by Jens Lapidus
Ahead of him was another set of glass doors. He didn’t have to open them himself; the policewoman in front held them for him: polite and kind. He went out into the inner courtyard. It was a glorious day, and there were even more people sitting out here, with cups of coffee and bottles of juice in their hands. Teddy walked straight ahead. He thought about all the cops he had met. The ones who had arrested him after the kidnapping of Mats. The ones who had escorted him to court for his remand hearing, the ones who had interrogated him afterward. All the local police, county police, special anti-gang officers who had watched him like hawks over the years. He would guess that he had met more representatives of the police force than any other profession. So why was he taking the risk that one of all these officers might recognize him here? It was easy: if he didn’t manage to prove his innocence, he would be sentenced to life in prison for murder. And the evidence had to be here somewhere, on their computer system.
He hoped that his new appearance, his shaved head and smoothed wrinkles, would be enough to camouflage him. And, above all: no one expected to see an old criminal wandering about in a police stronghold.
He opened the doors on the other side of the courtyard and stepped into the older building. This part of the station looked different: from the early twentieth century, all corridors and conduits. Walkways and small rooms. There were tall panels on the walls, and lights that looked at least a hundred years old hanging from the ceiling. He walked slowly, making sure that everyone passed him by, that he was always last. He searched for open doors, empty rooms.
He couldn’t help but think about what Isa from the employment service would say if she could see him now, how he would try to explain his situation. At some point, all this had just started, and he hadn’t been able to stop it. He wondered what the first domino had been, how it had all begun. In the third grade at school, people had been absolutely crazy about erasers. The girls had wanted pink ones that smelled like strawberry, the nerds had wanted big white ones with images from Star Wars and Indiana Jones on them, and Dejan and Teddy had wanted the ordinary green school erasers—the ones with a red line through the middle—but only so that they could cut them up and use them as ammunition in their slingshots. They used to go up to the teacher at least once a day to say that they had lost theirs, that they needed a new one. But it wasn’t enough: they had needed more, many more. One day, while everyone else was outside during recess, Teddy had snuck back into their classroom. Their teacher usually locked the door, but clearly not on that day. He knew where she kept the key to her wheeled cabinet. The sun was shining obliquely through the windows, making the dust glitter in the air. He had never done anything like it before, but he lifted the lid of the desk and took out the key, then used it to unlock the cabinet. There it was, inside: the holy grail. The teacher’s unopened box of erasers. The lost ark. He had snatched the box and run down the steps. The next evening, his father had called him over. “Najdan, come here.” Teddy had gone into the kitchen and found his father standing by the table, as though he were waiting for Teddy to sit down first. But neither had time to sit. Instead, his father had hit him with the back of his hand. White dots filled Teddy’s field of vision, and his cheek had stung as though he had burned it. His father was holding the as-yet-unopened box of erasers. “No one who goes by the name Maksumic is a thief.” His Serbian was crystal clear. “If I find out you’ve been stealing again, my hand won’t be open.” That had been the first time. Since then, his father had had to clench his fist on many other occasions. Eventually, many years later, Teddy had even stolen a person. Kidnapped another man. Now he was suspected of murder.
There: an open door. Teddy craned his neck, tried to peer in. He strolled toward it as casually as possible. The room was large, the tables set out in a horseshoe. At the very back, there was a whiteboard and some office equipment. It looked like some kind of seminar had been going on in there, and the participants were taking a break. He stepped inside and pushed the door closed behind him.
The air was stuffy and smelled like people. He went over to the lectern—there was a desktop computer there. He checked the back: a USB port. Loke had shown him what to look for. He pushed the little plastic stick into the slot and turned around to leave.
He tried to keep calm, to keep walking. The stream of cops was still dense. Did they just walk around these buildings all day? Maybe they were doing one of those step-counting challenges.
He opened the glass doors to the inner yard. Slightly fewer coffee drinkers now; lunch must be over. He passed the old motorbikes and the Ping-Pong tables. The escalator was moving slowly, as though it was set to half speed, and he had to force himself not to rush up it.
Teddy thought about his sporadic calls to Emelie. He wondered what she was up to right now.
The walls were covered in old police posters.
For the first time in a long while, he felt a real sense of exhilaration—he had managed to get Loke’s trojan into the system. He kept moving forward. Stairs and side passages. Clusters of sofas and enormous potted plants. Huge windows and hundreds of cops.
He could see the security doors ahead of him. Just thirty seconds more, and he would be out. Mission accomplished. It felt unbelievably good.
But then he heard a voice. “Teddy? Teddy Maksumic?”
It couldn’t be.
Shit.
He didn’t know who had said his name, but someone had recognized him.
Teddy kept walking toward the exit as if he hadn’t heard. It shouldn’t be possible to recognize him, that was the whole point of all the Restylane treatments. But the police officer was shouting after him now. “Teddy, stop!”
He picked up the pace, didn’t turn around, just jogged forward. The doors were about a hundred feet away.
The police officer raised his voice again. Shouting to his colleagues this time. “Stop that man, he’s wanted!”
Teddy had broken into a run. He was charging now.
He threw himself forward as police officers all around him hurled themselves at him like American football players.
He avoided them. Zigzagged between them.
The doors were so close now.
Then he tripped, stumbled.
He was chewing police station floor.
The cops threw themselves onto him. Pulled him down to the ground, jammed their wide knees into his back.
The police officer who had recognized him came over and looked down at him. “Cuff him.”
Teddy said: “I want my lawyer.”
“We can arrange that later.” The police officer bent down to help one of his cop colleagues.
“No,” Teddy groaned. “I’m not going to open my mouth again before my lawyer’s here. And there’s one in particular I want.”
“Who?”
“Call Emelie Jansson.”
42
The Body Academy. It smelled like disinfectant and Dior Homme. The walls were a shade of white you never saw in ordinary apartments, a ghostly glow. The skin therapists—as they called themselves—with their smooth foreheads and Japanese face masks, drifted around like they were floating on clouds.
Mr. One was lying with his face through some kind of hole in the bed. It was necessary, so that the customer could breathe while they had their massage—or, in this case: while they had their back and shoulders waxed.
“Just because you’re more ape than human doesn’t mean you have to look like one,” Isak had shouted when Nikola came in.
Couldn’t he have waited twenty minutes to ask me to come in, Nikola thought. This was intrusive. Plus: he had never been so tired in his life. The three-day party had been one of the most fun and exhausting things he had ever done—in fact, he had even felt happy for the first time since Chamon died. But then the cops had stormed the industrial area and arrested Roksana. He had managed to get away, along the water’s edge, and had
just heard the cops’ shouts behind him.
Nikola had called to ask what she was suspected of, whether they were planning to release her, but they just referred to the confidentiality of the preliminary investigation, like the losers that they were. So, really, he had other things on his mind—but if Mr. One wanted a meeting, you came, regardless of whether the boss was flat out on a massage bed, waiting for a ghost therapist to tear off a coat of fur thicker than a real gorilla’s.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Isak mumbled. Since his face was turned to the floor, Nikola could barely hear what he was saying.
He glanced at the therapist: she was applying the hot wax with some kind of brush.
“You mean the club we were doing security for, or all the rest?”
“I don’t give a shit about the club,” Isak said without looking up.
The therapist carefully placed strips of papery material onto the thin layer of wax. Nikola’s back started to ache from bending down to hear what Isak said.
“Nicko, tell me what you’re up to, you and the boys. You looking after everything?”
Nikola wondered what he was getting at.
“You talk to Bello, don’t you?”
“I talk to all of you. But I want to hear you tell me what you’re doing.”
Nikola wondered whether Bello had mentioned something about his chat with the cop, but he doubted it. They had agreed to forget that business up on the water tower. Instead, Nikola went through the various tasks and jobs he was doing for Isak: the exchange offices he visited, the sellers he gave jobs, the boxes of explosives they were topping up.
“Okay, and what else?” the boss said once he was done.
Again, Nikola wondered what Bello had told Mr. One.
“Nothing else.”
“Mm-hmm. And you’re not snooping about in that Chamon stuff anymore?”
Nikola now realized how nice it was to talk to Mr. One without seeing his face. “Nah, I’ve dropped it, just like you said.”
The therapist took hold of one of the strips and tore it off.
“Ay!” A red mark appeared on Isak’s back in its place. “Take it easy,” he hissed. “Nikola, you see that bag over there?”
There was a small black fanny pack at the end of the bed.
“In the outer pocket, there’s a phone. Get rid of it somewhere, in a lake or something. There’s so much shit going on right now, we’ve gotta be extra careful.”
Nikola got up and went over to the other end of the massage bed. He heard Isak cry out as the therapist tore away another wax strip. The bag was larger than he had expected, and he started rifling through it. He weighed the phone in his hand.
“Thanks, you can go now.” Mr. One’s voice sounded shrill, pained. Nikola had never heard him like that before, had never heard him suffer, but somehow it made a part of him feel good.
* * *
—
He met up with Bello: they had work to do. Nikola was like a pack donkey—Mr. One kept loading him up like an animal when all he really needed was to sleep.
He called his mother.
“It’s been a while. Have you heard what happened?”
“No.”
“They’re accusing Teddy of murder.”
“What, really?”
“Yeah, it’s so awful.”
“But you don’t believe he did it?”
“I don’t know. All I can say is that he seems to be right back at square one. We’re so disappointed.”
Nikola had heard those words before: throughout his entire childhood. Mom and Grandpa—disappointed in Teddy, unhappy with Teddy, ashamed to have a brother and a son who had done what he’d done and been convicted like he had. But to Nikola, Teddy had only ever been one thing: a hero, even if he had kidnapped a man. Nikola knew he should try to get ahold of him—but things had gone wrong last time they met. As though Teddy had been above Nikola, looking down on him; as though Teddy’s choice of life was suddenly better than Nikola’s. But now his uncle was prize game—he really should call.
“Listen, love,” said his mother. “I know not everything went like we planned.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, you’re refusing to go back to George Samuel, and you’re not going to get any grades from college, either, are you?”
“Come on, my best friend was murdered.”
“I know, I know it’s hard. But listen, Nicko, it’s for your own sake. You have to stop doing what you’re doing.”
He couldn’t deal with any more of this. He ended the call.
Bello quickly turned to him. “That your mom?”
“Yes.”
“Problems?”
“Yes.”
“Is she disappointed?”
“Yes.”
“They always are.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“She thinks you’ve gone crazy?”
“Yes.”
“What’s she going to do about it, then?”
“Nothing. She’s the one who’s gone crazy.”
“Aha.”
“Can we swing by some water somewhere? I’ve got something I need to chuck.”
“Isak give you a phone?” Bello asked.
“How’d you know that?”
“He switches up a lot, so he usually asks me to chuck his old ones into the telephone graveyard. That’s what I call the bottom of the lake by Saltskog. Though he usually wants me to keep the phone for a few days before I dump it—so it’s my movements that get tracked by the masts, not his. That way, if everything goes to shit afterward, he can always show that he’s been in other places than he actually has, or that the phone has been different places to him. It’s his alibi.”
Isak: Nikola thought about the boss. He might be the smartest guy he knew.
“The telephone graveyard,” Nikola said. “Can you show me exactly where that is?”
43
Emelie was still sitting on the bed. Her cell phone was still beside her. She couldn’t feel a thing—though the mental strain of just being here was surprisingly tough.
“How do you feel?” asked the midwife.
“Fine, so far.”
“Then I think you can go home in half an hour or so. Would you like us to call you a taxi?”
“No, it’s okay.”
“I also wanted to tell you about the counseling service that’s available, but we can do that before you leave.”
The midwife went out, the door closed. Jossan poured a glass of water and gave Emelie a pitying look as she held it out to her. Emelie shook her head.
Jossan said: “Should I call a taxi?”
Emelie shook her head again. “Wait a while.”
“It’s done now,” said Josephine. “You’ve reached the point of no return. I think that can feel good, in a way.”
Before Emelie had time to say anything, her phone started to ring. To begin with, she wasn’t going to answer—it didn’t feel like the right place to be talking on the phone—but there was something about the number, she recognized it. The Police Authority was trying to get in touch.
“Hi, my name is Elisabeth Carlberg and I’m calling from the National Operations Department.”
“What is this regarding?”
“We have a person in custody who has requested you as his public defender.”
“Aha. In that case, I’ll have to refer you to my deputy. I’m afraid I can’t take on any new cases at the moment.”
“The suspect said you would say that, but he insisted that we called you.”
“What’s his name?”
“Najdan Maksumic, but he seems to go by Teddy.”
Emelie was close to ending the call there and then. Jossan was watching her with one eyebrow raised, wondering
why she was sitting in silence, breathing.
“Hold on…,” Emelie said to the officer on the other end of the line. She had to process this information: they had arrested Teddy, and that meant he would likely be convicted of murder. Emelie knew he hadn’t done what they claimed, but he would still be locked up, and this time he wouldn’t get out alive. He would rot away in there. He would never get the chance to live a normal life, to live a life with anyone else. The thought echoed through her mind—because she also felt that it made her life meaningless somehow. Everything she had ever striven for would come to an end, like a deflated balloon that left behind nothing but a limp pile of rubber on the floor. At the same time, every action, every decision she now made was extremely important, every moment so dear. She had to see him. There were certain things she needed to say to Teddy.
She placed a hand on her stomach and then replied to the policewoman. “I’ll take the case. You can send the decree straight to me. Where is he being held?”
Josephine got up, and for a brief moment, Emelie thought she was trying to block the exit. “What’s going on, Emelie?” Jossan asked, taking her hand instead—the feeling that she was trying to block Emelie’s way vanished.
Emelie opened her hand. In it was the abortion pill she had spat out minutes after taking it. “I’m going to keep the baby. And now I have to get to work.”
* * *
—
Hanging from the rearview mirror of the taxi, Emelie noticed a small brass disc with Arabic text on it. “Is that a profession of faith?” she asked.
The driver reminded her of Naz in The Night Of. “Yes, the Islamic profession of faith. Shahada, we call it in Arabic.”
“Does it help if you read it to someone who’s neither a Muslim nor believes in God?”