by Jens Lapidus
TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS 110–135 (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: 25 September 2006
Summary: As above. None of the transactions have yet yielded a capital return, but the speculative value now amounts to more than twenty-four million euros. It can also be noted that Hugo Pederson has entered into a purchase agreement for a property in Upplands Väsby, Stockholm, with a value of roughly 40 million kronor. The property has not yet been paid for, however.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 136
To: Pierre Danielsson (co-suspect)
From: Hugo Pederson
Date: 25 September 2006
Time: 09:34
HUGO: Man, this is all completely insane, completely insane.
PIERRE: What are you talking about?
HUGO: I agreed to meet Mats at Odenplan like they asked me. I told him I wanted to go through a few documents for that company on the Isle of Man, North Term Investment, you know. So we met there, nothing odd about that, but I knew that they were the ones who wanted me to meet him, so once I’d said good-bye to Mats I decided to follow him. He headed back to his normal job, walking over Barnhus Bridge, you know, between Kungsholmen and Vasastan. And what happens then? Well, I see a van pull up next to him, then two guys jump out and throw him in the back. See?
PIERRE: What are you saying? They threw him into the back of a van?
HUGO: Yeah, it’s completely insane, it was just now. They grabbed ahold of him, threw him into the back of the van. I was only a hundred feet away. I saw everything.
PIERRE: Maybe it was a joke?
HUGO: It wasn’t a joke, I can tell you that. I have to call the police.
PIERRE: Hold on, Hugo, why are you getting the police involved before you know what’s going on?
HUGO: What the hell? Two giants have just kidnapped Mats.
PIERRE: Hugo, listen to me now. We have an enormous deal going right now. I’m not going to risk that by having the police bother our partners. So you’re not calling the police. You hear me?
HUGO: But…
PIERRE: No, you’re not calling the police. The only fucking thing you’re going to do right now is go back to work and do what you usually do. Business as usual.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 137
To: Hugo Pederson
From: Louise Pederson (wife)
Date: 25 September 2006
Time: 10:40
LOUISE: Ahhh, how amazing!
HUGO: What?
LOUISE: You’re so wonderful, Hugo, so cute. I really love you.
HUGO: What?
LOUISE: I heard from Fredrika who heard it from Calle that you’ve bought the estate. Just like I wanted.
HUGO: Ah, yeah, it’s cool. I wanted it to be a surprise for you.
LOUISE: I understand that, but I couldn’t stop myself from calling when I found out. You’re so sweet, so considerate. It’s going to be fantastic.
HUGO: Yeah, I think so, too. But we don’t have access yet.
LOUISE: No, but that’s just a formality.
HUGO: Yeah, for the most part, yeah.
LOUISE: Honestly, I feel all giddy, I’ve already started furnishing the great hall in my head, and decorating the bedrooms, thinking about the paintings in the dining room, the sound system in the TV room, and the billiards table in the boys’ room. Plus which dogs we’re going to have.
HUGO: That sounds good, Mousey. I’m happy you’re happy. But we can’t have any dogs, you know how I feel about dogs. I’ve got to get back to work now.
LOUISE: I understand. Kisses.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 138
To: Carl Trolle (friend)
From: Hugo Pederson
Date: 25 September 2006
Time: 10:50
HUGO: Hi, Calle.
CARL: Why are you calling me?
HUGO: Because I need you.
CARL: There’s something wrong with you, you know that, right?
HUGO: A load of shit’s happened, Calle, I’m in a really tricky situation. I want to apologize for acting like an asshole the other day. I was a real ass. I need you, you’re my best friend, always have been.
CARL: So what’s going on? You two been fighting again?
HUGO: No, nothing like that. I’ve gotten myself into business with the wrong people, let’s just say that. And today, about two hours ago, a couple of gorillas dragged one of my consultants into the back of a van and drove off.
CARL: What are you saying? They grabbed one of your consultants?
HUGO: I think it’s a kidnapping, and the guys who threw him into the van didn’t look like much fun, like Slavic mafia. Honestly.
CARL: But you’ve called the police?
HUGO: That’s the thing: if I call the cops, there’s a risk it’ll drag in a ton of people I don’t want to be dragged into this, which means I won’t be part of any future business, and then the whole purchase of the estate in Upplands Väsby will go to shit. Louise found out about it from Fredrika. She was ecstatic.
CARL: Sorry, that was my fault. I told Fredrika, but she promised not to say anything to Louise.
HUGO: You couldn’t know. They gossip like crazy. But what am I meant to do?
CARL: Want to grab a coffee and talk about it?
HUGO: Sure.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 139
To: Hugo Pederson
From: Göran Blixt (boss)
Date: 29 September 2006
Time: 11:12
GÖRAN: Hugo?
HUGO: Yeah?
GÖRAN: Can you swing by the office this afternoon? I want to talk to you.
HUGO: Sure, but I’ve got a lot going on. What’s it about?
GÖRAN: You can come in now instead, if you’re busy later.
HUGO: I’m not at the office right now.
GÖRAN: No, exactly.
HUGO: What did you say?
GÖRAN: I said: no, exactly. You haven’t been in much lately.
HUGO: I’ve been working from home.
GÖRAN: Okay. To keep it brief, let’s just say that I haven’t been happy with your performance over the past few weeks. You aren’t here enough, which is one thing, but your reports also aren’t up to standard, and that’s not acceptable. Add to that the fact that you’ve been acting strangely, to say the least, over the past few days. I honestly don’t know what you’re up to, but we don’t have room for anything like that at Fortem Capital, as you well know. I pay you to deliver, not to run around like a headless chicken.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 140
To: Carl Trolle (friend)
From: Hugo Pederson
Date: 29 September 2006
Time: 22:27
HUGO: Hey, Calle. You okay to talk for a bit?
CARL: Sure, sure.
HUGO: So, I still haven’t called the police.
CARL: Why not?
HUGO: Nah, it won’t work. But I have looked up some stuff.
CARL: Like what?
HUGO: Well, I saw the registration plate on the van that drove away with my consultant. It was a rental from OKQ8, so I called them and asked who rented the van, but they wouldn’t tell me. So I called Gurra Hamilton, you remember him from school?
CARL: Yeah, yeah, he’s on the board for the Swedish wing of OKQ8, right?
HUGO: Exactly. Anyway, five minutes later, the branch I’d called, called me back and told me who had rented the van. They gave me the guy’s ID number and a copy of his driver’s license and everything. So I looked him up, and he must be some kind of straw man because he’s registered on, like, seventeen defunct companies and hasn’t
paid any tax for the past ten years.
CARL: Sounds like the ideal straw man.
HUGO: Right, but I went over to his place last night, with ten grand in a bag. The guy wouldn’t say a word to begin with, but then I waved a thousand-kronor note under his nose and said there was more where that came from. After that, he told me he just let people use his name sometimes so he could afford his rent and old debts. I gave him two thousand more, and then he told me that he sometimes does work for really dangerous guys. “Kum’s boys,” he said. He wouldn’t say another word after that, just sat there sulking, staring at the floor. But I’d managed to get in there, you know, and I’d gotten him to open a bottle of cheap wine. I nagged and threatened and played cute with him, but he really didn’t want to talk. Eventually, I spread out six fresh thousand-kronor notes on the table and said that if he just gave me the name of whoever had rented the van, he could have those and as much again, so long as it checked out.
CARL: Did he tell you?
HUGO: Yep, I got a name.
CARL: Who?
HUGO: I’ve got no idea who he is, but apparently the guy’s name is Najdan Maksumic. Goes by Teddy.
CARL: Okay, never heard of him.
HUGO: Of course not, he’s a gangster. Anyway, I looked this Teddy up, and he’s infamous, definitely part of the Slavic mafia, but I don’t think he’s a bigwig. In any case, I went over to his place.
CARL: Are you serious?
HUGO: Yeah, I did. He lives in Södertälje, in an apartment, but he wasn’t home. I went back to the car and waited outside. Sat there all night, and half the morning, too. Göran even called me wondering where I was. He doesn’t think I’ve been pulling my weight lately. Eventually, this Teddy guy turned up, he looked exhausted, big as a house, a real bruiser, you know? And I’m convinced he was one of the men who did the kidnapping. So, I reparked my car behind his once he went inside. A few hours later, he came back out and started the engine. And I followed him.
CARL: Shit, man, you’re crazy. Why didn’t you just call the police? You have a name now.
HUGO: I can’t, I’ve told you.
CARL: So what happened?
HUGO: I followed him, stayed at a good distance but kept his car in sight the whole time. We ended up some way out of town, up toward Uppsala. There was another car parked there, a BMW, and after a few minutes another man came out, the other gangster type who threw my consultant into the van the other day. You see? I’m convinced they’re keeping my man in that house.
CARL: Then you have to call the police. You did it, right?
HUGO: No, I didn’t do it. I just went home.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 141
To: Pierre Danielsson (co-suspect)
From: Hugo Pederson
Date: 30 September 2006
Time: 01:34
PIERRE: You can’t call at this time of day.
HUGO: It’s up to you whether you answer or not. And you answered.
PIERRE: What do you want?
HUGO: I have to call the police about this Mats thing. I’m convinced he’s been kidnapped, and I know who did it.
PIERRE: Get out of here. You’re exaggerating.
HUGO: No, you get out of here. They might kill him.
PIERRE: But I fucking told you not to get involved. What’s wrong with you? The whole deal might go to shit and you won’t make a krona, the opposite.
HUGO: That’s bullshit. I already have my positions. No one can take that from me now, the same way no one can take the shares you own from you. And we’re in the same boat here, you, me, and whoever else is involved. No one wants to blow this deal. It’s too big for everyone.
PIERRE: You sound crazy. Are you going to risk a deal worth, if I’m guessing right, more than 50 mill just for you, all because you’ve decided someone kidnapped a sweaty, criminal, money-laundering loser?
HUGO: You aren’t listening. I’m telling you the deal won’t collapse. There are too many of us banking on it now. I’m going to call the police.
PIERRE: Please. Please, Hugo. Wait until tomorrow. Sleep on it. You’re making the biggest mistake of your life.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 142
To: Hugo Pederson
From: Louise Pederson (wife)
Date: 30 September 2006
Time: 03:10
LOUISE: Where are you?
HUGO: Sorry I didn’t call, Mousey, I’m working.
LOUISE: It sounds like you’re in a car.
HUGO: Yeah, I’m on the way to a meeting.
LOUISE: A meeting? At this time of night?
HUGO: Yeah, you could say that. I can’t explain right now, Mousey, it’s complicated.
LOUISE: I get worried when I don’t hear from you. You usually let me know when you’re going to be this late.
HUGO: I know, I know. I’ll tell you everything later, I promise. Get some sleep now, and think about how great the house is going to be.
LOUISE: But when are you coming home?
HUGO: Soon. Two hours, maybe.
LOUISE: Who are you going to meet?
HUGO: I’ll tell you tomorrow, I promise.
LOUISE: Okay, baby. See you tomorrow.
HUGO: Yeah, see you tomorrow.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 143
To: 112 (SOS Alarm/Police)
From: Hugo Pederson
Date: 30 September 2006
Time: 04:12
SOS: SOS Alarm.
HUGO: Hi, I’d like to report a crime.
SOS: Okay, and what is it that’s happened?
HUGO: They’ve kidnapped a man, Mats Emanuelsson.
SOS: Kidnapped, you said? In what sense?
HUGO: I saw them drag him into the back of a van a few days ago. And I’ve tracked them down.
SOS: To where?
HUGO: Not far from Uppsala, the coordinates are 59.78 and 17.81 They’re keeping him in a house there.
SOS: Aha, that doesn’t sound good, but thank you for the coordinates. Just wait a moment while I jot that down. And who is it that’s holding him there?
HUGO: I don’t know for sure, but one of them is called Najdan “Teddy” Maksumic, I know that much.
SOS: And do you have any more information about this Teddy?
HUGO: No, sorry.
SOS: And how do you know what you’ve told me?
HUGO: I saw it.
SOS: You saw the victim?
HUGO: No, but I’m sure, I saw when they grabbed him.
SOS: And how did you find out the name of the perpetrator?
HUGO: I just know.
SOS: And what is your name?
HUGO: I’d rather not say, it feels really uncomfortable.
SOS: I understand, but it would be good for us to be able to get in touch with you, to know who you are.
HUGO: I’ve done what I need to do now. I’ve reported this crap and given you the address. That should be enough.
48
These were the shittiest days of her life, and yet Roksana had still forced herself over to the school hall in Kista, to hand over her cell phone, show her own ID, and spend more than six hours working on the various components of the aptitude test. For real this time, all her—no one else.
There was mathematic problem solving, quantitative comparisons, diagrams, tables and charts, word comprehension, sentence completion, and so on. Each section lasted fifty-five minutes. The math in particular went badly, she couldn’t think straight, the stress blocking her thoughts, and it took her at least fifteen minutes to even read through the first question—fifteen minutes she couldn’t afford to waste. She glanced at the other test takers around her: they were all hunched over, scribbling away with their sharpened pencils, focused—they knew what they were doing. Her thoughts veered wildly. The psychos’ de
mands. The threat against her father. Z, who was apparently still being held for things to do with Our Land Club. She was going to fail, that much was clear. During the break, she went into the toilet and threw up.
* * *
—
She felt an enormous urge to go over to her parents’ house immediately after the exam, but when she got there, no one was home. She called her dad and felt herself breathe a sigh of relief when he answered.
“Baba, where are you?”
“Your mother and I are going to the theater.”
Roksana sat in their kitchen and listened to her father’s music. Was he playing on any of these songs? Caspar came home and sat down to study for some exam. Roksana went into her old room, lay down on her old bed, and tried to watch YouTube videos—covers by Sofia Karlberg, Clara Henry doing stand-up, the kind of thing she had watched three years ago. She thought it would help her relax, to feel like she was twenty again. To forget all the crap. But it didn’t work.
One million kronor. She was going to have to start trying to scrape the money together, but it was like she was paralyzed. The psychos were thinking of killing Baba, and nothing she could do would get rid of that thought—it whirled around her head like a centrifuge: blocking her senses, practically shutting her down. She couldn’t smell, couldn’t taste, didn’t hear the vloggers or see their smooth faces on her phone, couldn’t think of anything but her father’s innocent vulnerability. And when the time ran out—that short-circuited her head.
* * *
—
She called Z: she still hadn’t managed to get through to him since she was released. This time, someone did actually answer, but it wasn’t him. It was his father.
“He came over here when he was released. He’s going to be staying with us for a few days.”