The Son

8

What Arild Franck liked most about his Porsche Cayenne was the sound. Or rather the absence of sound. The hum of the 4.8-litre V8 engine reminded him of his mother’s sewing machine when he was growing up in Stange outside of Hamar. That, too, had been the sound of silence. Of silence, calm and concentration.

The door on the passenger side opened and Einar Harnes got in. Franck didn’t know where young lawyers in Oslo bought their suits; he just knew it wasn’t the same shops he frequented. Nor had he ever seen the point of buying light-coloured suits. Suits were dark. And cost less than five thousand kroner. The difference in price between his suits and Harnes’s ought to be paid into a savings account for future generations who had families of their own to support and who would continue the work of building Norway. Or fund an early and comfortable retirement. Or a Porsche Cayenne.

‘I hear he’s in solitary,’ Harnes said as the car pulled away from the kerb outside the graffitied entrance to the law offices of Harnes amp; Fallbakken.

‘He beat up a fellow inmate,’ Franck said.

Harnes raised a well-groomed eyebrow. ‘Gandhi pulled a punch?’

‘You never can tell what junkies are capable of. But he’s had four days of cold turkey so I imagine he’s very cooperative by now.’

‘Yes, it runs in the family — or so I’ve heard.’

‘What have you heard?’ Franck honked the horn at a slow Corolla.

‘Only what everybody knows. Is there anything else?’

‘No.’

Arild Franck steered the car in front of a Mercedes convertible. He had visited the isolation cell yesterday. Staff had just finished cleaning up vomit and the boy sat huddled up under a woollen blanket in the corner.

Franck had never met Ab Lofthus, but he knew that the son had followed in his father’s footsteps. That he had been a wrestler like his father and showed such promise at the age of fifteen that the newspaper Aftenposten had predicted a national league career. Now he sat in a stinking cell, shaking like a leaf and sobbing like a little girl. In withdrawal everyone is equal.

They stopped in front of the security booth, Einar Harnes produced his ID and the steel barrier was raised. Franck parked the Cayenne in its allocated space and he and Harnes walked up to the main entrance where Harnes’s visit was logged. Usually Franck let Harnes in through the back door by the staff changing rooms to avoid signing him in. He didn’t want to give anyone cause to speculate what a lawyer with Harnes’s reputation was doing visiting Staten so often.

Any inmate suspected of involvement in a new criminal case was usually questioned at Police HQ, but Franck had asked if this interview could take place at Staten, given that Sonny Lofthus was currently in solitary confinement.

A vacant cell had been cleared and made ready for this purpose. A policeman and a policewoman in plain clothes sat on one side of the table. Franck had seen them before, but couldn’t remember their names. The figure on the other side of the table was so pale that he seemed to blend in with the milky-white wall. His head was bowed and his hands gripped the edge of the table tightly as if the room was spinning.

‘So, Sonny,’ Harnes said brightly, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder, ‘are you ready?’

The policewoman cleared her throat. ‘The question should rather be is he finished.’

Harnes smiled thinly at her and raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean? I hope you haven’t started questioning my client without his lawyer present.’

‘He said he didn’t need to wait for you,’ the policeman replied.

Franck looked at the boy. He sensed trouble.

‘So he’s confessed already?’ Harnes sighed, opened his briefcase and pulled out three sheets of paper stapled together. ‘If you want it in writing then-’

‘On the contrary,’ the policewoman said. ‘He’s just denied having anything to do with the murder.’

The room fell so silent that Franck could hear the birds singing outside.

‘He did what?’ Harnes’s eyebrows reached his hairline now. Franck didn’t know what made him angrier, the lawyer’s plucked eyebrows or his slowness to appreciate the catastrophe that was unfurling.

‘Did he say anything else?’ Franck asked.

The policewoman looked at the assistant prison governor, then at the lawyer.

‘It’s quite all right,’ Harnes said. ‘He’s here at my request in case you needed more information about Lofthus’s day release.’

‘I granted it personally,’ Franck said. ‘And there was nothing to indicate that it would have such tragic consequences.’

‘And we don’t know that it has yet,’ the policewoman said. ‘Given that we don’t have a confession.’

‘But the evidence-’ Arild Franck exclaimed, but then stopped himself.

‘What do you know about the evidence?’ the policeman asked him.

‘I just presumed that you had some,’ Franck said. ‘Since Lofthus is a suspect. Isn’t that right, Mr. .?’

‘Detective Inspector Henrik Westad,’ the policeman said. ‘I was the first person to interview Lofthus, but now he’s changed his statement. He even says he has an alibi for the time of the murder. A witness.’

‘He does have a witness,’ Harnes said, looking down at his silent client. ‘The prison officer who accompanied him on his day release. And he has said that Lofthus disappeared for-’

‘Another witness,’ Westad said.

‘And who might that be?’ Franck scoffed.

‘Lofthus says he met a man called Leif.’

‘Leif what?’

Everyone stared at the long-haired prisoner who looked like he was very far away and entirely oblivious to their presence.

‘He doesn’t know,’ Westad said. ‘He says they chatted briefly at a lay by. He says the witness drove a blue Volvo with an “I ¦ Drammen” sticker and he thinks the witness might have been ill or had heart trouble.’

Franck barked with laughter.

‘I think,’ Einar Harnes said with forced composure as he returned the papers to his briefcase, ‘that we should end it here so I can speak to my client to take his instructions.’

Franck had a habit of grinning when he got angry. And now the rage bubbled in his head like a boiling kettle and he had to pull himself together not to laugh out loud again. He glared at Harnes’s so-called client. Sonny Lofthus must be mad. First his attack on old Halden and now this. The heroin must finally have corroded his brain. But Sonny wouldn’t be allowed to upset this, it was much too big. Franck took a deep breath and heard an imaginary click like a boiling kettle switching itself off. It was just a question of keeping cool, giving it time. Giving withdrawal a little more time.

Simon was standing on Sannerbrua looking down at the water which flowed eight metres below them. It was six o’clock in the evening and Kari Adel had just asked about the rules for overtime in the Homicide Squad.

‘No idea,’ Simon said. ‘Talk to Human Resources.’

‘Can you see anything down there?’

Simon shook his head. Behind the foliage on the east side of the river he could make out the towpath which followed the water all the way down to the new Opera House by Oslo Fjord. A man was sitting on the bench feeding the pigeons. He’s retired, Simon thought. That’s what you do when you retire. On the west side was a modern apartment block with windows and balconies offering a view of both the river and the bridge.

‘So what are we doing here?’ Kari said, kicking the tarmac impatiently.

‘Is there somewhere you need to be?’ Simon said and looked around. A car drove past at a leisurely pace, a smiling beggar asked if they had change for a 200-kronor note, a couple in designer sunglasses with a disposable barbecue in the bottom tray of their pram laughed at something as they strolled by. He loved Oslo in the summer holidays when the city emptied of people and became his once more. When it returned to being the slightly overgrown village of his childhood where nothing much ever happened and anything that did happen meant something. A city he understood.

‘Some friends have invited Sam and me over for dinner.’

Friends, Simon thought. He used to have friends. What happened to them? Perhaps they were asking exactly the same question. What happened to him? He didn’t know if he could give them a proper answer.

The river couldn’t be more than a metre and a half deep. In some places rocks protruded from the water. The post-mortem report mentioned injuries consistent with a fall from a certain height, something which could fit with the broken neck which was the actual cause of death.

‘We’re here because we’ve walked up and down Aker River and this is the only place where the bridge is high enough and the water shallow enough for him to hit the rocks that hard. Besides, it’s the nearest bridge to the hostel.’

‘Residential centre,’ Kari corrected him.

‘Would you try to kill yourself here?’

‘No.’

‘I mean if you were going to kill yourself.’

Kari stopped shuffling her feet. Looked over the railing. ‘I suppose I would have chosen somewhere higher. Too great a risk of surviving. Too big a risk of ending up in a wheelchair. .’

‘But you wouldn’t push someone off this bridge, either, if you were trying to kill them, would you?’

‘No, maybe not,’ she yawned.

‘So we’re looking for someone who broke Per Vollan’s neck and then threw him into the river from here.’

‘That’s what you call a theory, I suppose.’

‘No, that’s what we call a theory. That dinner. .’

‘Yes?’

‘Ring your other half and say it’s off.’

‘Oh?’

‘We’re starting door-to-door inquiries for potential witnesses. You can begin by ringing the doorbell of anyone whose balcony overlooks the river. Next we need to go through the archives with a fine-tooth comb for potential neck-breakers.’ Simon closed his eyes and inhaled the air. ‘Don’t you just love Oslo in the summer?’