Top Dog

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Top Dog Page 39

by Jens Lapidus


  Teddy remembered enough to know that it wasn’t the reasons given for remand that mattered—if you were accused of murder, the court would virtually always keep you locked up. What he wanted to know was why they suspected him. He had been at the scene when Fredrik O. Johansson was shot, but the only people who knew that were Dejan and the killer. Where had the information that he was linked to the murder come from, other than the fact that a car he had rented was found in the vicinity?

  They scanned through the papers: pictures of the burned-out mansion, a mediocre crime scene investigation from the lawn outside, a partial analysis of the bullet that had penetrated the old man’s skull, an examination of the various tire tracks on the gravel and in the grass, a report about the rental car Teddy had driven to the scene. But no interviews with anyone. And, as yet, no analyses of the forensic evidence had been finalized—though Teddy knew they would likely find his DNA inside the house. Then he saw what he had suspected all along: images from surveillance cameras that had survived the fire. Though the stills from the camera were grainy, they were clear enough: they showed Teddy himself making his way inside through the basement door.

  He still found it strange that the police had managed to arrive at the scene so quickly.

  * * *

  —

  The guards led him into the courtroom. His handcuffs rattled quietly. On the other side of the Plexiglas, he could see five people who might be journalists, plus Dejan—it felt good to have him here. The judge was sitting behind the bar, looking like she should have retired ten years ago, next to a notary with a neat red beard. The prosecutor was a woman in her midthirties, and she was wearing a gray dress with a pink scarf tied nonchalantly around her neck. A quick thought flashed through Teddy’s mind: Was she sitting so far away because she thought he might launch himself across the room and strangle her with that bastard scarf?

  In truth, the person he most felt like strangling was Nina Ley, who was sitting beside her. He wondered what she was doing there. In all likelihood, she was assisting the prosecution; it wasn’t entirely unheard of for prosecutors to have a cop by their side during hearings. What surprised him was that it was Nina Ley, of all people. Especially considering she was also the lead investigator. But maybe that wasn’t so strange, either: she had been trying to find Hallenbro Storgården and the people linked to it ever since Mats Emanuelsson first handed in the films. And now a murder had taken place there. A rat, that was what she was. A traitor.

  The two guards sat down behind Teddy. The room was completely silent—murder cases were always shrouded in a certain atmosphere. Emelie placed her bag on the table and took out a pen and pad. She was holding the remand order in one hand. It already looked well-thumbed, as though she had been reading it for months. The paper clip came loose and fell to the table with a clink. Ten minutes: that was how long they had had to go through the documents—it was a joke, but that was clearly how it worked. Apparently the rule of law was a relative concept.

  The prosecutor cleared her throat and read the exact same words as in the order. The judge asked for Teddy’s position.

  Emelie spoke slowly and clearly. “Teddy Maksumic denies the crime; he disputes that there are even reasonable grounds for suspicion. He disputes the special grounds for remand. He demands immediate release. No objection to closed doors.”

  “Very well,” the judge said in a croaky voice. “Then we shall close the doors, and I would ask all spectators to leave the room.”

  Dejan and the reporters got up and left.

  “Well,” the judge said, her hair bobbing like she was on a trampoline. “The prosecutor may begin.”

  * * *

  —

  He didn’t feel any claustrophobia. The last time he found himself in a place like this, he’d had serious anxiety: he had promised himself, there and then, that he would never return to a cell. Facing a long prison sentence. But that wasn’t how he felt today.

  The cell walls seemed to be sloping gently inward, falling in on him. But he had been here before. He wouldn’t panic this time. He wouldn’t shout and cry. No, something else had crept into him now, a new feeling for him. Something he didn’t recognize from his own personality, something that meant he felt alien to himself. He didn’t know what it was.

  He had been remanded into custody, of course. It made no difference how good Emelie was. At custody hearings, the evidence was never studied the way it was during the main trial—a simple statement from the prosecutor was all it took for the judge to rule that there were reasonable grounds for suspicion or probable cause for the crime. A custody hearing wasn’t a trial: it didn’t require anything to be backed up with evidence.

  Teddy thought back to all the times he had lain in a cell like this, thinking about the same thing he was now: his mother. In the cozy children’s corner of the library, all sofas and cushions, curled up in his lap. The Brothers Lionheart in his hands. “There are things you have to do, even if they are dangerous. Otherwise you aren’t human, just a piece of dirt.” His mother had looked serious. “My golden boy, do you know what that means?” Teddy had shaken his head. Six or seven years old. “What things do you have to do, Mamma?” She had kissed him on the cheek, even though Teddy didn’t like it when she did that in front of others. “You have to be kind, Teddy. Sometimes you have to be kind, even if it’s hard.”

  Teddy stared at the metal door. He had done it before the hearing, too, back when he was officially just being held. He listened for noises: the shuffle of slippers in the hallway outside. He pressed his ear to the door. Tried to hear whether there was anyone breathing out there. He ate his food as if he were tasting it for poison. First, he poked at it, searching for crushed tablets or strange liquids. Then he took small bites, one at a time, his taste buds trying to detect the slightest hint of acridness or bitterness. When they took him up to the roof for his hour of exercise, he kept his body tense. Ready for some kind of attack. He didn’t know how it would start or where it would come from.

  “We don’t know one another,” said Britta, the guard who led him up to the cage on the roof. “But you don’t need to look at me like I’m going to trip you up or something.”

  Teddy knew how he must seem to others. It was the new sensation within him, the new thought clogging up his brain.

  Once he was up in the cage, he positioned himself as far from the door as he could, even if it was only twelve feet away, and then waited. He didn’t know what he was waiting for, but something told him that the rusty gray door was about to open and that someone would come in. Someone who wanted to hurt him. Because they now knew that he knew. They had killed Fredrik O. Johansson. They were prepared to do anything.

  * * *

  —

  He spent his nights lying awake. The same thoughts over and over again. He had called Emelie—you were always allowed to call your lawyer, regardless of any restrictions or isolation orders. He really wanted to ask her to get in touch with Kum—but didn’t dare, the line probably had more people listening in on it than Assange’s phone in the Ecuadorian embassy.

  Eyes wide open. Teddy could hear his own breathing. The shouts and cries from the inexperienced idiots out in the hallway had stopped now; even those fools had fallen asleep after a while. There was no clock in his cell, and they had obviously taken his phone, but Teddy guessed it was sometime after midnight. The only dark hour of the day during June. Maybe he should read through the remand report Emelie had given him again—but there was no point. He had already seen everything there was to see in it, including the pictures of him holding a crowbar. He tried to breathe more quietly. He felt cold, stiff. Then he understood what was wrong with him. He suddenly worked out what this new sensation he was feeling was, something he had never experienced before. He—Teddy Maksumic—was scared. Terrified. For the first time in his life, he was afraid. Afraid for his life. For his unborn child’s life.

 
; It was crazy: he had kidnapped and beaten people, he had been arrested by task forces with their MP5s pointed at his face, he had gone to war with Kum, he’d been kept prisoner by crazy cops. He had been through more shit than 99.9 percent of the population, and yet he had never been scared, not really. Never to the extent that the smallest of sounds sent a cold shiver down his spine. Never to the extent that his breathing became unsteady at the very thought of having to sleep here. But now: he didn’t even dare move in bed. All he wanted to do was listen—see whether anyone was waiting outside the door, whether they were going to come in.

  * * *

  —

  He woke and realized he couldn’t breathe. He gasped, gasped again, but he couldn’t get any air. He tried to sit up, but something was holding him down, pressing on his back. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a dream.

  Someone was trying to strangle him from behind; there was someone sitting on his back.

  He tried to throw himself to one side, but something tightened around his neck. He had to breathe; he needed oxygen. He tried to shout, but without any air, no sounds would come out.

  His fingers tore at whatever was being tightened around his neck, but he couldn’t get a good grip. His eyes felt like they were being forced out of their sockets. He thought of Emelie’s bump.

  Teddy flailed with one hand, but his fingers couldn’t find a hold. He should have known: strangulation—the best way to make it look like suicide. Every year, at least one of the inmates would hang himself using his belt or sheet.

  He threw himself around, trying to force off the person holding him from behind.

  He gasped for a breath that never came, felt everything start to blur. How much longer would he manage? There was a rope digging into his neck. Cutting off his airway.

  His head was going to explode.

  He was about to disappear.

  Air. Breathe. He could see a white light.

  Images flickered past. Emelie’s bump in the waiting room before the hearing, the way she carried the thick stack of remand documents. His hands searched beneath the bed. Found the papers—he had been reading them before he fell asleep.

  Flashes of light in his eyes. Everything was blurry. He was on his way now.

  He fumbled for the paper clip—there, he found it.

  He tried to press against the edge of the bed, managed to grab the paper clip.

  He had been playing with it earlier, bent it so that it was now a thin metal stick.

  Then: his body was about to go limp, but with one last surge of effort he forced himself into movement. A throw, a blow, a stab: he raised what used to be a paper clip behind him, toward the person who was trying to take his life.

  A popping sound, like water being spilled. He felt the unfolded paper clip pushing against something soft. Part of a body. His stab had hit its target. An eye? A cheek?

  The grip around his neck loosened, a heavy body thudded to the floor. Teddy tore at the rope that had cut off his breathing. Threw himself to the other side, panting, coughing.

  The man who had tried to kill him was already on his way out through the door. Teddy saw his back in the darkness, followed by his tall, rushing body in silhouette against the light from the hallway as the door opened and closed.

  Teddy tried to sit up, but he had to catch his breath first.

  He heard the door being locked from outside.

  He slumped back onto the bed. Drew in air.

  Teddy pressed the alarm button, shouted and banged the wall.

  He was, at least, alive.

  The man had sneaked into his room while he slept. It came over him again, stronger this time, the feeling he had been carrying ever since they arrested him. The feeling he hadn’t recognized, that he didn’t think he had truly experienced before. It washed over him with full force: a purely physical effect in his body and head. He started to shake, trembling like a sick person.

  The fear.

  46

  Nikola’s palms were slipping on the wheel. His hands never normally sweated, but today it was like all of his sweat glands had been transplanted to the same place: between his thumb and index finger on each hand. He knew why. Bello was in the passenger seat next to him; they were moving the boxes of explosives that Isak ordered them to top off at regular intervals. Nikola wasn’t just scared of the content of the boxes; they broke his back, too—heavy as concrete. A van: from Sjöbergsgatan to Selmedalsvägen, from Selmedalsvägen to wherever they were heading today, and so on. What normal person drove from one place to another with a van-load of bombs? It was an insane job, but someone had to do it. Bello had talked about it before: Mr. One was building up some kind of stockpile.

  Once they were done with this, Bello had promised to show Nikola the telephone graveyard on the bottom of the lake.

  Nikola held the wheel with one hand while he wiped the palm of the other on his pants. There were so many explosives in the back of the van that they would probably be given life sentences for planning a terrorist attack if they were pulled over right now. It was a joke: of all the bastards to do this job, it had to be him being forced to drive a van full of bombs around, despite almost being blown to pieces just last year. He couldn’t help but think about what might happen if he braked or turned a corner too sharply. If someone crashed into them. Hägersten would see a fireball the size of the Globe Arena rise up on the horizon. The Stockholmers would think Putin had finally attacked or that ISIS had launched an assault on the southern suburbs.

  * * *

  —

  Three hours later, Nikola broke the surface. He had bought a diving mask, a snorkel, and a waterproof flashlight in Södertälje. The water of the lake had enveloped him like a cold blanket, but it wasn’t deep, only five feet or so, and it was relatively clear thanks to the rocks on the bottom. He could see better than he expected—a number of small black objects. Discarded cell phones. After just a few minutes underwater, he had fished up nine of them.

  “I’m sure I dropped one of Mr. One’s here in January. There was a bit of ice, so I gave the skates a spin, too,” Bello said, pointing to one of the phones. “That’s the one, the Samsung S5. I’m a thousand percent sure.”

  Nikola tried to smile—his friend probably hadn’t gone ice skating since they had been forced to as eight-year-olds—but deep down, he was in a worse mood than earlier, when they had carried the boxes of explosives into a new, secret address.

  He climbed up onto the rocks and wrapped a towel around himself. The air was warm, but he could feel his muscles shaking.

  * * *

  —

  He wanted to call Roksana, to hear how it had all gone, whether there was anything he could do to help her. But something made him hold back: he had to finish this thing with the phones first. He had to find out who was really involved in the murder of his best friend. It was too big to leave hanging.

  He watched a taxi pull up to the entrance below. He knew what the driver had for him: it was from Loke. Teddy’s old friend from the slammer stepped up to help him time and time again.

  Nikola went down, took the envelope, paid the driver, and tore it open. There was a postcard and a phone inside. The handwriting on the postcard was childish, almost as illegible as his own.

  Hey, Cutie Pie. Believe it or not, you can work wonders with a hairdryer and a bag of rice. I opened the phone, dried it out and put it in a bag of Uncle Ben’s best for two days. It still works, and I’ve cracked the code, so you can check everything now. The code’s 7586. Love&kisses / Loke

  Nikola sat down at the kitchen table with the phone in his hand—the phone Bello had pointed out. One of Mr. One’s castoffs, the one he had been using when Chamon was shot. Now Nikola was going to look through it.

  From the old poster on the wall, Al Pacino glared down at him. Tony Montana was sitting at a desk with a gold watch on his arm
and a glass of whiskey in front of him. He had his beautiful wife and everything was going well, but he still looked pissed off, bitter, and tired of the whole thing. The darkness in Montana’s eyes radiated from the image and met Nikola’s.

  He had hit rock bottom in Dubai after Yusuf was killed, but at the time he had still thought he was part of a family, a brotherhood. He had thought that he’d found his place, despite all the crap the cops were up to, despite having lost his best friend. He had believed in a bond that was worth something all the same.

  But they had fucked him. And the thing was that someone had always been fucking him. He could see it clearly now, the pattern, a line as straight as a fucking arrow stretching right from the very start to now: the end. Though his grandpa had taught him to read when he was five, though his fifth-grade Swedish teacher had told him he was a “diamond in the rough”—he hadn’t known quite what she meant at the time, but his mother had explained that it was something good, that it meant he had “huge potential”—everything had gone to shit. He had never been a nerd, but nor had he been one of the kids who fooled around most; he had just wanted to live his life, to hang out with his friends. But the whole class, the whole school—no, the whole area—had been condemned from the very start. A problem area, defined by those who refused to adapt. But adapt to what? They were still considered to have too much of an accent when they spoke, they were thought too loud or disruptive, but no one ever listened to what they were actually saying. Their drawings were seen as graffiti and vandalism no matter what they depicted. Their thoughts were considered medieval, violent, inciting fucking violence, even though no one had ever asked Nikola and his brothers what they thought they were doing. There was all this talk about everyone being born equal and the circumstances sending their lives in different directions, but it was bullshit—they were born unequal and the circumstances meant they were all pushed into the same life. They were like the fucking Angry Birds: you sent them flying with the slingshot, but everyone knew they would eventually come crashing down, that they would never reach heaven. The only question was how much destruction and damage they could do on their way.

 

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