by Jens Lapidus
The beach was to his left—it’d be sweet in a few weeks’ time when it got really warm and the chicks started spicing up the beach like jalapeños on a pizza.
The guy’s cousin had covered his face with a scarf. Plus: a hat pulled down low, sunglasses. He looked crazy, like some super-heist guru—what the hell, he wasn’t even sure it was Saman coming toward him.
Stomachache. Rumbling. Nikola wished Chamon was with him.
Was he a cop? Some filthy grass? He wasn’t getting that vibe—but what did he really know about that?
He raised a hand. Greeted him from a distance. The guy took a few steps forward.
They were opposite one another now. The dude was wearing leather gloves: what the fuck, man, it was so over-the-top.
Or? Maybe he should’ve hidden his face. He wondered what his guy in Spillersboda had actually told this dude.
“Hi, hi.”
Nikola said: “Not that I don’t trust you, but maybe we can take a walk?”
If this was a police sting, he didn’t want to be standing in the trees. If this was for real: he wanted to seem experienced.
“Yeah, no problem. I thought this’d be a good place, but if you want, sure.”
They walked along the beach.
Nikola said: “I love your cousin. We got up to tons of stuff together.”
The cousin replied: “Don’t talk to me about him. He’s the black sheep of the family.”
Nikola needed to know this really was Saman.
“You been to see him inside?”
They took a few steps on the sand. His shoes sank into it, it didn’t feel good.
“In Spillersboda? Nah, I haven’t had time.”
“But in the place before that, Häggvik?”
“Häggvik? He was never there. He’s got a good heart. From a good family. His dad’s an imam, you know.”
That was enough for Nikola—the guy knew plenty. He was the real deal.
He said: “I’ve got an offer you can’t refuse.”
“What?”
“Ten percent of anything we take.”
Stockholm County Police Authority
Interview with informant “Marina,” 17 December 2010
Handler: Joakim Sundén
Location: Farsta Centrum
MEMORANDUM 4 (PART 1)
Transcript of dialogue
JS: The weather today! Snow, snow, snow.
M: Mmm…
JS: Have you had time to do your Christmas shopping yet?
M: No, not really, no.
JS: I see.
M: I can’t remember where we left off.
JS: It doesn’t matter. You can start where you want. Like we said, Mats, the most important thing is that you’re comfortable. I’m here for you. To listen to what you have to say. There’s no need to be worried.
M: Thanks.
JS: Maybe I can ask you a question. I’m interested in things with Cecilia. Was the message from Michaela the only thing she ever wondered about? I mean, your extra job was mostly at night, wasn’t it?
M: Yeah, she had questions about a lot of things, but I started doing the extra stuff more and more during the day. In late autumn in 2005, I went down to 70 percent at KPMG. I blamed it on stress. They sent me to see the company doctor, and I didn’t even have to lie all that much when I told them I wasn’t sleeping and had stomachaches every now and then. It was mild gastritis, the doctor decided. I’ve always weighed about 170. I’ve been pretty much the same weight all my adult life, but that autumn, I dropped to somewhere around 150.
Cecilia still wanted to know why I had to work so much, but I kept on blaming it on my bosses and on our clients’ unpredictability, and on going to the club a bit too much again. That last part was true—I was playing a bit. And I think she probably thought I was having an affair, too. But anyway, I was so worried about Cecilia.
First, I’d gambled away everything we owned, then I’d had to do a ton of stupid stuff. And now I was having to lie about virtually everything I did. I was getting tired of it. I didn’t want her to give me the same worried or suspicious looks all the time. I wanted her to look at me the way she used to.
JS: How did that work, financially, if you weren’t working at KPMG full-time?
M: Ehhh…(inaudible)…get a bit of money. The last Monday of every month, there’d be an envelope with twenty thousand kronor in it on the desk. That pretty much made up for what I’d lost from going down to part-time, plus it was uh…tax free.
But I had more and more to do, and in early 2006 I asked my boss, Niklas, to cut my hours even more, down to half time.
That January, I bought Cecilia tickets to see Mamma Mia in London. She was really into music, she’d even started singing in a choir, which I think was good for her—it meant she had her own things to do in the evenings sometimes.
We went over to London for a long weekend in February, and when we checked in at the hotel, they told us we’d been upgraded to a suite. The view was incredible, and it was a great start to the weekend. I never asked who’d fixed it so we ended up there, but when I came home, Michaela was pretty curious about whether we’d had a Jacuzzi and a terrace, whether we’d been able to see Trafalgar Square from the window.
I started to get other ideas then, too. The economy in Sweden was on the rise, everyone had forgotten the dot-com crash a few years earlier, and the economy was charging ahead like a train with no brakes.
My friend Bosse was the one at the club who was always talking about the stock exchange. He brought it up when we were playing once.
“There are really fat takings for anyone willing to give it a chance. It’s just like Hold’em. If you can count, you can beat the system. You know, I bought a little company called SinterCast for forty-nine kronor a share. They make metal for car engines. I went in for two hundred grand. Then the news broke that Ford Motors had bought their technology. Three weeks later, the shares were worth a hundred each. That’s two hundred thou without lifting a finger,” Bosse said.
His friend Boguslaw picked at his nose. “But that’s like a fart in the wind to you. You blew that much at the table last month.”
Bosse looked at his cards before he put them down on the table. “I don’t think you get it. That’s the whole point. Things go up and down here. On the exchange, they just go up, in the long term anyway.”
I was listening. Thinking. And trying to understand.
I started reading the financial papers and business magazines. I signed up for newsletters from different analysis companies and stockbrokers. I talked to Bosse at the club and Stig Erhardsson at the bank. I read chat rooms online—everyone was shouting about their stock successes, explaining their thinking. I started paying attention to business valuations, P/E ratios, and technical analysis. I got an account with a cheap online broker, Nordnet, just to study the movements in the market.
I drew my own conclusions. It wasn’t quite as easy as Bosse made out, but there were definite similarities with poker—math and psychology in predictable patterns. You could make massive amounts of money if you did everything right. I could feel the bug coming back with a vengeance. Again.
Around the same time, Sweden launched something called the Third Money Laundering Directive. It was an EU thing, led by the Financial Action Task Force, mostly for fighting terrorism and stuff like that, but it had a massive impact on my extra job.
Suddenly every customer would be identifiable through documents, details, or information coming from sources other than us. In the past, the banks’d just had a policy called Know Your Client, but suddenly all kinds of businesses and consultants could do the same thing. Accountants, lawyers, and above all, the currency exchanges, they started wanting to meet personally, hear what kind of business we ran, get information about the purpose of the business relationship, understand why it needed to happen with cash. It was a fucking mess, completely over-the-top—a bit crazy, actually. We were hardly Al-Qaeda.
The worst thing was that even cash-heavy branche
s like antique dealerships or car dealers, dry cleaners and building firms ended up under the magnifying glass. Any cash payments more than fifteen thousand euros had to be checked and reported.
I spent every night calculating and thinking. The likelihood of a crackdown. The possibilities of the leverage effect. Exchanging investments. I decided we needed to spread our eggs into more baskets, you know. In practice, that meant getting in touch with and building up trust with new banks, finding new ways of doing what we were doing. So I made calls, sent messages, had meetings in different offices all over town. In the end, our companies had accounts with SEB, Handelsbanken, Nordea, Swedbank, and Danske Bank, but also with loads of plastic banks, as I call them, Ikano, Resurs, yeah, you know what I mean.
At the same time, I was always thinking about my own setup. If I could just borrow some money from our cash flows for a couple of weeks, I’d be able to make enough to give Sebbe and the others the finger, take my family and move somewhere else for good.
But one day, I got a call from a lawyer.
“I’m calling from the Leijon law firm. I was wondering if you would be interested in meeting a client of mine.”
“I’m not the one in charge of the client accounts. It would be better if you spoke to my manager, Niklas,” I said.
“No, my client doesn’t want to meet you like that. He wants to meet you in relation to your other work, if you follow.”
The law firm’s offices weren’t far from Clara’s. I’d never been there before. The interiors were all natural: hardwood, granite, sandstone. The place oozed competence and trust.
We went up to one of the corner rooms on the top floor. The views over Stockholm were incredible.
On the other side of the table, with a cup of coffee in his hand, the lawyer was sitting next to a man I didn’t know then, Peder.
Peder was wearing a tie, and he had round glasses. He got straight to his feet, held out a hand with a smile, and introduced himself, only his forename. His teeth looked unnaturally white. He was probably about my age, maybe a few years older.
“Mats, good to meet you. I’ve wanted to talk to you for a while,” he said. “By the way, do you know my lawyer?”
The other man looked uncomfortable with Peder’s forthcoming nature.
“Now that you’ve been introduced, I think I’ll leave you in peace,” the lawyer said, and got to his feet.
Once the door closed behind him, Peder clasped his hands together. He had a gold signet ring on his little finger.
“I represent a number of individuals who need your help.”
I didn’t know why I was the one sitting there, not Sebbe. This was above my head. I’d done a lot over the past six months, but I’d never been in touch with the people who actually used our services.
“We have money in certain places and need it moved to others. It’s really quite simple. But the Swedish state, the EU, and that huge Jewish-steered country in the West, they make life difficult for us. As I’m sure you know.”
I swallowed, thought that if Sebbe could do it, I could too. I talked as calmly as I could.
“Just tell me what you need, and we’ll arrange it.”
Peder leaned back in his chair. He reminded me of Sean Penn in Carlito’s Way. “Excellent.”
Memo continued on separate sheet.
22
Dejan had gone crazy for dogs, in the literal sense of the word. He’d bought a bull terrier four months earlier and decided to call it the Mauler, after the Swedish MMA king. He said: “The pooch takes up more time in one day than all the business I do in a week.”
“You never thought about doggy day care, or what?” Teddy asked. “Sure they take cash, which is good for you. Maybe they can even adopt it. It looks a bit pale. You sure you’re giving it the right meat, yeah?”
The dog was the whitest Teddy had ever seen. Even the inside of its ears were white. But apparently no joking about the Mauler was allowed—Dejan’s face went blank. Teddy had seen that look before, and apologized immediately.
They’d met in Flemingsberg again, but in the woods behind the train station this time. Teddy had called and said it was urgent.
Dejan: his old friend from before his eight years in the slammer. His armor-bearer, his crony—his sidekick in so many tight spots, he’d lost count. Above all: Dejan—the guy who’d helped him kidnap Mats Emanuelsson, but whose name Teddy had never mentioned during the trial.
Back then: Teddy in custody, full restrictions, for seven months, interviewed by the police eight times and a number of times in court. They’d offered him a reduction in his sentence, despite the fact that was forbidden in Sweden—plus the witness protection program, “equivalent annuity until you find your feet,” they said, and help with his education. They’d threatened to bring his family into it, forcibly remove Nikola, crush his sister, Linda. Unless he told them who else was involved. Unless he gave up his mates. Ratted out Dejan and Ivan. Kum.
And so Teddy had kept quiet. Hadn’t said a word. He’d taken his years without complaining.
Dejan should’ve been the one paying an annuity for the rest of his life. Or Kum.
He let Dejan talk. The Mauler had been on a puppy-training course, plus a course on calls and lead behavior. And one on something called clicker training, teaching the dog to obey him when he used a metal clicker.
“Look, he can nearly do a one-eighty,” Dejan said, clicking the metal thing like a madman.
The Mauler looked at him and turned his head.
“Is that what that is?” asked Teddy. A train sped past below them.
“He’s getting there, Teddy, getting there. Moving his head to the left’s the first step.” Dejan bent down and scratched the dog behind the ear. “Isn’t that right, little cutie? Yes.”
Teddy couldn’t believe his ears. The only thing Dejan had ever shown so much affection for in the past was his own dick.
In the distance, he could see the huge library building at Södertorn high school, and to the right, the colorful housing projects. Flemingsberg. This was where the dentistry students, business economists, and gender researchers flocked to. Lawyers, prosecutors, and judges to the courthouse directly behind the station. This was about as far out as they went: they never set foot any farther down the commuter train line.
He needed to get to the point now.
“Dejan, remember I asked what you knew about Mats a few weeks ago?”
“Yeah, but there’s no point going on about that. Just forget it.”
“Nah, I’m not gonna forget anything. You told me he was a gambler.”
“Yeah.”
“But you never said he had a backer, one of us?”
“What you on about?”
“Dejan”—Teddy raised his voice—“you know me. You know what I did for you. Eight years. You did zero. So quit lying to me.”
His friend’s smile faded. Teddy waited for his reaction: this could end any number of ways.
Dejan shoved his hands into his pockets, frowned.
Teddy raised his chin. Never give up.
Dejan: “Okay, Teddy, ’cause of everything you did. I don’t know much more than I already said, but that’s true. Sebastian Petrovic, remember him?”
“Yeah, a bit, used to hang out at Clara’s, right?”
“Exactly. He was Mats’s staker. And I think they did business together, too.”
“So we did kidnap him for money?”
“You asked that last time, and I swear, for me, it was about the cash. But Ivan’s dead, and God knows what his plan was with that fucking kidnapping.”
“What about Sebbe Petrovic—you know where he’s at now?”
“I haven’t seen that guy in three, maybe four years. I think he got out, moved abroad somewhere.”
—
Leijon had agreed to extend the rental-car contract.
Now he and Emelie were on their way to Solna to see Sara. He took all the detours he could, wanted to shake off Swedish Premium Security. H
e’d given Emelie a rough explanation of who Sara was, just left out certain parts.
“You working a half day?” he asked.
She didn’t seem to hear what he’d said, just kept looking out the car window. Out, toward the enormous gray glass walls of the new Karolinska Hospital. It was like someone had lowered a new city down from the sky, landed it next to the E4.
“Are you working part-time now?” he tried again.
“Accessibility’s everything in this job. If the client wants an agreement completed by Monday, it’s Sunday night that counts.”
A dark thought: Teddy would be seeing Sara soon. He hadn’t been with a woman for years. The last time had been on a vinyl-clad pallet bed in prison, and it had been with her.
“What was your dad like?” Emelie asked as they turned off toward Solna.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Just wondering, y’know, what he was like. When you were growing up.”
“Tough question. You can meet him sometime. He lives in Hägersten.”
“Was he a family man, helped your mom out? Or was he always away?”
“He worked for Scania in Södertälje when I was little, screwing together trucks and stuff like that. Mom worked in the same place, but in the finance department. As far as I remember, they used to help each other a lot. But then…”
He was talking more quietly than usual.
“Then she died, and Dad opened a lunch restaurant in Solna, and after that he was hardly ever home. You might think we would’ve spent more time with him now he was all we had, but no, other people took care of us.”
“Who?”
“My sister Linda, for example. She took care of me and my brother more than Dad ever did.”
“But she’s only a year and a half older than you, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, but when we were younger, it was like she was twice my age. It still feels that way, actually.”
Emelie laughed. “You know, Teddy, I feel like your age is really fluid. In a nice way, I mean.”
Teddy wondered what she meant.