The Andalucian Friend (34 page)

“I’m afraid I must ask you to come and finalize a few things, sign some papers, collect Rosie’s belongings. Can you come sometime this week?”

“Yes … that ought to be OK.”

Lars was still wandering about, looking for something.

“There’s one more thing I should tell you …”

“Yes?”

“Rosie … your mom took her own life …”

“Oh … OK.”

He hung up again. What the hell was it he was looking for?

Lars opened the fridge, and the chill that hit him felt pleasant. He stood there for a long time, it sounded louder this time. He stared at the condensing unit right at the back, listening to the way it clicked.

The phone started shrieking again, boring into him, shredding his peace of mind. He heard himself scream, a scream from the abyss, full of fury that seemed to come from the deep.

“Yes?”

“Lars, what happened yesterday?”

Gunilla’s voice.

“Yesterday? Nothing, as far as I know.”

“Your car’s gone up in flames.”

“My car?”

“The Saab out in Stocksund, it went up in a fire last night.”

“How?”

“We don’t know. Witnesses say it exploded. When did you go home?”

“About eleven.”

“And the equipment?”

“Left in the Saab. Where’s the car now?”

“It’s been taken away, to the Täby Police compound. They’re going to take a look at it, but you know long that takes.”

He didn’t know.

“Who could have done this, Lars?”

Lars acted bewildered.

“No idea … Hooligans, kids … I don’t know, Gunilla.”

“How much recorded material did we lose?”

“Nothing of any value, I’ve been sending you everything, after all.”

Gunilla stayed on the line for a moment, then hung up.

Jens wanted to go on sleeping
but the sound of the phone ringing wouldn’t let up. He reached for the receiver, knocking his old alarm clock onto the floor. He just managed to see the position of the hour hand, which, together with the sunlight filtering through the curtains, suggested that it was the middle of the day.

“Hello …”

“Did I wake you?”

“No, no, I was up.”

“Can we talk?”

Jens tried to put everything back in place inside his head. “Are you calling from the phone I gave you?”

“Yes.”

“Hang up, I’ll call you back.”

He threw off the thick white duvet and put his foot down on the soft carpet. His bedroom was as light as the inside of a cumulus cloud. White everywhere, except for one painting, which was a muted deep red: a Mark Rothko copy that he was very fond of. Jens stretched, stood up, and walked out of the room. He was wearing nothing but his ivory cotton boxer shorts, big and loose, with buttons, handmade in Turkey. He had bought twenty pairs from the tailor. In his opinion they were the best clothes he had ever bought.

He carried on into the kitchen, opened a drawer, and fished out a new SIM card, tore off the plastic, and inserted it under the battery in his cell phone, then called Sophie.

“A car was burned out here last night,” she said as soon she answered.

He was still slightly groggy from sleep. “Burned out? How?”

“I was woken by an explosion at about half past twelve. Albert and I went out, there was a car on fire, a Saab. Then the fire brigade turned up to put it out.”

“A Saab?”

“Yes.”

“How odd.”

“That’s putting it mildly … Is this anything to do with you?”

“No.”

Jens thought back through the evening. “But I was there a few hours before. But you know that, I told you.”

“What happened?”

“There was a man sitting in the Saab, a police officer. I was going to creep up on him and take some pictures. It was all supposed to happen without anyone noticing anything. That was the plan.”

“But?”

“But plans rarely work out the way you want them to.”

“So?”

“I saw Hector in your kitchen. Then Aron came walking up the road. He was heading straight for the man in the Saab.”

Sophie waited.

“So I had to get rid of the policeman. If Aron had become suspicious of him, and found the surveillance equipment in the car — well, you can figure out the rest.”

“What happened?”

“I jumped in the Saab and forced him to drive off.”

“Then what?”

“I got out a few blocks away and made my way back into the city.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, that’s all. I got his name,” Jens said.

“What’s his name?”

“Lars Vinge.”

“What does he look like?”

Jens went out into the hall, took out Lars Vinge’s driver’s license, put it on the hall-table, took a picture with no flash, and sent it over to her.

They were silent at either end of the line. He could hear her breathing, then her phone bleeped.

“That’s him. I saw him last night, he was in the crowd watching as the car burned.”

Her response surprised him.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. And he was the one driving the Volvo that night Hector went missing. I’ve seen him somewhere else, too … I’m not sure where, maybe on Djurgården. Did he see you?”

“No, I stayed hidden behind the driver’s seat.” Jens thought. “He must have set fire to the car himself.”

“What for?”

“Maybe he felt a bit stupid once I’d taken his things.”

“What did you take?”

“His phone, wallet, and the cartridge of his gun … and the car keys. All the things he cared about.”

“What happens now, Jens?”

He could hear how worried she was.

“Are the police more dangerous now?” she said.

“We might be lucky.”

“How do you mean?”

“He’s trying to keep this quiet, Officer Lars. Not telling anyone, maybe he feels ashamed. And that’s why he set fire to the car.”

“Or maybe not,” she said quietly. “What if your actions have made everything worse, especially for Albert? Have you thought about that?”

“Yes, I have. But I weighed that up against you getting found out by Aron and Hector. That would have been worse.”

He could hear steps on tarmac.

“What are you doing today?” he found himself asking. He regretted it the moment he said it.

“I’m going to work.”

He tried to find something else to say, but failed.

“Good-bye, Sophie.”

She ended the call.

Sara had been waiting in a café
across the road, sitting where she had a view of the door and could see when Lars came out. Her eyes followed him as he walked off down the street. She thought he looked different somehow, he seemed oddly stiff — he looked ill.

Sara waited until he had disappeared from sight. Then she got up, went out onto the sidewalk, looked quickly in both directions, then crossed Swedenborgsgatan. In the elevator she took off her sunglasses and looked at her reflection. The bruise from when he had hit her covered her whole right eye. Some of the blue was turning almost green now. She looked terrible.

Sara unlocked the door with her keys and stepped inside the apartment. There was a pile of unopened mail by her feet, and there was a chair full of saucepans in the middle of the hall floor. There was a stale, musty smell.

She went into the office, it was dark and messy. An unmade mattress on the floor. The sheet had somehow ended up in the middle of the wooden floor. A stained pillow with no pillowcase, a blanket lying beside the mattress. Plates with remnants of old food, glasses, bits of paper towels …
My god
.

And all the work? A chaos of papers and pictures everywhere. And
the wall,
covered in scrawl. Sara took a deep breath, pulled out a chair and sat down, and just looked at the mess. A wave of sadness suddenly washed over her, sadness that the man she had been so fond of had lost his grip. That this was his life now. Sadness at the sheer …
collapse
. But the sorrow was short-lived, she wanted to feel sympathy but couldn’t — instead she felt hatred, she hated him for what he had done to her. Sara looked at the photograph of a woman named Sophie, then a picture of a man who was evidently named Hector. More names, more pictures, Gunilla, Anders, Hasse, Albert, Aron … and a man without a name; he was sitting on a bench by the water, it looked like Strandvägen. Sara let her eyes roam over the wall, not understanding any of it. And the words! Words everywhere, words written in small writing wherever there was space, some scribbled out — manically scribbled out. Some of it was written in big, looping letters, as if he had written it in different moods.

She switched on his computer. She’d known the password for ages, from back when they shared the machine. She pressed Enter. While she was waiting for it to start up she opened the desk drawers. Messy, no apparent logic. In the bottom drawer she found a folder that someone had drawn a flower on. She opened it. Printouts of photographs on A4 paper. A whole folder full of pictures of the same woman. She turned and looked at the wall … Sophie. Sara leafed through the folder. Hundreds of pictures of Sophie in various situations. Sophie cycling, Sophie in the kitchen, the picture taken from outside. Sophie walking, Sophie working in the garden. Sophie going through the entrance to a big building, possibly a hospital … Sophie driving a car and … Sophie asleep.
What the …?
A close-up of her sleeping face. The picture must have been taken in her bedroom, from close quarters.
This is really sick, this is obsessive.

She kept on going through the drawers and found a pair of silk panties; they weren’t hers, they were some expensive label. She put them back and found a notepad. She opened it up and leafed through it. Poems … Lars’s appalling handwriting. Awful poems, flowery language:
summer meadow … thirsting for the well of the deepest love … Your beautiful hair blowing warmth over the evils of the world … You and I, Sophie, against the world …

Sara stared at them with a feeling of disgust. The computer had finished loading. The desktop was full of folders with dates below them. She opened one of them. The folder was full of audio files. She clicked on the first one and sound started coming from the computer’s speakers. Sara listened; to start with it was mostly just background noise, then after a while she heard steps on a wooden floor, a door opening somewhere, time passed, a television was switched on and the female anchor’s voice — she recognized it — could be heard in the distance. She left the file running, playing the nondescript sounds, and stood up to look at the faces on the wall.

She knew Gunilla was Lars’s boss, but the others? Anders and Hasse might be colleagues.

Everything spread out from Sophie. She followed the lines, read Lars’s notes. A pattern started to emerge.

Albert, come on, food’s ready!

Sara started, the voice was coming from the computer, it was clear, sounded close to her. Sara listened as someone took plates out of a cupboard, was that Sophie? Silence followed, then the file ended. She went over to the computer, selected another file, and heard a telephone conversation, Sophie talking to someone she knew, laughing, asking questions. The conversation was gossip, it sounded like Sophie was talking to a girlfriend about someone who’d made a fool of themselves at a party. Sara clicked on a different file. Sophie questioning a boy about World War II, he knew the answers to all the questions except for one about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. She looked at a picture of a teenage boy on the wall, Albert. He looked confident, alert, and happy. She clicked on another file, music from a stereo somewhere. Another file, Albert eating sandwiches with a friend, a succession of sick jokes and bursts of laughter. Then another file. Nothing but background noise again, then something that sounded like a slap. A conversation between the boy and Sophie. She heard the words
rape
,
witnesses
,
police.
Sara listened intently, then listened again — five times to the same clip.
Oh my God
 …

She copied as many of the audio files as she could onto a USB memory stick. She took a camera from her pocket and photographed the wall, the pictures, the poems …

She copied everything she could before she left.

He had picked up his V70 again.
It was standing where he had left it a week earlier, in a garage out in Aspudden.

Lars skidded to a halt outside Lyckoslanten Care Home. He had been driving faster than he had realized, and had to brake sharply when he realized.
Unaware of speed driving through the city?
He slid over the grit-covered tarmac, and managed to stop the Volvo just before it hit a parked car. Two youths walking past gave him the thumbs-up. Lars hesitated too long. A thumbs-up in response would have been too late.

He found a nurse inside the care home, told her who he was, and that he was there to go through his mother’s belongings. The nurse nodded and said she’d unlock the door for him. He followed her, she had a big backside, he couldn’t take his eyes off it. The nurse unlocked Rosie’s room and Lars stepped inside.

“Come down to reception when you’re done, we need your signature on a couple of forms.”

He closed the door behind him and went straight into Rosie’s bedroom, opened the door where she kept her prescriptions, and took them out. He glanced through them: Xanor, Lyrica, Sobril, Stesolid, Ketogan.

Lars tucked the prescriptions inside his jacket and went into the bathroom. Depolan in the bathroom cabinet; Ritalin, unopened; a few other bits and pieces; blister packs of Halcion and Fluscand. A jar on the top shelf, he reached for it and read the label: Hibernal … He recognized the jar, it looked old.
Hibernal
 … A memory flickered past and vanished as quickly as it had come. He put everything in his pockets. There was something on the middle shelf, behind the jar with the toothbrush, another old jar. Lithium —
a classic.
 …

There was a knock on the door. Lars tidied up, and for some reason flushed the toilet.

A man with a beard and black shirt was standing outside. The little white square in his collar was shining up into his face.

“Lars Vinge? I’m Johan Rydén, priest.”

Lars glared.

“May I come in?”

Lars stepped aside and shut the door after the priest. Johan said in a friendly tone: “I’m sorry for your loss.”

It took Lars a moment to realize what the man meant.

“Thanks …”

“How are you feeling?”

How are you feeling? How are you feeling
 …

Lars couldn’t think of anything other than the fact that he wasn’t feeling anything. But he could hardly say that, could he? He met the priest’s gaze. Something began to grow inside Lars, something he felt comfortable with: a lie.

Lars sighed. “Yes, how does it feel when a loved one passes on …? Empty, sad … tragic.”

Johan nodded slowly, as if he understood exactly what Lars meant. Lars bowed his head and went on.

“It’s an odd feeling, losing your mother …”

Johan was nodding frantically as Lars shook his head.

“But … I don’t know,” he said quietly, pleased with his performance.

Lars looked up at Johan the Priest’s face, which radiated humanity, worthiness, and trust. Fuck, he must really have practiced that in front of the mirror at home.

“No, how could we know, Lars?”

Lars looked sad.

“Your mother chose to end her own life … You shouldn’t feel burdened by that. She was ill, she was tired, she had lived her life.”

“Poor Mom,” Lars whispered.

He searched in Johan’s eyes, saw that the priest believed him. The priest believed in Lars … and in God.

Lars left Lyckoslanten
without looking back. He drove to the nearest pharmacy and picked up everything on the prescriptions, hoping the old woman behind the counter wouldn’t see on her computer that the intended recipient was dead. She didn’t. Full speed ahead for a new top-up.

He introduced himself as Alfonse.
He was young, maybe twenty-five, and smiled confidently as if he thought that this whole life business was enormous fun.

“Hector,” Hector said as Alfonse shook his hand.

Alfonse looked around the office and sat down.

“Books?”

“I run a publishing company, I’m a publisher.”

Alfonse made little noises with his mouth and smiled.

“A publisher … ,” he said quietly to himself.

Hector examined Alfonse and thought he could detect a family resemblance.

“You look a lot like your uncle.”

Alfonse gave Hector a theatrical look, as though the comparison offended him.

“I certainly hope not.”

They smiled at each other.

“How is Don Ignacio?”

“Splendid. He’s just bought himself a new airplane, so he’s happy as can be.”

“I’m pleased to hear it. Pass on my greetings and congratulations.”

Hector adjusted his posture in the chair.

“Let’s talk about the reason for your visit, then I’d be only too happy to invite you to dinner, if you don’t have other plans?”

“Thanks, Hector, but not today. Stockholm’s full of compatriots that I have to see.”

“How long are you staying?”

“There’s a certain lady in this city that I have a terrible weakness for, I’m staying with her. This morning it struck me that it’s so nice waking up there and having breakfast with her that I shall be staying longer than planned.”