Top Dog

by Jens Lapidus

  HUGO: Yes, if you fold down the backseat. I love our new car.

  LOUISE: It cost twice as much as the picture, and you tell me that I’m the one spending unnecessarily.

  HUGO: Jesus, it’s a Porsche Cayenne, it’s a fantastic car.

  LOUISE: Okay, okay, but listen, can’t you come home for a while anyway?

  HUGO: Mousey, definitely tomorrow, but not tonight. I really don’t have time. But listen, I’ve been thinking of something. Do you think we should buy a summer house somewhere?

  LOUISE: What about Strömsund? We’ve talked about building one there.

  HUGO: I’m so sick of my dad. I can’t cope with him anymore.

  LOUISE: Has something happened?

  HUGO: Not exactly. Listen, I have to get back to work. Kisses.

  LOUISE: Kisses. Bye.

  TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 51

  To: Hugo Pederson

  From: Göran Blixt (boss)

  Date: 26 February 2006

  Time: 12:30

  GÖRAN: It’s me. Are you in the office?

  HUGO: No, I’m at lunch.

  GÖRAN: Aha, who with?

  HUGO: Uhh, my wife.

  GÖRAN: Nice, lunch is a good time of day to show the missus a bit of appreciation. Where are you?

  HUGO: You’re not planning on swinging by to disturb us? Ha ha.

  GÖRAN: Ha ha, no, like I said. You have to show the wife respect. But I do want a chat with you once you’re back. I’ve found out that Svenska Dagbladet’s been sniffing around our Danfoss bid. I don’t know what they think they’re going to find, but I don’t like it. Once they get their teeth into something, they twist and turn it so that people think it looks suspicious. And when the press wakes up, that means the Financial Supervisory Authority wakes up, never mind the other authorities. We can’t have that, can we?

  HUGO: No, of course not. I agree.

  GÖRAN: Good, now I know we’re on the same page. And I haven’t been unclear?

  HUGO: No, I understand, if anyone gets in touch with any questions, we need good answers.

  GÖRAN: Exactly, and we need to go through all this with Danielsson Lind, but that’s not all. I’m assuming you haven’t done anything on your own.

  HUGO: No, no, we aren’t allowed.

  GÖRAN: Exactly, you’re aware of our insider trading rules.

  HUGO: Yeah, of course.

  GÖRAN: Good, because just between us, it should be very clear that if the hacks find anything that doesn’t look right, anything to do with you, you’ll get the boot immediately. No discussions, no damn disagreements over severance, about how I should have known or about there being problems with my leadership. Right?

  HUGO: No, no, why is this even an issue?

  GÖRAN: I’m not saying it is an issue. I’m just saying that if that happens, I want you to have signed the relevant contracts. Do you understand?

  HUGO: I understand.

  SMS MESSAGES

  To/from: Unknown

  From/to: Hugo Pederson

  26 FEB

  In: Hi, Hugo, thanks for lunch today. Would like to work with you and Pierre. We’ll be in touch.

  Out: Thanks to you, very interesting chat earlier. Let’s speak when we have something in the works. /Hugo

  1 MARCH

  In: We have something in the works.

  Out: Interesting. Want to meet for lunch? Same place as before?

  In: Happy to meet but not a good idea to be seen together. Have booked a room with my lawyer, the one I mentioned. Today, 12:00?

  Out: Good, perfect. See you there.

  2 MARCH

  Out: Thanks for yesterday. I have more information for you. Will send by encrypted mail. Regards to your lawyer. Nice guy!

  In: We’ll get to work tomorrow before lunch. Important that not everyone goes at once. You can’t start before 15:00 tomorrow.

  TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 52

  To: Pierre Danielsson (co-suspect)

  From: Hugo Pederson

  Date: 2 March 2006

  Time: 15:34

  HUGO: Hey, hey.

  PIERRE: Hey, how’s it going?

  HUGO: Incredibly well. I met our friend at his lawyer’s office yesterday.

  PIERRE: Interesting.

  HUGO: Very, I think he’s a nice guy. Big art collector, too. Told me he collects Zorn, for example. You know Anders Zorn?

  PIERRE: Of course I do. Those paintings don’t come cheap.

  HUGO: Apparently he hangs the best ones in his fernery, as he calls it, where only certain guests get to go.

  PIERRE: Okay, get to the point.

  HUGO: I just wanted to say that the ball is rolling, I’ll be able to send you more information, but we can’t do business before 3 p.m. tomorrow.

  PIERRE: Understood. Listen, though, there’s something else. I’m guessing you’re finding the logistics as tricky as I am.

  HUGO: Yeah, it’s pretty tough. Taking bags to and from Switzerland or the Isle of Man, just to bring the money back home.

  PIERRE: I think I’ve found a solution.

  HUGO: What?

  PIERRE: A guy called Mats Emanuelsson. Apparently he helps out with exactly the kind of thing you and I need.

  HUGO: Sounds great.

  PIERRE: But I don’t know much about him. Maybe it’s not safe getting help from an outsider?

  HUGO: Let’s think about it.

  TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 53

  To: Carl Trolle (friend)

  From: Hugo Pederson

  Date: 14 March 2006

  Time: 01:34

  HUGO: ‘Sup, man. Were you sleeping?

  CARL: Ehh, couldn’t sleep. Just been twisting and turning like a hot dog.

  HUGO: Fredrika’s not home?

  CARL: Nah, she’s out with the girls, Pauline and the others.

  HUGO: Late.

  CARL: She’s always out late.

  HUGO: So what time does she get up in the mornings?

  CARL: I leave before she even wakes up.

  HUGO: Calle…

  CARL: Yeah?

  HUGO: I’m not doing so well.

  CARL: What d’you mean?

  HUGO: I’m sleeping like shit.

  CARL: Welcome to the club.

  HUGO: But it’s not just that. I’ve been having attacks of some kind. Like, my breathing gets faster, I feel like I can’t cope, start sweating, just want to scream, have such crappy thoughts, like everything’s worthless. Like I’m worthless.

  CARL: Um, hello, things are going insanely well for you right now. New car, looking at places in the country, everything.

  HUGO: I know, I know, but this is something else. I don’t know what it is. I’ve been trying to go to bed later and later, so I’ll be really tired, but I still can’t sleep. Then there are all these images in my head, like I’m locked in with a pack of dogs and can’t get out. And then I just want to scream. Louise is lying next to me the whole time, completely oblivious.

  CARL: You never did like dogs.

  HUGO: Maybe that’s it.

  CARL: Can’t you talk to Louise about this?

  HUGO: No, what do you think?

  CARL: You working out enough? Maybe you should start some kind of fighting sport, heard that Foffe loves Thai boxing.

  HUGO: Yeah, maybe. I don’t know.

  CARL: Listen, I can hear the key in the lock. Fredrika’s home. Can we talk tomorrow?

  HUGO: Okay, speak later.

  30

  The exclusive private pool suite at Sturebadet Spa: booked. The Turkish Baths, they called it. Bello snorted. “Why would they want to call anything Turkish? Don’t they know what animals they are? What they did to our people, us Armenians?”

  “I know,”
said Nikola. “But the place is perfect. And everything’s prepared.”

  He and Bello were waiting in the lounge, both wearing the spa’s thick white dressing gowns and complimentary slippers. They had booked the place through Bello’s cousin’s friend’s former employee—a semi-alcoholic guy who now lived in a trailer by Slagsta Marina. The guy had paid for the entire booking in cash—Nikola didn’t want a money trail that could be followed back to him. He had canceled the spa’s own therapists and paid extra to bring in his own people: a couple of Thai women who didn’t speak a word of Swedish but who worked at a massage studio on Nygatan. Maybe that would satisfy Yusuf: a happy ending. The guy probably enjoyed a hand job more than the real thing.

  Because he was involved in what had happened. He had betrayed his own brother. Let him down. Yusuf—who had given Chamon work for several years. Yusuf—who was supposed to be helping Nikola find the bastards, when in actual fact he was one of them.

  The women in reception had stared at Nikola and Bello as they checked in: sunglasses and caps pulled low on their heads. They weren’t used to people from the ’burbs in this part of town. Naive, gullible, weak Stockholm: how could they think they could treat someone the way they had treated him without there being consequences? A father who was allowed to leave his wife and child—a society that valued that particular freedom over the family. A school that crammed twenty-five overenergetic boys and seven shy, quiet girls into the same class, with a teacher who had broken down after the first term and never returned. A city that let its social worker hags, school welfare officers, asshole principals, and local-pussy-police harass him and the boys throughout their childhoods. That had condemned them before they even stole their first bags of candy from the supermarket. That had sent out a clear message when they were ten years old and their parents were laid off from Scania, given long-term sick leave, forced into early retirement or taxed to oblivion the minute they tried to run their own business: you don’t belong in this society. You won’t be given a job anywhere, but you can’t run your own business, either. Plenty was written afterward, when the same people’s kids started shooting one another in gang disputes and downward spirals of revenge. But once you had decided to get out, wind down, go legit, the police authorities didn’t even arrest those who had killed. Everyone let them down. No one stepped up. This country closed all roads but one: the one Nikola was now on.

  But he was being careful all the same. The guy had checked that there weren’t any surveillance cameras in reception itself, and Nikola had sent a fourteen-year-old kid through the rest of Sturegallerian two hours earlier, to spray over the four cameras there. Nikola didn’t want to be caught on film—he was smarter than those bastards.

  * * *

  —

  Yusuf had sounded surprised when Nikola called him. Guarded, almost: he had replied primarily with monosyllabic sounds from the very back of his throat. As though he didn’t care. But Nikola could hear it: the cunt was happy. The cunt thought he had gotten away with helping those whores. The cunt thought that the cunt could fuck Nikola in the ass, like a real, genuine, 1,000 percent cunt.

  “I’ve tried calling you a hundred times. I even went over to your place, tried to get ahold of your mom, everything,” said Yusuf. “Where you been?”

  “Uhh, I’ve been lying low, was knocked out with some shitty flu,” Nikola lied. He knew that Yusuf had been looking for him, but he had deliberately kept his head down. He didn’t know how he would react if he was forced to see Yusuf unexpectedly. “But I’m back on my feet and we need to chat now that Mr. One’s inside. I was thinking we could meet someplace nice.”

  “Ahh, sweet,” said Yusuf. “I need to talk to you, too.”

  “Good, ’cause I was thinking we should go someplace where no one’s listening and all that.”

  “Sure. Sweet.”

  “You ever tried Sturebadet? The Östermalmers’ fave spa.”

  “Uhh. Nah.”

  “They have their own suite, insanely luxe, never been there myself but Bello’s bro had a bachelor party there.”

  The place really was perfecto: there was no way Yusuf could suspect a thing—not in the middle of town, not at the swankiest of addresses.

  “Sweet,” Yusuf said again.

  If the cunt said the word “sweet” once more, Nikola wouldn’t just do what he had planned. He would cut off his dick, too, and shove it in his ear.

  “Meet you there, then? I’ll tell Bello. And I’ll send you the exact time on Wickr.”

  “Sure. Sweet.”

  It was agreed: they were going to meet. And the cunt’s dick had to come off.

  * * *

  —

  Bello looked shaky. It wasn’t just that his leg was trembling like Grandpa’s hand when he poured tea—there was something about his lips, too, like they were moving the entire time, even though he wasn’t saying anything.

  The sofas were long and comfortable, the room meant for larger parties than theirs. Like Nikola said: bachelor and bachelorette parties, corporate events, group activities for Svenssons who thought they needed peace and quiet. The music was soft and low, some kind of Indian melody, pan pipes and synth drums.

  “Bro,” said Nikola. “What happens happens. Just take it easy.”

  “Can we go over everything again?” Bello looked strange in the dressing gown, which was two sizes too big. He actually reminded Nikola of Linda in it.

  Nikola took a sip of his cola. He had instructed the Thai women for later: they would serve cocktails and stuff, but Nikola’s and Bello’s would be alcohol-free.

  “Okay, it’s like this. The women come in first and do some massages and cleansing rituals for an hour and a half. After that, we’ve got the place to ourselves for two hours. Yusuf’ll be more wasted than us, but we’ll have to drink beers in the sauna so he doesn’t get suspicious. And the good thing is he’ll be as naked as we are, so we’ll know he doesn’t have anything on him.”

  “Then?”

  “Then, when the timing’s right, we do what we said.”

  His friend’s leg was shaking worse than a massage belt on turbo. “Okay, bro,” said Bello. “And Isak’s completely cool with this?”

  “Yeah, for God’s sake. It’s his order.”

  “Shit, man, Yusuf was practically like a father to me a few years back.”

  “To Chamon, too, but look how that turned out. You call me Bible Man, don’t you?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Do you read the Bible?”

  “Nah, not really. Even though the old lady wants me to.”

  “Doesn’t matter. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. You know that, surely?”

  Bello understood what he meant.

  * * *

  —

  Yusuf was late. Nikola’s stomach was full of butterflies. He wished he could be as calm as Chamon always was—oozing Prozac, chilling like a man. But with a stressed-out Bello on the sofa and a couple of Thai masseuses arriving at any minute, plus the spa’s own staff, who had already been up twice to check whether everything was “to their contentment”—what kind of word was “contentment,” anyway—Nikola wasn’t even half as chill as he would like to be. He got up, did a loop of the room to check the place out.

  The changing room was on the other side of the lounge, and he counted twenty lockers, all made of some expensive-looking wood. On the shelves beneath the mirrors, there were various complimentary products: hair gel, cotton swabs, skin lotion. The actual pool was in the next room. Nikola wondered how old the place really was. Tall columns with flourishes at the top, all clad in marble; more flourishes on the panels along the walls; a forty-foot pool with a complex mosaic pattern in the middle—honestly, they could be somewhere in Turkey three hundred years ago. Kind of. There were showers on the other side of the pool room, an anteroom with tiled walls and two sauna
s. The showers were the only thing to depart from the antique feeling: their long pipes shone like they had only been installed today.

  Nikola heard a voice he recognized from the lounge. It was Yusuf—the cunt had arrived.

  “Bro,” he said to him as they hugged. “We’ve got the entire pool to ourselves.”

  Yusuf smiled. “Crazy nice. When’re the chicks arriving?”

  Nikola and Bello sat on the benches in the changing room while they waited for Yusuf to change: watching him like he was an inmate at Guantánamo. Checking to make sure nothing caught the light, listening to make sure nothing jingled.

  “Sweet dressing gowns they’ve got here.” Yusuf smiled once he was done.

  They sat down in the lounge. Bello handed them drinks from a little bar, prepped just like Nikola had ordered. They talked about Isak’s arrest, how they thought the boss’s trial would pan out. They talked through all the different things they were doing for the boss: the tanning salon in Ronna, the restaurant on Badhusgatan, the explosives Mr. One always wanted topped up, people who needed to pay and guys who needed paying. The pigs’ Operation Secure and Operation Phoenix. They discussed Chamon’s murder. Who could really be behind it?

  After twenty minutes, there was a knock at the door, and the masseuses came in.

  “Dachri, I thought you would’ve found some Romanians or Bulgarians,” said Yusuf.

  “Nah, doesn’t work in a place like this. You know that.”

  The music in the background was like waves crashing onto a beach.

  The hamam ritual was nice. The girls must have taken some kind of class, or maybe it was just in their genes. First, the boys showered: Bello wanted to keep his swimming trunks on, for some weird reason. Yusuf roared with laughter at that. “Bro, is it ’cause your dachri’s nothing to boast about?” The room steamed up. Nikola turned the heat a little higher. He touched the glistening pipes. One of them was hot: he pulled back his hand. On the other, tiny droplets of water were condensing: it was cold.

  They lay down on the massage beds. After thirty minutes’ massage, it seemed like Yusuf had fallen asleep. If it hadn’t been for the masseuses, Nikola would have gone for him there and then. They drank their cocktails. Yusuf was going on about his plans to go over to fraud full-time, rather than blackmail. So much more cash, but only half the risk. Next, they were told to stand by the edge of the pool with small towels wrapped around their hips. The marble floor was remarkably warm. The masseuses pulled on exfoliating gloves and started scrubbing their bodies. After a few minutes, they rinsed off the cream. Then it was time for some kind of clay. Feet, legs, stomach, and back. The clay hardened quickly, arms, hands, neck: it changed color and became more grayish. It gave Nikola a bad feeling, like it would be impossible for him to break free from it, like someone was trapping him in wet cement.