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.
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, ca
n 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?”
The Other Son Page 10