Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘I left the crime scene because there was nothing to be found there,’ Simon said. ‘So tell me, where would you start?’

‘I would talk to his next of kin,’ Kari Adel said, looking around for a chair. ‘Map his movements before he ended up in the river.’

Her accent suggested she was from the eastern part of west Oslo where people were terrified that the wrong accent might stigmatise them.

‘Good, Adel. And his next of kin-’

‘-is his wife. His soon-to-be ex-wife. She threw him out recently. I’ve spoken to her. He was staying at the Ila Centre for drug addicts. Is it OK if I sit down. .?’

Clever. Definitely clever.

‘You won’t need to now,’ Simon said, getting up. He estimated her to be at least fifteen centimetres taller than him. Even so, she had to take two steps to one of his. Tight skirt. That was all good, but he suspected she would soon be wearing something else. Crimes were solved in jeans.

‘You know you’re not allowed in here.’

Martha blocked the access to the Ila Centre’s front door as she looked at the two people. She thought she had seen the woman before. Her height and thinness made her hard to forget. Drug Squad? She had blonde, lifeless hair, wore hardly any make-up and had a slightly pained facial expression that made her look like the cowed daughter of a rich man.

The man was her direct opposite. Roughly 1.70 metres tall, somewhere in his sixties. Wrinkles in his face. But also laughter lines. Thinning grey hair above a pair of eyes in which she read ‘kind’, ‘humorous’ and ‘stubborn’. Reading people was something she did automatically when she held the obligatory introduction interview with new residents to establish what kind of behaviour and trouble the staff could expect. Sometimes she was wrong. But not often.

‘We don’t need to come inside,’ said the man who had introduced himself as Chief Inspector Kefas. ‘We’re from Homicide. It’s about Per Vollan. He lived here-’

‘Lived?’

‘Yes, he’s dead.’

Martha gasped. It was her initial reaction when she was told that yet another man had died. She wondered if it was to reassure herself that she was still alive. Surprise came next. Or rather, the fact that she wasn’t surprised. But Per hadn’t been a drug addict, he hadn’t sat in death’s waiting room with the rest of them. Or had he? And had she seen it, known it subconsciously? Was that why the usual gasp was followed by the equally routine mental reaction: of course. No, it wasn’t that. It was the other thing.

‘He was found in the Aker River.’ The man did the talking. The woman had TRAINEE written on her forehead.

‘Right,’ Martha said.

‘You don’t sound surprised?’

‘No. No, perhaps not. It’s always a shock, of course, but. .’

‘. . but it’s par for the course in our line of work, yes?’ The man gestured at the windows in the building next door. ‘I didn’t know Tranen had shut.’

‘It’s going to be an upmarket patisserie,’ Martha said, hugging herself as if she were cold. ‘For the latte-drinking yummy mummies.’

‘So they’ve arrived here, too. How about that.’ He nodded to one of the old-timers who shuffled past on trembling junkie knees and got a measured nod in return. ‘There are many familiar faces here. Vollan, however, was a prison chaplain. The post-mortem report isn’t ready yet, but we found no needle marks on him.’

‘He wasn’t staying here because he was using. He helped us out when we had trouble with ex-offenders who were living here. They trusted him. So when he had to move out of his home, we offered him temporary accommodation.’

‘We know. What I’m asking is why you’re not surprised he’s dead when you know he wasn’t using. His death could have been an accident.’

‘Was it?’

Simon looked at the tall, thin woman. She hesitated until he gave her a nod. Then she finally opened her mouth. ‘We haven’t found any signs of violence, but the area around the river is a notorious criminal hot spot.’

Martha noticed her accent and concluded a strict mother had corrected her daughter’s language at the dinner table. A mother who had told her she would never find a decent husband if she spoke like a shop girl.

The Chief Inspector tilted his head. ‘What do you think, Martha?’

She liked him. He looked like someone who cared.

‘I think he knew he was going to die.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Why?’

‘Because he wrote me a letter.’

Martha walked around the table in the meeting room which lay opposite the reception area on the first floor. They had managed to retain the Gothic style and it was easily the most beautiful room in the building. Not that there was much competition. She poured a cup of coffee for the Chief Inspector who sat down while he read the letter that Per Vollan had left for her at reception. His partner perched on the edge of a chair next to him, texting on her mobile. She had politely declined Martha’s offer of coffee, tea and water as if she suspected even the tap water here to be contaminated with undesirable microbes. Kefas pushed the letter across to her. ‘It says here he leaves everything he owns to the hostel.’

His colleague sent her text message and cleared her throat. The Chief Inspector turned to her. ‘Yes, Adel?’

‘You’re not allowed to say a hostel any more; it’s called a residential centre.’

Kefas looked genuinely surprised. ‘Why?’

‘Because we have social workers and a sickbay here,’ Martha explained. ‘That makes it more than just a hostel. Of course the real reason is that the word “hostel” now has unfortunate connotations. Drinking, brawling and squalid living conditions. So they slap some paint on the rust by renaming it.’

‘But even so. .’ the Chief Inspector said. ‘Was Vollan really going to leave everything he owned to this place?’

Martha shrugged. ‘I doubt he had much to leave. Did you notice the date under his signature?’

‘He wrote the letter yesterday. And you think he did that because he knew he was going to die? Are you saying he killed himself?’

Martha thought about it. ‘I don’t know.’

The tall, thin woman cleared her throat again. ‘Marital breakdown is not, as far as I know, an uncommon reason for suicide in men over forty.’

Martha got the feeling that the quiet woman more than just knew it; she had the exact statistics at her fingertips.

‘Did he seem depressed?’ Simon asked.

‘More low than depressed, I’d say.’

‘It’s not uncommon for a suicidal person to kill themselves as they come out of their depression,’ the woman said and sounded as if she was reading from a book. The other two looked at her. ‘The depression itself is often characterised by apathy and it takes a certain amount of initiative to commit suicide.’ A beep indicated that she had received a text message.

Kefas turned to Martha. ‘A middle-aged man is thrown out by his wife and writes something that could be seen as a farewell note to you. So why isn’t it suicide?’

‘I didn’t say that it wasn’t.’

‘But?’

‘He seemed scared.’

‘Scared of what?’

Martha shrugged. She wondered if she was creating unnecessary trouble for herself.

‘Per was a man with a dark side. He was very open about it. He said he became a chaplain because he needed forgiveness more than most.’

‘You’re saying he had done things not everyone would forgive him for?’

‘Things that no one would forgive him for.’

‘I see. Are we talking about the type of sins where the clergy seems to be over-represented?’

Martha didn’t reply.

‘Is that why his wife threw him out?’

Martha hesitated. This man was sharper than the other police officers she had met. But could she trust him?