Free The Other Son by Alexander Söderberg Page A

anything to say. Her son was in a wheelchair, she was a widow, she was reserved….
    More details were spat out into the photocopier tray, all circumstantial, without any real foundation. That was what the investigation was like. She skimmed the pages, interpreting them, trying to read between the lines, trying in vain to see something that wasn’t there.
    More pages kept coming steadily. It was hypnotic. Antonia thought she could hear distant sounds. Cries from the other side. Voices that wanted to be heard, and laid to rest.
    The photocopier stopped and just sat there gasping for breath until the fan fell silent and it died altogether.
    Antonia picked up the bundles, put the originals back in their files, placed the copies in a plastic bag that she stuffed into her handbag, and left police headquarters.

    Time seemed to weigh heavily on him these days. So heavy and unmanageable he could never ignore it. If he did, it felt like he was suffocating. So the only thing Tommy could do was rush away from it. And rushing away from time was something you did by constantly keeping busy, keeping on the move.
    Tommy Jansson sat in his car, parked on the road in front of his row house with his engine switched off. The air in the car was warm and dry and full of problems.
    He left the car, walked the few steps up to the door.
    —
    The hall with its fabric-texture wallpaper. Tommy hung his leather jacket up on a hook in spite of Monica’s endless nagging to use a hanger. He slipped into the bathroom.
    His bulging stomach had gotten bigger, he couldn’t see
it
when he peed anymore.
Young Mr. Jansson
, he had always called it. Back when he and Monica were able to make jokes,
Jansson’s Temptation
. And they used to have fun, most of the time, it was the glue that held them together. A sort of affectionate humor with a lot of warmth and lightness that acted as a backdrop for their shared, if tacit, conviction that life was actually difficult—dangerous, even. But the backdrop had collapsed when Monica’s illness was diagnosed. The humor and warmth disappeared. All that was left was confusion, gloom, and a large portion of bitterness.
    Monica was sitting in the kitchen, being strong and ill. He hated her I’m-strong-and-positive charade. Tommy couldn’t bear it, just as little as he could bear her illness.
    She did crosswords, drank coffee, tried to do normal things. But her right hand no longer obeyed her, her speech was becoming slurred, and she couldn’t walk without the help of crutches, although she refused to use the walker the nursing aide had given her.
    “Hi, Tommy.”
    Her pronunciation was thick and heavy. She was smiling, but only with half her mouth. It tore at his heart—he loved her so much.
    He filled a mug with coffee and sat down at the kitchen table, talked about nothing, drank the coffee, helped her with her crossword without actually being any help. Then she said his name in that soft, pleading way.
Tommy.
An attempt to sound loving, with the implicit plea,
Please, Tommy, listen to me.
    And he knew what was coming. Practical things he ought to know about when she could no longer do them, and later, when she died. She had figured out what he needed to do in various situations, like buying food, the budget for the girls’ clothes, their menstrual cycles, contact with their teachers. It was a long list. He couldn’t deal with that sort of thing, and he stood up.
    “Where are you going?” She gave him a beseeching look.
    He didn’t answer as he made his usual escape to the basement.
    Tommy sat down at the little desk in the workshop, fished a quarter bottle of transparent liquor from a drawer, and struggled to swallow a few swigs. The horrible taste of gin. He put the bottle back and pulled a folder out of the same drawer.
    Bank withdrawals from accounts held with banks based in shady regimes. Two in western Africa, one in the Middle East. Expensive as hell, but hidden and safe from tax. The amounts were