The Father: Made in Sweden Part I

by Anton Svensson

  ‘You’re still overacting. I’ve seen your mother work with people who are … different. And they don’t move like that. They don’t drool like that.’

  Jasper stood up and slowly continued to wheel the chair along a suburban shopping street where everyone was on their way somewhere else. It was at that moment that Leo saw the boy. Five, maybe six years old. Just a few metres away among a group of people waiting for the bus.

  No one looks at things that are different.

  The boy pointed and pulled on his mother’s hand.

  No one really notices what a man looks like when they’re trying to decide whether to look away or not.

  A boy pointing at him – the wheelchair.

  But a child. A child doesn’t see the world like an adult.

  A boy who was now shouting out loud.

  A child is fascinated, open, he hasn’t had time to get so fucking scared.

  The weapon under the blanket. The taped-up magazines in his vest. That wasn’t what the boy was pointing at or shouting about, but that was how it felt.

  One more shout and the adult standing next to him, not daring to look, might suddenly glance over, maybe even remember them later. Jasper jerked the wheelchair around and hurried away from the bus stop to a less well-lit area.

  17.48.

  They waited, glancing towards the entrance to the parking area. Cars, bicycles, pedestrians. On their way in, on their way out.

  17.49.

  Only a few minutes left.

  17.50.

  Maybe a couple more.

  17.51.

  Soon.

  17.52.

  ‘Where the hell is it?’

  ‘It’ll be here.’

  ‘It’s already—’

  ‘It’ll be here.’

  17.53.

  They started slowly rolling closer, now not even ten steps from the wall that shielded the entrance to the exchange office. The white security van would have to drive all the way down the ramp without noticing two individuals in the crowd, a disabled man and his carer.

  17.54.

  Jasper crouched down, unable to stand still any longer. He untied his boots and started tying them up again.

  ‘Hey, what’s your name?’ shouted the boy. ‘Why are you sitting in one of those? Are you hurt?’

  The boy tore away from his mother’s grip and ran towards the people with the wheelchair. They looked exciting.

  ‘You go back,’ Jasper said in heavily accented English.

  ‘Hello! What’s your name? And what happened to your legs?’ the boy answered in Swedish.

  Jasper put his hand through the hole in his coat pocket, clutching the submachine gun that hung around his neck.

  ‘Go back.’

  ‘Gobakk?’

  ‘Go back!’

  ‘Is that his name? Gobakk? That’s a nice name.’

  He turned the safety off, on, off. An annoying clicking sound. Leo prodded him in the side with a bent arm.

  It had arrived – the truck they were going to rob.

  ‘To your mama! You go back.’

  The boy wasn’t frightened, but he didn’t like it when Jasper leaned close and hissed in his ear. So he stopped staring and asking questions and did as he was told, slunk back to his mother at the bus stop.

  17.54:30.

  Friday evening. Two hours left. Inside the security van, Samuelson glanced at Lindén, who he’d sat next to for almost seven years, but didn’t really know at all. They’d never had a coffee together outside work, never got a beer. Sometimes that’s just how it was – two colleagues remained just that, colleagues. They didn’t even talk about their kids. He knew he and Lindén both had the same number of kids, but nowadays Lindén’s only spent every other week living at his house, and talking to people about what they had lost didn’t usually turn out too well.

  The van’s headlights followed the streetlamps as it rounded the car park. They passed the people waiting for the bus or taking the escalators down to the Tunnelbana. The security guards looked around, scanning their surroundings as always: there was the hot dog kiosk near the bike rack, three women sitting on a bench with overflowing shopping bags, a man in a wheelchair and his guardian talking to a little boy around the same age as his own son, now being jerked away by his mother, a large group of adolescents a little further away, jostling each other and trying to decide where to go – a crowd just like on any other evening.

  They took the sharp bend at the bus turning area, then a small swerve, and then came the monotonous beep as the security van reversed down the sloping loading bay to the locked back door.

  Lindén turned off the engine, and they looked at each other, a quick nod; they’d both read this place the same way – peaceful for rush hour in a capital city. Samuelson opened his door and took a single step towards the back door. The money was always kept two corridors away in the chief of security’s office: two cloth bags on an otherwise empty desktop – banknotes and coins and a handwritten receipt in red ink: 1,324,573 kronor.

  Friday was the most profitable day of the week for Swedish exchange offices – and Farsta was the last collection for this particular armoured vehicle on this particular route. The point at which it contained the most money.

  17.56.

  Leo had chosen the target, the time, and the location of the attack. He knew the wheelchair would only get them as far as the ramp to the loading bay. Aware that there would be nowhere to hide, they would have to overpower the guard during his two steps from the building’s back door to the passenger door of the van. And they would have to do it without alerting anyone.

  17.57.

  They waited. They squinted at the metal door down below.

  Now.

  The short, humming signal of a lock being opened.

  Now. Now.

  Leo and Jasper grabbed hold of their extended polo necks, pulled them up over their necks and chins and noses, and let go just below the eyes.

  They exposed the AK4 under the yellow blanket and the submachine gun hanging under Jasper’s long coat.

  Forcefully and simultaneously, they heaved themselves onto the wall and jumped down towards the truck in the loading bay.

  Samuelson was leaning against the metal door, a green security bag in his hand.

  Then he heard it – two beeps from the radio. The go-ahead.

  He opened the door, went out onto the loading bay and heard a click from inside the truck, just like always, as Lindén opened the rear door to the secure area.

  Lindén was sitting in the driver’s seat when he saw Samuelson exit with the security bag. He pressed the button engaging the internal lock and was about to turn towards his colleague when he saw something else. Nothing clear, more like a fragment, something you try to piece together without quite understanding it. First, he saw through the windscreen that the wheelchair he’d seen in the crowd earlier was lying overturned on the pavement above, empty. And then, in one of the wing mirrors, he saw a movement, as if someone was falling towards him from the wall embrasure, someone whose face was completely, almost inhumanly black. And finally, Samuelson opened the side door Run! and threw himself inside For fuck’s sake run! and rolled across the floor of the van seeking cover.

  ‘Open door!’

  The single second he needed in order to understand.

  And it gave him the time he needed to key in the first code, and the steel door to the safe slid down again, blocking the way to the money. Then the two seconds he needed to enter the second code – four digits on the dashboard in order to turn the ignition key.

  ‘Jalla jalla, open door!’

  It was too late. Someone had landed on the bonnet. A black mask and staring eyes and an automatic weapon aimed at him.

  Lindén didn’t raise his arms, didn’t turn towards the door.

  He did nothing.

  And that big metal barrel got bigger, closer.

  He’d been imagining this every day for seven years, every time he scanned a cro
wd, but when it happened, it wasn’t at all like he imagined. It started in the chest, right in the middle, and then pushed all the way to his throat. And he couldn’t get rid of it despite his screaming.

  ‘You open fucking door!’

  And then he understood. He wasn’t able to get rid of it because he wasn’t the one screaming. Someone else was. Next to him. And there was another one – outside his window. Another face with the same mask, black fabric over his chin, nose, cheeks, up to his eyes. But with another kind of voice. Desperate. Not meaner, not louder, but more desperate.

  Someone was going to die. That’s what he felt in his chest. Death.

  The window shattered, and his only thought was how harsh it sounded to have someone stand so close by shooting at you. He was aware of two shots and threw himself backwards, his back and head pressed against the seat. The third bullet struck his chin and larynx, the fourth hit the dashboard and the fifth the passenger door, while he automatically pulled the control centre alarm.

  ‘You open door!’

  It takes three seconds to empty thirty bullets out of the magazine of a submachine gun. The five shots through the van window that Jasper had just fired took half a second, but it had felt so much longer.

  ‘You open or you die!’

  Leo stood on the bonnet of the van with his gun aimed at the security guard in the driver’s seat, while Jasper beat the muzzle of the submachine gun against the partially broken safety glass. Until the second guard, who was lying on floor, lifted his arms over his head.

  Samuelson looked at Lindén, at his neck, at the blood flowing from it – he’d never thought about how red blood is when it’s fresh. He’d got up, arms above his head, opened the door on the passenger side and let in the masked man from the bonnet of the van, who now stood inside the cab aiming a gun against his temple and speaking in broken English, asking him to unlock the safe. He tried to explain. But he couldn’t find the words. Not in English. He wanted to explain that from now on the safe door was locked, and that it could only be opened with a code held at headquarters. He searched for words that just weren’t there, while the masked man listened and waited, so quiet and restrained, not like the other one with the desperate voice, who’d fired through the window. This was the face that made the decisions, that was clear, even as the muzzle pressed a little harder against his temple.

  Lindén was slumped down in the driver’s seat, blood running down his neck.

  The hand, the hand that belonged to that self-controlled face, searched through the pockets of Samuelson’s trousers, jacket and shirt, searching for and then finding his keys.

  And the desperate one screamed and shoved the gun against his chest.

  ‘Start engine!’

  The muzzle of the gun moved from his forehead to his mouth. Into it.

  ‘You start! Or I shoot!’

  The gun was between his lips and against his tongue, as he leaned against the keypad, four digits, needed to start the engine.

  ‘I kill I kill I kill!’

  Samuelson’s hand had lost all feeling, his fingers hard to manoeuvre as he punched in the code, turned the key, and started the truck again.

  Jasper drove slowly up the steep loading ramp and across the pavement towards the turning area and the car park exit. No one had noticed five shots muffled by the walls surrounding the loading bay and then disintegrating into the soundscape of the city.

  A few metres up from the loading ramp, life went on as if nothing had happened.

  If they continued to drive at normal speed. If they didn’t call attention to themselves, they’d have plenty of time to empty the safe and disappear.

  ‘Open inner door,’ said Leo, holding up a key chain and handing it to one of the guards. Somewhere on the chain was the key to the security cabinet that hid seven other keys to seven boxes holding seven cash collections, with more than a million in each one.

  ‘Please, the door is locked. With code. Special code! Can only be opened from headquarter … please please …’

  ‘You open. Or I shoot.’

  He glanced quickly through the window. Outside, a Stockholm suburb in motion. In here, one guard lying down, retreating into a world of his own, and another guard with blood on his chin and neck still talking.

  ‘Understand? Please! Only … only open at headquarter.’

  A few minutes left, no more.

  Nynäs Road, Örby Highway, Sköndal Road. More blocks of flats, a football pitch, a school. And the crest of a steep hill – if someone were following them, they’d make it there, but no further.

  Felix was breathing slowly.

  In. Out.

  For the last twenty-four minutes he’d been lying in long, wet grass on the top of a hill they used to run up and roll down as children, right above the outskirts of Sköndal, not far from where their grandparents had once owned a small, white house.

  The gun shook, in, out, with every breath he lost his rhythm and had to start again, in, out, one hand around the grip with his index finger on the trigger, the other in the middle of the barrel, and one eye staring into the gun’s sight.

  Nynäs Road lay down below. He almost felt like he could touch it, though it was far away, a blurry streak of headlights melted together, cars on their way home on one of Stockholm’s most congested motorways. And beyond that stood Farsta, buildings shining in neon light; it was in that direction that he anxiously aimed his gun, that was where Leo would come from.

  There. The white van.

  No.

  That wasn’t it. It was white, and large, but not a security van.

  18.06. Two minutes late. Two and a half.

  The gun slid, vibrated.

  Three minutes. Three and a half.

  There. There!

  He glimpsed the roof of a white van, over the bridge and past the sharp left turn, searched through the telescopic sight and saw in the driver’s seat a face covered with a black polo neck just like his, then the space behind the car’s two seats, Leo squatting in front of two people lying on the floor, one with his hands over his head.

  And then he saw it. Behind the security van. A passenger car, two people in the front seat.

  They’ll either be following us in a painted cop car or in a civilian car. Always black, always a Saab 9-5 or a Volvo V70. This one was black. He saw that when he moved the barrel of the gun. But he couldn’t see the make. Look at the right side, there should be an extra side mirror, that’s how you know if they’re plainclothes cops. And don’t press too hard, just squeeze the trigger.

  He looked through the sight.

  Felix, listen to me. I set up this weapon myself and you can’t miss, and no one will be, or should be, hurt. You put a bullet in their engine and stop their car.

  He wasn’t sure, an extra side mirror, he just couldn’t be sure it was there.

  And he squeezed just a bit more, while the muzzle pointed at the bonnet of the black car.

  Leo looked at the guards, at Jasper driving, and out of the window as they passed the hill. There was a clear shot from up there all the way down to the bridge. Especially with an AK4 with a telescopic sight he’d ordered specially because anyone could hit anything at three hundred metres using it.

  If someone was following them, one shot should be enough.

  Felix was shaking. The black car was still close. Too close.

  Then you wait. Don’t leave or let go of your gun until we’ve gone past and you’re sure no one is following us.

  The white security van turned left after the flyover at the intersection. Thirty metres behind, the same car was following them.

  In, out.

  He let the sight rest towards the front, on his knuckles, and squeezed the trigger. Squeezed.

  The black car suddenly veered to the right, heading in the opposite direction. Increased its speed and disappeared.

  Felix wasn’t trembling any more, he was shivering, breathing rapidly.

  Two people had been sitting in the front seat, on
their way home, a single finger tap away from death because they’d been driving on the wrong road at the wrong time.

  He got up from the wet grass, put the gun in his bag, and rolled the fabric covering his face into a collar again. And ran. Down the hill, through the woods and the community garden. It was dark and he fell over a low, pointed fence, dropped the bag and stood up, ran until he reached the car parked at the bottom of the hill.

  They’d passed the hill. Felix hadn’t fired.

  They weren’t being followed.

  Leo looked at the locked door. Inside were seven more batches of collected cash – eight, nine, maybe ten million kronor.

  They’d had a few seconds to react. They’d needed one more.

  The security guard had managed to enter the code, and the steel wall had slid down to protect the safe. They were supposed to open and empty all the compartments before they got to the rendezvous. That was no longer possible. But they still had time to deviate from the plan.

  ‘Where … please, please … do you take us?’

  They could shoot open the door at the rendezvous – but that was too noisy.

  ‘What … please, I beg you, please … will you do with us?’

  They might be able to force someone at headquarters to open it from a distance – but that would take too long.

  ‘I have … please please please please … I have children!’

  The security guard lying on the floor, bleeding a little, put one hand inside his uniform, and Leo struck his shoulder hard with a gun.

  ‘You stay put!’

  The movement was interrupted, but the guard continued, put his hand back inside his jacket, held something up.

  ‘My children! Look! Pictures. Please. Please!’

  Two photographs came out of his wallet.

  ‘My oldest. He is eleven. Look!’

  A boy on a gravel football pitch. Thin, pale. A ball under his arm. His hair sweaty, he smiled shyly, his blue and white football socks rolled down.

  ‘And this … please please look … this is … he is seven. Seven!’