The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (62 page)

‘It won’t.’

‘If we end up at a police roadblock again, and they figure it out? That it’s you? That it’s us?’

Another small sip. The wine didn’t just look cheap, it tasted cheap.

‘Is that what you’re sitting here doing – imagining things?’

‘Listen to what he’s saying!’ shouted Felix.

Spaghetti strands had collapsed into the boiling water, limp now. Felix stirred them with a plastic fork, a little too vehemently.

‘Leo – you need to fucking understand what it is he’s trying to tell you!’

‘Him? Or you?’

‘OK. OK, Leo. Why are you doing this?’

‘Doing what?’

‘Robbing banks.’

‘So
we
can be financially independent.’

‘You have the weapons. Sell them. You said you were going to.’

‘I almost did. I did exactly what I planned to – contacted the cops, recce’d a place for a handover, built fifteen fucking landmines. Everything was ready. Twenty-five million in a bag on some cop’s desk.’

He stopped.

‘And …?’

‘And then that fucking cop started provoking me. Consciously. Tried to knock me off balance, wanted me to make mistakes. I wrote nine letters. The cop replied in five personal ads. Before I realised they were just stringing me along. That they’d never pay a fucking penny, that they were just trying to flush me out. That’s when I broke it off, completely.’

Felix was listening, but he still had the same expression on his face.

‘OK. Then I’ll ask you again. Why are you
doing
this? Robbing banks?’

‘Why am
I
doing it? And here I am thinking you did it too. Or am I mistaken, Felix? Weren’t you there? And if you
were
there – why did
you
do it?’

‘That’s exactly what Vincent’s trying to explain to you! Because it’s easier to be a part of it than not to – if everything went to hell, at least I’d know. This anxiety, you don’t get it, but I feel it, Vincent feels it. The only one who doesn’t think like that is you. You think … this
won’t
go to hell.’

Felix poured the water from the pan into the sink, the steam softly enveloping his tense face.

‘Because it won’t.’

‘You said you’d never seek out our father again. I felt calm after that. But you did it anyway! And I can see it. You’re turning into him! Nothing else exists for you except the next robbery. And the next. Nothing except that. You treat me and Vincent just like Ivan did when you broke with him.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You’re just like him. And I know exactly when it happened. Then … when he almost killed Mum. When you jumped on his back and she ran away and he stopped, and I saw how you looked at each other. You just … took over.’

‘Settle down now.’

‘And after that? Do you remember what happened next? You don’t, do you? You waited until he’d left and was back in his car, and then you fucking mopped up all the dried blood in the stairwell. When you were done you came back in and looked at me and Vincent, and from then on it was all your way.’

‘Are you finished?’

‘No! Not until you understand. You said “independent”. You stood
there in the window, staring out over Skogås, talking about how no bastard would have any power over us. But the opposite has happened. Robbing banks has only made us more dependent on each other. It’s just as important to you as it was for that old bastard. Stick together. Stick together! Shall we try to break some ice lolly sticks too?’

‘Are you finished yet?’

Leo looked at the two pans steaming on the table. They looked like the wine. Cheap. Junk.

‘I’m not the one who’s like Ivan. You are, Felix. You go on and on about how much you hate him. You are fucking fixated. You dwell on shit just like him. And he couldn’t do any of the things I’ve done!’

He dug into the pans anyway, spooning brown sauce over a pile of white pasta. On his own plate, onto Felix’s and Vincent’s.

‘One more time, Vincent. And if Felix is right …’

Leo put his hand on Vincent’s arm.

‘… then you should be part of this – now! If it’s …
easier
. Not just sitting here and worrying the day before Christmas Eve.’

‘Enough, Leo, can’t you see he doesn’t want to come with you!’

‘What the hell do you know about it? I’m talking to Vincent now.’

‘I can feel he doesn’t want to!’

‘Really? Felix? You can
feel
it?’

The saucepan of meat sauce stood between them. Felix suddenly grabbed hold of it and threw it against the wall. It splattered across the kitchen.

‘I spat in my own mother’s face! I will never do anything against my will again for the sake of someone else, ever!’

Warm bolognese ran down the white walls and Leo’s white shirt.

‘You’re talking about yourself, Felix. I’m talking about Vincent.’

Vincent had been staring down at his plate; now he looked up.

‘Can’t we just stop?’

Now he was the one who put a hand on Leo’s arm.

‘Can’t
you
just stop?’

There were napkins in an ugly little wooden dispenser in a corner of the kitchen table. Leo grabbed them all, crumpled them, and wiped the trickle of meat sauce off his shirt.

‘And do what? Sit on a fucking wooden chair at a fucking wooden counter, pretending we’re normal?’

They had never needed to ask each other for anything. Leo did it anyway.

‘Please, I’m begging you. Have I ever begged you? Have I? I’m doing it now. I’m
begging
you. I need you. One more time. One last time.’

He looked at one little brother whose hair was longer, at another who was quickly becoming an adult.

‘Please?’

One at a time. And he didn’t recognise them.

‘Felix?’

No reply.

‘Vincent?’

No reply.

‘
I’m begging you
.’

Felix met his eyes. Vincent looked down at the table and his plate.

Silence.

‘Well then. I’ll do it alone. If I don’t have a family, I’ll do it myself.’

SOMETIMES THE NIGHTS
never end. Sometimes you sweat and freeze and sweat, waking up every ten minutes just to fall into another incoherent dream that leads nowhere.

It was that kind of night. Again. All week, since being turned down by the two people he was closest to. Six nights of fucking loneliness lying beside him in bed, between his body and Anneli’s. If they’d been dead it wouldn’t have felt like this – then he would have understood why they couldn’t be together. If they had said they hated him, it wouldn’t have felt like this. But they were alive. And they still loved him as he loved them. Yet despite that – they weren’t going to carry on. Two brothers who had been so close were now so far away.

Leo pulled the sweaty sheet from his back, went downstairs to the kitchen. He opened the window wide, even though the temperature was eight below zero, and let his face meet the cold, breathing in, out, in.

The last few days he’d been going over the three elements all these robberies had in common, again and again. Planning. Execution. And the most crucial – escape – the transition from robber to civilian.

One element always remained the same – the execution. They had
never left their target with exactly what he’d expected. The ten million kronor in the security van had ended up being only one million. At every single robbery there had been less money in the vaults and safes than he’d expected. At the double robbery, he’d been convinced they’d take at least eight million but it ended up being three, and at the triple robbery the fifteen million he’d hoped for had ended up being only two, mostly drenched in red.

He ran his hand over the window ledge, gathering up the recently fallen snow and pressing it into a fistful – a pleasant chill as it melted into water.

He pulled down the window and wiped his hands dry with a kitchen towel, walked out into the hall and into the guest room. Nine robberies, and that fucking cop Broncks had no idea who they were – so if he just kept choosing the right date, continued to plan and escape properly, then sooner or later he’d get the execution right and receive the maximum return.

The tenth.

A small town outside Stockholm.

The day before Christmas Eve – payday.

And it would
not
be carried out by the Military League.

Because the Military League no longer existed; no one would ever write a line about that group again. The phantoms were disappearing and taking a new shape. That was exactly what he had rehearsed in the bank in Rimbo: a robbery that would differ from the others – casual clothes, black stockings over their heads and no shots fired. It had been preparation for changing their identities and breaking his pattern, if one day it were to become necessary. Now it was.

He lifted the floor tiles, pulled up the hatch and opened the horizontal safe, watching the black velvet fall away into the darkness. He climbed down and lit the lamp hanging above the rows of automatic weapons.

Next to the bulletproof vests lay a black sports bag.

The triple robbery had netted 2,137,000 kronor. 227,000 had gone on various expenses; 195,000 hadn’t been ruined by the dye; they had divided the rest into four piles, 428,750 kronor each. His pile had shrunk considerably since then: 75,000 left. The bills barely covered the bottom of the bag.

He unzipped it and gathered up ten thousand in various denominations – he would give it to Anneli for Christmas gifts, Christmas food, a Christmas
tree and some Christmas lights she had seen, the same as the ones the neighbours had in their apple trees. Then he separated off ten thousand for himself – leaving 55,000. He closed the bag and sat down on a concrete slab, lost in the fiery glow of the lamp, listening to the sump pump growling under his bare feet.

If he climbed out of the hatch, if he closed the safe and never opened it again, no one would ever know.

Feet on the cold, black and white vinyl floor. Steps. Her steps. She was standing up there now, and the light on the underside of her kneecaps, that was all he saw.

‘Leo?’

‘Yes?’

‘What are you doing?’

Anneli squatted down. She was freezing in a thin nightgown.

‘Come up and join me. Let’s go back to bed. Try to sleep.’

‘Fifteen million. That’s what we were supposed to take home from the triple robbery. And we ended up with almost nothing.’

She hunched down and crawled through, her bare feet balanced on the slender rungs as she climbed down, then stroked his cheek, her hand warm even though she was cold.

‘Leo?’

They were surrounded by neat lines of weapons, sunk into the walls like large fossils. He’d threatened to donate his collection to Sweden’s criminal elite, but refrained. He cared as little about them as he did about that cop he’d threatened.

‘Leo, I love you. I’m the only one who knows all about you, about this.’

She sat on his lap, she was really freezing, bare toes rubbing against each other and avoiding the floor.

‘I know what Felix and Vincent mean to you. I know that. But I left my son for our sake. And you have to let go of your brothers. For our sake.’

She looked at him, his eyes close to hers. She had met someone who shone and had fallen in love with his light. Now that light was gone.

‘I know you took care of them. But a brother shouldn’t be a father to his own siblings.’

She kissed him, and he looked at her. And maybe he glowed; it had been a long time, but he did, at least a bit, she was sure of it.

‘What is it?’

‘Anneli?’

‘What?’

‘Do you think you could drive the getaway car?’

She thought she hadn’t heard right at first.

‘Can you do it?’

‘Me?’

‘You.’

She’d helped them into their disguises and dropped them off at a robbery. Then she was always supposed to leave, go home, wait without participating.

Now he wanted her to be a part of it, for real.

She’d be driving the getaway car, like Felix.

She kissed him.

‘
Me?
’

‘Yes.
You
. I’m serious. You’re a damn good driver.’

She snuggled into his arms, skin to skin, laughed, kissed him.

IT WAS EARLY
morning, still dark, the streetlamps spilling light onto the pavements, which found its way between Bagarmossen’s 1950s three-storey apartment buildings. After three hours asleep in Anneli’s arms, Leo felt thoroughly rested again. He had deliberately parked some distance away and walked now through leafless bushes across a deserted playground on his way to the rear of the building. He didn’t want Jasper to see him, and he knew how he peered through the kitchen window every time a car parked out front, ready to flee if the cops got close.

Leo keyed the four-digit access code into the back door and hoped that it hadn’t changed. A muffled click and he stepped into the stairwell, holding the door as it closed again.

Jasper had planned his escape in detail, Leo knew. Opposite the house, across the car park, stood the Nacka Reserve national forest, and just inside, between two large rocks, Jasper had buried a plastic container that held clothes, a knife, cash, passport and a pistol – a Beretta he’d bought
in the United States three years earlier and sent home in pieces. But he wasn’t going to be allowed to escape now, nor arm himself and hide. Both remembered the blow so hard it had knocked Jasper to the floor, leaving him staring upwards with hatred, disappointment, confusion, sadness.

The stairwell walls were painted a suffocating green colour. Leo made his way cautiously to the door and rang the bell.

He didn’t hear a thing, but he was sure that the door’s peephole darkened.

He knocked. Continuously. The flap of the letterbox swung upwards.

‘What do you want?’

‘To talk.’

‘About what?’

‘Open the door, for fuck’s sake.’

It was quiet for a long time. Finally, the door slid open until the chain was fully extended.

‘Hold out your hands.’

Jasper’s eyes loomed in the gap between door and frame, and they weren’t jumpy so much as uncertain. Leo held out two open palms. Then the chain rattled as the door opened completely.