The Andalucian Friend (13 page)

Gunilla opened her handbag, took out a leather wallet, searched through an inside pocket, and found what she was looking for among some old till receipts and banknotes. She held her ID up toward Sophie.

“I’m a police officer.”

“Yes?”

Sophie folded her arms.

“I just want to talk to you,” Gunilla said calmly.

Sophie realized that she was standing defensively.

“Maybe you recognize me?” Gunilla asked.

“Yes, I’ve seen you here before. You’re related to one of our patients.”

Gunilla shook her head. “Can we sit down?”

Sophie pulled a chair over for Gunilla, who sat down. Sophie settled on the edge of the hospital bed. Gunilla was silent, she seemed to be searching for words. Sophie waited. After a while Gunilla looked up.

“I’m running an investigation.”

Sophie waited. Gunilla Strandberg still seemed to be trying to find the right words.

“You’re friends with Hector Guzman?” she said calmly.

“Hector? No, I’m not sure I’d say that.”

“But you do see each other?”

It was more a statement of fact than a question.

Sophie looked at Gunilla. “Why?”

“Nothing much, I’d just like to ask a few questions.”

“What for?”

“How close are the two of you?”

Sophie shook her head. “He was a patient, we talked. What do you want?”

Gunilla took a deep breath, smiling at her own clumsiness.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to be intrusive, I never learn.” She collected herself and looked Sophie in the eye. “I … I need your help.”

Mikhail had hit the water.
He had escaped being hit by the shots being fired off at him by a hairbreadth. On his way down through the dark sea he heard the whirr and hiss of the projectiles as they slowed in the water. After a while he turned and swam back underwater toward the ship again, then lack of oxygen forced him to the surface. The wedge-shaped design of the ship saved his life. The men up above couldn’t look both down and inward. Mikhail stayed there beside the hull, moving the whole time. When the engines started up he took a chance and swam toward the concrete quayside, aiming for its far end. The quay was high. If there weren’t any steps or something similar for him to climb up, he’d drown. His body was aching, he wouldn’t be able to manage much longer. But after the exhausting swim he rounded the end of the quay and found a rusty old cable that he clung to until the ship was on its way out to sea. With a fair amount of effort and a great deal of pain he managed to get himself up on the quayside, then clambered into the rental car, soaking wet, pulled the GPS and cell phone from the glove compartment, then called Roland Gentz. He said they had encountered armed resistance, that both his men were dead and that there had been three men on the ship — two he recognized as Aron and Leszek, and a third, unknown man, apparently Swedish.

Roland thanked him for the information and said he’d get back to him within the next few hours. They ended the call.

The Vietnamese captain hadn’t held back with him. Broken nose, broken ribs, but he could live with that. He didn’t blame the captain — after all, he had shot and killed his helmsman in front of him. He had been forced to make an example of him, because at the very moment shots started to ring out he knew the captain had broken his agreement with Hanke’s people. The helmsman was the punishment, and he hadn’t hesitated for a second.

Mikhail seldom felt any resentment toward people who beat him up or fired at him, they were just doing the same as him. He’d taken part in serious wars against both Afghans and Chechens; he’d been pinned down under heavy fire, on the very edge of what the human psyche could stand. He’d seen friends get shot, blown to pieces, burnt up. And he for his part had done the same to the enemy, but his actions had never been about anger or vengeance. Maybe that was why he had survived.

He had already had this attitude toward his life and his way of treating people when he started work for Ralph Hanke. The same attitude no matter whether he was shooting and killing someone on Ralph’s orders, beating someone up, or going up to Stockholm and driving into Adalberto Guzman’s son.

He never reflected on whether he’d done the right or wrong thing, his years as an active frontline soldier in bloody and meaningless wars had given him an awareness that things like right or wrong didn’t actually exist in this world at all. All that did exist were consequences, and if you were aware of these, then life could rumble on in something like a manageable fashion.

He stopped the
car at a shopping mall. People stared at the big, bloodstained man as he limped through the shops. He bought all that he needed, bandages, Band-Aids, cotton balls, antiseptic, and the strongest painkillers he could find. The shop smelled nice, a mixture of chemist’s and perfume counter. He paid for his goods and the pretty, white-clad women at the counter avoided looking him in the eye.

Mikhail drove to a roadside bar, went into the bathroom and patched himself up as best he could, then swallowed four painkillers.

He sat at a table at the far end of the restaurant and washed down his food with three glasses of beer. Then he stretched, feeling his joints crack, and noted that his whole body was still aching like hell.

While he waited for the bill he checked his GPS receiver. He had attached a transmitter to one of Guzman’s crates of cocaine in the hold of the ship. The screen said there was no signal, so they were probably still out at sea.

Mikhail got a room in a roadside motel, clean sheets in hideous colors that smelled of way too much fabric softener. He took all his clothes off and examined himself in the mirror, looking at the blue bruises on his upper body, rolling his shoulders and clicking his neck into place. His body told its own very clear story: a mass of scars, four bullet wounds, shrapnel injuries. The scars were evenly spread over his body, some inflicted by direct force, others by accident, but every injury to his body had a strong memory attached to it. Some of these memories he would prefer to have avoided, but that wasn’t how it worked; he was obliged to carry them with him the whole time. Every time he looked at his body he couldn’t help seeing the sort of person he really was.

His cell phone rang. Mikhail crossed the carpet and picked it up from the bedside table. Roland on the other end, asking what the options were.

“We’ve got a transmitter to follow, but that’s all.”

“Ralph’s angry.”

“Isn’t he usually?”

“You have to strike back, if only to avenge your dead colleagues.”

Mikhail understood that Roland was trying to play on his emotions, but he didn’t have any feelings of that sort. Mikhail didn’t give a fuck if his colleagues were dead, they were both wrecks, and their deaths probably came as a release for them.

“I’ll see what I can do, are you sending anyone?”

“You’ll manage fine on your own.”

Mikhail looked at himself in the big mirror, stretched his neck to the right, and something slid into place in his shoulder with a click. “OK, but be more specific.”

Mikhail could hear Roland clicking his mouse, he was evidently online.

“Ralph’s mad as a hornet, just do something, anything; he won’t sleep until they’ve understood that they’ve lost, you know what he’s like.”

Mikhail didn’t answer, just clicked to end the call.

He took a shower and then called an escort agency. He ordered a big girl, not too young, not too skinny, one who could speak decent Russian. The woman arrived, she was from Albania, very short, with knee-high white boots, a pink top, wide hips, exactly to his taste. She introduced herself as Mona Lisa, which he didn’t like, and asked if he could call her something else, maybe Lucy?

Mikhail and Lucy lay in bed, sharing a bottle of Genever and watching a Dutch talk show. He began to like her as they lay there laughing at the fact that neither of them could understand a word of what was being said on television.

“Can you stay the night?”

She reached for her cell in her sparkly gold handbag and called someone, then read out Mikhail’s credit card number to the person on the other end.

That night he slept with his head on her chest, holding her like a child holding its mother. At four o’clock in the morning his alarm went off. He sat up and rubbed the tiredness from his eyes. The pain was still there, it would be for a while yet. He turned around; Lucy was snoring quietly.

He switched on the GPS receiver, got up, and went into the bathroom. There he rinsed his face with cold water, washing himself as best he could in the little washbasin. When he emerged again the transmitter was active. He looked at the map. The boxes were in western Jutland.

Mikhail got dressed and left a big tip for Lucy on the bedside table.

He closed the door gently behind him, got in the rental car, and headed out onto the highway, disappearing into the early-morning mist.

The little half-timbered house with its thatched roof
lay isolated and surrounded by a mass of trees a hundred yards or so from the old main road. He turned the car onto a pitted gravel track that led through an avenue of trees, with wheat fields behind the trees on both sides. The sun was shining in that golden color that Jens remembered from summers here when he was small — gold, orange, and green all at the same time.

After getting off the ship the previous night, he had headed up the coast of Jutland in the fishing boat that Thierry had arrived in. They had moored in an isolated inlet and unloaded their cargo under cover of darkness. Three cars had been waiting for them there, one of them allocated to Jens, and he had driven off quickly.

He parked the car in front of the house but didn’t get out at once. It was a beautiful morning, the birds were singing, the dew was drying up as the temperature rose. A door surrounded by climbing roses opened and an old lady with white hair and an apron smiled broadly at Jens. He smiled back at the almost absurdly picturesque image, then opened the car door and got out.

They hugged, and she kept hold of him.

“Fancy, you coming and surprising me like this … how lovely!”

Grandma Vibeke made tea for them both, serving it in the same chipped old blue china that she always used. He looked at her. She was old, unbelievably old, but her age never seemed to slip into that stage when old people got tired and introverted. He hoped she would be able to leave this earthly life with the same attitude she had always had, that she would be permitted to die in this house.

He looked around the kitchen, picking up a photograph from the mantelpiece: Grandpa Esben with his drooping mustache, wide-brimmed hat, and a rifle on a leather strap over his shoulder.

“I could stare at this picture all day. I used to think it looked like he was standing out on the savannah, out on the veldt. On his way to hunt elephants or poachers. But he wasn’t, he was standing on a new-mown wheat field outside this house ready to hunt rabbits.”

Vibeke nodded.

“He was a grand man.”

Jens stared at the photograph. “But we didn’t get on that well, did we, Grandpa and me?”

He put the photograph on the table and sat down.

“I don’t know, he used to say you knew no boundaries. And for your part you always said he was crazy and should keep out of things. You always ended up arguing for one reason or other.”

Jens smiled at the memory, but there was something serious about his relationship with his grandfather. He had never understood why they always argued.

She came over with the teapot and filled their cups.

“Every summer when you arrived you used to get along fine to start with. You would go hunting with Esben, or go fishing down at the river, as if you were testing out your relationship. Then after a few days you’d stop spending time together, you always found something of your own to do, and Esben kept himself to himself.”

She sat down.

“One year, I think you were fourteen, you went into town to go shopping. There was a gang of boys on mopeds, a few years older than you … They picked a fight with you. You came home with a black eye and Esben blamed you for something you hadn’t done, he’d made up his mind that you were at fault. I tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Jens remembered. Vibeke drank her tea.

“The days before you were due to go home you set off into town on your own, found out where the boys were and gave all four of them a broken nose. You were positively glowing when you got back, but you didn’t say anything. I only found out about it after you’d gone, one of the mothers came ’round and wanted an apology.

Vibeke smiled.

“Esben was always worried about you, said you never backed down even when you knew it was all over.”

“No, I probably didn’t.”

“What about now?”

He thought for a moment. “I probably still don’t.”

They ate dinner
out in the garden, at an old wooden table in the arbor. Jens and Vibeke sat up late talking; he didn’t want to go to bed, wished he could have stayed longer.

“Thanks for coming, you’re a good boy.”

Jens looked at her, drained his glass of wine, and put it back on the table. “I used to be so eager to get here every summer, and it always felt so empty, having to go home again … it was the same each year. You’re the only person who knows me, Grandma.”

Her eyes filled with tears. Tears of old age, containing neither sorrow nor disappointment.

That night Jens lay awake in bed for hours just staring at the ceiling. The bed was as deep as a bathtub. He tried to remember the nights he spent in that same bed as a child. The memories came as emotions, good emotions. He slept flat on his back for the first time in a very long time.

His dream was sweeping him closer to the abyss. He was alone, unable to get away. There was a layer of darkness covering everything. He tried to shout out but no sound came out. Lack of oxygen to his head brought him back to consciousness. He opened his eyes.