by Jens Lapidus
JS: What did you do with the money you won?
M: I paid off a bit of the mortgage, stuff like that. But then in early 2005, it all went to hell. I started playing really badly. I’m not too sure why—I think it’s because some new guys started to turn up, people who’d learned to play online, who used programs.
I had to start going to the club almost every night to counter the losses, or else stay late at work and play online there. Cecilia started asking questions, of course. And I was having trouble getting up in the morning: used to stay in bed while she took care of dropping the kids off and things like that.
I remember one morning she came in and sat down on the edge of the bed while the kids were eating their breakfast. She shook me.
“What’s going on, Mats? Talk to me.”
I mumbled something in response. I’d only been asleep for a few hours.
“Mats, you need to answer me. I need to know what you do all night.”
I turned over, tried to wake myself up. “I told you, work’s been crazy. Sorry, darling. I’ll try to wind things down.”
She stroked my cheek. And in my sleep-deprived, fuzzy brain, I actually promised myself to try to sort the situation out.
I might’ve been able to do it, if I’d just stopped there and then. Sure, I had losses to pay off, but I could’ve lived with it. Instead, I started playing on tick.
JS: What does that mean?
M: It means I went over the limit. In the end, I owed different players and online companies so much money that I didn’t have any kind of coverage. In theory I was bankrupt.
But then in early April, I knew Sebbe would be in Macau for a few weeks. So I went to Maxim and took out a million. Do you follow?
JS: No, not really. Explain.
M: I had no credit left with him. But I told Maxim that I’d spoken to Sebbe and he was okay to increase it. I got the money in a bag and went straight to the club. Maxim trusted me. I screwed Sebbe over. And I lost the entire million, of course.
I was an idiot. And that’s where it all started.
JS: Okay, keep going.
M: How detailed do you want me to be?
JS: How well do you remember it?
M: I’ve got a memory like a book. I could tell you every single word.
JS: That sounds great. I’d like you to be as accurate and detailed as you can. Give me everything.
M: Okay, then. Two weeks later, I got a call from Sebbe. He was back and wanted to meet, he said. I was busy tidying up after dinner, but five minutes later he called again and said he was waiting outside in his car. He wanted me to go down.
He drove a Porsche 911. At first I thought I’d get to sit in the passenger seat, but when I went round, I saw Maxim was already sitting there. I remember that Sebbe rolled down the window and said, “Get in the back, there’s plenty of the room if you squash up a bit.”
We drove through the tunnels under Södermalm. I tried to make conversation, ask how Macau had been, tell him a bit about the next poker tournament, and so on, but neither of them said much. We came out by Gullmarsplan, and then drove down to Södra Hammarbyhamnen. There were a load of cranes, huge cement blocks waiting to become the foundations of the new part of town they’ve built there now. We pulled up behind a couple of construction warehouses.
The light in the roof automatically came on when Sebbe killed the engine.
I looked at Sebbe and realized I’d made a huge mess of things.
“You son of a bitch,” he hissed.
I didn’t know what to say. I was living a completely normal life back then, even if I burned thousands, hundreds of thousands on the poker sites and at the club. I saw myself as someone who could keep his head, keep his cool, someone who could roll with the big losses and then go back home to the family as though nothing had happened. But that was the first time I realized I’d gone too far. That I was like a tiny insect, balancing on the edge of the world.
Sebbe grabbed hold of my neck and pulled my face close to his.
“Look me in the eyes, you pathetic bastard.”
And then I caught a flash of metal. Suddenly he was holding it against my face: a knife. I squeezed one eye shut as tight as I could, and I remember I could only think one thing: that my son had a football tournament that weekend. That I couldn’t miss driving him to the first match on Saturday morning.
“Who the fuck d’you think you are?” Sebbe asked.
The cold tip of the knife was on my eyelid. It felt like it was scraping my brain.
“I know, I’m sorry, I can explain…,” I stammered.
“You went behind my back, you little whore. Did you think Maxim and I wouldn’t talk?”
I could feel pain in my eye by that point.
Sebbe turned to Maxim.
“We’ll take it straight to the garage after this. Get this thing properly cleaned.”
My eye was burning.
My whole head was screaming.
Then Sebbe turned back to me, his face even closer to mine. I could smell him—L&M cigarettes and aftershave.
“Okay, I’ll give you another chance. I’m a kindhearted man. You get me my money back in two weeks, I don’t give a shit how you do it. Win it, rob a bank, sell your wife on the street. I want my money. Three mil.”
“But…but…it’s impossible.”
“Don’t start that crap now. Two weeks, Mats.”
(Inaudible)
I, I mean, it was so fucking…(inaudible) I don’t know if I can…(inaudible)
Memo continued on separate sheet.
5
The conversation with the detective inspector had ruined her chances of a good night’s sleep more than she’d thought it would. Though if she was honest, it wasn’t just that. It was the idiot, too.
She hadn’t been able to enjoy herself with the girls at Riche, celebrate her new title with a glass of bubbly and some fun. Instead, she’d taken two sips of her champagne, thanked them for being so brilliant, and told them she had a super intensive case and needed to get back to Leijon.
In actual fact, she’d sat down at her desk and thought about nothing other than what the policeman had said. At ten thirty, she went home.
A young man, suspected of murder. In some kind of coma. Requesting her. She’d never worked on a criminal case in her life.
She’d asked the policeman if she could get back to him. Kullman wanted her answer by eight the next morning. He explained: “The suspect isn’t on a respirator or anything like that, and he managed to talk for a few minutes yesterday. He was very clear, he wants you to represent him. I’ve talked to the public prosecutor, Rölén, and we feel we have to honor his request, despite his situation. That’s it, really.”
They wanted to interview the suspect, and that meant a lawyer had to be present. Emelie would have to make up her mind.
So what was the problem? It was a clear no-go. There was zero chance Leijon would let her take it on. Why didn’t she just tell it like it was: “I’m not interested in taking on any defense work”?
But for some reason, she couldn’t get it out of her mind.
—
And now: the night had been one long, drawn-out frustration. Crumpled sheets. Irritation at the light creeping in under the roller blind. Aching muscles from yesterday’s sparring class.
But no: it wasn’t just the detective inspector’s question on her mind. There was also another insanely annoying issue: her neighbor. The idiot.
It was three in the morning, and it wasn’t the first time he’d done it. William was twenty-three, worked as a salesman somewhere, and seemed to have a soft spot for Avicii and Calvin Harris. At full volume. In the middle of the night.
His stereo had thundered away two nights every week, on average, since he’d moved in six months earlier. It made no difference what day it was. Night or early morning. The idiot seemed to lack any understanding of the fact that ordinary people had to get up in the morning. Emelie had gone over and knocked on his door four
times already. She’d talked to him during the day, too. He’d promised to keep the volume down.
She was trying to fall asleep. She thought about her years at university. It had been there when she first started studying law: the thought of a job involving people. But as her years in education went by, the idea had gradually been eroded. Her classmates seemed to have gone through the exact same process—the defense firms never turned up at open days, and people were constantly talking about how much more you could earn in business law. The human aspect, and the practicalities of defending someone, they just weren’t something people spoke about. And with that came the insight of how difficult it was to get a job with one of the defense firms. When they finally graduated, it had been obvious to Emelie and the majority of her peers: they applied either to the law courts or to the big legal firms.
She hauled herself up out of bed. Pulled on a pair of tracksuit bottoms under her nightdress and went out into the hallway.
The sound of the idiot’s music was lower here.
She pressed his buzzer.
No answer.
It was three thirty in the morning.
She pressed again.
After a moment, she heard the lock turn.
William opened the door: hair on end, eyes red; clearly drunk or high on something. She could see two others behind him, looking at a laptop. Probably a Spotify playlist full of even more bass lines, she thought.
He grinned at her.
Honestly, what a fucking i-d-i-o-t. This couldn’t go on.
She said, “I’ve asked you so many times now. You know your speakers are right against the wall in my bedroom. Could you please just turn the music down?”
He continued to smile. “Don’t be such a miserable bitch.”
Enough. Emelie needed her sleep, especially tonight.
Her right hook caught him in the face.
“What the fuck!” he shouted. Blood was streaming from his nose.
“Just turn it down. Or do you want another one?”
His friends seemed to have noticed that something had happened. They got up, grabbed William, and pulled him inside.
Emelie went back to her apartment. She locked the door.
—
At six thirty, the alarm on her phone burst into life. She immediately called Magnus Hassel.
Less than three hours’ sleep. She couldn’t bear to think about what she’d done last night. She’d gone far beyond what was normal. And the thing that surprised her most was that she’d actually dared; that she’d completely lost control like that and hit him. Maybe she should go over with a bottle of wine later, grovel.
“Hello?” Magnus sounded groggy.
“Hi, it’s Emelie Jansson. I’m so sorry to call you so early, but I got a really strange request for representation.”
“Can’t we talk about this at the office in a few hours?”
“No, they need a reply before eight.”
“Okay, and they didn’t request one of the partners?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s a criminal case. A murder suspect. He requested me as his defense.”
Emelie could hear her own breathing down the line, or maybe it was just Magnus’s sighs. She was standing by her bed, looking out the window. There was a blackbird on the roof opposite, watching her.
“Well, let’s put it like this,” Magnus said. “A firm like Leijon can’t get involved with that type of case. It’s outside our area of expertise, for one, and even worse, it could give us bad will. Dirty our brand. Make our clients think we associate with riffraff. You understand that, don’t you?”
“I thought as much, but I wanted to ask anyway. I don’t know, for some reason, it seemed like an important case to take. It seems really peculiar.”
It almost sounded like he groaned. Either he was tired or he wanted to indicate that enough was enough.
“Emelie, what you think is peculiar or important is irrelevant here. You work as a lawyer for Leijon. You’re not some fucking human rights activist.”
—
The metal door might have been in the middle of the enormous police station complex on Bergsgatan in central Stockholm, but it was actually quite modest. The only thing indicating that Sweden’s biggest remand prison lay behind it was the little white sign on the stone wall by the entrance: Kronoberg Remand Prison.
Emelie had never even thought about there being any kind of prison here. Right in the middle of town: a building full of suspected murderers, robbers, rapists, and drug dealers.
After her conversation with Magnus, she had remained on her feet by the bed, staring at the bird on the roof opposite. For some reason, she didn’t feel like she had a choice, no matter what he said.
A booth made from bulletproof glass. Four metal doors, heaviest weight category. More than ten surveillance cameras. Emelie was standing in the little reception-like room known as central guard.
The man on the other side had close-set eyes and squinted at her so intensely that, to begin with, she thought he had such bad vision, he couldn’t actually see her through the reinforced glass.
He pressed a button, and a speaker crackled to life.
“And you are?”
“We spoke on the intercom just now. I’m a lawyer. Emelie Jansson. I’m here to meet a client.”
“Do you have any ID?”
Emelie fished her driving license from her bag.
“Have you been appointed?”
“No, I’ll be registered as private defense.”
“Private?”
“Yes, Detective Inspector Johan Kullman should’ve passed the message on.”
“Right…,” the guard mumbled as he started tapping away at the computer behind the thick glass. “There we are…private defense…”
Emelie could see black-and-white surveillance images on some of the other screens. Lifts, entrances, booths. Soon, she would be face-to-face with a suspected murderer.
The rooms reminded her of a hospital, the main difference being that it smelled different and all the doors were closed. She’d handed her visitor’s permit to yet another guard, and after that they’d buzzed her through three more nine-hundred-pound doors. She thought about what would happen to all these electronic-locking mechanisms and those shut up behind them if there was ever a fire.
Section six: the hospital wing. On the wall, there was an old poster with information about CRISIS—Criminal Rehabilitation Into Society In Stages. A woman who, judging by her name badge, was named Jeanette Nicorescu came to meet her by the entrance. Emelie couldn’t tell if she was a prison warden, a nurse, or a doctor.
The room he was in had no windows. The floor and walls were covered in plasticky material, painted pale green and white. It was hard to imagine it had ever felt fresh. There was a hospital bed in the middle, two cushioned seats next to it. The light was flush against the ceiling. Emelie could guess why: no one would be able to hang themselves from it, or use the cable to injure any of the guards. Or their lawyer. Though today, the thought was slightly absurd—the young man in the bed was hardly in any state to hurt anyone.
Aside from a big red mark on his forehead, she couldn’t see any visible injuries. He looked peaceful, his eyes closed, like he was sleeping. His hand was on top of the covers, and one of his fingers was connected, by wire, to a machine by the bed. It was probably measuring his heart rate. Another machine seemed to be doing an EKG.
Emelie sat down in one of the chairs.
“Is he completely in a coma?” she asked.
“No, not entirely. We measure it on a scale—the Glasgow Coma Scale—and that goes from three to fifteen. At three, there’s no verbal or motor response; below eight often means the patient is on a respirator. At fourteen, patients can walk, stand, and talk, but they’re still extremely confused. We think he’s somewhere between eleven and twelve.”
“That sounds pretty good, then?”
“Yes, but only time will tell whether he’ll get any better.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“Maybe. It depends how he’s feeling. He has spoken, but he was obviously confused and disoriented. He has a head injury, and that led to a number of smaller cranial bleeds, but the doctors don’t believe they’re so bad that he needs to be operated on at present. That’s why he’s here, in section six.”
When Jeanette Nicorescu left and closed the door behind her, the room was quiet. Every now and then, Emelie heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside.
Nothing happened. She thought about her dad. Then she went through the night’s events again: how could she have been so stupid that she’d punched her own neighbor? Imagine if he reported her to the police? Or kicked up a fuss with the housing board? She had to calm down, control herself. Maybe she was working too much, or just needed help destressing. She knew what she’d tried in the past.
For some reason, her thoughts drifted to Teddy. She wondered if he knew she’d just become a lawyer. And if he knew—why hadn’t he been in touch to congratulate her? He worked for the firm from time to time, after all.
She leaned forward over the bed. “Hi, I’m Emelie Jansson. Your lawyer.”
The young man didn’t move.
“Can you hear me?”
She watched him. He was slim, and his blond hair seemed unwashed. He had thin lips that looked like they’d been drawn in with a pen and a ruler. Kullman had told her his name was Benjamin.
There was a rushing sound from somewhere in the ceiling, maybe a waste pipe from one of the toilets on the floor above.
“Please, Benjamin. Give me a sign if you can hear me.”
She got no reaction.
The digital graph on the machine was calm and steady.
Emelie stood up to leave. She wondered how you went about defending someone you couldn’t even communicate with.
Then she heard a faint voice from behind her. “Teddy,” it said.
She turned around. Benjamin’s eyes were still closed.