The Helicopter Heist

by The Helicopter Heist- A Novel Based on True Events (retail) (epub)

  Eventually, Dahlström manages to work out that he’s talking about a robbery on a cash service in Västberga.

  “Secure transit robbery?” he replies; he isn’t surprised.

  Secure transit vehicles were the new banks. Six out of every ten robberies these days had something to do with guards either carrying or transporting cash. All that surprises Dahlström is the time. Who could be out collecting money at this time of night?

  “It’s the G4S cash depot,” the guard says down the line. “They came in a helicopter.”

  Dahlström looks up from the blocks and squares. He stares blankly at his computer’s blue home screen as though it might give him the answers, and then he asks the guard to repeat what he just said.

  “It’s a helicopter,” the guard insists.

  “A helicopter?” says Dahlström.

  “It’s taken off again. It’s hovering above now.”

  Dahlström can’t believe what he’s hearing. A helicopter attacking a cash depot in Västberga? He knows the area, the Söderort district station is on Västberga Gårdsväg, less than a quarter of a mile from the secure transport company’s offices. He’s been to the station himself, as recently as a month ago.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asks.

  “Are you stupid?” the guard replies.

  Sofi Rosander has woken up on the sofa. She’s heard the conversation, their phone calls play automatically over the loudspeaker.

  “We need to call someone,” she whispers.

  “Stay on the line,” Dahlström orders the guard, ending the call.

  “We need to raise the alarm,” Sofi Rosander repeats. “And call the district commissioner.”

  “I can’t ring Caisa fucking Ekblad and wake her up,” Dahlström protests, terrified by the thought. “I’ll call Månsson instead. He’s in charge of Söderort. It’s his problem.”

  It takes a while for Dag Månsson to answer. He sounds muddled, newly woken and annoyed. Dahlström introduces himself and repeats the information that has just come in. Månsson reacts with the same degree of surprise.

  “The cash depot in Västberga? But it’s right next to the station?” he says.

  Dahlström has to repeat the information several times before Månsson finally understands that the robbers have landed a helicopter on the roof of G4S.

  “I’m on my way in,” he says. “I’ll call the commissioner en route. You raise the alarm.”

  72

  5:16 a.m.

  The helicopter is in the air, hovering just to the right of the building, far enough away not to hinder the three men working on the roof.

  Maloof had run over to Sami when he realized something wasn’t right. Together, they squat down and study the pane of glass close up. Thanks to the lights below, they can see a small crack, thin but long.

  Maloof knows that it could have been there before, but he decides not to mention that.

  “Keep going, keep going,” he says instead, returning to Nordgren, who has started to screw together the ladders.

  The longer of the two seems inconceivably long, but it does need to reach all the way to the fifth floor.

  “Let’s move everything over to the window,” he says to Nordgren.

  It’s more a type of therapy than anything else. They need to keep themselves busy while Sami lets the sledgehammer do its job.

  Sami strikes the glass. He strikes it again. The movement reminds him of a condemned prisoner in a chain gang in some film from the early sixties. Every time the sledgehammer hits the window, it makes the same dull thud, the same anticlimax, and after the fifth or seventh or eleventh strike, once Nordgren and Maloof have moved all the bags, ropes, ladders, tools and explosives over to the window, his patience starts to wear thin.

  Maloof had planned on them being out of there in quarter of an hour. Fifteen minutes. It can’t take any longer than that.

  Three of those fifteen minutes have already passed, and they haven’t even managed to smash the window.

  “I’ll blow it open,” Nordgren says quietly to Maloof, who nods.

  Nordgren bends down to prepare a charge, but as he does so, they finally hear the sound of the hammer breaking the glass into thousands of tiny pieces.

  * * *

  —

  With Nordgren’s help, Maloof lifts one end of the longer ladder above his head and they raise it vertically in the air. Next, they carefully lower it through the hole in the skylight. The balcony on the fifth floor is directly below them, little more than a ledge.

  Slowly, they lower the ladder down through the building. It has to be long enough.

  Afterward, Michel Maloof will look back at those few moments and think of them as having been the longest of the morning. If the ladder is too short, it’s all over. They won’t have any choice but to wave back the helicopter and leave.

  Foot by foot, the ladder disappears through the hole in the broken window. With just six inches of the full thirty-six feet to spare, it hits the floor.

  Maloof leans forward and looks down.

  “I think it’ll work,” he says.

  Getting the ladder into place took twenty-five seconds.

  It felt more like twenty-five minutes.

  Nordgren grabs the shorter ladder and swings it onto his right shoulder. He grabs the bag of explosives in his other hand.

  “You holding?” he asks Maloof.

  He starts climbing without waiting for an answer.

  Maloof holds on to the ladder as tightly as he can. It shakes. Nordgren is only halfway down when it starts to bend as though it were made of bamboo.

  But it doesn’t collapse.

  Maloof asks Sami to hold it while he grabs as much as he can and then sets off as the second man. Sami climbs down last of all, the Kalashnikov hanging from a strap around his neck.

  73

  5:18 a.m.

  “Do you think you could turn down the radio a bit?” Claude Tavernier asks as diplomatically as he can, though he already knows the answer will be a long, difficult telling off.

  Ann-Marie always has the radio on when she’s working. She manages to find channels on frequencies no one else even knew existed. Right now, she’s enjoying Swedish hits from the sixties, nonstop without any ads. Of the fourteen people working this shift, five have brought their own headphones to avoid Ann-Marie’s canned tunes, but the others have been forced to endure vintage Swedish hits for hours now.

  They’ve made it through the night without any conflict so far, but, as usual, patience starts to wear thin as dawn approaches. Tavernier has a theory that it’s linked to the bad air, and he has raised the problem with management. Every night shift is the same. Tonight, on top of the usual workload, they’ve also had to handle two additional secure transports from Panaxia. The smaller company hasn’t had the capacity since its move the week before.

  It means the tempo is higher than usual.

  After being received and registered down in the vault, the cash is sent up to Counting through the internal tube system. On the sixth floor, the staff don’t just have to count and package up the money, they also have to weed out any notes that are too old or damaged to return to general circulation. Once that’s done, they register the deposits and send everything back down to the vault.

  The room is big and gently U-shaped, which means that the people working at one end can’t see those working at the other. Also meaning, in theory, that it is possible to keep your distance from Ann-Marie and her radio, but Tavernier still has to ask her to turn down the volume. Like always. And, as usual, Ann-Marie, who has both been on the local union board and has held the position of shop steward, explains precisely which rights she has.

  One of these rights is to listen to music.

  Tonight, Claude Tavernier has much less patience than usual. He doesn’t quite know why. But it’s the reason he raises his voice and interrupts Ann-Marie before she even has time to start protesting.

  “Just turn it down, Ann-Marie,” he bark
s. “Or I’ll do it.”

  Ann-Marie is so taken aback by his change in attitude that she reaches out and turns down the volume on the old radio. It’s not her device, it belongs to the company.

  As the languorous strings grow quiet, they all hear it.

  The sound coming from outside.

  Colleagues elbow workmates wearing headphones so that they can hear it for themselves.

  “What the hell’s that?” someone asks loudly.

  Counting, on the sixth floor, has no windows. But it’s obvious that the clear thudding sound none of them can identify is coming from outside.

  “That’s not the air-conditioning, is it?”

  “We’ll have to ask the big boss what we should do,” Ann-Marie says, dripping with irony, as though to point out how dumbstruck Claude Tavernier looks, standing in the middle of the room with all eyes on him.

  Like many who have driven a secure transport vehicle or worked for a company dealing in them, Tavernier has personal experience of being robbed. That’s why his first thought is that it must be a robbery. It’s an automatic assumption. But six floors up, in one of Stockholm’s most secure depots, with a police station just a stone’s throw from the entrance, Tavernier brushes off the thought. It seems so unlikely.

  “Keep working,” he says. “I’ll go and check.”

  “What a hero,” Ann-Marie mumbles.

  A low giggle can be heard as Tavernier leaves the room.

  * * *

  —

  He comes out into a corridor, the elevators and stairs to his right. He turns the other way, to the left, and passes a couple of locked doors that he opens with his key card. He’s heading for the break room, where there is a window out onto the atrium. His plan is to take a quick look at the lower floors, to see whether anyone down there has noticed the noise.

  But as he steps into the break room, the first thing he sees is two black-clad men climbing down a ladder from the roof with bags on their backs.

  It takes a few seconds for Tavernier to process what he is seeing.

  He runs back to his department, but not so fast that he doesn’t have time to make sure that every door he opens is locked properly behind him.

  His leadership qualities are about to be put to the test. It’s time for him to prove that he’s capable, that he’s strong.

  When he reaches his department, everyone falls silent and turns toward him. The man that has just stepped through the door isn’t the same one who left a few minutes earlier. Tavernier’s pale face and wide eyes reveal that something serious has happened, he doesn’t need to ask for their attention. From Ann-Marie’s radio, a deep male voice is singing quietly.

  “Secure the cash,” Claude Tavernier says.

  No one protests or asks any questions, not even Ann-Marie. Time after time over the years, they’ve practiced this very drill. It’s a case of moving the bundles of notes to the lockable, bar-covered cages in the middle of the room as quickly as possible. There’s probably over 100 million kronor in Counting that morning. Most of it in 500-kroner notes, but also in lower denominations.

  Tavernier makes a point of moving as slowly as he can. Adrenaline is pumping through his veins, and he would rather be running between stations, making sure that everyone is doing his or her job quickly and effectively. But he knows that if he shows any sign of panic, it will spread through the room like an echo.

  He moves over to his desk and tries to find the number for Skövde. His instructions are crystal clear. There are procedures, a well-thought-out plan that he is expected to follow. Every fourth month, Palle Lindahl, the G4S security chief, stages a run-through with all the company’s middle managers.

  The first thing to do in situations like this is to call the alarm center in Skövde.

  But Skövde changed its number a few weeks earlier, and Tavernier can’t find the piece of paper with the new details. He knows it’s on his desk somewhere, and while his staff assiduously and silently continues to secure the money, Claude Tavernier feels the panic rising. He has only one job to do, one call to make, but he doesn’t seem to be able to manage even that.

  He resists the urge to tear the drawers from his desk and throw them to the floor. Eventually, he is forced to accept that the number for Skövde isn’t where it’s meant to be. He picks up the phone and calls down to Valter, on the ground floor.

  “Valter?” he says. “Claude up in Cash. There are people in the building.”

  He doesn’t want to say too much, because all around him, the others have their ears pricked. He strains to speak without any hint of his French accent.

  “Reported,” Valter replies. “I’ve already called Skövde.”

  Tavernier nods. He breathes out. That’s better. Skövde has already been informed. No one can blame him for not having done it.

  74

  5:19 a.m.

  It’s just turned twenty past five in the morning when County Police Commissioner Caisa Ekblad is woken by the angry sound of the phone. She is no stranger to being woken in the middle of the night, and when she picks up, her voice is clear and steady, as though she had been sitting by the phone waiting for the call. Only last spring, Caisa Ekblad was Dag Månsson’s colleague; he was one of the district chiefs behind her nomination.

  “We’ve got an unusual alert,” Månsson says.

  He’s panting into the phone. He is just leaving home, on the way down the stairs in his building.

  “A possible robbery ongoing in Västberga. We’ve got reports of a helicopter landing on the G4S cash depot roof.”

  “A helicopter?” Ekblad repeats.

  “The building’s practically next door to the police station.”

  Månsson has reached the garage, and he climbs into his car.

  “The robbers arrived in a helicopter?” Ekblad repeats. She doesn’t want any misunderstandings.

  “Apparently. This is no ordinary alarm.”

  “I’ll call Olsson,” the county police commissioner says, instinctively sensing that robbers in helicopters aren’t something that should be handled by the local police force.

  “Do it,” Månsson agrees.

  “I’ll call you again as soon as I can,” Ekblad says.

  “Same.”

  Månsson ends the call as he pulls out onto the Essingeleden highway.

  * * *

  —

  The relationship between the chief commissioner for Stockholm County and the national police commissioner operated as the circumstances demanded. They kept their distance from one another. Two female police officers in a male-dominated environment, two careerists surrounded by bureaucrats, two experienced officers now in primarily administrative roles, the women did actually have quite a lot to learn from one another. But Ekblad’s and Olsson’s fields of power weren’t compatible. It was more a case of personal chemistry than it was of women competing more with one another than with the men on the force.

  “Shit,” is the national police commissioner’s first reaction.

  The county commissioner notices the complete lack of surprise in Therese Olsson’s tone; she detects only anger.

  “You knew about this?” she asks.

  “This is ours, Caisa,” Olsson says, dodging the question. “We’ll take it from here. Ask your people to cut off the exits. Get a couple of patrol cars out there, with the lights on, and we’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Sorry, but I don’t know…This is happening now, and it’s happening practically on the doorstep of Söderort station. It’ll probably be quicker if we carry on than if you try to take over.”

  “We’ve been working on this for a month, Caisa. It’s too big for you.”

  “A month?” the county commissioner exclaims, sounding surprised. “Without informing me?”

  Olsson is silent for a moment, and then she says: “It had nothing to do with you.”

  Ekblad explodes. With suppressed rage, and with a level of clarity she would usually reserve for talking to a five-year-old, s
he explains that a robbery being planned in the Stockholm area is very much to do with the Stockholm County commissioner. If Olsson can’t understand that, then perhaps the Police Authority should be made aware at the next meeting that its commissioner is illiterate.

  “Caisa, I—” Olsson begins.

  But Ekblad ends the call without listening to Olsson’s excuses. She is still in bed, but she angrily tears back the covers and heads into the bathroom. That’s when she hears her cell phone ring, followed shortly afterward by the house phone. She doesn’t answer. By the time she makes a quick trip to the bathroom and heads down to the garage, the worst of her anger has abated.

  She calls Månsson for an update from the car. He confirms what the guard reported; the robbers are still in the building. He has set up a liaison unit in a police van by the Statoil gas station opposite G4S.

  “We’ve already got enough people here. Should we go in?” Månsson asks.

  It’s a good question.

  The display on her phone flashes, indicating an incoming call. Ekblad realizes she has to take it.

  “Hold off,” she replies.

  It’s Therese Olsson.

  “We made a mistake, Caisa,” Olsson immediately says. “We misjudged the situation. Of course we should have kept you informed. But it is what it is, and we can’t afford to lose any more time. You know Caroline Thurn, don’t you? With the Criminal Investigation Department? She’s been working on this for a month or so, she knows who’s in the building in Västberga. She has the best chance of being able to handle this.”

  Ekblad sighs.

  “OK,” she replies, resigned. “I was just talking to Dag Månsson. He’s set up a liaison unit outside.”

  “Then I’ll ask Thurn to get in touch with Månsson and the people at the scene.”

  Ekblad sighs again. She goes back to Månsson to tell him the bad news.

  75

  5:21 a.m.