The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (51 page)

‘Jasper – shut up.’

‘But we would have got a lot more money, little brother, if you hadn’t wasted so much time talking to the staff like a fucking wuss! A bank robber doesn’t need to coddle the staff! We could have fucking got a few more million!’

Coddle
.

That bit and took hold.

Vincent had to get out of here. He stood up, grabbed the bag under the table and slung it over his shoulder, felt the outline of a gun on his hip. He headed towards the platform and the train to Stockholm, with Jasper running behind him.

‘Little brother, coddling the staff.’

‘Hey, I got the keys. Didn’t I?’

‘
Get
them? You
take
keys. Press the barrel against their foreheads until they’re in your hand.’

He hadn’t been able to resist. But no matter how long that fucking idiot talked to him, he would just lie down on the train seats and sleep. He would not, could not answer Jasper again.

‘But listen. Leo explained that we’re a real company. And in that case Leo … he owns the company, like a CEO, and I … I’m more like a supervisor and you, Vincent, are just a teensy little trainee, an intern, that’s why you coddle the staff. Leo knows that. So he has me to take care of it. To be hard on the staff. And I am. Hard. Not like you, little brother.’

Vincent climbed up into the train carriage and walked along the narrow corridor with his hand behind his back, holding the bag in line with his body – he didn’t want to poke any of the other passengers with an automatic rifle as he passed by. There was just one private compartment at the far end of each carriage. He drew the curtains, closed the door and put the bag on the luggage rack, then sank down across three seats with his jacket over his head.

As he lay there the thump of the joints between the rails moved upward and into his body, a pulsating lullaby in the same rhythm as the colours and small flashes of light that ran smoothly behind his eyelids. But within ten minutes the conductor came in to check their tickets, then Jasper stood on his seat and lifted the bag down and pushed a reinforced-steel-toed boot against Vincent’s ribs.

‘Want one?’

Jasper put the bag on the floor, took out a beer and opened it with his finger through the metal ring. Drops of beer spurted out and landed on Vincent’s face.

‘Please don’t open that in my face.’

Jasper looked into the bag again, the folded wooden butt of the gun clearly visible next to the plastic bags filled with red-stained bills. He fished out another can and handed it to Vincent, who shook his head.

‘What did I do to make you hate me so fucking much? Eh? Little brother?’

‘We’re not brothers.’

He’d answered again. And he could see it satisfied Jasper. But his head was so heavy …

‘I’ll call you little brother if I want to call you little brother. You’re the youngest, right? And that’s why you don’t know shit about what Leo and I used to do – because you were just a puny, snotty whelp.’

Vincent wanted to be able to think clearly, but his eyes were itchy and dry, and the hair on the back of his neck felt charged with electricity.

‘At every robbery, little brother … Leo goes first, I go last, and you’re in the middle, the safest place. We protect you – Leo and I discussed that.’

Jasper started squeezing the empty can in his hand to make the annoying sound of a dent being pushed in and then popping out again.

‘We get off a shitload of shots, but we always keep some in reserve in case any fucking cop starts getting ideas about following us. Haven’t you ever wondered, little brother – where all the ammunition comes from?’

The dent on the can. In, out. A ticking second hand. Jasper moved it closer to Vincent’s ear.

‘If you only knew how much I’ve done for you, Vincent. Every day for six years. And you lie there with your fucking attitude. For fuck’s sake!’

He was being provoked. He knew it, felt it.

‘Six years … what the hell are you talking about?’

‘What am I talking about? Where do you think we got the plastic explosives and pentylstubin to blow the floor out of the bunker?’

Vincent hurt all over. Sleep was all he’d wanted.

‘Military service. First, Leo took what we needed. Then I did.’

But now it was as if his strength were slowly returning as he listened.

‘Final excercises, little brother. It starts with them transporting a whole fucking truck full of sealed boxes and setting them down next to the road, in the middle of the snow. Weapons. Explosives. Ammunition. And after a while it’s impossible for them to keep track of everything, but Leo knew and I knew that it was only when the exercise was over and everything was about to be driven back that the crates were inventoried.’

The louder the bloody idiot spoke, the more sure Vincent became that they would never rob a bank together again.

‘And then, little brother, at night when we stood guard, we brought black bin bags with us. We had three hours in the snow to take out cartridges or pentyl or hand grenades. Black bin bags that we buried before going back to our stations.’

Nothing else existed except Jasper’s mouth, with which he talked and talked about Leo, as if Leo were Jasper and Jasper were Leo.

‘And we knew that after that exercise there would be a complete inspection, and they’d turn the whole fucking regiment inside out.’

As if Leo were Jasper and Jasper were Leo.

‘Literally inside out, like a house search, they go through everything. But they didn’t find anything. Nothing, little brother.’

You are not my brother.

‘Do you understand? We’ve been planning this for six years, little brother – me and Leo.

‘It’s weird, you know … even though you’re his little brother I know him better than you do. When we go into a bank, Leo and I have a bond that you don’t have. We each know exactly what the other will do.’

Vincent stood up suddenly, in the middle of the swaying carriage. He wanted to hit those moving lips, empty out whatever energy his weary body had left.

‘Me and Leo. We can do anything. We stopped the entire police force with a little fucking bomb. Imagine what we can do next time!’

‘A bomb you pulled the safety ring out of, Jasper!’

He felt his fingertips pushing hard into the palm of his hand.

‘I know it was you! Just like Felix, I’ve known all along!’

Jasper shook his head just like he’d done every other time. But then it was as if he changed his mind. And smiled.

‘I knew the police would send in that bomb robot.’

‘So it was you?’

‘I know what I’m doing, little brother – nothing serious could have happened.’

‘It was you who took out the safety ring! You denied it!’

‘Nobody died. Right?’

‘You lied! You lied to Leo! He trusted you! But you don’t understand because you’re … alone, you don’t have any brothers!’

Vincent sat down, straightened out his fingers, which had gone white at the tips, and it was finally quiet in the train compartment. Something felt lighter inside.

‘So I’m … alone?’

‘Yes.’

Jasper was still staring blankly at him, as he unzipped the bag to take out one more beer. But that wasn’t what he held up now. It was a submachine gun.

‘And I have … no brothers?’

‘No brothers.’

Jasper straightened out the butt of the gun, ran his hand down its barrel.

‘Little brother? Do you know what I could do right now? Something that can be done alone. Without brothers.’

He left the seat so fast that Vincent didn’t even understand what was happening, not until Jasper was down on one knee, pressing the gun to his head. It chafed against his temple, and Vincent slid gradually backwards until he sank into the headrest.

‘Then I’ll explain it to you, little brother. Listen to me now. With this I can do whatever the hell I want to.’

Vincent had never been this close to death before.

He realised that he’d become the security guard in an armoured van or the bank cashier behind a counter, that he’d changed places with them.

‘Jasper, you have to—’

Jasper pressed harder, and it started to bleed where the barrel of the gun cut into his skin.

‘I didn’t lie to Leo, do you understand that?’

He held it there while someone passed outside their door. Someone else was laughing and talking loudly on the other side of the thin wall.

‘Do you understand that?
Little brother?
’

Vincent wasn’t sure if his head was moving, his body wasn’t responding, but he tried as hard as he could to nod. Jasper lowered the weapon as calmly as he’d raised it, folded it up, put it back in the bag and zipped it up.

More steps outside. More voices.

Vincent sat perfectly still.

Nine robberies. And he hadn’t realised it was that simple: you can take what you want if you’ve got a gun in your hands.

A GROUP OF
inmates sat on a bench in the gravel courtyard, sucking at cigarettes in the cold April wind, a short break from their places on the assembly line in the prison workshop, where they would cut out and assemble square wooden blocks for eleven kronor an hour. They were dressed in stiff and ill-fitting quilted coats, which reminded John Broncks of old prison movies about the Gulags.

This is where you’ll be sitting when I catch you.

He looked around. Though he lived alone, he never felt alone anywhere but here. There was nothing in the world that felt more futile than waiting for someone in a visitors’ cell. Shut off. Prison visits weren’t about happiness – they were about control and security.

He heard a bell, grating and metallic like the one on the front door of the flat where they’d shared a room until John was fourteen years old, the beds pressed close together, which never felt strange, even though none of his friends had had to share. Then a rattle of keys, two mechanical clicks, and hooks sliding out of a reinforced frame.

Slippers and blue shorts. White T-shirt with the Swedish Prison Service logo on the chest. And a guard half a step behind him.

Sam had become broader. Even more fury had been turned into muscle. His face revealed nothing, it was lifeless. The most difficult thing was living in the present, without being able to experience it.

This is where you will sit. This is how you should act.

And this will be you, Big Brother.

‘You applied in advance,’ said Sam.

‘Yes, I—’

‘But I didn’t bring any cakes with me this time either. You’re not here for a visit.’

They both leaned against the wall. There was no way to be further apart.

‘I ate on my way here.’

John pulled out one of the chairs and sat down.

‘Last time I was here they’d only robbed a security van and a bank. Now they’ve robbed a security van and eight banks, and set off a bomb in Central Station, and they have a stash of over two hundred automatic weapons.’

Sam smiled faintly.

‘Damn, seems like they’re doing pretty well … what was it you called them … the Military League?’

John rested his elbows on the table. It was just as wobbly as the chair.

‘There are four hundred and sixty-three long-term convicts in here. And after eighteen years, Sam, you know them all. And they know everyone.’

‘Listen … we’ve already talked about this. Right?
If
I knew anything I sure as hell wouldn’t tell it to a cop.’

‘But this isn’t like last time any more. Sam – forget about the banks. Before this group went on a rampage there were exactly thirteen stolen military automatic weapons unaccounted for out there. Now there are enough to equip every criminal organisation in Sweden that you eat lunch with in here every day. Every little wannabe gangster may soon be on the loose with a weapon of war. And then this won’t be about bullet-riddled cameras any more – a shitload of innocent people will end up in the way, and not even someone who “doesn’t want to talk to a cop” could think that’s a good thing.’

The ironic smile disappeared, and Sam’s expression seemed to soften a little.

‘I will never accept it, Sam. Hurting the innocent.’

It was only for a moment.

‘I don’t get why you’re so fucking obsessed with this.’

‘I told you why. I will never accept that some people solve their problems with violence. When a security guard shows them photographs of his children, and they push the gun further into his mouth to get what they want.’

‘But he was a security guard. If you choose to be a security guard you have to accept the risk. Security vans get robbed.’

‘What about the bank cashier they pushed to the floor then? Lying down with lacerations on her cheek? She’ll never sleep without taking a pill again. Her eyes – if you’d seen her eyes, they looked like our mother’s, back then.’

Sam finally left the wall for the table where John was sitting. The veins on his forearms looked like a road map and he squeezed the back of his chair, as if he was trying to crush it.

‘She worked in a bank. She chose to work there. She knew that banks are robbed.’

Sam hadn’t been a criminal when he was sentenced to life in prison. He’d become one inside these walls.

‘So you … you think what they’re doing is fine?’

‘I’ve been here for eighteen years – what the hell do you think?’

Sam’s grip on the back of the chair relaxed slightly, and his hands returned to their natural colour.

‘You sit there on your fucking visitor’s chair. And I’m sitting in here. You chose to hold his hand. I chose to fight back.’

Sam looked at him in a way that John recognised, without irony, contempt, hatred or guilt.

‘They tried to get me to go and see a fucking therapist once a week. So some idiot could tell me I stabbed my dad because I’d had a bad childhood. That it wasn’t … my fault.’

He sat down opposite Broncks, laying his thick-veined forearms on the table.

‘Fuck that. I was the one who chose to stab the bastard. I’m the one sitting here. Talking about what happened back then is like talking about a fucking cassette that is playing over and over and over. He’s still here, whatever we choose to be like. Whatever you and I do. No fucking therapist can change that.
Accept
it.’