The Andalucian Friend: A Novel

by Alexander Soderberg

  Eva had scanned the pictures into the computer. Anders, Gunilla, and Erik were staring at the screen.

  “What sort of car is it?” Gunilla wondered.

  No one answered.

  “Compare it with”—Gunilla looked down at her notes—“a Toyota Land Cruiser, 2001 model.”

  Eva began to type, looking for images of Land Cruisers on the screen. She found one she liked, ran it through a 3D program, and adjusted the angle, comparing it with the photograph.

  “They look the same,” she said.

  Eva opened another program and tapped in scales and measurements. The calculations were incomprehensible to the others. A tool that she was steering with the mouse measured parts of both vehicles. She looked at the results.

  “In all likelihood, it’s a Toyota Land Cruiser, 2001 model.”

  “The nurse is playing rough,” Anders whispered.

  “We don’t know that for certain,” Gunilla said.

  “Plenty of other people have the same sort of car,” Erik muttered.

  Silence fell as they each followed their own thoughts. Gunilla broke it.

  “Let’s have some scenarios, assuming that it is Sophie’s car.” Anders began.

  “The only sign of life we have from the vehicle is an arm on the third picture in the sequence. The arm isn’t Sophie’s, it’s a man’s, and he’s about to get out of the vehicle. It can’t be Hector, the tone of skin is too pale. It could be Aron. It could be the partner of the man who was shot … or someone else entirely. Either way, Sophie could have driven ’round the block from the restaurant and picked them up there, there’s a way out from the back, I’ve checked.”

  “So what about Lars?” Gunilla interrupted. “Why would Lars claim that she drove home?”

  “Maybe he thought she did. Maybe he lost her when she went ’round the block to pick the others up? Missed it, basically.”

  “But then he would have said she drove around the block, and he didn’t. He said she drove out onto Odengatan, and that he followed her.”

  “Maybe he’s lying?” Anders said.

  “Why would he lie?” Gunilla asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Anders, why would Lars lie?”

  Anders shook his head. “I don’t know.…”

  Erik screwed up his mouth, then tugged at his bottom lip.

  “I think we should examine her car before we start trying to come up with theories. If an injured man was transported in it, we’ll find evidence,” he said.

  Gunilla turned toward Eva.

  “Check all vehicles of that model and color in the Stockholm area, I want names of their owners. Anders, I’d like you and Hasse Berglund to get better acquainted.”

  “We’re already acquainted,” he said.

  15

  Anders Ask and Hasse Berglund had driven over to the technical division that afternoon. Gunilla had told them to pick up a box from reception. It didn’t need to be signed out, just collected. Anders tucked it under his arm and left the building, nodding to some old cops he recognized. They nodded in acknowledgment.

  They ate pizza at Hasse’s favorite place, Pizzeria Colosseum in Botkyrka. Hasse had a Colosseum special with the works, Anders a Hawaiian. They drank Falcon, which Hasse claimed was the only beer worth drinking, everything else tasted like piss … fox piss, apparently, whatever that tasted like.

  Drunks teetering on the brink of homelessness were drinking from a carafe of red wine in one corner of the restaurant. They kept veering from subject to subject, yelling at one another as they discussed education, health care, company directors, and that bastard, what’s his name, the foreign minister … Carl Bildt.

  Hasse stood up, went over to them, and asked them to keep the noise down. The hoarse, ravaged-looking woman with red hair shouted that she’d stopped taking orders from men years ago … it was against her principles … and he should make no fucking mistake about that. One of her friends started to snarl something incoherent at Hasse, who went back to his pizza and sat down.

  “Why do you even bother to get involved in stuff like that?”

  “I don’t know.” Berglund sighed, taking a bite from a large piece of pizza with strings of cheese hanging off it.

  “So tell me all about Mommy, then,” he said with his mouth full.

  Anders cut a piece of pizza.

  “There’s not so much to tell, we’ve known each other a long time. She’s rescued me from total humiliation a few times. I got the push from the security police.”

  Anders took a bite.

  “Why did you get the push?”

  “They caught me with my hand in the cookie jar,” he said in between chews.

  “What sort of cookie jar?” Hasse asked.

  Anders finished his mouthful.

  “A gang of Eritreans we had under surveillance out in Norsborg. I was going to install cameras there one evening, and found a paper bag full of money under the sink. I stuck my hand in, filled my pockets.… One of my cretinous colleagues reported me.”

  “And she helped you?”

  “Yes, somehow or other … At least I only got the push, not prison.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did she help you?”

  “In exchange for me doing a few jobs for her, staying loyal.”

  “And are you?” Hasse said, mid-mouthful.

  Anders nodded. “Yes, I am.”

  “How sweet.”

  Hasse drank some beer. The drunks started shouting at one another again. Hasse looked over, but Anders gestured to him to let it go.

  “So what happened?” Hasse asked.

  “I left the security police with my tail about as far between my legs as it would go. I did a few little jobs for her during the years that followed, then everything got messed up again.” Anders chewed.

  “There was a group of us who wanted to make a fast buck. We doped a few horses at the races out in Täby.… It was a fucking mess, two of them died, we were standing there when the inspectors came around, I still had the syringe in my hand.” He chuckled at the memory.

  “Gunilla came to the rescue on that occasion as well, it was pretty stupid, but she always seemed to turn up and put things right whenever I messed up.… So I owe her, basically.”

  Hasse finished his beer and had foam on his top lip when he put the glass down.

  “You started babbling something in the car … about us sticking together.”

  Anders took a bite and shrugged.

  “Oh, it was nothing.”

  “Go on, tell me,” Berglund said.

  Anders shook his head. “It wasn’t important.”

  “So tell me, then.”

  Anders thought for a moment as he chewed. He finished his beer and glanced over his shoulder.

  “It was an investigation that Gunilla and Erik were running. I was freelancing. We were about to get Zdenko, the so-called King of the Racetrack, you know. Big gangster, working out of Malmö. He had a girl, Swedish, no brain at all. A blonde from Alingsås, twenty-eight years old. Patricia something …”

  Anders seemed to get sidetracked for a moment, then pulled himself together.

  “Gunilla had brought her in before, she had something on her, I don’t know what. We put a wire on her but didn’t get anything from that. Then suddenly she disappeared. Zdenko went free, although he was later shot and killed out at Jägersro Racecourse.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Don’t know, she just disappeared. Vanished.”

  “What?”

  Anders cut a piece of pizza.

  “Vanished, I said. She disappeared, was reported missing, but there was never any sign of her again.”

  “Dead?”

  Anders took a mouthful, looked at Hasse, chewed, shrugged his shoulders.

  “How did you get away with that?”

  “It wasn’t that hard, we erased everything we had about her, it was as if she never existed in our investigation
. That’s how Gunilla works. She’s always worked like that, using people. She sees it as a natural part of the job, involving people she needs to involve, even if they don’t want to take part.”

  Anders looked up.

  “And keeping people she doesn’t need on the outside, that’s why she succeeds in most of what she attempts to do.”

  “How?”

  “How? Well, I’m sitting here, aren’t I, the bad cop from the security police, the horse murderer. And you, a mostly terrible rapid-response cop with mood swings. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

  “How did she get Zdenko’s blonde to play along?” Hasse asked.

  “I don’t know.… She was probably promised something, or threatened with something.”

  “Like our nurse?”

  “No, not quite … That was something else, I never did find out what. Either way, it’s over now, finished.”

  The drunks were now arguing about the Palestinian question in the background.

  “We made it through unscathed that time,” Anders went on.

  “And by that you mean what, exactly?”

  Anders washed the pizza down with beer.

  “By that I mean what I said before, that we have to stick together. It might turn out to be heaven or hell, but we need to have an exit strategy in case everything goes to heck.”

  “To heck? What kind of lame phrase is that?”

  “She’s taking a lot of risks right now.”

  “I think she knows what she’s doing.” Hasse leaned back in his chair, cleaning his teeth with his tongue.

  Anders shrugged. “Sure, but you understand what we’re doing?”

  “What?”

  “The group she’s built up is shapeless, it’s like a shadow within a much bigger organization. That’s what she wanted, and that’s what she’s got.… This isn’t just some ordinary job we’re doing. This is on the verge of judicial anarchy. She does whatever she wants to get results. She’s found a way. One day someone higher up will tire of it. I’m just saying that if you see or hear anything unusual, talk to me. And I’ll do the same for you. OK?”

  Hasse suppressed a hiccup.

  “I’m an old rapid-response cop who got exiled to the airport. That’s on a par with being sent to lost property. My career was fucked, I was supposed to hang around rotting out there until I hit sixty-five. Then I was supposed to drink myself to death and die alone in some shitty apartment somewhere. But I got a phone call that changed all that. You wouldn’t get any odds on that, so I’m thinking of doing as I’m told, I’m thinking of doing exactly what the boss tells me.”

  Hasse looked out across the room and burped quietly into his hand.

  “Well, you know what I mean,” he concluded.

  The drunks had gotten onto immigration policy now, none of them was racist, but … The red-haired woman even knew some immigrants who were decent people, but the fact that they came over here and took jobs from honest Swedes, she didn’t like that at all. Hasse stretched.

  “When do we have to be there?” he asked.

  “Three hours.”

  “Another round?”

  Anders couldn’t think of a good reason to say no. They ordered another round. Hasse drank his down in one gulp, Anders drank half, Hasse gestured for more.

  “And two Jägers as well!” he called.

  For a while they couldn’t think of anything to talk about, and just looked out across the room. The drunks were talking nonsense, panpipes were playing “I Just Called to Say I Love You” over the speakers up in the ceiling. Anders drew the Olympic rings on the table with the bottom of his wet beer glass.

  “What sort of exit strategy did you have in mind?” Hasse asked.

  Beer and Jägers appeared before them. They drank the shots in one gulp.

  “Two more!” Hasse said before he had time to put the empty glass down. The waitress in the black T-shirt was already long gone.

  “She heard, didn’t she?”

  “I think we should try to be a bit strategic.”

  “Don’t talk crap, Anders.… And—”

  Hasse burped mid-sentence. He grinned.

  “Anders And!” he exclaimed.

  Anders looked quizzically at Hasse, who went on in a slurred voice: “Donald Duck’s called Anders And in Norwegian. That’s you, Donald Duck!”

  Anders didn’t respond, and Hasse let out an odd laugh.

  “It’s a fucking good name for a cartoon character. Anders And …”

  Anders looked at Hasse, bemused by his strange sense of humor.

  “What shall I call you? Donald Duck or Anders And?”

  Anders drank the last drops from his glass.

  “Anders And,” he said in a tone of resignation.

  “That’s settled then. Where were we?”

  “We need to keep our backs clear.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  “We deny everything point-blank, but we have to deny it together.”

  “OK, let’s deny it point-blank,” Hasse said, and raised his glass.

  They left Botkyrka and the Colosseum, bought a six-pack of beer from the gas station, and headed back toward the city along the Essinge Highway.

  “I like driving when I’m drunk,” Hasse said.

  Anders leaned toward the open window, letting the mild evening air hit him in the face.

  “OK, that Lars guy, he’s a bit of an idiot, isn’t he?” Hasse asked.

  The wind was stroking Anders’s hair.

  “He’s just an idiot. Ignore him.”

  They killed time by driving around the city center, drinking beer, checking out the people on the streets, and listening to an old Randy Crawford album.

  Hasse did a tight turn around the Sergels torg roundabout, shifting down the Volvo’s gears and putting his foot down, driving around it three times. The centrifugal force threw the men to the right. Randy Crawford sang, Anders emptied his can, burped loudly, and threw it out into the fountain in the center of the roundabout. Hasse didn’t want to let the side down, so he did a truck-driver’s horn gesture and broke wind noisily.

  At two o’clock they headed out toward Stocksund.

  They were sitting in the Volvo a block or so away from Sophie’s house, connected wirelessly to the equipment in Little Lars’s surveillance car, which was parked by a clump of trees. Anders had headphones on.

  “I think they’re snoozing nicely now. Shall we?”

  They got out of the car and walked up the road, Anders carrying the box from the technical division under his arm, Hasse with a can of beer in his hand. The sun was somewhere just over the horizon. The nights were never properly dark at this time of year.

  “I hate summer,” Anders said.

  They each pulled on a black knitted hat. Anders looked at Hasse.

  “Terrorist?”

  Hasse chuckled. “Where did you do your national service?”

  “The interpreting unit. You?”

  “Arvidsjaur,” Hasse replied.

  “Of course …”

  They crept into the gravel drive where the Land Cruiser was parked, stopped, and listened to the silence.

  Anders switched on a flashlight and looked around the interior of the vehicle. It looked clean.

  He opened the box and took out an electronic gadget. He pressed a button and a digital counter started working its way through a spectrum while Anders held it toward the car. The counter started with low-frequency sounds and gradually made its way up the scale. The neighbor’s car unlocked some thirty yards away, its lights flashing in the night. They laughed quietly.

  The digital gadget worked. Sophie’s car unlocked. Anders put the gadget back in the box and carefully opened one of the rear doors. He took an ultraviolet lamp from the box, switched it on, and swept it over the seats. He found nothing unusual, even though he checked everywhere—floor, sills, seats, roof—the whole car. No blood anywhere, it was all incredibly clean.

  Anders closed the door and went around to
the baggage compartment. He opened it and looked in, searching all around it with the lamp. Nothing there, either. He switched the light off and sniffed the air, trying to identify the smell. There was a faint hint of bleach, and something else strong, something chemical … then another familiar smell. He took another sniff, was it glue? He looked at the mat covering the floor of the baggage compartment. Wasn’t it slightly too small? He lifted one edge and put his nose to it. Damn, it was glue.

  “Hasse!” he hissed.

  Hasse wandered over lethargically.

  “Smell this.”

  Hasse leaned in and sniffed.

  “Glue?”

  Anders nodded. “Look at this mat, it’s not the original, it’s too small.”

  Hasse shrugged and took a swig of beer. He didn’t care much about anything when he was drunk. Anders took a sample of the glue and snipped off a piece of the mat. He put them in separate little plastic bags and sealed them. He photographed the rest of the vehicle carefully, then locked it with the digital gadget. The neighbor’s car locked as well. Everything was back to normal.

  Gunilla had called him and told him to break off his surveillance at eight o’clock that evening, and to head into the city, to the Trasten restaurant, instead. She’d never asked him to do that before. Nothing was happening there, and after a while he realized that something else was going on, and drove back out to Stocksund again.

  Lars had kept his distance, in a neighbor’s garden, hidden among the bushes. He had seen them walking up the road, half drunk and fearless, he could hear them chuckling at some remark about terrorists. What the hell were they doing there?

  The telephoto lens had given some decent pictures, the camera clicking off clear close-ups of both Anders Ask and big Hasse Berglund. He waited until they had left, not moving, until he was sure he was alone. He pulled a sheet from his notebook, wrote Be careful on it in his scratchy handwriting.

  Lars dropped the note in Sophie’s mailbox.

  Back home in the apartment Lars transferred the pictures of Anders Ask and Hasse Berglund to his computer, printed out a couple of them, and pinned them up. He sat down on his office chair, rolled back, and looked at his handiwork. The wall had grown, as if it had a life of its own.