The Other Son (13 page)

Three rooms in a row, a kitchen, and a small bathroom. It could have been a home if it weren't for the surveillance cameras in the ceiling, the barred windows, and the locked doors.

Ernst was standing by a window, looking out. He was at a farm, isolated, palatial, exclusive. There was clearly a lot of land—there were horses and fields out there. Stables, barns, and—in the distance—a gatehouse.

Koen had driven him to Arlanda. Together they had taken a flight to Munich. Koen kept close to him the whole time. A car was waiting for them when they arrived, and Ernst had been sedated. He had woken up alone in a large bed in this room, watched some German television, had some food, and waited, pacing around nervously.

There was a knock on the door, then a key was inserted into the lock and turned. A tattooed, dark-haired man leaned in and looked around the room. He backed away, held the door open, and Ralph Hanke walked in, accompanied by Roland Gentz and a younger man Ernst recognized from photographs: Christian Hanke, Ralph's son, his heir. He was in his mid-twenties, with curly black hair and ice-blue eyes.

“Do we need to introduce ourselves?” Ralph asked.

Ernst shook his head.

The three men sat down on the group of sofas. Ernst remained where he was by the window. He got the impression that they were stressed.

“What have you got to tell us?” Ralph asked.

Yes, he sounded stressed.

“I don't know,” Ernst replied.

They stared at him. His answer was unacceptable, he realized that. As long as he had something to give them, he would be kept alive. Then they would kill him and bury his body somewhere, probably out in those fields. And Ernst Lundwall didn't want that. So he needed to play this right and give them a little at a time. Betray Hector? Yes, that was unavoidable if he wanted to live.

“What do you want to know?” Ernst asked, and cleared his throat.

“Where is he?” Christian asked.

“Who?”

“Who the hell do you think?” he roared.

The room became tense.

“I don't know where he is,” Ernst replied, pushing his glasses up his nose and trying to keep his voice steady.

“Who does know?” Roland Gentz asked.

“I'm mostly involved in Hector's business affairs. I'm his adviser. But I don't talk to him anymore.”

“Who do you talk to?”

“Aron. And Leszek, to a lesser extent. Sophie Brinkmann also attends our meetings from time to time.”

“What do you do?”

“I look after the legal side of things, provide advice and suggestions, I draw up contracts, I'm in constant contact with our business partners, official and unofficial alike.”

“Carlos?” Christian said.

Ernst didn't follow.

“Carlos?” Christian repeated very clearly.

“I don't know. Haven't seen him for six months. He disappeared, betrayed Hector. You're the ones who've got him,” Ernst said, confused.

“You don't know?”

“What?”

“He disappeared last night,” Ralph said. “We need to know who took him.”

“I don't know,” Ernst said. “I don't get told about that sort of thing. That's not my role in the organization, I'm more—”

“Like Roland?” Ralph said, pointing at Roland Gentz.

“Sorry?”

“You're like Roland. Would that be a fair comparison?”

“Yes, like Roland, you could say,” Ernst replied.

“Then it's probably best for the two of you to talk to each other? What are Christian and I doing here?”

Ernst didn't know how to reply to that.

Ralph went on. “You're here to give us information and redirect Hector's business affairs and partners in our direction. You can speed everything up. Make sure you do a good job, to save your friends unnecessary suffering. And yourself.”

Ralph stood up and Christian followed suit, then they left the room.

Ernst and Roland were left alone. They were the same sort. There wasn't much to say. No friendship, no enmity. Just two of the same sort of people who were expected to come up with something.

“Aren't you going to sit down?” Roland asked.

“I'd rather stand.”

“Sit down, Ernst,” Roland whispered.

Ann Margret was fifty-four, with bleached blond hair and signs of heavy tanning-bed use, and had been through a messy divorce. She had skinny legs, a flat backside, a protruding stomach, and she thought George Clooney was sexy.

Tommy looked at her as she stood waiting at the bus stop, their meeting place. He pulled up in front of it.

He leaned over, opened the door on the passenger side.

“Hi, Tommy,” she said in her affected, smoke-damaged voice when she got in to the car.

“Hi, Maggie,” he said.

She giggled excitedly at the fact that he had given her a nickname.

“How are things?” he went on, pulling out into the traffic.

“Oh, things are fine,” she twittered hoarsely, pulling a bundle of papers from her handbag.

Ann Margret looked up to Tommy in an unhealthy way; she did to all men in managerial positions, she wanted to make them happy, and he exploited that.

Ann Margret was a civilian employee within the police. Years of reorganizations had moved her around inside the bureaucratic machinery. She had been a senior secretary, an assistant in the Coordination unit, an auxiliary in the command center, a clerk for the Violent Crime and Economic Crime units, and an administrator for the forensics team. These days she was working as an assistant to an analyst in the CID's Surveillance unit. She still retained the competencies and permissions she had acquired in her previous positions, giving her almost total access to the police authority's databases, with greater insight and more access to the organization than she herself was aware of.

There's something about Antonia Miller or the investigation that isn't right
, he had told her.
Check what she's been doing on her computer, scan her searches, any progress in the case, and keep me informed
.

And Ann Margret had done as she had been asked, flattered by the secret mission. And now Tommy had added Miles Ingmarsson to her surveillance.

He glanced at her.

The woman was a complete idiot. And she wasn't exactly beautiful, either. Her sunglasses covered her face. Her hair was freshly brushed, but she'd forgotten about the back. Tousled from sleep. The dark roots of her natural hair color were showing close to her scalp, but the rest was bleached yellow. She smelled of cheap sweet perfume, a mild hangover, and the acrid stench of a recently smoked cigarette.

Ann Margret leafed randomly through her papers and began the run-through: “Antonia Miller is busy with the Conny Blomberg case. Nothing new to report there. Miles Ingmarsson doesn't appear to be doing anything at all, he seems a bit of a dead loss.”

She laughed, a smoker's laugh. Tommy tried to smile.

Ann Margret carried on in the same hopeful way she usually did during these informal meetings. She read out Antonia's and Miles's search histories, both on the Internet and in the police's internal systems. She told him what phone calls they had made, and about their digital activity in general.

And Tommy always concluded with something along the lines of: “Ann Margret, I can't tell you any details, but you're a star. What you're doing is very important. You'll definitely be rewarded for it, I can promise you that. But for the time being, all this has to stay between the two of us. This is what working undercover is like—little signs, especially the ones that seem arbitrary, can ruin an investigation. Bear that in mind.”

And she would nod solemnly, reaffirming her oath of confidentiality and her loyalty.

This business of manipulating people really isn't so difficult, he thought.

He let her out by an underground station and headed home. He felt relieved. The situation was just as he had hoped, just as he wanted. Antonia was occupied with her new murder. Ingmarsson was getting used to his new role and was doing nothing.
Perfect.

At home, in front of the row house, he sat for a while in his car, as he usually did. He could see his daughters, Vanessa and Emelie, through the kitchen window. They were standing side by side by the counter, already so grown-up.

Ten years ago things had been different, they had been different, he had been different, everything had been different. He danced and sang with them, he had struggled against their reluctance to let the day end when he read them a bedtime story, he had performed magic tricks, had made them laugh at made-up tales. When the girls got a bit bigger, he had taken responsibility for their homework, started to get them interested in better food, tried to bring a bit of quality to everyday life. Sometimes they traveled, Monica would put together a photograph album, summers were long and happy.

Then it had all ended.

There was a smell of food in the hall when he stepped into the house. Monica was sitting on a chair in the kitchen, tired, staring blankly into space. He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. Their daughters were preparing food. But there was one more person in the kitchen. A person who shouldn't have been there.

“Hi, Dad, this is Mattias,” Vanessa said. She was beaming, and looked infatuated as she stood by the counter chopping fruit.

Tommy looked the young man sitting at his kitchen table up and down. Bad posture, ponytail. He didn't even stand up.

“Hello,” Tommy said, trying to sound friendly.

“Hello,” Mattias said. His voice was exaggeratedly self-confident. “So you're the policeman?”

Mattias laughed; he evidently had no respect at all. Vanessa didn't know how to behave. She tried to laugh, looking at her dad uncertainly.

“What are we having?” Tommy asked.

“Something easy tonight. Fried cod.”

“Then?”

“Fruit salad,” she said.

He cast a glance at Mattias, who was still sitting while the others stood. Everything suddenly felt very dark. His daughter shouldn't have a boyfriend like that. Christ, his family ought to be aiming higher than that.

They ate dinner.
Mattias was studying to be an ethnologist, had left-wing genes, and had an opinion about everything and answers to most things.

Mattias asked Tommy how he thought the police should deal with demonstrations. He had been in one recently, apparently.

“The police act in line with regulations,” Tommy mumbled. He had no desire to get into a debate with this cocksucking ethnologist.

“Violently attacking defenseless youngsters?”

Monica tried to give Tommy a calming smile.

“I don't know,” Tommy said, clenching his teeth.

“You don't
know
?”

Mattias laughed again.

Tommy looked at Vanessa and saw her predicament, and his heart ached for her.