Jo Nesbo - The Son

19 March

Sonny says he wants to follow in my footsteps and become a police officer. Helene says that he is obsessed with me, that he worships me. I said it’s all right for a son to do that and that I was no different. Sonny is a good boy, perhaps too good, it’s a tough world, but a boy like him will always be a blessing to his father.

Some pages followed which Markus didn’t quite understand. Words such as ‘imminent personal bankruptcy’ and ‘sell my soul to the devil’. And the name ‘the Twin’.

Markus turned to the next page.

4 August

Today at the station they talked about the mole again, saying the Twin must have a plant in the force. How strange that people, even police officers, have so little imagination. It’s always one killer, one traitor. Don’t they realise the genius of being two? That one will always have an alibi when the other is active, that in this way we’ll both be completely above suspicion on so many occasions that we’ll automatically be eliminated as potential suspects? Yes, it’s a good set-up. It’s perfect. We’re corrupt, thoroughly rotten police officers who have betrayed everything we believe in for a few measly pieces of silver. We’ve turned a blind eye to drug dealing, human trafficking, even murder. Nothing matters any more. Is there a way back? Is there any chance of confession, penitence and forgiveness without me ruining everything and everyone around me? I don’t know. All I know is that I have to get out.

Markus yawned. Reading always made him sleepy, especially when there were so many words he didn’t understand. He flicked ahead several pages.

15 September

I wonder how long we can carry on without the Twin finding out who we are. We communicate via Hotmail addresses from our separate, stolen computers which we’ve ‘borrowed’ from the evidence room, but it isn’t failsafe. On the other hand, if he had wanted to, he could have arranged surveillance of the places where we make our drops. When I picked up the envelope which was taped to the underside of the bench at Broker’s Restaurant in Bogstadveien the week before last, I was sure I had been spotted. A guy at the bar scowled at me, anyone could see he was a criminal. And I was right about him. He came over and told me that I had nicked him for handling stolen property ten years ago. Said it was the best thing that could have happened to him, that he had stopped keeping bad company and was now running a fish farm with his brother. Then he shook my hand and left. One story with a happy ending. The envelope also contained a letter in which the Twin wrote that he wants me — so clearly he doesn’t know that there are two of us — to advance in the police force, get a top job where I can be more useful; both to him and to me. Access to sensitive information, more money. He wrote that he could help me advance, pull strings. I laughed out loud. The guy must be completely mad, a guy like that doesn’t stop until he has achieved world domination. He is someone who doesn’t stop, but has to be stopped. I showed the letter to Z. I don’t know why, but he didn’t laugh.

Markus could hear his mother calling him. He imagined that she had a job for him to do. He hated it when she did that, flung open a window and yelled his name across the neighbourhood as if he were a dog or something. He turned another page.

6 October

Something has happened. Z says he thinks we ought to quit while we’re ahead, get out while the going is good. And the Twin hasn’t replied to my email for several days. That’s never happened before. Have the two of them been talking? I don’t know if they have, but I do know that this isn’t something we can just walk away from. I know that T2 no longer trusts me. For the same reason, I no longer trust him. We have shown each other our true faces.

7 October

Last night it was suddenly clear to me: the Twin only needs one of us and that’s exactly what he’ll get — one. The other will be the jilted lover, a bitter witness who must be eliminated. And Z has already realised this. So now it’s urgent, I have to get him before he gets me. I’ve asked Helene if she could go with Sonny to the wrestling competition tomorrow as I have things to do. I have asked Z if we can meet at the medieval ruins in Maridalen at midnight, that we have things to discuss. He sounded a little surprised that I wanted to meet in such a deserted place and so late, but said that it was fine.

8 October

It’s quiet. I have loaded the pistol. It feels strange to know that I’m about to take a man’s life. I keep asking myself what led me here. Did I do it for my family? Or for myself? Or was it the temptation to achieve something my parents couldn’t, a position in society, the life I’ve seen handed to undeserving idiots on a plate? Am I resourceful and brave — or weak and spineless? Am I a bad person? I’ve asked myself this question: if my son had been in my shoes, would I want him to do what I have done? And that, of course, made the answer very obvious.

I’m going up to Maridalen soon, then we’ll have to see if I come back a changed man. A killer.

I know it sounds strange, but sometimes I pray that someone will find this diary. That’s human nature, I guess.

There was nothing more. Markus flicked through the blank pages and to the final ones which had been torn out. Then he put the diary back on the bedside table and walked quietly down the stairs while he heard his mother’s voice call out his name over and over.

Betty entered the crowded pharmacy, tore off a numbered ticket where it said ‘Prescriptions’, and found a vacant chair along the wall among customers who were staring into space or, despite the sign prohibiting their use, pressing keys on their mobiles. She had convinced her doctor to write a prescription for stronger sleeping pills.

‘These are hard-core benzodiazepines and only for short-term use,’ he had said and repeated what she already knew; that their use created a vicious cycle which could lead to dependency and which didn’t get to the root of the problem. Betty had replied that the root of the problem was that she couldn’t sleep. Especially not after she had realised that she had been alone in a room with the country’s most wanted killer. A man who had shot a woman in her own home in Holmenkollasen. And today the newspaper said that he was also suspected of the murder of a shipowner’s wife, that he had entered a house apparently chosen at random outside Drammen and nearly sawn off the top of her head. In the last few days Betty had wandered around like a zombie, half awake, half asleep, hallucinating. She saw his face everywhere, not just in the newspapers and on the TV, but on advertisements, on the tram, in reflections in shop windows. He was the postman, her neighbour, the waiter.

And now she saw him in here, too.

He was standing by the counter wearing a white turban or perhaps it was just a bandage around his head. He had put down a pile of disposable syringes and hypodermic needles on the counter and paid cash. The grainy pictures in the newspapers weren’t terribly helpful, but Betty noticed that the woman on the chair next to her whispered something to her companion while she pointed at the man, so perhaps she had also recognised him. But when the man with the turban turned round and walked towards the exit, his body twisting to one side, Betty realised that she was seeing things again.

The ashen, withdrawn and stony face looked nothing like the face she had seen in Suite 4.

Kari leaned forward to read the numbers while she drove slowly past the large houses. She had made up her mind after a sleepless night. Sam — whom she had also kept awake — had said that Kari shouldn’t take a job she didn’t intend to stay in so seriously. It was true, of course, but ultimately Kari liked order. And this could affect her future, it could close doors to her. So she had reached the decision to make a direct approach.