The Son by Jo Nesbø

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?’
    The boy had lowered his head, but Franck could see the beads of sweat on his forehead. The boy would come to his senses. He certainly ought to. Franck didn’t like prisoners dying in their cells in his prison; eyebrows were inevitably raised no matter how plausible it looked.
    ‘Yes.’
    It came out so softly that Franck automatically leaned forward. ‘Yes?’ he echoed.
    ‘Tomorrow. You’ll get the confession tomorrow.’
    Franck folded his arms across his chest and rocked back on his heels. ‘Good. Then I’ll bring Mr Harnes with me early tomorrow morning. And no funny business this time. When you lie in your bed tonight, I suggest you take another look at the light fitting in the ceiling. Understand?’
    The boy raised his head and looked the assistant prison governor in the eye. Franck had long since dismissed the notion that the eyes mirrored the soul; he had stared into too many inmates’ baby-blue eyes while they lied through their teeth. Besides, it was a strange expression. Mirror of the soul. Logically it meant that you saw your own soul in someone else’s eyes. Was that why it was so uncomfortable to look into the boy’s? Franck turned away. It was a question of staying focused. And not allowing yourself to get sidetracked by thoughts that led nowhere.
    ‘It’s haunted, innit?’
    Lars Gilberg raised a thin roll-up to his lips with fingers the colour of charcoal and squinted up at the two police officers who were standing over him.
    Simon and Kari had spent three hours looking for Gilberg and finally tracked him down under Grünerbrua. They had started their search at the Ila Centre where no one had seen him for over a week, continued via Bymisjonen’s cafe in Skippergata, Plata by Oslo Central Station which still served as a marketplace for drugs, and finally the Salvation Army’s hostel in Urtegata where information had taken them in the direction of the river to Elgen, a statue which marked the border between speed and heroin.
    Along the way Kari had explained to Simon that the Albanians and the North Africans were currently in charge of the sale of amphetamine and methamphetamine along the river south of Elgen and down to Vaterland Bridge. Four Somalis were hanging around a bench, kicking their heels, their hoods pulled low down over their faces in the evening sun. One of them nodded when he saw