The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Read online

  ‘And I’m saying – are you kidding me?’

  ‘Ten thousand.’

  ‘Shit, there’s more than a million in there. And I’m going out tonight. I wanna go through five thousand, ’cause I’m worth it. And tomorrow I have to pay the rent. And—’

  ‘We’ll talk about that then. Tomorrow.’

  ‘Damn it, ten thousand kronor, that’s what an eighteen-year-old makes at McDonald’s!’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Felix held the stack of money in his hand, looked around, trying to delay making a decision, and then dramatically started to put the notes back into the goldfish bowl one at a time.

  ‘Are you done?’ asked Leo.

  One at a time.

  ‘Are you?’

  Until they were lying there again, every one.

  Leo got a piece of paper from the kitchen and wrote on it while the others sat and watched.

  ‘Yes, there’s a million there. But we were counting on ten. It’s clear as fuck you should party and celebrate. But we have to live until next time, too. That’s my responsibility. And we have to be able to accomplish the next one. That’s also my responsibility.’

  The paper was in the middle of the coffee table, next to the goldfish bowl, and he pointed with a pen to columns of figures.

  ‘Out there in the car park are two cars that belong to the construction company. We need to look like we’re going to work every day. Cars, clothing, tools. There are ongoing expenses that have to be met so that we can do this instead: clothes that will all be burned, leasing a container for weapons, a boat that will have to be sunk. And that was just this time. Next time will cost even more. You know how a business works? In order to make money, we need to invest money until we have so much damn money that we don’t need any more.’

  Felix and Leo looked at one another. And they were kids again – one who challenged the other and one who accepted that challenge and would beat it every time, as you must to be in charge.

  But they’d never done it standing around a bowl full of banknotes.

  ‘Are we agreed?’

  No answer.

  ‘Are we?’

  Felix pursed his lips.

  ‘Mmm.’

  Leo pulled him closer to himself, hugged him.

  ‘You wily bastard.’

  Anneli sat so close to them and yet so far away. She’d never really understood it when siblings belonged together like this. She had an older sister and a younger brother and it had never felt like this – now they rarely even talked. These were siblings who trusted each other. Needed each other. And she didn’t like it; when people got that close, it was difficult for other people to get inside, to belong.

  7

  LEO SAT ON the edge of the bed, sweat on his face and running down his back. 03.05. Persistent rain was drumming against the windowsill. He’d been freezing when he went to bed, and now he was suffocating from the heat.

  Anneli was sound asleep on the other side of the bed, snoring, whimpering a little. She’d been so tense when he came home. Then, as he reached for her, her body had collapsed, as if she wanted to avoid explaining to him what she truly felt.

  She didn’t need to explain.

  He knew the time he’d been spending on the firm’s new project was creating a rift between them. But he was going to make up for it. When you love someone, you give back what you’ve taken.

  Leo kissed her lightly on the tip of the nose. Held his face close to hers. Her calm breath was warm, and now, with her anxiety gone and finally asleep, he could see what he’d been unable to understand last night or the night before.

  Even though I love you, Leo, I can leave you.

  And it didn’t get any better when he tried reversing the words.

  Even though I love you, Anneli, I can be left by you.

  It sounded so simple. And it terrified him.

  Another kiss on the cheek, but not so fleeting, as if he wanted to wake her, whisper to her.

  When you rob a bank together, you can never leave each other.

  He sat up quickly on the side of the bed. What the hell am I doing? Adversity should never cause doubt, should never be directed at the family.

  Nine million kronor locked behind a steel door – that was why he wasn’t able to sleep. It had nothing to do with Anneli, they belonged together and would never betray each other. He, if anyone, knew the consequences of driving away someone you love.

  He went over to the window and stood there for a moment looking out over the suburb he’d grown up in.

  Same tower blocks. Same asphalt.

  But he’d chosen a different life now. Bank robber. And he was going to do it better than anyone else. Because he had to do it better than anyone else. He couldn’t fail, getting caught was not an option – his brothers were part of this, and they were all going to become financially independent together.

  It was my fault.

  That’s why he couldn’t sleep – he should have done better tonight.

  It won’t happen again.

  He took a folder out of the desk between the sofa and the corner cupboard, laid it down on the table and opened it.

  A sketch of a bank.

  Four escape routes that led to four roundabouts, each with four new exits, and a search area that included a total of sixty-four possible escape routes.

  The doorbell rang.

  He threw a blanket over the goldfish bowl and a lid over the toolbox and the four guns it contained.

  The doorbell rang again.

  He stood up and looked out over the car park and the road from the centre of Skogås. Empty. The driveway to the gate, empty. He walked carefully across the floor, shut the door to the bedroom and her heavy breathing, proceeded to the front door and bent down to look through the peephole.

  Felix. Leo didn’t realise how tense he’d been – how prepared.

  ‘Weren’t you going to go into town? And “go through five thousand ’cause I’m worth it”?’

  ‘We never made it to fucking Crazy Horse. Jasper went to some underground club and then Vincent went off with a girl. Can I crash here?’

  Leo opened the door and nodded towards the bedroom door with a finger to his lips. He took the blanket off the goldfish bowl and threw it onto a fully clothed Felix, who sank into the sofa.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Felix asked, grabbing the drawing from the table.

  ‘The next one.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Handels Bank. Svedmyra. Let’s sleep now.’

  ‘Sleep? Cheers, brother! Here’s to financial independence!’

  ‘It’s not about the money.’

  ‘And that fucking goldfish bowl, then? It’s filled to the brim!’

  ‘It’s about making sure no bastard can ever tell us what to do again. After this you and I and Vincent won’t have to depend on anyone ever again.’

  Felix looked at his big brother who, trying to avoid more questions, went over to the window, lifted the blinds a little and peered outside.

  ‘Leo?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I don’t get how you can fucking live here.’

  Leo could hear in his voice that he was drunk. But he meant it.

  ‘Sometimes you know every bush, every staircase.’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying!’

  ‘We grew up here.’

  ‘We grew up here – and you moved back voluntarily!’

  A car reversed and turned round in the car park. A cyclist rode through the underpass. Otherwise, it was peaceful in a way that only existed between the hours of the final news bulletin and the arrival of the morning paper.

  ‘We’ll be moving soon.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why you moved back in the first place.’

  ‘Sometimes you have to.’

  ‘But here!’

  ‘And then we can move. Again. For real. Anneli wants a house. And I … I’ve already chosen one.’

  ‘A house?’

 
‘Yeah.’

  ‘A lawn? Cutting the grass? You?’

  ‘There is no lawn. And no basement. That’s the whole point.’

  It had been a virgin robbery by four beginners: a code to a steel door that he hadn’t anticipated; ten million that ended up being only a million.

  But next time, everything would be perfect.

  Leo lingered in front of the living room window, which was covered with stray raindrops – outside was Skogås, a suburb south of Stockholm whose tower blocks were almost identical to all the others built in Sweden in the sixties and seventies.

  The asphalt that had been his whole world.

  then

  part one

  8

  LATE EVENING WINTER darkness, and big patches of white, brown and grey snow lie on the asphalt, the steam pouring from his mouth as he counts his own big breaths.

  He has no coat on. Despite that, he’s not cold. They’ve been doing this for a while, up and down, up and down, and the skin on his forehead and cheeks is covered with shiny layers of sweat. He wipes his hands across his face, and they end up wet, so he dries them on his trousers.

  A three-storey building that looks just like all the others. 15 Loft Street. Five steps to the door. He turns his head to look at the next door along, 17 Loft Street, and his opponent, who stands there looking back.

  Felix. His seven-year-old little brother, already in junior school.

  Leo raises his arm slightly, angles it away from the shining streetlamp. A light brown leather strap, the watch face with red hands that are short and ugly. The day he has enough money, he’ll buy a new one, the kind that other people look at.

  He waits. The second hand passes the nine. Ten. Eleven. He holds his hand high up in the air.

  ‘Now!’

  At twelve exactly he runs. Opens the door to number fifteen, while Felix opens seventeen.

  Taking two steps at a time to each new door, a wad of paper in his hand, Leo delivers seven different leaflets from seven different companies, which they’ve bundled together at home on their living room floor.

  He opens the first letterbox and glances at the red hand of his watch. It took twenty-four seconds to run up the stairs and deliver the first bundle of ads. On each floor there are four letterboxes that he has to press open with the palm of his hand in order to make the opening large enough. One at a time, and as quickly as he can. They slam shut when he’s done and his black lace-up boots thud against the floor as he runs to the next slot.

  He’s lived here his whole life. Ten years. An area south of Stockholm called Skogås, thousands of identical high-rise blocks all standing in a row.

  Every door is almost the same, but not quite. The names, smells, sounds are different. Often someone’s at home watching TV. Sometimes someone’s listening to music, bass and treble coming through the open slot. Now and then someone is drilling holes in the walls, and quite often people are shouting at each other. The dogs are the worst part. In this stairwell there’s one waiting on the second floor. One jumping at the letterbox as he thrusts in the flyers, which aren’t supposed to be visible from the outside in case the people paying him make a random inspection.

  The dog starts barking as soon as he approaches, its heavy body against the inside of the door. He opens the slot, just a small gap, sees a long tongue and sharp teeth, and loses six seconds because those slavering jaws force him to stick his papers in one at a time.

  And then there’s that letterbox at the very bottom, the one that always takes twelve extra seconds – number seventeen has no such apartment.

  He wonders how far Felix has got.

  He takes the stairs three at a time, but knows that because of that damn dog and then this door, it’s taken almost a minute and a half to do the entire stairwell. Felix will be out there smiling, a little bit cocky, fifteen seconds before him.

  And he is. His little brother has won – but he’s not smiling.

  Felix has company. An ugly, blue puffa jacket. Hasse. He’s in year seven, the kind of guy who stays in the smoking area of the playground even after the bell rings. There’s usually someone else with him too, a shorter guy who wears a denim jacket even in the winter: Kekkonen, the Finn who’s never cold.

  But now he is alone. And he’s holding his arms outstretched. Above and around Felix, preventing him from moving.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Leo screams.

  That’s his little brother!

  ‘Let him go!’

  Hasse smiles in victory, a smile that should belong to Felix.

  ‘And here comes another little faggot.’

  ‘Let him go, damn it!’

  ‘The little fucking faggot’s screaming! The little fucking faggot doesn’t understand! I told you last time. Right? I said “one more time”. If I saw you and your little fucking faggot brother here again, I said I’m gonna kill you.’

  Leo is breathing heavily, but not because he took the stairs three at a time. He’s scared. He’s angry. And both sensations beat against his chest from the inside.

  ‘We’re not the ones who decide where these fucking flyers get delivered!’

  The anger and fear push him to walk quickly towards Hasse, still trapping Felix with his arms, and the closer Leo gets the bigger the smile on that bastard’s face gets. He continues walking, a little more slowly. It doesn’t make sense. Hasse shouldn’t be smiling, he’s tall but not strong, and he should be scared and angry, like Leo. He should be preparing.

  But he’s smiling, and looking at something that seems to be … behind Leo.

  It’s too late.

  Leo gets a whiff of a musty, forgotten smell. From a dirty denim jacket that’s only ever been taken off when a teacher has demanded it. He recognises the smell but doesn’t see the fist coming at his neck and cheek. Surely he’s going to fall. The snow-patched asphalt is getting closer to his other cheek and his forehead. He’s on the ground, his vision blurry. Someone is standing near his face, shorter than Hasse and squarer. Kekkonen, the Finn who’s never cold, has been hiding behind a tall bush and he’s attacked Leo from behind, while Hasse just stands there smiling.

  The ground is cold. He has time to notice that. But not to get up.

  The first kick hits his cheek. The second hits him lower down, on his chin. The last thing he remembers is how strange it looks when the evening darkness disappears into a streetlight, how it’s sucked up, turning white before it turns black.

  9

  THE PAIN IS most intense on his left side, near the ribs. When he pulls up his thin sweater and probes the skin with his fingers, the swelling is still there.

  Leo lies in his narrow bed, which is too short for him, his feet reaching all the way to the end. It’s not exactly light outside his window, but it’s lighter than when he went to bed.

  The pain throbs from a large spot in the middle of his head, as he grabs hold of the blanket and mattress and heaves himself upright. A mirror hangs above his desk. The tight half of his face is less red now, more blue and yellow and swollen like his ribs. He touches it. It hurts worse.

  He tiptoes barefoot across the room. Felix doesn’t move at all, lying on his stomach in bed with both his hands under his pillow, muttering something in his sleep. Leo walks out into the hall, unlike yesterday, when he crept in. And when his father had finally stuck his head into the room, Leo had made sure he was lying with his face turned to the wall, pretending to sleep.

  Leo closes the door to Vincent’s room, where inside is the little bed he once slept in and his three-year-old brother lying upside down with his feet on his pillow. He continues past to Mamma and Pappa’s bedroom, also closing their door. And he stands there, as he usually does for a moment, in the middle of those smells. Red wine from his father’s breath, menthol from his mother’s, and mostly, the smell from his father’s huge work trousers that hang on an iron hook in the hall, a Mora knife and a folding ruler in one of the oblong pockets. It’s a smell that has always been there, like drying paint
, or the smell of sunshine on skin – now it reminds him of Kekkonen’s denim jacket. He extends his hand gently towards them. The carpenter’s trousers have been hanging there for almost two weeks, untouched. That’s how it usually is in the winter, longer stretches between jobs.

  He hears a sound.

  Through the closed door.

  Leo waits quietly, closes his eyes, hopes it will go away. One ear against the painted surface. Quiet again. It was surely his mother. She usually makes some sounds when she’s just come home and managed to sleep for a little while, when she’s been working several nights in a row at the nursing home. He’s learned the morning sounds. It’s good when his father’s breathing is deep and audible – watch out if you don’t hear it any more. Leo waits a little longer, then goes into the kitchen and takes out a new kind of white bread that tastes like syrup, cheese with large holes in it, and orange marmalade. He doesn’t take out the toaster, it rattles too much. He mixes orange juice in three glasses, a finger of yellow and the rest cold water from the tap. He makes sure whenever he’s close to the sink not to bump against the pan of congealed wine, a dark and hard layer that’s difficult to wash away. There are piles of Keno tickets on the counter covered with crosses forming different patterns, part of the system his father has been using for so long. He counts the butts in the ashtray. His father sat up late into the night and won’t be getting up for a while yet. Leo goes back to the bedrooms, shakes Felix’s arm and then Vincent’s, with a finger to his lips – and they nod as they usually do.

  They don’t say anything while they eat. Syrup loaf, orange marmalade on top of the cheese, a full glass of juice. He moves his chair slightly, making sure to keep his ear towards the hallway and the bedroom. He can’t hear the heavy breathing any more. Maybe Pappa’s just turned over? Or what if their chewing was too loud and he’s woken up? Leo shakes the last slice of bread from the plastic bag, butters it, and hands it to Vincent, who has marmalade on his fingers and cheeks and in his hair.

  The door. He’s sure of it. That fucking damn shitty door.