The Other Son (26 page)

“Search it,” Mikhail said.

Jens went in, followed by Sophie.

It was a sort of glass security lodge, most of it shot to pieces. There was a kitchen off to their left. A smell of food. Four rooms facing one another. Solid security doors, three of them open.

Jens checked the rooms. They had been soundproofed, no windows. They were each furnished with a bed, table, and chair. Secure. Cells, where people had been held captive. Sophie tugged at the door to the fourth room, but it was locked.

“Mikhail, keys!” she yelled.

Several seconds of silence. Then he came in and gave Sophie a key. She put it in the lock and opened the door.

And there he sat, in a corner of the darkened room, arms wrapped around himself.
A teenager…

But it wasn't Albert, it was a different boy.

The room started to sway in front of Sophie's eyes.

“No…” she whispered. Repeating the word to herself, she backed out, then all her energy drained away and she sank to the floor with her legs beneath her.

Mikhail looked at her, then went over to where she was curled up on the floor and picked her up as Jens emerged carrying the boy.

The four of them left the security lodge.

Tommy was sitting in the little office in the basement of his row house. He was full of doubt and hesitation. He drank some more gin. The doubts vanished. He called the worst of the worst: Ove Negerson.

“Shall we have lunch, Ove?”

“
Yep,
” Negerson replied.

Tommy went out into the garden and down behind the shed, where the sun never shone. The biological process of decay was slower there than anywhere else, and it smelled of damp, dead matter. Covered with old leaves, probably from last year. Photosynthesis-dead, impossible to break down, brown and ugly.

He dug into the half-frozen ground with the little garden trowel. Thirty centimeters took time and a lot of work. But eventually he reached the cookie tin. Tommy stuck his hands into the soil, digging and scraping. He pulled it out, then, holding it with one arm, put his fingernails under the lid, twisted it a little to the right, and eased it open. The lid came off. The notes were packed inside. Twenty thousand euros was a nice, sizable bundle. Tommy divided the bundle in two, then shoved them both into his pocket.

Ove Negerson was
tall, broad-shouldered, with good looks. He was smiling wide, his teeth white, his eyes warm, his heart as cold as an ancient glacier. He was walking toward Tommy between the tables of the restaurant.

“Mr. Jansson,” Ove said.

“Negerson,” Tommy whispered.

Ove pulled out a chair and sat down, then looked into Tommy's eyes and sat completely still. The look on his face suggested that he remembered even more about Tommy now that he saw him again.

“Tommy…” he whispered, shaking off his recollections and picking up the menu from the table. “Are we having starters?”

“Straight onto the main course,” Tommy said.

Ove turned a page of the menu.

“I think I'd like chicken today,” Ove muttered.

Ove's real surname was Ledin, after his mother. His father, Leroy Clarke, had been an American deserter from Vietnam. He arrived in Stockholm in 1971 and was welcomed by the antiwar wimps as a hero, but all he really wanted was to do drugs, fuck Swedish girls, and, later on, beat up Ove's mother, Kerstin. She had a breakdown and wasn't able to look after her little boy, who was placed with a foster family out in Fisksätra.

Leroy died from a heroin overdose in 1975 in a restroom at the Central Station, wearing a filthy patched-up jacket and guarded by his aggressive Alsatian, Hero, who refused to let the ambulance staff near the body. Hero was put down on the spot, Leroy was cremated, and the padded jacket ended up at the dump.

No one cared, least of all Ove. He grew up without a father or mother, without love or compassion, was bullied at school and given the nickname Negerson, son of a Negro. He got through it, and stayed strong and self-motivated.

Ove kept the name and made it his own. Sometimes he told it to carefully chosen individuals, as if to say: do what you like, say what you like, I can handle anything.

Tommy Jansson was one of those who had been given this confidence a few years ago. A confidence he really didn't want.

Ove looked up from the menu.

“You look beat, Tommy,” he said.

“Shut up,” Tommy muttered, keeping his eyes on the menu.

“I'm just so damn curious. This change. It's exciting….”

Tommy pretended to read the menu.

“What's exciting?” he mumbled.

“You…You were always a stickler for honesty, weren't you? A cop, a talkative, upright bastard.”

Tommy didn't answer, just kept staring at the menu, now to the point of absurdity.

“But there's something going on now, Tommy. Your old woman? I heard she was on the way out.”

Tommy didn't answer, and Ove pursed his lips thoughtfully.

“No, that's not it,” he went on. “Grief wouldn't make you like this. You'd cut yourself off, go a bit weird and unpleasant. Mind you, you're unpleasant now, all the same. But this is something different. And I'm guessing I'm about to find out what it is.”

“Really?”

“You contacted me, Tommy. And you've changed. If you're about to ask for a favor, I'm going to find out why. If you're after inside information…I'd just walk away empty-handed.”

“You seem to have it all worked out, Ove,” Tommy muttered.

“True.”

Tommy had forgotten what his meetings with Ove were like. He was always on the defensive.

An oversolicitous waiter came toward them. Ove played along and adopted the same exaggerated manner as he ordered the chicken. Tommy nodded that he'd have the same.

“And some fizzy water, my friend,” Ove said.

“Fizzy water, coming right up,” the waiter said.

Ove gave him the thumbs-up.

“I'll take a beer, something strong,” Tommy said.

“OK,” the waiter said, and disappeared.

Ove watched the waiter go, then turned back to Tommy again.

“Nice guy,” he said with his eyebrows raised.

“Are you queer, Negerson? Are you going to fuck him later, or what?” Tommy asked, trying to redress the balance slightly.

“No, I like girls. What about you, Tommy, are you a bit queer?”

Tommy didn't answer.

“No one would be cross with you if you came out of the closet, Mr. Jansson,” Ove whispered.

“Shut up.”

Ove chuckled.

“Tommy! What the fuck's happened? You can't even take being teased anymore. Are you really that out of sorts?”

The waiter put a glass of sparkling water in front of Ove and a cold, misted beer in front of Tommy.

“And drinking beer at lunchtime? Are you completely lost, or what, man? Homer Simpson drinks beer during the day. And now Tommy Jansson?”

Ove laughed loudly to himself. He took a lighthearted view of life—and death, too.

The first time Tommy ran into him he had been a suspect in a murder investigation seventeen years ago. The victim, a man named Johan Christensson, had been beaten to death in his living room. Johan had been a bully at Fisksätra school in the '80s, a classmate of a certain Ove Ledin, and the instigator of the name Negerson. Johan had been methodically abused, every bone in his face was broken, his ribs and collarbone were snapped. It had been one of the most bestial murders Tommy had seen in his entire career. And also one of the most fascinating. Tommy remembered the revulsion he felt during the investigation, but also the fascination. Tommy had been almost bewitched by the rage that had been unleashed. And then there was Ove Ledin's calm demeanor when he was questioned. That was something else altogether. Tommy knew that Ove was the murderer, and Ove knew that Tommy knew.

“
I want you to call me Negerson,
” Ove had said.

“
No, I can't do that,
” Tommy had replied. Ove insisted, and made Tommy realize that it was inevitable, that he should see it as a compromising mix of confidence, threat, gift, and understanding.

“What are you up to these days, Ove?”

“I'm working in a kindergarten.”

Tommy waited for him to drop the sarcasm. Ove noticed.

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“Yes,” Tommy said.

“Why?”

“Because I need to know.”

Ove shrugged.

“Nothing much.”

“What does that mean?”

Ove did his best to understand the question.

“Are you expecting me to answer that, Tommy?”

“Have you cleaned up your act?”

No response from Ove.

“Have you fallen in love?”

“What's that?” Ove asked.

Tommy didn't smile, and neither did Ove.

“Have you found God?” Tommy went on.

Ove gave the question some thought.

“No, God won't have anything to do with me.” His answer sounded honest, sad, and considered.

“So you're as much a bastard as always?”

Ove gave Tommy a disappointed look. A nod, a truthful stare. It burned, and Tommy looked away.

Two plates appeared in front of them. Ove switched personas and joked with the waiter again. He picked up his knife and fork and dug in, and ate with a good appetite. Tommy picked at his food, concentrating on the beer instead.

“Go on,” Ove said.

“I want you on standby.”

Ove raised an eyebrow and took another mouthful.

“On standby to help me get rid of a guy…And possibly a girl.”

Ove stopped chewing, looked at Tommy in surprise, and adopted a theatrical look of pain.

“Ow, ow, ow. The food's hot. I think I just got burned. Tommy Jansson, police chief…good guy.”

Tommy drank a few large gulps of beer and evaded Ove's gaze.

Ove leaned back, took the linen napkin from his lap, and wiped his mouth, or rather dabbed at it, keeping his eyes on Tommy the whole while. Then he picked up his cutlery again and went on eating.

“What do you say, Ove?”

No answer. Ove just kept eating calmly. The lunch went on. Tommy realized they weren't going to get any further than that. He waved to the waiter and made a signal to indicate that he wanted to pay.

They left the restaurant, Tommy a few steps ahead. Ove walked past him.

“Follow me.”

They walked along the street, then turned into a multistory parking garage and walked down the entrance ramp.

The roof was low and all the parking spaces were occupied. Ove walked over to an AMG model Mercedes. The car flashed and unlocked. Before Tommy had time to react, Ove grabbed his arm, pulled him toward him, and then pressed him up against one of the concrete pillars. Tommy felt hard pressure somewhere on his arm, and was paralyzed in half of his upper body. Ove changed his grip and took hold of Tommy's neck with his big left hand, holding him tight against the pillar. With his right hand Ove searched Tommy's clothes. He found a cell phone (switched off), keys, a wallet, an envelope, and
€
20,000 rolled up in two bundles in the pocket of Tommy's jeans.

Ove let go.

“OK,” Ove said. “I'm doing a risk assessment, looking for signs of any threat. The absence of any wires, the fact that your phone is switched off, and this”—Ove waved the euros—“means that I can carry on talking to you. I get it.”

“Get what?”

“Two hundred grand. I've told you before, haven't I?”

Ove gave back the cell phone, keys, and wallet. But not the envelope or the money. Tommy took his things and massaged his neck.

“Yes, you mentioned it once. Two hundred first, the rest later.”

“OK, Tommy. Name?”

“Two colleagues: Miles Ingmarsson, Antonia Miller. Their details are in the envelope.” Tommy pointed at Ove's hand.

Ove waved the money.

“This will only pay for one,” he said.

“There'll only be one in the end, probably,” Tommy said hesitantly.

“Probably?”

“I need to check things out first. I have to piece things together,” Tommy said.

“And when are you going to do that?”

Tommy shrugged.

“Once I've worked out a few details, I imagine you'll be able to do your thing.”

“This is a bad deal,” Ove said.

“Why?”

“Getting rid of a cop, that's dangerous territory. That makes it more expensive.”

“How much more expensive?”

Ove smiled like a salesman.

“Don't worry about that now, I'll send an invoice.”

Tommy tried to think. This wasn't going very well.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“ ‘Go ahead,' ” Ove mimicked in the high-pitched voice of a 1940s radio announcer.

“And stand by, Ove. No hasty action, OK?”

“Aye, aye, Captain!” Ove saluted, then made a face. An ugly face, invasive and disquieting. Then he laughed, loud and hard. Ove Ledin knew no limits. And perhaps that was what he was laughing at as he walked toward his car.

Then he turned back.

“Do you see him?”

“Who?” Tommy asked.