by Jens Lapidus
He needed to get rid of the helmet. If they caught him with that, he was screwed—direct link to the motorbike.
Balls. He’d lost the dough—the small plastic bags of bills were scattered across the cycle path behind him.
He ran down a little bank. Almost fell. Pebbles crunched beneath his feet. He heard the sirens. They were up there, the pigs.
He kept going. In the darkness. Trees all around him. He could see something glittering between the trunks. Water. A lake.
He took off his sweater. Filled his backpack and helmet with stones. Threw it all into the water.
He was practically crying: how much money had he just blown?
He ran on. A hill. Out through the trees. Tall grass. A meadow. He was tired now, wouldn’t make it much farther.
It was dark, no houses or roads lit up anywhere around him. He was moving more slowly now—planned to walk away from the police.
Then he heard the barking. It couldn’t be—they’d brought dogs.
Sniffer dogs.
He saw the silhouette of the Alsatian first, then the dog handler. He’d dropped the lead. What an idiot. The dog was barking like it wanted to eat him alive.
What the fuck should he do?
He crouched down in the grass. It was damp. A small ditch: he made himself as small as he could. Hoped the fucking dog’s nose wasn’t that good after all.
He could see Linda’s disappointed face in front of him.
He hoped Chamon was long gone.
He thought about the girl, Paulina.
He could hear the dog yapping. Closer now.
Happy midsummer. Bitch.
PART III
JUNE–JULY
35
He wasn’t living in his apartment. It was no secret anymore, not since midsummer’s eve. Najdan “Teddy” Maksumic was at war with his old mentor.
Best Western Årsta, Hotell Ibis, the youth hostel in Hornstull. He planned to keep changing every night. There was no other way. Besides, he didn’t know whether those Swedish Premium Security idiots were still in the mix: he wanted to avoid them at all costs, too.
The hotel rooms all looked the same. Vinyl flooring meant to look like genuine parquet. Ridiculously hard double beds. Bottles of shower gel screwed to the wall so the guests wouldn’t get any ideas about swiping them. Low-energy lightbulbs linked to motion sensors; they went out after a while—the first time he was plunged into darkness, Teddy had been doing a number two. He’d thought there must’ve been a power cut. Eight years away from Sweden. Sometimes, he felt like a martian.
Teddy wandered around his new neighborhoods. Årsta, Järva, Södermalm. Tried to work out his next move. He could stay in nicer places, but it didn’t feel right. He needed to live like this. Stay under Kum’s radar. But keep pressing him at the same time.
He hadn’t heard from Emelie since she’d freaked out in the car on the way back from Mazern’s barn.
He’d sent Sara a message from a new phone—again: he didn’t know what resources those Swedish Premium Security guys had:
Sara, hope you’re feeling better. Thinking of you, just wanted to hear you’re OK. Teddy.
Linda had called on Midsummer Day. “They’ve arrested Nikola.”
She’d been crying when she told him the little she knew.
Teddy hated it when his sister cried. He hated it even more when his nephew was in the shit.
He thought back to the call Nikola had made to him the night before, about coming up to say hi. He hadn’t been on his best form at the time: in the process of burning down a barn.
But he tried to comfort Linda. Then he said: “There was another thing. You need to leave the country.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My old life’s caught up with me, and there’s some stuff I need to do to put things right.”
“I don’t understand what you mean. Stop talking in cliches.”
Teddy did his best to explain.
Linda refused, but she agreed to stay in a hotel in any case, to take a few days off work. Teddy promised to pay back every krona she spent.
He phoned Emelie. No answer. He sent her a message. He went to Leijon to look for her. Asked Magnus Hassel if he knew where she was.
“No, Teddy, my man, I have no idea. You’ll have to ask personnel. Are you two working together on something?”
He shook his head. Regretted even asking Hassel. On the way to the lift, someone tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hi, you’re Teddy, right?”
One of the lawyers, he didn’t know her name, but he’d seen her around. She was slim, dyed-blond hair, well-groomed nails. More polished than Emelie, somehow.
“That’s me,” he answered.
“I’m Josephine. I share a room with Emelie.”
He’d heard Emelie talk about her before, Jossan, they were friends—it struck him that she might know where Emelie was.
“Are you looking for her?” she asked before he had time to speak.
“Yeah, I need to talk to her. But she seems to be ill or something.”
Josephine gave him a searching look.
“Is she, Teddy? Is she ill? Or is it something else?”
Teddy didn’t say a word. The elevator arrived and the doors opened.
“Listen, I’ve gotta go,” he said. “But if you hear from her, will you tell her to give me a call?”
Jossan watched him as he stepped into the elevator.
On the way back to his hotel, he went to a 7-Eleven and bought a packet of chewing gum.
Textured paper on the walls. Mottled curtains he didn’t bother opening. On the bedside table: a Bible. On the coffee table: a free magazine about the Stockholm archipelago—the Fjäderholm islands, wherever they were—pretty place to visit, apparently. Under the bed: the shotgun he’d dug up in the woods. He’d hidden the pistol in his apartment.
The only positive in all this crap: that ass from Swedish Premium Security had been noticeable in his absence since Teddy started living life on the move. Maybe it had been idiotic of him to go up to the Leijon offices, or to try to contact Sara. But on the other hand: he had to keep going. He’d known the path he’d chosen would involve some heat.
His old phone rang. Hidden number.
“Hey, Teddy, can we meet?”
It was Dejan—Teddy recognized his voice right away.
His old friend: a bad omen.
“Nah, now’s not really a good time.”
“But I want to see you. You need to talk to someone.”
“It’ll have to be later, when things calm down.”
“What are you up to, man? You gone crazy? I want to talk to you ’cause you were my friend.”
Were my friend. The last time they met—when Dejan had brought along his dog—he hadn’t spoken in the imperfect.
Teddy said: “You can tell whoever told you to call me that there are no limits now. Understand that? No limits.”
He hung up. Heat—that was a part of all this; he had to put pressure on Mazern.
He lay down on the bed. Closed his eyes.
Dejan and him, eighteen years old. Breaking into the conference center. The trip to Amsterdam after they’d carved up those ten kilos. The parties at Green Bar. The moments in the car: when they’d talked about their parents.
His phone rang again. Hidden number—what exactly didn’t Dejan get?
“Hi, it’s me.”
This time, it wasn’t Dejan. The voice was Sara’s.
“Sara, how are you?”
“Better, but I’ll probably be here a few more days.”
“Where are you?”
“Karolinska, ward 57.”
“I’m so sorry, Sara. Everything that happened, it’s all my fault. I thought I’d shaken them off. And I’m sorry I sent you a message.”
“No, none of this is your fault. I’m the one who started looking into everything when you were inside. I’m the one who asked you to come to my place. It was my choice, not you
rs. I want you to have everything I found out about Mats, Teddy.”
He got up from the bed. “We can’t meet now, it’s too dangerous for you.”
“But I really want to see you. I talked to my partner about it. I’m willing to take the risk.”
Stockholm County Police Authority
Interview with informant “Marina,” 19 December 2010
Leader: Joakim Sundén
Location: Flemingsberg Centrum
MEMORANDUM 5 (PART 1)
Transcript of dialogue
JS: Well, the plan is for us to finish up before Christmas, so if we don’t manage today, we’ll have to meet again tomorrow. Is that okay?
M: I guess it’ll have to be.
JS: Good. Over to you, then.
M: Okay. So, it was time to put my plan into action. I was almost completely convinced there was going to be a takeover bid on Gambro. It was just a question of when. I remember I was checking the company’s share price a couple of times a day. SEB funds had started buying shares, and they were linked to the Wallenberg group. I could see the pattern, understood the timings. Investors and other people would put in an offer for the majority of the shares within a few weeks, and that offer had to be sweetened—in other words, much higher than the actual share price. We’re talking about a 15 to 30 percent increase in most cases. The alternative was to fill up on thousands of Gambro shares and then just wait—they were at ninety kronor each. But it’d cost a fortune, money I didn’t have. And at best, it’d be a gain of maybe 30 percent, a hundred thousand kronor or so. Not exactly leverage.
The other option was to play the long game: in other words to buy purchase options and pay a premium for the right to buy two hundred thousand Gambro shares at eighty-five kronor each in September. For that, I’d only need one hundred thousand kronor. But the gains could be enormous.
I was sitting on information that maybe only fifty or sixty other people had access to. The others were bound by confidentiality agreements and anti-insider trading rules, but I was a free agent. I was a gambler.
There was just one catch. I didn’t even have the amount of money I’d need for the purchase option route. But just like Sebbe had forced me to pay my debts by taking money from my clients at KPMG, I thought I could borrow a little from him now and make the bet of the century. All I wanted was to create a better future for my kids. Plus, it was a short-term loan. Just a couple of weeks. He’d have his money back soon enough.
And in practice, I bought the options through one of the companies I was looking after. No one would ever notice.
Summer 2006 passed pretty quietly. Even Sebbe seemed to realize I needed some time off. I took a holiday. Peder’s customers had quieted down a bit, though I really didn’t want anything to do with them anymore, not since I’d copied the contents of that computer.
We were at our place in the country. Lillan was learning to swim, and Benjamin was doing some waterskiing. I still couldn’t forget what I’d seen at that party. Clearly, I’d managed to copy the movies—perfect blackmail—onto my computer, something any ordinary person would’ve taken straight to the police, but I didn’t have the nerve to use it or do that. It’d risk revealing my entire double life, ruining everything.
Toward the end of summer, we went to Denmark and rented a little place in North Jutland. Every day, I cycled a few miles inland to get better a signal, and I’d scour the stock markets using my new phone. I was obsessed with the price of the Gambro shares.
Then one day in September, Michaela called me when I was at work—my ordinary job.
“What the hell have you done, you idiot?”
“What’re you talking about?” I tried to sound surprised.
“You know exactly what I mean. Jesus Christ, Mats. You need to put it back right now.”
The KPMG office wasn’t exactly made for conversations like that. I looked at my colleagues—they were like meek little sheep. I tried to keep my voice calm.
“Okay, okay. Please, Michaela. I’ll sort it all out, and more. It’s a great investment.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. It’s not your money. And look: some of us aren’t planning to wait for you to pay it back. Some of us are completely fucking furious with you.”
I took a taxi back home, ran straight up the stairs. I passed a man in the stairwell, a guy I didn’t recognize, but it wasn’t Sebbe or Maxim, which was something. All I could think about was keeping track of my laptop, the one I had all my evidence on, and about trying to convince Sebbe and Maxim that everything was okay. If they were planning to do something to me, I had enough dirt to sink them and half the people we worked with.
I wasn’t normally home that time of day. I usually left early in the morning and went straight from KPMG to Clara’s at some point in the afternoon. It was so quiet, weirdly quiet, and I remember thinking it smelled different, too. Like someone else had been in the apartment.
I opened the computer and started going through the different folders. There was one I hadn’t named—the one with the photos and videos from the computer at the party.
But then I smelled something even weirder—a sharp, pungent, burning smell. I sat there for a while, thinking someone must be burning something, even though there weren’t any open fires in our building, or not that I knew of, anyway. Maybe there was a fire outside somewhere.
I got up and went over to the window, opened it, looked out. It was like the air rushed into the flat, like it was being sucked in through the open window. I closed it again. The place really stank now.
I heard a sound in the kitchen, like the wind. I went over.
The room was covered in flames.
The walls were normally bright white, but now there were flames licking the ceiling, turning all the surfaces black. The heat nearly knocked me flat.
I started coughing. The smoke and the fumes caught in my throat. I realized our landline was in there, and I tried to remember whether there was any rhyme for what you were meant to do in a fire. Alert, alarm, get out. I wondered where I’d put my phone, but I couldn’t remember. I was breathing really heavily by then; I knew I had to phone the fire department. I had to get hold of some water somehow, put it out. I had to save my computer.
The ceiling was thick with smoke. I was coughing like mad.
The whole apartment seemed to be full of smoke now, and I thought the air might be better closer to the floor.
I got onto my knees. The flames in the kitchen were touching the ceiling.
It felt like someone had shoved pine needles down my throat and gravel up my nose.
I crawled toward the bedroom on all fours.
But my face felt weird, like I was wet.
The floor lurched toward me.
They must’ve given me the wrong lenses in my glasses, I thought. I couldn’t see anything. And then it was like my lungs were full of rubber.
I don’t remember anything after that.
The midwife’s calm voice when Benjamin was born. When Lillan and I went to the emergency room on her fifth birthday after I managed to crush her fingers in the basement door. Our wedding, how Cecilia’s hair made her look like an angel.
I floated around. In a way, it was nice.
I don’t know what kind of treatment they gave me, but they said I was out cold for days. I had first-degree burns, for the most part, blisters and sores, but I had some other injuries to my hands and arms, too. They told me I had inhalation injuries from the fumes and the smoke. They gave me painkillers through an intravenous drip and wrapped me up in clean, dry sheets. Damage to my lungs. Dehydration. I woke up with all kinds of tubes attached to me. They said my family were fine, that they were staying in a hotel. They told me to drink juice through a straw.
Then I could sense that someone was there. Sitting by my bed.
It was Cecilia. She held out a glass of juice, told me to drink.
We didn’t speak—I couldn’t, actually; the smoke had damaged my throat. But it wasn
’t just that. I couldn’t explain it to her. Sebbe had burned down our apartment. It was his way of repeating what he’d once told me at the gym: “Don’t ever fuck with me.”
I fell asleep with Cecilia next to me. Sank back down into my world of dreams.
I woke up. She was sitting there again. I don’t know if it was later that day, the next day, or even a week later.
There was a painting on the wall, a lake with trees around it. The sun was going down over the trees and the sky was reddish orange. I’m sure it was meant to make people feel calm, but the colors just reminded me of my kitchen.
“I saw your computer at home,” said Cecilia.
I wondered what she was talking about.
“It was open, I saw the pictures on the screen. And the other ones saved on it.”
It was like the ground opened up beneath me. Like I was tumbling helplessly toward I don’t know what, but I knew it’d knock me unconscious again. I turned away.
She’d seen the files on my computer. I hoped she meant the Excel spreadsheets and my parallel accounting, the lists of names and bank accounts. But something told me that wasn’t what she meant. The videos from the laptop at the party. Maybe she realized what I’d been doing the past year. Maybe she realized I’d gotten myself caught up in an enormous shit storm. But the films…what could you say about those?
I only managed one sentence. “I think that’s who set the apartment on fire.”
Later that day, one of the nurses came in to see me. Cecilia had gone home.
“There’s a man on the phone for you. Sebastian, he said. Do you think you can manage?”
The handset was hanging from the little cart next to the bed. I answered slowly. “Hello?”
“What’d I tell you, Mats?” Sebbe’s voice sounded uncomfortably mild. For a moment, I wished I’d been able to record the conversation and report him to the police.
“You said I should never fuck with you, I know. But I just borrowed the money for a few weeks, that was all. Have you heard of Gambro?”