The Other Son (43 page)

The vehicle braked hard. The siren started again. This time it seemed louder, pressing in on her consciousness.

A prickling cold embraced her, nausea weighed down by a physical weakness that spread out from her neck. Then a sense of being upside down, weightless. That she was about to topple over the edge of a cliff and lose everything. She couldn't hold on. The cold got worse, cutting through her entire body. Then shaking, hard and remorselessly.

The paramedic was suddenly standing over her, holding her body to the gurney, trying to hold her still. She looked into his eyes and saw fear.

She heard her own voice cry out
“No!”
several times.
No
, she thought,
dear God, I can't die now!

“I bet you a thousand kronor my cock's bigger than yours, Tommy,” Ove said.

They had stopped to have a piss in a patch of woodland.

“I'm not going to take you up on that,” Tommy muttered, pulling his zipper down.

“No, very sensible,” Ove said. “Because then you'd have lost a thousand kronor. And who wants to lose a grand just because they've got a tiny cock?”

“At a guess, no one,” Tommy said.

“Quite right. No one!” Ove said, then started to pee.

“I've stopped drinking,” Tommy said.

“Way to go, Captain Jansson! Very sensible for a handsome man like you. You do know that you're very handsome, don't you, Tommy?”

“So I've been told plenty of times.”

Ove lit up.

“Tommy! You're joining in the joke! Jesus Christ! This is getting better and better. You and me, Tommy, shit, we have a good time together.”

Ove chuckled, whistled the theme to
Rocky
, and concentrated on peeing.

Tommy put his right hand inside his jacket, took out the snub-nosed .38 from the hidden pocket, and weighed it in his hand.

“In the winter I usually piss ‘Ove' in the snow. Big or small letters, joined-up or not.”

Tommy took a firm grip of the revolver, raised his arm, and shot Ove in the cheek. The blast was incredibly loud. Ove's head shook from the force of the bullet and he fell where he stood. With his pride and joy still hanging out of his fly.

Tommy finished pissing, shook his cock, put it away, then went over to Ove, who was lying on his side staring up at Tommy. He was breathing fast and shallow, with a gaping hole in his cheek. His upper jaw was shattered, loose teeth scattered in his blood-filled mouth.

Tommy Jansson looked at him without saying anything, raised the gun, and emptied the magazine into Negerson, into his crotch, chest, shoulder, neck, and forehead. Six shots in total.

The water in the washbasin turned a grisly pale pink. Aron washed Sophie's blood from his hands. He had checked into a motel beside the motorway at the Danish-German border.

In the bedroom he opened the bag he had taken with him from Jens's house, emptied its contents onto the bed, and started to go through everything. It was all about Sophie, and the fact that she had been under surveillance, that the police who had been watching her had been corrupt. All of which he already knew. But it was possible to discern something else now too: that she might have talked to the police, or had at least been in contact with Gunilla Strandberg, who had been hunting Hector. It wasn't all clear, and she could have been innocent. But there was enough material to give a general impression that Sophie couldn't be trusted. A good enough impression to make Hector understand, help him let her go.

Aron divided the contents of the bag into two piles. The first was filled with compromising material about Sophie. The next was for everything else.

He put the first pile back in the bag. Then he sat down on the bed and destroyed everything in the second pile, shredding paper, destroying storage devices, tearing up photographs and pictures until they were unrecognizable. Removing every shred of evidence against Hector and his organization that Gunilla Strandberg had committed to paper.

Then he put it all in a plastic bag, tied it up, and threw it in a Dumpster behind the motel restaurant.

“Are you sitting comfortably?” Christian asked.

Albert nodded.

The private plane, a Bombardier Challenger, furnished in beige leather and walnut wood, had room for eight passengers but was carrying only four. Albert, Christian, and, behind them, Ernst and Roland.

“Do you need anything?” Christian went on.

Albert shook his head.

“Are you thirsty?”

“No,” Albert said gruffly.

“Hungry?”

Christian was smiling. Albert looked away.

The Challenger cruised
sedately at 12,000 meters, carried by the jet stream. Albert ate, read, tried to kill time. Night came and he fell asleep, and drifted off into a dream. He was back in the farmhouse, in the room where he had been held captive. The door was open. Albert stood up from the wheelchair and walked out of the room, on foot. He walked outside, the sun was shining. Then he started to run away from there. His legs were strong, carrying him at high speed, his shoes pounding on the ground. He was on his way home, home to his mom, to his girlfriend and his friends. On his way home to his old life…

He was torn from the dream as the plane touched the ground. Albert tried to figure out where he was as he looked out the window. They had landed somewhere in the darkness to refuel, and took off again. He didn't go back to sleep, and just sat there in the darkness, alone with his thoughts, which told him it was highly unlikely that he would ever go home again.

Daylight came and the plane sank through the clouds, looped around a city, found the right course, and descended for landing. It was a private airstrip, with a small control tower from a bygone age. The plane landed, braked hard, and taxied toward two waiting silver Cadillac Escalades.

The sun was white gold, and was shining mercilessly; the heat shimmered. It was a long way from home.

“Where are we?” Albert asked.

“Come on, let me help you get out,” Christian said.

They drove through
open countryside, then into a jungle-like forest. A barrier across the road, an armed guard, then more forest. Snipers among the trees with their barrels trained on the vehicles as they passed. Then the forest opened out to reveal a castle, an animal park, pools, waterfalls, tennis courts.

The car turned and pulled up outside the main entrance.

When Albert's door opened there was already a wheelchair waiting. Christian lifted him out.

A man came down the steps, a radiant, broad smile on his face. His shirt was loose, his jeans new, his hair black and shiny.

“Christian!” he said. “Welcome! And you too, Albert.”

The man stopped in front of Albert.

“I know your mother. My name is Alfonse Ramirez. My uncle is Don Ignacio; this is his house, and he asked me to say that you are all very welcome here.”

Alfonse studied Albert's face carefully.

“You're very similar, you and your mother. You're lucky.”

He laughed. Then he pointed at Christian to indicate that he should join in. Then, standing on either side of the wheelchair, they carried Albert up the steps and in through the main door.

They brought Albert to a large, open hallway. It was marble and gold, with life-size porcelain animals. Over-the-top. There was a cage up by the ceiling containing a chimpanzee that ran around nervously and shouting. A couple of servants in livery went past, as did some guards. It was like a film. A bad one.

A man walked toward them. He was about fifty-five, black hair, pale skin, poor posture.

“Uncle, this is Christian Hanke and Albert Brinkmann,” Alfonse said.

The chimpanzee screamed again.

Don Ignacio looked at Christian and then at Alfonse.

“What's this?”

He pointed at Albert.

“This is Albert,” Christian replied.

“A kidnapped child in a wheelchair in my house? Where's Hector Guzman's child?”

“We no longer have him,” Christian said.

“I see. So what are we going to do with
him
?”

“He's with me, until further notice,” Christian said.

“ ‘Until further notice'?”

The chimpanzee was shrieking and running around its cage. Don Ignacio ignored it, but Christian couldn't. The animal unsettled him.

“Yes, until further notice,” he said, almost irritably.

“What about you, then, how long are
you
going to stay? Until further notice?”

“We'll stay until we know what's going on with Hector.”

Ignacio gave him a disapproving look.

“You came here to hide?”

“We're going to get Hector, sooner or later. We just need a bit of time to gather our strength.”

Don Ignacio flared up.

“ ‘Until further notice,' ‘gather our strength'…What sort of crap is that? You and your father want to get Hector Guzman. That's what our collaboration is based upon. We helped you to find his son, we helped you with assets and men. We helped you to the point where you actually had Hector in your sights. And even then you managed to mess things up. And now this?”

“Our collaboration goes on until we're done with Hector; that's how we see it.”

Don Ignacio opened his eyes exaggeratedly wide.

“That's how you see it?”

He turned toward Alfonse.

“That's how they see it, Alfonse.”

Albert was listening to all this. Ignacio's voice was dripping with sarcasm. The chimpanzee screamed above them.

Christian stared at the floor.

“But that's not how
I
see it,” Ignacio said. “And that's the only thing that matters.”

The chimpanzee was rushing around.

Ignacio held up a hand, and a bodyguard walked over to Christian and indicated that he wanted to search him. Christian held his arms out. The guard found a cell phone and put it in his pocket.

“I've done the same to Roland and Ernst,” Ignacio said. “You are my guests, until I decide how things are going to develop. If you try to leave, I will take that as an insult and my men will hunt you through the forest and shoot you in the back. We'll leave your bodies with the hippopotamuses. They'll trample and piss on you until you're beyond all recognition. And then you'll be thrown to the pigs.”

The bodyguard took hold of Christian's arm and led him away.

“And what about you, little boy?” Ignacio said. “What happened to you, why are you in a wheelchair?”

Albert looked at Ignacio, then at Alfonse, and then back to Ignacio.

“I was run down by a car,” he said.

There was no trace of sympathy from Don Ignacio.

“When?”

“Last autumn.”

“Are you going to be stuck in it forever?”

“It looks like it,” Albert replied.

“Can you manage?”

“Yes, most of the time,” Albert replied.

Don Ignacio's tongue moved around his mouth, a new thought.

“Did they treat you well, the Hankes?”

The questions came thick and fast.

“I've got nothing to compare it to,” Albert replied. “I've never been kidnapped before.”

Ignacio smiled, as did Alfonse, who intervened.

“Answer Don Ignacio's question, Albert.”

“No, I can't say that they did.”

Ignacio grunted something inaudible but wasn't finished.

“I've never liked Germans,” he said.

He seemed to get caught in his thoughts, and one vein on his forehead grew as bitterness bubbled up inside him. Ignacio snapped himself out of it.

“Alfonse, I'm sick of the Hankes, I'm sick of Guzman, sick of the fact that those bastards are incapable of killing each other.”

He sighed irritably.

“See to it that the boy gets some food.”

Then Ignacio Ramirez walked away.