MAGNUS MONTELIUS
Magnus Montelius is an environmental consultant who spent many years in Africa, Latin America, and in the Eastern European countries that were part of the Soviet Union before 1991. He now lives with his family on Stockholm’s south side. His first novel was published in 2011 but is set in 1990 and is concerned with the political history of the previous decades. Montelius grew up in a family where many members had been active on the radical left, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, and he wanted to portray both that intellectual environment and its relationship to the surrounding world and its realities. Mannen från Albanien (The Man from Albania) was a very strong first novel: a political thriller of the last period of the Cold War, based on meticulous research and personal insights.
Both before and after that book, Montelius has written occasional short stories. As in his novel, he uses the personalities of his characters as the starting point for the events that follow. His story here displays both his careful sense of story, his humor, and his skill in portraying characters.
THEY WERE ALONE IN THE SMALL INTERROGATION ROOM. THE DEFENSE lawyer regarded him under heavy eyelids. His face was red and bloated and his hair a bit unruly. It had probably been a tiring holiday. Welcome to the club, Adam thought.
“So you mean,” the lawyer sighed, “that you are absolutely innocent of these charges.”
Adam nodded.
“But you did make a complete confession to the police?”
“It’s complicated.”
The lawyer looked even more tired. He obviously didn’t believe Adam, nor was he in the mood for any complicated stories. But even so, Adam thought, he had to tell him what really had happened. And start at the beginning.
Señor Banegas carefully sipped his wine toddy and glanced around appreciatively. He and Adam were the only guests in the Hotel Reisen bar, not particularly strange since, after all, this was the night before Christmas Eve.
“It’s not a bad plan, is it?”
Adam couldn’t get a word out. Actually, it was the most idiotic idea he had ever heard.
Banegas smiled crookedly. “Of course it entails a certain amount of inconvenience. And to me, personally, considerable cost. But love, my dear friend, is worth any sacrifice.”
Señor Banegas was the Honduran secretary of state for infrastructure, a successful retailer of favors and favors in return. He had arrived with a delegation a little over a week ago. The absurd time of year had been chosen to coincide with Christmas shopping, and the delegates had all brought their wives.
Banegas twisted his grizzled mustache. “Adam, I tell you this most seriously. We never know where and when a great love will overwhelm us.”
But Banegas was strangely reticent about the object of his passion.
Adam felt as if the minister read his thoughts. “We are gentlemen, you and I. So I know that there is no need for me to name the young lady. That is well. As I have told you, my wife is the problem.” He sighed. “She is crazy, and I use the word in a strictly clinical sense.”
Adam was prepared to agree. During his trips to Honduras he had met Mrs. Banegas at receptions. A round woman with staring eyes who seemed to watch every movement her husband made.
“When I told her that we would stay on an extra week, just she and I, to celebrate Christmas in Stockholm, she was at first overjoyed. But then she became jealous and suspicious. Why had I decided on such a thing? Was I going to meet someone? I tell you, she is crazy.”
“Well, not totally off the mark, anyway. And is this where I enter the picture?” Banegas spread his arms.
“Exactly. I explained that it would unfortunately not be possible for me to spend all my time in her company, no matter how happily I would have done so. But that my good friend Adam Dillner laid claim to part of my time for meetings concerning a transaction between the Honduran government and the company represented by him. And that I could hardly refuse, which she also realized. In my country, this would have been entirely normal. Not here, naturally. But she doesn’t know that.”
He was right, of course.
Banegas fished a paper out of his inside pocket and put it on the table. “I took the liberty of writing the schedule you have set me, since I thought it would add a nice touch. I used your company letterhead.”
Where had he gotten hold of that? “If I may say so, this looks like a very busy schedule.”
Banegas solemnly put his right palm over his heart. “My friend, I am in love.” In a more subdued voice, he went on: “I must implore you to stick entirely to our little subterfuge. Explain to your family that you are meeting an important client and, of course, stay away from home during the periods set out in the schedule. As I have told you, my wife is unstable and might very well decide to check on your absences from home. It is a most reasonable precaution.”
Adam looked at the schedule. In fact it was highly unreasonable that he would have to spend such a large part of the days between Christmas and New Year’s shuffling around in the snowstorm to prevent Mrs. Banegas from breaking her unfaithful husband’s alibi. There were more conventional ways of making business contacts with Central American customers that worked perfectly well. Still, right now Banegas’ insane wife happened to be just what Adam needed.
“Grampa, Grampa, Grampa!”
Max and Ada ran a set course around the living room, through the hallway, past the kitchen, and back again. Adam walked up to the kitchen island to pour himself some more wine.
Kattis gave him a glance. “Adam, we’ll have a nice evening tonight.”
His mother-in-law entered the kitchen, an empty wineglass in her hand. She stumbled on the carpet, muttering under her breath, bent to the bag-in-box wine container and wrinkled her nose. “Don’t you have anything Spanish? A Rioja?”
The plane she was on had lifted off from Málaga less than ten hours earlier.
Kattis removed a baking sheet full of gingerbread from the oven. “Adam, would you look?”
But his mother-in-law had already forgotten it all and refilled her glass. “I think I’ll make some toffee tonight, by the way. The poor little ones have hardly had any Christmas candy at all.”
“We’re trying to cut back on sugar.”
“Adam, dear, you really shouldn’t jump on board every new health bandwagon.”
“It’s hardly—”
Kattis let go of her rolling pin. “That’s a great idea, Mother!”
Grandma called out to the living room: “What do you say, kids, do you want some of grandma’s toffee?”
They screamed back. Hopelessly, Adam verified that they were always willing to sell their souls for some melted cane sugar.
“There, you see,” Grandma said, staggering back into the living room.
He turned to Kattis.
“Adam!” she growled.
In the living room, Grampa was in the middle of playing something with Max and Ada while Grandma was leafing through some old Swedish family magazines Kattis had put out for her. When they entered, Grampa poured a whiskey and sat down in the couch, arms spread across its backrest. “Katarina told us about your Mexican, Adam,” he said.
“Honduran.”
His father-in-law waved an impatient hand. “That’s what I said.” He glared at Adam. “What I don’t understand is how anyone, a husband, can abandon his wife almost the whole Christmas holiday just to play tourist guide to some Colombian.”
“Hond—”
“When he has two small children and his wife’s parents have come to visit—”
“Daddy, it’s okay. Adam and I have talked about it. It’s his work.”
“Haven’t we come any further despite all our talk about equality? And Adam, what’s so important about this—Honduran?”
Adam hesitated. “We are trying to get a road project, the new highway from Honduras to Nicaragua. This Banegas fellow—”
His father-in-law slowly shook his head. “Adam, Adam, Adam. That’s so out-of-date. Why don’t you build a railroad instead?”
Grandma put her magazine down and turned to Kattis. “Daddy is the chairman of the Torremolinos Environmental Club. We have become activists.”
“That’s great, Mother!”
Adam half-heartedly began to describe the infrastructure of Honduras, but his father-in-law interrupted him again.
“They don’t need a new road to Nicaragua, Adam. What they need is a road away from climate disaster.”
“God, how well you put that, Göran!” Grandma exclaimed. “Why don’t you write it down, Adam?”
He rose slowly. “I think I’ll lay the table.”
When he stood in the kitchen, he heard his mother-in-law’s voice. “He never listens to a word we say.”
Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, but according to Banegas’ schedule he would still be away for a few hours to explain the traffic solutions used on the Southern Link expressway. He could hardly wait.
Thanks to the Banegas scheme, he could spend several Christmas Eve hours in a coffeehouse on Nybrogatan. He brought a book he had given himself for Christmas, but most of the time he just sipped his coffee and looked at the last-minute shoppers rushing past outside. As for himself, he had no more shopping to do, no other tasks to perform than to serve as an alibi for a horny minister of infrastructure.
On Christmas Day, Banegas hadn’t dared make any entries on his schedule, and Adam spent the entire day with his family and in-laws. It was worse than usual. Kattis’ family had introduced so many traditions that the holidays became rigidly directed performances. Every detail was sacrosanct and their order must not be changed.
Mostly it was all about games. After ten years, Adam was still unable to see any point to them. They played Hide the Pig Santa, the Almond Race, and something which seemed mainly to involve everyone hitting everyone else’s head with tiny sandbags his mother-in-law had dragged along from Spain for the occasion. He wanted to refuse to get involved but knew from experience that everything would just get worse if he didn’t join in. Since he was the only one unaware of the rules he always lost, to his father-in-law’s undisguised delight. Adam sadly observed that as opposed to himself, his children always joined in with great enthusiasm.
The evening ended with a quiz on the lives of members of the clan. Though he always got what the others considered unusually easy questions, he had so far never managed a single correct answer.
“But Adam,” his mother-in-law exclaimed, “you had the same question about Aunt Lotta’s rusty old Audi last year!”
Tomorrow was the day after Christmas. That was when they were supposed to have their traditional waffle breakfast in front of the TV. Followed by a combined outdoors walk and new quiz competition, then a lunch with Kattis’ sister in Australia attending via a computer link, and after that a family game called Where Is the Krokofant, named for a disgustingly sweet candy bar.
Luckily, Banegas had a full schedule.
Adam decided to install himself in the cafeteria of the Museum of the Mediterranean. According to the schedule, he was showing Banegas biogas refueling stations. In the evening they were doing something even more silly; he didn’t remember what. It didn’t matter.
He was deep into his book when his phone rang. It was Banegas.
“Adam, we have a problem. It is extremely important that we meet at once.”
Every protest and demand for further explanations was met by hissed objections.
“We really must meet, I’m waiting at the Hotel Reisen bar.”
Adam plodded through the snow on the bridge to the Old Town. What had he gotten himself into?
Banegas seemed perfectly calm and sat comfortably with a wine toddy. His whole demeanor suggested that it was far from his first. He went straight to the point.
“We have a problem with tonight’s activity.”
We?
Banegas went on. “I chose the visit to the Hammarby Lake City since my wife refuses to travel by boat. Now it turns out that you can go there by land. Which you failed to tell me.” He glared at Adam. “And of course my wife has found that out and insists on accompanying me.”
Why, oh why had he gone along with Banegas’ plan?
“Adam, it just won’t do. And so at the last moment you have changed our schedule and instead arranged for us to go to the opera.”
“Opera?”
“My wife hates opera. As an extra precaution I have also decided that Señor Harald Thorvaldsson of the Export Council will join us, and that after the performance we will have supper at the Gyldene Freden restaurant to discuss business.” He held up Thorvaldsson’s calling card, as if it were a winning lottery ticket. “That’s when he gives me this, which will further strengthen the credibility of our story.”
It was hard enough to get hold of any of the Export Council functionaries during normal office hours; to convince one of them to spend the day after Christmas at the opera with a Honduran secretary of state would probably be humanly impossible. But, as Banegas would probably have said if Adam had bothered to object, his wife didn’t know that.
Banegas pulled out their schedule. “So I would like to ask you to make the necessary change to our little program.” He gave Adam a pen and added kindly: “You can do it by hand.”
As in a trance, Adam struck out the visit to Hammarby Lake City and wrote in the opera performance according to Banegas’ instructions. “Don’t forget to write that Señor Thorvaldsson will accompany us.”
When that was done, Banegas conjured up a ticket to that night’s performance of Don Giovanni and ceremoniously tore it apart along the perforation. “Here’s your ticket, Adam, I leave nothing to chance.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“I insist.”
Outside, Banegas embraced him. “Adam, how will I ever—” The Honduran was cut short as they both lost their footing. Arms around each other, they bounced down the snow-covered steps to the sidewalk. Adam managed to loosen his grip and keep his balance, but just as he imagined all was well he felt one of his feet crack the ice on a pool of water and his shoe immediately filled.
“God damn it!”
Banegas gave him a reproachful look. “My dear friend, I don’t know what that was all about, but there is no need to worry. Here we both are, and none the worse for wear.” He glanced down at Adam’s feet. “Well, sorry about your shoe. But I assume you must agree that it’s a minor problem.” He checked his watch. “Sorry, I really can’t chat any longer. Remember that according to our schedule we are having supper after the performance. Make sure not to get home earlier than midnight.”
The minister hurried off towards Kungsträdgården park.
Back at his house, the windows glowed in the night. Adam hid behind the snow-laden lilacs. According to the program he shouldn’t be here, but there was no helping it. His foot felt frozen stiff. In the washroom there were rubber boots and a laundry basket with warm socks; the key to the cellar was in the third right-hand flowerpot in the greenhouse. Perfect.
Then he saw it. The door to the cellar was open. The kids must have been playing down there again. How many times had he told them . . . And besides, there had been a lot of burglaries in the area lately. Silently he sneaked across the lawn, cursing under his breath every time the cold water in his shoe splashed his toes.
He walked soundlessly through the cellar and was just about to start digging in the laundry basket when he saw the man. His heart skipped a beat and he had to bite his lip not to scream. Wasn’t that . . . Yes, something metallic gleamed in the thief’s hand! Adam’s eyes flickered wildly around the room and stopped at a board left over from their renovation. Perfect. He grabbed it, slipped forward. His temples throbbed. I’ll fucking show you!
Slap that thing out of his hand with the board. Get the bastard. He lifted his arm, felt his foot slip on the floor. He lost his balance but completed the blow. No, a little too high, straight to the head. And much too hard! A nasty, dull sound and a jolt he could feel all through his arm and body. The man collapsed to the floor and made a rattling sound.
Fuck, how bad had he hit him? He couldn’t . . . A thin, red trickle of blood ran from his ear and joined the blood on his cheek. Adam frantically looked for some sign of life. He couldn’t . . . Warily his shaking hands turned the body. That’s when he recognized the familiar face, burned hazel by endless hours on the golf courses in Torremolinos. An unlit flashlight rolled from a slack hand. He felt his cartoid artery. Nothing. No no no, say it isn’t true! Anything, just not this! Suddenly he heard the rhythmic yells of his children upstairs.
“Where’s the Krokofant? Where’s the Krokofant?”
Get rid of the board, find socks, put on boots. Fuck fuck fuck. He ran across the lawn, through the woods, to another subway station. Just to be safe. Threw his shoes in a building-site container. Then he threw up on the platform. It just couldn’t be true. At the pub in the main railway station he downed a pint of beer and immediately ordered another. At least it made his hands stop shaking. What had he done? But it was an accident! Sure, but still!
While running through the wood he had promised himself at least to consider it. But halfway through his third pint he made up his mind. What good would it do? Confessing wouldn’t bring Göran back to life. But it wasn’t the thought of jail that frightened him, it was the reactions of his children. What would they think of him? He would forever be the man who had killed their adored Grampa. And Kattis? No, no, he would keep silent.
The two police officers waiting in the living room were dressed in civilian clothes and unobtrusive. The body had already been removed, the older one whispered, a kindly man who reminded Adam of his company’s personnel officer. His colleague was a younger woman who wore an inscrutable expression and her hair in a ponytail. She scrutinized Adam from head to feet. Did he have any stains? He had checked so carefully! The personnel officer cop took him aside.
“A horrible thing. I understand you are all in shock.” He went on to explain the circumstances with which Adam was already much too familiar. “We have had reports of a number of burglaries in this area. Your father-in-law must have left the door open and been surprised by them. He was playing some game with the children, aah . . .”
The young police woman checked her notes. “Where’s the Krokofant?”
“Exactly,” the policeman went on. “These international burglar gangs are no Sunday school boys. They used as much violence as necessary to be sure of getting away. Unfortunately they may already be out of the country.”
Adam slowly shook his head, angrily clenching his jaws to hide his relief.
“Of course we hold no preconceptions,” the young woman added. Adam said nothing. He much preferred her older partner.
Adam spent the rest of the evening trying to comfort Kattis. His mother-in-law took care of the children and managed to be both strong and tender despite her own grief. Had he misjudged her all these years? Before the police officers left they had wanted to know where he had spent his evening. Just routine, the man assured him self-consciously. Adam told them about his visit to the opera and showed them the ticket Banegas had given him. The policeman excused the necessity for such formalism. The woman said nothing but carefully noted the seat number in her little book. No, Adam didn’t like her at all.
That night he got no sleep at all. Would the police contact Banegas? And what had that policewoman been looking at all the time? He had to get hold of Banegas before the police got to him. At eight in the morning he sneaked out into the garden to call Banegas’ cell. No answer. He called again, several times, until nine-thirty. He didn’t dare phone their room at the hotel, given how suspicious Mrs. Banegas was.
Finally he decided to go to the Grand Hôtel. He waited in the lobby for at least an hour. Suddenly he got a glimpse of Mrs. Banegas, hurrying out alone through the revolving doors. Strange. According to their schedule, there were no imaginary educational field trips until three o’clock. At this hour, Banegas ought to be keeping his wife company. Could he be busy with the police?
Nonchalantly, Adam stepped into an elevator. On the third floor he found room 318.
“Señor Banegas,” he hissed while knocking. “Señor Banegas, it’s me. Adam.”
No reply. Adam tried again. “Héctor! Open, it’s important.”
He waited for another minute and was just about to knock again when he heard someone clear his throat behind him. A tall man in the hotel uniform, buttons gleaming.
“Are you looking for someone?”
Adam made a half-hearted attempt to explain.
“Hotel policy is that all callers must announce themselves at the reception. And your friend doesn’t seem to be in. If you give me your name, I will inform him that you have been here to see him.” He gave Adam a strange look. “Your full name.”
Adam thought for a second and decided on “Jonas Lindgren,” an old classmate who had always gotten into trouble. The uniformed man followed him all the way out to the street.
Kattis had decided to leave for Spain that day, bringing her mother and the children. They had to get away from the house for a while, she said. Adam told her that he understood and promised to take care of all the practical details, whatever they might be. When he had waved them off in the departure lounge at Arlanda airport he felt sweat begin to seep out on his forehead. But not because of what Banegas might say; what filled his mind was the memory of the blood trickling from Göran’s ear. It was an accident, he mumbled, a little too loudly. People around him seemed to look suspiciously at him.
When he got home he was unable to eat and instead poured a large whiskey. He had heard that some of the neighbors were going to start patrolling the area at night after what had happened, but that they didn’t want to ask him to join. Nobody wanted to ask anything of him. Out of sympathy. His conscience was surging over him and he began pondering whether he should begin building water mains in Sudan, give all his money to homeless or join a monastery. But it passed. What did any of that have to do with Göran’s death? Maybe he could just sign up to be a Homework Help instructor with the Red Cross. It had just been an accident, after all.
He lay down on the couch, pulled a throw over himself and tried to read. When the doorbell rang, he didn’t know how long he had slept. It was the two police officers. Something seemed to have changed. Now the young woman stood in front while her male partner stood to one side behind her, his head slightly bent. And it was she who spoke first.
“Could we come inside, we have a few more questions.”
They asked about his evening with Banegas, about the opera and the supper. Adam answered to the best of his ability and kept to the schedule. What might Banegas have told them?
“Have you spoken to him?” Adam tried to smile. “He can be a bit confusing sometimes, maybe the Swedish police would make him nervous if . . .” He fell silent. Something was obviously wrong, enormously wrong. The two police officers exchanged a glance. The woman cleared her throat.
“He is dead.”
“Dead?” At first, Adam felt immensely relieved. His worries about what Banegas might say had been totally needless.
“Banegas was found murdered on Kastellholmen,” the police woman said. “Beaten to death with a blunt object. We estimate the time of death to between ten p.m. and midnight. In other words, shortly after you left the opera.”
Adam had nothing very satisfactory to say and chose to give an uncertain nod.
“There are a few details we find confusing. We thought you might help us fill in the blanks.”
Was this when he should insist on having a lawyer present? Or was it too early? Would it seem suspicious instead?
Before he had reached any conclusion, she went on: “Maybe we could do this down at the precinct.”
They took turns questioning him. The older policeman seemed anxious to explain that it was all just routine, nothing to worry about. He had a kindly smile.
His female partner didn’t. She pulled out Banegas’ schedule. “Do you recognize this?”
Adam nodded.
“What happened to your supper? At the Gyldene Freden they have no memory of you, and there was no reservation made in your name.”
Adam managed to strain out an answer he felt reasonably satisfied with, about having forgotten to reserve a table and that anyway it had turned out Banegas had preferred to go for a walk on his own. If he had said anything else earlier, he must have mixed things up. She silently wrote down what he said. Then her partner took over and explained that of course this was no interrogation, but would Adam consider helping them out by staying on for a couple of hours?
In fact, only around three-quarters of an hour passed before the police woman returned. “Your schedule says that Harald Thorvaldsson at the Export Council was supposed to join you at the opera.”
Damn it!
“However, when we spoke to Mr. Thorvaldsson he denies that any such thing was ever even considered on his part. In fact, he dismissed it very firmly.”
The answer Adam managed this time was less satisfying. She put a few resulting questions, and Adam got himself still more entangled. After a while she suggested that they could take a break and continue later. He declined to have a lawyer present.
When he was brought back into the room, the kindly policeman was gone and the woman in the strict ponytail questioned him alone. As before, she wasted no time on small talk or smiles. “We have had an interesting conversation with a member of the Grand Hôtel staff. The day after the murder someone tried to gain access to the room where the Banegas couple stayed. That person acted nervously and gave a name that turned out to be false. However, you were identified from the photo we took in connection with out other investigation.”
Adam’s efforts to explain were torn to shreds by her furious counterquestions. He needed to sleep and clung to the single point which seemed to speak in his favor. “But why would I have anything to do with Señor Banegas’ death? It’s absurd!”
“Actually, we’ve learned a reasonable motive from his widow. It seems that you have spent a long time discussing some major road construction project. But Banegas had already given the commission to some American consortium. He was going to tell you before leaving for home.”
What a bastard! “But you don’t kill anyone because—”
But she wasn’t interested in Adam’s reasonable objections. They let him go home to sleep but brought him back again the next morning. At first, the atmosphere seemed more relaxed. The kindly policeman said that they accepted Adam’s statement that he had left for home immediately after the opera. Adam said that he was glad to hear it, and the policeman seemed pleased as well. But the female officer remained silent and resolute throughout. Without any warning, she asked:
“So could you tell us why you didn’t get home until two hours later? And wearing rubber boots?”
Suddenly the interrogation veered off on a new, horrible track.
The lawyer looked up from his notes. “So that was when you decided to confess to the murder of Banegas?”
Adam nodded. “I just can’t bear to be convicted of murdering Göran, my father-in-law.” He thought of Kattis and the children and closed his eyes. “This way I get an alibi for that.”
“But now you claim that you had nothing to do with Banegas’ death?”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you. But on the other hand—”
The lawyer held up a deprecating hand. “One thing at a time. Let us focus on the crime you have been arrested for.”
He summed up the situation in a few tired platitudes and looked at his watch. “We’ll see,” he said. “Complicated. Must consider strategy, consult my colleagues.”
A police officer arrived to return Adam to his cell. He was led along a corridor and past the open door to a room. In the room was a sobbing, rotund little woman dressed in black. She was leaning her head against the shoulder of a woman officer, but despite that Adam immediately recognized Mrs. Banegas. She glanced up at him. Her sly eyes shone triumphantly and her mouth curled in a superior smile.
She really was crazy.
Magnus Montelius was born in 1965 and returned to live in Stockholm after many years as an adviser on water and environmental management in both Africa and Latin America; he has also worked extensively in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics. He began writing in earnest in 2009, winning a short story competition that year and another one in 2011. In 2011 he also published his first novel, Mannen från Albanien (The Man from Albania), a universally praised spy thriller set during the 1960s and 1970s, which has been sold to eight countries and will become a Swedish feature film. Magnus Montelius is at work on his next novel.