Jo Nesbo - The Son

She put her hand on Anders’s shoulder and he jumped as if she had just woken him up.

‘Go inside,’ she ordered him. ‘Now!’

He blinked at her in confusion. Then he did as he was told. Walked past her up to the steps where the other guests had now gathered.

‘Go inside!’ Martha called out to them. ‘He’s a resident from the Ila Centre, I’ll deal with it. All of you, go inside!’

Martha squatted down next to Sonny. Blood was pouring from his forehead and down the bridge of his nose. He was breathing through his mouth.

An insistent, demanding voice came from the steps: ‘But is that really necessary, Martha darling? After all, you’ll be leaving that place now that you and Anders are-’

Martha closed her eyes and steeled herself. ‘And that goes for you, too. Shut up and get inside now!’

When she opened her eyes again, she could see that he was smiling. And then he whispered with bloody lips, so quietly that she had to bend down to hear him:

‘He’s right, Martha. You really can feel how love washes you clean.’

Then he got up, swayed for a moment before he staggered out of the gate and into the taxi.

‘Wait!’ she shouted and grabbed the briefcase which was still lying on the gravel path.

But the taxi was already driving down the road towards the darkness at the end of the residential area.

Iver Iversen bounced on his heels and twirled the stem of his empty Martini glass. He watched the guests gathered in clusters on the whitewashed terrace and in the living room inside. It was the size of a ballroom and furnished with the taste of someone who didn’t have to live in it. ‘Interior designers with unlimited budgets and limited talent,’ as Agnete would have said. The men were wearing dinner jackets as the invitation had requested. The women were clearly outnumbered, but those who were there stood out even more. Blindingly beautiful, tantalisingly young and representing an interesting ethnic mix. High-slit dresses, naked backs and deep cleavages. Elegant, exotic and imported. True beauty is always rare. Iver Iversen wouldn’t have batted an eyelid if someone had led a snow leopard through the room.

‘It looks like every single financier in Oslo is here.’

‘Only those who aren’t particularly fastidious,’ Fredrik Ansgar said, adjusting his bow tie and sipping his gin and tonic. ‘Or are away at their holiday homes.’

Wrong, Iver Iversen thought. If they do business with the Twin, they’ll have made the trip into town. They wouldn’t dare do otherwise. The Twin. He looked at the huge man standing by the piano. He could have been the model for the ideal worker on Soviet propaganda posters or the sculptures in Vigeland Park. Everything about him was solid, solid and chiselled: his head, arms, hands, calves. High forehead, solid chin, full lips. The person talking to him was heavily built and over 1.8 metres tall, but looked like a dwarf next to the Twin. Iver thought he vaguely recognised him. He had a patch over one eye. Probably some mogul he’d seen in the newspapers.

Iversen grabbed himself another Martini from the tray being carried by one of the waiters who orbited the room. He knew that he shouldn’t, that he was already drunk. But he didn’t give a toss, after all he was a grieving widower. Still, he knew drinking was exactly what he shouldn’t be doing. He might end up saying something he would later regret.

‘Do you know how the Twin got his name?’

‘I’ve heard the story, yes,’ Fredrik Ansgar said.

‘I heard that his brother drowned, but that it was an accident.’

‘An accident? In a bucket of water?’

Fredrik laughed and his gaze followed a dark-skinned beauty who glided past.

‘Look,’ Iver said. ‘There’s even a bishop here. I wonder how he got caught in the Twin’s net.’

‘Yes, it’s an impressive gathering. Is it true he also has a prison governor in his pocket?’

‘Let me put it like this, it doesn’t stop there.’

‘The police?’

Iver said nothing.

‘How high up?’

‘You’re young, Fredrik, and even though you’re on the inside, you’re not yet in so deep that you don’t have the option of retreat. But the more you know, the more trapped you are, believe me. If I had the chance to do things differently. .’

‘And what about Sonny Lofthus? And Simon Kefas? Will they be taken care of?’

‘Oh yes,’ Iver said, staring at a small, nimble girl sitting alone at the bar. Thai? Vietnamese? So young, pretty and dolled up. So instructed. So terrified and unprotected. Just like Mai. He almost felt sorry for Simon Kefas. He, too, was trapped. He had sold his soul for his love of a younger woman and, like Iver, he would come to know humiliation. At least Iver hoped that Simon would have time to feel it before the Twin did what was necessary and beat Simon Kefas to it. A lake in Ostmarka? Perhaps Kefas and Lofthus would get a lake each.

Iver Iversen closed his eyes and thought about Agnete. He felt like hurling the Martini glass at the wall, but instead he drained it in one gulp.

‘Telenor’s operations centre, police assistance.’

‘Good evening, this is Chief Inspector Simon Kefas.’

‘I can tell from the number you’re calling from. And that you’re somewhere in Ulleval Hospital.’

‘Impressive. However, I want you to trace a different number.’

‘Have you got a warrant?’

‘This is an urgent matter.’

‘Fine. I’ll report it tomorrow and you’ll have to take it up with the public prosecutor then. Name and number?’

‘All I have is the number.’

‘And what would you like?’

‘The location where the mobile is now.’

‘We can only give you an approximate location. And if the mobile isn’t in use, it can take time before our base stations pick up its signal. It happens automatically once every hour.’

‘I’ll call the number now so you get a signal.’

‘So this isn’t about someone who can’t know that their phone is being traced?’

‘I’ve been calling the number several times in the last hour and there’s been no response so far.’

‘Fine. Give me the number, ring it, and I’ll tell you what we find out.’

Pelle stopped the taxi on the deserted gravel track. To his left the landscape sloped down towards the river that shimmered in the moonlight. A narrow bridge led from the gravel track back to the main road by which they had come. To his right a field of wheat whispered and swayed below the black clouds that raced across the sky which looked like a photographic negative in the light summer night.

Further down the road, within the forest in front of them, lay their destination: a large house surrounded by a white picket fence.

‘I should be taking you to casualty instead so they could patch you up,’ Pelle said.

‘I’ll be fine,’ the boy said and placed a large-denomination banknote on the armrest between the front seats. ‘And thank you for the handkerchief.’

Pelle looked up at him the rear-view mirror. The boy had tied the handkerchief around his forehead. It was soaked in blood.

‘Come on. I won’t charge you. There’s bound to be a casualty department somewhere in Drammen.’

‘I might go tomorrow,’ the boy said, clutching the red sports bag. ‘I need to pay this man a visit first.’

‘Is that safe? I thought you said he’d killed someone?’ Pelle looked in the direction of the garage which was built into the house. So much space and yet no separate garage. The owner was probably a fan of American architecture. Pelle’s grandmother had lived in a village of Norwegians who had once lived in America or had families living there now, where the most fundamentalist converts to their adopted country hadn’t just had a house with a porch, a Stars and Stripes on the flagpole and an American automobile in the garage, but also 110 volt electrical installations so they could plug in their jukeboxes, toasters and fridges which they had bought in Texas or inherited from a grandfather in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.