The Andalucian Friend

by Alexander Soderberg

  “What do you mean?”

  “He knows you, he says. So you must know him?”

  “I think so,” she said cautiously.

  “Then you know what he would do?”

  Was that something like pleading she saw in Aron? Something beseeching that was peeping out from in there?

  “Maybe. But you know him as well, Aron.”

  “Yes, but in a different way.… We’ll do this together.”

  “And what about in the future?”

  He thought.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you know?” she asked.

  He looked at her.

  “If everything goes to hell for us, you’re coming down with us. Pretty much.”

  She thought about his words, it all sounded so absurd.

  “Hector has a son,” she said.

  Aron nodded. “Lothar Manuel,” he said.

  “Why not him? Why not you? Why not Sonya, Leszek, Thierry, Daphne … Ernst?”

  Aron met her gaze and shrugged. That was his answer.

  She tried to make sense of her thoughts.

  “What if I refuse? If I walk away from here and never look back again?”

  “That won’t be possible, I’m afraid,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because Hector told me that you were to have power of attorney, and that’s what’s going to happen.”

  “But I must have a choice?”

  He shook his head.

  “No,” he said in a low voice.

  She stared at him. He let her, then she looked away.

  “The police know who I am,” she said. “They saw me at the restaurant.”

  “That’s a risk we’ll have to take. Those police officers were after our money. They don’t care about you. Leszek will go home with you, he can protect you if necessary.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to stay hidden, and tell you what to do.”

  She had a thousand questions, a thousand pleas.

  “I’ll give you an introduction into our work. We’ll take a few days here in the mountains to do that, then we’ll see how things develop in Stockholm.” He turned around and began to walk back down the sandy path.

  She stood there with thoughts flying around inside her head, unable to settle anywhere. After a while she followed him, walking slowly. Aron stopped some way ahead and waited for her. They walked back side by side.

  “They beat up my son, Aron. Ran him down with a car. He’s probably going to be paralyzed for the rest of his life.”

  Aron didn’t respond.

  “He hadn’t done anything,” she whispered. “It’s not fair.…”

  Aron had a folded document in his hand, and held out the power of attorney that Hector had signed. Sophie took the document and put it in her pocket.

  They walked the rest of the way back to the house in silence.

  Tailing Anders Ask had been simple. After work a quick visit to the 7-Eleven on the corner of Odengatan and Sveavägen to buy an evening paper, drink, and candy, a bit of chat with the girl behind the counter, then a pit stop at the Italian place with checkered tablecloths to pick up a pizza. Then home to his apartment opposite Vanadislunden.

  Lars had gotten into the building and taken a photograph of the lock on Anders’s door, an Assa that looked pretty old. The next morning he had found a similar one at a locksmith’s on Kungsholmen, bought it, and practiced picking it back in his hotel room. That turned out to be pretty difficult, it took time even though he had the best tools for the job. He worked until long into the night, wishing he had been born with three hands.

  The next day, as the sun rose somewhere over by Djurgården, he managed to get the lock open for the first time. Lars practiced hard all morning, over lunch, and into the afternoon, and finally managed to pick the lock in less than seven minutes.

  He got himself ready and headed off to Sveavägen on foot. It was half past three in the afternoon when he stepped in through the door of the building for the second time and took the rickety elevator up to the third floor, pushed the gate back, and stepped out in front of the door to Anders Ask’s apartment.

  Anders had two neighbors, Norin and Grevelius. There was no sound from Norin, and a television was buzzing quietly in Grevelius’s apartment. He pulled a hood over his head, took out his tools, got down on his knees on the cold stone floor, took a few deep breaths, and got to work. Lars worked methodically; it all went as it should, the picklocks found their way in and pressed the little notches inside the drum of the lock. A door opened and closed on the floor above and the elevator started to chew its way upward. Lars had to stop, pull out his tools, and hide on the stairs while the elevator made its way down again. But after that he got his seven minutes with the lock. It let out a click.

  Lars pulled on his shoe covers, breathing mask, and gloves—then stepped into Anders Ask’s hallway.

  The apartment had two rooms plus a relatively large kitchen. He glanced into the living room. A sofa with flattened cushions, a crooked, rickety coffee table from IKEA. A glass cabinet with dusty glass figurines on one shelf. Pictures by famous artists on the walls. An enormous flatscreen television, speakers on the floor, and little treble speakers up by the ceiling. Anders liked his surround sound. Lars went into the bedroom. An unmade bed, closed blinds, a paperback on the bedside table, Arto Paasilinna’s The Year of the Hare. Lars saw a suitcase standing by the wall. He crouched down and opened it. Clothes, passport, money … Anders was planning to take off.

  Into the kitchen again. Lars sat down on a chair, the clock on the wall moved slowly, he pulled the mask from his mouth, let it hang from the elastic cord around his neck. The sound of traffic from Sveavägen was soporific and Lars nodded off.

  After a couple more hours he woke up when a key was inserted into the lock. The front door opened and then closed again. Anders clearing his throat in the hallway, keys being put on a table, shoes being kicked off, a zipper being pulled down—the slippery sound of nylon as a jacket was taken off. A loud sigh, the smell of freshly made pizza. Steps from the hall. Anders jumped when he saw Lars from the corner of his eye, put his arms out to defend himself, the pizza box landed on the floor.

  “What the fuck?! Christ, you scared me!”

  Anders stared at Lars, angry and worried at the same time.

  “What are you doing here?” He looked around, confused. “How the fuck did you get in?”

  Lars was pointing Gunilla’s Makarov at him.

  “Come in and sit down.”

  Anders hesitated, looked into the barrel, then at the pizza box by his feet. Lars nodded toward a chair; Anders looked bewildered at first, then stepped into the kitchen and sat down hesitantly.

  “How are things going with you, Anders?” Lars asked, with the barrel of the gun aimed at Anders’s stomach.

  “What did you say?”

  Lars didn’t repeat the question. Anders swallowed.

  “With what?”

  “With everything.”

  Anders saw the breathing mask around Lars’s neck.

  “It’s all right, I suppose.… I don’t get it, Lars.”

  He sounded scared.

  “What is it you don’t get?”

  “This! What you’re doing here … with a pistol?” Anders tried to smile.

  “Oh, you know, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t!”

  He suddenly sounded annoyed now.

  “Are you angry, Anders?”

  Anders held out his hands.

  “No, no, sorry, I’m not angry. I’m just … surprised.”

  Anders’s submissive smile returned.

  “Come on, Lars, what is it? We can sort this out. Please, just put the gun down.”

  Lars stared blankly at him, kept the pistol where it was.

  “How shall we sort this out?” he asked.

  “However you like, you decide,” Anders said desperately.

  Lars pretended to think
.

  “What is it we need to sort out, exactly?”

  Anders didn’t understand. “What?”

  “What do we need to sort out? You said we could sort this out. What?”

  Anders stared at Lars.

  “I don’t know, whatever you’re here for.”

  “What do you think I’m here for?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Anders glanced down at Lars’s shoe covers, and his fear rose into his throat.

  “Yes, you do.…”

  “No, I don’t!” Anders’s voice sounded a bit too high.

  Lars let the seconds tick, a long, painful, dramatic pause. “Sara.”

  Anders tried to look quizzical.

  “Oh? Who’s that?”

  Lars stared at Anders.

  “Stop it,” he said calmly.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lars.”

  Anders was a bad liar when he was frightened. Lars pulled a face to let him know, and weirdly enough that seemed to make Anders relax. He sat silently, glancing out the kitchen window, taking deep breaths.

  “It wasn’t me. It was Hasse … and Gunilla gave the order. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “What happened?” Lars asked.

  Anders’s mouth was dry.

  “Sara had worked something out from reading your wall. You’d written everything on a wall.… Hadn’t you?” Lars didn’t answer.

  “So she gave the order, Gunilla, I mean. The girl knew everything, even something that Gunilla was involved in before, some girl. Patricia something … something I don’t know about.”

  Lars shook his head.

  “No, Sara didn’t know anything, she was trying her luck.”

  Anders didn’t understand.

  “You saw the wall, didn’t you? How the hell could anyone have made any sense of that? There was hardly any notion of coherence there. I wrote it all in a kind of totally wired fucking chaos! She didn’t know anything, I didn’t know anything.…”

  “But you do now?”

  Lars nodded.

  Something almost like pride came over Anders.

  “Are you surprised?”

  Lars had no answer to that, and shrugged.

  “Do you understand how smart we’ve been?”

  Lars looked up. “Why didn’t you let me join in?” His voice was almost beseeching.

  “We would have, Lars, of course we would. We just had to be certain. But it’s not too late, is it? Come on, we can do this together.”

  “But you’ve murdered Sara.”

  Anders looked down at the floor.

  “OK, Lars, think about this. Gunilla’s our problem. Together we can change all this. You’re nothing on your own, I’ve got access to everything. Put the gun down.… We’ll do it together, Lars, we’ll sort her out once and for all … OK?”

  Lars hesitated, thinking, and looked up at Anders.

  “How would that work?”

  Anders saw an opening, a bit of self-confidence started to creep out. He looked at the pistol, then up at Lars.

  “We’ll gather everything we’ve got, put together a plan, report her, you keep quiet about me, I keep quiet about you.…”

  “What about Hasse?”

  “Up to you, Lars. We could take him out, I can do it for you. Remember, he was the one who killed your girlfriend, not me.”

  Lars nodded to himself.

  “Yes, that sounds like a good idea.…”

  Anders smiled with relief, slapped the palm of his hand on his thigh.

  “Good! That’s it, Lars! Christ, we’re going to get her now, together, you and me, a team.”

  Anders breathed out, rocking on his chair.

  “Where do we start?” Lars asked.

  Anders was fast.

  “The important thing is that we mustn’t make Gunilla or Hasse suspicious.… We carry on as usual for a few days, we meet in the evenings, draw up plans, then we pick one and stick to it. This is going to work out fine, as long as we do it together, you and me, Lars!”

  Lars hesitantly lowered the gun slightly.

  “Sorry I came here like this, Anders, with a gun and everything.”

  Anders waved his hand, convinced that his powers of persuasion had worked on Lars Vinge the idiot. But Lars raised the pistol, let it rest against the palm of his left hand for a couple of seconds, then aimed and shot him squarely through his half-open mouth. A loud bang rang out in the kitchen. The bullet tore through Anders Ask’s throat and neck and kept going, into the fridge door behind him. Then the kitchen was totally still. Anders was staring at Lars in astonishment. The chair he had been rocking on ended up in a kind of weightless no-man’s-land, balancing on its two back legs for a moment before gravity got the better of it and it fell backward to the floor, taking Anders Ask with it.

  Lars pulled on the face mask, stood up, went over to him, and crouched down. Anders stared at Lars, a trickle of blood running out onto the floor under his head.

  “You’re an asshole, Anders Ask, do you think I’m totally stupid?”

  Lars could detect a faint smell of burned meat.

  “Let’s take a moment to consider the situation.… I live, you die.”

  Anders tried to say something, no sound came out, just a mouth moving laboriously, like a fish on dry land.

  “I can’t hear you, Anders,” he whispered. “It’ll be straight to hell for you. You’ve killed women. A boy’s lying in the hospital, possibly paralyzed for life. They’ve probably got a special section for people like you down there.”

  Lars looked on patiently as Anders Ask’s life ran out onto the linoleum floor. When he was dead Lars stood up, opened the kitchen window, and wiped the gun on a kitchen towel, all the while staring at Anders’s corpse as it lay there. What was he feeling? Regret? No … Liberation? No, he wasn’t feeling anything. Lars turned the kitchen radio on at full volume.

  He crouched down beside Anders again, put the dead man’s right hand on the pistol, aimed the barrel at the open window, angled his own hand away from the gun so the flash of powder would hit Anders’s hand as much as possible. Lars fired. The news drowned out the bang, the bullet flew out through the window, shot over Vanadislunden, and kept going, past Eastern Station, finally coming to earth somewhere on Lidingö. Maybe the neighbors would have heard two shots, but that couldn’t be helped.… Witnesses were usually wrong. Every police officer assumed that. Witnesses were basically a bit thick.

  He closed the window and looked at Anders’s position in the room, working out how the pistol would most likely have fallen from his hand. He put it on the floor a little way from the body. Then he went into the bedroom, opened Anders’s suitcase, and unpacked it, putting the clothes back in the closet, his passport in a drawer, and pocketing the money, then shut the empty case and slid it under Anders Ask’s bed.

  Lars backed out of the apartment, pulled off the latex gloves and face mask, and shut the door behind him.

  Lars slept soundly that night, waking up at half past five in the morning. He ordered coffee in his room, didn’t feel any need for food. He waited until eight o’clock before making the call. The man at the other end was dubious, but Lars was insistent.

  He had showered and ironed a shirt. The shirt was smooth and unbuttoned as he stood in front of the bathroom mirror and combed his hair into something vaguely neat. He was high, but in a controlled way, and was combing very slowly.…

  His shoes were polished, his trousers had been under the mattress all night. He looked respectable, and tried out his face in the mirror, he never had any problems with that when he was high. He practiced an expression. An expression that would be hard to read. Lars came up with something vacant and neutral, buttoned the shirt, took his jacket from the back of the chair and put it on. On his way out he picked up the sports bag from the bed and left the room.

  Daylight was dangerous for him. But he had no choice. This had to happen during the day so that his target didn’t suspect anything.
He had chosen Mariatorget, an open square that he knew he could get a good view of.

  He was standing in the stairwell at the top of a neighboring building, looking down on the square through a pair of binoculars. The time was now 11:44. The meeting was supposed to take place at half past eleven. He scanned the people down below with the binoculars. Mostly mothers with strollers, children on swings, one or two dads with their backs bent, holding hands with their toddlers who were insisting on walking. He looked farther away, toward Sankt Paulsgatan. People who were in a hurry, a group of laughing youths, a few elderly people sitting on benches.

  Lars turned the binoculars back toward Hornsgatan, nothing there, either. Cars, people walking around aimlessly, fat tourists from the country eating ice cream by the little kiosk.

  He lowered the binoculars, checked his watch—11:48, should he get going? He took a last look at the square.… And there, in the middle of his sweep, a single man on a bench. The man was sitting with one arm along the back of the bench, he had fairly long hair with a bald patch on top. The man turned slightly and Lars saw his cop’s mustache. Hell, that had to be him.

  Lars keyed in a number on his cell phone. Put the phone to his ear and watched the man through the binoculars, saw him feel for his cell in his pocket, pull it out, answer.

  “Yes?”

  “Tommy?”

  “Yep.” Almost inaudible.

  “I’m running a bit late, five minutes.”

  Lars hung up. Tommy remained seated on the bench, glaring at the people in the square. He didn’t call anyone, didn’t give any signal. He just sat there waiting—bored, restless, and hot. Lars scanned around with the binoculars. Looked at the people in the vicinity. Looked between the trees on the far side by the old cinema, saw nothing. It seemed as if Tommy had come alone.

  He put the binoculars in the bag and walked back down the stairs. Lars stepped out into the sunlight and headed toward the bench where Tommy was sitting. The next bench was empty, and Lars sat down there. Tommy glanced at him, then looked out across the square again. Lars waited and waited, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. Tommy sighed and looked at his watch. Lars stood up, went over, and sat down next to him.