by Jens Lapidus
They were playing ABBA.
The ceilings were pretty low here. A crystal disco ball was rotating slowly above the bar. Red spotlights were reflected in thousands of small red diamonds of light all over the room. Farther in was yet another room and a dance floor with black-painted walls.
Straight ahead: clusters of men. Men in tank tops. Men in blue jeans and jewelry. Hägerström lowered his eyes. The floor was made up of porcelain mosaic. He looked down at his feet. The mosaic was the color of the rainbow. Someone touched his shoulder. He looked up. Was met by a set of pale blue eyes.
“Are you nearsighted?” The guy smiled.
Hägerström smiled back. “No, I just wanted to get some attention.”
“It worked.”
The guy’s head was shaved, but he had a beard. He put his arm around Hägerström. Led him farther into the venue.
Hägerström’s spine was shooting out signals. Strong synapses. Sending tickling sensations all throughout his body.
They were playing Lou Reed. “Said, hey baby. Take a walk on the wild side. And the colored girls go doo do doo do dooo do do dooo.”
Hägerström followed the man with the beard out onto the dance floor.
The crystal ball rotated slowly.
Doo do doo do doo do do dooo.
It was two-thirty in the morning. Hägerström and the man with the beard stumbled out onto the street.
Hägerström heard a voice. “Hi?”
He turned around. Focused his gaze.
It was one of his brother’s closest friends, Fredric Adlercreutz, who was standing there on the street, dressed in a dark coat with a tux underneath.
Hägerström returned the greeting. “What are you doing here?” He parroted his brother’s tone of voice whenever they talked about Södermalm.
“What do you mean?” Fredric asked.
“I mean, in Södermalm. What else would I mean?”
“I was at a gentlemen’s dinner.” Fredric looked away. He probably didn’t know how to handle the fact that he had just seen Hägerström hand in hand with another man. Polite as ever.
A taxi pulled up. Hägerström took his chance. Grabbed hold of the man with the beard and jumped into the car. He couldn’t drop Fredric’s expression. It wasn’t the first time someone had seen him like this, but it still always felt kind of shitty.
Then he thought: a gentlemen’s dinner in Södermalm? Maybe Fredric Adlercreutz had actually been on his way into the same place that Hägerström had just stumbled out of. But if so, why had he chosen to greet him at all?
They drove to the man’s apartment on Torsgatan. His name was Mats. They started making out as soon as they got into the foyer.
Tore each other’s clothes off. Caressed each other’s arms, chests, necks.
Mats smelled musky, of perfume that had been worn all day.
They fell into his bedroom. The bed was unmade. He had pictures of his kids on one wall and a smoking jacket on a hook on the other.
Mats was a PR guy, he said.
Mats took Hägerström in his mouth on the edge of the bed.
Mats saw his kids every other weekend.
Mats brought out lube. Put his finger up Hägerström’s ass.
Mats said he had seen Hägerström at the Side Track Bar before.
Mats put his cock inside Hägerström.
They both groaned.
It felt unbelievably good.
Back at the prison. One morning after breakfast, Hägerström knocked on JW’s cell door. The guy barricaded himself in there, but you couldn’t exactly lock out a CO.
Hägerström eyed JW. The stitches over his eyebrow were still visible. The blond hair wasn’t as slicked back as usual—it was hanging more in wisps around his ears. Still, he looked pretty calm. Considering.
According to plan. Exactly the way Hägerström wanted it.
He had a seat on the edge of JW’s cot.
“So how are you doing? Really.”
JW was sitting on his chair, the laptop open in front of him on the table. “You’re pretty new in here, Hägerström, but you know what happened. It’s part of life on the inside, but that doesn’t make it fun.”
“I understand. And your boys have been transferred.”
Hägerström had devised his word choice carefully: your boys. A signal referring to the basic premise of prison life. You had your boys, your camaraderie—in JW’s case: your protectors.
“Yeah, bus therapy. Too bad—they were good people.”
The way he breathed when he spoke: Hägerström thought he could hear his suppressed northern dialect.
“I have a proposition,” he said.
He rose, walked over to JW’s cell door. Carefully pushed it shut. Sat back down on the edge of the bed.
“Abdi Husseini is still here. His people are still here. You’re left here, alone. That’s not a good combination, to put it simply. Like a cat and a mouse. But I could make sure he gets transferred.”
JW closed his computer. Slowly, attentively. Hägerström could tell: JW was listening, closely.
“You don’t know me,” Hägerström continued, “but I’ve got good connections. Good feel for the Department of Corrections. A few phone calls, and it’s a done deal. Abdi Husseini disappears from here, and you don’t have to worry anymore. How many months do you have left?”
“Less than three.”
“Okay, almost three months with Omar. Or three relaxed months without that lunatic.”
“The second option sounds nicer.”
“So what do you say?”
JW smiled. A crooked smile. A business smile. He understood—in the end, it all comes down to price. That was his basic outlook in life too.
“What do you want?”
Hägerström bounced back like a ricochet: “Fifteen thousand.”
JW played the ball right back to him: “Ten thousand. And how fast can you make him disappear?”
Hägerström could hear his own victory cry ringing through his head. “In max four days, I think. But in that case I want fifteen.”
JW chuckled. His teeth were as white and shiny as Torsfjäll’s. “We have a deal.”
Hägerström thought, I’ve got you on my hook.
Now all I have to do is reel you in.
18
The day after the funeral: Natalie was sitting in the armchair in her room. Gazing at her reflection in the switched-off television set.
Dad’d given her the television.
Really, what she should do was go into the city and meet up with a friend. Take a walk with Mom. Work out. Or download a movie. Do something.
But nothing worked.
She was supposed to meet Stefanovic this afternoon. The note Goran’d given her after the funeral: not a question—an order. But he wasn’t in a position to command Natalie to do anything. She wasn’t at anyone’s beck and call. No one made decisions for her—Dad’s employees were only supposed to shut up and obey. But still: she actually did want to see Stefanovic right now. See how he was doing, hear what he had to say.
She remained sitting in the armchair. The same reflection in the television’s black screen. The same meaninglessness.
On the wall: the photo of Dad when he was young.
On the dresser: the diamond earrings from Tiffany’s that Dad’d given her.
Dad.
She saw the same images flicker past in her mind over and over again.
The dark blue BMW across the street. Dad’s voice from the car. The flames. The smell of burned leather and human flesh.
Then she heard a sound. An irritating, penetrating indoor sound. It was the warning signal from the gate. Someone was making their way up to the house. Someone who’d chosen not to announce themselves through the intercom. Neither Mom nor Patrik seemed to hear it. The signal continued to blare out. It was only ten o’clock in the morning.
For a brief moment, she considered running to the safe room. But that seemed a little over the top. She should che
ck the monitors to see who it was.
The doorbell rang. Whoever it was, he was apparently standing outside the door, wanting to get in.
She rose. She’d owned the T-shirt she was wearing now since she was fourteen. It’d been washed so many times that it was soft as silk.
She walked out into the hall. Looked at the security monitor. Standing outside the door were three men she didn’t recognize. They didn’t look like murderers.
“Can you see who it is?”
Natalie turned around. Patrik was standing behind her.
“No, no idea. There are three of them. Should I ask?”
“No. I’ll take care of it. Get out of the hall, Natalie, until I’ve checked who they are.”
Natalie walked into the kitchen.
She heard Patrik’s voice: “Who are you?”
That canned sound from the speaker by the door: “This is the police.”
At least it wasn’t someone who was out to hurt them on a physical level.
She heard Patrik open the door.
Natalie was about to go out and greet them. She hesitated for a second before walking back out into the hall. A feeling coursed through her body—might be good to take it a little easy.
She heard their voices.
“We’re from the Economic Crimes Bureau.”
“Okay, and who are you looking for?”
“We’re not looking for anyone. May I ask your name?”
“My name is Patrik Sjöquist.”
“Please identify yourself.”
A rustling sound. Natalie was tense like a rubber band about to spring. It didn’t seem like these cops were here to talk to her, not to solve Dad’s murder. There was something else they wanted.
She heard one of them say, “We are here to go over Radovan Kranjic’s papers. Accounting, that sort of thing. So if you would be so kind as to show us where he kept that kind of material, we’ll take it from there.”
Patrik wasn’t going to match their game of pretend politesse. “You’re in the wrong place. We don’t keep paperwork here. It’s all kept in the offices of the businesses themselves or with the accounting firm. You’ll have to go there. This is where the family lives. And they are in mourning.”
Natalie tried to evaluate the situation quickly. She didn’t know if Dad kept bookkeeping and stuff like that at home. But she knew that whatever they wanted to get at, she didn’t want them to succeed.
She could hear Patrik continue to talk back out in the hall.
Finally, a cocky cop voice said, “Listen, buddy, calm down. We’re the ones who’ll decide if there’s something for us to find or not. And if you don’t quit it, we’re going to have to call for backup.”
Natalie’d heard enough. She left the kitchen. In the hall outside: she listened for the cops’ voices. She was several rooms away from them now.
She walked past Mom and Dad’s bedroom. It was empty. A six-foot-high headboard—like a canopy bed but without the canopy. The king-size bed was bedecked with a purple satin coverlet with the large Kranjic coat of arms embroidered on it.
The wall-to-wall carpeting muted her footsteps.
She walked past Mom’s bathroom, the den, her own bedroom. A bend. She walked past the guest room where Patrik was staying. The door to the library and Dad’s office was three yards away.
Now she could hear Patrik’s angry voice at a distance. Good—he was still arguing with the cops.
She opened the door to the office. The solid oak desk was covered in a large leather pad. On top of that was a pile of papers and a paperweight with the Kranjic coat of arms on it, a closed laptop, and a pencil stand—several of the pens had the Kranjic coat of arms on them. There was a real Persian carpet on the floor and decorative vases all around. On the bookshelf: books on finance, piles of paper, binders.
There was no time to be picky. Natalie moved toward her goal like a well-trained dog: the bookshelf. She grabbed as many binders as she could carry. Opened the door with her foot. Glanced back into the office one last time. There was one more thing she wanted to bring with her—an open binder on the desk. Dad must’ve been looking at it before he died.
She set down one of the binders she was carrying. Grabbed the binder on the desk. Total: she was able to carry seven binders if she balanced them on both arms at once. If there was time, she would come back and grab more.
She left the office. Walked down the hall.
She heard voices.
Cop voices.
Jerk voices.
Natalie opened the kitchen door. Walked out the back way to her car. Hoped that the cop fuckers didn’t see her.
She drove into the city. Called Louise to ask if she could stop by. Louise wasn’t home. She called Tove. Drove to her house with the binders.
She was back in her car again. She’d had a nap. Talked to Patrik, who guaranteed that there was nothing to worry about. He said all the important stuff was kept with Dad’s accountant, Mischa Bladman, at the offices of MB Accounting Consultant AB.
The cops’d cleared out Dad’s office. Natalie didn’t say anything about the binders she’d managed to take with her.
Now she was on her way to Södersjukhuset, the hospital that Stefanovic’d been moved to. It was conversation time.
She had plenty of time. Drove through the city. In by Norrtull. The Vanadis roundabout with lots of annoying pedestrian crosswalks where people ran straight out into the street. The city hadn’t been washed over with that familiar summer lull yet.
She drove Karlbergsvägen. Glanced down St. Eriksgatan. You could see all the way over the bridge to Kungsholmen, almost all the way to Fleminggatan. An unusually long view in her line of vision. A slice through the city. An artery that pumped life into Stockholm. Dad’s territory. Her territory.
She parked the Golf in a visitors’ parking lot below the hospital. Almost forgot to lock the car. Pressed the button on the key when she was twenty yards away. She heard the lock click.
The main entrance was large. She eyed the people. Old men with walkers, seven-year-olds with casts and their moms in tow, Somalian women draped in layers upon layers of fabric despite the sun that was shining outside. Natalie had no idea how she was going to get to the unit where Stefanovic was being cared for. She was afraid of getting lost.
But that wasn’t all. She was also afraid that she wasn’t going to be able to handle this. The meeting with Stefanovic wasn’t all. Stuff was happening constantly. The day before yesterday: she’d been called in for questioning with the police regarding the murder. They wanted to know what she’d seen on the street when the bomb exploded. Yesterday: the funeral. Today: the panicked binder-rescue mission right under the cop fuckers’ noses. And every day since Dad’d been murdered: terrierlike journalists who wanted her to comment on the events. What the fuck did they think—that she was going to open up about her feelings to them?
Unit 43.
She walked slowly down the corridor. A guy who looked to be around twenty-five was sitting outside one of the rooms. Natalie didn’t recognize him, but she recognized the style—track pants, a zippered sweater that said BUDO NORD on it, plus-size muscles, and distrustful eyes. He had to be one of Dad’s employees.
She nodded at the guy. He rose and opened the door for her. Natalie stepped inside.
A bright room. Windows looking out over the water, Årstaviken. Flower print curtains and furniture in light colors. Textured wallpaper, linoleum floor, and one hundred percent hospital feeling.
Stefanovic was sitting propped up by pillows in the bed that stood against one of the walls.
Goran, Marko, Milorad, Bogdan were sitting in chairs. One chair was empty.
Stefanovic’s face looked pale. Other than that, she couldn’t see any traces from the explosion. She almost couldn’t look at him—everything reminded her too much of Dad.
“Dobrodošao.”
Stefanovic remained where he was. The other men rose, kissing her on the cheeks, one by one.
N
atalie sat down in the empty seat.
Stefanovic propped himself up even taller against the pillows and said, in Serbian, “Good, everyone’s here. We can begin.”
He turned to Natalie. “It’d be good if you’d turn off your cell phone.”
Natalie met his pale eyes. “It hasn’t been on for a long time. The journalist assholes, you know.”
“I understand.”
He looked dead serious.
“I appreciate that we could all get together so soon. First of all, I want to say that I’ve heard from many sources that yesterday was very dignified. An important manifestation for us. Many powerful people were present. Dmitrij Kostic, Ivan Hasdic, Nemanja Ravic. Magnus Berthold, Joakim Sjöström, and Diddi Korkis, to name a few. I am happy for your sake, Natalie.”
Stefanovic’s spiel was weird—he was talking more about the guests than the actual ceremony. But Natalie didn’t say anything. Let him finish.
“And now we have to deal with the reality at hand. Two things. First of all, we have to save Kum’s assets. The Economic Crimes Bureau has visited the Kranjic family at home and also demanded the bookkeeping material from the accounting firm. If it wasn’t for my condition, I would’ve dealt with the binders days ago, but it’s too late now. The companies are probably going to be getting some pretty unfortunate letters from the tax man pretty soon. Natalie, I want to tell you that you should expect to get the same demands directed at the estate. There are accounts in several countries that we have to look into and secure. I have a suggestion for an estate manager for you.
“We are getting into formation,” Stefanovic went on, “readying ourselves to face every mommyfucker who thinks we’re down for the count. I promise you, the little punks out there think we’re going to lie down and die just because Kum Rado is gone. I’m assuming you’ve all already been called in for questioning with the police. They’ve been here anyway, and I got the distinct sense that they don’t want to investigate this properly. You know, the cops aren’t doing shit. They don’t want to find the murderer. No—they’re happy that Kum is gone and see their interrogations as a way to press us for information. And they want a war to break out in this city in order to make us all weaker.”