Never Fuck Up: A Novel (52 page)

“You know what I mean. He’d die of shame.”

It hurt. Like a knife being twisting into his gut.

Die.

Of shame.

He knew how right she was.

His entire body was screaming at him. Get away from them. Step off before it’s too late.

Break up with the Yugos.

Niklas got out of bed. More tired than usual. Four hours of sleep. His cameras kept rolling at night. The footage he’d speed-scrolled through didn’t show anything interesting. But it would come. He wanted proof. Righteousness was his thing. Strömberg, Jonsson, Ngono—he already knew enough about them. Niklas was a man of honor: if one of them didn’t show himself to be that kind of man, he wouldn’t attack. It wasn’t about morals, it was about action.

After breakfast, he strapped the heart-rate monitor on. Got dressed: underwear, workout clothes.

The air was colder now. The asphalt was wet. He jogged at a calm pace. The air was cool to breathe. It felt so good.

Home again: He practiced katas with the knife. Felt in better shape than in a long time. The sweeps through the air. The knife’s arch-shaped movements staked out a blocking area in the room. Smooth stabs. Nimble jabs. The knife had to follow the will of the hand’s muscles as if it were a sixth finger.

He showered longer than usual. Yesterday, he’d seen Jamila’s brother, Mahmud, again. Not the kind of person he would’ve gotten to know ten years ago. Even less the kind of person he would’ve met down there. The question at hand: Was he a person he ought to know now? Maybe Mahmud could help him with the fight? Niklas knew the dude didn’t share his beliefs, but the guy had drive. Something in his eyes. Not the vermin’s sparking spitefulness. Something else.

Above all, the Arab seemed as hot for cash as Niklas was. Niklas couldn’t care less what Mahmud wanted to do with his money. Money was a means to an end. But maybe, maybe the Arab could be something else for him? Benjamin was a traitor. The
anarchist-feminist activists weren’t willing to participate in the Operation. Mom was out of the match. The Arab might prove to be a puzzle piece in the war.

After the shower, he ate again. His financial situation was starting to reach crisis level. He didn’t have the energy to think about that right now. He didn’t know what to do.

He climbed into the Ford. Missed the Audi, somehow. He needed to think.

He drove slowly. Tried to figure out where he wanted to go.

Thought about his money situation again.

He drove out of the city via Nortull. Kept thinking about Mahmud. How could he use the Arab? The Biskops-Arnö people’d just talked and talked. The only people they influenced were one another—the rest of society didn’t give a damn about them. Then he thought about Mom again. Why couldn’t they talk anymore? Why couldn’t she just accept? Everything he did, he did for her.

Niklas looked around. It was strange. He was in Edsviken, Sollentuna. Where Nina Glavmo-Svensén lived. The woman who’d sold him the Audi. He drove toward her street. Pictured her green eyes. The baby on her arm. Her crooked smile.

He reached the area. Vikingavägen ran like an artery through adjoining plots of land. The small streets were like detours leading into the inner realms of an idyllic world.

There, a hundred feet farther up, was the house where she lived. Number twenty-one. The yellow wood siding didn’t look as shiny in the drizzle as it had during the summer, when he’d been there last. The trees were barren. He thought about what things must be like for her. A man who denied her the right to a life. She needed Niklas. That much was clear. Crystal clear.

The car rolled slowly down the street. He leaned his head back. Tried to look in through the windows, see if there was a light on in there. Fifty feet from the house. He saw that the garage doors were closed. The autumn sky was the color of chromed steel. Nina lived somewhere in there, in the warmth.

He could feel it: she was home. He drove past the house. Slowly. Peered. Stretched to try to see in. Saw a movement further in, inside a room. She was there.

Niklas turned right. Up a hill. His palms were sweaty. The wheel was sticky. Right again. Down. Back on the street. His heart was pounding.
Number eleven.
Da-dum
. Number fifteen.
Da-dum.
Soon, number twenty-one again.

He wanted to ring her doorbell so badly. See her. Touch her. And she probably wanted to see him.

He stopped the car outside the house. Too bad it wasn’t the Audi anymore. That would’ve made Nina happy.

So happy.

Jasmine showed up late to the club. Thomas saw it right away. Thought: There’s something different about her tonight. She was wearing a baseball cap pulled down low over her eyes, a baggy hoodie, a knee-length skirt over tight jeans. Tanning-salon bronzed like a mulatto after two weeks on
la playa
. What was it that didn’t tally? He looked again. She wanted to hide something. Her choice of dress was speaking loud and clear: the hoodie, the skirt. The tan, the baseball cap.

Then he saw: the lips. They were pouting like on someone goofing off. Then he saw more: the breasts. Also pouting a stupid amount—either she’d stuffed two handballs under her sweater or, more likely, she’d filled up with at least two pounds of implants in each tit.

Thomas grinned. “You look—how should I put this? Thriving.”

At first, Jasmine was dead serious. Acted like she didn’t understand. After three seconds: she grinned back at him. “Whaddya think?”

Thomas gave a thumbs-up. “Sure. But the lips? Are they gonna settle a little, or what?”

Jasmine laughed. “I think so. I’m switching fields, so I need this.”

“Chapstick model, or what?”

“Ha-ha, real funny. I’m gonna make a career.”

“Oh yeah? Are you gonna tell me what you’re gonna do, or do I have to guess?”

“Erotica.”

Thomas was silent for a second too long. Jasmine noticed his reaction.

“What? You got a problem with that?”

He didn’t want to argue. To bare your body in front of people and run the register now and then at a well-guarded strip joint maybe wasn’t the best gig in the world, but still—it paid good money. And he was there to keep track of the rabble-rousers. But porn felt dirtier somehow. He couldn’t explain why. He liked porn. But he also liked Jasmine—they laughed a lot. Not just
at
the same jokes, but
together
at the same jokes. As if they understood each other. He didn’t want her ending up in trouble.

“The producer paid for the implants and everything. It’s totally free. Can you believe it? You know what this kind of thing costs?”

“I have no idea. But is it really the right thing for you?”

“Of course.” Jasmine went on to describe how good the erotica business was going to be for her. Told him about her plans, different career paths, routes to fame.

“Erotica is, like, much better than stripping. There’s no money in stripping in Sweden. And, you know, the strippers are bitches with a nasty attitude. But everyone says it’s the opposite in the film industry. That it’s like one big, happy family, you know?”

Thomas shut her out. It hurt to listen. He’d watched too much porn to care to imagine Jasmine in the scenes he usually jerked off to.

Later that night, Ratko showed up. Laughed at Jasmine too. “I think things’re gonna go well for you, honey,” he said, like he was her dad or something. What bullshit.

Ratko sat down next to Thomas. Put his arm around his shoulders. Jasmine was inside, doing a show. One of her last.

“What do you think about Jasmine’s plans?”

Thomas looked around the room. Wondered what Ratko was trying to get at. Was it a provocation? He didn’t care either way—he always spoke his mind.

“I think it sounds like shit. That’s a dirty business.”

“So, you think this is a lot better, then?”

“We keep order here.”

At first, Ratko didn’t answer. Thomas turned to him. “Was there something you wanted?”

A crooked smile on Ratko’s lips. “You do a good job, Thomas. We think you’re performing. Just so you know.”

Ratko got up. Walked into the show area.

Thomas didn’t bother trying to interpret what the Yugo’d just said.

When the right moment came along, he was going to ask about Sven Bolinder, the so-called financier, the one Leif Carlsson’d babbled about.

He woke up around eleven o’clock. Åsa’d gone to work without waking him up, as usual.

In the bathroom. He let the shaving cream soak in for an extra long time. Shaved meticulously: short strokes with a fresh razor. He looked at himself in the mirror. Tried to really see himself, not just his reflection. Who was he? What did he want?

He knew what he wanted: to track down Rantzell’s killer and bring home his adopted child. It felt like a good balance. One project to solve outside the home. One to solve at home. But who was he? During the day, he was an upright citizen. At night, he belonged to the underworld. Just like the enemy. Maybe he was the enemy?

He thought about Leif Carlsson’s muddled answers. Then he thought about Christer Pettersson, who’d almost been convicted for the Palme murder. It wasn’t a question of
if
there were any connections. It was a question of
how strong
the connections were. Too bad he couldn’t ask Pettersson himself. The guy’d bit the dust a couple of years ago in what seemed like a natural enough cerebral hemorrhage.

Thomas’d mixed what everyone in Sweden who was over thirty years old knew about the murder with his more specialized knowledge from the police force. And then he’d done some research too, lately.

A picture was emerging. Of one of Sweden’s most wanted men: Christer P. The biggest murder investigation ever, a national trauma: the unsolved murder
of a prime minister. An unhealed wound in the Swedish consciousness. An unpleasant, stinging mystery for anyone who came from the same background as Thomas—regular Swedish middle-class people who still knew where they had their roots. Whom they had to thank for being where they were today.

Olof Palme’d been shot in the open, on a public street, more than twenty years ago. Thomas wasn’t as politically interested as his dad’d been, but according to him: Palme—Sweden’s biggest ever politician internationally. A man of honor, a friend to regular Swedes. Executed with a clean shot to the back. It was a good shot, he had to admit.

Three years later, the District Court convicted Christer Pettersson of the murder and sentenced him to life in prison. The guy was identified by Olof Palme’s wife, Lisbet Palme, during a lineup arranged by the investigators. What’s more, there were apparently witnesses who placed him at the scene of the crime and who said he had the same limp the perpetrator apparently had. Pettersson: an aggressive deadbeat alcoholic. Maybe the perfect scapegoat. But this was the murder of a prime minister. You couldn’t just make a conviction based on circumstantial evidence and shady claims—the Court of Appeals freed Pettersson. There was not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that was the claim.

Claes Rantzell, previously Claes Cederholm, showed up as one of the key witnesses in the federal prosecutor’s appeal to the Supreme Court a few years later. The state really wanted to get Pettersson convicted.