The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (5 page)

Leo rolled down the blinds on the window overlooking the Skogås shopping centre. The living room looked just like every other living room: sofa, easy chair, TV, bookcase. But that was about to change.

The four men worked on opening the tool chest, the Adidas bag and the paper bags that Jasper and Vincent had brought up from the basement, and the three brown boxes that had been under the sink, and then placing each item in a long row on the wooden floor, as if this were a military inspection before an attack.

A folded wheelchair found in the corridors of Huddinge hospital, the kind that could be collapsed in just two moves, and two yellow blankets with the name of the hospital on them, found in the hospital ward among sleeping patients.

A bag with two wigs of real hair from the Folk Opera and two pairs of brown contact lenses from the optician on Drottninggatan.

Two AK4s and two submachine guns taken from the black container on the building site. Shoes, pants, shirts, jackets, hats, gloves. Torches – Vincent would carry the smaller one in his pocket, and Felix would signal with the larger one. Two five-litre drums full of petrol. And four sports bags beside four indoor hockey sticks.

Leo sat down in the wheelchair and rolled across the shiny floor towards the bathroom wall, turned around, rolled back. He spun around several times, and leaned, trying to tip the chair over.

It was steady.

He stood up and went back to Anneli in the kitchen, caressed her cheek as before.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

‘They’re ready.’

Extra fabric extended the black collar of the polo neck. Anneli pulled on it hard, and the seam held and stayed invisible. It was her design.

‘Each collar has a face mask. They all work.’

She then pointed to two green vests.

‘And these. Just like you wanted them. Beaver nylon fabric. Pockets for magazines.’

He tried on the vest he’d be wearing under his windcheater. It fitted perfectly. She knew his body.

He leaned forward and kissed her.

‘All that stuff on the living room floor, any amateur could get hold of that. But not this. Or one of these.’

He held onto the vest and picked up one of the sweaters with the elongated collar.

‘Details. That’s the difference. What makes it possible for us to get close enough and transform quickly enough.’

One more kiss and back to the wheelchair again. He folded down the leg rest and put his right leg on it, tried to sit as he thought someone with an injured leg would sit. Jasper squatted in front of him, wearing thin, transparent plastic gloves, opening up the first of the three compact brown boxes – 7.62 calibre, lead and steel core – then the second – 9 calibre, metal jackets – and the third – tracer ammo with phosphorus that would make a luminous red streak several hundred metres long. He then filled each magazine with cartridges and taped them together in pairs. Four pairs for the newly sewn pockets in his own vest, three pairs for Leo’s vest, and one pair each for Felix and Vincent, who would wear them in little bags on their stomachs.

‘No one looks directly at people who are different. And we’re going to take advantage of that. Of their prejudice, their fear.’

Leo spun around in the wheelchair.

‘And if they do look, it won’t be for long.’

He moved his wheelchair in the same way he remembered the disabled people that his mother worked with moving theirs. His mother, who’d worn a white nurse’s uniform and let her three sons come to the nursing
home sometimes, when they couldn’t stay at home on their own. That’s when they’d all seen it – how adults turned their eyes away in uncertainty.

‘Right? Don’t stare at what’s different.’

Jasper handed him an AK4, and Leo tried holding it in his right hand under the yellow blanket, next to his leg on the footrest.

‘You’re exaggerating too much.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are. Isn’t he?’

Jasper looked at Felix and Vincent, who both nodded.

‘You’re overacting, Leo,’ said Felix. ‘It ruins it.’

‘That’s how they moved their wheelchairs. But you don’t know that. You were too small.’

Leo got up out of the chair and looked around the room. Their very first time. None of them had carried out a major robbery before. But everyone had their roles and knew what to do. And on the floor in front of him was everything they needed.

In less than twenty-four hours, they would be transformed.

SIX THIRTY-FIVE P.M.
Fifteen minutes remaining.

A journey in silence.

All of them were focused inward.

Anneli adjusted the van’s rear-view mirror; she was tall in comparison to her few female friends, but despite that she was significantly shorter than Leo, who was sitting next to her in the middle seat, and Jasper, who was in the passenger seat. A red traffic light, the last before Farsta. It was as if she was slowly being sucked into that light – the more she stared, the more it took hold of her and carried her away.

She didn’t remember the single moment in which she’d decided to be involved, the moment when someone had shoved this into her life,
my God
, because if anyone had suggested just a few years ago that she was capable of this, that she’d be on her way to rob a security van … Or maybe there was no single moment. Maybe there were just small moments melting together that she never noticed. Maybe one day someone says
there is an arms dump in the forest, and someone else says it might be possible to open it up and empty it out, and someone else says that if you empty out a bunker full of weapons, then you might as well use them to rob someone – perhaps when you find yourself surrounded by such moments you slowly become a part of them. No one had ever really asked her a question that she’d stood up and said yes to. Abnormal becomes normal, the ideas of others become her ideas and suddenly a woman named Anneli – a mother – is driving a car towards something she could never have imagined. That was probably why she took off too fast when the light turned green, her driving uncharacteristically erratic.

She was shaking. Not very much, not enough for Leo to notice; he had long since retreated into himself. She was shaking because she’d only ever been so scared before when she gave birth to Sebastian. That had been just like this, crossing a border, knowing that your old life was over.

‘There.’

Leo pointed to a pavement lined with lamp posts. She guessed there were another two hundred metres to the middle of Farsta.

‘Stop right between those two – where it’s darkest.’

Leo closed his eyes, feeling a calm that only existed inside him.

Only I know. No one out there knows what’s going to happen. I am the only one who can feel each new step.

They sat waiting for his signal. Anneli was on his left, almost gasping, Jasper on his right, his breathing slow and steady as if he were trying to relax himself.

The van’s engine was off, and it had become obvious how dark this October evening was. Leo had sat alone here for four Fridays in a row in a parking spot facing the rear of the forex office, near the bus stop and the entrance to the metro, the Tunnelbana. He’d recorded every moment of the actions taken by the two uniformed guards in an armoured security van, the route they chose, the pattern of their movements, how they communicated with each other.

‘Sixty seconds.’

Her hands started trembling again. He grabbed them, looked at her, holding her hands until the trembling decreased. She did one last, very quick inspection.

First the wigs, made from real human hair. If any traces were found
later, they would be from a person with thick, dark hair. She reassured herself that they were on straight and covered all of their blond hair, made sure they weren’t
too
perfect, tousling both Leo’s and Jasper’s fringes.

Then the makeup. Waterproof mascara on the eyelashes and eyebrows; she brushed them upwards, making them bushier. Their foreheads, cheeks, noses, chins, necks had been scrubbed clean of dirt and dead cells in the apartment bathroom, moisturised and covered with Sunless tanning lotion.

‘Thirty seconds.’

She told them to blink so she could see if their brown contacts sat right.

She examined their jeans, jackets and boots, Leo’s windcheater and Jasper’s oilskin coat; they’d worked together to survey men’s fashion, and this was what they’d agreed two young Arabs, recent immigrants, might wear.

Finally, the polo necks.

‘Lean forward.’

Her idea, her design.

‘Both of you.’

She folded them down, pulled them up, folded them down again.

‘You’re wearing them too high. In order for them to work, you have to be able to grab hold of them and pull them over your face without them slipping down again.’

‘Fifteen seconds.’

He adjusted his vest, its extra magazines chafing slightly against his chest.

‘Ten seconds.’

The thin leather gloves.

‘Five seconds.’

He leaned over to kiss her, and she flinched a little as his moustache, also made from human hair, brushed against her upper lip; it was slightly awry, and she smiled as she readjusted it with two fingers until it was straight.

‘Now.’

Anneli opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement, loosened the cover on the white truck bed and lifted out the wheelchair and two blankets. Right footrest up – with a new, shorter butt, the AK4 could be
hidden under the blanket completely. Jasper steadied Leo as he sat him down on the plastic padded seat and nodded towards the van as Anneli drove away.

Along the dark pavement. Down the gently sloping hill, which would become much steeper in a moment – the loading bay for one of Stockholm’s largest forex offices.

Leo had carefully mapped out every section of their course.

‘Leo?’

Jasper had stopped the wheelchair, leaning down to unlace his shoes and then tie them up again, so he could whisper without anyone seeing.

‘You’re still overacting. I’ve seen your mother work with people who are …
different
. And they don’t move like that. They don’t drool like that.’

Jasper stood up and slowly continued to wheel the chair along a suburban shopping street where everyone was on their way somewhere else. It was at that moment that Leo saw the boy. Five, maybe six years old. Just a few metres away among a group of people waiting for the bus.

No one looks at things that are different
.

The boy pointed and pulled on his mother’s hand.

No one really notices what a man looks like when they’re trying to decide whether to look away or not.

A boy pointing at him – the wheelchair.

But a child. A child doesn’t see the world like an adult.

A boy who was now shouting out loud.

A child is fascinated, open, he hasn’t had time to get so fucking scared.

The weapon under the blanket. The taped-up magazines in his vest. That wasn’t what the boy was pointing at or shouting about, but that was how it felt.

One more shout and the adult standing next to him, not daring to look, might suddenly glance over, maybe even remember them later. Jasper jerked the wheelchair around and hurried away from the bus stop to a less well-lit area.

17.48.

They waited, glancing towards the entrance to the parking area. Cars, bicycles, pedestrians. On their way in, on their way out.

17.49.

Only a few minutes left.

17.50.

Maybe a couple more.

17.51.

Soon.

17.52.

‘Where the hell is it?’

‘It’ll be here.’

‘It’s already—’

‘
It’ll be here
.’

17.53.

They started slowly rolling closer, now not even ten steps from the wall that shielded the entrance to the exchange office. The white security van would have to drive all the way down the ramp without noticing two individuals in the crowd, a disabled man and his carer.

17.54.

Jasper crouched down, unable to stand still any longer. He untied his boots and started tying them up again.

‘Hey, what’s your name?’ shouted the boy. ‘Why are you sitting in one of those? Are you hurt?’

The boy tore away from his mother’s grip and ran towards the people with the wheelchair. They looked exciting.

‘
You go back
,’ Jasper said in heavily accented English.

‘Hello! What’s your name? And what happened to your legs?’ the boy answered in Swedish.

Jasper put his hand through the hole in his coat pocket, clutching the submachine gun that hung around his neck.

‘
Go back
.’

‘Gobakk?’

‘
Go back!
’

‘Is that his name? Gobakk? That’s a nice name.’

He turned the safety off, on, off. An annoying clicking sound. Leo prodded him in the side with a bent arm.

It had arrived – the truck they were going to rob.

‘
To your mama! You go back
.’

The boy wasn’t frightened, but he didn’t like it when Jasper leaned close and hissed in his ear. So he stopped staring and asking questions and did as he was told, slunk back to his mother at the bus stop.