Life Deluxe (31 page)

“Let go, you nasty fuck!” the man yelled.

Hägerström jerked his entire upper body. The man lost his balance. Fell.

Hägerström got up. Grabbed the coffee machine. He swung it with full force at the man’s head.

The man roared.

The other one, who was also dressed in black, tried to make his way into the kitchen. They were standing in a narrow section of the room, just the way Hägerström wanted it. To face off against them one at a time.

The first man was holding his hand over his face. Still roaring. Blood was spraying from his forehead.

Guy number two came at Hägerström. He was large. Leather jacket. Black jeans. Crew cut.

He was holding a narrow object in his hand. Flipped out a blade.

A stiletto.

Hägerström noted that the man held the knife like someone who had been around the block a few times. His thumb against the flat side of the blade, windmilling his arm back and forth in front of his body.

“I’ll take care of this whore!” he screamed.

Hägerström remained still. The man with the knife had a slight Eastern European accent. He lunged.

Hägerström moved to the side, blocked the stab. Followed along with the movement, forced the man’s arm to the side. Tried to get his hand in a grip. Failed. The guy was
really
a pro, whipped forcefully as
he pulled his arm back. Hägerström felt the pain in his hand but didn’t look at it. He couldn’t let himself get distracted now.

The first assailant tried to lunge at him again.

Simultaneously, another blow came slicing through the air.

Hägerström couldn’t block with his arms. He twisted his body. The blade of the knife missed his cheek by an inch.

The man whose face was bleeding tried to grab him. Arms around him. He couldn’t let it happen. Hägerström head-butted him with full force. Hopefully the blow landed where the coffee maker had already struck him. The man screamed like a coffee-scalded pig.

It was too late. Hägerström felt a pain in his side. Raw, stinging, worse than most of what he had ever experienced before.

The knife.

He couldn’t hold his stomach. Couldn’t lose control.

He hauled himself up onto the kitchen counter and kicked at the knife-man’s groin.

A flash of pain through his stomach. The kick missed.

Hägerström saw his own blood on the floor. Or was it the other guy’s?

The knife-man was fast. Another slice at his stomach.

A burning pain near his navel.

Hägerström wasn’t screaming. He heard himself hiss, the same sound as when you put a fresh piece of tuna on the grill.

He gathered strength. All the force he was able to muster.

Held his hand straight. Slammed it into the man’s eye while simultaneously kicking him in the groin again.

Classic combat technique in a panic situation: aim at weak spots.

The guy covered his face with his hands. Howled.

Hägerström took his chance. Shoved him aside. Pushed past.

Out of the kitchen. Out of the house.

Out onto the street.

His shirt was wet over the stomach.

It felt like there was a fire in there. As if he couldn’t take another step.

He had time to think:
Maybe this is the end. Maybe I’ll never get to see Pravat again
.

The Djursholm afternoon was completely calm.

He felt something dripping from him and onto the ground.

He ran toward his car.

Natalie positioned herself on the other side of Björngårdsgatan—kept her eyes glued to the entrance of the apartment building. She was waiting for the girl with the Louis Vuitton purse to walk out. She hoped that there wasn’t a basement exit or some back way out of the building. She should really’ve been on her way to the police station a long time ago, but fuck the cops—they’d have to ask their questions some other time.

She was in luck. The door opened after less than fifteen minutes. The Louis Vuitton girl walked out. The monogrammed bag dangled in the crook of her arm. Fast steps on four-inch platform heels and a gaze that didn’t even try to take in her surroundings—idiot.

Natalie followed her. She turned down onto Wollmar Yxkullsgatan toward the subway. The girl was clownishly made up. Dressed in a pink top, a short black jacket, tight blue jeans. She was difficult to place. On the one hand: the trashy top and platform shoes. On the other hand: the bag, which looked real.

They walked onto the subway platform. Just a guy with a stroller a ways off.

The girl stopped near the middle of the platform. Still with her gaze fixed straight ahead. She was staring at the ads on the other side of the tracks: H&M’s bikini and bathing suit chicks and ads for cell phone plans with forty million free texts. The display said the next train would arrive in five minutes.

Two guys in their thirties pushing baby strollers started walking down the platform.

Natalie took a few steps forward: about thirty yards from the Louis Vuitton girl.

Another guy with a stroller came walking down the platform. It
seemed to be some kind of religion here on the south side of the city—every guy had to have a stroller with a baby in it. The neighborhood was like one giant sect.

That’s when the train pulled into the station. The girl got on. Natalie followed her.

The girl got off at T-Centralen and took the stairs down toward the blue subway line.

They walked the underground subway passageways. Got onto the moving walkways that transported people between the tunnels. It was different here than on Södermalm: no softy dads with mom complexes—an international feeling instead. The subway’s blue line connected downtown with the ghettos. Natalie couldn’t see a single person who looked typically Swedish. Still, she felt like she stood out here: none of these Somalis, Kurds, Arabs, Chileans, or Bosnians would question her Swedishness. Or rather, she could feel it, saw it in their eyes. They looked at her as though she were part of the system, part of this country: as though she were 100 percent Sven. Normally she was the
blatte
. Even if Louise, Tove, and the others never said it to her face.

A train pulled into the station. The girl got on. The car was packed. Natalie pushed her way in. The girl was standing fourteen feet off. Natalie examined her more closely. Her hair was bleached blond, and she had about an inch of dark roots peeking out. It was difficult to judge her natural hair color, but it was probably some variant of mousy. Her eyebrows were very plucked—you couldn’t judge her natural hair color from them either. She had that tanning-bed tan—just like the one Viktor usually had. Even if she was hardly older than Natalie, she looked busted in some way. Worn out. Or maybe she was just nervous. She concluded: this chick was scared.

Natalie fished out her iPhone. Held it lazily in her hand. Pretended to surf or text. What she was actually doing was snapping photo upon photo. The Louis Vuitton girl got off in Solna. Natalie tailed her. Maintained a fifty-foot distance. Long escalators up to the surface—the blue subway line was at the bottom of the earth.

It was still nice out. The girl walked through the center of Solna, where all the shops were. Not so much as a glance over her shoulder. No suggestion of an increased stress level to her stride.

They left downtown Solna. The Råsunda soccer stadium towered on
the other side like a UFO that’d parked in the wrong place. The girl walked down to an underpass under the road. Natalie didn’t want to get too close. Waited for a few seconds. Then she walked down into the underpass. Just in time to see the girl disappear toward the buildings on the other side. Natalie jogged in order not to lose her. Hoped, pleaded, prayed that the Louis Vuitton girl wouldn’t be paying too close attention.

She saw her, a hundred feet in the distance. Still walking. Apartment buildings. The girl slowed her steps. Walked into a building: Råsundavägen 31.

It was a four-story building. Key code pad beside the door. Natalie realized she’d reached the end of the road today. She wouldn’t be able to get inside.

But it wasn’t over. It was a start. She was already thinking about who the chick might be. She was going to dig into this thing until she found an answer.

They left Tomteboda exactly three minutes and twenty seconds after Babak’s Range Rover’d paved the road. Two minutes and four seconds over the Finn’s time frame.

The bomb bag they’d positioned by the gate was still standing there. The road was wide open.

They heard cop sirens.

They might be fucked now.

Still: no cruisers in sight yet. They must still be far away. Or else the pigs’d gotten stuck in the spike strip they’d planted out by the fork in the road.

They drove out toward Solna. First the Range Rover with Babak and Sergio in it. Followed by the van with Mahmud and Jorge in it.

Mahmud was working the wheel like a Formula 1 racer. Jorge was working the frequencies on the cop radio like a pig on
The Wire
. He was able to pick up all the police districts except for the surveillance frequencies—you needed special antennae for those. The Western region, frequency 79,000—they were first on the scene. The dispatchers were screaming like crazy. Calling ambulances, bomb experts, senior officers. Tried to figure out the escape route, modus operandi, if they could fly in helicopters from Gothenburg.

What wasn’t according to the plan—that a security guard was lying on the floor, bloody. Above all: that they were bolting with
two
cars. Two cars that might be recognized. Two sets of descriptions of vehicles that were being wired out over the police radio. Two cars that they had to erase all their tracks from.

Still: so far, everything’d gone like a penalty kick at a wide-open goal, except for the fact that they’d blown out the lights in the vault. The guards’d taken it easy—fag Sweden didn’t allow them to bear arms, but they all carried alarm buttons. J-boy and Co. got all the bags, lined up neatly with the handles facing out and the small, red LED that continued
to blink as if nothing’d happened. Plus two bags with dough from the vault. Jorge decided to view them as a bonus.

Losers,
adiós
.

Five minutes later: they drove up behind Helenelund’s cemetery. The drive out of the city’d been smooth sailing. Slow traffic: thanks to Jimmy and Javier for that—the main arteries were probably still in flames. No cop cars on the road: thanks to Jimmy, Tom, Robert, and Babak—the pigs were probably still trying to figure out how to disarm Jorge’s fake bombs. No choppers: he thanked himself for that—felt bad for the dogs that’d died.

No surprises, except for the wheel loader: thank God for that.

He didn’t know how he’d handle things with Jimmy and Robert when they met up: the wheel loader was probably not really their fault.

They turned up behind the chapel. Jorge’s stomach was almost ready to blow again: what if the getaway cars weren’t parked here either? What if the same shit happened as went down with the fucking wheel loader?

In front of them: the parking lot.

He saw it right away. The small truck was parked where it was supposed to be. A black Citroën.
Gracias a dios
.

They pulled the Benz van up close. Jumped out of the cars. Opened the van’s back doors. Hauled over the sacks and bags with the valuables. One, two, three. They did it in no time. Four, five, six. The inside of the Citroën’s cargo space was also covered wall-to-wall in aluminum foil. Seven, eight, nine. Jorge got a message from Tom over the walkie-talkie saying everyone was on their way home. Ten, eleven, twelve. They grabbed the jammer too. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Mahmud and Sergio climbed into the Citroën—drove off to the apartment.

Two sacks plus maaaaany bags of bills on their way home to Daddy.

Now the final step. One of the most important—wiping out their own tracks.

Jorge got the fire extinguisher out from the van. Started spraying the inside of the Benz—that stuff got rid of fingerprints and corroded most DNA tracks. Babak was watching him.

“What do we do with my car?”