The Son

39

Markus was sitting on the bed in the yellow house.

After the woman had rushed off, only twenty minutes after the Son had left in a hurry, Markus had waited ten minutes before he realised that they weren’t coming back.

Then he had crossed the road. The key to the house had been put back in its regular place.

The bed had been made and the shards from the lamp placed in the waste-paper basket. He found the scrunched-up piece of paper under the shards.

The words were written in a neat, almost feminine hand.

Dear Martha

My father once told me how he watched a man drown. He had been on patrol, it was the middle of the night and a boy had rung from the harbour at Kongen. The boy’s father had fallen into the sea while they were mooring their boat. He couldn’t swim and was clinging to the gunwale, but the son wasn’t able to pull his father back on board. By the time the patrol car arrived, the boy’s father had given up, let go and gone under. Several minutes had already passed and my father called for divers as the boy sobbed desperately. And while they waited, the man suddenly surfaced, his pale face gasping for air. The son let out a cry of joy. Then the father went under again. My father jumped into the water to rescue him, but it was too dark. When my father resurfaced, he looked straight into the still beaming face of the boy who thought that now everything was OK, his father was alive and the police were here. And my father told me how he had seen the heart torn out of the boy’s chest when he realised that God had merely been toying with him by letting him think he was going to give back the father he had taken from him. My father said that if there was a God, then he was a cruel God. Now I think I understand what he meant, because I have finally found my father’s diary. Perhaps he wanted us to know. Or maybe he was just cruel. Otherwise why keep a diary, but hide it in such an obvious place as under the mattress?

You have your whole life ahead of you, Martha. I think you can do something good with it. I can’t do the same. Forgive me, but I’m going to disappear now.

I love you forever.

Sonny

Markus looked at the table. There was the book which the Son had been reading.

Black leather cover, yellowing pages. He flicked through it.

He realised immediately that it was a diary even though there weren’t entries written for each day. In some places there were months between the entries. Sometimes there would just be a date and a couple of sentences. For example, it said that ‘the troika’ would eventually break up, that something had come between them. A week later that Helene was pregnant and that they had bought their own house. But how hard it was to survive on just a policeman’s salary, what a shame it was that both his and Helene’s parents came from such reduced circumstances that they couldn’t help them. Later on how happy he was that Sonny had started wrestling. Then a page about how the bank had raised interest rates, how they quite simply couldn’t pay the mortgage, how he had to do something before the house was repossessed. Think of something. That he had promised Helene it would be OK. Fortunately, the boy didn’t seem to have noticed that anything was troubling his parents.

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.