‘Help me,’ Sonny pleaded when he saw them approach.
‘Sure,’ Goldsrud said, winking at Finstad. ‘A wrap will cost you two thousand.’
He meant it as a joke, but he could see that Finstad hadn’t been quite sure.
The boy shook his head. His muscles were bulging even in his neck and throat. Goldsrud had heard a rumour that the boy had once been a promising wrestler. Perhaps it was true what they said, that any muscles you build up before you’re twelve, you can regain in a matter of weeks as an adult.
‘Lock me up.’
‘We don’t lock you up until ten o’clock, Lofthus.’
‘Please.’
Goldsrud was puzzled. It happened that inmates asked to be locked in their cells because they were scared of someone. Sometimes, but not always, they had cause to be. Fear was a common by-product of a life of crime. Or vice versa. But Sonny was probably the only inmate in Staten who didn’t have a single enemy among the other prisoners. On the contrary, they treated him like a sacred cow. And the lad had never shown any signs of fear and he clearly had the physique and mental stamina to handle addiction better than most. So why . . .?
The boy picked at a scab from a needle mark on his forearm and it was then Goldsrud realised there were scabs on
all
the marks. He had no fresh ones. The boy had quit. That was why he wanted to be locked up. He was in withdrawal and all too aware that he would take anything he was offered, no matter what it was.
‘Come on,’ Goldsrud said.
‘Lift your legs, will you, Simon?’
Simon looked up. The old cleaner was so small and bent double that she barely reached over the cleaning cart. She had worked at Police HQ since before Simon had started there himself sometime in the previous millennium. She was a woman with strong opinions, and always referred to herself – and to her colleagues regardless of gender – as a cleaning ‘lady’.
‘Hi, Sissel, is it that time again?’ Simon looked at his watch. Past four o’clock. The official end of the working day in Norway. Indeed, employment law practically prescribed that you had to leave on the dot for king and country. In the past he couldn’t have cared less about leaving on time, but that was then. He knew that Else was waiting for him, that she had started cooking dinner several hours ago and that when he came home she would pretend the meal was something she had just thrown together in a hurry and hope that he wouldn’t see the mess, the spills and the other signs that revealed her sight had deteriorated a little more.
‘Long time since you and I last had a fag together, Simon.’
‘I use
snus
now.’
‘I bet it’s that young wife of yours who made you quit. Still no kids?’
‘Still not retired, Sissel?’
‘I think you already have a kid somewhere, that’s why you don’t want another one.’
Simon smiled, looked at her as she ran the mop under his legs and wondered, not for the first time, how it had been possible for Sissel Thou’s tiny body to squeeze out such a huge offspring. Rosemary’s Baby. He cleared away his papers. The Vollan case had been shelved. None of the residents in the Sannerbrua flats had seen anything and no other witnesses had come forward. Until they found evidence to suggest that a crime had been committed, the case would be downgraded, said his boss, and told Simon to spend the next couple of days fattening up reports on two solved murder cases where they had been given a bollocking by the public prosecutor who had described them as ‘on the thin side’. She hadn’t found any actual errors; she only wanted to see ‘a certain raising of the level of detail’.
Simon switched off his computer, put on his jacket and headed for the door. It was still summer which meant that many of the staff who were not on holiday had left at three o’clock and in the open-plan office that smelled of glue from the old partition walls warmed by the sun he heard only scattered keystrokes. He spotted Kari behind one of the partitions. She had put her feet on the desk and was reading a book. He popped his head round.
‘So no dinner with friends tonight?’
She automatically slammed the book shut and looked up at him with a mixture of irritation and guilt. He glanced at the title of the book:
Company Law
. He knew that she knew that she had no reason to feel bad for studying during work hours since no one had given her anything to do. It was par for the course in Homicide; no murders equalled no work. So Simon concluded from her blushes that she knew her law degree would eventually take her away from the department and it felt like a kind of treachery. And irritation, because though she had convinced herself that it must be acceptable to use her time like this, her instinctive reaction when he appeared had been to shut the book.
‘Sam is surfing in Vestlandet this weekend. I thought I would read here rather than at home.’
Simon nodded. ‘Police work can be dull. Even in Homicide.’
She looked at him.
He shrugged. ‘Especially in Homicide.’
‘So why did you become a homicide investigator?’
She had kicked off her shoes and pulled up her bare feet on the edge of the chair. As if she was hoping for a longer reply, Simon concluded. She was probably one of those people who prefer any company to solitude, who would rather sit in a near-deserted open-plan office with the chance of company than in their own living room where they were guaranteed peace and quiet.
‘You may not believe it, but it was an act of protest,’ he said, perching on the edge of the desk. ‘My father was a watchmaker and wanted me to take over his business. I didn’t want to be a bad copy of my father.’
Kari wrapped her arms around her long, insect-like legs. ‘Any regrets?’
Simon looked towards the window. The heat made the air outside quiver.
‘People have made money selling clocks.’
‘Not my father,’ Simon said. ‘And he didn’t like fakes, either. He refused to follow the trend and make cheap copies and plastic digital watches. He thought it was the path of least resistance. He went bankrupt in style.’
‘Well, that explains why you didn’t want to be a watchmaker.’
‘No, I ended up a watchmaker all the same.’
‘How?’
‘Crime scene technician. Ballistics expert. Bullet trajectories and all that. It’s almost the same as tinkering with watches. We’re probably more like our parents than we’d like to believe.’
‘So what happened?’ she smiled. ‘Did you go bankrupt?’
‘Well.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I guess I became more interested in the why rather than the how. I don’t know if it was the right decision to become a tactical investigator. Projectiles and bullet wounds are more predictable than the human brain.’
‘So that’s when you went to work for the Serious Fraud Office?’
‘You’ve read my CV.’
‘I always read up on people I’m going to work with. Had you had enough of blood and guts?’
‘No, but I was scared Else, my wife, might have. When I got married, I promised her more regular working hours and no more shifts. I liked the Serious Fraud Office; it was a little like working with watches again. Talking of my wife . . .’ He got up from the desk.
‘Why did you leave the Serious Fraud Office if you enjoyed it so much?’
Simon smiled a tired smile. No, his CV wouldn’t tell her that, would it?
‘Lasagne. I think she’s cooking lasagne. See you tomorrow.’
‘Incidentally, I got a call from an old colleague. He told me he had seen a junkie wandering around wearing a dog collar.’
‘A dog collar?’
‘Like the one Per Vollan used to wear.’
‘What did you do with the information?’
Kari opened her book again. ‘Nothing. I told him the case had been shelved.’
‘Downgraded. Until new evidence is found. What’s the name of the junkie and where can we find him?’
‘Gilberg. At the hostel.’
‘The residential centre. Fancy a break from reading?’
Kari sighed and closed her book. ‘What about the lasagne?’
Simon shrugged. ‘All good. I’ll call Else, she’ll understand. And lasagne tastes better when it’s reheated.’
10
JOHANNES TIPPED THE
dirty water down the sink and put the bucket and the mop in the broom cupboard. He had washed every corridor on the first floor and in the control room and was looking forward to the book waiting for him back in his cell.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
. It was a collection of short stories, but he read only the one story over and over again. It was about a man with gangrene in his foot who knows he is going to die. About how this knowledge doesn’t make him a better or worse person, just more insightful, more honest, less patient. Johannes had never been much of a reader, the book had been recommended to him by the prison librarian, and since Johannes had been interested in Africa ever since he had sailed to Liberia and the Ivory Coast, he had read the first few pages about this apparently innocent, dying man in a tent on the savannah. The first time he had only skimmed through it, now he read slowly, one word at a time, looking for something even though he didn’t even know what it was.
‘Hi.’
Johannes turned round.
Sonny’s ‘hi’ had been almost a whisper and the hollow-cheeked, wild-eyed figure standing in front of him was so pale it was almost transparent. Like an angel, Johannes thought.
‘Hello, Sonny. I heard they put you in solitary. How are you doing now?’
Sonny shrugged.
‘You’ve a good left hook, lad.’ Johannes grinned and pointed to the gap where his front tooth used to be.
‘I hope you can forgive me.’
Johannes gulped. ‘I’m the one who needs forgiving, Sonny.’
The two of them looked at each other. Johannes saw Sonny glance up and down the corridor. There was a pause.
‘Would you break out of prison for me, Johannes?’
Johannes took his time and tried shuffling the words to see if that made them make more sense before he asked: ‘What do you mean? I don’t want to escape. Besides, I’ve nowhere to go. I’ll be found and brought back immediately.’
Sonny didn’t reply, but his eyes radiated black desperation and Johannes understood.
‘You want . . . you want me to break out so I can score some Superboy for you.’
Sonny still didn’t reply, but continued to fix the old man’s gaze with his own manic, intense stare. Poor lad, Johannes thought. Sodding heroin.
‘Why me?’
‘Because you’re the only one with access to the control room so only you can do it.’
‘Wrong. I’m the only one with access to the control room and that’s why I know it can’t be done. The doors can only be opened with fingerprints stored in the database. And I’m not in it, my friend. Nor can I be added without submitting four copies of an application which would need to be approved on high. I’ve seen them—’
‘All the doors can be locked and unlocked from the control room.’
Johannes shook his head and looked around to make sure they were still alone in the corridor. ‘Even if you make it outside, there are guards in the security booth in the car park. They check the ID of everyone coming or going.’
‘Everyone?’
‘Yes. Except during shift changes when they let out recognised cars and familiar faces.’
‘Would that include people in a prison officer’s uniform, by any chance?’
‘Definitely.’
‘So you would need to get yourself a uniform and break out when the officers change shift?’
Johannes placed his forefinger and thumb under his chin. His jaw still hurt.
‘How would I get hold of the uniform?’
‘From Sørensen’s locker in the changing room. You’ll have to force it open with a screwdriver.’
Sørensen was a prison officer who had been on sick leave for almost two months now. Nervous breakdown. Johannes knew they called it something else these days, but it was the same thing, a bloody great big mess of feelings. He had been there.
Johannes shook his head again. ‘The changing room is full of prison officers during a shift change. Someone will recognise me.’
‘Change your appearance.’
Johannes laughed. ‘Right. And let’s say I get hold of a uniform, now how would I go about threatening a group of prison officers so that they’ll let me out?’
Sonny lifted up his long white shirt and produced a packet of cigarettes from his trouser pocket. Stuck a cigarette in between his dry lips and lit it with a lighter shaped like a pistol. Johannes nodded slowly.
‘This isn’t about drugs. There’s something you want me to do on the outside, isn’t there?’
Sonny sucked the flame from the lighter into the cigarette and exhaled the smoke. He narrowed his eyes.
‘Will you do it?’ His voice was warm and soft.
‘Will you give me absolution from my sins?’ Johannes asked.
Arild Franck spotted them as he came round the corner. Sonny Lofthus had placed his hand on the forehead of Johannes who was standing with his head bowed and his eyes closed. They looked like a pair of queers to him. He had seen them on the monitor in the control room; they had been talking for a while. From time to time he regretted not fitting every camera with a microphone because he could tell from the men’s wary, sideways glances that they weren’t discussing the next football pools coupon. Then Sonny had taken something out of his pocket. The boy had been standing with his back to the camera so it was impossible to make out what is was until they saw cigarette smoke rise above his head.
‘Hey! You know you’re only allowed to smoke in the designated areas.’
Johannes’s grey-haired head slumped and Sonny let his hand drop.
Franck walked up to them. Gestured with his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Go mop floors somewhere else, Johannes.’ Franck waited until the old man had shuffled out of earshot. ‘What were you talking about?’
Sonny shrugged.
‘No, don’t tell me, the sanctity of the confession is inviolable,’ Arild Franck guffawed. The sound bounced between the bare corridor walls. ‘So, Sonny, have you had time to think about it?’
The boy stubbed out the cigarette on the packet, put it in his pocket and scratched his armpit.
‘Itchy?’
The boy said nothing.
‘I imagine there are worse things than an itch. Worse even than cold turkey. Did you hear about the guy in 317? They think he hanged himself from the light fitting. But that he changed his mind after he had kicked the chair away from underneath him. That’s why he clawed his own neck to pieces. What was his name again? Gomez? Diaz? He used to work for Nestor. There was some concern that he might start talking. No evidence, just a worry. That was all it took. Funny, isn’t it, when you lie in your bed at night and you’re in a prison and what scares you most is that the door to your cell might
not
be locked? That someone in the control room could give a prison full of killers access to you at the touch of a button?’