The Son

20

Simon drove past the playing fields and turned into the street where they lived. He could see that his neighbour was barbecuing again. The loud, sun-baked and beer-soaked outbursts of laughter emphasised the summer silence in the neighbourhood. Most houses were empty and only a single car was parked along the road.

‘And we’re home,’ Simon said and pulled up in front of their garage.

He didn’t know why he said it. Else could surely see where they were.

‘Thank you for taking me to the movies,’ Else said and put her hand on his on top of the gearstick, as if he had walked her to her front door and was about to say goodnight and leave here there. I could never do that, Simon thought and smiled at her. He wondered how much of the film she had been able to see. Going to the cinema had been her idea. He had glanced furtively at her several times during the movie and seen that at least she had laughed in all the right places. But then again, Woody Allen’s humour lay more in the dialogue than in slapstick. Never mind, they had had a lovely evening. Another lovely evening.

‘But I bet you missed Mia Farrow,’ she teased him.

He laughed. It was a private joke. The first film he had taken her to see had been Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski’s disgustingly brilliant movie with Mia Farrow who gives birth to a child who turns out to be the devil’s son. Else had been horrified and for a long time she had believed that it was Simon’s way of letting her know that he didn’t want children — especially when he insisted that they see it again. Not until later — after a fourth Woody Allen film with Mia Farrow — did she click that it was Farrow and not the spawn of the devil who so fascinated him.

As they walked from the car towards their front door, Simon saw a brief flash of light from the street. Like a revolving lighthouse beam. It was coming from the parked car.

‘What was that?’ Else asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Simon said and unlocked the front door. ‘Would you mind putting on some coffee? I’ll be with you in a moment.’

Simon left her and crossed the street. He knew the car didn’t belong to any of their neighbours. Or anyone living nearby. In Oslo limousines were associated mainly with embassies, the royal family or government ministers. He knew only one other person who drove around with tinted windows, plenty of leg room and his own driver. A driver who had just got out and was holding open the door to the back for Simon.

Simon bent down, but remained outside. The small man sitting inside had a pointy nose in his round, ruddy face of the type people described as ‘jovial’. The blue blazer with the gold buttons — a favourite with 1980s Norwegian bankers, shipowners and crooners — had always made Simon wonder if it disguised a deeply anchored fantasy among Norwegian men to be the captain of a ship.

‘Good evening, Chief Inspector Kefas,’ said the small man in a bright, cheerful voice.

‘What are you doing in my street, Nestor? Nobody here wants to buy your crap.’

‘Now now. Always the dogged crime fighter, eh?’

‘Give me a reason to arrest you and I will.’

‘Unless it’s against the law to help people in trouble, I don’t think that will be necessary. Why don’t you get in so we can talk without being disturbed, Kefas?’

‘I fail to see why I’d want to do that.’

‘So your eyesight is bad as well?’

Simon stared at Nestor. Short arms and a small, thick upper body. And yet the sleeves on his blazer were still so short that the golden cufflinks in the shape of the initials ‘HN’ peeked out. Hugo Nestor claimed to be Ukrainian, but according to the file they had on him, he was born and bred in Floro, came from a fishing family and his surname had originally been Hansen before he changed it. He had never spent time abroad apart from a brief and unfinished economics course in Lund, Sweden. God only knew where he had picked up that strange accent, but it certainly wasn’t the Ukraine.

‘I wonder if your young wife could see which actors were playing in the movie, Kefas. But then I guess she’d heard that Allen wasn’t in it himself. That Jew has such a disgusting, chattering voice. Not that I have anything against Jews as individuals, I just think that Hitler was right about them as a race. The Slavs are the same. Even though I’m an East European, I have to admit that he had a point when he said that the Slavs can’t lead themselves. On a racial level, I mean. And this Allen, isn’t he a paedophile as well?’

The file also said that Hugo Nestor was Oslo’s most important drugs and human trafficking operator. Never convicted, never charged, always suspected. He was too smart and too careful, the slippery eel.

‘I don’t know, Nestor. What I do know is that there’s a rumour that your guys expedited the prison chaplain. Did he owe you money?’

Nestor smiled overbearingly. ‘Isn’t it beneath your dignity to listen to rumours, Kefas? You usually have a bit of class, in contrast to your colleagues. If you’d had more than rumours — such as a reliable witness willing to come to court and point the finger, for example — you’d already have made an arrest. Isn’t that right?’

A slippery eel.

‘Anyway, I want to offer you and your wife money. Enough money, say, for a very expensive eye operation.’

Simon gulped; he heard his voice croak when he replied: ‘Did Fredrik tell you?’

‘Your former colleague at the Serious Fraud Office? Let me put it this way, I’ve heard about your predicament. I presume that you went to him with your request in the hope it would reach ears such as mine. Isn’t that right, Kefas?’ He smiled. ‘Anyway, I have a solution which I think would suit us both. So why don’t you get in?’

Simon took hold of the door handle and saw Nestor automatically shuffle across the seat to make room for him. He concentrated on breathing calmly so that rage wouldn’t make his voice quiver. ‘Carry on talking, Nestor. Give me an excuse for arresting you, please.’

Nestor raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘What excuse would that be, Chief Inspector Kefas?’

‘Attempted bribery of a public servant.’

‘Bribery?’ Nestor laughed a brief, squealing laughter. ‘Let’s call it a business proposal, Kefas. You’ll see that we can. .’

Simon never heard the rest of the sentence as the limousine was clearly soundproof. He walked away without looking back, wishing he had slammed the car door even harder. He heard the car start and the tyres crunch against the gravel on the tarmac.

‘You seem upset, darling,’ Else said when he had sat down at the kitchen table next to his coffee cup. ‘Who was it?’

‘Someone who was lost,’ Simon said. ‘I told him where to go.’

Else shuffled over to him with the coffee pot. Simon stared out of the window. The street was deserted now. Suddenly a burning pain spread across the top of his thighs.

‘Damn!’

He knocked the coffee pot out of her hands and it landed on the floor with a bang while he shouted: ‘Bloody hell, woman, you’ve just poured boiling coffee all over me! Are you. . are you. .’ One part of his brain knew what was coming and was trying to block the word, but it was like slamming the back door of Nestor’s car: he didn’t want to be there, he refused, he wanted to destroy, he would rather plunge the knife into himself. And into her.

‘. . blind?!’

The kitchen fell silent; all he could hear was the coffee-pot lid rolling across the linoleum floor and the bubbling of coffee seeping out of the pot. No! He hadn’t mean it. He hadn’t.

‘I’m sorry. Else, I’m. .’

He got up to embrace her, but she was already on her way to the sink. She turned on the cold tap and held a tea towel under it. ‘Pull down your trousers, Simon, let me. .’

He put his arms around her from behind. He pressed his forehead against her neck. He whispered: ‘I’m sorry, so sorry. Please, forgive me? I. . I just don’t know what to do. I should be able to help you, but I. . I can’t, I don’t know, I. .’

He couldn’t hear her crying yet, only feel that her body was trembling and how it spread to his. His throat thickened, he suppressed his own sobs and didn’t know if he had managed it, only that they were both shaking.

‘I’m the one who should say sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘You could be with someone better, someone who doesn’t. . scald you.’

‘But there is no one better,’ he whispered. ‘All right? So you just go ahead and pour boiling coffee all over me, I won’t ever let go. OK?’

And he knew that she knew that it was true. That he would do anything, suffer anything, sacrifice everything.

. . it would reach ears such as mine. .

But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it.

He heard the neighbours’ distant, ecstatic howls of laughter in the darkness while her tears flowed.

Kalle looked at the time. Twenty to eleven. It had been a good day; they had shifted more Superboy than they normally did over a whole weekend, so the cashing up and the preparation of new wraps had taken longer than usual. He took off the gauze mask they wore when they cut and mixed the drugs on the worktop in the plain, twenty-metre-square room which served as office, drug factory and bank. Obviously, the drug was cut before it reached him, but even so Superboy was still the purest drug he had come across in his career as a dealer. So pure that if they didn’t don gauze masks, they would not only be high, but also dead from inhaling the particles which whirled up in the air when they cut and handled the pale brown powder. He put the masks in the safe in front of the piles of banknotes and bags of drugs. Should he called Vera and tell her he would be late? Or was it time he put his foot down, told her who was boss, who brought home the dough and who should be able to come and go without accounting for his movements all the bloody time?

Kalle told Pelvis to check the corridor. From the iron door to their office the lift was just a few metres away on the right. At the far end of the corridor was a door leading to a stairwell, but that door they had — against fire regulations — sealed with a chain so that it was permanently locked.

‘Cassius, check the car park,’ Kalle called out in English while he locked up the safe. It was a quiet office with no noise other than anything that travelled from the rehearsal rooms, but he liked shouting. Cassius was the biggest and fattest African in Oslo. His shapeless body was so huge it was impossible to know what was what, but if just ten per cent of him was muscle, it would be enough to stop most people.

‘No cars, no people in the car park,’ Cassius said as he peered out between the iron bars in the window.

‘Corridor all clear,’ said Pelvis, who was looking out of the hatch in the door.

Kalle turned the combination wheel. He savoured the smooth, oiled resistance, the soft clicking. He kept the combination in his head and only there, it wasn’t written down anywhere, and there was no logic to it, no combination of birthdays or similar.

‘Let’s go,’ he said and straightened up. ‘Have your guns ready, both of you.’

They gave him a puzzled look.

Kalle hadn’t said anything to them, but there had been something about the eyes he had seen staring through the hatch earlier. He knew that they had seen Kalle sitting at the table. OK, so it was just some guy from a crappy band looking for management, but there had been enough money and drugs on the table for any idiot who wanted to have a go. Hopefully, the guy had also noticed the two guns on the table which belonged to Cassius and Pelvis.

Kalle went over to the door. It could be locked from the inside, and only his key unlocked it. It meant that Kalle could lock in anyone who worked here if he himself had to go out. The bars in front of the window were solid. In short, no one who worked for Kalle could run off with the money or the drugs. Or let in uninvited guests.

Kalle looked through the hatch. Not because he’d forgotten that Pelvis had just announced that the coast was clear, but because he automatically assumed that Pelvis would betray his boss by opening the door if someone was prepared to make it worth his while. Damn, Kalle would have done the same himself. He had done the same himself.

He couldn’t see anyone through the hatch. He checked the mirror which he had mounted on the wall to make sure that no one could hide by pressing themselves against the door below the hatch. The dimly lit corridor was empty. He turned the key and held the door open for the other two. Pelvis walked out first, then Cassius and finally Kalle. He turned round to lock the door.

‘What the. .!’ It was Pelvis.

Kalle turned back, and it wasn’t until now that he could see what he had been unable to from the hatch due to the angle: that the lift doors were open. But he still couldn’t see what was inside the lift as the light inside it was off. All he could see in the dim corridor light was something metallic on one side of the lift door. Duct tape covering the sensors. And broken glass on the floor.

‘Watch out. .’

But Pelvis had already taken the three steps to the open lift.

Kalle’s brain registered the flame from the muzzle in the darkness of the lift before it received the signal about the bang.

Pelvis whirled around as if someone had slapped him. He stared at Kalle with a stunned expression. It looked as if he had been given a third eye in his cheekbone. Then his life left him and his body fell to the ground like a coat shrugged off by its owner.

‘Cassius! Shoot for fuck’s sake!’

In his panic, Kalle forgot that Cassius didn’t speak Norwegian, but it clearly wasn’t an issue, he had already aimed his pistol at the darkness inside the lift and fired. Kalle felt something strike his chest. He had never been at the wrong end of a pistol before, but now he knew why the people he had aimed his gun at had frozen in such a comical manner, as if they were filled with cement. The pain in his chest spread, he couldn’t breathe, but he had to get away, there was air behind the bulletproof door, safety, a door he could lock. But his hand refused to obey, it couldn’t get the key into the lock, it was like a dream, like moving underwater. Fortunately he was shielded by Cassius’s vast body that kept shooting and shooting. Finally the key went in and Kalle turned it, flung the door open and hurled himself inside. The next bang had different acoustics and he reckoned that it must be coming from inside the lift. He spun round to slam the door shut, but it was pressing against Cassius, half of whose shoulder and an arm as thick as a thigh were trapped inside. Damn! He tried to push it away, but more of Cassius was trying to get into the office.

‘Come on in then, you fat fuck!’ Kalle hissed and opened the door.

The African poured in like rising bread dough, spreading his body mass over the threshold and the floor inside. Kalle stared down at his glassy expression. The eyes bulged like the eyes of a freshly caught deep-water fish, his mouth opened and closed.

‘Cassius!’

The only reply he got was a wet smack when a big, pink bubble burst on the African’s lips. Kalle pressed his legs against the wall in an attempt to move the black mountain out of the way so he could close the door again, but it was no use, so he bent down and tried to drag him inside instead. Too heavy. The pistol! Cassius had landed on top of his own arm. Kalle straddled the body, trying desperately to slip his hand under it, but for every roll of fat he passed there was another and still no pistol. He had his arm buried in fat up to his elbow when he heard footsteps outside. He knew what was about to happen, tried to get out of the way, but was too late, the door smacked into his head and he blacked out.

When Kalle opened his eyes, he was lying on his back staring up at a guy in a hoodie, wearing yellow washing-up gloves and pointing a pistol straight down at him. He turned his head, but saw no one else, only Cassius who lay with half his body inside the door. From this angle, Kalle could see the barrel of Cassius’s pistol sticking out from under his stomach.

‘What do you want?’

‘I want you to open the safe. You have seven seconds.’

‘Seven?’

‘I started counting down before you woke up. Six.’

Kalle scrambled to his feet. He was woozy, but he made his way to the safe.

‘Five.’

He turned the combination wheel.

‘Four.’

One more digit and the safe would open and the money would be gone. Money he would personally have to replace, those were the rules.

‘Three.’

He hesitated. What if he could get hold of Cassius’s pistol?

‘Two.’

Would the guy really shoot or was he just bluffing?

‘One.’

The guy had killed two people without batting an eyelid, a third body wouldn’t bother him.

‘OK,’ Kalle said, stepping aside. He couldn’t bear to look at the piles of banknotes and bags of drugs.

‘Put everything into this,’ the guy ordered him and handed him a red sports bag.

Kalle did as he was told. Not slowly or quickly, he simply put the contents into the bag while his brain counted automatically. 200,000 kroner. 200,000. .

When he had finished, the guy told him to toss the bag on the floor in front of him. Again Kalle did as he was told. At that moment he realised that if he was going to get shot, it would be now. Here. The guy no longer needed him. Kalle took two steps towards Cassius. He had to go for the gun.

‘If you don’t do it, then I won’t shoot you,’ the guy said.

What the hell, was he a mind-reader?

‘Put your hands on your head and walk out into the corridor.’

Kalle hesitated. Could this mean that he might let him live? He stepped over Cassius.

‘Lean against the wall with your hands above your head.’

Kalle did what the guy said. He turned his head. Saw that the guy had already picked up Pelvis’s pistol and was now squatting on his haunches with his hand under Cassius, but his eyes on Kalle. He managed to get hold of Cassius’s gun as well.

‘Take out the bullet in the wall over there, would you please?’ said the guy and pointed, and Kalle realised where he had seen him before. By the river, it was the jogger. He must have followed them. Kalle looked up and saw the end of a mangled bullet stuck in the mortar. A fine spray of blood led from the wall to where it had come from: Pelvis’s head. It hadn’t travelled at great speed so Kalle could pick it out with his fingernails.

‘Give it here,’ said the guy, taking the bullet with his free hand. ‘Now I want you to find my other bullet and the two empty shells. You have thirty seconds.’

‘What if the other bullet is inside Cassius?’

‘I don’t think so. Twenty-nine.’

‘Look at that mountain of fat, man!’

‘Twenty-eight.’

Kalle threw himself on his knees and started looking. He cursed himself for not spending more money on stronger light bulbs.

At thirteen he had found four of Cassius’s shells and one of the other guy’s. At seven, he had found the other bullet which the guy had fired at them; it must have gone straight through Cassius and ricocheted off the metal door because the door had a small dent.

When the countdown was over, he still hadn’t found the last shell.

He closed his eyes. Felt how one of the slightly too tight eyelids scraped his cornea while he prayed to God to live one more day. He heard the shot, but felt no pain. He opened his eyes and realised he was still crouching on all fours on the floor.

The guy lifted the barrel of Pelvis’s gun from Cassius.

Christ, the guy had shot Cassius again with Pelvis’s gun to be sure he was dead! And now he went over to Pelvis, held Cassius’s gun in the same place where the first bullet had entered, adjusted the angle. And pulled the trigger.

‘Fuck!’ Kalle screamed and heard the terror in his own voice.

The guy put the others’ two guns in the red sports bag and pointed at Kalle with his own. ‘Come on. Into the lift.’

The lift. The broken glass. It had to be in the lift. He had to attack him in the lift.

They stepped inside and in the light from the corridor Kalle could see that there was more broken glass on the lift floor. He selected a longish piece which looked as if it would be perfect for the job. Once the doors shut it would be completely dark and all he would have to do was bend down, grab the shard and swing it in one flowing movement. He had to. .

The doors closed. The guy stuck his gun into the lining of his trousers. Perfect! It would be like killing a chicken. It grew dark. Kalle bent down. His fingers found the shard of glass. He straightened up. Then found himself paralysed.

Kalle didn’t know what kind of hold it was, only that he was immobilised, he couldn’t even move a finger. He tried shaking himself loose, but it was like pulling at the wrong end of a knot, the grip tightened further and his neck and arms hurt like hell. It had to be some kind of martial art technique.The shard of glass slipped out of his hand. The lift started moving.

The doors opened again, they heard the never-ending thumping bass and the hold loosened. Kalle opened his mouth and drew breath. The gun was pointed at him again and indicated for him to move down the corridor.

Kalle was ordered into one of the empty rehearsal rooms where he was told to sit down on the floor with his back to the radiator. He sat without moving and stared at a bass drum with the name ‘The Young Hopeless’ scrawled across it while the guy tied him to the radiator with a long, black cable. There was no point in fighting back, his attacker didn’t intend to kill him or he would be dead already. And the money and the drugs could be replaced. He would have to pay for them out of his own pocket, of course, but what was foremost in his mind was how to explain to Vera that there was unlikely to be another shopping trip to some cool city in the foreseeable future. The guy took two guitar strings from the floor, tied the thicker one around his head over the bridge of his nose and the thinner one around his chin. He must have tied them to the radiator behind him; Kalle could feel the metal of the thinner string dig into his skin and press against his lower gum.

‘Move your head,’ the guy said. He had to shout over the music coming from further down the corridor. Kalle tried to turn his head, but the guitar strings were too tight.

‘Good.’

The guy put an electric fan on a chair, switched it on and aimed it at Kalle’s face. Kalle closed his eyes against the current of air and felt his sweat dry on his skin. When he opened his eyes again, he could see that the guy had placed one of the unmixed kilo bags of Superboy on the chair in front of the fan and had pulled his hoodie up to cover his nose and mouth. What the hell was he doing? Then Kalle spotted the shard of glass.

It felt as if a cold hand was squeezing his heart.

He knew what was about to happen.

The guy swiped the sliver of glass. Kalle steeled himself. The tip of the glass hit the plastic bag, sliced it open and in the next second the air filled with white powder. It got it into Kalle’s eyes, mouth and nose. He closed his mouth. But he had to cough. He closed his mouth again. Felt the bitter taste of the powder stick to his mucous membranes which started stinging and burning; the drug was already entering his bloodstream.

The photograph of Pelle and his wife was stuck to the dashboard on the left side, in between the steering wheel and the door. Pelle ran his finger over the smooth, greasy surface. He was back in his usual spot in Gamlebyen, but it was a waste of time, it was summer quiet and the trips which flashed up on the display screen departed from other destinations in town. Still, he could always hope. He saw a man leave through the gate to the old factory. He walked with a purpose and speed that indicated he had places to go to and wanted to flag down the only taxi at the cab rank before the light on the roof went out and it drove off. But then he suddenly stopped and leaned against the wall. Doubled up. He was standing right under a street light so Pelle could clearly see the stomach contents splash down on the tarmac. No way he was having him in his cab. The guy remained crouched and vomiting. Pelle had been there many times himself, he could taste bile in his mouth simply by looking. Then the guy wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his hoodie, straightened up, pulled the strap of the bag back up over his shoulder and continued towards Pelle. It wasn’t until he was very close that Pelle realised that it was the same guy he had driven only an hour ago. The guy who hadn’t had enough money to get to the hostel. And now he was indicating to Pelle that he wanted another trip. Pelle pressed the central locking button and opened the window a crack. Waited until the guy had come up to the side of the car and had tried to open the door in vain.

‘Sorry, mate, I’m not going to take this fare.’

‘Please?’

Pelle looked at him. Trails of tears down his cheeks. God only knew what had happened, but it wasn’t his problem. True, the guy might have a hard-luck story to tell, but you didn’t survive as a taxi driver in Oslo for long if you opened your door and let in other people’s messes.

‘Listen, I saw you throw up. If you throw up in the cab, it’ll cost you a thousand kroner and me a lost day’s income. Besides, last time you were in this cab, you were skint. So I’m going to pass, OK?’

Pelle rolled up the window and stared right ahead in the hope that the boy would move on without causing trouble, but got ready to drive away should it become necessary. Christ, how his foot hurt tonight. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the boy open his bag and take out something which he pressed against the window.

Pelle half turned his head. It was a thousand-krone note.

Pelle shook his head, but the guy stayed where he was, motionless. Waiting. Pelle wasn’t really worried, the guy hadn’t been trouble earlier this evening. On the contrary, rather than hassle Pelle to drive a bit further as most people short of cash would have done, he had thanked him when Pelle had stopped to let him out when the meter had reached the amount he had given him. Thanked him so sincerely that Pelle had felt guilty for not driving him all the way to the hostel — it would have only taken him another two minutes. Pelle sighed and pressed the button which unlocked the doors.

The guy slipped into the back seat. ‘Thank you, thank you so much.’

‘Fine. Where to?’

‘First up to Berg, please. I’m just dropping something off, so I’d be grateful if you could wait. Then to the Ila Centre. I’ll pay you up front, obviously.’

‘No need,’ Pelle said, starting the car. His wife was right, he was too good for this world.