by The Helicopter Heist- A Novel Based on True Events (retail) (epub)
Hassan Kaya had shown them sketches of the trucks that would be emblazoned with the company’s logo. They should have been there to take the cargo, but there was no sign of them. Sami was jumping up and down on the spot like a child who wanted immediate answers to his questions.
* * *
—
The clock struck seven, and the two friends talked about Årsta warehouses and how much money they were going to make on frozen shellfish, all while trying to keep warm as best they could. Sami was constantly glancing in the direction of the Baltic, hoping to catch sight of the boat.
But there was no boat anywhere to be seen, and no trucks either.
By seven thirty, Sami couldn’t hide his frustration any longer. He told Bulut to wait by the Mercedes while he went away to talk to a couple of men busy unloading goods.
Sami Farhan wasn’t someone who left things to chance. During the two months that had passed since he invested in the project, he had asked Hassan Kaya thousands of questions, and Kaya had patiently answered them all. Thanks to that, Sami not only knew that the boat they were waiting for sailed under an Estonian flag, but also what its designation was and where it would dock.
But no one working in the harbor that morning could give him the slightest idea as to what had happened.
At quarter to eight, Sami called Hassan Kaya. The phone rang, but there was no answer. For once, it also didn’t go to voice mail.
“I don’t like this,” Sami said when he returned to Bulut and the car. “You know what I mean? This doesn’t feel good.”
He thumped his chest through his down jacket.
“You’re just paranoid.” Bulut smiled. He was leaning against his Mercedes, smoking a cigarette. “As usual.”
“It’s not just my money. Do you get that? People are expecting things. From all directions.”
“You’ve mentioned that a few times,” Bulut pointed out. “Like, a hundred.”
“So where the hell’s the boat?”
Sami’s hand drummed against his thigh, and he shook his head.
“You want to sit down and wait?” Bulut suggested. His friend’s behavior was starting to stress him out.
They climbed into the Mercedes and Bulut turned the ignition to get the heater going. They stared at the empty harbor entrance in silence, Sami still drumming his hands. On his thighs, on the dashboard, on the car door. After a few minutes, he couldn’t bear it any longer.
“I’m going to see if he’s in the office yet.”
Ibrahim Bulut nodded.
* * *
—
When Sami Farhan returned to the corridor in Magasin 6, the majority of the doors were still closed. He knocked on Kaya’s. Gently at first, then harder. Nothing happened.
He took out his phone and tried calling the number the shellfish importer had always answered in the past. It rang, but again, no one answered.
With the phone pressed to his ear, Sami studied the closed door. Some of the offices down the corridor had metal doors, but this one was wood. He shoved his phone back into his pocket and tried the door with his shoulder. It gave. Not much, but enough for him to know that it was worth another try, with more force this time.
On his fifth attempt, the door gave way. The frame broke with a crack and Sami suddenly found himself inside the tiny office he had visited so many times before.
It was empty. Even the desk had gone.
His blood was pounding in his temples.
There wouldn’t be any boat. There wouldn’t be any trucks.
Like a tiger in a small cage, Sami paced the room. The bastard had screwed them over.
Ibrahim Bulut was still waiting in the car. Sami tore open the door.
“He’s gone! Do you understand what I’m saying? Gone! The office is empty, his phone’s off. Shit! Shit, shit, shit. We’re driving over to that asshole’s place for a chat right now.”
“What the hell are you saying?” The color had vanished from Bulut’s face.
“We’re screwed. There’s no fucking boat. We’re going over to that bastard’s place now to get our money back.”
“But…” said Bulut, “I don’t know where he lives…”
“You don’t know where he lives? What the hell are you saying?”
Sami couldn’t believe it.
“Somewhere in Gothenburg, I think,” said Bulut. “Or Landskrona or somewhere on the fucking west coast.”
“You said you knew him?”
“Yeah, but what the fuck, I do know him. We’ve fucking worked together. But not so much that I know where the hell he lives! He lives with his fucking prawns somewhere, that’s all I know.”
Sami was thinking about the money. He was thinking about Karin, about her big belly and the way she nursed John. He was thinking about his big brother, who had called him “Lord of the Prawns” and laughed.
He thought about how, in just a few moments, he had gone from being a successful businessman in the import branch to a debt-ridden trainee chef with a criminal past.
“Shit!” he shouted, hammering his hands against the solid paneling of the German car. “Shit, shit, shit!”
6
This wasn’t where it was meant to happen.
Music was pounding from invisible speakers, so loud that she couldn’t hear her own panting breaths.
You’re hot then you’re cold, Katy Perry sang. You’re yes then you’re no.
Why, Alexandra Svensson wondered as she mirrored the energetic instructor with a series of quick squat jumps, could her life be summed up by three short minutes of a pop song? She didn’t want to be predictable. You’re in then you’re out. But it wasn’t her fault. She had to remember that. For once, it wasn’t her fault. Giving him an ultimatum had been the right thing to do. He couldn’t have his cake and eat it too.
That Thursday afternoon, there were twenty or so people working out at her branch of Friskis & Svettis in Ringen. Alexandra had gone straight after work, and there were just two men in the room. One of them was gay. The other was desperate. Neither of them was a suitable candidate.
High knees.
Arms spinning.
Alexandra Svensson came to the gym twice a week and had learned all the moves, but it wasn’t the place she would meet someone she could share her life with.
* * *
—
In the row in front of her, to the right, was Lena Hall.
Alexandra watched her friend in the mirror. Lena had an hourglass figure, and she always ordered a pastry of some kind when they stopped for a coffee afterward, scoffing it down in a couple of breathless bites and not thinking anything of it. But still, Lena’s knees were higher than the instructor’s, and she never seemed to sweat.
Life was deeply unfair, and Lena Hall was proof of that.
Lena and Alexandra were unlikely friends. They hadn’t known one another particularly long, but Lena was the type of person people felt like they knew, even if they had just met her. When the women sat down in Espresso House for their usual coffee—and pastry—after class, Alexandra would talk about work and Lena about clothes. Those were the roles they had assigned to themselves. Alexandra told a new story about her boss, and Lena spent half an hour on a dress she had seen online, one she wanted to buy even though it was too expensive and she hadn’t tried it on.
“I should do it though, right?” she asked.
“I don’t buy many clothes,” Alexandra replied.
She glanced at the time on her phone at regular intervals. She wasn’t really in a hurry to get back to her apartment in Hammarby Sjöstad, all she had planned was to stop off at the supermarket in Hammarby Allé and buy dinner. Alexandra gazed longingly at Lena’s pastry and decided she would add one of the mint dark chocolate bars from Lindt into her basket. She needed something to console herself with as she watched TV that evening.
Alexandra knew she shouldn’t keep thinking about the man she would probably never see again, she knew he was no great loss, that he was just a place
bo.
But she couldn’t help it.
She had the ability to fall in love with the hope, she fell in love with love itself, and the actual object of her feelings wasn’t always that important. Not to begin with. But sooner or later, reality always struck. And the man lying asleep in her bed would transform from a handsome magician who had made her loneliness disappear into a snoring pig who talked about himself with his mouth full while he ate breakfast.
All the same, she wasn’t made for the single life.
She sighed.
“What?” Lena asked.
“No, nothing,” said Alexandra.
“You know what I’m talking about though, right?”
The truth was that Alexandra hadn’t been listening, so when she nodded she hoped there wouldn’t be any follow-up questions.
Lena had finished her pastry and asked for the bill. “See you on Tuesday?” she asked.
Alexandra nodded. Going to the gym had become more fun with Lena there, but more than twice a week was too much.
“Maybe we could try the yoga class too?” said Lena. “Did you get the invite?”
“What invite?”
“Was it yesterday? No, over the weekend? No, hang on, it was through the Facebook group.”
Alexandra shrugged. She had been on Facebook for a while now, but there were so many Alexandra Svenssons that everyone who ever contacted her seemed to be looking for someone else. It was easier not to take part.
“No,” she replied. “I didn’t see it.”
“Seemed totally reasonable. Four classes for two hundred kronor, something like that. Shall we go?”
Lena began to talk enthusiastically about yoga groups, and Alexandra found her thoughts drifting again.
Life, her mother had said just before she died of cancer one overcast November day seven years earlier, was like any old party. If you want to, you can stay by the bar and drink until you’re so drunk that you have to go to the toilet and throw up. Or else you can sneak home after dinner because you think everyone else is an idiot. Maybe you can try to have a deep conversation with some depressing guy who thinks he’s an artist. Or maybe you’ll dance the night away. Life is what you make of it, but it rarely gets better than that.
Alexandra had grown up with her mother. Just the two of them. Only four months had passed between diagnosis and death, and though it had now been seven years, Alexandra could still sometimes see her in her reflection.
* * *
—
She was home by seven, and an hour later she had eaten dinner. She washed up and then changed into a dressing gown and sat down on the sofa with her bar of chocolate. There was a film on TV about a female lawyer fighting the mafia. Being a lawyer was something Alexandra Svensson was still considering. She liked rules.
As anxious as she was about her loneliness, she was satisfied with her job. She worked at G4S out in Västberga, a huge multinational where she felt comfortable. She assumed she would find something else one day, maybe in the center of town, but she was in no rush. She was only twenty-four, she had her entire life ahead of her.
First, she needed to meet someone.
There were times when she could have gone home with absolutely anyone from work, cooked dinner and massaged his shoulders, just to avoid facing the loneliness awaiting her.
There were times when she woke at night, alone in her bed, curled up in the fetal position, and hugged a pillow.
There were times in the morning when she just wanted to scream to break the silence in her cramped, practical kitchen in Hammarby Sjöstad.
7
It was ten in the morning when Sami Farhan maneuvered the stroller into the elevator. For the first six months, they had just left it by the front door, but it had been stolen a few months ago. The new stroller Karin had bought with the insurance money had followed them up into the apartment ever since. What went on in the mind of someone who stole a stroller, Sami wondered, swearing to himself at the cramped elevator.
Out on the street, the light was unexpectedly bright. He slowly walked up Skånegatan, and the baby was asleep before he even reached the top of the hill.
Sami turned off into Vitabergsparken, pushing the stroller ahead of him up the slope toward the Sofia Church. He could see the silhouette of a man in a black jacket waiting for him outside the entrance to the house of God. His head was shaved, and there was a strikingly wide scar looping around it. As though his halo had fallen and branded him for life.
Toomas Mandel.
“Shitty business,” was the first thing Mandel said as they greeted one another. “Real shitty.”
Sami sighed. The whole city knew what had happened. He had no idea how the rumor had spread, he hadn’t started it. But now it was too late to do anything about it. Everyone knew he had been screwed over by the Turk, who seemed to have gone up in smoke; everyone knew the whole frozen shellfish business had gone down the drain.
Sami shrugged. He was still pushing the stroller ahead of him like a plow, and Mandel fell in step with him. The two men walked through the park toward Nytorget.
“You thought about it?” Mandel asked.
Sami nodded. “I’m not sure. I’m really not sure, you know?” he said. “I’ve got thousands of questions. Or hundreds, at least.”
“Ask away. I’m not sure I have all the answers yet,” Mandel cautiously replied, “but I’m working on it.”
“Tell me about the gates again. They shut when the alarm goes off, was that it? And there were how many guards…?”
“Sixteen guards on site at night,” Mandel replied.
“But that means sixteen people calling for backup. You know? If every guard calls in backup, and one car turns up per guard…That’s like, a hundred pigs. How long do we have?”
It was a good question. Carrying out a raid on Täby Racecourse was all about speed. The money was kept waiting in a locked room for the guards to come and pick it up at midnight. Getting into that room wouldn’t be the problem, it was getting out afterward that they still needed to solve.
While Mandel explained his plan, they turned right toward Malmgårdsvägen. Sami listened carefully and asked questions.
* * *
—
Ten days had passed since Sami stood on the dock in Frihamnen, waiting for the boat of prawns that would never arrive. When he got back home that morning, it had been without the champagne he had been planning, and with a despondency he couldn’t hide.
Karin had been awake, eating dry, sticky prunes straight from the bag in the kitchen. The outer walls of their building on Högbergsgatan were cracked, and a cold draft rolled in across the floor. Karin had been wearing a long, white terry dressing gown that Sami had given her for Christmas, and she pulled it tight around her body.
“You think I’m gross now, right?” she asked.
He smirked and shook his head.
“I’m used to it,” he replied. He still hadn’t taken off his coat.
“What? Did I eat prunes last time?”
“Yeah.”
She hadn’t been able to control her craving for prunes then either. She was just over seven months into this new pregnancy; the baby was due in early April, meaning there would be just under a year between the two children.
“There should be a law against having kids this close together,” she said.
She stared angrily at the prunes. After every bag, she was forced to spend an hour on the toilet. She had told him to stop her from eating too many of them, but when he saw her greedy eyes on the bag, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything.
“Why can’t I have cravings for something healthy?” she asked. “Some people just want broccoli.”
Sami didn’t reply, and it was only then that Karin looked up.
“What is it?” she asked. “What happened?”
The easygoing tone was gone, replaced by a concerned crease on her forehead and a look completely lacking in affection.
Sami had just turned fifteen when
he first fell in love with Karin. She had been unobtainable, and he had no idea how they could have ended up in the same class. Karin was from the city and Sami the suburbs, she was from the middle class and he from somewhere below. Months had passed before he even dared to speak to her, much longer before he worked up the courage to actually ask her out. Sami and his brothers had always talked openly about girls, but he didn’t dare say a word about Karin, terrified that his brothers would take an interest in her before he had time to get anywhere himself.
He was seventeen when they finally got together. For a couple of months, his experience was straight out of some predictable teenage American film, a time when every single song on the radio seemed to have been specially written for him and Karin. And then one evening he happened to tell her about something he had done, a break-in. Or happened to; he was boasting about it. He felt tough, grown up; it was something he had done with his big brother. Now he couldn’t even remember what they stole. Karin had broken up with him a few minutes later. Just like that. He had caused the exact opposite of what he wanted. But her explanation had been clear. She didn’t want to—ever—be with a criminal.
It had taken him a few years to win her back, but since then the pattern had repeated itself. Time and time again. Before she agreed that they should have a baby, he had promised once and for all that he was done with his old life. They had a future together, a life in which she wouldn’t have to worry about the police turning up one day to take him away, lock him up and throw away the key. And the fact she was choosing to believe him, she had firmly explained, was proof of her love. But her belief had since been tested a number of times, and the frown on her forehead was a clear sign that this was another such occasion.
Sami explained what had happened, that he had been set up and the frozen prawns had been a lie, and Karin breathed out.
“Business can always be sorted out,” she comforted him.
He didn’t know where she got her strength from.
