The Andalucian Friend (14 page)

On the edge of the bed, with one hand around his neck and the other holding a pistol, its barrel resting against his chin, sat Mikhail, staring at him. The look in the man’s eyes was empty but curious, as if he were trying to read something from Jens’s eyes. Mikhail’s battered face was made worse by the white light of the moon, illuminating the room, the look of a pallid, sick person.

His deep voice said “Car keys.”

Jens tried to think. “In my trouser pocket.”

Mikhail turned around and checked the trousers that were hanging over a chair. He turned back toward Jens and struck him on the head with the butt of the pistol. There was an unlikely metallic echo, and Jens fell into empty unconsciousness.

The lawnmower was making its way
through the grass. It was heavy and Sophie was sweating in the heat. The little motor that was supposed to drive the front wheels was broken, she’d ordered a new one but it had never arrived. Maybe it was just as well, seeing as she had no idea how to install it.

Since her meeting with Gunilla she hadn’t stopped thinking. She had gone for walks, bike rides, runs, trying to find some peace of mind. She had tried writing in the evenings when she was alone, she had looked inside herself — thinking, reasoning, evaluating.

Anger had been a constant, that had been there from the start, in the question Gunilla had put to her. Or perhaps not in the question itself but in the reply that she hadn’t been able to avoid, angry because she had known all along what it would be. A yes, there was no other choice open to her. She was a nurse. A police officer had contacted her, asking for help.

Sophie cut the grass in straight lines; now there was just a thin line of taller grass running from one end of the garden to the other, and she aimed the lawnmower at it and let it cut the tops off the blades of grass.

When she was finished she let go and the dead-man’s handle automatically switched the engine off. The lawnmower clicked quietly in the heat, her hands were warm and red from the vibration — and somewhere deep inside her ears was a high-pitched squeaking. She glanced at her work, the lawn looked symmetrical.

Sophie poured herself a glass of iced water from a jug in the fridge, and her cell buzzed anxiously on the worktop and the screen lit up. She stopped drinking, took several deep breaths, trying to slow her pulse rate.

UNKNOWN NUMBER
it said on the display. She clicked to open the message.

Thanks for your message. Have been busy. Meet up? Best, H.

She had sent a text to his cell the day before, after wondering what to write. In the end she had kept it brief:
Thanks for the party
.

Now she wasn’t sure about replying, her fingers hovered above the buttons. The car horn sounded anxiously outside, interrupting her thoughts. Albert was sitting in the front seat, and she glanced at the clock on the wall and realized that she had lost track of the time. She put the phone in her pocket. Albert blew the horn again, and she called out angrily that he’d have to be patient. She would have to go as she was, scruffy, all sweaty in her jeans, gardening boots, and washed-out sweater. On the way out she managed to pull her hair up and grab her handbag.

Albert was sitting beside her in the car wearing a green tennis shirt, white shorts, white tennis shoes, holding a tennis racket in a case on his lap. The air-conditioning wasn’t working. Sophie had the window open. The heat outside had a cooling effect once they were going faster. They didn’t talk, Albert was always quiet before a match. A mixture of nerves and concentration.

She headed straight over the roundabout by the main square in Djursholm, drove up past the castle and down the little hill beside the water tower. She turned off into the garage in front of the red and utterly tasteless tennis hall.

“You don’t have to come in.” He opened the door, saying this more out of politeness than anger.

She didn’t answer, just took the key out of the ignition and got out of the car. They went in together, Albert a few steps ahead.

There were matches under way on the courts inside the hall. Albert found some friends sitting in a group a short way away and went over to join them. They fell into amused conversation. She liked his friends, they were always laughing when they were together. Sophie found a spare seat and sat down to watch the match in front of her. The ball moved back and forth between the two girls who were playing, she thought they were pretty good. The match kept up an even pace as Sophie’s thoughts drifted off. She pulled out her cell and reread Hector’s message, her finger hovering above the Reply button. Albert’s name and that of another boy were called out over the loudspeaker. She put the phone back in her bag and discovered that she was smiling as she watched Albert step onto the court. His walk was confident, and he looked relaxed as he shook hands with the umpire, then focused as he threw the ball in the air and hit the first serve of the match.

Albert won one of his matches and went through to the semifinals, due to be held at the outdoor courts over by the castle. People began to get up and leave the hall. She went with the flow out to the garage, and saw Albert looking for her in the crowd. He indicated that he was going to go ahead with his friends.

In the garage she got stuck with another mom, who was going on about a collection for a teacher at Albert’s school. She avoided another mother who was renowned for thinking that every child apart from her own daughter was heading in the wrong direction in life. She pretended not to see the red-wine club, a gaggle of over-the-hill women who had once been attractive. Slender legs, bulging stomachs, expensive makeup, and an easy social manner at first acquaintance but with whom just minutes later the conversation slid onto other people’s faults and shortcomings.

She got in behind the wheel, feeling no connection to any of the people she had just encountered. She asked herself why she chose to live among these peculiar people who never ceased to amaze her.

She drove the car toward the castle. Without quite knowing why she took out her cell, found Hector’s message again, and wrote
Whenever
.

Mikhail had driven south from Jutland,
across the unmanned border into Germany.

When he arrived in Munich he parked the car in the garage of one of the empty villas that Hanke owned.

The villa was on a sleepy, middle-class road where all the houses looked the same — brick-built, heavy doors. He guessed he had about ninety pounds of cocaine in the trunk of the car. In spite of the intermezzo on the boat he was pleased with the way things had turned out, and he knew that Ralph would be too. They had got the last word and, thanks to Mikhail’s last-minute intervention, some of the cocaine as well, just as Ralph wanted.

He reversed into the garage and closed the door.

The boxes, two of them, wooden, were sitting on top of each other. He pulled one out, found his transmitter, pulled it off the box, and put it in his pocket. He pulled the other box out and opened it with a crowbar, pushed the wooden lid off and found a load of sawdust. Mikhail brushed it aside and put his hand in, and found the butt of a machine gun. He pulled it out and recognized the model, a Steyr AUG. He evaluated it quickly. Relatively unused, good condition. Mikhail found another nine of the same model, recently greased and with their bolts in place. He broke open the other box and under the sawdust he found eight brand-new Heckler & Koch MP7s and two MP5s.

He scratched under one eye with his index finger.

Hector was sitting in the backseat
of the car that was waiting outside Sophie’s gate. He watched as she came down the little gravel path. They looked at each other. When she came out of the gate he leaned over the seat and pushed the door open for her.

“Welcome, Sophie Brinkmann,” he said.

She got in beside him and shut the door. In the driver’s seat Aron started the car.

“Hello, Aron,” she said.

Aron nodded and pulled away.

“You have a nice house,” Hector said.

“Thanks.”

Hector raised a finger.

“I like yellow houses,” he said.

“Really?” she said with a smile.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Quite a while.”

He was searching for a follow-up question. “Do you like the area? Is this a good place to live?”

Now she looked at him as if she were about to start laughing, wondering where this sterile small talk was going. He realized.

“Well, good,” he said after a pause.

“Mmm.” She smiled.

They kept on driving.

“Thanks for your present, I like it a lot. I’ve been using it,” he said.

She had given him a money clip, possibly because it was suitably impersonal but really nice.

The car journey turned out to be straightforward. Hector talked in his assured, calm way, telling her things, asking questions, and steering them away from small silences and other awkward moments. He was good at it — one of his accomplishments. She didn’t know if he was aware of it himself, but throughout the drive his leg kept nudging hers.

Aron turned into Haga Park and drove up to the Butterfly House.

“Have you been here before?”

She shook her head. They got out of the car and went inside the large greenhouse. A man offered to take her jacket. It was damp and warm, and there were birds singing and the sound of running water, and — as the name suggested — butterflies fluttering about, apparently oblivious to everything, possibly even their own beauty. She realized that she liked butterflies a lot, had always liked them.

In one part of the tropical room there were several rows of wooden chairs set out in front of a single larger chair, placed a step up from the others. Behind the single chair sat a four-man orchestra. One cello, two violins, and a flute.

A few people were already sitting, waiting. Sophie sat down. Hector walked in, and called for everyone’s attention. He began in Spanish, then switched to Swedish, introducing a Spanish poet whose work had been translated into Swedish. Applause broke out in the tropical heat.

The poet, a short man with a cheerful face, came in and sat down on the chair, said a few words of Spanish, then began reading his poetry to the accompaniment of the quartet behind him.

To start with, Sophie wasn’t sure what to think. She almost started giggling, but after a while she got caught up in the solemnity of the moment. She listened to the beautiful music, to the beautiful words the man was intoning with calm concentration. It was as if he were transmitting some sort of harmony even though she couldn’t understand a word he was saying. The butterflies were fluttering about, seemed to be showing themselves off to the audience. Her thoughts began to wander: Gunilla Strandberg, Hector, herself, to and fro without settling. And all the time the feeling that had been running through her since her encounter with Gunilla in the hospital, something along the lines of
Follow your heart
 … But when she tried to do that, she realized that she had more than one heart. There was the one that Gunilla had played on,
Do the right thing
— her moral heart. But there was also the one that Hector had somehow brought to life, the passionate heart that had lain dormant within her for so long.