The Andalucian Friend: A Novel

by Alexander Soderberg

  He scratched under one eye with his index finger.

  Hector was sitting in the backseat of the car that was waiting outside Sophie’s gate. He watched as she came down the little gravel path. They looked at each other. When she came out of the gate he leaned across the seat and pushed the door open for her.

  “Welcome, Sophie Brinkmann,” he said.

  She got in beside him and shut the door. In the driver’s seat Aron started the car.

  “Hello, Aron,” she said.

  Aron nodded and pulled away.

  “You have a nice house,” Hector said.

  “Thanks.”

  Hector raised a finger.

  “I like yellow houses,” he said.

  “Really?” she said with a smile.

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “Quite a while.”

  He was searching for a follow-up question. “Do you like the area? Is this a good place to live?”

  Now she looked at him as if she were about to start laughing, wondering where this sterile small talk was going. He realized.

  “Well, good,” he said after a pause.

  “Mmm.” She smiled.

  They kept on driving.

  “Thanks for your present, I like it a lot. I’ve been using it,” he said.

  She had given him a money clip, possibly because it was suitably impersonal but really nice.

  The car journey turned out to be straightforward. Hector talked in his assured, calm way, telling her things, asking questions, and steering them away from small silences and other awkward moments. He was good at it—one of his accomplishments. She didn’t know if he was aware of it himself, but throughout the drive his leg kept nudging hers.

  Aron turned into Haga Park and drove up to the Butterfly House.

  “Have you been here before?”

  She shook her head. They got out of the car and went inside the large greenhouse. A man offered to take her jacket. It was damp and warm, and there were birds singing and the sound of running water, and—as the name suggested—butterflies fluttering about, apparently oblivious to everything, possibly even their own beauty. She realized that she liked butterflies a lot, had always liked them.

  In one part of the tropical room there were several rows of wooden chairs set out in front of a single larger chair, placed a step up from the others. Behind the single chair sat a four-man orchestra. One cello, two violins, and a flute.

  A few people were already sitting, waiting. Sophie sat down. Hector walked in, and called for everyone’s attention. He began in Spanish, then switched to Swedish, introducing a Spanish poet whose work had been translated into Swedish. Applause broke out in the tropical heat.

  The poet, a short man with a cheerful face, came in and sat down on the chair, said a few words of Spanish, then began reading his poetry to the accompaniment of the quartet behind him.

  To begin with, Sophie wasn’t sure what to think. She almost started giggling, but after a while she got caught up in the solemnity of the moment. She listened to the beautiful music, to the beautiful words the man was intoning with calm concentration. It was as if he were transmitting some sort of harmony even though she couldn’t understand a word he was saying. The butterflies were fluttering about, seemed to be showing themselves off to the audience. Her thoughts began to wander: Gunilla Strandberg, Hector, herself, to and fro without settling. And all the time the feeling that had been running through her since her encounter with Gunilla in the hospital, something along the lines of Follow your heart … But when she tried to do that, she realized that she had more than one heart. There was the one that Gunilla had played on, Do the right thing—her moral heart. But there was also the one that Hector had somehow brought to life, the passionate heart that had lain dormant within her for so long.

  Do the right thing, Gunilla had said during their conversation in the hospital. Do the right thing. With the subtext: tell them all about Hector Guzman, that’s the right thing to do. We’re on the right side, she had said, and he’s on the wrong side. Had Gunilla understood who Sophie was? Someone who couldn’t say no to a request from the police. A nurse—someone who wanted to do the right thing.

  Sophie opened her eyes, the poet was still reciting his work. She looked at Hector, who was listening intently to the poet’s voice. She liked watching him when he looked like that, private, concentrating, impenetrable. Her eyes fell to her hands in her lap. No matter how she might want to look at it, contact with Hector was already established, the game was afoot. And what, according to Gunilla, ought to feel right really didn’t at all.

  The Spaniard read, the orchestra played, the butterflies fluttered about, and tears started rolling down her cheeks. She found a handkerchief in her bag. Hector turned to look at her, possibly thinking she was crying because of the intensity of the moment. She managed to smile as though she were embarrassed by her tears, then wiped them away and pretended to concentrate on the music and poetry again. She could feel him still looking at her.

  When the poet finished the audience applauded. Hector stood up and showed everyone the bilingual book that his publishing company had produced in both Swedish and Spanish, telling them about it and thanking the poet for coming.

  They headed toward the garage, Hector walking slowly with his stick, one leg still in a cast.

  “Beautiful? Lovely? Good?” he asked.

  “All of those,” she said.

  They stopped at a waiting taxi. He paid the driver to take her home. The door closed and the taxi drove off and she realized that she was smiling. She was rather scared of how much she liked being in his presence.

  “Stocksund, please.”

  The driver muttered something.

  Her cell buzzed to let her know she had a message. She pulled it out of her bag and read: Well done. Meet me at once in the multistory garage on Regeringsgatan, 4th floor, from an unknown number.

  She read the message several times, debating with herself.

  “Sorry, I’ve changed my mind. Regeringsgatan, please.”

  For some reason the taxi driver sighed.

  She took the elevator up to the fourth floor of the garage. Gunilla was waiting for her in her car, and gestured to Sophie to get into the passenger seat.

  “Thanks for coming.”

  Gunilla started the car and pulled away.

  “Was it nice? The Butterfly House?”

  Sophie didn’t answer, and fastened her seat belt.

  “We don’t follow him all the time, it’s called sporadic surveillance.”

  They drove down the spiral ramp that took them to the exit onto Regeringsgatan. She was driving a fairly new Peugeot, and the seat was too far forward, too close to the steering wheel. It made her look like a little old lady. As usual, the traffic was heavy but Gunilla drove better and more safely than Sophie had feared when she saw the position of the seat.

  “I realize that you must have done a lot of thinking since our conversation, and that your decision has been difficult.”

  Music was playing quietly on the radio. Gunilla leaned over and switched it off.

  “You’ve made the right decision, Sophie. If that means anything.”

  She pulled out to pass a double-parked truck.

  “You can help us do something good. Our work combined with your observations will help us get results.… It will feel good, I promise you.”

  Gunilla looked at Sophie. “What do you think?”

  “It doesn’t feel like that right now.”

  “What?”

  “Good. It doesn’t feel good.”

  “And that’s entirely natural,” Gunilla said quietly.

  They got stuck in traffic. There was something unforced about Gunilla Strandberg, something grounded and normal. She had a calm about her, a calm that never let her get out of balance. The traffic eased and they pulled out onto Valhallavägen, heading toward Lidingö.

  “I saw something in you when you came out of his room. I was sitting on a benc
h in the corridor. You didn’t notice me, but I noticed you.”

  Sophie waited.

  “I checked you out. A widow with one son, a nurse making ends meet with the inheritance from her husband. She seemed to live a fairly comfortable, quiet, retiring life. But perhaps meeting Hector Guzman has changed that?”

  Sophie was feeling uncomfortable. Gunilla noticed.

  “How does that feel?”

  “What?”

  “That I know that about you?”

  The question surprised Sophie. She automatically replied with the opposite of what she was feeling. “It feels fine, it doesn’t matter.”

  Gunilla drove on for a bit.

  “I’m going to be honest with you, Sophie, otherwise this isn’t going to work. And that honesty includes explaining how I work, and what you can expect from me.”

  “What I can expect from you?”

  They were passing a truck in the inside lane, and it let out a loud hissing noise as it changed gears.

  “I’m a widow as well, although my husband died many years ago now.”

  Sophie glanced at her.

  “I know that your father’s dead as well. So are my parents. I know how it feels, I recognize the emptiness that never really goes, the feeling of loneliness.…”

  They were crossing the long bridge out to Lidingö, with motor-boats and yachts on the glittering water below them.

  “And that loneliness contains something that I’ve never understood, a little hint of shame.”

  Gunilla’s words hit home heavily inside Sophie. She kept her eyes on the view.

  “Do you know what I mean, Sophie?”

  Sophie didn’t want to answer, then nodded.

  “Where does that come from?” Gunilla went on. “I mean, what is it?”

  Sophie’s eyes were glued to the world outside.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  They sat in silence for the rest of the journey.

  They turned into a maze of little roads, and Gunilla made her way through them with ease, eventually pulling onto a gravel track that led to a little wooden house in the middle of a grove of trees.

  “This is where I live,” she said.

  Sophie looked at the house, it reminded her of a summer cottage.

  Gunilla showed her around the garden, pointing out her peonies and roses. Told her their names and how she’d got them, how they behaved in different soil, at different times of the year. How she kept them free from various diseases and pests, how she was genuinely affected by their well-being. Sophie was left in no doubt about Gunilla’s genuine interest, it was fascinating.

  They passed an arbor and Gunilla invited Sophie to sit down on a white wooden chair. Gunilla sat down opposite her with a file on her lap, Sophie couldn’t remember if she had been carrying it the whole time.

  Gunilla was about to say something but changed her mind. She handed the file to Sophie.

  “I’ll get us something to drink. Take a look at this in the meantime.”

  Gunilla got up and went off toward the house. Sophie watched her go, then opened the file.

  The first thing she saw was a report of a murder investigation that had been translated into Swedish from Spanish. Hector’s name appeared on every other line.

  Sophie kept looking through the file, leafing past other official documents. They were followed by a number of translated documents about other murders. She read a bit more. They went all the way back to the ’80s. Each document had two photographs attached to one side. One was a picture of the corpse, the other a picture of the murder victims when they were still alive. She leafed through the cases, looking at the pictures of the victims. A dead man lying on the floor in a pool of blood. A man shot inside a car, his head at an odd angle. A man in a suit hanging from a noose in a tree in a forest. The bloated body of a naked man in a bathtub. Sophie went back through the file, looking past the photographs of the crime scenes and staring instead at the family photographs. Men with their wives and children. Different settings, mostly vacation snapshots, but a few pictures of dinners, barbecues, Christmas parties. The men were happy, the children were happy, the women were happy.… But the men were dead. Murdered.

  She turned a page and saw an enlarged photograph of Hector; he was staring straight at her and she stared back.

  Sophie closed the file and tried to take some deep breaths, but found that she couldn’t.

  PART TWO

  8

  Sonya Alizadeh was on all fours on the large double bed. Svante Carlgren was taking her from behind. He was many years older, and many years uglier. Sonya faked an orgasm, screaming into the pillow. Svante felt a surge of pride.

  He really preferred more elaborate things but today he was in a hurry, they only had half an hour before his lunchtime meeting. He liked sneaking away for a fuck every now and then. Sonya was his sexual fantasy, possibly even better than a fantasy. Her long black hair, her quiet, mysterious attitude, and of course her breasts, which in his opinion sat perfectly on her nicely curvaceous body.

  He had met her a year before when he was attending a theatre premiere with his wife. They had bumped into each other during the intermission by the bar, and she had spilled champagne on his trousers. His wife had gone out to the car to get a cardigan, she was always cold. All that bloody freezing got on his nerves.

  Svante and Sonya had gotten to talking after the mishap, before his wife returned, and when they separated she gave him her phone number, offering to pay to have his trousers dry-cleaned. He said that that was out of the question, and she said he could call anyway if he felt like it. Those words had made Svante go weak at the knees for a moment. Never before had a woman been as candid as Sonya, never before had a woman of her caliber made contact. She was sexy, she was an animal. She didn’t ask for much, apart from an agreed fee—she was perfect. And he had noticed that she found him interesting, just as he himself did; he saw himself as one of the elite, one of the big boys.

  After studying economics in Gothenburg, Svante Carlgren had joined Volvo during the years when Gyllenhammar was in charge, but when the great man resigned and moved to London, Svante went to Stockholm instead and worked his way up in Ericsson, the telecom company. The firm was so large that only a very few people had a good overview of how it all worked. Svante was one of them. The only thing he was missing was the occasional mention in one of the business papers, getting some sort of public recognition for his work, but he was also aware that the day that this happened would be the day when his sphere of influence began to shrink. He made do instead with the appreciation he was shown by his colleagues, and sometimes got to join in with the big boys, even flying on the company jet.

  As usual, Sonya had offered him cocaine before they went to bed. He thought the drug was fantastic, it made him feel fit, alert, and self-aware in a way that was completely new to him. In all of his sixty-four years he had never taken any drugs, but the combination of cocaine and energetic sex with Sonya was such a heady mix that nothing could make him abstain from it.

  Sonya was talking dirty, the way he liked so much, he whimpered as he came, and she said how biiiig he was again.

  Svante left the money on the bedside table, along with a silver and gold bracelet. Svante had long since realized that women liked getting presents, he knew pretty much everything about the way women worked.

  Sonya said good-bye at the door in her silk dressing gown, smiling appreciatively at the bracelet that she had put on her right wrist. She said she didn’t want him to go. He replied that he had to, that his work and responsibilities were greater and more important than she could possibly understand. He pinched her cheek and headed downstairs. She could hear him whistling something tuneless before he vanished out the front door.

  She let her smile fade, went into the bedroom, switched off the video and sound-recording equipment behind the mirror, and tore the sheets from the bed. She squeezed them into a black garbage bag, the way she always did after seeing a man, then
dropped the tasteless bracelet in as well and left the bag by the door of the apartment.

  In the bathroom she stuck her fingers down her throat and threw up in the toilet, then rinsed with mouthwash and brushed her teeth carefully. Then she took a shower and washed off as much of Svante Carlgren as she could.

  When Sonya was clean she dried herself carefully with a fresh towel and rubbed her skin with various lotions for different parts of her body. She couldn’t smell him at all once she was finished. All the while she was careful not to look at herself in the bathroom mirror, it would be several days before she could do that again.

  Sonya now had eight hours’ worth of material showing Svante Carlgren taking cocaine, her whipping him, his shouting perverse crap. Showing him with a rubber ball in his mouth, showing him pretending to be a handyman, a slave, or head of Ericsson.

  He had requested a meeting with Gunilla, but she had said it would have to wait. He had called her voice mail and asked for some feedback on his surveillance at least, on the analysis of Sophie that he had been sending her. She hadn’t replied. Then he had e-mailed her. A long, well-formulated e-mail in which he reminded her that when they had first met she had said she appreciated his analytical skills, so how was she thinking of using them? No response to that, either.

  Lars was boiling over in his isolation as he thought about the way he was being treated. He had only asked for a conversation, no more, no less. He went over it again and again, having long discussions with her in his head where he explained that he wasn’t just anyone, he wasn’t made for sitting in a van for days on end.

  Gunilla was at her desk when he walked into the office; she was talking quietly on the phone, met his gaze, and gestured to him to wait. Eva and Erik weren’t there. Lars pulled out an old, low-backed office chair on wheels from Eva’s desk and sat down to wait patiently for Gunilla to finish her conversation.