by Jens Lapidus
At the same time, all this crap was still raging inside him. Isak’s betrayal. Mr. One: a man who ordered murders. Of his own boys.
A few nights earlier, Simon Murray had accosted Bello in a pub.
“I hear Nikola wants to see me,” he had said.
Bello didn’t want to talk to the pig, but he had still nodded and passed on Murray’s suggested time and place.
* * *
—
They met by the gravel pit, the same place as before. The same grayish gloom. The same lame Volkswagen.
“Was that your gorilla who dropped you off again today?”
“If you mean Bello, he’s not an ape. But I know you pigs call us that kind of thing.”
The color of bastard Murray’s face darkened. “I didn’t mean that.”
A machine whirred in the distance: they were working here today. Nikola had always thought the place was abandoned. He and Murray started walking.
Murray sounded almost out of breath. “So what do you want?”
“I wanted to talk to you about what you know.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s too much shit going on right now. I want it all to stop.”
“I wonder. I think I’ve worked out most of it.”
“What have you worked out?”
“You took out Yusuf and the other guy by mistake, because you thought he was behind Chamon’s murder.”
Nikola held off replying.
Simon Murray continued: “But now you think it was Isak behind it all. Am I right?”
Murray really had worked it out. Nikola had to say something.
“Why would I think that? I don’t have anything against Isak. He’s like a mentor to me.”
Murray’s voice had almost reached a falsetto by now. “Maybe he was, I don’t doubt that, even if it is sad, because you could have chosen another way. But I don’t think you’re following Isak anymore.”
“That’s bullshit. You can’t prove anything.”
“You don’t know that.”
Nikola shoved his hands into his pockets. “Why do people become pigs? It’s something I’ve always wondered. Why would you want to be involved the minute something bad happens? Wouldn’t it be better to do something positive? There must be something about you people, something that draws you toward the shit.”
Simon Murray’s shoulders looked tense. “If you give me something, maybe I can make sure you get out of all this. So you can drop all this crap.”
“No, it’s you who needs to drop it,” Nikola said, pulling out his cell phone. “I remember you thought it was incredible that Isak had been released even though the charges against him were ready and there was plenty of evidence.”
“Yeah, that was magic, but what does that have to do with this?”
Nikola pressed play on the recording he had made of Simon Murray last time they met. The cunt’s face turned even redder, the corners of his mouth drooping.
“Listen to me now. Just take it fucking easy,” said Nikola. “Because you’re giving me classified information in this recording. That’s misconduct, and it’s not at all good for you, even you know that. So, if you don’t want me to send this to your bosses, I want you to answer one question.”
Murray squirmed—now he knew why Nikola had wanted to meet.
“I want to know what the deal is with Isak.” Nikola crossed his arms: demonstratively.
Thirty seconds passed. The sound of the road hummed in the background.
“You’re a little asshole, you know that, don’t you?” said Murray.
“Maybe, but right now one asshole is in a worse position than the other. So tell me what you know about Isak, why he was released.”
“Okay, okay. If you delete that crap you recorded, I’ll tell you what I know.”
Nikola held out his hand. Deal.
Simon Murray’s throat looked tense. “I only just found this out myself. I didn’t know it when they dropped the charges against him, but I had the feeling it was something out of the ordinary. Isak has been an informant for local police for years.”
“What?”
“You heard what I said.”
Nikola had heard—but he still hadn’t understood it. “Again please.”
“Well, I said that I’d been looking into stuff and worked out certain things. Isak has been playing in our court the entire time, giving us information, building up a relationship with local police, squealing on whoever he thought he could squeal on, selling out whoever he felt like selling out. That’s what Chamon found out: that your boss is an informant. Don’t ask me how, but he found out Isak was a rat, as you say. And that’s why Isak had to get rid of him. The attack at the gym was aimed at Chamon from the beginning, no one else.”
Nikola had never listened to anything as carefully in his life, but he still couldn’t make sense of it. Was this cop saying what he thought he was saying?
“What did you say?” Nikola asked. He had to understand. He had to hear it again.
They were standing opposite one another, roughly the same height. Murray—the police officer who had spent the past few years trying to send down Nikola and his brothers, who had been praised by the papers as “the police inspector who made it his calling to clean up Södertälje,” the cop who always wanted to be righteous, honorable, good. Now Nikola wanted to know what he was really saying.
Murray repeated the same thing again. “And I think,” he then said, “that after Chamon was attacked, he told Yusuf what he knew.”
Nikola thought back to Chamon’s words in the hospital, words his friend hadn’t been able to speak but had written down: You can’t trust anyone. I want out.
Shit.
It was crazier than he had thought. Isak—the boss—wasn’t just a killer. He was also a rat. A traitor.
Now he really did have to take down Mr. One; it was justified on all fronts. But, in order to manage it, he was going to need help. The only problem was that he didn’t know where he would find it. He couldn’t talk to Bello: it was too much to ask for his friend to turn on Mr. One. The next person who popped into his head was Teddy. But they hadn’t spoken in a long time, and his uncle was currently being held in custody. Nikola had been there; it wasn’t a good place.
And yet Nikola had made a friend there, the guy who had spent his exercise hour in the neighboring cage: Kerim Celalî. The guy who had escaped by helicopter, been re-arrested, and then by some magic only been given three years by the courts. Kerim: the mafioso with more than nine lives. The guy everyone was talking about, who they called the New Kum, who seemed to be building an empire as big as the old one. Nikola counted the months and days. Kerim should have been given conditional release just a few weeks earlier.
* * *
—
Roksana opened her eyes. Nikola crept closer so that his face was near hers. When she blinked, he could feel her lashes on his. He was completely naked—even Chamon’s gold chain and cross were on the bedside table. They kissed. He could see the fear in her eyes—last night, she had told him about the men demanding a million kronor in cash and threatening to kill her dad unless she delivered the dough.
“Morning, Roksy.”
“Morning, Nicko. How long have you been awake?”
“A while. How’re you feeling?”
“Yeah, you know. They want the money in three days, on Midsummer’s Eve.”
“I know. What are we going to do?”
“You’ve already done enough by lending me money. I need to try to convince my dad to lend me the rest somehow.”
Nikola had given her all of his savings the night before: the 154,000 kronor that he always kept in two rolls, bound with rubber bands, in his pocket. But it wasn’t a loan, like Roksy had said—he wasn’t going to ask for it back. He thought about whether h
e should pawn the gold chain and cross—but they weren’t really his.
“And you’re sure you don’t want me to talk to them? I might know who they are.”
Roksana kissed the scar on his stomach: a physical reminder of the explosion he had survived. “No, it won’t help. They’ve given me so many chances now.”
“I’m coming with you, at least, when you go to meet them. No way you’re going to see those bastards on your own.”
“Z and I usually call them the psychos.”
The psychos, Nikola thought: I’m just like them.
His phone beeped.
A Snapchat message: Heard you wanted to meet. Just say when and I’ll tell you where. /Kerim
The New Kum was willing to see him—he had to seize this chance. Nikola got up and started to get dressed.
“When will I see you again?” Roksana asked.
Nikola hadn’t thought that far ahead. He kissed her forehead. “I don’t know.”
“What are you going to do?”
Nikola knew the rules; he knew the law among brothers. But he also felt so good with this girl in front of him that he wanted her to know every inch of him.
“I’m going to war.”
“What do you mean? War?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
He could hear how crazy it sounded when he used that word.
War.
51
She was in her twentieth week of pregnancy, but she couldn’t sleep at home. She would be giving birth in just a few months’ time, and she was living under the threat of death. She was carrying an unborn child whose father’s face was on posters all over town. Billionaire’s suspected killer escapes from prison. Suspected killer ties up lawyer in custody. Suspected murderer and former kidnapper pulls off most cunning jailbreak since helicopter escape.
Emelie and the suspected killer were sitting in the entertainment room beneath Kum’s villa with a laptop computer and stacks of papers and documents. Loke had finally come through with the information that, thanks to the trojan, he had managed to extract from the Police Authority’s computer system. He hadn’t sifted through it: that was Emelie and Teddy’s job. Preliminary investigation reports from the old kidnapping case in 2006, reports from the Benjamin Emanuelsson case, material from the ongoing investigation Nina Ley was pursuing with her special unit. Emelie had already seen a lot of it, but there was also material she had never come across before: the ongoing preliminary investigation into Teddy and the murder of Fredrik O. Johansson, for example; other investigations Nina seemed to have carried out, investigations into Joakim Sundén—the cop who had worked for the bastards and who had been killed just under two years ago. In another world, she and Teddy might have been able to enjoy one another’s company. But right now, they didn’t have time.
They prepared, organized. Tried to understand the scope of the material, to draw up priorities. They read interviews, forensic reports, police memos. By looking at everything, they tried to see the bigger picture, to spot patterns. The network was bigger than she had ever realized: the range of those dogs became physical when she studied the mountain of material.
* * *
—
Every now and then, Kum came down with food.
“Emelie, what do you think of my ćevapčići?”
She loved the skinless lamb sausages, even if her appetite wasn’t the greatest at the moment.
“The two of you seem comfortable down here?”
The place was nice, two big sofas, an enormous TV with all the games and streaming channels they could ask for, and two fold-up beds where she and Teddy tried to sleep at night.
Teddy said: “I’ll always be grateful.”
Kum started to head back upstairs. He paused midway and stuck his head over the railing. “A star lawyer and one of my best men. You two should be able to manage this. And you should be able to get yourself released, Teddy, right?”
Emelie wished she could agree with the man on the stairs, Teddy’s old godfather. She just didn’t know how they were going to do it.
* * *
—
In one of the police reports in the investigation into Fredrik O. Johansson’s murder, Emelie saw that one of the surveillance cameras at the property had caught the dead man’s Range Rover pulling away from the house after the killing. The police suspected it was Teddy who had taken it, but both Emelie and Teddy knew that it must be the man who had disappeared with the Samsonite case. The police had checked the toll booths and had tracked the car driving into central Stockholm forty minutes later.
Emelie thought about the fact that someone had taken an Uber to the same area after threatening Katja. Then she thought about the company documents she had seen for the estate, which had been drawn up by Leijon. She got an idea.
“I have to go out,” she said to Teddy. “There’s something I need to check in town.”
* * *
—
She was standing by the entrance to the building that housed Leijon Legal Services. On the ground floor, there was a dry cleaner, a skiwear shop, and a 7-Eleven.
She stepped into the 7-Eleven and immediately recognized the same assistant who had been there when she worked upstairs.
“Hey, Gregory,” she said, smiling so widely that her jaw almost ached. “It’s been a while. How’s it going?” She was glad he was wearing a name badge on his chest pocket.
Gregory seemed to recognize her—she had been a huge consumer of the self-serve mixed candy back in the day, after all.
“Pretty good. You not working for Leijon anymore? Don’t think I’ve seen you here in at least a year.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m still there. But I’m trying to be healthier. They say sugar’s dangerous, you know.”
Gregory had freckles and still looked seventeen, though he was probably at least twenty-three.
“I have a question,” said Emelie. “Or rather, the firm has a question. We were wondering if we could have access to the films from your surveillance camera on the front of the building.”
Gregory picked his nose. “Why?”
“Uff, there was an incident a few weeks back, and we just wanted to check it out. It’s not worth getting the police involved for such small stuff. I just wanted to check whether a certain person came to the office on a certain day.”
“Aha.”
“How long do you keep the films?”
Gregory’s finger was even deeper in his nose now. “Several months. It’s all on the computer back here.” He gestured to a door behind the counter. “You can check as much as you want.”
* * *
—
Ten minutes later, Emelie had seen enough—finding the right clip hadn’t taken long. 7-Eleven’s camera also covered part of the Leijon entrance, and she knew which date she was looking for. On the same day the murder occurred out at Hallenbro Storgården, exactly 14 minutes and 12 seconds after Fredrik O. Johansson’s car passed the tolls into the city, she watched a man enter the building pulling a Samsonite suitcase in the same color Teddy had described. In other words: Fredrik O’s unknown friend had grabbed the case out at the estate, driven Fredrik’s car into town, and then taken the case straight to Leijon.
There was only one problem: 7-Eleven’s fantastic camera didn’t cover the whole of the entrance. You couldn’t see the head of the man pulling the bag. It was out of shot.
Maybe it was no longer in there, but just the chance that everything Fredrik O. Johansson had wanted to tidy up, everything he had wanted to hide, might be up there, within reach, meant that someone had to get in there. They had to try to get ahold of that crap. The evidence.
* * *
—
Emelie sat down at Jossan’s kitchen table.
“What’s really going on?” her friend asked. “I’ve seen posters with T
eddy’s face on them all over town.”
“Yeah, it’s a bit tricky.”
“A bit tricky? You’re involved somehow, right? It was your lawyer he tied up in the visitor’s room?”
“I am involved. And you’re right. It’s not just a bit tricky. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever been through.”
Jossan pushed out her lower jaw. She looked skeptical—a look Emelie had never seen on her before. It scared her. Jossan clearly didn’t feel like joking today.
“Just how involved are you?”
“Very. Teddy is the father of this little one, for example.” Emelie patted her stomach.
Josephine looked like she had just found out that she herself was pregnant with triplets. “Are you kidding? You said you didn’t know who the father was.”
But then she laughed, back to her usual self. “Pippa, your kid’s going to be insanely cute. I mean, it would have been anyway, but now that I know who the father is, I think it’s going to be a baby model. Maybe for Bonpoint or something. They make fantastic clothes for little ones. Have you seen them?”