by Jens Lapidus
“Okay,” he said. “I met Murray, I did. But not to squeal. I swear on my grandmother’s grave, on my uncle’s name. I haven’t ratted on anyone.”
“My dachri, you swear. But you met a pig in secret. Why?”
Nikola realized he was starting to breathe more quickly. He had to make an effort to speak calmly now, to keep the lightning at bay. He said: “I met him because I wanted to swap information. I wanted to know what they’ve got on Chamon’s murder, on everything with Yusuf, so we can move on.”
Bello glared at him. “But why’re you getting the pig involved?”
“Because we aren’t getting anywhere ourselves. And he told me some really shitty stuff.”
“Like what?”
Nikola pulled out his phone. He had recorded his chat with the cop—he wanted everything Simon Murray said recorded.
He played the cop’s voice.
When it was finished, Bello lowered the gun.
Nikola said: “This whole thing is so messed up. We’ve been hunting the wrong person. Yusuf and Chamon were using those tracking apps all the time. And it ended with us stabbing an innocent guy. Yusuf was innocent, Bello.”
39
Emelie considered herself to be a rational, considerate person. Always had been. In many respects, she thought it was a positive trait. She assessed positives and negatives, analyzed situations before she acted; she could see herself from an outsider’s perspective, and she tried to understand the reasons for her actions. She contemplated the world before she took it on. But maybe there was a better word to describe her, and that word was “indecisive.” She had trouble making up her mind, drew out decisions rather than taking the leap and moving forward. She often spent far too long weighing different points of view, procrastinating until the opportunity had passed her by. Sometimes, she thought that her tendency to overthink things was her one great incompetence.
She had gone to the gynecology department at Söder Hospital the week before but changed her mind and not taken the pill. An indecisive act, a nondecision. Especially considering her last chance to have an abortion was in week eighteen, this week. After that point, the process required so-called special circumstances, according to the National Board of Health and Welfare’s guidelines, and those only applied if, for example, it involved a very young girl who hadn’t realized she was pregnant, or if tests had determined that there were severe complications with the baby. Emelie obviously didn’t apply. It was now or never.
An abortion at this stage could still take place medically—she could take a pill under supervision at a medical center. She had to make a decision.
Emelie had stayed up half the night at Jossan’s place, talking things over. She told Jossan she was pregnant. Josephine—her friend who had just gotten lip fillers and whose happy place was Chanel’s new Stockholm boutique—was the best conversation partner she knew. The only one, in fact: she hadn’t told anyone else, not her colleagues at the office, not Marcus, none of her old friends back in Jönköping. Not her mother and father.
“I have to do it tomorrow at the very latest,” Emelie explained. Both she and Jossan had a glass of Sancerre in front of them.
“Because you should at least be able to smell the wine,” Josephine had said. But then she asked: “What does the father say?”
“I don’t know who the father is,” Emelie had lied. They were sitting in Josephine’s top spec kitchen.
“Do you remember two years ago, when I was dating a guy who worked at Lindhag Orre?” Jossan had asked.
“Yeah, the one who always wore a Hermès tie?”
“Exactly, and I’m glad you remember the ties, because those were one of the main reasons I thought he was so nice.”
“Yeah, the purple one with the little horseshoes on it went so well with his green eyes.”
“Precisely. But I never told you he got me pregnant, did I?”
Jossan took a sip of her wine. Outside, darkness was falling, though the night wasn’t really closing in. Norr Mälarstrand at the end of May: the sky was a deep shade of blue, but the city lights were glittering on the water in the distance, the traffic creating a soft haze of color.
Emelie grabbed her glass and considered taking a sip. If she was going to have an abortion tomorrow, it made no difference. “No, you never told me that. What happened?”
“I wanted to keep the baby,” said Jossan. “But he didn’t. We went back and forth about it and couldn’t come up with a solution. I was working like an idiot at the time, you know when EQT was selling Sourcefounder? I was sleeping at the office, Anders Henriksson was, too, believe it or not. We used to brush our teeth next to one another in the bathroom on the ninth floor.”
“No way. So what happened with the pregnancy?”
“I got rid of it.”
Emelie clutched the glass she still hadn’t drunk from. “I’m going to cry, and maybe I’ll regret it. But I can’t have this baby, either.”
“All I can say is that I’ll be here for you no matter what you decide.” Jossan snorted. “The same way I’m always trying to get you to buy a proper handbag.”
There was something comforting in the stupid comparison: Josephine never gave up on her. She was stubborn, and the thought that she would be as stubborn in her support for Emelie as she was about bags felt good. Irrepressible, somehow.
* * *
—
Emelie had been given her own room at the clinic, she had met the midwife, and now, in a small plastic dish on the table in front of her, she had the tablet. Mifegyne: the abortion pill. Josephine was sitting next to her, dressed for the day in workout pants, high-tech sneakers, and a thin white cashmere sweater.
Next to the dish was a plastic cup of water. All Emelie had to do was put the pill on her tongue, take a big sip of water, and swallow it down. Then she would have to stay for another hour, for observation.
She could do this. She sat down on the chair and stared at the pill in front of her. White, round, small. So small. But with such a huge potential impact.
She had tried to get ahold of Adam Tagrin again and was following the legal process against his son as closely as she could. She had met Jan to go through how she could find out more about the person Adam claimed had threatened Katja the night before the second interview was supposed to take place. Jan had been wearing workmen’s pants and some kind of fishing or hunting jacket when they met. He didn’t look quite right, but then again he rarely did.
“We could try checking the surveillance cameras at the metro station closest to Katja and Adam’s apartment—it must be Örnsberg or Axelsberg—but I don’t think they keep the films for very long, and it was a while ago now. Plus, we’ll never get permission to view that kind of material.”
“I have to try.”
“We could also look for fingerprints or DNA, but I doubt we’ll find anything so long afterward. The stairwell has probably been cleaned.”
“Okay.”
Jan had fiddled with his jacket. “Apart from that, I don’t know.”
“I understand.”
She had tried to research Hallenbro Storgården. The estate was owned by a company registered in Malta. She had looked it up: Paradise Nordic Estates Ltd. She had requested as many documents as she could from the MFSA—the Malta Financial Services Authority. It was all very sparse: they either couldn’t or wouldn’t provide her with any documents relating to who was on the company’s board. The only noteworthy thing she had spotted was that the company was owned by a holding company registered in Cyprus, Nordic Light Investment Group Ltd. She had read the meager documents forward and back. After a few hours, she had spotted it: on some of the contracts, there was a handful of small letters and numbers at the very bottom of the page. 324SAL, it said. She had seen that kind of thing before, when she worked at Leijon—she was convinced it was part of a legal firm’s document
ation system. Many firms used something similar, in order to keep track of which versions and which items were which, and it had been particularly common a few years back. She had Googled like mad, talked to Jossan and some of her old colleagues from Leijon; she even called around a few of the large British and American firms, pretending she was still in the field. Eventually, she had gotten lucky: a British lawyer she had dealt with while she was at Leijon had recognized the code. SAL: it was a Panama-based firm called Suarrez Augustin Landman. Emelie had skimmed through their home page: it was perfectly clear what they were up to—Mossack Fonseca looked like a kindergarten in comparison.
Teddy had been calling her from different numbers roughly every other day. For the most part, she had rejected his calls, but when she did answer, the first thing he always did was to ask how she was doing and how she felt. She didn’t have any answers for him. But he wouldn’t make her change her mind; she had made her decision.
* * *
—
Jossan was holding her hand. The bowl where the abortion pill had been was empty. Emelie had put it in her mouth. The midwife was sitting on a chair in one corner of the room. There was plenty to be said about how health care in Sweden had changed over recent years, but at this particular clinic at least, the level of care didn’t seem to have gone down—it was high.
The nurse had explained: “The Mifegyne pill has to be taken under supervision, because that’s the moment you’re carrying out the abortion, so to speak. But it’ll be a while before you feel anything.”
“How long?”
“It depends. Some women don’t feel anything, but if it is painful, just lie down and get some rest, turn off your phone, and try to relax.”
She couldn’t feel a thing.
Josephine’s nails were neat and manicured.
Emelie was sitting on the bed, but she didn’t turn off her phone. For some reason, she wanted to keep it on, not that she knew who might call.
40
How did you go about organizing an enormous club in three weeks? How did you arrange Stockholm’s sweetest party, something that would crush Summerburst and make Coachella and Burning Man look like end-of-the-year plays—in just three weeks? A party that had to bring in at least eight hundred thousand kronor in profit. There was only one person who could pull off something like that. And that crazy, happy, overenergetic person had a weird, cool name: Z.
Z was a genius. A brilliant madman who wouldn’t take no for an answer. An Energizer Bunny with an extra charger pack, a manic upward entrepreneur, a doer with no equal.
Three weeks: they didn’t smoke, they skipped the Kit Kat, drank only coffee and vitamin juice with added ginger and açai boost. They slept five hours a night, spent the rest of their time cooking ket and eating Sunee’s best noodles as they worked. They bounced names back and forth. The start date was pinned to June 6: Sweden’s fuuuucking national day, three days of partying in all. Should the name have something to do with that? National Day? They trawled the Net, talked to Billie, considered smoking a joint just to find inspiration. Eventually, Roksana had come up with a suggestion: “Our Land Club—The Isaawi Experience.” Z loved it. Especially the subtitle, an homage to the ranch owner who had sent enough horse tranquilizer to knock out half of Sweden.
But how would they manage to book the big DJs? Even though Roksana had enjoyed her fifteen minutes of drug fame, the agents and managers were still impenetrable; they did their jobs: acted like firewalls for the stars. The people Roksana and Z wanted to book were impossible to get ahold of; the only contact details they could find went straight to representatives and intermediaries.
Despite that, they didn’t give in. Roksana ignored the middlemen: she sent a message straight to DJ Ora Flesh—they had practically been friends, after all. The model/DJ seemed like she was about to cream herself when Roksana got in touch; she could see it from the emojis in her reply. They met two days later at Berns, ordered a couple of glasses of cava, chatted about the latest Skrillex video and about Our Land Club, of course. There was nothing wrong with Ora Flesh, even if Roksana had forgotten her real name. She was nice, her finger firmly on the hottest music, the latest opinions, and she had a new reaper man tattooed on her neck in a naivist style. Above all, she was hotter than hot, plus she was with that supercool photographer. But it was like there was something missing all the same. She never said anything surprising. Roksana knew which word she was looking for: authenticity—Ora Flesh lacked authenticity. In any case, she was going to ask. “I know you DJs all know one another,” Roksana began.
“Yeah, but I know only the best.”
“Exactly. I couldn’t get some of their private phone numbers, could I? Thought that some of them might want to play at my three-day club.”
DJ Ora Flesh looked disappointed: she was probably wondering why Roksana hadn’t asked her.
Roksana added: “And obviously I really want you to play, too.”
It wasn’t easy to get ahold of hyper-famous DJ people: time differences and upside-down routines. Ibiza and LA time. But with Ora Flesh’s name on the list, everything was easier. Roksana managed to get ahold of six of the biggest names on the electro scene. She set out the deal in plain terms for each of them: “We don’t have much money to offer you, it’s short notice, and we know you’re the biggest name on the scene, but we had another idea.” The DJs listened closely. “You’ll get a royalty from the tickets, but that’s not all, you can also have ten percent of all royalties going forward. From the name, from future clubs, gigs, everything.”
They thought she was crazy, and yet two of them accepted her offer all the same, canceling other gigs to be there. Choosing to come to Estocolmo for The Isaawi Experience.
“You’re the best,” Z shouted when he heard the two names she had managed to bag.
Z had found two students from some art school no one had heard of and promised them the world and a gallery contract if they could handle the decor. They thought he was a talent scout for some huge American player, somewhere like the Gagosian Gallery in NYC. He borrowed an industrial building in Haninge where the two budding artists could go wild and show off their work; the guy who owned the building didn’t want any rent; he was happy to take twenty grams instead. Their art project caused a stir in the traditional media: both Expressen and Dagens Nyheter wrote about the three-day party. “What does The Isaawi Experience mean?” the journalists mused. “It’s to do with my Iranian roots,” Z said, glancing at Roksana. They had laughed nonstop for an hour afterward.
Z had also chatted up one of Billie’s girls—she worked as a social media consultant for some PR firm and had agreed to set up a private campaign for their party for very little money. Still: it would cost more than they could afford. Z took out an instant loan of two hundred thousand kronor so that they could pay for the web design and the advance fee for the sound system and other equipment. Roksana asked her father for a loan again, but he continued to hold out. Instead, she borrowed from Bank Norwegian and quickloan.se. The interest rates were crazy, but she was counting on being able to pay off the debt in just a few weeks’ time. Z set up an Instagram account and a YouTube channel, where he uploaded pictures and films of himself dancing and telling insane in-jokes about various open-air parties in Sweden. The PR consultant optimized their searchability, meaning that their streams were visible to anyone interested in the same music as him, and making them pop up in the top ten whenever anyone searched club Stockholm or summer Stockholm. DJ Aziz and Sandra Mosh repped them and gave them mentions. By the end of that week, there wasn’t a hipster south of Västerbron who didn’t know about their club. But best of all: Ora Flesh raised Our Land Club to the heavens with three posts in a row. She had 1.2 million followers—after ten days, the Our Land Club account had more than seventy thousand of its own.
They booked men to build the two stages, which luckily didn’t need to be all that big—they
weren’t exactly having live bands. They arranged for helium canisters and more than two thousand balloons, beer barrels, bars and bar staff, special rubber wristbands for people who had paid entry for all three days. They hired people to look after the entry, lighting, and laser shows. Roksana called Nikola and tried to organize the security.
“I’ll be bringing a guy called Bello,” he said.
“That’s definitely not enough. This isn’t some shitty little party. We’re going for three days, in a huge space. And you’ll get paid.”
“I just need to check.”
“Who do you have to check with?”
“Can’t go into that.”
“Are you still coming to Amy Schumer? You don’t need to check with anyone about that, do you?”
* * *
—
But what about the venue? Where would they be? Roksana had solved that riddle, too: “Why don’t we use the place where Dusky was, in Ulvsunda industrial area?”
Z looked at her with his red, sleep-starved eyes. “You might be the best person I’ve ever met. Can I call you Edward Snowden?”
They sent in applications for a license to serve alcohol, unsure whether they would be approved—they really were cutting it close.
“We’ll do it anyway,” Z decided. “We just need to make eight hundred thousand, then the rest doesn’t matter.”
Eight hundred thousand kronor: easy as pie. Roksana loved that Z was so relaxed, despite the fact that his fingers were still crooked.
* * *
—
The only time Roksana did anything not connected to their planning during those three weeks was when she went to see Amy Schumer at the Globe Arena. And the cool thing was that Nikola went with her. Billie and the others stared at him like he was a chimpanzee at the zoo, but there was also something else in their eyes: worry, possibly even fear. Respect, too. Roksana had brought a guy who was genuinely from the ’burbs, who was authentic.