It landed a little higher this time, not on the cheek and neck as with his mother, but it ran down the old man’s face in exactly the same way.
‘What the hell are you two doing?’
Leo ran out of the side room and pressed one hand against his father’s chest and the other on his brother’s chest, forcing them in opposite directions.
‘Now leave, Felix.’
Vincent stood there. Alone. And he watched his father wipe away the saliva with his shirt sleeve and Felix open the front door.
‘Wait!’
He rushed out into the hall, past his father, past Leo.
‘I’m going with you.’
83
IVAN HAD BEEN lying there for an hour, maybe two, when he suddenly realised what it was. The smell was bothering him. He sat up and held the pillow to his nose. Yep. That was it. The intrusive smell that was so familiar; the pillowcase smelled of Britt-Marie.
Had she slept here?
It pulled him back. He was there. Snitch. She buzzed around him, and he was sitting again on the edge of a completely different bed – in a jail cell just days after a Molotov cocktail had been thrown – and he had been betrayed. Snitch. And a policeman had opened the cell door with a bandage around his right hand and stepped in uninvited, wanting to talk.
Ivan hadn’t wanted to talk.
Still that damned pig had stood there demanding answers.
– How … could you bring your own son with you?
– What are you talking about?
– I’m talking about your ten-year-old son, and how you took him along to incinerate your wife. His mother.
– I’ve got nothing to say to you.
– Listen, your son Leo seems like a good boy, he—
– I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t have to. I’m sitting in a jail cell, but I decide when I want to talk. So leave. Get out of here!
– You don’t have to talk to me. Because your son already has. Leo’s already told us everything. How you made the bomb. How you took him in the car, parked it on the road, how you went through the raspberry bushes, how you waited there gaping before you threw it through the basement window.
– I didn’t throw any bomb. And my son would never talk.
– But he did. And everything went so smoothly, he did so of his own free will and his mother was there. I sat down at your kitchen table with your son for over an hour.
– So some fucking cop got my son to sit for an hour informing on me?
– Yes.
– Then what the hell happened to your hand? My son would never talk. In my family, we don’t snitch.
– He talked because he needed to talk, don’t you understand that? You’re his father, Ivan. For his sake, tell me what happened. So he doesn’t have to bear this alone.
– Get the fuck out of here! Now!
That fucking smell, he couldn’t get rid of it, even though he tore the pillowcase into pieces and threw them out of the window. He went into the hallway, cold and dark. He was sneaking around like a child in his son’s house, and she buzzed around him until he was dizzy and slipped and hit his hip on the sink and his foot on the kitchen table. He didn’t want to be back there, back then. You’re the only risk. He’d walked beside Leo, and they had broken into a car and driven it to the getaway site, and his son had looked at him and accused him before they even started. A risk? Buzzing around someone’s head is a fucking risk. Snitching on someone is a fucking risk. Not a drop in forty-eight hours, and his hands shook, and several times he’d almost thrown up, but hadn’t, and he knew there was a whisky bottle in the corner cupboard, and then the fever made him shake even though the house was no longer cold, so he sat down at the kitchen table and now froze from the inside as well, and maybe there was a bottle of wine next to the whisky, and he lay down and punched at the air because it buzzed and buzzed and buzzed.
84
JASPER WAS SITTING up. Irritated. It wasn’t just the uncomfortable sofa cushions. Or the sheets that were too thick. Or the light that seeped in through the leaky blinds. She was the one who kept him awake. Anneli. The weak link. And he was the only one who could see it. A weakness only becomes apparent when it is subjected to pressure, and under pressure she’d fall apart like a porcelain egg. Crushed. Ten minutes in an interrogation room, and she would squeal like a baby. He felt sorry for Leo. He was stuck with her, could never get rid of her. She would always have a hold on him. Go to the police. Or just talk too much, to a friend or somebody else, someone at a bar, and then the uniforms would kick in the door. And if they did, he knew what to expect. A life sentence. For the bomb. A prosecutor would insist on sentencing them for endangering the public and the offence would be aggravated.
If she talked it would mean a life sentence.
Anneli would point him out first because she’d never liked him, he’d felt that from the beginning. At that illegal club in Handen. She’d been there by herself, drinking rosé cava, hot as hell, that’s what he thought, beautiful and natural. They’d talked at the bar, he and Anneli and Leo. He had seen how she laughed and her lips whispered a little closer to Leo’s ear with each fresh glass. He hadn’t even existed.
85
LEO HAD FELT her waking silence for a few hours now, her bare skin so close to his own as she had turned and twisted, the sheets in her flapping arms. He knew why, she was trying to imagine a sequence of events she’d never experienced before. She wasn’t Felix, didn’t have his steadiness, the qualification for waiting behind a steering wheel for three minutes while a vault was being emptied, leaving the crime scene so quickly that no one saw anything, no one followed them, and at the same time slowly enough that no one responded or even noticed. Without Felix, they’d need two people outside the bank this time. His girlfriend would drive and his father would face any potential attacker. Inside, he and Jasper were exchanging roles. Leo would go in behind the security glass and clear out the tills and the vault, while Jasper controlled the customers and cashiers lying on the floor.
He felt a sharp elbow between his ribs, against his back, as her arm flailed in that land between sleep and wakefulness. He grabbed it gently, stroking her, soft skin against his fingertips.
‘Anneli? Listen? Don’t think about it any more.’
She turned over, and her eyes shone clear in the darkness. He kissed her forehead and her cheek.
‘I’m not nervous, if that’s what you think.’
‘I think you are. Try to sleep.’
‘“Leo has never and will never let anyone like you get in his way. He has his brothers.” Jasper said that. And he thinks he’ll be here afterwards. I can’t stand him.’
‘It’s not about him, Anneli. Right? That’s not why you’re lying here twisting and turning. It’s about tomorrow. And I understand why you’re afraid.’
She heaved herself up on her elbows.
‘Don’t you understand, Leo? Listen – I’m not afraid. I’m actually glad I’ll be going along, that I won’t have to sit here listening to that radio to find out if you’re alive or not. And then … it’ll be nice to not have your brothers, and him, here afterwards!’
She poked him again, in the same place between his ribs, not very hard, but deliberately this time.
‘The only thing I don’t think is nice is that you trust that psycho out there on the sofa.’
‘Anneli? This is how it is. We’re going to do this together tomorrow. Therefore I choose to trust Jasper. Just like I choose to trust you and my father. Because I have to. OK? Go to sleep.’
He rolled towards the edge of the bed, over it, feet on the cold floor. He needed some peace. He waited until she was asleep before closing the bedroom door gently and walking towards the stairs.
Jasper was on the sofa. Awake. With four automatic weapons in front of him on the coffee table.
‘Jasper? What the hell are you up to?’
‘Cleaning the weapons.’
‘You’ve already cleaned the guns. They’re ready. And you need sleep.
’
‘It’s going to snow tomorrow. A lot.’
‘I saw that. But not till the afternoon – and then we’ll be on our way home. Go to sleep.’
Jasper put down the gun he’d just oiled again.
‘What if we’re stopped. Leo? What if the cops are suddenly standing there. Have you thought about that? If she can do it?’
‘Do it?’
‘I don’t trust her. If—’
‘Jasper? We’re going to do this together tomorrow. Therefore, I choose to trust her. Just like I choose to trust you and my father. Because I have to. OK? Get some sleep.’
He was the one holding it all together. That had been the case when Felix and Vincent were involved too, but it was more obvious now. Leo went down the stairs, avoiding the step that always creaked. It was quiet inside the guest room, but he closed the door, just in case. Into the kitchen. Half a glass of water from the tap that always coughed before giving in and releasing the liquid.
Anneli, Jasper and himself. All awake. Only his father, who he’d been most worried about, was asleep.
He drank another half glass of water, went out into the hall again, and was taking the first step back up the stairs when he heard his father’s voice behind him.
‘Leo? Leo, can you come here?’
Pappa’s voice sounded different, and not because he was whispering, or because it was hoarse and low, but because he was … pleading. His father – who never asked anyone for anything, who outlined how he wanted things to be and then expected them to be just so – had pleaded with Felix at the front door and ended up with spit in his face, and now he was pleading again. It felt uncomfortable.
‘Dad, what are you doing here? You have to sleep.’
He hadn’t seen him in the darkness. He lay on the kitchen sofa in his underpants. Leo stayed in the doorway and could see the shaking from there.
‘Sit down here, beside me, just for a minute. I want to tell you something.’
He went in and sat on the edge of the sofa, while Ivan sat up. Side by side. Two pale torsos. Leo, in his twenties, who had just started his journey, and Ivan, who was more than twice his age and was no longer going anywhere.
‘I … maybe I didn’t always do right by you when you and your brothers were little.’
‘You did what you did, Dad. No more, no less.’
‘But Leo … it wasn’t right.’
‘Stop it.’
‘I could have—’
‘I don’t give a shit about that stuff now. I don’t want to hear any more.’
‘Leo, it’s important for me to say this. You were just a child.’
‘Just a child?’
‘Just a child, Leo. And I know you didn’t mean to.’
‘Mean to?’
‘To snitch.’
‘Snitch? Are we going there again?’
‘No, but—’
‘Listen to me now! Once and for all! I didn’t snitch on you! That’s not who we are. We do the opposite! Even when you tried to kill Mamma, we all took the blame. And that’s why I think I opened the door, and why Felix claims he did, and Vincent says it was him. That’s how fucking far we are from being snitches!’
‘Leo … I … I don’t hold it against you, not any more, you saw that, didn’t you? Felix … and I did nothing. Felix spat in my face and I didn’t raise a hand. Spitting in someone’s face is the greatest insult of all! If someone else had done the same thing, I would … have hammered the bastard! But not my son. I didn’t do it.’
He wasn’t aware of it, but as he spoke, he rubbed the flattened knuckles of his right hand.
Something that happens to them after inflicting repeated blows.
‘Stop it! Don’t ever talk to me about my childhood again.’
‘But Leo, why don’t you want … I want …’
Leo made to walk away, he had no more energy for this.
‘It was open!’
The house had gone completely silent. A kind of peace. As he went towards the stairs, Leo realised what his father had just said.
‘When I … and your mother … there in Falun. It wasn’t locked. I was able to push down the handle and walk right in. Past Felix and Vincent and you.’
Leo sat down on the first step. It squeaked. It always had.
‘You hear, Leo? None of you opened the door.’
86
HE WAS GUARDING a door with a large pane of glass in the middle and brown wooden slats on either side. The door of a bank that was being robbed at this very moment. And he was one of the bank robbers.
Ivan wasn’t afraid. He didn’t feel that way because he wouldn’t allow himself to, he couldn’t afford to – that was his son running around in there wearing a black mask and carrying an automatic weapon. But it felt like something. Shame. Terrible shame, clinging to him like the small child who had once clung to his back, little fingers digging in between his shoulder blades, preventing him from striking her face again. The terrible shame when that other, smaller face had stood in his way, forcing him to let go and allow her to flee across the bloody, slippery floor. All day those fingers had ripped at his back, while time stood still, and soon the world would realise they were robbing a bank and that his son was in there behind him.
Ten minutes to three. The ground was covered with powdery snow that muffled the sounds outside his mask. Just half an hour ago the asphalt had been dry and the landscape grey. Now he could see their footsteps in the snow, two each from the car to the bank, Leo’s, his own and Jasper’s. They were supposed to be in there for three minutes. Two and a half left. And if it kept snowing like this, their footprints would almost be gone by the time they got back to the car.
He held his gun in front of him, facing the street and the few shops, glanced over his shoulder and saw Jasper’s back in the middle of the room, while his eldest son continued past a large green plant and behind the counters. And up ahead, still in the car behind the wheel, also wearing a ski mask, sat Anneli.
He looked at his watch again. Forty-five seconds. Suddenly time had frozen, and the shame was moving forward at the speed of light – and the desire to get away from this place, to swallow a big gulp of red wine, to never look his sons in the eye again, was unbearable.
Leo glanced quickly over his shoulder. Pappa was still out there, in front of the door, his gun ready. He was holding firm. It had been the right thing to choose to trust him.
Sixty seconds.
Leo waited outside the vault while the trembling hands of the branch manager tried to insert the key in the lock. The man was around his father’s age but lankier, with fingers like pointers. He was just about to tell him to calm down when he heard the hush of the security lock, a heavy sigh as the pistons left their stronghold in the reinforced frame and the door slid open.
He’d almost forgotten how it felt.
To walk into the room. To force the customers and staff onto the floor. To be the master of a room for one hundred and eighty seconds. Planning and calculating, and then standing in front of an open vault and seeing that everything had been done right.
The only time it had felt like this before with Pappa was another time when they had practised and planned together to carry out a plan and it had worked – it had been just as easy to punch Hasse with Pappa standing on the balcony as it was to rob a bank with him standing outside right now.
There were bundles of cash on the shelves of the vault, even more than there should be: 100s in bundles of ten thousand kronor, 500s in bundles of fifty thousand, and 1000s in bundles of a hundred thousand.
Everything was there. Nothing had been stored in the night vault.
When Leo ordered the banker to get inside, sit down and keep his back against the wall, he heard the excitement in his own voice. He couldn’t believe that there could be so much money on the shelves of such a small bank.
He adjusted his shoulder bag and held it open like a gaping mouth as it swallowed every banknote he pushed in – and no dye packs. He counted
quickly. At least three and a half million kronor! More than the double robbery, more than the triple robbery. In a little shitty bank, in a little shitty town with Pappa on guard and Anneli driving.
A woman was talking on the police radio about a bank robbery in Heby, and another woman replied to say a patrol car was on its way from the police station in Sala. None of it mattered to Anneli: she’d drive back just as she had memorised and practised over the past week with Leo in the passenger seat. Not even the snow covering the road, melting on the windscreen and being scoured away by the wipers mattered. Those outside the car, hiding and watching, who would later give their statements without ever knowing that it was a woman who sat behind the wheel, didn’t exist to her. The only thing that existed was encapsulated in a predetermined pattern that she and Leo had created together. Just the two of them, no one else.
Maybe that’s why she saw Leo first, even though all three of them were walking away from the bank, Leo carrying a bag over his shoulder that seemed stuffed full.
And when the car doors slammed, she did what she was supposed to: started in second gear, rolled down the wide pavement and onto the street, speeded up at the church with its black tower. Then right and, almost immediately, right again, around the town and out onto the main road. The gentle snowfall had, within just a few minutes, turned into a blizzard, soft snowflakes with white hard tips. But she was unmoved – she knew every bend and what speed to keep at all times.
‘Three million!’
He’d shouted that several times now.
‘Over three million!’
Anneli had never heard Leo’s voice sound like that; it was exploding, becoming almost hoarse he was so happy. Even Jasper’s laughter in the back seat felt good. She didn’t care at all that the visibility was getting even worse, she still knew how she should drive. Soon left, there, at the mailboxes. She even put on the indicators and giggled to herself – a stolen car that had just been used in a bank robbery and she … was putting on the indicators. She giggled more loudly as she turned left onto the snow-covered gravel road. And then, just because it felt so good, and Leo sounded so happy, she put on the indicators again as they turned onto the tiny forest road crossed only by the occasional deer or hare, and again as she turned into the natural parking space between otherwise dense spruce trunks.
The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Page 47