The Other Son

by Alexander Soderberg

  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 Håkan 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.

  The ground was wet, and Tommy was lying on his stomach looking through a pair of binoculars. Next to him was Ove, with a rifle equipped with a telescopic sight. Tiny needles of ice were being thrown by the rain, simultaneously cold and wet. The visibility was atrocious. Denmark really was a fucking dump….

  Through the binoculars Tommy could see into an old-fashioned country kitchen, four people in total….Sophie Brinkmann and a big bastard on a chair by the wall. He scanned around; Antonia Miller was sitting at the table. Beside her was a man with his back toward Tommy….That couldn’t be right. The man turned his head.

  That profile…

  No doubt about it. Miles fucking Ingmarsson, risen from the dead.

  “Do you see what I see?” Tommy muttered.

  “Four people,” Ove said.

  “Do you see the man at the kitchen table?”

  Ove looked through the rifle sights.

  “Yes,” he said lazily.

  “You’re no good at drowning people, Ove.”

  “I’m hurt, Tommy,” he said sarcastically.

  “Can you get them both?”

  “Maybe,” Ove said.

  “Maybe?”

  “Who’s most important?”

  Tommy thought. Antonia Miller. She was the driving force behind this, she was the one who knew the most; she knew what was going on, she had to die first. That was why he was there. But on the other hand…Miles…

  “Come on, Tommy, you’re the customer. Tell me what you want!”

  Antonia was over the moon. She was enjoying herself, she listened, she understood. She now finally had the whole picture there in front of her. The murders at the Trasten restaurant, every step, every word, every detail. Sophie and Mikhail gave her everything. Antonia could see the chain of events in her mind’s eye. Who was there, what was said, what was done. The murders, how they were committed, and by whom. The whole of the case that she never got to finish was replayed in front of her, all the questions she had been asking were finally answered. Faces that she had only seen in two dimensions on paper came to life.

  She saw how Hector and Alfonse Ramirez from Colombia were sitting in a meeting at the Trasten restaurant. How Sophie and Jens took refuge there when they were being chased by three drugged-up Russian gangsters. Sophie had thought they had shaken them off, but the Russians stormed the restaurant and held everyone at gunpoint. The leader of the Russians subjected Jens to a brutal assault. Then they got it into their heads to shoot everyone in the restaurant. They were all saved at the last minute by Mikhail and Klaus Köhler, who burst in and emptied their weapons into the Russians.

  Antonia and Miles looked at Mikhail, who was sitting there on his chair, apparently calm and relaxed.

  “Then the police arrived,” Sophie said. “Anders Ask and Hasse Berglund. They worked for Gunilla; they were all corrupt. They’d tracked Hector down and had come to extort money from him. There was supposed to be some sort of transfer of money from Hector to Gunilla’s gang. They were going to supervise the transfer at the restaurant.”

  “And was the money ever transferred?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Hector and Alfonse Ramirez had just finished off the last of the Russians in the kitchen…Dmitry, that was his name. When they were done, Hector came and got me, and we left Sweden in a plane from Bromma Airport, flew to Málaga. We were attacked on the motorway. Hector was shot. Simultaneously his father was murdered in Marbella.”

  “Who by?” Antonia asked.

  “One of Hector’s enemies. A German businessman. Ralph Hanke.”

  “How did he get hold of you?”

  “The man who ran the Trasten restaurant worked for Hector. Carlos Fuentes, he was there. He betrayed Hector, told the Hankes where we were.”

  Antonia and Miles listened, soaking up every detail.

  “And Gunilla Strandberg?” Miles asked.

  “She was corrupt, her brother was corrupt. Everyone in their group was, apart from Lars Vinge. He figured out what was going on and was about to stop them….”

  Antonia absorbed it all.

  “Vinge? Who’s he?” Antonia asked.

  Sophie brushed some hair from her face.

  “He was the one watching me, he took those pictures. He got too close. Then we caught him. He started to talk, and revealed how corrupt Gunilla and her colleagues were. He claimed they’d murdered his girlfriend….”

  “So that’s why he shot Gunilla, and then himself?” Antonia asked.

  Sophie paused to think.

  “Perhaps not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he was getting somewhere. He was very keen, in spite of everything.”

  “In spite of everything?”

  “Vinge was different,” Sophie said.

  “Different, how?”

  “He was broken, obsessed in a rather unfortunate way.”

  “And people like that don’t kill themselves?”

  Sophie didn’t answer that.

  “There must have been a third person there,” she said. “Someone who knew everything.”

  Antonia and Miles looked at each other.

  “Yeah. Tommy Jansson,” Miles said.

  “Head of the Violent Crime unit. Close friend of Gunilla Strandberg,” Antonia explained. “He’s the one we’re hiding from. And he’s the one we’re trying to stop….”

  Silence descended on the kitchen, as they all tried to digest what had been said.

  Sophie rubbed the tiredness from her face.

  “How are you doing?” Antonia asked.

  Sophie looked at Antonia in surprise.

  “How am I doing?”

  “Yes, how are you doing?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that.” She almost smiled.

  “Your son?” Antonia went on. “You said you needed help finding your son?”

  Sophie was trying to figure Antonia out. She felt safe with her. That would have to do.

  “Go on,” Antonia said.

  Sophie began to talk about Albert. About his accident, when Gunilla’s thugs ran him down and left him confined to a wheelchair. About how he had adapted to his new life, and having to live in hiding with Sophie, how she had tried to protect him, then how he was snatched from her, kidnapped by the Hankes, and used to blackmail her.

  “Where is he?” Antonia asked.

  Sophie could feel her sympathy.

  “I don’t know where he is,” she said.

  The kitchen fell silent again.

  “We’ll help you find him, you’ve got my word on that,” Miles said.

  “Thank you, for everything,” Antonia said, feeling relieved and liberated by all the questions that had now been answered. She was enjoying this new knowledge. She took hold of Miles’s good hand and held it in hers.

  “We’re going to do good now, Miles Ingmarsson, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, we are, Antonia,” he replied.

  A window shattered behind Antonia. A bullet flew through the kitchen and pierced the back of her neck, shr
edding her carotid artery.

  Antonia Miller died instantly.

  More shots followed, breaking the remainder of the kitchen window and slamming into the walls. Glasses and crockery flew off the shelves, and splinters of wood and lumps of plaster filled the air.

  They all threw themselves down. Mikhail and Sophie flat on the floor, Miles on top of Antonia, protecting her, pressing a hand to her neck as the blood poured between his fingers, thick and dark.

  Mikhail passed Antonia’s service pistol to Sophie, then ran upstairs.

  “Protect Lothar,” she called after him.

  Sophie pulled herself across the floor to Miles.

  “Miles!” she cried.

  But he was in shock, out of reach. She grabbed his arm and squeezed hard. He looked up at her.

  “She’s dead,” Sophie said.

  She held Antonia’s gun out to him. He stared at it, then at Sophie. She pressed the gun into his hand.

  “We’ve got to defend ourselves. Do you hear me?”

  Miles looked down at Antonia, who lay dead beneath him.

  From upstairs came the muffled bursts of five distinct shots as Mikhail emptied the M1, followed by a clattering sound as the cartridge ejected itself.

  Rapid footsteps outside the kitchen window, the door was yanked open, and someone came into the hall, heading for the kitchen. Miles grabbed Antonia’s pistol from Sophie’s hand and readied it to fire.

  “No!” Sophie cried out, and managed to push Miles’s gun toward the floor.

  Jens entered the kitchen, crouching down. He was out of breath as he slid down and sat back against the wall, the rifle in his hands. He looked at Antonia Miller’s dead body, then at Miles.

  “There are at least two men out there,” he said, breathing hard. “One hundred meters to the east…” Jens swallowed and went on. “I think there might be a third among the trees to the west.”

  He looked at Miles more closely.

  “We know each other,” he said.

  Miles said nothing; he picked up a blanket from the sofa and laid it over Antonia’s dead body.

  Mikhail’s rifle clattered once more from up above.

  “Either we stay here and defend ourselves,” Jens said. He double-checked that the rifle was loaded. “Or Miles and I go out and find them instead.”

  Sophie looked at the two men. Jens: afraid, curious, excited. Miles: quiet, blank, empty.

  “We go out and find them,” Miles said flatly.

  There was no more to say. Miles walked toward the hall.

  Jens followed him but stopped in the doorway and turned back toward Sophie.

  “Stay close to Mikhail,” he said.

  “Stay close to Miles,” she said.

  Silence…

  “Fear is what keeps me alive,” he said.

  The words came out of nowhere.

  “What fear?” she asked.

  “This, among others.”

  He stood there with the rifle in one hand, and gestured vaguely with the other to indicate the situation they were in. It was ridiculous of him to start talking now. But she wanted to know more.

  “I don’t believe that,” she said.

  He looked at Antonia’s body, then at Sophie. There was something painful in his eyes.

  “So what are you saying, Jens?”

  “I want to be with you, free, together. Not like this. I’m tired.”

  Jens turned around and left the house.

  She watched him go, gathered herself for a moment, then went and sat a few steps up the staircase—it had walls on either side, she was protected there.

  Mikhail was sitting below a window upstairs, with the rifle between his legs.

  “Lothar?” she asked.

  Mikhail pointed to his left.

  “I’m here,” Lothar said, showing himself. “I’m helping Mikhail reload.”

  “Lothar,” she said.

  He looked out again.

  “Don’t worry,” she said.

  He realized she meant their last conversation. He smiled at her, then sat down behind Mikhail again.

  There was a crack from outside and Mikhail stood up and fired three aggressive shots back.

  At the same moment the shots rang out a hand clamped over Sophie’s mouth. She was pulled backward and dragged down the stairs. Someone held her in an iron grip, pressing her down onto the kitchen floor.

  Another two shots from Mikhail’s rifle, and the man who had her in his grasp kneed down on top of her back. For a brief moment, just before he put his hand over her mouth, Sophie’s face was side-down to the floor. She got a quick glance at the man’s face.

  It was Aron.

  The rattling sound again as the magazine hit the floor. It sounded so close, she wanted to call out, call Mikhail to come and help her. But Aron Geisler’s strength was phenomenal, the body that was holding her down, and the hand over her mouth that had her in a vise-like grip. She caught a glimpse of a blade flashing. Not very long, a large field knife. It thrust into her right side. It had looked so sharp, but it didn’t feel sharp as it forced its way through layers of skin and tissue. More the opposite, in fact: that she was being stabbed with something blunt, thick, and long. As if something was being hammered into her. The pain flashed through her whole body. She screamed into Aron’s hand as Mikhail fired more salvos above them. Aron twisted the knife to cause as much damage as he could. She felt paralyzed. The knife was pulled out of her body.

  Sophie lay there immobile, saw his shoes as he moved silently through the kitchen, then his whole body as he stopped at the kitchen table, still covered with photographs. Aron quickly gathered them in the sports bag and left the house.

  Blood filled her eyes and she was sucked backward into something dense and empty.

  The wind and mixture of snow and rain made for poor visibility. Jens was making his way through the vegetation of the garden. Miles was off somewhere to his right. They were planning to flank their target from both sides.

  A sound, a short distance away, Jens stopped, crouched down, listened. His heartbeat was pounding in his ears.

  A gash in time. A powerful car started up in the distance and drove off. Jens remained still, saw movement to his right, and Miles emerged from the storm, calm and ice cold.

  He squatted down beside Jens and they listened together.

  “There’s no one here anymore,” Jens whispered.

  —

  Jens saw Sophie as soon as they got back, the blood, her eyes closed. Mikhail was crouched beside her at the foot of the stairs.

  “No, no, no,” he muttered to himself as he rushed over.

  Mikhail was working fast, trying to stop the bleeding. A pale and frightened Lothar appeared, bringing towels.

  “She needs medical attention urgently,” Mikhail said.

  “I’ll call an ambulance; carry her out to the car and I’ll drive and meet them,” Miles said.

  Mikhail and Jens carried Sophie out to the Jaguar and laid her in the backseat, and Lothar followed with the towels. Jens got in beside her, and pressed the towels over the wound that was still pumping out blood. Miles hurried over, his phone clutched to his ear, got in behind the wheel, and drove off.

  Mikhail and Lothar watched the car as it disappeared at high speed. They stood there until they could no longer see or hear it. It was completely quiet. They knew what they had to do. Mikhail patted Lothar on the shoulder.

  “Come on,” he said.

  In a shed behind the house they found a couple of spades. They strode out onto the lawn, dug their spades into the ground, and began to dig a grave for Antonia Miller.

  —

  The Jaguar sped along the road.

  Miles was hunched over the steering wheel, and Antonia’s handbag was on the seat next to him. He stuck his hand in, dug around, and found the forged passport that Marianne had given her, then passed it to Jens.

  “Will this work?” he asked.

  Jens took the passport and glanced at the pho
tograph.

  “Yes,” he said, and stuck the passport in the pocket of Sophie’s jeans.

  Swirling blue lights from an emergency vehicle ahead of them. Miles flashed it down as it got closer.

  The exchange happened quickly. The paramedics put Sophie on a gurney and wheeled her into the back of the ambulance. Jens followed her in and the doors closed. The ambulance drove off with its sirens blaring.

  Miles stood there watching it until it disappeared from view. The storm had died down.

  He looked back at the Jaguar. Open doors, blood on the backseat.

  He jumped in, turned the car around, and drove off, looking for a lake on the map application on his cell phone.

  There was one very close.

  —

  Miles sat behind the wheel as the Jaguar purred in neutral. A sandy beach and a long jetty stretching out into the water. The sun was going down. Darkness came quickly at this time of year.

  Antonia…Miles could see her in front of him. She shouldn’t have died. She shouldn’t have taken that bullet….

  Miles called his brother. Ian Ingmarsson answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Listen, now, little brother. I don’t exist, I’ve disappeared, gone missing. I need your help, I really do. Can you do that?”

  “Tell me what’s happened.”

  “No. I want to know if you’ll help me.”

  The sound of Ian breathing.

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Good. Who runs the embassy in Copenhagen?”

  “An idiot, that dyslexic bastard who was on the Defense Committee and molested that intern—”

  Miles interrupted him.

  “I need to get ahold of someone in authority at one of the nearby embassies, someone good, trustworthy, someone who’s prepared to bend the rules and won’t talk.”

  “I don’t get it…”

  “Berlin, Warsaw, the Hague, Brussels, Prague, Vienna? Second and third in command would do as well.”

  “I don’t follow, Miles.”

  “Someone decent! What don’t you understand about that?”

  Ian ran through a list of names; most of them he claimed were idiots. Like most people, in his view of the world.