The Andalucian Friend (22 page)

“Did you have a good trip?”

Leszek met Sonya Alizadeh as she emerged from the gate at Malaga Airport, taking her bags as they headed for the exit.

He had parked outside by the taxi stand. Someone yelled at him that he shouldn’t be there. He paid no attention and opened the door for Sonya. They headed out onto the highway toward Marbella.

Adalberto received her
in a shirt and beige linen trousers. He was barefoot and suntanned. His thin white hair was swept back, the gold watch on his wrist sparkling ostentatiously.

“Welcome.”

He kissed her on both cheeks, as usual, and showed her into the villa.

A large table in the middle of a light room covering the whole inner part of the building had been laid for lunch, and the panoramic window showed a view of the endless sea. They sat down.

“How was it?” he asked as he unfolded his napkin.

She drank from her water glass.

“I think it’s fine. It’s all sorted out, the apartment has been cleaned, I never lived there.”

Adalberto ate a mouthful, then looked up at Sonya.

“Is it OK for you to live here?”

She nodded.

“It’s wise of you to let us look after you, you never know what men like him might get into their heads, they’re the most dangerous, the ones who try to pass themselves off as the right sort.”

She didn’t respond to his statement, but didn’t exactly disagree with it. She was the one who knew Svante Carlgren, she’d had him inside her numerous times. He was genuinely unpleasant. He possessed a sort of chill, an emptiness that she had never experienced in a man before. As if he lacked something other men had, as if he didn’t actually recognize that there were other people in the world. And on top of this, there was something stupid about him. Something talentless and moronic, as if he could only deal with one single thing in life — his warped view of himself.

Sonya felt exhausted, and somewhere deep inside she was pleased not to have to be a whore for a while. Yet the choice had been her own. She was the one who put the idea to Hector a long time ago. He was like a brother to her. At least, he was the closest thing to one that she had. Her dad, Danush, had been a heroin importer, had fled Tehran when the Shah was toppled, and had gone into business with Adalberto. Their families became close and, as an only child, Sonya spent a lot of her school vacations in Marbella with the Guzmans. She was like the fourth child of the family. Her parents were murdered in Switzerland in the late ’80s. She fled to Asia and fell into severe and protracted cocaine addiction, which intermittently helped her to forget her boundless grief. Hector was the one who tracked her down and helped her get back home. Adalberto and Hector let her live with them in Marbella, helped her to recover. After a while Hector showed her a picture of three dead men. They were lying on a white tiled floor. A public toilet at a roadside café in the south of Germany. They had bullet wounds in their heads, chests, arms, legs. Riddled with holes. The men had belonged to the ’Ndrangheta and they were her parents’ killers. She took pleasure in the photograph. She kept it, looking at it whenever life felt tough and unfair. Sonya wanted to repay Hector and Adalberto for all they had done for her. When she suggested the idea to Hector he had tried to dissuade her, telling her that she didn’t owe them anything. But she didn’t agree, no matter what he said. So she held her ground and went ahead with her plan. Maybe Svante Carlgren would turn out to be the repayment that would help get rid of the sense of obligation that she was keen to escape.

Sonya liked Hector and Adalberto, but she knew that when it came down to it the men in her life weren’t so very different, even if the man sitting opposite her now was trying to prove that he was.

Adalberto was looking at her, and almost seemed to be reading her mind.

“I’ve made preparations for your arrival. A female psychiatrist is at your disposal if you feel like talking. She’s a good woman, she’ll come whenever we ask her to. You can have whatever you want from me, just say what you need to find your way back again.”

He smiled, and she returned a smile that radiated the exact opposite of what she really felt — an accomplishment she had learned early in life.

They ate lunch in silence, the sea sighed outside the open windows, the warm sea breeze caught the white linen curtains and made them move.

Piño the dog came running in and sat down to beg for scraps. Adalberto ignored him, and after a while he settled down at his master’s feet.

“I gave him something at the table a few years ago. It’s taking him a long time to realize there won’t be any more.”

He looked at Piño.

“But we’re still friends, aren’t we, you and me?”

Sonya saw the happiness in Adalberto’s face when he looked at Piño. Then the smile faded, as if he suddenly realized how sad it was that the dog was merely a dog.

Gunilla looked quizzically at Anders.

“Say that again.”

“Two men went into the restaurant after Hector held the door open for the nurse. He never came out again, but the nurse did. Lars followed her.”

“And the men?”

Anders shrugged. “Gone, vanished. I went into the restaurant thirty minutes later. None of them was there. There’s a back door leading to a courtyard, so that must be how they got out. Through the yard and out onto the other side of the block.”

“Then what?”

Anders shook his head. “Nothing. I went home.”

They were sitting on a bench in Humlegården. Most of the people around them appeared to be enjoying the summer heat. Anders Ask was the only man in the park wearing a jacket.

“So Sophie and Hector arrived at the restaurant, they went in, two men followed them. How long did you say it was before Sophie came out?”

“About half an hour.”

“About?”

“I have the exact times written down, but not on me.”

Gunilla thought for a moment.

“And Lars followed her?”

Anders nodded.

Gunilla pulled out her cell and dialed a number.

“Lars, am I interrupting anything? Can you come to Humlegården at once? Thanks very much,” she said, and ended the call.

Anders smiled at the friendly tone that left Lars no room to respond or object. She noticed.

“He’s coming,” she said.

“I know.”

Then they just sat there, as if they were two robots on standby mode, completely still, staring out across the park. Anders was the one who moved first. He put his hand in his jacket pocket, pulled out a crumpled bag of candy, and held it out to her. She came to life as well, possibly because of the rustling sound, took two pieces of licorice without thanking him, and chewed on them, deep in thought. One particular thought wouldn’t go away. She drifted back to the present, took out her phone again and looked up Eva Castroneves’s number. She put the phone to her ear.

“Eva, can you run a date check?”

Gunilla waited.

“Last Saturday, the fifth, I think it was.”

Gunilla glanced at Anders who nodded in agreement.

“Run the whole day, but pay particular attention to the evening and early Sunday morning. Main focus on Vasastan, but the surrounding areas as well. Anything at all could be of interest. Thanks.”

Gunilla ended the call. Anders was looking at her, and Gunilla shrugged.

“Where else can I start?”

He didn’t answer.

Lars was approaching along the gravel path from Stureplan. She looked at him. His walk was stiff, as if he had a bad back. Which he probably did, people who felt guilty almost always transferred it to the base of the spine unconsciously.

He walked up to them, there was something hesitant and antagonistic about him.

“Hello?”

Gunilla looked at him.

“Have you cut your hair?”

Lars ran a hand through his hair without thinking.

“A bit,” he muttered.

“Thanks for coming so quickly.”

Lars waited, put one hand in his jeans pocket.

“If I remember rightly, you wrote in your report for Saturday evening that Sophie drove home after her visit to the Trasten restaurant. Anders here says he saw you outside the restaurant, and that you followed Sophie when she left the restaurant?”

“That’s right. She left her house at about eleven o’clock and drove to the restaurant. I seem to recall that she left about midnight. I followed her to Norrtull, then I let her go and went home. I presumed she was driving home.”

Gunilla and Anders were looking at him, seemed to be searching for any small signs of lying. Lars scratched his neck.

“Has anything happened?” he wondered.

“I don’t know, Anders saw you,” Gunilla said.

Lars looked at Anders.

“Oh?”

“And he saw two men go into the restaurant.”

Lars was showing signs of impatience, irritation.

“Yes? And?”

“Did you see them?”

Lars shook his head.

“No. Well, maybe, people were coming and going, it’s a restaurant.”

Lars dug out a cough drop and put it in his mouth, looking at Gunilla.

“What is this? An interrogation?”

Gunilla didn’t answer. Anders was looking at him intently the whole time.

“The men never came out. Hector never came out. There’s an exit from the back. When you followed Sophie, when she left the restaurant, did she stop anywhere?”

The cough drop gave him an excuse to swallow. He did, then shook his head.

“No.”

Lars had been insanely wired. He had practically no recollection of that evening. Just a hazy picture of losing her near Haga, then a total blank. God alone knew what had happened or how he had gotten home, and he couldn’t exactly ask Him; they weren’t on good terms.

It was always a matter of persuading yourself that the lie was true, then you weren’t lying, then you didn’t betray any signs of uncertainty.

“She drove straight home, and I broke off surveillance when she turned off the highway.”

“Which route did she take?”

He made an effort not to show any signs of uncertainty in his posture, visualizing the lie.

“From Odenplan she turned left onto Sveavägen, even though that’s not allowed. Then all the way along Sveavägen to the roundabout, then north on the E4.”

“Why not Roslagstull and Roslagsvägen? That’s closer for her.”

Lars shrugged.

“Same difference, really. She must have turned off at Bergshamra and got to the Stocksund Bridge that way. I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you follow her all the way home?”

Lars sucked the cough drop, and it made a sound as it hit his teeth.

“It was late, not much traffic. I had to be careful.”

Gunilla was looking at him, Anders likewise.

“Thank you Lars, thanks for taking the time to come down here.”

Lars looked at the pair of them.

“And?”

The look on Gunilla’s face said that she didn’t understand what he meant.

“What else? What’s happened?” Lars asked.

“Oh, nothing’s happened. I just couldn’t quite get the evening to make sense.”

“What’s he doing here?”

Lars directed the question to Gunilla without so much as looking at Anders.

“I don’t need tailing, Gunilla,” he said in a low voice.

The anger in his voice surprised her.

“No, Lars, and that’s not what we’re doing. Anders is helping us to identify the people around Hector, and you just happened to be in the same place at the same time. When I couldn’t get the evening to make sense I asked to speak to you. But you don’t seem to have anything to add that wasn’t in your report, so everything’s as it should be. Isn’t it?”

Lars didn’t answer, but the darkness surrounding him eased a little.

“Thank you, Lars … Continue your surveillance.”

He turned on his heel and walked back the way he had come. He only just managed to keep everything under control, inside he was shaking.

Gunilla and Anders
sat in silence until Lars had disappeared.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Anders thought.

“I don’t know, I honestly don’t know. He doesn’t seem to be lying.”

“But?”

Anders glared out across the park.

“He’s insecure by nature. Today he seemed too certain, almost as if he was trying to find a way of hiding a lie of some sort.”

Gunilla stood up.

“Come with me back to the station, stay close for a while.”

Gunilla was sitting
in front of Eva Castroneves’s desk. Eva gathered her papers together and read through in silence until she found the right section.

“Saturday. Nothing of note in Vasastan apart from a few drunk and disorderlies, a couple of fights and a robbery from the 7-Eleven on Sveavägen … An overdose in Guldhuset in Vasaparken, stolen cars, vandalism. An ordinary Saturday. The only thing I found that stuck out was an unidentified man with gunshot wounds who was dropped off at Karolinska at about one o’clock in the morning.”

“Who is he?”

Eva turned to her computer and began tapping at the keyboard. She read from the screen.

“No info about his name. The hospital staff told the police that he spoke German when he was feverish. Nothing else in the file so far, he’s probably still unconscious.”

“Dropped off, you said?”

Eva nodded.

“Yes, by a private car that drove off.”

A short while
later Gunilla and Anders were standing looking at Klaus Köhler’s unconscious body under a white hospital sheet.

“I don’t know … Could have been one of them, the smaller one.”

Gunilla waited for more. Anders took his time, looking at Klaus from different angles. Gunilla started to get impatient.

“Anders?”

He shot her an irritated glance, as if her talking was interrupting his concentration.

“I don’t know, can we lift him up?”

Tubes, drips, and wires led from the man to a stand beside the bed. Gunilla leaned over and looked under the bed.

“I think the top end will go up.”

Anders went over and found the pedal under the bed. He put his foot on it, the hydraulics started to work and, against his will, the bed started to sink. The needles from the drips and other equipment that were fastened under the skin of Klaus’s hand were caught under his arm and popped out when the bed touched bottom. A machine started to bleep.

“Shit.”

Anders grabbed the needle and drove it back into Klaus’s hand and the bleeping increased. Eventually he found the right pedal under the bed. Klaus Köhler’s upper body rose majestically toward them. The more upright he got, the more noise the machine made. The curve on one screen was lurching up and down. Anders looked down at the floor in an attempt to summon up an image from memory. He looked up again, then repeated the process several times. Then he left the room. Gunilla followed him, the apparatus bleeping insistently as the door closed behind them.

“Well?” Gunilla asked.

A nurse was running down the corridor toward them.

“Maybe … Probably. Somewhere between the two, leaning toward probably. Seventy percent, I’d say.”

She was sitting
on the edge of a concrete flowerbed outside the hospital, phone to her ear, asking Sophie friendly questions, and getting friendly answers back.

“But weren’t you planning to have dinner?”

“It didn’t work out. Hector had a last-minute meeting, so I went home.”

Anders was standing a short distance away. He was killing time by trying to hit an ashtray with small stones, making an annoying ringing sound.

“Has anything happened?”

“There are just a few details that are a bit unclear.”

Sophie was silent at the other end.

“Do you know who he was meeting?” Gunilla went on.

“No, no idea.”

Anders Ask hit the ashtray several times. Clang, clang, clang.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. What is it, Gunilla?”

She sat down with the phone in her hand,
staring in front of her at the wax cloth on the coffee table in the staff room. The conversation with Gunilla was echoing in her head. She tried to remember what she had said, how the conversation had developed. She tried to remember her tone of voice …
her style
. Had she given anything away? The thoughts were flying around. The phone in her hand rang again, ringtone and vibration at the same time. In her confusion she forgot to check the screen.