The Other Son (27 page)

“There, right next to you!”

Ove pointed at nothing.

Tommy glanced briefly in that direction, at nothing.

“The devil, Tommy. He's standing there right beside you, your new friend!”

Ove laughed cheerily.

“You can stop talking so much bullshit,” Tommy said.

Ove turned away, and his laughter vanished abruptly.

“No, I can't!” he shouted back.

Feeling scared, Tommy stared down at the ground.

Ove jumped into the supercharged Mercedes and spun out toward daylight.

Tommy Jansson stood there alone and shaken, trying to make sense of something incomprehensible.

His name was now Lars Vinge. In his hand was a driver's license bearing a picture of Miles Ingmarsson.

The girl behind the counter was polite and frosty, which matched the atmosphere of the branch as a whole. Wall-to-wall carpet, quiet, a stagnant twenty-two degrees of heat blanketing everything.

She held out a hand, which seemed to indicate that she wished to see some form of identification. He passed it to her. She took the driver's license, and without looking at it she turned it over and put it under the flashing red card reader. Nothing happened, so she repeated the gesture. Ingmarsson suppressed an urge to run. Instead he pointed to the license.

“It's been damaged, as you can see.”

She looked at the code. The plastic covering had come loose.

“It's invalid,” she said in a nasal voice.

“OK,” Miles said.

“You'll have to order a new one,” she went on.

He nodded.

“Have you done that?”

“No.”

She typed Lars Vinge's date of birth into her computer. She glanced quickly at the license twice, both sides. The line behind him was getting longer, and Miles felt like running again.

“Are you still a customer here?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

She read the screen.

“No activity in your account for some time.”

“Does there have to be?”

She looked up at him.

“No, I suppose not. It just seems a bit unnecessary to have two banks. Because that's what you've got, isn't it?”

“Does that matter?” he wondered.

“No, but I could make an appointment for you to see one of our advisers,” she continued.

“No, thanks. Not now.”

He was given a piece of paper, and he glanced quickly down at it: the number of the safe-deposit box.

Miles walked over to a mesh gate farther inside the office, and stood there waiting. A man in a suit but no tie came up to him.

“Hi there,” he said.

The bank official ran a card through a reader. The gate clicked and he opened it.

“After you,” he said with a gesture to Miles, who walked down some steps into a narrow corridor. The bank official followed him, pushed past, apologized several times, moving submissively and obsequiously.

The absurdly thick door of a bank vault stood open in front of them.

“Zero eight eighteen,” Miles read from the piece of paper.

The official found the right box, inserted his key into one of the locks, and turned it. Then he gave a feeble smile, unconsciously apologizing for his whole existence, and slipped away.

With sudden urgency Miles put his own key in the lock, turned it, and pulled out a long, deep, wide plastic tray. He put it down on an empty table and opened the lid.

He looked down: a black sports bag, nothing else. Miles lifted it out; there was something inside it, something heavy. He wasn't about to open it. He was planning to get the hell out of there with it as fast as he could, before anyone got any ideas.

Miles shut the box again, locked it, and went back up the stairs and rang the bell that opened the gate, walked through the calmness of the bank, opened the front door, and stepped out into the cruel, wintry sunlight.

Antonia was sitting in her car on the other side of the road. He hurried toward her. She opened the door, took the bag from Miles, and put it on the seat beside her, then glanced at it quickly. She was practically burning up with curiosity.

“What's inside it?”

“No idea,” he said.

Antonia pushed back in her seat, stretched her legs, and pulled a folded piece of paper from her jeans.

Antonia passed the folded note to Miles, and he read the address:
Hagagatan.

“Roger Lindgren has a post-office box. No fixed address. But from time to time he lives with a woman in Vasastan.”

She started the engine.

“You've earned that,” she said, then put the car in gear.

“How did you get hold of it?” he wondered.

“At the dry cleaner,” she said with a smile. “See you, Miles Ingmarsson!”

Antonia's car started to move. Miles closed the door and took a step back, Antonia pulled away and disappeared into the traffic. Miles stared at the note. He was going to let his inner self decide this one. His dark inner self that wanted to do good.

Though he was well aware that if you let loose the darkness inside you to help put things right, everything always ended up in a complete fucking mess.

They walked back the same way they had come, across the fields to where the car was parked on a secluded gravel track. The boy refused to talk, refused to answer the questions Sophie asked.

They got in the car.

“My name is Sophie,” she said. “The boy I was asking about, Albert, he's my son.”

She saw a reaction in the boy's eyes, but he remained silent.

They took the elevator up from the hotel garage. Mikhail got out on the ground floor and disappeared into the bar.

Jens, Sophie, and the boy continued up to Jens's room.

Once they were in, Sophie sat down on one of the two beds. She indicated that the boy should sit down opposite her, on the other bed.

He hesitated, and for some reason he looked at Jens, as if to get the OK. Jens nodded and he sat down. Sophie looked at him carefully for the first time.

He had pale brown skin, sharp features, eyes that seemed to shift between two colors, and that mouth…
Hang on…

She leaned forward and inspected him more intently. He grew uncomfortable and looked away.

And his profile…

She had never seen him before, but she knew without any doubt who he was. Hector was clearly discernible in his eyes, forehead, mouth. There was also a hard, impenetrable exterior, an intelligence, a deep courage; she had seen and felt that even during the short time she had known him. But there was something else as well, something warm and very human. Maybe that came from the boy's mother, whoever she was.

“Lothar?” she asked gently.

He looked at her in surprise. So did Jens, from where he was standing over by the window.

Sophie kept her eyes on him.

“Your name is Lothar, isn't it?” she asked quietly.

The boy didn't answer.

“What are your mom and dad's names?”

Suddenly he looked at her anxiously, then at Jens.

She leaned closer to him.

“Tell me, Lothar, there's no need to worry, we don't mean you any harm.”

His gaze flitted between Jens and Sophie.

“My mom's dead,” he eventually said.

“Your dad?”

“I haven't got a dad, I never have.”

His voice was low; he was hard as stone, this boy.

“How old are you?”

Hector had told her he was sixteen, that day they had been out on his boat in the archipelago. It had been as if he wanted to give her something, the greatest of all confidences, his biggest secret.
I've got a son,
he had said.
Lothar Manuel Tiedemann. He lives in Berlin with his mother….

“Seventeen,” the boy whispered.

Sophie hadn't taken her eyes off him.

“Albert?”

He hesitated, as if he had already said too much.

“Albert?” she asked again. “Have you seen Albert? Answer me.”

“Who are you?”

“I've already told you, I'm his mother.”

Lothar tried to read her.

“What's Albert's father's name?” he asked.

“David,” Sophie replied.

“What happened to him?”

“He got sick and died.”

“What sort of sick?”

“Cancer. Tell me now, Lothar.” She'd run out of patience.

He hesitated a little longer.

“Yes, I met Albert,” he said.

“When and where?”

“A few days ago.”

“Where?”

“Where you found me.”

She waited for more. Lothar looked at her from under his bangs.

“He was in the room next to me for a few days. We talked through an air vent.”

“Did you see him, did you actually meet him?”

“No, I never saw him.”

“How was he?”

“OK, I think.”

“What did you talk about, what did he say?”

“All sorts of things.”

“Like what?”

Lothar thought.

“His dad being dead. And you being a nurse, and his girlfriend, Anna. And the fact that he's in a wheelchair. That you live in an apartment in Stockholm…that you used to have a dog, a yellow Labrador, I don't remember the name.”

Rainer…
Sophie thought.

“That you're in trouble,” he went on. “And that's why they took him.”

“Did he have his wheelchair with him?” she asked.

“I don't know. But he thought it was a pain that there was no one to help him with the things he couldn't do for himself.”

Sophie looked down at the hotel-room carpet. It was thick, dark-blue. She held her feelings in check.

“What else happened?” she asked. “What did he say, what did he do, how did he sound?”

“We were both scared and upset, we kept each other company. Albert thinks you're dead. I thought that too; I thought what happened to my mom had happened to you.”

Now she looked up at him.

“What happened to your mom?”

“They shot her.”

At first she didn't understand. His tone of voice was so normal. As if the significance of the event hadn't hit him yet.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“I was there,” he said.

The images came back to him. He struggled to hold them at bay.

She went on living while innocent people died around her. Sophie met his gaze. Perhaps he was asking himself the same question:
Why did they let you live, and not my mom?

“Who took me?” he asked quietly. “Who killed my mom?”

She knew the answer to his questions, but wasn't going to tell him. Instead she thought about the Hankes and their compulsive brutality. As if it were a language, the violence, talking to her, reminding her that she was ultimately powerless. No chance at all.

Sophie stood up and turned toward Jens.

“We leave in a few hours.”

She left Jens's hotel room. The door closed with a click behind her.

Jens sat down on the armchair. Lothar was sitting on the bed, his feet on the floor, his hands in his lap.

“How do you know who I am?” he whispered.

“Try to get some rest, Lothar,” Jens said. “I'll be sitting here with you.”

“How do you know who I am?” he asked again, harder this time.

“I don't know who you are.”

“She knew,” he said, pointing to the door.

Jens shrugged.

“I'm not her.”

“Why did they take Albert?”

“Get some rest now, Lothar,” Jens said.

Lothar was about to protest, but Jens hushed him.

“Not now; you'll get your answers soon enough, but first you need to rest.”

With a degree of reluctance, Lothar lay down on the bed with two pillows behind his head.

Jens could see fatigue, worry, and anxiety in the boy as he sat there, staring out at nothing.

Lothar came back to reality, was about to switch the television on with the remote.

“How are you feeling?” Jens asked.

Lothar thought about the question, pain and anguish on his face as he looked for an answer that didn't seem to be there.

“I don't know,” he said, clicking the remote control. A sports channel appeared on the screen. The Bundesliga. The match was fast, the play well organized, the attacks clever, the long balls hard. The crossbar—bang! The post—bang! Goal disallowed for offside. The protests not particularly vociferous.

Soon after, Lothar was fast asleep.

Jens got up from the armchair, went over to the boy, and pulled the bedspread over him, then switched the television off. He sat back down again.

He had also noticed those features. The same things Sophie had seen. Elements of Hector Guzman in the boy's face.

Jens rubbed his eyes. Tiredness was taking its toll. His eyes closed and he fell asleep.

He was awakened by a noise.

Lothar was sitting up in bed and screaming out loud in terror.