Top Dog
Page 32
“Mi friend,” said Kum. “Dejan called me. Is your tooth better?”
“Fine now, I hope.”
“A man’s got to look after his teeth. They’re the first thing a person notices.”
“I didn’t get any dental care when I was first sent down. You had to be given leave for that.”
“It happens. And now you’re borrowing from Dejan to pay the dental bills?”
Teddy couldn’t tell whether Kum was joking or serious. There were practically no wrinkles on his face: it looked like someone was pulling his skin from both sides. Had the godfather had a face-lift?
“I’ll pay him back,” said Teddy. There was no denying that his feelings for Kum were complicated.
Kum shook his head. Though he was talking, his face remained still. “You won’t pay anything back. I want to remind you that it was me who ordered you to do that kidnapping, even though I had no idea who the kiddie fuckers behind it were. And there’s one thing you should know about me, Teddy…” Kum paused for effect. “I might have stopped with what I once did—but I’m still a man. How much of our language do you know, Teddy? Lojalność, do you know what that means?”
“I think so.”
“That’s how you were when you were convicted: they ground you down in interviews and you still did your time without ever mentioning another name. Without saying a thing to the cops. Lojalność, Teddy. It means loyalty. A good principle to live by. I place more value on that than most other things in this world. And you upheld it better than many. So even if we’ve had our problems, you and I, I’m here now. I want to help you.”
Teddy actually felt himself relax slightly. Some of the tension, loneliness, fear, it ran right off him. Kum really did want to help. But at the same time: he had no idea how it would work. He was wanted for murder by the Swedish state—what could a former godfather do about that?
Kum said: “You need to find out whether that cop, Nina Ley, can be trusted. No matter how much I hate the pigs, she’s your best hope right now.”
* * *
—
Kum and Teddy were standing at the top of the Katarina Elevator, looking down. Teddy had called Nina Ley and said he wanted to meet.
“You know there’s a warrant out for your arrest?” she said. He couldn’t hear any compassion in her voice.
“Yeah, of course I do. But I’m not going to hand myself in voluntarily. I didn’t shoot Fredrik O. Johansson, but I do know what happened out there, and I think you do, too.”
“So tell me.”
“It’s not a good idea over the phone.”
“Then we’ll have to do it outside of protocol, like I have with Emelie and all the other stuff. Can we meet outside the station?”
“No,” said Teddy. “I’ll send you a location. And just you, no one else. Promise me that.”
“I promise. How will I recognize you?”
“I’ll message you when you’re there.”
* * *
—
The walkway between the Katarina Elevator and Mosebacke was roughly 130 feet aboveground. Teddy felt almost dizzy as he peered down at Slussen. Or rather: what was left of Slussen. Directly beneath them were a number of large holes the size of soccer fields. Right in the middle of town: they were busy demolishing the past; the pavements and roads, tunnels and channels were laid bare like wounds. The gray gravel, the yellow diggers, and the brownish-orange planks piled up like some enormous game of pick-up sticks looked like something imported from a war-torn city in the Middle East. The steel reinforcements hung like rusty strands of hair from the torn-up remnants of road. Loose paving stones and lumps of concrete spread out like something from The Road. And everywhere: holes. Holes into the underworld, holes between former pavements, holes down to the water that threatened to eat Slussen from beneath. That was what a city changing shape looked like: as though a dusty bomb had dropped, and once they were finished something new would rise up here, impossible to imagine right now. Something without any connection to what once was.
Beyond the planks, on the other side of the holes, Teddy could see Dejan. Teddy had sent the location to Nina: Södermalmstorg, directly in front of Slussen metro station. Right now, Dejan was checking out the scene down there, making sure everything seemed calm.
I’m wearing an LA Dodgers cap, Teddy wrote in his message. He could see Dejan pacing back and forth, like a bear or a tiger in a cage at the concrete zoo. It was ten to six: Teddy would have to go down now. In ten minutes’ time, Nina was meant to show up.
“What’s your gut feeling?” Kum asked.
Teddy tried to see whether she was anywhere nearby. He could see the flower cart down there, the herring truck. The square was crawling with people, the last throes of rush hour—people jogging down to the metro, carrying heavy bags onto the buses, confused people trying to understand the new walkways that had been set up to cross the building site. And then the cyclists: they streamed by. Few of them were wearing helmets; those airbag collars were clearly popular these days. Teddy had read about them; the inventors claimed that by using advanced sensors, the collar learned the cyclist’s patterns of movement and then inflated to become a protective hood if they crashed or fell off.
“My heart says I trust her, because she clearly trusts Emelie,” he said to Kum. “But my brain says that she’s a cop. And I’m a wanted criminal.”
Kum bared his teeth: they were unnaturally white. “A pig’s always a pig. And it’s in their nature to act like one. But this particular pig seems to have characteristics of other animals. Come on, let’s go down.”
Dejan was over by the flower stand. Kum was next to Teddy, talking about his businesses as though everything were normal. He owned four asylum shelters outside of Stockholm, and was planning to open as many more. Teddy was getting bored. Maybe Nina wasn’t planning to show up at all; maybe she had been delayed or felt compelled to cancel since it would be serious misconduct not to arrest him.
There was a helicopter hovering high in the sky.
Suddenly something happened: Teddy felt it in the air before he even saw it—clearly his gangster senses were still working. He saw four men moving quickly from different directions as three unmarked cars pulled into Södermalmstorg with blue lights in their windows. Inside the metro station, he saw more men positioning themselves in front of the down escalators. Men wearing windbreakers, walking pants, and sneakers: the standard uniform of a plainclothes officer. The cars pulled up with screeching tires.
All around them, everything came to a standstill. The plainclothes officers moved closer, with deliberate movements: they thought they were about to catch a killer.
He still couldn’t see Nina Ley, but people began to scatter—what had happened to this town? Four well-built men rushing toward another man, and not a single person stopped to help, no one shouted anything, no one cared.
The only thing Nina had promised was that she would meet him alone. He knew she would be being fed information about how they were about to arrest him now. There was no point running—there were too many of them.
Kum said something.
Teddy turned around.
Kum grunted. “Oink, oink. Always oink oink.”
Teddy tried to smile, but all he could see was him being arrested more than ten years earlier, in the cottage where they had been keeping Mats Emanuelsson prisoner. Fragments of a memory that he had tried to repress. First the darkness when they cut the power. Then the pinpricks of light from their MP5s before they threw smoke grenades inside and stormed the place. Finally, the pain when the first cop knocked him down—his back and his head, like a forewarning of what was to come.
Then it all kicked off on Södermalmstorg. Teddy would have liked to see Nina Ley’s face right now—when she realized that Teddy hadn’t trusted her. That he had taken the safe approach ahead of the risky one: told her he w
as wearing a Dodgers cap when in actual fact that was Dejan.
The officers threw themselves at his friend, held him down. Maybe they were cuffing him, it was difficult to see even though they were only fifty feet away.
Dejan didn’t put up any resistance: he had been expecting this; it was all part of the plan. Teddy saw his Dodgers cap disappear beneath the mass of plainclothes officers’ bodies. Excessively brutal, like always.
“We should probably go,” said Kum.
Teddy tore his eyes away. He hoped they wouldn’t hurt Dejan too much.
They started to walk in the opposite direction.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 54
To: Pierre Danielsson (co-suspect)
From: Hugo Pederson
Date: 23 March 2006
Time: 14:45
HUGO: Hey
PIERRE: ‘Sup?
HUGO: I’ve met him now.
PIERRE: Who?
HUGO: Mats Emanuelsson, the fixer you thought I should talk to.
PIERRE: So how did he seem?
HUGO: Good, really good. We met at a law firm, the same one the old guy uses, and I gave him a brief explanation of what we need his help with. He hasn’t had our caliber of client before, more sleazy stuff. I did a bit of research into him, think he’s working for the slavic mafia.
PIERRE: Ah, maybe he’s not the right person for us, then?
HUGO: No, for God’s sake, he knows this stuff. I think he could be a perfect fit.
PIERRE: Does he know who you are?
HUGO: No, that didn’t feel necessary. I made up a name, mixed around some letters in my actual name. Guess what I ended up with?
PIERRE: Peder Hugoson?
HUGO: Almost, but that would’ve been too obvious. I called myself Peder Hult. Think it sounds great.
PIERRE: Ha, ha, yeah, that sounds good.
HUGO: Right? Listen, I’ll send you more stuff the encrypted way. I believe in this Mats guy.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 55
To: Hugo Pederson
From: Louise Pederson (wife)
Date: 28 March 2006
Time: 12:30
LOUISE: Hey, it’s me.
HUGO: I can see that, Mousey. What are you doing?
LOUISE: I had a headache, so I left work.
HUGO: So you’re at home now?
LOUISE: Yeah.
HUGO: Are you feeling any better?
LOUISE: No. I want you to come home for dinner tonight. I want to talk to you.
HUGO: Sounds like something’s happened. Can’t we do it now?
LOUISE: Tonight’s better.
HUGO: But I won’t be able to make it to dinner, there’s no way. Can’t we talk now?
LOUISE: Okay, fine. You know I haven’t really been happy with how much you’ve been working and how little time we’ve spent together this past year. Then there’s the whole bed thing, and you know what I think about that. I don’t feel like you’re listening, I don’t feel like you’re doing anything to change where we’re heading. I’m not happy, Hugo. I need change. And what we’re heading toward, it doesn’t work.
HUGO: What is it you think we’re heading toward?
LOUISE: Stagnation, coolness.
HUGO: Come on, you’re exaggerating.
LOUISE: It’s how I feel. Hugo, I want us to start going to couples’ therapy. And I need some kind of project to give me energy again. Right now, that’s not you.
HUGO: Please, Louise.
LOUISE: No, listen, you’re the one who wanted to talk now rather than later. Anna and Fredric went to couples’ therapy in London, and it’s been great for them. You know he started working less afterward?
HUGO: But that’s because he changed departments at the bank.
LOUISE: Maybe, but why do you think he changed departments? This is what I want from you, Hugo. If you can’t even consider talking things through with me, then I don’t see how we can keep going.
HUGO: Are you serious?
LOUISE: I’ve never been more serious. Also, I’ve seen an estate in Upplands Väsby that I want us to buy.
HUGO: What are you talking about?
LOUISE: Kalaholm, it’s online now. Five hundred acres and a run-down castle building, which needs a thorough but sensitive renovation. It’s practically made for me. I think we’d be happier out there, or at least I would.
HUGO: But, but…
LOUISE: They want forty million in total, which includes a riding place and three villas, which are being rented out to ordinary people right now. I’ve talked to Fredrika and she can see the potential in the place; she thinks I’d really be able to transform it. I’ve already thought through the renovation of the kitchen and the stables, it could be magical.
HUGO: Mousey, forty million is a bit beyond us, at least right now. Maybe in a couple of years?
LOUISE: You could get a loan, couldn’t you? Stop worrying so much. It’s about our relationship, don’t you get that?
HUGO: But a forty-million-kronor estate can hardly determine how we’re doing?
LOUISE: It doesn’t seem like you’re listening.
HUGO: Calm down, I just don’t see how the estate would help us.
LOUISE ENDS THE CALL.
HUGO: Hello? Hello? Did you hang up? What the hell?
SMS MESSAGE
To/From: Unknown
From/To: Hugo Pederson
Date: 29 April 2006
Out: Hi, we’ve got something new in the works. Can you meet at the usual place at 14:00? / Hugo.
In: I’ll come. By the way, I understand you have a new consultant, Mats E.
Out: Yeah, he does the job. Lots of good ideas and arrangements. I call him Mr. Money Man.
In: Interesting.
Out: But I’m extremely careful, hidden numbers and encrypted messages from new accounts all the time. I don’t think he knows who I actually am. I’m using an alias.
In: Ha ha. Sounds very interesting. We can talk more about him when we meet.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS 56–80 (SUMMARY)
To/From: Pierre Danielsson (co-suspect) and a number of other stockbrokers and bankers in Sweden, Switzerland, and England (named in relevant appendix)
From/To: Hugo Pederson
Date: 3–17 May 2006
Summary: Hugo Pederson has a number of conversations with co-suspect Pierre Danielsson and the above-named brokers and bankers in Sweden and Europe regarding a number of companies. The total capital gain for Pederson from his business transactions is upward of two million euros. Each transaction is documented separately.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 81
To: Pierre Danielsson (co-suspect)
From: Hugo Pederson
Date: 17 May 2006
Time: 15:15
HUGO: Teenie weenie Pierre, how’re you doing?
PIERRE: I’m all good. That last trip was wild, huh?
HUGO: Yeah, incredible, the sky’s the limit, nothing else. I’ll be able to buy up Göran and shut him down soon.
PIERRE: Ha ha.
HUGO: But that’s not why I called. I saw the guy. He’s got a few ideas. I told him how happy we are with Mr. Money Man, and now the guy wants to take him out to meet his friends and business contacts.
PIERRE: Aha.
HUGO: So is that okay with you?
PIERRE: As long as it’s all handled nicely, it’s okay.
HUGO: Exactly, I just thought it would probably be good for us to be invisible, you know, if we’re bringing in others. You got much of a presence online?
PIERRE: Nothing.
HUGO: Good, me neither. I just asked my secretary to take down my picture from the home page. No pictures from nights out or anything, if you go to any events. We need to be careful about that kind of thi
ng.
PIERRE: I already am.
HUGO: Good, then I’ll talk to Mr. Money Man and see if he can give a little talk for twenty or so potential clients. Apparently the guy has access to an insanely nice estate in Södermanland, Hallenbro Storgården.
PIERRE: Okay.
HUGO: He wants it to be lavish, so dinner jackets and a good atmosphere. No names. Mats doesn’t need to know any names.
PIERRE: Sure, sure, let’s do it. Could be cool. I’m wondering if we should take the helicopter up. I bought a Robinson, did I tell you that?
HUGO: Yeah, you haven’t talked about anything else lately. What’s it like to fly?
PIERRE: Incredible. You have to come.
HUGO: We’ll take it up there together. Mats can come along, too; it’ll impress him.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 82
To: Carl Trolle (friend)
From: Hugo Pederson
Date: 24 May 2006
Time: 01:10
HUGO: Hey, man.
CARL: Come on, it’s ten past one in the morning.
HUGO: You don’t have to answer when I call.
CARL: But I assume something must’ve happened.
HUGO: Something’s happened.
CARL: What? You managed to leave work early for once?
HUGO: No, I’ve actually been home for a while, but Louise and I had the worst argument ever. She’s gone.
CARL: You’re kidding? She just left?
HUGO: Yeah. But you should’ve heard it, man, she was screaming like a two-year-old.