The Andalucian Friend (32 page)

Albert had left them and gone into the living room.

“That’s a fine boy you’ve got there,” Hector said. Then he started talking about the importance of finding the right attitude to the world around you at an early age, that everything sorted itself out if you did, everything fell into place. He compared Albert to himself.

Sophie interrupted him.

“I want you to go now, Hector.”

He didn’t understand.

“I should go?”

She nodded, and he searched her face.

“Why?”

“Because I want you to. I don’t want you to come here again.”

Hector looked at her carefully, frowning, his hands folded.

“OK,” he said, trying to sound as if her words didn’t really mean much. He got himself together and stood up. But instead of leaving he stood beside the table.

“I don’t know what I’ve done.”

She avoided his gaze.

“You haven’t done anything. I just want you to leave.”

He was clearly sad. But he didn’t make a big deal of it, just made a call, muttered something in Spanish, and left the house. Aron drove up in the car down below.

She remained sitting at the kitchen table, she didn’t know how long.

“Do you want to die alone, Mom?”

There was look of disappointment to him when he came into the kitchen and sat down opposite her. She didn’t answer, just stood up and started to clear the table.

“What are you so scared of?”

“I’m not scared, Albert. I make the decisions about my life, got that?”

She could hear how sharp she sounded, how wrong she sounded.

“So who was that?”

“I’ve told you.”

“Really?”

She didn’t reply to that, either. She felt like saying:
For God’s sake, Albert, please, just shut up! People can hear every word we say!

But she just pointed toward the living room in some misdirected adult attempt at punishment. He was too old for that sort of scolding, and didn’t understand it. Instead he just sighed, stood up, and walked out of the kitchen.

Sophie poured the fizzy wine down the sink.

The apartment looked like an old storage space,
pillars holding up the relatively high ceiling — large, open, sparsely furnished. Harry lived in a ramshackle attic apartment on Kungsholmen. He’d lived there for as long as Jens had known him, fifteen years or so. Harry was self-taught and had worked as a private detective for the whole of his adult life. He spent the ’70s and half of the ’80s based in London, then for some reason decided to move home again.

He’d only just woken up and was dragging himself across the large open space in slippers and a checkered dressing gown. His thin, straggly hair seemed to have a mind of its own, way beyond Harry’s control.

“The coffee’s on but it’ll take a while because I keep forgetting to clear the lime scale out of the fucker.” Harry’s voice was hoarse and rough, as if he needed to clear his throat.

The electric coffee machine over in the kitchen corner was bubbling alarmingly. There were four computers up and running. Harry shuffled over to them, scratching his scalp.

“What have you got?” he said, then coughed.

They both sat down at the desk.

“ID card and a cell phone.”

Harry held out his hand. “The ID card.”

Jens put Lars Vinge’s ID in Harry’s hand. Harry inspected it from every angle. He held it up to the light of a reading lamp on a shelf behind his monitors.

“It’s genuine, so in all likelihood the guy’s a cop. Did you see his face?”

“From the side, it was the guy in the picture.”

Harry let out a big yawn and started tapping at one of the keyboards, glancing at the ID card.

“How did you get this? I thought you said you were going to try to get some photographs.”

“The situation changed.”

“Shit happens,” Harry said, still tapping away, clearly not interested. He pulled out a box down by his feet and took out a badly battered leather diary, dropped his reading glasses down from his forehead, and began leafing through it. The pages were covered in tiny handwriting. He turned to Jens and nodded toward the coffee machine, which had fallen silent. Jens got up and walked over to it.

Harry found what he was looking for, typed a user name and password into a web page, and pressed Enter. Then he keyed in “Lars Vinge,” followed by his date of birth and ID number. A page started to load and soon Vinge’s passport photograph appeared. Jens came back with two mugs.

“Lars Christer Vinge, beat cop, Husby Police Station,” Harry said.

Jens leaned over and read the screen.

“What site is this?”

“The cops’ personnel database. …”

Jens sat down as Harry read on.

“He was with the Western District until a month or so ago. Now he’s in crime, connected to the National Crime Unit …”

“I don’t know much about the police, but can they really go from one to the other just like that?” Jens asked.

“No idea … they’re police, who the fuck cares,” Harry muttered, taking a sip of coffee, then put the mug down and started tapping at the keys again.

“This is going to take a while,” he said.

Jens didn’t move. Harry typed, looked at Jens, went on typing, then turned to look at him again.

“There are toys over in the corner, off you go.”

Jens got the message.

There was a table tennis table folded up against the wall, and Jens opened it out and started hitting the ball to himself. It felt good concentrating on the sound of the ball. It was hypnotic. Jens wasn’t thinking about anything, just kept the ball bouncing between him and the wall. He shut himself off, all his concentration was focused on just one thing, making the bastard ball realize that it stood no chance against him. But evidently it did, because Harry called to him, Jens lost his focus, and the ball won. It bounced down from the table and rolled off across the floor toward its own vacuous freedom.

Harry had several sites open in small windows on the screen when Jens sat back down on his chair.

“Lars Vinge’s a pretty invisible character, there’s nothing very interesting about him. He’s a cop, he’s moved from the Western District to National Crime. I’ve checked his medical records and managed to find a recent visit. The old records aren’t online, so doctors’ appointments before 1997 are difficult to dig out. Anyway, he saw a doctor recently for back pain and trouble sleeping. He got prescriptions for Oxazepam and Citodon, from what I can see here.

“And what are they?”

“Oxazepam’s a sedative, addictive. It’s benzo, people get seriously fucked up on benzo.”

“And the other one?”

“Citodon’s a painkiller, looks like acetaminophen, tastes like acetaminophen … But this is codeine. Gets metabolized as morphine.”

“How do you know all this, Harry?”

“None of your business,” he muttered, tapping away at his keyboard, clicking with the mouse, searching through the flat, two-dimensional world in front of him. He seemed to be regretting his impolite response.

“My ex got hooked on prescription drugs. She used to have a whole pharmacy at home. A whole pharmacy that only made her worse and worse with each passing day.”

“What happened?”

“In the end neither of us could recognize her anymore.”

“That’s a shame.”

Harry turned to Jens, and looked him in the eye.

“Yes, it was a shame,” he replied, his voice open and honest, then he went back to the computer.

Jens was looking at Harry from the corner of his eye. Harry was usually pretty tight-lipped about his private life.

“So we’re dealing with a detective with a prescription drug problem?”

Harry shook his head.

“No, no, it isn’t necessarily a problem. You’re not fucked the moment you take the first pill … Most people can cope if they only use them short-term, and take them in small doses.”

“What else?”

Harry shook his head.

“Nothing, except that he isn’t married, lives on Södermalm, and wrote some sort of report on ethnic divisions in Husby while he was a beat officer, or a neighborhood officer or whatever the fuck they’re called these days. … He’s licensed to drive a taxi, his finances are fairly limited, and according to his charge card he sometimes buys films off the Internet and food from a budget supermarket.”

Jens skimmed through the scant information on the screen.

“I need more detail. Is it possible to find out what he’s working on at the moment? Who he works with … and why?”

“You can always phone and ask,” Harry said.

“Will they tell me?”

“Probably not.”

“OK. Look up a woman, another police officer, Gunilla Strandberg.”

Harry got to work on his keyboard.

“Who’s she?”

“The boss, I think, Sophie’s contact.”

Harry stopped on one site, scrolled down and read.

“Gunilla Strandberg, on the force since ’78. Looks like the usual career path … beat cop in Stockholm, inspector at some police station in Karlstad for a few years in the mid-’80s … Back to Stockholm, National Crime, became a superintendent … On paid leave pending the outcome of an investigation in 2002, two months, then back to work.”

“What sort of investigation?”

“Don’t know, this is only the police personnel database. Nothing but the bare facts.”

“Can you get into some other site, one with more detail?”

“No.”

Harry switched windows and searched for her name again. He clicked to open several pages, shrank them and lined them up next to each other on the screen.

“Unmarried, lives out on Lidingö. One brother, Erik … Nothing interesting in her medical notes … Looks like she’s never been ill.”

Harry went on tapping at the keyboard.

“She’s got a few notices for nonpayment of bills, but her finances look pretty good. She’s a member of Amnesty and has standing orders for Human Rights Watch and UNICEF … Possibly a member of the Peony Society, her name came up in an old register of members.”

Harry stretched.

“She’s a fairly wealthy old bag who’s a bit disorganized when it comes to bills, is hardly ever ill, and likes peonies. No more than that.”

Lars wasn’t shocked, he wasn’t even trembling.
That was the way it was these days with Ketogan at hand. He felt devoid of emotion. Even when the cold steel of the barrel of the pistol was pressing against his skin —
nothing
.

He didn’t know what to call his current state. Maybe surprised? Yes, that was probably it,
surprised
. Surprised that an unknown armed man had forced his way into his car and taken his cell, ID, and car keys.
Surprised
.

He stared out into the night with his mouth open, then tugged at his bottom lip. He knew how strung out he was, he could feel it. Mostly because of the pills, but also because of everything that had happened. It had all gone with lightning speed, within the space of just a few weeks he had ruined everything. The little he had of a proper life was now gone. His relationships were in tatters, his emotional life was in a state of anarchy, and now the machinery itself was starting to fuck with him. His soul was dead and buried somewhere deep inside his own personal hell. Not even his thoughts were his own anymore. As if the only thing left inside him was something that someone else had shoved in there. He didn’t recognize himself. It wasn’t him anymore … but it wasn’t anyone else, either. Who was that man? Not one of Hector’s group. Maybe a friend? A friend helping Sophie? But why?