by Jens Lapidus
—
Teddy was sitting at the bar. He’d asked to talk to whoever ran the place. Given them a rough indication of what it was about.
After a couple of hours of boredom, his body was itching. All around him, people were staring down at their cards.
He thought of Sara. It had been more than a year since he’d stood outside her house in the dark. Sara, with a baby in her arms. A man in the house. Maybe it was understandable that she didn’t want to talk to him.
Then: a chubby guy in dark sunglasses appeared next to him at the bar.
“Hey,” he said. He put something into Teddy’s hand. His fingers were callused. “Call me.”
Teddy opened his hand. In it: a slip of paper with a phone number on it.
The next day, Teddy got up at five. That’s when he woke up anyway. He wandered around the older part of Solna. The clean streets, the absence of any strong smells. Kingdom of the birds and the homeless for a little while longer.
Sara dropped off her son at the nursery early.
The little boy had to be about eighteen months old by now. Teddy felt like a stalker: waited in his car outside her house. Followed her when she walked the quarter mile to the nursery with the stroller. Stood on the other side of the street when she opened the gates and disappeared into the green wooden building.
But on the other hand: following people was what he’d made his living doing this past year—he should be used to it by now. And he was sure no one had followed him here today. He’d changed cars on the metro several times, stopped, taken elaborate detours.
—
The years hadn’t been the least bit unkind to Sara’s appearance, he saw when she came back out. Her face had the same glow as before, her eyes the same intensity. Standing in her kitchen with the boy in her arms. Or before that: in the visitation room in prison—it was more than four years since he’d seen her close up.
She’d been a warden; he was doing a long stretch. She’d slowly fallen in love with him; he’d been crazy about her. Their relationship had started tentatively, but once they both realized what they wanted, she’d decided to hand in her notice, said she couldn’t do her job properly if she was in a relationship with an inmate. Teddy had understood the logic behind it, but it had hurt all the same.
They’d continued to see each other after that. She visited him regularly, they talked on the phone every day, wrote long letters about life and the future.
Sara had started asking questions about what Teddy was serving time for—she’d started looking into the kidnapping, but then everything collapsed, and she cut off all ties to him.
He’d tried to call her when he got out a few years later, they’d even talked—but she’d been clear: they couldn’t meet. Ever again.
Teddy walked over to her. Probably the only woman he’d ever loved.
“Hi, Sara.”
She was wearing blue jeans and a black leather jacket. It struck him that he had no idea whether she was still working as a warden.
“Teddy, what’re you doing here?”
Neither of them moved. No hugs. No handshakes.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Have you been following me?”
“No, no, well yes, I was waiting for you here.”
She took a few steps back, toward the low fence surrounding the nursery.
He said: “I just need to talk to you, please.”
Her shoulders dropped, she relaxed. “It’s good to see you. You look really well.”
“Better than in a long time. I’m working now, I’ve got my own place, everything’s moving forward. How are you?”
“Great. I’m a researcher these days, at the university.”
“Still in criminology?”
“Exactly.” She smiled.
“Sounds like a good match for you.” There was so much he wanted to say. But he’d come here for a reason.
“Look, something’s come up, and I don’t think you’re going to want to talk about it, but I need to ask anyway.”
She glanced around. Women and children had started streaming out of the building behind her. “What?”
“Mats Emanuelsson’s son is being held on suspicion of murder.”
“What? Mats’s son? The guy you kidnapped’s son?”
“Yeah, and he’s asked for my help.”
“Oh Jesus, so something’s going on again?”
“Yeah, something to do with what happened back then, that’s what I thought, too. I just don’t know what. But I remembered you’d been looking into what really happened when I did what I did nine years ago. You don’t have to tell me anything, but I know someone got to you. I know someone made you stop snooping around and cut off all contact with me.”
Sara’s face looked different now: no longer her strong, mature self. Teddy could see something else now—and clearly. Fear. He could see fear in her eyes.
“I hear what you’re saying,” she said. “But you’ve got to realize, I can’t talk about it. I’m not on my own anymore. I’ve got a son. I’ve got a partner.”
“I know. I don’t want to pressure you.”
Sara scratched her head, put a hand to her brow.
“Maybe, Teddy, maybe. I don’t know….”
“It’s up to you….”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Okay.” He gave her his phone number.
They walked along the edge of the fence. The sound of the kids in the nursery in the distance.
“Your son, how old is he now?” asked Teddy.
“Nineteen months.”
“What’s his name?”
She slowed down.
“He’s named Edward.”
“Nice name.”
Silence around them now.
She said: “Thanks. I call him Teddy.”
Stockholm County Police Authority
Interview with informant “Marina,” 15 December 2010
Leader: Joakim Sundén
Location: Haninge Centrum
MEMORANDUM 3 (PART 2)
Transcript of dialogue (continuation)
M: Life was pretty much like normal again. The kids were back at school and nursery. This was autumn 2005. The usual morning stress again—packing gym uniforms and ballet clothes. That’s what life was like for me back then. You know what I mean. Have you got kids?
JS: No, unfortunately not.
M: Aha, well, anyway. Hamster wheel. Everyday life, you know, office frenzy. I used to sneak off for long lunches quite often, cycle down to Clara’s.
We kept the official accounting for the companies in folders in the office, but the special files, and by that I mean the real accounting, we kept that on laptop computers you needed loads of passwords just to get onto.
We looked after our relationship with the bank. We couldn’t risk them getting suspicious about the flow of money, the big cash deposits and withdrawals, or about the fact the companies had started renting eighty-foot yachts in Croatia and Marbella, Hummers in Stockholm, paying bills of more than seven thousand euros a table at Zaranda in Palma.
We moved money to accounts in Estonia then shipped the same money back to a currency exchange in Stockholm. Sometimes we’d send money over to banks in Luxembourg, Dubai, Hong Kong, and the Channel Islands. This was back before those countries’ banks had to stop being so secretive. Everything went according to my plan. We produced invoices for Swedish building firms and pubs, kept track of the black loans and clean declarations. I arranged authorization for our smurfs to manage new accounts. We created minutes from board and committee meetings. Registered addresses and partners with the authorities. Maxim made sure we always had the personal details of people who were apparently willing to lend us their names. And after a few weeks, my name wasn’t linked to a single one of our companies.
I put together loan and leasing documents. I dealt with the owner of a super villa in Palma. One of our companies was going to rent it. Everything ran as smoothly as the ball bearings in S
tig Erhardsson’s Merc probably did before it was written off.
But there was one more thing I did. For some reason, I couldn’t get Sebbe’s words of wisdom from a few months earlier out of my mind: “You gotta keep a hold on people in this world.”
That was how they got me. Their hold on me’s the reason I’m here. So what I did, I started gathering things for myself. I bought a laptop and decided it’d be my life insurance. I transferred, copied, and saved everything that might be of value on it. Names of clients, bank accounts, company names. Businessmen who worked in the gray zone, transaction methods, links to our encrypted accounts. I thought to myself: You can’t have too much of a hold on things.
JS: Where’s the laptop now?
M: It was my only guarantee, you can understand that, but it’s what got me into much worse situations. Unfortunately.
JS: I want to see it.
M: I don’t have it anymore. I’ll get to what happened, I promise.
A few months after that, Sebbe sent me a message to say he wanted to meet at Clara’s. But not for work. “We’re just gonna have fun tonight,” he said.
I told Cecilia I might be late.
“Work, like usual?”
“No, actually, I’m going to meet a few old poker friends.”
She frowned. “Oh, I didn’t realize you did things socially.”
She turned around and started to wipe the kitchen counter.
“Benjamin has football after school. Can you pack his shoes and shorts and stuff now?”
I started to gather his things.
And then I heard my phone beep on the counter. Cecilia picked it up to pass it to me. But she pulled back her hand and started pressing buttons.
It was like the room went cold. She glared at me.
“What’s this?” she asked, holding it up.
I saw the message: “See you tonight, right? Hugs/Michaela”
JS: What did I say…(sound of laughter)
M: Mmm…it wasn’t funny, let me tell you. Cecilia was just holding the phone, staring at me. Different options went through my head. Maybe I should tell her the truth: say I was in a bind, had to meet Stockholm’s mafia elite in a club down by Stureplan, that I was helping them launder money on a daily basis—money I could only guess where it came from. But Cecilia never would’ve believed it—plus, I just couldn’t. I knew I had to fix things myself, without dragging her into it.
So I took the phone from her and said: “She’s the croupier at the club. She might be coming tonight.”
Cecilia’s head jerked. “I thought you were all guys.”
“No, we’re not,” I said.
I hoped she’d never ask again.
I was at Clara’s pretty much every day, in their office. Always during the day or at night on weekdays. But it was almost eleven on a Saturday night. It felt weird to be meeting Michaela. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong as far as she was concerned, but still—we’d never met in that kind of context before.
There was already a huge line outside the place. It actually looked more like an angry crowd. People were shouting and pushing, and the bouncers were pacing back and forth with their earpieces in, refusing to look anyone in the eye. It just wasn’t my world. I didn’t even know how I’d get in.
Then someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around. It was Maxim. He winked at me.
He pushed through the crowd like some kind of bodyguard breaking up a group of paparazzi, some Old Testament prophet parting the Red Sea. I followed him in.
There were entrance hosts in dark suits and black gloves standing in the corner, their heads slowly turning this way and that, and they nodded at Maxim. The girls were wearing handbags with different monogram patterns on the leather, and they were taking long strides past the counter, foot after foot, like they were in some kind of fashion show. They didn’t look at anyone else.
Stairs, narrow hallways. Red ropes. More bouncers. Even more stairs. I thought I knew my way around the place, but now I was confused.
Crystal chandeliers. Silver buckets full of champagne. People dancing on chairs. The music in the background: someone with a lazy voice saying drop it like it’s hot over and over again.
Eventually: the VIP room of VIP rooms. The walls were covered in red velvet, and the lights looked like huge spiders. It was a bit calmer inside—people were even eating at some of the tables. I’d had no idea that floor even existed.
A man got up from one of the tables and came over to us. It was Sebbe. He was wearing a black polo shirt and a dark suit. He looked really elegant that night, I have to say.
“My man,” he shouted over the noise and the background music.
I sat down in one of the empty chairs. Sebbe aside, there were four other men around the table.
“Where’s Michaela?” I asked.
Sebbe grinned. “Boys’ night tonight.”
Honestly, I can’t really remember who all the people were, but there was one guy who had a restaurant somewhere in Södertälje, a place called the Steakhouse Bar, if I remember right.
JS: What else do you know about him?
M: Not much. He had dark hair, Syrian, he said. The others were more like Maxim. Big guys, blunt noses, short hair.
The hours passed. I sat quietly for most of the evening. I even went over to the blackjack table at one point. It wasn’t my favorite thing to play, but better than roulette anyway. Us poker players, we like horses and card games, stuff where skill and knowledge mean something.
The others were talking, toasting, and moving about the place, chatting with other people. Women came over, young girls, sat on the men’s knees; there was champagne and shots. The music got louder.
At one point, the guy from Södertälje leaned toward me.
“Want one?”
I looked down. He had a white tablet in his hand.
“To stop the hangover?” I asked.
He grinned. “Nah, this is better. Easier to keep when it’s like this, less for curious eyes to latch on to.”
He crushed the pill in his palm and it turned into a fine powder. Then he got up and disappeared for a while.
I gradually got pretty drunk. There was nothing wrong with Clara’s at night. Sebbe’s friends were nice. They asked about my son’s interest in football and what my wife did. We talked about the Italian penalties in the final against France. They talked about the Mohammed cartoons—I remember those were a pretty hot topic back then. The gang was divided. The guy from Södertälje and Sebbe both thought it was stupid, provocative to draw Mohammed like that. The others saw Muslims as animals who only had themselves to blame.
Sometime after midnight, I noticed that everyone’s focus had shifted from whatever they were doing. There was a man standing in front of the empty chair next to me. He was pretty short, with side-combed hair and a white shirt he hadn’t tucked into his wide-legged jeans. The biggest gold watch I’ve ever seen. I recognized him from the photos on the wall in the office.
JS: Who was he?
M: You don’t know?
JS: No.
M: Their boss. They called him Kum.
JS: Aha.
M: They went forward, one after another. Kum held out his hand. He had a tiny tattoo of a cross between his thumb and index finger. I’d seen one like that before. Four cyrillic letters, CCCC, one in each quadrant of the cross. But I’d never seen grown men do what happened next: they all kissed him on the hand.
Kum sat down next to me. Asked how I liked the place. If I’d eaten, whether it was good. If the staff were doing their job. If Sebbe was looking after me. We started talking about other stuff after that. How insane it was that some Swedish guy had sold a company called Skype for more than eighteen billion kronor. How sick the bombs on the London tube were.
“What do we learn from that?” he asked.
“No idea,” I replied.
“That we should stick to our principles. I haven’t been on the metro since 1991. And what happened in England just pro
ves it was the right choice.”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking.
“A man should only travel in his own or another reliable driver’s car. That’s my rule.”
“So you don’t take taxis?”
Kum raised his glass to me, almost like he wanted to toast.
He seemed to be drinking water. “No, never. When I go somewhere, I want to know who’s behind the wheel. See what I mean?” he said. “By the way, I have to say hi from Michaela, too. Things’re going well, I understand—she likes you.”
Then Sebbe bent down and said something into his ear. Kum got to his feet, and Sebbe led him away.
20
Emelie and Teddy were in a taxi, en route to somewhere in Östermalm. The address: super flashy. Narvavägen 4.
The man who’d given Teddy his card in Star Gamers had been brief when Teddy called him up. “My friend and I would like to meet you. I heard you were asking around. We knew Mats from the club. Come to my friend’s place. We can talk.”
“Have you managed to get anywhere?” she asked when she sat down next to him in the backseat.
“Not really.” Teddy spoke quietly so the driver wouldn’t hear. “But I’ve been thinking about the background to all this. I think we can be pretty sure that someone, maybe even a group of people, were behind the scenes when we kidnapped Mats, that it had something to do with whatever was on that computer. I’m not a hundred percent sure Mats himself was a member of any network anymore, but they’re out there, whoever wants to stop the information on that computer from getting out. I’m a hundred percent on that. And even if it was nine years ago, I’m sure Benjamin’s situation has something to do with it, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten me involved.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Benjamin wants me to understand, so I think he wants us to figure out the link between whatever happened to his dad and the murder on Värmdö. I don’t know if it’s got something to do with this network, or with the guys I used to work for, or with anyone else, but we need to find out who Mats used to hang out with. What he really lived for in the years before he died. Who he was. We need to map him out to find the link.”