The Other Son (16 page)

“I'm not armed,” she muttered.

“Let's go,” he said, shoving her in the back.

Antonia stumbled, and he shoved her toward the door again.

“What?”

“We're leaving!” He sounded extremely agitated.

She stopped and turned around.

“Hang on a moment,” she pleaded.

HÃ¥kan Zivkovic screamed, “We do what we agreed!”

Saliva sprayed from his mouth. Antonia stared ahead of her in horror as he shoved her toward the door.

They were sitting
in her car as she pulled away from Luntmakargatan, heading toward Sveavägen. Håkan kept the pistol aimed at her in his right hand. With his left he was stuffing himself with some old Rohypnol that he'd saved up,
roofies
as they are sometimes known, a reliable old small-time crooks' drug that made him feel unafraid and violent, should the need arise. He swallowed them down with an energy drink. Then he told her the plan. It was simple. Håkan was going to three addresses: a bank in the city, a tobacconist that offered bets on the horses, and finally a currency-exchange office in Värtahamnen, close to the ferries to Finland. And that's where he'd vanish. Antonia just had to drive, wait outside and listen to the police radio, and if necessary try to mislead her colleagues. With each robbery she would get to hear a bit more of what he had to tell her. Then, when he felt ready, they would part company. That was his idea of what was going to happen. Hers was to get away at the first opportunity. Probably at the very first robbery. Or possibly the second.

“OK, start talking, HÃ¥kan.”

He swallowed the last of the energy drink.

“Three months ago I got a big job,” he began. “A stuck-up cow who was getting divorced wanted proof that her husband was being unfaithful, so she could negotiate a better settlement. I'd been chasing the old man around the city, filming him, but hadn't come up with anything useful.”

HÃ¥kan checked that the pistol was fully loaded.

“I realized I needed to shift things up a level. So I got in touch with a guy who knows all about surveillance to ask for help.”

The drugs were kicking in, she could tell.

“Who?” she asked.

“His name's Harry. We talked on the phone, and I ordered microphones, and asked for help installing them.”

HÃ¥kan bit one of his thumbnails.

“So Harry and I broke into the rich old guy's house, set up a few microphones. When we were done, I suggested going for a drink nearby.”

He spat out the nail.

“One drink turned into several. Harry was drunk and started babbling about Trasten and all that. Obviously he didn't know I'd met Guzman. But he kept going on about a job that had some connection to it. I was drunk, I don't remember exactly what he said, but he did mention a name.”

“What name?”

“A name that was in the papers.”

“Yes?”

HÃ¥kan smiled.

“No. When I come back out,” indicating that she should park in front of a bank. He tucked the pistol in his belt.

“No violence,” she said.

“Wait here” was all he replied.

“Tell me the name,” she asked again.

“No, I told you, when I come back.”

“Cut it out, HÃ¥kan. Tell me the name now. That's how it works: you give me the information before you go in, otherwise I drive off.”

He considered this, his eyes darting around.

“Give me the name.”

He was searching for the truth again, his eyes cutting through hers. Christ, this guy had serious trust issues.

HÃ¥kan said nothing, just opened the car door and got out.

“HÃ¥kan!”

He turned around and put his hand on the car roof, leaned over into the car, then hesitated.

“Lars Vinge,” he said.

“The police officer?”

“Yep.”

HÃ¥kan was already walking away.

“Wait, HÃ¥kan! What did he say, what did Harry say about Lars Vinge?”

HÃ¥kan pulled a balaclava onto his head. “Stay tuned for the next installment.”

He headed toward the bank.

“How do I get ahold of Harry?”

HÃ¥kan didn't answer, just marched coolly and steadily toward the entrance. Antonia watched as he stuck his hand down between his stomach and trousers, turned around, and pushed the heavy glass door open with his back and slid in. Was he smiling at her?

She desperately wanted to drive away, call her colleagues.

Then she heard shots from inside the bank, three in rapid succession from the same weapon. She heard screaming as all hell broke loose.

She could see the backs of the people inside the bank as they sat down. Hostages.

No
…

A few minutes later she heard the sound of police sirens approaching. She looked over to see if HÃ¥kan was on his way out, but couldn't see anything. Antonia started the car and did a U-turn over to the other side. She stopped there as two patrol cars came racing up with lights and sirens and parked across both ends of the road, effectively shutting off all traffic in front of the bank. More police cars arrived from all directions, everyone wanting to get involved.

She was in the middle of everything, and showed her ID to a uniformed policewoman who was clearing the street outside the bank of civilians. She grabbed a pair of binoculars from a patrol car, took cover behind it, leaned on the roof, and zoomed in on HÃ¥kan, who was wandering around inside the bank with his balaclava on, shouting and making demands that no one could hear. The hostages were cowering on the floor.

The National Rapid-Response unit showed up. Desperate to do a bit of real-life shooting. They took up covered positions and aimed their semiautomatic rifles toward the bank. HÃ¥kan had to open the door to shout out his bizarre demands for a helicopter and free passage to some obscure country far away. The cops took their chance and shot him in the hip, the backside, the base of his spine. He spun around and collapsed, his legs paralyzed. Screaming, HÃ¥kan used his hands to drag himself inside the bank again. She followed him through the binoculars, saw his useless legs, the trail of blood he left behind him, saw his pathetic attempts to keep moving.

Antonia switched focus to look at the frightened faces of the people sitting on the floor inside the bank. Then back to HÃ¥kan. He had stopped dragging himself, and was lying on the floor like a wounded baby seal. He tugged the balaclava off. Antonia saw him give a hopeless smile. It seemed to be aimed at one of the cashiers. She was wearing a cornflower-blue dress. She'd wet herself badly. HÃ¥kan Zivkovic said something to her, put the barrel of the pistol in his mouth, and fired. The wall behind him turned red, the noise reached Antonia half a second later. The cashier threw up.

She called Ulf;
he had the day off, had a slot booked in the communal laundry, and was going to be working that night. They met in the laundry, where he was ironing his T-shirts when she walked in. The whole thing happened on top of the tumble dryer. It lasted one hundred and twenty seconds. They gasped in each other's arms, her sitting, him standing. Antonia wanted to stay in that embrace, just be there for a while. But they didn't have that kind of understanding. Ulf pulled away.

Miles had been lucky to get ahold of a patrol car. Most of them had been allocated to a bank-hostage drama over on Sveavägen. The pair of cops in the front seats looked like Laurel and Hardy. Miles didn't know their names, and didn't care, either. One large with a double chin, the other small and wiry.

He was sitting in the backseat, reading through the document again. The man he was going to pick up at Arlanda had no formal papers. The fingerprints the Mexicans had run through the system had set off an alarm with Interpol, then bounced on to Europol, where they triggered an automatic response to the number of Miles's case, the Trasten investigation, and ended up in Miles Ingmarsson's e-mail because he was listed as the lead detective.

It could be anyone, a guest who ate dinner at the restaurant a long time ago, a waiter….Or someone else. Possibly one of the suspects, even if that was highly unlikely.

The custody unit at the airport was a miserable place. Custody units were always miserable, no matter what they looked like. The officer on duty was a girl in dark-blue trousers and a pale-blue shirt. She didn't say much, just pointed to a pile of documents on a table, and left Miles to it. He signed everything.

She returned with a large, blond, suntanned man in his forties whose hands were cuffed.

“Thanks,” Miles said, then took an authoritative grasp of the man's upper arm and led him out of the custody unit.

A plane thundered overhead as they headed toward the police car.

“Miles Ingmarsson, police inspector,” Miles said, trying to make himself heard over the noise of the plane.

The man didn't answer.

The uniforms were sitting in the car, drinking coffee from flasks.

“Let's get going, then,” Hardy said as Miles and Jens got in the backseat.

They forced their way through the taxis and set off back toward the motorway. The radio was playing hard rock. On the motorway Hardy turned the volume up.

“Turn it down,” Miles muttered.

Hardy looked away from the road and into the rearview mirror.

“Sorry?”

“Turn it down!” Miles said again.

Hardy turned the volume down.

He tried to look at Miles in the rearview mirror again.

“I just didn't hear what you said, sir,” he said.

Sir?

Then everything happened very quickly. A loud cry from Hardy, swearing from Laurel, then a lurch as the police car braked sharply. Miles was thrown forward, bracing against his seat belt. They were rushing toward a construction area that had been set up in the left-hand lane, in the middle of the motorway. A few yellow cones and a bit of tape, it looked very amateurish. A van had stopped across the right-hand lane.

The crash was unavoidable. The police car smashed into the van, pushing it forward. Glass shattered and flew through the air, metal crumpled, someone screamed, the dashboard bent and snapped with a bang; there was a smell of burning, and something acrid, like acid. The van broke free from the police car and toppled over. Their speed slowed. Miles saw the world outside indistinctly through the crazed glass of his window. They were sliding forward along the motorway, toward the right-hand shoulder. He had a few happy seconds in which to think everything was going to be fine, they were going to be all right. Then something came rushing toward them from behind. An infernal noise, a car horn combined with the piercing shriek of rubber tires braking sharply at high speed. Miles braced himself. Then came the bang. Like an explosion. It was deafening, and at the same second the immense force made its way through the car. The whole vehicle was thrown forward. Miles was weightless for a moment, then found himself flying forward….

The driver of the car behind came crashing in through the rear window, hitting the back of Miles's head with some part of his body before smashing into the shattered dashboard between the two police officers.

The ruined police car bounced off the edge of the road and came to a halt facing the drop at the side of the motorway. Then everything went quiet.

There was a ticking sound, the turn signal, perhaps, or the noise of the overheated engine. The wind was blowing gently through the broken windows of the wrecked car. Laurel and Hardy were moaning in pain and confusion. Otherwise nothing. It was almost peaceful.

Miles Ingmarsson was hanging forward in his seat belt, and from the corner of his eye he could see two men approaching the car. They were carrying weapons. Miles tried to warn the two officers in the front. He couldn't make a sound, couldn't breathe. Something was blocking his airway. He hit Laurel on the shoulder, but the policeman just sat there and didn't react. The men were approaching the car from opposite sides.

The suntanned man beside him undid his seat belt, and glanced at Miles.