The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (72 page)

Vincent was subdued, collapsed on the sofa with two remotes, alternating between television and radio news broadcasts. And Felix paced back and forth between pulled-down blinds in an apartment that seemed to have shrunk, a cell of seven square metres.

Shots fired at the police. The national SWAT team.

Felix poured, drank the last of the bottle. A cell with no windows. That was how it felt.

There was another bottle. Vincent’s other Christmas present. This time Felix didn’t even pour any for Vincent.

Then the landline rang.

‘Hello.’

His voice. You’re alive. Is everyone alive?

‘Felix, how are you?’

They’re hunting you.

‘I just wanted to talk to you.’

‘Is he with you?’

‘Who?’

‘Ivan.’

‘Yes.’

Someone was moving something in the background. Maybe Ivan. Or Jasper.

‘If it goes to hell, Felix …’

‘They’re already in place.’

‘If it does, I want you and Vincent to disappear.’

‘The SWAT team. They’re in place. They said it on the news.’

‘They’re not.’

‘That’s what they’re saying! The national SWAT team.’

‘It’s not possible. It would take them too long to get here.’

‘Don’t do anything stupid!’

‘I’ll say it again. If it goes to hell, Felix, you leave that apartment. Disappear. Any-fucking-where at all.’

‘Why should we?’

‘You shouldn’t take the heat for something I’ve done.’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean, no?’

‘I’m not running away.’

Vincent lowered the volume on the radio and the television.

‘Why do you have to be so damned stubborn, Felix! Just for once – do what I fucking tell you to do without arguing!’

‘I don’t rob banks any more. And I’m not running away after some bank robbery either. I’m staying here.
We’re staying here
.’

Vincent was now standing next to him, leaning towards the narrow gap that separated the telephone from his ear.

‘Do you want to talk to Vincent?’

He hadn’t even finished the question, hadn’t received any response, before Vincent snatched the phone from his hand.

‘Leo?’

‘Yes?’

Their youngest brother stopped short, held the phone tightly to his mouth, trying to say something that had been said to him so many times.

‘Leo … you … we’re going straight through them.’

Five hundred kilometres away.

‘Right, Leo?’

And in the same room.

‘Yes. Straight through, Vincent.’

Behind the door they’d chosen to shut.

‘And Vincent … Felix isn’t listening. So you have to listen. If this ends badly,
if
it does … then you have to take care of yourselves. Do you understand?
You
have to finish this in
your
way. In your own way. Whatever you do, Vincent, you’re doing the right thing. You hear me? Whatever happens … what you do is right, no matter what.’

There was a small plastic Christmas tree on the table.

He hadn’t seen it before. Felix must have bought it.

His brother didn’t even like Christmas.

‘Leo?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I should have been there.’

‘No, little brother … you shouldn’t.’

Broncks stood in front of the wall with the giant map on it. A large cross in black ink marked the place where a car – which he now knew had been rented in the name of Anneli Eriksson and had been transporting fake Christmas presents – lay in the ditch. The fleeing robbers had made their way from there on foot through a vast wooded area covered by half a metre of snow – he guessed at a speed of three, possibly four kilometres per hour, no faster. He looked at the clock, counted, and drew a circle with the cross at its centre, six-kilometre radius. A search area that hadn’t become too big. And, with reinforcements in place, it would soon be narrowed.

‘I’m going in again,’ he said to Rydén. ‘And when I’m done, contact the prosecutor. She should be arrested and taken into custody. I don’t know how she’s involved – but she
is
involved.’

He went into the interview room, to the woman who was still pretending to be confused.

‘Anneli?’

She was looking down at the table, the floor.

‘Anneli, look at me when I’m talking to you. I want you to tell me everything you know. If you don’t, this could end very badly.’

‘What do you mean, “everything”?’

‘Everything you know. About the people in that car. The ones who robbed a bank. I want to know what their names are. If you can communicate with them. How they’re armed. I think that’s important. If you ever want to see them again.’

She looked at him for the first time for real, without that dissembling gaze.

‘Anneli … how are they armed?’

Not long, but long enough. She knew what he was talking about. She knew what the men running around in that forest were capable of.

‘In order to protect them, we have to know what we’re up against.’

And she was scared.

‘Do you understand, Anneli? We have to know. If we’re going to take them alive.’

‘Put on your shoes.’

‘Leo, damn it …’

‘Shut up, Pappa! We have a head start, and we’re going to keep it! Jasper – water, food, take whatever the hell you can find!’

‘But the SWAT team … Leo, son, listen to me, you have to—’

‘No, you listen to me!
No bastard will ever get close to me again! Nobody!
’

The storm and wind had died down. Weak light from the stars above the trees. It would be a quiet night. And their trail would be easier to follow. But it would also make it easier to move forward – out of the reach of those hunting them.

Leo was pulling on his boots, jacket, bulletproof vest and grabbing his gun when he noticed something. Not clearly, more like a glimpse of something that you become aware of without understanding it.

Except back then, when all this started, he’d been the one using darkness as cover. Now others lay in the dark watching him.

First, to the left of the kitchen window, it seemed as if a shadow had come alive and was moving beside a tree. Then, to the right, as it moved to the next tree, a shadow with a half-blackened face. And finally, when he lay down on the floor and crawled to the window to get a better look, there were multiple shadows carrying weapons similar to his own, moving in a wide arc around the house. And if he really was seeing all this –
events that seemed so strangely familiar – it felt in some way as if it was all taking place at the same time.

‘They’re here!’

He turned to Ivan who was sitting in an armchair in the living room, and Jasper who was searching the kitchen cupboards for anything edible he could pack into the weapons case.

‘They’re already here!’

Ivan sat there as if he were paralysed, leaning back in the chair, while Jasper ran first to the window to see what Leo had already seen, then to the jacket hanging over the armrest of the sofa. He carried it to the kitchen and took a hand grenade from one of its pockets, placing it on the table. Then another. And another.

‘This group, what we’ve done – it’s not going to end like this,’ urged Jasper. ‘
We
aren’t going to end it like this.’

Three grenades. Beside them he laid out the bag that held the magazines, evenly spacing them out in a new line.

‘Jasper, you’re fucking crazy – grenades?’

‘Grenades, Leo! Tomorrow, when we’re on the front page, it will be with our hoods pulled down! They won’t fucking be able to point to us and say, “So that’s what they look like.” Tell me what to do, Leo. I’ll do anything you want. You know that – anything! We can’t die like failed robbers or end up in a fucking cell in some fucking prison! Then there’ll be no group left!’

He cocked his weapon, aiming into the night, ready to shoot the shadows.

‘For fuck’s sake, calm down,’ said Ivan, standing and walking over to the lined-up arsenal. ‘If you want to die, you’ll manage it tonight, I can guarantee it. But you’re not the only one in here, you fucking idiot! So stop waving your gun around!’

‘Jasper. That’s my name! Go ahead and shoot your mouth off, you’re damn good at it, you always have been. You can even hit people in the face. But you can’t fucking keep track of your equipment! It’s your fault we’re here!’

He sat down by the hand grenades, just as lonely as he’d felt when he decided to take them from the armoury. He’d known the two civilians wouldn’t measure up.

‘They’re deploying now! Don’t you get it, they’re doing exactly what we’ve been doing for a year without you, you old bastard! Deploying! In
order to strike! So I’ll wave my gun around as much as I want to – somebody out there already has me in their sights! I can feel it.
I can feel it!
’

Leo crawled along the floor and sat down between them.

‘Leo? Are you about to let this fucking fake ranger … what should we do?’

That pleading tone was back in Pappa’s voice. Leo didn’t answer. He turned to the wood stove and warmed his face. The bag still lay on the kitchen floor. He opened it, put his hand in, and took hold of two bundles.

‘These are … almost thirty per cent cotton. Fabric. Did you know that, Dad?’

A stack of 100s and one of 500s.

‘It makes the paper a little stiffer. More difficult to tear. Know how I learned that? I washed them. Acetone and water. Quite a few of them, actually. They’d been stained by a dye pack that exploded. And then I had to dry them.’

He pulled open the small square door on the front of the wood stove.

‘The fucking fabric shrank in the drier; they got too small and couldn’t even be used in petrol pumps. I didn’t know that before, that there was fabric in paper money. I got through thousands of kronor before I realised they had to be dried on the line.’

Leo pushed in the first stack of notes, the 100s.

‘What the hell are you doing!’ Jasper screamed, but not from rage, from surprise.

‘Should we give up? Leo, we can’t fucking let them take us!’

‘Then get down on the floor. You said it yourself, they’ve got you in their sights.’

He pushed in the second stack, 500s, and they flared up too.

‘It’s good you’re burning every fucking krona,’ said Ivan, sitting on the floor beside his son, the fire at face level. ‘Because sometimes, Leo, you just have to accept it.’

Leo felt a violent and intense heat like a thin shell across his face.

‘Accept it? They’ll never get this fucking money.’

Leo put his hand in the bag again, both hands, deep. Six bundles left. Only 500s now.

‘Not the money. And not me.’

The fire continued to devour the banknotes, and he shoved and pushed more bundles through the open door and then locked it with the simple bolt.

‘They won’t take me. Do you understand that, Dad?
Not me
. So either get your gun or crawl out the door. They’ll take care of you out there, you know that, don’t you? Like they usually do. From now on, Dad … do what you want.’

The heat from hundreds of thousands of kronor felt the same as the heat of a log, but the flames ebbed more quickly.

There was complete silence. Ivan had sat down at the corner table in the living room, protected by two walls, his hands trembling as he rolled his very last cigarette with the very last of the tobacco. Leo pushed and prodded in more money as the bundles turned into hot coals. Jasper crawled around trying to peer through all the windows, following the movements of the shadows while he cocked and switched the weapon to automatic fire.

From now on, everyone could do what they wanted.