The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (70 page)

He took her hand, trying to pull her up, but she resisted and he let go.

‘Anneli!’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘We can’t stay here any longer!’

She’d made up her mind. She was going to stay – a decision as firm as her will to give up. Jasper turned back.

‘I told you, Leo!’ he hissed. ‘I told you she was the weak link! She’ll talk! We can’t leave her here, Leo, not alive!’

Leo grabbed him, pulling him close.

‘So what the fuck do you want to do?’

‘They pick her up, and she’ll point us out, one by one! All of us! Your brothers too!’

Jasper was right. The snowstorm had drawn all the strength out of Anneli in just a few minutes, and the only remaining life was in her confused eyes, which refused to face Leo or the reality that would catch up with her as soon as she was sitting in a warm police car.

‘Do you … want me to shoot her? Well? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Yes.’

Jasper grabbed the gun hanging on his shoulder and cocked it. But the only thing Leo could think about was how long Anneli would last in an interrogation – one hour, three hours, five hours – and how far he’d be able to get if he let her live, compared with if Jasper shot her.

And just as suddenly his head cleared and he rushed in between Jasper’s raised weapon and the woman who he’d chosen to share everything with him.

‘Anneli!’

He crouched down next to her, making sure the whole time to keep his back between her and the barrel of the gun.

‘Listen to me!’ he screamed.

She barely looked at him.

‘Don’t you remember, Anneli? When you rob a bank together, you can never leave each other!’

He pulled off his leather gloves and wiped the cold tears from her cheeks, holding her thin face between his hands, trying to find her gaze.

‘Get up now, for Christ’s sake – you have the energy! Come on!’

But she remained, sinking deeper into the snowdrift. And the woman
in front of him was someone else, not his Anneli, the one he’d always been able to rely on.

‘She’ll turn us in!’

Now it was Jasper who was screaming, while at the same time threading his left arm through the leather strap to stabilise the weapon’s muzzle.

‘Leo, I’m waiting! Give me the order, and I’ll shoot!’

Leo saw Jasper moving slowly in a semicircle around him to get a good shot, and then around his father who was standing stock still as he had the whole time, doing nothing that would give Leo some direction. Not a word. Ivan was a dark, motionless shape around which thousands of snowflakes danced.

‘No!’

He
was the one who’d planned the robbery.
He
was the leader, and
he
had to make the decision.

‘Secure your fucking weapon, Jasper!’

He grabbed hold of the muzzle and twisted it away.

‘Don’t you understand, Leo? She’ll turn you in!’

‘She is not going to die.’

That was just how it was. They were here because he’d relied as much on his father as he had on Anneli.

‘If anyone is going to die here, it’s me and Ivan – because we’re not finished with each other.’

Because once again, someone had left their mark on the crime scene.

‘We’re leaving now, do you hear me? She’s staying here, and we’re going on.’

He kissed her, but she didn’t meet his lips. He could feel her warm breath so clearly in the cold wind.

And it was strange, but sometimes you just know when it’s the last time.

FELIX MOVED A
dessert plate, a half-drunk glass of beer, and one of those dull maths books Vincent had spread out all over the place, and put down a tiny plastic Christmas tree, the smallest kind, which could stand on a kitchen table like a houseplant. The artificial Christmas spirit,
the illusion that everything here was just like everywhere else, that’s how it had always been as long as he could remember – always too much, false, strained, ruined each time by his father’s yelling, demands, folly. A plastic tree on a kitchen table corresponded exactly to what Christmases had always been – small.

He should have felt calm: this was an evening in a new life with no past. His little brother close by in the armchair in front of the TV, a remote control in each hand, clicking between TV channels.

Yet calm was the one thing he didn’t feel.

‘Turn it off. Everything.’

‘I have to.’

‘And I don’t want to know. Turn it off, damn it!’

Vincent had been sitting there for six hours, watching news bulletins as the anxiety seeped out of him.

‘Turn it off!’

‘I will not.’

‘I don’t want to know. I’m fucking well here. In Gothenburg! I’m not there!’

Felix sat down in front of the plastic Christmas tree and drank the other half of the beer in the glass. It was lukewarm. He could feel the anxiety creeping through Vincent’s pores, mouth, nose, and he remembered the only time he had smelled death – one of the neighbours, who’d lain alone for a long time behind closed doors had had just such a smell.

He couldn’t take it any more, almost throwing himself into the living room and snatching the remote controls from Vincent’s hands, turning off the TV. Vincent looked at him in surprise, grabbed the phone lying on the coffee table, and hit one of the few saved numbers.

‘Don’t call them!’

Too late. The call had already gone through. And Felix could see it in Vincent’s face. Hope. There might be others. Others who had also scouted
out Heby and chosen this particular day. They didn’t know, couldn’t be completely sure, and it could—
Hello, you’ve reached Leo and Anneli, we can’t come to the phone right now, but …
and then the long beep, and Vincent hung up.

Now they knew.

Felix grabbed the phone and threw it at the wall. It fell apart.

‘He couldn’t leave it alone! He had to keep going, even though we moved here and … fucking hell, Vincent!’

He kicked the plastic fragments of the mobile phone and slapped his hands against the walls and doorframes, and Vincent’s smell was even worse now. He rushed into the kitchen, to the four Christmas presents that lay under a stool in one corner, two each, and picked up one of them – oblong and rectangular, with wrapping paper that was not completely smooth because he’d wrapped it himself.

‘This one was for you.’

He handed it to Vincent who opened it, paper and ribbons falling in a pile on the floor. A box. And inside – a bottle of whisky. Single malt. Felix got out two clean glasses and filled them all the way up to the brim. They drank until the glasses were empty.

‘He’ll never give up,’ said Vincent, filling the glasses again. They drank again.

‘Do you understand, Felix? I should have been there!’

He wept, first quietly, then violently.

‘I was supposed to be there, Felix … damn, damn!’

And he didn’t smell any more, the tears that never seemed to end rinsed him clean.

‘You understand that, right? He’ll never give up – not alive.’

The snow came up to Leo’s knees. The winter cold cut through shoes, jackets, skin. And the wind had become a storm again, whipping, hunting, defying.

I’m going straight through.

Those bastards will never get close, never demand answers.

Straight through.

Leo first, Jasper last and Ivan between them, moving forward in Leo’s tracks, his breathing strained, hands clenched tightly in his pockets, ski mask pulled down over grey hair. Twenty minutes. Halfway there. The
forest opened up into a large glade, an easier passage, and they zigzagged across, making time, leaving their pursuers further away.

Until Leo, who was in front, started to sink. Quickly. Up to his waist, his chest. This was no open glade. It was thin ice over a bog. Icy water rushed into his trousers, his jacket, and his shoes stuck fast in the mud.

‘Leo!’

Ivan, with short steps, came as close as possible, and then stretched out his hand to Leo. His son was stuck. He crouched down, the soles of his boots hard against the slippery surface, and pulled. Then the ice broke. One leg went down into the black water, one leg still on the edge of the ice, while he hauled Leo with all his remaining strength. Then the bog, as suddenly as it had grabbed hold, decided to loosen its grip.

They heaved themselves up and rolled onto solid ground, lying next to each other until the coughing that had started somewhere deep in Ivan’s lungs slowly subsided.

‘Leo, you can’t go on. Not like this. You’ll freeze to death.’

It was below zero and the wind howled. The mud and water that covered his son up to his chest would soon turn to ice.

‘They’re on their way! We have to keep ahead of them!’

He didn’t look at his father or at Jasper as he set off, teeth chattering. Ivan caught up with him and grabbed his jacket.

‘Did you hear what I said, Leo? Don’t you understand! You have to dry off! Otherwise it doesn’t matter how fucking far you get!’

Leo broke free and started walking again.

Straight through.

Ivan caught up with him once more.

‘There are some summer houses! Over there … on the other side of the clearing, see?’

The house wasn’t very big. Red panelling, white trim. Nestled among protective trees. Just like any other Swedish summer house.

‘Go, damn it!’ said Leo, pushing him away.

‘We’re going inside to get you dry.’

Ivan pointed into the woods.

‘
Then
we keep going. If you don’t dry off in this weather, Leo, look at me … you could die.’

John Broncks parked next to the little square where the bank stood just a mini-market away. A small town that could have been Ösmo or Ullared or Rimbo or Kungsör, a few thousand inhabitants and a town centre with shops, a bank, a library, all concentrated in a small area – they’d also been methodical in their choice of crime scene, had always chosen places with limited police resources, easy to get into and out of.

The rest was similar, too.

The billowing tape around the roped-off area, forming a square around the bank’s two windows, in order to keep the curious away. The closer he got, the more confused, frightened, weeping people. Inside the bank there were shot-up cameras and a security door open to an empty vault. A uniformed police officer, who had just finished interviewing someone, met him and pointed towards the exit.

‘I’m gonna have to ask you to—’

‘John Broncks, City Police, Stockholm.’

He examined a badge that looked the same as his own.

‘Broncks?’

‘Yes.’

‘My name’s Rydén, Heby police. You’re pretty far from home.’

‘I know.’

‘We already have patrols from Heby and Sala and Uppsala here.’

‘I know that too. And I think I know who you’re chasing.’

Broncks spent fifteen minutes talking with customers and cashiers who’d been inside the bank when two masked men ordered them to lie down on the floor. He picked up cartridges manufactured for Swedish military automatic weapons, and on an eight-second video clip saw both the leader and the shooter, the ones he called Big Brother and the Soldier.

It was them. No black jumpsuits, and just two of them inside the bank. But it was them.

More than a year of hunting, and he’d never been this close.

The local police station was near the entrance to the town, and Broncks had gone past on his way to the bank without seeing it. He now found a modest building that resembled a brick house, decorated with gnomes and wreaths just like the much larger headquarters in Stockholm, with even the same half a cake and half-finished cups of coffee inside. A Christmas party interrupted by a bank robbery.

Rydén showed him in, and they passed the interview room where a woman sat staring blankly – thirties, blonde, a blanket over her
shoulders and a hot cup of something in her hands – as she listened to questions from a female police officer. She listened but didn’t answer at first, and when she did reply her responses were vague, as if she was in shock.