The Son (53 page)

He spotted him at the end of the aquarium, right by the swing door to the kitchen.

He took aim and pressed the trigger three times in quick succession. He saw the Twin’s jacket twitch and then the glass in the aquarium cracked. For a moment it looked as if the water might retain its rectangular shape, held together by habit or unseen forces, before it came crashing towards them like a green wall. Simon tried to leap aside, but he was too slow. He crunched a lobster underfoot as he took a step, felt his knee buckle and fell his full length in the deluge. When he looked up again, he couldn’t see the Twin, only the flapping kitchen door.

‘Are you OK?’ Sonny asked as he offered to help Simon back on his feet.

‘Never been better,’ Simon groaned and knocked aside Sonny’s hand. ‘But if the Twin gets away now, he’ll be gone for good.’

Simon ran to the kitchen door, kicked it open and entered holding the pistol in front of him. The harsh smell of a commercial kitchen. His gaze quickly scanned the brushed metal worktops and cookers, rows of pots, ladles and palette knives hanging from the low ceiling and obstructing his view. Simon squatted down to look for shadows or movement.

‘The floor,’ Sonny said.

Simon looked down. Red stains on the blue-grey tiles. His eyes hadn’t deceived him, one of his bullets had found its target.

He heard the distant sound of a door slamming.

‘Come on.’

The blood trail led them out of the kitchen, along a dark corridor where Simon tore off his sunglasses, up a staircase and down another corridor, which ended in a metal door. A door that would have made the very noise they had just heard. Even so, Simon checked all the side doors on their way down the corridor and looked inside. Nine out of ten men fleeing from two men and an Uzi would always take the shortest and most obvious way out, but the Twin was the tenth man. Always cold, always rational and calculating. The type who survives a shipwreck. He might simply have slammed the door in order to misdirect them.

‘We’re losing him,’ Sonny said.

‘Calm down,’ Simon said and opened the last side door. Nothing.

And the bloodstains were now unequivocal. The Twin was behind the metal door.

‘Ready?’ Simon asked.

Sonny nodded and positioned himself with the Uzi aimed right at the door.

Simon pressed his back against the wall beside the door, lowered the handle and pushed open the metal door.

He saw Sonny get hit. By the sunlight.

Simon stepped outside. He felt the wind on his face. ‘Damn . . .’

They were looking out at an empty street that lay bathed in morning sunshine. The street was Ruseløkkveien which intersected Munkedamsveien and disappeared upwards in the direction of the Palace Gardens. No cars, no people.

And no Twin.

43

‘
THE BLOOD STOPS
here,’ Simon said, pointing at the tarmac. The Twin must have realised he was leaving a trail of blood and managed to stop it from dripping on the ground. The type that survives a shipwreck.

He stared up at the deserted Ruseløkkveien. Let his gaze sweep past St Paul’s Church, past the small bridge where the road bent and disappeared out of sight. He looked left and right across Munkedamsveien. Nothing.

‘Bloody he—’ Sonny slapped his thigh with the Uzi in frustration.

‘If he’d stayed on the road, we would have been in time to see him,’ Simon said. ‘He must have gone in somewhere.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Perhaps he had a car out here.’

‘Perhaps. Hey!’ Simon pointed at the ground between Sonny’s shoes. ‘Look, there’s another bloodstain. What if—’

Sonny shook his head and opened his jacket. The side of the clean shirt Simon had given him was red.

Simon swore silently. ‘That bastard managed to reopen the wound?’

Sonny shrugged.

Simon let his gaze wander upwards again. There was no street parking. No shops were open. Only closed gates leading to backyards. Where could he have gone? Look at it from another perspective, Simon thought. Compensate for the blind spots. Let in . . . He shifted his gaze. His pupils reacted to something. A sharp flash of sunlight bouncing off a small piece of moving glass. Or metal. Brass.

‘Come on,’ Sonny said. ‘We’ll try the restaurant again, perhaps he—’

‘No,’ Simon said in a low voice. A brass door handle. A closer that makes the door shut slowly behind you. A place that is always open. ‘I can see him.’

‘You can?’

‘The church door up there, do you see it?’

Sonny stared. ‘No.’

‘It’s still shutting. He’s inside the church. Come on.’

Simon ran. He put one foot in front of the other and took off. It was a simple action, something he had done since he was a boy. He had run and run, every year a little faster. And then, every year a little more slowly. Neither his knees nor his breathing worked together like they used to. Simon managed to keep up with Sonny for the first twenty metres, then the boy took off. He was at least fifty metres ahead when Simon saw him leap up the three steps, throw open the heavy door and disappear inside.

Simon slowed down. Waited for the bang. The staccato, almost childish sound that gunshots acquired when you heard them through a wall. It didn’t come.

He walked up the steps. Pulled open the heavy door and entered.

The smell. The silence. The weight of so many thinking people’s faith.

The pews were empty, but candles were lit on the altar and Simon remembered that morning mass would start in half an hour. The candles flickered over the lost Saviour on the cross. Then he heard the whispering, chanting voice and turned to the left.

Sonny was sitting in the open cubicle of the confessional with the Uzi aimed at the perforated wooden board separating it from the other cubicle whose black curtain almost covered the board opening. There was only a tiny crack between the curtain and the board, but through it Simon could see a hand. And on the stone floor, from underneath the curtain, a pool of blood was slowly spreading.

Simon crept closer; he caught Sonny’s whispering:

‘All earthly and heavenly gods have mercy on you and forgive your sins. You will die, but the soul of the penitent sinner shall be led to Paradise. Amen.’

Silence followed.

Simon watched Sonny tighten his finger around the trigger.

Simon put his gun back in the shoulder holster. He wasn’t going to do anything, not a damn thing. The boy’s verdict would be pronounced and executed. His own judgement would come later.

‘Yes, we killed your father.’ The Twin’s voice sounded feeble behind the curtain. ‘We had to. The mole had told me that your father was planning to kill him. Are you listening?’

Sonny didn’t reply. Simon held his breath.

‘He was going to do it that very night, in the medieval ruins in Maridalen,’ the Twin continued. ‘The mole said that the police were on to him, that it was only a question of time before he was exposed. So he wanted us to make the killing look like a suicide. Give the impression that your father was the mole, so that the police would call off the search. I agreed to it. I had to protect my mole, yes?’

Simon saw Sonny moisten his lips: ‘And who is he, this mole?’

‘I don’t know. I swear. We only ever communicated by email.’

‘Then you won’t ever know.’ Sonny raised the Uzi again, curled his finger around the trigger. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Wait! You don’t have to kill me, Sonny, I’ll bleed to death in here anyway. All I ask is that I get to say goodbye to my loved ones before I die. I let your father write a note telling you and your mother that he loved you. Please, show this sinner the same mercy?’

Simon could see Sonny’s chest heave and sink. The muscles rippled along his jaw line.

‘Don’t,’ Simon called out. ‘Don’t give it to him, Sonny. He—’

Sonny turned to him. There was gentleness in his eyes. Helene’s gentleness. He had already lowered the Uzi. ‘Simon, all he’s asking is—’

Simon saw movement in the gap in the curtain, the hand being raised. A gold-plated pistol lighter. And Simon knew immediately that there wasn’t enough time. Not enough time to warn Sonny and for him to react, not enough time to pull out his own gun from the shoulder holster, not enough time to give Else what she deserved. He was standing on the railings of the bridge across the Aker and the river was raging under him.

So Simon dived.

He dived out of life and into the wonderful, spinning roulette wheel. It didn’t take intelligence or courage, only the folly of a doomed man who is willing to gamble a future he doesn’t value highly, who knows he has less to lose than others. He dived into the open cubicle between the son and the perforated wooden board. He heard the bang. Felt the bite, the paralysing sting of ice or heat tearing his body in two, connections being severed.

And then came another sound. The Uzi. Simon’s head was on the floor in the cubicle and he felt wooden splinters from the board rain down on his face. He heard a scream; he lifted his head and saw the Twin stagger out of the confessional and stumble between the pews, saw the bullets nip at the back of his suit like a swarm of angry bees. Empty shells from the Uzi – still red hot – cascaded onto Simon, scorching his forehead. The Twin knocked over pews, sank down on his knees, but he kept moving. He was refusing to die. It wasn’t natural. Many years ago, when Simon had learned that the mother of one of Norway’s most wanted men was working inside the police station as a cleaner and had sought her out, that had been the first thing she had said: that Levi wasn’t natural. She was his mother and she loved him, obviously, but he had terrified her from the moment he was born, and not just because of his size.

And she told him about that time when her young but already gigantic son had come to work with her because there was no one at home to look after him, and he had stared at his reflection in a bucket of water on the cleaning trolley and said that there was someone in there, someone who looked just like him. Sissel had suggested that perhaps they could play together and gone to empty the waste-paper baskets. When she came back Levi had stuck his head in the bucket and was desperately kicking his legs in the air. His shoulders had become lodged inside the bucket so that she had to use all her strength to pull him out. He had been soaking wet and his face had gone all blue. But instead of crying like most children would have done, he had laughed. And said that the Twin had been bad, had tried to kill him. From that moment on she had wondered where he had come from and she hadn’t felt free until the day he moved out.

The Twin.

Two holes appeared right above the fat folds between his broad neck and mighty back and the movements abruptly stopped.

Of course, Simon thought. A perfectly normal only child.

And he knew that the big man was dead even before he tottered forward and his forehead hit the stone floor with a thud.

Simon closed his eyes.

‘Simon, where . . .?’

‘My chest,’ Simon said and coughed. He could tell from the consistency on his skin that it was blood.

‘I’ll get you an ambulance.’

Simon opened his eyes. He looked down at himself. Saw the deep red stain spread on his shirt front.

‘I won’t make it, don’t bother.’

‘Yes, you will—’

‘Listen.’ Sonny had taken out his mobile, but Simon covered it with his hand. ‘I know a little too much about gunshot wounds, all right?’

Sonny put his hand on Simon’s chest.

‘It’s no good,’ Simon said. ‘You run along now. You’re free, you’ve done what you had to do.’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Run for my sake,’ Simon said, grabbing the boy’s hand. It felt so warm and familiar, as if it were his own. ‘Your job is done now.’

‘Lie still.’

‘I said the mole would be there today, and he was. And now he’s dead. So run.’

‘The ambulance will be here soon.’

‘Why won’t you listen—’

‘If you’d just stop talking—’

‘It was me, Sonny.’ Simon looked up into the boy’s clear, mild eyes. ‘I was the mole.’

Simon waited for the boy’s pupils to expand in shock, for black to displace the bright green iris. But it didn’t happen. And he understood.

‘You knew, Sonny.’ Simon tried to swallow, but had to cough again. ‘You knew it was me. How?’

Sonny wiped the blood from Simon’s mouth with his shirtsleeve. ‘Arild Franck.’

‘Franck?’

‘After I cut off his finger, he started talking.’

‘Talking? He knew nothing about me. No one knew that Ab and I were the moles, Sonny, no one.’

‘No, but Franck told me what he
did
know. That the mole had a code name.’

‘He told you that?’

‘Yes. The code name was the Diver.’

‘The Diver, yes. That was the name I used when I contacted the Twin. Back then one person used to call me that, you see. Just one person. So how did you know . . .?’

Sonny took something out of his jacket pocket. Held it up in front of Simon. It was a photograph. It had dried specks of blood on it and showed two men and a woman by a cairn, all three of them young and laughing.

‘When I was a boy I’d often look through our photo album and that was where I saw this picture taken in the mountains. And I asked my mother who he was, this mysterious photographer with the exciting nickname, the Diver. And she told me. That it was Simon, the third of three best friends. That she had nicknamed him the Diver, because he dived in where no one else dared.’

‘So you put two and two—’

‘Franck didn’t know there were two moles. But what he did tell me made everything add up. That my father was about to expose you. So you killed him before he could do it.’

Simon blinked, but the darkness continued to creep in from the outer edges of his field of vision. Even so, he could see more clearly than ever. ‘So you decided to kill me. That was why you contacted me. You wanted to be sure that I would find you. You were just waiting for me.’

‘Yes,’ Sonny said. ‘Right until I found the diary and understood that my father was in on it. That there were two of you. Two traitors.’

‘Then your world fell apart and you abandoned your mission. There was no longer any reason to kill.’