The Other Son (30 page)

Oh là là
, Tommy sang silently to himself to keep from turning around and going back to strangle the boy on the spot.

He gave his daughters a hug in the kitchen.

“Hi, Dad.”

The hugs were distanced and impersonal. The atmosphere was tense and odd. Half smiles and fear of the unknown circling around their father's peculiar personality.

Monica tried to smile. Tommy noticed an oxygen cylinder on wheels beside her, a transparent breathing mask in her hand. Every so often she would take a breath from it.

“Is that new?” was all he could find to say.

Monica tried to smile in confirmation.

“Oh. Great,” he said, then pulled a bottle of wine from the rack on the wall.

As usual, the
evening meal was of a high standard. They ate and made small talk. Tommy was worrying about Ingmarsson and Miller. The pressure in his chest had found its way up through his neck to his brain. It was making him stupid and sluggish. He drank his wine, quietly but quickly; it was a trick that seemed to work, he didn't think anyone noticed.

Mattias was talking about gender issues. The kid knew what he was doing, declaiming loudly and authoritatively to Tommy's women around the table.

Tommy ate, looking down at his plate, breathing shallowly through his nose. His blood pressure rose as Mattias talked about power structures, patriarchal society….

Tommy tried to think about something else, but the left-wing nightmare's holier-than-thou voice cut through the room at a frequency it was impossible to ignore. Phrases like
gender trap,
sexism, women's football, liberal feminism, quotas, gender roles.
The words forced themselves into Tommy's consciousness.

In the end he blew his top, it was impossible to hold back. Fury burst out of his reptile brain, through his head and out from his eyes.

“You cocky little bastard,” Tommy growled as he flew up from his chair and grabbed hold of Mattias by his hair. He bit his bottom lip as he hit the boy's head hard against the table repeatedly. His plate shattered. The girls screamed, and Monica's dark, slurred, weak voice urged him to stop. But Tommy didn't hear, he was hard at work and enjoying himself. It was like finally being able to scratch somewhere you couldn't reach. The release of tension put him in a strangely happy mood, made him feel soft inside as a feeling of warmth embraced him.

Tommy stopped and looked at Mattias. Fragments of his plate were stuck to his face, along with vegetables and sauce.

From the corner of his eye he saw Monica trying to stand up to stop him, but her paralysis prevented her. He carried on with the assault for a while longer with an open palm. Then he was done. He let go of the boy's hair and sat down on his chair again and leaned back, feeling relaxed and harmonious.

Mattias looked bewildered. His nose was bleeding steadily, his hair was on end, and his anxious eyes darted around the table, not quite aware of what had just happened to him.

The girls were crying quietly. Monica stared at her husband. He realized he was still smiling. It came from the heart.

“I'm fine, Monica,” he whispered. “Absolutely fine.”

She said nothing, just carried on staring at him. Tommy met his daughters' gaze. They looked away, and that's when he began to doubt.

“You've got to be allowed to feel good sometimes, haven't you?”

The conviction in his voice was suddenly gone.

Tommy's cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out.

“Saved by the bell,” he said happily.

Vanessa started to cry more loudly.

He checked the number, then hushed her irritably to get her to be quiet.

“Yep,” he said into the phone as he stood up.

The reception was bad. He waved his hand to Vanessa to tell her to stop crying.

“Tommy here,” he said.

The voice at the other end was high-pitched.

“
This is Roger Lindgren. Your friend Miles is here, in my apartment.
”

Tommy left the table and called Ove Negerson.

The first round was going to hell. Miles was lying on the floor. Roger Lindgren was taking great, swinging kicks at his face.

Miles had prepared carefully, planning exactly what he was going to do.

He went upstairs in the building on Hagagatan and rang the doorbell. He pushed Roger Lindgren back into the apartment and slapped him around a bit. Miles had expected to gain some advantage from the confusion he created. The plan was to get Lindgren down on the floor and then do what he was there for.

But Roger wasn't at all confused. Not even surprised. Miles figured that out the moment the guy opened the door.

Roger Lindgren was chewing, only without gum; he had a tense smile, a shiny druggy glow to his face, and madness in his eyes. Roger Lindgren was high.

“Is your name Miles Ingmarsson?” he asked.

“How the hell do you know that…?”

Roger Lindgren broke into joyous anger and quickly and violently punched Miles Ingmarsson down onto the parquet floor.

Things moved pretty damn fast after that. Seemingly endless kicks to the face. Miles sensed it wouldn't be long before he lost consciousness. Blood flew, and the violence focused on his head was brutal and remorseless. The adrenaline in his body was working hard to control the pain, but it couldn't keep up. It soon became clear to Miles that he was going to die right there on the floor.

Then, just as he felt he was about to pass out, Roger stopped kicking him. Through the fog of the assault, Miles saw Roger sit on top of him, pull a cell phone from his jeans pocket, and make a call.

Miles lay there, about to die. And he realized why.

He hadn't been angry when he stormed in, not the slightest. He had been nervous, expectant, deluding himself compulsively that his plan would work. Which of course it hadn't. He had forgotten the most important ingredient—fury. That was why he was lying there like an idiot, just taking it.

Miles backed up in his thoughts.
Sanna
…Her pleading messages on his voicemail…her battered face in the hospital…How lovely she was, how honest…

That was why he was there, after all…Miles looked up at Roger Lindgren's ugly, drugged frame sitting on top of him. Roger ended the call and was about to continue his assault when Miles grabbed Roger's hair with his left hand. A hard punch with his right fist.

The blow landed just below Lindgren's eye, and Miles felt something break. Two more punches. Whatever had broken was going to be impossible to mend.

Then everything happened automatically, and time became disjointed and hazy. Miles ended up on top of Roger, raining blows down on him, then grabbed his head and brought it down hard on the floor. Roger Lindgren tried to resist, flailing at the air.

Miles found his rhythm and lost track of time and space. A harmonious state of being. Apparently it was called
flow
, and there were entire books all about it.

Lindgren was finished, he wasn't coming back, was about to be knocked out for good. But he mustn't die; Miles wasn't finished with him yet.

Cold water.

Miles stood up, walked through the apartment, and found the kitchen behind a locked door.

A plastic curtain, then he was met by a bright blue light, as if he were on his way to heaven. But this wasn't heaven, it was a laboratory, a meth kitchen.

Miles stepped inside. There was a heavy, acrid smell. The windows were covered with black garbage bags, and the strong blue light came from UV lamps above an extended kitchen table. There were hot plates, cookware, heat-proof glass beakers, Bunsen burners and chemicals, benzene, acetone, gasoline, sodium hydroxide, hydrochloric acid. Also lighter fluid, dismantled children's anti-allergy inhalers, cotton balls, coffee filters, tea towels, and matches.

Miles stared.

There was a small mountain of pure white powder under one of the UV lamps.

Better than cold water.

He picked up a transparent plastic bag, found a spoon in a drawer, filled the bag with amphetamine, and left the kitchen.

Lindgren was lying on his back, his hands cuffed behind him. He followed Miles with his swollen eyes.

“What's that?” He sounded like he had a harelip, his voice coming from his nose and mouth simultaneously.

Miles didn't answer, and Roger realized. There was genuine panic in his voice when he started to plead.

“No, for fuck's sake, it hasn't been diluted yet!”

Miles sat astride Lindgren's chest, took a spoonful and drove it into the man's throat. Roger coughed, trying to spit it out, but Miles held his mouth closed as he looked around the living room. It was very shabby, furnished with stuff from secondhand shops and crap from cheap trips to Asia. Ugly pictures, stupid artistic photographs. Cultural nonsense…Miles waited patiently for Lindgren's swallowing reflex to kick in, as eventually it did. The anguish in his wide-open eyes was unmistakable. This was high-octane amphetamine. This was a nightmare. The mother of all bad trips…

A new start.

Longer life.

Bang!

His whole system was working hard, pulse, heart, blood. Miles watched. Lindgren was behaving like the Hulk, mid-transformation, as his insides boiled—vomiting and writhing in pain and anguish.

Miles couldn't be bothered to hit the bastard anymore. He leaned forward and whispered
Sanna
into Roger's bleeding ear. Then he looked on calmly as Roger Lindgren died of what was probably a heart attack, unless it was just the general shutdown of everything.

Miles stood up, unzipped his trousers, and pissed on Roger Lindgren. It just felt right, like a sort of grand finale.

There was a noise behind him, and he turned around, urine spraying across the body.

Tommy Jansson was standing there in the room with another man.

“Hi, Ingmarsson,” Tommy said.

A few seconds ticked by before Miles understood. He finished pissing, shook the last drops, and tucked himself away.

“Hi, Tommy,” he said, for some reason brushing the legs of his trousers.

Miles's face and hair were covered with blood—his hands and arms, too. A butcher who had just pissed on a corpse.

“Miles Ingmarsson,” Tommy whispered. “I didn't think you had it in you.”

No response. Miles waited for him to go on.

“It appears things have gotten a bit out of hand, I must say,” he continued.

Miles wiped his nose with his sleeve.

“That depends how you look at it,” Miles said.

“ ‘How you look at it'?” Tommy let out an affected laugh. “I'd say it looks out of hand,” he went on, and turned to the other man. “Wouldn't you say, Ove?”

Ove looked at Roger Lindgren.

“Things have gotten out of hand, no doubt about that,” he said.

Tommy scratched his chin.

“Is he still alive?” he asked, pointing at the body on the floor.

Miles turned around and tried to see any sign of life in Lindgren.

“No, I don't think so. He's probably dead now.”

“And what the hell happened to your hand?” Ove asked, staring wide-eyed as he pointed to Miles's right hand.

Miles inspected it. The knuckles of his first and middle fingers were shattered, and the bones on the back of his hand were stretching the skin like tent poles.

“I don't know,” he said.

“For fuck's sake, it's broken,” Ove laughed.

“Is it?”

Ove couldn't stop laughing.

“Yes, it's fucked.”

Miles examined his hand.

“Yes, it probably is,” he mumbled.

“You hit him so fucking hard you broke your hand!”

Ove had a chuckling laugh; it sounded genuine.

“In this short time you've won my undivided respect, Miles Ingmarsson. I want you to know that. My name is Ove, Ove Negerson.”

Miles didn't understand.

“What are you doing here, Miles?” Tommy asked.