While he was talking, Broncks searched for his identification in all his pockets—then he found it in one of his leather jacket’s inner pockets and put it down on the counter.
“Now be so kind as to answer the question.”
The gas station clerk skeptically picked up the leather case and opened it. He examined the identification card in the plastic pocket to the left and checked the police shield in the plastic pocket to the right. Then he held it out to give it back. And he opened a small, gray metal key cabinet on the wall behind him. Hooks with keys on them, hooks without keys. And above every hook was a sticker with a printed registration number.
“That’s correct. BGY 397—that’s our vehicle.”
“Rented by whom?”
“I don’t have permission to tell you that.”
Broncks took the police shield out of his hand now.
“Are you finished checking it? In that case I’m asking you again—the last time I’ll ask nicely—to tell me who rented it.”
The clerk looked at Broncks, then at the identification, then at Broncks. Then at a pile of papers in a letter tray with two shelves, ingoing and outgoing. He glanced at the man claiming to be a police officer while he leafed through the pile. He found the document he was looking for and scooted it forward on the counter.
“It’s better if you read it yourself.”
Broncks pulled the paper toward him. A car rental agreement with the gasoline company’s logo at the top and the text of the agreement spreading out over two pages. Partway down on the first page, the correct model and the correct registration number. A bit farther down was another number, a familiar one—a personal identity number, ten digits he had seen before. And at the very bottom on a dotted line, the only thing that was handwritten.
Sam’s signature in black ink.
A FAINT BUT distinct smell of smoke was clinging to the light wind. It came from above the house. For a moment it was as if he was imagining it, as if it only belonged to dusty memories—a smell that was always around him and Sam here. Mama burning leaves and grass and Papa burning everything else that was too unwieldy to lug with him to the Strängnäs dump.
John Broncks lingered, not moving, outside the pointed red fence. Dense, overwhelming darkness, the same as any evening during this season. The flashlight’s beam hit the gate, which was closed all the way. The latch, which never ended up in the right spot without effort, had been pushed down forcefully.
Sam Larsen.
That was at the bottom of the car rental agreement.
A signature that—together with the registry information about ownership of the Tumba house—linked his brother to the truck’s floor filled with over two hundred automatic weapons. When it was time to arrest Leo Dûvnjac, he would also have to arrest Sam. He shouldn’t have felt anything at all, seeing as they didn’t exist for each other now, and hadn’t for a long time. But—he felt it. Despair. It surrounded him. A gnawing, screaming, stabbing despair as unexpected as it was strong. He wasn’t sure if it had to do with a not yet entirely extinguished brotherly love, or if it was the fact that he, Sam’s own brother, would deprive him of his freedom a second time.
Already on the way out of the gas station, Broncks started to call him, with no answer, each time drowned by a dead line. And when he was halfway—a little after the exit from Södertälje Bridge—he got hold of a neighbor on the island, who explained that he had seen Sam spring cleaning earlier in the day but couldn’t say where he was now. Not even the ferryman, who kindly added an extra trip between two departures, had seen him.
Spring cleaning.
That’s what the smell of smoke was.
When he walked up the slope that ended at their only remaining childhood home and followed the swirling wind to the back of the house, he saw it then. A red, almost orange glow in the middle of a pile of ashes in the same place where Mama used to burn her garden waste.
The house was as dark as the evening.
The door was unlocked.
“Sam?”
Broncks called into mute rooms and his voice met no resistance. He tried to switch on the ceiling light both in the hall and in the kitchen, but they didn’t work. The electricity was shut off. It was so very quiet when the fridge wasn’t even humming.
He swept the light from his flashlight up ahead, calling again in a voice that fluttered about between the cold walls.
“Sam? Hello? It’s me, John.”
Then he understood.
Everything was gone.
The art on the wall in the entryway depicting stone walls, which had always hung there, was not there. The hall was completely empty. Even the little table that should have a red plastic shoehorn on it had gone—replaced by a layer of dust on the floor where it had stood, nothing else.
The kitchen, same thing.
Empty.
There were no Windsor chairs around a simple folding table. Only clear, slightly lighter squares on the wooden floor where the table legs had rested.
The small sitting room—the triangular sixties table, the rounded corner cupboard, the big television, the two floor lamps, the armchair, the rag rugs, and the small sofa with the corduroy fabric frayed on the right side because that was where Mama sat when she watched Good Evening and News Report and some debate program—all gone. It was more evident than ever before how unevenly the floor was worn, which areas feet had walked upon.
His first thought wasn’t particularly logical.
An upcoming house viewing.
Rooms that could be filled with something meaningful for the buyer, who would continue their life here.
His second thought was more relevant.
He slowly realized what actually had gone up in flames out there. Sam had burned up all the household furniture. And he had been wrong himself—Sam did not intend at all to live there among his memories. He only wanted to say farewell to them and then leave them all behind.
All the memories except one.
A single piece of furniture remained in the dark bedroom.
Broncks directed the flashlight beam toward it.
Papa’s bed.
The beam washed over the unmade mattress and what was lying on it.
The fishing knife. Broken point, bloodstained edge.
And he saw the silhouette of Sam’s sinewy, young back, how he raised the knife and thrust it into their father’s chest, again, again. Only the sound of muscle fibers tearing and ribs resisting.
He felt the anger, which the time before had become nausea. The anger he had locked inside for such a long time, and had consciously shut out because it was so pernicious. Anger blurred impulse control. Anger brought out a moment’s actions that you had to live with forever.
It was here now and he let it stay.
Broncks rushed into the narrow bedroom and grabbed hold of the wooden frame so that the knife fell to the floor somewhere behind the side of the bed. He dragged the thick, flabby, sagging mattress outside to the smoldering embers and dropped it down. He went back in and kicked the wooden frame to pieces of the right size to spread over the suddenly awoken flames.
Just the fishing knife left.
It lay so neatly in his open hand.
Fierce sparks from the embers played like flies above the mattress and bed frame, now catching fire on the sides. Suddenly the fire was intensely hot against his face as he stared into it.
Back then it had been him, the younger brother, who appealed to the big brother to save him. He had not asked Sam to stab their father, but they both feared—when they held each other tight—that Papa would sooner or later go too far and beat his younger son to death.
So Sam made his own decision.
To kill, instead of seeing his little brother killed.
But afterward he, John, the one who was rescued, hurried to the green phone on the wall—which now lay in the fire, a piece of the receiver sticking up out of the ashes—and called the police. He gave up his own brother. Hadn’t given him a chance
. Without realizing it, he had doomed Sam to a life sentence.
Now he must give him the chance to avoid a new life sentence.
Before conducting the raid of the arms cache in the barn, before the arrest, he must reach Sam, talk to him, and get him to understand that tomorrow it could all be over.
If, despite the warning, he chose to continue, to not believe what his little brother said he knew, then it would be his own decision.
Then it was Sam’s own responsibility to live with the consequences.
But he had to give him the opportunity for that choice. That was his responsibility. And if his last route to contact stopped here in a burned-down dead end, he needed to try another one. The route that went through the man he decided to never again risk being humiliated by.
He clasped the fishing knife in his hand.
He threw it into the flames.
IT WAS A rather beautiful residential area, sandwiched between Tallkrogens center and the humming national highway to Nynäshamn, a Stockholm suburb that exuded the 1950s for the Swedish middle class. Cars on almost every driveway. Manicured gardens just shy of being overworked, warm lights in every window. John Broncks wished that he could have managed to find himself in a reality like this, a context it seemed so lovely to sink down into and let wash over you. But it was not him. Somehow he didn’t have a place here. He forgot how to live when everything was marked out and lay in ready-made piles.
He rang the bell at the front door that had a shiny, oval, gold-colored sign with AXELSSON on it. A monotonous signal was repeated in three equally long strokes.
He listened. Nothing. He looked in through the kitchen window, well lit, a pair of silver candles next to a pot of flowers next to a porcelain ornament. Still nothing.
A pile of ashes behind their childhood home. That was everything Sam had left.
There was no other message.
Broncks tried to resist, but the trembling that cut through his body was as insistent as it was foreign, a loneliness he had never felt before, so cold.
Sam had used the scorched-earth tactic. The idea was to destroy everything and only allow that which would weaken the enemy to remain. The idea was to demoralize. Poison the water of the wells, everything that was nourishment.
Like leaving a fishing knife in a bed.
Sam was his brother, but he was carrying that damn hatred. Broncks didn’t understand, had never understood it—why he chose to define and treat his little brother as his enemy.
The trembling, icy cold through his chest came back, but despite all of Sam’s fucking attempts to repudiate him, despite Sam’s fucking hatred, it wasn’t enough.
Broncks knew that he must meet him again, that he had to be able to give Sam a chance to make his own choice. And there was no other way left than to—once again—ring this doorbell.
Now, albeit faintly, he perceived what sounded like steps.
The little window at the side of the door darkened as someone blocked it while turning the lock mechanism.
A woman, with curly, strawberry blond hair, watchful eyes.
“Hello, I’m sorry to disturb you so late. I’m John Broncks and I’m—”
“I know who and what you are. I remember you from the trial.”
Her tone was neither accusatory nor offended. She was simply making an observation.
“It’s late. What do you want?”
He wanted to say, I remember you too—I remember how you sat at the very front of the high-security courtroom day after day; how you listened to the charges, one by one, formulated against your three sons. And he wanted to add that he had seen it several times before, how close relatives chose to sit in exactly that place, the very front, to avoid the glances of people curiously turning around—as if it were easier to let them stare at your back.
“I’m looking for your son, Leo. This is the address given for him.”
“He isn’t home.”
“In that case I would like to ask for your help. Ask that you call him. I assume you have his number? You should let him know I want to speak with him.”
The woman holding the door handle was watching him, her eyes still simply observing him—eyes that said, I don’t like your presence but you don’t disconcert me, because if you, like me, have seen and experienced everything, you know no one and nothing shakes you up any longer. Or was it just a façade? Was that the reason she sat at the very front? After having gotten away from a man who wanted to knock her down and batter her to pieces, did she hope to avoid being struck and battered again by finding out that her three sons were serious criminals and were about to spend several years in various prisons? It’s true—those who don’t share in the reactions of others are not exposed to judgmental looks; they aren’t vulnerable and they don’t fall down.
“You people were here yesterday at lunchtime, on his second day of freedom, and you brought him in for an interrogation. At the same time you took the opportunity to turn my home upside down. So what is it about this time? Is he suspected of something?”
And then she did it again. She didn’t yell at him, didn’t slam the door, didn’t even ask to see his police identification or other papers—she just watched him and attempted in a neutral voice to understand what was happening.
She refused to fall down.
“If I intended to arrest your son, I wouldn’t have come here alone. Your house would’ve been surrounded by armed police in order to disarm a person we classify as highly dangerous according to our risk assessment. From that you understand surely that this is not a formal investigation yet. Right now, I’m not a police officer—I’ve come ringing at your door as a private citizen.”
It was early April, and late in the evening, so it was rather cold for someone to be standing at the door in thin clothes. But it wasn’t because she was freezing that she slowly crossed her arms. Broncks was sure of that.
“As a private citizen? Then I understand even less why you want me to contact him. Because I’m sure you haven’t suddenly become best friends?”
He looked at her. He understood her.
But there was no good reply.
Because his hasty visit wasn’t about her son at all but rather about a completely different man—about John Broncks’s only living family member.
He was somehow still hoping his brother wasn’t connected to the armed robbery. He was somehow still hoping to reach his brother, prevent him from participating in Leo Dûvnjac’s arms sale and prevent him from being sentenced to a life term.
“It’s like this, Britt-Marie. Is it okay, by the way, if I call you Britt-Marie? If I don’t get hold of your son, if he and I are not able to talk and come to some agreement, then there will be more of that unpleasantness you felt during yesterday’s house search, when it still only concerned a suspicion. It will be pure hell when he has carried out the serious crime that I know with certainty he is planning to commit.”
“No, it’s not okay for you to call me Britt-Marie. Because you don’t know me. If you did, you would know that I can’t help you. I’m his mother. I’m not going to assist you in an arrest.”
“You won’t be helping me to arrest him. You’ll be helping me to prevent an arrest.”
He lied, again. He let her believe that it was her family member’s arrest that the police officer on her doorstep wanted to prevent. He lied to her for fucking Sam’s sake, exactly as he had lied to another shrewd woman who was also a skilled colleague. He wanted never again to experience the sort of disdain for himself he felt right now.
“I’m asking you to trust me, Britt-Marie.”
“I can’t trust someone whose intentions I don’t understand.”
“Intentions?”
“Everyone always has some intentions.”
Despair. A driving force that distorts intentions. It could have been his own mother who stood there protecting one of her sons. But he had no choice. He was forced to use what he wanted to avoid—the two other brothers. With them he could reach her. And
she would reach Leo Dûvnjac.
“There are more people involved.”
“More?”
“Your son Leo is about to drag more brothers into this. Others who don’t deserve this. He’s done it before. Do you want it to happen again?”
“Felix?”
Broncks looked at her and saw the way his own despair became hers, while his self-loathing took hold and expanded.
“Do you mean it—Felix? Or, no, I . . . Vincent? Would he . . .”
“More brothers, Britt-Marie. That’s all I can tell you.”
He wanted to shout it at her.
More brothers means my brother.
He wanted to, but he wouldn’t. And then he could see it. How her stoic attitude, her power to resist falling dropped away slightly. Perhaps he was about to break through her protective shell.
“Call him.”
He held out his cell phone.
“Britt-Marie, call him.”
“No.”
She was powerless. But strong enough to shake her head defiantly.
“Listen to me, Britt-Marie, you must . . .”
“Don’t you hear what I’m saying?”
And she shouted.
“Vincent will never commit a criminal act again! I know that! I am his mother—I know that!”
And the words came from deep in her stomach and from her chest and passed through him and landed somewhere far away in the beautiful residential area.
“So I will never make contact on your behalf!”
And she flung out both her arms toward the driveway by the garage and the small illuminated road that led there.
“Will you kindly go now?”
And her voice was no longer shouting. It was as low now as it was sharp.
“Or would you like me to call one of the police officers who actually is on duty this evening?”
AFTER A FEW hours of aimless driving on deserted country roads, and perhaps the first sensible conversation they’d had as adults, Leo felt conflicted when he let his father out at the Dráva restaurant. He didn’t like having two feelings simultaneously. It wasn’t him. To be successful, all distractions must be peeled away. And colliding feelings distracted. There was of course delight. Broncks had taken the bait. His father had taken the bait. But while he was still sitting there in the driver’s seat of the car and looking in the restaurant window, there was something else. Something dirty. His father walked up to the counter with light steps and chatted with the owner and ordered a cup of coffee before closing time. He looked pleased. Hopeful. It was hope that his eldest son had filled him with and would soon take from him.
The Sons: Made in Sweden, Part 2 Page 27