She remembered his present, took the sock from her pocket and shook out the contents. It was a hard roll of bills wrapped in a wrinkled note.
She unfurled a bill, one hundred dollars, and then quickly counted the rest. There were fifty one-hundred-dollar notes. She did not know exactly how much a dollar was worth, but realized she had been given tens of thousands of kronor.
She stared at the note with Manuel’s home address and the neighbor’s telephone number. The nice neighbor.
Before Eva went to bed she counted the money one last time, tucked the bills into an old envelope from the social insurance administration, and hid it in the very back of the utility closet.
Even though she was completely exhausted she couldn’t sleep.
“Manuel,” she ventured in a whisper into the darkness. In a way she now regretted having warned him. If he had gone to Arlanda and been arrested by the police he would have received a trial and perhaps been found not guilty of the murder accusation. It wasn’t inconceivable that Armas… Of course, his brother would wind up back in prison, but Manuel would… If he were found to have committed voluntary manslaughter or whatever it was called.
“Stop it,” she said out loud, tormented by her own loose thoughts, threads that she could not manage to bind together into a satisfying conclusion. She both wanted and did not want him to get caught. The horrifying thing was that she understood him so well. He had lost one brother and the other had received a long prison sentence. Of course Manuel was trying to get him out of the country. How would she have reacted if Hugo or Patrik were in jail in Mexico? Wouldn’t she have done everything in her power to free them, regardless of what they were accused?
After having tried and failed at all the old tricks to conjure sleep, Eva got up and went out to the kitchen. The clock on the wall read half past two. She took out milk and heated a cup in the microwave. Her eyes were constantly drawn to the utility closet. Never before in her life had she had so much cash. She would be able to go wherever she wanted. It would make Helen so curious and not a little envious. But could she keep the money? Where had he got hold of five thousand dollars?
She drank the last of the milk, which had cooled down, got up and walked over to the calendar on the wall. When did the kids have their fall break? It was around All Saints, but was it the week before or the week after? Her gaze went to December. They were off for three weeks then. Wouldn’t it say in the paper how much a dollar was worth?
She quickly leafed through both sections of Upsala Nya Tidning and finally found a whole page of stock and currency exchange and other numbers she had never paid any attention to. Over seven kronor for one dollar, and she had five thousand! Thirty-five thousand kronor in the utility closet.
She pushed the paper away and sat back down. What if the police caught Manuel and he told them that he had given her money?
“No way,” she said, as if to convince herself of the unlikelihood of this.
“What are you doing?”
Eva twirled around in the chair. A groggy Hugo was standing in the hall.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Eva said. “Go pee and go back to bed.”
“Was it fun at work?”
“It was great,” Eva said, knowing the question concealed a considerable concern. The children had heard and read about what had happened. Maybe Zero had filled them in.
“Go back to bed. I’m going to take a painkiller and do the same.”
Hugo turned back toward his room and gave her a final glance.
“Thanks for the tea and your nice note,” Eva said.
He smiled a little and then closed the door behind him.
Sixty-Four
He called himself Ramon, but they did not think this was his real name. It didn’t matter. There was no question that he was Spanish, nor that he was a real professional.
During the night, Patricio and Manuel had made their way to the small town of Märsta, with the help of Manuel’s map. They had taken a small road that snaked through the darkened landscape, encountered at most ten cars, and once they reached Märsta, they parked outside the grocery store that Ramon had picked as their meeting place. They had waited for half an hour until the Spaniard turned up.
He had taken them to a basement room in an apartment building.
“If you get caught, we expect you not to say a single word about our meeting.”
He did not explain who the “we” referred to. Perhaps he meant José Franco.
“Of course,” Patricio said.
“I hear you can keep quiet,” Ramon said and smiled.
“How is José?”
“Very good,” Ramon said and his smile widened. “He sends his greetings.”
“Send our greetings back and thank him for all his help,” Patricio said.
Despite the early hour-it was not even six yet-Ramon appeared energetic and focused. He took out some photographic equipment, a couple of lamps, and a screen. He took a dozen photographs each of Manuel and Patricio. The whole thing was over in minutes.
Manuel held out the agree-upon sum without a word. Ramon licked one thumb, then quickly flipped through the pile of bills and stretched out his hand for a handshake.
“Who will we be?”
“Two Chileans. I have a lot of those passports.”
“When and how will we get them?”
“One of you drives to Rotebro and leaves the car there, that is not so far away. I can show you the road. Take the train back here. Someone waits here until I turn up. That will be tonight.”
“But taking the train seems dangerous,” Manuel said. “Someone might recognize-”
“We’ll take care of that,” Ramon said and left them for a moment.
They heard him looking around for something in the next room, and when he returned, he smilingly held up a wig.
“This is how you become a blond,” the Spaniard grinned. “This and the glasses will be good. Which one of you is going to Rotebro?”
“That would be me,” Manuel said.
Beside himself with fatigue and confused by Ramon’s precise instructions, Manuel tried to memorize everything. He felt a teary gratitude for the help they received. He had never imagined how quickly it would go.
“I don’t know how we can thank you,” he said.
Ramon slapped his hand across the pocket where he had tucked the money.
“Now let’s get moving,” he said. “On with the wig!”
The last thing Ramon did was to show them how they could make coffee, and where bread, butter, and soda was stored.
The last thing he said before he and Manuel left the basement was a warning not to call anyone, not to leave the basement, and not to drink any alcohol.
When Manuel returned to the basement, Patricio was sleeping on a mattress in the inner of the two rooms. He woke up but immediately fell asleep again. Manuel opened a bottle of soda and drank greedily. He had been thirsty ever since the night before.
What is Eva doing now, he wondered sadly but immediately chastized himself. Why should he think of her? The important thing was to leave Sweden. Wasting thought on anything else was idiotic. He looked at Patricio who was muttering something in his sleep.
Manuel lay down on the floor and stretched out his exhausted body. We should shave, was the last thing he thought before he fell asleep.
Sixty-Five
It was five o’clock in the morning when Sammy Nilsson and Ola Haver stepped into the Arlanda police headquarters. The combination of morning fatigue with the tension that had mounted the previous day meant that neither one of them was particularly talkative during the short ride to the airport.
Now they were greeted by a shamelessly alert colleague. He introduced himself as Åke Holmdahl. Sammy Nilsson had a vague memory of having seen him before. Maybe they had been at school at the same time?