by Jens Lapidus
Bello had waved his hand to order another drink.
“NATO barely exists anymore, you know that. But people back home need stuff, it’s basically high chaparral in the hood. And Mr. One is building up his supplies.”
“Guessed as much. He always wants more explosives.”
“I know.”
“Do you think there’s gonna be a war now, once Yusuf’s family works out that he’s dead?”
“How would they know that he’s dead?”
Bello had spoken to the waiter in Arabic, ordered a glass of champagne, and then he turned to Nikola. “Habibi, I don’t think it can get much worse than it is right now.”
The sun had been setting over the water. The palms, the silhouette of the famous hotel, the red clouds: Nikola felt like the Dubai tourist board had draped a huge Instagram filter over the entire sky. The world wasn’t that beautiful in reality.
* * *
—
Nikola had received the Snapchat message from Jacub, one of the boys back home, after three weeks and four days: it was only on-screen for five seconds, but he didn’t need to see it for any longer. Completely insane: Mr. 1 got out today, they’re not gonna prosecute. You two have to come home. He needs help.
They landed at Arlanda at twelve thirty at night. The May air felt good. The guy who had sent the message was waiting for them in the arrivals hall. Just over an hour later, they were at his place, having everything explained to them. The apartment was full of empty cans of Monster, tubs of bodybuilding protein, and bottles of vitamins.
Jacub was some steroid-pumped, Instagram-filtered fitness guru. Nikola had met him only once before, after Chamon’s funeral, but he knew who he was: Isak’s man along the red metro line to Bredäng.
Jacub’s phone buzzed. He looked up at them. “He’s here.”
Nikola noticed both Jacub and Bello stiffen.
A minute later, Isak stepped into the room. He looked more tired than he had when Nikola saw him in prison—probably because he had spent the past few days partying hard.
“Boys,” he said, moving over to Nikola and Bello. Nikola tried to see how Bello acted. Bello was probably doing the same. Eventually, Nikola stepped forward. Hugged Isak.
“Congrats,” said Nikola. “It’s incredible.”
Bello hugged the boss, too. “Yani, totally crazy, insane.”
Isak slowly sat down. The sofa creaked. “Yeah, yeah. It’s not that strange. My lawyer’s the best in town, always has been. I admitted the drug stuff, should’ve been given three months for that, but since I’d already been in custody for close to two, that meant I’d served my time, with conditional release taken into account. But it was actually for the financial charges that my lawyer came up with the really good stuff. I voluntarily submitted everything to the Tax Authority, which meant they gave me some penalties, but that also stops them from bringing any further charges against me. You understand?”
Isak went on like he himself was a lawyer. Nikola didn’t understand a word of it, but he and Bello continued to congratulate Isak all the same.
“I hope you had a good time in Dubai, that the hotel was chill. But you’re back now, and we’ve got work to do. Plenty of people thought I was down for the count, but you know what my dad used to say?”
“No.”
“ ‘It’s when they think you’re down that they’re weak. They lower their defenses.’ So now’s the time to go after them. We’ve gotta go all in. We need to expand.” Slowly—Isak spoke slowly. “ID fraud’s the new thing. There’s so much cash in it you have no idea. Then there’s domain hijacking and the recycling centers—copper, metals, and environmental waste. You’re gonna be rich, boys. You do what I say, just follow my word. You get me?”
Nikola wasn’t sure whether he understood. He had been prepared to continue the hunt for whoever clipped Chamon—the hate was still burning in him for that, and Yusuf had only been the instigator or coconspirator, as they said in legalese. But this: being a runner for Mr. One—stepping back in time?
“What about those bastards? The ones who got to Chamon, what do we do about them?”
Mr. One got up. Rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand, scratched his stubble. “We’ve sent our message. Two of the cunts are missing. No one knows what happened, but everyone knows what it’s about. That’s enough. Now we have to drop what happened to Chamon, focus on other stuff. It’s time to turn the page.”
Nikola looked down. He stared at the packets of Star Nutrition Gainer Pro and Mutant Creakong that were lying everywhere. He should say something. He should.
“What you can do, Nikola, is have a chat with Magdalena. You know who that is?”
“Nope.”
“Yusuf’s girl, she’s been calling me like a whore every fucking day since I got out.”
* * *
—
Nikola was waiting for her in the middle of Stortorget. There weren’t many people about: it was only quarter to nine in the morning, and none of the shops were even open yet. The new town hall and courthouse rose up behind him, Saint Ragnhild’s Church to the left and the old town hall, cafés and other crap in front. The sky was as blue as a Smurf and the air felt nice. Compared to Dubai, it was sheer paradise—but the situation was still fucked-up. There was nothing smart about Isak sending him, of all people, to talk to Yusuf’s widow.
Magdalena’s heels clicked over the paving stones. Her head was bowed, knees bending with every step like she wasn’t used to her shoes. Her long, dark hair was parted in the middle, but it looked matted and uncombed, and he could see a tattoo behind her ear: a dolphin.
They were standing in the middle of the square now. Södertälje had started to wake up: there were more people moving around them. Apparently she knew that Nikola spoke her language, because her first words were in Syriac. “Why didn’t Isak come himself?”
“He’s busy with other stuff. But he sends his regards and knows you must feel terrible.”
“Where’s Yussi?”
“We can’t talk about that, sadly. But Isak still wanted me to let you know that if you need anything, we’ll fix it. Anything.”
“Where is Yusuf?” Magdalena repeated.
“Like I said, we can’t talk about that.”
“Isak knows where he is.”
Nikola didn’t reply. He could feel the lightning starting to invade his skull.
“I want to know where my husband is.”
Nikola massaged his temples. “You know what happened to Chamon?”
“I know. And I’m sure this is linked somehow. Yussi was so scared.”
“Did he know something was going to happen?”
“Yeah, ever since they killed Chamon. But I want you to tell me what happened.”
“I can’t say anything. Because I don’t know.”
Magdalena started to sob. “I can feel it, that he’s not alive anymore.”
Nikola almost felt a pang of compassion, of sorrow. Yusuf had gotten what he deserved: First, he had betrayed Chamon. Then he had tried to kill Nikola and Bello, but Magdalena was her own person; she had just hooked up with the wrong guy. “Hey, now,” he said, reaching out for her.
“Don’t touch me,” she shouted, staggering back. “I want to know where my husband is,” she shouted, in Swedish now. “You, Nikola, you have to tell me,” she was yelling—roaring, like a wounded animal, like a mother clutching her dead child.
Nikola glanced around. People were turning to look at them. A couple of men seemed to be weighing whether to come over and ask what was going on.
He tried to calm her down. Hold her arms. Hush her. She was crying. Shouting. He wanted to lead her away, but the first lightning bolts had struck in his head. He practically collapsed.
“I want to know where Yusuf is,” she repeated.
People all around
them had stopped what they were doing and were openly watching them. Waiting to see what would happen.
“I want to see Isak. Isak Nimrod!” she yelled, so loudly that Mr. One’s name could probably be heard all the way to Ronna.
“I want to know who killed my husband!”
Nikola staggered away without turning around. Crazy headache: his vision had gone white.
People were staring.
“I want to know who killed Yusuf!”
He had to shut off. Stop listening. But it had affected him. He also wanted to know more—he wanted to know who, other than Yusuf, had been behind Chamon’s murder. Yusuf hadn’t ordered the whole thing, he was sure of it.
His head was about to be blown to pieces.
He wasn’t planning to drop it like Mr. One had told him. He had to continue his hunt. He had to find whoever was responsible.
35
Emelie was on one of the new machines at the gym, trying to work out. Josephine had talked her into going.
Almost a month had passed since they went out for drinks. In a way, Emelie felt calmer now: she knew who had killed Katja. The police knew now, too: she had been the one to tell them. The idea had come to her as she left the bar after Magnus Hassel’s strange approach. All the same, the past few weeks had also been the worst of her life: she still couldn’t decide what to do about the baby growing in her belly.
She had been surprised by Magnus’s behavior. It was undignified, and she almost felt sad on his behalf—it just wasn’t what she had expected from him. He must have been heading home when he approached her with his drunken proposition. He hadn’t realized he would be stopping off at the restaurant, in any case, because he wouldn’t have had both his coat and briefcase with him otherwise. The coat could possibly be explained, people did sometimes keep those on, but not the case—there was no reason to have that with him if he was planning to stay.
That was when Emelie had had another, bigger thought: someone planning to leave somewhere takes their bag with them, while someone planning to return may well leave it behind. She transferred that thought to Katja’s murder: the backpack they had found on the roof was a sign. Whoever was up there must have been planning to go back; since the bag was still there, it figured that they must have been disturbed, or that something unexpected had happened. Something that wasn’t planned. It could be a murder. It could be something else.
Adam didn’t fit as the perpetrator. The backpack on the roof had never fit him. Besides, you didn’t kill someone you wanted to protect, that felt like a golden rule. He was the wrong person from an emotional perspective—he lacked the emotional motive. And that was when the past few weeks’ unprocessed, incoherent thoughts suddenly became clear. Adam’s son, Oliver. Thirteen years old. When she met him for the first time outside Bredäng metro station, he had begged her to help his father. It was a cool, March day, and Oliver had been wearing gloves. Emelie could picture them clearly: dirty, torn, winter gloves that were far too thick for the weather. He had taken them off when they shook hands: on the palm of one hand, he’d had a large bandage. She hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but now she knew what it meant. When they met for the second time, in her office, when she helped him write a letter, the bandage was gone—instead, he’d had a pale red scar. It perplexed her that she hadn’t thought of it at the time. Jan had also analyzed the backpack on the roof: it was too small to fit a grown man, but it would have been perfect on Oliver. Still—it could all be nothing but a coincidence.
The minute Emelie got home from her night out, she had pulled out the pictures of the backpack from the preliminary investigation. She had logged on to Facebook and brought up Oliver’s page. There were a number of pictures of him there. She knew what she was looking for without even daring to formulate the thought—she didn’t want it to be right.
But it was: in several pictures, Oliver was wearing a backpack. The backpack. It didn’t just fit him, it was his.
Middle of the night: Emelie called Nina Ley, even though she still didn’t quite understand how it all hung together.
* * *
—
Nina had called her back a day or two later. “We’re going to release Adam Tagrin,” she said glumly. “He’s no longer a suspect. His son’s going to be placed in a young offenders’ institute. We have reasonable grounds to suspect him of Katja’s murder. He confessed in an interview.”
Emelie had wanted to cry. “What did he say?”
Nina kept it brief. “He said that he was the one on the roof, looking down at the apartment. Your backpack theory was right: it is his. And when we searched his house, we found the keys for the padlock on the hatch.”
“But what has he said about the actual crime?”
“There’s a background.”
Emelie had heard her taking a deep breath. “In what sense?”
“There’s always a background. The background’s important.”
“What is it, then?”
“Katja and Adam didn’t want us to interview her again. She was going to refuse. They also knew there was a certain level of threat, so their plan was to leave Sweden, just run away from everything. Oliver overheard them talking and realized all of this.”
“What happened?”
“They were planning to leave the country without him, and he had trouble accepting that, he didn’t want to lose his father. In his world, it was Katja’s fault that his father was going to leave him. In his world, it was her whoring that risked taking his dad away from him. So, he ran up to the roof, where he apparently hung out quite often. But when Katja came home alone that afternoon, he went down to talk to her. He wanted to try to convince her that she and his dad should change their minds.”
“And then?”
“Well, Oliver wasn’t exactly clear here, but according to him they were just talking to begin with. He wanted Katja to leave his father in peace. They started arguing, and after a while Oliver became, in his own words, ‘so crazy with fear’ that he started waving the carving knife around. We haven’t managed to work out exactly what happened next, but he did, at least, stab her. I think it was some kind of blind rage.”
“And no one noticed the wounds on his hands afterward?”
“You saw them yourself, but you didn’t think anything of it at the time, right? Oliver is just a child. He’s not even criminally liable. We never interrogated him like that.”
Emelie had felt the tears welling up in her again.
Nina continued: “When Adam got home a few minutes later, he immediately worked out what his son had done and tried to disarm Oliver. That was when Adam cut his hand, the so-called disarming wound, and it’s also how his blood ended up in the living room. We found Oliver’s blood there, too, but our technicians confused it with Adam’s. It’s easily done with such close relatives. After that, they both fled the scene as quickly as possible.”
The line had gone silent. There was one question remaining, but Emelie already knew the answer—because the answer was just plain humanity. She laid it out herself: “And Adam didn’t call the police or say anything in your interviews because he didn’t want you to arrest his son.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s awful.”
Nina’s voice had been composed. “Murder is always awful. But this is what rage and fear does to people. We see them everywhere these days. Rage and fear.”
* * *
—
The next day, Nina Ley had called her again. She sounded even more serious than she had during their last call. “Something else has happened.”
Emelie didn’t have the energy for any more difficult news, but she was curious all the same.
“Your friend Teddy,” Nina said, “is suspected of murder and aggravated arson.”
Emelie had been in her office at the time. She had closed the door as she clutched the phon
e to her ear. The bright sunlight was accentuating the dirty windows, glittering in the filth. Everything was on the verge of falling apart.
“What are you talking about?”
“Someone has been murdered and a large building has burned down, and everything points to Teddy. We have a warrant out for his arrest. He’s been charged in absentia.”
“What points to Teddy?”
“I’m afraid I can’t give you any more details this time—you know one another and I’m bound by preliminary investigation confidentiality. But I have to ask: Do you know where he is?”
Emelie had felt like she was about to run out of air, like the oxygen around her had vanished. For a brief second, she had weighed up ending the call. She needed to gather her thoughts. She had to understand. Teddy was supposed to have killed a person and burned down a house. The father of her unborn child. The man she thought she knew.
“I have no idea where he is,” she eventually said. “I’ve been trying to call him since I worked out everything with Oliver, but he isn’t answering.”
* * *
—
After the call, she had gone back to her own apartment, locked the security gate from the inside, taken the key into the bedroom with her, and clutched the personal alarm fob in her hand—she wondered whether it still worked. She had to talk to Teddy. About everything. She slumped down onto the bed. It was too soft, she thought, instinctively bringing her hands to her belly. It was growing, and a trained eye could probably tell exactly what was going on in there. She had been wearing loose, baggy blouses over the past couple of days, but in just a few weeks’ time, there would be no more hiding it. In a few weeks, she would be out of time for making her decision. She felt like she should, at least, tell her mother. And above all: she had to get ahold of Teddy.