Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘But?’

‘But it would have brought Franck’s wife and child into the firing line.’

‘Innocent bystanders. He doesn’t want the innocent to get hurt.’

Simon nodded slowly. He saw something happen in her eyes. A spark. A hope. Was it really that simple? Was she in love? Simon straightened his back. Looked up at the altarpiece which showed the Saviour on the cross. Closed his eyes. Opened them again. To hell with it. To hell with it all.

‘Do you know what his father, Ab, used to say?’ he said, hoisting up his trousers. ‘He said that the age of mercy is over and that the day of judgement has arrived. But as the Messiah is running late, we have to do his job for him. He alone can punish them, Martha. Oslo Police is corrupt, they’re protecting the crooks. I think Sonny is doing this because he feels he owes it to his father, that this is what his father died for. Justice. The kind of justice which is above the law.’

He watched the older woman by the confessional box where she was discussing something with a priest in a low voice.

‘And what about you?’ Martha said.

‘Me? I am the law. So I have to catch Sonny. That’s just the way it is.’

‘And that woman, Agnete Iversen, what crime did she commit?’

‘I can’t tell you anything about her.’

‘I read that her jewellery was stolen.’

‘Did you?’

‘Did that include a pair of pearl earrings?’

‘I don’t know. Is it important?’

She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It isn’t. I was trying to think of anything that might help you.’

‘Thank you,’ Simon said and buttoned his jacket. The hard heels were approaching. ‘You have other things on your mind, I can see.’

Martha quickly glanced up at him.

‘I’ll talk to you later, Martha.’

As Simon left the church, his mobile rang. He looked at the display. The area code told him the call was coming from Drammen.

‘Kefas.’

‘It’s Henrik Westad.’

The police officer who was investigating the murder of the shipping owner’s wife.

‘I’m at the Cardiology Unit at Buskerud Central Hospital.’

Simon could guess what was coming next.

‘Leif Krogn?ss, our witness with heart trouble. They thought he was out of danger, but. .’

‘He died suddenly,’ Simon said, sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. ‘He was alone in the ward when it happened. The post-mortem won’t find any abnormalities. And you’re calling me because you don’t want to be the only one who can’t sleep tonight.’

Westad didn’t reply.

Simon put the mobile in his pocket. The wind was rising and he looked up at the sky above the roofs. He couldn’t see it yet, but he could tell from his headache. A low pressure system was heading his way.

The motorbike in front of Rover was about to rise from the dead. It was a Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail, the 1989 model, with a huge front wheel, Rover’s favourite. When he got it, it had been a dilapidated 1340cc wreck whose owner had treated it without the love, patience and understanding which an HD — in contrast to its more pliable Japanese cousins — demanded. Rover had replaced the crank bearing, the big-end bearing, the piston rings and reseated the valves, and very little of the original was left as the bike was transformed into a 1700cc with 119 b.h.p. to the rear wheel, which used to have only 43. Rover was wiping oil off the forearm with a tattoo of a cathedral when he noticed a change in the light. His first thought was that it was clouding over like the weather forecast had promised. But when he looked up, he noticed a shadow and a silhouette in the doorway to his workshop.

‘Yes?’ Rover called out and continued to rub oil off his arm.

The man started walking towards him. Silently. Like a predator. Rover knew that the nearest weapon was too far away for him to be able to reach it in time. And that was how it should be. He was done with that way of life. It was bullshit when people said it was hard not to fall back into your bad old ways once you were out of prison; it was just a question of willpower. It was that simple. If you wanted to, you could do it. But if your intention was merely an illusion, wishful thinking, just something to dress yourself up in, then you would be back in the gutter on day two.

The man was now so close that Rover could make out his facial features. But surely that was. .

‘Hello, Rover.’

It was him.

He held up a yellowing business card saying ‘Rover’s Motorcycle Workshop’.

‘The address was right. You said you could get me an Uzi.’

Rover was now wiping his hands while he stared at him. He had read the newspapers. Seen the picture on TV. But what he was staring at now wasn’t the boy from the cell at Staten, it was his own future. The future as he had imagined it.

‘You took out Nestor,’ Rover said, pulling the rag between his fingers.

The boy made no reply.

Rover shook his head. ‘That means it’s not just the police who are looking for you, but the Twin as well.’

‘I know I’m trouble,’ the boy said. ‘I’ll leave immediately if that’s what you want.’

Forgiveness. Hope. A clean break. A second chance. Most people blew it, they continued making the same stupid mistakes their whole lives, they could always find an excuse to screw things up. They didn’t know it themselves, or they pretended not to, but they had lost before they had even started. Because they didn’t really want to succeed. But Rover wanted to. It wasn’t that that was going to bring him down. He was stronger now. Wiser. But that said: if you’re going to walk with your head held high, there’s always a chance of falling flat on your face.

‘Why don’t we close the garage door?’ Rover said. ‘It looks like rain.’

The rain was lashing the windscreen when Simon took the key out of the ignition and prepared to sprint from the car park to the hospital building. He spotted a blond figure in a coat right in front of his car. It was raining so hard that the raindrops bounced off the bonnet and the man’s outline was blurred. The door to the driver’s side was opened and another, dark-haired man asked him to come with them. Simon looked at the clock on the dashboard. 4 p.m. It was two hours before the deadline.

The two men drove him to Aker Brygge, a seafront development with shops, offices, some of the city’s most expensive flats and around fifty cafes and bars. They walked along the promenade by the water and saw the ferry from Nesoddtangen dock as they turned into one of the many alleyways; they carried on walking until they reached a small iron staircase that led down to a door with a porthole that presumably evoked associations with seafood. Next to the door was a small sign saying ‘Nautilus Restaurant’ in unusually discreet letters. One of the men held the door open and they entered a narrow hallway where they shook the rain off their coats and hung them up in the unmanned cloakroom. There wasn’t a soul to be seen and the first thought that crossed Simon’s mind was that this was a perfect location for money laundering. Not too big, but with a rent and a position that made profitability plausible, but whose profits would never be questioned, as profits on which taxes are paid rarely are.

Simon was wet. When he wiggled his toes inside his shoes, they made tiny squelching sounds. But that wasn’t the real reason he was cold.

The dining room was divided in half by a large, rectangular aquarium which also supplied the only source of illumination. At the table in front of it and with his back to the aquarium sat a huge figure.

He was the reason Simon was cold.

He had never seen him in the flesh before, but he didn’t doubt for a second who it was.