by Jens Lapidus
The next day, Mikael had sat down at the same table and drawn a plane. Everyone stared, rushed to tell him how good he was at drawing propellers. It went on like that for four days. By Friday, Nikola was crying before his mother even woke up. “Please, Mom, let me come to work with you. I promise I’ll be quiet.” He had felt like she might give in: there was something about the way her mouth twitched when his pleading was about to work. And yet she had said: “No, love, it’s good for you to go, it’ll make it easier when school starts on Monday.” He hadn’t wanted to let her go, had clung on when she dropped him off. Mikael had been drawing again. The other children either watched that or went off somewhere else. No one spoke to Nikola. He had walked around on his own, the loneliest boy on earth.
Behind the drawing room, there was a room called the cushion room. He had seen the boys who were starting first and second grade go in there. It was forbidden territory for the younger kids like him. They would probably beat him to a pulp if he set foot in there. Still, he had opened the door and peered inside. It was almost empty, the cushions covered in plasticky green covers and strewn about the room. There was a lone girl jumping up and down on a pile of them. Her dark hair rose upward with each bounce. “Hi,” Nikola had said. He knew that he couldn’t be friends with a girl, so he had just sat down in one corner and watched.
“Hi,” the girl had said, continuing to bounce.
“Hi,” said Nikola, getting up.
“You want to bounce with me?” asked the girl.
Nikola didn’t reply, but he knew he wanted to bounce—despite the no-playing-with-girls rule. He climbed onto a pile of green plush cushions and got ready.
The two bounced alongside one another. They threw the piles of cushions into the corner, built obstacle courses, and jumped higher and higher. He and the girl.
After a while, the youth club educator had poked his head around the door and said: “Time to head home now, boys.”
Nikola had stared at the girl in front of him: boys?
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Chamon,” said Chamon, whose hair might not have been so long after all. “I’m starting school on Monday. What’s yours?”
* * *
—
“You can drive while I eat,” Bello said as he sat down with the food carton on his lap. “We’re circus performers. Juggling loads of stuff at the same time.”
Nikola hoped Kerim would get in touch soon. He had spoken to Gabbe, Mr. One’s old gun dealer, and gotten himself a piece. But mostly, he was preparing his head: everything he had done until this point was driven by burning fire. He had been pushed forward by a wave of hate. But now: now he would be instructed to carry out a task that he knew nothing about. Against someone he probably didn’t know—that was new. Maybe he was crazy, but everyone had been pissing on him for so long now, it was his turn to piss back.
“Believe me,” he said. “This is the last time I’m doing anything for Mr. One.”
Bello’s grin vanished. “There’s something going on with you and Isak, right? All you’ve done lately is moan about him.”
Nikola started the engine. “Yeah, there’s something going on.”
59
A memory. Emelie in the bedroom as a child. She had been reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for more than an hour, but she still couldn’t sleep. Her mother had been sitting in the armchair, trying to go through a relaxation exercise with her—“Feel your body getting heavier, heavier”—but Emelie still hadn’t been able to sleep, so her father had said that she could try getting into their bed. She had lain down on his pillow, beneath his blanket, breathed in his scent, tried to think about how good he smelled when there wasn’t a cloud of alcohol around him. And yet: she hadn’t been able to sleep. Her father had climbed in next to her, not saying anything, just stroking her back and resting his hand on her shoulder blade—as though he was protecting her from anything and everything. Embracing her. Suddenly it was like everything he had done and would do no longer mattered. Suddenly she could sleep.
Emelie could do with someone to protect her right now. Stuck in a fireproofed archive room with a metal door and an incredibly strange partner.
Magnus didn’t want her here, but he kept talking about how sorry he was for the misunderstanding at the restaurant a few weeks earlier. He was, at least, not the person she had briefly feared he might be—he wasn’t part of Fredrik O. Johansson’s conspiracy, his network. He was just an ordinary, self-centered idiot. Just a simple loser.
Her phone rang: Teddy’s name flashed up on the screen.
“It’s me.”
“I can see that.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m at Leijon.”
Teddy’s calm breathing on the line. Emelie’s heart beating at three times its usual rate. Magnus staring at her.
“Hugo Pederson was more stubborn than I thought. He refused to name any names.”
Emelie groaned.
“But, after a bit of four-legged persuasion, he gave me his phone,” Teddy continued.
Emelie had almost forgotten that Magnus was standing next to her. She was just listening.
“And I saw a call to a very interesting number on it.”
“A number?”
“Yep, the same number that booked the Uber from Katja’s place, the one Fredrik O. sent a message to before he went to the estate.”
Emelie understood. “So Hugo’s been calling the same person who threatened Katja and who went to the estate with Fredrik?”
“Probably.”
“Have you tried calling it?”
“Yeah, but no one answers.”
“Maybe Loke can help?”
“Maybe. I’ll call him. But you can also check the number where you are.”
Again: Teddy’s calm as he read out the number. Her own pulse at 180. She wanted him with her now. He must have heard something in her voice: “Emelie, is everything okay?”
“No,” she said, weighing whether to tell him who was standing in front of her. For some reason, she decided against it. “But we can talk about it later.”
She ended the call but kept her phone in her hand as she tried to work out what she was going to do.
Magnus’s eyelashes were trembling. “Can you forgive my embarrassing behavior at the restaurant?”
Emelie didn’t know how to reply. Magnus had to stop now. And she had to move on.
“Because this is what I’m thinking,” he continued. “If we can just draw a line under that episode, you’re welcome to come back to us here. I still believe in you. And you should know I’ve devoted my life to this place, I’ve built it up from the shabby little firm of amateur generalists we were when old man Leijon still ran the place to what we are today: the highest-ranked firm in Scandinavia, with the highest partner profit in the whole of northern Europe. And that’s the ship I want you to join.”
Emelie really had to get away now.
She breathed in and steeled herself—quickly stepped past him, toward the closed door. She tore it open.
Magnus started to say something: “What are you doing?”
Emelie slammed the door behind her—it thudded even more loudly than when she had gone in earlier. She picked up a sculpture of a boy in a swimming cap and goggles and pushed it beneath the door handle, blocking it—Magnus was trapped inside.
* * *
—
The silence in the hallway was almost unpleasant. She tried to calm her breathing. Then Magnus started banging. She could hear his faint voice on the other side of the thick door. “Let me out, Emelie, what are you doing?”
She needed to think clearly now, so she moved down the hallway. There could still be other Leijon employees around. The sound of Magnus grew fainter. She dialed the number Teddy had seen in Hugo’s phone.
> The call went through, but nothing happened, neither an answer nor a machine.
The carpet on the floor looked almost like silk as it glittered in the sunlight filtering through the windows. She held her phone in front of her, still calling the unknown number. She listened out for noises. Magnus was quiet now, as far as she could tell.
She passed Jossan’s office; she passed her old room. The ringing continued at regular intervals. She walked past more of her former colleagues’ offices. Her phone grew warm in her hand.
Then she heard it: a faint ringing farther down the hallway. She headed toward the sound. It grew louder. A phone ringing in someone’s office.
She tried the handle. The door was locked, but she could clearly hear a phone inside. No one locked their door at Leijon; she had never seen anyone do it. Though the working culture was tough and you were expected to devote your life to the firm, the doors were always open. The assistant lawyers always had to be able to speak to one another or the partners if there was something they needed to know. The firm’s decision always had to weigh more than individual employees’ possible needs for privacy.
But she was sure: the phone she was calling was locked inside.
Emelie pulled at the door, but it was solidly built. Nothing happened.
She went over to the stairwell, down to the sixth floor where the handyman’s closet—or the property maintenance department, as it was known—was located. She rifled through the tools and grabbed the biggest screwdriver she could find.
Back at the door: she forced the screwdriver into the lock and tried to pry it open. She pulled at it, tore, and hacked. She couldn’t do it. Instead, she pushed the screwdriver into the gap between the door and the frame. She got ready and kicked. It rattled, cracked; the damned door opened.
Right then, she felt a kick in her belly.
The room looked just like she had expected it to: neat, tidy, incredibly impersonal—other than a picture of a woman on the desk, probably a daughter or new wife. She called the number again. She knew where she was now. This was Anders Henriksson’s office. The arch-loser who had always been responsible for her development meetings, who had stopped Magnus Hassel at the bar in Ling Long.
She could hear the angry ringtone coming from a tall, brown cabinet. It was locked, and she broke it open using the screwdriver. Inside was a gray Samsonite suitcase. And, on a shelf, a phone was buzzing and ringing.
Emelie picked it up. Her own number was flashing up on the screen. She grabbed the handle of the Samsonite case: it was locked, too. She tried forcing the screwdriver into the lock, but she couldn’t get a good grip. The case was clearly constructed to be difficult to pick. She was going to need better tools. And she couldn’t stay here too long.
With the phone in one hand and the case in the other, she turned and left.
60
The police station in Täby didn’t match the rest of the area. It was on what felt like a back street, to one side of the hulking great shopping center. She and Billie were holding hands. Roksana needed her friend right now—she had called her a while earlier, and Billie had come right away.
“That there’s the temple of the repressed,” Billie said, pointing toward the shopping center. “And the cult of consumerism demands complete obedience. Awareness of society’s power structures is the one thing they don’t sell in those otherwise so brightly lit places. Since that awareness is something money can’t buy, they’re not interested.”
Standing in front of the heavy glass doors into the police station, Roksana felt a wave of nausea.
“Is this where they held you after Our Land Club?” Billie had possibly realized that Roksana hadn’t exactly called her to go off on one of her political rants.
Roksana nodded. “Though they actually treated me pretty well,” she said. “No fascist pigs. They were just doing their jobs.”
Billie snorted. “They protect Nazis demonstrating on our streets, but they take your ticket money from a celebration of love. They’re crazy.”
Roksana knew who the real crazy people were. She had to find the money now.
The station wasn’t open to the public today, but above a bell by the doors there was a sign reading Emergency Help. She pressed it.
“It’s going to be fine,” said Billie.
* * *
—
Ten minutes later, a woman in plain clothes opened the door.
“I’d like to speak to someone. Could we come in?” Roksana asked.
“You can talk to me, but we’re pretty understaffed today, so you’ll have to sit down and wait a while.”
Billie glared at her. The policewoman continued. “The officers on shift are out hunting drunk drivers. Today’s the most dangerous day of the year to be out on the roads.”
They sat down to wait on one of the stone benches in reception. Roksana shoved her hand into her canvas bag and felt the cool metal of Nikola’s gold chain between her fingers. A guy she barely knew versus her father. She didn’t understand how it could be such a difficult choice.
After another ten minutes, a hatch in the reception counter opened. The police officer was now wearing glasses, and she was standing on the other side, behind the glass—lame, marking out her position.
Roksana breathed in and felt the chain in her bag again. “There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.” Her mouth was dry, her words catching on the roof of it, on her tongue.
The policewoman had switched on a computer and was standing with her fingers poised to type up whatever Roksana wanted to tell her. Billie seemed invigorated. She did a quick pirouette on the floor.
61
“I’ve never liked Stockholm by day,” Dejan said. “This city has to be experienced at night.”
“You’re messed up,” Teddy mumbled, thinking about how Dejan had fired the MP5 over the Midsummer guests’ heads. Not that he wasn’t grateful—if his gangster friend hadn’t had his dog with him, Hugo would never have shown him his phone. And now Dejan was giving him a ride back to Kum’s place.
“I mean,” Dejan continued, “that everyone’s so proud of Stockholm’s successes, how beautiful she is with all the water, how clean, how safe, and all that crap. But the sexy thing is the depth of the place. The way nothing’s how it seems. The fact that on those very same streets, insane amounts of coke are dealt every night, that the whores will go to any address you send them, that access to weapons from the Balkans has increased sevenfold over the last three years, that the police don’t even dare go out to the districts.”
“Quiet, concentrate on driving,” Teddy said. Dejan was more screwed up than he had ever realized.
The touch screen on the Porsche dashboard was only half the size of the one in the Tesla, but everything else screamed German luxury.
He had just spoken to Emelie. She had managed to get ahold of the suitcase and a phone and was in a taxi en route to Kum’s place, where they would try to open the case together. He was assuming they would find material inside that would enable them to round up and end the so-called network. With any luck, they would find a police officer who could help them, someone more trustworthy than Detective Inspector Nina Ley.
His child wouldn’t have to be born into this. His child wouldn’t have a father who was living on the run.
A memory: pre-slammer, pre-all-this-damn-shit. An equally cold spring. Teddy had taken Nikola to the amusement park, to Gröna Lund. He was maybe seven years old at the time. They bought wristbands and started on the left side of the park, where the rides for smaller children were located. The line had been long, and they spent twenty minutes in line for the Ladybird. After one ride, Nikola had wanted cotton candy. They went on the smaller free-fall tower and the teacups, the cotton candy like a thin beard around Nikola’s mouth and a sticky mess on his fingers. Then he had wanted to head over to the “grown-up section” as he ca
lled it—and the bigger free-fall ride. They went on the roller coaster and the ghost train. Teddy was freezing, but Nikola had wanted to go on the Wild Mouse roller coaster; according to the brochure, you had to be at least forty-seven inches to get on, and Nikola was only forty-six. Teddy had said no. Nikola had begged. When Teddy said no a second time, Nikola had cried. “Please, Uncle Teddy. Please. You’re the only one who does fun stuff with me, and Chamon’s been on it, he told me. Do you want me to be the only one who hasn’t been on the Wild Mouse?” They had gone into the bathroom, where Teddy lifted Nikola onto a toilet seat and pulled off his boots. He had folded two paper towels until they became stiff cardboard cushions and then shoved them into Nikola’s boots. “There, now let’s see how tall you are.” They went back to the Wild Mouse, and Teddy had watched Nikola hold his breath as the entry guy measured him. But when their turn came around and they were finally sitting in the front car, Teddy had caught a glimpse of something else. He had stroked Nikola’s cheek. “You okay?”
Nikola had nodded stiffly. The roller coaster cars screeched and vibrated and cranked their way thirty feet into the air, to the start. For a brief moment, they hung at the top, suddenly swinging downward, upward, around the sharp bends. They had been pushed outward by the g-force, heard people screaming, and Teddy had felt his stomach protesting. He had glanced over to Nikola and realized that he should have known better. His nephew’s eyes were filled with terror. When they left the ride, it had all welled over—Nikola couldn’t stop crying. Teddy had picked him up and carried him down the stairs to the exit. He had felt Nikola’s warm breath on his shoulder, his tears on his neck. Nikola had been sobbing, huddled up—a small, wet fleck.