A Darker Shade of Sweden (22 page)

“. . . even one who has lost his way,” the tall one interjected.

“. . . and that is that we are the ones writing your lines,” the short one continued. “So I'll ask you to damned well repeat that entrance!”

The waiter bowed. Disappeared and after only a few seconds reappeared, armed with a bunch of keys. Bowed again and cleared his throat.

“On behalf of the host I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas. Please feel free to serve yourselves from the bar, and should you feel hungry, there are cold cuts in the refrigerator. Lock up whenever you leave, but please don't forget to put the keys in the mail slot.”

“Excellent,” Van Veeteren stated. “Perhaps there is some common sense and good in the world after all.”

The waiter retired for the last time. When he disappeared through the entrance they briefly heard the whistling of the snowstorm, but then the winter night again enfolded the little restaurant in the town that was missing from the map.

Common sense? Kurt Wallander thought, sliding a trey towards the king and jack already on the table. Good?

Well, if there was, perhaps on Christmas Eve.

And in the company of fictitious poets.

Poets, my ass! he thought after a second. Eight novels and not even a fucking line of blank verse!

Tomorrow, he would see Linda.

Henning Mankell was born in Stockholm in 1948. He began writing at an early age, but was also interested in the theater and initially worked as a stage director; from 1984 through 1990, he was in charge of the
V
äxjö theater. During the 1960s, he was politically active on the far left, largely in sympathy with the Maoist groups in Sweden as well as Norway, where he lived during most of the 1970s. Currently, Mankell and his fourth wife, Eva, daughter of movie and stage director Ingmar Bergman, have homes in the southern Swedish town Ystad, on the Swedish island Färö, and in Maputo, Mozambique. Mankell published his first novel, Bergsprängaren, in 1973, and has since written more than thirty novels as well as plays, short stories, juveniles, and an autobiography. His first crime novel, introducing Detective Inspector Kurt Wallander in Ystad, was
Mördare utan ansikte
(Faceless Killers),
published in 1991; it won both the Best Novel of the Year Award from the Swedish Crime Fiction Academy and the first Glass Key for best crime novel of the year in any of the Scandinavian countries. In 1995, the fifth Wallander novel,
Villospår
(Sidetracked),
received another Best Novel of the Year award. In Sweden, a total of thirty-five Wallander films have been released, covering all Mankell's novels as well as more than twenty based on original stories by the script writers. In Britain, the BBC has produced twelve adaptions of the Wallander novels starring Kenneth Branagh. Mankell's work is published throughout the world.

HÃ¥kan Nesser was born in 1950 in the small town of Kumla, which also houses one of Sweden's high-security prisons. He studied at Uppsala University and from 1974 until he became a full-time writer in 1998 was a gymnasium
(
approximately equivalent to high schoo
l
)
teacher of Swedish and English. His first novel was
Koreografen
(The Choreographer,
1988
)
; with his second,
Det grovmaskiga nätet
(The Mind's Eye
,
1993
),
he published his first crime novel and the first of ten featuring Inspector Van Veeteren in the fictitious city of Maardam; the novel received the Best First Novel Award from the Swedish Crime Fiction Academy. The second and fourth in the series
Borkmann's punkt
and
Kvinna med fodelsemärke, (Borkmann's Point,
1994, and
Woman with a Birthmark,
1996
)
received the Best Novel of the Year Award; the seventh,
Carambole (Hour of the Wolf),
won the Glass Key for best crime novel published in Scandinavia during the year 2000. In 2006, Nesser introduced a new protagonist, Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti, a Swedish policeman of Italian descent; for the second Barbarotti novel in 2007,
En helt annan historia
(An Entirely Different Story),
Nesser for the third time won the Best Novel of the Year Award. A further three Barbarotti novels have followed. Nesser has also written stand-alone crime novels, set in Sweden as well as in London and New York, and is an internationally acclaimed author.

AN ALIBI FOR SEÑOR BANEGAS

M
AGNUS
M
ONTELIUS

Magnus Montelius is an environmental consultant who spent many years in Africa, Latin America, and in the Eastern European countries that were part of the Soviet Union before 1991. He now lives with his family on Stockholm's south side. His first novel was published in 2011 but is set in 1990 and is concerned with the political history of the previous decades. Montelius grew up in a family where many members had been active on the radical left, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, and he wanted to portray both that intellectual environment and its relationship to the surrounding world and its realities.
Mannen från Albanien
(The Man from Albania)
was a very strong first novel: a political thriller of the last period of the Cold War, based on meticulous research and personal insights.

Both before and after that book, Montelius has written occasional short stories. As in his novel, he uses the personalities of his characters as the starting point for the events that follow. His story here displays both his careful sense of story, his humor, and his skill in portraying characters.

THEY WERE ALONE IN THE SMALL INTERROGATION ROOM. THE DEFENSE
lawyer regarded him under heavy eyelids. His face was red and bloated and his hair a bit unruly. It had probably been a tiring holiday. Welcome to the club, Adam thought.

“So you mean,” the lawyer sighed, “that you are absolutely innocent of these charges.”

Adam nodded.

“But you did make a complete confession to the police?”

“It's complicated.”

The lawyer looked even more tired. He obviously didn't believe Adam, nor was he in the mood for any complicated stories. But even so, Adam thought, he had to tell him what really had happened. And start at the beginning.

Señor Banegas carefully sipped his wine toddy and glanced around appreciatively. He and Adam were the only guests in the Hotel Reisen bar, not particularly strange since, after all, this was the night before Christmas Eve.

“It's not a bad plan, is it?”

Adam couldn't get a word out. Actually, it was the most idiotic idea he had ever heard.

Banegas smiled crookedly. “Of course it entails a certain amount of inconvenience. And to me, personally, considerable cost. But love, my dear friend, is worth any sacrifice.”

Señor Banegas was the Honduran secretary of state for infrastructure, a successful retailer of favors and favors in return. He had arrived with a delegation a little over a week ago. The absurd time of year had been chosen to coincide with Christmas shopping, and the delegates had all brought their wives.

Banegas twisted his grizzled mustache. “Adam, I tell you this most seriously. We never know where and when a great love will overwhelm us.”

But Banegas was strangely reticent about the object of his passion.

Adam felt as if the minister read his thoughts. “We are gentlemen, you and I. So I know that there is no need for me to name the young lady. That is well. As I have told you, my wife is the problem.” He sighed. “She is crazy, and I use the word in a strictly clinical sense.”

Adam was prepared to agree. During his trips to Honduras he had met Mrs. Banegas at receptions. A round woman with staring eyes who seemed to watch every movement her husband made.

“When I told her that we would stay on an extra week, just she and I, to celebrate Christmas in Stockholm, she was at first overjoyed. But then she became jealous and suspicious. Why had I decided on such a thing? Was I going to meet someone? I tell you, she is crazy.”

“Well, not totally off the mark, anyway. And is this where I enter the picture?” Banegas spread his arms.

“Exactly. I explained that it would unfortunately not be possible for me to spend all my time in her company, no matter how happily I would have done so. But that my good friend Adam Dillner laid claim to part of my time for meetings concerning a transaction between the Honduran government and the company represented by him. And that I could hardly refuse, which she also realized. In my country, this would have been entirely normal. Not here, naturally. But she doesn't know that.”

He was right, of course.

Banegas fished a paper out of his inside pocket and put it on the table. “I took the liberty of writing the schedule you have set me, since I thought it would add a nice touch. I used your company letterhead.”

Where had he gotten hold of that? “If I may say so, this looks like a very busy schedule.”

Banegas solemnly put his right palm over his heart. “My friend, I am in love.” In a more subdued voice, he went on: “I must implore you to stick entirely to our little subterfuge. Explain to your family that you are meeting an important client and, of course, stay away from home during the periods set out in the schedule. As I have told you, my wife is unstable and might very well decide to check on your absences from home. It is a most reasonable precaution.”

Adam looked at the schedule. In fact it was highly unreasonable that he would have to spend such a large part of the days between Christmas and New Year's shuffling around in the snowstorm to prevent Mrs. Banegas from breaking her unfaithful husband's alibi. There were more conventional ways of making business contacts with Central American customers that worked perfectly well. Still, right now Banegas' insane wife happened to be just what Adam needed.

“Grampa, Grampa, Grampa!”

Max and Ada ran a set course around the living room, through the hallway, past the kitchen, and back again. Adam walked up to the kitchen island to pour himself some more wine.

Kattis gave him a glance. “Adam, we'll have a nice evening tonight.”

His mother-in-law entered the kitchen, an empty wineglass in her hand. She stumbled on the carpet, muttering under her breath, bent to the bag-in-box wine container and wrinkled her nose. “Don't you have anything Spanish? A Rioja?”

The plane she was on had lifted off from Málaga less than ten hours earlier.

Kattis removed a baking sheet full of gingerbread from the oven. “Adam, would you look?”

But his mother-in-law had already forgotten it all and refilled her glass. “I think I'll make some toffee tonight, by the way. The poor little ones have hardly had any Christmas candy at all.”

“We're trying to cut back on sugar.”

“Adam, dear, you really shouldn't jump on board every new health bandwagon.”

“It's hardly—”

Kattis let go of her rolling pin. “That's a great idea, Mother!”

Grandma called out to the living room: “What do you say, kids, do you want some of grandma's toffee?”

They screamed back. Hopelessly, Adam verified that they were always willing to sell their souls for some melted cane sugar.

“There, you see,” Grandma said, staggering back into the living room.

He turned to Kattis.

“Adam!” she growled.

In the living room, Grampa was in the middle of playing something with Max and Ada while Grandma was leafing through some old Swedish family magazines Kattis had put out for her. When they entered, Grampa poured a whiskey and sat down in the couch, arms spread across its backrest. “Katarina told us about your Mexican, Adam,” he said.

“Honduran.”

His father-in-law waved an impatient hand. “That's what I said.” He glared at Adam. “What I don't understand is how anyone, a husband, can abandon his wife almost the whole Christmas holiday just to play tourist guide to some Colombian.”

“Hond—”

“When he has two small children and his wife's parents have come to visit—”

“Daddy, it's okay. Adam and I have talked about it. It's his work.”

“Haven't we come any further despite all our talk about equality? And Adam, what's so important about this—Honduran?”

Adam hesitated. “We are trying to get a road project, the new highway from Honduras to Nicaragua. This Banegas fellow—”

His father-in-law slowly shook his head. “Adam, Adam, Adam. That's so out-of-date. Why don't you build a railroad instead?”

Grandma put her magazine down and turned to Kattis. “Daddy is the chairman of the Torremolinos Environmental Club. We have become activists.”

“That's great, Mother!”

Adam half-heartedly began to describe the infrastructure of Honduras, but his father-in-law interrupted him again.

“They don't need a new road to Nicaragua, Adam. What they need is a road away from climate disaster.”

“God, how well you put that, Göran!” Grandma exclaimed. “Why don't you write it down, Adam?”

He rose slowly. “I think I'll lay the table.”

When he stood in the kitchen, he heard his mother-in-law's voice. “He never listens to a word we say.”

Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, but according to Banegas' schedule he would still be away for a few hours to explain the traffic solutions used on the Southern Link expressway. He could hardly wait.

Thanks to the Banegas scheme, he could spend several Christmas Eve hours in a coffeehouse on Nybrogatan. He brought a book he had given himself for Christmas, but most of the time he just sipped his coffee and looked at the last-minute shoppers rushing past outside. As for himself, he had no more shopping to do, no other tasks to perform than to serve as an alibi for a horny minister of infrastructure.

On Christmas Day, Banegas hadn't dared make any entries on his schedule, and Adam spent the entire day with his family and in-laws. It was worse than usual. Kattis' family had introduced so many traditions that the holidays became rigidly directed performances. Every detail was sacrosanct and their order must not be changed.

Mostly it was all about games. After ten years, Adam was still unable to see any point to them. They played Hide the Pig Santa, the Almond Race, and something which seemed mainly to involve everyone hitting everyone else's head with tiny sandbags his mother-in-law had dragged along from Spain for the occasion. He wanted to refuse to get involved but knew from experience that everything would just get worse if he didn't join in. Since he was the only one unaware of the rules he always lost, to his father-in-law's undisguised delight. Adam sadly observed that as opposed to himself, his children always joined in with great enthusiasm.

The evening ended with a quiz on the lives of members of the clan. Though he always got what the others considered unusually easy questions, he had so far never managed a single correct answer.

“But Adam,” his mother-in-law exclaimed, “you had the same question about Aunt Lotta's rusty old Audi last year!”

Tomorrow was the day after Christmas. That was when they were supposed to have their traditional waffle breakfast in front of the TV. Followed by a combined outdoors walk and new quiz competition, then a lunch with Kattis' sister in Australia attending via a computer link, and after that a family game called Where Is the Krokofant, named for a disgustingly sweet candy bar.

Luckily, Banegas had a full schedule.

Adam decided to install himself in the cafeteria of the Museum of the Mediterranean. According to the schedule, he was showing Banegas biogas refueling stations. In the evening they were doing something even more silly; he didn't remember what. It didn't matter.

He was deep into his book when his phone rang. It was Banegas.

“Adam, we have a problem. It is extremely important that we meet at once.”

Every protest and demand for further explanations was met by hissed objections.

“We really must meet, I'm waiting at the Hotel Reisen bar.”

Adam plodded through the snow on the bridge to the Old Town. What had he gotten himself into?

Banegas seemed perfectly calm and sat comfortably with a wine toddy. His whole demeanor suggested that it was far from his first. He went straight to the point.

“We have a problem with tonight's activity.”

We?

Banegas went on. “I chose the visit to the Hammarby Lake City since my wife refuses to travel by boat. Now it turns out that you can go there by land. Which you failed to tell me.” He glared at Adam. “And of course my wife has found that out and insists on accompanying me.”

Why, oh why had he gone along with Banegas' plan?

“Adam, it just won't do. And so at the last moment you have changed our schedule and instead arranged for us to go to the opera.”

“Opera?”

“My wife hates opera. As an extra precaution I have also decided that Señor Harald Thorvaldsson of the Export Council will join us, and that after the performance we will have supper at the Gyldene Freden restaurant to discuss business.” He held up Thorvaldsson's calling card, as if it were a winning lottery ticket. “That's when he gives me this, which will further strengthen the credibility of our story.”

It was hard enough to get hold of any of the Export Council functionaries during normal office hours; to convince one of them to spend the day after Christmas at the opera with a Honduran secretary of state would probably be humanly impossible. But, as Banegas would probably have said if Adam had bothered to object, his wife didn't know that.

Banegas pulled out their schedule. “So I would like to ask you to make the necessary change to our little program.” He gave Adam a pen and added kindly: “You can do it by hand.”

As in a trance, Adam struck out the visit to Hammarby Lake City and wrote in the opera performance according to Banegas' instructions. “Don't forget to write that Señor Thorvaldsson will accompany us.”

When that was done, Banegas conjured up a ticket to that night's performance of
Don Giovanni
and ceremoniously tore it apart along the perforation. “Here's your ticket, Adam, I leave nothing to chance.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“I insist.”

Outside, Banegas embraced him. “Adam, how will I ever—” The Honduran was cut short as they both lost their footing. Arms around each other, they bounced down the snow-covered steps to the sidewalk. Adam managed to loosen his grip and keep his balance, but just as he imagined all was well he felt one of his feet crack the ice on a pool of water and his shoe immediately filled.