Life Deluxe (10 page)

It was ten past eleven. Martin Hägerström unlocked the front door. He peered in through the barred inner gate to the doormat. It was specially made by Liz Alpert Fay and existed in only one copy—this one.

Resting on the Alpert Fay doormat were three envelopes and one plastic-covered magazine.

He unlocked the barred gate. It squeaked.

He liked his apartment on Banérgatan.

He took his shoes off.

He draped his jacket over the stool that stood against one wall and slipped on his velvet slippers—he didn’t traipse around in just his socks, never. Around twenty years ago, when he had been given his first flat, Father had come over and said, “All foyers need a stool.”

And then he had set out a wooden stool from the classic design store Svenskt Tenn, with a seat covered in iconic Josef Frank fabric—a more potent seal of class than wearing a gold signet ring. It was timeless, and it was still standing in Hägerström’s hallway.

The idea was that guests—and the person who lived in the place too, certainly—would have a chance to sit down when they took their outdoor shoes on and off. No one should be forced to bend down in an undignified manner just because they were changing into indoor shoes. According to Father, the presence of a stool simplified the hallway’s most important function. But Hägerström never sat on it. Instead, he threw his sweaters, gloves, bags, and jackets onto it. So his father had been a little bit right, after all—it simplified the life of the hallway, but not in the way Father had intended.

On the wall was a ten-foot-square concert photograph of David Bowie, bought at last year’s Sotheby’s auction. Milwaukee Arena, 1974. Bowie was holding the mike, his grip almost looking cramped. He had balled his other hand into a fist, hard. He looked cool.

There was a kilim rug on the floor in the hallway. Inherited crystal sconces hung on the walls. He liked his personal mix of old and new. Hägerström had been interested in decorating for a long time. It wasn’t something he had started getting into since the TV personality Martin Timell conquered the Swedish populace’s homes. Do-it-yourselfers, at-home tinkerers, pretend decorators, and so-called design experts had invaded all the TV channels but had failed to inform the people what good taste actually was. Everyone thought it was about the same old hackneyed Scandinavian design: Myran chairs, Super Ellipse tables, and AJ Pendulums. People were nervous; that much was obvious from how everyone thought everything had to look the same.

He sat down with the mail in the kitchen. A vase with flowers stood on the sideboard. That was one of the cleaning lady’s additional duties—to
always make sure there were fresh-cut flowers in the house. A portrait of Count Gustaf Cronhielm af Hakunge hung over the kitchen table. The painting was more than a hundred years old, and small cracks in the paint were visible in the light from the directional spotlights.

He tore the letters open with his finger. One electricity bill. One invoice from his lawyer. If it weren’t for his inherited money, he wouldn’t have been able to pay it—his entire police officer’s salary wouldn’t have been enough to cover the lawyer’s fee.

The door to Pravat’s room was open. He always left it that way—he wanted to be able to see the boy’s toys and bed.

The final letter was junk mail about a lottery. Crap.

He picked up the magazine.
Vanity Fair
. Flipped through it listlessly.

The clock on the microwave read eleven-thirty. A long day at work. But maybe he worked fifteen hours a day in order to forget. Water down his anxiety about not being allowed to see Pravat more often. Move on without having to feel too much.

He had eaten at the speciality hot dog place on Nybrogatan. Bruno was the owner’s name, the old German guy who had more than thirty kinds of sausages in a sixty-five-square-foot space. Hungarian
kabanos
, German
Zwiebelwurst
, Tunisian
merguez
, Argentinian
chorizo
—say what you wanted, and Bruno’d have it. And best of them all:
Zigeunerwurst
—Gypsy sausage. Hägerström ordered two in Bruno’s special French bread. Walked home in the gray weather. Chewed every bite with pleasure.

Mother Lottie tried to joke about the divorce. “Anna was from Norrland, after all,” she said. “And up in the north, everyone is named -ström something, so that’s probably why she thought you two belonged together.”

Well, if that was the case, then these days Mother belonged up there too. She had been named Hägerström longer than he had, after all. Actually, she had never really gotten over the fact that she had gained a plebeian Sven name. Her maiden name was Cronhielm af Hakunge—Count Gustaf hanging on the wall was her grandfather. Mom was from a noble family, but according to the Swedish laws of nobility, her children were demoted. She had to live with the fact that they would always belong to the lower castes of society. Except for Tin-Tin, of course. She was going to marry back into the right caste.

Mother’s father came from Idlingstad Manor outside of Linköping but had moved to Stockholm in the 1930s. Lottie herself was born on Narvavägen. She had moved between three addresses in her life: her
childhood home, her first flat with Father on Kommendörsgatan, and then the current flat on Ulrikagatan. A journey through life of less than two thousand feet. So Kommendörsgatan was maybe the closest she had ever gotten to the North.

Hägerström thought about what Mrado had told him.

For a man like Mrado, it hurt, it was fucking nasty to be sentenced to fourteen years in prison—but it was nothing to be ashamed of. It was nothing he hadn’t calculated might happen. A stint in the pen was something that everyone in his world counted on, though perhaps not quite that long. But for JW, his entire life had come crashing down. Or rather: both his lives.

First the ordinary, normal Swedish world that he actually came from. His mother couldn’t understand. His old high school friends up in Robertsfors had been shocked. His father couldn’t forgive.

And then his new world, the upper-class life. None of his friends had visited him during those years—at least that’s what the Department of Corrections claimed. None of those he had done everything to resemble had even so much as sent him a letter. No one. So much for true friendship. But then again, the Department of Corrections didn’t know who had called him over the past few years. They didn’t keep a record of that kind of thing.

Hägerström didn’t like it when Mrado said “upper class.” He knew what that meant—people who used that expression wanted to divide Sweden and label his family as different. And what was more, Anna used to say it when she ran out of things to attack him with.

But he didn’t let it get to him. His family
was
different. A little bit, anyway.

Mrado had told him that during the first months after the sentencing, JW had been completely lethargic. But then he had come back slowly. With a plan, evidently. He had accepted his fate. Started making new friends. New connections. JW had apparently succeeded in hiding away some money that he was able to control from the pen. He started lending people small sums. The Department of Corrections had granted him permission to take university classes at a distance—but that was just on paper. According to Mrado, he actually spent his time managing his money and thinking up smart ways to help others with the same needs.

Mrado knew people who had been helped by the guy. Robbery
money, drug money, whore money, blackmail money: everything could be laundered, as long as you were meticulous and patient enough.

But Mrado refused to name names. That was a setback.

Torsfjäll said that he could have pretty much figured out what Mrado had told them on his own. JW was clearly helping people on the outside with money laundering. The question was what the scope of the operation was. How did he bring information in and out? And above all: Who were his customers?

Torsfjäll was aware of another detail too: JW was carrying around a secret story. A tragic mystery that had taken place a few years before he was convicted. Camilla Westlund, his sister, had been in Stockholm. Fraternized with the wrong crowd. Hung out at the wrong places. But something had gone wrong. JW’s sister had disappeared, and no one seemed to know what had happened to her—but everyone knew that it was something bad. JW had hunted, researched, searched for her.

Torsfjäll didn’t know what he had found out. But it was something.

Hägerström looked down at the
Vanity Fair
magazine. He tried to summarize the information. He had to get a grip on JW. He had to get to know this man from a distance. Understand him. Burrow his way under his skin, like a shrink.

He opened his computer. Apple’s tune sounded when it started up. What he should really do was go to bed—he was finished thinking for tonight. But he was going to do one thing first.

A while later: twenty or so images that he had found on different Web sites were open on the screen. Different camera angles: from above, from the side, from below. Uncomfortable positions. Cold light. Close-ups that seethed with frustration.

He skipped between the images. He zoomed in. He zoomed out.

Sometimes it felt like Count Gustaf was staring at him from the wall.

Fifteen minutes later, he was lying in bed. Cock wiped off. Teeth brushed. Pitch black in the room. He wasn’t thinking about anything at all. He shut his eyes.

He had to stop living like this.

Father was dead now.

Anna and Pravat didn’t live here anymore.

His life needed a boost.

* * *

Wet pillows, crumpled sheets. Cold in the room, even though Mom’d turned the thermostat up to seventy-three degrees. Constantly: static thoughts, cyclical sorrow, anxious memories.

Natalie didn’t leave the house. She was
not allowed
to leave the house. Mostly she sat in the kitchen with Mom, talked to Viktor on the phone now and then, and watched YouTube clips to push the thoughts away. Most of all she lay in her bed and studied the structure of the ceiling.

She drank a cup of tea in the morning and tried to eat a fried egg for lunch. That was all. Mom nagged at her, telling her she had to eat more—made salads and ordered in healthy food. But Natalie couldn’t do it. As soon as she looked down at the tomatoes, it felt like the lunch egg in her stomach was on its way up again.

At night the same scene came back to her, over and over again. The parking garage: the puddle of blood growing under Dad. The movements around him. The people throwing themselves on the ground, running toward the exits, cowering behind big cars. She heard the screams and the cries. Stefanovic yelling orders in Serbian. Goran roaring. After a few seconds, everything became calm around her. She knew what it was called: the eye of the storm.

Goran pushed her into a car. Shoved her onto the floor in the backseat.

Natalie wanted out. Goran held her down.

“No, Natalie. More shots could go off out there. You have to stay, for your father’s sake.”

She howled. Screamed. “Is he alive? Goran? Answer me.”

But Goran couldn’t answer. He just held her. A firm grip around her torso and arms. She tried to look up at him. See into his eyes. They were wide open. Staring. And now, after the fact, she knew that she’d felt something else: Goran’s arms and hands’d been shaking. Trembling, somehow.

They waited. One minute. Maybe two. Natalie pulled herself up. She managed to peer out through the car window.

Stefanovic was on his knees next to Dad. It looked like he was trying to examine something. He leaned down. The wounds. His hands, bloody. Dad was lying still, like a doll.

Two minutes.

Time was all they had. Why was it standing still right now? Why was no one coming to help?

She threw herself against the car door again. Goran’s arms were steadier now. She struggled to break free. He pulled her back.

She had to go to him.

Finally an ambulance pulled into the parking garage.

Two EMTs jumped out and started working. They put Dad on a gurney.