by Jens Lapidus
They didn’t hug.
Only the desk lamp was switched on in her office, and there was a half-eaten box of sushi at one end of the desk. At the other, she had a computer screen and a keyboard. Other than a notepad and a couple of pens, that was all.
“So this is your new office? Why don’t you have more artwork on the walls?” he tried to joke as he sat down. What he really wanted to know was how she was, how running her own law firm was going. Whether she had met anyone who was a better fit for her life than him.
Emelie turned to one side, not looking at him as she spoke. “Now’s not the time, Teddy. I’m going to be representing a woman who was abused by them.”
She told him about Katja.
“So I was wondering if you could help me. Because I have the feeling she’s going to need a lot of support.”
The office fell silent. The sound of a bus struggling up Hantverkargatan made its way in through the window.
“Emelie, isn’t it better to let the police do their job?”
“They haven’t exactly done all that well so far—they’ve had those films for over a year now. Plus, it was probably this Peder Hult man who tried to blow up you and your apartment eighteen months ago, when Nikola got hurt.”
The Mats Emanuelsson case, Teddy thought, it followed him through life. So Katja was one of the girls abused by the predators.
There was something steely in Emelie’s eye. “You have to help me, Teddy. Help me pick up where we left off.”
“Why me?”
“You know people I can’t reach otherwise. You can do things I can’t. I know you want to move on with your life, and I respect that. But we never found the people who were really behind all this. The people who hurt your nephew. We gave up halfway.”
Teddy knew now what he had seen in Emelie’s eyes. She had no intention of giving in.
But him?
Would he?
10
Small metal dispensers of hand sanitizer everywhere. A mecca for drunks: go to the hospital, take an empty bottle and a pump. Get yourself wasted on disinfectant. Free is good.
Nikola made his way in. The automatic doors whirred continuously. There was a line at the information desk. The color codings on the walls were harder to read than if they were written in Amharic.
When he and Yusuf had arrived with Chamon three days earlier, he had watched them wheel his friend away and close the doors. “Only relatives allowed, I’m afraid.” No one knew what was going to happen—the image of Chamon’s broken face on repeat. The sound of his gurgling on a loop.
But now Nikola was back.
* * *
—
The robotic woman’s voice in the elevator announced that he had reached the third floor. Nikola checked the signs. Ward 345. This was the right place; Chamon’s dad had told Nikola where Chamon was—otherwise, he never would have known.
The doors into the ward swung open with a whirring sound. Chamon had been transferred from intensive care to a normal ward, meaning you could just walk straight in. Nikola wondered what the police and the hospital knew about how Chamon had really sustained his injuries—he hadn’t said a thing, in any case, and he seriously doubted anyone else from the gym would have, either. The golden rule: no talking to the pigs.
The hallway was full of medical equipment on carts. The clusters of doctors and nurses in Birkenstocks and green hospital scrubs seemed mostly to be chilling. The bluish plastic floor was polished and reflected almost everything going on in the hallway. In the distance, there was a sign with a crossed-out cell phone.
Nikola stepped inside. He didn’t know which room Chamon was in, but he could just look around, he thought. One of Isak’s guys was supposed to be keeping watch outside, but he could also be in the room itself.
The ward smelled like boiled potato. An older man with a bandage over his mouth was shuffling down the corridor, looking really creepy—like a mummy who had come alive in one of the operating rooms. But the old man also reminded him of Bojan, his grandfather. Lately, he had also started dragging his feet, as though he didn’t have the energy to walk. It meant that he sounded different when he moved, more shuffling, sluggish, a trudging style that didn’t seem right. Grandpa was a strongman—or at least that was how Nikola had always thought of him.
A nurse hurried past. There was a red light blinking above one of the doors farther down the hallway. In all likelihood: I need help taking a shit, I need help turning over in bed, I need someone to jerk me off—because I can’t manage it myself.
“Hi, sorry, I’m looking for Chamon Hanna,” said Nikola.
The nurse replied: “Turn left over there, then it’s the second room on the right. But I think he’s asleep right now.”
* * *
—
The door had an extra-large handle, or at least that was how it felt. Nikola stepped inside: the lightning had started flashing in his head. He needed to stop; maybe he would have to sit down. Flashbacks from the room where he had been bed bound after the explosion. The bluish-gray curtains over the window, the glass of juice on the table next to the bed. His mother’s anxious glances from the armchair in the corner. He had to cover his eyes with his hand. Get away from the memories: the lightning. Then he looked up, focused on this room. On Chamon. His friend’s face was bandaged, with dressings covering his chin—probably from the operation, and there were bruises around his nose and on his cheeks. His gold chain and cross were missing from around his neck—Nikola wondered what had happened to them. The bed’s wheels were locked, and there was a drip stand to one side, its tubes leading directly into Chamon’s arm. His friend probably couldn’t eat.
Nikola sat down in the only chair. Chamon seemed to be sleeping. Gym redux: the shouts from the bastards who had attacked, the crack of the pistol shot. Chamon’s jaw in pieces, hyperventilating. The blood on the wall. Nikola’s own heart rate at 180. The fragments of bone that had caught on his sweater.
Then it hit Nikola, like a bomb. WTF—there was no one here. There was no one keeping watch on the ward. No one sitting either outside or here in the room. Anyone could walk right in, just like he had. His friend wouldn’t even wake up before someone had time to do something. The nurses outside wouldn’t have time to notice that anything had happened.
Nikola pulled out his phone and called Yusuf. No answer. He sent a message: Am with C now. Why’s there no one here keeping an eye on him? Send someone. Bello or whoever. /N
Bello was a good guy. When they were in high school, he, Nikola, and Chamon used to drive hot ATVs down by Igelstaviken. Nikola didn’t know what his real name was; everyone just called him Bello—and no one seemed to remember why.
He waited a few minutes. Chamon was quiet. Nikola leaned in toward him. Was his friend breathing? He couldn’t hear anything. He leaned even closer, tried to listen. Look. Feel.
He saw Chamon’s chest rising. Slowly upward. Slowly downward. Good.
His phone beeped. A reply from Yusuf: I was there before, it seemed cool.
Nikola wrote: Someone should still be here.
The reply came a few seconds later: They were probably after Mr. 1. Not C.
Nikola understood his point: no one was after Chamon; that seemed logical. But still. He took out his phone again. Wrote to a few guys. After ten minutes, he had managed to get ahold of Isak’s private number. He called it—the first time he had ever contacted Mr. One directly.
The ring signal sounded like it was coming from abroad. “The king speaking,” the boss eventually answered.
“Isak,” Nikola spoke in Syriac. “I’m at the hospital with my boy.”
“How’s he doing?”
“I don’t know. He’s alive. They’ve operated on him.”
“I heard. Thank God. He’s got a present waiting for him.”
Nikola had heard about that. Isa
k had sent a curved, seventy-eight-inch Samsung to Chamon’s place—the sickest TV on the market—but what was his friend going to do with that right now, while he was stuck here?
“Listen, Isak, there’s something that doesn’t seem right.”
“What?”
Nikola went over to the window. How should he put it to Mr. One, without making a mistake? Without being disrespectful. Down below, he could see the main entrance into the hospital. There were people everywhere. This was probably Stockholm’s biggest hospital: pensioners, immigrant families; tired, broken people who might not really need to be here. But the people he could see still didn’t feel like a representative sample of Sweden—they were what Grandpa called radnička klasa, the working class. Where were the others? Where were the inner-city people and the brats? Maybe they had their own hospitals now, or maybe they just didn’t get ill quite so often.
Nikola said what was on his mind. “Isak, there’s no one here keeping watch. Anyone could get in.”
“Ah shit, that’s no good. I’ll send someone.”
It sounded like Isak was eating something—the chewing noise was almost deafening.
Nikola tried to explain.
Mr. One continued to chew.
“I can’t stay here all day, so it’d be good if someone could come pretty soon.”
“Got you. How long can you stick around?” It was hard to hear what Isak was saying. What was the boss eating? Oatmeal?
“Two hours max, then I’ve gotta get to work. I promised my boss, and I need the hours to get my electrician’s certificate.”
“I’ll get someone there by then.”
Nikola turned around and looked at Chamon. One of Isak’s faithful. A man who always had his back. Never chickened out. Who hadn’t dropped out the way Nikola had. A blood brother. A soldier.
* * *
—
“Chabibi.” A faint, rough voice.
Nikola turned around. Chamon’s eyes were open. Nikola sat down. “You can talk?”
What little he could see of Chamon’s face crumpled in pain when he tried to move his mouth. Nikola could tell that his friend was wondering who he had been talking to.
“Ignore me,” he said. “Just a joke.”
Chamon reached for a notepad from the bedside table. He grabbed a pen and wrote in slow, spindly letters. I’ll write instead. Hurts so fucking much to speak.
“Okay, got it.”
The pigs tried to interview me yesterday. Pretended I was too groggy to understand what they were saying.
“Okay.”
Yusuf was just here.
“But he’s not here now.”
I dunno where he is. Do you know who the shooters were?
“No idea. What did the cops say?”
Fuck all. Just that they wanted to know if I knew who’d shot me. And then they wanted to know who else was there. They want to interview you all.
“Did you tell them?”
Nah. We don’t talk to them like that.
“No, I know. So they have no idea, either?”
Don’t think so.
“They’ll try to interview you again.”
I know. Plenty of people would’ve said more than I did.
Nikola didn’t understand that last part. “What do you mean?”
Chamon’s hand was on the covers again. The pen rolled onto the floor, and Nikola bent down to pick it up for him. His friend was clearly exhausted, but Chamon still held the pen steady as he wrote two new lines. You can’t trust anyone. I want out.
Nikola studied that last sentence.
Chamon’s eyelids fluttered. Then he turned away and seemed to fall asleep.
* * *
—
Just over two hours later. No one had turned up to take over from Nikola. Chamon was still sleeping. Nikola had pulled the chair over to the window and was looking down at the constant stream of people coming and going through the entrance. He had bought a couple of cans of Red Bull from the vending machine by the elevators and was trying not to drift off. To hell with George Samuel today; Chamon was more important—he just didn’t know why his replacement hadn’t shown up.
Then he saw the very thing he didn’t want to see. Three floors down.
Two men in sunglasses, even though it was an overcast day; two men moving a little faster than everyone else. There was something about their movements, their stiff gait. Even though Nikola couldn’t see their faces, he was sure—they were here, the same guys who had been at the gym. They were here to finish the job—there was no doubt about it.
Fucking hell.
He opened the door to the hallway and saw two women in white hospital scrubs talking to each other.
“Can you help me?”
The older of the two women turned to him: plastic glasses and a name badge—apparently her name was Britt Fuentes.
“You have to help me get my friend out of here,” Nikola said.
“What do you mean?”
“Britt, please. My friend can’t be on this ward right now. We need to move him somewhere else.”
Britt Fuentes’s furrowed brow looked like crumpled paper.
“No. No, absolutely not. We don’t move patients like that.”
The men shouldn’t have known which ward to find Chamon on—but the speed of their movements suggested otherwise.
“It makes no difference what you normally do. You have to help me. Otherwise I’ll move him myself.”
He went back into the room, loosened the brakes on the bed, and started to roll it out. Britt and the other woman blocked the doorway. Grumbled, tried to talk him around. They just didn’t get it. He readied himself, gave the bed a real shove. Pushed it into them: “What do you think you’re doing?!”
He rolled on, out into the hallway. There was a thud behind him—the drip had fallen over. He backed up, stood it upright again. Pushed Chamon toward the exit. He looked down at his friend. Still sleeping.
A man in scrubs came running toward them. He smiled tensely. “What’s going on here?”
Nikola tore the drip line from Chamon’s arm—he would survive without it for a few minutes.
“My friend needs to leave the ward.” He continued pushing the bed.
“No, no, I don’t think so,” the nurse protested, also blocking his way.
Enough now.
“Look, there are two men on their way up here to kill him, so lay off!” Nikola shouted.
Britt and the others grabbed at the bed. Shouted at him. Nikola gesticulated with his arms. The lights on the ceiling looked like the white lines on a highway.
At the end of the hallway, the doors opened and Nikola saw them: the two men stepped inside. He knew what they wanted to do now—what he didn’t know was how to stop it. Everything seemed to happen in ultraslow motion after that, like someone was showing all the agitated people frame by frame. Angry frowns. Flushed red cheeks. Confused, irritated eyes.
The men were still wearing their sunglasses. They swung their arms, turned their heads like T. rexes on the prowl.
Nikola shouted. “No, no!”
They stepped closer, toward the bed where Chamon was lying. The nurses, or whoever they were, still didn’t understand a thing. They continued to pull at the bed.
The men had almost reached them now, and Nikola could see that one of them had a gun in his hand. Ten feet away. Britt Fuentes cried out; she finally understood what was going on. Nikola reacted instinctively: he pushed the bed as hard as he could, sent it rolling as far as possible toward the doors, past the two intruders.
The man with the gun hissed something, but Nikola didn’t catch what he said. Then he turned around, raised his pistol, and headed after the bed. Nikola threw himself at him, one last effort.
People were screaming. Maybe there wo
uld be a bang now: a bullet to the head. It didn’t matter. Nikola tried to grab the gun. Lashed out all around him. He hit something hard—the pistol flew out of the man’s hand.
“Cunt!” the man shouted, looking like he had just woken up from a dream. Maybe he realized that without the gun, it would all go to shit. He started hurrying away. The older of the two did the same, shoving one of the women to get past and practically knocking Britt Fuentes to the floor. But he was moving more slowly, and he paused as he reached Chamon’s bed. Britt Fuentes pulled at him the way a toddler pulls at their mother. There was a bang. They fumbled for a few seconds, and the man managed to throw her off. Then he vanished through the doors.
Nikola took a deep breath. Was it over now?
The nurses continued to shout. People were running around him like headless chickens. Britt’s face was completely red. It looked like Chamon was moving in bed. A doctor came running and started to push him away. Someone who looked like a security guard grabbed the gun from the floor.
Nikola caught up with the bed. Looked down at Chamon. He was no longer moving. The doctor’s hands were pressed to Chamon’s stomach. Then Nikola saw it: the covers around his hands were red and sticky. What had happened? Deep down, he already knew. He saw the doctor trying to stem the bleeding—it was already surrounding Chamon like a sea. The man who had fought with Britt must have done it—shot him in the stomach.
Nikola saw his friend’s peaceful face.
He shouted at him: “Can you hear me?”
Chamon was still.
Chamon wasn’t breathing.
Chamon.
11
Riche: classy, stylish, great people watching. Stockholm’s premiere lunch spot for generations, and, come night—the timeless bar numero uno in town.
Even when she worked in the area, Emelie had never quite felt comfortable there, but Josephine, aka Jossan, loved Riche, so she obediently caught the bus over whenever they had lunch plans together. It was okay—like going on a day trip to some animal park you used to visit as a child. Emelie thought back to when she had bumped into Magnus Hassel and Anders Henriksson in a restaurant nearby, when Magnus had recommended that she hire Marcus.