The Andalucian Friend (24 page)

He walked over the tarmac, smelling the scent of the honeysuckle without actually knowing what honeysuckle was, crept into her garden, and made his way soundlessly up to the veranda.

The skeleton key worked just as well this time. It pressed in the little metal tumblers in the lock. Lars carefully pushed the handle of the terrace door, nudged it open slightly, and took a can of lubricant from his pocket. He sprayed the oil on the hinges inside the door, two quick squirts. The door slid open without a sound.

Lars stood silently in the living room, then bent down and took his shoes off, listening, but all he could hear was his own heartbeat thudding inside him. Slowly and cautiously he began to go upstairs. The old wooden staircase made small creaking sounds. A car passed by out in the road. Lars compared the sounds, possibly the same decibel level. His steps wouldn’t wake her up.

The door to her bedroom was ajar. Lars stood still, taking calm, regular breaths, letting his breathing go back to normal, then took a step onto the soft carpet. A smell hit him, faint, thin, as if it were drifting about the room like invisible silk …
Sophie
. There she lay. As if in a fantasy she was lying on her back, her head on the pillow, slightly askew. Her hair was like a backdrop to everything, her mouth was closed, her chest calmly rose and fell. The covers went up to her stomach, she was wearing a lacy nightdress. His eyes were drawn to the shape of her breasts, and stopped there. She was so beautiful. He wanted to wake her up and tell her:
You’re so beautiful
. He wanted to lie down beside her, hold her in his arms and tell her everything was all right. She’d know what he meant.

Carefully he pulled out his camera, switched off the flash and sound, then found her through the lens. Without a sound he took thirty or so close-ups of Sophie as she slept.

He was about to leave when his eyes were drawn once again to her breasts. Lars stared, as fantasies from the depths of his troubled soul started to take shape. Lars crept closer to her. And closer. In the end he was standing right next to her face. He could see her skin, the little wrinkles around her eyes, her lines … He closed his eyes, he smelled, he wished …

She moved in her sleep and let out a little sound. Lars opened his eyes, backed away carefully and silently left the room.

He was breathless
by the time he got back in the car. He felt as if he’d slept with her, a feeling of having been inside her for the first time. He felt strong, safe, happy. He knew that she felt the same. She must have seen him in her sleep, in her dreams. It was so obvious, he was her angel of salvation, in her life without her knowledge, who made love to her when she was asleep, who protected her from evil when she was awake. He took some more of the prescription gear, the world around him took on a different hue, his tongue seemed to grow inside his mouth, and sounds became blurred.

Lars drove carefully back in toward the city, passing the Natural History Museum in the pale light from the streetlamps. And saw a huge fucking penguin that was staring quizzically at him.

Sophie had been having nightmares,
she couldn’t remember what they were about, but she woke up with a sense of unease. A sense that she had been subjected to something, a feeling of disgust. She got out of bed, she’d overslept. She could hear the sound of the vacuum cleaner downstairs.

It had been ages since she last saw Dorota. She usually came when Sophie was at work, but she had the day off today. She was pleased to see her again when she went downstairs. Dorota was kind. Sophie liked her.

Dorota waved from the living room where she was vacuuming. Sophie smiled back and went into the kitchen to get some breakfast.

“I’ll drive you home later!” she called.

Dorota switched off the vacuum cleaner.

“What did you say?”

“I said I can drive you home later, Dorota.”

Dorota shook her head.

“You don’t have to, it’s so far.”

“No, it isn’t. But you always say it is.”

Dorota was sitting
in the passenger seat with her handbag in her lap. They’d already crossed the Stocksund Bridge and turned off at Bergshamra.

“You’re very quiet, Dorota. Is everything OK, are your children all right?”

“Everything’s good, the children are fine … I miss them, but everything’s good.”

They drove on a bit farther.

“Maybe I’m tired,” Dorota said, looking out the window.

“You can take some time off if you like.”

Dorota shook her head. “No, work’s fine. I’m not tired like that, just tired in my head, if you can say that?”

Dorota tried to smile, then her eyes settled on the world outside again, at everything going past. Her forced smile vanished. Sophie kept looking between Dorota and the road.

Dorota lived in Spånga, for as long as Sophie had known her. It was almost twelve years since the first time she came to their house. They’d developed a friendship. This was the first time Sophie could see that Dorota wasn’t herself. She was normally happy, talking about her children, laughing at things Sophie told her. But this time she was withdrawn. Sophie looked again. She looked sad, possibly scared.

Sophie pulled up outside Dorota’s door on Spånga Square.

Dorota stayed in her seat for a moment after undoing the seat belt, then turned toward Sophie.

“Well, good-bye, and thanks for the lift.”

“I can tell something’s troubling you,” Sophie said. “If you want to talk, you know where I am.”

Dorota didn’t move, just sat there without saying anything.

“What is it, Dorota?”

She hesitated.

Sophie waited.

“The last time I came to clean there were two men in your house when I arrived.”

Sophie listened.

“At first I thought they were relatives or friends of yours, but they turned nasty, threatened me.”

A chill swept through Sophie.

“They said they were police, that they’d cause problems if I told anyone.”

Sophie’s mind was racing.

“I’m sorry, Sophie, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t dare. … But I changed my mind. You have always been so kind.”

“What did they do? Did you understand why they were there? Did they say anything?”

Dorota shook her head.

“No, I don’t know. One of them tried to be nice, the other was terrible, cold and … I don’t know. He felt evil. They didn’t say what they were doing there. They went after they spoke to me.”

“Where did they go?”

“Out.”

“Through the door? How did they get in?”

Sophie could hear the fear in her own voice.

“I don’t know. They went out through the terrace door. That’s all I know.”

Sophie tried to think.

“Tell me everything they said.”

Dorota tried to remember.

“One of them said his name was Lars. That was the only name I heard.”

“Lars?”

Sophie didn’t know why she repeated the name.

“Lars what?” she went on.

Dorota shrugged her shoulders lightly. “I don’t know.”

“What did they look like? Try to be as exact as possible.”

Dorota hadn’t expected this reaction from Sophie. She put one hand to the side of her head, staring down into space.

“My memory’s so bad.”

“Try, Dorota.”

Sophie’s tone was abrupt. Dorota could hear how desperate she was.

“One of them, the one who said his name was Lars, was about thirty, thirty-five, I don’t know. Fair …”

She thought, searching her memory.

“He looked scared. Worried.”

Sophie listened.

“The other one was more ordinary, hard to describe. Maybe forty, maybe younger. Dark hair with some gray. He looked kind but he was so mean. His eyes were kind. Dark and round. Like a boy’s.”

Dorota shivered. “Ugh, he was horrible.”

Sophie looked at her and could see how scared she was. Sophie leaned over and hugged her.

“Thank you,” she said as they embraced.

They looked at each other once they’d let go. Dorota patted Sophie on the cheek.

“Have you got problems?”

“No … No, I haven’t. Thank you, Dorota.”

Dorota looked at her.

“The mean one took my ID card, he said I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. Promise you won’t do anything silly. He meant it. He knows who I am.”

Sophie took the woman’s hand in hers.

“I promise, Dorota. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

Sophie drove away
from Spånga. She followed the traffic, changed lanes, kept to the speed limit. She found herself in a vacuum where there were no thoughts or feelings. Then a crack opened up somewhere. A terror was welling up inside her. A sense of being helpless, at the mercy of powerful forces. The fear grew, spreading through her, an innate maternal horror of not being able to protect Albert, of being helpless. Then it vanished. Suddenly and abruptly, it simply winked out of existence. The vacuum returned. She drove through the traffic, her feelings shut off. Then something else bubbled up. Fury. A bright red anger poured out, like water from a burst dam, roaring through her whole body and filling her to the breaking point.

His tiredness had shifted
into a sort of nervous wakefulness. Jens felt wired as he drove into Munich. He hadn’t slept in two days, running on nothing but willpower.

The address Mikhail had given him turned out to be in a sleepy residential area with identical houses from the ’60s packed tightly together. Small lawns, built-in garages, low quality. Jens stopped at number 54, got out of the car, and looked around. Not a person in sight. He went up the paved path and felt the front door, it was unlocked. He opened it and stepped cautiously inside the house.

“Hello?”

No answer. There was no furniture apart from an old sofa in what was clearly meant to be the living room. Faded, striped wallpaper from a bygone age, little brown patches of damp on the ceiling and floor. He looked into the kitchen. A table, two chairs, a coffee machine, quiet as the grave. Jens turned around and glanced back at the front door, which he had closed behind him. Toward the bottom of the frame were two electrical contacts, the sort you see in shops, which set off a buzzer somewhere whenever the beam of light is broken. He inspected the amateurish setup, following the wire to where it was connected to a thin telephone cable that ran untidily along the top of the wall.

With a sudden sense of urgency he rushed upstairs: two rooms and a bathroom. He checked the cupboards, keeping an eye out for hidden cubbyholes in the walls and floors. He ran back down and went through the same procedure in the kitchen, living room, and the back room facing the yard. Nothing. Jens considered getting out of there, realizing that he might have been lured into a trap. But which was worse — the Russians if they didn’t get their goods, or the German bastards who might be on their way right now? The answer was the Russians. He had to get his weapons back.

The cellar door was hard to open, it had swollen with damp. He tugged and pulled at it, but it didn’t budge. Jens backed away, took aim, and kicked it. After another couple of kicks the door finally gave way.

As he took the flight of steps in three strides he was hit by a strong sense of damp from the dark cellar. Jens felt along the wall, trying to find a light switch. As the seconds passed, he found no switch, stumbled over something, and made his way farther along the wall. A different smell hit him, a smell he recognized — the smell of something dead. He had noticed it at his place out in the country, when mice had found their way into the walls and died there. The same smell, but more pungent, stronger. He swallowed the urge to throw up, and began breathing into his elbow, still feeling along the wall with his other hand.

In the far corner of the room he found a switch, the fluorescent lights flickered groggily into life, and Jens saw a body. He was in a garage with no cars in it, the room bathed in a thin, cold light. The dead body was lying on the boxes containing his weapons, in the middle of the floor, laid out across them on its back. Its face was swollen, pale-yellow, waxy. Jens stared at the body, frozen to the spot. He didn’t know what to do, and was trying to suppress the foreboding that was welling up inside him.

He heard the front door open and close up above, and the footsteps in the empty room echoed down into the cellar. A pair of shoes appeared on the top step.

“Come up,” Mikhail grunted.

When Jens went up the stairs Mikhail grabbed him, checked him for weapons, found nothing and pushed him away.

On the old sofa sat a young man in a suit and a white shirt with the top button undone. By the window facing the street stood an older man with his back to Jens, more correctly dressed, more stiff.

“I understand that you claim you’re nothing to do with Guzman?”

Ralph Hanke turned around.

“There’s a dead body lying on my boxes in the cellar,” Jens said.

“Jürgen?”

“I don’t give a damn what his name is. Would you mind removing him?”

Ralph smiled. Jens looked at him, the smile was mirthless, just a physical gesture in which the man turned the corners of his mouth up.

“You see, we’ve been chasing Jürgen for quite some time. He took us for forty thousand euros, and thought no one would notice. What’s forty thousand worth today? Not even a decent car. But Jürgen couldn’t help himself.”

Ralph looked out at the street again.

“He caused a lot of other trouble for us … We don’t kill people for forty thousand euros … We’re not monsters.”

“Could you please remove the dead body from my things, then I’ll leave. I had an agreement with Mikhail here,” Jens went on.

“That still applies, in principle. I just want to talk to you before you go.”

Jens looked at Christian, who had been glaring at him the whole time. Ralph turned around.

“My son, Christian,” Ralph said.

Jens shrugged to say that he wasn’t interested.

Ralph got straight to the point.

“I want to make the Guzmans an offer. I want them to come over to our side … We’re taking care of their affairs from now on. They’re going to be employees, you could say. With reasonable perks.”

Jens shrugged.

“You’ve got the wrong man. I’ve got nothing to do with the Guzmans. I’m just here to pick up my things, nothing else.”

Ralph took a deep breath and shook his head.

“No, you’re going to pass on my proposal, then call us and tell us how they received it. You’re going to be the go-between. And as long as I’m in the room, any arrangements you’ve made with Mikhail are worthless. Sorry.”

Ralph paused for effect.

“Mikhail says he’s bumped into you several times. You’re the prefect man for the job. If I sent an intermediary, Guzman wouldn’t be interested. I want you to go back home with my question, you can take your goods with you. If you choose not to do as we ask, we’ll find you.” Ralph shrugged to suggest that Jens could probably guess the rest.

Jens realized he had no choice. If Mikhail hadn’t been in the room he’d have taken them on, father and son, and it wouldn’t have been without its satisfaction.

“What’s the question?”

Ralph thought.

“It’s not a question. Just say that we’d like to ask them in, they’ll understand what I mean by that.”

“I’ll get back to you with the answer, then my part on this is over,” Jens said.

“Who’s the woman?”

The question came out of nowhere, and Jens tried his best to sound convincing.

“The woman?”

“Yes, the woman who was driving when you so courageously rescued Hector.”

“Don’t know, one of Hector’s women, I suppose.”

Ralph nodded. “Is that what he’s like?”

“What?”

“A man who likes a lot of women?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“What’s her name?”

Jens shook his head. “Don’t know.”

Ralph stared at Jens for a moment, trying to read his eyes.

“Mikhail will stay here and help you with your things,” he said, then turned and walked toward the door. Christian got up from the sofa and followed him. They left the house, the door closed behind them, and everything went quiet.

Mikhail pointed to the cellar stairs. Jens looked at the monster standing in front of him. He rubbed the tiredness from his eyes, sighed, and went down into the cellar. Mikhail followed him.

They lifted the dead Jürgen off the boxes and carried him into what looked like an old laundry room, and put the body down on the cold floor. They went back out into the garage.

“How’s Klaus?” Mikhail asked in a low voice.

“Better than Jürgen …”

Mikhail repeated his question.

“What do you care?” Jens asked.

“I care.”

He stopped beside the boxes.

“We drove him to the emergency room, he’ll be OK.”

Mikhail went over and opened the garage door. The room filled with daylight. They each took hold of one end of the first of Jens’s boxes, picked it up and carried it out to his car by the pavement.

“He’s a good person, Klaus.”

They put the box in the trunk.

“What’s your definition of a good person?” Jens asked.

Mikhail didn’t answer and they went back inside the garage and moved the second box. Jens closed the lid of the trunk.

“Give me your number,” Mikhail said.

Jens gave him his temporary cell number. Mikhail sent his own contact details. Jens’s phone buzzed.

“Call this number when you’ve spoken to the Guzmans. Make sure you get this sorted. This whole thing feels fucked-up,” Mikhail said, then went back into the house with his rolling walk without saying good-bye.

Jens drove out of Munich, heading toward Poland. The most direct route was through the Czech Republic, but he wanted to avoid any unnecessary border crossings. He kept going, up through Germany, hoping to find a straightforward crossing somewhere. He found one by the German city of Ostritz and slid into Poland without any problem.

He called Risto and told him that things had got pretty messed up, but that he was now on his way. He asked Risto to persuade the Russians not to make a big deal of the delay, said that he’d be prepared to take a small reduction in the fee, but that he wasn’t prepared to take any shit from them. He’d be in Warsaw in seven hours, and gave Risto the name of a hotel where he could be reached the following day. Risto said he’d see what he could do.

It was dark out, it felt like this part of the Polish countryside had no electricity. Thick darkness everywhere. He didn’t meet any cars, saw no houses lit up in the distance. He had a fleeting sense that he was all alone in the world.
Du-dunk, du-dunk.
It sounded like a train as the tires hit the gaps in the concrete road surface. The noise was monotonous and hypnotic. His eyes never got used to the dark. The headlights only lit up a narrow corridor ahead of him and the road looked exactly the same the whole time, as gray and featureless as the darkness beyond.
Du-dunk, du-dunk
. In the end it turned into a lullaby. Jens started to nod off at the wheel and opened the window, and tried to stay awake by singing out loud. It didn’t work and he stopped singing, but thought he was still singing, although the song was just carrying on in his head. His head began to nod again.
Du-dunk, du-dunk
 … then suddenly a different sound somewhere. A persistent sound. His cell!

The ringtone saved him from driving off the road into a field. He was on his way into a ditch and had to twist the wheel to get back onto the road again, then sighed to get over the shock.

“Hello?”

“Did I wake you?”

“Yes, you did. Thanks.

“It’s Sophie.”

“I know.”

“Where are you?”

“Driving.”

He closed the window and slowed down so he could hear better.

“I think I need some help.”

“What sort of help?” he replied.

“Someone’s been in my house.”

“Are you calling from home?”

“No. I’m in one of the few remaining phone booths.”

“Good.”

Eons of silence.

“Did you feel threatened?”

“Yes … but not desperately.”

“I’ll be home in a day or two, give me a call then. If anything happens before that, let me know.”

“OK.”

She stayed on the line, as if she didn’t want to hang up. He listened to the sound of her breathing.

“I didn’t know who to call.”

“Take care,” he said, and ended the call.

Everything was starting to get a bit much. He found a packet of cigarettes in the door pocket, lit one with the lighter set into the dashboard, then opened the window again and blew the smoke out. He breathed in the rural Polish air, lightly spiced with the smell of brown coal from a nearby power station.

Change of cars. Lars had switched the Volvo
for a Saab. An old, dark-blue 9000 that he was driving out to Stocksund, with the recording equipment in the back.

He parked, made sure he had decent reception, then switched to voice activation, locked the car, and walked to Stocksund Square. He caught a bus and got off at Danderyd Hospital, slid into the underground and got a train back to Central Station.