The Andalucian Friend (37 page)

Anders stared out into the night, then nodded.

“What’s it like?”

Anders didn’t want to go into it.

He felt in his pocket. Held out his hand to Berglund, white pills.

“What are they?”

“They help. Take two.”

“I never take pills.”

“Are you thick, or what?”

Hasse didn’t understand.

“What?”

“Take them!”

Anders shouted the words, then sighed and leaned against the door, still staring out into the night. Hasse took the pills and swallowed them.

Time passed slowly. It was sucking its way through thick, heavy walls, as if time itself wanted them to suffer. As if time wanted to give them a choice. Anders hated that feeling. He looked restlessly at the clock. Five minutes before the appointed hour he opened the car door.

“Let’s go.”

They left the car, walked to the door, let themselves in with the correct code, and made their way up the stone staircase.

Dahl,
it said on the door.
S. Jonsson
was written on a piece of paper taped underneath.

They listened for noises. Anders started picking the lock. He wasn’t trembling, didn’t hesitate at all, the pills were working. The lock opened. They conjured forth total silence, listening for the slightest sound that shouldn’t be there.

Anders put his hand on the door handle, pressed it down slowly until the door slid open a crack, waited a few seconds, then opened it just enough for them to be able to slip through.

Anders and Hasse stood stock-still in the hall. To their right was a small kitchen, narrow, with a table folded down by the window, two folding chairs, not much storage space. It was a one-room apartment, and a small one at that. Anders took a step farther in. A television, a sofa, a coffee table, a picture, a standard lamp … A bed behind a curtain. She was lying there, they could just make out the faint sound of her breathing.

They took off their shoes and crept soundlessly into the room. Anders crouched down and unrolled a Gore-Tex sleeve, revealing a syringe nestling on a piece of soft cloth. He picked it up gently and unscrewed the plastic cap protecting the needle.

Hasse kept behind him. He was no longer breathing so heavily, the pills had gone to work on him as well. Anders stood up. He met Hasse’s gaze,
Let’s do it
. They began to move silently toward the bed.

Sara was sleeping on her stomach, making little snoring sounds. Hasse moved toward the top of the bed, carefully pushed the curtain aside, crept in behind it, and stood over her upper body, ready to grab her if she woke up. Anders sat down silently at the end of the bed. He would have to lift the covers, and he tested it tentatively, raising it just a centimeter or two. She didn’t move. Anders lifted the covers a few more centimeters, Sara went on sleeping soundly. He couldn’t see any feet, and lifted a bit farther, and Sara kicked instinctively in her sleep. Anders started. One foot rubbed the other; she muttered something, it sounded stern, like she was telling someone off. Then silence again. Anders and Hasse looked at each other. Anders took a deep breath, concentrated, put the syringe in his right hand, his forefinger and index finger on the plastic wings, his thumb on the plunger. Her recent movement had left one foot outside the duvet. Anders nodded to Hasse that he should get ready. Hasse stood with his legs wide apart, his arms held out in the air.

Anders looked at the syringe. The liquid was transparent, unpleasantly transparent. He waited, as if he were hesitating, as if he were wondering what he was doing. Anders put the thin needle against the sole of Sara’s right foot and pushed it a centimeter in. She reacted to the pain; Anders caught her foot and held it as Hasse pressed her arms down on the bed with all his weight. She screamed into the mattress as Anders injected the liquid into her system. She struggled and shook; Anders lost his grip of her foot, with the needle still in it. She was kicking instinctively with both feet. The needle broke and the syringe flew off. Hasse was using all his strength to try to hold her down.

It took several long seconds for the drug to make its way to her heart and make it stop beating. Sara stopped screaming, she stopped kicking. It became more silent than either of them could ever have imagined.

The men stared at the woman lying on her stomach on the bed, then glanced briefly at each other. Hasse let go of her and backed a step away from her.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. “She went all limp!”

He backed farther away.

“Completely limp … ,” he said, his eyes fixed on Sara. “Is she dead?”

Anders stood up and looked at Sara. She was lying in almost the same position as when they arrived. Her head on the pillow, her hair a bit mussed-up, her face to the left. She was staring at the curtain.

“Yes … she’s dead.”

They stood there, not moving, not for any particular reason, just a feeling of not wanting to leave, of wanting to stop time, to wind it back, to make it undone. They stared at their perverse accomplishment. Hasse swallowed hard, and Anders pulled himself together.

“Find the syringe, it’s here somewhere.”

Hasse didn’t understand at first, and looked questioningly at Anders.

“The syringe, find the syringe!”

Hasse started looking. Anders sat down beside Sara’s foot again with a miniature flashlight in his mouth. He took off his glove and carefully stroked her sole. He found the little broken needle, and pulled it out with his thumb and forefinger, like he was pulling a splinter out of a child’s foot on a summer’s day.

Hasse found the syringe a short distance away. They did a circuit of the apartment, searching carefully through boxes and cupboards. Anders found Sara’s camera in a jewelry box, as well as her notes and a diary, and tucked them all inside his jacket.

They cleaned up after themselves, left the apartment, and drove through the Stockholm night. Anders put his phone to his ear.

“It’s done,” he said.

Gunilla spoke quietly, possibly out of respect, possibly because she had just woken up.

“You know this serves a higher purpose. Much higher than you are aware of at the moment.”

Anders didn’t answer.

“How are you feeling?” she said.

She really did sound like a mom. Not his mom, someone else’s mom.

“Like last time.”

“That had a higher purpose as well. And those purposes are intertwined, you know that, don’t you? This had to be done, everything was at stake.”

Anders remained silent.

“It was either her or us, Anders. She knew about Patricia Nordström.”

He started. “What?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Don’t know, she must have dug something out of the register.”

“What about Lars? What does he know?”

“No idea. Possibly more than we think.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“What do you think?”

“My instinct says no … But who knows?”

“Yes, who knows …”

He heard her sighing.

“How was it for Hasse?” she asked.

Anders looked at Hasse’s slouched head and empty face as he steered the car through the night.

“OK, I think.”

“Good,” she said quietly.

They drove around
the city, breathing, staring … Neither of them wanted to go home alone. Hasse was uptight. Anders could tell, and patted him on the shoulder a couple of times.

“It’ll pass.”

“When?” Hasse muttered.

“In a few days,” he lied.

Hasse drove on through the city night.

“Can you tell me the whole story now?” he said.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” he whispered.

“Like what?”

“Start with why you killed the blonde, the King of the Racetrack’s bird. That was you, wasn’t it?” His voice was low, almost a whisper.

Anders realized his right leg was twitching restlessly. He stopped it.

“We didn’t have any choice. She’d seen one of our men finish off one of the King of the Racetrack’s thugs.”

“Why did you finish him off?” Hasse asked.

Anders wiped his eyes.

“It was total fucking chaos … I can hardly remember exactly what happened.”

Anders looked out through the window. The buildings they were passing looked suddenly threatening.

“There was one guy who was close to Zdenko, so we targeted him first. We wanted to turn him, make him an informant, but he played both ways. He shafted us so fucking badly. I had complete confidence in him; Gunilla and Erik, too … But he was loyal to his boss. We’d misjudged everything. By the time we realized it was all falling apart, we were on the brink of losing the whole damn thing. So we starting to work on Patricia Nordström, Zdenko’s bird. She helped us get what we wanted. I set up a nice little suicide for the traitor.”

Anders cleared his throat.

“But she saw it all. Got hysterical, started screaming and shouting, saying she was going to the police … The whole thing was totally fucked-up.”

“What did you do?”

Anders looked at Hasse, let the silence answer for him.

“How?”

Anders didn’t like remembering.

“Like the journalist, tonight’s been like some fucking déjà vu … But before that I shot that bastard Zdenko through the head out at Jägersro … I was wearing a wig. The story you read in the tabloids about gang wars and all that crap was pure bullshit. We lifted as much of his fortune as we could get our hands on.”

“What happened to the blonde?”

The indistinct outlines of the city were starting to solidify as the first rays of sun appeared on the horizon.

“She’s way down at the bottom of the sea,” Anders said to himself.

The feeling of unease was there again
when she woke up. She felt she wanted to get away from the bed, as if the room were somehow infected.

Sophie made herself a cup of tea, went over to the cellar steps, pulled the monitor out of its hiding place, and switched it on. Same routine every morning. She was holding it in front of her as she walked back to the kitchen, sipping the warm tea. Suddenly an image appeared. It was night, a streetlamp in the distance was casting a thin glow over the living room. A man in dark clothes walked past the camera toward the stairs, then the film stopped. It had lasted four seconds. She froze to ice and put the teacup down so she didn’t drop it. All the energy had drained out of her. Another clip started, the same man coming from the opposite direction, from the stairs and into the living room, where he vanished from the picture.

What she felt was no ordinary fear welling up inside her. This was something else. A terror that made her feel sick, dizzy, and weak all at the same time. She watched again, the recording was dark and grainy. Hostile and threatening. She located the scroll function, rewound the clip, and froze the picture. The man was caught in a pose with one leg in front of the other. His hair was wet, sweaty.

There was no doubt about it, it was Lars, Lars the police officer. …