The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Read online

  ‘What the hell … are you talking about?’

  ‘Just say it, Vincent. “The keys.”’

  ‘The keys.’

  ‘Not like that. Deepen your voice. Speak from your chest, all the way down to your stomach. As if you’re … giving me an order. Say it one more time. “Give me the keys.”’

  ‘Give me the keys.’

  ‘Again! Deeper voice. And louder.’

  ‘Give me the keys.’

  ‘Again!’

  ‘Give me the keys! Give me the keys! Give me …’

  ‘You should sound damn determined. You have a good vocal range – from now on, use it! OK?’

  They walked towards the car, across the meadow, up the slope, and Vincent swayed slightly with soft knees, repeating give me the keys every time he put down his right heel.

  A computer office in Kista. Leo parked next to an identical truck with an identical logo on both sides, CONSTRUCTION LTD, opened the door and climbed out. Vincent had sat quietly in the passenger seat for the entire journey, and stayed seated now.

  ‘Come on,’ said Leo.

  ‘That’s what we’ll be doing from now on?’

  ‘Doing?’

  ‘Robbing banks.’

  Leo held the car door open and looked at Vincent, who wasn’t ready to get out yet. So he climbed back in again.

  ‘Vincent?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The target next to the roundabout – it’s just one bank. It’s just an exercise. Next time … we’ll take two. At the same time.’

  ‘Two? That’s impossible, we’ll get caught!’

  ‘You have to dance with the bear if you want to win, Vincent. You can never get too close. Or you won’t survive it. He’s much bigger than you are. He can rip you apart. But you can dance around him. And wait. You get one punch in; if you hit him right, you can keep dancing and get ready to take the next one. And it’s just like—’

  The door to the office building opened. Felix and Jasper. In the right clothes. And they walked towards the truck, took the cover off the truck bed and gestured impatiently.

  ‘Time to get out now!’

  They unloaded the first packs of oak parquet from the truck onto the asphalt and when Leo and Vincent didn’t get out of their truck, Jasper knocked on one of the side windows.

  ‘Come on out – you were the one who thought it was so fucking important to do this job!’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘That’s not how it sounded this morning.’

  ‘Soon.’

  Leo looked at his little brother who was staring straight ahead; he’d listened and now held inside himself what he needed to understand.

  ‘So, it’s like this, Vincent … it’s just like robbing banks. A small group, just a few bank robbers, can defeat the whole police force. And you sting the bear every time, which irritates him, confuses him. Never give the bear time to recover, sting after sting until he goes crazy. The Bear Dance, Vincent. Punch, confuse, disappear. And then do it again, bank after bank.’

  Leo put his hand under the seat, took out a stuffed, tatty plastic bag, and handed it to him.

  ‘Here. Required reading.’

  Vincent took the bag and dug into it, taking out one title at a time.

  Boobytraps – Department of the Army Field Manual. He’d never read any of them before. Explosives A – Kitchen Improvised Blasting Caps. Not even heard of them. The Anarchist Cookbook. Mostly thin books. Homemade C-4 – ‘A Recipe for Survival’. Sometimes slightly thicker booklets. How to Build Silencers – An Illustrated Manual. All in English. Explosives B – Kitchen Improvised Fertiliser Explosives.

  He flipped aimlessly – text full of terms he didn’t understand, illustrations showing how to construct small bombs – while Leo opened the car door.

  ‘That’s your homework this week.’

  Vincent watched Leo walk over to the mound of parquet flooring and stand as if he was about to slash into one of the packages – but instead he gripped Jasper’s neck tightly, pretending to wrestle with him as he sometimes did when he was trying to make things work. So Felix dropped the flooring, pounced on both of them. It was hard to make out whether or not he was pretending to fight with Leo or with Jasper, he might not even know himself.

  Two older brothers and their childhood friend.

  Vincent put the books back into the bag with one handle. And he smiled.

  He didn’t want out. He wanted in. Together.

  22

  JOHN BRONCKS STOOD on the last plank of the jetty – one more step and he’d be in the lake. He thought about another jetty in long-ago summers on a small island in Lake Mälaren – he could almost hear the sound of feet on wood and his mother shouting for them to come back. Sam half a step in front of him, running through the pouring rain from the summer house to the lake, then lying on his back in brackish water watching the drops landing on his face.

  He squatted down and split the dark November surface of the lake with his hand, so much colder than his memories, probably just above freezing. In a month or two it would be brittle ice.

  ‘John? You there?’ called Sanna.

  He heard steps behind him on the wooden jetty, causing it to sway back and forth.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And we’re supposed to … what exactly?’

  She nodded towards the simple aluminium, eight-horsepower boat moored at the jetty.

  ‘We’re going to figure out where they went. Where they landed. Which table they’re sitting around now, planning their next robbery. That sort of thing.’

  That neutral expression again. And her voice was just as mechanical.

  ‘And we have to sit in an unsteady boat in the rain on Drevviken Lake to figure that out? Even though you’ve already made this trip several times?’

  ‘I need your help to understand how they think.’

  He put one foot on the jetty and one in the middle of the boat as she climbed in, two waterproof ponchos in her arms. She handed him one of them.

  ‘You’ll need this – it’s supposed to get worse.’

  He jerked twice on the engine cord to get the propeller spinning. A nudge away from the jetty, through the tired reeds that knew it wasn’t summer any more and bent without protesting, out towards open water.

  With the plastic-coated map unfolded across his thighs, they slowly passed small islands with names like Kaninholmen and Myrholmen, according to the almost illegible signs. He held onto the tiller lightly, passing shores covered with fir and pine, sometimes broken by the upper floors of grey high-rises and the occasional tiled roof of a villa that had been built near the beach when that was still allowed. Then the lake narrowed, and Drevviken turned into a bay with lush and uninhabited land on the port side – the tranquil Flaten nature reserve, full of coniferous and deciduous forests and small community gardens – and dense housing on the starboard side – a restless spillikins of roads, houses and concrete complexes. It was sufficiently narrow for a fleeing boat hidden by darkness to be able to land on either shore with only very small changes in course.

  ‘Which side would you have chosen?’

  Sanna examined the map first, then the reality, and pointed towards the shore with the buildings on it.

  ‘That one.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  John steered closer to that side – a criminal on the run would want to change direction as many times as possible and would have chosen a place to disappear around here.

  ‘I’ve checked – there have been no reports of a stolen boat in this area.’

  ‘And if it belonged to them?’

  Sanna looked at the map. ‘There are … five, eight, eleven … fifteen marinas. At least. If they own a boat they would have been able to go anywhere.’

  ‘These guys wouldn’t have landed a boat and left it there – they’re not that type, they’re the kind that clean up after themselves.’

  The gulls approach, curious, break the moment with their shrill wailing.

 
; ‘Robbers of this kind always get rid of their getaway vehicle. And if it’s a boat they’d sink it. Coves, bays, jetties, swimming areas: every metre of the shore is a landing place. Someone was waiting for them – with another getaway car.’

  ‘Or not.’

  John smiled. They still thought alike. At least as cops.

  ‘Or not. If they didn’t need to keep running. If this was their last stop. If here is where they call home.’

  He nodded towards a small strip of beach behind a gnarled tree that spread out, dipping its sprawling branches into the water.

  ‘It was seven o’clock, maybe eight. The shore would have melted together to form a black backdrop – wherever they went in, someone must have been guiding them with a light signal.’

  Two hares ran over the bank, frantic, terrified by the approaching boat.

  ‘So … what do you believe happened?’ he asked her.

  ‘Believe?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You know, John, that I never believe things – I’m so damn boring I just write down what I can safely confirm in the technical investigation.’

  ‘But what do you see? What are you thinking? If you were to … guess?’

  ‘You can guess. Or, you have to guess, that’s your job. I don’t interpret. I establish the evidence and the facts, that’s my job.’

  ‘And if I want to know what Sanna believes, not what the forensic scientist has established?’

  ‘I don’t like this. Speculating,’ she said after a moment, shaking her head.

  ‘We’re in the middle of a lake, I’m the only one who’ll hear you.’

  ‘Sanna believes the two men – so far we only know of two perpetrators – who attacked and robbed the security van had done something like that before and been punished for it. Absolutely everything about their actions suggests that: the shots, the brutality, the purposefulness, the willingness to take risks.’

  They drifted towards the shore, rocks surrounded the boat, and he steered them back out again.

  ‘And … Sanna knows there’s always talk about that kind of thing. Inside.’

  She looked at him properly for the first time. She knew he knew what she was referring to.

  ‘People locked up with not much else to do. Right, John?’

  She was one of only a few he’d ever been close enough to tell.

  ‘It’s not me you should be talking to. You know that. You should go there, talk to him.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘That won’t give me anything.’

  ‘Well you have to—’

  ‘No.’

  They passed a forest path that followed the Skogås shore with its high-rises, and the contrast was so obvious – stillness, beauty and fragility so close to something restless, ugly and harsh.

  ‘You haven’t changed, John.’

  ‘Neither have you.’

  Every day she’d lived inside his head and chest and hung on no matter how much he’d tried to escape her. He couldn’t think her away. For ten years. They’d only been together for two, lived together for one, but back then, they’d been young and a year lasted longer.

  ‘It made me happy. When I left that shocked security guard and walked down to the jetty and saw you.’

  He’d tried building other relationships, especially for those first few years afterwards, but she’d been in the way, and the women he’d been with noticed. They were competing with someone who wasn’t there, with a goddamn shadow.

  ‘You really haven’t changed, John. Damn it … is this why you’ve dragged me out in the rain in a fucking boat?’

  ‘I think about you – every day.’

  ‘I never think about you.’

  He was the one who’d done the leaving. And she was the one who’d mourned. And when she’d stopped mourning – she’d let go of him.

  ‘Was that all, John?’

  He sat silent, a little boy with no clue how people talked to each other, a long way from the detective skilled in communication and analysis.

  ‘Can we behave like police again? Maybe even pretend this boat trip was something you suggested to try to get somewhere with a criminal investigation?’

  He nodded, weakly.

  ‘In that case …’

  She lifted up the map again.

  ‘… we know that not a single witness saw them disembark. We also know that despite the dogs and helicopters and roadblocks and forensic scientists, you’ve found no trace of them. They must have known this place – being familiar with it was the only advantage they were certain to have.’

  The channel had become wider, and they were on open water again. Forty-five minutes to the jetty. He looked past her to where they’d come from, for the first time during this entire trip.

  ‘You have to go back there, John – and keep looking.’

  23

  ANNELI PARKED THE rental car right in front of the barrier with the heavy padlock, just a short distance from the road. A rental Volvo 240. Red. Sweden’s most common car.

  She’d packed up everything from the kitchen cupboards and walked from room to room between the stacked cardboard boxes. They were moving, but not in the way she’d hoped. But he’d promised. Just one year. And she had gone, without him knowing, to the exclusive Saltsjöbaden area a couple of times and walked alone around the giant houses with huge gardens and as many rooms as they had cardboard boxes, and she knew that the day they started living somewhere like that, Sebastian would choose to live with her. She took out her phone and dialled.

  ‘Hello darling, what have you been up to today?’

  ‘Riding my bike.’

  ‘In the rain?’

  ‘It’s not raining that much. Not here.’

  She called Sebastian sometimes when she felt like this, and it always made her feel calmer.

  ‘It’s raining a little bit here.’

  ‘Unnhuh.’

  ‘I’m in the woods … picking mushrooms. And I’m thinking about my darling. And you know what? Next time you come to our house you’re going to have your own room.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And Leo’s going to put up a basketball net for you in the yard.’

  ‘OK. Now I’ve got to go.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Dad already has his shoes on. Bye-bye.’

  ‘Hugs and kisses, I’ll see you—’

  He hung up. Electronic silence. That was the worst.

  ‘— soon.’

  She was just as alone and the woods were just as gloomy, an endless coffin that stank of rotten fruit and dirt.

  She folded the raincoat, stuffed her trousers into her rubber boots and set off over moss and wet leaves with the mushroom basket in her right hand. She’d never been out picking mushrooms before. She spotted a brown one, a Karl-Johan, she thought as she picked it. What a name. One more, a yellow one, a chanterelle – that one she recognised.

  Suddenly she heard barking.

  A dog. Maybe more than one. And close by. She wasn’t alone.

  She picked a few more, some white, some that were almost black – the bottom of the basket should be full if she was going to look like a mushroom picker, Leo had explained several times. He had instructed her the same way he usually instructed his brothers, and she’d liked it a lot, listening attentively, keen to do exactly what he wanted.

  More barking. Closer this time. A big dog, maybe a German Shepherd, and more than one. They were warning someone.

  Without fully realising, she had come close to the huge, open gravel yard. Thinner forest, more air and light. The armoury. But something was moving out there. She caught a glimpse of people dressed in green between the trees and tall bushes, heard voices on the wind.

  They’d discovered it.

  The fear that had kept Leo up at night, sweating, awake while he thought she was asleep. It had happened.

  Anneli took a few quick steps back in the direction she’d just come from. She had to tell him, he had to kn
ow. Then she stopped just as suddenly – she didn’t know anything. She knew someone was there, that there were several people with dogs, but that was all she knew. She still had a mission; she was involved.

  She turned around and slowly started walking towards it again.

  Sharp-toothed dogs were barking and drooling. She remembered the bite on her left cheek from a boxer who’d jumped up on her as a five-year-old girl, whose owner said he was just playing around. She crossed to the other side of the street nowadays when she saw a large dog approaching. They knew how scared she was of them.

  And she saw them now.

  Through the forest, trees sparser with every step … two dogs, maybe three. And five … six … seven people wearing green. If she kept going, stepped onto the gravel, the dogs would be able to smell her fear. But she had no choice. If they’d discovered the hole, the tunnel, the empty armoury, Leo had to know.

  She walked amidst the branches of a bushy tree at the edge of the gravel, and from there she could clearly see the concrete bunker.

  She was convinced the door was closed.

  It was still closed!

  She was just about to leave, as carefully as she had approached, when she found herself slipping. Slowly. Along the muddy edge into the ditch which separated moss from gravel, the forest from the military building. A high-pitched sound cut through the air as the soles of her rubber boots scraped against fragments of stone.

  The dogs were eager. They pulled on their leashes.

  They’d heard her.

  Anneli was almost out of the ditch, almost to the top, when she slid down again.

  ‘Do you need help?’

  There weren’t seven men – there were eight, all in green uniforms. The dogs were German Shepherds, she’d guessed right, and they followed her every movement.

  ‘Have you … got them on a tight leash?’

  ‘This is a military area.’

  ‘I’m a little afraid of dogs, I …’

  The tall soldier with a twisted, grizzled moustache, who seemed to be in charge, turned towards the dog at the front, whose small sharp eyes were on her.

  ‘Here, Calibre. Sit.’

  He had his gun on a brown leather strap slung over his shoulder, and he looked friendly.