by Jens Lapidus
After four days, their first batch was ready. More than six hundred grams of Kit Kat, packed, weighed, and measured into pouches with a gram in each. They opened the doors and left the lab. It was five in the morning. The May sun was rising like a volcano over by the road.
“Sunlight, here we come,” Roksana yelled.
* * *
—
The amounts and the speed they were cooking it: if they sold the whole lot, they might be able to claw together enough money for the psychos—they had a real chance of making it. The very next night, they went to Transmission#3; they went to Ghost Town Sessions the night after that. They sold the ket for more than fifty thousand kronor. The old crowd was flocking around them again: club organizers, old friends, new friends, friends of friends. Above all: buyers. It was like nothing had happened, like they had never been away. To begin with, Roksana barely had time to go onto the dance floor. But during the last hour, once people had already been on their K trips, twice and even three times, she danced like she would never run out of energy.
Billie wanted to know where they had been lately, and when they gave a vague answer, she started roaring with laughter. “You two always said you would just be friends.”
“And we still are just friends, nothing else,” Roksana replied.
The next weekend, they set out with new bags, to new illegal clubs, to old and new customers. They lowered the price to one hundred kronor a hit, three hundred for a bag. People gathered around them in crowds like they were some kind of Håkan Hellström show. They off-loaded sixty thousand kronors’ worth of Kit Kat. Concentrated horse tranquilizer was a sweet product. The rumors about them, the cheap new party makers, spread like a Kardashian post over Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Kik Messenger. They paid off two hundred thousand of the psychos’ money.
A few days later, the Boss called.
“It’s taking too long.”
“But we’ve paid off two hundred thousand.”
“I don’t care. I want the rest of our money. You’ve got three weeks. Understand?”
“Okay, okay, but that’s almost impossible.”
“Three weeks.”
Click.
* * *
—
She went over to her parents’ place. They had seen each other only once since she got back from Tehran, the week before the goods arrived—back when she still had time. Her mother had practically started crying when she pulled out the silver cutlery from Etty and the slippers Roksana had bought, and then she had questioned her for more than two hours. Her father had been more cautious, but she could see the eagerness in his movements; he was curious, too, and glad she had gone.
Today, only her father was home. He was sitting in front of the TV, watching some French documentary about ISIS. They hugged. He smelled like he always did, was dressed like he always was. When she sat down next to him, he turned off the TV.
“Roksana joonam, I get so depressed watching things like this.”
“Then why do you watch them?”
“I can’t help it. It’s like when you drive past an accident on the highway. It makes you feel sick but you still can’t help looking, reading, following what they’re doing down there.”
Her father leaned back on the sofa. He looked so small, like he was about to drown among all the cushions. “How could the world have ended up like this? When your mother and I were young, it felt like things could only get better.”
Roksana had to say it now—she had no choice, no matter how hard it felt. She had to ask her untruthful question. “Dad,” she said in a serious voice. “I don’t know how much longer I can live with Z. It’s not working out. I need to find somewhere else.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’ve been frantically looking for a place that doesn’t cost too much, but when I eventually find one, I’m going to need to move fast.” It felt shitty having to lie to him, of all people, but she had no choice. “So, I was wondering if you could increase the mortgage on the house, so I could borrow some money from you?”
“Can’t you just live here for a few months? Until something else turns up, something you can rent rather than buy?”
“But, Baba, I should still buy something. I don’t think it would be good for Mom and I if I moved in. We’d get on one another’s nerves. It wouldn’t be good for you two. It’s better if I have the money ready.”
Her father tipped back his head. “You’re right, azizam, you’re right. And you’ll need your own place when you start your psychology course. It’ll be fantastic.”
That last part was particularly painful, and she thought of asking him about what her grandmother had said, about how he had wanted to be a musician but been forced onto another course. But now wasn’t the moment.
He continued: “Of course you can borrow money from us, the minute you find something. But not now, it seems unnecessary. We’ll wait a while.”
Roksana broke down inside.
* * *
—
On the bus away from her parents’ house, she checked Instagram. One type of post was dominating the American accounts: this year’s Coachella festival had just started. Pictures of the geometric tents, of the people who were so pretty and yet so bohemian that they all looked like Gigi Hadid, of spotlit stages full of smoke and pyrotechnic marvels. Another type of image dominated the Swedish accounts: people proudly showing off their bookings for Into the Valley and so on—tickets for that summer’s Swedish festivals had just gone on sale.
At the same time, on repeat in her head: she and Z needed to come up with another eight hundred thousand kronor. In three weeks. The sums just didn’t add up, even if they were selling well.
On her phone: pictures of wasted Americans dancing in the desert.
And then she had an idea. They had gotten to know plenty of DJs, party planners, and buyers lately. Theoretically, they had a great network of contacts. A handle on the Stockholm party scene.
The thought grew in her mind. Their only chance of getting the money together in so short a period of time was if they organized something themselves. Plus handled all the sales and ticket revenues.
She and Z should organize a club. Their very own mega nightclub.
37
Teddy pressed the button on the intercom. He was expecting a gruff voice on the other end—someone asking who he was and what he wanted—but instead, the door clicked open immediately. He turned to Dejan before he stepped inside. “I’ll have my phone on the whole time, no matter what happens,” he said.
Dejan grinned beneath the brim of his LA cap. “And if she gives you gas?”
Trendy fashionistas could wear soft black caps. Skaters and trash metal wannabes sometimes wore caps with straight brims and logos, while rich Swedes from Saltsjöbaden and Täby preferred navy blue NY caps. But on Dejan: a cap looked about as natural as a wizard’s hat.
Teddy said: “If she gives me gas, you’ll have to hold the ropes till I wake up.”
The state-run dental clinic in Alby: someone had carved a stylized dick beneath the buttons in the elevator. Teddy’s old tooth had started to ache—or rather, the implant that had replaced the tooth he’d had extracted while he was in prison. It would have cost him four months’ wages while he was working at Leijon—but the dental work had been covered by some kind of insurance he had by working for the firm. He no longer had private insurance. He had practically nothing now, and the implant crunched like he was chewing gravel every time he ate. It hurt so much that he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t even think; so even though he had been on the run for a month now, he knew he had to do something about it. It was urgent.
But his biggest concern was that he didn’t dare just go to the dentist like normal, Dejan had to keep watch outside. If the police caught wind of his appointment today, it could all be over.
&
nbsp; The dentist had dimples and asked him to lie back in the chair. Her soft Finnish accent and faint smile calmed him somehow. He checked that his phone was still turned on, that he had coverage, and then he opened his mouth as wide as he could. There was a bookmark taped to the light shining down into his mouth: a picture of an angel. Teddy closed his eyes. Let the dentist do her thing. His life was anything but calm right now. He really could do with an angel to watch over him.
Keeping a low profile in relation to the network wasn’t easy—their reach was clearly extensive—but the police force was virtually impossible to avoid, at least in the long run. Teddy had plenty of friends who had done stupid things in their youth, illegal activities, who had been wanted. They had often thought that they just needed to stay with their parents for a while, lie low, play computer games at some cousin’s place, crash on the sofa at some woman’s house, and pretend everything was normal. But that life didn’t suit anyone genuine. You got the urge to go out and cruise around with the boys, you wanted to meet women, you wanted to be involved when things happened. The cops had your picture and your description in all their radio cars, you were on their red list. They had you in their nationwide register, they knew who you were friends with, which networks you were a member of. They even knew who taught at the school that your kid, who you saw only every other Friday, attended. Eventually, they would find you.
But Teddy had taken precautions. He wasn’t going to make the same mistakes his friends had made fifteen years ago. He had gotten rid of the Volvo and bought a worn-out old Fiat instead, registering it to a friend of Dejan’s. He had tinkered with the driver’s seat so that it could lie flat—he had been sleeping in the car as best he could, with his long legs drawn in to his chest like a child, parking in different wooded areas outside of the city and setting his alarm to go off several times a night so that he could stretch, keep moving. He never went home. Lived like a traveler. Wore the same T-shirt six days in a row, then washed it and his underwear in the sink in restaurant toilets. He stopped taking showers at Dejan’s place and started going to Sydpoolen, a swimming pool in Södertälje, instead. He had watched from a distance as the police raided his friend’s place. He had seen them do the same at Linda and Bojan’s, and of course at his own apartment, but he didn’t dare call them to say it was all bullshit. He hadn’t even taken any calls from Emelie—he didn’t want to drag her into a bad situation, suspicions of co-conspiracy or anything. He had taken caution to new levels: if he had been careful before the events at the estate, he was paranoid now. He grew a beard, didn’t go anywhere without sunglasses, took a detour if he saw someone who might know him. He borrowed cash from Dejan. He didn’t work out. He ate badly. He could feel what it was doing to his stomach and had been sleeping badly even before the toothache started torturing him. He became the world’s loneliest man.
During the day, he had spent most of his time in various 7-Elevens, using their rental computers. He had gone over what happened out at Hallenbro Storgården again and again. How he had interrupted Fredrik O. Johansson and his nameless passenger, who were clearly trying to empty the place of evidence. How deeds, DVDs, and other material had vanished into the Samsonite case, which, in turn, had vanished with the nameless man. How Teddy really wanted to find the contents of that bag—clearly it was something the network didn’t want to come out. And then: the cop in the motorbike helmet who had clipped Fredrik O. right in front of him. He couldn’t be a real police officer—he had to be a fake.
The big house had burned down—Teddy’s theory was that the passenger must have set it alight, though maybe it was the biker cop. In any case, the police didn’t seem to have found much other than the rental car Teddy had arrived in, which they had clearly managed to trace back to him. Maybe he had been caught on the surveillance cameras, too, he didn’t know. They should have burned down with the rest of the crap.
He wanted to know who owned Hallenbro Storgården and to find out more about the men he had met and those he hadn’t. Above all: he wanted to know more about Fredrik O. Johansson. He had asked Loke if he could hack into the police’s internal computer system to find out which officer had been on the scene at the estate, if he was even a real officer. To find who the real killer was.
Loke had gotten back to him a few days later. “Sorry, little man,” he had said, wrinkling his nose as he sat down in the passenger seat of the Fiat. “But I couldn’t do it. They’ve got new firewalls and new security programs. I thought I could get in anywhere, but not anymore. Maybe I’m getting old.”
“Isn’t there a course you can take?” Teddy tried to joke.
“I’m the one who runs them, cutie,” Loke had said. “By the way, Emelie Jansson got in touch with me last week. She sounded really keen to get ahold of you.”
“I know she’s been looking for me. But I don’t want to drag her into all this.”
“She was fully aware that you’re suspected of all this crap. And she still wanted to talk to you.”
* * *
—
It was true, what he had said—he didn’t want to drag Emelie into this. But, in the end, he had called her anyway. They hadn’t said much over the phone, and decided instead to meet in the place they had gone for dinner a few months earlier. Teddy had dropped his phone from a bridge as soon as they ended the call. He didn’t know whether she was still pregnant; he was just happy that she wanted to see him, despite everything that was going on.
* * *
—
Raw Sushi & Grill, a few hours later. Teddy had arrived an hour early and scoped out the area outside. Though he fundamentally trusted her, he had to be sure that she hadn’t called the police or that they were tapping her phone.
He had waited until she came through the glass door into the restaurant, and watched her order what looked like a juice. She seemed worried, her eyes darting back and forth. When he stepped inside, it didn’t seem like she had recognized him at first, but that was the point. He, on the other hand, couldn’t tell whether she was still pregnant; her top was far too loose.
They hugged. And when their heads were at their closest point, he had felt her warm breath in his ear. “I know you didn’t do it, Teddy, but what happened?”
Teddy had wanted to hold her there, to whisper back into her ear. But she had pulled away and sat down.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t do it.” Then he had leaned forward and explained, in a low voice. About the men he had visited. How he had tried to put pressure on them and how he had tricked Fred O. He talked about Hallenbro Storgården, where this Fred bloke had gone to tidy up. About the Samsonite case that had been taken away from the house. Once he was finished, it was her turn. She told him that they had released Adam Tagrin and that Oliver had been placed under arrest for Katja’s murder while they investigated further.
Then she had said: “Teddy, I’m not going to keep it.”
He glanced at her glass of juice; she hadn’t taken a single sip. “Why?”
Emelie looked around, possibly to see whether anyone at the tables around them was listening. Then she had crossed her arms, demonstratively. “I wouldn’t be able to cope with being a mother right now. And I don’t think you and I would make a good parenting team.”
It felt like a rock had dropped inside him. A weight dragging him down to the floor, to the ground. “But I think you’d be a fantastic mom,” he had said. “And I could be a good dad. I can learn.”
It seemed like Emelie was searching for the right words; he had never seen her like that before. Eventually, she said: “Maybe you’re right, but I have my doubts.”
“I don’t think you really have doubts.”
“Stop, Teddy. I can’t be in a relationship with a man suspected of murder.”
“But you know I’m innocent.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just that. You know who you are. Someone who attracts this kind of crap, som
eone whose history is just full of trouble. You’re trouble, and that doesn’t work for me. I’ve made up my mind. I’m sorry.”
Then she had stood up.
* * *
—
The cute dentist pushed back the light. The bookmark angel disappeared from Teddy’s field of vision. “Okay, you can rinse out now,” she said.
Teddy sat up; he didn’t know how long he had been lying there. The plastic cup was standing on what looked like a small, porcelain fountain which, in turn, was part of the equipment around it. He swilled the water around his mouth and spat into the fountain. His cup automatically refilled. He ran his tongue over his new tooth.
* * *
—
“Want to take a spin in my new car?” Dejan asked as they walked away from the dental clinic.
“Nah,” said Teddy. “But I’m glad you’ve got a new one.” The Tesla was about as discreet as a Lamborghini.
Dejan laughed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a pinball. “You’re in a real shitty sitch, my man. You sure you don’t want to leave town? I know people in Palma, Marbella, Belgrade.”
“I need to straighten all this stuff out.”
“You can follow me to the car, at least?”
“Okay.”
They passed huge billboards advertising some TV channel. Relax with the best crime shows, it said. Apparently it was relaxing to watch people killing one another. As they approached Dejan’s new car—a Porsche Panamera—the door of another one opened. A man climbed out and started striding toward them. It was Mazern, aka Kum.
Kum: the godfather, Teddy’s old boss from before he was sent down. Not that he was a godfather in any religious sense of the word. Kum was a myth in the Stockholm region; a ghost to the police, a gangster legend with more than nine lives. He was the mentor and father figure all the guys needed, at least if they lived the Life. The man rumored to have earned more from tobacco, coke, smuggled booze, and money laundering than anyone in Sweden before him. The man who had apparently quit, and now only invested in legit businesses. They shook hands.