All she’d had to do was lie down, be still and stay quiet.
He’d prepared himself for some idiot male customer or staff member to play the hero, or for a showdown with the local police – prepared himself to take aim and fire to prove to them he was willing to use violence. He had sometimes imagined a life and death situation involving heavily armed police intervention. But this, a woman breaking down and crying and just wanting to get out, he’d never even considered that.
A woman protecting herself from a man using violence.
‘Two minutes and fifty-five seconds! Fifty-six!’ barked Felix, standing beside the Beetle. ‘Fifty-eight! Fifty-nine! And out … out … out!’
Jasper and Vincent ran out of the other bank’s door, threw one full bag each into the boot and themselves into the back seat. Felix jumped into the front seat, pushed the clutch and revved the engine, ready to drive.
But Leo stood there, completely still. On the square. Next to the car. He didn’t hear Felix shouting.
‘Black One – it’s been three minutes!’
He was surrounded. Everything pressed in on him. The weapon around his neck. The screaming inside the bank, her cries replacing those he hadn’t heard as a child because they never came.
A cursory glance at the roof in the distance.
He started walking back.
Felix hit the gas, without letting up on the clutch, and shouted after him.
‘Black One – it’s time, damn it!’
But Leo kept walking.
His black-clad body disappeared into the bank.
Leo’s gun lay steady in his hands when he took aim.
When he fired into the room.
Eight shots.
He hit his target with extreme precision.
When his gun was empty, Leo lowered it and turned back to the door, and stepped outside.
It was silent. Just as he remembered it back then.
Nothing surrounding him, nothing pressing in on him.
No one was screaming and screaming and screaming.
He didn’t hear the child running in fear from the tobacco kiosk across the square, nor the dog at the lamp post gnashing her jaws, nor the birds that landed on the roof, nor even the scrape of his own boots as they hit gravel and asphalt.
He moved in silence.
And now he felt what he’d felt before, that calm, peaceful breathing from deep within.
44
JOHN BRONCKS RAN through the tired corridors and dark staircases of the police station, over yellow plastic carpets and grey cement floors, past the pale-green metal door that led to the garage.
At 14.52:15 a civilian operator working on the front lines in the vast hall of the municipal emergency call centre had received an alert that a robbery was underway at Handels Bank in Ösmo Square.
At 14.52:32 another operator a couple of chairs away had received an alert that another bank, SE-Bank, was being robbed, and at exactly the same location.
At 14.53:17 Karlström had stepped into Broncks’s office without knocking to say that what they’d predicted had now come to pass. Four robbers in black masks. Extensive gunfire. Swedish military weapons. Exactly three minutes.
It’s you.
Broncks kept running through the underground garage. In the past month there had been three bank robberies in the Stockholm area, and he’d been on call for every one. The Savings Bank in Upplands Väsby – three men in an Opel with a gun and an axe, arrested the same evening at an illegal club. The Cooperative Bank at Norrmalmstorg – an armed, middle-aged man arrested only an hour later in his childhood room at his parents’ home, with both the loot and a converted starting pistol under his bed. A security van on its way to the main post office – two men armed with shotguns, still at large.
But none of them had given him this feeling.
It’s you.
He started the car and passed the crime tech cage, where just a few weeks ago he’d seen something on a computer screen that didn’t make sense – a bank robber whispering, shielding his colleague, taking responsibility, on his way to one of Europe’s most violent bank robberies. The garage door automatically slid open, and Broncks drove up the incline towards the lowered barrier and the daylight.
Two brothers.
And now they’d struck again. This time it was two banks at the same time. They were taking bigger risks and would take even more.
Every time you rob a bank, I get a little closer.
The heat of four adult bodies trapped in a cold metal shell had turned into a milky fog covering the interior of the car windows as everyone breathed quick and heavy all around Felix, still with their black ski masks pulled down.
‘What the fuck was that?’ he asked Leo, not taking his eyes off the road, hands gripping the wheel tightly. A constant speed of eighty kilometres per hour.
‘You saw for yourself.’
‘No, I did not! What the hell were you up to?’
Leo also stared straight ahead. Facing the trees, which multiplied as the houses became more sparse.
‘You’re the one with two fucking watches on your arm and six separate timelines! You’re the one who’s always preaching about time, time, time!’
Leo’s shoulder collided with Felix’s as the car left a narrow road for an even narrower one: a rugged, bumpy track fit only for tractors. His knees knocked against the bottom of the dashboard at each new bump. His jumpsuit was soaked with sweat by the time they stopped at a mound of stones at the end of a snowless path.
‘I had time.’
They all knew the drill. Out of the Beetle. Open the boot. Lift out three bags full of cash.
‘You went back!’
On to the next car, the Mercedes.
‘You went back into that bank and started shooting like a fucking idiot. You put us all at risk!’
Open the boot. Drop three bags inside. Jump in. Take the track out again towards a country road.
‘We’re sitting here. Aren’t we, Felix? If you want to whine, you can do it when we get home.’
Leo turned round.
‘And now, masks off.’
The fabric was pulled off, revealing four young men with damp hair glued to damp foreheads. In an oncoming car, a woman with a baby in a car seat drove by without reacting.
Jasper leaned forward from the back seat, tapped Leo’s shoulder lightly and whispered.
‘Front page.’
Felix turned towards the back with a jerk and the car swerved across the line. He didn’t whisper.
‘You shut your mouth back there.’
Leo continued to stare straight ahead, gun on his thighs, ski mask ready.
Five kilometres to the next bank.
The car in front of John Broncks stood completely still, as did the car in front of that. When he drove up onto the pavement to try to get a clearer view, all the cars were standing completely still, blocking every metre of asphalt from the City Hall to Central Station.
He rolled down his window, searched under his seat and grabbed a bubble-shaped light – the magnet stuck to the car roof and a blue light started spinning as his siren ricocheted between the buildings. He forced his way out, scraping bumper after bumper, crossed the solid line, zigzagging between oncoming cars trying to find space that wasn’t there.
The whole of Stockholm’s inner core was off balance.
The streets around Central Station were either cordoned off or carrying heavy, redirected traffic. According to his radio, someone had planted a bomb in the heart of Stockholm – initially suspected to be a dummy, they had just upgraded it to a live bomb, and the bomb squad, bomb dogs, and a remote-controlled bomb robot had just arrived. Microphone in one hand and steering wheel in the other, Broncks made sharp turns as he passed the City Hall and drove out onto the equally backed-up Central Bridge.
‘I’m driving in the direction of Ösmo. How many officers on site?’
‘One.’
‘One?’
‘Another unit on its
way from Nynäshamn.’
‘Two. Two patrol cars?’
There were multiple lanes in both directions on the short Central Bridge, but with oncoming traffic separated by a concrete ramp, he was forced, despite his blue lights and siren, to slow down as car after car tried to move aside for him.
‘That’s all we have … So far.’
‘That’s not enough. We need a SWAT team, dogs, helicopters … we’re talking about two fucking banks – at the same time!’
Old Town and Slussen and then, somewhere in the Söderled tunnel, the traffic finally started to ease up.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
A commanding officer in Nynäshamn’s precinct came back.
‘I heard you. And who – to use your own words – the hell are you? And why exactly are you heading here?’
‘John Broncks, City Police.’
‘That says nothing to me about who you are or why you’re on your way to a district you don’t have anything to do with.’
‘The bank in Svedmyra, the security van in Farsta … this is the same group. I’ve been investigating them for almost three months.’
The tunnel traffic was much more spaced out. He increased his speed slightly, towards the daylight and the long bridge in the distance.
‘They’re heavily armed – and prepared to use their weapons. Two patrol cars? You need backup!’
‘There isn’t any. The rest of the police force in this county are all crowded into a few blocks close to where you’re coming from. And you know very well why they’ve been ordered there. But there are more on their way from other districts.’
Daylight. Johanneshovs Bridge. And a strange sight. The water covered by shimmering blue ice far below and trains stationary on the parallel bridge. And between the railway and the road, hundreds, maybe thousands of pedestrians were streaming in both directions, wearing coats and jackets, legs melting together, becoming one, like insects moving, people who’d stopped hoping a train would come.
At the other end of the bridge stood Gullmars Square – platforms and stairs and even more stationary trains, and throngs of people crowding into chaotic lines trying to get onto hastily summoned shuttle buses. He had just reached the stadium and was about to pick up speed on a less busy road when a new voice broke the radio silence.
‘It’s exploded!’
It didn’t happen very often. The professional voices communicating over these frequencies every day became difficult to tell apart, using the same emphasis, volume, detachment.
‘The whole fucking thing … blown up! The robot is scrap!’
Occasionally when something unexpected happened, when threat and danger combined to become tangible, these voices became sincere, immediate.
‘One of ours … he’s down!’
The voice slashed through the radio like the knife that had slashed through Leo’s jacket, when Vincent was too young to remember.
‘One of ours … he’s down!’
The frightened, hunted, furious voice on the police scanner stated that a bomb had exploded, that the police officer steering the robot had been hit by shrapnel in the blast.
Then he fell silent. No information about whether the police officer had survived or not.
‘It wasn’t supposed to go off!’ yelled Vincent, leaning forward to Leo. ‘You promised me, damn it!’
Leo lowered the volume of the police radio and the monotonous beeping disappeared. Straight ahead, a blue sign on the edge of the road and field, SORUNDA 3 km – they were almost there.
‘We can’t do anything about that now.’
‘But what if he’s dead!’
‘We don’t know what happened. We don’t know why it went off. But I’ll figure it out. Later. When we’re done with the next bank.’
In the distance was a tractor with a trailer next to a snow-covered barn. A few inhabited farms, children’s bikes and skis leaning against the walls. A truck at a lay-by, its driver peeing behind a tree.
Felix adjusted the rear-view mirror to look hard at Jasper in the back seat. Jasper wouldn’t meet his eyes.
‘Did you take out the safety ring? Did you?’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Look at me, Jasper! Goddamn it, did you arm the fucking bomb?’
Jasper met Felix’s gaze.
‘I sure as hell did not.’
And he stared long enough for it to become uncomfortable.
‘Someone’s been hit. They could die!’ shouted Vincent.
‘And what the hell does that have to do with me?’
Felix was still driving at a steady speed, despite the fact that he was looking backwards as much as he was forwards.
‘You’re lying, Jasper! I can see it!’
Leo had been silent. Until now.
‘Stop it!’
‘I helped build the damn thing,’ said Felix. ‘I know that it couldn’t—’
‘Just drive, goddamn it!’
In the twilight outside everything melted together, but Vincent noticed a difference in Felix’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. Leo seldom raised his voice, they all knew that, but it was even more rare for Felix to accuse someone if he wasn’t absolutely sure.
The exit to Sorunda, a suburb with a single bank, their third target. And Felix drove straight past.
‘What the hell …’
‘Like you said, Leo. We’re going home. We’re gonna “figure it out”.’
‘This isn’t the way to … you’re driving too far!’
The road was so narrow that oncoming traffic had to slow down to avoid a collision. But Felix hit the accelerator as they approached the next car, driving at over a hundred kilometres per hour.
‘Turn round!’
‘If you want to continue, go ahead. Without me!’
Felix’s neck had gone a blotchy red, which spread upwards to his cheeks and temples, and Vincent knew what that meant – it was taking everything Felix had to contain his rage. Vincent should have started to feel uneasy, but all he felt was heat in his chest. If it feels like this again I’m not doing it. He’d said it and meant it. And yet, so calm. Because if they all died in a crash at the next bend, if the policeman who was down in Central Station was dead, if the bomb had exploded because somebody had wanted it to explode … It didn’t matter. It really didn’t. For the first time in his life Vincent realised where Leo went when he disappeared into himself. To a calm where there was no time. No future, no past, and therefore no worries. Just now. Now. And the only thing he could do something about was what was happening right now, in this car, with his brothers.
Two banks shot up.
A bomb detonated in the heart of Stockholm.
John Broncks had driven thirty kilometres on the main road and there were twenty to go. The last suburb south of the city went by outside his window, and then the landscape flattened out into vast meadows punctuated by clumps of trees.
According to the operational chief in place at Central Station, the bomb technicians had determined that the safety ring had been designed so that the bomb would explode when it was taken out of the locker, with only one purpose – to maim and kill.
Two separate events, nine minutes apart, that were somehow related to each other.
Dusk approached with each passing kilometre; with twenty still left, it would be dark by the time he arrived.
‘Broncks?’
The two-way radio – the officer in Nynäshamn, now more welcoming.
‘Where are you?’
‘Eight kilometres away.’
‘We’ve found the getaway car. A red Volkswagen. Registration GZP 784. On the same road you’re driving down now, right at the exit. You’ll see it and one of our cars in just a few minutes.’
One of only two patrol cars in place.
‘You found it … at what time?’
‘15.09.’
John Broncks was thinking about a circle.
A search area expanding with each minute that pass
ed. In Farsta and in Svedmyra it had grown rapidly, becoming too large.
‘Any road barriers?’
Now it had been restricted.
‘Two patrols from Handen have cordoned off the main road north and one from Nynäshamn has blocked traffic south – we’re closing the road completely along the coast. More patrols on their way from Huddinge and Södertälje, which have been blocked off inland – west and north.’
Broncks counted quickly.
14.56 – a Volkswagen with four masked men leaves the crime scene.
14.58 – the same car parks three kilometres away.
14.59 – they continue in a new car.
A search area that was no longer widening – for the first time they were close to each other.
The exit to Ösmo. A few hundred metres later a sparse wall of trees – a thicket, and red paint shining through the bare branches. The air colder and rawer than in the city centre, the kind of cold that bites into your cheeks and neck and stiffens your fingers.
Broncks walked through the snow towards the abandoned car, avoiding the tracks that were already present. A red Volkswagen Beetle, parked with its front end against a pine, almost driven into the bark.
‘Witnesses?’
The young man had fuzz on his upper lip that was trying to become a moustache. He wore uniform and greeted Broncks with an equally cold hand.
‘No one saw anyone leave or arrive at the scene.’
‘And … this?’
‘We’re confident that it’s the car they used – same model, same registration that several witnesses saw outside the banks.’
The number plate at the bottom of the boot.
GZP 784.
Broncks went round and peered in through the passenger side window. On the floor a beer can next to a burger wrapper, in the ashtray three or four butts. In order to make his way forward he had to press through tightly packed tree trunks and thick branches. It was even colder here, the thin crust of snow gave way and snow tumbled into his shoes.
He saw it as soon as he reached the front of the car, despite the bark that obscured half the plate.
BGY 397.
The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Page 26
