by Jens Lapidus
“What did you say?”
His voice was weak, but she had no trouble understanding him. “Get Teddy to understand.”
6
A morning walk. Gainomax and a coffee from 7-Eleven. Fifteen-minute phone call about Nikola with Linda: he was out of the young offenders’ institute now. She was already worrying herself to death, had no idea how to deal with him.
Teddy went over to see his nephew and congratulate him on being out. Nikola had locked himself in his room. Teddy knocked. “Can’t an uncle give his nephew a hug?” But Nikola just mumbled something about being too hungover right now.
Linda suggested they go for a walk instead so that Nikola had a chance to rest. They walked along the water’s edge on Linavägen, up toward the little harbor. The garbage cans were overflowing with the detritus of student parties.
“I wanted to apologize for what I said last time, Teddy. That the only thing I wanted was for Nikola not to be like you.”
“It’s okay, don’t worry.”
“I’m worried about him, though. I wouldn’t be able to cope if he went back in.”
“Hopefully he’s learned something this past year.”
“I don’t know. Can’t you talk to him? You’re the only one he listens to.”
Maybe she was right. But at the same time—they needed to have a functioning relationship even when he wasn’t around, otherwise it would never work. Still: he had to help out. See Nikola, spend some time with him, maybe even find him an apartment, a job. But his nephew was nineteen now. He and he alone could live his life.
Teddy took a shower. When he came out, he saw he had a missed call. Emelie had called. It was the first time in more than a year he’d seen her name on his phone.
He listened to the message. Her clear voice. “Call me back as soon as you can. It’s important.”
Of course he’d get back to her. He just couldn’t figure out what she wanted.
Last time he bumped into her, it had been in the elevator in the Leijon office. She’d been carrying a laptop case in one hand, and she’d tried to ignore him at first—looked the other way, pretended he didn’t exist. But that was pretty hard when one person was waiting in an open elevator, and the other was just outside.
“Hi, Emelie. It’s been a while.”
She’d stepped out of the elevator and twisted to avoid brushing up against him.
“How are you?” she had asked as Teddy stepped into it.
“Fine. You? Working hard?”
“Like always.”
Teddy had said: “Take it easy, you look a bit pale.”
“Transparent lawyer, not exactly unusual in these parts. I promise not to haunt you down the hallways.”
Teddy had pressed a button. The doors had closed between them. He’d been able to smell her in the elevator. Her scent reminded him of lemons.
—
He’d asked for sixty thousand kronor for the Fredric McLoud case. After payroll and tax, that left just under half of it to be paid out by Leijon Legal Services. Still, it was enough to live on for a few months; he didn’t have an extravagant lifestyle. Magnus Hassel was happy with the “operation,” as he called it.
Teddy had reported back to him yesterday.
The chain of evidence was the most important thing. Teddy had a video recording of the bag being handed over on his phone. The woman had stated that McLoud had been carrying the bag. And finally, in the clothing shop, while they’d both been hiding out, Teddy had checked the contents of the bag and transferred some of it to his own. For analysis.
“I guess there won’t be a deal now? Your client is hardly going to want to buy McLoud’s company?”
Magnus laughed. His fondness for art seemed to have gone crazy lately. On a shelf behind him, Teddy could see something that looked like a greenish vagina made from plastic and marble.
“Teddy, Teddy, Teddy, you’re new to this world. Of course there’ll be a deal. The chances increased dramatically thanks to your work.”
Teddy didn’t understand. He’d just collected enough material to land the CEO at least two years behind the same bars that had locked him up.
“Fredric McLoud is an extraordinarily good CEO,” said Magnus. “The only difference now, with the information you’ve given us, is that our client’s going to pay two hundred million less for his company.”
“What, some kind of blackmail?”
“Here at Leijon, we never let a client down. Remember that, Teddy. If we see an opportunity to do a better deal, it’s our responsibility to take it. I call it haggling. It’s just what happens in business. The more you know, the better the deal’s going to go. Would you listen to that, I just rhymed.”
—
“I’ve been appointed private defense counsel for a young man accused of murder,” Emelie said when he finally called her back. Her voice sounded tense.
“I didn’t think you worked in that field. Is this through Magnus?”
“No, and it’s not from anyone else at the office, either. The suspect requested me, but the whole thing seems really important.”
“And you said yes?”
“Oh, yeah, didn’t I say? But as private defense.”
Teddy himself had never had a private defense counsel. Usually the only people who did were those with plenty of money.
“Who’s paying?”
“No one. I decided to do it pro bono. There are two alternatives in Sweden. Private or public defense.”
“I know, but why…?” And suddenly, he understood. “Leijon doesn’t know you’ve taken it on, do they? It hasn’t been made public.”
Breathing pause.
“Right,” said Emelie. “And no one can find out, in case it’s dropped. The suspect’s name is Benjamin Emanuelsson, by the way. Do you know who that is?”
Emanuelsson.
He said: “Can I call you back in a few minutes?”
—
Harenpark. Saturday. Teddy had gone there four months ago, on the anniversary of Mats Emanuelsson’s death.
They always took this route to the metro station, the Emanuelsson kids. The snow was already lying thick and white on the ground between the swings and the sandbox, but the gravel path had been sanded.
The kiddie pool was full of frozen leaves. Teddy didn’t know much about Mats’s suicide, but he’d wanted to wait there today. See whether anyone walked that way.
The snow was swirling in the air. It almost seemed to be rolling forward, an impenetrable mist rising from the ground, about to swallow up him and his memories.
Teddy had kidnapped Mats Emanuelsson. He’d also been convicted and spent eight years in prison for doing it. And then, in the middle of his sentence, Sara had told him that Mats had killed himself.
Sara. He tried not to think about her. He still didn’t know why things had ended the way they had, other than that something didn’t make sense. She’d suddenly just cut off all contact with him.
Teddy had a rough idea of what Mats had been subjected to during the kidnapping; he’d seen certain things, and above all he’d heard Mats himself talk about it during the trial. Teddy wasn’t surprised it had swallowed him up. And the fact he’d committed suicide hadn’t so much shocked Teddy as grabbed hold of his heart. Until Loke Odensson, his old friend from the slammer, some kind of computer genius these days, called him to say that the real reason he’d been hired to kidnap Mats Emanuelsson was because a couple of kiddie fuckers wanted to shut him up. Because they were afraid that some information Mats had somehow come into possession of was on a hard drive. Teddy had done it for the money, hadn’t had a clue about the other stuff. But it made no difference. Not now. He, Teddy, had helped the predators.
He’d waited in the snow for four hours.
Eventually, they appeared, both of them. Maybe they were on the way to see their friends. He’d watched them walk along the path. A young man, a teenage girl. It had to be Benjamin and Lillan. Mats’s kids. Teddy was standing some distance from them. They
didn’t care he was there. They probably didn’t recognize him, weren’t expecting to see the man who’d done eight years for kidnapping their father there, of all places.
He caught up with them.
“Wait.”
They turned around at the same time.
“My name’s Teddy Maksumic. Don’t be scared.”
Lillan’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of her head, and she started to reach for her cell phone. Maybe she wanted to call the police. Benjamin took a step forward, as though to protect her. But they didn’t leave.
“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for what I did to Mats. If I could turn back time, I’d do anything to stop it from happening,” Teddy said.
He tried to see if they were listening, if they understood what he was saying.
“I didn’t know what they wanted from him, and I didn’t hurt him. That was the others. Not that it’s an excuse. I kidnapped your dad. For that, I’ll always be guilty.”
He’d thought only about what he wanted to say, nothing else. He hadn’t thought about what he’d do next. The three of them were unmoving, like shy children waiting to be told they could leave.
After a minute or so, Benjamin had said: “Why did you find us?”
“Because I was tricked.”
Teddy hadn’t had anything else to say after that. He bowed slightly, and turned to leave.
And now, four months later: Benjamin, accused of murder. The kid had been twelve when Teddy kidnapped his father. He was twenty-one now. And he’d asked Emelie to be his lawyer.
The whole thing was so strange, it almost couldn’t be true. But Emelie wouldn’t make something like that up.
What the hell had happened?
7
Nikola was in bed. Not like when he’d been on leave before. Then: at Chamon’s or one of the other guys’ places. No, this time he was at his mom’s. Maybe it was home now.
He was lying in the fetal position, curled up under the covers.
He should be ecstatic. No doors being locked at nine in the evening. No room searches. No checking for booze, pot, porn. No Sandra, Anders, or any of those other idiots constantly nagging at him.
But still, he felt fucking awful. Threw up three times in a row. There was nothing but bile left in his stomach now. That, and a bad feeling. He hadn’t even felt up to opening the door when Teddy dropped in to say hello.
It wasn’t just some winter sickness bug, either. It wasn’t too many smokes. Not some bad food—however much he wished it was. It wasn’t even last night’s partying—he hadn’t been that wasted. He knew what it was.
He was Nikola Maksumic—the nephew of Najdan, aka Björne, aka Teddy. He was a free man.
But he was sick with worry.
Last night Chamon had been serious. Gone all out, generous, invited the guys. Booked a table at Yama’s Bar on Saltsjögatan. Chamon, Yusuf, Bello, and four other guys.
Chamon: on form. “You pay for the food yourselves, but the drinks are on me. Our man’s out!” Nikola wondered where he’d gotten the cash from.
They eyed up girls, flirted with the waitress, talked to familiar faces who came over to the table. Södertälje wasn’t exactly a metropolis—honestly, it was just a big suburb of Stockholm—and they were Yusuf’s guys, the whole group of them. If you were in Yusuf’s gang, you were in Isak’s. An air of respect around the table.
They ate steak, drank beer.
Chamon brought over the shots after the food.
Chamon waved a rolled-up five-hundred-krona note in the air and hissed that he had enough Charlie for everyone.
He ordered a bottle of champagne—shouted, “Moët and Chandon’s my middle name.”
Chamon: didn’t care about anything but having a good time. Climbed up on the chair. Yelled so loudly you could probably hear him out on the street: “Kas b’houbouk to the Bible Man! Welcome out.”
Thoughts from last night spun through his mind.
Nikola: a fraud, a wannabe tough guy fooling them all; a weak, dickless kid.
What the hell was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he just be like the other guys? So confident. Act chilled. Act crazy. Head high, oozing authority.
He should be the happiest man in northern Europe. Instead: just an overanxious loser.
He didn’t get why it wouldn’t pass; he was almost twenty, for God’s sake. But somehow, he knew it never would. The same thing had happened plenty of times the past few years. He hung out with the boys. He did jobs. He talked about wanting to move up, do more, be part of the big jobs.
But at the same time, he was so fucking scared.
He could never tell anyone. How he felt. That he didn’t want to be part of Isak’s trial.
That he was a weak fucker who dreamed of wimping out.
The others had been busy doing lines in the toilets. Nikola had done one himself about half an hour earlier, the rush starting to subside. Now he was standing by the bar. Alone.
A girl pushed her way in next to him and tried to order. The bartender ignored her.
“Lemme help,” said Nikola. He leaned over the bar.
“Hey, man. This girl here wants a drink.”
The bartender cocked his head: gave him a who-the-fuck-d’you-think-you-are look. Then the idiot’s eyes widened. He came over and took the girl’s order like a nice little lamb. Nikola turned around: Yusuf was behind him.
The girl’s name was Paulina, and she was only seventeen. Technically, she wasn’t allowed in the bar, but she was clearly using an older friend’s ID. She told him how she and her friends had been having a night picnic down by the marina on Viksängsvägen, and that they’d been drinking “space boxes.”
“What’s that?” Nikola asked.
“A boxie,” Paulina replied, giggling.
“What’s a boxie?” Nikola asked.
“You don’t know what a boxie is?”
“No.”
“Box wine, y’know?”
They laughed. Paulina had brown eyes.
She said: “Is it true you speak Syriac?”
In Södertälje, lots of people his age knew him for that reason alone. He nodded, used to the question. “I grew up with these guys.”
“Impressive. I can’t even speak Polish, and both my ’rents are from there. Is it true your grandpa read you the Russian classics when you were a kid?”
Nikola nodded to that, too, but more cautiously. He wondered how she could know. He changed the subject. Started talking about who she was there with.
He looked around. Now Chamon and the others were circling them like hyenas. All waiting for him to pounce on his prey: he deserved a fuck tonight. He hoped they hadn’t heard Paulina’s last question.
He’d really rather just stay there talking to her the rest of the evening.
That was his other big lie: he wasn’t just a scared motherfucker. He’d never had sex, either.
—
The bed felt uncomfortable. His mom had gone out with Teddy.
Tomorrow was the day. Isak’s trial would take place. He didn’t know exactly where or when it was going to happen. Chamon didn’t, either. That was how it always was—no one knew anything before the last minute. But tonight, Nikola needed to sort something out; he knew that much: it was part of the job.
He really should’ve been working at George Samuel’s today, but honestly: the way he felt, it had to count as being ill. Plus, George Samuel Electrical was in Åkersberga, that was more than a fucking hour away. How exactly did they think he could keep working there?
He looked at one of the framed photos on the bookcase. Linda when she was younger, wearing her student cap and a bright blue summer dress. She looked happy, and Grandpa was clearly proud. Nikola had been born a year later. Once, when Nikola was eleven, she’d blurted out that Grandpa hadn’t been as happy after that.
“Why?” Nikola had asked. “Grandpa loves me, doesn’t he?”
“Of course he loves you, more than anything else on earth. But he want
ed me to go to university, and he didn’t think I’d make anything of myself once I had a kid so young.”
Nikola remembered how he’d replied: “Twenty isn’t young, Mom. You’ll see when I’m twenty. Maybe I’ll own the whole of Södertälje by then.”
He was even a fake in front of his mom.
At three in the morning, Chamon had staggered over to him. The place was closing. The girl, Paulina, had left more than an hour earlier.
“She was totally hot for you, man. Why didn’t you take her home?”
“I don’t know.”
“No biggie. Time to go. The party continues.”
Nikola didn’t know what he meant. The only places in Södertälje still open after three were the underground clubs—but you didn’t go there to party, just to play cards or dice.
“What are you talking about? Back to yours, or…?”
“Nah, like hell. I said I’d organized some special effects for you, didn’t I? We’re off.”
Almost all the others had left. Some too wasted, others too high. Some with a bit of tail. Yusuf had gone to Bårsta to play cards. But Bello was waiting outside.
People were pouring out of the place. Nikola really wanted to just go home. He was tired, wasted enough, and didn’t know what Chamon meant by special effects.
Bello made a couple of calls. Five minutes later, a battered old Ford Focus pulled up. Chamon opened the door. “Our own taxi service.”
They left Södertälje. Nikola had never seen the driver before, but Chamon seemed to know him. Up onto the highway. Ten minutes. Then they turned off at Norsborg. Shit—Nikola was usually the driver. But not tonight.
“What’re we doing?”
Chamon grinned. “Something tasty. Just for you.”
The air was cool.
Chamon took out his phone: made a call in English. “We are here now. What is the code?”
Nikola looked at his boys: they looked like they’d just won the jackpot.
The elevator didn’t work. The stairwell stunk of piss. Chamon’s laugh sounded like a badly tuned moped. They rang the bell.
The woman who opened the door was wearing some kind of dressing gown. “Welcome,” she said, hugging Chamon.