The Other Son

by Alexander Soderberg

  “Yes, I understand. And it was wrong of me to ask,” he said. “You made a decision that felt right at the time. And it was, in spite of everything. Because there was no alternative. I would have made the same decision, Sophie.”

  His words were some comfort to her.

  “I think Aron knows about Munich,” she said.

  “So he moved everyone, afraid for their security now that you’ve been to see the devil incarnate?”

  She let him continue.

  “And now he’s taken Albert as a bargaining tool,” Jens said. “As long as Aron has him, you can’t do anything. Does that sound plausible?”

  “It sounds plausible,” she said.

  “But why didn’t they take him at the same time as they must have taken the others, Angela and the children, before you got home?”

  She had no answer to that.

  “And why didn’t they just kill you?” Jens said.

  She thought about it. Perhaps he was right, perhaps he wasn’t. It didn’t matter anymore. Albert was all that mattered, getting him back as soon as possible.

  “The man who took Albert, the one who drugged you, did you get a good look at him?”

  “Yes…”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? Think about it, have you ever seen him before anywhere? With Hector, with Aron, in the background? Is he one of theirs?”

  She searched her memory. Trying to identify anyone next to Hector. No, she was sure she’d never seen the man before. But a different face came into her mind. A woman she had first met at Hector’s birthday celebrations. The woman stayed close to Hector. She was extremely beautiful, and Sophie had felt oddly jealous. Then they had met in the house in Marbella, where Adalberto was killed…when Hector was shot.

  “Sonya…?” she said out loud to herself.

  Sophie quickly dug out the number, got up, and paced around the room, waiting impatiently for her to pick up.

  A woman’s voice answered.

  “Sonya!”

  A brief silence.

  “Sophie?” Sonya replied in surprise.

  “Where’s Albert?”

  “We’re not to talk. Hang up and don’t call me again.”

  “Where’s Albert?”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “Wait, please, Sonya.”

  She waited, and Sophie breathed out.

  “Just explain what’s happened, and where Albert is. Tell me what you want me to do.”

  “No, I’m not going to explain, and we’re not to talk anymore.” Sonya paused before going on in a low voice: “But I swear to you that I don’t know where Albert is. I hope nothing’s happened to him. Don’t call again.”

  The call ended. Sophie stood there with her back to Jens, with the cell phone in her hand.

  “She didn’t know where he was?”

  “No, that’s what she said.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  She turned to him. “Yes.”

  “So who’s taken Albert?”

  “The Hankes,” she said.

  “Can you be certain?”

  “No.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “They’ll be in touch.”

  “Why would they be in touch?”

  “They want something. That’s why they’ve taken him.”

  She tried to sound convincing, not least to make herself believe it.

  “You’re not that naïve, Sophie,” he said, then went on: “This is Ralph Hanke we’re talking about. If he’s taken Albert, he’s not going to make you an offer and then hand Albert back.”

  She looked at him.

  “Ralph Hanke takes,” Jens continued. “That’s his skill. He knows how people who haven’t got anything work. It’s all about pressing people down and shaping them, nothing else….Look at the murders. Eduardo—why him? Daphne and Thierry? A brother, a married couple. None of them belong to Hector’s inner circle. Hanke just wants to show he can do whatever he wants. It’s a form of language, Sophie. Otherwise they’d have killed you in Munich….They want something by taking Albert.”

  “They want Hector,” she said.

  “And if you give him Hector? Which I doubt that you could actually do. What happens then?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Is he going to give Albert back? No, Ralph Hanke doesn’t give anything back.”

  It was blunt, and chilling.

  “We have to go and get him,” she said.

  Jens nodded.

  “We do,” he said.

  “Just you and me?” she asked.

  “It’ll be difficult,” Jens said.

  “Have you got anyone else who can help us?”

  “Not off the top of my head. You?”

  Sophie thought. Her eyes grew bigger.

  “Yes, I think so,” she said.

  He woke up in the same position he had fallen asleep in. On his back, on top of the bedspread. No Sanna beside him. Night outside the window.

  Miles searched through the apartment. She hadn’t come home.

  His cell phone was on the kitchen table. Five missed calls, all from Sanna. Three messages in his voicemail.

  He called her, but her phone was switched off.

  Miles checked the messages.

  “Hi, it’s me, can you come and get me at the club? I’ll wait here.”

  She was speaking in a tone of forced calm.

  The next message followed.

  “They’re closing soon, the place will soon be locked up. I can’t walk out of here on my own. Please, call me.”

  Miles could hear an unmistakable anxiety in her voice.

  Then another message, the call made by mistake. A scraping sound as she walked, her voice, muffled by the fabric of her pocket. The words were unintelligible, but the pleading tone was clear enough. He heard a male voice, complaining, loud, high-pitched, agitated, wounded, intense….

  The line went dead.

  The taxi stopped outside Sophie and Albert’s apartment on Eriksbergsgatan.

  The elevator up.

  Sophie unlocked the door and walked through the apartment to the guest bedroom. There, in a closet, up on a shelf behind a box of winter gloves—a wooden casket. She took it down, opened the lid. An old napkin, white and crumpled. There was a phone number written on it in firm handwriting, written by a man who had promised to return a favor to her.

  She dialed the international code for Germany, then the number on the napkin.

  A male voice answered with a German hallo? after three rings.

  “Klaus?” she asked.

  “Who wants to know?” the voice said in German.

  “An old friend,” she said quietly in English.

  “Klaus isn’t here anymore,” the man said in English.

  “Do you know where I can find him?”

  “He’s passed away.” The voice was subdued. “Who am I talking to?” he asked again.

  “What happened?”

  “The cancer got him in the end.”

  Sophie felt a wave of grief. She could see the man in front of her, Klaus Köhler. Wiry, dangerous, different…and sensitive. He was one big paradox. He’d arrived in Stockholm together with the big Russian, Mikhail Asmarov, and they had both worked for Ralph Hanke. They were planning to put Hector under pressure. It didn’t go as planned.

  They kidnapped Hector, drove him out into the woods, put a gun to his head, and made demands. Aron, Sophie, and Jens followed. Aron shot Klaus in the stomach. Hector and Aron wanted to leave him to die there, bleed out in the forest. But Sophie didn’t listen to them. She stopped the bleeding temporarily, demanded that they drive Klaus to the hospital. They did it reluctantly.

  She would meet Klaus Köhler two more times. In the chaos that followed, everything became increasingly blurred. Enemies and friends became friends and enemies. Mikhail Asmarov came with Klaus to her and Jens’s hideout. Klaus was hurt again. This time a bulle
t in his shoulder. She helped him again. The third time it was Klaus’s turn to help her, and indirectly Hector and Aaron, when he and Mikhail stepped into Trasten at the right moment and fired their weapons against the Russians who were about to kill them all.

  Klaus made her the promise there and then.

  You’ve saved my life twice, Klaus had said, then wrote his number on one of the restaurant’s napkins before walking away.

  “When?” Sophie asked the man on the phone.

  “Two months ago.”

  “Had he been ill for long?”

  “Yes. But it was diagnosed too late.”

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “My name’s Rüdiger. I lived with Klaus.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. It sounded hollow.

  A pause.

  “Is that a Scandinavian accent I hear?” he asked.

  “Yes…”

  “Then I think I know who you are.”

  “Who am I?” she asked.

  “You’re the woman who helped him, the nurse. Aren’t you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Thank you, Sophie,” he said, as if they knew each other.

  Several seconds passed before he went on. “What did you want to talk to Klaus about?”

  “I wanted to ask for help,” she said quietly.

  “What with?”

  “It doesn’t matter now.

  A pregnant pause.

  “Goodbye,” Rüdiger said, and hung up.

  Miles slipped into the strip club. There were just a couple of poor, lonely jerks waiting for the morning show.

  He headed straight for the curtain that was off-limits to people like him.

  A heavily made-up woman with fiery red hair, thigh-high boots, a leather corset, and a bullwhip in her hand was walking toward him along the corridor on her high heels.

  “Do you know where I can find Sanna?” he asked.

  “You’re not allowed back here.” She had a strong Finnish accent.

  “Do you know where I can find Sanna?” he asked again, frustrated.

  “Why?”

  “I need to get ahold of her.”

  The woman looked at him carefully. “You’re a regular here?”

  He nodded again.

  The leather mistress brightened up.

  “Well, sure! We always give each other’s addresses to customers who sit and stare at us all day long. All we ever dream of is that one of you will one day discover us and get in touch.”

  The Finnish accent made her sarcasm even more biting.

  “I actually know her. I want to talk to her….We’re living together.”

  She held his gaze. He looked away, dug out his wallet, and showed her his police ID.

  “That doesn’t make it any better,” she said.

  Miles realized it was pointless and put his ID away.

  “If you see her, tell her Miles is looking for her.”

  He walked away.

  The Finnish woman called after him. “How well do you know her?”

  Miles stopped and turned around. “What?”

  “How well do you know Sanna?”

  Miles thought. “Fairly well.”

  She waited for more. “That doesn’t mean anything to me. Tell me something about her.”

  “Tell you something about her?”

  She knew he’d heard her, and said nothing.

  “She’s a good cook,” he said, but could hear how hollow that sounded.

  The woman confirmed as much with an unimpressed stare.

  “She likes comedies,” he mumbled. “She lights candles, buys flowers when she can. When she’s by herself and in a good mood she sings old Swedish pop songs.”

  Miles searched his memory and more images appeared.

  “She’s allergic to nickel. She hits me hard on my upper arm when she laughs, she’s very good at French, good pronunciation….”

  He shrugged, thinking it all sounded silly.

  The Finnish woman stood there motionless; there was something bitter about her, as if she were giving him a last chance. Miles scratched his head.

  “She grew up with her mom and dad in Malmberget. They were Communists,” he said.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, then went on.

  “Sanna thinks they loved her but their political convictions meant they sometimes neglected her….”

  “Sanna’s in Södermalm Hospital,” the leather-clad woman interrupted.

  Miles looked up. “Sorry?”

  She knew he had heard.

  “Her ex was here yesterday after work. He beat the shit out of her.”

  She walked off. Miles tried to make sense of what the woman had told him.

  “Who? What’s his name, the ex?” he managed to say.

  The Finnish woman stopped, turned around, but seemed to hesitate.

  “Roger Lindgren,” she said.

  She stood there for a while with one hand on her hip.

  “You’re such fucking pathetic little cunts, all of you.”

  She said this with genuine disgust, aimed at the entire male gender. He wanted to say he wasn’t one of them. But of course he was.

  Her stiletto heels clicked hard on the floor as she stalked off and disappeared behind the curtain to the strip club. A smattering of thin applause greeted her as she walked onstage and cracked her bullwhip in the air. Synth drums from 1986, Samantha Fox singing “Touch Me.”

  —

  She lay there, unconscious and badly beaten. Her jaw was broken, the lower half of her face hidden by bandages, her eyes bruised and swollen beyond recognition, traces of dried blood.

  Part of him wanted to walk away; another part wanted to stay, stay and keep watch.

  Staying with her won.

  He fetched a chair, pulled it to the side of the bed, and never took his eyes off her. He didn’t cry. Everything was dry and revolting.

  Hospital apparatuses hummed in the room. Miles wanted to lean forward and whisper something in her ear, tell her he was there now, that he’d never give up. But he didn’t. Instead he just sat there staring at her, as if he were being forced to. As if some stronger power were holding him there. Look at this, look, and see how it feels, Miles Ingmarsson.

  The Finnish woman at the strip club was right. He was a little cunt.

  Miles had always wanted to believe that his nonchalant attitude toward life and the people around him gave him a sort of neutral alibi for everything and everyone: an in-between person, neither good nor bad, neither kind nor mean. Just drifting past everything without any responsibility. As if he had convinced himself that the reality he lived in was a sort of mixture of extremes. And that if he balanced precisely on the knife’s edge, he would be immune to most things. But Miles Ingmarsson wasn’t immune to anything. Not to mortal dread: the car crash had proved that. Not to love: Sanna had proved that. Not to fear: the previous evening had proved that.

  And not to hatred, as the person who had done this had proved.

  Mikhail Asmarov hurried down the escalator in the underground. His big body moved quickly; people scattered to make way for him.

  There were four men after him, and there were probably more on the way. He had drowned their boss in the bath, in his lover’s home. It was problematic, half-political. He had been given the job by another freelancer who was close to the police. That was how the cops commissioned murders. So now he had a mafia group after him, and soon the police as well. The lover had talked. Mikhail regretted giving in to an attack of mercy. He should have drowned her, too.

  The underground train was standing at the platform. Was he going to make it? He heard the little signal and the driver’s voice inside the train. Mikhail took a huge leap into the train car just before the doors closed.

  He saw his pursuers reach the bottom of the escalator as the train began to move. Panting, he made his way back through the car to an empty seat. He sat down breathlessly. Now every fucker in Moscow knew he was on this train.

&n
bsp; The train rattled through the tunnel, and glitches in the electricity supply meant the lights in the car kept flickering. Mikhail could feel his pistol against his ribs.

  A little girl was playing a violin at one end of the car. It sounded good; she knew what she was doing. Mikhail looked around: children, adults, old people. There’d be a bloodbath if he stayed where he was.

  The train ground to a halt at the next station. Mikhail scanned the sea of people going past but had no chance of knowing if anyone was waiting for him.

  The doors opened and he dived into the people on the platform, cruising around the big, square marble pillars as he hurried toward the escalator.

  On the other side, on the escalator taking people down to the platform, two men had just got on and were heading toward him. Mikhail thought he recognized one of them. He put his hand inside his jacket.

  The man caught sight of him when they were almost level. The moment of recognition was unmistakable. Mikhail pulled his pistol from its holster, shot and hit the man in the side of the head, then ducked down for cover.

  People started screaming and trying to get away in panic on the escalators. He heard pistol shots firing blindly behind him. Mikhail crouched down, then glanced up; he was almost at the top of the escalator. At that moment his cell phone rang, caller unknown, and he answered with a grunt.

  “Yes?”

  “Mikhail?”

  “Yes?”

  The top of the escalator was close now.

  “Rüdiger here.”

  “Hang on, Rüdiger.”

  Mikhail stood up and ran up the last few steps and through the hall. He reached one of the exits and took it, hurried along a sidewalk until he found a door that was open, ran through a corridor, and found himself in a backyard. High-rise apartments all around him, sky up above. Mikhail stopped, held his phone up, and gasped: “Yes?”

  “It’s Rüdiger.”

  “Yes, so you said.”

  “Are you busy?”

  “What do you want?”

  “The nurse called.”

  “Who?” Mikhail was still out of breath.

  “Hector Guzman’s woman, Sophie…Sweden.”

  Mikhail added Rüdiger’s words together, and after the equals sign a woman’s face appeared in his mind. She was beautiful, kind, and good, he remembered. And completely wrecked after the shootout at Trasten.