The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (32 page)

Both photographs lay near one of the legs of the low coffee table – they’d landed right side up.

Jan Lindén’s father sat down on the sofa, next to his son.

‘Please pick up your pictures.’

‘One more question.’

‘Pick them up.’

Broncks got down on his knees and peeled up the pictures that were now stuck to the rug.

‘Thank you.’

The older man held out his hand.

‘May I have them?’

He took them and held them in front of his son.

‘Jan?’

Jan Lindén had closed his eyes for a while, gone elsewhere. Now he looked at the pictures in his father’s hand.

‘Look at them. Jan, do it. They can’t reach you any more.’

Lindén looked. For a long time.

‘Was it one of them, Jan, was it?’

Then he lifted a trembling forefinger, moving it slowly towards one of the pictures.

‘Him.’

‘You recognise him?’

‘He was the one who aimed at me. I’m sure. At the beach, outside the car.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘He stood like that. Sunk down. Held his weapon just like that. Had the same eyes.’

The security guard shuffled out exactly the same way he’d shuffled in.

John Broncks nodded a silent thank you to the father, then left the apartment and a man who would probably never live his life again without medication, who after years on disability would retire early, and who would be granted a small settlement of 29,200 kronor for the crimes committed against him. That was how it worked. A bank robber didn’t just take the cash from the vault, he took something you’d always taken for granted, he took your sense of security. And that was the real crime they should be on trial for someday. The charge of
aggravated robbery
should be replaced by
theft of security
.

It was still snowing. Leo drove south on Ring Street, and every time he used the brakes, at every uneven patch of asphalt, five wooden crates full of gun parts banged against the walls of the truck bed. All morning he’d
been trying to reach Jasper on the phone with no success, so he’d decided to go to his flat. First though, he was heading towards Svedmyra. It was a ten-minute detour, but he couldn’t help it. And when he got there he did two laps of the roundabout.

It looked so different in the daylight.

The car park was cordoned off and the getaway car had been towed away. Police tape fluttered around the square and the bank, and there were a few people going into the pizzeria next door, but otherwise the place was deserted. Almost as if it hadn’t happened.

He drove on through the small houses of Socken Road to the older apartment buildings of Bagarmossen, at the edge of a large nature reserve.

Up to the second floor of Jasper’s building. The doorbell sounded muted, as if the metal bell had been unscrewed. He pounded on the door, shook the flap of the letterbox, leaned over and shouted.

It took a few minutes. A dishevelled Jasper in white underpants showed Leo in, happy and proud as he always was on the few occasions Leo came to visit.

A narrow hallway. Heavy boots sat on double shelves, but not the pair worn to rob the bank – and stand around in a bar. Jasper went into the kitchen and made coffee.

‘With a splash of milk. How you like it,’ he said, holding out a steaming cup.

A one-bedroom sublet. Black drapes separating the living room and a sofa, a table, and a television set. And the altar.

Suppressors Vol One Ruger MK I and Standard Model Auto Pistol.

Suppressors Vol Two Ruger 10/22.

They stood there in neat rows – thin books, manuals and booklets.

Suppressors Vol Three AR-7 Survival Rifle
next to
Suppressors Vol Four UZI Semi Auto & SMG
next to the
Hayduke Silencer Book
next to
Home Workshop Silencers
beside
American Body Armor
.

The second half of the course literature, which Vincent hadn’t yet received. Next to the books lay a bayonet and a green beret with a golden emblem, similar to the one Leo had been assigned – that was why Jasper had applied to that regiment, to do the same military service two years later. And then a photo in a gold frame, Jasper in a snow-white jumpsuit with a loaded gun under his arm.

Jasper’s altar. A world that still meant so much to him, even though he hadn’t meant much to it. His whole life had revolved around one day
becoming an officer. But he hadn’t been considered competent to lead and therefore had received a final grade that was too low to continue in the military.

His yearning sometimes got the better of him.

This morning’s
Daily News
lay in the middle of the kitchen table. A double-page spread on a bank robbery in Svedmyra – good-sized pictures of the square filled with shocked witnesses. And there stood the black boots to the left of the newspaper. And to the right of the newspaper – tins of shoe polish and polishing rags.

‘I sat up the whole fucking night waiting. And not a single picture of the security camera I shot down,’ said Jasper.

Leo looked at him. He had to explain this more clearly.

‘Jasper, you can only succeed out there if you become your job. The best artists don’t stop being artists when they go home for dinner. The most important stockbrokers don’t stop being stockbrokers at five p.m. You’re a bank robber now. You have to be consistent. You’re still a bank robber beyond the roadblocks. They’re looking for us all the time.’

He turned the boots upside down and two silicone heel cushions fell out.

‘You have to think and breathe like a bank robber all the time.’

‘The inserts, damn it, be careful!’

‘So you can’t wear these, Jasper. OK? Never again. We have to burn them. And buy new ones.’

‘What the fuck do you mean?’

‘You wore them in Farsta. And yesterday. And you’ve been wearing them to bars. Damn it, Jasper! Whatever we use, we destroy afterwards. You know that.’

Jasper got down on his knees to grab the heel inserts, which had landed under the table.

‘You know I … that these … I’ve broken them in!’

A person who wanted to be someone that he would never be. And just like the beret on the altar, he held on tight to what others didn’t want to give him.

‘I know you like them. I get that. But if they take an impression and then find your boots, then it’s all over.’

Leo was still holding the boots and began pulling out one kitchen drawer at a time.

‘I’m taking them with me. I’ll burn them. Then you don’t have to. Do you have a plastic bag?’

‘I want to do it myself.’

‘I’ll burn them.’

Jasper squeezed the heel inserts inside his fists and opened a drawer filled with used plastic bags. He grabbed the boots and threw them inside, tied the handles together and handed the bundle to Leo.

‘You’re good, Jasper. Really fucking good.’

‘What?’

‘During a robbery. You never hesitate. Without you this wouldn’t be possible.’

The smile he’d worn when he opened the door and realised it was Leo, or when he’d served coffee with just the right amount of milk, returned.

‘But there is one more thing.’

The proud smile became unsure.

‘What, Leo, what should I do? I’ll do fucking anything, you know that.’

‘When I say stop –
you have to stop
.’

Jasper didn’t control the violence, he let the violence control him. He still carried inside him his dreams of a military career, and even though he hadn’t measured up, he was still trying to prove they’d been wrong.

Jasper had no off button, and if Leo couldn’t help him find it, he wouldn’t just be shooting at safes and surveillance cameras. He’d be shooting at somebody’s head.

‘Leo, damn it, I took those safe deposit boxes for our sake! I made sure we got everything we came for, and all of this could have been avoided if Vincent hadn’t stopped outside like a fucking fool. He slowed me down!’

Jasper pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down.

‘I think about this all the fucking time, how we can get better, more efficient, make more money.’

His eyes were as sad as they were annoyed.

‘This is my life now. You and Felix and Vincent. I share everything with you!’

Leo sat down in the chair opposite him.

‘And
we
need
you
. I told you that. We could not do this without you. You know that.’

They sat in silence for a while. Until Leo stood up holding the boots in the bag. And Jasper smiled, again.

‘Listen …
I’ve
also been thinking about something.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Next time. Ösmo. On our way home, after the double … we could fucking hit one more.’

‘Another one?’

‘Sorunda.’

Sorunda. Leo knew exactly where that bank was. Just ten kilometres from the two adjacent banks in Ösmo. It was one of the sites he’d scouted before he opted for Svedmyra. But then he’d been thinking of it as a single target, not as a third on their way home from Sweden’s first double bank robbery.

‘It’s big, Leo. But it’s possible.’

Jasper saw that Leo was actually listening and raised his voice.

‘I know it’s possible! If we just make sure the fucking cops are somewhere else. If we
send
them somewhere else.’

SO MANY BEAUTIFUL
homes. Äppelviken. Apple Bay. Even the name was beautiful. John Broncks had lived his whole life in Stockholm, but had never been here before. Just a few minutes’ drive and you entered a different reality, as if the whole area were surrounded by an invisible fence.

Driving down the narrow tracks of the Nockeby tram as far as the school, then onto the smaller streets, and down to the water. Broncks checked the name and house number on the mailboxes and stopped in front of a house that stood right on Lake Mälaren. A thin layer of snow covered the lawn, and he nodded to the garden gnome that looked as if it was standing guard. It was surrounded by the footprints of two small children and one full-size man – perhaps from the ceremonial placement of a plastic gnome with a fixed smile.

He rang a doorbell, below which was a notice that said Welcome. He could smell home cooking inside.

‘Hi.’

A little girl, who he guessed was the older daughter, the six-year-old. She was dressed in white with a crown of candles on her head, for the
celebration of St Lucia’s Day, like so many little girls her age all over Scandinavia.

‘Hello. Is your dad at home?’

She straightened a sash of glossy paper.

‘I’m Lucia. Who are you?’

‘Well, then, well I’m … the Christmas Elf. Now then – is your dad at home?’

She examined him from top to bottom.

‘You’re not the Christmas Elf. I am.’

The younger daughter had just arrived. Four years old. Wearing sparkly pyjamas.

‘You don’t even look like an elf,’ she said.

Then they both disappeared, and he heard the younger one speaking loudly and indignantly,
Dad, there’s somebody here and he’s lying
, and then heavier steps.

‘John?’

His boss, Karlström, one of Stockholm’s senior police chiefs, stood there in a checked apron with a kitchen towel hanging from one of its ties.

‘Can we talk? Ten minutes. Then I promise to leave. This time as well.’

A hall filled with large and small clothes on hangers and hooks. Big and small shoes on the floor. Lucia and the Elf were sitting around a tin of gingerbread biscuits in the living room, and Karlström showed him towards the stairs.

‘It’s a bit quieter up here.’

They went up a flight of stairs to Karlström’s office, an old desk, overflowing bookshelves, and a guest chair that Broncks sank into.

‘Over a million kronor was stolen and forty shots were fired eight weeks ago.’

A beautiful view through the window – the frozen water facing Stockholm.

‘Nearly two million kronor and eighty-one shots fired twenty-two hours ago. In roughly the same geographical area and with the same kind of weapons. The
same
group appears suddenly, then vanishes without a trace.’

There was music coming from downstairs, Christmas carols.

‘And if we assume they won’t need more time to prepare for a third robbery. Weeks? Maybe a month or so? Then that’s how long we have to find out who these people are. So we can arrest them at home or on
their way to work or at the gym or when they’re leaving the store with shopping bags in their hands. Not when they make a mistake at the next robbery. Because with this pattern of behaviour, they won’t hesitate to turn their weapons on us.’

‘Pappa?’

A small hand opened the door, and the little girl dressed as Lucia came into the room.

‘Yes?’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Working.’

‘Working with what?’

‘Someone’s done … something naughty.’

‘What have they done?’

‘Grown-up naughty.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Go downstairs now. To Mummy. I’ll be down soon.’

Children. Family. Another world. Broncks wasn’t sure, but it looked as if Lucia winked at him as she went.