The Sons: Made in Sweden, Part 2

by Anton Svensson

  It doesn’t smell like anything. Shouldn’t it, though? And Papa is lying exactly as he did at the wake in one of the hospital’s prayer rooms. Fine suit. Hair combed back. Ashen complexion.

  John Broncks unbuttons his papa’s pinstriped suit jacket and white shirt. He keeps the tie knotted but pushes it to one side so it won’t be in the way. When he bends forward he happens to bump his shoulder against the wall of the hole. The soil falls on his papa’s exposed stomach and chest. He pushes it away with his hand and feels the edges of the wounds with his palms and begins to count. Twenty-six holes. It said twenty-seven in the medical examiner’s report.

  “You should look higher up.”

  It sounds like Papa’s voice.

  “The rib directly under the left arm. The last cut was there.”

  And when he grabs hold of his papa’s arm and turns it to be able to see the twenty-seventh hole better, he hears his father’s heart beating, hard. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. As if his father is fighting back.

  Thump, thump.

  Broncks sat up in bed.

  Thump, thump.

  A dream—so bizarre. But the part that had felt so real, standing there in the middle of a grave, had not been real at all.

  He felt relieved.

  But then the thump came again, from the front door.

  His cell phone was lying on the floor—05:57. He hadn’t even slept two hours.

  Thump, thump.

  Who the hell was banging on the door at this hour?

  He padded softly through the hallway of his two-room apartment, sockless feet on the cold pine floor. There was a peephole above the door handle and lock. He leaned forward.

  Her?

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Leo Dûvnjac.”

  “And?”

  “We have to talk about him.”

  “I thought you were clear when you explained that you didn’t want to work on that investigation—or was it that you didn’t want to work with me?”

  “Listen, Broncks?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I want to keep working on it. I don’t care if you are a psychopath. He sat in the interview chair yesterday and he is even worse.”

  People don’t look sensible when they are smiling through a peephole that distorts lines and perspective. Elisa didn’t either. Her smile was crooked and round at the same time, and too big. Or perhaps that was what she looked like? He probably had not seen her smile especially often before. And now she was holding up something black, gesturing with it at the peephole. It was an investigation folder, or at least he thought so.

  “Wait a minute.”

  He went back to the bedroom, ignored the unmade bed, and pulled on his jeans, which were lying on the floor, and a T-shirt hanging on the armchair. Then he opened the front door. As she came in and hung her jacket on the hook on top of his jacket, it felt as if she was examining him, taking in his disheveled hair and bare feet.

  “Yes, you are seeing correctly—you woke me up. Would you like something? Water? Coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Then I’ll just get some for myself.”

  Broncks went into the kitchen and Elisa followed him.

  “You broke off the interview, John.”

  He filled the kettle and turned on the stove.

  “You showed Dûvnjac out. And you didn’t come back.”

  Hot water. Silver tea.

  “Since then I’ve tried to call you.”

  “And I thought you came here to talk about the job. Not about how I spend my time.”

  “I said that I came here to talk about Leo Dûvnjac.”

  He poured his steaming water into a large cup. From her seat she could take in the whole apartment with a glance. Single. She was certain of that. Not gay, although he had never looked at her in the way heterosexual men sometimes did. A home that could have been clipped out of any page of an Ikea catalog, entirely without personal effects. No photographs. Nothing on the walls that he was proud of. Nice but not distinctive. A hotel room. Anyone at all could stay here a couple of nights and then move on.

  “I checked Dûvnjac’s alibi. It holds, John. He was at the restaurant he named and met his father at the time he stated. It was confirmed by the couple that runs the place and by a slightly drunk regular. And our house search at his mother’s gave us nothing either, as we anticipated.”

  “But from what I have heard, it gave you something else—enemies. Because correcting colleagues, as you evidently did when they turned her bedroom upside down, is the best way to make yourself unpopular in the building where we work.”

  “I have no problem with that if I know I’m right. I didn’t become a police officer because I was lonely—I already have friends.”

  She looked at him. That look that only she had.

  “You, on the other hand, don’t seem to have too many friends there—so what have you said?”

  He drank the warm water, so pleasant when it spread through his chest.

  “Alibi, no result. House search, no result. So you came here and woke me entirely unnecessarily? If so, you can go home now. And I can go back to sleep.”

  She made no attempt at all to go, but instead pulled out one of the pine chairs and sat down at the kitchen table.

  “John, when I don’t find what I’m looking for, I keep looking. Until I find it.”

  She opened the folder she had waved in front of the peephole and the first paper she picked up seemed—at least from what he could see upside down—to be a page from the correctional system’s register.

  “We knew that Jari Ojala, the dead robber, served the last six months of his sentence at Österåker prison. In cell 2, cell block H—the same prison and same cell block as Leo Dûvnjac. That they knew each other, and that Dûvnjac could certainly have planned, and led, exactly as before, but without being at the scene of the crime.”

  The next paper also had the correctional system’s logo in the upper corner.

  “Now we know that an additional fourteen prisoners were in cell block H during the time both Dûvnjac and Ojala were there. Ten of them are still locked up and no one had temporary leave right then. So we can eliminate them.”

  “Well?”

  “That leaves four. This one . . . we can call him A. Joaquín Sánchez. Twelve years for serious drug offenses. Belongs to a Bolivian cartel. If you are prepared to cross a border with a suitcase full of clothes impregnated with cocaine, you would probably be ready to carry out a robbery of a security van.”

  Four bundles of paper, each held together with a paper clip.

  “And this one, the one with the ruddy complexion, in the next bundle, we’ll call B.”

  She laid them out on the table in front of her, careful to make sure they formed a semicircle.

  “Thor Bernard. Eight years for kidnapping when he was advancing from probationer to regular member in a motorcycle club. Ready to do anything to gain the leader’s appreciation. Next, this bundle, John, we’ll call C. Sam Larsen. Life sentence for murder, now released. Even though he was not convicted for anything like robbery, he was inside long enough to be totally damaged by prison life. And the last, that bundle, which we’ll call D. Semir Mhamdi. Six years for manslaughter. Member of a Moroccan criminal network, or rather North African. It extends over the border to Algeria. Exhibits extreme contempt for the police and is known for keeping his mouth shut during interrogation, just like the dead man Ojala.”

  The water in the kettle was still hot. Broncks turned around and filled his cup again, even though he did not intend to drink more.

  Sam.

  You—again.

  We have only seen each other four times in twelve years, most recently when I told you in the visitors’ room that our mother was dead—and you didn’t even want to touch me. Then suddenly you were there again in the interview. Then last night when I couldn’t sleep. And now, as one of the names on a list that will be investigated further. I know you. You are not a rob
ber. At the same time, I don’t know you at all.

  “So once you finish getting dressed, John, we’ll start to deal with them. One after another.”

  And you, Sam.

  If we’re going to see each other again now, under these circumstances, an investigation to eliminate you from our inquiries, I do not want to do it in the company of someone who runs around calling me a psychopath.

  “Elisa—let’s divide them up instead.”

  Someone who still doesn’t know about our background, and won’t afterward.

  “You take the first two and I’ll take the second two.”

  “I don’t understand—when you invited me in, John, you said you wanted to work side by side.”

  Because there have been enough outsiders digging in our family grave for now.

  “It’s better like this. It’s about time, Elisa—if Dûvnjac decides to strike on his first day of freedom, then he’s working on a deadline. Don’t you think?”

  He pulled two of the bundles toward him.

  “I’ll take, yeah, these ones, C and D. And you take A and B. Okay?”

  He sat down across from her to do what she was doing—browsing through the small piles of personal details and criminal records and photographs. But while Elisa flipped pages methodically forward, Broncks was already stuck on the first photo of a then very young inmate. Sam Larsen.

  Broncks had forgotten how his big brother once looked.

  It was as if every childhood memory of Sam was replaced with a different person, the one he met in the visitors’ room—muscles and bad prison tattoos and eyes that repel. The Sam who looked at him now from a black-and-white photograph—eighteen years old, narrow neck, bangs a bit too long and tousled, and eyes staring straight into the camera—knew well that the twenty-seventh and last stab with a serrated fishing knife was stuck in their father’s left side, high up under his arm.

  PEOPLE’S CALVES LOOK so incredibly different.

  He had not thought about it before. But now, as he saw them passing by out there on Hallands Street through two long, narrow, and rather dirty windows that were placed immediately under the cellar’s ceiling, it was clear how the rest of the body might be imagined—age, status, even inner well-being—from eight inches of feet and calves.

  “Leo?”

  He glanced in the room Fredrik Sullo Söderberg called his office—two hundred square feet of basement in a building by Rosenlunds Park in central Stockholm.

  “Leo, hello?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I shouldn’t ask, but . . . you have everything with you?”

  Leo let the bag’s strap slide down from his shoulder.

  “Two kinds of payment. Paper and metal, just as we agreed.”

  “I trust you, Leo, but I have to check for the seller’s sake, you know?”

  Sullo’s voice always sounded nice, even seconds before a broken jaw. It had gone so quickly that time that the prison guards didn’t notice the blow. Leo had verified Sullo’s story—that the Russian rapist dropped a barbell on himself while bench-pressing in the prison gym. This was how trust between two inmates strengthened.

  “And you—have you arranged what you are supposed to?”

  The ceiling was painted in lime green and the gray concrete floor was covered with worn Persian-style rugs, a way to keep the heat in on a freezing spring day. Based on Sullo’s own description, Leo had imagined the office to be a little more organized. An improvised shelving system had grown on the walls all the way to the ceiling at the same pace as the business, which was expanding, uncontrolled, and a little too fast. Cartons and cardboard boxes and plastic bags with not yet unpacked cell phones, surround-sound systems, projectors, and computers. Below the shelves was the rather large packaging for television sets and screens and the odd hard drive.

  “Over here, Leo, are a few gadgets for you.”

  Sullo pointed to the room’s far corner and the items waiting there. Leo was one of the few invited into the heart of the business. This was not a consequence of his official qualifications. Sullo had been clear on that point. Anyone could rob a bank and get sent to prison. It had to do with the eight armed robberies that the police still suspected Leo Dûvnjac for. Someone with that particular qualification did not talk to the police about his fellow workers.

  “The pants and jackets you ordered came knocking on the door last night.”

  “My wish list was longer than that.”

  “Everything is here. There were several deliveries.”

  They passed two clothes racks with Armani, Givenchy, Prada, and Hugo Boss packed in tightly together, suits packaged in thin plastic that happened to fall out of some long-distance truck on the E4 between Malmö and Stockholm. The large room was a halfway station where the products were stored for a while on their way between new sellers and new buyers. And Sullo was the station manager who guaranteed a secure stopover in his waiting hall, where everyone involved got a fair share of a shady transaction.

  He presented himself in this manner at Kumla prison four years ago: the safe middleman when sellers and buyers did not want to meet and learn each other’s names and descriptions.

  “Here—your entire wish list.”

  Sullo stopped at the only clean tabletop and picked up a moving box with a brown tube sticking up in the middle like a chimney out of a house.

  “But the freaking shield . . .”

  He folded the carton’s flaps aside and picked up the little metal shield that made up half of every police officer’s identification. Blue, red, and gold. District and number imprinted on the brass plate that went with it.

  “. . . it was not easy—just as difficult to obtain as I tried to explain to you. There was only one little bastard out there in the market who was the real deal. So it cost. Shit—not even the best pickpocket can pick the pockets of cops anymore.”

  Leo held it on the palm of his hand. Light metal. Not more than an ounce.

  “One is enough. I’m arranging the other one myself. I’m already prepared.”

  Sullo looked at Leo curiously. That didn’t happen often since he was the one who arranged things.

  “How’s that?”

  “The miracle of technology. Can I see the rest now?”

  Sullo picked up two folded dark-blue jackets and two equally dark-blue pairs of pants.

  “The police authority’s current uniform, standard model.”

  Leo took the jacket and let it unfold—he felt the shoulder flaps that extended the thick collar, checked the zip inside the Velcro, and inspected the labels with the specifications.

  “Pants? Shirt? Leather gloves? Boots? Do you want to examine them also?”

  “No. No need. But I want to see the belt.”

  Sullo fished out the nylon belt with an expandable baton, handcuffs, pepper spray, extra magazines, radio, walkie-talkie, and gun holster. All told, nine pounds to be carried around the waist. Leo weighed the single heaviest item in his hand, the gun, the model that was the Swedish police’s service weapon, the Sig Sauer P226.

  “Okay, Leo. If you are satisfied, you know what it costs.”

  Leo opened the sports bag and pulled out two assault rifles.

  “Paper and metal. We’ll start with the metal.”

  Sullo took them and put them on the shipping table without examining them more closely.

  “One more thing. A little consumer information. Just so you know, Leo, the uniforms, with the belts attached, are going to be missing tomorrow or—if you’re lucky—at the latest the day after that.”

  “Missing where?”

  “From the police authority in Örebro.”

  “The essential thing is that no one is going to miss them in Stockholm. Örebro, it’s going to take at least a couple of days for the news to reach here. And by then I will already have changed clothes for good.”

  The tube sticking up like a chimney was capped at one end with a plastic lid. Sullo opened it and pulled out a sheet of paper with a drawing on it.<
br />
  “Directly from the cleaning company.”

  Leo interpreted the sharp black marker lines that summarized a building that both already had and would acquire great meaning in his life—corridors and stairs and central rooms marked off on the different floors.

  “And here—the accompanying access card. The entrance to the underground passage from the courthouse. We’ve both been there a few times, right—in shackles. But the seized property room. Do you hear that, Leo? You can’t move freely down there. Otherwise all hell will break loose. To the property room and back. Because if someone finds this piece of plastic and figures out where it comes from, then . . .”

  “No need to worry. I don’t plan to go anywhere else. When I get what I want, I’ll get out of there clean.”

  Sullo held out the access card, not much bigger than an ordinary credit card, but did not let go when Leo slipped his hand around it.

  “I got the metal. Now I want the paper. Your order costs, exactly as we agreed, seven centimeters of five-hundred-kronor notes, in addition to the two AK4s.”

  The envelope Leo put on the table contained the five-hundred-kronor notes, seven hundred of them, and it was bulging precariously.

  On top of it was another envelope, a slightly thinner one.

  “And this, Sullo, is for the information about transport times to Tumba paper mill.”

  “That was on the house. It was the first test sample. Satisfied customers come back.”

  “No, you should have them. You decided to trust me even though I couldn’t pay then. Now I just need the apartment.”

  Sullo rummaged around in the moving carton, taking a while to find the bunch of keys.

  “Gamla Sickla, twenty-five Atlas Road, fourth floor. Close to the diesel workshop.”

  “I’m staying two nights max. I’ll put the key in the mail slot when I leave. Okay?”

  Leo packed the whole wish list in a few minutes and left the extraordinary office located in an ordinary basement. Soon he too would pass by the long, narrow, dirty window on Hallands Street where only people’s lower legs could be seen. And in his case, on the basis of eight inches of feet and calves, it would just be possible to imagine one shape—the other one lay in the bag hanging from a strap over his shoulder.