Stockholm Delete

by Jens Lapidus

  Transcript of dialogue (continuation)

  M: On a personal level, I was out of the shit. Done with the therapy sessions and psychologists. I was working for Sebbe again, Michaela and I were back to doing what we always had. Maxim was in charge of the rest of it. This was mid-2007. A few months later, I handed in my notice at KPMG. Cecilia wanted to know why, they’d always been so good to me, supportive through those difficult times, but I just told her I needed to move on. She thought I’d switched to another normal, smaller accountancy firm, and I guess I had in a way. Emanuelsson, Petrovic & Co., Fraud Services—We move, launder, and reinvest.

  The accountancy itself was demanding: good enough to be approved by an auditor, but also essentially nonsense. I looked after the tax returns and self-assessments, VAT returns. I registered new companies, gave them new names and addresses—I was finding new board members the whole time. I still didn’t know where Maxim got his so-called goalkeepers from, but I knew there had to be movement in the businesses, so the authorities couldn’t keep up. I liquidated companies and transferred real and invented activities to the new ones. I created asset transfer and share purchase agreements. I faxed instructions to banks across half the world.

  Not much had happened while I’d been gone. Michaela had learned a bit more, Sebbe had started to get a bit more aggressive with the whole arrangement, and Maxim was looking after more smurfs and bringing in more goalkeepers than ever. But the work was the same. Aside from one thing: I refused to do any more work for Peder.

  Sebbe wanted to know why.

  All I said was: “He’s an asshole, a pig. Someone should put one bullet between his legs and another one between his eyes.”

  He didn’t dig any deeper. Maybe he understood. He was just happy to have me back. Michaela had missed me, he said.

  I told Sebbe I’d resigned from my normal job to be able to keep up with everything he wanted. The very next day, there was a present waiting for me when I got to Clara’s: a gold watch, an Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean. I picked it up, weighed it in my hand.

  “Oh, so nice,” Michaela said. “Looks like it’ll fit?”

  I reluctantly put it on—it was the perfect watch for someone like me. They knew I liked windsurfing. Michaela looked at my wrist. It fit like a dream. I said: “It’s great, really.”

  She smiled. “You think? Cool. I picked it out for you.”

  There was an envelope under the box. In it, there was a stack of five-hundred kronor bills, 120 of them, plus a handwritten note—written in a terrible scrawl. You’re a good driver. Glad to see you back in action. I could only guess who’d written it.

  The next day, I went to NK and bought a necklace for Cecilia—a one karat diamond. I left the Omega watch in the office.

  But sadly, things between me and Cecilia still weren’t right. We moved into a house in autumn 2007. It had been a year since the kidnapping, and I’d hoped that having a project to work on would bring us back together. None of us had really felt great in the apartment—but for me, it was a constant reminder of the fire.

  We started renovating the new place. I realized it was a great way to use up some of the allowance Sebbe gave me. The carpenters wanted to be paid in cash, after all. It was my expert area.

  “Can’t we do it legally, without your poker money?” Cecilia asked when I tried to explain the benefits of my method.

  “Just let me look after this,” I said.

  She took hold of my arm and just held me like that. Her fingers dug into my bicep. It wasn’t nice, but I was glad she thought it was poker money.

  “Mats,” she said, “you’ve changed.”

  I didn’t move. I knew she’d let me go eventually, or even better, pull me into a hug.

  “You know what I’ve been through.” I sighed. “It’s not easy.”

  Her hand dropped to her side. We were facing one another, and it was like the air between us was thick, soupy.

  “No,” she said. “It started before all that.”

  We were having trouble with Benjamin around that time, too. He was being picked on at school. Some of the other kids had been getting to him for a while, but it got worse that winter. He was a teenager now, but maybe he was a bit childish for his age. Football and Lego Technic, that’s what he was most interested in. But the bullies actually seemed to focus on the fact he did Thai boxing. They would push him up against the wall, show him he wasn’t all that just because he did martial arts. He came home and told us how several of them had held him down, kicked him in the crotch. Then he started telling us they’d stolen his things. They ruined his coat with paint; he found his scarf covered in shit. But the worst thing was that they’d started doing the same thing to his classmates, punishing anyone who talked to him. They completely froze him out.

  I called his class teacher. She just said: “Boys that age can be a bit tricky sometimes, and I know they have their play fights and things like that during break, but I haven’t noticed anyone being singled out. It’s a mutual game they have. Just boy stuff.”

  “But what about his scarf? It was covered in some kind of excrement.”

  “Yes, though I don’t know anything about that. I took two of the boys to one side and asked them about it, but they didn’t know anything, either. I don’t think they were lying to me.”

  There wasn’t much more to say. I tried to forget all about it by working even harder.

  Sometimes, I think things happen automatically, that your body reacts before you have time to think. Like some kind of chain reaction. I was a bored teenager, so I started playing backgammon. Backgammon led to poker. Poker led to gambling debts. Gambling debts forced me to try to arrange things with Sebbe, who forced me to launder his money. The money got me to try to earn more through my financial derivatives instrument, which made Sebbe go crazy and led to Cecilia discovering the films on the computer, which led to me being kidnapped…which, in turn, affected me so that I did what I did.

  I mean, sometimes I just think you can trace things back as far as you want. Nothing comes out of thin air. Nothing a person does is completely free from other people’s actions, and whatever happens can, in theory, already be traced out at birth.

  One Monday, I went to Benjamin’s school. Before that, I’d gone to Järnia and bought a Stanley knife.

  I went into the playground and waited. After awhile, I saw one of the boys who was bullying and harassing my son. I went over.

  “Could you come with me a minute?”

  The worthless little shit looked up at me like I was a stranger, though he must’ve known who I was. But he followed me anyway—kids are odd like that, even when they’re thirteen. You say something with enough authority, they’ll do whatever you want.

  We went out onto the street, away from the playground.

  I was pushing the boy in front of me, over to a parking lot, behind a van. His name was Joel, that kid. Benjamin had told me he was the leader. He was the one who’d started a chatroom online, just to stir up things against Benjamin, and he was the one who’d pissed in two of his classmates’ shoes as punishment for talking to my son. He was the one who’d tied Benjamin to a tree behind the school. He’d been stuck there for five hours before he managed to get free, by almost pulling his shoulders out of joint.

  What happened next isn’t something I’m proud of, but I was fuming. I slapped the kid, hard. His cheek was as red as a stop sign. Then I pulled out the knife with one hand and grabbed his chin with the other.

  I pressed the knife to his throat.

  His eyes were full of tears.

  I said: “You tell anyone about this and I’ll kill you, just so you know.”

  He was sobbing. Kept his head perfectly still.

  “From now on, this is how it’s going to be. You don’t touch Benjamin, you don’t say a bad word about him. You’re going to make sure everyone treats him with respect. You’re responsible for him feeling good. Every single day.”

  The kid moaned, but I didn’t know if it
was because he was in pain or because he was ashamed.

  I left.

  When I got home, Cecilia was sitting in the kitchen. She looked so serious. I thought she must’ve heard about what I’d done to the bully.

  “I want a divorce,” she said instead.

  I sat down. I didn’t really understand, but it was also like I’d been expecting it. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come on, we need to talk first.”

  “We’re past that, Mats. We can’t live in parallel worlds.”

  I wondered whether she really knew how separate our lives had been these past few years. “We can fix this, Cecilia,” I tried.

  “No. You don’t love me and I don’t love you. I don’t even think you love yourself.”

  Memo continued on separate sheet.

  SNIFFER DOG REPORT

  Dog Unit

  Signed by Karl Järnnacke

  Stockholm County

  Date: 21 June

  Service dog: Tassie, D1

  Confiscation made: No

  Material for analysis: No

  Tracking after intruders from ICA Maxi in Botkyrka ran from escape vehicle on a dirt track off Hågelbyvägen, Botkyrka

  TASK:

  Colleague, Anna Petterson, had witnessed two suspects disappear from crime scene on a motorcycle and quad bike, respectively. Quad bike unfortunately lost. Suspect on motorcycle was, however, followed by RB 23-5849, down Hågelbyvägen and then onto a dirt track transverse to the road. Visual contact maintained throughout. Approximately six hundred feet down the track, the suspect left the motorcycle and disappeared into the wooded area to the north. The motorcycle was abandoned on the dirt track.

  I, Stockholm dog handler K. Järnnacke, began the search for the suspect at the motorcycle. Service dog Tassie picked up the scent on the second attempt. The scent began by a ditch, roughly sixty feet to the south of the dirt track. The scent continued southward, along the ditch. The dog did not hesitate. After roughly three hundred feet, the scent veered in an eastward direction, toward the lake.

  Approximately three hundred feet to the west of the lake, I came out into a meadow and made visual contact with a person moving in the same direction as the scent. It was still dark, but after roughly one minute, I determined that the person had also seen me. I shouted that I would release the dog unless he stopped. The person did not heed my warning, and I released the dog to apprehend him. When the dog reached the person, I was roughly one hundred feet away. As I came up to the person, I pushed him and he fell to the ground. I also administered some distraction hits with an open hand, to the head and the chest. I subsequently secured the suspect with handcuffs.

  In service, Karl Järnnacke

  48

  Teddy’s one-man attack. Teddy’s war against the gangster goliath. Teddy’s lack of an alternative. He’d thought the man would crack sooner, but it still wasn’t working. Teddy had called Mazern at least eight times to try to get him to talk. Kum just hung up the moment he realized who it was.

  So today, Mazern would talk. It was that simple. Chaos notwithstanding. Regardless of the risk. Teddy was on the way to where Kum’s woman on the side lived.

  Surveillance society: tons of people complained about it. Most people didn’t give a shit. But for Teddy, it was a problem. Outside the garage where he’d parked his car, above the entrance to Leijon, by the escalator down to the platform—small, round eyes everywhere. Plus: all these fucking smartphones—people didn’t even read books on the metro or the bus anymore, they stared at their screens instead, and they could use them to take photos, make films, save audio clips. Keep a record. That was the last thing Teddy wanted today: to be on record.

  For some reason, the rubber handrail was moving more quickly than the escalator steps. An out-of-sync movement. Out of step, like his life: he did things—still, he was out of sync with something else. Teddy—Emelie. Teddy—Linda and Bojan. Teddy—his new self.

  His shotgun was in a bag by his side.

  He’d spent the night in another crappy hotel. Hotel Star Spånga. Five hundred a night, but the sheets had looked dirty and the carpet was covered in dark patches, which made him think of one thing and one thing only: blood.

  He bought some baklava in the square, the sweetness and pistachio flavor reminding him of Bojan. He’d called him last night. Checked he and Linda were okay. His father had no complaints—he loved the heat, being able to speak his own language, and the swampy taste of the coffee. Linda wanted to come home—she was worried about Nicko.

  Teddy, on the other hand, still hadn’t been in touch with Emelie to pass on Isak’s message to Nikola.

  He went to the same woman every Saturday, according to Isak. Hjorthagen. A place on Artemisgatan. Nice and close to Lidingö—but the average income where she lived was probably about a quarter as high.

  Tagg hadn’t wanted to come along this time. Teddy understood—his friend had already gone above and beyond. It was okay.

  Jalo, he read on the mailbox. No security door. Teddy rang the bell. Hoped Kum was still a horny bastard even though he knew Teddy was after him.

  No one came to the door. He pressed the buzzer again.

  He heard a shuffling sound inside. The lock clicked. The door opened slightly, the safety chain stretched out in front of him. A face through the crack: a woman in a pink dressing gown. Fake lips. High cheekbones and something naive in her eye.

  Teddy could feel a vein pulsing in his forehead.

  He threw himself at the door with all his weight. The safety chain gave way. The door flew open, and the woman was shouting: “What’re you doing? Cime se baviš?”

  Teddy raised the shotgun to her forehead. Closed the door behind him.

  Shouted back. “Gde je on?”

  He didn’t have to look far. Her place was small: one kitchen, one room. Wooden bookshelves, empty apart from a few magazines and some withered potted plants. Condoms, lube, and pills on the bedside table. And on the bed: him. Naked. Pathetic.

  A vision. His former godfather. Ten years back: a giant in Stockholm’s underworld. A living gangster legend. Now: a wrinkled, scrawny old man with a limp dick.

  Teddy pushed the woman to one side. She collapsed in a heap on the floor. Her hands to her face. Sobbing: “Ne, ne.” There was a pile of clothes on a chair. Teddy spotted the monogram on something light blue: EMP. Emilijan Mazer-Pavić.

  He pushed the barrel of the shotgun up against the naked idiot’s temple.

  “I’ll blow you both away unless you start talking. You know what I want to know.”

  Kum slowly turned his head.

  Teddy held the weapon steady: it was pointing at his forehead now. He wondered what bothered the old bastard the most: getting his head blown off, the whore on the floor getting hurt, or his wife finding out.

  Their eyes locked.

  “Was it really you who set fire to my stuff in Killinge?” Kum asked.

  “Puši mi kurac. I’ll set fire to this place, too, unless you start talking.”

  “And shot my car to shit outside tennis? You’ve gone mad, mali Teddy. You aren’t thinking straight. I should’ve killed you.”

  Teddy lowered the gun. He saw Kum breathe out.

  Teddy shot the bathroom door.

  The noise was louder than he’d expected. Kum and the woman both yelled. The door was in splinters.

  Barrel back to his head now. “Next one’s between your eyes, pičko.”

  Mazern: in shock.

  The woman on the floor: rocking back and forth, mumbling something in Serbian.

  Mazern: dogged. “You going to tell my…wife?”

  Teddy countered: “You’ve got bigger things to worry about right now. You talk, I’ll leave her out of it.”

  He raised the shotgun again. Took aim. Saw something he’d never seen in Kum’s eyes. He’d seen it plenty of times before, in others’. On Mats’s face when they put him in the box. In the Screwbacks’ president’s eyes. On the fac
es of all those men he’d taken care of. Back in his old life.

  Kum was afraid.

  He tried to cover himself with the blanket. His voice was weak when he began. “You know me…I’m someone who’d keep doing what I was doing, either until I ended up in the morgue or in a villa with a pool out in Lidingö.”

  “The hell you talking about?”

  “Wait…let me speak. I made it, didn’t I?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “That I’m out. I swear on my majkin grob. I’m out these days. I stopped the coke, the speed. I’m done with the coat rooms, the cigs. I even stopped the invoice business. I don’t want anything to do with my past. I’ve moved on.

  “But then you turn up, asking questions about what happened nine years ago. About Mats Emanuelsson. I don’t want anything to do with that shit. Is that really so hard to understand?”

  “Except you do have something to do with it,” Teddy replied bluntly. “So you don’t have a choice.”

  His eyes, the whole time, his eyes—there was something about Mazern’s eyes.

  “What the hell’s all this about?” Kum asked. “Tell me why you care, Teddy.”

  Teddy was holding the gun with both hands, didn’t want to start shaking with tiredness. He explained as quickly as he could. That Mats Emanuelsson’s son had been arrested on suspicion of murdering an unknown man, that things had happened when he visited Sara, that Mats had faked his own suicide.

  He looked at Kum. There, again: his eyes. They weren’t just full of fear. There was something else there.

  It took Teddy a while to go through everything. He sat down in an armchair: the gun on the armrest, still pointing at the has-been on the bed. The woman on the floor was calmer now. Mazern wasn’t moving. Silent.

  “So, now you know,” Teddy said once he was done. “And don’t just blame Ivan. I know he’s dead and can’t explain it himself.”

  Kum pulled the covers higher, over himself. “I’ll do a deal with you.”

  “You’ll fuck me over.”