Two plants on the windowsill, and between them a porcelain angel – most of the white paint on one side flaked off and only one eye – which had come from Anneli’s childhood home, and now for a few weeks every year appeared in her kitchen next to the poinsettia. Things had popped up everywhere. One oversized plastic Santa by the fridge, another Santa almost as large under the hat rack in the hallway, a few smaller ones on the stairs to the second floor, and one under the Christmas tree in the living room. Things she’d brought into his life, that meant something to her. He could see her joy, her anticipation, as she chose where things went, rearranged them until she found the right place.
A porcelain angel with worn edges and a shitload of plastic Santas, thought Leo. It was just a date. Worth as much as the 25th of November or the 25th of October. Maybe she just needed something to hold on to as time slipped by: New Year’s Eve, Easter, Midsummer, all just dates. Someone else had made that decision, had used the calendar as a tool to control people’s lives. What mattered was what you yourself decided and carried out. Creating your own calendar – 2 January, when the first triple robbery in Swedish history would take place, or 17 February, 11 March, 16 April, the other dates he’d chosen for robberies, and which therefore meant something.
He lifted up the porcelain angel, turned it round, tried to read the stamp on the bottom, put it down again.
Expectations.
Just as fragile, he’d had to find a way to gently lower hers, explaining that this Christmas wasn’t really Christmas, that they’d celebrate properly next year when all this was finished, just like their neighbours on the other side of the fence, who she liked to watch through the kitchen window, joining them from a distance. She’d gone to the window several times on Christmas Eve. They’d eaten ham and cabbage and meatballs and Jansson’s Temptation, and he’d given her the Christmas present meant for her son who she was going to visit straight after the holidays. They’d even lit candles, and watched a few hours of Donald Duck and Karl-Bertil Jonsson’s Christmas Eve programme, like everyone else in Sweden, until he couldn’t take any more and went down into the Skull Cave to continue working on his own calendar.
Plastic bag in hand, and carrying a tray of food, he walked out into the damp morning darkness. His thin shoes were soaked through by the mix of snow and rain on the asphalt. The garage was the opposite: dry and warmed by the pleasantly buzzing convection heater, well-lit by intense lamps. Vincent, Felix and Jasper were already waiting for him on wooden stools around a table of hardboard and two sawhorses. The map was open on top of it.
‘Coffee and sandwiches,’ said Leo, passing the tray around.
Right across the map ran a red, almost straight line. Starting in the neighbourhood of Kronoberg in central Stockholm, where the majority of Swedish police operations were based, and ending nearly fifty kilo metres away in Ösmo Square where there were two banks sharing one wall. A line that cut through Stockholm and the towns of Huddinge and Haninge and Nynäshamn, and was the key to diverting the police and disappearing from the scene of the crime.
‘Target One.’
A 10-kronor coin in the palm of Leo’s hand. He placed it on one of the grey squares near the end of the red line, which indicated areas of dense population.
‘Target Two.’
Another 10-kronor coin. On top of the first.
‘And here.’
Just outside the window of both targets. The getaway car.
A toy car just as red as the line.
‘That’s you, Felix.’
There was much more where that came from. A cardboard box they all recognised. Three plastic, olive green soldiers that had once stood on the floor of their childhood apartment in Skogås. A few centimetres high, and they smelled just like they had then.
‘This is Vincent. And Jasper. And there … here I come.’
He separated the gold coins, put the final plastic figurine on one of them.
‘Target One – Leo opens the door. Target Two – Jasper and Vincent open the door. At two fifty p.m.’
Now, the Dinky car. A red Volkswagen model 1300, the Beetle, which they still kept in its original packaging, they’d never been able to throw it away, and which Leo had shoplifted for Felix at Toys & Hobbies in the Skogås shopping centre.
‘And Felix takes care of the car. Just like in Svedmyra.’
Another larger box of plastic figurines, but these were brown with rounder helmets than the Americans and had different weapons.
‘Russian soldiers.’
He dumped a whole handful of plastic soldiers onto the red line and lined them up there, and then put a few at the other three locations further away.
‘Cops. Every single one. Most of them work here … at City Police HQ. Then a few here, the Huddinge police, and here, the Handen police. And the fewest here … the Nacka police.’
He made sure they all stood in the right place. And then he moved his arms around them, a giant capturing and slowly pulling them towards the point where the roads, railway tracks and Tunnelbana lines met – the well-connected, grey area that represented central Stockholm.
‘And they’ll all go there, together, to Central Station.’
He looked at Jasper, nodded.
‘Because we’ll have planted a bomb there – a real bomb in a locker.’
Vincent had been silent up to this point, as he usually was. Now he slammed his coffee cup down on the hardboard table and the soldiers who hadn’t yet fallen, toppled over.
‘Vincent, what the hell …’
‘Are we terrorists now?’
‘It’s not going to explode. But they need to know it’s real.’
Leo collected the pile of soldiers around Stockholm’s Central Station.
‘Our first diversion will be to close down Central Station. And while the cops gather there, busy defusing a real bomb, we’ll be robbing two banks fifty kilometres away.’
It didn’t help. Vincent moved half of the soldiers towards Old Town and the other half towards Kronoberg.
‘And then what? What do we threaten to bomb next? The castle? Police headquarters? Or something bigger?’
A little annoyed, and a little proud, Leo smiled at Vincent, while patiently moving the soldiers back to the area around Central Station.
‘Our second diversion – two red cars.’
The Volkswagen Beetle that for so long had lived by itself on the shelf above Felix’s bed. Leo grabbed it with his thumb and forefinger and moved it across the map – from the banks onto the minor roads that led through the countryside.
‘We’re going to use a car that everyone recognises. And one that whatever cops are left south of the city will find … here.’
He moved the toy car from the road they would actually drive on to a larger road that lay on the other side of the banks, the motorway to Stockholm, which they wouldn’t use.
‘It will stand here. And the cops will therefore block the road. They’ll think we’ve gone down that road.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Vincent.
‘Vincent, it—’
‘I don’t understand how you could have sat there in that car, given me a bunch of books, and told me that we were going to rob banks.’
‘And?’
‘Building a bomb is not robbing banks.’
‘If we build a bomb, and if we use it, it won’t explode. OK?’
Vincent didn’t move any more soldiers. But he also didn’t look away.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Vincent, can’t you—’
‘I don’t get why we’re building a fucking bomb. Then painting ourselves into a corner – leaving the first getaway car, which everyone recognises, on the main road – where it’s completely visible!’
‘That’s exactly what they should believe. But we’ll be here, Vincent, we’re on one of the minor roads, on our way to rob a third bank.’
A third 10-kronor coin on the map, along the minor roads and on to the even smaller town o
f Sorunda.
‘I still don’t understand.’
A tiny bit proud as he produced another car out of the bag.
‘Do you know how long it took for me to find this? I went to every toyshop in the city – then I saw it in the window of an antique shop on Ring Street.’
An exact replica of the getaway car – a red Volkswagen Beetle model 1300 – and he set it down next to the new 10-kronor coin.
‘We’ll be in this car on the minor roads.’
Then he pointed to the other side of the map.
‘And at the same time, the same car will be here, on the main road, surrounded by roadblocks.’
Leo looked at Vincent who had no more protests, not this morning.
‘Magic, fellas. Four days left.’
Felix’s shoulder bumped into the door every time he turned the wheel of the Beetle. And even though he’d moved the seat as far back as possible, his knees hit the dashboard when he changed gear.
It didn’t have much in the way of horsepower and wasn’t very easy to drive. But that wasn’t why they’d chosen this car – it was because everyone who saw it would recognise it, and they’d easily be able to identify it later.
He waited for the garage door to roll up and then drove in, the headlights beaming towards the workbench and the map. Jasper, Vincent and Leo sat further inside the room at the other workbench, opening four cardboard boxes and four soft packages wrapped in thin plastic.
And now Jasper stood up and approached the car.
‘A … fucking Beetle? Felix, those were just toy cars – you didn’t actually think Leo was fucking serious?’
‘Well done, Jasper,’ said Felix.
‘How the hell can we—’
‘You don’t know shit about cars, but you recognise it and you can name it. Just like everyone in Ösmo Square.’
Leo, a box in one hand and some plastic wrapping in the other, left the workbench and placed himself directly between Jasper and Felix, in the crack that had opened a few weeks ago and could not be allowed to get any bigger.
‘But I’m riding shotgun. Right?’
Leo tapped lightly on the red metal roof.
‘We need two that are identical. Make, model, colour. We’ll start here in the south, and split up. If we can’t find the other one here, we’ll do what we did last time, and hit the northern half of the city. Three days left.’
It was basically a simple device. Purely mechanical. A long, narrow metal box half-filled with nails and screws and bolts and m/46 plastic explosive. The fuse was connected to a spring percussion detonator, which lay against one of the short sides of the metal box. When the short side is opened the percussion detonator releases the fuse and the contents of the metal box explode, killing every living creature in the immediate vicinity. A simple chain reaction.
Leo was sitting on the garage workbench, a red steel wire in his hand. He cut off exactly ten centimetres. Felix switched from the wood to the metal drill, the little hole should sit in the middle of the uppermost side of the box, a cover that hid the nails and explosives.
There was a knock on the garage door.
Leo opened it to Vincent, cold, clear air and a muffled bang in the distance.
‘Eleven forty. You’re late.’
‘It was hell getting a taxi.’
Leo closed and locked the door and hugged his little brother, took a step back and whistled loudly – Vincent, who was wearing a dark suit and white shirt open at the neck under his jacket.
‘Damn it, you almost look grown up.’
‘Two thousand kronor. Bought it today.’
Vincent was holding a bag in his hand; he handed it to Leo and continued into the garage.
‘Is that … the bomb?’
Leo emptied and folded the bag. Two bottles of Bollinger. There was just enough room for them on the workbench next to three champagne glasses.
‘Yes.’
‘OK. Then I guess that’s what we are. Terrorists.’
Vincent stared at the grey-black box, could hear Felix pulling duct tape off a roll.
‘Our mother could be the one who puts her purse in the fucking locker next to this!’
‘I thought we were done talking about it.’
‘You were, Leo. Not me.’
‘We’re not putting it there to kill someone. We’re putting it there so they have to take it seriously. If we put a fake in there, they’ll see through it.’
‘But what if … if it explodes accidentally?’
Leo leaned closer and smelled alcohol on his brother’s breath.
‘Vincent? You weren’t waiting for a fucking cab.’
And he sniffed several times, to prove the point.
‘You were at home drinking.’
Leo tried to catch his little brother’s eye, but couldn’t, his eyes were on the box with a red wire sticking out of a hole drilled into its lid.
‘Vincent? If you’ve got something to say to me, just say it. We’re brothers! You don’t need to get drunk before talking to me.’
‘I’ve already said it. It doesn’t feel right.’
‘What do you mean “not right”?’
‘It doesn’t feel good. And if it feels like this again … I’m not doing it.’
‘Vincent, listen to me.’
Leo angled up the lid, revealing several layers of nails, screws and plastic explosives.
‘If this is secured …’
His index finger over the black tubular percussion detonator.
‘… it won’t explode.’
Then into the red wire loop on the other end of the igniter.
‘But if I were to pull just a little bit more on this …’
He did so, looking at Vincent as he watched the wire.
‘… then it would only take a movement of a hair – and that’d be it for us. But only if I pull the safety ring.’
He gently took his finger out again.
‘Nobody gets hurt, Vincent. No one will die. Not even the lady who stores her bag in the locker next to it.’
Felix put a strip of duct tape over the lid to keep it on tight, then tore off another one and put that on too, just to be sure. He’d stood between his two brothers, listening without taking sides. He recognised this, even though it had never happened before. It was the first time Vincent had protested in the same way he himself usually protested. And it had ended as it usually did. The big brother he knew so well couldn’t be persuaded; he could convince everyone else with his energy. So if anyone were to ever change course, it had to be the younger brothers.
‘Then we’re agreed. Right?’
Vincent nodded slightly.
‘Good. Because it’s ten minutes to midnight. Time to open these up.’
He folded his jacket, grabbed the glasses and bottles and started towards the garage door.
‘One more thing,’ said Felix, leaning over the workbench towards Vincent. ‘I mean, since we have our little brother here. Who opened the door?’
Vincent didn’t understand.
‘That time … when Pappa turned up.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Felix – are you still stuck on that?’ said Leo. ‘It’s eleven fifty-two. We’re leaving now.’
Felix shook his head.
‘No. We are going to discuss this. Vincent – who was it that opened the door when the old man came to our house and tried to kill Mamma?’
‘What are you two talking about?’
‘When Pappa got out of prison. After we’d moved to Falun. He drove out there.’
‘Felix, damn it, he was … six years old. Is he a witness now?’
Vincent became very quiet.
‘Seven. I was seven. When he tried to kill Mamma.’
Felix did what Leo usually did, and put his hands on Vincent’s shoulders.
‘Forget that we’re your big brothers. Tell me what you saw. Did I open the door – or did Leo?’
Leo waved the champagne bottle towards his watch.
‘Ex
actly. Tell us what you remember. Then Felix will be satisfied, and we can go out.’
He stood there. Felix with his hand on the door handle. Leo on his way.
‘Come on! Vincent – what did you see? Was it me or was it Leo?’
He jumped. And couldn’t reach. But almost.
‘It was me.’
And then, he did it, reached, twisted.
‘I opened the door.’
Leo laughed, not loudly, not from joy.
‘That was a diplomatic answer.’
Felix didn’t even laugh.
‘It was me,’ Vincent repeated. ‘I remember it. I turned the lock and pushed down the handle and opened the door.’
Felix became flushed. He tried to understand how all three of them could have stood next to each other at that door, all three later believing that they had opened it.
‘And where the hell was I? Wasn’t I there? Leo jumped on his back and you opened the door and I … I sat on a chair in the kitchen, perhaps? On the toilet? Maybe I didn’t even exist … maybe you two were the ones who spat in Mamma’s face too? Were you? Which one of you was it then?’
‘What’s the fucking difference?’ said Leo.
‘It fucking matters. To me.’
The large garage, completely quiet. Outside, the sound of fireworks and firecrackers increased in intensity.
‘You were the one. Who spat. But it … it was something else.’
Leo nodded to Felix.
‘And it really doesn’t matter any more.’
Three champagne glasses in Leo’s hand and thirty seconds until midnight. He rolled open the garage door towards the tapestry of a night sky filled with shooting stars. He pulled off the gold foil from the neck of the bottle and pushed up the cork, which flew away and landed somewhere.
‘Cheers.’
Bubbles in glasses in three hands.
‘Cheers to Getryggen, to Farsta, to Svedmyra.’
The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Page 24