Vincent climbed up into the train carriage and walked along the narrow corridor with his hand behind his back, holding the bag in line with his body – he didn’t want to poke any of the other passengers with an automatic rifle as he passed by. There was just one private compartment at the far end of each carriage. He drew the curtains, closed the door and put the bag on the luggage rack, then sank down across three seats with his jacket over his head.
As he lay there the thump of the joints between the rails moved upward and into his body, a pulsating lullaby in the same rhythm as the colours and small flashes of light that ran smoothly behind his eyelids. But within ten minutes the conductor came in to check their tickets, then Jasper stood on his seat and lifted the bag down and pushed a reinforced-steel-toed boot against Vincent’s ribs.
‘Want one?’
Jasper put the bag on the floor, took out a beer and opened it with his finger through the metal ring. Drops of beer spurted out and landed on Vincent’s face.
‘Please don’t open that in my face.’
Jasper looked into the bag again, the folded wooden butt of the gun clearly visible next to the plastic bags filled with red-stained bills. He fished out another can and handed it to Vincent, who shook his head.
‘What did I do to make you hate me so fucking much? Eh? Little brother?’
‘We’re not brothers.’
He’d answered again. And he could see it satisfied Jasper. But his head was so heavy …
‘I’ll call you little brother if I want to call you little brother. You’re the youngest, right? And that’s why you don’t know shit about what Leo and I used to do – because you were just a puny, snotty whelp.’
Vincent wanted to be able to think clearly, but his eyes were itchy and dry, and the hair on the back of his neck felt charged with electricity.
‘At every robbery, little brother … Leo goes first, I go last, and you’re in the middle, the safest place. We protect you – Leo and I discussed that.’
Jasper started squeezing the empty can in his hand to make the annoying sound of a dent being pushed in and then popping out again.
‘We get off a shitload of shots, but we always keep some in reserve in case any fucking cop starts getting ideas about following us. Haven’t you ever wondered, little brother – where all the ammunition comes from?’
The dent on the can. In, out. A ticking second hand. Jasper moved it closer to Vincent’s ear.
‘If you only knew how much I’ve done for you, Vincent. Every day for six years. And you lie there with your fucking attitude. For fuck’s sake!’
He was being provoked. He knew it, felt it.
‘Six years … what the hell are you talking about?’
‘What am I talking about? Where do you think we got the plastic explosives and pentylstubin to blow the floor out of the bunker?’
Vincent hurt all over. Sleep was all he’d wanted.
‘Military service. First, Leo took what we needed. Then I did.’
But now it was as if his strength were slowly returning as he listened.
‘Final excercises, little brother. It starts with them transporting a whole fucking truck full of sealed boxes and setting them down next to the road, in the middle of the snow. Weapons. Explosives. Ammunition. And after a while it’s impossible for them to keep track of everything, but Leo knew and I knew that it was only when the exercise was over and everything was about to be driven back that the crates were inventoried.’
The louder the bloody idiot spoke, the more sure Vincent became that they would never rob a bank together again.
‘And then, little brother, at night when we stood guard, we brought black bin bags with us. We had three hours in the snow to take out cartridges or pentyl or hand grenades. Black bin bags that we buried before going back to our stations.’
Nothing else existed except Jasper’s mouth, with which he talked and talked about Leo, as if Leo were Jasper and Jasper were Leo.
‘And we knew that after that exercise there would be a complete inspection, and they’d turn the whole fucking regiment inside out.’
As if Leo were Jasper and Jasper were Leo.
‘Literally inside out, like a house search, they go through everything. But they didn’t find anything. Nothing, little brother.’
You are not my brother.
‘Do you understand? We’ve been planning this for six years, little brother – me and Leo.
‘It’s weird, you know … even though you’re his little brother I know him better than you do. When we go into a bank, Leo and I have a bond that you don’t have. We each know exactly what the other will do.’
Vincent stood up suddenly, in the middle of the swaying carriage. He wanted to hit those moving lips, empty out whatever energy his weary body had left.
‘Me and Leo. We can do anything. We stopped the entire police force with a little fucking bomb. Imagine what we can do next time!’
‘A bomb you pulled the safety ring out of, Jasper!’
He felt his fingertips pushing hard into the palm of his hand.
‘I know it was you! Just like Felix, I’ve known all along!’
Jasper shook his head just like he’d done every other time. But then it was as if he changed his mind. And smiled.
‘I knew the police would send in that bomb robot.’
‘So it was you?’
‘I know what I’m doing, little brother – nothing serious could have happened.’
‘It was you who took out the safety ring! You denied it!’
‘Nobody died. Right?’
‘You lied! You lied to Leo! He trusted you! But you don’t understand because you’re … alone, you don’t have any brothers!’
Vincent sat down, straightened out his fingers, which had gone white at the tips, and it was finally quiet in the train compartment. Something felt lighter inside.
‘So I’m … alone?’
‘Yes.’
Jasper was still staring blankly at him, as he unzipped the bag to take out one more beer. But that wasn’t what he held up now. It was a submachine gun.
‘And I have … no brothers?’
‘No brothers.’
Jasper straightened out the butt of the gun, ran his hand down its barrel.
‘Little brother? Do you know what I could do right now? Something that can be done alone. Without brothers.’
He left the seat so fast that Vincent didn’t even understand what was happening, not until Jasper was down on one knee, pressing the gun to his head. It chafed against his temple, and Vincent slid gradually backwards until he sank into the headrest.
‘Then I’ll explain it to you, little brother. Listen to me now. With this I can do whatever the hell I want to.’
Vincent had never been this close to death before.
He realised that he’d become the security guard in an armoured van or the bank cashier behind a counter, that he’d changed places with them.
‘Jasper, you have to—’
Jasper pressed harder, and it started to bleed where the barrel of the gun cut into his skin.
‘I didn’t lie to Leo, do you understand that?’
He held it there while someone passed outside their door. Someone else was laughing and talking loudly on the other side of the thin wall.
‘Do you understand that? Little brother?’
Vincent wasn’t sure if his head was moving, his body wasn’t responding, but he tried as hard as he could to nod. Jasper lowered the weapon as calmly as he’d raised it, folded it up, put it back in the bag and zipped it up.
More steps outside. More voices.
Vincent sat perfectly still.
Nine robberies. And he hadn’t realised it was that simple: you can take what you want if you’ve got a gun in your hands.
58
A GROUP OF inmates sat on a bench in the gravel courtyard, sucking at cigarettes in the cold April wind, a short break from their places on the assembly line in the prison workshop, where they would cut o
ut and assemble square wooden blocks for eleven kronor an hour. They were dressed in stiff and ill-fitting quilted coats, which reminded John Broncks of old prison movies about the Gulags.
This is where you’ll be sitting when I catch you.
He looked around. Though he lived alone, he never felt alone anywhere but here. There was nothing in the world that felt more futile than waiting for someone in a visitors’ cell. Shut off. Prison visits weren’t about happiness – they were about control and security.
He heard a bell, grating and metallic like the one on the front door of the flat where they’d shared a room until John was fourteen years old, the beds pressed close together, which never felt strange, even though none of his friends had had to share. Then a rattle of keys, two mechanical clicks, and hooks sliding out of a reinforced frame.
Slippers and blue shorts. White T-shirt with the Swedish Prison Service logo on the chest. And a guard half a step behind him.
Sam had become broader. Even more fury had been turned into muscle. His face revealed nothing, it was lifeless. The most difficult thing was living in the present, without being able to experience it.
This is where you will sit. This is how you should act.
And this will be you, Big Brother.
‘You applied in advance,’ said Sam.
‘Yes, I—’
‘But I didn’t bring any cakes with me this time either. You’re not here for a visit.’
They both leaned against the wall. There was no way to be further apart.
‘I ate on my way here.’
John pulled out one of the chairs and sat down.
‘Last time I was here they’d only robbed a security van and a bank. Now they’ve robbed a security van and eight banks, and set off a bomb in Central Station, and they have a stash of over two hundred automatic weapons.’
Sam smiled faintly.
‘Damn, seems like they’re doing pretty well … what was it you called them … the Military League?’
John rested his elbows on the table. It was just as wobbly as the chair.
‘There are four hundred and sixty-three long-term convicts in here. And after eighteen years, Sam, you know them all. And they know everyone.’
‘Listen … we’ve already talked about this. Right? If I knew anything I sure as hell wouldn’t tell it to a cop.’
‘But this isn’t like last time any more. Sam – forget about the banks. Before this group went on a rampage there were exactly thirteen stolen military automatic weapons unaccounted for out there. Now there are enough to equip every criminal organisation in Sweden that you eat lunch with in here every day. Every little wannabe gangster may soon be on the loose with a weapon of war. And then this won’t be about bullet-riddled cameras any more – a shitload of innocent people will end up in the way, and not even someone who “doesn’t want to talk to a cop” could think that’s a good thing.’
The ironic smile disappeared, and Sam’s expression seemed to soften a little.
‘I will never accept it, Sam. Hurting the innocent.’
It was only for a moment.
‘I don’t get why you’re so fucking obsessed with this.’
‘I told you why. I will never accept that some people solve their problems with violence. When a security guard shows them photographs of his children, and they push the gun further into his mouth to get what they want.’
‘But he was a security guard. If you choose to be a security guard you have to accept the risk. Security vans get robbed.’
‘What about the bank cashier they pushed to the floor then? Lying down with lacerations on her cheek? She’ll never sleep without taking a pill again. Her eyes – if you’d seen her eyes, they looked like our mother’s, back then.’
Sam finally left the wall for the table where John was sitting. The veins on his forearms looked like a road map and he squeezed the back of his chair, as if he was trying to crush it.
‘She worked in a bank. She chose to work there. She knew that banks are robbed.’
Sam hadn’t been a criminal when he was sentenced to life in prison. He’d become one inside these walls.
‘So you … you think what they’re doing is fine?’
‘I’ve been here for eighteen years – what the hell do you think?’
Sam’s grip on the back of the chair relaxed slightly, and his hands returned to their natural colour.
‘You sit there on your fucking visitor’s chair. And I’m sitting in here. You chose to hold his hand. I chose to fight back.’
Sam looked at him in a way that John recognised, without irony, contempt, hatred or guilt.
‘They tried to get me to go and see a fucking therapist once a week. So some idiot could tell me I stabbed my dad because I’d had a bad childhood. That it wasn’t … my fault.’
He sat down opposite Broncks, laying his thick-veined forearms on the table.
‘Fuck that. I was the one who chose to stab the bastard. I’m the one sitting here. Talking about what happened back then is like talking about a fucking cassette that is playing over and over and over. He’s still here, whatever we choose to be like. Whatever you and I do. No fucking therapist can change that. Accept it.’
John suddenly wanted to touch those arms, lay his hand on them, but it had been many years since he and his brother had had any physical contact.
‘I didn’t come here to talk about him.’
‘No, you came here because you want me to be your snitch.’
He remembered the last time when he’d put a gentle hand on Sam’s shoulder, and he had pulled away as if John had struck him.
‘I heard you sat with him.’
‘And you’re sitting here, Sam.’
‘You held his hand.’
‘You have to know who’s doing these things.’
‘Mum told me that. You sat next to the hospital trolley holding his hand. That devil’s hand which … beat you.’
‘Sam, you must have heard something. A name. A weapons cache. Somebody always talks. You’re my brother, it’ll stay in here, you surely know that?’
‘You held his hand. But you come here, brother, and think I’ll run around in here asking questions on your behalf?’
Sam pushed the button on the wall, calling for the guards.
‘The visit’s over.’
‘Already?’
‘Already.’
Just like last time. Sixty minutes, after several months, was too long. And silence fell. They avoided looking at each other until John couldn’t stand it any more.
‘They’re brothers. At least two of them.’
Two guards arrived to escort Sam from the visiting room, one walking in front of him and one behind. They were halfway to the staircase to the lower floor when Sam turned round.
‘John? I never want to see you again.’
59
LEO GENTLY TOOK five dripping 500-kronor notes out of a bowl filled with liquid and hung them on a clothes line he’d stretched between the walls of the garage. The wet paper was heavy, and they’d dry into rigid U-shapes that would need to be ironed straight one at a time.
The clothes line crisscrossed the whole of the large garage, a roof beneath the roof made of dangling kronor in various denominations – no longer worthless.
The plastic bag he’d carried fifteen hours earlier had weighed nothing, filled as it was with pieces of paper that had lost their value. That’s how he’d treated its contents when he closed the door to the garage.
Their value couldn’t be lost a second time.
If he’d considered it for what it really was – over two million kronors’ worth of red-stained money, real money that couldn’t be used – he would never have found a solution. His anger, his fury at the cashier who’d ruined their haul by sneaking in a dye pack disguised as a roll of money would have hindered his creativity, and the stained banknotes would have ended up being no more than just bits of meaningless paper.
He’d started with a 500, stretche
d between his fingers, red dye splashed across a dead king’s face. When he’d rubbed his thumb on it, the dye had stayed on the paper, just as permanent. He’d been sure he’d have to burn the whole bag.
Then he’d seen his thumb. It didn’t look the same any more. There was a coating over the skin, a faint red film.
One-part dye.
As anyone with any construction knowledge knows, anything that is one-part hasn’t reacted to another component and is therefore not permanent.
He still hadn’t dared to think two million, not yet, but he’d opened the metal cabinet holding inflammable liquids, taken out the plastic bottle of benzene, and squirted a few drops on the 500-kronor note. The red had dissolved immediately. After only a few seconds, the original print had dissolved as well. But it was possible. The red dye did go away. Now, it was just about finding the right kind of solvent.
Renol. Methanol. Methylated spirits. He’d even experimented with acetic acid before realising that the most accessible solvent – chemically pure acetone – worked best. Just like benzene, it dissolved the original ink and the ultraviolet security printing. But not so fast, not so annihilatingly. Time. It had been about finding the precise number of seconds. And he’d tested it on low denominations, 20-kronor notes and sometimes 50s.
The right amount of time. And the right balance between acetone and water in bowls of liquid.
Acetone, which could be bought in any local shop! He’d instructed Anneli to take the car and buy fifty litres, spreading her purchases – half a litre here, half a litre there – while he continued mixing, measuring, weighing.
And at last he succeeded.
After 114,400 obliterated kronor, the very first banknote came out perfect. Given acetone, water and time, two million in stained notes would be washed clean.
He was hanging up the latest round of 500-kronor notes when there was a knock on the door.
‘It smells like a paint factory in here,’ said Vincent.
‘You need some ventilation, Leo, this isn’t healthy,’ agreed Felix, just behind him.
Leo was wearing sticky plastic gloves and his sleeves and chest were wet, so the hug he usually gave them would have to wait.
‘I’ve solved it. Can you believe it? Solved it!’
The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Page 35