Ivan found the car keys in the inner pocket of his black coat.
‘Do you trust him?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Do you trust that pretend soldier?’
He opened the car door, and they sat in their seats, the keys in the ignition.
‘Listen … Jasper is the kind of guy who never hesitates,’ said Leo. ‘He does what I tell him to do. If something unexpected happens tomorrow, if they stop us, if they get close to us … he’ll stand his ground.’
Anneli watched Leo’s and Ivan’s backs from the kitchen window, waiting for Leo to turn round, for their eyes to meet in that way that had become part of her, but he didn’t – he would always retreat into himself in those last days before a robbery, into a world he didn’t share with anyone. She’d also become aware of something else: a father and his son. She had never seen them beside each other before, and now as they walked there shoulder to shoulder, their closeness became obvious, something they themselves were unaware of.
The living room was too dark. Anneli pushed a plug into the wall socket and a wreath lit up. She knelt by the tree and readjusted two parcels lying under the widest branch. She wondered if Sebastian would be happy – his face was always so focused when he opened presents, so full of anticipation. It had been a long time since they’d celebrated Christmas Eve together, but this year she’d have time to pick him up after they hid the getaway car and money and destroyed the weapons. She might even have time to cook a ham and put the herring in lime juice and fresh coriander and sugar and parsley and vinegar and leave it overnight in the refrigerator. They were going to have a real Christmas, as a family, just Leo and Sebastian and her.
She’d bought a horn for his bike, and an ice hockey helmet with flames on, exactly as he’d asked for. She started wrapping them up on the low coffee table.
‘And what do you want for Christmas?’
Jasper. She hadn’t heard him. He liked to sneak around.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was thinking … I have time to get to Åhlens department store. This time of year they stay open until nine? I can’t spend Christmas here without giving you anything.’
‘What did you say?’
‘If I’m going to be here, then I have—’
‘You’re not going to be here. We’re going to rob a bank together. Then we’ll celebrate our Christmases separately.’
‘Leo asked me, and I said yes. So it’ll be us. The family’s getting bigger.’
He sat in Felix’s armchair and rocked gently, as Felix always did.
‘No. No. You are not going to be here.’
‘I thought, this is like a fresh start. Right?’
‘Did you hear what I said? You are not going to be here.’
‘And I think, if I’m guessing right, we can probably get over a million. And then … we’ll just keep going.’
She didn’t answer.
‘Anneli, what do you say to that?’
She didn’t look at him, carried on taping the parcel up instead, but it didn’t turn out exactly straight.
‘What do I say? That you haven’t understood a thing. That you will not be celebrating Christmas with us because you don’t belong to our family. That you … that you don’t understand that you’re just a little fucking soldier! A dog that runs after sticks whenever his master calls him.’
She tore the paper off, started again.
‘Don’t you realise that you’re not his brother? You’re sitting there in Felix’s seat but you are not a real brother!’
She stared defiantly at him, knowing he was prepared to hurt people to get what he wanted. But he just started rocking again.
‘Anneli, I’ve known Leo a hell of a lot longer than you have. He has never and will never let anyone like you get in his way. Leo has his brothers. You know that damn well.’
He put his hand on his breast, clenched it, pounded it a few times.
‘Leo has his brothers.’
Then he got up, walked towards the stairs, but stopped halfway.
‘I am a soldier. A damn good soldier. And a good soldier knows exactly what to do – so I know exactly what the hell I’m going to do tomorrow. Do you know?’
And then he saluted.
‘I’m not the weak link. You’re the one driving the getaway car – and how many banks have you robbed? What if the cops stop us and you’re the one who has to roll down the window? And you’re the one who has to say, “Oh, officer, are you doing a breath test?” If that’s you … for fuck’s sake.’
And he carried on towards the stairs and then down to the armoury, which was his responsibility.
Jasper wiped a cartridge clean, pushed it into a magazine, then the next and the next, until the magazine was full and he could wipe it and then put it among the others. A pile of sixteen magazines free of fingerprints; he always wore eight, Leo wanted six, and Ivan would get two.
Sitting down here thinking about the next robbery – the big one, fifty million – he felt a little calmer, but the irritation that ran in front of him and roared at him didn’t stop altogether. A little fucking soldier. Anneli didn’t know shit about what they were planning to do in a year’s time! Not a damn thing! Not a real brother. She was a ticking time bomb, he could feel it, and wanted to scream it at Leo. He wanted to warn him, but he couldn’t do it, it would sound wrong. Ideally, he would have liked to push a gun barrel into her forehead and explain that she would disappear completely if she so much as considered talking. But he wasn’t going to make the same mistake again, not like with Vincent. You can’t teach somebody who doesn’t want to learn. He had been right though. That’s why he was the one sitting in the armoury polishing away fingerprints, not Vincent. He would be proven right by Anneli, too, dammit.
He looked at his watch. They should be in touch soon.
Row after row of automatic weapons. And something else, in a grey-green wooden box on the top shelf, still unused. He lifted up the lid. Hand grenades. They’d got hold of them at their final exercise, too. And he would take three of them with him tomorrow. Just as a precaution. Without saying anything to Leo.
Leo and Ivan drove in silence through the winter darkness in a newly acquired Ford Scorpio, stolen from a deserted car park in Södertälje. They passed Strängnäs and turned onto the exit for Highway 55.
‘Can you handle this?’ asked Leo, glancing at his father.
‘What do you mean “handle”?’
‘Not drinking.’
He wanted to see the strength, the limitless power he’d grown up with. He didn’t understand this man so well. His father was no longer so easy to read. He had to know if the man who’d taught him to punch with his whole body was still in there.
‘If the cops come, you’ll encounter them first. Can you handle it?’
‘I’ll shoot if I have to.’
‘Aim and shoot?’
‘I think I know how a damn rifle works!’
They were silent as they drove through the countryside of ancient Sweden, rune stones and Bronze Age tombs at every other intersection. Past the road to Arnö, the island they’d rented a cottage on for a few summers when they were still a family, over Hjulsta Bridge and the roundabout that separated Enköping from the E18, and then the last couple of kilometres on Highway 70. His father had raised his voice and that was good – but it wasn’t enough, he had to be pushed further.
‘So I don’t need to hide the booze tonight?’
Ivan clenched his hands, Leo saw it. Clenched them and let them lie in his lap.
‘Leo, damn it … are you trying to give me orders? Is that what you think you’re doing? Like a real leader?’
‘You didn’t answer. The bottle, Dad. The bottle! I have to know. Are you going to drink this away?’
‘If you’re such a real leader, where the hell are your brothers?’
It was that kind of aggression he wanted to see, that it was still there and came instinctively. And that his father could control
it, that he’d learned how to focus it.
‘Is that why you’re here? You thought we’d do this together, like a big fucking family … damn, don’t you get it? If I still had Felix and Vincent with me, I’d sure as hell never need someone like you, Dad.’
The eyes that had just been hidden behind sombre thoughts were now clear and black – a look that could turn into a beating at any time. And Ivan’s hands weren’t shaking at all.
‘Then why aren’t they here? With their leader?’
‘They don’t want to be. Simple as that, Pappa.’
‘Are you enemies? My sons? I taught you to stick together.’
It was still in him. And he’d been able to control it. And if he could control himself, then Leo could also control him.
‘No. They just don’t want to. And when someone doesn’t want to do something, you don’t force them to. I learned that long ago. And I’m not forcing you either. If you’re not up to it, Dad, say so now.’
The last exit. The road narrowed, its bends limiting visibility. Farmland turned into shapeless darkness outside their window.
‘Leo, are you really going to do this?’
Up ahead, the first lights of the low-rise buildings and the few family rentals that formed the small town of Heby.
‘I mean … with them? The pretend soldier? A buffoon who thinks we should attack Russia? And that woman who rearranges fake presents trying to make them look nice? Can she even drive a car? Listen, Leo. Have you really thought this through?’
‘I’ve thought of everything. There’s just one problem: you. You are the only risk.’
‘This is insane, Leo!’
‘Nine bank robberies. I know what the hell I’m doing.’
Ivan saw it all so clearly now. It had always been him in charge. But in this fucking car that wasn’t even theirs, in the icy wind that danced through the rolled-down window, it was his eldest son.
Heby was even smaller than the town he lived in. And at this time of night it was completely dark except for a kiosk at the small bus station, the pizza and kebab restaurant opposite it and the video shop. And there it was, in a rendered low-rise building with its lights on, squeezed between a tobacconist and a dentist. The bank.
‘That’s where you’ll stand tomorrow, next to those brown wood slats that mark the entrance,’ said Leo, pointing.
They rolled slowly past.
‘Or do you think it’s insane?’
Then the town ended. It was really just a single street, then a beautiful white church on the hill, and then the main road again.
A few kilometres north, they drove through dense forest, around a sharp bend, then two kilometres west. On the right-hand side stood a fence with a double row of mailboxes that belonged to a scattering of summer houses. Leo slowed down and turned off the paved road onto gravel, passing two large barns and a tractor. It was there they’d stop tomorrow, a natural parking spot between densely growing tree trunks. He got out, went into the woods and came back with a bundle of fir twigs already bound together in his arms, and they quickly covered the car, before starting the walk back through the black forest.
‘We’ll go the same way tomorrow. In about two hundred metres, we’ll reach the next car.’
The only light far up above the branches came from the white dots of stars, surrounding a burning half-moon. Leo tried to look at his father, but only heard his heavy breathing as his out-of-shape body ducked under the stubborn branches.
‘Dad? Say it right now.’
‘Say what?’
They stopped, engulfed by blackness, standing just an arm’s length apart.
‘So I can reconsider. Say it now. Here. Between us. Say you can’t do it. I can take it, but I want to know now – not tomorrow at breakfast.’
Before Ivan could answer they heard tyres approaching on the gravel. Headlights shone through the tree trunks. It was the same rental car that had been parked outside the house in Tumba, packed with colourful and empty parcels, with Jasper behind the wheel. Leo started towards it.
‘Leo?’
He was pushing aside branches when Ivan grabbed him.
‘Leo, look at me.’
A heavy, needle-laden branch between their faces.
‘You, look at me.’
Ivan pressed the branch down, broke it off.
‘I’m your father. I can do this.’
82
A LIGHT KNOCK on the front door. It is almost inaudible, but somehow it migrates through the house.
Anneli was standing at the worktop, cutting thick slices of bread for sandwiches, and Ivan stood next to her dicing cucumbers and tomato for a salad, a midnight snack, fuel for bank robbers. Jasper sat in the armoury with the hatch open, oiling tomorrow’s tools, and Leo sat in an armchair in the living room with a map spread out on the table, studying alternative escape routes.
They jerked to a halt, prepared themselves. Nobody had any business being here, less than a day before the operation.
Leo crept to the bedroom window and angled up the blind, but couldn’t see under the porch roof from there, so he went down the stairs towards the front door. A hand had been pressed over the peephole.
Another knock.
Jasper emerged from the armoury with two automatic rifles, handed one to Leo, who placed it on the shelf in the hall and covered it with a jacket, and then crept into the kitchen with the other.
‘Go upstairs. And take Anneli with you,’ Leo whispered to his father. He waited until they disappeared up the stairs before opening the door.
‘So have you been bad or good?’
The two of them. Here. Leo relaxed and smiled.
‘Come in.’
He hugged Felix and Vincent. His brothers were back.
‘Come in, damn it!’
Jasper approached from the kitchen, gun in hand.
‘I guess the whole family’s together!’
‘You’re not part of this family,’ said Vincent, unable to look at Jasper for more than a moment.
Anneli came down from upstairs. And behind her, Ivan, who stopped halfway down. Felix crumpled up into immediate anger.
‘What the hell is he doing here?’
‘It’s obvious what he’s doing here,’ replied Leo.
‘No, it’s fucking not!’
‘You left. Someone had to take your place.’
Ivan continued down the stairs.
‘My boys,’ he said, smiling a little more broadly with each step. ‘Vincent, you’re so big now. And Felix … see, Leo, they’re here now!’
It was so crowded in the little hallway. Leo felt squeezed from two directions. Behind him, his impatient father wanted to go forward and say hello, in front of him his two younger brothers had no intention of doing so.
‘We want to talk to you. Me and Vincent. Alone,’ Felix said to him.
Leo nodded towards the room with the safe in the floor, and the three brothers went in and closed the door.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Felix, once they were alone. ‘But we haven’t changed our minds. We’re not here to rob banks.’
Felix took an envelope from his jacket’s inner pocket.
‘Here. Seventy thousand. That’s all we have left. If you need money, if that’s why, then take it, Leo. And forget about robbing that damn bank!’
At first Leo had just stared at the envelope. Now he realised.
‘You come here, here, Felix, like fucking Santa Claus handing out Christmas presents. And then what? Seventy thousand will only last a few months.’
‘Then we’ll move back here, if you want us to. We still have a company, don’t we? A real construction company? We can do what we did before. We can build houses together.’
The envelope hung in the air between them.
‘Vincent, do you still agree with him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know?’
‘I don’t know!’
Leo inclined his head a little to one side
, and smiled.
‘But what you do know, Vincent, is that you can’t stand sitting at home and worrying about it either. So it’s decision time. We’re going tomorrow.’
Felix dropped the envelope that nobody wanted.
‘So you’re going to rob a bank together? Seriously? You … four?’
‘Yes.’
‘Leo, that envelope is yours. I’m leaving now. I didn’t come here to rob a bank – I came here to stop you from doing it. And you will never ask us that question again. Not me, not Vincent.’
He went to the door, opened it, turned round.
‘Vincent? I’m going back home tomorrow morning. Our tickets are already booked. You have my number if you want to go with me.’
Ivan got up from the kitchen chair, as if he had been waiting.
‘Wait!’
Felix didn’t.
‘Wait, I want to talk to you!’
He just barely got hold of Felix’s arm.
‘Let me go, damn it!’
‘Listen to me, we haven’t seen each other—’
‘Listen? To you? You’re gonna rob a bank with your own son?’
Ivan let go.
‘Felix. My boy. I’m here to see you. You. Leo. Vincent. I thought we could … work together. All of us.’
‘What?’
A few metres between them, but close enough to tell that his breath was different, didn’t smell of alcohol.
‘Do you think I would want to rob a bank … with you? Do you think I even want to be in the same room as you? After what you made me do to my mother? Do you really believe that? You can go to hell!’
‘You have to let go of that someday, Felix, it’s not me you’re angry at … you’re angry with him, the man you knew when you were little, who wasn’t much older than Leo is now. Let go of it. And look at me now, I’m not the same. You have to let go.’
‘I have to … let go? Can you answer me one thing – who opened the fucking door when you came and smashed in our mother’s face? Was it me? Was it Vincent? Was it Leo? Do you remember? Or should I let go of that, too?’
He took a step closer to his father. He cleared his throat, collecting saliva.
And then he spat.
The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Page 46
