The Andalucian Friend Read Online Free PDF Page B

others, wanted to know, to understand. But the similarities alarmed her as well. She had probably always been a bit scared in his company. Not of him, but maybe of something he radiated, something he did to her.
    Loneliness was simple and monotonous. She was all too familiar with it, had hidden herself away in it for an eternity by now. And every time anyone got close to her, suggesting that her self-imposed isolation wasn’t solid or absolute, she took a step back, pulled away. … But it was different this time. Hector’s appearance in her life meant something. …
    Suddenly there was blinding light. The underground train was rushing over the bridge between Bergshamra and Danderyd Hospital, the sun’s rays bombarding the carriage. She was roused from her thoughts, got up, and went to stand by the doors, holding on to keep her balance as the train pulled into the station.
    Sophie went up to the hospital and changed back into her nurse’s uniform. She worked to keep her thoughts at bay. She didn’t have a favorite patient on the ward, and hoped that one would soon turn up.

3
    Lars Vinge called Gunilla Strandberg. As usual, she didn’t pick up, so he hung up. His cell rang forty seconds later.
    “Hello?”
    “Yes?” Gunilla Strandberg asked.
    “I just called you,” he said.
    A moment’s silence. “Yes …?”
    Lars cleared his throat.
    “The accomplice picked up the nurse.”
    “And?”
    “He drove her to a restaurant, where she had lunch with Guzman.”
    “Pull back and come in,” she said, and hung up.
    Lars Vinge had been watching Hector Guzman and Aron Geisler on and off since Hector was discharged from the hospital. It had been a slow job, nothing to report. He thought someone else could have done this. Considered himself overqualified. He was an analytical person, and that was why he had been recruited. At least that’s what Gunilla had said when she offered him the job two months before. Now he was spending days on end sitting in a car while the rest of the team was busy with the background analysis, potential scenarios, and theoretical approaches.
    Lars had been in the police twelve years before Gunilla contacted him. He had been a beat cop in the Western District, where he had been trying to find ways to defuse ethnic tensions. He felt isolated in his work. His colleagues didn’t show the same sense of social engagement as him. Unbidden, Lars wrote an analysis of the area’s problems. The report hadn’t exactly made much of an impact or received any great recognition, and, if he was honest, he had written it mainly to stand out from the rest of his factory-farmed colleagues. That was how he perceived the majority of his male colleagues, factory-farmed: their upper arms were too big, their faces too heavy, they were pretty solid, pretty dense, too dim for his liking. And they for their part didn’t like him much either; he wasn’t considered one of them, he knew that. Within the force, Lars Vinge wasn’t the man you wanted as your partner. He was cautious when they were out at night, when things got violent he pulled back and let the big gorillas go in and take charge. He was always getting teased about that in the changing room.
    He looked in the mirror one morning and realized how childish he looked. Lars tried to solve it with a new hairstyle, water-combed with a parting. He thought it made him look a bit more substantial. His colleagues started calling him Sturmbannführer Lars. That was better than Little Cunt or Front Bottom, the things they used to call him. As usual, he pretended not to hear.
    Lars Vinge did his work as best he could, avoiding violent crime and night duty, trying to win the approval of his superiors, trying to make small talk with his colleagues. Nothing went his way, everyone avoided him. Lars ended up having trouble sleeping and developed eczema around his nose.
    Two years after his report on local tensions was finished, and probably archived and forgotten