Dirty.
Just as dirty as when, in another time, their father constantly did the same thing to three brothers—gave them hope and took it back.
It was necessary so that the plan would work. So that Broncks would be a dozen or so miles away tomorrow when his own nest was raided by Leo Dûvnjac.
His father would naturally be disappointed. Hurt. But not injured. He would receive only one more telephone call and then not need to participate further. He wouldn’t be affected by the legal consequences. After the fact, it would be obvious that he had been reduced to a pawn in the game that he so clearly suspected when they were in the barn. His father laughed out loud at something the restaurant owner said as Leo was forced to slide his eyes out of the restaurant and into the car to make a U-turn over a solid line and drive around the corner—into Ring Road and down into the tunnel and straight into the parking garage under the large hotel.
Sam was waiting there when he arrived. Together they would continue over the old Skanstulls Bridge to Sullo’s apartment in Sickla and make the final preparations. Then his encrypted phone started to buzz in his jacket pocket. It was a number that only a few people had. He looked at the display. Mama. Her home number. He didn’t want to answer, didn’t want to say farewell. He had made the decision that it was easier to simply disappear. But he didn’t want to worry her either.
“Hello, Mama.”
If she called this telephone, it was important.
“Leo, can you talk?”
“I can talk.”
“Just now there was . . .”
She was not afraid. It wasn’t that voice.
Upset.
Maybe even angry.
“. . . a policeman on my doorstep. He said his name was John Broncks. I recognized him. It was him.”
Broncks?
“He said that he has to talk to you, privately.”
A short while ago?
“He wants to come to an agreement with you so that more won’t be affected. More brothers, that’s what he said.”
There, at her house?
“More brothers, Leo—I have no idea what or who—Felix and Vincent, if he meant them. But I think you know what it’s about.”
Broncks! Just now! At her house!
“I’ll take care of it, Mama. Don’t worry.”
He pressed his mother’s voice off with the button. Angry—would it sound like that the last time they spoke with each other?
“Your Mama?”
Sam smiled. Leo didn’t.
“No. Your fucking cop brother.”
When he recounted what the short conversation was actually about, it was as if Sam didn’t hear what he said, as if he closed off a little more with each new word.
“John and I are the only ones left in our family. The only ones of the whole Broncks clan. Did you know that, Leo?”
As if he had already taken his farewell.
“And it doesn’t matter. An adversary. That’s how I see him. Have seen him for many years.”
As if they were talking about someone who didn’t exist.
“An adversary—and the only one left. That’s what he is.”
They headed left at the green light as they approached Gullmarsplan along Hammarby Road past Fryshuset and Statoil gas station. Leo thought about how Sam was closest to him and he was quite convinced that he held the same place for Sam, at Broncks’s expense. They were side by side on the way to the next phase in life, where no one else could accompany them. But Sam had forgotten something—however hard he still tried to erase Broncks from his system, Broncks had obviously not erased Sam. There was no other reasonable explanation. Broncks was hoping for some sort of reconciliation. To be able to warn him about the impending arrest so that, when it was time to surround the barn, he would stand there with the weapons and Leo Dûvnjac but avoid his own brother.
Leo took the telephone out of his inner pocket again.
It hadn’t felt good.
She answered directly.
“Is that you, Leo?”
“It’s me, Mama. I just wanted to say that I’ll drop by early tomorrow. To make sure everything’s okay.”
He stuffed the phone back into the same pocket along with the words he couldn’t say.
And, Mama, to say a proper farewell.
They were getting close to Sickla and the area called Tallbacken and Sullo’s apartment inside the door marked number 25. He stopped in the space between two parked cars and then stayed seated while Sam opened the door and got out.
“I’ll come in a little while. I’m just going to fix a small detail to do with tomorrow. Someone who I, just like you, also have to erase from my system.”
He nodded to Sam and rolled down the hill. It wasn’t particularly far to Södermalm and Högalids Street. Fifteen minutes at the most.
You just made a fucking mistake, Broncks.
His anger gradually turned into rage, which he hadn’t wanted to show in front of Sam the day before their big coup, when all emotions must be restrained. It was no longer possible to keep it inside his chest.
You brought in my family.
The rage pressed out, struck out, and he shouted out loud, protected by the car’s metal casing.
You threatened my mother with destroying my younger brothers’ future.
He yelled again with the windows fully rolled down. He vented his frustration again and again. And it was almost pleasant.
THERE.
If John Broncks pushed a little with the bumper on the car in front and a little on the car behind, he could just slip his own car into what seemed to be Södermalm’s only available parking space. It was the same thing every time he came home late, right before midnight—driving around in confusion and looking through streets that were empty of people and full of vehicles. He had found this odd space at the top of Lunda Street, and then as he was walking homeward across Ekermansk Malmgård and Varvs Street and took the first steps on Högalids Street, the fatigue hit him. He really wanted to sleep. A short but good night and he would be rested enough to be able to keep going.
Broncks passed blocks of apartments that were melded together in one long façade, all of them with four stories and filled with small dwellings, all built during the first decades of the twentieth century. It was unusually dark, poorly lit. He thought about it first when he was approaching his own door, as if someone had turned off every streetlight. Only the light from the formidable church with twin towers on the other side of the street. Long shadows fell from a two-headed giant keeping watch. And then there were three strikes, the church bell’s muffled clang, meaning a quarter to twelve. When he first moved here the plink-plunking four times an hour drove him crazy and he unconsciously walked around and counted down to the next time—nowadays he liked the monotony, liked that the stately building did not give up. It stood there in the middle of a big city and announced that everything was still going on as usual.
But it was not as usual.
The despair that had turned into self-loathing was gnawing deeper and deeper, taking an even larger bite out of him. He was about to go too far, perhaps had already done so. He was not an easygoing person, not the sort people took easily to their hearts, but he had always had some kind of inner moral compass pointing in the right direction. Now it didn’t. It was as if he had ended up between two strong magnetic fields—between Leo Dûvnjac and his own brother. And that had made the compass needle stop and shake between two directions until it had smashed him. Running around and calling himself—hiding behind—private citizen? While he subjected others to lies? Hurt and shook up and even threatened for his own gain? Was Sam worth it—Sam who didn’t want to have contact at all? Was he worth it regardless of who or why someone held a fishing knife?
John Broncks had no answers right now except one. That he could not be that person very much longer.
The ring of keys in his pocket was warm, in spite of the shiny metal encountering cold night. And as he was looking for the right k
ey and the slot in the lock, it became clear that the streetlight that usually illuminated the door was broken.
Suddenly he stopped moving.
He felt an unpleasant sensation, as if he were no longer alone.
As if someone standing behind him had sneaked forward quickly and soundlessly.
“You and I, Broncks, will never be private citizens to each other.”
That voice.
Broncks glanced at the glass pane on one side of the outer door and at what was reflected in it.
It was him.
“So the next time, pig, that you seek out someone in my family, you do it as a policeman.”
I reached out to you. But you preferred to choose the place.
Broncks turned around slowly. No gestures that could be misinterpreted. To stand with your back to the attacker was the same as being at a disadvantage.
“That’s exactly what I tried to do yesterday in the interview room. It was you, Leo, who made it private when, uninvited, you tried to use Sam’s and my history against me.”
“Uninvited? Sam chose to tell me in confidence himself. You do that for someone you trust.”
Then it went very quickly.
The man in front of him put his hand somewhere behind his back and pulled a pistol out of his waistband and pressed it against Broncks’s left temple.
“And Broncks? This is my interview room. Because what you did this evening was something entirely different—you went to see my mother, frightened her, and let her think I’m going to involve my brothers in . . . whatever you think I’m doing. And you did it in some sort of fucking disguise!”
Even though the rounded metal mouth scraped his thin skin, he felt nothing—no anxiety, no fear.
“I don’t understand your question, Leo. By the way, may I call you Leo? Your mother didn’t like my using her first name very much and you might be the same. And I don’t understand your question since you didn’t ask one.”
Emptiness. That’s all.
He didn’t even think, just stared into a pair of eyes. Leo Dûvnjac didn’t intend to do anything. It was a threat, not an action that he would follow through on.
“Because you know, Leo, that’s what you do in an interview room. Ask questions in order to get answers. And don’t you want to know why I visited your fucking mother?”
The pistol harder against his temple. The metal, which was just scraping before, was now digging a hole. Blood was running down his cheek.
“What did you say? What did you call her?”
“Then I’ll give you the answer, Leo. To the question you aren’t asking. Your mother. I visited her to get in contact—with you.”
Just as suddenly as when the pressure increased to the point where it meant instantaneous death if the trigger was moved only a few millimeters, it stopped completely. The gun dropped down and rested in a relaxed hand.
“And you got it. Contact. Next time I won’t rub a red ring into your face. If you contact me one more time, pig, I’ll shoot you.”
Leo Dûvnjac smiled at him and started to walk away.
“You know where Sam is!”
He had managed to get halfway across the street when Broncks’s voice reached his back.
“You had damn well better make sure that I see him!”
He stopped right there, in the middle of the street. And he turned around.
“Go to hell, you cunt of a cop.”
Leo Dûvnjac smiled then, like before, and continued to walk away, like before.
“Call him! For fuck’s sake, call him and tell him . . .” Broncks ran, pursuing his voice and the fleeing back, “. . . that he and I have to meet!”
Then he caught up with him and they walked beside each other toward Långholms Street.
“Call! Call him! Help me arrange a meeting!”
“Broncks—do you even hear what you’re yelling about? Why the fuck would I help you?”
Broncks had already realized he’d lost control. Despair and self-loathing that turn into desperation work like that. And he was so close to saying that. Screaming that.
You’ll help me because you don’t know that I know where your guns are. Because you don’t know that I know what they are going to be used for.
But he didn’t do that. Nor did he say, or scream, why it was so important to get to talk to Sam, why it was worth every ounce of humiliation.
Because I’m going to catch you, you bastard. Because when I do it, I also have to catch my own brother.
“You don’t know Sam, pig.”
Broncks almost stumbled over the curb. His throat was hurting. He had shouted out that last part after all.
“You don’t know him as well as I do, Broncks. If you did, you’d also know he’d rather take a bullet than be locked up again.”
Högalids Street turned into Långholms Street. And when Leo turned left toward Hornsplan, Broncks turned also and they kept walking side by side, each with the person he perhaps hated the most.
“Okay. Then we’ll say this.”
There were more people out walking. There were ears and curious eyes and Broncks should have lowered his voice but he didn’t.
“If you don’t care about how things go for my brother—maybe you don’t care about how it goes for your own brothers either?”
And then they both stopped.
“What the fuck do you mean by that, pig?”
Unlike the others, one streetlight seemed to be working and was shining on the asphalt in front of them. They had ended up exactly at the edge between light and dark and they stayed there, completely still. Maybe because Leo Dûvnjac had just made a threat without carrying it out, and next time he threatened, he also had to act upon it. Maybe because John Broncks would soon actually go too far, violating the limit of a policeman’s powers.
“What do I mean, Leo? If you step into the light here so I can see you, then you can hear what the fuck I mean.”
Broncks himself took a decided step forward into the streetlight’s beam, waving with his index finger toward the asphalt.
“Step into the light!”
“And I thought you didn’t have any more dignity to lose. Go home and go to bed, Broncks.”
“Into the light, you bastard!”
“Come on now, you fine police officer. Go home and save your strength. Because I’m going to visit you again. When you least expect it. When I take away from you what you are most proud of.”
It almost sounded as if Leo was laughing as he walked around the circle of light that stretched out into the street; quick steps as he vanished into the darkness.
“Then it’s your choice, Leo! Your choice!”
Broncks, still taking no notice of the people moving around them, called after him.
“Because there’s one thing you should be damn clear about—if you get my brother involved, I’ll get your brother involved!”
NIGHT OUTSIDE HER window.
Elisa walked between the bookcase and the window, between the window and the bookcase.
She had many rules for how she should carry out her work. She liked that. Structure quite simply made her a better police officer. In her private life, on the other hand, there was only one rule—never ever return to a breakup, to a conflict. Men and women who touched each other mentally touched each other physically, and abusing the intimacy would only hurt again, more deeply the next time.
It could be easily applied to work life. A rule that her colleague was not at all familiar with.
For that reason, as some church bell was striking three times in the dark, she was walking around in her office in the police station like that clichéd policewoman she had promised never to become, who remained on the job instead of spending time with loved ones, who wouldn’t even let go of an investigation for a moment of sleep. But there was a crucial difference. It was no longer just about a criminal bastard from the group of usual adversaries that should be locked up. This time it was also about a colleague.
She walked f
rom the bookcase to the window and around the desk and the three piles constituting the investigation’s three pillars. And she felt that with each new lap the frustration was increasing. Alibis. For both, unfortunately. He had looked at her with that devilish discordant smile. And right there, right then, she recognized when the distorted tone, which she still did not grasp, had come up for the first time.
In the interview room.
LD: Broncks—your little puppet and I have just been talking about how well people know their neighbors in a corridor.
She stopped at the pile on the far left, the one she called “You struck first, you bastard.” She had placed the transcript from the interview with Leo Dûvnjac there. Or rather, Broncks’s interview with him.
LD: For example, there was a prisoner, can you imagine, who told me about how he stabbed his father to death in a summer cottage.
She read again about someone who knocked on the camera’s lens with his fingertips and hit the microphone with the palm of his hand. He turned directly toward the man who was sitting in the next room and watching them on a monitor.
LD: Twenty-seven fucking cuts in his own father’s chest.
Somewhere around there Broncks had suddenly stormed into the room and interrupted the interview. Leo Dûvnjac had succeeded in provoking him. She had asked Broncks directly on several occasions about what actually happened, what Dûvnjac was talking about. And each time she was met with the tone-deaf smile.
She didn’t like gut feelings.
But the interview transcript lying in the pile in front of her contained facts.
There was something not quite right with John Broncks. And it was part of her job to find out what. Another lap around the room as the frustration slowly eased. It was always like this when the direction began to be clearer. From this moment on she must also follow Broncks’s tracks, since he didn’t know the rules. Never, ever return to a breakup, to a conflict. For a police officer that was the same as never catching the same individual twice. At least, not if you investigated him previously for a series of bank robberies and then sat in interviews with him for several months. You developed a relationship. You were no longer objective. You and the criminal had touched each other and one of you was going to abuse that closeness.
The Sons: Made in Sweden, Part 2 Page 28