The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (57 page)

‘And …
if
I’m wrong.
If
. Then I’ll use it. If that’s our only option. If that’s the only thing keeping all hell from breaking loose.’

He got up to go, but Karlström – just as he’d done at their last meal together – reached out and put his hand on Broncks’s arm.

‘John? Are you interested in what I think?’

Broncks pushed away the feeling of wanting to break free, nodded and listened.

‘I believe in making the sale
and
an arrest. We have more resources than they have. But the most important thing is to end this madness. To be able to show everybody that we took them when we had the chance and not by luck. And after that … fewer bank robberies, fewer victims.’

Karlström still held onto him. Just like last time.

‘One more thing.’

And Broncks felt equally uncomfortable.

‘When this is over … I want you to take some time off. Do you understand?’

‘Sure.’

‘You hear that, John? Not a single case.
Free
.’

‘Later. When this is over. But I have a few things to do before that. For example, for the first time in my life I need to write a personal ad.’

THEY’D HAD A
six-year-old in the house for a week, but Leo had barely been there. He knew that Anneli was disappointed, it was so rare for her son to visit his second home, but she’d understand. He knew that too.

When this was over.

Now Anneli was asleep, now Sebastian was asleep, when suddenly Leo heard the lid of the mailbox being opened and closed, a metallic rattle in a beautiful, warm May dawn – the newspaper arriving and with it, the beginning of the end. He filled a large porcelain cup with coffee and put it down on the kitchen table.

All his planning had led to this moment. He went the few steps to the gate and the mailbox. Later today, he’d post the last letter, instructions the cops would use for the actual exchange.

Then it would be
over
.

All the planning, all his preparation had boiled down to this reply. He opened the newspaper near the middle, flipped, skimmed.

Page thirty-seven.

Leo stopped. His rage became an icicle, dripping from the top of his skull and cutting through his chest.

He wasn’t going back to the house and his coffee steaming on the table, he’d sit down in his car and drive while the day woke up.

He hated that fucking cop.

John Broncks hadn’t slept. Hadn’t even tried. The bed was still made, the bedroom door closed.

Three cups of coffee at the kitchen table, and he never drank coffee. But the blackness and bitterness seemed appropriate for a night of waiting.

The phone, lying next to page thirty-seven of the newspaper, the classifieds, rang for the first time. Then moments later it rang again while he was reading. And again.

He watched the phone as it rang for a fourth time, a fifth. Then stopped while Broncks counted the seconds to himself, like a child counting the time between the sharp flash of lightning and the muffled rumble of thunder.

Seven seconds. Then it rang again.

He let it ring three times this time.

‘Hello … Anna-Karin.’

‘You’ve made a big fucking mistake!’

So this was how his voice sounded when he was under stress. Neither powerful nor thin, and still absolutely no accent or dialect. It went well with the black-masked body he’d seen so many times.

‘You think so.’

‘Now listen to me, you little son of a—’

‘Are there many people there? Around you, there on Gullmars Square? Yes, I’ve had your last call traced. I can send over a patrol car if you want.’

‘We’ve been talking for fifteen seconds. I have thirty more seconds before you fail to trace the call. But first you need to understand one thing – you’ve just started a fucking war. You’ve put the weapons of the state into the hands of criminals.’

Broncks tried to catch any background noise. Completely quiet. Either he’d covered the receiver with something when he wasn’t speaking, or this particular phone booth was at a traffic-free site.

‘Big Brother … you know just as well as I do that’s not the case. Right? You have no record. Even though you might be the most dangerous bank robbers I’ve seen. How the hell does that work? It works because you can think. And therefore you
won’t
contact any other criminals.’

‘You shut the fuck up and listen closely, you little son of a bitch! I don’t need any contacts for my weapons to fall into the hands of others! I’ll just bury a few boxes and send a letter with red hearts on it, giving directions. Maybe you recognise the style? Forty automatic weapons in each box – one to the Hell’s Angels, one to the Yugoslavian mafia, one to those fools in the suburbs … and that’ll be your damn fault,
yours
, because you wouldn’t buy back what I stole!’

‘Listen. You know what? Right now there’s a black bag containing twenty-five million in used kronor on my desk at the police station. Your money. Which I was supposed to exchange. If I hadn’t decided to fuck all that.’

There was silence.

‘Because the only thing you’re really good at, Big Brother, is robbing banks. And you’re gonna rob again. And again! You hear that, Anna-Karin! You’ll be robbing banks again, you motherfucker!’

‘Broncks … John … you’re forgetting one small detail. You don’t know who I am or what I look like. But I know who
you
are and what
you
look like.’

Then the silence changed. No background noise. Big Brother had hung up. When Broncks put the phone down on the table, he realised he’d stood up during the call without noticing it.

Now he just had to wait for Big Brother’s next move.

It was eight o’clock by the time Leo rolled onto his property and parked. A coffee at one of the open cafés and a few hours’ aimless driving through the southern suburbs trying to calm himself hadn’t helped. The feeling that his plan had been a big, fat failure could not be dislodged.

He got out of the car and walked towards the garage. His persistent irritation was only increased by the sound of a bouncing ball. Sebastian was already awake and pretending to be a professional footballer, kicking the ball against the garage door, commentating on every shot in pretend English.

‘Hello, Extra Dad. Where are you going?’

‘Why aren’t you asleep?’

‘Wanna join in? I need a good goalkeeper.’

Leo opened the door beside the gate.

‘Sebastian? Go in to your mum.’

The six-year-old managed an unexpectedly powerful kick with his right foot, and the garage door shook.

‘She just sleeps all the time. Sleeps and sleeps.’

Leo picked up the half-inflated ball, and drop-kicked it far across the vast concrete yard towards the house.

‘Play over there.’

A disappointed look from Sebastian as he ran after the ball and his
extra dad went into the garage, turned on the lights and shut the door behind him.

It still stood under his workbench. He picked it up, put it down in the same place as before.

The typewriter.

Everything moved quickly then. A few steps towards the wall, to a sledgehammer. He raised it high above his head and swung, pulverising the heavy iron casing and slender keys, a loud scream ripping through his throat with each blow.

‘What are you doing?’

The damn kid had opened the door and was peering inside.

‘Get out!’

‘It’s so loud.’

‘Now!’

Leo didn’t even stop, raining down blow after blow as Sebastian closed the door behind him, and kept swinging until the typewriter was reduced to splinters of metal and plastic. It would never be used again! No fucking cop would be able to link it to those extortion letters! That was John Broncks’s decision, and Leo wanted nothing more than to complicate life for him, to fool him again and disappear before his eyes.

SEVEN MONTHS AGO
the envelope had been entirely white and had contained eighty-six 500-kronor notes. Now it was dark from being thumbed open and closed, and just four of those notes remained.

After years of silence, Leo had come to his home and waved it around.
I’ve just completed a major construction project in Tumba, the Solbo Centre. Seven hundred square metres. Commercial property, good money.

As soon as his eldest son had driven off in his shiny fucking company car, Ivan had rushed inside, looking for a pen under some Keno tickets, and had quickly written down what he needed to remember. He’d known it even then, forty-three thousand handed over like it was fucking Monopoly money.

That thirty-five grand you thought I owed you. And five thousand in interest. And three thousand more … One for each rib.

Ivan balanced the envelope against the beer glass on the table, yellow plastic just like the chair he was sitting on, while heat streamed from the wide pizza oven. He sipped a little more beer from his glass – but not too much, he had to be sharp when he left.

He turned his head to the window. The busy road outside quaked in the early summer warmth – he was surrounded by heat.

He had called twice and tried to ask his son if he was up to something he shouldn’t be, without getting any answers. Until recently, there had still been a slight possibility that he was wrong. That was until just now, when the hot-tempered fat man finished his beer and left the pizzeria. He was a construction manager named Gabbe who, Ivan had discovered after many phone calls, was the entrepreneur behind the job he’d written down on the envelope. He’d presented himself as a carpenter with his own business who’d received an offer to work with a builder named Leo Dûvnjac – and therefore was seeking references.

And the conversation had started out well.

The shrill foreman confirmed that indeed he
had
hired Leo’s company as a subcontractor, so the money
could
have come from a construction job. But then, halfway through his beer, the foreman had leaned forward and given him a piece of advice:
Be vigilant when they put in the bid. I’ll be honest with you. He won’t suit you. He dumps prices. It suits me ’cause I’m buying from him but for you, who’ll be working with him … they’re so far underpriced I don’t understand how they survive.

And now he knew. His suspicions had been justified. The foreman Gabbe had, without realising it, confirmed what Ivan had long suspected – that he recognised the masked robber on the television screen: it was his eldest son.

On the other side of the road stood a little house with a big garage.

The one the construction manager had pointed out.

Leo’s house.

Ivan drank up and put a fifty on the table. Everything would turn out as he’d thought it would during those long sleepless nights when the wine started to taste bad. First, he and Leo – the core – would unite in a small father-and-son firm that would gradually grow. Then he’d solve his problems with Felix and get to know Vincent, and they’d all sit and talk to each other in the evenings.

All four of them. Working and building a family business. A clan.

He set off. Across the main road. Towards the strange little house enclosed by fences with barbed wire spirals around the top – it looked more like a fortress than a home.

Hand against his breast pocket. He didn’t feel it – he’d forgotten the envelope at the pizzeria. No, there it was, close to his chest, a constant reminder of when he’d last seen his eldest son. It lay near his heart, just as it had month after month.

He was anxious to meet Leo, and he’d never been afraid of seeing anyone, ever.

Over the busy main road and onto a much smaller one and then around a proud wooden villa. Sweat slid down between his shoulder blades and stayed there, soaking the fabric of his shirt. He trudged past the villa and through an opening in the fence which reminded him of a small prison gate, and which led to an empty yard, almost completely covered in asphalt.