Broncks browsed in the middle pile of papers without asking for permission. He was looking for the photo of a masked robber running to a milk truck and waved it as she had waved it before.
“At the same time this photo was taken.”
———
He had been lucky; the ferryman had been just as easy to talk to as he had hoped.
“At 16:30, did you say?”
“Yes. The trip over.”
“In that case . . . your brother could certainly have been on board. And I would be able to know that because he stepped out and waved to me in the control room as he always does.”
“Thank you. And the surveillance camera?”
“Unfortunately, it’s going to be out of use. Broken. And it has been for a week.”
“Thanks, again. And I’m sorry, but I simply can’t say why.”
“You don’t need to. I should have helped you long ago. When you were little.”
———
John Broncks got up with his untouched silver tea in his hand. He had placed his lie on her desk and he started to walk toward the corridor, away from the questions he lacked the strength to continue to answer.
“Now you have something to check and place in your little piles, while I go back to my office and switch off the lights and open the windows again, because I prefer to have it that way.”
He was able to get about as far as the doorway when her voice managed to catch up.
“Not yet. There was one more thing. Vincent Dûvnjac.”
He stopped but didn’t turn around.
“Yes?”
He couldn’t sit in front of her fucking papers again. He hadn’t prepared for this. A lie requires that the liar himself understands what happened. And he didn’t know if he wanted to do that, yet.
“He’s dead.”
“I know that.”
“You were there when it happened.”
“Yes.”
“How is that, John? And even more interesting—how is it that Vincent was there with you?”
“That will be made clear in the report I submit to the leader of preliminary investigations tomorrow. Good evening, Elisa.”
A single step over the threshold was as far as he managed to get this time.
He didn’t see, but he heard her free yet another document from the third and last pile of paper.
“While you delayed coming in here to me, John—and I can’t swear to it, but I think it sounded as if you made a call—I also took the opportunity to make one. To my contact at one of our telephone companies. The operator Vincent Dûvnjac signed his contract with. The paper in my hand contains the list of the telephone numbers that called him today. A couple of them are especially serious. That verifies a statement from Vincent’s mother: that a police officer—who previously investigated the brothers—contacted her youngest son and pressured him to accompany him for the sake of her eldest son.”
She left her desk and walked up to him, took hold of his shoulders, and forced him to look at her.
“John—I’ll say it one more time. I’ve dubbed the third pile in my system ‘You can’t fucking think you’ll get away.’”
And her eyes were burning.
“Leo Dûvnjac is in it. He’s not going to get away. Your brother, Sam Larsen, is there and he won’t get away either. I’ll search until I find him and get him to talk. Because now you are also in there, John, and I will fucking put you away. You know I don’t care if I make enemies in this station as long as I’m right. You will never, ever, ever get away with this.”
JOHN BRONCKS NEVER switched on the lights in his office that evening, that night.
Nor did he close the two windows.
If you don’t want to return to the past when all debts are finally settled, if you don’t want to stay in the present and encounter the unbearable heat and the intense light from a bomb, only one alternative remains—to continue forward.
To do that, you must know how, and to where.
He would be able to remain sitting in the dark and icy cold until dawn, when the fog lifted in the harbor of Riga.
Then he must know. Then he must have made a decision.
Then it would be over.
EARLY DAWN. THE light had just begun its journey across the sky. And the corridor through the Kronoberg detention center didn’t seem as dark.
He would soon cut a deal with the devil.
But the devil didn’t even look at him. He just sat there on the cell bunk with an empty gaze.
“Should I open it?”
That was the second time the sleepy young prison guard with the bulky bunch of keys repeated the question.
“Not just yet.”
The little square opening in the cell door framed Leo Dûvnjac in a way that made him seem almost small. Broncks considered for a moment meeting his blank silence by closing the square window again and leaving. But he had no choice. Someone who wants to start negotiations with the devil can’t expect an invitation.
“Now you can open it.”
There was rattling when the keys scraped against each other and mechanical clicking as the parallel bolts of the lock were released from the doorframe.
“Thanks. Close it when I’ve gone in and then leave us.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Broncks nodded impatiently.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“You want to be in there alone? Without an alarm?”
“Give me the alarm and go.”
The detention center guard took a small black plastic box out of his pants pocket and handed it to Broncks.
“A slight pressure on the button in the middle. That’s all you have to do.”
The guard left them and, through the opening in the closed door, they could both hear the rattling from the large bunch of keys fall silent, the squabbling metal fading as he walked away.
The cell was not particularly large. An unmade bunk, a table attached to the wall, a dripping sink. It became even smaller with two men and their mutual hatred. After being quiescent and stable for six years, it had escalated over a few days to if you get my brother involved, I’ll get your brother involved.
“What happened yesterday . . .”
Broncks had somehow hoped to never be forced to put Vincent Dûvnjac’s death into words beyond a police report—and especially not for the person sitting now in a closed room and staring at him.
“. . . should never have happened. Your . . . Vincent, he—”
“You don’t say a fucking word about my little brother.”
Leo Dûvnjac had not yelled at him. It would have been simpler if he had. Even though sound waves require air to make their way, his despair echoed in the airless space.
“And now I think you should use that fucking assault alarm. I don’t want you in here.”
Broncks stayed there, still. Standing near someone who hates you is easy when you have no alternative.
“Leo—I want you to listen to me.”
“Go.”
“Give me two minutes.”
“Just go.”
Broncks did as Leo asked. He went. But only one step, to the thick metal door, which he opened slightly, then pulled closed again.
“This is a conversation that only concerns us. Not between a policeman and a suspect—between two individuals who, each in his own way, have gone through a truly horrible twenty-four hours.”
He left his hand on the door handle, as if to signal that it was properly closed.
“Not that I understand what it meant for you—but the last time we saw each other here at the police station, when I let you out, you turned and called out something like: ‘Today, John Broncks, was a fucking black thread for you.’”
For the first time it felt as if Leo made eye contact. The hollow stare filled with something that might be life.
“And I imagine that what we should talk about now is precisely such a thread.”
He was observing, as if attempting to decide w
hat he saw.
“You’ll get your fucking two minutes.”
Leo Dûvnjac reached out his hand, with the palm open.
“If you give me the alarm.”
Broncks understood what he said, what it meant. And he searched right away in his pants pocket for the little black plastic box and laid it in the waiting hand.
“And if you don’t say anything within two minutes that makes me look at you in a different way, Broncks, I’m going to crush your head against the concrete wall behind you.”
Leo got up and the narrow cell became narrower.
Broncks glanced at the closed door and realized that, if the pent-up fury of the man in front of him found no reason to subside, in less than two minutes there would be only one man alive in the cell.
“Because you understand, Broncks, that a bastard of a black thread more or less doesn’t matter. You used Vincent to get to me and it all went to hell—you’re responsible for his death.”
Leo was more than four inches taller than Broncks, so when he leaned forward, he also leaned down so that their eyes could come really close as he whispered.
“Can you hear it, too, Broncks? The second hand. Tick tick. Tick tick.”
Broncks heard it. And he felt it, inside. It was almost pleasant knowing that the next moment would decide everything. No matter how, or what, it would soon be over and he didn’t need to prepare himself or wonder any longer.
“So here it is: I am the only police officer who knows exactly how everything that has happened the last few days fits together.”
“Tick tick, Broncks, tick tick.”
“That it was you who staged the robbery of the security van that my brother and the dead man, Jari Ojala, carried out—criminal offense aggravated robbery, eight years in prison. That you and my brother together conducted the robbery in the basement of this station, the one all my colleagues are trying to solve right now—criminal offense aggravated robbery, ten years in prison. That you stored two hundred military-grade automatic weapons in a secret room in your own residence, criminal offense crime of terrorism—life sentence.”
“Tick tick, tick tick.”
“And I repeat—right now I’m the only one who knows it. But other police, skillful police, have begun to dig, attempting to see the links I’ve already seen. So you have a choice: You can choose to tell them everything, or you can choose to do what you and I both know you are rather good at—keeping your mouth shut.”
John Broncks felt Leo Dûvnjac’s hand stroking his temple. The man who hated him so much had suddenly jerked his arm forward, as if to highlight how easy it would be to carry out his threat.
“One minute left.”
And then he patted the cold, hard concrete surface next to the back of Broncks’s head. Clear language. But Broncks didn’t move away and didn’t stop talking; on the contrary, he leaned closer and rested against the concrete.
“I’ve also lost a brother today.”
As if he wanted to show that he accepted the agreement—it’s your right to kill me if I don’t succeed in convincing you. He stayed there too when Leo struck with an open palm, again near Broncks’s cheek. It landed with a loud smack on the concrete wall.
“What the hell are you talking about! You don’t have a fucking clue what it means to lose a brother.”
“Yesterday evening, I sat with my brother in a luxury cabin on a boat that was about to depart. I drank out of the champagne glass he filled for you. I could’ve made certain he was arrested then. I can still arrange for him to be arrested when he reaches Riga harbor in a few hours. I can also not do that. If you do what I want.”
A few seconds. Maybe more. Then Leo lowered his arm, dropped his gaze from the wall, and didn’t even count down the seconds, didn’t tick anymore.
“It was like this when Sam, your brother, and I met—in a cell with a closed door at Österåker. When I thought that he was running your errands.”
Broncks was certain he had succeeded in subduing the rage for the moment. He had been able to capture Leo’s interest.
“So what the fuck is it you want, Broncks?”
“That you don’t confirm for anyone, at all, that Sam was involved.”
“And why shouldn’t I do that? Why shouldn’t I take the opportunity to send you to prison too—the person responsible for Vincent’s death?”
“There is nothing that connects me to Vincent’s death.”
“You lured him there! You locked him to the truck door with your fucking handcuffs!”
“The same handcuffs I moved to your wrists before my colleagues came. For every outside analyst, your presence there is so much harder to explain than mine. Isn’t that so? Because in my version there would be an explanation of what the metal clump now lying there actually is. Where it came from. What the entire trail of clues looks like. So . . . if you don’t verify it, I won’t verify your involvement. And we would be able to stand out there on the pavement in five minutes time, never to see each other again. You would be able to look for my brother and the suitcases he has with him, precisely as you once planned.”
“Fifty million? Listen, you bastard Broncks, Vincent is still dead.”
The only thing Broncks was sure of was that his two minutes were over.
“But yes, I . . .”
And the alarm, which was in Leo Dûvnjac’s hand, was given back now.
“. . . will do it for Sam’s sake.”
They looked at each other as their hands met.
“The interesting question, Broncks, is who are you doing it for?”
Broncks took the black plastic box and opened the cell door and yelled to the young detention center guard that it was time to lock up. Then he left without answering the question. It would have seemed too small, too sad to say it—for my own sake.
THE BLUE-AND-WHITE PLASTIC tape fluttered a few feet from the entrance to the police station on Bergs Street, so light and fleeting in the April wind. Leo pulled up the hood of his jacket and passed the first uniformed police unnoticed. When Broncks grabbed the barrier tape and lifted it they looked at each other one last time, a quick, cold glance before they continued in different directions—Broncks back into the building and Leo slowly toward Hantverkar Street and the city center.
A short distance away on the pavement, he couldn’t help but turn around and contemplate an entire police complex embedded in plastic. Scandinavia’s largest robbery had been carried out inside the police station not very many hours ago, by the man who was now leaving it.
He had succeeded in taking back what didn’t exist.
At the same time, he had taken from Broncks what he had been so proud of and acclaimed for.
It meant nothing.
The only similarity between being released now and being released earlier in the week was that Vincent was not there. Four days—the time it had taken to lose everything.
He saw Mama in front of him that first evening, so steady, so balanced on her feet, just as she stood the times she defied Ivan. Whatever you do, Leo. Don’t get your brothers involved. She had looked at him and caressed his cheek.
He continued walking alone through the early morning in Stockholm.
He encountered stressed-out people walking to work, cars honking angrily at each other, and buses groaning their way forward in hectic traffic. But he didn’t see them. There, somewhere, midstride, he couldn’t hold out.
That’s how it is.
Sometimes you close off because you love too much.
Then when you open yourself again, you realize that grief is a creature that feeds on memories.
It was as if, without being able to know it, of course, he was embraced by all the people who through his actions were forced together in order to be able to tear apart bonds; Mama and Papa in an empty apartment; John Broncks and Sam Larsen in a first-class cabin on a ship; himself and his beloved little brother in an abandoned barn.
Forced together to bring about an end.
And he, who
never cried, did so now.
Eye of Steel
THEY ARE STANDING on the cross on the map, exactly in its center, out in the forest that corresponds to the map’s green field and slightly away from the cycle path corresponding to the line Leo drew with the blue pen.
Felix is sitting comfortably on a huge, egg-shaped rock that resembles a giant’s head. He dangles his legs and slides down to be able to press his heels deep into the soft moss. He wants to come closer as Leo empties the contents of two plastic bags.
And it’s too late.
Felix regrets it from head to toe but can’t back out.
A promise is a promise.
Vincent decided. The shitty plan would be carried out. But then, when everything was ready, Leo suddenly explained that he didn’t need any help at all and that he would rather carry out the plan by himself. And for that very reason, quite strangely, Felix began to nag. I want to do it now. Almost crying. I want to. He does not even understand himself how his no became a yes. Yet deep down, he knows exactly why he changed his mind. Not because he wants to—but so Leo won’t go to prison.
Leo went through everything at home in the kitchen, explaining that he chose the cross on the map—the pine grove they are standing in now—because no one can find them in it. He had already checked it out, with the same carefulness that Leo always checks things. On a chopped-off tree in the grove, he had hung a hockey jersey—Leksand’s blue and white, colors that don’t belong in the forest in autumn. After that he cycled by on the path ten times. The jersey did not emerge a single time out of September’s garb. So the grove was ultimately designated as the starting point—the place where a fourteen-year-old would be transformed into Druggie-Lars and Druggie-Lars would afterward be transformed into a fourteen-year-old.
A figure lies before them on the ground: the jacket with uneven green coloring, the wig with shoulder-length hair, and the wrinkled pack of John Silver cigarettes. And cutout, pieced-together padding in various shapes.
The most important piece will fit on the stomach. Leo is especially pleased with it, four layers of padding combined with an additional two at the bottom. A potbelly. He sewed it together by hand, big stitches, and it’ll be held in place with a rope.
The Sons: Made in Sweden, Part 2 Page 39
