Another number plate.
One number if seen from the front – another if seen from the back.
The car braked abruptly on the asphalt behind the abandoned petrol station. The right headlight was crushed against the rusty iron railing near the entrance, and the right mirror hit a tap sticking out of the side of the building.
Felix ran, which was something he rarely did, the torch in his hand pointed at the metal door and padlock.
‘Felix!’
Leo caught up and started pulling on his upper arm.
‘We still have time!’
Two kilometres earlier. The exit. And Felix had driven past, interrupted their double robbery before it could become a triple robbery.
‘We had time. We don’t any more. Because time has run out.’
Leo pulled harder on Felix’s arm.
‘We’re going to the bank in Sorunda now.’
‘You’re going without me, in that case.’
Torch under his armpit. Light on the metal door and the key towards the padlock. The faded Caltex sign at the gas pump was creaking as usual. It was always windy here.
‘Felix, what the hell are you doing?’
Leo grabbed the hand that held the key.
‘Let go of my hand. I’m going in here. I’m going to change my clothes, and then I’m going home.’
‘Get back in the car! We have one bank left!’
‘There will be no more. You wasted twenty seconds going back to do some more shooting – we hit two banks and have three kilos of banknotes in the trunk, that’s enough for today.’
The two shadows on the metal door in the gleam of a single headlight turned to three as Jasper placed himself between them.
‘We’ve been planning this fucking robbery for weeks!’
He was holding the black ski mask in his hand. Now he put it on, rolled it down over his face.
‘This is what we’re going to do, Felix – we’re going to go and get three more kilos of cash!’
One set of keys still in hand, Felix found the car keys, handed them over.
‘Then you can drive.’
‘Are you serious? You’re quitting? What we agreed on? What we agreed on!’
‘We also agreed not to detonate a fucking bomb.’
Felix directed his torch into the eyeholes of the fabric.
‘I know it was you.’
And Jasper raised his arm to protect them, squinted.
‘You don’t know shit.’
‘I know it was you.’
Jasper knocked the torch out of Felix’s hand, and it went out as it fell to the ground.
‘I’m not gonna fucking take this any more. Leo? I—’
‘A helicopter!’
None of them had heard Vincent at first. Not when he opened the car door, not when he ran over to them, the police scanner in his arms.
‘They’ve got a helicopter!’
‘Broncks?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You’ve got your helicopter.’
The wind was blowing. John Broncks pushed the two-way radio receiver close to his cheek and cupped his palm over it, as the tall pines swayed back and forth. The wet snow had started to soak through his thin socks and run down into the soles of his shoes.
‘The Eleventh Helicopter Division has volunteered. They’re on their way now.’
The commanding officer in Nynäshamn was starting to sound as hopeful as Broncks was beginning to feel.
‘You’ll hear it in a couple of minutes, it’s heading in your direction, and it’s going to concentrate on the area around the main road.’
‘Good! I—’
‘Broncks, wait a minute, I’m getting a message from a colleague.’
In the middle of a thicket of trees, the faint glow of streetlights in the distance. The earpiece was silent, but if he concentrated, Broncks could hear people talking quietly to each other, then steps, then someone moving their microphone.
‘This may sound strange, but the getaway car has been found. Again.’
‘Again?’
‘Same model – same number plate. Except … on the other side of town … along a country road.’
‘I’m not sure I follow.’
‘Volkswagen 1300. Red. GZP 784. At the end of a tractor path near a cairn. It’s as far west of town as you are east.’
Broncks checked the plate at the back of the car. GZP 784. Then he trudged through deep snow a second time, in order to squeeze his body tight between the branches and check the plate up front. BGY 397.
‘Do you have someone in place over there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ask him to walk around the car.’
His colleagues were speaking faintly in his ear. He waited until the crackle and the voice came back.
‘It has a different number on the front.’
‘BGY 397?’
‘Yes.’
They’d stolen two identical cars. Switched the number plates. And had two identical cars with the same numbers on front and back for witnesses to report.
One search area had suddenly become two.
Now they had to double the number of barriers, double the number of adjacent areas, double the number of surrounding districts.
The wind on the ground was increasing, even though the tops of the trees were swaying less than before. John Broncks looked around in the ebbing twilight. Then he saw them. It wasn’t the wind picking up – it was rotor blades, cutting through the air.
‘The helicopter!’
‘Yeah?’
‘It has to be rerouted! It has to leave the coast and the main road and go west instead, search the minor roads inland!’
45
ROTOR BLADES. AT first faint, then louder, closer. Leo looked towards a sky that should have been black as a searchlight cut through the darkness above the trees.
‘Felix! Vincent!’
They were standing outside the locked door of the petrol station wearing the clothes they’d just robbed two banks in. With three kilos of cash. The Stockholm police had two helicopters, which had been deployed in the area around the bomb threat. But this, a military helicopter – he hadn’t counted on that.
‘The tarp! Over the cars!’
If they were to be seen from the air, if their current position was revealed, then he had only one real solution. Open fire. But a military helicopter has ballistic armour, bulletproof plates that protect vital engine parts and personnel – there would be almost no chance of taking it down before the crew reported in.
Felix had reached the company car, and was moving the driver’s seat forward to uncover a folded tarpaulin, while Leo ran towards the other car and gathered up four automatic weapons from the seats and floor, hanging one around his own neck and handing one to Jasper.
‘Watch the helicopter!’
Jasper braced one shoulder against the wall of the petrol station, sank down on his knees and assumed a shooting position, aiming towards the light.
‘Tarp all the way over the cars!’
It rustled as they unfurled the wrinkled olive-green plastic. In its folds there were dry, brittle brown leaves from the forest around the bunker.
‘Helicopter incoming!’ Jasper screamed, but was drowned out by engine noise.
A sharp jerk and the tarp blanketed the two cars.
‘Into the petrol station – everybody in!’ shouted Leo, running towards the locked door. ‘In, in!’
The key to the padlock – Felix searched his jumpsuit, chest pockets, back pockets, front pockets, cargo pockets. It wasn’t there.
He searched again. The damn pounding came from above, harder and harder.
He’d had it in his hand ready to unlock when Leo grabbed his wrist and Jasper had knocked his torch to the ground.
‘I can’t find the key!’
‘Felix, damn it!’
‘I can’t find it! But the bolt cutters are in the car, under the passenger seat, I …’
‘There’s no time!’
&nb
sp; That damn awful pounding. That fucking light.
‘Should I, Leo?’
Jasper. Kneeling beside them, gun pointed up towards the light sweeping across the partially snow-covered ground, the butt pressed against his shoulder.
‘Leo, I’m waiting! Give me the order, and I’ll shoot!’
Leo waited. The helicopter’s light was like a long silver eye just a few hundred metres away. If he said fire, Jasper would shoot. If Jasper let loose and didn’t aim just right, this would be it.
‘Under the cars!’
He ran towards the tarpaulin, folding up the edge like a cave opening.
‘In!’
Vincent crawled under. Felix crawled under.
‘You too!’
Jasper stood up, ran two steps with the gun in his arms, threw himself to the ground, rolled under the cars. Leo followed him, as the helicopter searchlight probed its way towards the gas station, the asphalt yard, the tarpaulin.
Stomachs pressed to the ground, backs pressed against the exhaust system and oil sump.
It was there. Above them.
The rotating propeller blades pushed air against the tarpaulin and it quivered, then started to dance to an irregular beat. The spotlight filtered through it, a sharp shade of green.
Afterwards, they lay there, breathing in silence. Leo’s shoulders were pushed up against Felix. And he knew what his little brother was thinking.
If Felix hadn’t stopped him. If they’d robbed the third bank.
The helicopter would have been there before them, would have found them.
Eye, eye, nose.
A little further down, five holes next to each other, in a semicircle.
A mouth.
And it was smiling.
John Broncks counted. Eight shots fired. Into the shatter-resistant glass above the counter.
He was in the middle of the evacuated bank – customers and staff had been relocated to the library reading room across the square, to its calm and warmth, to be interviewed by the local police. A young woman had been taken to hospital, silent despite testimony describing her incessant screaming, one dislocated arm and a couple of external wounds, physical damage that would soon heal. But the screaming would return.
Security cameras on the floor. Shards of glass. And in the bank on the other side of the bullet-riddled internal wall – the same.
Three minutes, a double robbery, before disappearing in a car that would be found in two places.
Roadblocks – no results. A military helicopter – no results.
And you – you’re outside our search area.
The protective glass of a single bank teller’s desk had bullet holes in the shape of a face, and these measurements can be found in a separate register.
Broncks went closer, lifted his hand slowly towards eight holes.
An eye. An eye. A nose. A mouth.
He looked at the face, and it stared right back at him.
It didn’t blink, didn’t move its lips – empty eyes, a stiff mouth that would never stop smiling, a nose that sat wrong, too much in the middle. And the rest resembled skin, ugly wrinkles from hundreds of small crisscrossing cracks in the glass radiating from every bullet hole.
Broncks turned towards the entrance.
You were done. You’d left the premises. Then you turned back, made this smile, shot by shot.
A mark.
What the hell does it mean? Why are you smiling at me? Because you’ve vanished without a trace – again? Because you’ve committed Sweden’s first double robbery? Because you’re going to do something even bigger next time?
He stared at the face and it stared back.
It was late afternoon, but dark outside. From far away it was easy to see Vincent and Felix as they walked from the kitchen to the living room, illuminated by the bluish light from the TV.
Leo and Jasper remained outside.
The wind cooled their hot cheeks, while their tense bodies slowly relaxed. They’d stripped off one layer of their robbery uniforms, their jumpsuits, and now the next was evaporating: their sweat.
After the helicopter’s rotor blades had slowed down and the spotlight faded, they’d crawled out and pulled off the tarpaulin. They’d broken a padlock for a second time, changed and driven away in the company car, Felix in the driver’s seat and Leo, Vincent, Jasper under the truck bed cover behind a wall of insulation. They hadn’t said a word to each other. Eight shots into protective glass and a detonated bomb stood between them.
‘I promise.’
Jasper shifted anxiously in front of Leo.
‘The safety ring was intact when I closed the door. Leo? I swear on my life!’
On the other side of the fence, a panorama of rush-hour traffic, people on their way home after work.
‘I built it, Jasper.’
Leo looked at the house. Felix was standing up now, the remote clearly in his hand.
‘I designed and built it. And Felix built it. And he’s right. It could not have detonated by itself.’
‘Fuck, Leo … do you know how this feels?’
Jasper shook his head and beat his fist against his chest, several times.
‘Do you know? When you stand in front of me and don’t believe me? It fucking … hurts. Hurts!’
Now Felix sat down on the sofa. And it seemed as if Vincent was sitting down next to him.
‘Explain to me then. How did it happen? How could it have gone off?’
Fist against his chest again, but not as hard.
‘Damned if I know. I didn’t build it. Leo … I swear! I only did what I was told to do.’
The rush-hour traffic would continue, maybe get even heavier – it would be a few more hours before most people arrived home for the day. But he did so now. Came home for the day. Into the hall and living room, while Jasper disappeared into the kitchen.
Leo went upstairs. Felix and Vincent were on the sofa next to the round table, police scanner in the middle, surrounded by glasses and bottles. They sat there just as they had after the Svedmyra robbery, but this time there was no laughter, no eager voices, and silent sips of whisky in large tumblers instead of champagne and bubbles.
‘Turn on the scanner,’ said Leo.
‘No.’
‘Felix? I want to hear what they’re saying.’
‘The news will be starting soon.’
Leo sank down into one of the armchairs and poured himself a few fingers of whisky.
‘Stop sulking – there’s over two million kronor in those bags out there.’
Felix didn’t answer – instead he pointed the remote at the TV and raised the volume.
‘Give it up, damn it.’
‘Give it up?’
Felix held half a glass of whisky. He emptied it.
‘You went back – had you planned that or was it just a fucking whim?’
‘It wasn’t a fucking whim. I just thought it … seemed to fit.’
‘It didn’t fucking fit me! You were on your way to the car. We were on our way out of there.’
The sound of the TV changed as the news programme began a more measured report.
‘Can you turn up the volume a little?’
Jasper came out of the kitchen, four bottles of beer between the fingers of each hand.
A bomb planted in a storage locker at Stockholm’s Central Station detonated shortly after three o’clock when a police robot tried to disarm it.
Vincent, who was sitting furthest away on the sofa, leaned forward to see and hear better. He saw long camera shots of the train station in the capital city. He heard a muffled bang.
And then a hasty, shaky zoom in towards the black smoke pouring out of the entrance hall, rising upwards, thinning out.
But that wasn’t what he wanted to see and hear, not what he’d been carrying with him. He wanted to see images of someone who’d been hurt. Maybe blood on a white sheet or black asphalt. Maybe on a stretcher, maybe a paramedic. Nothing. The news only showed piles of rubble o
n the stairs and in the arrival hall and waiting areas, more barricades, long lines of travellers.
A bomb-disposal technician was slightly injured by shrapnel and was taken to Sabbatsbergs Hospital.
Now. Finally. A picture of an ambulance.
Vincent crumpled into the sofa. The policeman wasn’t dead.
And he laughed a little. It had all been so weird. All of this, the last few months, hadn’t felt real. More like a movie they’d talk about afterwards. But now he knew that it was real.
Felix filled his glass halfway again with the light single malt, then drained it again.
‘Are you proud, Jasper? A bomb. In the heart of the city. Does it feel … good?’
‘It’s not my fucking fault that you built it wrong.’
‘I know it was you!’
Felix got up off the sofa, grabbed Jasper’s shirt, yanked him up.
‘Let go!’
A shirt button bounced onto the floor. Savage breaths. Jasper grabbed onto Felix’s hands, which in turn gripped even harder.
‘Sit down, damn it!’ yelled Leo, pushing his hands against their chests. ‘What the hell are you two doing? Sit down!’
‘I know he’s lying!’
‘Sit!’
‘I won’t sit in the same room as this bastard!’
Felix let go of Jasper’s shirt collar, and Jasper released Felix’s wrists and started to do up whatever buttons were left.
‘Felix – be quiet now.’
Leo looked at his little brother, whose neck was flushed and his jaw clenched.
‘I believe Jasper. He looked me in the eye and swore.’
‘So you believe him?’
‘I believe him.’
‘He’s completely fucking unreliable. He put his gun in that security guard’s mouth, and he stayed too long at Sköndal and Svedmyra and kept shooting and fuck … today … it seems to be spreading, right, Leo … I don’t trust him any more. And we have to be able to fucking trust each other!’
‘But I trust Jasper when he says he didn’t do it.’
‘Then you can go to hell too!’
Felix overturned one of the armchairs and walked towards the hall.
‘Listen to me, all of you – it doesn’t fucking matter at all.’
The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Page 27
