by The Helicopter Heist- A Novel Based on True Events (retail) (epub)
The fact that Löwenheim had passed the brothel both surprised and relieved her.
She rounded the corner at high speed, and found herself about to run straight into the older man. He was standing outside the entrance to Grevgatan 63 with one hand on the door handle, and he turned around in panic.
“I, what?” he exclaimed.
His shock was understandable. He hadn’t seen another living soul in several minutes, only to find himself being almost mowed down.
Thurn stopped dead. Her pulse was racing, her breathing heavy, and she had no idea what to say.
In the next instant, he recognized her.
“Caroline?” he said. “Is that you, Caroline? My…what a coincidence!”
She tried to compose herself.
“Headmaster Löwenheim,” she replied. “It’s…been a while.”
He held out a hand and she took it automatically, shaking it as though she was thanking him for a diploma at a graduation ceremony. His handshake was limp and damp, she remembered it well. But it wasn’t his handshake that the girls at school had gossiped about, it was the hugs that quickly became too intimate, the glances that lingered for far too long before they reached your eyes. The scandal with the matron in one of the boardinghouses was something Löwenheim could never shake off.
“I saw your father only last week, at a dinner in Nääs,” Löwenheim now said. “He seemed to be in good spirits.”
“Yes,” Thurn replied evasively. “I’m sure he is.”
“We spoke about your brother for quite some time, but we never got round to you…”
“No,” she said, “these things happen.”
* * *
—
Caroline von Thurn hadn’t used her noble “von” since she realized that Grefvelsta Gård in Närke, the place where she and her father, her grandfather and great-grandfather had all grown up, would be taken away from her.
She was fifteen at the time, and had recently enrolled at Lundsberg boarding school, where her classmates had explained what would happen. She wouldn’t get a thing. Thanks to laws dating back to the seventeenth century, the farm and its land would be inherited by her younger brother. Fifty years earlier, the Swedish parliament had agreed to phase out the so-called fideicommissum, the rule that decreed that the oldest son was the heir of his ancestors, but an exception had been made for Grefvelsta, among other places.
To begin with, she hadn’t believed her friends. Thurn had called her mother that evening, but all she had been able to do was refer her to her father. She explained that she had nothing to do with “all that”; it was something her father had decided.
And when her father came to her school a few weeks later, it wasn’t for Thurn’s sake, it was because he sat on the governing board. He was more irritated by her questions than anything else. He didn’t need to justify a thing, he couldn’t be held accountable. It was just how it was, the way it had always been, it wasn’t about fairness. People were born into a certain context, in a certain place, some were born men and others were born women. The girls in the family would never be running farms or inheriting land.
When her father left that day, the betrayal had burned in Thurn’s throat and heart. By evening, she could barely breathe. It was as though a thin, beautiful rug on which her entire childhood was depicted had been pulled out from beneath her feet, leaving her standing on an earth floor that stunk of old prejudices and was steeped in small-mindedness.
Over the week that followed, her initial shock was replaced by a deep sense of injustice. It was something she would nourish and develop during the three years she spent at that boarding school in the forests of Värmland. When she graduated from high school, it had long been too late for her to return to her family home.
The day she left school was the last time she saw her father, mother and brother. There were no dramatic farewells, she was far too well raised for that kind of drama; causing scenes was something that the boarding school drummed out of its pupils, if they hadn’t already learned it earlier. She would see her mother and father again if it was necessary. If not, she wouldn’t bother.
And so, Caroline von Thurn became Caroline Thurn, and she sought out a different life for herself.
She became a police officer.
“Well,” said Headmaster Löwenheim, “running into one another like this, in the middle of the night? But I’m afraid I must hurry off.”
“Aha?” said Thurn. “Where are you heading?”
In the moment he recognized her, he had let go of the door handle as though it had burned him. He now mumbled a vague reply.
“I have a sister whose sister-in-law lives around the corner. I sometimes help…it was urgent…she has trouble with her hip…living alone isn’t easy.”
He was already on his way, backing up a few steps.
“Say hello to your parents, Caroline,” he added before turning around.
She stood there, watching as he limped away. She let him leave.
Then she turned to the door he had been about to go through.
This address on Grevgatan, this entrance, led into the same building they had been watching on Karlavägen. And she realized it was the reason she had never seen anyone go in or out of the brothel.
The ambassadors and members of society who frequented the establishment would enter through this considerably more discreet entrance around the corner.
Sometimes, the answer was simpler than you wanted to believe, Thurn thought.
She slowly walked back out onto Karlavägen. As she did, she called for backup. The uniformed officers could go up into the building and catch the men there in the act.
There was no doubt about where Löwenheim had been heading, and when he failed to follow through on his plans, he had inadvertently revealed them.
Caroline Thurn no longer had any interest in going in to make the arrests herself. If the headmaster knew about the brothel, there was a risk that other men from her father’s circles might be up there in its bedrooms. And she was happy to avoid that discovery.
33
When Maloof pulled into the parking garage at Skärholmen Centrum on Tuesday, August 25, it wasn’t particularly busy. For once. He had planned for them to keep moving along the long, shop-lined corridors of the shopping center, but he changed his mind when he saw how quiet it was. Zoran Petrovic was a head taller than everyone else, and it took a real crowd to hide him.
Better to go for a walk in the woods around the shopping center, Maloof thought, pulling in between two dirty gray cars—it was impossible to determine their make, an Asian variant of some old car.
The parking garage smelled of exhaust fumes and greenery. Maloof took a deep breath and shivered in the cool breeze. On the backseat, he found a scarf that must have been lying there since spring. He wasn’t ready for autumn yet.
He also hated problems. Petrovic was suddenly having to find a new pilot. Nordgren hadn’t managed to blow a hole in the concrete roof, meaning they had to come up with another way of getting in. If that was even possible. Everything seemed to be going against them all of a sudden.
Maloof saw Petrovic’s blue BMW approaching from the north entrance. He also noticed the car that pulled in after it, a silvery-gray Saab. It was no more than a brief observation, however; the car rolled on and he soon forgot about it.
Petrovic parked and then the tall Yugoslavian came loping across the garage in his short, pale summer coat. He waved cheerily.
Maloof replied by pointing toward the woods.
Petrovic turned and started to walk in the other direction, away from the shopping center. Maloof followed him.
Rather than parking, the silvery-gray Saab continued to creep along at a safe distance behind Maloof and Petrovic.
* * *
—
The first stage of their walk took them down a winding path deep into the forest, over hills and past small fields. The ground was dry, the deep furrows the summer rain had dug into the gravel on the slopes h
ad vanished without a trace, and Maloof’s new sneakers survived without getting dirty.
They were talking about helicopter pilots.
“I might have a guy,” the ever-hopeful Petrovic said. “When I was down in Cannes last time, I met an American who…he was in the import and transport branch. Sold American chemicals that made potatoes grow bigger. Or maybe it was less grainy? Anyway, he’d been in…the transport branch…a long time. And when he was working over in the West Indies, he’d had a helicopter pilot who flew stuff between the islands. That guy, Kluger, he’s been in Sweden for a few years now.”
The path led them out into an open field, and they passed an abandoned farm. Maloof had never seen a single sign of life in there. As they reached the middle of the open field, approaching the next wooded area, something made him turn around and look back.
The silvery-gray Saab was parked by a broken fence, almost out of sight. This time, Maloof paid attention to it. He waited until they were back among the trees before he said anything.
“We’ve got company.”
“What?”
“We’ve got company,” he repeated. “Look.”
They walked back on themselves. Maloof pointed between the thinning trunks and Petrovic saw the silvery-gray car.
“It followed you into the parking lot.”
“Me?” said Petrovic. “Are you sure?”
Maloof smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “No.”
“No?”
“Let’s check.”
Rather than continue into the woods, Maloof turned back and cut across the grass to the narrow paved road that passed the abandoned farm, the way the Saab must have driven. Petrovic followed him. After walking for a few minutes, Maloof took out his phone and held it in front of him. In the reflection of the screen, they saw the car start up and slowly begin to follow them.
“Shit,” Petrovic swore.
They continued toward the shopping center parking garage. Maloof’s intention was to shake off the tail by heading down into the subway. An increasingly irritated Petrovic, however, seemed to have different plans.
“Jesus Christ,” the Yugoslavian swore. “This is so fucking low. We’ll show that bastard. He’s got no damn right to follow us. We haven’t done anything.”
“Well, I mean…”
“Today. We haven’t done anything today.”
They had reached the parking garage, and while the silvery-gray car continued to creep along the small road, Petrovic ran to his BMW and jumped in. He leaned across the passenger seat and opened the door for Maloof.
“Come on!” he shouted.
Hesitantly, Maloof climbed inside. In the rearview mirror, he saw the Saab approach the entrance to the parking garage and then come to a halt. After that, everything happened very quickly. Petrovic reversed out of the space so quickly that the tires screeched. He threw the car into first gear, revved the engine and drove straight at the exit. To make his intentions even clearer, he sounded the horn madly.
“What are you doing?” Maloof shouted in surprise.
Petrovic didn’t reply, he just continued to drive straight forward. The driver of the Saab realized that he would end up on the wrong side of the exit unless he did something, and so he picked up speed and made it just before Petrovic, who turned the corner on two wheels.
“What are you doing?!” Maloof shouted again.
The sudden turn had thrown him against the door, and he crawled back upright and put on his seat belt.
“We’ll get him. I want to ask why that bastard is following us!” Petrovic snapped irritatedly, attempting to talk over the engine, which was approaching 4,500 revs.
“Right, right,” Maloof mumbled. “We’ll get him. We’ll get him?”
The German car roared. The Saab was a hundred or so yards ahead of them, on its way up the exit to the highway.
“We’ll force him off the road!”
Maloof didn’t reply. It was the worst idea he had ever heard. He glanced over to the speedometer. They were already doing a hundred, but the Saab seemed determined not to let them catch it.
“Why isn’t he stopping?!” Petrovic yelled.
The Saab was heading toward Södertälje, and Petrovic kept after it. They were almost bumper to bumper, but whenever the traffic thickened, the tall Yugoslavian changed his mind and focused on survival.
“We’re chasing a cop,” Maloof pointed out.
“That’s the way it should be,” Petrovic said, laughing.
“Right, right,” Maloof agreed. “But if he’s police, why doesn’t he just pull over, stop us and give us a ticket for speeding?”
* * *
—
After passing the exit for Fittja and Botkyrka at 120 miles per hour, they approached Södertälje.
“To hell with this now,” Maloof pleaded.
He looked indifferent, as usual, but inside, the panic was rising. However this ended, it couldn’t be good. But Petrovic seemed to have no intention of giving up.
On the straight stretch to the south of Salem, they saw the roadblock. Right in the middle of the highway.
To begin with, it seemed to be nothing but a single patrol car with its blue lights flashing, but the closer they came, the clearer it became that this was something else. Maloof could count five police cars parked across the road, waiting for them.
“Shit,” Maloof mumbled, sinking into his seat as though he were trying to make himself invisible.
Up ahead, the silvery-gray Saab slowed down. The cars blocking the road moved to the side, and it passed them. The gap closed again behind it.
Petrovic braked. He slowly pulled up and came to a halt a few yards from the patrol cars, he wound down his window. A female police officer came over and nonchalantly greeted him, as though she were helping a tourist with directions.
Maloof was expecting the worst, but nothing happened.
“That was a bit fast, wasn’t it?” she said kindly.
Maloof couldn’t believe it. Why did she sound so friendly?
“We want to report that car,” Petrovic said, pointing to the Saab which was vanishing into the distance. “He’s been harassing us.”
“In what way has he been harassing you?”
“He was following us.”
“Really?” the officer replied, giving Petrovic a few seconds to think.
“Not right now,” Petrovic said when he realized why she had paused. “That was me following him. But only to ask him to stop following us.”
“I suggest we draw a line under this,” the police officer said. “You’ve clearly been following one another. I think we can leave it like that?”
Maloof continued to stare through the window, but the situation was just getting stranger and stranger. Why weren’t they asking for driver’s licenses, ID, how could she not point out that they had been driving at 120 miles an hour?
The police directed Petrovic onto the other side of the highway, where he could drive back to Stockholm.
SEPTEMBER 2009
34
“Seems like an uphill struggle,” said Ali Farhan.
“Tricky,” Adil Farhan agreed.
Sami Farhan shrugged. His brothers were, of course, right.
They were eating dinner at their uncle’s restaurant in Liljeholmen, and the fact that they were three brothers sitting around a table wasn’t something anyone could have missed. Big brother Ali looked oldest, tougher than the others, with furrows on his forehead and around his eyes. Still, his eyes and nose were identical to Sami’s. Their younger brother, Adil, had considerably more hair and smaller eyes. There was also a sense of calm about him, whereas both Sami and Ali gestured intensely as they spoke, and radiated the same kind of impatience.
“I mean, sometimes it’s just like that,” Sami defended himself. “Things are a bit up and down?”
“Yeah, but there are uphill struggles and uphill struggles. You lot seem to be stuck,” Ali determined.
Coming to the res
taurant as a guest was a very different experience from working in its cramped kitchen. In the kitchen, you toiled away and were proud of your work. The equipment wasn’t new, but it was well cared for; the fresh ingredients weren’t exclusive, but they were carefully chosen. Ambitions were always high in the kitchen, and the food they prepared was worthy of a better fate than ending up in the hands of the weary serving staff who carried the plates out into the tired, dark restaurant that looked like any other drinking hole.
Being a guest should have been better than working on the cold buffet, but to Sami it was the exact opposite. He had just gone through the situation. Not in detail, but he had given his brothers the bigger picture. There was no doubt they were right. Right now, everything was going in the wrong direction.
“We’ve got something on the go,” said Ali. “Maybe you could hang with us instead?”
“Yeah,” Adil agreed. “It would be cool. Like back in the day.”
Sami squirmed.
“I need to pay people back first,” he said. “You know what I mean? You get your interest first, then we can talk about the future.”
“Take it easy, little brother,” said Ali.
“The hell with that. We’ll get the money when you get the money. No more complicated than that,” Adil backed him up.
Sami knew they wanted to be kind, that they wanted to play down the fact he had burned their money and allowed himself to be screwed over by the captain of some fucking ship. But neither the fact that Hassan Kaya had also been burned nor his brothers’ consideration made it feel any better. He owed them, and he had to repay that debt. As well as the promised interest.
“No, it doesn’t work like that,” Sami said, pulling at the neck of his T-shirt. “I made you a promise. You know?”
They understood, but they took no notice of him. Ali changed the subject and started talking about soccer instead. Adil joined in. Sami had nothing to add to a conversation about Chelsea and Arsenal, and he quickly retreated to the silence that his brothers always reduced him to.