‘Thank you,’ Simon said and buttoned his jacket. The hard heels were approaching. ‘You have other things on your mind, I can see.’
Martha quickly glanced up at him.
‘I’ll talk to you later, Martha.’
As Simon left the church, his mobile rang. He looked at the display. The area code told him the call was coming from Drammen.
‘Kefas.’
‘It’s Henrik Westad.’
The police officer who was investigating the murder of the shipping owner’s wife.
‘I’m at the Cardiology Unit at Buskerud Central Hospital.’
Simon could guess what was coming next.
‘Leif Krognæss, our witness with heart trouble. They thought he was out of danger, but . . .’
‘He died suddenly,’ Simon said, sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. ‘He was alone in the ward when it happened. The post-mortem won’t find any abnormalities. And you’re calling me because you don’t want to be the only one who can’t sleep tonight.’
Westad didn’t reply.
Simon put the mobile in his pocket. The wind was rising and he looked up at the sky above the roofs. He couldn’t see it yet, but he could tell from his headache. A low pressure system was heading his way.
The motorbike in front of Rover was about to rise from the dead. It was a Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail, the 1989 model, with a huge front wheel, Rover’s favourite. When he got it, it had been a dilapidated 1340cc wreck whose owner had treated it without the love, patience and understanding which an HD – in contrast to its more pliable Japanese cousins – demanded. Rover had replaced the crank bearing, the big-end bearing, the piston rings and reseated the valves, and very little of the original was left as the bike was transformed into a 1700cc with 119 b.h.p. to the rear wheel, which used to have only 43. Rover was wiping oil off the forearm with a tattoo of a cathedral when he noticed a change in the light. His first thought was that it was clouding over like the weather forecast had promised. But when he looked up, he noticed a shadow and a silhouette in the doorway to his workshop.
‘Yes?’ Rover called out and continued to rub oil off his arm.
The man started walking towards him. Silently. Like a predator. Rover knew that the nearest weapon was too far away for him to be able to reach it in time. And that was how it should be. He was done with that way of life. It was bullshit when people said it was hard not to fall back into your bad old ways once you were out of prison; it was just a question of willpower. It was that simple. If you wanted to, you could do it. But if your intention was merely an illusion, wishful thinking, just something to dress yourself up in, then you would be back in the gutter on day two.
The man was now so close that Rover could make out his facial features. But surely that was . . .
‘Hello, Rover.’
It was him.
He held up a yellowing business card saying ‘Rover’s Motorcycle Workshop’.
‘The address was right. You said you could get me an Uzi.’
Rover was now wiping his hands while he stared at him. He had read the newspapers. Seen the picture on TV. But what he was staring at now wasn’t the boy from the cell at Staten, it was his own future. The future as he had imagined it.
‘You took out Nestor,’ Rover said, pulling the rag between his fingers.
The boy made no reply.
Rover shook his head. ‘That means it’s not just the police who are looking for you, but the Twin as well.’
‘I know I’m trouble,’ the boy said. ‘I’ll leave immediately if that’s what you want.’
Forgiveness. Hope. A clean break. A second chance. Most people blew it, they continued making the same stupid mistakes their whole lives, they could always find an excuse to screw things up. They didn’t know it themselves, or they pretended not to, but they had lost before they had even started. Because they didn’t really want to succeed. But Rover wanted to. It wasn’t that that was going to bring him down. He was stronger now. Wiser. But that said: if you’re going to walk with your head held high, there’s always a chance of falling flat on your face.
‘Why don’t we close the garage door?’ Rover said. ‘It looks like rain.’
34
THE RAIN WAS
lashing the windscreen when Simon took the key out of the ignition and prepared to sprint from the car park to the hospital building. He spotted a blond figure in a coat right in front of his car. It was raining so hard that the raindrops bounced off the bonnet and the man’s outline was blurred. The door to the driver’s side was opened and another, dark-haired man asked him to come with them. Simon looked at the clock on the dashboard. 4 p.m. It was two hours before the deadline.
The two men drove him to Aker Brygge, a seafront development with shops, offices, some of the city’s most expensive flats and around fifty cafes and bars. They walked along the promenade by the water and saw the ferry from Nesoddtangen dock as they turned into one of the many alleyways; they carried on walking until they reached a small iron staircase that led down to a door with a porthole that presumably evoked associations with seafood. Next to the door was a small sign saying ‘Nautilus Restaurant’ in unusually discreet letters. One of the men held the door open and they entered a narrow hallway where they shook the rain off their coats and hung them up in the unmanned cloakroom. There wasn’t a soul to be seen and the first thought that crossed Simon’s mind was that this was a perfect location for money laundering. Not too big, but with a rent and a position that made profitability plausible, but whose profits would never be questioned, as profits on which taxes are paid rarely are.
Simon was wet. When he wiggled his toes inside his shoes, they made tiny squelching sounds. But that wasn’t the real reason he was cold.
The dining room was divided in half by a large, rectangular aquarium which also supplied the only source of illumination. At the table in front of it and with his back to the aquarium sat a huge figure.
He was the reason Simon was cold.
He had never seen him in the flesh before, but he didn’t doubt for a second who it was.
The Twin.
The man seemed to fill the entire room. Simon didn’t know if this was simply due to his physical size and obvious presence or the trappings of power and wealth, of this man’s ability to control so many destinies. Or whether all the legends that surrounded his persona made him even bigger: the baggage of death, meaningless cruelty and destruction.
The man made an almost imperceptible gesture towards the chair which had been pulled out in front of him. Simon sat down.
‘Simon Kefas,’ the man said, stroking his chin with his forefinger.
Large men often had surprisingly high-pitched voices.
Not the Twin.
The rumbling bass of his voice raised ripples in the glass of water in front of Simon.
‘I know what you want, Kefas.’ The muscles swelled under the suit which looked as if it might burst at the seams at any moment.
‘And what’s that?’
‘Money for Else’s eye operation.’
Simon gulped at the sound of the name of his beloved in this man’s mouth.
‘The question is, what have you got to sell, yes?’
Simon took out his mobile, opened the mailbox, put the phone on the table and pressed
play
. The voice on the sound file he had received sounded tinny: ‘. . . what’s the name and number of the account Nestor sent money to when he paid you? If I were you I would think before speaking.’ A pause, then another voice: ‘The account is in the name of a company. Dennis Limited, registered in the Cayman Islands.’ ‘And the account number?’ Another pause. ‘Eight, three, zero.’ ‘Slow down. And speak more clearly.’ ‘Eight. Three. Zero. Eight . . .’
Simon pressed stop. ‘I presume you know who was answering the questions.’
The huge man responded with a tiny gesture that could mean anything. ‘Is that what you’re selling?’
‘This recording was sent to me from a Hotmail address which I haven’t been able to or indeed tried to trace. Because I’m currently the only person who knows about the sound file. Evidence that the prison gov—’
‘Assistant prison governor.’
‘—of Staten admits to having a secret account into which he has received money from Hugo Nestor. I checked the account number and the information is correct.’
‘And how is this of value to me?’
‘What is valuable to you is that I don’t take this to my colleagues and you lose an important ally.’ Simon cleared his throat. ‘
Yet
another important ally.’
The huge man shrugged. ‘Assistant prison governors can be replaced. And, in any case, it looks as if Franck has served his purpose. What more have you got, Kefas?’
Simon stuck out his lower lip. ‘I’ve evidence that you have laundered money through Iversen’s property business. And DNA evidence linking Iver Iversen Senior to a Vietnamese girl, whom you trafficked into the country, murdered and made Sonny Lofthus take the fall for.’
The large man stroked his throat with two fingers. ‘I’m listening. Go on.’
‘If I get the money for the eye operation, I can make sure that neither of these cases will be investigated.’
‘How much money are we talking about?’
‘Two million kroner.’
‘You could have blackmailed Iversen directly for that amount. So why are you really here?’
‘Because I want more than money.’
‘And what is that?’
‘I want you to stop looking for the boy.’
‘Lofthus’s son? Why would I do that?’
‘Because Ab Lofthus was a friend.’
The big man looked at Simon for a while. Then he leaned back in his chair and tapped the aquarium glass with his finger.
‘It looks like a regular aquarium, yes? But do you know what the grey fish that looks like a sprat costs, Kefas? No, you don’t, because I don’t want the Serious Fraud Office to know that some collectors are willing to pay millions of kroner for it. It isn’t especially impressive or attractive, but it’s incredibly rare. So its price is determined by the value it has to the individual; the highest bidder.’
Simon shifted in his chair.
‘The point is,’ the big man said, ‘I want the Lofthus boy. He’s a rare fish and has greater value to me than to any other buyer. Because he has killed my people and stolen my money. Do you think I could have ruled this city for twenty years if I let people get away with stuff like that? He has turned himself into a fish I simply have to have. I’m sorry, Kefas. We’ll give you the money, but the boy is mine.’
‘All the boy wants is the mole who betrayed his father, then he’ll go away.’
‘And, as far as I’m concerned, he can have the mole, I’ve no use for him or her any more, the mole stopped operating twelve years ago. But even I never knew the mole’s identity. We exchanged money and information anonymously, and that was fine by me, I got what I paid for. And so will you, Kefas. Your wife’s eyesight, yes?’
‘As you wish,’ Simon said and got up. ‘If you go after the boy, I’ll get the money some other way.’
The big man heaved a sigh. ‘I think you’ve misunderstood our negotiation, Kefas.’
Simon saw that the blond man had also risen.
‘As an experienced gambler you ought to know that you should always check your cards carefully
before
you decide to play,’ the big man said. ‘Afterwards, it’s too late, yes?’
Simon felt the blond man put his hand on his shoulder. He resisted the urge to push it away. He sat down again. The big man leaned across the table. He smelled of lavender.
‘Iversen told me about the DNA samples you came to him about. And now there’s this sound recording. That means you’re in touch with the boy, am I right? So now you will lead us to him. Him and whatever he stole from us.’
‘And if I say no?’
The big man heaved another sigh. ‘What is it we all fear when we grow old, Kefas? Dying alone, yes? The real reason you’re doing everything you can to restore your wife’s sight is that you want her to look at you when you die. Because we tell ourselves it makes dying a little less lonely, yes? Well, imagine a deathbed even more lonely than one with a blind, but living wife present . . .’
‘What?’
‘Bo, show him.’
The blond man held up his mobile to Simon. Showed him a picture. He recognised the hospital ward. The bed. The sleeping woman in the bed.
‘The interesting thing isn’t that we know where she is right now,’ the big man said. ‘But that we found her, yes? In less than one hour after Iversen contacted us. And that means we’ll be able to find her again, no matter where you hide her.’
Simon leapt out of the chair, his right hand shot towards the big man’s throat, but it ended up in a fist that caught it as easily as if it had been a butterfly. And that now closed quietly around Simon’s fingers.
‘You have to decide what you value the most, Kefas. The woman you share your life with or this stray dog you’ve adopted.’
Simon swallowed. He tried to ignore the pain, the sound of his knuckle joints grinding against each other, but knew the tears of pain were giving him away. He blinked once. Twice. He felt a hot tear roll down his cheek.
‘She needs to travel to the US within the next two days,’ he whispered. ‘I must have the money in cash on her departure.’
The Twin released his hold and Simon felt dizzy when the blood rushed back and exacerbated the pain.
‘She’ll be on a plane the moment you hand over the boy and the stolen goods,’ the big man said.
The blond man escorted Simon out. It had stopped raining, but the air still felt clammy and heavy.
‘What are you going to do to him?’ Simon asked.
‘You don’t want to know,’ said the blond man and smiled. ‘But it was nice doing business with you.’
The door was closed and locked behind Simon.
He left the alley. Darkness was falling. Simon started to run.
Martha sat looking over the roast beef and the tall wine glasses, at the heads on the other side of the table, at the family pictures on the console table in front of the window, at the rain-sodden apple trees in the garden, up at the sky and into the approaching darkness.
Anders’s speech was beautiful. No doubt about it, she could imagine one of the old aunts wiping away a tear.