by The Helicopter Heist- A Novel Based on True Events (retail) (epub)
They came to a door with a frosted glass panel. They could hear voices from the other side, and Kant knocked.
“You can wait by the elevator,” he said to the two police officers, who nodded obediently.
Thurn sighed.
They stepped into the room.
* * *
—
It was smaller than Thurn had expected. The curtains were drawn, hiding what had to be a fantastic view of the capital, with City Hall and possibly even Riddarfjärden in the distance. There were five men sitting around the white conference table, all wearing dark suits, white shirts and ties. Director Henrik Nilsson, the man the police were looking for, had clearly been giving some kind of presentation. He was standing by a whiteboard and stopped to turn to them.
“Björn?” he exclaimed in surprise.
“Hello, Henrik,” Kant replied.
Henrik Nilsson shook his head in confusion.
“What are you doing here? I’m…Björn, could you wait in my office, I’ll come as soon as I’m done here? Fifteen, twenty minutes? I’m…a little busy, as you can see.”
He gestured to the men sitting at the table, all of whom looked equally surprised and were staring at the prosecutor and the prosecutor’s pretty companion.
Kant hesitated. “No, I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple, Henrik. I can explain…If you give me a couple of minutes, I can…”
The prosecutor nodded toward the corridor.
“A couple of minutes? Now?” the suspect said with a forced laugh. “Like I said, Björn, I’m in the middle of an, er, let’s say…a presentation of sorts. And I really need to finish it.”
He turned to the men around the table for support, but they didn’t say a word.
“I’m sorry, Henrik, but this can’t wait,” said Kant, trying to drum up some courage.
“Look,” Nilsson said, this time with a note of sharpness and irritation in his voice, “I’ll ask you for the last time, please go to my office and wait there, and I’ll come as soon as I’m done here.”
Caroline Thurn, who had been standing behind Prosecutor Kant until this point, had already lost her patience after their opening exchange. She had tried to help put the prosecutor on the right track using her body language, but now she stepped forward and said, loudly: “Henrik Nilsson, you’re under arrest. You’re going to come with us to police headquarters where we will conduct a preliminary interview.”
Nilsson’s jaw dropped.
“This is the most ridiculous damn…”
He shook his head. He didn’t have the words.
“Henrik,” said Kant, trying to soften Thurn’s lack of tact, “we do actually have to…”
“Get out!” Nilsson shouted, suddenly finding his tongue. “My lawyers are going to—”
But Thurn couldn’t bear to listen any longer.
Where the handcuffs had come from wasn’t something the prosecutor would be able to explain afterward, but she stepped straight past him and snapped one of them around Henrik Nilsson’s wrist. It all happened so quickly that the director barely had time to realize what was happening.
Caroline Thurn quickly fastened the second cuff around the wrist of prosecutor Björn Kant.
She looked at the two friends with a broad smile.
“I’m going back to police headquarters now,” she said. “And wherever I go, the key goes too. Do stop by and see us.”
With that, she left the room. She walked toward the elevators and the two waiting officers.
“The others are just coming,” she said. “We might as well wait here.”
10
Michel Maloof had chosen the soccer field in Fittja as their meeting place. Soccer fields were always a possibility, as were any other open spaces where you could be sure there was no one eavesdropping behind a bush. Maloof had said that he had followed up on the tip from the man with the dogs and that it was something Sami should hear with his own ears. But he hadn’t said any more than that.
That was why Sami Farhan was waiting in a parking lot in Fittja, in the shadows behind a garage. One by one, the lights had gone out in the windows of the hulking tower on the hill, the enormous block of apartments that had been built during the fifties and sixties as part of the government’s political experiment, an extensive public housing program known as the Million Project. Every time Sami went to places like Bredäng, Botkyrka or Flemingsberg, he was reminded of exactly why he now lived in Södermalm.
Out here was his past, not his future.
It was ten thirty in the evening. Though he was wearing two sweaters under his coat, his clothes were no protection against the cold. March had arrived, but the mercury was still hitting new lows.
Michel Maloof had said he would be there at quarter past ten, and, like always, Sami had arrived in good time. He had been waiting almost half an hour now. His impatience was worse than the cold. An inheritance from his father, his mother always said. A quick run around the park would warm him up and get rid of his restlessness, but who knew which eyes were on him in the tower block up there.
* * *
—
Another five minutes passed before a gray Seat pulled into the parking lot. Sami sighed gently. He wanted to be home before midnight, Karin had already been suspicious when he said that he had to help out on the cold buffet for the second night in a row. It wasn’t a lie that he worked extra shifts at his uncle’s place in Liljeholmen, and the money it had brought in so far was proof of that. But his wages from the cold buffet were barely enough to cover the rent, diapers and gruel. It was Karin who kept the family together, both financially and socially. She was one of Stockholm’s many struggling small-business owners, who, along with a friend, had opened a dressmaker’s shop on Maria Prästgårdsgata. They had been lucky and skilled enough to win a couple of big repeat customers, which helped them build up a certain level of stability and success. But things varied, of course, and some weeks were better than others. All the same, the majority of her months were considerably better than Sami’s.
The nondescript Seat parked next to an Audi some way from the garage, and Sami immediately recognized the short, compact shape of Maloof as he moved around the car and opened the passenger’s side door. The woman who climbed out was wearing a bulky blue down jacket and a white knitted hat. Sami couldn’t make out much more than that from where he was standing.
He made himself visible by stepping forward out of the shadows. Maloof waved, and a few minutes later they were face-to-face.
“Alexandra, this is Sami. Sami, Alexandra Svensson,” Maloof introduced them.
Sami took off a glove and shook Alexandra’s hand. She looked away. If it had been light, Maloof was convinced he would have seen her blush.
“So…well…you can keep us company for a while?” Maloof suggested, as though they had only bumped into one another by chance.
Sami nodded and smirked. “What a coincidence,” he said. “Bumping into you two here. You on the way back to your place, Michel?”
“Right, right. Some hot tea…with honey,” Maloof replied, completely without irony.
Alexandra laughed as though he had told a joke, so that no one would believe she had gone along with the tea-and-honey idea.
Sami knew that Maloof’s family had put down roots in Fittja and then let those roots grow wide in the suburban Swedish world. Sami didn’t feel any such belonging to a place or neighborhood, not even to Södermalm.
* * *
—
They started walking. Maloof took them across the soccer field, which was currently bathed in darkness. The snow crunched beneath the soles of their shoes. Alexandra didn’t say a word, and Sami waited for Maloof to start the conversation. Lights from the highway fell across the field in thin strips, and as they walked through one of them, Sami took the chance to get a better look at Alexandra Svensson.
He would have described her as more ordinary than cute. The shadows of her long lashes fell onto her round cheeks, which had turned red in
the cold night air. She sensed his gaze and turned her head. The glimmer in her eye told him that she was slightly drunk, but she wasn’t an idiot.
Sami made a mental note.
“Yeah, so,” Maloof began, “we were in town for dinner. A place in Kungsholmen…well…yeah…Did you know Sami was a chef?”
“You’re a chef?” Alexandra asked with interest. “I love food. And cooking. But I’m, like, not very good at it. I could never go on Come Dine with Me or anything like that. Or maybe I could? I’m good at chocolate mousse.”
“Right,” Maloof added, though it wasn’t clear what he was referring to.
“I like baking,” Sami confessed.
“Do you?” Alexandra sounded enthusiastic.
“Cookies, mostly.”
She stopped and looked up at him in surprise.
“Yeah, raspberry caves, Finnish sticks…” Sami went on. “You know?”
He sounded serious, but the thought of this big, strong man stooped over a baking tray, adding raspberry jam to his cookies, seemed so unlikely. She laughed briefly, as though to show that she understood.
“Where do you work?” she asked.
Sami told her the name of the restaurant in Liljeholmen.
“What about you? What do you do?” he asked.
“I count money,” she said, giggling again.
Maloof was impressed. Sami had managed to get her to bring up the subject much quicker than he had. That was what he had expected, it was the reason he had wanted to let Sami hear it from her rather than recapping what she had said. Maloof would never be anywhere near as convincing.
“Count money?”
“I work for G4S,” she explained, unnecessarily adding: “It’s a company that does secure transports. We collect money from shops and stuff like that.”
“Wow,” Sami said tonelessly. “You like it?”
“It’s OK, but like, I dunno…? The hours are a bit…two days a week you have to work nights. Then the day after’s ruined, you wake up late in the afternoon and can’t sleep that night because you’re not really tired. It’s tough.”
“A bit like being a chef,” said Sami.
“I never thought of that.”
Her voice sounded eager when she realized that she happened to have something in common with the stranger.
Maloof stopped by the far goalpost. A soft breeze was blowing across the open field, carrying with it the smell of exhaust fumes and an icy chill that stung their skin.
Without thinking about it, all three turned their backs to the wind and their faces to the ground. The sound of lone cars passing with a low whine on the highway was all they could hear. Sami stamped his feet hard against the snow, which was lying like a thin white blanket on the grass.
“Right, right,” said Maloof. “And…didn’t you say it felt like hard work…going out to Västberga every day?”
Maloof wanted her to get back to the main subject, and Alexandra was someone who quickly adapted to that kind of demand.
“Yeah, that’s the thing,” she willingly agreed. “Super hard. Västberga, I mean. What even is that place? I sublet in Hammarby Sjöstad, so you can go straight through Årsta, but…Especially in the evening and nights, it’s like traveling abroad. Trains and metros and buses. I applied for a job at Lugnet, the school right next to where I live, but I didn’t get it. There were like a thousand people who applied.”
“You can just ask your new boyfriend for a lift,” Sami joked, elbowing Maloof. “He works nights too, sometimes.”
“My new boyfriend?” Alexandra blurted, surprised, realizing a moment later who Sami meant. “Yeah, I mean…I don’t know…”
Maloof wasn’t amused by the joke. He urged her on.
“And,” he said gently, “you said you didn’t have the best colleagues either?”
“Nope, that’s true,” Alexandra replied, though a note of hesitation had appeared in her voice.
Maloof was worried. Was she starting to realize how odd the situation was; that she had been brought out onto a cold soccer field in Fittja to talk with a complete stranger about her pointless job? But he was counting on her need to please being stronger than her anxiety.
“No, it’s not exactly like I’d choose to socialize with them outside of work,” she continued. “But I guess it’s always like that? Plus, I’m not planning to stay there counting money for the rest of my life…”
“No,” said Sami. “You seem smart, you could do whatever you want.”
“Right, right.” Maloof backed him up.
“I’m freezing, Michel,” she said. “Can’t we…”
“We’re going,” he promised. “But…I mean…while we’re on the subject of your job…”
He turned to Sami. “When Alexandra told me about Västberga last time…you said…that it felt uncomfortable? Sometimes? ’Cause there are people who…you know, are planning to rob the place?”
“It’s like, pretty hard to rob us.” Alexandra nodded.
“Right, right,” said Maloof. “But it’s still possible?”
He was careful not to leave any pauses that might unintentionally increase the importance of what he wanted her to talk about.
“Because you had an idea…?” he continued.
She laughed self-consciously and glanced around. As though someone was listening. But the soccer field was deserted that dark evening, and if anyone was approaching, they would notice them from a mile off.
“It’s not exactly my idea,” she said. “Everyone talks about that kind of thing during the breaks, you know. About how the people working in the vault think they’re special because it’s impossible to get in there. And then the rest of us, working up in Counting, we ask why someone would try to get in the vault. There are like a thousand doors and locks and cameras. But up in Cash, we’ve got hundreds of millions of kronor and nowhere near as much security stuff.”
“I don’t understand,” said Sami.
“No, so,” Alexandra explained, “if you were a thief, you shouldn’t try to get into the vault. You should just go in through the roof. You’d just have to drill a hole and then you’d be in our section.”
“A hole in the roof?”
“Right.” Maloof nodded, trying to rein in his excitement. “Alexandra’s department is on the top floor.”
“So you’d go in through the roof?” Sami repeated in an attempt to understand.
“That easy.” Alexandra nodded.
“Right?” Maloof laughed.
That was exactly what he thought. For years, more than he could remember, Michel Maloof had been trying to find out how to get into the cash depot in Västberga. Nowhere else in Sweden held as much cash as it did. But it had always seemed impossible, and the security was legendary.
And then it turned out to be this easy.
Right beneath the ceiling was an unguarded room full of hundreds of millions in cash.
The three stood in silence for a moment or two.
“My feet are freezing, Michel,” Alexandra moaned.
“Right, right. Let’s go now,” he replied, putting an arm around her to share some of the warmth he felt inside.
They took a step toward the grass slope where you could take a shortcut straight to one of the foot tunnels.
“Through the roof?” Sami repeated, nodding to himself. “OK. See you later, Michel. Nice to meet you, Alexandra.”
Maloof and his new girlfriend disappeared into the darkness.
11
Her water broke at home on Högbergsgatan on the second of April.
It wasn’t anything like the first time.
Karin and Sami had gone to the hospital too early then. There hadn’t been any free rooms, and they’d had to wait in the corridor of the maternity ward for six hours, from two in the morning until eight. When things finally got going, it took another twelve hours. Sami had fallen asleep in the bed in their room that afternoon, while Karin paced around him trying to manage her pain.
He knew tha
t sleep was the body’s way of managing a situation that couldn’t be managed, but he had still felt ashamed when he woke up. Being so physically close to the person you loved and still being shut out and helpless was awful. He couldn’t lessen or share Karin’s pain, so his only escape had been to shut down.
The tension in the delivery room had grown the longer her labor went on, the nurses’ eyes had started to wander, and by dinnertime, he’d heard them whispering about a cesarean. But then the time suddenly came, and John had been born that evening.
The second time was different.
When they arrived at the maternity ward, her contractions were so close together that the nurses and midwife immediately took them into a delivery room. Just under an hour later, John’s little brother was born, and two hours after that, Sami was back home on Högbergsgatan.
During the month that followed, the Farhan family—Sami, Karin, John and the baby—lived life as though in a cocoon. They and the rest of Stockholm were trapped beneath a gray blanket of incessant rain. There were days when they didn’t even get out of bed, days they never got dressed, with a newborn baby and his one-year-old brother both needing closeness, warmth, food and care. It didn’t feel right to leave either of the kids with a babysitter, not even with their grandmothers.
It was only as April was suddenly on the verge of May that the new parents felt their isolation start to grate. They took turns leaving the apartment, striking up contact with family and friends and regaining their respective identities outside of being a parent.
Awaiting Karin was early spring, blue skies and mild winds, loyal friends and a longing grandmother. Awaiting Sami were debts that hadn’t paid themselves during his monthlong paternity leave.
And on top of that, a large number of missed calls from Michel Maloof.
The planning for different jobs went in phases, and you kept doors open because you never knew what would happen. Things were leaning more and more toward the Västberga job, though Sami still didn’t want to rule out the Täby Racecourse plan.
