trousers on. I must go for a pee too. Are you willing to wait?”
As Lars backed away toward the bathroom, Henrik looked at Mia, who couldn’t help shaking her head when they followed him down the apartment’s hallway.
The bathroom was straight ahead and they could see Lars in it, picking out a pair of gray cotton trousers from the laundry basket. Then he closed the door and locked it.
“Shall we?” said Henrik and gestured politely toward Mia. She nodded and took a few steps more.
The kitchen lay to the left, and they could see it littered with piles of dirty plates and pizza cartons. A tied-up bag of rubbish sat in the sink. The bedroom that was across from the kitchen was rather small and contained a single unmade bed. The Venetian blinds were closed and Lego pieces of various sizes cluttered the floor. To the left of the bathroom lay the living room.
Henrik hesitated as to whether he should sit down on the brown leather sofa. A duvet in one corner made him realize that the sofa doubled as a bed. It smelled stuffy.
A flushing sound could be heard and Lars came into the living room wearing trousers that were five centimeters too short.
“Sit down. I’ll just...” Lars pushed the pillow and the duvet onto the apricot-colored linoleum on the floor.
“There now, take a seat. Coffee?”
Henrik and Mia declined and sat down on the sofa, which made a hissing sound under their weight. The smell of sweat was pervasive and made Henrik feel a little queasy. Lars sat down on a green plastic stool and pulled his trousers up another two centimeters.
“Lars,” Henrik began.
“No, call me Lasse. Everyone does.”
“Okay, Lasse. First and foremost, our condolences.”
“For my brother, yeah, that was bloody awful, that.”
“Did it upset you?”
“No, not really. You know, we weren’t exactly best buds, him and me. We were only half brothers, on our mum’s side. But just because you’re related doesn’t mean that you spend lots of time together. It doesn’t necessarily mean you even like each other, for that matter.”
“Didn’t you get on?”
“Yeah, or perhaps, hell, I don’t know.”
Lasse thought about it for a second or two. He lifted up one leg a little, scratched his crotch area and in doing so exposed a hole that was the size of a large coin. Then he started telling about his relationship with his brother. How it wasn’t really good. That they actually hadn’t had any contact at all this past year. And it was because of his own gambling. But he didn’t gamble now. For his son’s sake.
“I could always borrow money from my brother when things were really bad. He didn’t want Simon to go without food. It’s tough living on welfare and, you know, you’ve got to pay the rent and so on.”
Lasse rubbed the palm of his hand against his right eye, then went on: “But then something strange happened. My brother became stingy, claimed that he didn’t have any money. I thought that was bloody nonsense. If you live in Lindö then you’ve got money.”
“Did you ever find out what happened?” said Henrik.
“No, just that he said he couldn’t lend me anything more. That his old lady had put a stop to it. I had promised to pay him back, even though it wouldn’t be for a while, but I promised anyway. But I didn’t get any more money. He was an idiot. A stingy idiot. He could have done without a pricey steak dinner one evening and given me a hundred kronor, you might think. Couldn’t he? I would have, if I were him, that is.”
Lasse thumped his chest.
“Did you argue with him about money?”
“Never.”
“So you’ve never threatened your half brother or exchanged harsh words, anything like that?”
“The odd curse word, perhaps, but I would never have threatened him.”
“You have a son, right?” Mia went on.
“Yes, Simon.” Lasse held out a framed photo of a smiling boy with freckles.
“Mind you, he’s only five in that photo. Now he’s eight.”
“Have you got a better picture of him, a recent one?” said Henrik.
“I’ll have a look.”
Lasse reached toward a white cupboard with glass doors and pulled out a little box that was full of a jumble of stuff.
Sheets of paper, batteries and electric cables all tangled together. There was also a smoke detector, a headless plastic dinosaur and some sweet wrappers. And a glove too.
“I don’t know if I’ve got a decent recent one. The photos they take at school are so hellishly expensive. They charge four hundred kronor for twenty pictures. Who can order those? Bloody daylight robbery.”
Lasse let the sheets of paper fall onto the floor so he could get a better look at the contents of the box.
“No, I haven’t got a good one. But come to think of it, in my cell I might have one there.”
Lasse disappeared into the kitchen and came back with an old-fashioned flip phone in his hand. He remained standing on the floor and pressed the buttons.
Henrik noticed that the arrow button was missing and that Lasse had to use his little finger to browse through the picture folder.
“Here,” said Lasse, and held the cell toward Henrik, who took it and looked at the photo on the screen.
A low-res image showed a relatively tall and still freckled boy. Reddish cheeks. Friendly eyes.
Henrik complimented Lasse on his son’s good looks, then told him to send the picture via MMS to him. Within a minute he had saved it in his image archive.
“Is Simon at school?” said Henrik when he put his telephone back in his pocket.
“Yes, he is,” said Lasse and sat down on the stool again.
“When does he come home?”
“He’s with his mum this week.”
“Was he with you last Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“Where were you between five and seven in the evening?”
Lasse rubbed his hands up and down his shins.
“Simon played his videogames.”
“So you were both here, at home?”
He rubbed again.
“No. Only Simon.”
“Where were you then?”
“Er...an early poker evening, you know, just down the block. You’ve got to join in when your mates ask you. But this was the last time. Absolutely the last time. Because, you see, I don’t gamble. Not any longer.”
THE MAN WITH the scar paced back and forth. He glared at them with a wild look in his eyes, as they stood there in a row, barefoot on the stone floor. The windows were covered but in one or two places a sliver of light shone in between the wall planks.
The girl’s lips and cheeks ached from the glue of the silver tape they had slapped across her mouth. She had had difficulty breathing through her nose when they were in the van. Then, later, when they were pushed into the little boat, she had felt sick and been forced to swallow the vomit which had risen in her throat. The woman had ripped the tape off when they finally got to the big room, or hall, or whatever this place was.
The