The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (26 page)

Blue Four looked towards the cashier’s window, hesitated.

‘If the window is locked, shoot it open!’

Blue Four was sweating profusely as he finally aimed his weapon at the lowered window and the cashier sitting behind it, calling out
bam, bam, bam
more quietly than the others, and without much feeling.

‘OK. Then we’ll take a break. A few minutes.’

Blue One – Leo – rolled the black mask up onto his forehead. They’d been running in and out of a fictional bank building in his garage for four hours and were making fewer and fewer mistakes. He put down his machine gun and leather gloves on the workbench, took the microphone off his collar and tucked it in his pocket.

‘Vincent – what did I say you were supposed to do if they close the window?’

Blue Four pulled off his mask.

‘Shoot it open.’

‘And then?’

‘Jump in.’

‘We should never stop moving, OK? We lose time. And everything will go to hell. We have to be in control of the time – not them.’

Giant rectangles were outlined with duct tape on the dirty floor, a 1:1 copy of the Handels Bank branch in Svedmyra – the tape outlined the outer walls and a wooden plank indicated the front door. The cash registers had been built with studs and plywood boards. Five mannequins – customers – sometimes stood up, and sometimes lay down on the other side of the cash desk, and three mannequins – the cashiers – sat in their chairs on the other side.

Cowboys and Indians on the floor of a boy’s room. Or mannequins on the floor of a garage that were props for a bank robbery.

When then became now, when the game became serious.

It was a model of a room none of them had ever entered. Though Leo had traipsed across the small square and into the mini-market, and had sat a couple of times eating in the pizzeria next door, he’d never opened the front door to the bank. It was out of the question that any of them go inside. Their height, weight, and way of moving mustn’t be caught on any surveillance footage. Anneli was the only one who had been on the other side of the bank’s display windows, in front of the real cameras and cashiers, surrounded by real customers. During each brief visit, she’d sketched a new part of the premises on the back of an unused deposit slip, and he’d pieced it all together on the kitchen table, transforming the fragments into a floor plan.

Felix left the driver’s seat of a car parked outside the bank built from tape and scraps of timber.

‘Vincent, you stopped moving before, what happened?’

‘I’ve already told you!’ said Jasper, still wearing his mask. ‘He can’t do it! He was supposed to shoot down the Plexiglas!’

Felix moved one of the customers who was lying down and put it next to the unpainted pieces of plywood that represented the cashier’s counter.

‘The window might be open, right?’

‘Leo told him the cashier had closed the window!’ shouted Jasper.

Felix just smiled. He didn’t like to yell, so he knocked on a piece of wood instead, which read
Cashier 3
.

‘But what’s this? Sure enough – the window is open.’

‘We’re conducting a damn exercise!’

‘And you’re a fucking jarhead who sees things that don’t exist. So stop picking on Vincent.’

‘It’s not about
picking
on someone! He has to react with his gut. Never any hesitation! You hesitate if you don’t trust your weapon. Right, Leo?’

Jasper almost ran over to the two pieces of hardboard that hung from ropes on the ceiling with handwritten text on them –
Surveillance Camera 1
and
Surveillance Camera 2
– and prodded them with the gun.

‘There – and there – are cameras that have been shot down. Do you know why?’

‘All I see are two bits of hardboard that you scribbled something on.’

Jasper smacked the muzzle of his gun against the two boards, which vibrated, while he shook his head.

‘When you fire a shot outdoors, people might be scared, a machine gun makes quite a bang. But inside it sounds different. Shrill. Like knives hitting the walls bouncing around until your eardrums break. And the ringing in their ears makes people disoriented. Indoors, they become more than just fucking scared. They throw themselves onto the floor, not just to protect themselves – orientation is fucking crucial to survival.’

Jasper looked at Felix and Vincent, who were silent. Leo nodded slightly.

‘And this is the most important part,’ continued Jasper. ‘The fucking cops need to know that it’s dangerous to get close to where we’re working. And if they still decide to approach us, they’re the ones who’ve decided what’s going to happen.’

‘Jasper’s right,’ said Leo. ‘If they aim at us, we aim back. If they shoot to kill, we shoot to kill. If it’s a matter of their lives or … do you understand?’

He looked into their eyes and knew that they trusted him. Now he had to decide if he trusted them. A seventeen-year-old who hadn’t even done his military service, a 21-year-old who’d enrolled but got out with an exemption, and a 22-year-old who acted like he trained marines. It was his job to make them work together as a group.

‘Into the car. Everybody. Once more. Come on! I’ll count down, three minutes from … now.’

In forty-six hours they’d be doing this for real.

THEY WERE SITTING
in the same Dodge van, restored to its normal configuration. It was rolling north along the E4 motorway, in the dawn light. They had practised the attack on the imaginary bank twenty-eight times, moving from the van to the cash desks to the vault and back again. A pattern had been carved into their consciousness. But there was more preparation to come.

The asphalt road narrowed, turned into a dirt road, not far now.

A ringing sound. The mobile phone in the outer pocket of Leo’s jacket.

‘Hello?’

‘Leo … the envelope.’

That voice.

‘I don’t have time for this right now.’

‘Your fucking debt, Leo. The money in the envelope. You said you didn’t owe me anything, right?’

‘I can’t talk right now.’

‘So if you’re coming around here after this many years with cash like that, and you don’t even think you owe me … then you must have a lot more where that came from. You’d never give me your last penny. So where the hell did it come from?’

Leo hung up.

‘Who was that?’ asked Felix.

‘It’s not important.’

‘It sounded important.’

‘Concentrate on the road.’

Felix was in the driver’s seat, as always; he knew this car now, how it accelerated, the braking distance, the steering. A Dodge van. It was the kind of vehicle they’d be using in the bank robbery, and the kind they’d switch to when they fled the scene. Felix had practised driving it but he’d also learned exactly how it was put together. He had been given the job of stealing two vehicles the night before the robbery, and he’d spent hours practising jemmying the lock until he was sure he’d be able to open the door of a Dodge in less than twenty seconds.

The old shooting range lay at the end of the gravel road. They parked and heard shots being fired in the distance.

‘There’s someone else here,’ said Vincent.

With their bag of ammunition, four camping roll mats, and automatic weapons, they started walking down a gravel path that turned into a track. Two men were lying on a mound three hundred metres from the targets on a sandy embankment.

Leo paused, listening.

‘MP5s. They must be in the SWAT team.’

‘Leo, let’s go, they’re looking for us, damn it!’ said Vincent, pulling on his eldest brother’s arm. ‘We have to get out of here.’

‘No. You have to learn this.’

‘Leo, damn it, we—’

‘Listen, the cops are looking for two Arabs.’

Vincent walked more slowly, near the back. He’d seen Leo like this before, when you couldn’t talk to him, when he felt the need to challenge you, to win even though it wasn’t necessary, just to show that he could. And it was at that exact moment that the two men in dark uniforms stood up, packed their things and set off.

Towards them.

They looked bigger as they approached from the other end of the narrow path. Broad shoulders, wide necks, they looked like adults. Not even Leo looked like that when he moved.

‘You here to do some shooting, fellas?’

The gravel rustled as they moved over to examine the weapons.

‘Let me have a guess … Home Guard?’

Suddenly Jasper ran out into the grass, past Leo, in order to proudly show off their weapons.

‘That’s correct. Järva’s Home Guard battalion.’

He held his AK4 like a marble statue, confident smile carved between his pointy nose and sharp chin, revealing the gap between his front teeth. Vincent took another step back, hunched over. If Leo wanted a pissing contest, wanted to win, Jasper wanted to belong.

‘MP5?’ asked one.

Now they’d stopped to look at the gun, just as they were about to move on.

‘You’re in the SWAT team, right?’ replied Jasper.

Vincent closed his eyes. It wasn’t enough. Showing off their stolen weapons, risking everything. Jasper also had to go and grab hold of theirs too. He stood there, exchanging admiring glances, and loving it. Brotherhood.

‘Yeah. We’re in the SWAT team. Good luck out there, there’s no wind, a good day for target practice.’

They nodded as people do when they’re preparing to leave. Vincent looked down at his feet, breathed as carefully as he could while they passed.

‘You there.’

The one who’d talked the most and showed off his weapon stopped in front of Vincent.

‘Aren’t you a bit young for this?’

‘I …’

Vincent tried to look up from his feet, but couldn’t.

‘HGY.’

Leo had answered.

‘Home Guard Youth.’

The policeman was still looking at Vincent.

‘When I was your age, I spent my time chasing women, not doing combat training.’

Vincent tried an uncomfortable smile, still not breathing. He didn’t stop until they’d taken their MP5s and gone on their way. Jasper had already unrolled the mats on the gravel, and Leo had taken a pile of targets out of the barracks, and even though Felix had opened the ammunition boxes and distributed cartridges, he couldn’t relax until the two police officers had started their car and were driving away.

‘They didn’t even check the fucking serial numbers,’ said Leo.

His smile was the real thing: happy, proud. He had confronted them sure he could win, and he had won. Now he filled the magazine, threaded the strap around his forearm in a standing position, switched the gun to automatic fire, got one of those cardboard figures in his sights and squeezed the trigger. The staring paper face was torn to pieces.

‘In order to learn how to use an AK4, you also need to learn how to stand,’ he said.

Leo reloaded and handed the weapon to Vincent – but didn’t let go.

‘If you don’t brace yourself for the recoil with your body weight, if you don’t push on your weapon with both your shoulder and your left hand, it’ll bolt upwards and your third shot will end up half a metre above the target.’

He handed it to Vincent again and let go completely this time.

It was difficult to breathe normally, to keep the sweat off his hands. Vincent pressed against the butt of the gun as Leo had shown him, put the weight on his left leg like Leo, held his hand on top of the barrel like Leo. And fired. The butt rebounded into his shoulder. And the barrel bolted upwards as if an invisible rope were pulling on it.

Twenty shots fired into the sandy ditch. And the cardboard figure stared at him with indifferent eyes.

Jasper almost ran forward, as he’d done when they met the guys from the SWAT team, and gently kicked Vincent’s left foot.

‘Vincent! Concentrate! Legs apart. And then push with your left hand just like Leo said. Press on it, damn it!’

‘You shut up.’ Felix had left his place just as fast, placed himself
between Vincent and Jasper. ‘When you talk to my brother there will be no shouting or kicking. Do you understand?’

‘Move. Both of you,’ said Leo.

He waited until they were finished staring at each other.

‘Your breathing, Vincent.’

He turned his little brother’s face gently until they were looking at each other.

‘Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. And then … fire.’

The butt firmly against his shoulder. Left hand like a lock on the barrel.

And Vincent took another shot. And … hit! The cardboard figure’s head, neck, chest.

A new magazine. More shots. Until enemy after enemy gave up and fell to the ground in pieces. And sometimes, just like yesterday in the garage, Leo lingered further away, observing the little brother he’d lifted up out of his crib, built red and blue Lego cities with, made jam sandwiches for.
You’re not old enough to vote. Not old enough to buy alcohol
. And smiled with pride.
But you can fire an automatic weapon and in thirty-three hours you’re going to rob a bank.

IT WAS LATE
evening when they drove into the yard. Leo took some shopping bags inside to Anneli, while Felix, Vincent and Jasper carried the equipment and weapons into the garage. Vincent put the bag of magazines and the remaining ammunition on the floor and felt his right shoulder jerk involuntarily, a muscle memory from the recoil.

‘Gun cleaning,’ said Jasper.

Vincent knew what this was really about. It had always been like this. It didn’t matter who or where, as long as he belonged.

‘Felix, Vincent, come on, damn it!’

Jasper put his weapon on the workbench. He quickly disassembled it, piece by piece.

‘Now you do it. Disassemble and clean your own weapons. And I’ll watch.’

Felix put down the AK4 he’d been firing at cardboard men, leaned over and whispered to Jasper instead.

‘Jasper?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Why do you act like you’ve got a machine gun shoved up your arse?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You run around here like you’re some kind of fucking commando. Me and Vincent don’t really … like that.’