The Son Read Online Free PDF

to be able to see him from where she was standing, she was only pretending. He cleared his throat.
    ‘I’ve got to go, sweetheart. Will you give me a call and tell me what the doctor said?’
    ‘Yes. Drive carefully.’
    Two middle-aged men walked through the park popularly known as Kuba. Most people thought the name had something to do with Cuba, possibly because political rallies were often held here and because Grünerløkka was once regarded as a working-class neighbourhood. You had to have lived there for many years to know that there used to be a large gas holder here and that it had had a framework shaped like a cube. The men crossed the pedestrian bridge which led to the old factory that was now an art college. Lovers had attached padlocks with dates and initials to the bars of the railings of the bridge. Simon stopped and looked at one of them. He had loved Else for ten years, every single day of the over three and a half thousand they had been together. There would never be another woman in his life and he didn’t need a symbolic padlock to know that. And neither did she; hopefully she would outlive him for so many years that there would be time for new men in her life. And that was all good.
    From where they were standing he could see Åmodt Bro, a modest little bridge that crossed a modest little river which divided this modest little capital into east and west. Once upon a time, a long time ago, when he was young and foolish, he had dived from this very bridge into the river. A drunken troika of three lads, two of them with an unshakeable faith in themselves and their prospects. Two of them convinced that they alone were the best of the three. The third one, Simon, had realised long ago that he couldn’t compete with his friends when it came to intelligence, strength, social skills or appeal to women. But he was the bravest. Or, to put it another way, the most willing to take risks. And diving into polluted water didn’t require intellect or physical skill, only recklessness. Simon Kefas had often thought that it was pessimism that had prompted him to gamble with a future he didn’t value very much, an innate knowledge that he had less to lose than other people. He had balanced on the railings while his friends had screamed for him not to do it, that he was mad. And then he had jumped. From the bridge, out of life, into the wonderful, spinning roulette wheel which is fate. He had plunged through the water which had no surface, only white foam and, under that, an icy embrace. And in that embrace there was silence, solicitude and peace. When he resurfaced, unharmed, they had cheered. Simon, too. Even though he had felt a vague disappointment at being back. It was amazing what a broken heart could drive a young man to do.
    Simon shook off the memories and focused on the waterfall between the two bridges. More specifically on the figure that had been left there like a photograph, frozen in mid-fall.
    ‘We think he floated downstream,’ said the crime scene officer who was standing next to him. ‘And then his clothes got caught on something sticking out of the water. The river is usually so shallow there that you can wade across it.’
    ‘All right,’ Simon said, sucking the tobacco in his mouth and cocking his head. The figure hung straight down with its arms out to the sides and the cascading water formed a white halo around the head and body. It reminded him of Else’s hair. The other CSOs had finally got their boat into the water and were working on freeing the body.
    ‘A beer says it’s suicide.’
    ‘I think you’re wrong, Elias,’ Simon said and hooked a finger under his upper lip to extract the snus . He was about to drop it into the water below, but he stopped himself. Different times. He looked around for a bin.
    ‘So you won’t bet a beer?’
    ‘No, Elias, I won’t.’
    ‘Oh, sorry, I forgot . . .’ The CSO looked embarrassed.
    ‘That’s all right,’ Simon said and left. He