‘He was the one who screamed. Whose hand got hurt,’ answers Leo.
Voices rumbling. He doesn’t hear it. If you decide to not hear something, you won’t. He does that sometimes, goes into his own room and locks the door. His room is even smaller than this one, and inside it’s only him, his body, everything exists inside, nothing exists outside.
‘Leo? You know we can open this door anyway, don’t you? Leo? Your mother doesn’t want that. So open up!’
Then his youngest brother wakes up. Tousled hair, tired eyes.
Leo picks him up and walks back and forth between the door and the window.
‘Vincent? They don’t exist.’
He stops near the door and the rumbling that’s telling him to open up, come out.
‘They don’t exist.’
The tired eyes aren’t tired any more, they’re watching him, listening.
‘You hear that, little brother?’
‘Yes.’
‘They don’t exist. And we’re … going to go straight through them.’
The three-year-old is trying to understand. And then he smiles.
‘Straight through?’
‘Straight through.’
Mamma and the two officers are still outside. Pappa is being driven along some other street with two police officers.
He walks around the room for a long time, a big brother holding his little brother behind a closed and locked door.
And he’s probably never felt as calm as he does right now. With Felix and Vincent. In a place where he decides who exists and who doesn’t.
now
part four
77
DECEMBER CHANGED ITS clothes during Leo’s three-hundred-mile ride west through a countryside decked out for Christmas; ice on Lake Mälaren and a capital city where people walked quickly with their eyes to the ground were replaced by Gothenburg, a city of pedestrians in their autumn jackets. So Leo did the same as they did – buttoned up his jacket and strolled.
He got a bottle of water at a kiosk and a hot dog at a grill opposite Valands Art School, where he was supposed to turn off the avenue and follow the tram lines to Vasa Park. From there it wasn’t far to Erik Dahlberg Street. To them. His brothers. He hadn’t seen them once since they’d moved here. He hadn’t felt it so much this autumn because he’d decided not to, but he did. Now that he was so close he felt the tug of expectation.
He’d decided to leave them be, yet somehow it still felt as if it were they who were keeping him at arm’s length. They’d always been in contact. Never judged each other, or got in each other’s way, never ever needed to ask each other for help. Now they spoke two, maybe three times a month, stiff conversations about the weather and the price of taxis and some new movie the other should see. Not a single word about the abortive weapons sale. He hated it. It was just like his mother and her siblings, the way people who had nothing in common talked to each other.
His little brothers lived in an apartment in a beautiful 1920s building. On the board inside the door a piece of tape with their names had been affixed over someone else’s. Third floor. He rang the doorbell and knocked, just to be sure. He could tell just from the sound of approaching feet that it would be Felix, before he even opened the door.
His hair was longer – Felix had always kept his hair cut short – but it looked good. They hugged each other in the doorway, as if everything was normal.
‘Hungry?’
The smell of food. He followed Felix down a narrow hallway to the kitchen where Vincent stood next to the refrigerator. He looked older. Older than just the few months that had passed. Stronger – physically more like a man. And his eyes, just as intense, were more piercing and distinct. Another hug. It was hard to say if the distance and chilliness were just in Leo’s head, something he’d imagined.
‘So … nothing here is yours?’
‘Nope.’
A table he’d never seen before. Chairs he’d never seen. A microwave oven, a toaster, a radio, all unfamiliar. And a Salvador Dalí poster on the wall. He wondered if they even knew who that was.
‘Just like when we were little, and you got all my hand-me-downs,’ said Leo.
‘Second-hand. The whole lot. Furniture, kitchenware. They even left us some shampoo. But Mamma liked it.’
‘She said she’d been here.’
Bolognese on the stove; Felix was making dinner.
‘She said it was going well. At the university, with your courses. And she was so proud of you, Vincent, that you’d already got through the first year of your school studies.’
He was anxious. He couldn’t hide it, and he could tell Felix could see it.
‘You should see his marks. Every single exam, perfect. He’s only eighteen, Leo, and our little brother can do anything he wants to.’
Felix winked at Vincent, who smiled shyly – that was still the same at least – and then took out the plates, glasses and a bottle of wine.
‘How long are you staying?’
‘The train leaves in four hours.’
‘Four hours? Here I thought you came to hang out for a while.’
Leo didn’t say anything. Fucking superior, stubborn little brother. He was here to heal the breach, not make it worse.
‘Just a simple financing robbery. Everything’s ready. A little bank in Heby. The day before Christmas Eve. A few million.’
The bolognese was almost ready. The water on the other burner was boiling.
‘Then we’ll have enough money for a big job. And after that … you can study whatever the hell you want to.’
‘That’s what we’re already doing,’ said Felix, taking out a packet of spaghetti and dumping it all in at the same time. ‘I thought you knew that. That we’re already studying what we want to.’
‘I need you.’
‘We’ve quit, Leo.’
He’d decided he’d stay calm no matter what. But that didn’t last long. Leo slammed his hand onto the table, the silverware and plates shook.
‘Do you think you’re normal now because you’re at college? Because you’re sitting on a fucking wooden chair behind a fucking wooden counter?’
Felix poured wine into his glass up to the top.
‘I’m not studying in order to be normal, I’m studying to get an education.’
Leo took a small sip.
‘What about you, Vincent?’
His youngest brother looked away.
‘Vincent, damn it!’
‘It was easier to be part of it than to not be,’ Vincent replied. ‘To find out if everything was going to go to hell.’
Leo laughed, not kindly. He took another small sip of wine.
‘Go to hell? Vincent – it won’t go to hell. Ever. Come over here, sit down.’
Vincent did as he asked and sat down on the chair opposite Leo.
‘But if it does?’
‘It won’t.’
‘If we end up at a police roadblock again, and they figure it out? That it’s you? That it’s us?’
Another small sip. The wine didn’t just look cheap, it tasted cheap.
‘Is that what you’re sitting here doing – imagining things?’
‘Listen to what he’s saying!’ shouted Felix.
Spaghetti strands had collapsed into the boiling water, limp now. Felix stirred them with a plastic fork, a little too vehemently.
‘Leo – you need to fucking understand what it is he’s trying to tell you!’
‘Him? Or you?’
‘OK. OK, Leo. Why are you doing this?’
‘Doing what?’
‘Robbing banks.’
‘So we can be financially independent.’
‘You have the weapons. Sell them. You said you were going to.’
‘I almost did. I did exactly what I planned to – contacted the cops, recce’d a place for a handover, built fifteen fucking landmines. Everything was ready. Twenty-five million in a bag on some cop’s desk.’
He stopped.
&
nbsp; ‘And …?’
‘And then that fucking cop started provoking me. Consciously. Tried to knock me off balance, wanted me to make mistakes. I wrote nine letters. The cop replied in five personal ads. Before I realised they were just stringing me along. That they’d never pay a fucking penny, that they were just trying to flush me out. That’s when I broke it off, completely.’
Felix was listening, but he still had the same expression on his face.
‘OK. Then I’ll ask you again. Why are you doing this? Robbing banks?’
‘Why am I doing it? And here I am thinking you did it too. Or am I mistaken, Felix? Weren’t you there? And if you were there – why did you do it?’
‘That’s exactly what Vincent’s trying to explain to you! Because it’s easier to be a part of it than not to – if everything went to hell, at least I’d know. This anxiety, you don’t get it, but I feel it, Vincent feels it. The only one who doesn’t think like that is you. You think … this won’t go to hell.’
Felix poured the water from the pan into the sink, the steam softly enveloping his tense face.
‘Because it won’t.’
‘You said you’d never seek out our father again. I felt calm after that. But you did it anyway! And I can see it. You’re turning into him! Nothing else exists for you except the next robbery. And the next. Nothing except that. You treat me and Vincent just like Ivan did when you broke with him.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You’re just like him. And I know exactly when it happened. Then … when he almost killed Mum. When you jumped on his back and she ran away and he stopped, and I saw how you looked at each other. You just … took over.’
‘Settle down now.’
‘And after that? Do you remember what happened next? You don’t, do you? You waited until he’d left and was back in his car, and then you fucking mopped up all the dried blood in the stairwell. When you were done you came back in and looked at me and Vincent, and from then on it was all your way.’
‘Are you finished?’
‘No! Not until you understand. You said “independent”. You stood there in the window, staring out over Skogås, talking about how no bastard would have any power over us. But the opposite has happened. Robbing banks has only made us more dependent on each other. It’s just as important to you as it was for that old bastard. Stick together. Stick together! Shall we try to break some ice lolly sticks too?’
‘Are you finished yet?’
Leo looked at the two pans steaming on the table. They looked like the wine. Cheap. Junk.
‘I’m not the one who’s like Ivan. You are, Felix. You go on and on about how much you hate him. You are fucking fixated. You dwell on shit just like him. And he couldn’t do any of the things I’ve done!’
He dug into the pans anyway, spooning brown sauce over a pile of white pasta. On his own plate, onto Felix’s and Vincent’s.
‘One more time, Vincent. And if Felix is right …’
Leo put his hand on Vincent’s arm.
‘… then you should be part of this – now! If it’s … easier. Not just sitting here and worrying the day before Christmas Eve.’
‘Enough, Leo, can’t you see he doesn’t want to come with you!’
‘What the hell do you know about it? I’m talking to Vincent now.’
‘I can feel he doesn’t want to!’
‘Really? Felix? You can feel it?’
The saucepan of meat sauce stood between them. Felix suddenly grabbed hold of it and threw it against the wall. It splattered across the kitchen.
‘I spat in my own mother’s face! I will never do anything against my will again for the sake of someone else, ever!’
Warm bolognese ran down the white walls and Leo’s white shirt.
‘You’re talking about yourself, Felix. I’m talking about Vincent.’
Vincent had been staring down at his plate; now he looked up.
‘Can’t we just stop?’
Now he was the one who put a hand on Leo’s arm.
‘Can’t you just stop?’
There were napkins in an ugly little wooden dispenser in a corner of the kitchen table. Leo grabbed them all, crumpled them, and wiped the trickle of meat sauce off his shirt.
‘And do what? Sit on a fucking wooden chair at a fucking wooden counter, pretending we’re normal?’
They had never needed to ask each other for anything. Leo did it anyway.
‘Please, I’m begging you. Have I ever begged you? Have I? I’m doing it now. I’m begging you. I need you. One more time. One last time.’
He looked at one little brother whose hair was longer, at another who was quickly becoming an adult.
‘Please?’
One at a time. And he didn’t recognise them.
‘Felix?’
No reply.
‘Vincent?’
No reply.
‘I’m begging you.’
Felix met his eyes. Vincent looked down at the table and his plate.
Silence.
‘Well then. I’ll do it alone. If I don’t have a family, I’ll do it myself.’
78
SOMETIMES THE NIGHTS never end. Sometimes you sweat and freeze and sweat, waking up every ten minutes just to fall into another incoherent dream that leads nowhere.
It was that kind of night. Again. All week, since being turned down by the two people he was closest to. Six nights of fucking loneliness lying beside him in bed, between his body and Anneli’s. If they’d been dead it wouldn’t have felt like this – then he would have understood why they couldn’t be together. If they had said they hated him, it wouldn’t have felt like this. But they were alive. And they still loved him as he loved them. Yet despite that – they weren’t going to carry on. Two brothers who had been so close were now so far away.
Leo pulled the sweaty sheet from his back, went downstairs to the kitchen. He opened the window wide, even though the temperature was eight below zero, and let his face meet the cold, breathing in, out, in.
The last few days he’d been going over the three elements all these robberies had in common, again and again. Planning. Execution. And the most crucial – escape – the transition from robber to civilian.
One element always remained the same – the execution. They had never left their target with exactly what he’d expected. The ten million kronor in the security van had ended up being only one million. At every single robbery there had been less money in the vaults and safes than he’d expected. At the double robbery, he’d been convinced they’d take at least eight million but it ended up being three, and at the triple robbery the fifteen million he’d hoped for had ended up being only two, mostly drenched in red.
He ran his hand over the window ledge, gathering up the recently fallen snow and pressing it into a fistful – a pleasant chill as it melted into water.
He pulled down the window and wiped his hands dry with a kitchen towel, walked out into the hall and into the guest room. Nine robberies, and that fucking cop Broncks had no idea who they were – so if he just kept choosing the right date, continued to plan and escape properly, then sooner or later he’d get the execution right and receive the maximum return.
The tenth.
A small town outside Stockholm.
The day before Christmas Eve – payday.
And it would not be carried out by the Military League.
Because the Military League no longer existed; no one would ever write a line about that group again. The phantoms were disappearing and taking a new shape. That was exactly what he had rehearsed in the bank in Rimbo: a robbery that would differ from the others – casual clothes, black stockings over their heads and no shots fired. It had been preparation for changing their identities and breaking his pattern, if one day it were to become necessary. Now it was.
He lifted the floor tiles, pulled up the hatch and opened the horizontal safe, watching the black velvet fall away into the darkness. He climbed down and lit t
he lamp hanging above the rows of automatic weapons.
Next to the bulletproof vests lay a black sports bag.
The triple robbery had netted 2,137,000 kronor. 227,000 had gone on various expenses; 195,000 hadn’t been ruined by the dye; they had divided the rest into four piles, 428,750 kronor each. His pile had shrunk considerably since then: 75,000 left. The bills barely covered the bottom of the bag.
He unzipped it and gathered up ten thousand in various denominations – he would give it to Anneli for Christmas gifts, Christmas food, a Christmas tree and some Christmas lights she had seen, the same as the ones the neighbours had in their apple trees. Then he separated off ten thousand for himself – leaving 55,000. He closed the bag and sat down on a concrete slab, lost in the fiery glow of the lamp, listening to the sump pump growling under his bare feet.
If he climbed out of the hatch, if he closed the safe and never opened it again, no one would ever know.
Feet on the cold, black and white vinyl floor. Steps. Her steps. She was standing up there now, and the light on the underside of her kneecaps, that was all he saw.
‘Leo?’
‘Yes?’
‘What are you doing?’
Anneli squatted down. She was freezing in a thin nightgown.
‘Come up and join me. Let’s go back to bed. Try to sleep.’
‘Fifteen million. That’s what we were supposed to take home from the triple robbery. And we ended up with almost nothing.’
She hunched down and crawled through, her bare feet balanced on the slender rungs as she climbed down, then stroked his cheek, her hand warm even though she was cold.
‘Leo?’
They were surrounded by neat lines of weapons, sunk into the walls like large fossils. He’d threatened to donate his collection to Sweden’s criminal elite, but refrained. He cared as little about them as he did about that cop he’d threatened.
‘Leo, I love you. I’m the only one who knows all about you, about this.’
She sat on his lap, she was really freezing, bare toes rubbing against each other and avoiding the floor.
‘I know what Felix and Vincent mean to you. I know that. But I left my son for our sake. And you have to let go of your brothers. For our sake.’
The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Page 43
