by Jens Lapidus
“No, a real deal. You flashlighted my cars and shot at me, but I’ll tell you what I know. But for that, you’re going to fucking pay for what you did. The insurance company is refusing. They’re saying it’s fraud.”
Teddy couldn’t believe it: Mazern was talking about a deal. He’d assumed he would have to use McLoud’s money to live abroad for the rest of his life, a price on his head. But now?
“I don’t believe you. Why?”
Kum said: “Because I hate those bastards, too. I never knew what that kidnapping was about, either.”
“How much do you want?” Teddy asked.
“Eight million, plus one more for scaring the shit out of my bodyguard by the tennis hall, plus compensation for the bathroom door you just shot to pieces.” Kum smiled wryly. Maybe he was sure Teddy wouldn’t be able to afford it.
Teddy smiled back. Held out his free hand.
“Expensive rides.”
“You’re fucking me over,” said Kum.
“My word’s my word.”
Teddy took out his phone. Loke had shown him how to do this. He jabbed away at it with his thumb while he held the gun steady with the other hand. To avoid any suspicion, he’d spread the money between four different accounts. He held up screen after screen. Showed Mazern: he was serious.
“Idi u kurac. I’ll be damned,” his old godfather said, getting up from the bed. He’d wrapped the covers around him like a towel. “Then we’ve got a deal.”
Kum got dressed. Sat down on the wooden chair by the little dining table. The woman was standing in the kitchen. She closed the door.
“Who ordered Mats’s kidnapping?”
Kum twisted. “A man, a Swede. We only met once, outside. He used a runner to pay me in cash once the job was done. He emailed me a couple of times, but his main contact was Ivan.”
“Name?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did he look like?”
“It was a long time ago. I can’t remember the details. He was middle-aged. Glasses. Really white teeth.”
“You still have the email address?”
“No, sorry. It was on an old computer I got rid of ages ago.”
“And Sebbe Petrovic, what did he have to do with Mats?”
“You already know a lot, so I hear.”
“Just answer the question.”
Kum slowly scratched his cheek. “Sebbe was Mats’s backer at first, poker, you know. Then Mats turned into Mr. Gold. The Magician, they called him. He helped them out, in other words—with everything, if you get what I mean. And with investments.”
Teddy asked him to go on. Kum talked for a few more minutes. Mats had been the uncrowned king of fake invoices. An expert, a seriously good bookkeeper. He’d helped them for years.
“So why’d you go along with kidnapping someone who worked for you?” Teddy eventually asked.
“Because Mats was starting to become a burden. Sebbe overreacted and scared him, and then he went to the cops. He was a risk, simple as that. Mats became a risk.”
“Then why did he jump from the ferry?”
Kum: “I don’t actually know. Maybe he still felt like shit after what they did to him during the kidnapping.”
Teddy glared at him.
Again. Those eyes. They surprised him. Bothered him. For a different reason now: he had the feeling Mazern was telling the truth. That he wasn’t actually lying.
“You promised to tell me everything. We just agreed.”
“I can’t tell you anything else because that’s all I know. But I did promise to help you, and there’s one person who does know. In Palma.”
“Who?”
“Go down there and see for yourself.”
Teddy got up.
Kum: “One more thing, Teddy. Fuck those bastards up good from me. I regret ever helping them. And that you had to do eight years.”
49
One of the guards, the one who always had shiny hair and smelled of garlic, led Nikola up to the cage on the roof. The handcuffs weren’t tight. They thought he was great, not doing a runner with Kerim when he had the chance. They could go fuck themselves.
Today: a new guy in the cage next door. Nikola didn’t care who. It was almost time for his main hearing. He’d be getting out of this shit hole anyway. Best-case scenario: he’d be a free man with a smile as wide as the E4 on his mug. Worst case: he’d be in the back of a transport van, on the way to prison. At least two years, probably more—and this time, there’d be no talk of being sent to young offenders’.
But he had a plan.
The preliminary report was 350 pages long. It had turned up yesterday. The guard with the shiny hair had knocked on the door and dumped the pile of papers on the floor before Nikola even had time to get up. He’d been watching a repeat of Let’s Dance.
Nikola: followed Kerim’s advice—hadn’t said a word in any of the interviews, other than to complain about how disappointed he was with them. Instead, he’d listened to their questions—they had to ask them, to inform him of their suspicions—and tried to work out how much they knew. He hadn’t even said much to Emelie. He’d told her the same thing he’d told the police: wrong place, wrong time.
But now: he could dig deeper into their evidence, see what they had on him. Counter their arguments. Details were his thing. He marked the pages, underlined the findings from the crime scene investigation, the reports from the National Forensics Centre, the dog handler’s report. He read through their analysis of the motorbike, the surveillance camera images, and the residue from the explosives in the office. One thing was clear: they didn’t have a clue about Chamon. He read on. Checked the interviews they’d conducted with him, with the guards who’d been first on the scene, with the cops who’d chased him. There was even a telephone interview with Teddy. Just a few short lines.
– Did you receive any calls on Midsummer’s eve?
– I can’t remember.
– Can we have a look at your phone?
– OK.
Note: p.i. leader checks witness Teddy Maksumic’s telephone, and finds that on the relevant date, a call was received from 0733-577488 (suspect Nikola’s cell phone number).
– Looks like your nephew called you, could that be right?
– Yeah, now you mention it. Nikola called me to ask if he could come over.
– Had he been to your apartment before?
– You mean that night?
– No, I mean had he ever been to your apartment.
– No, never. He only got out of the young offenders’ institute recently.
That decided it. Nikola knew what his strategy would be in court. He couldn’t congratulate himself enough for having made that call to Teddy. If Emelie did her job right, he might have a chance after all.
But regardless of the trial: he was fucked. This bastard spell in custody hadn’t canceled out what he’d promised Isak—that he’d get the money and find out who derailed the agreement between Metim Tasdemir and the Bar-Sawme family. He had no idea what to do. The money from ICA had been on the ground when he crashed the 125cc. He hoped Isak would show some understanding.
All the same: slight hope. The old man, Gabbe, had told him he’d almost bought the same kind of weapon. From the same series of prototypes stolen from Finland. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Abrohom Michel. One of Metim’s guys. The weapons had to come from them. Nikola asked the guard to make a call.
He wasn’t planning on letting Isak down.
Simon Murray turned up a few hours later. An empty holster on his belt. He’d probably handed his weapon in somewhere.
“I didn’t think you wanted to talk to me anymore.”
Nikola: “I don’t. I wanna do a deal.”
Simon sat down opposite him. He had stubble today. Somehow, he looked older than the last time they’d met—maybe because the hair on his chin was a completely different color from the hair on his head—it was bright white.
“I read the preliminary report. You
tried to fuck me over with Chamon. You said they had him, but they never did.”
Nikola had thought this through. Now: attack was the right approach. Murray: always trying to play good cop, but lying about Chamon had been a mistake. It gave Nikola the upper hand, a favor Murray would have to pay back.
Simon shifted in his chair. “Sorry about that. Made a mistake, I guess, I didn’t actually know everything.”
Nikola got straight to the point. “Like hell. You knew what you were doing. But I’ve got a question for you: want to be the cop who raids the biggest weapons stash in Södertälje?”
“Tell me more.”
“Depends what you’ve got to offer.”
A watershed moment. See whether Murray was willing to negotiate, play the game. Skirt the rules to get somewhere. Essentially: exactly who was Simon Murray?
“Tell me more,” Simon repeated.
“If I give you the location of a weapon, and that place is linked to me, can you forget about it?”
“You said the biggest weapons stash in Södertälje, and now you’re saying one weapon?”
“You can have the big fish if you’re willing to let the little one go.”
“Aha, so it’s like that.” Simon Murray fell silent. He didn’t just have white hairs in his beard. The cop sitting opposite him had white strands of hair all over his head. Nikola almost felt sorry for him—a guy who’d gone gray prematurely, who’d never gotten to be part of the fun, who’d only ever taken crap from people like him. Who slaved away for the state without even being able to dream about a life of luxury.
“What d’you say?”
“I can’t promise anything. But if you tell me, you have my word I won’t report it so long as we keep it like this, between us.”
Nikola took the step. Now: sink or swim. Out over the edge. It wasn’t just a case of revealing something about himself. He was planning to talk about others. He wondered if it always counted as snitching.
He said: “There’s an automatic weapon, an assault rifle—an Rk 62—in my basement. It’s not mine, but that’s where you’ll find it. And if you do a raid on a certain person’s house, you’ll find a sweet load in his basement.”
“How do you know?”
“Don’t ask. I just do. And the thing in my basement—that’s the little fish.”
“Where’s the stash?”
“Look me in the eye first, tell me whether we’ve got a deal or not.”
50
The SAS plane would be taking off in thirty minutes. Palma de Mallorca. The Swedes’ dream destination for more than fifty years: there were constant flights down there.
Beside her, in the café opposite gate thirteen, sat Teddy. The smoothie and coffee they’d just bought had cost ninety-four kronor. You could get a decent lunch in town for the same price, but airports were airports. If Emelie hadn’t been in such a rush, with such a raging headache, she would’ve spent the time browsing the perfumes, alcohol, and Samsung bags; she would’ve bought something for herself. An unwritten rule: you were expected to shop mindlessly when you traveled.
She’d called Teddy two hours earlier. This time, she withheld her number so he wouldn’t see it was her—he answered.
“We really need to talk,” she’d said.
“Maybe, but I’m on the way to Arlanda right now. I’m flying to Mallorca in two hours.”
“What’re you doing there? You can’t go on vacation now.”
“Do you really think that’s what I’m doing?”
“I’ll come out to you, then.”
She didn’t really know why she’d done it. Maybe she was just exhausted from everything. And she was actually on leave from work, still hungover from Magnus’s party last night. Either way. She really needed to see him.
She paid for her ticket at the airport. SAS Plus: business class remade—they called it something else but demanded just as hefty a price.
Teddy told her he’d met Lillan. And Kum.
“I hope you didn’t do anything stupid to him,” Emelie said.
“He’s been through worse,” he replied. “Actually, I gave him pretty much all of McLoud’s money.”
They tried to gather their thoughts in the short time before the plane took off and they’d be crammed in among curious ears.
The plane rolled out onto the tarmac. Outside, the rain was pouring down. The drops slammed against the asphalt like tiny little bombs. The sky was grayer than one of Magnus Hassel’s cashmere suits. Emelie found herself thinking that the farmers back home in Jönköping would probably be over the moon.
They hadn’t been given places next to one another. The seats next to Emelie were empty. She thought about asking Teddy to come and sit with her, but decided against it. Maybe he already thought she was pushy, following him all the way to Palma.
She sat back in her seat—tried to sleep. Her hangover, or whatever it was, still felt like someone had installed a bass drum in her head.
She’d called Magnus, too. A short call—much too short, maybe.
“Thanks for the party yesterday. It was great.”
“Thanks. Feeling a bit heavy today, shall we say, he he. Was the boat home okay?”
“Yep, absolutely.” She thought about how she’d thrown up in his pool—Jossan had used her own cardigan to swirl the water and catch the particles. “It was seventy percent off on Net-a-Porter, so it doesn’t matter,” she’d said.
“I thought about what you said, about New York,” Emelie had said to Magnus.
“Yeah?”
“I can’t go, I’m sorry. I have other summer plans.”
“What plans?”
“I guess you could call it a kind of job. Mostly that.”
“I see, well, I’m not going to pressure you. But I do think the course would’ve been perfect for you, and New York…I love NYC, don’t you?”
Four and a half hours later. It was five thirty in the evening. The damp heat hit them like a wall when they stepped off the plane in Palma de Mallorca.
They didn’t bother going to check in to their hotel; they had only hand luggage. And if things went to plan, they would be able to meet someone with more knowledge that evening, leaving again the next morning.
“I’ve called on you as a witness,” Emelie said. “Since Nikola called you.”
“Sounds sensible. But I’m just going to say what happened, nothing else.”
“What did you expect?”
“You’re a lawyer. You think justice is a game.”
Emelie watched Palma through the wound-down window in the taxi. The coast road: dual nature. To the right: first, the cathedral—enormous. Then: the picturesque heart of the old town. Sun-drenched tourist traps in the distance. Sangria bars and ice cream cafés. Farther along the road: tired old buildings mixed with flashy hotels. And to the left: the boats. They got bigger the farther west they drove. Genuine fishing and motorboats with cabins replaced by big family boats that would’ve looked like scrap if they were docked in the Stockholm archipelago. And finally: the yachts—they were huge. Emelie had never seen anything like them. They looked more like the ferries to Finland than private vessels.
“Teddy,” she said, “why’ve you been avoiding me lately?”
Now it was Teddy’s turn to face the window. “Because you were so pissed off about the whole McLoud thing.”
Emelie tried to think back, but then, almost without thinking, she said: “I was really mad at you. Maybe I still am. But do you know why, really?”
“No.”
“Because I’ve been let down by irresponsible people who put themselves first so many times now. So with you…I don’t know, I guess I’d hoped you’d be able to stay away from your old life. Stick to the new you. Resist it, y’know?”
They climbed out of the taxi. Sensation on repeat: the warmth again.
Carrer del Bisbe Miralles. Number nineteen. Teddy knew where they were going. A white-painted wall. A yellowish villa behind it. An ornate pool along one side of th
e building. Emelie was sweating. It was pouring down her, everywhere—she hadn’t gotten changed before she left Stockholm, just grabbed her passport, a couple of pairs of pants, a top and a toothbrush, and jumped into a taxi.
There was a doorbell by the gate, and a tiny video camera. Teddy held down the button.
They heard a voice: “Buenas tardes. Cómo puedo ayudar?”
Teddy answered in shaky English. “We would like to see the owner. About Mats Emanuelsson.”
The man on the other side replied in broken English. “Sorry, not home. Tomorrow you can come back?”
“It’s important,” said Teddy. “And whoever lives here should already know I’m coming. Can you call, tell them I’m waiting?”
After ten minutes, they heard the voice again. “No, today no. Tomorrow. Ten. Come then.”
Hotel Pere Antoni was at the other end of Palma, back where the boats were small. Emelie didn’t know why Teddy had chosen a room there, of all places, but it turned out to be owned by a Swede: the muscular guy in reception talked to them with a strong Skåne accent. He was the yoga instructor, he told them. “If you’re interested, there’s a Mysore class at six thirty tomorrow morning.”
Judging by the decor: a boutique hotel, but not too stylish—tasteful. Mediterranean feeling with a Scandinavian touch. Pale colors, cane furniture, cool stone floor, brass lamps on the ceiling.
“Breakfast is served at seven every morning,” the tanned receptionist said as he handed over their key card. “And if you’re interested, we offer a CrossFit session afterward, at nine.”
“Can I book a single room?” Emelie asked.
The receptionist looked surprised. “Oh, I thought you were together. I’m not sure we have any other rooms free, but I’ll see what I can do.”
They ate at a restaurant nearby. Calamari and shrimp in garlic. White bread in a basket on the table. A bottle of Rioja. She took off her shoes and let her feet brush the ground beneath the table. The paving stones were still warm.
They tried to make sense of what they knew. Bring structure to their theories. Get their facts straight.
Mats: money launderer for the Yugoslav mafia, a man who’d worked for or with Sebbe for years before faking his own death. Probably worked with Forum Exchange and Stig Erhardsson, too. Nine years ago, there had been a fire in the Emanuelssons’ apartment—they still knew nothing about the cause of the fire. But a few weeks later, Mats had been kidnapped. And the motive behind that seemed to have been getting hold of a computer. They still didn’t know whether Mats’s business with Sebbe had anything to do with the kidnappers. Or why Mats had decided to go underground five years later, convincing everyone he was dead.