The Other Son (31 page)

“What are
you
doing here, Tommy?”

They stared at each other for a moment.

“What did you find in Vinge's safe-deposit box?” he asked calmly.

“Nothing,” Miles lied.

Tommy nodded, pretending to accept the lie.

“So what the fuck is this?” Tommy gestured round the room. “Why did you kill this poor bastard?”

Miles shrugged.

Ove mimicked the shrug, exaggeratedly and theatrically.

“You can do better than that, Miles,” Tommy said.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters!”

“I had to,” Miles said.

Ove put his hand over his mouth and opened his eyes wide.

Tommy glanced at Ove in irritation, then turned back to Miles again.

“Had to?”

“There was a development.”

“What?”

“A development. A personal development. I found love,” Miles muttered.

Tommy looked disgusted. Behind him, Ove was making a pantomime gesture of surprise.

“And I almost died in a car crash,” Miles went on. “I had some sort of revelation.”

Ove was stuck in pantomime mode now, protecting his face in a car crash, then looking terrified, and finally acting like Jesus on the cross.

“Then he showed up and ruined everything.” Miles pointed at Lindgren's body with his left thumb.

Ove turned into a sad clown, clasping both hands to his heart.

Tommy was irritably aware of the performance taking place out of the corner of his eye.

“Can you just stop that, Ove!” he yelled.

Ove froze like a cartoon character and looked exaggeratedly sad; the corners of his mouth hung down, his shoulders drooped, and he walked with heavy steps toward Lindgren's body. Then he relaxed and straightened up. In the end he was standing perfectly normally beside the body.

“Now I'm myself again, Tommy!” Ove smiled broadly, sat down next to the body, and pointed up at Miles.

“The same thing goes for your colleague. He's himself again, that's what he's trying to say,” Ove went on.

Tommy looked Miles Ingmarsson up and down.

“ ‘Himself'? So what does that mean, then?”

No answer.

“Are you? Yourself again?” Tommy asked. “Is this Miles Ingmarsson?” He pointed to the room once more. “Well?”

“Maybe,” Miles whispered.

“We're all being nice and honest today, I like it!” Ove said.

Tommy scratched his stubble.

“You've committed murder here. Would that be a fair assessment, Miles?” Tommy asked.

Miles shrugged. “Maybe,” he said once more.

“
Maybe?
” Tommy let out a crooked laugh. “This is murder!”

Ove found the amphetamine and tasted it with his finger, then turned to Tommy.

“What the fuck are you up to, Tommy?”

“What am I up to? If we can get Ingmarsson for this murder, then that ought to be enough. That's what I'm up to,” Tommy said.

Ove snorted, then stood up with the bag of amphetamine in his hand.

“He'll sit in prison singing his heart out until someone listens to him. He's a cop. What sort of fucking stupid idea is that, Jansson?”

“I'm just trying to find different solutions,” Tommy said weakly.

“ ‘Different solutions'?” Ove mimicked the words like a child. “You're not looking for different solutions, you're chickening out, you haven't got the balls to go through with what we agreed. There are no other solutions, Cap'n Jansson!”

Ove took a few steps toward Tommy.

“What the hell do you know about what I'm thinking…?” Tommy began.

Ove slapped him hard across the face. It made a loud noise.

Tommy was bewildered.

Miles tried to see an opportunity to run, out of the room, out of the building. But they were standing in the way. The apartment was on the third floor, so he couldn't jump out the window. Unless that was what he ought to do? Headfirst. Maybe that would be better than what was to come?

“Here, Tommy,” Ove said softly. “Have some of this.”

He held up the bag of drugs.

“What is it?”

“Speed. Looks like absolute dynamite. It'll help with your cowardice.”

Tommy lost his cool.

“And you think it's wrong drinking beer at lunchtime!”

“Ooh, that one hit home,” Ove said.

He was smiling again now, the change in mood was striking. He offered the bag to Tommy.

“What? You think I'd take drugs?” Tommy said, affronted.

“Yes, just have a little bit and stop being such a girl.”

Ove dug out a little pile with his forefinger and balanced it in front of Tommy.

“You first,” Tommy said in a hostile voice.

Ove snorted it up his nose, pulled out some more, and held his finger up to Tommy.

Tommy inhaled and made a face, then rubbed his nose hard.

“Tastes like medicine,” he said.

“You really do have a way with words, Tommy. Now, let's get dear old Miles out of here.”

Tommy was high,
clinging to the wheel with both hands as he stared ahead, wide-eyed. Ove was grooving to the music on the radio, and Miles was sitting in the backseat with cuffs on. They drove for a good half hour, away from the city, away from civilization. Then the car suddenly stopped. Ove pulled Miles out; they were in a dark, deserted place. He led Miles down toward a lake.

Cold, black water spread out in front of him into eternity, a few thin ice floes on its surface.

“You know none of this really has any purpose,” Ove said, pointing out into the darkness.

“What?” Miles asked.

“It's all unnecessary, completely devoid of meaning.”

Miles looked out across the threatening water.

“Lie down now,” Ove said.

The water is death.

“I don't want to,” Miles said. He heard his own voice. He sounded like a child, a frightened child who didn't want to die.

“It's OK.” Ove's voice was very close to him.

“I don't want to,” Miles replied once more.

Warmth down one leg, he'd wet himself.

“Tommy?” Miles cried.

A hard kick to his knee, and Miles's leg buckled. Then a heavy shove that got him off balance, followed by a punch to the head. Miles collapsed. Ove grabbed his arms and dragged him to the shore. Miles saw the sky up above, the stars, galaxies.

Ove turned him over onto his stomach, Miles stared down into the water. Ove's steady hand on his head pressed him below the surface.

The water was ice cold. Miles kicked, to no avail. He tried to move his whole body in an effort to slip out of Ove's firm grasp.

Ove called Tommy, somewhere above the surface, and Miles felt Tommy grab his legs and sit on them. He didn't stand a chance, there was no escape as the air in his lungs ran out. His ears were buzzing, his throat burned, he felt pressure building behind his eyes, his skin felt like it was boiling. His heart beat shallowly and quickly.

Then the oxygen ran out, and pain twisted through his body.

He was going to die now, and he wasn't at all ready.

But just as Miles realized that his life was coming to an end, something else appeared. Something else, between the thin veil of life and the great, dark eternity. Something that didn't exist, yet did exist. Without dimensions, without form or structure, but definitely real. A voice that wasn't speaking, a presence, invisible hands holding him, calming him.

Whatever it was, it presented itself to Miles as an alternative. The alternative that he had never made use of. The alternative that he had always shunned and avoided, that he had smirked at as something for the weak, the lonely, the slightly crazy. The alternative that wasn't real….

Tommy undid the cuffs and took them back.

Miles felt himself drifting slightly outside himself as Ove let go of his hair and he was pushed out into the water, gently sinking.

Jens was putting gas in the car. Sophie and Lothar were stretching their legs. The filling station shone brightly in the evening gloom. Cars rushed past on the motorway.

Lothar had his arms around himself as he stood there shivering.

“Are you cold?” Sophie asked.

He didn't answer immediately, then muttered
yes
. Sophie put one arm around him. At first the physical contact made him stiffen up. Then he relaxed. Before long he started to cry. She could feel his body shake, and held him tight as he sobbed into her shoulder.

She met Jens's gaze.

Deep inside her, responsibility, sympathy, and a reflex to look after people existed as fixed elements of her personality. They had always been there, for better or worse. Now she had to suppress them, shut them away, and persuade herself that the exact opposite was the right choice….
Keep your distance, because you're going to betray this boy…horribly.

Sophie let go of him.

Lothar walked away to be alone.

Her phone rang. Number withheld.

“Yes?” she said.

Roland Gentz's voice was very clear.

“
Have you paid us a visit?
”

“Where's Albert?” she said.

“
Albert's with us.
”

“Where's Albert?” she repeated.

“
Do you know who you took with you from here, Sophie?
”

She turned around. Lothar was sitting at a picnic table between the filling station and the motorway.

“Yes,” she replied.

“
We'll organize an exchange.
”

“I want that to happen as soon as possible,” she said. She kept her voice steady, didn't want to sound too desperate.

“
Get in touch with Aron,
” Roland interrupted. “
Tell him you've got Hector's son, and say you want to hand him over to them. Give us Hector. He's the only one we want. If you can do that, you'll get Albert back.
”

“Were you there?”

“
Where?
”

“At the farm. Was Albert there when we were there?”

“
No.
”

The line went dead.

She let the phone sit there in her hand. Cars raced by in both directions on the motorway.

Jens started the car.

Mikhail came out of the gas station.

Lothar got up from the bench and walked back.

Sophie watched him. Grief-stricken and unaware of almost everything, he walked toward the car in a crouch. He didn't belong to anyone. His whole bearing radiated precisely that—abandonment.

Antonia and Ulf were in bed. They had left Ulf's apartment after she told him what had happened, and had taken refuge just two floors above: one of Ulf's neighbors was away and had asked him to water the plants and feed the hamster for a few weeks. The hamster was dead, but the plants were still alive.

They were lying on two mattresses on the floor, under the covers. Ulf was focused but tense, she could feel it. She spooned behind him.

“I'm frightened,” she said.

“I'll help you,” he said.

“Are you frightened?”

He thought about it.

“No, I don't think so,” he said. His Dalarna accent was pronounced.

“How are you feeling, then?”

“Surprised…and angry,” he replied.

She couldn't really huddle up any closer, but she tried.

In spite of the peculiar décor of the apartment, and the stupid pictures of crying clowns, dolphins leaping around at sunset, and a still life of a bowl of fruit, Antonia felt warm and safe there, intact.

“What are we going to do afterward?” she asked.

“Afterward?”

“When we're done with this. When we've done the right thing. When we've caught Tommy, when we're free?”

“Then we're going to move back down to my apartment again.”

“Really, though?” she said.

Ulf gave the question almost half a minute.

“Then I'll take you up to the cabin. We'll go hunting in the forest. We'll make food and have sex in different places….Would you like that?”

“Yes, I'd like that a lot,” Antonia replied.

Miles was floating under the water. His consciousness was burning like a small flame. Life was a tenacious thing.

He bumped against something. Something vertical, a chain. He came to a halt in his weightless state.

The flame inside him got some oxygen, grew a little stronger, enough for the blood in his arms to start moving. And with that minute pulse of energy he gave himself a barely perceptible push to move up along the chain.

He made slow progress as he hung there in the darkness. Then another push…The effort was an additional drain on a life that was close to over.

At last he broke the surface as his arms hung limply around the chain. A white plastic buoy attached to the end was bobbing beside him.

But he wasn't getting any oxygen, even though he was surrounded by fresh, cool, winter-evening air. Nothing, and he could taste blood in his mouth, an incredible pain radiating throughout his whole body, and a dull throbbing in his ears.

Then all his organs turned inside out and he vomited water. Several liters of brackish, polluted Baltic Sea water gushed out of him in a steady stream.

Then he was empty, wrung out like an old bath sponge, dry as a dead twig.

But suddenly he could breathe air into his lungs. The pain was still there, worse than when death had held him in its clutches. But gradually life came back to Miles Ingmarsson. He waited until he heard what must have been Tommy Jansson's car start up and drive away. Then he swam toward land.

Miles was utterly drenched as he stood there with the lake behind him, but with solid ground under his feet and air in his lungs. He was alive.

Miles began to swear. He swore as loudly and violently as he could, right into the black night. He swore and cursed everything that was fucked up on the planet he had been left to live on. No one but the animals, nature, and the punishing God listened to him. His screams died away like a drawn-out echo.

Then he walked off into the darkness.