Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘He’s not going to kill anyone tonight,’ the boy said.

‘Even so,’ Pelle said. ‘Sure you don’t want me to wait? It’s half an hour back to Oslo and another taxi will cost you shedloads because it’ll have to make the journey out here first. I’ll stop the meter-’

‘I really appreciate that, Pelle, but it’s probably best for both of us if you’re not a witness to anything. Do you understand?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

The boy got out of the car. He looked at Pelle. Pelle shrugged and drove off; he heard the gravel crunch under the tyres while he followed the boy in his mirror. Saw him standing there. Then suddenly he was gone, swallowed up by the darkness in the woods.

Pelle stopped the car. He continued to stare at the mirror. The boy was gone. Just like his wife.

It was so difficult to grasp. That people who had been around, furnished your life, could simply evaporate and you never saw them again. Except in dreams. The good dreams. Because he never saw her in his nightmare. In the nightmare he saw only the road and the headlights of the oncoming car. In the nightmare he, Pelle Granerud, once a promising rally driver, didn’t have time to react, didn’t manage to carry out the simple manoeuvre needed to avoid a drunk driver on the wrong side of the road. Instead of doing the things he did every single day in training on the motor-racing circuit, he froze. Because he knew that he might lose the only thing he couldn’t bear to lose. Not his own life, but that of his family: the two people who were his life. The two people he had just picked up from the hospital, they were his new life. Which started now. He was a father. He got to be a father for just three days. And when he woke up, he was back in the same hospital. First they told him about the injuries to his legs. It was a misunderstanding, there had been a change of shift and the incoming staff didn’t know that his wife and child had been killed in the accident. It was two hours before he found out. He was allergic to morphine, an inherited condition probably, and he had lain in unbearable agony screaming her name day after day. But she didn’t come. And hour by hour, day by day, little by little he began to understand, that he would never, ever see her again. So he carried on screaming her name. Just to hear it. They hadn’t had time to decide on a name for the baby. And it suddenly dawned on Pelle that it wasn’t until tonight, when the boy had put his hand on his shoulder, that the pain disappeared completely.

Pelle could see the outline of a man in the white house. He was sitting behind a large, curtainless panorama window. The living room was lit up as if the man was on show. As if he was waiting for someone.

Iver could see that the big man was bringing the guest he had been talking to by the piano over to him and Fredrik.

‘It’s you he wants to talk to, not me,’ Fredrik whispered and slipped away, having set his sights on something Russian over by the bar.

Iver gulped. How many years had he and the big man done business together, been in the same boat, shared upturns and the very occasional downturn, such as when the shock waves of the global financial crisis sloshed gently against the Norwegian coast? And yet he still tensed up, almost petrified, when the big man approached. People said that he could lift his own body weight on the bench press. And not just once, but ten reps in a row. But it was one thing for his physical presence to be so intimidating, another for you to know that absolutely everything you said, every word, the slightest change in pitch, also — or indeed, especially — anything you didn’t intend, he would catch. In addition to what your body language, facial colour and the movement of your pupils revealed, of course.

‘So, Iver.’ The low-frequency, rumbling voice. ‘How are you doing? Agnete. Terrible business, yes?’

‘It certainly is,’ Iver said, looking around for a waiter.

‘I want you to meet a friend of mine — the two of you have something in common. You have both been widowed recently. .’

The man with the eyepatch extended his hand.

‘. . by the same killer,’ said the big man.

‘Yngve Morsand,’ the man introduced himself and squeezed Iver’s hand. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

‘Likewise,’ Iver Iversen said. So that was why he thought the man looked familiar. It was the shipping owner, the husband of the woman who had been practically decapitated. Yngve Morsand had been the police’s prime suspect for a while until they had found DNA at the crime scene. From Sonny Lofthus.

‘Yngve lives just outside Drammen,’ the big man said. ‘And tonight we’ve borrowed his house.’

‘Oh?’

‘We’re using it as a trap. We’re going to catch the guy who killed Agnete, Iver.’

‘The Twin says there’s a good chance Sonny Lofthus will make an attempt on my life there tonight,’ Yngve Morsand laughed and looked around for something. ‘I’ve put money on it that he won’t. Would you tell your waiters to get me something stronger than a Martini, Twin?’

‘It’s Sonny Lofthus’s next obvious move,’ the big man said. ‘Luckily he’s sufficiently systematic and predictable, so I think I’ll be taking your money.’ The big man grinned broadly. White teeth below his moustache, eyes like two slits in the fleshy face. He placed a gigantic hand on the shipowner’s back. ‘And I’d prefer it if you didn’t call me that, Yngve.’

The shipowner looked up at him jokingly. ‘You mean Twi- Aaah.’ His mouth opened and his face contorted into a baffled, frozen grimace. Iver saw the big man’s fingers release their grip around Morsand’s neck and the shipowner bent forward to cough.

‘So I think we’re agreed on that, yes?’ The big man raised his hand towards the bar and snapped his fingers. ‘Drinks.’

Martha stuck her spoon diffidently into the cloudberry cream pudding while she ignored the words being hurled at her from every angle of the table. Has this person assaulted you before? Is he dangerous? If he’s a resident, surely you’ll have to see him again, good God! What if the guy reports Anders to the police for his defence of her? Everyone knows how unpredictable these drug addicts are. But then again, he was probably high and won’t be able to remember a thing. An uncle thought he had looked like the man on TV who was wanted for murder. What’s his name — is he foreign? What is it, Martha, why don’t you say anything? Surely you can guess why, she has a duty of confidentiality.

‘I’m eating my pudding,’ Martha said. ‘It’s good, you should try some. I think I’ll get some more.’

Anders came up behind her in the kitchen.

‘I heard him,’ he hissed. ‘ I love you ? That was the guy from the corridor at Ila. The one you were talking to. What’s going on between the two of you?’

‘Anders, don’t. .’

‘Have you slept with him?’

‘Stop it!’

‘He definitely has a guilty conscience. If he didn’t, he would have pulled his gun on me. What was he doing here — had he come to shoot me? I’m calling the police-’

‘To tell them how you attacked and kicked a man in the head without provocation?’

‘And who would tell them I wasn’t being provoked? You?’

‘Or the taxi driver.’

‘ You ?’ He grabbed her arm and laughed. ‘Yes, you would, wouldn’t you? You would take his side against your own fiance. You fucking wh-’

She tore herself loose. A dessert plate hit the floor and smashed. The dining room fell completely silent.

Martha marched out into the hall, grabbed her coat and headed for the door. Stopped. Paused for a second. Then she turned round and marched into the dining room. She grabbed a spoon, white from cloudberry cream pudding, and tapped it against a greasy glass. She looked up and realised that last action had been superfluous, she already had everyone’s attention.