The Sons: Made in Sweden, Part 2

by Anton Svensson

  “Knock, knock.”

  The door was open and she raised the cups slightly higher by way of an explanation for the verbal knocking. He looked up from his desk chair, nodded, and she walked in.

  “Thought we should celebrate a little, Broncks. A cup for you and a cup for me.”

  She sat down in front of a man who somehow always looked the same, no matter what clothes he was wearing. Today—blue jeans, gray pullover, black shoes next to pale skin. The only difference in him from how he looked when they first met as colleagues was his hairline, the bays above his temples having become deeper, pulled backward. In a year or so he would start to shave his entire head. They usually did that, balding men of his age. In addition, he looked exactly like his room: pared down, impersonal, with institutional furniture and nothing on the slightly damaged walls. Not a thought about covering the traces of the previous inhabitant. Just bundles of papers for investigations that broke off—unlike her piles they lay spread out over the entire floor. They were all old, and some, at least for him, represented unsolved cases. The bundles, she knew, were permeated with aggravated violence, up and down the pages. She had always thought it odd that they did not reappear in his blank face, that he could keep the violence away—it was present in all her other colleagues. It was possible to trace in their eyes and its color wore off on their voice and gestures. It was as if he had decided it would not affect him, and so it didn’t. She had always thought that didn’t seem entirely healthy. He was not someone she would like to wake up next to the following morning.

  “Thanks, Elisa . . . but most likely it’s been celebrated enough by now, as far as I’m concerned. It’s a finished investigation, since the sentence has been confirmed.”

  He nodded knowingly toward the window, or rather toward the large building, the roof of which was providing shade there outside the old courthouse, where the trials began for what was dubbed the “Robbery of the Century” in the media, the biggest heist in Scandinavian history. One hundred and three million kronor. A case that consumed all his waking hours the year before and now had been pounded through questioning, district court, and court of appeals. And two weeks ago, when the Supreme Court chose not to take it up, it was finally over.

  There was a binding judgment now. The perpetrators’ sentences could be enforced. John Broncks was praised internally as the hero, as the man behind the prosecution, and the loot from the robbery was still entirely intact. None of them had spent a single krona, having been careful not to change their habits.

  “But thanks for the cup of tea. Which, if you excuse me, Elisa, I would rather drink alone—with all that, there’s been a little too much running around lately.”

  He smiled, drank the warm water, and let his gaze linger on the town hall roof.

  The “Robbery of the Century” in most newspapers. The “Transport Heist of Transport Heists” in others. Money that was to be transported from the federal bank’s main branch by the Mall in the middle of downtown Stockholm and out to security companies, which in turn would fill all the ATMs in the central area of the city before the big sales after Christmas—it was the time of year when commerce was at its greatest and the amounts of money at their highest. A female security guard had been attacked and forced at gunpoint to relinquish the whole security van. She had been a victim in the eyes of the media and the rest of the police station—until Broncks saw something else. Broncks saw a woman who’d had an intimate relationship with one of the robbers, who had applied for the job as a guard a couple of years earlier and had slowly worked her way up in the organization with just one goal in mind—to gain enough trust to be allowed to drive that particular vehicle on that particular day.

  “I’m sorry, John, I know what you’re thinking, but that’s not what I wanted to celebrate. I think just like you—that it’s simply our job. That it’s not so fucking worthy of note that we do what we’re paid for.”

  He blushed. She saw it, although he was pretending to fumble with his cup in front of his face, embarrassed that he’d assumed she was yet another impressed admirer.

  “This, on the other hand . . .”

  The two documents had been lying upside down on her knee. Now she picked one of them up and placed it on the desk next to the cup.

  “This is what I want to celebrate.”

  John Broncks glanced at the document. A photograph. He recognized it. He had seen it several times on the news yesterday evening. A man’s body lying on asphalt.

  “Jari Ojala. Hit man, enforcer. Does anything for the right price. Responsible for the occasional shot-up kneecap. But—according to previous convictions and the register of suspects—never involved in an armed robbery before.”

  “So we should celebrate this instead—that he’s stone dead?”

  Wounded pride. But at least he wasn’t blushing anymore.

  “No. Ojala is not interesting. However, the weapon lying there . . .”

  She leaned forward, pointing at the photo.

  “. . . we should celebrate. You’ve been waiting for it for a long time. With this, you should be able to throw out at least this gigantic pile of papers.”

  She was pointing now at one of the unfinished investigations lying on his floor, the most comprehensive—a six-thousand-page investigation.

  “Because that gun, John, is going to link the guilty parties to all the crimes they’ve committed—not just the few they were convicted of.”

  Then she laid the other document on his desk.

  A copy of one of the six thousand pages. An excerpt from the report of a weapons heist that started a unique series of bank robberies.

  Item: Rifle

  Item: Rifle

  Item: Rifle

  Item: Rifle

  Item: Rifle

  Model: AK4

  Model: AK4

  Model: AK4

  Model: AK4

  Model: AK4

  No: 11237

  No: 10042

  No: 11534

  No: 12621

  No: 10668

  Column after column, up and down the pages—two hundred and twenty-one automatic weapons had been stolen from a secret military ammunition depot and then transported away. Broncks had been entirely unaware of where to.

  “The gun in the photo, John, is one of those that disappeared without a trace, and you have been looking for them ever since. The serial number is correct. The stamp with Three Crowns is correct. It’s one of the guns in the large collection that you were sure Leo Dûvnjac and his family controlled and used in ten bank robberies. And now on the same day Dûvnjac is released, it shows up. At another robbery.”

  She picked up her cup and raised it as if for a toast—the celebration she’d intended—and drank the coffee that didn’t taste like anything this time either.

  “Here’s your chance, John. If you follow that gun, you will find the rest.”

  Broncks didn’t toast. He had heard what she said, he really had, but he hadn’t really taken it in.

  Dûvnjac?

  The weapons heist?

  He left his chair and sank down to a squatting position and began to browse in the giant pile. He knew it by heart, knew the exact pages. There. The photos of a tunnel dug under the security door underneath the bunker, the floor blown up and the guns handed out one at a time. A heist that wasn’t discovered until half a year later even though the weapons depot was checked daily—but only from the outside.

  “You’re right. The serial number matches the one in the report. It could have something to do with Leo Dûvnjac. But it could just as easily be the case that he sold them, which he threatened to do when he tried to commit blackmail against us and exchange them for twenty-five million kronor.”

  “John, you don’t believe that.”

  “The entire collection could have leaked out onto the market already then. The gun in the picture might be in the hands of any criminal organization whatsoever.”

  “You don’t believe that—six years have gone by. The AK
4 was a common weapon used during bank robberies back then, and it’s never used today. Think about it, John. When’s the last time you heard of one? It’s only been Kalashnikovs since then. That’s part of what I was doing last night. I didn’t give a shit about gut feelings and verified the facts. Not a single robbery has been carried out with AK4s.”

  He looked at her, at a slight angle from below, stayed there, and sat down on the pile of papers as if it were a wobbly stool.

  “Leo Dûvnjac. I know him as well as anyone does. Shooting people at the scene of the robbery, that’s not his modus operandi. He shoots at surveillance cameras, walls, protective glass, ceilings, whatever the fuck—but to terrify, to force the surroundings to become passive. It worked every time. Even we, the police, backed off. He had just as heavy weapons and demonstrated that he could use them. Dûvnjac gave some thought to violence. Each shot was like a new . . . word. Violence was his language. To start shooting like a fool without any motive, that’s not like him at all.”

  Elisa, on the other hand, looked at him, at a slight angle from above.

  “John?”

  And it didn’t feel entirely comfortable.

  “You hate violence, that’s what makes you tick. Piecing facts together, that’s what makes me tick. Do you understand?”

  She pulled slightly on the lever that raised and lowered the chair and sank down.

  “You went around, then, with a few years of gut instinct. You knew that Leo Dûvnjac committed ten bank robberies and set off a bomb and was behind Northern Europe’s largest weapons heist, but you managed to get him convicted on only two counts. Because you didn’t have enough evidence. Gut feelings are shit, John. Gut feelings trick good police officers into not going all the way. And then when they have to change course, the gut feelings lie there like a dead weight and point in the wrong direction—the same direction as from the beginning.”

  She wasn’t sure he was listening, or if he was only looking at her, past her.

  “And a police officer who followed gut feelings at first and then slowly realized that he or she is wrong must of course change that. And to what, do you think? Don’t answer humility, because that’s wrong, John. Prestige? An investigation can never be driven by prestige. Listen to me—to facts. If you follow the gun, you will find the rest.”

  She grew silent. If he had listened, it was now he must reflect, react.

  He was doing that.

  “Elisa, this is actually my second cup today.”

  He reached for a sip of the hot drink, and then leaned back so much that it moved the stool made of papers. He rubbed his eyes.

  “The first, you see, I made myself in the kitchenette, as I usually do when I arrive in the morning. And, by the way, you seemed to be sleeping very soundly then.”

  He smiled at her, and she realized that, earlier that morning, she had done what she’d thought she would never do. She’d woken up with him. It wasn’t the light from the courtyard that woke her. It was the sound of someone moving around in the same room she was sleeping in.

  He looked so pleased, as if he’d just taken back what he’d lost by the embarrassment over what should be celebrated.

  But, hell no, she wouldn’t blush, as he had done.

  “Okay, John. If you don’t think that the gun is enough as a link—then we’ll take a look at the getaway, which happened when we thought robber number two in blue overalls was still in the security room behind the ATMs.”

  She took her cell phone out of her jacket pocket, pressed the arrow symbol in the middle of the display screen, and handed it to Broncks. It played a silent video clip from a surveillance camera. It was far from perfect resolution—good enough for a general idea, insufficient for identification. John lowered the phone to avoid the daylight reflecting on the small screen.

  A loading dock. A man steps out onto it with his back to the camera and a bag over his shoulder. As usual, the chain of events is jerky, since a couple of frames are missing for each step, but it is clear that he jumps down from the loading dock and is running at the edge of the picture to a parked truck. He opens the back doors and jumps in. Twenty-one seconds later he jumps out again and moves quickly to the cab.

  Broncks looked up briefly and met Elisa’s gaze.

  They were thinking the same thing.

  Who’s missing? What was the dead man’s role in the getaway? Was he supposed to have driven the milk truck, the getaway car, or was he supposed to have loaded the bag with the stolen goods?

  “The escape plan’s various parts—what you’ve always said was Dûvnjac’s hallmark—hook together in a ridiculously simple way. And, John, that impresses me—against my will.”

  She reached out her hand and he put the phone in it.

  “They knew that the armored transport company was still using the system called generation two—that the case was protected but not the cassettes. They knew that there would most likely be patrol cars nearby. That we would get there and see both the getaway car with the engine running and the robber standing watch with his gun. And they knew that we knew that in one hundred cases out of one hundred the robbers leave the scene in the same car they arrived in.”

  She pressed the display arrow again and every movement of the man dressed in blue was shown in slow motion. They were on edge even then and it was clear that he was also working for someone who would soon be left in the parking lot.

  “They got us to look at one car, while they would be vanishing in another vehicle that would blend in with a million others, and that had been placed there long before the execution of the robbery. I found out that a truck was stolen the night before last from Arla Dairy’s distribution terminal in Västerås and that the registration plates went missing from another vehicle at Arla Dairy’s distribution center in Kallhäll a few hours later.”

  That really was a milk truck. Broncks saw it now, the logo on the side of the truck when it was driving away so much slower in the video sequence.

  “They went from being violent robbers to being a natural part of the surroundings, and even the stolen goods became a natural part of the surroundings. They got through the roadblock without us seeing them. And tricks of that sort, John, of such a high caliber, can really only be the work of one bank robber you’ve investigated in the last few years.”

  Broncks remained seated on his temporary stool. It was almost pleasant. The constantly wobbling stack of papers forced his back to move, to compensate for small shifts, forcing it to relax.

  She was probably right.

  It most likely was Dûvnjac.

  Unique inventiveness in the exchange of escape vehicles and a robber who vanished without a trace: he certainly recognized that. Brilliant escape plans with the kind of targets that were attractive—always small, out-of-the-way banks, with many alternative escape routes and with decent money in their vaults.

  “Okay, Elisa. I agree with you. There are three patterns, all of which point in the same direction. The gun. The getaway. And the fact that he was released the same day.”

  “Four.”

  “Four?”

  Another paper. This one was in the other pocket of her jacket. A page from the correctional system’s register.

  “The dead robber was released from his latest prison term five months ago. And do you know from which prison?”

  “No. But I guess that you do.”

  “Österåker. Cell block H.”

  “Is that so?”

  “The same cell block that Leo Dûvnjac was released from yesterday.”

  When he suddenly got up, his makeshift chair collapsed and spread out across the floor. The doubts he had tried to construct were gone. It was no longer probably Dûvnjac—it was Dûvnjac. And John Broncks felt almost . . . dizzy. As if all the energy and strength he had ever carried and burned now filled him again.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Yeah. Son of a bitch. That’s what I was thinking last night.”

  “And . . . so you want to hand it
over to me?”

  “Yes. There are three piles started on my desk.”

  Energy shot him through the room and he walked restlessly back and forth between the door and the window, the desk and the extra chair she was sitting in. He almost spat out the words when he spoke.

  “Elisa?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You can forget that. I don’t want your damn piles of paper.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I want you to work with me. So that we lock up that bastard together.”

  He stopped in the middle of his eager pacing and looked at her, waiting for a reaction, perhaps even a smile.

  She didn’t smile at all. She just sat there as if she hadn’t understood what he said.

  “Well, I mean, Elisa, I would like you to work with me and—”

  “I heard what you said.”

  She got up from the chair.

  “But I’m not sure I want to.”

  What he had interpreted as not being there was actually the opposite, presence.

  Her way of speaking, moving. She was completely present.

  “Have I understood you right—you aren’t sure you want to work on the case?”

  “You misunderstand me—I’m not sure I want to work with you.”

  She kept her gaze on him. She meant every word.

  He ought to be offended but instead he was curious.

  “What exactly are you saying?”

  “What you just tried to say—that was the second time. And that is one time too many.”

  “The second time? The second time—what?”

  “You used the oldest trick just now, pulling the rug out—‘I don’t want your damn piles of paper’—so that I’ll submit and gratefully accept what you have to offer when I’m down—‘I want you to work with me.’ And a little while ago, when I presented those facts I came up with, and you didn’t agree, trying to diminish me by talking about the fact that you stood watching me as I slept. ‘You seemed to be sleeping very soundly.’ That’s what psychopaths do. And I don’t like it.”