Jo Nesbo - The Son

When he was released there had been no one waiting for him on the outside. His family had disowned him, his friends grown apart and he would never get work on a ship again. So he sought out the only people willing to accept him. Criminals. And resumed his old ways. Tramp shipping. Nestor, the Ukrainian, recruited him. Heroin from northern Thailand was smuggled in trucks using the old drug route via Turkey and the Balkans. In Germany the cargo was distributed to the Scandinavian countries and Johannes’s job was to drive the last stretch. Later he became a confidential informant.

There hadn’t been a good reason for that, either. Only a police officer who appealed to something inside him, something he didn’t even know he had. And though that prospect — a clear conscience — had seemed worth less than the kiss of a beautiful woman, he had really believed in that police officer. There had been something about his eyes. Johannes might have gone straight, changed his ways, who knows? But then one autumn evening the police officer was killed. And for the first and only time Johannes heard the name, heard it whispered with a mixture of fear and awe. The Twin.

From then on it was only a matter of time before Johannes was pulled back in again. He took bigger and bigger risks, moved bigger and bigger loads. Dammit, he wanted to get caught. Atone for what he had done. So he was relieved when customs officers pulled him over at the Swedish border. The furniture in the back of his lorry was stuffed full of heroin. The judge had reminded the jury both of the large quantity involved and that it wasn’t Johannes’s first offence. That was ten years ago. He had been at Staten for the last four years, since the prison opened. He had seen inmates come and go, seen prison officers come and go too, and he had treated them all with the respect they deserved. And, in return, he got the respect he deserved. That is to say, he enjoyed the respect the old-timer gets. The guy who is no longer a threat. Because none of them knew his secret. The betrayal he was guilty of. The reason he inflicted this punishment on himself. And he had given up all hope of finally getting the only things that mattered. The kiss he had been promised by a forgotten woman. The clear conscience he had been promised by a dead police officer. Until he had been transferred to A Wing and had met the boy they said could heal you. Johannes had been startled when he heard the surname, but he hadn’t said anything. He had just carried on mopping the floors, keeping his head down, smiling, doing and receiving the little favours that made life bearable in a place like this. The days, the weeks, the months and the years had flown by and turned into a life which would soon end. Cancer. Lung cancer. Small cell, the doctor had said. The aggressive kind which is the worst unless it is caught early.

It hadn’t been caught early.

There was nothing anyone could do. Certainly not Sonny. He hadn’t even come close to guessing what was wrong when Johannes had asked; the lad himself had suggested the groin, nudge nudge, wink wink. And his shoulder had got better of its own accord, if truth be told, not from Sonny’s hand which definitely didn’t have a higher temperature than the usual 37 °C, was far colder in fact. But he was a good lad, he really was, and Johannes had no desire to disillusion him if he thought he had healing hands.

So Johannes had kept it to himself, both his illness and his betrayal. But he knew that time was running out. That he couldn’t take this secret with him to the grave. Not if he wanted to rest in peace rather than the horror of waking up like a zombie, worm-eaten and trapped, doomed to eternal torment. He had no religious beliefs about who would be condemned to everlasting suffering or why, but he had been wrong about so many things in his life.

‘So many things. .’ Johannes Halden muttered to himself.

Then he put the mop aside, walked over to Sonny’s cell and knocked on the door. No reply. He knocked again.

Waited.

Then he opened the door.

Sonny sat with a rubber strap tied around his forearm below the elbow, the end of the strap between his teeth. He held a syringe just above a bulging vein. The angle was the prescribed thirty degrees for optimum insertion.

Sonny calmly looked up and smiled. ‘Yes?’

‘Sorry, I. . it can wait.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, it’s. . there’s no hurry.’ Johannes laughed. ‘It can wait another hour.’

‘Can it wait four hours?’

‘Four hours is fine.’

The old man saw the needle sink into the vein. The boy pressed the plunger. Silence and darkness seemed to fill the room like black water. Johannes withdrew quietly and closed the door.

Simon had his mobile pressed to his ear and his feet on the desk while he rocked back on the chair. It was an act the troika had perfected to such an extent that when they had challenged each other, the winner was whoever could be bothered to balance the longest.

‘So the American doctor didn’t want to give you his opinion?’ he said in a low voice, partly because he saw no reason to involve other members of the Homicide Squad in his personal life, and partly because this was how he and his wife always spoke on the phone. Softly, intimately. As if they were in bed, holding each other.

‘Oh, he does,’ Else said. ‘But not yet. He wants to look at the test results and the scans first. I’ll know more tomorrow.’

‘OK. How are you feeling?’

‘Fine.’

‘How fine?’

She laughed. ‘Don’t worry so much, darling. I’ll see you at dinner.’

‘All right. Your sister, is she. .?’

‘Yes, she’s still here and she’ll give me a lift home. Now stop fussing and hang up, you’re at work!’

He ended the call reluctantly. Thought about his dream in which he gave her his sight.

‘Chief Inspector Kefas?’

He looked up. And up. The woman standing in front of his desk was tall. Very tall. And skinny. Legs as thin of those of a daddy-long-legs stuck out from under a smart skirt.

‘I’m Kari Adel. I’ve been told to assist you. I tried to find you at the crime scene, but you disappeared.’

And she was young. Very young. She looked more like an ambitious bank clerk than a police officer. Simon rocked the chair even further back. ‘What crime scene?’

‘Kuba.’

‘And how do you know it’s a crime scene?’

He saw her shift her weight. Look for a way out. But there wasn’t one.

‘Possible crime scene,’ she then said.

‘And who says I need help?’

She jerked her thumb behind her to indicate where the order had come from. ‘But I think I’m the one in need of help. I’m new here.’

‘Fresh out of training?’

‘Eighteen months with the Drug Squad.’

‘Fresh, then. And you’ve already made it to Homicide? Congratulations, Adel. You’re either really lucky, well connected or. .’ He leaned back horizontally in the chair and wiggled out a tin of snus from his jeans pocket.

‘A woman?’ she suggested.

‘I was going to say clever.’

She blushed and he could see the discomfort in her eyes.

‘Are you clever?’ Simon asked, pushing a piece of snus under his upper lip.

‘I came second in my year.’

‘And how long are you planning on staying with Homicide?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If drugs didn’t appeal to you, why would murder?’

She shifted her weight again. Simon saw that he had been right. She was one of those people who would make a brief guest appearance before disappearing up the building to the higher floors and up the ranks. Clever. Probably leave the police force altogether. Like the smart buggers at the Serious Fraud Office had done. Taken all their skills with them and left Simon in the lurch. The police force wasn’t a place you stayed if you were bright, talented, ambitious and wanted a life.