The Andalucian Friend

by Alexander Soderberg

  Sonya Alizadeh came up into the room. Sophie lowered the gun, put it down on the floor.

  “Are they dead?” Sonya whispered, sitting down on a chair. “They came without warning,” she said. “They shot into the house from the outside. Adalberto was hit as he sat and ate.… Then they came inside the house and kept on shooting. Leszek got one of them. Then he was hit as well.”

  “Who by?”

  Sonya thought.

  “I don’t know. A man who drove off in a car.”

  “And you?” Sophie asked.

  “I ran downstairs, hid in the cellar.”

  Sophie went over to her, pulled a chair out, and sat down close to Sonya, taking Sonya’s hand in hers. They sat like that, looking out across the room, holding hands. A mild sea breeze was coming in through the shattered windows, caressing them. Sophie looked at Hector, who was lying on the stretcher fighting for his life.

  There was a sound of small paws on the stairs. A little white dog appeared and looked around the room as if he was searching for something.

  Sonya held out her hands and the dog went over to her, still hesitant, seeking, sniffing, unable to find his master. Sonya crouched down, called him over. The dog wagged his tail and jumped up into her arms. She sat up in the chair again with the dog in her lap, gently stroking his fur.

  “This is Piño.…”

  Sophie realized she was smiling at the dog, possibly because she always smiled at dogs, perhaps because the dog’s presence lent the room a bit of calm and normality.

  Suddenly one of the machines that was attached to Hector started to beep, and the doctor and nurse started to work feverishly as Sophie and Sonya looked on.

  “He’s going into a coma.” The doctor’s voice was stressed.

  Sophie hurried over as the doctor worked intently. He asked for things, she handed him whatever he needed, he muttered and swore that he couldn’t work with so few resources. The nurse was pumping oxygen into Hector manually, and Sophie looked on impotently as the doctor gave up his attempt to stop Hector from slipping into the coma. He swore in Spanish, asked the nurse a question, a question that had no answer and was just an expression of his frustration.

  “He needs to be moved.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s part of the agreement. He needs a respirator.”

  “Where are you going to take him?”

  “To a safe place.”

  “Leszek?”

  The doctor looked over at the sleeping Leszek.

  “Don’t worry about him.”

  Sophie was sitting in the back of the ambulance next to Hector’s stretcher, Sonya beside her with Piño in her lap. They drove through Marbella, the town glowing outside. Sophie could only see through one of the windows in the back doors: people having fun, cars whose paintwork gleamed under the evening’s neon lights, restaurants, terrace bars, motorbikes, mopeds, heat, music, young and old together.

  She was holding Hector’s hand in hers, wanted to say something, anything, wanted to believe he could hear her behind the walls of unconsciousness, wanted to believe he was holding her hand in his. She let go of it after a while. Took out her cell phone, called Jane. She held on to Hector’s stretcher with the other hand. Jane sounded sleepy when she answered. Said she was at the hospital, that she was sleeping there. That the two men were still around. That one of them was there the whole time, working in shifts. No one else had asked after Albert or her. And she was able to reassure Sophie by telling her that Albert seemed to be doing all right. He was sound asleep.

  They emerged from the town and headed up toward the mountains, out into the countryside, driving in darkness, passing the town of Ojén and then on into the darkness again. After an hour they slowed down and the ambulance stopped. Sophie heard the front doors open and close, followed by footsteps outside, then the back door was opened by the doctor and warm evening air hit her, and he gestured for them to get out.

  It was an old farm, now restored, white, red roof, lights on. A compact car was parked outside, the sort of car single people have, unremarkable, with small wheels and flimsy doors. Someone was waiting for them inside. The door was opened by a woman.

  Hector was carried in on the stretcher. Sophie and Sonya followed. The woman who let them in examined Hector briefly in the hall, then indicated that they should carry him into the living room. It was a large room, white stone walls, terra-cotta floor, Spanish furnishings, sober in its lack of pretension. Sophie saw hospital equipment: a defibrillator, two drip stands, a respirator, and, off to one side, a large hospital bed.

  Hector was lifted into the bed. The woman rolled the equipment over and attached the drip and connected a catheter under the sheets. The doctor and nurse set up the respirator, spoke briefly to the woman, left the house, and drove off in the ambulance.

  The woman checked Hector once more, then turned toward Sophie and Sonya.

  “My name is Raimunda, I’m going to take care of Hector. As of this evening, this is where I work. Yesterday I was working at a private hospital, I resigned four hours ago when I got the phone call.”

  She was speaking quietly and clearly.

  “This place is secure, only a few people know about it, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”

  Sophie looked at Raimunda. She was thin, in her thirties, black hair that stopped at the base of her neck. There was something correct, strict about her. She felt good, stable … loyal.

  Sophie whispered, “Thank you.”

  The cicadas were singing in the night when Sophie went off to bed in one of the rooms.

  There was a buzzing noise from Sophie’s handbag on the chair. She got up and went over. The phone she had been given by Jens was lit up at the bottom of the bag, down there with her wallet, jewelry, makeup, and random receipts.

  “Jens?”

  “No, Aron.”

  “Hector’s been …”

  “I know everything, where are you now?”

  “At the farm … up in the mountains.”

  “Who’s there with you?”

  “Raimunda, Hector, and Sonya.”

  “Stay there. The police have sealed off Adalberto’s villa. Leszek’s on his way to you.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m coming down as soon as I can, there’s a warrant out for me, I need to take a detour.”

  “Jens?”

  “I patched him up as best I could … he’s going to be OK.” Silence.

  “Sophie?”

  “Yes?”

  “We need to talk when we meet.”

  He ended the call.

  27

  The sun’s rays were wandering slowly across the room. Gunilla followed them leisurely. He was lying on the floor with no covers, curled up like a little baby in the womb. Slowly, slowly the light made its way up over his shoulder, then hit his chin. The passage of light across Lars Vinge was like a symphony, she thought, a silent symphony. She waited patiently, as usual. The sun found its way up his cheek and eventually nudged at his closed eyes. She could see movement behind the eyelids; he swallowed, opened his eyes, stared out across the floor, closed his eyes, swallowed again.

  “Good morning,” she whispered softly.

  He saw her sitting on the chair, looking down at him. Lars leaned up, still sitting on the floor, still drowsy, with a Ketogan hangover and as empty as a vacuum.

  “What are you doing here?” he managed to croak.

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of you, but I never get an answer, I wanted to see how you are.”

  He looked at her with hazy eyes.

  “How I am?”

  “Yes.”

  Lars tried to think, how had she gotten in? Had he been followed last night?

  “Lars?”

  He looked at her, wished he’d had more time, more time to figure out a plan of how to deal with her.

  “I’m not feeling so great,” he said quietly.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I’
ve probably been working too hard.”

  She looked right through him, held up a bottle of pills that she had on her lap.

  “What’s this?”

  “Just medicine,” he said.

  She studied him.

  “You’ve got a whole drawer full?”

  He didn’t answer that.

  “This isn’t ordinary stuff, Lars.… Are you ill?”

  He felt like saying Cancer, the late stages. People who were in the late stages of cancer got to do what they liked. No, she already knew everything about him.

  “No.”

  “So why are you taking Ketogan?”

  “That’s my business.”

  She shook her head.

  “No, not as long as you’re working for me.”

  Now he looked into her eyes; they were shut off somehow, empty and dead. As if someone had crawled in behind them and closed the curtains. Had she always had eyes like that? He didn’t know; he just knew that she was there at that moment, that she was lethal, that she probably hadn’t come alone. That his pistol was out of reach. That she may well know that he knew. Maybe she’d found the microphone in Brahegatan. Maybe he was going to die now?

  Lars looked at the drugs on her lap. He thought about the time he lied to the priest in Lyckoslanten, how easy it was to lie when you made use of reality. The truth is the best lie.

  “Lars? Answer my question.”

  He sat on the floor and rubbed his eyes.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know what you’ve been doing these past few days, I want to know why you’re taking a cocktail of Ketogan, benzo, and anxiety medicine.”

  He let time pass.

  “Sorry, Gunilla …,” he whispered.

  She looked at him intently.

  “Sorry for what, Lars?”

  “Sorry for letting you down …”

  Her calmness turned into a tense curiosity.

  “How have you let me down?” Now she was whispering too.

  Lars took several deep breaths.

  “When I was young …,” he began, “ten, maybe eleven, I was given medicine to help me sleep, drugs. My mom got them on prescription.… I soon became dependent on them. Later on, toward the end of my teenage years, I got help to stop … but the damage was already done. I’ve managed to abstain for most of my adult life. I’ve avoided alcohol, never taken any strong medicines. Recently I sought help for back pain,” Lars went on, “and when the doctor asked I said I was having trouble sleeping. I always have, and, well … I wasn’t really thinking. He prescribed something, painkillers and tranquilizers, and I took them.”

  He looked up at her, she was still listening.

  “It was nothing terribly dangerous, but it was like pressing a button. It made me happy … it made me happy in a way I hadn’t been since … well, I don’t remember when. My whole system responded to the pills, reacted and accepted them.… Then it just took off. I was hooked after a week or so.… I managed to get hold of stronger substances. I’ve been using them ever since.”

  “You said you’d let me down?”

  He looked at the floor and nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “I haven’t been doing my job properly, I’ve spent the last few days lying here, knocked out.… I called you from here, said I was looking for Sophie, I lied to you.”

  Gunilla was looking for truth and bluff at the same time. After a while she relaxed, he could see it.

  “It doesn’t matter, Lars,” she said. “It doesn’t matter …,” she repeated.

  Gunilla stood up, looked at him, seemed to want to say something more. But instead she started to walk out of the room. Lars watched her go.

  “Gunilla,” he said.

  She turned around.

  “Sorry.”

  She considered what he had said.

  “I don’t want to lose this job. You gave me a chance … give me another, I’m begging you.…”

  She didn’t answer and disappeared into the hall. Lars heard the front door open. Anders Ask walked past the office doorway, smiled at Lars, pretended to shoot him with his forefinger, then followed Gunilla out into the stairwell. The front door closed and the apartment was left in silence.

  He lay there until the sound of their footsteps on the stairs had faded. Lars got up, gathered his pills, waited a bit, then left the apartment and made his way to the subway. He traveled around, paranoid, changing trains several times, trying to see if he was being followed. When he was sure he was alone, he went back to the hotel on Strandvägen and hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. He was trembling down to his very marrow, aware that he had just managed to cling to his life by a hairbreadth. Lars realized that time was pressing. He got to work, and began to figure out a plan of how he should proceed.

  Leszek was frying bacon.

  One arm was strapped up, but he was managing to do everything with the left one. Raimunda was sitting in an armchair reading a book by Annie Proulx, Sonya was asleep on the sofa, Hector was lying on his back in bed, in another dimension, perhaps.

  Chopin was playing quietly from a stereo, Raimunda’s choice. Hector should hear beautiful music the whole time, she had said. Sophie listened from the edge of the sofa. It was the Bernstein recording, the Second Piano Concerto … En fa mineur. She had played parts of it herself as a child. She had stopped playing sometime when she was a teenager, she couldn’t remember why.

  Sophie got up and went over to Leszek, who was turning the bacon in the pan; he was staring down vacantly into the grease, looking sad. She patted him gently on his healthy shoulder.

  “Do you want me to cook?” she asked. He shook his head.

  She got plates out of the cupboard, started setting the table, then there was the sound of a car outside. Leszek was quick, pulling the frying pan off the heat, taking his pistol from the spice shelf, and hurrying over to one of the windows. The car door opened, and Aron got out of the driver’s seat. Leszek relaxed, went out, and met him. Sophie watched through the window as they embraced, then fell into conversation, with Leszek doing most of the talking, presumably telling Aron in detail about everything that had happened over the past few days.

  Aron came in, hugged Sonya, and exchanged a few words with her. He introduced himself to Raimunda, then went and sat beside Hector, talking quietly to him in Spanish and stroking his hair. He met Sophie’s gaze.

  “Let’s go for a walk.”

  They left the house and took a narrow sandy path that led up toward the mountains. Aron had his hands in his pockets. They walked on for a while, it got cooler the higher they got. Sophie looked at the ground, the gravel here was different, browner, finer than the gravel at home in Sweden, but there were still a few larger stones. She tried to avoid them as she walked.

  “Any more news about your son?”

  She shook her head.

  “What do the doctors say?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  He paused for a moment before getting to the point.

  “Hector said on the phone that you were to have power of attorney, do you know why?”

  She didn’t say anything, just shook her head.

  “Me neither. At least not at first.”

  Now she looked over at him.

  “I’ve come to two conclusions, very different conclusions,” he said.

  They walked a bit farther before he went on.

  “You’ve seen a lot, you’ve heard things, maybe you’ve understood things you weren’t meant to understand, I don’t know. Maybe Hector realized that we couldn’t just let you go, maybe the power of attorney is a way of keeping you here with us, close, where you can’t do any harm.”

  He glanced quickly at her. “That was what I thought at first. Hector knew he was injured.…”

  Aron waited a few moments.

  “But there could also be another reason,” he said. “I don’t know if this still applied when he called me from the car.…”

  A breeze caug
ht her hair. She pushed it back.

  “Hector often talked about you, before all this happened.… About what you were like … your qualities. He appreciated you in a way that I realized he’d never appreciated a woman before.”

  She looked down at the ground.

  “He saw something different in you.”

  “What?” she whispered.

  Aron shrugged his shoulders.

  “I don’t know. But he saw something.”

  They had gotten a fair way up, and had a view across a valley that stretched hundreds of yards down into dark green vegetation. Aron stopped, resting his eyes on the view.

  “He said that you didn’t understand what sort of person you really are.”

  The reasoning seemed unclear.

  “What sort of talk’s that? That’s just words,” she said.

  “No, not when it comes from him.”

  He stared at something in the distance.

  “He wanted something with you. But I don’t understand what, I still don’t understand exactly what he meant in our last conversation.”

  “Do you need to?”

  He looked at her.

  “Yes, I do.”

  There was new sharpness in his eyes. Decisions were being made deep inside.

  “I’m putting you in a kind of quarantine until things clear themselves up, or until Hector wakes up and can explain his choice.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “The power of attorney gives you a partial right to make decisions about our work. It means that you’ll become initiated into and complicit in what we do, and if you’re complicit, then you’re no threat. Something like that.”

  “What about me, what does it mean for me?”

  “It means that you’re going to help me. I have to stay here, stay hidden until everything’s settled down a bit.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “We can’t let the world think he’s out of the game, that would be disastrous for us and a lot of other people who are dependent on him. You know him, don’t you?”