by Jens Lapidus
JENS LAPIDUS
TOP DOG
Jens Lapidus is a criminal defense lawyer who represents some of Sweden’s most notorious underworld criminals. He is the author of the Stockholm Noir trilogy, three of the bestselling Swedish novels of this past decade: Easy Money, Never Fuck Up, and Life Deluxe. He lives in Stockholm with his wife.
ALSO BY JENS LAPIDUS
Easy Money
Never Fuck Up
Life Deluxe
Stockholm Delete
A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, NOVEMBER 2018
English translation copyright © 2018 by Alice Menzies
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in Sweden as Top dogg by Wahlström & Widstrand, Stockholm, in 2017. Copyright © 2017 by Jens Lapidus. Published by agreement with Salomonsson Agency.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lapidus, Jens, 1974– author. | Menzies, Alice, translator.
Title: Top dog / by Jens Lapidus ; translated from the Swedish by Alice Menzies.
Other titles: Top dogg. English
Description: New York : Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, November 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018005472 | ISBN 9780525431732 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Women lawyers—Sweden—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Sweden—Fiction. | Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PT9877.22.A65 T6713 2018 | DDC 839.73/8—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018005472
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Trade Paperback ISBN 9780525431732
Ebook ISBN 9780525431749
Cover design by John Vorhees
Cover photograph © Masterfile
www.blacklizardcrime.com
v5.4
ep
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Also by Jens Lapidus
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Part I: January
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part II: March–April
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Part III: May–June
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Part IV: Midsummer’s Eve
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Epilogue
SWEDISH WOMEN’S WEEKLY
EXCLUSIVE MINGLE AT BUCHARDS EXHIBITION
CoolArt and Buchards threw an exclusive launch party last night, in celebration of their unique art. The event saw Prince Carl Philip and his graphic designer friend Joakim Andersson mingling alongside Stockholm society and the big names of the art world.
Our reporter also spotted a couple of newcomers to the Stockholm collectors’ scene: youthful financier Hugo Pederson and his beautiful wife, Louise. The stylish pair are said to have a keen interest in art, and sources tell us that they have built up a sizable collection of contemporary pieces despite having only been collecting for two years.
“I’ve always loved the fragile, the complex,” Mr. Pederson cheerily told our reporter.
Mr. Pederson works for investment firm Fortem, and has rapidly become a great patron of a number of artists.
“If you’re lucky enough to earn a bit of money, you also have to give back,” he continued, heading off to mingle alongside his equally engaged wife.
Johan W. Lindvall, 2007
Prologue
Adan dragged the aluminum ladder over to the back of the building and peered up at the balcony. The apartment was on Nystadsgatan: first floor—it shouldn’t be too hard to unfold the ladder, lean it against the balcony, and climb up. But still, fuck—he felt like he was about to shit himself. Genuinely. He could just see it: him at the very top of the bastard ladder with a brown stain on his ass.
He had actually stopped doing jobs like this. He was nineteen now and too old for break-ins: it was the kind of thing they used to do at the end of high school. Plus: it was beneath him now. But what was he meant to do? If Surri told you to do something, you did it.
They had known each other since kindergarten, lived on the same block, played on the same teams—their fathers had even been neighbors back in the old country. “We were like everyone else in Bakool. We didn’t care about one another more than we needed to,” Adan’s old man used to say. “But everyone here thinks we’re like family, like we’re the same person.”
His father was both right and wrong: Surri was a brother. But he still acted like a dick.
* * *
—
Adan could feel the chill of the ladder through his gripper gloves. Gloves: he had kept that part of the routine from before—his prints were guaranteed to be saved in a database somewhere. He braced himself; there was a lot of him to haul over the railing: he had to weigh at least 240 po
unds. Still, the screwdriver was light in his hand, and the grip felt comfortable—as though his fingers had actually been longing to use it, despite his living a completely ordinary life these days. Drove a delivery van for his dad’s boss, ate popcorn and watched Luke Cage and Fauda with his girl at night. It was just that two weeks earlier, he had been asked if he wanted to earn a little extra dough. Nothing illegal, just a one-day job for old times’ sake. You were crazy if you said no to that kind of thing.
It was all those German bastards’ fault. What Surri had wanted was for Adan to travel down to Hamburg and pick up one of the new 7 Series BMWs. It was a done deal: you could get a 730d for under 100,000 euros there, then sell it without any trouble for 150,000 back in Sweden. The only problem: you couldn’t register too many cars to yourself in any given year, otherwise the tax authorities would come sniffing. And that was where Adan came in.
He had taken the train down to the southern tip of Denmark; a one-way ticket was 599 kronor, and he had spent the entire journey listening to Spotify on his new Beats headphones, keeping a tight grip on the fanny pack Surri had given him, and staring out of the window. A million kronor in euro notes weighed almost nothing. He had never spent so long on a train before, but it was actually pretty sweet. He never got bored of watching the scenery outside. It flew by: frosty fields, wooded areas, and small towns where people seemed to collect rusty wrecks and old planks of wood. He wondered how they made a living.
* * *
—
He’d had no trouble finding the car place, signing the documents, and negotiating with the salesman, who even spoke a bit of Arabic—it wasn’t Adan’s language, but he knew enough to be able to say a few friendly phrases. It felt sweet to sink back in the black leather seat, start the engine, and cruise back to Sweden. He drove different pickups every day, but never BMWs. This car didn’t just look like it had class—you could feel the quality in the details, too. The smell of leather, the feeling when he ran his fingers over the dashboard, the weight of the doors, and the faint, comforting sound when they closed. He had thought about Surri, the guy did everything with style—even his balaclavas came from sick French designers. One day, Adan might even be able to afford a car like this. But, right then, his plan had been to drive all evening and night. He wanted to get the BMW home without having to check in to a motel.
It was on the highway outside of Jönköping that he first heard it: a hollow scraping noise that definitely didn’t sound good. He had pulled over two miles later. Climbed out, inspected everything, but he couldn’t see a thing. The sound had returned the minute he pulled away. After another twelve or so miles, a warning light had come on. “Brake Fault.” What did that mean? Shit—he didn’t know if he could even keep driving. He had slowed down, causing a line of traffic behind him; he was going forty in the seventy-five lane. The car sounded terrible. Another five or so miles later, he had pulled into a gas station and asked if the assistant could come out and check the car. The kid had spots all over his face and looked like he was five years younger than Adan, but he had immediately started shining a flashlight at the rims of the tires.
“Looks like your brake pads are pretty much gone,” he had said. “You can’t drive another inch in this car. Shame with such a sick ride, by the way.”
That had been the end of the upside: Adan had had to pay a recovery van to tow the car to the next garage. It had taken five weeks to fix and cost forty grand. But there was also a risk it was pulling to one side, they said. Adan had called the seller in Germany and yelled at him, but the guy had pretended he didn’t even speak English. In the end, Surri had a valuation on the piece of crap car: he wouldn’t even get six hundred thousand for it.
“How could you be so thick not to even check the car before you signed?”
* * *
—
The lock on the balcony door gave way with a click and Adan pushed it open. Surri had been clear: “The cops are keeping our guy who rented the place in custody, but they haven’t found the shit there. So if you break in and find what’s mine, we can write off half your debt. You know how much I blew on that car.”
Adan had squirmed. “Is anyone living there?”
“Fuck that. There won’t be anyone home tomorrow night, either way.”
Adan thought back to one day in the yard when they were younger. Surri had fallen from the jungle gym, dropped like a little rock and cut his knee. To them, it seemed like a river of blood had come flooding out, and the cut was full of gravel. His friend wouldn’t stop crying. “I’ll help you. C’mon, let’s go to my place, I think my dad’s there,” Adan had said in as gentle a voice as he could. They were six at the time, and Adan knew that his father could mend Surri’s knee. Sure enough, he had—his father had cleaned the wound and applied the biggest Band-Aid they had ever seen. As they drank chocolate milk, ate cookies, and watched Toy Story on DVD afterward, Surri had said: “Your dad’s better at that than mine.”
* * *
—
It was a two-bedroom apartment. Adan switched on the light in what had to be the living room and saw a green sofa, a glass-topped coffee table, and a bookcase. There was also what looked like a projector of some kind. In both bedrooms, there were narrow, unmade beds. People had to be living there—why else would there be newspapers on the coffee table and a T-shirt hanging over the back of a chair?
At the same time, the place was also barely furnished, so maybe they just slept over here every now and then. He picked up the garbage can in the kitchen, peered down at an empty milk carton, and caught the scent of something he definitely recognized: stubbed-out weed.
He went through the kitchen cabinets and the fridge. The person or persons living there had plenty of chips and sour cream, but no normal food. He peered into the oven and the dishwasher, got down onto the floor and shone his flashlight beneath the sink and behind the fridge. It was dusty.
People could be imaginative sometimes, but he didn’t find a thing. He lifted the cushions from the sofa, ran his hand beneath the sheets and the mattresses in the beds. There was a bag on the floor in one of the bedrooms, and he rifled through it—spotted a few more T-shirts, four pairs of boxers, and some socks. He climbed onto the coffee table and shone his flashlight into the air vent in the wall. Nothing.
He couldn’t see a thing.
Back in the living room. Adan got down onto all fours and peered beneath the sofa, shone the flashlight behind the bookcase.
The guy who rented the place before these people must have screwed Surri over—there was nothing here, or maybe the cops had found it after all. It wasn’t really Adan’s problem anymore. Not that Surri would see it that way.
And then he heard something. A noise from the hallway.
No, it was in the stairwell, on the other side of the door. He could hear voices out there.
Before Adan had time to think, he heard the key rattling in the lock. Shit—someone was on their way into the apartment. He turned out the lights in the living room.
He could hear people talking in the hallway now. Two voices, a girl’s and a guy’s. Maybe he should just jump out and beat them up, whoever they were. But no—he wasn’t like Surri. He wasn’t a tough guy.
He crawled behind the sofa.
The voices grew clearer. The girl was talking about someone called Billie. The guy mumbled something about a party. “Almost party time.”
Adan lay perfectly still, trying to keep calm and quiet. He should go back to Hamburg and kill that BMW salesman with his own bare hands—this was all his fault.
Then he heard a door close. It sounded like it might have been the bathroom door, judging by the distance. Was this his chance? He could hear only the girl’s voice now; she was humming some tune. The guy was probably in the toilet. It sounded like the girl had come into the living room. Then silence. Adan wasn’t even breathing, just trying to listen. The paddi
ng of feet. Puffing sounds. Then more footsteps, out, toward one of the bedrooms.
Now.
He got up: the living room was empty. He took two long strides toward the balcony door. He wasn’t thinking, wasn’t reflecting. Just acting. He tore open the door. Didn’t look back. Stepped out onto the balcony. Closed the door behind him. Sucked in the fresh air.
He jumped over the railing.
He threw himself down. No, he fell.
Like Surri from the jungle gym.
* * *
—
The darkness felt safe, but it was far too cold out. His gloves were as thin as paper.
Adan leaned against the tree. He was trying not to put any weight on his right foot, which he had really hurt in the fall—the bastard might even be broken. All the same, he didn’t want to leave. The ladder was lying on the ground in front of him: he had dragged it behind him as he limped away over the snow. Surri would go crazy when he told him he hadn’t found anything. Still: it had to have been Surri’s own guy who’d screwed him over. Adan had searched everywhere.