The Other Son (40 page)

The weather had turned vicious. It was blowing a storm, and the trees outside were bending under the wind as sleety rain lashed the windows. Lothar was standing looking out of the leaded window of his room.

Sophie was leaning against the doorpost. She didn't know if he was captivated by the storm or just letting his thoughts roam free.

She leaned heavily to one side, her body weight pressing harder on the doorjamb, and the old wood creaked.

Lothar turned around. He looked at Sophie for a few moments before saying, “Am I going to have to escape from here?”

“No, you won't have to escape from here, Lothar.”

“What are you going to do with me?” His voice was firm.

“I don't know,” she whispered.

“Have I been kidnapped again? By you this time?”

“No, you haven't.”

“So I can take my things and just walk out?”

“No, you can't,” she said.

“So I have been kidnapped?”

She wrapped her arms around herself. Sometimes it was cold, even though it was warm.

“I want to be with my dad,” he said, almost in a whisper.

She didn't want any more of this, couldn't do any more of this. She turned to go back downstairs.

“Albert said you think you're not allowed to make mistakes,” he said to her back.

Sophie stopped and turned around.

Lothar went on: “He said you think you're not allowed to make mistakes. So you always think you're doing the right thing instead.”

“I know I make mistakes,” she said in her own defense.

Lothar shook his head slowly.

“He didn't mean it as a criticism. He didn't know if you were alive. I'd told him about my mom, about them killing her. He was frightened the same thing had happened to you.”

“So?”

“That's why things are the way they are.”

“Because of that? Because I'm not allowed to make mistakes?”

He shrugged.

“Maybe.”

“Did Albert say that?”

Lothar nodded.

She felt like snorting. Felt like saying he didn't know what he was talking about…But she knew he did.

“What else did Albert say?”

“It doesn't matter.”

He was calm. Matter-of-fact.

“Why are you telling me this, Lothar?”

“Because my mom's been murdered. Because I'm being dragged around in a world that's got nothing to do with me. I have no voice. I met a dad I didn't know existed, and then I was dragged away from him just as abruptly.”

He paused.

“And the whole time, you're the one who decides the outcome, Sophie.”

“No, it's not like that…” she attempted.

“Yes, it is. My life is in your hands, but you wouldn't dare admit it.”

She looked away from him. Rain and snow lashed the window, and the wind made a sucking sound as it tried to find a way into the old house.

“What do you want me to do, Lothar?”

She felt awful.

“Rise above it.”

“ ‘Above it'?”

“Above all the wrong.”

Hector's son. The spitting image of his father just then, that much was obvious. The sudden ability to put something into words, to overturn your view of yourself, make you see something as it really was. Unafraid, courageous, wise. Boundless.

“How?” she whispered.

“Tell me what you're thinking, and what's going to happen to me. I have to know.”

“You know,” she said.

“No, how could I know if you don't tell me?”

Sophie wanted to flee. But she remained where she was. She swallowed twice, then said: “I want my son back, and I'll do anything to make that happen.”

“Anything?”

She nodded. Her jaw was clenched.

Then Sophie turned and went downstairs, into the kitchen. She went and stood by the sink, leaning on it heavily with her hands, breathing hard with her eyes closed.

Lothar came down behind her.

“Would you like a drink?” she asked with her back to him.

“A drink would be good,” he said, sitting down on a chair.

Mikhail hunched forward as he made his way across the square, fighting against the wind and rain.

The silver Jaguar was parked in front of the café.

He approached the car from behind, read the license plate, and without looking around pulled open the back door and squeezed into the backseat.

“Drive,” he said to Miles at the wheel. Antonia glanced back at him from the passenger seat. Mikhail indicated that she should look forward.

They drove away from the square and out of the town. Mikhail directed them onto a main road and they speeded up. Mikhail leaned back, pulled a walkie-talkie from his jacket pocket, and pressed the Talk button.

“How does it look?”

There was a crackle. Jens's voice.

“
I can't tell, can you?
”

Mikhail looked back. The weather was still bad, and visibility poor. He could barely make out Jens in the Passat, three cars behind.

“There's no one following us,” he said.

“
We'll take a few detours, then carry on.
”

Mikhail directed Miles to drive in circles, around and around, this way and that.

Half an hour later they headed up the drive to Jens's grandmother's house. Miles parked in front of the entrance and they got out.

Antonia looked around. In spite of the storm, it was beautiful. A chalk-white, half-timbered house with a thatched roof.

Mikhail had already opened the trunk and taken out the sports bag, and now he walked up to her and gestured that she and Miles should lean against the car. Mikhail hurried Miles along, pushing him toward the car, and Miles put both hands out to brace himself, wincing at the pain in his broken right hand.

“Stay like that,” Mikhail said, then frisked him. He did the same to Antonia.

“In my handbag,” she said. “My service pistol's in my handbag.”

Mikhail indicated that they should go in.

Sophie met them in the hall. They were wet and cold after being made to stand in the storm while they were searched.

“Hello, Sophie,” Antonia said, brushing the wet hair from her forehead.

Sophie didn't respond.

“Miles Ingmarsson.” He introduced himself.

“Follow me,” Sophie said, and walked into the kitchen.

Miles and Antonia sat down at the kitchen table. Sophie leaned back against the counter, radiating watchfulness.

Mikhail walked in behind them and put the bag on the table, then pulled out a chair, put it over by the wall, and sat down, legs wide apart.

“Thanks for letting us come,” Antonia said.

Sophie waited.

Antonia reached for the bag. She pulled out all the copied photographs and dropped them on the table, and gestured for Sophie to take a look.

Sophie saw herself in various situations in her house out in Stocksund. She saw Albert before the accident, standing in the kitchen behind her. She saw herself riding a bike, driving a car, working in the garden.

“There are hours and hours of audio recordings of you as well,” Antonia said.

“I know,” Sophie said.

Miles and Antonia were taken aback.

“How do you know?” Miles asked.

“We found the microphones,” she said.

“How? Why?”

“We scanned the house,” Sophie replied bitterly.

“Who installed them?” Antonia asked.

“You did,” Sophie said.

“No, not us,” she said.

“Yes, you, the police. Gunilla Strandberg had them installed.”

Antonia's mind was spinning.

“What for?” Her eyes were blazing.

Sophie recognized that eagerness from their first meeting, that thirst, that curiosity…that urgency. There was something compulsive about it, something Antonia Miller tried to hold in check.

Sophie snatched up a photograph of Albert.

“Tell me what you know, and why you're here,” she said.

Antonia looked at Miles, as if to ask:
Can you help me?

“This is your show, Antonia,” Miles said.

“Could I have some water?” she asked.

Sophie took a glass from the shelf, filled it from the tap, and gave it to Antonia, who drank half of it in one gulp.

She put the glass down on the table, then stared into it as if her story were floating around in it.

“I was the first detective to arrive at Trasten after the shootout and murders in August last year,” she began. “I started to investigate but couldn't make any progress. Not long ago I was pulled from the case, and Miles was brought in instead.”

She pointed at him quickly, then went on to tell them how Miles had been told not to do anything, and how she kept on looking, but without finding any answers, only more questions. How she eventually started looking outside the case itself, at the police officers who had been investigating Hector Guzman, Gunilla Strandberg, and her brother. Nothing there, either. And then how she suddenly got a lead from an unexpected source, a small-time Stockholm gangster named HÃ¥kan Zivkovic, who gave her some scant information but mentioned Lars Vinge as someone she ought to take a closer look at. And how that had led to the safe-deposit box and the bank, and the bag in front of them on the table. And then Tommy's attempted murder of Miles, and how she and Miles had gone to ground. And how they had managed to contact Sophie thanks to the napkin they found in her apartment.

“And now here we are,” Antonia concluded.

Sophie pointed at Lars Vinge's sports bag.

“Go ahead and ask,” she said quietly.