Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘We’re like Charlie Chaplin and the flower girl,’ Else said. ‘If you play the movie backwards.’

Simon swallowed. The blind flower girl who thinks the tramp is a rich gentleman. Simon couldn’t remember how, only that the tramp helps her get her sight back, but that afterwards he never reveals his identity because he is convinced that she wouldn’t want him if she saw who he really was. And then, when she finds out, she loves him all the same.

‘I’ll go and stretch my legs,’ he said, getting up.

There was no one else in the corridor. For a while he looked at the sign on the wall depicting a mobile with a red line across it. Then he took out his mobile and found the phone number. Some people think that if you send an email from a mobile via a Hotmail address on the Internet, the police won’t be able to trace the phone number it was sent from. Wrong. It had been easy to find. It felt as if his heart was in his throat, as if it was beating behind his collarbone. There was no reason why he would pick up the phone.

‘Yes?’

His voice. Alien, but yet so strangely familiar, like an echo from a distant, no, a near past. The Son. Simon had to cough twice before his vocal cords would make a sound.

‘I have to meet you, Sonny.’

‘That would have been nice. .’

There wasn’t a hint of irony in his voice.

‘. . but I’m not planning on being around for very long.’

Here? In Oslo, in Norway? Or here on Earth?

‘What are you going to do?’ Simon asked.

‘I think you know what.’

‘You’re going to find and punish all the people responsible. The people you served time for. The people who killed your father. And then you want to find the mole.’

‘I don’t have very much time.’

‘But I can help you.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Simon, but the best thing you can do to help me is carry on doing what you’ve been doing so far.’

‘Oh? And what is that?’

‘Not try to stop me.’

A pause followed. Simon listened out for any background noises that might reveal where the boy was. He heard a low, rhythmic pounding and sporadic shouting and screaming.

‘I think we want the same thing, Simon.’

Simon gulped. ‘Do you remember me?’

‘I have to go now.’

‘Your father and I. .’

But the line had already gone dead.

‘Thank you for coming.’

‘Don’t mention it, mate,’ Pelle said, glancing up at the boy in the rear-view mirror. ‘A taxi driver’s meter runs less than thirty per cent of his working day so it’s nice, both for me and my business, that you called. Where are you off to tonight, mister?’

‘Ullern.’

The boy had asked him for his card the last time Pelle drove him. Passengers tended to do that from time to time if they were satisfied, but they never called. It was too easy to get a cab by flagging one down in the street. So Pelle had no idea why the boy specifically wanted him to drive all the way from Gamlebyen to Kvadraturen to pick him up outside the dubious Bismarck Hotel.

The boy was wearing a smart suit and Pelle hadn’t recognised him at first. Something was different. He carried the same red sports bag plus a briefcase. A sharp jangle of metal had come from the bag as the boy dumped it on the back seat.

‘You look happy in that photograph,’ the boy said. ‘You and your wife?’

‘Oh, that one,’ Pelle said and felt himself blushing. No one had ever commented on the picture before. He had stuck it low down on the left-hand side of the steering wheel, so that customers wouldn’t be able to see it. But he was touched that the boy could see from the picture that they were happy. That she was happy. He hadn’t selected the best picture of them, but the one where she looked happiest.

‘I think she’s cooking rissoles tonight,’ he said. ‘Later we might go for a walk in Kampen Park. The breeze up there will be very welcome on a hot day like this.’

‘That sounds nice,’ the boy said. ‘You’re lucky to have found a woman to share your life with.’

‘Indeed I am,’ Pelle said and looked up in the rear-view mirror. ‘You couldn’t be more right.’

Pelle usually made sure the customer did the talking. He liked it, getting a snippet of someone’s life for the brief duration of a cab ride. Children and marriage. Jobs and mortgages. Sneak a peek at the trials and tribulations of family life for a short while. Not having to bring up the topics he knew so many taxi drivers enjoyed discussing. But a strange intimacy had grown between them; in fact, he quite simply enjoyed talking to this young man.

‘How about you?’ Pelle asked. ‘Found yourself a girlfriend yet?’

The boy smiled as he shook his head.

‘No? No one who revs up the old engine?’

The boy nodded.

‘Yeah? Good for you, mate. And her.’

The boy’s head movements changed direction.

‘No? Don’t tell me she doesn’t fancy you? I admit you didn’t look like much of a catch when you were throwing up against the wall, but today, in that suit and everything. .’

‘Thanks,’ the boy said. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t have her.’

‘Why not? Have you told her you love her?’

‘No. Should you do that?’

‘All the time, several times a day. Think of it as oxygen, you never stop needing it. I love you, I love you. Try it, then you’ll see what I mean.’

There was silence in the back for a while. Then he heard a cough.

‘How. . how do you know if someone loves you, Pelle?’

‘You just know. It’s the sum total of all the little things you can never really put your finger on. Love surrounds you like steam in the shower. You can’t see the individual drops, but you get warm. And wet. And clean.’ Pelle laughed, embarrassed and almost a little proud at his own words.

‘And you continue to bathe in her love and tell her that you love her every day?’

Pelle got the feeling that the boy’s questions weren’t spontaneous, that it was a subject he had intended to ask Pelle about because of the picture of him and his wife, that the boy must have spotted it on one of the other two rides they had taken.

‘Absolutely,’ Pelle said and felt as if something was stuck in his throat, a crumb or something. He coughed hard and turned on the radio.

The drive to Ullern took fifteen minutes. The boy gave Pelle an address in one of the roads which swung up towards Ullernasen between gigantic wooden structures that looked more like fortifications than family homes. The tarmac had already dried after the rainfall earlier that day.

‘Pull over here for a moment, would you, please?’

‘But the gate is over there.’

‘This is fine.’

Pelle pulled up along the kerb. The property was surrounded by a tall white wall with broken glass on the top. The vast, two-storey brick house lay at the top of a large garden. Music was coming from the terrace in front of the house and the light was on in every window. Floodlights in the garden. Two massive, broad-shouldered men in black suits were standing in front of the gate, one with a big white dog on a leash.

‘Are you going to a party?’ Pelle asked and massaged his bad foot. Now and then, the cramp came back like someone had thrown it at him.

The boy shook his head. ‘I don’t think I’m invited.’

‘Do you know the people who live here?’

‘No, I got the address when I was in prison. The Twin. Ever heard of him?’

‘No,’ Pelle said. ‘But seeing as you don’t know him, I can tell you that it ain’t right for one person to have so much. Look at that house! This is Norway, not the US or Saudi Arabia. We’re just a freezing cold bit of rock up here in the north, but we always had one thing that the other countries didn’t have. A certain equality. A certain fairness. But now we’re busy wrecking it for ourselves.’