The Andalucian Friend by Alexander Söderberg Read Free Book Online Page B

company. He crept away to another bar. There he found a dark corner and drank alone until he was very drunk.
    The drive to Paranaguá the next day was an eleven-hour nightmare. His hangover kept him awake, and the driver shouted and blew his horn all the way to Brazil.
    The ship was an old hulk from the ’50s, blue in the places where the color was still visible. It was some two hundred feet long, with diesel engines whose throbbing could be heard through the whole of the hull and right up to the quayside where he was standing looking at it. It was steered from the bridge toward the stern of the vessel. Half the deck was open. Some shipping containers had been lashed down in the middle of it all. Then boxes, crates, and other half-successful attempts at packaging. It was a freighter whose best days were behind it — no more, no less.
    Jens went aboard via a rickety gangplank and looked around when he reached the deck. The ship felt larger up there.
    He found his cabin after wandering about for a while. It was more like a cell. Just wide enough for him to get inside without having to turn sideways. A narrow bed fixed to the wall, a small cupboard, and nothing else. But he was happy with it. Partly because the cabin had a window and lay above the waterline, but mainly because he didn’t have to share it with anyone.
    He stood at the railing as the ship pulled out. The sun was over the horizon as Jens watched the container port of Paranaguá disappear into the distance.

     
    Lars Vinge was finding the days long and dull. He had photographed Sophie as she cycled home from work. He had sat glowering somewhere nearby, trying to pass the time; he had taken a walk under cover of darkness, then took a few grainy pictures of her as she passed a window inside the house. He had followed Sophie and her son, Albert, as they drove into the city and went into a bar and then a cinema. Then two days when she ate dinner alone. Why he was doing this was a mystery to him, it felt utterly pointless.
    Lars was getting tired and cross, and because he didn’t have anyone he could share it with he kept going over it, again and again, as he always did.
    The evening before he had written a report for Gunilla about Sophie’s activities and had concluded it with a sentence in which he suggested the surveillance be suspended.
    Lars’s partner, Sara, was sitting in the living room of his apartment watching a television program about environmental destruction. She was upset, some professor in England had said everything was going to hell. Lars was leaning on the doorpost watching the program. Statistics and convincing arguments from well-educated people scared him.
    His cell received a text message and he read it on the screen. Gunilla wrote that he was important and valuable to the investigation, and that he couldn’t end the surveillance yet. She had ended the text with the word “Hugs.”
    Even though Lars realized that her flattery was a ploy to get him back in line again, he couldn’t help feeling a bit more cheerful. He made up his mind to carry on doing his job. In time he’d get other things to do, in time Gunilla would give him better duties, she’d promised him that — duties that better reflected his intellect than sitting in a car all day and all night watching a nurse who seemed to live an unusually routine-bound existence. Then he would understand what he was doing, then the others in the group would realize that he was unbeatable in his work.
    He sat down on the sofa beside Sara and watched the end of the program, which explained that it was partly his fault that the world would soon be coming to an end. He felt a pang of guilt and grew as annoyed as Sara at the information the reporter was presenting. Sara said she was thinking of not flying anymore, that she’d travel by train from now on … if they ever went abroad. Lars nodded, he felt the same.
    “I’ve got to go back to work later this evening. Shall we go and lie down