The Andalucian Friend (51 page)

There were three vehicles outside the house, an ambulance and two private cars, the door to the villa was wide open, she sounded the horn, ran in, shouting.

A man came rushing down the stairs with blood on his arms and clothes, but he still looked strangely composed.

“Hector’s been shot, he’s lying in the car,” she said loudly and breathlessly.

The man turned on the stairs and hurried up again, called something in Spanish, then came back with another man, just as bloody, just as composed. The men ran to the ambulance, pulled out a trolley, hurried over to the shot-up car, lifted Hector out, and pushed him inside the house; Sophie followed as they carried him up the stairs.

The first thing she saw when she got upstairs was that the windows of the dining room had been shot out, there was broken glass all over the floor. Leszek was lying on a dining table, two men were operating on him. A dead body was lying on the floor under a sheet, and at the far end of the room a unknown bearded man in a checked shirt and jeans was sitting dead against the wall with a pistol in his hand. He had a bullet hole in his neck, and blood all over the wall behind him. She tried to make sense of it.

One of the men tore off Hector’s clothes, the other looked through a big bag, looking for blood plasma, reading the different blood groups. They worked quickly and calmly. The man standing next to Hector was a doctor.

“I’m a nurse,” she told him.

He looked at her, then around the room and pointed at Leszek. She went over. Leszek had been sedated, he had a large flesh wound in his shoulder. It was bloody, dirty, and messy; everything at that moment was about saving lives. None of the focus on hygiene and other luxuries that she was used to. One man was standing beside Leszek, pulling out fragments of a bullet with a pair of tweezers, the man beside him was checking the drip and keeping the wound clear. Leszek’s doctor had heard what she had said, and pointed toward a bathroom. Sophie went over, washed her hands carefully, not looking at her reflection in the mirror.

They worked furiously, the broken windows filled the room with salty sea air, she stood between Leszek and Hector and responded as the doctors and nurses called for her help. She made sure they all had what they needed.

“Hector’s lost a huge amount of blood,” the doctor said. “We’re replenishing it as best we can; he’s got two bullets in his back, it’s hard to say anything about his condition.”

Sophie sewed Leszek back together, bandaged his shoulder, then her work was done, there was nothing more she could do for anyone. She went to wash her hands again, and didn’t look at her reflection in the mirror this time either.

Outside in the room everything was silent. Hector’s doctor was operating, his assistants working alongside him.

Sophie summoned her strength and went over to the person under the white sheet; she knew who it was, she knew that his son wasn’t yet aware that his father was dead. She lifted the sheet carefully and saw Adalberto, looking almost peaceful. She lifted it a bit more, coagulated blood across his chest. She lowered the sheet again.

“What happened?” She addressed the question to Leszek’s doctor, who was smoking a cigarette toward the other end of the room. He shrugged.

“We arrived … Adalberto was dead. Him too.” The doctor pointed at the bearded man who was sitting against the wall, a bloodstain had followed him down.

“Leszek was wounded but conscious. I don’t know what happened, it doesn’t matter. The devil’s been here, that’s enough.” He took a drag and the cigarette flared.

“Who are you all?” she asked.

He blew out the smoke.

“Who are you?”

“I’m a friend of Hector’s.”

For some reason he didn’t want to look her in the eye.

“We’re doctors and nurses, freelancing today, employed yesterday. We’ve had an agreement with Adalberto Guzman for a few years … a sleeping agreement, in case anything like this should ever happen.”

They were interrupted by a sound from the floor below, by the stairs, everyone in the room exchanged glances, scared glances. Who should take charge here? Steps on the stairs, the men in the room tried to hide. Slow, hesitant steps approaching. Sophie hurried over to the bearded man, bent his fingers open, took the revolver from his cold, stiff hand, and aimed it toward the stairs. The steps were getting closer, she aimed, trying to breathe, she was going to fire. A head appeared, her aim was steady and followed the head, which gradually acquired a body, the slender body of a woman.

Sonya Alizadeh came up into the room. Sophie lowered the gun, put it down on the floor.

“Are they dead?” Sonya whispered, sitting down on a chair.

“They came without warning,” she said. “They shot into the house from the outside. Adalberto was hit as he sat and ate. … Then they came inside the house and kept on shooting. Leszek got one of them. Then he was hit as well.”

“Who by?”

Sonya thought.

“I don’t know. A man who drove off in a car.”

“And you?” Sophie asked.

“I ran downstairs, hid in the cellar.”

Sophie went over to her, pulled a chair out, and sat down close to Sonya, taking her hand in hers. They sat like that, looking out across the room, holding hands. A mild sea breeze was coming in through the shattered windows, caressing them. Sophie looked at Hector, who was lying on the trolley fighting for his life.

There was a sound of small paws on the stairs. A little white dog appeared and looked around the room as if he was searching for something.

Sonya held out her hands and the dog went over to her, still hesitant, seeking, sniffing, unable to find his master. Sonya crouched down, called him over. The dog waved his tail and jumped up into her arms. She sat up in the chair again with the dog on her lap, gently stroking his fur.

“This is Piño. …”

Sophie realized she was smiling at the dog, possibly because she always smiled at dogs, perhaps because the dog’s presence lent the room a bit of calm and normality.

Suddenly one of the machines that was attached to Hector started to bleep, and the doctor and nurse started to work feverishly as Sophie and Sonya looked on.

“He’s going into a coma.” The doctor’s voice was stressed.

Sophie hurried over as the doctor worked intently. He asked for things, she handed him whatever he needed, he muttered and swore that he couldn’t work with so few resources. The nurse was pumping oxygen into Hector manually, and Sophie looked on impotently as the doctor gave up his attempt to stop Hector from slipping into the coma. He swore in Spanish, asked the nurse a question, a question that had no answer and was just an expression of his frustration.

“He needs to be moved.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s part of the agreement. He needs a respirator.”

“Where are you going to take him?”

“To a safe place.”

“Leszek?”

The doctor looked over at the sleeping Leszek.

“Don’t worry about him.”

Sophie was sitting
in the back of the ambulance next to Hector’s stretcher, Sonya beside her with Piño in her lap. They drove through Marbella, the town glowing outside, Sophie could only see through one of the windows in the back doors: people having fun, cars whose paintwork gleamed under the evening’s neon lights, restaurants, terrace bars, motorbikes, mopeds, heat, music, young and old together.

She was holding Hector’s hand in hers, wanted to say something, anything, wanted to believe he could hear her behind the walls of unconsciousness, wanted to believe he was holding her hand in his. She let go of it after a while. Took out her cell phone, called Jane. She held on to Hector’s stretcher with the other hand. Jane sounded sleepy when she answered. Said she was at the hospital, that she was sleeping there. That the two men were still around. That one of them was there the whole time, working in shifts. No one else had asked after Albert or her. And she was able to reassure Sophie by telling her that Albert seemed to be doing all right. He was sound asleep.

They emerged from the town and headed up toward the mountains, out into the countryside, driving in darkness, passing the town of Ojén and then on into the darkness again. After an hour they slowed down and the ambulance stopped. Sophie heard the front doors open and close, followed by footsteps outside, then the back door was opened by the doctor and warm evening air hit her, and he gestured for them to get out.

It was an old farm, now restored, white, red roof, lights on. A small car was parked outside, the sort of car single people have, unremarkable, with small wheels and flimsy doors. Someone was waiting for them inside. The door was opened by a woman.

Hector was carried in on the stretcher. Sophie and Sonya followed. The woman who let them in examined Hector briefly in the hall, then indicated that they should carry him into the living room. It was a large room, white stone walls, terracotta floor, Spanish furnishings, sober in its lack of pretension. Sophie saw hospital equipment, a defibrillator, two drip stands, a respirator and, off to one side, a large hospital bed.

Hector was lifted into the bed. The woman rolled over the equipment and attached the drip and connected a catheter under the sheets. The doctor and nurse set up the respirator, spoke briefly to the woman, left the house, and drove off in the ambulance.

The woman checked Hector once more, then turned toward Sophie and Sonya.

“My name is Raimunda, I’m going to take care of Hector. As of this evening, this is where I work. Yesterday I was working at a private hospital, I resigned four hours ago when I got the phone call.”

She was speaking quietly and clearly.

“This place is secure, only a few people know about it, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”

Sophie looked at Raimunda. She was thin, in her thirties, black hair that stopped at the base of her neck. There was something correct, strict about her. She felt good, stable … loyal.

Sophie whispered,
“Thank you
.
”

The cicadas were
singing in the night when Sophie went off to bed in one of the rooms.

There was a buzzing noise from Sophie’s handbag over on the chair. She got up and went over. The phone she had been given by Jens was lit up at the bottom of the bag, down there with her wallet, jewelry, makeup, and random receipts.

“Jens?”

“No, Aron.”

“Hector’s been …”

“I know everything, where are you now?”

“At the farm … Up in the mountains.”

“Who’s there with you?”

“Raimunda, Hector, and Sonya.”

“Stay there. The police have sealed off Adalberto’s villa. Leszek’s on his way to you.”

“And you?”

“I’m coming down as soon as I can, there’s a warrant out for me, I need to take a detour.”

“Jens?”

“I patched him up as best I could … he’s going to be OK.”

Silence.

“Sophie?”

“Yes?”

“We need to talk when we meet.”

He ended the call.

The sun’s rays were wandering slowly
across the wooden floor. Gunilla followed them leisurely. He was lying on the floor with no covers, curled up like a little baby in the womb. Slowly, slowly the light made its way up over his shoulder, then hit his chin. The passage of light across Lars Vinge was like a symphony, she thought, a silent symphony. She waited patiently, as usual. The sun’s rays wandered up his cheek and eventually nudged at his closed eyes. She could see movement behind the eyelid, he swallowed, opened his eyes, stared out across the floor, closed his eyes, swallowed again.

“Good morning,” she whispered softly.

He saw her sitting on the chair, looking down at him. Lars leaned up, still sitting on the floor, still drowsy, with a morphine hangover and empty as a vacuum.

“What are you doing here?” he managed to croak.

“I’ve been trying to get hold of you, but I never get an answer, I wanted to see how you are.”

He looked at her with hazy eyes.

“How I am?”

“Yes.”

Lars tried to think, how had she gotten in? Had he been followed last night?

“Lars?”

He looked at her, wished he’d had more time, more time to figure out a plan of how to deal with her.

“I’m not feeling so great,” he said quietly.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I’ve probably been working too hard.”

She looked right through him, held up a packet of pills that she had on her lap.

“What’s this?”

“Just medicine,” he said.

She studied him.

“You’ve got a whole drawer full?”

He didn’t answer that.

“This isn’t ordinary stuff, Lars … Are you ill?”

He felt like saying
Cancer, the late stages
. People who were in the late stages of cancer got to do what they liked. No, she already knew everything about him.

“No.”

“So why are you taking morphine?”

“That’s my business.”

She shook her head.

“No, not as long as you’re working for me.”

Now he looked into her eyes, they were shut off somehow, empty and dead. As if someone had crawled in behind them and closed the curtains. Had she always had eyes like that? He didn’t know; he just knew that she was there at that moment, that she was lethal, that she probably hadn’t come alone. That his pistol was out of reach. That she may well know that he knew. Maybe she’d found the microphone in Brahegatan. Maybe he was going to die now?

Lars looked at the pills on her lap. He thought about the time he lied to the priest in Lyckoslanten, how easy it was to lie when you made use of reality. The truth is the best lie.

“Lars? Answer my question.”

He sat on the floor and rubbed his eyes.

“What do you want to know?”

“I want to know what you’ve been doing these past few days, I want to know why you’re taking a cocktail of morphine, benzo, and nerve medicine.”

He let time pass.

“Sorry, Gunilla … ,” he whispered.

She looked at him intently.

“Sorry for what, Lars?”

“Sorry for letting you down …”

Her calmness turned into a tense curiosity.

“How have you let me down?” Now she was whispering too.

Lars took several deep breaths.

“When I was young … ,” he began, “ten, maybe eleven, I was given medicine to help me sleep, drugs. My mom got them on prescription … I soon became dependent on them. Later on, toward the end of my teenage years, I got help to stop … but the damage was already done. I’ve managed to abstain for most of my adult life. I’ve avoided alcohol, never taken any strong medicines. Recently I sought help for back pain,” Lars went on, “and when the doctor asked I said I was having trouble sleeping. I always have, and, well … I wasn’t really thinking. He prescribed something, painkillers and tranquilizers, and I took them.”

He looked up at her, she was still listening.

“It was nothing terribly dangerous, but it was like pressing a button. It made me happy … it made me happy in a way I hadn’t been since … well, I don’t remember when. My whole system responded to the pills, reacted and accepted them … Then it just took off. I was hooked after a week or so … I managed to get hold of stronger substances. I’ve been using them ever since.”

“You said you’d let me down?”

He looked at the floor and nodded almost imperceptibly.

“I haven’t been doing my job properly, I’ve spent the last few days lying here, knocked out … I called you from here, said I was looking for Sophie, I lied to you.”

Gunilla was looking for truth and bluff at the same time. After a while she relaxed, he could see it.

“It doesn’t matter, Lars,” she said. “It doesn’t matter … ,” she repeated.

Gunilla stood up, looked at him, seemed to want to say something more. But instead she went to walk out of the room. Lars watched her go.

“Gunilla,” he said.

She turned around.

“Sorry.”

She considered what he had said.

“I don’t want to lose this job. You gave me a chance … give me another, I’m begging you. …”

She didn’t answer and disappeared into the hall. Lars heard the front door open. Anders Ask walked past the office doorway, smiled at Lars, pretended to shoot him with his forefinger, then followed Gunilla out into the stairwell. The front door closed and the apartment was left in silence.

He lay there until the sound of their footsteps on the stairs had faded. Lars got up, gathered his pills, waited a bit, then left the apartment and made his way to the underground. He traveled around, paranoid, changing trains several times, trying to see if he was being followed. When he was sure he was alone, he went back to the hotel on Strandvägen and hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. He was trembling down to his very marrow, aware that he had just managed to cling to his life by a hairbreadth. Lars realized that time was pressing. He got to work, and began to figure out a plan of how he should proceed.

Leszek was frying bacon.

One arm was strapped up, but he was managing to do everything with the left one. Raimunda was sitting in an armchair reading a book by Annie Proulx, Sonya was asleep on the sofa, Hector was lying on his back in bed, in another dimension, perhaps.

Chopin was playing quietly from a stereo, Raimunda’s choice. Hector should hear beautiful music the whole time, she had said. Sophie listened from the edge of the sofa. It was the Bernstein recording, the second concerto …
En fa mineur
. She had played parts of it herself as a child. She had stopped playing sometime when she was a teenager, she couldn’t remember why.

Sophie got up and went over to Leszek, who was turning the bacon in the pan; he was staring down vacantly into the grease, looking sad. She patted him gently on his healthy shoulder.

“Do you want me to cook?” she asked. He shook his head.

She got plates out of the cupboard, started laying the table, then there was the sound of a car outside. Leszek was quick, pulling the frying pan off the heat, taking his pistol from the spice shelf, and hurrying over to one of the windows. The car door opened, and Aron got out of the driver’s seat. Leszek relaxed, went out and met him. Sophie watched through the window as they embraced, then fell into conversation, with Leszek doing most of the talking, presumably telling Aron in detail about everything that had happened over the past few days.

Aron came in, hugged Sonya and exchanged a few words with her. He introduced himself to Raimunda, then went and sat beside Hector, talking quietly to him in Spanish and stroking his hair. He met Sophie’s gaze.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

They left the house and went up a narrow sandy path that led up toward the mountains. Aron had his hands in his pockets. They walked on for a while, it got cooler the higher they got. Sophie looked at the ground, the gravel here was different, browner, finer than the gravel at home in Sweden, but there were still a few larger stones. She tried to avoid them as she walked.

“Any more news about your son?”

She shook her head.

“What do the doctors say?”

“I don’t know,” she replied.

He paused for a moment before getting to the point.

“Hector said on the phone that you were to have power of attorney, do you know why?”

She didn’t say anything, just shook her head.

“Me neither. At least not at first.”

Now she looked over at him.

“I’ve come to two conclusions, very different conclusions,” he said.

They walked a bit farther before he went on.

“You’ve seen a lot, you’ve heard things, maybe you’ve understood things you weren’t meant to understand, I don’t know. Maybe Hector realized that we couldn’t just let you go, maybe the power of attorney is a way of keeping you here with us, close, where you can’t do any harm.”

He glanced quickly at her.

“That was what I thought at first. Hector knew he was injured …”

Aron waited a few moments.

“But there could also be another reason,” he said. “I don’t know if this still applied when he called me from the car …”

A breeze caught her hair. She pushed it back.

“Hector often talked about you, before all this happened … About what you were like … your qualities. He appreciated you in a way that I realized he’d never appreciated a woman before.”

She looked down at the ground.

“He saw something different in you.”

“What?” she whispered.

Aron shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know. But he saw something.”

They had gotten a fair way up, and had a view across a valley that stretched hundreds of yards down into dark green vegetation. Aron stopped, resting his eyes on the view.

“He said that you didn’t understand what sort of person you really are.”

The reasoning seemed unclear.

“What sort of talk’s that? That’s just words,” she said.

“No, not when it comes from him.”

He stared at something in the distance.

“He wanted something with you. But I don’t understand what, I still don’t understand exactly what he meant in our last conversation.”

“Do you need to?”

He looked at her.

“Yes, I do.”

There was new sharpness in his eyes. Decisions were being made deep inside.

“I’m putting you in a kind of quarantine until things clear themselves up, or until Hector wakes up and can explain his choice.”

“And what does that mean?”

“The power of attorney gives you a partial right to make decisions about our work. It means that you’ll become initiated into and complicit in what we do, and if you’re complicit, then you’re no threat. Something like that.”

“What about me, what does it mean for me?”

“It means that you’re going to help me. I have to stay here, stay hidden until everything’s settled down a bit.”

“What do I have to do?”

“We can’t let the world think he’s out of the game, that would be disastrous for us and a lot of other people who are dependent on him. You know him, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“He knows you, he says. So you must know him?”

“I think so,” she said cautiously.

“Then you know what he would do?”

Was that something like pleading she saw in Aron? Something beseeching that was peeping out from in there?

“Maybe. But you know him as well, Aron.”

“Yes, but in a different way … We’ll do this together.”

“And what about in the future?”

He thought.

“I don’t know.”

“What
do
you know?” she asked.

He looked at her.