by Jens Lapidus
Eventually they arrived. Solna. Tottvägen 28. Sara’s house.
Painted red plaster. The lights were on on the ground floor, and Teddy could see potted plants in the windows. Dusk was falling. The street was quiet: the kids’ skateboards and teenagers’ mopeds had all disappeared. The villa idyll was winding down for the day.
Teddy thought: people of the night everywhere.
He parked slightly away from the house, didn’t want to block any entrances or stop other cars from passing.
Emelie had her bag on her arm: her laptop was probably in it, she always had it on hand.
“Did Sara say what she wanted to tell you when she called?” she asked as they closed the car doors.
“No, she just said she was ready to talk about what she’d found out, and about what made her stop.”
“Made her stop?”
“That’s what I think she meant: what made her stop looking into what happened.”
Emelie’s heels clicked against the pavement.
They knocked on Sara’s door. She answered after a moment.
“Hi,” she said, with a glance at Emelie. She paused in the doorway.
Teddy said: “You can trust Emelie. She’s Benjamin Emanuelsson’s lawyer.”
A car was approaching along the street behind them.
Something made Teddy turn around.
One of the car’s windows was wound down. Bad vibes—it was driving too slowly.
He caught sight of a man dressed in dark clothing; he leaned out of the car and raised his arm. An object. Something long. In his hand.
Teddy had seen enough.
He yelled, “He’s got a gun,” and threw himself to the ground, pulling Emelie down after him. He tried to grab Sara, bring her down, too.
They heard the shots. One, two, three, four.
He saw Sara’s wide eyes.
The car picked up speed. The tires screeched.
It couldn’t be.
Sara was lying on the doormat.
Teddy was burning. They, whoever they were, had crossed the line. He was close to exploding.
No, he couldn’t do that: he threw himself over Sara.
Her shirt was dark over her stomach.
In the background, Emelie was shouting.
Sara stared up at him. She tried to say something, but it just came out as a cough.
“Get the car,” Teddy shouted to Emelie.
He held the towel in place, not pressing too hard on Sara’s stomach. Emelie was driving. He’d lifted Sara into the car as carefully as he could—she only seemed to have been hit once, but he’d heard several shots. If the bullet had hit her spine, moving her in the wrong way would be disastrous.
A minute later. They were driving on Solnavägen, toward Karolinska Hospital. Emelie honked at car after car. They were shaken about in the backseat. Sara was in his lap. Her eyes: fixed on Teddy.
Her breathing was quicker now.
“It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay,” he repeated, a kind of mantra.
The towel was soaked through. He had to stop the bleeding somehow. If the bullet had hit her aorta, she wouldn’t have long left.
Sara gripped his elbow. “Teddy…,” she said. She coughed up blood. Her grip tightened.
He could see she was sweating.
“Teddy…,” she said again, “…home alone.”
And then he understood—Emelie had already called 112 to say they were on the way to the hospital, but she couldn’t call again now, not while she was flooring it.
Teddy groped for his phone in his pocket. His eyes didn’t leave Sara. Her breathing sounded jerky now. He knew what that meant: she’d lost too much blood.
Eventually he found it: dialed 112. Told the operator what was happening. “Someone’s been shot, and we’re taking her to the hospital. But her small baby’s home alone, Tottvägen 28 in Solna. Edward.”
Sara mumbled something in his lap. He didn’t hear what. Her face was pale, all the color had left her skin.
She twisted her head from side to side, delirious.
Fuck. He could see it. She was crossing over. Her breathing, the pallor of her skin, the cold sweat: she was going into shock, and then…fuck—he couldn’t think about that now. He pressed harder against the towel.
“Sara, look at me. Don’t give up. Stay here with me. It’s gonna be okay.”
Emelie was driving faster than a car thief. They had to be almost there.
“Please, Sara. Listen, you remember when we first met and you told me you’d just started studying criminology? You remember what I asked?”
Her eyes were still open.
Teddy continued. “Remember? I asked if they had a course about me.”
No reaction.
“You laughed.”
Sara was hyperventilating.
She was elsewhere.
23
Gabbe seemed happy to see Nikola, waved him in. A dent on the sofa: Nikola sank down into it.
The guy was wearing the same clothes as last time. Syriac saints and church fathers still peering down at them from the walls.
A plate of raw onion and sliced tomato on the coffee table.
“Take some food,” said Gabbe.
Nikola couldn’t help but think of his grandpa. Gabbe didn’t seem to fit the role of weapons dealer.
“Where’s your phone?” he asked.
“Home,” Nikola replied. He knew the score.
“How did you get here?”
“Chamon gave me a ride.”
“And how d’you know you didn’t have a cop tail?”
“I got out a quarter mile away. I swear, no one’s following me.”
“You guys aren’t right in the fucking head.”
“Why?”
“Starting up a war again.”
“It’s not us this time.”
“And then trying to get me on the phone. You need to be more careful, habibi.”
The old guy: clearly fifty times street-smarter than he looked.
Nikola put on an old winter glove he’d found at home—didn’t want to leave any prints. Then he got it out of his bag.
“Here’s the AK they dropped.”
Gabbe was also wearing gloves. He picked up the weapon. There was black masking tape on the hand grip.
“This isn’t an AK-47.”
“Uh, what is it, then?”
“An Rk 62. Assault rifle, they call it. It’s the Finns’ version of a Kalashnikov, pretty much the same thing, but theirs. Rynnäkkökivääri, that’s what they call it.”
“You know Finnish?”
“No, but this is a good weapon. I like it. Our friends looked into it when they were developing their Galil.”
“Which friends?”
“The Israelis. I’m from Lebanon, you know? I’m Christian.”
“Okay, so what do you know about this gun here?” Gabbe: didn’t just know everything about guns—king of chatter, too.
“Quite a bit. I had a huge deal on the cards about six months ago, all kinds of stuff, but it all went to hell. They wanted too much money. Two of the weapons I was gonna buy were like this, with the numbers scraped off too, both from 1995. The last year the Finns made their Rk 62s with the collapsible butt. They messed about with the shape for a while, made a test model with the selector on the left so you could control it with your thumb. Smart move, actually, but the Finnish military started to moan. So I mean, these particular prototyves…prototyke…”
“Prototypes?”
“Exactly. They only made twenty of these prototypes. Someone lifted five of them from a weapons store outside Åbo last year. This one here and the ones I was gonna buy were all that kind.”
“Oh shit, so three outta five?”
“Yes.”
Nikola picked up the gun again.
“Who was trying to sell them?”
“Abrohom. You know him?”
“Abrohom Michel? Metim Tasdemir’s cousin?”
“Exactl
y.”
“So Metim’s behind the whole thing?”
“You don’t know that, and I don’t, either.”
His mind was spinning. Metim Tasdemir. Clan leader. Head of the family. Career gangster. Metim: let one of his own guys get shot in the leg. Metim: first, tried to get Isak to rule on damages. Then grabbed the same money from right under their noses.
What a player.
But still: Metim Tasdemir—real prophet of violence, mafia strong man. A guy who clearly didn’t even have respect for Mr. One.
Nikola didn’t know what to do. These guys were leagues above him. Just the thought of it made him shit himself: if Metim found out he suspected him.
He got up to leave. Gabbe asked: “By the way, can you help me figure out my Internet? It’s useless.”
Nikola hesitated. Then he changed his mind. “Sure, but can I have something in return? I see you’ve got some.”
Gabbe: might not know anything about installing digital TV channels—but he was a fucking genius when it came to weapons.
24
It was time for the yearly development chat at the office. All employees were supposed to be constantly kept up to date on how they’d been evaluated, where they were on the ladder—even if officially, it was all about professional and personal development.
Emelie really didn’t want to be there right now, she’d been off sick since the shooting in Solna, but she had no choice. Not if she wanted to keep her job.
The same two partners as last year. Leijon didn’t like to buck tradition.
Anders Henriksson was a forty-nine-year-old mega nerd whose second marriage was to a twenty-seven-year-old secretary; he acted like he was thirty but thought Tiësto was an electric car from California. All the same, he was one of Sweden’s foremost experts in Mergers and Acquisitions. In the latest edition of Legal 500, he was listed as a Leading Individual, and his description read: “a brilliant analyst—creative and authoritative.” Emelie was sure he was brilliant, at least from a strictly IQ-related perspective, but when it came to so-called EQ, it was probably better to talk about him being incredibly challenging.
Magnus Hassel needed no further introduction. If you worked within the branch, you knew who he was. His description hadn’t been updated for years. It had long read that he was “the brightest M&A star in Sweden” and “incredibly impressive.”
Emelie had been interviewed by the police after what happened in Solna. Even they had wondered: “What do you have to do with this?” She didn’t know what she could or couldn’t say.
Sara had lost consciousness for a few minutes before they got to the hospital—for a second or two, Emelie thought it might all be over. Teddy had been screaming in the backseat: “No, no, no.”
But yesterday, he’d called to say she’d made it. Apparently they’d operated on her for more than four hours. The fact that Tottvägen was close to Karolinska Hospital, the fact that Teddy had decided they should drive her themselves rather than wait for an ambulance, and the fact that he’d stemmed the bleeding like he had—that was what had saved her.
—
“So, Emelie, how do you think it’s going?” Anders asked with his squeaky, strained voice. Jossan claimed that last time she’d worked with him, the other party’s lawyer had asked whether he could do the moonwalk during the break, he sounded so damn much like Michael Jackson.
Emelie was lost in her thoughts. She needed to get her life together. She hadn’t had a boyfriend since Felix, whom she’d dated for a few months last year. She never saw her cousin, even though she also lived in Stockholm. She occasionally spoke to her parents on the phone, but when she saw them in Jönköping two weeks earlier, it had been the first time in a long while. She talked to the girls at training, but she never had time to meet them for lunch or drinks whenever they suggested it.
She’d spent a year studying in Paris between high school and university, but then she’d narrowed her focus: competed the nine terms of her law course in seven. Straight ahead. Fixated on the goal. The office was her life. She had Jossan and a few other friendly legal associates there. She had a future. Above all: she meant something there, she was in her element.
They were sitting, exactly as they had a year earlier, in Anders’s office, rather than one of the meeting rooms. He had a cluster of armchairs in one corner. On the floor, a rug made from reddish-brown, glittering threads.
“I’ve grown, focused on client understanding and not least the business side of things. Plus, now that I have the title of lawyer, I can continue to move forward,” she answered.
Magnus said: “We’ve looked through your cases from the past year. Over the twelve-month period, it all looks good. But…”
Emelie thought she knew where this was heading.
Magnus continued. “This past month, you’ve worked less than forty-seven billable hours. You’ve just had a few days’ sick leave, but it doesn’t seem like you’re especially ill.”
Emelie tried to sit as still as she could, not reveal anything. She could feel the sweat starting to build on her back. Magnus would ask about their meeting in the pharmacy soon, wonder what she’d been picking up.
“What happened, Emelie? Why the drop in work from your side? Why are you out sick?”
Emelie smiled at them. She was trembling inside. Stesolid.
“I’ve just been unlucky this month: I’ve had a cold, tonsillitis, the flu, a stomach bug, you name it. I haven’t been able to work properly.”
“But you seem perfectly fine today, if you ask me. If you feel bad, if you’ve got a fever or you’re sick or anything like that, you need to see our company doctor. We have excellent health insurance for you and the other associates. We take care of our employees here at Leijon.”
“I know, I’ll think about it. I just wanted to do my best.”
She had no idea what to say. All she knew was that they couldn’t find out what she was really working on, and how she actually felt right now.
They talked for a while longer. Compared her billable hours with the average figures, talked about renewed responsibilities, discussed the company’s new working groups. The whole time, she was waiting for the question about what she’d been collecting from the pharmacy.
It wasn’t written in any of the company materials, on their home page, or in any of the brochures they handed out to hungry final-year law students—but the abiding principle was up or out. In short, if you didn’t keep moving up the pay scale, if they didn’t think you were moving along nicely, on track, you’d be expected to look for another job. It would be subtle, but eventually, forwarded “Business lawyer wanted” ads would start to turn up in your inbox, no comments attached.
Up or out. The principle was simple enough. If you weren’t cut out to make it to the highest levels, you had to go.
Her mother had been indignant about the system ever since Emelie started there. “But sweetie, they can’t just kick people out like that. We have job security in this country. Thankfully those right-wingers never managed to abolish it completely.”
“But they don’t fire you. They just expect you to hand in your notice yourself.”
“So they provoke you into leaving, in other words?”
“Who wants to stay somewhere they don’t fit in?”
Emelie broke off from her thoughts and looked up. Magnus had just concluded a monologue about client perceived value. He said: “So, Emelie, I think we’re probably done here. But think about what I said, that we take care of you, our employees. You’re important to us.”
—
Today was the day that the time to bring charges against Benjamin ran out, though it was already clear that the prosecutor would request an additional two weeks. According to her, the investigation was far from ready—and even that would be tight.
Jossan was working on her computer when Emelie came in after her development chat. Finally home from Luxembourg.
“You feeling better now, Pippa?”
“I don’t
know,” Emelie replied. She’d survived Magnus’s questions unexpectedly well, in any case.
Josephine told her that after Luxembourg, she’d slept for twenty hours. Drank two cups of Pukka tea, done four sun salutations, and gone straight to bed without even switching her phone on. “They could live with it. It was a done deal, so I checked out for a day.”
She was actually annoyed for a change. “Yesterday, we got called to the partner’s room, everyone who’d worked on the project. He said: ‘You’ve been invaluable. You’ve shown true Leijon spirit. Great work, girls. Really.’ And then he gave us each a bottle of Sancerre Gitton as thanks. ‘A little bonus,’ the idiot said. So I checked the price online, it doesn’t even cost two hundred kronor a bottle. And I know that Jonas Bergqvist got dinner at Oaxen when he finished project Bubble. Pretty greedy, if you ask me. Want to drink the wine with me tonight?”
Emelie thought about it. Aside from a few trips into the office to deal with urgent matters, she’d spent most of her time at home lately, horrible thoughts floating through her mind.
—
Jossan lived on Norr Mälarstrand: a flashy two-bed place with Carrara marble in the bathroom and Gaggenau ovens in the kitchen. That’s right: ovens plural—“You need a steam oven, too,” Josephine claimed. Everything felt brand-new. “International standard,” the estate agent had said—Jossan had let them value the place, not that she had any plans to move.
They talked about Magnus Hassel’s colorful ties and his collection of art. They talked about how stressed they felt—Emelie was on the verge of telling her about the Benjamin case. The pressure from Leijon. The pressure of defending a murder suspect. The shooting outside Sara’s house. She was burning the candle from both ends—being torn in half. She needed her pills.
“I went to a doctor and got something for the stress,” she said.
Jossan wanted to know more, but Emelie dodged her questions—it was pointless telling her that strictly, they were narcotics, the crap she was taking. She couldn’t talk about it, not even with Josephine, one of the few people she could call a friend.
After the bottle of Sancerre and another of Chablis, Jossan told her what had happened two years ago. “Before we shared a room, this is. I was in the middle of a huge transaction that lasted for three months. I didn’t have a single weekend off, worked past midnight every day. The partner just said: ‘In the British offices, they’ve got hordes of hungry eastern Europeans and Indians willing to give their all. We’ve got to compete with that, don’t we?’ I’d booked a long weekend in Rome with my mom once it was over. I felt like I needed to relax a bit. But instead, I got thrown into project Two Star the very next day, had to cancel the trip. It was insane, seriously insane. I worked day and night for two weeks. I mean, really, day and night. I think I slept less than forty hours during that entire period. I didn’t know what to do, just called my mom and cried and cried. Eventually a guy friend of mine gave me something to try, in a little plastic bag. Totally Breaking Bad.”