The Andalucian Friend (41 page)

Sophie had called, sounding upset, incoherent.
It had taken a while before he realized what she was saying. He threw himself in the car.

Her son was lying in some bushes in a garden with two cops circling around him. She had said that they mustn’t get hold of him, she’d repeated that to him several times. Jens had tried to calm her.

He wasn’t far away when the ambulance overtook him at high speed. He followed it. The ambulance stopped a block or so farther on, beside the bloody body of a boy lying alone in the middle of the road.

Sophie bit off part of the nail on her little finger.
None of her nails looked the way they usually did. They were short now, uneven.

She was standing in an empty patient’s room at work. She’d been walking aimlessly around the room ever since she got Albert’s text. Now she was just waiting.

An image flickered past inside her, Albert in the garden, playing with Rainer. The image vanished as quickly as it had arrived. She didn’t understand why she had suddenly come to think about the dog. Rainer had been a golden Labrador, and Albert had loved him dearly. They had bought the dog when Albert was two, possibly as a substitute for a brother or sister. Albert had chased the dog around the lawn from the age of six, summer and winter alike. By the age of nine he had learned to read the dog’s movements, its way of thinking. He caught it every time. She had stood in the window watching. Albert concentrating, Rainer boisterous.

Albert was twelve when Rainer died. He cried until there were no more tears to cry.

The cell phone rang, rousing her from her thoughts.

“Yes?”

She heard what Jens said, heard his clear, factual tone of voice. Her legs gave way under the weight of her despair and horror. She managed to grab the windowsill, and clung to it as if it were the only lifeline in her fall into the darkest of all dark holes. Then everything went black. The next thing she could remember was running down a corridor. She took the stairs down instead of the elevator, ran down service corridors, through the entrance lobby, and into Accident & Emergency.

She got there just as the ambulance was pulling into the bay. She ran over, shoving aside the nurse who had just opened the back door of the ambulance.

She saw Albert lying on the stretcher, his face smeared with blood. His head was locked in place, with a broad strip over his forehead and his neck in a plastic collar. His torn clothes from the last day of school were covered in blood. She was about to clamber up into the ambulance when a nurse caught hold of her and pulled her away.

The exhaust fumes in the garage were stronger
now that it was warm outside. She had the window open.

Gunilla was sitting waiting in her Peugeot in the garage at Hötorget. She watched Anders’s Honda in the rearview mirror as it drove down and stopped behind her. Anders opened the passenger door and sat down heavily in the seat beside her.

“Everything went to hell,” he said in a low voice.

“Is he going to be all right?”

Anders rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. The car hit him hard, he landed on his back.”

“Did anyone see you?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Gunilla was sitting quite still.

“The car?” she asked.

“We’ve washed it, fixed it so it hit another car. It’s parked up and secure.”

Gunilla leaned her face in her hand. The silence was making Anders impatient.

“I took the boy’s cell. He’d sent Sophie a text. She knows it was us.”

Gunilla said nothing.

“What do we do?” he asked.

She sighed. “I don’t know … Right now, I don’t know.”

He looked at her, had never seen her like this.

“You know what we have to do,” he said.

She looked up at him, then put her face in her hands again.

“Gunilla?”

She didn’t respond.

“You know what we have to do?”

“Let the boy be,” she said.

Anders was halfway out of the car.

“Why?”

“Because I say so.”

He thought for a moment.

“OK, for the time being. But if he wakes up, he’ll have to be gotten rid of, you must see that?”

Gunilla was staring ahead of her.

Anders jumped out of the car and slammed the door behind him. She heard the little squeals of the tires on the polished concrete floor as the car left the garage. The sound died away and everything was silent. She tried to think, to find a path, a direction … Her cell interrupted her thoughts when it started ringing in the pocket between the seats. Gunilla answered. It was Lars, who told her that Erik had just died. She understood what he said, but asked anyway.

“Which Erik?”

Sophie was sitting at Albert’s bedside,
holding his hand. He was even more tightly restrained than he had been in the ambulance: straps, neck brace, clamps, and a surreal metal crown on his head that held him perfectly still. Both legs were in a cast from the thighs down to the ankles.

The doctor came in, her name was Elisabeth, Sophie knew her slightly. Elisabeth stuck to the facts.

“We believe that Albert’s damaged his twelfth vertebra. It’s been driven into the marrow but we don’t know what sort of state it’s in.”

Albert looked like he was sleeping.

“His skull was fractured. Because we dare not move him at the moment, we don’t actually know very much. Just that there’s pressure on his brain. We want to reduce that pressure. As soon as it’s possible we’re going to move him to Karolinska.”

Throughout all her years as a nurse she had tried to calm patients’ relatives by saying that injuries often looked worse than they were. And that had been true, that was often the case. But now the opposite was true, Albert’s injuries were worse than they looked. Much worse.

Dear God, please, help us now
 …

Jane came into the room, took a frightened look at Albert, and hugged Sophie.

Jens had called
several times on the secure cell phone. In the end she had answered, he sounded stressed.

“You need to get away from there now …”

“I can’t leave him.”

“Of course you can. I spoke to the ambulance staff, Albert didn’t have his cell on him. The police may have taken it, they’ll have seen your messages … They know that you know. And when they find you, they’ll hurt you.”

“No, I’m not leaving him. …”

“I’ve called for help. Two friends will take turns sitting with Albert. They’ll guard him, protect him.”

Sophie had a hundred questions.

“Leave now, Sophie!” He almost spelled it out.

Jane was standing behind her when Sophie ended the call.

“What’s going on, Sophie?”

She didn’t answer.

“It isn’t just Albert’s accident, is it?”

Sophie considered telling her. She’d always told Jane everything. And Jane had done the same with her. Truth, honesty. The glue that bound them together. She looked into her sister’s eyes, fighting against the impulse to tell her.

“Not now, Jane. I have to get away from here, don’t ask me why. Don’t leave Albert for a moment. Two men will be coming. Let them stay.”

Then she turned and walked away, unable even to say good-bye to Albert. She just left. Jane stared after her.

Sophie was packing
a bag in the bedroom. She was rushing, trying to think what she’d need — the cell with the direct line to Jens was the most important thing, then her other cell, the charger. She tipped everything into her handbag, hurried into the bathroom, and started to fill a toiletry bag. There was a noise downstairs in the living room. She stiffened, kept very quiet and listened. Nothing. She carried on, putting in toothpaste, toothbrush, creams … anything that was within easy reach. Another noise — a click, a door closing. She stopped breathing and just listened. Nothing.
Was it just her imagination? No
 …

She crept over to the bathroom window and peeped out. There was a Honda parked out on the road by her gate. She left the window and crept out of the bathroom. Now she could hear the parquet floor downstairs creaking. An icy chill swept through her and she stood utterly still.

“Check upstairs.”

A low male voice, then steps approaching the stairs. She just stood where she was, trapped on the upper floor. What should she do, hide? Fight? With what? There were at least two men against her.

Footsteps on the stairs. She tried to think of a weapon, couldn’t think of anything. The steps were getting closer. Then a thought struck her — the fire escape ladder outside Albert’s window. Sophie left the bathroom and made her way toward Albert’s room as the steps got closer. She made it at the very last moment and shut the door silently behind her. Sophie hung her handbag diagonally across her chest, opened the window, climbed up on the rickety desk, and was just about to climb out when the door flew open behind her. A strong hand grabbed her collar. She was dragged backward and down onto the floor, landing hard on her back. Hasse Berglund was kneeling on her chest, a hand around her neck. His cheeks hung as he leaned over her. He looked like a dog. She met his staring, watery eyes, could see he was enjoying this.

“Anders!” he called.

Sophie stretched her hand across the carpet under Albert’s bed, feeling with her fingers. She got hold of the end of the old telescope and grabbed hold of it like a baseball bat.

“Anders!” he called again, turning his face away from her for a moment.

Sophie hit him with all her strength. The telescope struck Hasse Berglund on the side of the head. The blow was so hard that he let go of her throat and toppled over on his side, temporarily confused and weakened. Sophie struggled loose, kicking the big man to free her right leg from under his body. She could hear quick steps from the stairs. Sophie scrambled to her feet, hearing Hasse muttering something behind her. From the corner of her eye she could see him regain his strength and start to turn toward her, reaching out an arm to grab her. She leaped up onto the desk and threw herself headfirst through the window. She managed to grab the rusty ladder with her right hand, slid a short distance and tore a deep cut in the palm of her hand. Sophie lost her grip and fell backward helplessly for a second before landing on her back on the lawn. All the air went out of her and she lay there for a moment. Even though her whole body was telling her to lie still and get her breath back, she forced herself to get up on her feet. She hurried awkwardly over to her car, which was parked on the gravel drive in front of the house, managing to pull the key from her pocket as she ran. Her body ached painfully. Sophie unlocked the car with the remote. She just managed to get in behind the wheel and lock the doors when the men came rushing out of her kitchen door. The overweight one was bleeding from his ear. The other one looked boyish in spite of his age, dark, round deer’s eyes — just the way Dorota had described him.

She turned the key. The car started. The boyish one drew a pistol and aimed it at her. The overweight one shouted at her to turn the engine off and get out of the vehicle.

Sophie put the car in reverse and slammed the pedal to the floor. The tires sprayed gravel as the car shot through the gate posts. Sophie wrenched the wheel and lurched out onto the road. She went on reversing at high speed toward the parked Honda. The gears were shrieking at having to go backward so fast. She steeled herself for the impact. The Land Cruiser backed right into the front of the Honda; the collision was hard and brutal, she was thrown forward and hit the steering wheel, losing her breath for a moment. She changed gear and drove forward fast. A quick glance in the mirror, the front of the Honda was demolished.

The men were standing in the middle of the road. Weapons drawn, aimed at her. She pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor, the automatic gear-box changed up. Sophie crouched below the dashboard for cover and headed straight for them. Anders and Hasse leaped out of the way.

She headed into
the multistory garage at the shopping center in Mörby, and parked on the top floor, where she locked the car and hurried out into the mall. Then she stopped, hesitant. Should she take the underground or head out to the buses? She thought quickly. The underground station in Mörby was the end of the line, there was only one way in and out. If the train didn’t come and the men were on their way, she’d have no hope of escape.

She bought a ticket from the machine and hurried out to the bus stops, hiding in the waiting crowd of people, looking the whole while in the direction the buses came from, occasionally glancing back toward the main entrance to the mall where she imagined the two policemen were going to rush out at her at any moment. Her heart was beating so hard that she thought it was going to burst through her chest.

Then, at last … A large, red, concertina bus turned in toward her from the junction and stopped with a hiss in front of the waiting passengers. The number of the bus meant nothing to her, but she didn’t care. She moved with the line and got on board, showing her ticket to the driver who waved her past. Sophie moved toward the back and sat in a vacant pair of seats, then leaned over and prayed that the bus would leave soon. But it didn’t, it stood there with its doors open, waiting for the scheduled departure time.

Her breathing was getting harder, shallower. Panic was building and she had to summon up all her strength just to stay on the bus, not run off, even though her whole body was screaming at her to go.

Finally the doors closed and the bus set off from Mörby. She could breathe out. It carried her toward Sollentuna. Sophie got off at Sjöberg, where she walked among the identical-looking houses and called for a taxi. It arrived fifteen minutes later, and she asked the driver to take her into the city center, Sergels torg.

She paid cash, jumped out on Klarabergsgatan and went down into the square. She disappeared into the crowd, made her way into the underground station, and caught a train to Slussen. There she changed platforms and took another train back to Gamla stan, and from there she headed off on foot toward Östermalm.

He met her in the street, waiting outside his door. She didn’t cry, just let herself be embraced and rested her head on his shoulder.

They took the elevator up to the top floor. He looked at her in the mirror, not knowing how to comfort her, or if he should even try. He didn’t know how to do that sort of thing, had no training in it, because that was pretty much what he’d spent his whole life avoiding. Now he wanted to be able to do it, now he wanted to know what to do to comfort her. But it was too late, he’d only mess things up if he tried.

She asked for antiseptic. He gave her what he had. Sophie bandaged her bleeding hand and went into another room. He could hear her talking to her sister on the phone.

Jens made food for her. She ate in silence, withdrawn, and he let her be.

There was a smell of formaldehyde in the room.
Gunilla was standing there looking down at her dead brother. Erik Strandberg was lying on one of the mortuary’s shiny metal trolleys, it looked like he was asleep. She felt like waking him up, telling him it was time to go to work now, that this was going to be an ordinary day, then they’d have dinner somewhere, talk about the case, talk about all the things they always talked about.

What do you do when you see your brother for the last time? Do you try to find something to remember? Do you try to remember something you’ve forgotten? Outside the hospital she sat in her car looking out through the windshield without registering what she was looking at. The scream came. She screamed from the depths of her body until the air in her lungs ran out. Then came the tears, and then the grief, rolling through her consciousness like great gusts of wind. The pain felt like it was going to suffocate her; she felt alone, a vast feeling of abandonment that refused to let go. It was joined by a shapeless sense of impotence. And from that feeling an image gradually emerged, an image that showed that her total isolation had put her in a position in life where she had nothing to lose.

Then she was done. She opened the window to let in some air, took a few cautious breaths, and wiped her eyes and the makeup that had run down her face. She put her makeup on again in the mirror of the sun visor, sat herself up, took a deep breath, started the car, and drove off.