The Andalucian Friend: A Novel

by Alexander Soderberg

  Anders Ask and Erik Strandberg came into the restaurant, saw the tragedy being played out, and went over to his table.

  “You must be Hasse Berglund,” Erik said.

  Hasse looked at them, nodded, and went on throwing fries.

  “I’m Erik, and this is Anders.”

  Erik sat down with a sigh. He had a temperature that day, a cold sweat, and permanent pressure over his forehead, and his mouth was dry.

  Hasse threw another fry that landed on one young man’s hood.

  “Having a fries war, I see?” Anders said.

  “Yep,” Hasse said, firing off another one.

  Anders joined in, grabbing a few fries and throwing them at the youths. He was also a good shot. The young men stared ahead of them, humiliated.

  “You used to be in the city?” Erik asked, breathing heavily through his high blood pressure.

  “Yep.”

  “Then Arlanda?”

  They ran out of fries.

  “Shall we get some more?” Anders asked.

  Erik shook his head and turned to the young men.

  “Have a good day, boys. Look out for each other,” he said, gesturing for them to leave.

  The youngsters got up and slouched out. Outside they started shouting and fighting again, then disappeared.

  “Great lads!” Anders said.

  “Sweden’s future,” Hasse said.

  Erik coughed into his elbow. Hasse drank through a straw, looking at Erik and Anders. Anders settled down and began.

  “You’ve already spoken to Gunilla, she’s told you about the project. We wanted to meet you.”

  “I’ve heard about you, Erik, but not about any Anders,” Hasse said.

  “Anders is a consultant …,” Erik said.

  “So what does a consultant do?”

  “Consults,” Anders said.

  Hasse found a fry between his legs on the chair and ate it.

  “And Strandberg?” Hasse said. “You’ve got the same name. Is Gunilla your missus, or what?”

  Erik looked hard at Hasse.

  “No,” he replied.

  Hasse Berglund waited for more, but nothing came.

  “OK, like I care. I’m just happy to be involved, because I’m guessing that’s what this is about, a job offer?”

  “I think so. What do you say, Anders?”

  Anders didn’t answer. Hasse looked from one to the other.

  “Come on, I’m stuck in a fucking airport, I need to get out of there before I shoot someone. I’m very flexible, I told Gunilla.”

  Erik tried to find a comfortable position on the fixed plastic chair, and let out a rattling cough.

  “OK, it’s like this.… We work as a team. We don’t question Gunilla’s decisions, she’s always right. If the results don’t come at the rate we might want them to, at least they come eventually. Gunilla knows that, and that’s why we do as she says. If you don’t understand your role in what we do, you don’t ask, you just carry on and keep your mouth shut. Are you with me?”

  Hasse swallowed the last of his drink, the ice cubes rattling at the bottom of the cup.

  “OK,” he said flatly as he let go of the straw.

  “If you’ve got any complaints, if you think you’ve been unfairly treated, or if you’ve got any other whiny union questions, well, then you’re out on your ear.”

  Erik leaned forward, took Hasse’s untouched apple pie, and helped himself to a big bite. As usual, it was too hot and he chewed on it with his mouth open as he went on.

  “We work with simple equations, we don’t like complicating things. If you do the job well, you’ll be rewarded.”

  Erik finished Hasse’s apple pie. Hasse’s expression didn’t change. Erik took a napkin from the table and wiped the fevered sweat from his brow, then blew his nose noisily.

  “You’ll be transferred to us shortly. Keep your mouth shut about this, don’t go yapping about it to any of your colleagues, just be goddamn grateful, OK?”

  “Ten-four,” Hasse Berglund said in his best TV-cop voice, then gave them the thumbs-up and a crooked smile.

  Erik stared intently at him.

  “And none of that fucking shit with me.”

  Erik stood up and walked out. Anders pulled an innocent face, shrugged his shoulders, and followed him.

  He had been pretty shaken up after his meeting with Gunilla and Anders. The pills weren’t working the way they should. Gunilla and Anders were in cahoots. They were onto something, something he wasn’t allowed to be part of. They were questioning him. They didn’t trust him.

  His nerves were gnawing away at him. He had hurried home, picked up the prescriptions he had stolen from Rosie, and gone to the nearest pharmacy. There was a line, moving slowly, the old woman behind the counter was in no hurry. A knot of anxiety pressed at his stomach. The pharmacist started asking questions about one of the prescriptions. He answered tersely and monosyllabically, told her he was Rosie’s son, that he didn’t know, he was just supposed to pick them up. He kept scratching his cheek.

  When he got back home he checked the online pharmaceutical directory. Lyrica was like a fucking Kinder Egg, three gifts in one: it prevented epileptic fits, neuropathological pain, and anxiety. Rosie took the pills for her nerves. It said 300 mg on the bottle, the strongest available, bingo. He took two, washing them down with some stale water from a glass on the desk. The second prescription was nasal spray, so he threw that in the bin. The third, the one that had looked different and that the pharmacist had asked about, was Ketogan. He looked it up in the directory. Addictive substance. The utmost care should be taken with prescriptions of this drug. He was already addicted, the school nurse had told him that. And inside Lars’s head a thought took shape: If that was the case, then these pills wouldn’t be dangerous for him. What the hell could possibly go wrong?

  He kept reading. Ketogan was a powerful drug, used for very severe pain. Very severe pain?

  He tore open the box. Fuck. Suppositories. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Lars pulled down his trousers, squatted down, and shoved one of them up his backside, then another … and then another. He pulled up his trousers and went out into the living room. Life gradually changed into something soft, composed, and undemanding. He wandered aimlessly around the room, feeling a sudden and immense gratitude for everything in his life. It all fell into place, his feelings were where they should be, neatly partitioned, secure, incapable of making a fuss or throwing up any questions for him to get caught up in. He sat down in a corner. The wooden floor felt soft and Lars lay down, it was like a waterbed made of cotton balls. He looked out across the horizon of the floor. It was so beautiful, so intricately beautiful, imagine that a floor could be so wonderful, so incredibly wonderful in all its flatness.…

  He lay there enjoying everything that he could understand yet not understand. When he slowly began to bottom out he took a few more of each drug. The world became interesting for a while. His fingers started talking to each other, started to explain the true nature of existence to him, the nature that lay three steps behind the laws of physics, two steps behind God’s creation … one step behind the creation of God.… Then Lars fell asleep.

  The alarm clock sounded like an air-raid siren. Several hours had passed and the feeling of emptiness had expanded into a huge black hole that was swallowing all the light in Lars’s universe. He got on weak legs and topped up with a random mix of drugs. The black hole withdrew and life became easy again.

  He drove to Stocksund. All the radio stations were playing really good music and he bopped weirdly along to it.

  He found a good hiding place for the car, put on the headphones, got himself comfortable in the car seat, and listened to her. How she went around her house all alone, how she prepared food, how she talked to her friend Clara over the phone, how she laughed at something on television.

  He felt like going in to see her, to share what she was doing, or just sit alongside and watch. Darkness came, the hou
se was completely silent. Longing started to tug and pull at him.

  At half past one in the morning Lars took off the headphones, put on a dark woolly hat, carefully opened the car door, and started walking toward her house.

  He crossed the street, smelling the scent of the honeysuckle without actually knowing what honeysuckle was, crept into her garden, and made his way soundlessly up to the veranda.

  The skeleton key worked just as well this time. It pressed in the little metal tumblers in the lock. Lars carefully pushed the handle of the terrace door, nudged it open slightly, and took a can of lubricant from his pocket. He sprayed the oil on the hinges inside the door, two quick squirts. The door slid open without a sound.

  Lars stood silently in the living room, then bent down and took his shoes off, listening, but all he could hear was his own heartbeat thudding inside him. Slowly and cautiously he began to go upstairs. The old wooden staircase made small creaking sounds. A car passed by out in the road. Lars compared the sounds, possibly the same decibel level. His steps wouldn’t wake her up.

  The door to her bedroom was ajar. Lars stood still, taking calm, regular breaths, letting his breathing go back to normal, then took a step onto the soft carpet. A smell hit him, faint, thin, as if it were drifting about the room like invisible silk … Sophie. There she lay. As if in a fantasy she was lying on her back, her head on the pillow, slightly askew. Her hair was like a backdrop to everything, her mouth was closed, her chest calmly rose and fell. The covers went up to her stomach, she was wearing a lacy nightdress. His eyes were drawn to the shape of her breasts, and stopped there. She was so beautiful. He wanted to wake her up and tell her: You’re so beautiful. He wanted to lie down beside her, hold her in his arms, and tell her everything was all right. She’d know what he meant.

  Carefully he pulled out his camera, switched off the flash and sound, then found her through the lens. Without a sound he took thirty or so close-ups of Sophie as she slept.

  He was about to leave when his eyes were drawn once again to her breasts. Lars stared, as fantasies from the depths of his troubled soul started to take shape. Lars crept closer to her. And closer. In the end he was standing right next to her face. He could see her skin, the little wrinkles around her eyes, her lines.… He closed his eyes, he smelled, he wished.…

  She moved in her sleep and let out a little sound. Lars opened his eyes, backed away carefully, and silently left the room.

  He was breathless by the time he got back in the car. He felt as if he’d slept with her, a feeling of having been inside her for the first time. He felt strong, safe, happy. He knew that she felt the same. She must have seen him in her sleep, in her dreams. It was so obvious, he was her angel of salvation, in her life without her knowledge, who made love to her when she was asleep, who protected her from evil when she was awake. He took some more of the prescription drugs, the world around him took on a different hue, his tongue seemed to grow inside his mouth, and sounds became blurred.

  Lars drove carefully back in toward the city, passing the Natural History Museum in the pale light from the streetlamps. And saw a huge fucking penguin that was staring quizzically at him.

  Sophie had been having nightmares, she couldn’t remember what they were about, but she woke up with a sense of unease. A sense that she had been subjected to something, a feeling of disgust. She got out of bed, she’d overslept. She could hear the sound of the vacuum cleaner downstairs.

  It had been ages since she last saw Dorota. She usually came when Sophie was at work, but she had the day off today. She was pleased to see her again when she went downstairs. Dorota was kind. Sophie liked her.

  Dorota waved from the living room, where she was vacuuming. Sophie smiled back and went into the kitchen to get some breakfast.

  “I’ll drive you home later!” she called.

  Dorota switched off the vacuum cleaner.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I can drive you home later, Dorota.”

  Dorota shook her head.

  “You don’t have to, it’s so far.”

  “No, it isn’t. But you always say it is.”

  Dorota was sitting in the passenger seat with her handbag in her lap. They’d already crossed the Stocksund Bridge and turned off at Bergshamra.

  “You’re very quiet, Dorota. Is everything OK, are your children all right?”

  “Everything’s good, the children are fine.… I miss them, but everything’s good.”

  They drove on a bit farther.

  “Maybe I’m tired,” Dorota said, looking out the window.

  “You can take some time off if you like.”

  Dorota shook her head. “No, work’s fine. I’m not tired like that, just tired in my head, if you can say that?”

  Dorota tried to smile, then her eyes settled on the world outside again, at everything going past. Her forced smile vanished. Sophie kept looking between Dorota and the road.

  Dorota had lived in Spånga for as long as Sophie had known her. It was almost twelve years since the first time she came to their house. They’d developed a friendship. This was the first time Sophie could see that Dorota wasn’t herself. She was normally happy, talking about her children, laughing at things Sophie told her. But this time she was withdrawn. Sophie looked again. She seemed sad, possibly scared.

  Sophie pulled up outside Dorota’s door on Spånga Square.

  Dorota stayed in her seat for a moment after undoing the seat belt, then turned toward Sophie.

  “Well, good-bye, and thanks for the lift.”

  “I can tell something’s troubling you,” Sophie said. “If you want to talk, you know where I am.”

  Dorota didn’t move, just sat there without saying anything.

  “What is it, Dorota?”

  She hesitated. Sophie waited.

  “The last time I came to clean there were two men in your house when I arrived.”

  Sophie listened.

  “At first I thought they were relatives or friends of yours, but they turned nasty, threatened me.”

  A chill swept through Sophie.

  “They said they were police, that they’d cause problems if I told anyone.”

  Sophie’s mind was racing.

  “I’m sorry, Sophie, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t dare.… But I changed my mind. You have always been so kind.”

  “What did they do? Did you understand why they were there? Did they say anything?”

  Dorota shook her head. “No, I don’t know. One of them tried to be nice, the other was terrible, cold and … I don’t know. He felt evil. They didn’t say what they were doing there. They went after they spoke to me.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “Out.”

  “Through the door? How did they get in?”

  Sophie could hear the fear in her own voice.

  “I don’t know. They went out through the terrace door. That’s all I know.”

  Sophie tried to think.

  “Tell me everything they said.”

  Dorota tried to remember.

  “One of them said his name was Lars. That was the only name I heard.”

  “Lars?”

  Sophie didn’t know why she repeated the name.

  “Lars what?” she went on.

  Dorota shrugged her shoulders lightly. “I don’t know.”

  “What did they look like? Try to be as exact as possible.”

  Dorota hadn’t expected this reaction from Sophie. She put one hand to the side of her head, staring down into space.

  “My memory’s so bad.”

  “Try, Dorota.”

  Sophie’s tone was abrupt. Dorota could hear how desperate she was.

  “One of them, the one who said his name was Lars, was about thirty, thirty-five, I don’t know. Fair …”

  She thought, searching her memory.

  “He looked scared. Worried.”

  Sophie listened.

  “The other one was more ordin
ary, hard to describe. Maybe forty, maybe younger. Dark hair with some gray. He seemed kind but he was so mean. His eyes were kind. Dark and round. Like a boy’s.” Dorota shivered. “Ugh, he was horrible.”

  Sophie could see how scared she was. Sophie leaned over and hugged her.

  “Thank you,” she said as they embraced.

  They looked at each other once they’d let go. Dorota patted Sophie on the cheek.

  “Have you got problems?”

  “No … No, I haven’t. Thank you, Dorota.”

  Dorota looked at her.

  “The mean one took my ID card, he said I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. Promise you won’t do anything silly. He meant it. He knows who I am.”

  Sophie took the woman’s hand in hers.

  “I promise, Dorota. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  Sophie drove away from Spånga. She followed the traffic, changed lanes, kept to the speed limit. She found herself in a vacuum where there were no thoughts or feelings. Then a crack opened up somewhere. A terror was welling up inside her. A sense of being helpless, at the mercy of powerful forces. The fear grew, spreading through her, an innate maternal horror of not being able to protect Albert, of being helpless. Then it vanished. Suddenly and abruptly, it simply winked out of existence. The vacuum returned. She drove through the traffic, her feelings shut off. Then something else bubbled up. Fury. A bright red anger poured out, like water from a burst dam, roaring through her whole body and filling her to the breaking point.

  13

  His tiredness had shifted into a sort of nervous wakefulness. Jens felt wired as he drove into Munich. He hadn’t slept in two days, running on nothing but willpower.

  The address Mikhail had given him turned out to be in a sleepy residential area with identical houses from the ’60s packed tightly together. Small lawns, built-in garages, low quality. Jens stopped at number 54, got out of the car, and looked around. Not a person in sight. He went up the paved path and checked the front door, it was unlocked. He opened it and stepped cautiously inside the house.