The phone rang. Her mother, Yvonne, asking the usual how-are-you questions. Sophie replied with the usual fine-thanks answers.
“Are you coming on Sunday?”
Yvonne sounded like a martyr as she asked the question. Sophie tried to sound the way she usually did.
“Yes, at seven. The same time we always come.”
“Yes, but you usually come at half past seven. It doesn’t really matter, but if we’re going to eat—”
Sophie interrupted her mother.
“We’ll be there at seven, or half past.”
She said good-bye and hung up. And cracked. Sophie threw the phone on the floor. When it didn’t break she picked it up and threw it again, then stomped on it. She clenched her jaws but didn’t get the cathartic feeling the release was supposed to give her. She just felt the same fury and impotence that had been there before the phone hit the floor.
Albert was staring at her from the living room. They looked at each other. Sophie bent down and picked up the pieces of the broken phone.
The windows were open, Jens was vacuuming the apartment, pushing the head of the machine over floors and rugs. He was trying to find some calm, and it occasionally appeared when he did the cleaning. But not today, and besides, it was already clean, he had done the vacuuming the day before. The sound of things flying into the machine was appealing, the way they rattled through the tube into the bag. It made him feel a sort of satisfaction about the fact that what he was doing was fulfilling a purpose. But there were no such noises today. Just him and the vacuum cleaner going around the apartment like an old married couple.
He thought he could hear a noise over the music from the stereo and the roaring motor. He listened but heard nothing, and went on cleaning. The sound again. He switched the vacuum cleaner off with his foot and listened again—the doorbell was ringing out in the hall.
Sophie stood in the kitchen. She was speaking clearly, concisely, and carefully. Explaining what had happened with Albert and the police. He was finding it incomprehensible.
“The police say there are witnesses, and that the girl’s fourteen,” she went on.
Jens could see how upset she was. It colored her whole face. She looked older all of a sudden, thin … frightened.
The espresso maker on the stove started making noises, building to its crescendo. But he didn’t hear it, he was too busy trying to make sense of what Sophie had said. In the end it was Sophie who pointed it out to him. The hissing sound entered his head and dispelled his thoughts. He took the pot off the heat.
“Could it actually have happened?” he asked as he took two cups down from a shelf.
She shook her head as if his question were crazy.
“You’re quite sure?”
She flared up. “For God’s sake, of course I’m sure!”
Jens looked at her, unabashed by her short outburst.
“But could anything similar have happened?”
Sophie was about to launch into him.
“No, hang on, Sophie. Could anything small, insignificant, something completely harmless have happened?”
Sophie wanted to say no, but she stopped and took a deep breath.
“I don’t know …,” she said weakly.
Jens let her think for a few moments.
“Come on,” he said, taking the cups and heading toward the living area in one corner of the apartment.
He gestured to her to sit on the sofa, put the cups down on the coffee table, and sat down in the armchair opposite her.
“Could it be something as innocent as an approach from Albert to the girl, a bit of flirting?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“What does Albert say?”
She looked up, then down again.
“That there was no girl like that there. He didn’t meet anyone, didn’t talk to anyone. That he’d gone to the party because another girl was supposed to be there.”
“Who?”
“His current girlfriend, her name’s Anna.”
“Could she provide an alibi?”
“No, my son wasn’t brave enough to go and talk to her.”
“And what does he think?”
“He thinks everything and nothing. His first thought was that some boy he’d fallen out with wanted to get him in trouble.… But he also believes what I told him.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“That the police had made a mistake.”
“And he bought that?”
She didn’t like the question, and didn’t answer. Instead they sat in silence, sipping their coffee, each of them thinking hard. Jens wasn’t getting anywhere, he needed help making sense of it.
“So the police had Hector under surveillance when he was in the hospital?”
“Yes?”
“And you and Hector became friends, and the police noticed?”
Sophie nodded, unsure of where he was going with this.
“They contacted you and asked you to inform on him?”
She didn’t answer.
“Then they started bugging your whole house?”
She didn’t like his tone of voice.
“And began to watch you?”
She looked down at her hands. Twisted a ring so it was facing the right way.
“And now they’re threatening your son with a rape charge?”
He leaned back in the armchair.
“That sounds pretty ambitious,” he said.
She looked at him, trying to figure out if he was being sarcastic.
“So what do you think?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe it’s ambitious.”
“It looks like they’re concentrating their fire on you rather than Hector.… Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know.”
He changed. As if he suddenly couldn’t be bothered to be understanding anymore. As if he didn’t have time for her.
“You’re being threatened by the police, bugged, you’re sleeping with a suspected criminal, and you’re being forced to act as an informant because the police have found a way to get at your son?”
Sophie defended herself automatically.
“No, absolutely not.”
He cast her a weary glance.
“I’m not sleeping with him and I don’t know that he’s a criminal.… And I haven’t informed on him yet.”
“Do you have other friends who get taken off into the forest to be executed on a Saturday night?”
“Stop it.”
“No, Sophie, you stop it. What do you think this is? You can’t just invent your own reality based on the way you want things to be. What you’re being subjected to isn’t remotely normal. This police officer seems utterly ruthless. And you’re already an informant, even if you can’t see it yourself. The moment the police started asking you questions, you became an informant. What you have or haven’t said won’t make the slightest bit of difference to Hector and his associates when they find out about it.”
Jens was about to go on, but stopped himself.
“Why would the police do this?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think?”
“Control. They want to force me into a corner, make me do things I don’t want to.… I don’t know.”
She turned to him.
“I’m not creating my own reality. But I’m not going to prejudge anyone. It’s like crossing a minefield, the slightest wrong move …”
She looked down at her hands again, at her fingers and the rings on them. The diamond ring from her grandmother, the engagement ring she’d never taken off. She began to talk quietly.
“Hector, the police … I’ve done what I thought was right. I haven’t had anyone to turn to. I haven’t had any idea who I am in all of this. Only that I’ve had to follow some internal voice that’s hardly whispered a word to me throughout it all. I’ve been listening to the silence for so long, crying for
help. But now all of a sudden this is about my son, all about him, nothing else matters anymore.”
He was relaxed again, seemed heavy and hoarse.
“Who else knows about this?”
“No one.”
“No one?”
She shook her head. “No one.”
“No one you see socially? No friend you can call on when things get tough?”
“Well, yes …”
“But she doesn’t know anything either?”
Sophie shook her head. “No …”
Jens thought for a moment.
“Good,” he said in a low voice, then looked up at her. “Why not?”
She looked at him quizzically.
“Why haven’t you told anyone about this? Surely it would only be natural to turn to someone else with something like this?”
“That’s what I’m doing now.”
The sound of a propeller plane high up in the sky came through the open window.
“And now you want to take Albert and run away?” he went on.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“If you could choose?”
“Then I’d like all this to disappear.”
“I can understand that. How would you make it all disappear?”
She shrugged and said nothing.
“Sophie!”
“I don’t know. What sort of stupid question is that?”
“You must have some idea! You must have thought about it, at least once?”
At first she didn’t answer, but she knew what he was getting at.
“I can’t make any sense of it, I can’t see a way out. No matter how I look at it, someone’s going to get hurt. And I don’t want that. I haven’t done anything, nothing at all, I don’t want to sacrifice anyone.”
“But surely the sacrifice is obvious?”
She met his gaze.
“Yes … of course it is.”
“So why don’t you give him up? Do what the police are asking. Give them whatever you can, let them catch him—then it’s all finished. You and your son can get back to your normal lives.”
She looked at him critically.
“Is that what you’d have done?”
He shook his head.
“No. It wouldn’t end there, I’d be on the run for the rest of my life, from both the cops and Hector’s gang. They wouldn’t give up.”
“Right,” she said flatly.
Sophie pulled out a scrap of paper and handed it to Jens. He took it and read: Be careful.
“Where did you find this?”
“In my mailbox.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“Before they picked Albert up?”
She nodded. He looked at the note again, as if he might understand something that wasn’t written there.
“Who wrote it?”
“I don’t know.”
Jens was at something of a loss. He put the note on the coffee table and leaned forward in the armchair, legs apart, elbows on his knees.
“If I were you, I’d be gathering as much information as I could about the greatest threat, which right now is the police. Then I’d find a way to confront them.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “By confronting them, I just mean finding a way to get them off balance.… Maybe by finding something out.”
“Then what?”
Jens got up from the armchair and headed off toward the kitchen.
“I don’t know.…”
17
Carlos, wearing a brand-new tracksuit, was eating soup. He could only have fluids. He was sitting in his best armchair with a towel over his knees. The television was showing a film with Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. Bud was hitting the bad guys with an open hand to the accompaniment of exaggerated sound effects. Terence’s dubbed dialogue had been atrociously lip-synced. Carlos chuckled at the fight, which made his face hurt.
The doorbell rang out in the hall.
Anders and Hasse smiled amiably at him when Carlos opened the door.
“Carlos Fuentes?” Hasse asked.
Carlos nodded. Hasse was waving his police ID.
“I’m Cling, this is Clang. Can we come in?”
“I’ve already spoken to the police, they came to the hospital.”
Hasse and Anders pushed past Carlos and made their way to the kitchen. Carlos watched them.
“What do you want?”
Cling and Clang were sitting on kitchen chairs. Carlos was standing up, leaning against the counter.
“And you don’t remember what any of them looked like?”
Carlos shook his head.
“How old did you say they were?”
Anders asked the question. Carlos thought for a moment.
“Teenagers …”
“Thirteen or nineteen?” Anders asked.
“More like nineteen, maybe seventeen.”
“Seventeen?” Hasse said. Carlos nodded.
“And they attacked you, just like that, these seventeen-year-olds?”
Carlos nodded again.
“Dear me,” Hasse said.
Carlos couldn’t tell if he was making fun of him.
“But surely you must have seen something? A face …”
Carlos shook his head.
“It all happened so quickly.”
“Nationality? Swedish?”
Carlos pretended to think.
“I think they were immigrants, they were wearing hoods.”
Carlos scratched the end of his nose lightly.
“It’s always those immigrants,” Hasse said.
Anders looked through his notebook, just for the sake of it.
“And you were on your way home from work?”
“Yes …”
“Where do you work?”
“I own a restaurant, Trasten.”
“And everything was OK at Trasten that night? No trouble? Nothing out of the ordinary?”
Carlos shook his head, and touched his nose again—quickly, almost imperceptibly.
“No. The restaurant shuts at eleven, so I went down to lock up. A quiet Saturday night.”
“Of course it was, Carlos.” Anders smiled.
Carlos tried to smile back.
“Tell me, where are you from again, Carlos?” Hasse asked.
“Spain … originally from Málaga.”
“Isn’t the king named Carlos?”
Carlos couldn’t make sense of the question.
“No, his name’s Juan Carlos.…”
“Well, then he is named Carlos, isn’t he?” Hasse said.
Carlos wasn’t following.
“So nothing happened?” Anders asked again.
Carlos looked at Anders and shook his head.
“Everything the same as normal?” Hasse asked.
Carlos’s gaze flitted between them.
“I just said it was!”
“Don Carlos! Wasn’t there a porn star called that?”
Carlos looked at Hasse, unable to figure out if he was expecting an answer to that.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly.
Anders was looking intently at Carlos. “Have you ever studied psychology?”
“What?”
“Have you ever studied psychology?”
Carlos shook his head. “Psychology? No.”
Anders pointed at Hasse.
“We have, we’re psychologists. Cling and Clang’s school of psychology.”
Carlos was completely lost now.
“One of the things they teach you is that one of the most obvious signs that someone’s lying is that they touch the tip of their nose.”
Carlos touched his nose.
“Just like that. You keep rubbing the tip of your nose, Carlos, because right at the end there’s an irritating little nerve that itches every time we tell a lie.”
“I’m not lying,” he said.
“How do you know Hector Guzman?” Hasse asked.
“Hecto
r?”
Anders and Hasse waited.
“He’s an old friend, he eats at the restaurant sometimes.”
“How would you describe him?”
“Nothing special, an ordinary man.”
“What’s an ordinary man like?”
Carlos rubbed the tip of his nose.
“Just ordinary. Works, eats, sleeps … I don’t know.”
“Did you see Hector on Saturday?”
“No.”
“But he was at the restaurant, wasn’t he?”
“Not when I got there. I got there late, to lock up.”
“Did he have company that evening? Do you happen to know?”
Carlos shook his head. “No, I don’t know.”
“A woman? Sophie?”
Carlos shook his head, grateful that he didn’t have to lie.
“I don’t know,” he said flatly.
Anders got up and walked over to Carlos. Examined his wounded face. Carlos felt invaded, but tried to express the exact opposite. Hasse slid up behind Anders, and they both stared.
“Their aim was good …,” Anders whispered.
Carlos was uncomprehending.
“The teenagers, when they attacked you. They only hit you in the face?”
Carlos nodded.
“No other injuries?”
Carlos shook his head.
“You need to wear this.”
Anders held up a microphone.
“You can have it in your pocket or wherever you like, but no more than thirty yards away from this.”
Anders showed him a little box. Carlos was shaking his head desperately.
“I’m afraid the decision’s out of your hands, Carlos. Wear the microphone and keep your mouth shut. Make sure it’s running whenever you’re around Hector and Aron, fill it up with information.”
Hasse and Anders left the kitchen and headed for the front door.
“You can’t do this,” Carlos whispered.
Anders turned around.
“Of course we can. We can do whatever we want. Even other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
Hasse walked quickly up to Carlos, grabbed him by the neck, and hammered his fist into the side of his head several times. The blows sounded meaty and hard as they struck him on the temple, ear, and cheekbone. Carlos slumped to the kitchen floor. He sat there bewildered, his eyes flaring as he watched Cling and Clang’s silhouettes disappear out the front door.
Carlos was trying to calm down. His pulse was racing too fast. He felt a sudden tightness in his chest, his breathing grew labored, his heart beat faster, and he felt giddy. He managed to get up unsteadily and made his way to the bathroom. His heart was thudding in his chest. With trembling hands he managed to tip five pills from the bottle of heart medication. He swallowed three and stood there with both hands leaning on the washbasin, taking deep breaths, feeling his heart rate slow down. Carlos looked in the mirror. A beaten man in every sense. He concluded that he had two options, and possibly a third at some point in the future, but two for the time being: Hector or Hanke. The third possible option for the future was the police, but he couldn’t figure out what they knew and didn’t know. He had to do what was best for himself now. Carlos weighed Hector against Hanke: who was strongest, who was going to win? He had no idea, he didn’t even know what the conflict was about, he just knew that he had sold out his boss and had been beaten up as a result, and now the police had contacted him, and they seemed to know more than they wanted to let on to him.
The Andalucian Friend: A Novel Page 25