by Jens Lapidus
“What fucking kelb rings the bell this time of day?” came a voice inside.
Gabbe opened the door. He looked exactly the same as last time Nikola was there. Messy, gray-flecked hair; unshaven. He rubbed his eyes. He was wearing shorts and an untied dressing gown, but his stomach and chest were so hairy, you could’ve mistaken it for a wool vest.
“Who’re you?”
Nikola said: “You don’t remember me?”
Gabbe grinned. “Yeah, now you mention it. Little man who speaks our language. Come in.”
The living room had a high ceiling. Gabbe had switched on only one light in the hallway, so the rest of the house was dark. The walls were covered with Syriac saints and church fathers.
“The TV’s been giving me grief. Can you help me tune the channels?”
Nikola just wanted to get what he needed and run.
“Yeah, later.”
Gabbe stopped. “I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t need any more technology. I’m happy with what I’ve got. But then Yusuf and all those other guys turn up, and they bring me a load of TV equipment, phones, those tablets for surfing the web, stuff like that. Tell them I don’t want any of this crap.”
“You wanna give it away, I’ll take it for you.” Nikola smiled.
“Give away, no, no. I sell it to the guys at Vincent’s. All I want’s a good signal on the sports channel, and something I can listen to music on, you know, a bit of Walter Aziz and Noman Hanna.”
“Okay, but where’s the stuff?”
Gabbe didn’t move. “You know, I don’t need to be able to record films on my phone or play all those complicated games on it. I’m fine, y’know, it’s enough. You understand?”
“Yeah, yeah, you don’t have to get a new phone, you know. Just keep the old one?”
“Mmm…but my grandkids send so fucking many pictures all the time. I want to see photos of them while they’re still cute, but they just take pictures of what they’re eating, their nails, clothes, the coffee they’re drinking.”
Gabbe kept the door to one of the bedrooms locked. He opened it with a key he fished up out of the earth in a flowerpot.
They went in. There was a bed in the middle of the room. Other than that, it was empty. Gabbe went over to the wardrobe and opened the door. There were six boxes inside, stacked in two neat piles.
Nikola helped him lift them out onto the floor. Behind them, there was some kind of handle. Nikola hadn’t noticed it until Gabbe started pulling on it. The wardrobe clearly had a false back.
“I’ll show you, my little friend,” Gabbe said, and he pulled the fake door to one side.
This hadn’t happened when Nikola was here before, last year. Back then, he’d just been handed a bag with something heavy in it.
The sickest thing he’d seen. If he got arrested now: so many years in the slammer, he’d probably be as old as Gabbe when he got out.
There was stuff hanging up on the back wall of the wardrobe. He could see what it was. Two Glock 17s, three AK-5s, a Kalashnikov, a couple of Sig Sauer pistols, a Mini Uzi. On the floor, a box of what was either dynamite or explosive putty. But craziest of all: a massive thing, a greenish beast. It looked like a drain pipe with handles.
“What the hell’s that?”
Gabbe grinned. “Carl Gustaf—pride and joy of the Swedish army. It’s what Isak used when those fucking idiots from Stockholm tried to take over here.”
Nikola knew what he was talking about. Two dead, four cars blown to pieces.
Gabbe said: “I thought you’d like seeing what we’ve got.”
Nikola could feel the nausea rising again. He needed two pistols, that was all.
10
He’d been to Emelie’s place once before, but that had been in the middle of the day. Tonight, her apartment seemed messier. There were clothes draped over the chairs in the kitchen. He recognized the design of the seats, but couldn’t remember the name, kryp something. Tights strewn across the floor in the hallway; newspapers, magazines and bread crumbs covering the kitchen table; and unwashed coffee cups sitting proudly on the counter. Teddy was surprised: hadn’t thought she would be able to cope with this much disorder. He could still clearly smell her perfume, just like he had the last time they met. The scent of a person: to Teddy, it was more unique than DNA. She seemed to be freshly showered; her hair still looked damp.
“Sorry about the mess. I’m having some work done,” she said, folding up a couple of newspapers.
“Yeah? Where?”
“Just kidding. It’s been crazy at work lately. Hence the mess.”
Emelie wrung out a cloth in the sink and wiped the round kitchen table. “Want a drink?”
“You got any whiskey?” For some reason, he felt nervous.
“No, but I’ve got port, cognac, and gin.”
“I’ll have a cognac, then.”
Emelie pulled out a chair, climbed up onto it so she could reach the cabinet above the fridge, and took down a bottle. She was barefoot, and he noticed that her toenails weren’t painted. It wasn’t an especially good cognac, and she didn’t seem to have the right glasses. But it had a rounded taste, and Teddy could feel himself relaxing.
—
It had been her idea for him to come over. He realized that if they were going to meet to talk about the case, it couldn’t be at Leijon. But still, he didn’t understand. Why would Mats Emanuelsson’s son want anything from him? What was he meant to understand?
“You could come over to my place, we can talk?” she’d said.
“You didn’t seem so keen to talk last time I saw you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean in the elevator in the office, a few weeks ago.”
“You weren’t, either. But things are different now. We’re both stuck in the middle of this.”
Somewhere, deep down, he knew she was right: they were in it together—thanks to Benjamin’s request. He had a debt to repay to the Emanuelsson family. An eternal bad conscience.
Teddy leaned gently against the rounded back rest—it creaked, like it was about to collapse under his weight. “Where do we start?”
“I guess you can tell me what this is all about, and then you could help me ahead of the hearing tomorrow, if you have time?”
He leaned forward again and tried to find the right words. “I’m not sure I know. But I probably know more than you.”
And so he told her about the kidnapping nine years earlier, and about how Sara, a guard he’d met in prison, had started to root around in the case. Later, Mats Emanuelsson had committed suicide. Teddy told her how he’d asked a friend, Loke Odensson, to look into what, exactly, had happened, and how Loke had eventually managed to hack his way to finding out that Mats had somehow come into possession of a computer or hard drive containing information that someone absolutely didn’t want to get out. Something to do with men sexually abusing small girls.
Emelie listened in silence as he talked, but he couldn’t work out whether what he was saying surprised or scared her. Or both. It was almost one in the morning. He caught sight of his reflection in the kitchen window. His dark blond hair was getting long now. He’d only cut it twice since he got out. Snub nose, big eyes—they looked even bigger in the window, like dark spots into which his reflection had vanished. The tooth he’d had pulled out when he was inside, replaced by an implant that would’ve taken him four months at Leijon to pay for—but which had been covered by the insurance he’d been given in return for working for the firm.
Teddy took a sip of his cognac. “I don’t really know what Benjamin wants, but I know I regret the shit I did to his dad nine years ago. I told him that. And now he’s accused of murder? There has to be a connection to what happened to Mats, otherwise he wouldn’t be asking me to understand anything.”
Emelie shook her head. “What kind of connection?”
“No damn idea. I know zero about Mats’s life until he killed himself. All I know about is the kidnapping.”
Five
minutes later, the two of them were hunched over the few documents Emelie had been given. The prosecutor’s application for a remand order was very brief. Right now, Benjamin was just being held, but in order to keep him any longer than four days, the court would have to rule on whether he could be remanded.
A completed form.
APPLICATION
Crime and grounds for remand
* Benjamin Emanuelsson’s continued detention is sought on suspicion of murder, or accessory to murder, 15/16 August, Värmdö.
* There is a risk that the suspect, whether by removing evidence or through some other means, may hamper the investigation.
* For the specified crime, imprisonment of no less than two years is stipulated, and there are no clear grounds to oppose custody.
* It is of particular importance that the accused is taken into custody pending further investigation of the crime.
Notification has been given to the accused by Detective Inspector Johan Kullman in accordance with Code of Procedure 24:11.
Emelie hadn’t been given the actual memorandum containing the investigation that the prosecutor wanted to submit in support of her claim.
“It’s completely ridiculous. How am I supposed to defend my client when I’m not even allowed to see the material?”
“Welcome to Sweden,” Teddy calmly replied. “You’ll get the remand memo tomorrow, right before the hearing. That’s how it always is.”
“Why do they want to keep someone unconscious in custody? That’s even weirder.”
That, Teddy agreed, was unusual. He’d never heard of anything like it. But he knew what they were thinking. “He’s been talking a bit, and they know that. So from the prosecutor’s point of view, he could get in touch with someone and try to influence the investigation. We’re talking about a murder here.”
They were fumbling around in the dark—Emelie hadn’t even been given information about what evidence there might be against Benjamin. They talked about whether someone else could be involved, and what that might mean for Benjamin. They read legal commentaries on the presumption rule. Because of the serious nature of the crime—the lowest sentence was definitely higher than two years in prison—it was up to Emelie to show that there was no clear basis for keeping Benjamin in custody, not the other way around.
She moaned about the reversed burden of proof: the prosecutor asserted something—she had to prove the opposite. But Teddy simply shook his head.
“Like I said, welcome to Sweden. If the prosecutor says you’ve kidnapped the king in a spaceship, they’ll remand you for it, and that’s that. End of story.”
They talked about why the identity of the deceased hadn’t been released and what the police technicians would be looking for at the crime scene out on Värmdö.
“Your only chance of getting him out is the rule of proportionality,” said Teddy.
“You mean the whole thing of him being unconscious?”
“Exactly. It’s hardly proportionate to keep someone who can’t even piss by himself in custody.”
They moved on: to whether Emelie could request more of the meager material, to the order of the hearing, whether members of the public would be permitted. How the case should be presented. How Benjamin’s position should be clarified.
“Do you actually know what he’d plead?” Teddy wondered as he refilled their glasses. “They must’ve tried to interview him?”
“Yeah, the policeman and I sat on either side of his bed, and Kullman asked him some questions. Benjamin didn’t reply to a single one. I don’t think he could. So honestly, I don’t even know if he admits or denies it.”
They were sitting close together, looking at Emelie’s laptop.
Teddy was helping her write some kind of script. How she should express herself. Which questions she needed the prosecutor to answer.
The glowing numbers on the microwave read three in the morning.
She closed the lid of her laptop and got up.
“I feel like I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Thanks for helping. You’ve really picked up a thing or two during your err…career in the court world.”
They went out into the hallway.
“It’s good if any use comes of it,” Teddy said as he put on his shoes. Emelie was watching him with a strange look in her eyes. Like he was funny somehow.
He opened the door.
“What?”
She leaned against the doorframe.
“I’ve got a question,” she said. The hallway outside was dark. The light from the apartment was like a halo behind her head. “You don’t want to stay over, do you?”
Stockholm County Police Authority
Interview with informant “Marina,” 11 December 2010
Interview leader: Joakim Sundén
Location: Älvsjö Centrum
MEMORANDUM 2 (PART 3)
Transcript of dialogue (continuation)
M: We drove through town in Sebbe’s Porsche, just like we’d done two weeks earlier. Sebbe and Maxim were talking like nothing had happened, completely normal. About football, mostly.
“What a fucking hero, man. First, those two saves after Andriy Shevchenko’s chance at the end of added time, then the penalties. Did you see the game? The Liverpool fans never stopped singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone,’ even though they were three–nil down at the end of the first half.”
“Does Pamela Anderson sleep on her back, or what? ’Course I saw it. Y’know, Jerzy Dudek, he didn’t realize Liverpool’d won, even when he saved that penalty. I saw an interview with the guy afterward.”
“I know, what a player. Slavic king. Stood up to shot after shot, didn’t care about anything else, just saving them. Did that whole spaghetti legs thing.”
But there’s no doubt about it—something would’ve happened to me if I hadn’t gone with them. I thought of Benjamin, my son. He was about to turn eleven, 2005. I didn’t want to miss a single early-morning car ride across the county to stand on the sidelines in the freezing rain, cheering him on as his team lost yet another match. I thought about Lillan, too. She was six and liked bead necklaces and paper planes more than anything. She could sit for hours with her pearls, making patterns with the beads, different color combinations. But if she made a mistake, she might cry for ten minutes, throw them all over the room. I longed for those tantrums, for being on my knees, clearing up the aftermath.
I saw Cecilia’s abandoned coffee cups on the kitchen table, too, and her makeup in the bathroom. Right then, I missed those cups and powder brushes so damn much.
Sebbe and Maxim didn’t seem to care that they’d parked the Porsche in a handicapped space. But when we got out of the car, I saw they had a permit on the window. Sebbe grinned. “No point taking any risks. You sort this out for us, I’ll get you one, too—you can have a discount.”
My job at KPMG was in the bookkeeping department, on the seventh floor. I worked on the accounts for small- and medium-size businesses. Our tax and financial consultants worked late, sometimes 24/7, but the pace was slower in my department, less pressure. At eleven at night, the only person you risked bumping into in the absurdly open-plan office was the cleaner.
Sebbe snorted and groaned. He fit in about as well among all the screens, computers, and desk chairs as a lion in a swimming pool.
“You work here?”
“Yup, every day. But I took some vacation and called in sick to try to get your money together.”
“How tragic. What the hell is this place?”
“It’s an ordinary office.”
“But what do you do here?”
Maxim yawned. “Dream about life and jerk each other off because they’re never gonna live it.”
I took them to my desk and tried to keep an eye on the elevator doors at the other side of the room. No one could come in now. There’d be too many questions.
“That true?” Sebbe asked. “You jerk each other off?”
“Most people here are married with kids.”
“Keep up. You know what I mean. You want what we’ve got.”
I didn’t want to joke around with him. I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Sebbe paused. “What the fuck’s your problem? You pissed off or something?”
“No, no. But I need to concentrate to sort this out for you.”
“Fine, but you can still answer. You want what I’ve got, don’t you? Right? You wanna live like me and Maxim. Not spend all day trapped in this fucking cage, talking about the finale of Survivor, your shitty flexi-fuel cars, and your boring kids’ school reports. You want to fucking live, don’t you? Get plenty of pussy. Like free men.”
He was breathing more quickly, but I still didn’t know how to reply.
“You pretend you’re happy, but you’re really just pathetic losers. Other people control your lives. Shit, I feel so sorry for you all.”
Eventually, I said: “But I’m a gambler. That’s a little bit of your life.”
Sebbe turned to me. His eyes were red, like he was the one who’d spent most of the past few days awake.
No, I thought. No more now.
But he said: “You’re fucking right.”
My plan was to borrow money from a couple of clients I was doing the bookkeeping and invoicing for. We called it the Plus Package. I had access to bank fobs and account details. But first, I printed out…By the way…we’re clear I’m telling you this freely, and there won’t be any legal repercussions, right? And my name won’t ever come out? Right?
JS: Yes, that’s the agreement. I never hang my informants out to dry.
M: Good. Okay, well, I printed out a few invoices I’d created. Processed them properly and then transferred about a hundred thousand kronor from each of the different companies. It was simple. And no one would ask any questions until maybe when they did the end-of-year accounts, but that was at least six months away. I was planning to pay the money back by then—I could do it by sending credit notes from the made-up suppliers.