As Jens drove over the Stocksund Bridge, he opened the window and threw the car keys and magazine of bullets over the railing.
Albert had left them and gone into the living room.
“That’s a fine boy you’ve got there,” Hector said. Then he started talking about the importance of finding the right attitude toward the world around you at an early age, that everything sorted itself out if you did, everything fell into place. He compared Albert to himself.
Sophie interrupted him.
“I want you to go now, Hector.”
He didn’t understand.
“I should go?”
She nodded, and he searched her face.
“Why?”
“Because I want you to. I don’t want you to come here again.”
Hector looked at her carefully, frowning, his hands folded.
“OK,” he said, trying to sound as if her words didn’t really mean much. He got himself together and stood up. But instead of leaving he stood beside the table.
“I don’t know what I’ve done.”
She avoided his gaze.
“You haven’t done anything. I just want you to leave.”
He was clearly sad. But he didn’t make a big deal of it, just made a call, muttered something in Spanish, and left the house. Aron drove up in the car.
She remained sitting at the kitchen table, she didn’t know how long.
There was a look of disappointment from Albert when he came into the kitchen and sat down opposite her. “Do you want to die alone, Mom?” She didn’t answer, just stood up and started to clear the table.
“What are you so scared of?”
“I’m not scared, Albert. I make the decisions about my life, got that?”
She could hear how sharp she sounded, how wrong she sounded. “So who was that?”
“I’ve told you.”
“Really?”
She didn’t reply to that, either. She felt like saying: For God’s sake, Albert, please, just shut up! People can hear every word we say!
But she just pointed toward the living room in some misdirected adult attempt at punishment. He was too old for that sort of scolding, and didn’t understand it. Instead he just sighed, stood up, and walked out of the kitchen.
Sophie poured the fizzy wine down the sink.
The apartment looked like an old storage space, pillars holding up the relatively high ceiling—large, open, sparsely furnished. Harry lived in a ramshackle attic apartment on Kungsholmen. He’d lived there for as long as Jens had known him, fifteen years or so. Harry was self-taught and had worked as a private detective for the whole of his adult life. He spent the ’70s and half of the ’80s based in London, then for some reason decided to move home again.
He’d only just woken up and was dragging himself across the large open space in slippers and a checkered dressing gown. His thin, straggly hair seemed to have a mind of its own, way beyond Harry’s control.
“The coffee’s on but it’ll take a while because I keep forgetting to clear the lime scale out of the fucker.” Harry’s voice was hoarse and rough, as if he needed to clear his throat.
The electric coffee machine over in the kitchen corner was bubbling alarmingly. There were four computers up and running. Harry shuffled over to them, scratching his scalp.
“What have you got?” he said, then coughed.
They both sat down at the desk.
“ID card and a cell phone.”
Harry held out his hand. “The ID card.”
Jens put Lars Vinge’s ID in Harry’s hand. Harry inspected it from every angle. He held it up to the light of a reading lamp on a shelf behind his monitors.
“It’s genuine, so in all likelihood the guy’s a cop. Did you see his face?”
“From the side, it was the guy in the picture.”
Harry let out a big yawn and started tapping at one of the keyboards, glancing at the ID card.
“How did you get this? I thought you said you were going to try to get some photographs.”
“The situation changed.”
“Shit happens,” Harry said, still tapping away, clearly not interested. He pulled out a box by his feet and took out a badly battered leather diary, dropped his reading glasses from his forehead, and began leafing through it. The pages were covered in tiny handwriting. He turned to Jens and nodded toward the coffee machine, which had fallen silent. Jens got up and walked over to it.
Harry found what he was looking for, typed a user name and password into a web page, and pressed Enter. Then he keyed in “Lars Vinge,” followed by his date of birth and ID number. A page started to load and soon Vinge’s passport photograph appeared. Jens came back with two mugs.
“Lars Christer Vinge, beat cop, Husby Police Station,” Harry said.
Jens leaned over and read the screen.
“What site is this?”
“The cops’ personnel database …”
Jens sat down as Harry read on.
“He was with the Western District until a month or so ago. Now he’s in crime, connected to the National Crime Division.…”
“I don’t know much about the police, but can they really go from one to the other just like that?” Jens asked.
“No idea … they’re police, who the fuck cares,” Harry muttered, taking a sip of coffee, then put the mug down and started tapping at the keys again.
“This is going to take a while,” he said.
Jens didn’t move. Harry typed, looked at Jens, went on typing, then turned to look at him again.
“There are toys over in the corner, off you go.”
Jens got the message.
There was a table tennis table folded up against the wall, and Jens opened it out and started hitting the ball to himself. It felt good concentrating on the sound of the ball. It was hypnotic. Jens wasn’t thinking about anything, just kept the ball bouncing between himself and the wall. He shut himself off, all his concentration was focused on just one thing, making the bastard ball realize that it stood no chance against him. But evidently it did, because Harry called to him, Jens lost his focus, and the ball won. It bounced from the table and rolled off across the floor toward its own vacuous freedom.
Harry had several sites open in small windows on the screen when Jens sat back down on his chair.
“Lars Vinge’s a pretty invisible character, there’s nothing very interesting about him. He’s a cop, he’s moved from the Western District to National Crime. I’ve checked his medical records and managed to find a recent visit. The old records aren’t online, so doctors’ appointments before 1997 are difficult to dig out. Anyway, he saw a doctor recently for back pain and trouble sleeping. He got prescriptions for oxazepam and Citodon, from what I can see here.”
“And what are they?”
“Oxazepam’s a sedative, addictive. It’s benzo, people get seriously fucked-up on benzo.”
“And the other one?”
“Citodon’s a painkiller, looks like acetaminophen, tastes like acetaminophen.… But this is codeine. Gets metabolized as morphine.”
“How do you know all this, Harry?”
“None of your business,” he muttered, tapping away at his keyboard, clicking with the mouse, searching through the flat, two-dimensional world in front of him. He seemed to be regretting his impolite response.
“My ex got hooked on prescription drugs. She used to have a whole pharmacy at home. A whole pharmacy that only made her worse and worse with each passing day.”
“What happened?”
“In the end neither of us could recognize her anymore.”
“That’s a shame.”
Harry turned to Jens, and looked him in the eye.
“Yes, it was a shame,” he replied, his voice open and honest, then he went back to the computer.
Jens was looking at Harry from the corner of his eye. Harry was usually pretty tight-lipped about his private life.
“So we’re dealing with a detective with a prescripti
on drug problem?”
Harry shook his head.
“No, no, it isn’t necessarily a problem. You’re not fucked the moment you take the first pill.… Most people can cope if they only use them short-term, and take them in small doses.”
“What else?”
Harry shook his head.
“Nothing, except that he isn’t married, lives on Södermalm, and wrote some sort of report on ethnic divisions in Husby while he was a beat officer, or a neighborhood officer or whatever the fuck they’re called these days.… He’s licensed to drive a taxi, his finances are fairly limited, and according to his charge card he sometimes buys films off the Internet and food from a budget supermarket.”
Jens skimmed through the scant information on the screen.
“I need more detail. Is it possible to find out what he’s working on at the moment? Who he works with … and why?”
“You can always phone and ask,” Harry said.
“Will they tell me?”
“Probably not.”
“OK. Look up a woman, another police officer, Gunilla Strandberg.”
Harry got to work on his keyboard.
“Who’s she?”
“The boss, I think, Sophie’s contact.”
Harry stopped on one site, scrolled down, and read.
“Gunilla Strandberg, on the force since ’78. Looks like the usual career path … beat cop in Stockholm, inspector at some police station in Karlstad for a few years in the mid-’80s … back to Stockholm, National Crime, became a superintendent.… On paid leave pending the outcome of an investigation in 2002, two months, then back to work.”
“What sort of investigation?”
“Don’t know, this is only the police personnel database. Nothing but the bare facts.”
“Can you get into some other site, one with more detail?”
“No.”
Harry switched windows and searched for her name again. He clicked to open several pages, shrank them, and lined them up next to one another on the screen.
“Unmarried, lives out on Lidingö. One brother, Erik … Nothing interesting in her medical notes.… Looks like she’s never been ill.”
Harry went on tapping at the keyboard.
“She’s got a few notices for nonpayment of bills, but her finances look pretty good. She’s a member of Amnesty and has standing orders for Human Rights Watch and UNICEF.… Possibly a member of the Peony Society, her name came up in an old register of members.”
Harry stretched.
“She’s a fairly wealthy old bag who’s a bit disorganized when it comes to bills, is hardly ever ill, and likes peonies. No more than that.”
Lars wasn’t shocked, he wasn’t even trembling. That was the way it was these days with Ketogan at hand. He felt devoid of emotion. Even when the cold steel of the barrel of the pistol was pressing against his skin—nothing.
He didn’t know what to call his current state. Maybe surprised? Yes, that was probably it, surprised. Surprised that an unknown armed man had forced his way into his car and taken his cell, ID, and car keys. Surprised.
He stared out into the night with his mouth open, then tugged at his bottom lip. He knew how strung out he was, he could feel it. Mostly because of the pills, but also because of everything that had happened. It had all gone with lightning speed, within the space of just a few weeks he had ruined everything. The little he had of a proper life was now gone. His relationships were in tatters, his emotional life was in a state of anarchy, and now the machinery itself was starting to fuck with him. His soul was dead and buried somewhere deep inside his own personal hell. Not even his thoughts were his own anymore. As if the only thing left inside him was something that someone else had shoved in there. He didn’t recognize himself. It wasn’t him anymore … but it wasn’t anyone else, either. Who was that man? Not one of Hector’s group. Maybe a friend? A friend helping Sophie? But why?
He let go of his lip. Stared ahead of him. Surprised was probably the wrong word, actually—he hadn’t felt anything at all.
Lars let the hours pass. He just sat there. But something started to dawn on him in his drug-addled confusion, a little glimpse of meaning. His phone was gone, his wallet, the magazine of his pistol, the keys to the car … all gone, together with his personality and soul … together with his previous life. Maybe it was a sign? A sign of change? That now was the time to start again, start afresh, from scratch. Figure out what was really going on around him, pick a side.
It suddenly struck him that he was free to take this in whatever direction he wanted. Lars saw time stretching out ahead of him, saw in his mind’s eye what he ought to do from now on, what he was obliged to do.
He reached his arm back and pulled out his magazine-less service pistol from the floor behind the seat, jumped out of the car, and went around to open the trunk. He closed the little case around the surveillance equipment using the Velcro strips, then took it out and walked a little way toward a garden, putting it behind a birch tree. Lars sat down and pulled the laces from his sneakers, tied them together to make a longer cord, then went back to the Saab, opened the cap of the gas tank, dangled the shoelace in as far as he could, pulled it out, sniffed—Gas, what a fantastic smell.…
He dipped the other end in as far as it would go. Just a few inches of the shoelace were visible. He looked over toward the tree, trying to figure out his escape route. Three, maybe four seconds. No, longer. Five, six.
He pulled out a lighter and ignited the gas-soaked end. The shoelace burned fast, quicker than he had anticipated. Lars ran like never before, taking long strides, panic raging at the back of his head.
The explosion was muffled and thick, as if someone had dropped a heavy carpet on the whole area. The pressure wave felt like a warm, burning squall on his back as he threw himself to the ground on top of the bag of surveillance equipment. He looked back from where he was lying. The pillar of flame stood straight up for a few seconds. The flames along its top edge formed a mushroom shape where they seemed to want to burn downward and inward. Then it vanished in the semidarkness of the evening. The Saab was in flames. It snapped and crackled and popped. The rear window was gone, the lid of the trunk was hanging from one hinge. The plastic was beginning to melt, glass cracked, the rear left-hand tire was squirting out rubber as it burned. He stared wide-eyed at the fireworks.
Sophie had dreamed that the boiler in the cellar had exploded. She bumped into Albert outside her bedroom.
“What was that?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
She went downstairs but nothing looked any different. She went down into the cellar, looking around, sniffing for any wrong smell, but there was nothing there, either. She heard Albert’s voice calling her from outside.
When she got out she saw a glow above the trees one block away. A strong, yellowish glow.
They started walking in that direction.
A large group of people were standing watching the fire. More were on their way from the surrounding streets. Sophie could see it was a car, an old Saab.
Albert met up with a friend, and they started laughing and joking. She stared at the burning car and heard the fire-department sirens in the distance, over the crackling sound of plastic, rubber, and metal.
He was standing right behind her.
Lars had gotten to his feet after the explosion and had been about to leave the area when a thought suddenly struck him: she was bound to come and look. He had stopped, turned around, and tucked himself away in the darkness. He had watched as people came out from the neighboring houses. Lars had hidden the bag, roughed up his hair, then went back.
Now he was a homeowner who had been woken by the blast, got dressed, and gone out to see what was going on.
He hadn’t seen her at first, which made him impatient. Lars tried to calm himself down by listening to what other people were saying. They were mostly joking. Someone asked for a light. A man said something about Saab, shares, and bankruptcy. Lars didn’
t get the joke but everyone else seemed to. More people joined the crowd to watch the spectacle. And then he saw her.
She had come down the road off to one side behind him. He had glanced in that direction, saw Albert walking ahead of her, saw her beautiful apparition. He smiled, then realized he was smiling. He stopped, turned around, and stared into the fire, and saw her from the corner of his eye as she stopped a short distance from him. Lars had slowly moved closer to her through the crowd.
Now he was standing right behind her, staring into the back of her neck, the part of her that he found so attractive. She had her hair tied up loosely, her neck was bare. He wanted to reach out a hand and stroke it, massage it, press his finger into the little hollow.
“Sophie?”
A woman in a dressing gown came up to her. “This is crazy! What happened?”
Lars listened intently.
“Hello, Cissi, I don’t know, the explosion woke me up.”
“Me too …”
He had spent so long listening to her on his headphones, had seen her through his telephoto lens, had stood beside her as she slept, but he had never seen her like this—normal, awake, Sophie. He continued staring at her little movements, the small ways she moved and acted, and smiled again.
Cissi pulled a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her dressing gown.
“I remembered to bring these, do you want one?”
“Thanks.”
They lit up, then watched the burning car.
Cissi tore her eyes away, turned around, and found herself looking straight at Lars’s odd smile. She looked him up and down.
“And what the hell are you grinning at?”
Sophie turned around as well and caught sight of Lars. They stared at each other. He looked down at the ground, turned around, and quickly made his way through the crowd and disappeared.
Cissi took a puff on her cigarette.
“Who the hell was that creep?”
Sophie knew.… She knew who he was. She felt scared. She had thought he would be sturdier, bigger, more like a policeman, whatever they were supposed to look like. Not like what she had just seen, with an insipid, searching gaze, weird posture, hollow eyes.
The Andalucian Friend: A Novel Page 27