The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (48 page)

She wasn’t crying, he was. But she walked away towards the bus stops and the taxi rank, and he didn’t turn round this time; he didn’t want to see her disappear.

Leo stood in the window and looked out at the hollows collecting rainwater in the yard. His mother behind him in the room on the edge of the sofa bed in a nightgown so different from the ones Anneli wore, lifting off decorative pillows and throwing them in a pile on the chequered floor.

He pulled down the blinds and turned round, gently moving her away from the bed.

‘I’ll do it, it’s a little bit tricky.’

He pushed down on one corner and grabbed the handle with the other – and jerked. The mattress gave in. It folded open, and he pulled it out to its full length. The bed covered four floor tiles, two white and two black, which in turn covered the safe and the entrance to the weapons store. Then he undid the straps holding the quilt in place, and ran his hands several times over the sheet to smooth it out.

‘To be honest, Leo, I expected this.’

‘Expected … what?’

‘That when Vincent came to me and said he wanted to move to Stockholm, to you … that you’d take care of him.’

She held his hand and stroked it, and he shivered even though it felt familiar. It was the same this morning, when they’d walked through Central Station.

‘Vincent takes care of himself.’

‘I know for a fact that he doesn’t. Not entirely, anyway. You’ve always taken care of him. And of Felix. And even me and your father.’

He shook his head, as if he didn’t want to hear any more.

‘Mamma …’

‘Leo, if you hadn’t intervened, I would have died. He would never have stopped hitting me.’

She saw the guilt in his eyes, but she didn’t care.

‘I’m so proud of you. You take responsibility. You
always
take responsibility.’

‘Mamma, stop, please.’

She grabbed his other hand now and put it between hers.

‘You’ve succeeded at what he failed to do. You started a company that’s expanding instead of going out of business, which gives your brothers jobs. You’re more a father to them than he ever was. Or … he was like you. In the beginning. Caring. Loving.’

She fell silent. And when she continued, her voice had hardened.

‘You’re more like me. Do you know that? We can take a lot, you and me, Leo. You might not be able to see it, but it’s there inside us.’

She’d surely see through him soon, realise that what she thought was guilt was actually shame. So he smiled and hugged her.

‘Goodnight, Mamma.’

As he left he switched off the overhead light without turning, and went out into the kitchen.

She thought she was sleeping on a solid floor laid by her youngest sons, when what was beneath it would have shattered her. She believed that her eldest son ran a construction company, one which gave all her sons a job. She thought exactly what he wanted everyone to think. Even she saw what he wanted everyone else to see.

And yet – it didn’t feel good.

He looked in the window for the image of someone she thought was like her, someone who took responsibility.

Breathed out, slowly, until the windowpane blurred and his reflection disappeared.

Just one more. Just one more, and it would be the biggest yet. A triple robbery. Fifteen million kronor. Then he’d sell back the weapons, and Felix would be able to start studying. Then he’d be like her again. If they stopped after that no one would ever know.

NOTHING WAS ALLOWED
on the coffee table when his programme started except a brand new notepad, each page white and empty. He’d bought it when he was buying the newspapers at Jönsson’s kiosk. He rarely read the news, but for the last week he’d walked down to the square around four o’clock every day in order to buy the morning and evening editions, all of which lay in a pile on his sofa now. The cutting board, knife, ashtray, onion and wine were gone, even the remnants of tobacco and the thin red rings made by his glasses of wine had been wiped away and dried.

He moved closer to the pile of newspapers, flipped through it uneasily without knowing why: he’d already read every article several times. But
the TV show he was waiting for always had the latest images from current crimes, ones the newspapers didn’t yet have access to, information that the police chose to present; it was as if the pigs thought they were doing something important, even though they just sat there like they were part of the studio furniture.

He wasn’t worried. He was impatient. It was crawling so insistently inside him, he just couldn’t sit still. He pulled his reading glasses out of his pocket, and they got caught on the envelope that now contained nineteen thousand kronor in 500-kronor notes. Not as thick as it had been on that autumn day when Leo came here for the first time in four and a half years and handed him forty-three thousand as if it were Monopoly money in order to pay a debt he felt he didn’t owe.

Ivan swapped the newspaper on top for one below, which showed a picture of a black-clad robber aiming his weapon. He’d stood in a queue at the supermarket down in the square that moved so slowly he wondered why they didn’t open another cash register. While he waited his eyes had landed on the newspaper rack, and there from a distance he’d seen two words,
MILITARY LEAGUE
. And then, when it was his turn, he saw the rest – according to the article, whoever had stolen a shitload of weapons from a military armoury had used them to carry out a robbery in Sköndal near a summer camp for the handicapped that Britt-Marie had worked at for several years, and two robberies just five hundred metres from his own home.

Sköndal. Her domain. A place the police described as so obscure that you had to know about it in order to choose it.

Ösmo. His domain. And the paper pointed out the brutality of eight shots forming a face.

He had gradually stopped caring about what they wrote, focusing instead on the pictures, in particular two black and white ones, that appeared in all the papers, of the man they called the leader. Slightly blurry photos, and yet. Broad shoulders. Eyes behind the mask as if she were standing there looking at him. And a mouth with thin lips stretched into a tight line, an expression he himself often wore.

Ivan adjusted the notebook and lifted his pencil.

It was starting now.

S
WEDEN’S MOST WANTED
. According to the newspapers today’s whole programme would be devoted to the Military League. A special that would highlight every aspect, every detail, in the hope of generating responses from the public.

He flattened out the pages of his notepad and watched the host standing in front of the cops, talking about the biggest weapons theft in Swedish history, and about the six aggravated robberies that the group might be linked to.

He wrote that down. The newspapers had only written about four.

Rapid pictures of the insides of bullet-riddled banks. Shattered glass on the floor and open doors to empty bank vaults. A security van in Farsta. Handels Bank in Svedmyra. Handels Bank and SE-Bank in Ösmo. Savings Bank in Rimbo and SE-Bank in Kungsör.

He started writing again. New information.

Then several seconds of a panning shot taken inside Stockholm Central Station. Where a bomb had exploded. Terrified people pushing each other behind a high fence.

He wrote it down, but couldn’t really see it. He understood the weapons, he did. And the robbery. But not the bomb. The word ‘bomb’ didn’t belong with the rest. It didn’t fit into the pattern.

The host now spoke about the members of the group. About their military knowledge. About how they were athletically built, spoke perfect Swedish, and probably had no criminal record.

And then. Brand new images. Moving.

They hadn’t shown anything like this before. Shots from various cameras just before they were shot down. Short snippets angled from above and often only a few seconds long, depicting a clear leader described as between six foot two and six foot four, weighing between 80 and 85 kilos.

He dropped the pencil and heard it roll across the table and onto the floor. Despite the fact that this was exactly what he was supposed to be keeping tabs on. Height. Weight. All the things he didn’t know. All the information that was new. That was why he’d bought this notebook.

But he didn’t need to write it down.

He could see it clearly, though it was just a few seconds of footage: the pattern that is repeated in everything, from the smallest element to the movement of our limbs, a driving force inside millions of cells present even in the unique rings of small ridges on our palms and fingertips.

Ivan reached for the wine bottle that stood on the floor at his feet, untouched. He opened it and drank until he had to stop to catch his breath.

Now he knew.

THEY DROVE ACROSS
Sweden for six hours to reach the starting point of their very last robbery, setting up camp a kilometre or so outside the small town of Ullared. It had only a couple of thousand inhabitants, but was also the location of the largest outlet store in Sweden, a place people from all over the country made pilgrimages to. Especially in a week like this – Easter. Free time to burn, one of the year’s commercial peaks. And with the outlet store on one side of the town’s central square, the vaults of the three banks on the other side would be full right now.

Spending the night in a patch of forest, they brought camping beds and sleeping bags, freeze-dried food and water which they heated over a camping stove. First, they made the final adjustments to the vehicle they’d arrived in, creating a secret wall in a small truck they’d rented a week earlier. Rented because it had to be obtained legally, as it was the vehicle they would pass any checkpoints in later. Then, when darkness had fallen, they’d gone to Varberg, the closest town, to steal the truck they’d use during the robbery.

After they came back, they took turns standing guard while the others got a few hours’ sleep. But Felix hadn’t slept at all, and gazed up at the stars, white specks in a blue-black sky, as the moisture forced its way up from the ground. Something didn’t feel right.

All night it was so quiet in the woods. The only sound was the occasional barking of dogs. A kennel, that’s what it sounded like.

They woke up at 5 a.m. Breakfast was a thermos of coffee and ready-made sandwiches.

They started the day by refilling the fuel tank from the four cans they’d brought with them from Stockholm – you couldn’t trust a stolen truck to have enough petrol. Then they sat down on their adjacent camping beds, laid out aerial maps like art prints and went through the three parallel robberies. Leo would rob Bank 1 by himself, Vincent and Jasper would take Bank 2, and then they would all rendezvous at Bank 3 and rob it together.

During the entire process Felix would keep watch over the town’s entry and exit points through the hatch in the roof of the truck. Cutting out the hatch was the last element of preparation, one he was now trying to finish – the delivery truck was now missing a large circular chunk of its ceiling. The sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes, started to sting.

‘Vincent? Can you give me a hand?’

His little brother pulled the creaking door to the side and stood up on the seat, pressing upwards on the nearly loose sheet of metal. Together they prised off the hatch and threw the remains into the ditch.

‘Felix?’

‘Yeah?’

‘This isn’t going to go well.’

Vincent’s anxiety was the same as had kept Felix awake last night.

‘It’s never felt like this before, ever.’

‘I’ll be behind the wheel. And as long as I’m there, everything will turn out fine. OK?’

He wanted to believe it. But he didn’t.

One last time.

This was their destination. Three banks at the right time. Ten million, fifteen, maybe even twenty. Then we’ll have enough. That was what this had been about. Getting enough money. And doing what no one else had done.

‘One last time, Vincent. Then we disappear. And no one will ever hear from the Military League again.’