The Son (18 page)

Kari nodded. They weaved their way towards the city centre and the Ibsen Tunnel. ‘And then?’

‘I no longer gamble. Nor do I bother anyone.’ Again this sad, resigned smile.

Kari thought about her plans for this evening. Go to the gym. Dinner with her in-laws. A viewing in Fagerborg. And heard herself ask the question which must have come from another, almost subconscious part of her brain: ‘Why did the killer take the shell with him?’

‘Every shell has a serial number, but it rarely leads us to the killer,’ Simon said. ‘He might have been scared that the shell would have his prints on it, but I think that this killer would have already thought of that, that he would have worn gloves when he loaded the gun. I think we can conclude that his gun is relatively recent, produced in the last few years.’

‘Oh?’

‘For ten years now it has been mandatory for handgun manufacturers to engrave a serial number on the weapon’s firing pin so that it leaves a kind of unique fingerprint when it hits the cap on the shell. It means all we need to identify the owner is an empty shell and the Firearms Register.’

Kari struck out her lower lip and nodded slowly. ‘OK, I get that. What I don’t get is why he wanted it to look like a robbery.’

‘Just like he’s scared of the evidence on the shell, he’s scared that if we know the real motive, it would lead us to him.’

‘Well, then it’s straightforward,’ Kari said, but she was really thinking about the Fagerborg property ad. It had stated that the flat had two balconies, one east-facing, one west-facing.

‘Oh?’ Simon said.

‘The husband,’ Kari said. ‘Every husband knows that he’ll be the prime suspect unless he can make it look as if his wife was killed for another reason. A burglary, for instance.’

‘Another reason apart from?’

‘Apart from jealousy. Love. Hate. Is there anything else?’

‘No,’ Simon said. ‘There isn’t.’

18

EARLY THAT AFTERNOON
a shower of rain washed over Oslo without noticeably cooling down the city. And when the sun scorched its way through the layer of clouds, it was as if it wanted to make up for lost time by baking the capital in a white light which caused steam to rise from the roofs and streets.

Louis woke up when the sun was so low in the sky that the beams hit his eyes. He peered at the world. At the people and the cars going to and fro in front of him and his begging bowl. It had been a reasonably lucrative business until some years ago when Romanian gypsies started coming to Norway. A few had turned into many. Which in turn had become a swarm. A stealing, begging and swindling swarm of locusts. And like all vermin they must be fought with every possible means. It was Louis’s simple opinion on the matter, that Norwegian beggars – just like Norwegian shipping companies – were entitled to government protection against foreign competition. As things were now, he was having to rely on stealing; something which was not only exhausting, but frankly beneath his dignity.

He heaved a sigh and prodded his begging bowl with a filthy finger. Heard there was something in the bowl. Not coins. Banknotes? In which case he had better pocket them before one of the gypsies nicked them. He looked down in the bowl. Blinked twice. Then he picked it up. It was a watch. A lady’s watch, it would seem. A Rolex. It was fake, obviously. But heavy. Very heavy. Did people really enjoy wearing such heavy objects around their wrists? He had heard that watches like that were water-resistant to a depth of fifty metres, something which was sure to come in handy if you went swimming while wearing a watch like this. Could it be . . .? There were some weirdos around, no doubt about it. Louis looked up and down the street. He knew the watchmaker on the corner of Stortingsgata; they had been at school together. Perhaps he should . . .

Louis staggered to his feet.

Kine was standing next to her shopping trolley, smoking a cigarette. But when the green man lit up and the other pedestrians around her started walking, she stayed put. She had changed her mind. She wasn’t going to cross the street today. She stayed where she was, finishing her cigarette. She had nicked the trolley from IKEA a long, long time ago. Simply rolled it out of the store and into the van in the car park. Driven that and a Hemnes bed, a Hemnes table and some Billy bookcases to a place she thought was their future. Her future. He had fixed the furniture before preparing a fix for both of them. He was dead now, she wasn’t. And she was no longer a junkie. She was all right. But it was a long time since she last slept in the Hemnes bed. She trod on the cigarette and grabbed the handle of the IKEA trolley. She noticed that someone – probably one of the other pedestrians – had left a plastic bag on top of the filthy woollen blanket in her trolley. Irritated, she snatched the bag; it wasn’t the first time people had mistaken the trolley with all her earthly possessions for a common bin. She turned round; she could tell the location of every rubbish bin in Oslo with her eyes shut and knew there was one right behind her. But then she stopped. The weight of the plastic bag stirred her curiosity. She opened it. Plunged her hand in and brought its contents up into the afternoon sunshine. It glittered and sparkled. Jewellery. Necklaces and a ring. The pendants were diamonds and the ring was solid gold. Real gold, real diamonds. Kine was almost certain; she had seen gold and diamonds before. After all, the furniture in her childhood home hadn’t been self-assembly.

Johnny Puma widened his eyes, felt the terror creep up on him and turned over in the bed. He hadn’t heard anyone come in, but now he could hear heavy breathing and moaning. Was Coco in the room? No, this panting sounded more like someone screwing than someone collecting a debt. A couple had been allowed to stay at the centre once; the management must have thought that the two of them needed each other so much that they had made an exception to the men-only rule. It was certainly true that the man had needed the woman – she had financed their heroin addiction by screwing her way from room to room until the management said enough was enough and threw her out.

It was the new arrival. He was lying on the floor, facing away from Johnny, and Johnny could faintly hear a synthetic, rhythmic track and a robotic, monotonous voice coming from the earphones he was wearing. The boy was doing push-ups. In his heyday Johnny could have done a hundred, using just the one arm. The boy was strong, no doubt about it, but he was struggling with stamina, his back was sagging already. In the light that seeped in between the curtains and hit the wall, he saw a photo which the boy must have pinned up. A man in a police uniform. And he saw something else, on the windowsill. A pair of earrings. They looked expensive; he wondered where the boy had stolen them.

If they were as expensive as they looked, they might just solve Johnny’s problem. Rumour had it Coco was moving out of the hostel tomorrow and that his runners were busy collecting any debts he was owed. It left Johnny with only a few hours to scrape some money together. He had considered burgling one of the apartments in Bislett as many people were away on holiday. Ring the doorbell and see where there was no answer. He just had to summon up the energy first. But this was simpler and safer.

He wondered if he could sneak out of bed and snap up the earrings without getting noticed, but dropped the idea. Stamina or no stamina, he risked a beating. The very idea was laughable. But he could always try to distract the newcomer, make up an excuse to get him out of the room and then strike. Suddenly Johnny found himself looking into the boy’s eyes. He had turned round and was doing sit-ups. He smiled.

Johnny gestured that he wanted to say something and the boy pulled the earphones out. Johnny heard the lyrics ‘. . .
now I’m clean
’ before he started to talk.

‘Would you help me down to the cafe, mate? You’ll need something to eat yourself after that workout. If the body can’t burn fat or carbohydrates, it’ll start eating muscle, you know. And all your hard work will have been for nothing.’

‘Thanks for the tip, Johnny. I just need to shower first, but you get yourself ready.’ The boy stood up. Slipped the earrings into his pocket and headed out of the door in the direction of the communal showers.

Damn! Johnny closed his eyes. Did he have the energy? Yes, he had to. Only two minutes. He counted the seconds. Then he sat up on the edge of the bed. Pushed off. Stood up. Grabbed his trousers from the chair. He was putting them on when there was a knock on the door. The boy must have forgotten his keys. Johnny limped over to the door and opened it. ‘How many times do I have to—’

A clenched fist wearing knuckledusters landed right in Johnny Puma’s forehead and he fell backwards.

The door opened fully and Coco and two of his boys entered. The boys grabbed his arms and Coco headbutted Johnny so the back of his head slammed into the top bunk. When he looked up again, he was staring right into Coco’s ugly, heavily mascaraed eyes and the gleaming point of a stiletto.

‘I’m busy man, Johnny,’ Coco said in broken Norwegian. ‘The others have money, but still they don’t pay. You have no money, I know that, so you will be example.’

‘E-example?’

‘I’m reasonable man, Johnny. You keep one eye.’

‘But . . . Please, Coco . . .’

‘Don’t move or eye will be damaged when I take it out. I show it to the other scumbags so they know is real eye, OK?’

Johnny started screaming, but was quickly stopped by a hand placed over his mouth.

‘Easy, Johnny. Not many nerves in eye, little pain, I promise.’

Johnny knew that his fear was supposed to give him the strength to fight back, but it felt as if it had withered away. Johnny Puma, who had once lifted cars, stared apathetically at the point of the stiletto as it moved closer.

‘How much?’

The voice sounded soft, almost like a whisper. They turned to the door. No one had heard him come in. His hair was wet and he was dressed only in his jeans.

‘Get out!’ Coco hissed.

The boy stayed put. ‘How much does he owe?’

‘Now! You want to taste my knife?’

The new arrival still didn’t move. The gofer who was covering Johnny’s mouth let go and walked up to him.

‘He . . . he nicked my earrings,’ Johnny said. ‘It’s true! They’re in his pocket. I was going to pay you with them, Coco. Search him and you’ll see! Please, please, Coco!’ Johnny heard the sobbing in his own voice, but he didn’t care. Besides, Coco didn’t appear to hear him, he was staring at the boy. Probably liked what he saw, the sick pig. Coco called off the gofer with a gesture and chuckled to himself.

‘Is Johnny boy telling the truth, handsome?’

‘You could try finding out,’ the boy said. ‘But if I were you, I would say how much he owes you and there’ll be less trouble. And less mess.’

‘Twelve thousand,’ Coco said. ‘Why—’

He broke off when the boy stuffed his hand in his pocket, produced a small wad of notes and started counting out loud from the top. When he reached twelve, he handed them to Coco and stuffed the remaining notes back in his pocket.

Coco hesitated. As if there had to be something wrong with the money. Then he laughed. Opened his mouth and revealed the gold teeth he had had fitted to replace perfectly healthy white ones.

‘I’ll be damned. I’ll be damned.’

Then he counted the notes again. Looked up.

‘So are we done?’ the boy asked, and not with the stony face of a young drug dealer who had seen too many movies. On the contrary, he smiled. Like waiters used to smile at Johnny back in the days when he dined in fine restaurants and they would ask him if everything was OK with the meal.

‘We’re good,’ Coco grinned.

Johnny lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. He could hear Coco laughing long after he and his gofers had closed the door and disappeared down the corridor.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ the boy said. Johnny could hear him even though he tried to shut out his voice. ‘I’d have done the same if I’d been you.’

But you’re not me, Johnny thought and felt how the tears were still there, somewhere between his throat and chest. You haven’t been Johnny Puma. And then stopped being him.

‘Why don’t we go down to the cafe, Johnny?’

The glare from the computer screen was the only light in the study. Any noise came from outside the door which Simon had left ajar. It was the sound of a radio at low volume in the kitchen downstairs and of Else pottering about. She came from farming stock; there was always something that needed clearing up, washing, sorting, moving, planting, sewing, baking. The work was never-ending. No matter how much you did today, tomorrow would be another full day. It meant working at a steady pace and not rushing so that you broke your back doing it. It was the soothing hum of someone who finds joy and purpose in their chores, the sound of a steady pulse and contentment. To some extent he envied her. But he was also listening out for other sounds; stumbling footsteps or things falling to the floor. If it happened, he would wait. Wait to hear if she had things under control. And if he could hear that she was OK, he wouldn’t ask about it later, but let her think that he hadn’t noticed.

He had logged on to the Homicide Squad’s intranet and read the reports on Per Vollan. Kari had written an impressive amount, she was a hard worker. And yet when he read them, they seemed to be lacking something. Even the most bureaucratic, procedural police report couldn’t hide the passion of an enthusiastic investigator. Kari’s reports were a textbook example of how a police report should sound: objective and factual. No tendentious assertions or prejudices on behalf of the author. Lifeless and cold. He read the witness statements to see if any interesting names cropped up among the people Vollan had been in contact with. Nothing. He stared at the wall. Thought about two words. Nestor. Shelved. Then he googled Agnete Iversen.

Headlines about the murder popped up.

‘
WELL-KNOWN PROPERTY INVESTOR BRUTALLY SLAIN
.’

‘
SHOT AND ROBBED IN HER OWN HOME
.’

He clicked on one of the headlines. Inspector Åsmund Bjørnstad was quoted from the Kripos press conference in Bryn. ‘Kripos’s investigation team has discovered that even though Agnete Iversen was found in the kitchen, she was probably shot on the doorstep.’ And further down. ‘Several pieces of evidence suggest that this is a robbery, but we can’t rule out other motives for the time being.’