by Jens Lapidus
He learned the unwritten rules on the inside. How you handled provocations that would have made any regular cop on the beat pound the person in question black and blue. How you handled people who drank a gallon of water a day—to water down their urine so the drug tests wouldn’t come back positive—or who cut themselves and mixed the blood in their piss, another way to hide what you had been taking. He became an expert at controlling the inmates’ cells. They glued Red Line Baggies with hash into their TVs with the help of dried toothpaste. He screwed apart computers: the inmates were allowed to have laptops of their own but no Internet. They were perfect hiding places for shivs of the smallest size. He learned to frisk the inmates in the smoothest way possible—it wasn’t the same as on the street; there was nothing to threaten them with if they made a fuss. Cell phones were often hidden inside their boxers. Esmeralda just laughed. “Sweaty, hairy crotches are my favorite.”
After a few days, he realized what was really important in here. The routines. That the commissary cart rolled in at the same time every day, that the rec hours didn’t change, that mealtimes remained intact. These boys didn’t need any more chaos in their lives. And many of the inmates thought the time inside was good for the first six months or so. If you had spent many months in jail pretrial, prison life was liberating. You were allowed to eat together, play games, had a proper schedule with things to do.
If they wanted to, they could make nine kronor an hour working. Fold envelopes, build clothes hangers or birdhouses. Some of them saved their weekly pay in the prison’s accounts, others blew their whole load on tobacco and soda. A few sent every krona home to their families in South America, Romania, or small-town Sweden. One inmate demanded that his savings—around four thousand kronor—be transferred into another inmate’s account. The prison administration suspected a gambling debt and forbade the transaction. The guy went crazy, refused to come out of his cell for two weeks. In the third week, he started to smear feces on the walls. Desperation took the upper hand sometimes. An unpaid poker debt could be worse than all the shit in the world.
The vast majority didn’t bother working. Would rather hang out in the block all day. Played cards or video games. Lay in their cells and watched TV. Played Ping-Pong in the Ping-Pong room.
Sometimes the entire block walked through the culverts to the prison’s gymnasium. Played floor hockey or basketball. But it almost always ended in upheaval. People wouldn’t take any injustices on the court. But at least it was better that they took care of it there than with a sharpened toothbrush in the shower.
Hägerström’s mission was to become a well-liked screw, a foul screw, a friend. The fact that the inmates knew he had been a cop didn’t make it any easier. A canned cop, sure—but still. FTP, ACAB. The graffiti in the cells spoke its own, clear language: FUCK THE POLICE. ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS. He had to gain the boys’ trust. Become someone known for being crooked—just enough. Never call for the riot squad unnecessarily. Always give an extra half an hour in the visiting room with the ethnic woman that everyone but the prison administration understood was a whore. Not argue even if the cell doors were open after eight at night. Not do overly thorough room searches. Make sure to neglect checking the space between the bed and the wall or the cracked sole in the prison-issue slippers.
One night, when he was about to try to have a talk with JW, Hägerström heard sounds. A closed cell door, number seven. He opened the hatch and peered inside. At least five inmates were crowded in there. Loud. Trashed. Happy. He knocked before he stepped inside. Wanted to show respect. They fell silent. He opened the door. They had gotten hold of yeast and raisins and made pruno in a mop bucket. Hägerström tried to be cool with the guys. Reason with them and make them understand: This isn’t a good idea. I can let it slide without a warning, but leave right now.
He could only guess what the other screws were thinking. Laziness wasn’t a point of pride. But among the inmates, the incident raised his status immediately. He could feel it as soon as no other screws were around. They had started to dig him.
But—there was a but. Time was running out. In a few months, this window would be closing. He had to set things in motion with JW before then.
They had spoken many times. JW rocked a polite, accommodating style. No fuss. No backtalk. No long harangues about why he should get another serving at dinner, had the right to stay in someone else’s room, or anything else that was constantly being discussed, asked, demanded. He was easygoing, articulate, positive. A few of the screws thought he was slippery like lube, but in general they liked the fact that he was calm and well behaved.
In a cautious way, Hägerström tried to ask around about whether anyone on the staff had a good relationship with JW, if there was someone he spoke more with. If someone had got closer to him, beyond that overt polite facade. The answer was clear: no one working now had any such relationship to JW. But Esmeralda confirmed Torsfjäll’s claim, the entire reason Hägerström was here: “I guess Christer Starre did, but he doesn’t work here anymore. Did you meet him before he left?”
Sometimes Hägerström thought the suspicions directed at JW appeared weak. Why would someone use an inmate to help with a complex white-collar crime? At the same time, if it was as Torsfjäll believed, it was genius. No one would suspect that a federal penitentiary was the planning hub for a money-laundering scheme.
Hägerström did what he could, every day. At the same time, he didn’t want to appear too forward. JW wasn’t stupid. Hägerström and Torsfjäll already knew that he was quasi-paranoid, and with every right too. And there was no real reason for JW to bond with a new screw just because the screw was nice. It would take something more than that. Hägerström thought he knew what.
Most of the inmates sat in the dining hall during lunch. The two halls of cells on level three had a shared kitchen, where those who were interested in cooking could prepare their own lunch and dinner.
JW always sat at one of the middle tables. He was blond with four-inch-long hair. He wasn’t broadly built, but still in good shape. Hägerström had figured out his routines. JW ran six miles on the treadmill at the gym three times a week. What was interesting was that no matter who was using the treadmill, when JW came into the gym, that person stepped off and gave JW the spot. It was obvious that the guy’s standing in here was out of the ordinary.
The screws ate at the same time as the inmates. The prison administration’s idea was that it would create a friendly feeling of camaraderie. That was mostly on the surface. All the screws sat at their own table. But today Hägerström was planning on trying something out.
JW was eating with three other inmates. Hägerström knew who they were too. Torsfjäll’s memos covered all the details. To JW’s left was a fifty-year-old Yugo called the Tube, but whose real name was Zlatko Rovic. Twenty years ago he had been beaten up so severely he lost the hearing in his right ear. But the doctors had put in some kind of equipment, a tube, in his ear canal, and the Tube could use his ear again. He was a former hit man who had changed gears and worked with invoice fraud and other white-collar crimes these days. On the other side of the table was a younger talent nicknamed Crazy Tim. His real name was Tim Bredenberg McCarthy. The guy was thirty-three years old, a former soccer hooligan and leading rabble-rouser in the 1990s. These days he did white-collar stuff, but on a smaller scale. The last man at the table was Charlie Nowak. A different category altogether: 100 percent violent criminal. Convicted of aggravated assault and blackmail. He was twenty-two years old. He must fit into the gang in some way other than through white-collar-crime contacts, but that didn’t surprise Hägerström. Unholy alliances of this kind were normal these days. The raw knuckles joined the brains in the pen, as Torsfjäll put it.
Hägerström asked if they minded if he sat down.
The Tube put his silverware down. Crazy Tim froze. Charlie Nowak stopped chewing.
Screws and inmates didn’t share tables. Like oil and water, unmixable. In other words, unthinkable.
JW continued to eat, unperturbed. Kept on talking to the others. Didn’t even look up.
Enough of a signal. It was okay with JW.
The others relaxed.
Hägerström sat down. The Tube didn’t drop his gaze for a second.
JW continued to cut his pieces of stroganoff. Held the knife far down on the shaft, meticulously. He cut every piece of sausage in three parts. Mixed with rice. Pushed one of the pieces that he had chosen onto his fork. In Hägerström’s eyes, his manners belonged to a food-obsessed teenager.
He couldn’t even remember how young he had been the first time Mother had said, “Hold your knife and fork high up. So people don’t think you’re putting your fingers in your food.”
In other words: not the way JW was holding his.
JW opened his mouth. “How long have you been here now, Martin?”
An opening. He said, “Not long enough to know my way around all the blocks yet.”
JW laughed politely.
“But I like it better every day,” Hägerström said.
“Easy for you to say,” the Tube muttered. “You don’t have three more years until you get to go home.”
“I know, maybe it sounds weird to say I like it here. But the atmosphere in this unit is pretty cool.”
“You’re probably right,” JW said. “I’ve seen a lot worse. This place is chill. The only thing I miss is better workout facilities.”
Crazy Tim grinned. “Doing time’s good for you, man. Freshens you up. No booze and shit. Good in the head, I mean. But you get fucking fat too. Too little training and too little fucking.”
Everyone around the table laughed. Hägerström laughed too. Crazy Tim, Mensa candidate. And his sex jokes were similar to some of Hägerström’s cop colleagues’ bro’y lingo.
He was trying to come up with a clever retort, but his brain had apparently checked out for now. He didn’t come up with anything. He felt stupid.
The Tube, Crazy Tim, and JW kept chatting. Hägerström’s presence didn’t seem to bother them. A step in the right direction. But it didn’t bring him any closer to JW, not really.
He knew it would take time.
After ten minutes, they got up. JW rose first. The others followed him like kids toddling after their day-care teacher. Hägerström remained seated. He was thinking about his next move. Too many of his talks with JW had ended up like this—pleasant, accepting, and simple. But no trust. No opening.
He had to break into JW-land soon.
He had discussed several different strategies with Torsfjäll.
Soon Hägerström would kick his operation into full gear.
He had a plan.
12
Louise said it was, without a doubt, the party to beat all parties—the year’s most expensive, exclusive, elite private throwdown. Natalie’s attitude was more balanced. She was geared up to go. She was always let in to the clubs around Stureplan—if you’d worked the bar circuit, looked okay, had her legs and above all her dad, things usually worked out. But still: the fact that they were invited to Jet Set Carl’s housewarming party along with two hundred other special guests—that was seriously VIP.
At the same time: she didn’t feel all that great about the night ahead—what’d happened to Dad was scary.
Carl Malmer—alias Jet Set Carl, alias the Prince of Stureplan—had gut-renovated his penthouse on Skeppargatan and was celebrating with a big, bad blowout bash. More than three thousand square feet on posh Östermalm, Stockholm’s Upper East Side: that was some sky-high class. Jet Set Carl’d bought the neighboring apartment a year ago, torn down the walls, made the place like a loft—lots of open space. Not because he really needed more space but because he didn’t want to have neighbors who complained when he partied. It sounded like an exaggeration. But it’s what Louise said, anyway.
Louise’d kept Natalie up to speed in the days leading up to the party. Scribbled her Facebook wall full. The hottest guys were coming. The brats from the best families. She got herself more and more worked up. Keep your cell phone camera on—there are gonna be crazy photo ops, promise. Sometimes Natalie thought Louise wasn’t just a little bit of a bimbo, she was almost a hazard to herself. What did she imagine Jet Set Carl would think if he saw her posts?
The tabloids were amping up the mood too. Jet Set Carl: romance rumors with Hollywood starlets and European princesses. Jet Set Carl’s company: bigger turnover than the entire Stureplan Group. Jet Set Carl: ranked as the most powerful person within the Swedish entertainment industry by the gossip site Stureplan.se.
Louise seemed to think that they’d been invited because of her. Normally, that might’ve been true: she went out every weekend and was treated to bubbly by dudes with their shirts unbuttoned who just wanted to get off and get gone. But Natalie knew why they’d actually been invited.
Louise had a tendency to place herself at the center of attention a bit too often. She was a serious germophobe, never touched her mouth to the bottle when she drank, pulled her sleeves down to touch a door handle, never touched anything in a bathroom without disinfecting her hands afterward with her little tube of DAX Alcogel. And yet she would suck anyone off for a few hours of validation. But Jet Set Carl was friendly with Dad. If it wasn’t for that, Natalie and Louise wouldn’t even have been let into the afterparty.
Dad wasn’t happy about the fact that Natalie planned on going. She understood, that’s how it had to be. Her parents hadn’t exactly been Sweden’s most liberal before the assassination attempt, but they also didn’t want to treat her like a child anymore. Now they were trying to rein her in. And she understood them: the entire family had to be careful.
And what’s more: they didn’t just need to be careful. They had to avenge what’d happened.
Louise whined about Natalie being wishy-washy. “You’ve gotta come. You need it. Or I’ll go with Tove instead.”
Natalie wanted to go, but she didn’t have the energy to comment on Louise’s childish attempt to play her against Tove. Plus: Louise should know better than to nag at her—she knew what’d happened.
But two days before the party, Mom was actually the one who brought up the question. They were sitting in the den watching Grey’s Anatomy. Not Natalie’s favorite show, but she was okay watching it ’cause Mom liked it. Mom said that she’d talked things over with Dad, that they couldn’t keep her locked up forever. That Natalie must to be allowed to go out, live her life. They wanted her to have fun. Like before.
But when they’d discussed the matter again, Dad’d been kind of short: “You’re sleeping here, at home.”
“Okay,” Natalie said. “But maybe Viktor can pick me up and drive me home?”
“Isn’t he going to the party?” Dad wondered.
“No, he’s not invited.” Natalie was actually kind of relieved about that. Viktor worked around the clock these days. But not with his car showroom in Hjorthagen. Instead he said things like “I’m out on a job,” and “Soon, soon the money will start flowing.” She thought the whole thing was a bore.
Dad didn’t comment. He ended the discussion instead. “Since you’ll be sleeping here, me, Patrik, or Stefanovic’ll drive you home. Where and when do you want to be picked up?”
Back at Jet Set Carl’s enormous pad. Overflowing clothes hangers and a huge guy with a shaved head and unmistakable appearance: dark jeans, black leather jacket, and a turtleneck that fit snugly over a bulletproof vest. Bouncer, to the millionth power.
He checked his list. Natalie didn’t know if she and Louise were on it.
Louise tried to flirt. Pouted her lips. “Will you be inside at the party later? I want to get a picture of us together. I’ve never seen such a cool bouncer before.”
Louise smelled too strongly of J’Adore—and she was acting like someone who wears too much perfume too.
The bouncer didn’t even glance up. His fingers stopped at a point on the page. He looked at Louise, then at Natalie.
“You’re Kranjic, right?
”
She nodded.
“Welcome.”
They took their jackets off. Louise asked Natalie if she thought she’d put too much self-tanner on her face.
Natalie was wearing a dress she’d found at a vintage place in the Marais. Diane von Furstenberg—smashing, if she did say so herself. She was carrying a purse from Louis Vuitton. Stuffed with her iPhone, wallet, two packs of Marlboro Menthol, keys, a blush, YSL’s classic gold mascara, at least five Lancôme Juicy Tubes, and the new portable emergency alarm.
Louise was wearing a short, ruffled skirt and a tight tank top that she’d bought at the Marc Jacobs sale in Paris. Her push-up bra pressed her boobs up more ridiculously than usual. She would’ve needed a push-down instead.
The heat, the din from the party, and the smell of expectation in the air rose up like a wall of wonder. They pushed through. Inside: blond babes, B-list boob models with D-cups, and blazer boyz abounded.
The goal was to quickly find someone they knew or to be hit on by someone. They wanted to avoid having to stand around like losers, waiting for something to happen. To look alone was totally taboo.
They went into the kitchen—an enormous room, probably a thousand square feet. A bar’d been built in one half of the room. Smirnoff ads covered the walls: Jet Set Carl knew his product placement. Bartenders who’d been hired from the biggest club downtown bubbled up a steady golden stream of Taittinger and mixed drinks with the advertised booze as the main ingredient. In the corners: huge speakers were pumping out Eurovision-style music—appropriately ironic. The ceiling was covered in spotlights. Suspended from it were two crystal chandeliers the size of motorcycles. The light was reflecting in them like in the disco balls at the clubs Jet Set Cal usually controlled.
Natalie stared straight ahead. All her friends rocked that look all the time: the dead gaze. On the street: determined steps, head still, don’t turn it for anything except possibly avoiding being run over. At bars: stand and wait for your friend outside the ladies’ room and never meet anyone’s eyes—showing that you cared about others was a weakness.