The Sons: Made in Sweden, Part 2

by Anton Svensson

  Was this what Sam Larsen committed murder with?

  And why—what connection did he have with the murder victim and to a plaintiff named Maria Broncks?

  The medical examiner’s report was considerably thinner, seven pages.

  Cause of death: multiple organ failure caused by direct sharp-force trauma to internal organs and massive internal and external bleeding.

  A pathologist’s explicit language filled the image with substance.

  The torso shows 27 stab wounds in total, of which 21 have sharp borders and 6 have the character of lacerations with ragged borders.

  A story of a murderer who repeated death again and again.

  In one of the stab wounds with a sharp border, a broken-off tip of a knife-like object was found—lodged under the sixth rib in the mid-axillary line. This tip measured 2.5 x 3 cm.

  What was it about the victim that had incited Sam Larsen to this utter fury?

  The judgment in its entirety was truly a tome, two hundred and thirty pages, which she skipped over. The summary she had already read up in her office was sufficient for now. However, the preliminary investigation, nearly as thick, might contain more answers. And she didn’t need to read further than the introduction—the one emergency call—before the most remarkable week in her life in the police force became even more remarkable. There she found the answer to why her closest colleague had consistently broken the police profession’s code of honor—both by lying and in deed he had deliberately obstructed their joint investigation.

  “Hello, my name is John Broncks. I want to report a murder.”

  Two emergency calls had been made about the same incident almost simultaneously—one by the plaintiff, Maria Eva Broncks, from a neighbor’s house to which she fled. The other was from the scene of the murder itself, by a not yet sixteen-year-old boy.

  “I understand. I am going to help you. What number are you calling from?”

  “Zero, one, seven, one. Then eight, four, zero, eight, four.”

  “Are you sure the person is dead?”

  “Yes. The entire bed is full of blood.”

  “Do you know who the dead person is?”

  “My papa.”

  Elisa let the heavy bundle sit for a moment. She suddenly saw what she had always found missing in him. That neutral appearance that kept the violence at a distance. An investigator’s eyes and voice and movements that didn’t reflect what he worked with every day.

  She understood now how Broncks had decided that it would never get to him.

  “Are you alone?”

  “My mama ran to the neighbor’s. My big brother is probably here somewhere. He was the one who stabbed him. Several times.”

  “Now I want you to listen to me, John—because I want you to run immediately to the neighbor’s too. And wait there until the police come.”

  “I don’t need to hide anymore. Papa is dead.”

  Yet he hadn’t succeeded in running from it any longer.

  The violence had gotten to him.

  It had caught up.

  Elisa closed the thick preliminary investigation and put it in the archive box with the judgment and the medical examiner’s report and the technical report. Now she understood. Now she had her facts. But it didn’t matter. The bastard had tricked her deliberately and sabotaged their investigation. Why was completely irrelevant. It gave him a motive—but did not free him from responsibility.

  She climbed up on the rolling step stool and pushed the archive box into its place at the far end on the seventh shelf. The room she liked so much had once again widened her perspective. And now she was on her way out of there to continue a police investigation in which she fought and pursued two sides for the first time: the perpetrator, who committed the actual robbery, and her own colleague, who committed a different crime that in her eyes was just as terrible—treachery.

  ELISA SOMETHING WALKED by out in the corridor between Oscarsson’s seventh and eighth retrieval, heading in the other direction. Leo was able to follow her purposeful steps on the monitor placed on a chair on the other side of the wooden counter. She must be finished with what she was doing. The only person, other than Broncks, who could have recognized him. And he was still the only visitor to the property room. No one on behalf of another investigation had shown up to retrieve something from the thousands of pieces of evidence lying down here, packaged in brown envelopes or cartons.

  Then, the loud panting.

  That meant that Oscarsson was approaching, carrying the ninth fifty-pound package in his arms. Bright red. Soaking-wet temples, as well as forehead and neck, sweat forming a shiny film over the skin. Even the brown wrapping paper was damp from being pressed hard against the checked shirt. A thud when, without the strength to resist, he dropped the box onto the counter. The gray suit jacket had been lying there since the fourth run.

  “The next . . .”

  The man in the storage room was breathing heavily, clipping his words in the insufficient, dry air.

  “. . . to last.”

  In spite of his age and physique, he had so far kept a reasonable, steady pace. Once he stopped talking about how tough it was to work and actually started to work, each trip had taken him almost exactly one minute and forty-five seconds.

  13:55:30

  Nineteen of the twenty-one minutes Leo estimated for this part of the plan were used up.

  “Fine, Oscarsson, then you can take care of the tenth right away.”

  If the man in the storage room didn’t take a sudden break, if he also retrieved the final piece of seized property at the same speed as the others, and after Leo signed in the right spot and sealed his own considerably larger moving boxes, the time period would certainly have been exceeded—but not enough to run directly into the regular, scheduled transport.

  A coup was still possible.

  “Right, Oscarsson? While you are already moving, I mean. Then it’s my job to drag them further.”

  “All right. The la . . . st. The ten . . . th. When I . . .”

  There was a Coca-Cola bottle halfway filled with water on one end of the counter. And the man in the storage room brightened up when he saw it, like a dear friend he had not seen since filling up in connection with the fifth package.

  “. . . have emptied this.”

  He started to drink, the seconds ticking away and anxiety throbbing inside Leo. Stress that could not, not, not be allowed to be seen on the outside. He had hurried Oscarsson as much as he dared without risking suspicion. He couldn’t also urge him not to drink.

  “Fluid out, fluid in. Isn’t that right, Eriksson?”

  The storage room man winked and just as he vanished for the last time into the passage between the shelves, Leo began to feel vibrating in his uniform jacket’s one inner pocket. He answered.

  “Leo, they’re coming now! They are . . . ,” said Sam. “. . . early. Get out of there, Leo! Now!”

  He heard Oscarsson rooting around and breathing heavily, far in there.

  Get out of there.

  No.

  Not yet.

  If he were to break off now, with nine of ten pieces of seized property without signing for the receipt and saying goodbye, Oscarsson would sound the alarm immediately. That was an even greater risk than waiting for the tenth package. He turned away from the counter and whispered.

  “I’m staying for the last one. I’ll have it in less than one minute.”

  He turned to the counter and the aisles between the shelves were just as empty as before.

  He had lied to Sam. To calm him down.

  “Okay, Leo, then I’m off now, down to the underground.”

  But he hadn’t lied to himself. He heard that Oscarsson had just reached the safe and he knew how much time it took for him to lift it and carry it to the front.

  In spite of this, he kept whispering.

  “See you at the meeting place. Good luck.”

  Then he counted the seconds so as not to come apart inside. Sixty-thr
ee until he heard the heavy panting. All the way to the counter, and it banged significantly when Oscarsson let go of the fifty-pound package and allowed ten million in five-hundred kronor banknotes to fall onto the wooden counter.

  “And I sign—here somewhere?”

  Leo hurried to pick up the pen and the storage room man’s breathing was now so labored that he couldn’t speak at all. He just extended a white paper and a crooked, trembling index finger pointing to one of the blank lines.

  Peter Eriksson.

  The signature certainly looked the same as last time.

  Then he moved the tenth package from the counter and down into the last empty space in the top carton on the hand truck. He folded and wove the four cardboard flaps together. Then a quick look at the watch.

  13:59:10

  One minute and thirty seconds over the time, while the regular transport had arrived five minutes early.

  He had to get out of there.

  “Can you be so kind as to let me out?”

  Oscarsson nodded, as silent as he was tired. He pressed the button on the wall until the thick metal door to the corridor clicked. The two moving boxes sat firmly together thanks to the weight, and five hundred pounds helped the whining wheel to stop whining. Leo pushed the door open with his back, then a powerful jerk of the hand truck over the sill and a last look at Oscarsson, who was resting, leaning forward onto the counter with the whole weight of his body distributed on shaking arms.

  He was alone, again.

  In the middle of the corridor on the first of three legs.

  The first crossing was waiting up ahead about forty yards. Right, and no one in this corridor would be able to see him any longer—the real transport always arrived via the west entrance. And it was so easy to walk. Once, with a hand truck he had pried a half-ton kitchen boiler out of a renovation project and over an uneven garden. This was half the weight, and fully pumped up tires on even concrete made the motion less unsteady. It felt as if he was flying forward.

  Until he heard footsteps.

  Just before he was going to turn off right and vanish behind the concrete wall for the next leg.

  He turned around. And there, at the other end of the corridor—he guessed twenty or thirty feet away—were two uniformed policemen, also with a hand truck.

  They would be there in less than a minute. And in about another minute—after a procedure at the wooden counter with exactly the same request for ten fifty-pound packages, which one of their colleagues had just now given out—the alarm would be sounded.

  JOHN BRONCKS MOVED cautiously three, four, five tree trunks forward, still hidden, in order to see without being seen. Fifteen minutes earlier, all the anxiety, tension, and anticipation made his heart beat out of rhythm—he couldn’t move and his chest cramped up when he couldn’t release the accumulated discomfort. That was when Leo Dûvnjac and his father should have arrived at the poorly painted barn over there filled with automatic weapons. When he should have found out if Sam was involved to the extent he feared. When he should have called the head of the National Task Force and requested an immediate emergency response.

  Emptiness, that’s what he felt. Disappointment. Like a child who waited and wished and counted down to the present in shiny paper and curled ribbon, which was then opened and didn’t contain what it should have.

  Something wasn’t right.

  The Leo Dûvnjac he’d pursued for such a long time, who confounded the entire Swedish police corps—the whole of Swedish society—began a bank robbery exactly at the planned moment every time and carried out a job in exactly the estimated time. And his greatest job ever was there in the barn, military weapons for a reasonably large army, which would also bring in more than ever when they were sold. The Leo Dûvnjac he analyzed and interrogated would never come unprepared or let the buyer wait.

  Then there was a chirp in Broncks’s ear.

  “To all units.”

  In the earpiece connected to the communications radio hanging on his belt.

  “Suspected robbery at the property room Kronoberg.”

  And he stood entirely still.

  A robbery—inside the police station?

  “National alert issued at 14:01.”

  Emptiness. Disappointment.

  It was slowly starting to gain meaning.

  “Perpetrator in his thirties, height 190, brown eyes and shaved head.”

  A major crime, an aggravated robbery, about twelve miles away, being committed at the same time Leo Dûvnjac should have committed a major crime, here.

  This was a modus operandi Broncks recognized.

  “May be wearing police uniform and possess forged police identification in the name Peter Eriksson.”

  That was why he didn’t arrive in time for this job, Broncks thought, because he was on time for a different one. I found out only because he wanted me to find out. The guns in the barn are here only so that I would be here.

  Diversion. False lead. Decoy.

  Just like when he planted a bomb at the Central Station, lured the police there, and at the same time robbed two banks many miles away.

  And brown eyes, shaved head, police uniform, police identification?

  Disguise. Façade. Escape as if by magic.

  Just like when he parked two cars, one on each side of a community, and forced them to search in two directions.

  Leo Dûvnjac.

  THE FINAL STEPS to the plate-metal door. Leo leaned the cart temporarily on its two feet and it stood both upright and steady while he drew the access card through the slot of the card reader.

  Nothing.

  No blinking green light, no metallic click of the door’s lock.

  Shit.

  He drew it through one more time, but the door separating the police station’s passage from the courthouse was still shut. He rubbed the piece of plastic against the fabric of the uniform jacket and drew it through again.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  The regular transport had only half a corridor left and then the ID check and they would be let into the property room, then confusion, then a mistake becoming clear.

  That fucking card, it has to work.

  He turned around. Still no one behind him. His movement through the last two sections of the passage had been entirely without any encounters and also quick as the hand truck—thanks to the heavy load—rolled silently on the concrete.

  A new attempt.

  The access card into the slot. Swipe.

  And now the blinking green light.

  The metallic click.

  His back pushed against the plate-metal door as he opened it, both hands on the cart, and with another jerk over the doorsill, which was slightly wider than the one in the property room. He was inside. On the right side of the underground entrance to the courthouse.

  The elevator was not particularly large and it was crowded with two huge boxes. He took off the police uniform, revealing a blue coverall. The cap had been in one pocket and now he unfolded it; PORTER in capital letters on the peak. There were two floors between the ground floor and the main entrance of the courthouse, a sufficiently long ride in an elevator to be able to hide the police uniform in the box on top. He stepped out into a somber, echoing stone building, kept walking to the heavy iron door and out into daylight and fresh air. A deep sigh of relief while he looked around, searching for the truck that should be parked there just outside.

  He had made it to the meeting place.

  But there was no one to meet him.

  Rapid glances, first toward Kungsholms Street and the underground entrance in that direction and then toward Bergs Street and the underground entrance that way.

  Sam—where the fuck are you?

  BRONCKS WALKED OVER the last tufts of grass, then a jump over the marshy ditch and still another over the simple wooden fence to the gravel road.

  He tried to shake it off, the thought that got stuck, that was now moving around inside him with each new step. Suspected robbery at
the property room Kronoberg. The thought connected to this exact point in time, Thursday at 14:00, and also to the point in time fourteen days ago when the judgment in what was called the Robbery of the Century had become binding. The two points in time were linked—bound together by one hundred and three million kronor that were no longer needed as evidence and in a few hours would be destroyed.

  You bastard.

  You took my brother and manipulated him into committing crimes that carry sentences up to life. You took the robbery loot that in some way became my redress as a policeman.

  Then you led me on a wild goose chase to this place. Dressed as a policeman, in my security and pride, in my clothes, you attacked both the heart of my family and the heart of my profession with a single blow.

  And that was enough right there—he couldn’t walk anymore.

  So John Broncks started to run.

  Toward the fucking barn.

  THE MONOTONOUS HONKING increased in intensity the closer the truck backed up toward the façade of Stockholm’s courthouse. While Sam lowered the tail lift, Leo grabbed both handles of the cart, rolled it on board, and pressed the button for it to glide up again. The two reinforced boxes filled with five-hundred-kronor banknotes were identical to all the other brown boxes already placed in the truck’s cargo space. Then he jumped out again, closed the back door, and opened the door to the driver’s cab on the passenger side.

  “Drive.”

  Slowly along Scheele Street, left at the first crossing onto Hantverkar Street, toward the city. He guessed a quarter of an hour, perhaps twenty minutes in inner city traffic to the multistory parking garage, then the same distance to Värta Harbor.

  “You were late, Sam.”

  “I was delayed because the underground train was late. One train at the platform while the next one was waiting in the tunnel. I couldn’t throw away the bag with the other police uniform before both were gone.”