The Son (55 page)

‘But the worst for Simon was what he did to Ab. He hated Ab because he took from him the only thing that had ever had any value to him. He dragged Ab with him down into the abyss. Ab and Helene were deep in debt when the banking crisis came and interest rates shot up; only one thing could save them from homelessness and that was quick money. So after Simon had struck a deal with the Twin, he went straight to Ab and made him an offer for his soul. At first Ab refused and threatened to report Simon to their boss. Then Simon used Ab’s Achilles heel. His son. He said that this was how the real world was, and that his son would pay the price for his father’s pride and grow up poor. Simon said that had been the worst thing, to watch Ab being eaten up, lose his soul. But also that it had made him feel less lonely. Right until the Twin wanted his mole to rise up the ranks in the police force, and then there was no longer room for two.’

‘Why are you telling me this, Else?’

‘Because he asked me to. He thought you ought to know before you made your choice.’

‘He asked you to do it? Did he know that he was going to . . .?’

‘I don’t know, Kari. He just said that he saw so much of himself in you. He wanted you to learn from his mistakes as a police officer.’

‘But he knew I wasn’t going to stay in the police force.’

‘Aren’t you?’ The rays of sunlight gleamed dully in the port as Else raised her glass to her lips, sipping it carefully before putting it down again.

‘When Simon realised that Ab Lofthus was willing to kill him to take the only spot with the Twin, he contacted the Twin and said he had to eliminate Ab, that Ab was on to both of them, that it was urgent. He said that he and Ab were like identical twins who had the same nightmare, which was that each was trying to kill the other. So he beat Ab to it. Simon killed his best friend.’

Kari swallowed. Fighting the tears. ‘But he repented,’ she whispered.

‘Yes, he repented. He stopped being the mole. He could have continued. But then Helene died. Simon had reached the end of the road, he had lost everything there was to lose. So there was no longer anything to be scared of. And he spent the rest of his life doing penance. Making amends. And he was merciless in hunting down those who were corrupt, like he had once been, and that doesn’t earn you many friends in the police force. He grew lonely. But he never felt sorry for himself, he thought loneliness was what he deserved. I remember him saying that self-loathing is the kind of hatred you feel every morning when you wake up and look at yourself in the mirror.’

‘You saved him, didn’t you?’

‘He called me his angel. But it wasn’t my love for him that saved him. Completely the opposite of what so-called wise men say, I’ll argue that being loved never saved anyone. It was his love of me that did it. He saved himself.’

‘By loving you back.’

‘Amen.’

They sat outside until midnight, when Kari left.

On the way out, in the hallway, Else had shown her the photograph. Three people in front of a cairn.

‘Simon had this on him when he died. There she is, Helene.’

‘I saw a photo of her in the yellow house before it burned down. I told Simon that she looked like a singer or an actress.’

‘Mia Farrow. He took me to see
Rosemary’s Baby
, just so he could look at her. Even though he claimed he couldn’t see the likeness.’

The photograph moved Kari strangely. It was something about their smiles. The optimism. The
faith
.

‘You and Simon never talked about having children?’

She shook her head. ‘He was scared.’

‘Of what?’

‘That his own vices would be passed down. The addiction gene. The destructive risk-taking. The lack of boundaries. The black moods. I guess he feared it might be the devil’s child. I used to tease him and say he must have an illegitimate child somewhere and that was why he was scared.’

Kari had nodded.
Rosemary’s Baby
. She had remembered the little old lady who cleaned at the police station and whose name had eventually come back to her.

Then Kari had said goodbye to Else and gone out into the summer night where first a mild breeze, and then time, had picked her up and whirled her away until she sat here, in a car, looking out at the virgin snow and thinking how it transformed the whole landscape. How often things turned out differently from what you had planned. She and Sam were already trying for a baby. To her own amazement, she had declined not only an interesting job offer from the Justice Department, but also a job with a huge salary with an insurance company.

It wasn’t until they had left Oslo and driven across the small bridge and up the gravel path, that she asked Åsmund what had happened.

‘Drammen Police called and asked us to assist them,’ Åsmund said. ‘The victim is a shipowner. Yngve Morsand.’

‘Good God, it’s the husband.’

‘Yes.’

‘Murder? Suicide?’

‘I don’t know the details.’

They parked behind the police cars, walked through the gate in the picket fence and up to the front door of the big house. They were met by an inspector from Buskerud Police. He hugged Kari and introduced himself to Bjørnstad as Henrik Westad.

‘Could it be a suicide?’ Kari asked on the way in.

‘What makes you say that?’ Westad said.

‘Grief at the loss of his wife,’ Kari answered. ‘Because people suspected him of killing her, or that he actually did kill her and couldn’t live with it.’

‘It’s possible . . .’ Westad said as he ushered them into the living room.

The CSOs were practically crawling all over the man in the chair. Like white maggots, Kari thought.

‘. . . but I doubt it,’ Westad completed his sentence.

Kari and Bjørnstad stared at the body.

‘Bloody hell,’ Bjørnstad said in a low voice to Kari. ‘Do you think that . . . he . . .?’

Kari thought about the hard-boiled egg she had had for breakfast. Or perhaps she was already pregnant; maybe that could explain why she felt so sick? She pushed the thought aside and concentrated on the body. It had one wide-open eye, a black patch over the other, and over the eyelid there was a jagged edge where the top of the head had been sawn off.

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Epub ISBN: 9781448161102

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Harvill Secker 2014

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Map in endpapers © Mike Hall 2014

Jo Nesbo has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

First published with the title
Sønnen
in 2014

by H. Aschehoug & Co. (W. Nygaard), Oslo

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

H
ARVILL
S
ECKER

Random House