The Other Son (39 page)

They headed west through Denmark. Sophie's phone vibrated in her pocket.

“Yes?”

“
What happened?
” Roland Gentz's voice was unmistakable.

“Why are you asking me?”

“
Is Hector alive?
”

“I don't know.”

“
Was he alive when you and the boy took off?
”

“Where's Albert?”

“
Answer my question.
”

“Answer mine,” she said.

“
Albert's OK. Is Hector alive?
”

“He was alive when we left. I want to talk to Albert. Why didn't you bring him to me?”

“
Where's Hector now?
”

“I don't know where Hector is. We had an agreement, and you broke it.”

She was trying to stay calm. “Give me Albert now,” she begged in a low voice. “There's nothing to be gained from this. I want my son back….”

“
We need to know if Hector's alive.
”

“What for…?”

“
We'll be in touch.
”

Her cell phone went quiet. He'd hung up.

She was shaking inside. An overdose of grief and despair, frustration, and rage was taking complete control of her whole existence with paralyzing force. She let her discomfort wash over her and push her down. Let it hurt, torment her, suffocate, and sting. Sophie just kept breathing and waiting, there was nothing else she could do.

“There's a police officer looking for you, Sophie,” Mikhail said.

She didn't follow.

“What did you say, Mikhail?”

He looked at her in the rearview mirror.

“A Swedish police officer has been looking for you, a woman, Antonia something, she wants to talk to you.”

“How do you know that?”

“From Rüdiger.”

Antonia
, Sophie thought. Antonia Miller. She remembered the policewoman who had been investigating the murders at Trasten. Antonia had visited her at home in the villa in Stocksund, asked questions. She seemed reserved but curious.

“What did she say?”

Mikhail sat back, then glanced in the mirror again.

“Don't know. Rüdiger just passed the message on.”

“She called him?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say to her?”

“Nothing, I guess.”

Mikhail felt in his pocket and pulled something out, then reached his hand back toward her, a note between two long fingers. A Swedish cell-phone number.

Jens had turned around. He didn't say anything; perhaps he was waiting for a decision.

Sophie put her cell phone in her lap and looked out the window, searching for an answer.

“Call her. Hear what she's got to say, you've got nothing to lose.” Jens turned around again.

She dialed the number on the scrap of paper. It rang twice, then a woman answered.

“
Yes?
”

“You've been trying to get in touch with me.”

“
Yes, I have.
”

The woman sounded almost relieved.

“What for?”

“
Where are you?
” Antonia asked.

The world racing past outside the car, it was all a blur.

“I'm going to hang up if you don't tell me what you want,” she said.

Another silence, as if the woman at the other end was considering what to say very carefully, afraid of saying the wrong thing, afraid of missing her chance.

“
I'm on the run as well,
” Antonia said.

“Explain.”

“
Things are happening.
”

“What sort of things?”

“
You know
Lars Vinge?
”

“What about him?”

“
You know who he was?
”

“Yes.”

“
He left a bag. And I've got that bag.
”

“Oh?”

“
You're rather over-represented among its contents.
”

Antonia's voice became steadier.

“
I need to know why, so I can put an end to this.
”

“Put an end to what?”

“
I don't know yet.
”

“You said you're on the run. Who's after you?”

“
I've gone to ground. I can't say more.
”

“What do you know?” Sophie asked.

“
A bit.
”

“What don't you know?”

“
A lot more
.”

Sophie's eyes met Jens's.

“So what do you want my help with?” Sophie asked.

“
I need to get a clearer picture.
”

“What of?”

“
The people who died six months ago, what happened to them, what they knew, what you know from Trasten. What happened there. There are two of us in hiding now, we're both police officers, and we're onto something big.
”

She thought for a moment.

“
Sophie?
” Antonia sounded like a friend now.

“Yes?”

“
What do you need help with?
”

“I need to find my son,” she whispered.

Leszek and Sonya had been traveling nonstop after dropping Aron off. The ferry from Rødby to Puttgarden, then straight through Germany to its southern border, across the Alps, and down toward Lugano. Hector woke up there. They pressed on through Italy until they reached the Mediterranean, then turned west toward the French Riviera and Villefranche. A journey of twenty hours.

Considering the circumstances, Hector felt reasonably OK. Soon Raimunda would be able to look after him.

Villefranche was asleep when they arrived early in the morning. They drove up the winding road toward the villa.

Leszek looked up at the house, scanning the façade. A blind pulled down in one of the guest rooms facing the road: a signal that everything was OK…in the afternoon. But not now, not early in the morning. Now the blind should be pulled up and a nightlight switched on inside. That was what they'd agreed, and Raimunda was a very conscientious person.

“Keep going. Drive past,” he said to Sonya. “Hector, lie down and take cover,” he added.

They drove past the villa. Leszek couldn't see anything else unusual, and they kept on going up the road and stopped at the crown of the first hill.

“Wait for me here,” he said, then got out of the car and disappeared into a garden.

He made his way quickly back down to the villa. There he climbed over the wall and landed feet first on the lawn beside the pool, where he stopped and listened. Complete silence. Toys and an inflatable mattress floated in the pool. That never happened. Raimunda usually kept things tidy.

Under cover of the trees and bushes in the yard he made his way around to the front. There was a car parked there. The little Peugeot Raimunda used when she went shopping. Leszek kept going, to the side of the house, where he crouched beneath the big living-room window, then peered into the gloom. All the furniture was exactly where it should be. He moved on to the dining room. Same thing there, just dormant furniture in a peaceful room.

Leszek crouched down again and went on to the kitchen, and peered in cautiously. There was someone sitting at the kitchen table in the darkness, the red glow of a flashlight gave the man enough light to read a book by. Beside him on the table was a flask, a mug, a French newspaper, and a glistening black pistol.

Leszek craned his neck. Two people were asleep on the floor over by the kitchen cupboards, in sleeping bags on top of camping mats. One of them had a black rucksack beside him. It had the emblem of the Police Nationale on it.

Leszek backed away, then ran off silently, across the wall, through the neighbor's garden, back up to the car.

“The police are in there waiting for us,” he said as he got into the backseat next to Hector.

Sonya started the car and drove off.

“The others?” Hector asked.

“I didn't see any of them. It looks like they left in a hurry.”

They all thought hard.

“How did the police find us?” Hector asked.

“Raimunda or Angela?” Leszek replied.

“Angela,” Sonya said. Neither of them disagreed.

“What does she know?” Hector asked.

“Enough,” Sonya said.

“Enough, how?”

“She was married to your brother, Hector.”

Sonya steered the car along the winding road.

“Where are we going now?” she added.

“We need to disappear completely,” Hector said tightly.

“We haven't got any money,” Sonya said. “And without money we haven't got any friends.” She tried to find Hector in the rearview mirror.

“No friends, no money,” he said to himself. Then he smiled, as if there was something funny about that.

They started suggesting names. Names of business partners, friends, acquaintances, people from the past. None of them was suitable, they all entailed too much risk.

Leszek eventually said, “Your father's cousin, Hector.”

“Who?” Hector asked.

“Every year Adalberto used to send money to the monastery in Tuscany; he kept it going, don't you remember?”

Hector searched his memory, yes, he remembered.
Roberto…

“Head toward Tuscany,” he said.

The passports were standard EU ones.

Marianne Grip from the Laundromat was sitting behind the wheel of her silver Jaguar XJ6, inspecting them like a customs official.

“It took him a day and a half to do these after you called me, Antonia. Some forgers really do deserve their reputation,” she said, handing them to Antonia and Miles, who were sitting in the backseat.

Miles and Antonia opened their new passports, looked at their pictures, the fake names, the fake signatures.

“This isn't exactly standard-issue stuff, as I hope you appreciate.”

Miles and Antonia stared at her uncomprehendingly.

“This is a miracle,” Marianne said. “Fake ID cards and passports that work….Don't take any of this for granted.”

Marianne fixed her eyes on them.

“And finally: This is a '76; I got it from Assar. If you so much as scratch it I'll never forgive you.”

She opened the car door; it was big and heavy. Marianne got out, then leaned over and looked in again. She let out a sigh and her sternness vanished, and her face went back to normal.

“Be careful, whatever it is you're going to do,” she said, and closed the car door.

Miles and Antonia climbed into the front, Miles behind the wheel. It was wide and thin. He turned the key. The old car started. The engine purred reassuringly. Antonia switched on the GPS on her cell phone, opened the maps, and keyed in the address of the little village in Jutland that Sophie had given her.

She held the phone up to Miles, who read it.

“Ten hours driving ahead of us,” he said, pulling out of the parking space.

“Do you want to play I Spy?” she said flatly.

Tommy was lying on the sofa at home with his head against Monica's breasts. She was stroking his hair. The movement was minimal, barely perceptible.

“You've been good to me, Tommy.”

Her voice was thin and slurred, her speech deteriorating, drawn out, almost dark. She struggled with the words.

“Always, ever since the first time I met you. Toward me and the girls, everyone you know. Even your enemies.”

He tried to find some sort of symmetry between the ceiling and the top of the open door.

“But then you turned bad, Tommy.”

With one eye closed he managed to line up the top of the door with the corner of the ceiling.

“You stopped talking to me, you got quiet and depressed. And sometimes you got angry, as if your depression had found an outlet. You changed. I wanted to help you, but I couldn't reach you, Tommy….You cut yourself off, and disappeared.”

Tommy looked away from the corner and stared blankly up at the ceiling instead.

“Perhaps that's finished now, Tommy? Over?”

Monica broke off abruptly, breathing shallowly, then she went on in a weaker voice. “You should talk to your daughters, explain yourself. Give them a chance not to have to carry your problems. You used to be able to talk to them. Do it again….Do good, Tommy.”

Tommy listened. He heard what she was saying, but he didn't understand. He used to understand. But that was then, and this was now—completely different things. He had been someone else then, everything was different. He used to be a policeman, a husband, father, colleague. Down-to-earth, considerate, and he used to try, in spite of a fairly negative view of the world, to do the right thing. Now he was still a policeman, a husband, father, and so on. But he was also a criminal, a murderer, and now, with the same negative view of the world, he was actively trying to do wrong. That was the path he had chosen. He couldn't change it, no matter how much he might want to. The consequences would be too great.

Monica
…She meant everything to him. Perhaps that was his underlying driving force. It ought to be nothing but good, but it wasn't; it was nothing but bad.

He looked at his wife.

“I've stopped drinking,” he said.

She looked deep into his eyes.

“That's good,” she whispered.

“I love you,” he said.

She believed him, he could see that. That was a big thing, now that he no longer believed in himself. Tommy turned his head away.

“I love our girls,” he went on.

Monica stroked his head.

The sun disappeared behind a cloud and the living room turned darker.

“I wish I could turn back time, Monica. But I can't.”

She went on stroking him.

“No, Tommy, you can't.”

Her voice was so thin, so weak.

Time passed by around them. He wanted to stay there, to stay with his Monica. Where life was safe and normal.

“Tommy?” she whispered.

He waited.

“I want you to promise me one thing.”

He tried to preempt her. “I'll take care of everything, I promise.”

“No, not that,” she interrupted.

Monica turned his face so he was looking at her.

“Help me go when the time comes.”

Tommy didn't know what to say.

“Promise to help me if I get trapped inside myself. I don't want to end up there, I don't want to be scared. Promise to give me a bit of help along the way.”

He stared at her. But she just looked calmly back at him. Tommy stood up and walked away, into the kitchen, walked around the kitchen table, his hand on his head….What the hell was he doing in the kitchen?

Then down into the basement, down the steep, narrow steps.

The bottom drawer of the desk was empty; he'd emptied the bottle of gin down the toilet earlier.

There was a humming sound in his head and he bit his thumbnail.

His cell phone buzzed in his pocket and he answered it.

“Yes?”

“
Stefan here
.”

“Stefan who?” he shouted.

“
Stefan Andersson, Forensics!
”

Tommy scratched his head hard.

“What is it?”

“
I've managed to locate the cell phone. The GPS has just been switched on.
”

“Where?”

“
Norrbackagatan, Vasastan—Birkastan
.”

Tommy unlocked the
gun cabinet where he kept his hunting rifles and took out an old snub-nosed revolver, a .38 he stole during the search of an embezzling lawyer's home four months ago.

He checked the gun—fully loaded, silver-colored with a mother-of-pearl handle—and weighed it in his hand.

Tommy grabbed his winter jacket in the hall. He tucked the revolver away in a hidden inside pocket, pulled the jacket on, and headed off into the vile world outside.

He called Negerson from his car and gave him the address in Birkastan. Tommy drove fast, his car straining around him.

Ove Negerson was
already there, at the address where Antonia Miller's phone was supposed to be, leaning against the hood of his Mercedes when Tommy drove past, looking for somewhere to park.

Ove was standing at the back of the car when Tommy walked up. He opened the trunk with the remote. All of Ove's guns lay spread out on a blanket. He waved his hand.

“Voilà.”

Tommy saw two pistols, two rifles—one shorter, with a sniper sight, the other old and rusty—three knives (two butterflies and one bowie), and two silencers.

“So what's it to be?” Tommy asked.

Ove scratched his chin, as if he were only allowed to pick one chocolate from a full box, then pointed at a modern black pistol and one of the silencers.

He leaned in and screwed the silencer onto the pistol, then held it up like a trophy.

“What about you?”

“Nothing,” Tommy said.

Ove opened his mouth theatrically and stared at him, wide-eyed.

“Living on the edge, Tommy?”

“Fuck off.”

Ove shut the trunk and they walked toward the entrance to the building. A man with a young dog was walking toward them.

Ove stiffened as he stared at the dog.

“Scared of dogs?” Tommy chuckled happily.

“Yes,” Ove said. “I've always been frightened of dogs, ever since I was little.”

They were on their way in through the door when Stefan from Forensics called again.

“What the hell is it now?” Tommy answered.

“
The signal vanished, then popped up again. They are heading south on the motorway.
”

“Dammit.”

Tommy turned and ran toward his car.

“Let's take mine,” Ove called after him.