The Andalucian Friend (55 page)

Tommy took a turn around Lars Vinge’s apartment, double-checking that there was nothing there that had anything to do with the case. There wasn’t, it was clean. He thought through everything that might be of interest to the forensics team. He knew how they worked, they were fuckers sometimes when it came to putting things together.

When Tommy felt confident, he left Lars and Gunilla and went down to the street, jumped into his Buick Skylark GS, and started it up, letting the tuned V8 engine echo between the buildings. He put his right foot on the brake pedal, moved the gearstick to D. The trimmed engine made the whole car bounce as the gear settled.

He drove away and headed home to Monica and the girls. They were planning to barbecue sausages on the terrace that night. He would nod over the fence of his row house to the neighbors, Krister and Agneta, say something amusing to Krister, who would laugh, he always did. Then Tommy would test Vanessa on the extra English homework that she had been given over summer vacation. She would tease him about his pronunciation, he would exaggerate his Swenglish, and they’d laugh. Emilie would get stuck in front of the computer. He would tell her to log off. She’d sulk for a while, but that would pass. After a bit of television Monica would suggest backgammon and coffee in the conservatory, with a slice of that Swiss roll that they were both addicted to. Monica would win the game. They would go to bed and read, a car magazine for him, and something by Jean M. Auel for her. Before they turned out the lights he would pat her on the cheek and tell her he loved her, she’d say something nice back, strong in spite of the ever-present illness … Something like that. Everything would carry on exactly as usual for a bit longer. Then he would set to work and save his wife from slow suffocation.

Tommy forced his way through the Stockholm traffic in his Buick. He calculated in his head how rich he was, indirectly at least. He made it two digits, followed by six zeros. Two relatively high digits. That was a lot to digest for a boy who was born in Johanneshov in the ’50s, who had pinched Robin Hood cigarettes, listened to Jerry Williams, and thought the Phantom and Biggles were cool.

She sang softly to him, washed him,
combed his hair, and dressed him in clean clothes every day. She kept on reading him the book he had been reading before the accident. She had found it beside his bed with a bookmark in it.

The door of Albert’s hospital room was ajar. Jens stopped, looked in. The sight of the mother beside her unconscious son was just as sad each time. He had a pack of cards in his hand, bought from the shop downstairs, he had imagined that he and Sophie might play cards to pass the time. But now that he was standing there, it was as if a wall had grown up in front of him, an invisible wall that made it impossible for him to enter the room. Which made it impossible for him to be part of her and Albert’s lives. Which made it impossible for him to confront his fears, once and for all, and take the step into the warmth.

She sat and read, tucked a stray strand of hair from her face. She was so beautiful when she didn’t know she was being watched. …

Jens turned and walked away down the corridor.

The atmosphere was subdued and tense.
The men were thinking. They were sitting in the same room as always, the conference room that was Björn Gunnarsson’s very own smoking room. Björn Gunnarsson was Tommy’s boss, and he sucked at his pipe before breaking the deadlock:

“What do we know, Tommy?”

Tommy had been sitting there staring at the table, leaning back in his chair. He kept his eyes focused on an invisible point for a few seconds before looking up.

“Lars Vinge was unstable. Gunilla was worried about him. She mentioned it to me once in passing. I didn’t pay it much attention at the time. But he was evidently very pushy, thought he deserved better than the jobs he was given. He called her, sent e-mails, was aggressive and threatening. And apparently his mother and girlfriend both died recently, one after the other. That seems to have knocked him even further off balance. …”

Gunnarsson listened and smoked. Tommy went on.

“Vinge had checked into a rehab center, but bolted just a few days later. We have a call from him to Gunilla registered the same evening he came home. Maybe he called to ask for her help, I don’t know. Either way, evidently she went to his apartment the following morning. He shot her and then killed himself. The indications are that he did so while he was under the influence of very strong medication. …”

“What sort of medication?”

“Prescription morphine … He was high, he was addicted to it. Apparently he had a history of trouble. I don’t know much about it, but according to Gunilla it was escalating out of control again. It might have had something to do with his mother and girlfriend.”

“And their investigations?” Gunnarsson puffed at his pipe.

Tommy wiped some invisible grit from his eye.

“This is where it gets a bit strange. The office on Brahegatan contained practically nothing. It was empty, apart from a few surveillance reports, some photographs, and a few other case notes.”

“Why?”

Tommy left a dramatic pause, then looked up.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you think?”

Tommy’s face took on a slightly pained look, as though he were about to say something that was actually physically painful.

“What?” Gunnarsson asked, with the pipe still between his teeth.

“Maybe Gunilla and Erik didn’t have anything, maybe they hadn’t gotten anywhere. … At least not as far as she wanted to make out.”

He said these last words in an almost apologetic tone, as if it hurt him to speak ill of the dead.

“What makes you think that?” Gunnarsson’s voice was gruff.

“Remember that she managed to sell this way of working to us. We bought it, lock, stock, and barrel, and gave her carte blanche. Maybe she was ashamed that it wasn’t turning out the way she’d hoped. Or else she wanted to keep on getting financial support, and knew that would stop if she couldn’t show any sign of progress.”

Tommy shrugged his shoulders.

“But I don’t really know,” he said.

Gunnarsson let out a deep sigh. Tapped the exhausted tobacco into the palm of his hand and tossed it into the wastepaper basket beside him.

“And the murders at Trasten?” he asked.

“Antonia Miller’s running that. I’ve let her have everything I had from Gunilla, the little that did exist, I mean. We’ll have to hope that forensics can help us there.”

“And Guzman, he’s gotten away?”

“Yes. We’ve got warrants out for him through all the usual channels. His father was murdered in his home in Marbella at roughly the same time as those shots were fired in Trasten. It looks like this settling of accounts stretches much further than we thought.”

Björn Gunnarsson frowned.

“Hasse Berglund?”

“Vanished,” Tommy said.

“Why?”

Tommy shook his head.

“Don’t know. He already had plenty of crap in his record before he was employed by Gunilla. He’s probably just fled the field.”

A moment’s silence.

“So, where is he then?”

Tommy shook his head. “No idea.”

“And Ask? What the hell was Anders Ask doing in all this?”

Tommy left another dramatic pause before he replied.

“I asked Gunilla when I saw him at Trasten. She said he had been helping with some surveillance work. Said she didn’t want to overburden the force.”

Gunnarsson looked up.

“She said that, about
overburdening the force
?”

Tommy nodded.

“So why did he kill himself, then, Ask?” Gunnarsson asked.

“Why does anyone kill themselves? I don’t know, but he’s not the first officer to take the shortcut. You know about his past. No one wanted to work with him, or even have anything to do with him after the debacle with the Security Police. He was tainted, used up, alone … I’d guess he was just pretty damn tired of it all.”

Tommy saw a quick nod from the man opposite. “Pretty damn tired” was a phenomenon that Gunnarsson was well acquainted with.

Gunnarsson took a deep breath.

“Don’t you think there are an unusual number of question marks surrounding this whole business, Tommy?”

Tommy let a few moments pass.

“Well, yes …”

His answer stretched no further than that. The sound of traffic could be heard from somewhere below. They were sitting in Police Headquarters on Kungsholmen. Björn Gunnarsson filled his pipe again and sighed out of habit.

“How do we proceed?”

“There’s not so much we can do. It’s a tragedy, Björn. The work of a madman, a madman by the name of Lars Vinge. End of story. As far as Gunilla’s Guzman investigation is concerned, we’ll continue with what we’ve got. The same with Trasten.”

Gunnarsson had his matches ready, and said gruffly as the pipe tapped against his teeth: “We’ve probably only got ourselves to blame for part of this tragic business. Gunilla wanted to work without supervision, and we allowed that. We allowed her to fail. And if she for her part could have just dropped the clever-girl routine and asked us for help when she realized she wasn’t getting anywhere, then maybe the situation would be very different today.”

Tommy read his boss. Somewhere in there Gunnarsson was terrified. Terrified he was going to have to take responsibility for this chaos. Just as Tommy had hoped.

“I’ll take care of it, Björn. I’ll make sure it all gets sorted out.”

Gunnarsson lit his pipe again, took several deep puffs, the smoke was almost blue. He looked at Tommy carefully as he let the nicotine do its work on his tongue and cheeks.

“Gunilla and Erik were close friends of ours, Tommy. They had a good reputation. I want their memory to stay that way.”

Tommy nodded.

She moved Albert from the front seat
and down into the wheelchair. She knew he hated that. There were so many aspects of daily life that he found humiliating. But he was brave, never showed that he was weak or despairing. Sometimes it scared her, she was worried he was bottling up his grief.

But the glint in his eyes was there, she’d seen it when he woke up in the hospital two weeks before. That had dispelled all her anxiety, it was her Albert waking up, it was her Albert asking questions, who got angry when he realized what his life was going to be like from now on, who after two days started crying, and after four started joking with her for the first time. Then it was her turn to grieve. After that came his questions. She told him everything, from the day she first met Hector in the hospital, about Gunilla and her threats, right up to the point when she fled to Spain. He listened and did his best to understand.

Tom and Yvonne
were being a nuisance. They stood by the car door, wanting to be helpful. They were in the way, and she asked them to go and wait inside.

Sunday dinner, there they were again, Jane and Jesus, Tom and Mom, Albert and her. Yvonne was happy and upbeat, Tom the same. Rat, the dog, was barking, Jane and Jesus were silent and kept to themselves. The terrace doors were open, the table laid in the loveliest way, and the warm evening caressed the dining room — everything was as it should be … almost.

She looked around the table at her nearest and dearest. Albert was reading texts on his cell phone in his lap, Yvonne was nodding eagerly at something Jesus had just said. And Tom — he felt she was looking at him — was smiling at her. And then Jane — Jane who without any questions had shown such immense strength and stability. She had just rolled into action. She did that whenever anything serious happened. Then she switched from being a dizzy gadfly to calmness personified, taking charge where other people lost their grip or the plot. Jane was a rock, and hardly anyone knew.

She looked at Albert again. His phone buzzed, he read a text and replied with his thumb.

And then she looked at herself for the first time in ages. She saw a flame somewhere, a shimmering light that she recognized. The flame didn’t burn, it wasn’t blinding, it just lay there soft and warm inside her, rocking gently within a feeling that told her something about herself that she had forgotten. A feeling that said she could step away from her fear, away from her self-imposed isolation, that she was bigger than she had dared to see. That she didn’t need to understand the fear in order to get rid of it; she could just walk away from it quietly, leave it behind, say good-bye. It didn’t happen after a chain of thought where she put words to something. It was crystal clear. She was changing, shedding the skin of her personality. The change had happened gradually. She realized that she had stopped fighting against it. Everything was changing, it was always changing, everywhere throughout the universe, day and night alike, for all eternity. The change that no one and nothing could shield themselves from, not even her. She felt angry, warm, intense, empty, and determined all at the same time. And it felt completely natural.

Sophie looked at Albert, who met her gaze, and gave her a wide, heartfelt smile. She wondered why, until she realized that she herself was smiling.

They drove home
at dusk. Even though it was still warm, it felt like a different season, a season when the darkness came earlier. A season when the green leaves of the trees hung heavily on thin branches, a time just before the visible change, when the leaves could no longer hold on, just before they lost their grip.

They parked outside the house and repeated the procedure, out of the car, down into the wheelchair, up the ramp to the front door. He wanted to do it all himself. He could move freely at home, where all barriers had been removed and a lift had been installed on the stairs.

Sophie locked the doors all around the house with the extra locks that she’d had fitted, and activated the alarm in the rooms they weren’t going to be in.

When Albert had fallen asleep, Aron called. He told her what was going on in the world around them, asked questions, and kept her informed. She listened and spoke to him, reasoning and trying to find the best solutions to his queries. She asked if there was any change with Hector, but there wasn’t. He was lying there connected to machines that were keeping him alive.

She made tea. Drank it alone, cursing herself. She would always do that, the guilt would never leave her. She wished Jens had been there. But he had vanished, gone. She had gotten a text. Something along the lines of: I’m forced to go away for a while.
Forced
 … she thought. I’m forced as well. Everyone is forced.

And amid all of this, she took care of Albert and kept looking over her shoulder. That was what her life looked like.

She woke up
eight hours later and ate breakfast out on the veranda. It was pouring rain. She was sitting in the cover of the balcony above, drinking her tea and listening to the water falling from the sky. Sophie heard the sound of tires on gravel on the other side of the house, footsteps approaching. When she heard the front doorbell ring she got up and leaned out from the end of the veranda.

“I’m ’round here!”

Around the corner came a woman of her own age, possibly a few years younger. The woman was fairly tall, had dark hair, and was wearing high boots and tight jeans. Trinkets rather than classic jewelry, Sophie had time to note as the woman jogged around to get out of the rain.

“Ugh!” she said as she came up the steps to the veranda, brushing the rain off her clothes with her hand.

“Goodness! Antonia Miller, detective inspector,” she said, holding out her wet hand.

“Sophie Brinkmann,” Sophie said.

“Am I disturbing you?”

“No, come and sit down, I was just having breakfast.”

Sophie and Antonia
sat on the veranda, Sophie offered tea, Antonia accepted the offer.

“You have a nice house,” she said.

The woman seemed to mean what she said.

“Thanks,” Sophie said. “We’re happy here.”

Sophie could see Antonia wondering who “we” was.

“I live here with my son, I’ve been a widow for many years now.”

Antonia nodded.

“I understand. I’m not married myself, I live in a two-room apartment in the city … it faces south. Every morning this summer I’ve woken up asking myself why I live in a sauna.”

Antonia reached for a slice of bread from the little bread basket, took a bite, looking at the flowers and trees.

“I could certainly live like this.”

Sophie was waiting, and Antonia noticed.

“Sorry … I’m in charge of an investigation, a murder inquiry. A triple-murder in Vasastan, at the Trasten restaurant, I’m sure you’ve read about it?”

Sophie nodded.

“It’s a real mess … I’m slowly feeling my way forward … That’s pretty much what the job’s like, feeling my way the whole time.”

Antonia drank a sip of tea, then put the cup down.

“And as you’ve probably also read, there was another murder, a meeting between two police officers that ended in tragedy.”

The rain was still falling beyond the terrace.

“Yes, I’m aware of it, and my name’s cropped up somewhere, and now you’re here to ask some questions.”

“Yes,” Antonia said.

“I’m afraid there’s not much I can tell you. But I’ll try to help you as much as I can.”

Antonia took a little notebook from her jacket pocket and turned to a fresh page. There was something uncomplicated about Antonia Miller. She was easygoing and had honest eyes. Sophie liked her, and that scared her.

“Apparently Gunilla Strandberg’s investigation hadn’t gotten anywhere. She left very little material about the case … But amongst that material your name did crop up.”

Antonia looked at her, then she asked: “How did you come into contact with each other?”

“She came to see me at the hospital where I work, Danderyd. She told me she was investigating a Hector Guzman. He was on my ward, he had a broken leg after being hit by a car. That was at the end of May, beginning of June. …”

Antonia listened.

“Gunilla asked me some questions about him, but that was all.”

“Did you know Hector?”

“I got to know him a bit while he was in the hospital. That sometimes happens with patients, you develop a relationship with them. We’re always being told that we’re not supposed to … but that’s easier said than done.”

Antonia was taking notes in her book.

“Then what?”

“She called me a few times, asked questions I didn’t have any answers to. Hector was discharged, he invited me to lunch.” Sophie leaned forward and drank some of her tea.

“He invited you to lunch?”

Sophie nodded.

“Yes …”

Antonia was thinking.

“What was he like?”

Sophie kept her eyes on Antonia.

“I don’t know, pleasant, well mannered … almost charming.”

Antonia was taking notes.

“Leif Rydbäck?” she said suddenly without looking up.

“Sorry?”

“Leif Arne Rydbäck, does that name mean anything to you?”

Sophie shook her head.

“No, who’s he?”

Antonia looked at Sophie, wrote something in her pad.

“We found three murdered men at Trasten, but also a fourth when we searched the place, he had died earlier. I’ve only recently had his identity confirmed, Leif Rydbäck.”

“I see. … No, I’ve never heard the name before,” Sophie said.

“Lars Vinge?”

Sophie shook her head.

“No, I’ve never heard that name either, who’s that?”

Antonia didn’t answer immediately.

“Lars Vinge was the policeman who murdered Gunilla Strandberg, even if his name hasn’t been officially released yet.”

Antonia went on asking questions. There were a lot of them — small, thin, and harmless. Antonia Miller didn’t know anything, she had nothing to go on. She didn’t know who had been working on the case. She had no knowledge of Hector, no knowledge of anything, really … But she wanted to know, wanted to be able to build up a picture. Sophie could hear it in her voice, see it in her slightly forced unobtrusive manner.

Sophie shook her head to all of Antonia’s questions, totally ignorant, just like the innocent nurse that she was.

They were interrupted when Albert came rolling out onto the veranda. The suntanned boy in the wheelchair threw Detective Inspector Miller off balance slightly.

“Hello! My name’s Antonia,” she said rather too cheerily, standing up and shaking Albert’s hand.

“Albert,” Albert said.

Sophie put her arm around him.

“This is my son, he’s got one more week of his summer vacation left. I’ve told him it’s time to start getting back into a proper routine, but you don’t really care about that, do you?”

And with that, she kissed him on the head.