The Other Son (12 page)

She wished she could stand at the edge of the world with her back to everything, facing away from everything and everyone….She wanted to make herself stand in the corner and never leave, if she could find such a corner….

“Sophie?”

Leszek's voice calling for her. She took several deep breaths, trying to hide the truth somewhere inside her and hit the Reset button.

Hasani was leaning against the sink when she went into the kitchen. Leszek was looking out the window, and he turned around.

“How secure are we here?” she asked.

“Secure, for now,” he replied.

“What do we know?”

“Nothing.”

“Has everyone been contacted?”

Leszek nodded. She could see he was shaken up.

“Right now you and Albert need to make sure your family and friends are calm. We don't want them to start looking for you. Give them some sort of plausible explanation.”

Leszek hadn't finished.

“Whoever did this has a goal,” he said. “And he'll carry on killing until he reaches that goal. Understood?”

“Yes,” she said weakly.

“So from now on nothing gets done without serious thought. Everything has to go through me and Hasani.”

The wooden floor
creaked as she walked toward Albert's room.

Andres and Fabien were blissfully unaware; they were running around chasing each other with their shoes off, sliding on the polished parquet floor. They were enjoying themselves, and their happy cries formed a distant background of noise no matter where you were in the apartment.

Albert was sitting on the bed, his legs out straight in front of him. She went into his room and sat down beside him on the edge of the bed. He waited for her to say something. But she merely took his hand in hers. She leaned over and hugged him, holding him tight.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you too, Mom.”

Silver and gold signs with company names next to the doorway on Mäster Samuelsgatan. Koen pressed all the buttons on the intercom except one. The door buzzed and he went in. The elevator took him up to the third floor. He knocked on a tall white door, which was opened by a man who was getting ready to leave.

Koen recognized him from photographs.

“Ernst Lundwall?” Koen asked lazily.

“No,” Ernst said.

“Yes,” Koen said, showing him the submachine-gun under his jacket. Ernst took a step back, and Koen walked in and closed the door behind him.

“Ralph Hanke wants to see you,” Koen said, pointing the weapon at Ernst. “You need to pack some things,” he went on, pushing Ernst farther away from the door.

Miles had a funny feeling in his stomach. A tingle, he'd have said if he were a child. But he wasn't, he was grown-up, and the time for tingles was long gone. But whatever it was, it was directly connected to Sanna, who was performing onstage in front of him.

Hers was the last performance of the evening. As usual, he was sitting in the darkness at the back of the room. He thought she was moving differently, as if she was bored and tired.

Miles didn't like evenings. Different people came then, people who shouldn't be there. That evening there were three drunk thirtysomethings in cheap suits. The plastic badges they had been given at their conference or sales fair or wherever they had been were still dangling from corporate straps around their necks. The men were talking loudly in an Örebro accent and laughing exaggeratedly at bad jokes.

Miles looked at Sanna again. Yes, she probably felt much the same as he did, didn't like evenings, didn't like country hicks and drunks and loud talking.

A bachelor party tumbled in. There were three of them as well, but these seemed to be made of sterner stuff. They had an empty shopping cart with them, which bounced noisily down the stone steps.

The groom-to-be was wearing a filthy wet T-shirt, a diaper on top of his jeans, and had a condom on his head that was horribly stretched across his forehead, giving him very odd eyebrows and an unnerving stare. The groom's friends were each drinking from a bottle of Koskenkorva. Miles guessed that they had come straight from the Finland ferry, and all three were close to passing out. But they could at least stand up. The groom yelled something indistinct and threatening at the room. One bottle flew through the air and hit one of the men from Örebro in the head. The man fell, hitting his face on the edge of the stage, then just lay there. Then the shopping cart raced across the room.

The bachelor party set their sights on the two remaining visitors from Örebro, who didn't stand a chance.

Once they had been dealt with and couldn't be beaten any more, the young men set about some of the defenseless old pervs.

Miles had been on his way out, but stopped. An old man was being beaten up. Something happened inside him. Maybe it was the sight of a defenseless man being attacked, maybe a sense of total injustice, that what was happening was simply wrong.

Without being able to stop himself, Miles strode over, pulled the condom from the groom's head, grabbed him by the hair, and punched him repeatedly in the eye, cheekbone, and temple with his right fist. The blows were steady and hard, and the man's legs gave way and he fell to the floor. Miles leaned over toward him.

“Don't get married,” he leered.

One of the groom's friends, possibly his best man, came toward Miles. He was angry, drunk, and ugly.

Miles pulled him to the floor and smashed him in the face with his left hand. When he was done, he looked around for their other friend. But the third one was just standing there, rocking drunkenly, and glaring at Miles, gesturing to indicate that he was done for the day. He sat down hard on a chair and threw up.

Miles helped the old perv up from the floor and led him off toward the stairs. A whispered
thanks
as they parted on the street outside.

Miles lit a cigarette and took a few drags. It tasted incredibly good. What had just happened? He had never hit anyone like that before. It had been easy.

Miles inspected the knuckles of his right hand. He had even enjoyed the fight.

With his hands in his pockets and the cigarette still in his mouth, Miles walked away.

Someone appeared alongside him. Sanna looked just like she did onstage, although she had clothes on now. A pair of sneakers, jeans, top, coat.

“Hi,” she said.

Her eyes flashed.

“Hi,” he said.

They walked a few steps.

“That was unpleasant,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

She stayed by his side. “You're a regular, aren't you?”

“You could say that,” Miles said.

“For me, or just in general?”

“In general, but you're good,” he said.

“You don't stare like the others,” she said.

He turned to face her. “Really?”

“Where are you heading?” she said.

And with that, Miles stopped. A glimpse of paradise. Everything made sense, right there, right then.

“Home,” he replied.

“Shall I finish the show back at yours?”

He didn't even need a moment to consider. Miles nodded.

“Yes, if you like.”

Miles and Sanna
set off toward Nybroviken, walking side by side. They got on the tram outside the Royal Dramatic Theatre, stood, and held on to the straps. Catching each other's eye was evidently quite amusing. At Skansen they got off and walked over to the houses on the other side of the road.

She stripped for him on the living-room floor, at a greatly reduced rate. To the accompaniment of an old jazz record. There was no thrusting. She just stripped really well.

Then they drank strong tea, played Yahtzee on her phone, told stories about their lives, happy memories, things they liked.

She fell asleep on his sofa. Miles covered her up, put a soft pillow under her head, and set his alarm clock for half an hour earlier than usual.

He wanted to make it nice, wanted her to feel at home.

He wanted it to be perfect….

She was a psycho. He liked psychos; they were often completely uninhibited in bed, and got turned on by old men like him.

But not this one, she was asexual. She just lay there like a glove and soaked it up. It was as if he was assaulting her. Which he was, but it was OK, because they'd agreed to terms, there was an understanding: she was a whore, he was a customer.

At least that was what Carlos Fuentes convinced himself of as he lay there on top of her with his tongue in her ear, mumbling dirty words and working with determination toward climax.

Carlos Fuentes finished and rolled off, gasping for breath. Once he was breathing normally again he got up from the bed, then put on a pair of slippers and a paisley-patterned silk robe.

“The money's on the bedside table,” he muttered, then left the bedroom and went downstairs to the kitchen. He was always hungry after sex. There was a bottle of Chablis in the cooler. Foie gras, spiced German sausage, and smoked salmon in the fridge. He could eat it all with his hands; things tasted better then.

He entered the kitchen—sterile and modern.

The fridge was huge, like a closet. Carlos tucked the bottle of wine under his arm, then carefully picked out a nighttime snack.

“Carlos?” A woman's voice, whispering and sensual.

He turned around.

Sonya Alizadeh was smiling at him.

“Sonya,” he said with a gasp.

Sonya Alizadeh, at Hector's side throughout all the years that Carlos had worked for him.

And then he realized.

“Wait a minute…”

A blackjack hit him in the temple. Carlos slumped, and the wine bottle fell to the floor and shattered. Sonya hit him again and all his muscles went limp as he fell flat on the floor.

Sonya pulled off her black rucksack, sat astride him, and quickly pulled out some zip ties and bound his hands and feet. Then she fished out a thick roll of tape, put a strip over his mouth, then wound it twice around his head and bit down to cut it. Sonya stood up and shook out a transparent body bag next to him.

The woman from Carlos's bed came into the kitchen and went and stood by his feet, and Sonya stood by his arms.

At an invisible signal the two of them lifted the heavy man onto the body bag. Sonya put an oxygen mask over his face, attached it to a small tube of oxygen, and zipped the bag shut. She stood up again and looked down at her handiwork.

“That'll do,” she whispered to herself.

She handed the woman an envelope. Its thickness suggested a lot of money. The woman opened it and counted.

“Are you a user?” Sonya asked. “Is that why you do this?”

The woman looked up from the envelope of money with a smirk. “What do you think?”

“Give it up,” Sonya said.

The woman snorted derisively and put the envelope into her handbag.

Together they quickly carried the body bag out to an SUV in the sleepy backstreet. Once they'd heaved the body into the back of the vehicle, the woman turned on her heel and walked off down the sidewalk.

Sonya closed the door, got in behind the wheel, and drove off.