“We’re thinking of moving. Changing hoods. Things are going downhill in Tensta. I love the suburbs, I was born and raised there, but you can’t trust anyone anymore.”
Something about his voice . . . Jorma couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
“You still haven’t told me why you want to do this.”
“Neither have you.”
A security car with a Securitas logo came down the ramp to their level of the garage. They unconsciously sank down in their seats while the vehicle passed at a distance of ten meters. Its windows were tinted; it was impossible to see in. Then it turned off toward the steel door that hid the loading dock.
“Damn, we just got a lucky break. Time it, Jorma. I want to know how many seconds it takes for the door to open and close.” The electronically controlled door slid open, and they caught a glimpse of the secure area on the other side: a security camera angled down—no way its reach could extend more than twenty meters—and two guards from the shopping center waiting at the ramp. Then it closed again with a metallic whine.
“Thirty seconds.”
“Then that’s what we have to work with. Get back on the floor of the car. We’ve been here long enough.”
They left through the back exit. Zoran turned onto Ekholmsvägen and drove to an intersection. Aino had lived in this neighborhood for a few years in the late seventies. Dreary rental apartments. Buildings covered in graffiti.
A drunk woman with a pit bull was standing outside the Vårberg newsstand, talking to herself. He thought he recognized her.
They turned south on Svanholmsvägen and drove toward Vårby Gård. A few minutes later they stopped at a car park.
Jorma looked around. Hardly any vehicles, free parking. No windows facing the area from the nearby buildings. They could leave a getaway car there the night before the robbery, and no one would notice it in the morning.
“What do you think?”
“Should work. We’ll switch cars here and keep heading south.”
The car park was hidden from the larger road. There was a wooded area five hundred meters behind it.
Zoran kept driving. Backgårdsvägen. Walkways linked the redbrick buildings that flanked the street. The road narrowed around speed bumps. They should leave caltrops here too, as a safety measure—a single punctured tire would cork up the whole thoroughfare.
Vårby Allé. The neighborhood where he had begun his life of crime. He had lived here for a year, when he was thirteen. With a foster family, while Aino couldn’t handle him. Harri had been out of the picture by that point; he had packed up his few belongings and moved to Vällingby, where he bankrolled his alcoholism by teaching piano lessons at the community music school.
Aino had come to visit him in his foster home each Sunday, and she never wanted to let him out of her embrace when it was time to go. Social services had determined that his placement would last no longer than a year; she needed a relief period and Jorma would move home again as soon as her situation had improved. But instead he sank deeper and deeper into crime, until the authorities gave up on him and placed him in a youth home in Hässelby. That was where he’d met Katz, just as hopeless a case as Jorma. He could picture Katz, the first time they’d met. His vaguely Middle Eastern features from his father’s side, Jews who’d moved to Sweden before the war; his dark eyes, full of sadness and frustration. He had lost both his parents in quick succession. He had taken revenge on the world by fighting and doing drugs. The two of them clicked right away.
“We’ll head for Botkyrka,” Zoran said. “The cops will have lost us, and from there we can go whichever way we want, through Huddinge and back into the city, or back up on the E4 again, in the opposite direction. We just have to find a good hideout. Lay low for a couple weeks.”
They passed Vårby school, where he’d officially spent his last term when he’d lived here. In practice, he had never set foot there; instead he had hung around with the gangs in Fittja or gone into the city to rob kids his own age of their money. Unlike Katz, he had avoided drugs, but he had other vices: theft, break-ins, muggings, all kinds of shit that had presumably ruined people’s lives.
Regret? Maybe . . .
Lake Mälaren unfolded below them. More memories returned to him. His foster family. They had taken him in because of the money. The mother in the family disliked him; the father pretended he didn’t exist. He’d had foster siblings, two younger girls, Maria and Lotta, maybe eight and five, with whom he’d played now and then. But he hardly remembered them anymore; the agony he had felt must have erased them from his mind.
They were driving along the shore by now. The lakeside community gardens and steamboat docks. The luxury homes on the other side of the road, with views of Lake Mälaren. They passed Spendrups—that old Vårby brewery, he thought. They had sat on the dock one summer drinking beers someone had managed to steal from the trucks outside; little kids, all of them, but their future had already been written. Half of them were dead now.
They arrived at the high-rises on the other side of the highway. Fittja made him think of a foreign, destitute country, the outskirts of an African city; all that was missing was the heat and emaciated beggars.
“If we make it here, we’re safe,” Zoran said. “So, we have four days to get everything ready.”
He looked over at the endless rows of unwelcoming buildings. Mälaren, glittering in the sunlight. It will be just fine, he thought. Just one last job. Then he would be done with this life.
Katz had called again, he noticed when he arrived home. His mobile phone was on the kitchen table. Two missed calls, which he had no intention of returning.
He made a cup of espresso from the machine and took it out to the balcony. He started to flesh out the most crucial parts of the job.
They needed a safe apartment, or preferably a house, where they could lie low after the robbery. The first few days were the worst, as he knew from experience. But the manhunt would then begin to slacken off. It was all about momentum.
They needed at least three cars with fake plates; one of them would serve as a command center. And then another getaway car waiting for them in Vårby Gård. He knew a couple of trustworthy strawmen who dealt in cars, so on that front he couldn’t see any problems.
They also needed bulletproof vests and weapons. At least a couple of automatic weapons and smaller guns. If push came to shove with the cops, they had to be able to defend themselves.
He turned the page in his mental notebook and scribbled down the word “bomb.” A dummy would have to do; he didn’t have enough time to make a real one. They would have to put it somewhere highly visible at the crime scene in order to divert the first patrol. They wanted to force the cops to stop and deal with the bomb, but the blasting charge would have to look real if the ploy were to work.
He took a sip of espresso. New burner phones. They couldn’t be used until the job and would have to be thrown away immediately afterward. And zip ties to restrain the guards in case they resisted, and bags to transfer the money into. Duffel bags, he thought, seven or eight of them. They should buy them from several different sports shops so as not to raise suspicions. The whole city was full of security cameras; you couldn’t walk one meter without being caught on film.
The hideout would be the hardest thing to arrange on short notice. It would be best to take care of it via a frontman. Maybe a summer cottage close to the city. But Zoran would have to deal with that.
The espresso had cooled in his cup. He peered down the street. The afternoon rush hour was starting. Normal people, coming home from normal jobs. The abusive boyfriend upstairs had started playing Bob Marley on the stereo.
He walked back into his apartment, sat down at the piano in the living room, and looked at the sheet music on it. A Kurt Weill piece. Art music, just as difficult to play as a composition by Mahler. Sudden shifts in tempo, intricate left-hand moves, and advanced disharmonies. He struck the first chord but stopped as he heard the first notes of “Buffalo
Soldier” one floor above. They were fighting again. The woman screamed something in broken English, and then the man’s voice: “Shut up, you fucking Thai slut, I’ll fucking sew your cunt shut . . . Shit, you’re just awful . . .”
Jorma shut out the noise, walked into the kitchen, and continued his checklist.
Gloves, so they wouldn’t leave fingerprints. One more driver, and an extra person to put out caltrops on the exit off the E4.
He took the envelope of photographs from his jacket pocket. The insider’s pictures of the armored truck’s interior.
Nothing strange there. It was the old style, the kind Loomis and Falck had got rid of in the early 2000s because they were far too easy to open. On some of them, it took nothing more than a motor-driven angle grinder to cut open the door.
The photos had been taken with a flash, probably late at night when the guy was working late. Two cabinets on the right side were open; they contained gray bags, the ones holding the larger denominations. They were the type of plain old metal cabinet that could be jimmied with a crowbar. On the left was a storage area for bags full of lower denominations. At the very back was an instrument panel for the time locks and the alarms. There was a camera mounted in the middle of the ceiling.
Was he wrong about this? There was still time to back out.
He still had money left over from earlier jobs. He could loan it to Zoran, whatever he needed it for.
The fighting above him had moved closer. He heard the woman crying in the kitchen, the sound of something breaking, a chair hitting the floor, it sounded like . . . and then the man’s stoner voice as he called her a cunt, a whore, a Thai slut.
Gotta start calling around, he thought as he walked to the hall and put on his shoes. From a secure line. Arrange a meeting with some people to sell the job.
He met Micke Fredén and Stefan Lindros at the Ringen Center in Skanstull. They were waiting for him in the food court with their respective combo plates of yakiniku and sushi. They seemed happy to see him; it had been a few years.
He had got to know them in the late nineties, during one of the few times he’d been to prison. They had been planning an escape and Jorma helped them with a few favors. But both of them had been relocated before they were ready. Each had been transported suddenly, in the middle of the night, as if the COs suspected what was up. They served out their sentences in different facilities but contacted him once they were free again. They did some stuff together around the turn of the millennium. Blasting ATMs, among other things. With red plastic explosives, he remembered with nostalgia—that damp, cold surface, and the smell of it, like vanilla.
As far as he knew, neither of them had spent much time on the inside. He didn’t want to take any risks by working with people who were listed in the surveillance database. And no suburb kids or gang members. He was too old for that.
They made small talk for a while, telling each other about their lives since they’d last met. Lindros had done some business in Spain, buying up half-finished apartment buildings in bankruptcy estate and selling them on to people in the construction industry who needed to launder money. Fredén had worked as a bouncer at bars, doing some carousel crime on the side: he imported fizzy drinks and cigarettes from Germany and sold them in Skåne without paying VAT or the tobacco tax.
“But that’s not why we’re here,” he said. “You had a job in the works. Maybe we should go somewhere where we can chat.”
They left the Ringen Center and walked down to the Hammarby canal. Young couples with prams were strolling in the sunshine. A gang of teenagers was skateboarding alongside the quay.
“What kind of job is it?” Lindros asked.
“An armored truck . . .”
He told them about the middleman and the insider and explained the task.
“So, old trucks. Sounds like child’s play.”
“Aside from the timeline. It has to be done in three days.”
“How many people do you need?”
“Four or five, including me and Zoran.”
They had sat down on a bench by the water. A ferry was gliding away from the quay, setting course for Hammarby Sjöstad. Images from prison flickered through his mind. Life in a shrinking cell. The sense of claustrophobia that just got worse as years went by. Walking around with eyes in the back of your head to protect yourself from people who actually belonged in a psych ward but were instead dumped in a prison because society thought it was a good way to save money. His last turn had been at Österåker. Accessory to aggravated robbery. He hadn’t said a word during the trial; he had kept quiet as a mouse so as not to compromise anyone. He had only planned part of that job, obtaining weapons and doing a little recon, but he ended up getting nailed for the whole thing. He hadn’t grumbled or made an effort to get his sentence reduced. In reality, he had done time for other people, and once he got out he got his share, plus interest. But had it been worth it?
“You said Skärholmen city center . . . Have you been down to check it out?”
“Twice. Once with Zoran, and once by myself.”
“How does it look?”
He took a drawing from his jacket pocket to show them where the loading dock was, where they would stop the armored truck, the escape route, the position of the lookout who would stand guard by the E4.
“What kind of money are we talking?”
“Between five and eight mil. We’ll divide it up based on risk.”
The conversation flowed on. They discussed people who might be interested. Fredén had a bouncer colleague who needed cash. Jimme Gårdnäs. Lindros had an acquaintance from Uppsala he thought would be a good fit.
They had made up their minds without stating it. Jorma went through the times and the positions of the cars. The command center. The car that should be waiting at the Statoil station. He explained how they would get to and from Skärholmen city center, and how they would contact each other once the job was done.
“Let’s have another meeting tomorrow,” he said. “To go through all the details.”
“Your insider . . . you’re sure he can be trusted?”
“He’s so mixed up in this, he can’t back out.”
A woman walked by them on the quay. She was dressed like a plainclothes cop. Baseball cap. Motorcycle boots. Sunglasses. She sat down on a bench twenty-five meters away.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
A couple of workers were putting up scaffolding in front of a building. They laughed at something, handing each other tools. I could have been one of them, he thought. Done something constructive, instead of this.
He looked over his shoulder as they walked toward Barnängen station. The woman with sunglasses was still sitting on the bench. His mind played him another reel of prison memories. The psych eval he’d undergone during his last turn, a so-called “short psychiatric evaluation,” as required by law. Anti-social tendencies with elements of paranoia.
He had just laughed at it back then, but maybe there was something to it after all.
The forest they found themselves in was just west of Rönninge. There were no houses nearby, only a deserted gravel pit.
They had come in different cars, spacing their arrivals at ten-minute intervals, meeting up at a turnaround where the forest road ended. Thistles and small shrubs sprouted from the ground. The sky was gray as a corpse.
Jorma opened the boxes and put a SIM card in each phone, his hand shaking in a way that was unlike him. A bad feeling, he thought. Ever since he woke up . . . ever since they started planning this job. He couldn’t explain it.
He tested the phones by calling them. No problems. He turned them off again.
He saw Zoran’s determined face out on the turnaround.
“It’ll all work out,” he said. “We’ve done this before, Zoran, haven’t we?”
Jorma climbed out of the car and walked over to Lindros and Fredén and the friend they’d brought along, Gårdnäs. A psychopath type. Jorma could tell just by looking at
him. That was one more reason to worry. This guy might lose it if the cops showed up. He said he had spent the last year stealing cable from construction sites. He would go out at night with a stripping knife, a car and trailer, and a couple of grams of speed. If he was lucky, he could collect a hundred kilos in one night with his ulcerous, cable-blackened hands. It was a big step forward to be included in a robbery, he explained.
“Listen. Everyone takes a phone. The numbers are in ‘recent calls.’ The first one goes to the command center—that is, Zoran. Use them only with gloves on and toss them right after the job is done. Zoran and I will take the loot to the safe house. We’ll contact you, not the other way around, but you can count on it taking a few weeks for everything to calm down.”
A gray, misty morning. Birdsong in the distance. No audible sounds of people or cars. They were a kilometer from the closest main road.
“I’m super stoked for this!” he heard Gårdnäs say. “It’s making me fucking horny. Makes me wanna fuck, you know? Fuck!”
Jorma walked into the woods to take a piss, and he could smell the sulfurous smell of his own urine. When he came back to the turnaround, Zoran was standing next to the trunk of the Audi, unloading weapons: a few hand grenades, two Uzis, an AK-5, and a Czech M-23 submachine gun.
He smothered the bad vibes he got from the grenades.
“What’s wrong with you, Jorma, are you nervous?”
Could they see it on him, his anxiety?
“It’s fine. I’m focusing.”
Zoran opened the passenger-side door and took a pistol from the glovebox: a Tokarev 7.62.
Jorma’s pulse increased as Zoran handed it to him. The butt against his palm. The chill of the barrel. It was incredibly light. He had used a similar one during previous jobs. Could it be the same weapon? Some of them went around and around in circles.
“Take these too. In case we’re separated.”
The keys to the apartment. For security reasons, only he and Zoran knew where the hideout was.
The Tunnel Page 3