The Other Son (49 page)

The car didn't stop in front of the main building but carried on beyond it, through another patch of jungle and along a gravel road.

At the foot of a verdant hillside lay a row of white, single-story buildings, with small gardens, an orangery, and two more buildings without windows. It looked like a miniature suburb, but it was all surrounded by a three-meter-high metal fence with signs warning of extremely high voltage. There was a barred gate in the middle, and guards patrolling outside.

They pulled up in front of the gate; Jens could see some men sitting on the illuminated veranda of one of the houses. They were dressed in casual clothes, almost as though they were on vacation, sitting around a table, perhaps they were playing cards….

In the front seat, Alfonse turned around.

“Do you recognize them?” Alfonse asked, nodding toward the veranda.

They were some distance away, but Jens recognized one of them, at least.

“Ernst Lundwall, Hector's adviser,” he said.

“That's right,” Alfonse said. “The other two are Christian Hanke and Roland Gentz.”

Ralph Hanke's son and his right-hand man.

Don Ignacio Ramirez was collecting people. Just like the animals in the enclosures. And now he and Lothar were collector's items of his as well. The picture was becoming clearer. Alfonse and Don Ignacio had the right people in their possession to take over whatever they wanted to from Hanke's or Guzman's businesses. Possibly everything. Because they had their sons.

Jens looked at Lothar. He sat there beside him, his expression not revealing anything of what he thought about things.

“You're not going to be living here. You're guests in the main house,” Alfonse said.

“What does that mean?” Jens asked.

“That we start up there. If you behave yourself, Jens, and if you're cooperative…well, you understand. Then Lothar will have a decent life here.”

Tommy was pushing Monica in her wheelchair. It was cold. She was looking at the wildlife, it was always beautiful. However gray and miserable it was, she always enjoyed looking at things.

She had stopped talking to Tommy. He thought it was because of her illness. She could talk, sometimes really well. But she was never going to talk to him again. She had made her mind up about that. And then he had begun to talk to her, properly. Their walks, like this one, were unbearable. He pushed her ahead of him in her wheelchair and told her one appalling truth after the other. As if he were unburdening himself to her. As if that was what she was for, now. The truths were partially camouflaged, but she understood. Tommy was a murderer, a mass murderer, who used his warped sense of honesty to justify everything with wise words and childish psychology. And all the while he reminded her that it was for her sake that all of this was happening, because he was going to make her better.

He was so sick, her Tommy. He didn't even have the decency not to say that, not to try to lay the blame on her.

“Do you remember Denmark?” he said. “That was our best holiday, wasn't it? The girls were so happy. They loved that beach, and the restaurants. We're going to go back there again. We'll stay at the same place, and it will be just as much fun.”

He sounded so convinced of everything he said. As if every thought in his head were a truth. She couldn't even remember Denmark.

And Monica knew that Tommy would never help her with anything again, and certainly not help her on her way. The biggest thing she had ever asked from her husband, after a lifetime in his service.

But Tommy was only capable of helping himself the whole time, over and over again, sucked in by centrifugal force toward the center of his own self-obsessed and warped universe.

And she could no longer do anything but pray for him, pray hard and intensely in the vague hope that one day he would come to his senses and put a bullet in his own head.

Kennet Wessman showed his diplomatic passport to the customs official at Václav Havel Airport in Prague. He signed to acknowledge receipt of a large wooden crate sent from the Swedish diplomatic delegation to Colombia.

The crate was loaded into his van.

Miles was sitting behind the wheel as Kennet jumped in. They drove away from the customs office. But instead of heading toward the center of the city, they steered around the building and drove a short distance until a large man in just his shirtsleeves emerged from the darkness.

Mikhail pulled the back door open and climbed inside.

“God, it's cold,” he said, shivering.

With Kennet driving, they sped off. Miles clambered into the back and helped Mikhail to open the crate. The lid came off.

Albert was sitting inside the box, his legs tucked beneath him.

“I'm Miles Ingmarsson,” Miles said, sticking his hand in the crate.

“I'm Albert Brinkmann,” Albert said, taking his hand.

She was lying
in bed, and heard the door open, heard Miles talking, heard Albert answer. Then the sound of rubber tires on the wooden floor of the apartment. Albert's wheelchair.

He came into her room. They looked at each other. Albert looked the same, but was different in a way that she couldn't quite put her finger on. Something in his eyes.

Tears were running down her cheeks. She held his hand and leaned toward him. And in spite of the pain from the knife wound, she managed to hug Albert. She held him tight. He felt a long way away.

“Hello, Mom,” he said.

“Hello, darling,” she whispered.

The house was quiet when Tommy opened the door. He walked through the hall and into the living room. It felt clean, as if someone had been hard at work.

“Hello?” he said cautiously.

In the kitchen, at the table, Monica was sitting in her wheelchair, her head lolling sideways, dead; staring eyes, arms hanging limply. On the table a glass of water and an open bottle of pills.

Tommy stood there motionless. The afternoon sun was shining on her. A scene of calm. He took a few careful steps closer. He took hold of a chair and realized he was moving quietly, as if he didn't want to upset her spirit, which he knew was still in the kitchen. Tommy sat down beside Monica.

Her hand was cold, but he held it in his, tried to warm her up.

“Monica,” he whispered.

He had shared parts of his secret with her during their walks. Not everything, but small fragments. It had felt good. And he hoped it had given her something, a feeling of trust, perhaps. But mainly it had helped him. And now she was going to disappear? Unless she already had? He needed her…as the bearer of his guilt.

So Tommy began to explain in graphic detail to his dead wife how he had shot, strangled, and murdered people around him, then talked about his self-awareness and self-control, seeing as he had managed to stop drinking all on his own. After that it just kept coming. Tommy talked about his view of life. Lots of truths, they just kept coming, they sounded good. They made him sure that everything he had done was right, and that he had to keep going along the same path.

And Monica seemed to agree with him, because she didn't say anything, just sat there listening and concentrating, keeping her eyes on a single point.

Then Tommy cried, lots of heavy tears, his body shaking as he wept. He was crying because he was free. It felt so good….

Tommy let go of Monica's cold, stiff hand, and called to report his wife's death.

Some uniformed colleagues arrived, went through the routine for suicides, passed on their condolences. The paramedics waited until they were done, then came into the kitchen and carried her out to the ambulance.

Tommy watched them drive away. Then he packed all of Monica's clothes and belongings into some moving boxes and carried them down to the basement. There, in his little office, his refuge, his hiding place, he looked at his desk. Piles of papers; it looked messy.

He began to tidy up, organize, sort things….It was mostly to do with his surveillance of things that could come back and bite him, expose him. So Tommy looked at it a different way. He started to investigate himself, like the brilliant detective he was. He looked at it all from every angle, to see how the intense events of recent weeks could be traced back to him. Only then could he block the holes. And once again, Tommy was surprised by his own skill, both as a detective and as a perpetrator.

He worked, wrote, sketched…evaluated risk. Two names leaped out at him. Miles Ingmarsson and Sophie Brinkmann. Otherwise he was untouchable.

He was going to make it, he was going to put a stop to this, he would work hard, always one step ahead, and be seriously goddamn dangerous. Tommy felt strong…invincible.

Miles was waiting in the arrivals hall at Prague Airport. He saw her walking toward him. His brother Ian by her side, pulling a case. She was wearing a shawl, sunglasses, a scarf. But it wasn't enough. The recent operations to her face were clearly visible.

She speeded up as she got closer to him, crept into his embrace, and stayed there. They stood like that for a long while. Ian waited at a distance.

“Now we're together,” Sanna said.

He pulled out of the embrace and looked at her.

“It'll heal,” she whispered. “The doctor said so.”

He patted her gently on the cheek.

Ian walked over.

“Hello, Miles,” he said.

“Hello, Ian.”

Miles looked at his younger brother and thought he must have grown a meter or so since he last saw him, in terms of his character at least. There was a sort of honesty to him, a stability. As if he had stopped trying to hide his poor self-esteem, and had thereby got rid of it.

“Thanks for all your help, Ian,” Miles said.

Ian shrugged, as if to say that he didn't know what Miles meant. But Miles was serious. Ian had worked tirelessly on everything Miles had asked him to do. First on protecting Sanna at the hospital. And now he had accompanied her here, had even bought new clothes for her so she'd feel she looked OK. Now he was going to turn around and fly home again.

Ian hugged Sanna, then held his hand out to Miles.

Before Miles took it, he said, “I hope we'll soon be able to sit down, the two of us, and just eat, drink, and talk.”

“About what?”

“About nothing,” Miles said.

“I hope so too.”

Miles shook his hand. Ian smiled, turned around, and walked away.

They ate together
in their shared home, the apartment in Prague.

Sophie, Albert, Mikhail, Miles, and Sanna. There were two empty places. That was what they had agreed. Lothar and Jens would sit there again. No one knew when, but that wasn't the point.

Sophie looked at the people eating, drinking, and talking to one another.

She was starting to recognize Albert again. He was talking, wanted to understand, wanted to know what was going on. She had told him everything, without any evasion, without softening or glossing over anything. It had been hard. But he had demanded it of her. He had demanded her honesty, not so much for his own sake as for hers. And it had been a relief…like the start of her own process of accepting herself for who she was, and of getting better.

The same applied to everyone around the table. It was as if that was their tacit understanding: to get better, each one of them on their own terms. Because they had each chosen to.

Miles looked radiant, in a way Sophie liked. Sanna was good for him. She was aware, honest, wise, and warm, and created harmony around her. And Mikhail, he was more and more human with each passing day. But perhaps he always had been.

But they were also sitting there for a reason that none of them had any power over. They were all hunted, with death constantly lying in wait around the corner. None of them was free.

And none of them could simply accept that. They were going to fight for their survival. For their freedom.

Albert was sitting on the other side of the table from her. He laughed at something Miles was saying.

His laughter was infectious, and she started laughing too.