The Andalucian Friend (48 page)

Suddenly Mikhail was sitting beside her, examining Jens.

“We’re going now,” he said quietly.

Jens said nothing, his ravaged face just looked back at Mikhail.

Mikhail turned to Sophie, maybe he saw how scared she was. He had nothing to say that could help, and instead just stood up and walked toward the door. Klaus came over to her, said something in ragged English which she understood to mean that he owed her, that she had saved his life twice and that he didn’t understand why. He tried to say this several different ways, but failed. Instead he picked up a pen, leaned on a table, wrote something on a napkin, and gave it to her. Sophie looked at the napkin, read
Klaus Köhler,
and a phone number. She looked into his eyes. Klaus turned away and followed Mikhail, who had now left the restaurant.

Hector came out of the kitchen with his sleeves rolled up, bloody fists, and staring eyes. He looked at the chaos in the room, then at Sophie sitting on the floor with Jens’s head in her lap. He was different, somehow charged. Charged with two thousand volts. Something was burning inside him, something he couldn’t control. His eyes stopped on Sophie, but she got the feeling that he couldn’t see her. Hector was about to say something when the stranger came out of the kitchen. Freshly washed and tidied up, he kissed Hector on the cheeks. They exchanged a few rapid words in Spanish. He walked toward the exit, smiling at Sophie as he passed her, then disappeared out past the broken door. Hector went back into the kitchen.

She hadn’t told him what she had come here to say. Now Anders Ask was in there, along with Hasse Berglund. The men who had run down her son, the men who had tried to murder her …

Sophie laid Jens’s head gently on the floor, got up, and walked out through the kitchen, passing Dmitry. He was sitting dead on a chair in the middle of the kitchen, his head lolling back. She could see a carving knife sticking out of his heart, and one eye was hanging out, and there were several liters of blood in a big puddle under the chair.

“Hector Guzman!” she heard Anders’s voice say from inside the office.

She stopped, the door was ajar. She saw Anders sitting tied to the radiator beside the desk, Hasse alongside him. She could see Aron working at a computer. Sophie leaned forward and saw Hector, bare-chested, wiping his hands on a damp towel, his bloody shirt in a heap on the floor.

“We’re supposed to supervise the transfer … ,” Anders said.

Hector didn’t answer.

Anders was struggling against his losing position.

“Shall we begin?” he said.

Sophie was trying to understand.

Hector opened a desk drawer, took out a new shirt, and tore the cellophane off it.

“It looks to me as if you’re tied to a radiator,” he said, starting to recover from the two thousand volts now.

“Just let us go, and we can finish off what you agreed with Gunilla, then we’ll leave.”

Gunilla?
Sophie thought that nothing would ever surprise her again.

Hector waved his hand in the direction of the restaurant.

“Things have changed. There’ll be no transfer for you, which I dare say you will understand after this.” He unfolded the shirt with a shake.

“OK. We’ll just go, we haven’t seen anything,” Anders said in a vain attempt to open up some sort of bargaining. Hector didn’t bother responding to his suggestion. He pulled the shirt on.

“Don’t be stupid now, Hector Guzman!”

Anders’s words sounded angry. Aron stopped what he was doing on the computer and turned toward Anders. Hector stopped.

“Sorry?” he whispered.

Anders didn’t seem to care.

“We can help you here … If you let us go. We can do the transaction together, we’ll take the witnesses and leave the restaurant, and you’re free.”

Hector buttoned the shirt and looked up.

“Free?” he said in a toneless voice.

“Yes, free.”

“You’re a very strange man. Do you assume that everyone is as stupid as you are?”

Anders was about to reply when Hector held up his hand. Then he finished buttoning the shirt, with his chin on his chest.

“Be quiet,” he said.

But Anders the terrier wasn’t finished.

“Let us take the witnesses and leave, that’s all I ask.”

Sophie held her breath.

“Who?”

“The witnesses.”

“What witnesses?”

“The woman, Sophie, and the man, her friend. They’ve got nothing to do with this.”

Hector looked at Anders.

“How do you know that?”

“I just know.”

Sophie heard a noise and turned around. Carlos Fuentes was standing there, staring at her. He looked small, marginalized, bowed somehow. She shook her head slowly to tell him to be quiet, not to give her away. Carlos’s eyes were cold. He walked off.

She was sitting
beside Jens again when she heard noises behind her. Hector and Aron came out. Hector in the fresh shirt, a jacket, and carrying a briefcase in his hand.

“Sophie?”

He was almost whispering.

“You have to come with me,” he said.

“What for?”

He didn’t have time for the question.

“The police will be here any minute, the ones in the office saw you.”

She was seeing a different side of him again, he was emotionally shut off.

“Jens?” she asked

“Aron will help him.”

“Where are we going?”

“We need to get away from here … that’s the first thing.”

She realized she had no choice. Anders and Hasse were sitting in the office, there were three dead bodies in the restaurant, and Gunilla and Hector were doing business together. … She had no chance. Had Anders told Hector about her?

Sophie looked at Hector, then at Aron, trying to detect any sign. She could see nothing but impatience and an urge to get going.

She leaned over Jens, kissed him on the head, wishing for a moment that he would wake up, get to his feet, take her by the hand and run off. But he wasn’t going to. He wasn’t going to do anything, he was severely beaten and unconscious, scarcely capable of even breathing by himself. Sophie stood up, picked up her handbag, and followed Hector as he hurried out of the restaurant.

The smell of powder and death lingered
in the room.

Carlos looked out across his restaurant. He had been in the kitchen pushing the pieces of Leffe Rydbäck through the mincer when the first shots were fired. He had stopped and hidden inside one of the kitchen cupboards. But when Hector and the Colombian dragged the Russian in and killed him, Carlos backed out and hid in the office. He had heard Hector’s phone conversation with his father, how Hector had asked him to send the G5 up to Bromma Airport. Carlos had made his way back into the restaurant and hid on the floor behind the bar counter.

He couldn’t figure out who was who, but he recognized the policemen, Cling and Clang. He had prayed to God while he was lying with his nose against the cold floor, prayed to Him to spare his miserable life. And God had done so. Carlos had made his way into the kitchen again, and found that woman, Sophie, eavesdropping on Hector. Then he had found another hiding place until Hector and the woman disappeared. Aron had come into the restaurant and picked up the wounded man, Jens. He had put him over his back and disappeared.

Now everything was silent, there was no one there, except the dead bodies and the policemen tied up in the office.

He looked around the inferno of blood and dead bodies, weighing things up, then, with shaking fingers, tapped a number into his cell phone.

“Gentz,” Roland answered at the other end.

“This is Carlos … with the restaurant in Stockholm.”

“Yes?”

“There are dead bodies here.”

“Oh?”

“I need your help. I can give something in return.”

“What?”

“Hector’s location.”

“We know that already.”

“Where?”

“Stockholm.”

“No.”

“Where?”

Will you help me?”

“Maybe.”

“Malaga, in a few hours.”

“What do you want help with, Carlos?”

“Protection.”

“From whom?”

“From everyone.”

“Where are you now?”

“Stockholm.”

“Get out, lie low, then call me again and I’ll see what I can do. … You said people had been killed? Who’s dead?”

“I don’t know.”

Gentz hung up. He could hear police sirens in the distance. Carlos left the restaurant.

The house was on its own.
Looked more like a little summer cottage than the home of a detective superintendent. He had just spoken to her on the phone, she was at Brahegatan. He said he had been trying to find Sophie everywhere. She told him to come in. He said he couldn’t. There had been a short silence, then she had asked what he wanted.

“Just checking in,” he had replied.

Lars parked the
car a few blocks away. Now he stepped inside her garden, walking under the apple trees and through the grass on the narrow gravel path that led up to the veranda.

The lock on the front door was modern, impossible to pick. He went around the house and checked the windows. All closed and locked. Lars found some steps that led down to a cellar door under the house, solid but out of the way, it had an old window with bubble-patterned glass, and possibly a latch on the inside. He pulled the sleeve of his sweater down over his arm and broke the glass, stuck his hand through, and felt. There, an old latch. He unlocked the door and went into the cellar.

Lars hurried through the rooms, scanning with his eyes as he went. A storeroom, a pantry, a recently installed geothermal system with a generator, a staircase leading to the floor above. He took it in a couple of strides, opened the door, and found himself in a kitchen that could have been taken from an English interior-design magazine. A new stove, but an old-fashioned design, a wooden floor with wide floorboards, oiled and varnished. Old-fashioned cupboards, beautiful. He kept going through the kitchen, turned into a living room, and went into an office. A desk, a lamp with a green glass shade, a filing cabinet, locked. He broke it open using a screwdriver he found in the bottom kitchen drawer. It made a noise, tin bending and twisting, but eventually it opened. A mass of documents hanging in a row. He worked through them with his fingers, looking for Sophie Brinkmann, but she wasn’t there. His fingers went to G, Hector Guzman, nothing … Just the names of tons of police officers he didn’t recognize. Everything was in alphabetical order … He went on. Wait, that was something … Berglund. Hasse Berglund. A passport photograph of the pig, Hasse, and some service reports. A note in pencil in the top right corner.
Violent,
it said. Lars looked on through the files. Found Eva Castroneves, no pencil note … instead a roughly drawn star. Like a teacher might put in a pupil’s schoolbook. He checked the letter V, and found himself. He pulled the file out, opened it. The photograph was old, the same one he had on his police ID. At first the word that was written in pencil in the top right corner didn’t want to sink in, as if he didn’t understand it.
Unstable,
it said.

Lars closed the file and put it back. He experienced a moment of complete silence within him as his eyes failed to register anything. Then he came back to life again.

He sat down on the chair by the desk, opened drawers: paper, pens, reading glasses, paper clips, a ruler … a few notes and coins. The bottom drawer was locked and he broke that open as well. Papers, notes, letters, he put them all in his pockets. He glanced around the room one last time before heading back down to the cellar again. There he checked in every nook and cranny. He needed a pee, and speeded up the search. Into the boiler room, his flashlight dancing over the walls, ceiling, floor. A cleaning cupboard under the stairs, an old Nilfisk vacuum cleaner with the hose looped over a semicircular metal hanger. Mop and bucket, cloths and disinfectant — a smell of old, unperfumed Ajax, hazy and fleeting childhood memories that he hurriedly shrugged off.

Into the pantry, full of tins and preserves. She could survive a nuclear war down here. The flashlight playing over the ceiling. Lars sat down and searched the floor. Got up and searched behind the tins … Something shimmered. Right at the back of the shelf, behind the beans, the sweet corn, different varieties of Campbell’s soup … He swept them aside with his arm and the tins went flying. There it was in front of him, the treasure he’d just uncovered. A dial, numbers around it, solid steel — an old safe, fifteen inches square, set back into the wall. But his joy was short-lived … How the hell was he going to get it out? A quick glance at the time; he might have an hour, maybe less. What could he do in that time? Spin the dial at random? He tried to think … the notes in his pockets! Lars sat down, spread the notes out on the floor in front of him, the flashlight in his mouth. He read, tons of words and questions, he went on looking, no numbers anywhere.

He ran upstairs again, into the office, and grabbed as many of the folders from the filing cabinet as he could carry, down into the cellar again, and spread them out on the floor. The same trip three times. On the fourth he picked up all the old bills and papers that had been on top of the desk, and in the living room he grabbed a standard lamp.

He was on his knees, the standard lamp shining at the safe. He searched through the bills, found her ID number, stood up and tried it, splitting it into two-digit segments. The first two counterclockwise, the following two clockwise. Locked. He repeated the process, starting with clockwise. Locked. He tried her phone number, locked. He tried her phone number and date of birth … locked. Time was passing. He still wanted to pee. And now he was sweaty, cold, and tired as well. His detox was slowly working, his teeth were grinding the whole time.

Lars kneeled down on the floor again, opened the first file, leafed through it, information about a police officer named Sven. Sven had got the pencil annotation
Reactionary
. He put it aside. Opened more files, more police officers, trainees, inspectors, detectives … Small passport photos of faces he didn’t recognize. Gunilla’s notes in the corner in pencil.
Solitary
,
Dependent on company
,
Passive-aggressive
 … All the files were set out the same, photograph in one corner, a personnel office record, notes, and a service report. He read through ten or so, trying to find anything that stood out. Nothing. He went back to Gunilla’s notes again … nothing of interest.
This isn’t working,
he thought. Lars stood up, stepped back, and looked at the folders. He turned the light from the standard lamp on them. The light made them look different from one another. In the filing cabinet they had all looked brown. They still did, but the different shades indicated that they were different ages. He shone the light around and picked up the file that looked palest — palest equaled oldest. He opened it, it was thicker than the others. The file contained a mass of old newspaper clippings, typewritten notes, washed-out photographs. He read a date … August 1968. He read names, Siv and Carl-Adam Strandberg, murdered on a camping trip in Värmland on August 19 1968.
Strandberg? Her parents?
He tried the safe again, 68 08 19, locked. He tried clockwise and counterclockwise, he tried backward, counterclockwise, and clockwise. Locked. He read her parents’ dates of birth, tried those the same way. Time was flying now, he’d been there almost forty minutes, Gunilla could show up anytime. Locked, locked, locked.

Sweat was dripping from his brow, his heart was pounding, his throat was dry, he badly wanted to take something, get rid of the itchy feeling in his soul. … Lars went back to the file, looked through the newspaper clippings. A photograph of Siv and Carl-Adam Strandberg with their two children, Erik and Gunilla. They were standing in front of the entrance to Skansen, the open-air museum, sometime in the ’60s. Siv and Carl-Adam were smiling, strict clothes, Carl-Adam with a little hat on his head; a tight, checked, short-sleeved shirt, straight trousers, polished shoes. Siv in a dress, hair piled up high, white shoes, the children smiling as well. Lars could see Gunilla in the girl’s face. She looked happy. He looked at the boy, Erik, a fair-haired, laughing boy who was about to go into Skansen with his family. The boy was happy, he seemed to be glowing somehow. A terrible sense of guilt overwhelmed Lars. A feeling that it was this innocent little boy whom he had let die on the floor of Carlos’s apartment. Lars stared at the photograph, breathing deeply to dispel the unease that was starting to spread. He looked on. The investigation. Lars read: they had been shot through the canvas of the tent. Shotgun. The murderer’s name was Ivar Gamlin, he was thirty-one when it happened, seriously drunk, he’d beaten his wife then gone off in his car. The gun happened to be on the backseat by chance, he had claimed. He had been using it to hunt birds the day before. He just hadn’t bothered to take it indoors. Lars moved on to an interrogation: Gamlin claims he has no recollection. Further down the page: Gamlin sentenced to life imprisonment in 1969 … November 23, 1969. Lars tried those numbers every way he could, locked. He looked at the time again, almost half past five. He listened to see if he could hear anything. Then kept looking through the file. Gamlin applies for clemency, 1975. Rejected. Gamlin’s sentence is fixed, 1979; he will be released in November 1982. Lars read quickly, skimming, leafing through … There! Ivar Gamlin is murdered by another inmate, 1981. Lars went on, found a postmortem report. He scanned through the findings and got the impression that pretty much every bone in Gamlin’s body had been shattered. He found another police report, a typewritten sheet of A4. Someone had gotten into Gamlin’s cell at night. Cause of death was suffocation, with the help of an unknown object. The coroner’s report suggested that this might have been a plastic bag. Lars thought, read once more, scanning the text. He found what he was looking for. Date of death 1981 … 03 … 21 … Lars tried the numbers on the dial. There was the sound of a car outside the house, tires on gravel. He kept going: 19 counterclockwise, 81 clockwise, a car-door closing, 03 counterclockwise. Steps on the gravel, 21 clockwise, steps heading toward the door. He tried the handle. Locked.

A key was inserted into the lock up above. He tried again, staring with 19 clockwise. The door upstairs opened and closed. Footsteps into the living room. He turned the dial slowly, sweat running from his brow — 21 counterclockwise. He turned the handle slowly. Quick footsteps. He finished turning,
click
! The safe opened. Other people would have guessed it was God’s help. Not Lars, he didn’t guess anything.

Gunilla’s voice through the floorboards above. She sounded upset, she was talking to someone on the phone. Lars stuck his hand inside the safe. Two plastic folders, a notebook, two bundles of thousand-kronor notes, a pistol, and a thick, official ledger with a dark-green felt spine. He took it all, tucked it inside his jacket, zipped it up silently, then made his way out of the pantry, past the stairs, he could hear Gunilla’s voice more clearly now. Her tone was curt and irritated, she was saying that her house had been broken into and demanded that a forensics expert be let off other duties to come out to her.

He was moving slowly toward the exit when the cellar door above him opened and he heard steps on the stairs. Lars set off, ran through the darkness, found the door, and raced up the little flight of steps.

Instead of running out onto the road the way he had come, he swerved immediately left, into the leafy undergrowth. Twigs on slender stems whipped at his face. He’d gotten quite a way when he heard the door opening behind him. Lars kept up the same speed until he reached his car five minutes later. He started it the moment he was behind the wheel, and drove off, away from her house, away from Gunilla. Away.

It was a lounge, empty, cool, and private.
They sat in separate armchairs, looking at each other. He was about to say something, changed his mind, looked away and made eye contact with a woman behind a desk, waved her over, and asked for some water.

They drank in silence. Outside, planes took off and landed in turn, in the end the sound of jet engines became just a part of everything.

“How is your son?” he asked cautiously.

She looked at him.

“He’s not good.”

“What do the doctors say?”

“Nothing yet.”

“Did you want to tell me anything in particular?” he asked quietly.

“It doesn’t matter.”

He looked at her.

“Tell me.”

Sophie leaned forward slightly. “I came to tell you that Mikhail and his sidekick had asked Jens for help, that they weren’t here to hurt you.”

He looked at her critically.

“Why would you tell me that?”

“Because I was there when they arrived.”

“Where?”

“At Jens’s.”

She realized how odd her lie sounded. But that didn’t seem to be what Hector got caught up on.