—
“Is what’s happened to Albert your fault?” he asked after a few dozen kilometers.
Something lurched inside her.
“No,” she said abruptly.
But her curt reply didn’t help. His question hung there inside her for a long time.
Your fault…
“Albert got sick when he was four,” she said without explanation.
He looked at her.
“What?”
She didn’t repeat herself.
“We were out in the archipelago, Albert and I, on an island, we were cut off. We were renting a place out there. No telephone, no neighbors, just a cottage on a small island. David had gone into the city; he’d taken the boat, and was going to be coming back the day after next. It was toward the end of the summer. That evening Albert had an allergic reaction. He swelled up and started to have trouble breathing.”
The memory was vivid. She went on: “He got worse, started to fade. I shocked him with cold water, gave him mouth-to-mouth, shouted at him, held him in my arms out there in the darkness, blowing air into his lungs, but nothing helped. The life was just slowly draining out of him, and there was nothing I could do. He was so small and helpless. I held him tight, kept him warm, didn’t want him to be freezing when he died. Because I was sure he was going to die.”
The world rushed past outside.
“So I prayed,” she said. “For the first and last time in my life, I prayed, for real. From the depths of somewhere inside me, I prayed for help. I swore I would devote the whole of my life to God if He helped my child. That’s how I felt at the time, and I understood the consequences of my promise.”
Sophie put one hand over her eyes, then removed it and said, “And the swelling disappeared. The allergy faded. Albert got some color back in his face, his breathing stabilized, and he slept soundly in my arms.”
Thinking about it brought images into her mind.
“But I didn’t keep my promise. I forgot it, I carried on living my life just as I had before, self-absorbed in pointless worrying and all the stupid little problems of daily life. Then I got that call, last summer, telling me that Albert had been run over. And I prayed, not in the same way, but I prayed for help again, I demanded it. And it came again, from somewhere. Even though I hadn’t kept my promise. I won’t get that kind of help again.”
“Do you believe that?” he asked, glancing at her.
“Yes, I do,” she replied quietly.
“Completely?”
She waited before replying, “No, but part of me does.”
“The part that wants you to feel guilty?”
Now she looked at him. He was almost smiling.
—
Munich by night. They saw the city lit up in the distance as they approached from the northwest. Their hotel was outside the city center, a short distance from the motorway, where no one lived and nothing happened.
Sophie and Jens walked side by side toward the long wooden reception desk, weekend bags in their hands, a couple just passing through.
Jens checked in as Sophie waited, looking around. A piano bar. The pianist, a happy man with a big nose, was playing “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?,” a little slower than the original, a little calmer, in a more easily digested two-four time.
Some restaurants, another bar in the distance. Quite a few people around. Men and women with plastic badges around their necks. There was probably a conference venue nearby, hotels close to those tended to look like this one. And the guests tended to look like these.
Some distance away, in one of the small groups of sofas, she saw him, Mikhail Asmarov. He was sitting with his back to her: large, thickset, calm, motionless.
Sophie felt happy to see him again. But Mikhail Asmarov shouldn’t conjure up feelings of happiness. He was a remorseless killer, he was lethal, he was the opposite of everything she believed in. But a smile flitted across her lips regardless, she felt it. Possibly just relief at having him on her side now, at having someone on her side.
Jens came up behind her and put his hand gently on her arm.
“Come on,” he said quietly.
They walked toward the elevators. And as if he had eyes in the back of his head, Mikhail stood up and walked toward them without looking at them or meeting their gaze. He passed a key card to Jens, who slipped it unobtrusively into his pocket.
There was a jacket tossed across the bed as they stepped into Mikhail’s room.
“Shall we talk?” Mikhail’s voice was gruff, even when he spoke quietly.
Mikhail walked farther into the room, pulled out a chair from the desk, and gestured to Sophie to take the armchair. Jens found a place by the windowsill and leaned against it.
Mikhail sat with his arms on his knees, his legs wide apart, testosterone leaking out of him.
“I know the Hankes are in hiding,” he said. “Ralph and his son, Christian, are rarely together, for reasons of security.”
“Do you know anyone close to them?” Jens asked.
“Perhaps.”
“Can you ask?”
“No.”
Mikhail looked at Sophie, as if he was trying to remember her better.
“Sophie,” he grunted.
She didn’t answer.
He scratched his neck with his thumb. “Has life been unfair to you?”
The question could have been sarcastic. But this was Mikhail asking. There was no possible subtext. She thought about his words, twisting and turning them a few times, but only came to one answer.
“Yes,” she said. “Life has been unfair to me.”
His eyes drilled through her. She got the impression that the question had been asked to test her. To test her honesty, perhaps, her attitude, her position. Who was she in all this, a self-pitying mother?
“Have you changed?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“It looks like it.”
“Probably, then,” she said.
For a moment his eyes looked friendly, as if he understood her, then he looked away and became his usual brusque self again. Mikhail stood up, picked up the jacket, and pulled out a folded map from the inside pocket. He unfolded it on the bed.
The map showed Munich and the surrounding area, with black marks in various places, circled addresses, arrows at the corners of the map pointing outward. He put his finger in the middle of the map, central Munich.
“These are the properties I remember from back when I worked for Ralph Hanke. A few are offices, some are residential, some are safe houses, others just properties they own for no apparent reason; a lot of them are empty.”
Sophie pointed to the arrows leading away from the city.
“What do these mean?”
“Three estates. Summer houses, hunting lodges, castles…I don’t know what they’re called.” Mikhail coughed hard enough to raise his blood pressure. “But they’re a good size,” he went on. “They’re secluded and are surrounded by a lot of land.”
He looked at Jens and Sophie.
“But that’s just here,” he continued. “He’s got property all around the world.”
“So this is where we start,” Jens said.
“OK,” Mikhail said, trying to switch his head to planning mode. It looked like it was painful. He rubbed above one eye with his forefinger.
“Do you have weapons?” he went on.
“No.”
“Men?”
A shake of the head.
Mikhail raised one eyebrow.
“You and me against the Hankes, without weapons?” he asked.
Jens looked at Sophie, then back at Mikhail.
“Yes,” he said.
—
Sophie and Jens dropped their bags in their rooms, then went down to the lobby, where they were met by an easy-listening hell as the pianist ran through “Strangers in the Night.” He’d started singing as well, which really wasn’t a good move.
They ordered food from the bar menu.
<
br /> “Thank you, Jens,” she said as they ate. “Thanks for helping me.”
He kept eating and didn’t reply.
“But do we have any other choice?” she asked.
He looked at her quizzically.
“Is there any other way we can do this?” Sophie asked.
Jens shook his head. “No.”
The doorbell rang. Far too late for a weeknight. Antonia pulled her robe around her, went out into the hall, and opened the door. She wasn’t expecting to find Miles Ingmarsson standing there.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hello,” he said.
Silence.
“Do you have a minute?”
“What for?”
“A chat.”
“A chat about what?”
“Are you going to let me in, or what?”
—
She made tea. Miles sat at the kitchen table, looking out through the dark window.
“Is this south-facing?” he asked.
Antonia put loose tea in a strainer. She wasn’t expecting small talk.
“Yes, south-facing,” she said.
“Must get hot when the sun’s on it.”
Antonia turned toward Miles. She could either be accommodating or dismissive. She’d rather have been dismissive and told him to stop talking shit, but for some reason she didn’t. Instead she softened up and relaxed.
“Yes, it gets really hot in here, especially during the summer.”
They looked at each other. He was smiling slightly, perhaps grateful that they were now, after a bit of meaningless chat, more on the same level.
Antonia put two cups and the teapot on the table. She sat down opposite him.
“OK, this is my kitchen, and you’re sitting in it, Miles Ingmarsson, in the middle of the night.”
“It’s not the middle of the night.”
She wasn’t going to argue with that. Miles weighed his words.
“I need your help,” he said.
“How?”
“I need to find someone.”
“Who?”
“The ex-boyfriend of a girl I know.”
“Why?”
“That doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Yes, it does.”
Miles hesitated.
“Assault,” he said.
“Of her, the girl you know?”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
Antonia could see desire, honesty, commitment. Qualities she hadn’t thought he possessed.
“I presume you’ve tried to find him yourself?”
“Mm.”
“And?”
He shrugged. “I have a name, but I haven’t managed to get any further than that.”
“So you’ve come round to see me, a homicide detective, in the middle of the night? Why?”
“It’s not the middle of the night,” he repeated in a quiet voice, pursed his lips, then scanned the kitchen without really looking.
“It has to be you,” Miles went on.
“Why?”
“Because you’re a police officer.”
She snorted.
“What are you, then?”
He evaded her searching look.
“I’m not the same. You said so yourself.”
Antonia almost got the feeling he really meant what he said.
“And when I find him?” she asked.
“You give him to me.”
Worry lines on her brow. Ingmarsson’s expression remained blank.
“And what are you going to do to him?”
“Don’t worry about that.” She was on the point of going on when he shook his head and met her gaze.
“Don’t worry about that,” he repeated, more firmly this time.
She tried to read between the lines. Miles Ingmarsson was serious about this. He was on his way toward something, and couldn’t be stopped.
“You wouldn’t come here empty-handed, would you?” she asked.
“Of course not.”
“So?”
“If you help me, I help you,” he said.
“Let’s hear it.”
“You’re desperate for answers about Trasten,” he said.
“What can you give me?”
“What do you need?” he asked.
A weight lifted from Antonia Miller’s chest. She tried to hide how happy she felt.
“What have you got?”
He was just as cool in his reply.
“Nothing. No more than what you had when I took over.”
She was almost taken aback.
“Anything?”
“Tommy Jansson made it very clear that I wasn’t to investigate.”
“What?”
“Our colleagues clearly messed up, Gunilla Strandberg and her group. Tommy doesn’t want to sully their memory.”
“Did he say that?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you believe that?”
He shrugged.
“Does it matter?”
She snorted in surprise.
“Does it matter?!”
Miles didn’t answer.
Antonia tried to understand the man in front of her. His passivity. She couldn’t. She poured the tea.
“I’m not just interested in Trasten, Hector Guzman, and so on,” she said.
“What else are you interested in, then?”
“Our colleagues. The ones in charge of the case. The ones who died. The ones Tommy says he wants to protect.”
“Why?”
“Never mind the whys.”
“What do you want?” Miles asked.
“Lars Vinge. The truth.”
“Yes, so you said.”
“I’m saying it again.”
“Suicide,” Miles said.
She shrugged.
“Start there anyway,” she said.
“Give me a reason.”
“A little bird whispered that name in my ear.”
“What else did the little bird say?”
“That he was on the side of the Indians.”
“Where’s the little bird now?”
“Dead.”
“How?”
She shrugged again.
“Little birds die.”
Miles raised an eyebrow, waiting for more. But Antonia didn’t go on. Instead she drank her tea, then got up and walked out of the kitchen.
She came back and sat down again.
“The woman, the one who was assaulted, does she mean a lot to you?”
He averted his gaze, mumbling.
Antonia wasn’t so sure, she had trust issues engraved deep in her personality. But on the other hand, she was also a risk taker.
So she took a chance. Antonia put a small key on the kitchen table and pushed it toward him so it was in between them. The key was flat, silver-colored.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“A safe-deposit box.”
“Whose?”
“Vinge’s,” she said. “If we’re in luck…”
Miles leaned forward and picked it up.
“Where did you find it?”
“It was among the things Vinge left when he died.”
“Are you sure it’s Vinge’s?”
“No,” she said drily.
Miles looked at her quizzically.
“It was in a storeroom. It contained the belongings of three different people, all mixed up.”
“And some of them were Vinge’s?” Miles asked.
Antonia could see how skeptical he was, and nodded curtly.
“Which bank?” he asked.
“No idea.”
“What box number?”
“No idea.”
He thought some more.
“And he’s been dead a while. So if he had a safe-deposit box, surely it would have been emptied by now?”
“I doubt it.” she said.
“Why?”
“Because,” Antonia continued, “all that sort of thing, his financial affairs,
details of his estate, assets, debts…it’s all been gotten rid of.”
“Which means?” Miles asked.
“That someone doesn’t want them to be touched.”
“Which means?” Miles asked again.
“That they may not have been touched.”
Miles held the key up to the light, inspecting it.
“This is virtually impossible,” he said.
“You don’t have much faith in yourself, do you?”
“Only idiots have faith in themselves,” he said. “Are you serious about this?”
He was right; she realized that the odds were pretty long, but she stood her ground.
“Help me open Lars Vinge’s safe-deposit box and I’ll help you find your guy.”
He tried to read her.
“And if I don’t succeed? Which I’m probably not going to?”
She shrugged.
“Then I don’t find your guy.”
A noise behind them. Miles turned around. A well-built man wearing jeans and a football T-shirt with the Real Madrid insignia appeared in the kitchen.
“Hello,” the man said amiably.
Miles stood up.
“I’m Ulf,” the man said in a Dalarna accent.
“Hi, Ulf,” Miles said, then left.
—
He lit a cigarette out in the street and checked his watch. It was the time of day when he usually visited Sanna in secret. He walked through the city toward Södermalm Hospital, his fingers toying with the safe-deposit key in his pocket as he walked.
At the hospital he went up to Sanna’s ward…then stopped, concealed in the corridor, listening.
The night staff was in the staff room, as usual at this time. Miles took off his shoes and crept along the corridor, past the coffee-drinking nurses to Room 9. There he carefully opened the door and slipped inside.
The lights had been turned out for the night. He picked up a chair and moved it to the side of the bed, lit the bedside lamp, and angled it away from her. Enough light to see her by. And Miles did what he always did when he sat beside her. He looked, and looked, and looked.
Five hours later he woke up, bent forward and stiff. The sun was up, Sanna looked the same. He had his toothbrush in his coat pocket. Miles washed his face and brushed his teeth in the bathroom, this was his home now.
He left Sanna and the hospital and headed for work.
He was the first person to arrive. The lights flickered wanly as he walked down the corridor.
He tapped in his old user ID from Economic Crime.
The Other Son Page 17