Never Fuck Up

1

The taste of metal in his mouth didn’t tally. Like when you drink juice after brushing your teeth. Total confusion. But now—actually—it did tally. Mixed with fear. Panic. Mortal terror.

A grove. Mahmud on his knees in the grass with his hands over his head, like some fucking Vietcong in a war flick. The ground was wet; damp seeped through his jeans. Might be nine o’clock. The sky was still bright.

Around him stood five blattes. Each one = model lethal. True soldiers. Guys who’d sworn to always have each other’s backs. Who chowed on small-timers like Mahmud for breakfast. Every day.

Khara.

A chill in the air, even though it was nearly summer. Still, he could smell the sweat on his skin. How the fuck had all this gone down? He was supposed to be living Life. Had finally caged out—free as a bird. Ready to grab Sweden by the balls and twist good. Then this. Could be game over now. For real. Every fucking thing.

The gun was grinding against his teeth. Echoing in his head. Light was flashing before his eyes. Scenes from his life. Memories of whiny social-service hags, pretend-to-give-a-shit counselors, half-baked racist teachers. Per-Olov, his teacher in middle school: “Mahmud, we don’t do things like that in Sweden. Do you understand?” And Mahmud’s response—in a different situation, the memory would’ve made him smile—“Fuck yourself, this is how we do in Alby.” More movie clips: cops in the concrete who never understood what Sven Sweden’s shitty urban rearing did to guys like him. Dad’s tears at Mom’s funeral. All the buzz with the guys at the gym. The first time he got to put it in. Hitting bull’s-eyes with water balloons from the balcony on dog walkers down below. Shoplifting in the city. The chow hall in the pen. Him: a true Millionaire, a housing project kid from the Social Democratic Million Program high-rises, on his way up, like a deluxe gangster. Now: free fall. Wipeout.

He tried to whisper the Shahadah despite the gat in his mouth. “Ash-Hadu anla-ilaha illa-Allah.”

The dude holding the piece in his grill looked down at him.

“You say something?”

Mahmud didn’t dare move his head. Glanced up. He couldn’t say shit with the gun filling his mouth. Was this dude slow or something? Their eyes met. The guy still didn’t seem to get it. Mahmud knew him. Daniel: on his way up, becoming a name, but still not one of the big blattes. Thick eighteen-karat gold cross around his neck—true Syriac style. Right now he might be the one bossing. But if his brain’d been made of blow, the sales price would hardly cover a candy bar.

Finally: Daniel understood the situation. Pulled the gun out. Repeated. “Did you want something, or what?”

“No. Just let me go. I’ll pay what I owe. Promise. Come on.”

“Shut it. You think you can play me? You gotta wait till Gürhan wanna talk.”

The piece, back in his mouth. Mahmud remained silent. Didn’t even dare think of the Shahadah. Even though he wasn’t religious, he knew he should.

Pounding thought: Was this it?

It felt like the woods around him were spinning.

He tried not to hyperventilate.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Fifteen minutes later. Daniel was getting bored. Fidgeted, looked unfocused. The gat was squeaking worse than a rusty old subway car against Mahmud’s molars. Felt like he had a baseball bat in his mouth.

“You think you can do whatever you want, huh?”

Mahmud couldn’t respond.

“You really think you could boost from us, huh?”

Mahmud tried to say no. The sound came from far back in his throat. Unclear if Daniel understood.

The dude said, “Bottom line: nobody boosts from us.”

The guys farther off seemed to sense that things were buzzing. Came closer. Four of them. Gürhan: fabled, fatal, fat cat. Inked all the way up his neck: ACAB and a marijuana leaf. Along one forearm: the Assyrian eagle with wings spread. Along the other forearm, in black Gothic lettering: Born to Be Hated. Vice president in the gang with the same name. Southern Stockholm’s fastest growing gang. One of the most dangerous people Mahmud knew of. Mythic, explosive, insane. In Mahmud’s world: the more insane, the more power.

Mahmud’d never seen the other three dudes before, but they all had the same tattoo as Gürhan: Born to Be Hated.

Gürhan gesticulated to Daniel: Pull out the gat. The VP took it himself, aimed at Mahmud. Half a yard away. “Listen. It’s pretty simple. Get the cash and stop dicking around. If you hadn’t made a fuckin’ mess to begin with we wouldn’t have to play this game. Capice?”

Mahmud’s mouth was dry. He tried to respond. Stared at Gürhan. “I’m gonna pay. Sorry I tripped up. It’s on me.” Heard the tremble in his own voice.

Gürhan’s response: a hard slap with the back of the hand. Exploded in Mahmud’s head like a shot going off. But it wasn’t a shot—a thousand times better than a shot. Still: if Gürhan flipped out, he was really screwed.

The dude’s neck muscles were stretching out the layered texture of the marijuana leaf on his skin. Their eyes met. Locked. Gürhan: huge, bigger than Mahmud. And Mahmud was far from a twig. Gürhan: infamous psycho-bandit, blood-loving violence addict, gangster Olympian. Gürhan: eyebrows more scarred than Mike Tyson’s. Mahmud thought: If it’s possible to see someone’s soul by looking in their eyes, then Gürhan doesn’t have one.

It was a mistake to say anything. He should’ve lowered his eyes. Groveled for the VP.

Gürhan yelled, “You cunt. First you fuck up and get collared. Then the five-oh confiscate the goods. We checked the court sentence. You didn’t think we were gonna do that, huh? We know there were over ten thousand ampoules missing from what they got. That means you boosted from us. And now, six months later, you start trippin’ when we want back the dough you owe. What, you gonna play hardball now ’cause you done time? It was three thousand fucking packs of Winstrol you lifted. No one steals from us. You a slow learner, habibi?”

Mahmud, panicked. Didn’t know what to say.

In a low voice, “I’m sorry. Please. Sorry. I’m gonna pay.”

Gürhan impersonated him in a shrill voice: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—stop speaking gaylish, you fucking fairy. You think that’s gonna help? Why’d you start messing?”

Gürhan grabbed hold of the revolver with both hands. Cocked the top break. The bullets fell out, one by one, into his left palm. Mahmud felt his body relax. They could smack him around. Beat him bloody. But without a gat—they probably didn’t plan on ending him.

One of the other guys turned to Gürhan. Said something curt in Turkish. Mahmud didn’t get it: Was the guy giving orders or showing appreciation?

Gürhan nodded. Pointed the gun at Mahmud again. “Okay, this is the deal. There’s one bullet left in this cylinder. I’m gonna be nice to you. Normally, I’d just pop you. Right? We can’t be tolerating a buncha clowns like you who bitch as soon as things sour. You owe us. A lot. But I’m in a good mood tonight. I’ll spin, and if you’re lucky, it’s meant to be. You walk.”

Gürhan held the cylinder up against the pale sky. Clearly visible: five empty chambers and one with a bullet in it. He spun the cylinder. The sound was reminiscent of the wheel spinning on a roulette table. He grinned widely. Aimed at Mahmud’s temple. A clicking sound when the hammer was pulled back. Mahmud closed his eyes. Began to whisper the creed again. Panic took over. The flashes of light in front of his eyes returned. His heart was pounding so hard his ears almost popped.

“Okay, let’s see if you’re a blessed blatte.”

A click.

Nothing happened.

NOTHING HAPPENED.

He opened his eyes again. Gürhan grinned. Daniel laughed. The other guys howled. Mahmud followed their eyes. Looked down.

His knees were wet from the damp ground. And something else: along his left jeans leg. A long stain.

Loud laughs. Jeers. Cruel grins.

Gürhan handed the piece back to Daniel.

“Next time maybe I’ll fuck you instead. You little girl.”

Frenzied feelings. Hope versus fatigue. Joy versus hate. Relief—but also shame. The worst was over now. He would get to live.

With this.

Curtain.

2

Niklas was back.

He was living with his mother, Marie. Tried to sleep now and then, between the nightmares. In the dream world he was hunted, tracked, punished. But, just as often, he was the one holding the weapon or kicking defenseless people. Just like it’d been when he’d been down there. In reality.

The couch was too short to sleep on, so he’d put the leather cushions on the floor instead. His feet stuck out in the cold, but it was okay—better than being folded up like a Leatherman in a three-seater—even if he was used to that kind of thing.

Niklas saw a sliver of light through the crack in the door. Mom was probably reading ladies’ magazines in there—just like she’d always done. Biographies, memoirs, and gossip. An unvarying interest in other people’s failures. She lived vicariously through news of B-list celebrities and their divorces, alcoholism, and affairs. Maybe their tragic lives made her feel better. But it was all a lie. Just like her own life.

In the mornings he remained where he was, on the cushions. Heard her get ready for work. Wondered what his life in Sweden would be like, life as a civilian. What was he supposed to do here, really? He knew what kind of jobs would be suitable: security personnel, bodyguard, soldier. The last was out, though. The Swedish armed forces wouldn’t hire someone with his background. On the other hand, it was what he knew.

He stayed at home. Watched TV and made omelets with potatoes and sausage. Real food—not dried stuff, tins, and canned ravioli. The grub down in the sandbox’d almost ruined his taste for quality meat, but now it was coming back. He left the apartment a few times. To jog, grocery shop, run errands. Not a lot of people out in the middle of the day—he ran senselessly hard. Drove the thoughts away.

He was living on borrowed time. His mom couldn’t handle his staying with her. He couldn’t handle his staying with her. Neither could handle knowing they couldn’t handle it. He had to release some pressure. Find a place to live. Make a move. Something just had to work out.

After all, he was back in easy, safe Swedeland. Where everything could be arranged with a little willpower, gung-ho, money, or Commie connections. Niklas didn’t have connections. But he did have willpower—harder than the armor on an M1A2 Abrams tank. Mom called him cocky. Maybe there was something to it. He’d been cocky enough to hold his own down there with guys who’d fuck with you for much less than a stupid English mispronunciation. And money? He wasn’t sitting on a lifelong fortune—but it was enough for now.

He was standing in the kitchen, thinking. The secret to a good omelet was cooking it under a lid. Get the eggs to coagulate faster on the surface to avoid slime on top and burning it on the bottom. He piled on diced potatoes, onions, and pieces of sausage. Topped off with cheese. Waited for it to melt. The smell was fantastic. So much better than all the grub he’d had down there, even on Thanksgiving.

His thoughts were dreary. He was back—felt good. But back to what, exactly? His mom was present absent. He didn’t know who he knew in Sweden anymore. And how was he doing, really? If he truly let himself feel, for once? Confusion/recognition/fear. Nothing’d changed. Except for him. And that was terrifying.

During the first years he’d been gone, he’d come back once a year or so. Often got R & R around Christmas or Easter. But now it’d been over three years since the last time. Iraq was too intense. You couldn’t just up and leave. He’d hardly even spoken to Mom during that time. Hadn’t been in touch with anyone else, either. He was who he was. Without anyone knowing. But on the other hand—had anyone ever known?

The day crept by in slow motion. He was sitting in front of the TV when she came home. Still full from the omelet. Watching a documentary about two guys skiing across Antarctica—the most meaningless shit he’d ever seen. Two clowns playing at fake survival—there was a camera crew there too, obviously. How did they survive if it really was as cold and awful as they made it out to be? Pathetic people who knew less than nothing about survival. And even less about life.

Mom looked much older than when he’d been home last. Worn out. Tired. Grayed, somehow. He wondered how much she drank. How much she’d worried about him during all those nights after watching the news. How often she’d seen Him with a capital H—the man who’d destroyed their lives. The last time Niklas’d been home she’d claimed they didn’t see each other anymore. Niklas believed that about as much as Muqtada al-Sadr believed the United States wanted the best for his people. But all that was over now.

She was strong, somehow. Had raised a punk kid on her own. Refused welfare. Refused to give in and retire early like all her girlfriends had. Toiled through life. On the other hand, she’d let Him come into her life. Let Him take control over her. Humiliate her. Wreck her. How could they be so different?

She set a grocery bag down on the floor. “Hello, hi. So, what’ve you been up to today?”

He could tell how much pain she was in just by looking at her. He’d understood already on his first day back in Sweden: her back’d given up. Still, she kept working—part time, sure, but still: what was the point, really? Her face’d never exactly radiated joy. The wrinkles between her eyes were deep now, but she’d always had them. They formed an expression of constant worry. She’d lower her eyebrows, scrunching them up, making her most noticeable wrinkles deepen by almost half an inch.

He kept studying her. Pink cardigan—her favorite color. Tight jeans. A necklace with a gold heart around her neck. Her hair had blond highlights. Niklas wondered if she still had it done at Sonja Östergren’s salon. Some things never change, as Collin used to say.

She was actually the nicest person in the world. Too nice. It wasn’t fair.

Marie. His mother.

Whom he loved.

And still despised.

Because of that—the niceness.

She was too weak.

It wasn’t right.

But they would never be able to talk about everything that’d happened.

Niklas put the groceries away in the kitchen. Went back into the living room.

“I’m moving out soon, Mom. I’m going to buy a firsthand rental contract for an apartment.”

There they were again: the wrinkles. Like cracks in a desert road.

“But Niklas, isn’t that illegal?”

“No it’s not, actually. It’s illegal to sell rental contracts, but not to buy them. It’ll be fine. And there’s no other way to get a rental in this city, you know that. Stupid socialist housing system. But I have some money and no one’s going to rip me off. Promise.”

Marie mumbled something in response. Went into the kitchen. Started making dinner.

Insomnia was having its way with him. Not even during the worst nights down there, when the grenades’d made more noise than a New Year’s Eve fireworks display in the middle of the living room, had his sleep been this shitty. Earplugs used to be a blessing; his CD player, salvation. But nothing helped now.

He lay watching the gap under his mother’s door. Lights off at twelve-thirty. For some reason, he already knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He turned over and over again. With every turn the sheets slipped more and more to one side of the cushions. Got twisted. Annihilated the chance of sleep.

He was thinking about what he’d bought the other day. Unarmed, he was unsafe. Now he felt better. He’d arranged what he needed. His thoughts drifted on. He considered his work options. How much of his résumé should he include, really? He almost chuckled to himself in the dark: maybe in-depth knowledge of more than forty types of weapons wasn’t the kind of thing that was valued too highly in Sweden.

He thought about Him. He had to get out of this apartment, away from this building. It was giving him bad vibes. Difficult memories. Dangerous intimacy.

Niklas was planning to live according to his own philosophy now. A temple of thought he’d been building meticulously over the past few years. Ethical rules only mattered to yourself. If you were able to rid yourself of them, you’d be free. All that stuff died down in the sandbox. Morality dried up like a scab that disappeared on its own after a few weeks. He was free—free to live his life in the way that suited him best.

He thought about the men. Collin, Alex, the others. They knew what he was talking about. War made humans become self-aware. There is only you. Rules are made for other people.

The next day, he tried an off-the-books apartment broker. The guy sounded shady over the phone. Probably a nasty type. Niklas’d gotten his number from an old school bud, Benjamin.

First he had to leave a message on the illegal broker’s voice mail. Four hours later: a call from a hidden number.

“Hi, I’m a broker. I heard your message. You’re interested in looking at some properties. Is that correct?”

Niklas thought, Some people lived well off other people’s crises. The guy was a snake. Consistently avoided words like apartment, contract, or off the books—knew not to mention anything that could be used against him.

The broker gave him instructions: I call you, you never call me.

They arranged to meet the following day.

He stepped into McDonald’s. Totally beat, but ready to meet the broker. The place looked just as he remembered it. Uncomfortable metal chairs, cherrywood-colored paneling, linoleum flooring. Classic McDonald’s smell: a mix of hamburger meat and something rank. Ronald McDonald House donation jars by the registers; ads for Happy Meals on the tray covers; young, downy-lipped dudes and swarthy chicks behind the registers.

The difference since he’d been here last: health fascism. Mini carrots instead of french fries, whole-wheat buns on the burgers instead of the traditional white bread, Caesar salad instead of extra cheeseburgers. What was people’s problem? If they didn’t exercise enough to burn normal food they should think twice before they even went into this place. Niklas ordered a mineral water.

A man walked up to his table. Dressed in a long coat that almost dragged on the ground, under which he was wearing a gray suit and a white shirt. No tie. Slicked-back hair and empty eyes. A smile so wide it looked like his head was going to split in half.

It must be the broker.

The man extended his hand. “Hi, I’m the fixer.”

Niklas ignored his hand. Nodded at him. Point: You may be the fixer I need—but that doesn’t mean I’m going to kiss your ass.

The broker looked surprised. Hesitated for a moment. Then sat down.

Niklas didn’t skip a beat. “What do you have for me and how does it work?”

The broker leaned forward. “You seem to be a straight shooter. Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

“No, not now. Just tell me what you have and how it works.”

“All right. I’ve got listings anywhere you want. I can get you something south of the city, north of the city, Östermalm, Kungsholmen. I can get you something in the royal Drottningholm Park if you’re interested. But you don’t look like the type.” The broker laughed at his own joke.

Niklas remained silent.

“But remember, if you ever come claiming we’ve met here to discuss what we’re discussing, it didn’t happen. I’m in a meeting with some colleagues right now, just so you know.”

Niklas neither heard nor understood what the broker was talking about.

“Yeah, so, I’ve got myself covered in case of rotten eggs. Just so you know. If anything unpleasant happens, I have witnesses who’ll say I was busy with other stuff somewhere else right now.”

“Okay. Good for you. But you didn’t answer my question.”

The broker smiled again. Got going. Spoke rapidly. He was difficult to understand. Niklas had to ask him to repeat himself several times. The guy’s confident style didn’t match his jumbled manner of speaking.

He described the listings in detail: in all the inner-city neighborhoods. Collaborations with landlords of luxury apartments, single-family homes, state-owned rental co-ops. Magnificent apartments in the inner city, one-bedrooms with eat-in kitchens on Södermalm or studios in the boroughs. According to him: safe, good-value deals.

Niklas already knew what he wanted. A one-bedroom in an area just outside the inner city. Preferably near Mom.

The broker explained the routine. The preparations. The timing. The process. The guy looked like he thought this was all a game.

“First we’ll register you at a rental out in the boondocks for a few months—a place with a short tenant wait list attached to it. Everything’ll look good on paper. That’s where you’ll be registered and since there was a short wait list, no one will wonder how you got your hands on it. I’ll deal with the landlord. After a few months, we’ll exchange the apartment for the one you’re actually going to buy. That way, the trade will look completely clean. After that, the seller will have to be registered at the same apartment you traded from—that is, your fake apartment—for at least two months. Credibility is everything in my field, as I’m sure you understand.”

Problem. This wouldn’t cut it—Niklas had to get a place this week already. He had to get out of Mom’s apartment. Fast.

The broker grinned. “Okay, I think I know your problem. Did your chick kick you out, or what? Shredded clothes? Trashed stereo? Things tend to go a little High Chaparral when they’re mad.”

Niklas held his gaze. Stared for two seconds longer than normal social codes would allow if he were laughing it off as a joke.

The broker finally got the message—this was not the time to try to be funny. “Whatever,” he said. “I can still help you. We’ll get you a sublet for those three months when you’ll need to wait. Does that work? I can put you in a sweet one-bedroom, five hundred and forty square feet, in Aspudden. If you want it, you can have it next week. But it’ll cost a little extra, of course. What do you think?”

He needed something even sooner. “If I pay more, can you get it faster?”

“Faster than that? You’re really cutting it close, I have to say. But sure, you can get it the day after tomorrow.”

Niklas smiled inside. That sounded good. He had to get away.

Better than expected, actually.

To disappear so quickly.

3

The Southern District might not have the most incident reports per capita, but it always had the most major crime. The City District, downtown, definitely topped the numbers, everyone knew that, but that’s because the scum from south of Södermalm came into the city and did a lot of petty shit there. Shoplifted, pocketed cell phones, harassed, started bar brawls.

Thomas thought, The south—real ghettos that the politicians don’t give a damn about. Fittja, Alby, Tumba, Norsborg, Skärholmen. Everyone knew the names of the northern shit holes: Rinkeby and Tensta. Diversity aid and cultural organizations abounded. Support efforts were focused. Project money rained down. Integration institutes invaded. But in the south, the gangs ruled for real. Iraqis, Kurds, Chileans, Albanians. The Bandidos, Fucked for Life, Born to Be Hated. You could spend ages burping up calamities. Topped the Swedish lists in number of firearms, number of guys who refused to talk to cops, number of reported blackmail attempts. The criminals organized, copied the MC clubs’ hierarchies, pulled together their own steel-fisted gangs. The teen punks followed the examples set by older bank robbers/drug dealers/thugs. A well-trodden road. To a shit life. The list was endless—all the facts were there. In Thomas’s eyes, didn’t matter what you labeled those niggers and losers—they were all scum, the lot of them.

He’d heard all the theories that the social-service ladies and the youth psychologists droned on about. But what were they really supposed to do with all those behavioral, cognitive, dynamic, psychiatric, blah-blah-istic hypotheses? No methods worked anyway. No one could clean it up. They spread. Reproduced. Multiplied. Took over. Once upon a time he too might have thought there was a way to stop it. But that was a long time ago now.

Things used to be better. A cliché. But as Lloyd Cole sings, the reason it’s a cliché is that it’s true.

Yet another night on the beat. Thomas was driving calmly. Let his hands rest on the wheel. Knew he’d get his ear chewed off at home for signing up for the night shift all week. He didn’t really need the extra money—even though that’s what he told Åsa. A police inspector’s base salary wasn’t even worth a tenth of the drugs he confiscated on a regular night. It was an insult. Ridicule. A loogie in the eye of all the honest men who really knew what needed to be done. So if they took back a little, it was only right.

There were five or six of them who took turns driving these routes together. Circled the areas around Skärholmen, Sätra, Bredäng. Damned the development to hell. Skipped the PC bullshit and the Commie fake-empathy crap. They all knew the deal—break the swine or roll over and die.

Thomas’s partner tonight, Jörgen Ljunggren, was sitting in the passenger seat. They usually switched sometime around 2:00 a.m.

Thomas tried to count. How many times’d he and Ljunggren slid through the slowly darkening summer nights like this? Without unnecessary chitchat. Ljunggren with his paper cup of coffee, always for too long—until the coffee got cold and he hurried off to get a refill at the closest all-night place. Thomas often with his thoughts elsewhere. Mostly focused on his car at home: zinc treatment for the new original detailing, parts to the differential in the back axle, the new tachometer. A project of his own to long for. Or else he yearned for the shooting range. He’d just bought a new pistol—a Strayer Voigt Infinity, made to his specifications. Thomas was lucky in that way, he had more than one home. First the cruiser with the guys. Then his own car at home. Then the shooting club. And then, maybe, home-home—his house in Tallkrogen.

Jörgen Ljunggren suited Thomas well—he preferred people who didn’t babble too much. What came out was mostly nonsense anyway. So they were quiet. Shared meaningful looks sometimes, nodded, or exchanged short remarks. That was enough for them. They liked it that way. Mutual understanding. A worldview. It wasn’t complicated: they were here to clean up the crap flooding the Stockholm streets.

Ljunggren was one of the best on the squad. A good guy to have on your side when things heated up.

Thomas felt relaxed.

The police radio was spewing out commands. The Stockholm County Police Department used two frequencies instead of one: the 80 system for City, the Southern District, and the Western District, and the 70 system for the rest. In accordance with the rest of the organization. The fact that there were two systems instead of one: inefficiency was the middle name of this operation. No one ever woke up to realize a new age’d dawned. You couldn’t keep trudging along in the same old tracks anymore. His thoughts ran on a loop: The rabble organized completely differently these days. It wasn’t just some Yugos and washed-up Finns running amok. The bottom-feeders stayed fresh. Professional, international, multidisciplinary criminals. New methods were needed to get at them. Faster. Smarter. Tougher. And as soon as someone wanted to do something about it, the media started whining about the new laws as if they were intended to hurt people.

The radio crackled. Someone needed assistance with a shoplifter at a twenty-four-hour bodega in Sätra.

They exchanged glances. Grinned. Forget it, they weren’t taking a crap job like that—let some greenhorn cadet take it. They ignored the call. Drove on.

Approached Skärholmen.

Thomas downshifted, slowed. “We’re thinking of going away for Christmas again.”

Ljunggren nodded. “That’s nice. Where were you thinking?”

“Don’t know. My wife wants to go somewhere warm. Last year we did Sicily. Taormina. Real nice.”

“I know. You didn’t talk about anything else for three months after.”

Laughs.

Thomas turned off toward the Storholms school, outside of Skärholmen’s center. Always worth taking a look at the schoolyard. The punks usually got it into their heads to go there at night—sit on the back of park benches, roll a fatty, as they say, smoke up, and enjoy their short lives.

Dig the irony: the same kids that usually played hooky all day flocked to the schoolyard at night—to smoke themselves stupid. If they were still sitting on those benches five years from now, jobless, they could only blame themselves. But they complained that it was society’s fault. Moved on to heavier stuff: moonshine, hash, aimies. If unlucky: brown sugar. Talk about free fall. Welfare and social services. Worked a couple corners. Flipped a few grams and pulled some suburban break-ins. Their parents could only blame themselves—they should’ve taken their responsibility ages ago. The police could only blame themselves—should’ve clamped down right off the bat. Society could only blame itself—if you gather that much riffraff in one place, you’re asking for trouble.

The lights in the schoolyard could be seen from far away. The gray concrete school building lay like a giant Lego block in the darkness behind the yard.

They stopped the car. Got out.

Ljunggren grabbed the white baton. Completely unnecessary—but correct. The other feeble expandable baton didn’t always cut it.

“Maria always needs to be so damn cultural. Wants to go to Florence, Copenhagen, Paris, and God knows where else. There isn’t even anything nice to look at over there,” Ljunggren said.

“Can’t you look at the Mona Lisa?”

Chuckles, again.

“Yeah sure, she’s about as hot as a fucking bag of wieners.”

Thomas thought: Ljunggren should swear less and show his wife who’s in charge more.

He said, “I think she’s kinda hot.”

“Who, the Mona Lisa or my old lady?”

More laughter.

For once, the schoolyard was empty. Except for under one of the basketball hoops, where a red Opel was parked.

Thomas lit his Maglite. Held it at head height. Illuminated the license plate: OYU 623.

“That’s Kent Magnusson’s car,” he said. “I don’t even have to run the plates. We ever plucked him together?”

Ljunggren hung his baton back on his belt. “You’ve got to be kidding me. We’ve picked him up ten times, at least. You going senile, or what?”

Thomas didn’t respond. They approached the car. Weak light inside. Someone moved in the front seat. Thomas leaned over. Knocked on the car window. The light went out.

A voice: “Beat it!”

Thomas cleared his throat. “We’re not going anywhere. That you in there, Magnusson? This is the police.”

The voice in the car again: “Dammit. I don’t got anything tonight. I’m as clean as Absolut.”

“Okay, Kent. It’s okay. But come out anyway so we can talk.”

Indistinct swearing in response.

Thomas knocked again, this time on the roof. A little harder.

The car door opened—the stench from the car: smoke, beer, piss.

Thomas and Ljunggren’d both struck a broad stance. Waited.

Kent Magnusson climbed out. Unshaven, hair a mess, rotting teeth, herpes blisters around his mouth. Faded jeans on half-mast—the guy had to pull them up at least a foot and a half in order not to fall over. A T-shirt with a print ad for the Stockholm Water Festival that must’ve been ancient. An unbuttoned plaid shirt over the T-shirt.

A complete junkie. Even more worn down than last time Thomas’d seen him.

Thomas shone the flashlight in his eyes.

“Hey there, Kent. How high are you?”

Kent mumbled, “Not at all. I’ve been cutting back.”

His eyes really did look clear. His pupils were a normal size—contracted when the light from the flashlight hit them.

“Yeah, right, you’re cutting back. What you got on you?” Ljunggren said.

“Honest, man. I got nothing. I’m trying to quit. It’s the truth.”

Ljunggren was losing his temper. “Don’t give me that crap, Kent. Just give us what you’ve got and we’ll play nice. No fuss, no hassle, and no bullshit. I’m damned tired tonight. Especially of junkie lies. Maybe we can be nice to you. You follow me?”

Thomas thought: Curious thing about Ljunggren—he talked more with the criminals than he did with Thomas during an entire night in the car.

Kent made a face. Seemed to be considering his options.

“Eh, come on. I don’t got any.”

The junkie wasn’t going to make it easy for himself. “Kent, we’re going to search your car,” Thomas said. “Just so you know.”

Kent made another face. “Fuck, man, you can’t search my car without a warrant. You ain’t seen no drugs. You don’t got the right to go through my car, you know that.”

“We know that, but we don’t give a shit.”

Thomas looked at Ljunggren. They nodded at each other. No problem: just write a report afterward claiming that they’d seen Kent fiddling with something in the car when the door opened. Or that they’d seen that he was high. Or whatever the fuck—there was always reasonable doubt. Piece of cake. Cleaning up the streets of Stockholm—that was more important than objections from some whiny junkie.

Ljunggren crawled into the car and began the search. Thomas led the junkie away a bit. Kept the situation under control.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Kent spit. “You can’t do this. You know that.”

Thomas remained cool. No point in getting worked up. All he said was, “Calm down.”

The junkie hissed something. Maybe pig.

Thomas had no patience for people like him. “What did you say?”

Kent kept mumbling. If the guy whined and made a fuss, that was one thing. But no way he said pig.

“What did you say?”

Kent turned to him. “Pig.”

Thomas kicked him hard in the back of the knee. He collapsed like a tower of matches.

Ljunggren popped his head out of the car. “Everything cool?”

Thomas turned Kent over. Belly to ground, arms behind his back. Cuffed him. Put one foot on the guy’s back. Called to Ljunggren, “Sure, it’s cool.”

Then he turned to the junkie.

“You fucking cunt.”

Kent lay still.

“Please, can you loosen the cuffs? It fucking hurts, man.”

Oh, so now he thought it was time to sulk.

After five minutes, Ljunggren yelled something. Yup, he’d found two bags of hash in the car. No surprise there. Ljunggren handed the baggies to Thomas. He checked—one with ten grams and one with around forty.

Thomas bent Kent’s head back.

“Now what you got to say for yourself?”

The junkie’s voice jumped up a notch. “Come on now, Officer, someone must’ve put them there. I didn’t know they were in the car. I mean, where’d he find it? Can’t you cut me some slack?”

No problem. Fifty grams of hash wasn’t much, considering. They’d let it slide, for now. “It’s cool,” Thomas said. He took the bags. Put them in the inside pocket of his jacket. “But never lie to me again. Got that?”

“No. Never. Thank you so much. Damn, you guys are being nice. Fucking generous. You’re cool.”

“You don’t have to bend over. Just quit lying. Act like a man.”

Two minutes later, Kent was crawling back to his feet.

Thomas and Ljunggren walked back to the cruiser.

Ljunggren turned to Thomas. “Did you toss the shit, or what?”

Thomas nodded.

Kent climbed back in the Opel. Started the engine. Turned the volume up high on the stereo. Classic rock. The junkie just got spared a month or so behind bars—despite losing the hash he was as happy as a kid on Christmas.

Back in the cruiser. Thomas pulled his gloves off. Ljunggren wanted to go to some twenty-four-hour café and get a java refill.

From dispatch: “Area two, do we have anyone who can take a call for an unconscious man in Axelsberg? Seriously wounded. Probably intoxicated. He’s lying in a basement at Gösta Ekman Road number 10. Over.”

A real dirty gig. Silence. They slid on down the road.

No one else took the call. Crap luck.

The radio again: “We’re not getting any response for Gösta Ekman Road. Someone’s gotta take it. Over.”

Dammit, two chill police officers like Thomas and Ljunggren shouldn’t have to deal with more small fry tonight. It was enough that Ljunggren’d had to crawl around in the junkie’s nasty ride. They kept their mouths shut. Rolled on.

The radio ordered: “Okay. No one’s taking Gösta Ekman Road. It’ll be car 2930, Andrén and Ljunggren. Copy? Over.”

Ljunggren looked at Thomas. “Typical.”

Sometimes you just have to eat shit. Thomas pushed the mike button. “Roger that. We’ll take it. Any additional info? It was a drunk, right? There gonna be any booze left for us? Over.”

The radio voice belonged to one of the boring girls. According to Thomas: a sour pussy. Couldn’t kid with her like you could with most of the other chicks on dispatch.

“Quit playing around, Andrén. Just go. I’ll get back to you when we know more. Over and out.”

The car pulled up to Gösta Ekman Road number 10 a few minutes later. Ljunggren was whining about not getting his coffee yet.

People were lined up outside the entrance to the building as if waiting for some kind of show. A lot of people—the building had eight stories. The sky was beginning to brighten.

They got out.

Thomas took the lead. In through the entrance. Ljunggren dispersed the crowd outside. Thomas heard him say, “Nothing to see here, folks.”

Inside, the building felt super sixties. The floor was made of some kind of concrete plates. The elevator door looked like it belonged in a Star Trek spaceship. The small entranceway had a door out to a courtyard and a set of stairs leading down. There was a metal railing along the stair leading up to the second floor. He saw some people standing up there on the landing. A woman in a bathrobe and slippers, a man with glasses and a sweat suit, a younger kid who must be their son.

The woman pointed down.

“I’m so glad you’re here. He’s down there.”

“It’d be great if you could go back inside,” Thomas said. “We’ll take care of this. I’ll be up to talk to you in a bit.”

She seemed reassured by having done her civic duty. Maybe she was the one who’d called 911 in the first place.

Thomas started to walk down. The stairs were narrow. There was a garbage chute with a sticker on it: Please—help our sanitation workers—seal the bag!

He thought about his car again. This weekend he might buy a new motor for the automatic windows.

He checked out the lock on the cellar door. Assa Abloy from the early nineties. He should have a skeleton key that’d work, or else he’d have to ask the family he’d seen on the landing for help.

A few seconds later the electronic skeleton key buzzed. The lock clicked. It was dark in there. He switched on his Maglite. His right hand searched for the light switch.

Blood on the floor, on the bars over the cellar windows, on the stuff in the storage units.

He pulled his gloves on.

Eyed the body. A man. Dirty clothes, now also very bloody clothes. Short-sleeved shirt and corduroy pants. Covered in vomit. Boots with the laces untied. Arm at a weird angle. Thomas thought, Yet another little Kent.

The torso was bent. Facedown.

Thomas said, “Hello, can you hear me?”

No reaction.

He lifted the arm. It felt heavy. Still zero reaction.

Pulled off his glove. Searched for a pulse—stone cold dead.

He lifted the head. The face was totally busted—beat beyond recognition. The nose didn’t seem to exist anymore. The eyes were so swollen that you couldn’t see them. The lips looked more like spaghetti and meat sauce than like a mouth.

But something was strange. The jaw seemed to be sunk in somehow. He put two fingers inside the mouth, felt around in there. Soft like a baby’s palate—the dead man was missing teeth. This was obviously not a junkie who’d lost consciousness by his own doing—this was a murder.

Thomas didn’t get worked up.

Considered placing the man in the recovery position, but left him as he was. Skipped CPR. It was pointless, anyway.

He followed the rulebook. Alerted dispatch. Raised the radio mike to his lips, spoke in a low voice so as not to freak out the whole building. “I’ve got a homicide here. Real grisly. Gösta Ekman Road number 10. Over.”

“Roger that. Do you need more cars? Over.”

“Yes, send at least five. Over.”

He heard the call go out to everyone in the Southern District.

Dispatch got back to him: “Do you need any senior officers? Over.”

“Yes, I think so. Who’s on tonight? Hansson? Over.”

“That’s right. We’ll send him. Ambulance? Over.”

“Yes please. And send a couple rolls of paper towels, too. We’ve got a lot to mop up. Over and out.”

The next step, according to protocol: He talked to Ljunggren on the radio, asked him to make people identify themselves, gather addresses and telephone numbers for potential witness reports. Then have them wait until backup arrived with enough people to ask the usual control questions. Thomas looked around the stairwell. How’d the guy been killed? He didn’t see a weapon, but the perp’d probably taken that with him.

What should he do now? He looked at the body again. Lifted the arm. Didn’t bother with routine—he should really wait for the technicians and the ambulance.

He looked at the man’s hands. They were weird somehow—no missing fingers, not unusually clean or dirty—no, it was something else. He turned a hand over. Then he saw it—the tops of the dead man’s fingers were all messed up. On the top of every fingertip: a blood effusion. It looked like they’d been sliced, leveled, erased.

He dropped the arm. The blood on the floor’d dried. How long’d the dead guy been lying down here?

He searched his pockets quickly. No wallet, no cell phone. No money or identification. In one of the back pockets: a slip of paper with a smudged cell-phone number. He memorized the discovery. Put it back.

The man’s T-shirt was sticking to his skin. He looked closer. Turned the body over a little, even though he shouldn’t. That kind of thing was totally against protocol. Really, they ought to take photographs and search the place before anyone moved the body—but now his interest’d been piqued.

That’s when he saw the next weird thing, on the arm. Track marks from an injection needle. Small bruises around every puncture. Completely clear: what he had in front of him on the floor was a murdered junkie.

He heard sounds on the other side of the cellar door.

Backup was coming.

Ljunggren entered the room. Two younger inspectors brought up the rear. Thomas knew them, good guys.

They eyed the body.

“Damn, he sure slipped on all the blood someone spilled everywhere,” Ljunggren said.

They grinned. Police humor—blacker than this cellar’d been before Thomas’d switched on the lights.

Orders started sputtering out from their radios—Hansson, the senior officer, had arrived, gave orders to have the area cordoned off. Did what he usually did: ordered, organized, hollered. Still, it was a small operation. If it’d been anything other than a junkie in the stairwell, they would’ve called in all the squad cars they could get. Cordoned off half the city. Stopped trains, cars, subways. Now there was no real hurry.

The ambulance crew showed up after seven minutes.

Let the body lie there for a while. A technician came down, snapped some photos with a digital camera. Analyzed blood. Secured evidence. Investigated the crime scene.

The ambulance guys brought a stretcher down. Covered the body with blankets. Hauled it up.

Disappeared.

When there’s action, it’s fun. When it’s fun, the night flies by. But they’d combed home zilch. Ljunggren sighed. “Why did we even bother making a whole operation out of this thing? It’s just one less drunk who probably would’ve started a fight ’cause the liquor store opened three minutes late some Saturday morning when we’re really not in the mood to deal with bullshit like that.” Thomas thought, Sometimes Ljunggren can really talk.

They interrogated some neighbors at random. Photographed the area around the basement. Sent two guys to the subway station. Wrote down the names and phone numbers of people in the building next door, promised to be back the following day. The technicians checked for fingerprints and swabbed for DNA traces in the basement. A couple of cruisers blocked off the street and stopped a sampling of cars down on Hägerstensvägen. Hardly anyone out and about at this hour anyway.

They were quiet on the way back to the station in Skärholmen. Tired. Even though nothing’d happened, it’d been an intense experience. Would feel good to shower.

Thomas couldn’t stop thinking about the body in the basement. The busted face and the fingertips. Not that he felt sick or thought it was hard to deal or anything—too much nastiness’d crossed his path already; it didn’t affect him. It was something else. The shady aspect of this whole business—the fact that the junkie seemed to have been offed in a way that was just a tad too sophisticated.

But what was strange, really? Someone’d freaked on him for some reason. Maybe a fight over a few milligrams, an unpaid debt, or just a bad trip. It couldn’t have been hard to beat the shit out of the guy. He must’ve been lit like a bonfire. But the missing teeth? Maybe it wasn’t so strange. Addicts’ bodies tended to give up early—too much of life’s good stuff corrodes the fangs. Dentures on forty-year-olds were legion.

Still, the face that’d been beaten beyond recognition, the cut fingertips, the fact that someone’d plucked out the dentures. Getting a positive ID on this guy was going to be a bitch. Someone’d given this some real thought.

It spelled out a job by semipros. Maybe even by total pros.

This wasn’t the work of some fellow addict. No way.

Weird.

4

Erika Ewaldsson got on Mahmud’s nerves. Annoying, nagging. Wouldn’t, like, give up. But, really, he didn’t give a fuck about her; she was valueless. Nothing would happen if he broke the probation office’s rules just a little bit, anyway. The problem was what they might come up with. What it boiled down to: they thought they could control him, could decide when he went into the city and when he chilled out in the concrete. There was a risk that it looked like he was letting those clowns walk all over him. Make the rules. Control a blatte with thick honor—they could go shit themselves.

Still: the red subway line, on his way into the city from the projects. From Alby to the probation office at Hornstull. From his bros—Babak, Robert, Javier, the others—to Erika: parole officer, pussy-marauder, playboy-saboteur. She wouldn’t cut him any slack. Refused to understand that he was gonna go straight, or at least really meant it when he told her so. She was riding him worse than the counselor back in school when he was thirteen—the Sven loser who’d decided that Mahmud was troublemaker number one.

Bitch.

The train pounded through the tunnels. Mahmud was nearly alone in the car. He tried to study the pattern on the fabric of the seats across from him. What were those shapes supposed to be, anyway? Okay, he recognized the little ball—the Globen arena. And the tower with the three knobs on top—the city’s hall, City Hall, or whatever it was called. But the other stuff. Who drew ugly like that? And who was the train company trying to kid? The subway wasn’t some warm and cuddly place and it never would be.

Still: great feeling—chilling in the train car. Being free. Could get off and on wherever he wanted. Flirt freely with the two chicks sitting a few rows down. Life on the inside was like life on the outside except in fast-forward. Time went so much faster, each part seeming more compact—it felt like his latest stint had never even happened. The only thing that disturbed him: the nightmares he’d been having the last two nights. Spinning Russian roulette. Piss stains eating their way down his leg. Gürhan’s golden grill gleaming. He had to try to forget. Born to Be Hated.

The train pulled up to the station. He got off. Hungry for something. Walked toward the vending machine. When he was ten yards away he saw that it’d been smashed. What amateurs. If they were gonna rob something, why not go big? What good were a couple bucks from a vending machine? Must be junkies. Tragic losers. Why didn’t Erika work on treating them instead? After all, Mahmud didn’t bother anyone unless they bothered him. Priorities were all flipped.

He started walking toward the escalators. The station’s white brick walls reminded him of the Asptuna pen. A month and a half since he’d gated out of there—six months behind bars. And now he had to go to fucking Hornstull once a week and humiliate himself. Sit and lie to the bitch straight to her face—felt like he was back in middle school again. Didn’t work. Some dudes locked themselves into tiny studio apartments that social services lined up for them when they got out. Couldn’t handle cribs that were too big, wanted things to be as similar to the pen as possible. Others moved in with their moms. Couldn’t really handle life on the outside without someone getting their grub and cleaning up after them. But not Mahmud—he was gonna be a soldier. Get a place of his own, travel, move. Slay mad bitches, make fat stacks. STYLE. But then the image of Gürhan’s mug killed all his dreaming like a punch to the face.

He crossed Långholmsgatan. In the background, the traffic thundered. The sky was gray. The street was gray. The buildings were grayest of all.

The parole office shared an entrance with a podiatrist and a pension fund office. He thought, Were only P joints allowed in this pussy place? A janitor was waxing the linoleum floor. Could have been his dad, his abu, Beshar. But his abu wouldn’t have to live that way anymore. Mahmud was gonna provide. Promise.

At the welcome desk, they didn’t even slide back the glass partition for him. He had to lean forward to reach the mike.

“Hey, hi. I’m supposed to see Erika Ewaldsson. Ten minutes ago.”

“Okay, if you’ll have a seat she’ll be with you shortly.”

He sat down in the waiting room. Why did they always make him wait? They acted like the screws in the slammer. Power-hungry humiliation experts: fags.

He eyed the worthless magazines and papers. Dagens Nyheter, Café, and Gracious Home. Grinned to himself: What clowns would show up at the parole office and read Gracious Home?

Then he heard Erika’s voice.

“Hi, Mahmud. Glad you made it. Almost on time, in fact.”

Mahmud glanced up. Erika looked the way she usually did. Yellow pants and a brownish poncho thing up top. She wasn’t exactly thin—her ass was as wide as Saudi Arabia. She had green eyes and wore a thin gold cross around her neck. Damn, there was that metal taste in his mouth again.

Mahmud followed Erika to her office. Inside, the blinds created a striped light. Posters on the walls. A desk piled with papers, binders, and plastic folders. How many homies did she hassle, anyway?

Two armchairs. A small round table between them. The fabric on the chairs was pilling. He leaned back.

“So, Mahmud, how are you?”

“I’m fine. It’s all good.”

“Great. How’s your dad? Beshar, that’s his name, right?”

Mahmud still lived at home. It sucked, but racist landlords were real skeptical toward a prison blatte.

“He’s good too. It’s not exactly perfect, living there. But it’ll be fine.” Mahmud wanted to tone down the problem. “I’m applying for jobs. Had two interviews this week.”

“Wow, that’s great! Any offers?”

“No, they said they’d get back to me. That’s what they always say.”

Mahmud thought about the latest interview. He’d purposely gone wearing only a tank top. The tattoos piled up. The text: Only trust yourself on one arm and Alby Forever on the other. The ink spoke its own aggressive language: If there’s trouble—you’ll get in deep. Watch yourself.

When would she understand? He wasn’t gonna let a job rob him of his freedom. He wasn’t made for a nine-to-five life; he’d known that since he came to Sweden as a kid.

She studied him. For too long.

“What happened to your cheek?”

Wrong question. Gürhan’s slap wouldn’t ordinarily’ve busted his cheek—but the dude’d worn a massive signet ring. Had torn up half his face. The cut was covered with surgical tape. What was he gonna say?

“Nothing. Sparred a little with a buddy. You know.”

Not the world’s best excuse, but maybe she’d fall for it.

Erika seemed to be considering him. Mahmud tried to look out through the blinds. Look unaffected.

“I hope there’s no trouble, Mahmud. If there is, you can tell me. I can help you, you know.”

Mahmud thought, Yeah, sure you can help me. Irony overload.

Erika dropped the subject. Droned on. Told him about a job-application project that the jobmarketpreparationunemploymentinsuranceoffice, or something like that, was running. For guys like him. Mahmud deflected her attention. Had years of training. All the talk with school counselors, meetings with social-service bitches, and interrogations with cops’d paid off. Mahmud: expert of experts at shutting his ears when the situation required it—and at managing to still look interested.

Erika kept talking. Blah, blah, blah. Sooooo slow.

“Mahmud, aren’t you interested in doing something related to physical fitness? You work out a lot. We’ve talked about that before. How’s that going, by the way?”

“Yeah, it’s going good. I like the gym.”

“And you never feel tempted to do that—you know what I mean?”

Mahmud knew what she meant. Erika brought it up every single time. He just had to smile and take it.

“No, Erika, I’ve stopped with that. We’ve talked about that hundreds of times. Fat-free chicken, tuna, and protein shakes work just as good. I don’t need illegal stuff anymore.”

Unclear if she was actually listening to what he said. She was writing something down.

“May I ask you a question? Who do you spend time with during the day?”

The meeting was dragging on too long. The point of this shit: short talks so that he could air the problems free life created. But he couldn’t let slip about the real problem.

“I hang out with the guys at the gym a lot. They’re chill.”

“How often are you there?”

“I’m serious about it. Two sessions a day. One before lunch, not too many people there then. And I do another session later at night, around ten.”

Erika nodded. Kept talking. Would this never end?

“And how are your sisters doing?”

His sisters were holy, part of his dignity. No matter what punishment Swedish society came up with, nothing could stop him from protecting them. Was Erika questioning something about his sisters?

“What do you mean?”

“Well, do you see her—your older sister? Isn’t her man doing time?”

“Erika, we gotta be clear about one thing. My sisters’ve got nothing to do with the crap I’ve done. They’re white as snow, innocent as lambs. You follow? My older sister’s starting a new life. Getting married and stuff.”

Silence.

Was Erika gonna get whiny now?

“But Mahmud, I didn’t mean anything. You have to understand that. It’s just important to me that you see her and your family. When you’re released from a penitentiary it often helps to be in touch with stable people in your environment. I’ve been under the impression that your relationship with your sisters is very good, that’s all.”

She made a quick pause, eyed him. Was she checking out the mark from Gürhan’s slap again? He sought her gaze. After a while, she put her hands in her lap.

“All right, I think we’re done for today. Here, take this pamphlet about the Labor Market Board’s project I was telling you about before. Their offices are in Hägersten and I really think they might be able to help you. They’ve got courses in how to succeed at job interviews, stuff like that. It could make you a stronger candidate.”

Out on the street. Still hungry. Irritated. Into the 7-Eleven by the entrance to the subway station. Bought an orange soda and two power bars. They crumbled against the roof of his mouth. He thought about Erika’s annoying questions.

His phone rang. Unlisted number.

“Yeah.”

The voice on the other end: “Is this Mahmud al-Askori?”

Mahmud wondered who it was. Someone who didn’t introduce himself. Shadyish.

“Yeah. And what do you want?”

“My name is Stefanovic. I think we may have met at some point. I work out at Fitness Center sometimes. You’ve collaborated with us before.”

Mahmud connected the dots: Stefanovic—the name pretty much said it all. Not exactly a nobody he had on the line. Someone who worked out at the gym, someone who sounded colder than the ice in Gürhan’s veins, someone who was Serbian. Mahmud didn’t recognize the voice. No face came to mind. But still, it could only mean one thing: One of the heavy hitters wanted to talk to him. Either he was deeper in the shit than he’d thought, or something interesting was in the works.

He hesitated before answering. Wasn’t Stefanovic gonna say anything else?

Finally he said, “I recognize your name. Do you work for you-know-who?”

“I guess you could say that. We’d really like to meet you. We think you can help us with something important. You’re well connected. And you’re good at what you did earlier.”

Mahmud interrupted him.

“I’ve got no plans on rebounding. Just so you know.”

“Calm down. We don’t want you to do anything that you could get sent back in for. Not at all. This is something completely different.”

One thing was certain: this wasn’t some normal job. On the other hand: sounded like easy money.

“Okay. Tell me more.”

“Not now. Not on the phone. This is what we’ll do. We’ve put a ticket for Sunday in your mailbox. Get there by six and we’ll explain then. See you.”

The Yugo hung up.

Mahmud walked down the stairs into the subway. Took the escalator to the platform.

He thought, Fuck no, I don’t wanna get sent back in. Low odds: the Yugos were gonna trick him into doing something stupid. But it could never hurt a pro blatte like Mahmud to meet with them. See what they wanted. How much they’d fork over.

And more importantly: becoming the Yugos’ made man could be a way out of the shit he’d ended up in with Gürhan. He felt his mood lift. This could be the beginning of something.

5

Things didn’t end up the way Niklas’d planned. One day after he moved into the new apartment, Mom came over. Asked to spend the night.

The whole point of the move was that they wouldn’t get on each other’s nerves, step too far into each other’s territory, disturb each other’s routines. But he couldn’t say no. She was scared, really scared. Had every right. She had called him on his cell while she was at work.

“Hi Niklas, is that you?”

“Course it’s me, Mom, you’re calling my number.”

“Yes, but I haven’t really learned it yet. It’s so good that you’re home in Sweden now. Something terrible happened.”

Niklas could tell by her voice that it was something out of the ordinary.

“What?”

“The police found a murdered person in our building. It’s so horrible. A dead person has been lying in our basement all night.”

Niklas froze. His thoughts sharpened. At the same time: they turned upside down. This was not good.

“That sounds totally crazy, Mom. What’re they saying?”

“Who? The neighbors?”

“No, the police.”

“They’re not saying anything. I was standing outside half the night, freezing. We all did. Berit Vasquéz was totally broken up.”

“Damn, that’s terrible. But did you speak more with the police?”

“I’m going in for questioning after work today. But I’m afraid to sleep at home alone tonight. Can I stay with you?”

Not at all what he’d planned. This wasn’t good.

“Of course. I’ll sleep on a mattress or a bedroll. Why did you go to work today? You should call in sick for a few days.”

“No, I can’t. And I want to get out of the house, too. It feels good to be at work.”

A question in Niklas’s head. He had to ask her.

“Do they know who the murdered person was?”

“The police didn’t say anything about it. I don’t know, anyway. They haven’t said anything. Can I come after work?”

He said that was fine. Explained how to get there. Sighed inside.

Niklas put on his shorts and T-shirt: the DynCorp logo in black across the chest. He loved his gear. The runner’s socks with no seams to avoid blisters and with a drawstring on the side to hold them up. The shoes: Mizuno Wave Nirvana—nerdy name, but the best shoes the runner’s store carried.

The first thing he’d done since he’d come home—and one of the few times he’d traveled any distance from the apartment—was to buy the shoes and the rest of the running stuff. He ran on the treadmill in the store, discussed weight and width, the affect of overpronation on his step and the arch support. A lot of people thought running was a nice sport because it was simple, cheap, no unnecessary gadgets. Not for Niklas: the gadgets made it more fun. The socks, the shorts with the extra slits to avoid chafing on the leg, the heart monitor, and, of course, the shoes. More than fifteen hundred kronor. Worth every cent. He’d already been running more than ten times since he got back. He used to run down there too sometimes, but a limited amount. If you happened to go a few yards down the wrong street, it could end in tragedy. Two British guys from his troop: found with their throats slit. Shoes stolen. Socks still warm on their feet.

He was standing in front of the mirror strapping the heart monitor around his chest. Checked himself out. Fit. Newly sheared crew cut—you could hardly see how blond he really was. But his blue eyes gave him away. Glimpses of another face in the mirror: black streaks smeared under his eyes, greasy hair, steel gaze. Armed for battle.

He put the heart-rate-monitor watch on last. Set it to zero. It gave him the feeling of intensity, the right tempo. And best of all, it gave instant feedback on his training.

He stepped out. Jogged down the stairs. Opened the door. A nice day.

Running: His method of control over loneliness. His medicine. His relaxation in the midst of the confusion over being home again.

He started slow. Felt a mild ache in his thighs from the last run, in Örnsberg. He ran out toward the Aspudden school. A big, yellow brick building with a flagpole in the schoolyard. A lower wooden building nearby, maybe an after-school center or an elementary-school classroom. He ran past. The trees were sprouting crisp leaves. Nothing was as beautiful as the foliage. He was happy to be home again.

The hill sloped steeper. Down toward what looked like a valley. On the other side: a hill with a wood. At the bottom of the valley was an allotment-garden area—every tenant mommy’s big dream: to get her hands on a plot like that. Little cottages, water hoses, and flower beds where things’d really started to grow. The greenery in Sweden was so green.

He couldn’t stop himself from analyzing the terrain. Saw it as the FEBA—front edge of battle area. An amphitheater. Perfect for an ambush, an unexpected attack from both sides against an advancing enemy or an enemy convoy at the bottom of the valley. First out: AH-64 Apache helicopters—30-millimeter M230 rotary cannons, a rate of fire of over two thousand rounds a minute. Mow down the trucks and the jeeps. Crush them. Force them to stop. Then bombard them with the helos’ Hellfire missiles. After that, the grenade people in the hills would do their bit with 20-millimeter ammunition. Last but not least: the infantry would make sure the jeeps were torched good, spread blankets of fire against any enemy combatants that were still putting up resistance, make sure no militiamen excaped, BBQ the hajis. Deal with the remains. The wreckage. The prisoners.

That’s how it was done. The situation was perfect. In the middle of the allotment gardens. He almost longed to be back.

He kept running, toward the hill on the other side. Kept visualizing war scenes. Different images. Bloody people. Burned faces. Blown-up body parts. Men in torn, half-military uniforms screaming in Arabic. Their leaders with guns in their hands and emblems on their shoulder straps, roaring: “Imshi!”—charge!

Crawling soldiers. Wounded people. Smoldering bodies.

Everywhere.

In panic.

Distorted faces. Gaping wounds. Empty eyes.

Shit.

He ran. Down toward the water.

The branches arched over the trail like a roof. He continued on toward a residential area.

Felt the fatigue wash over him. Checked his watch. He’d been running for twenty-one minutes. Memorized the time: halfway. Time to turn back. Steady breathing. Could he handle the allotment gardens one more time?

He thought, How am I doing, really? The time at DynCorp marked its men, he knew that. There were plenty of stories about guys who hadn’t been able to handle the safe existence in their home countries.

Max 650 feet left to the building’s entrance. He slowed down. Walked the last bit. Let his blood sugar settle. His breathing slow. He loved his gadgets. Material that breathed—his shirt was hardly even wet from sweat.

The sky was a clear blue. The leaves in the flower beds lining the street were a clear green.

That’s when he saw it. On top of an electrical cabinet.

Dammit.

He didn’t know they had those running around outside in Sweden.

Over there, the place was overrun with them. But that was different—there, he was dressed in Kevlar-reinforced camo pants tucked into high, hard military boots. Equipped with weapons—if they came too close, he showed no mercy. Let their little brain substance speckle the gravel. That almost made it okay.

But now.

The rat stared.

Niklas remained still.

No boots—low Mizuno running shoes.

No reinforced pants tucked in—just shorts.

No gun.

It remained still. As big as a cat, he thought.

The panic started creeping up on him.

Someone moved inside the entrance to the building.

The rat reacted. Jumped off the electrical cabinet.

Disappeared along the side of the building.

Niklas opened the door and stepped into the entranceway. Inside, a girl was throwing out trash. Maybe twenty-five years old, long, dark hair, coal-black eyebrows, brown eyes. Pretty. Maybe she was a haji, what the Americans called the civilians down there.

He started walking up the stairs. Sweaty. But it didn’t feel like it was from the run. More from the rat shock.

The girl followed. He fumbled with his keys.

She stood outside her door, on the same landing. Checked him out. Opened the door.

Dressed in sweat pants, a big sweatshirt, and flip-flops.

Then he realized—she was his neighbor. He should say hi, even if he didn’t know how long he’d be living here.

“Hi, maybe I should introduce myself,” he said.

Without really having the time to realize it himself, he heard his own voice say, “Salaam alaikum. Keif halek?”

Her face broke into a completely different expression—a broad, surprised smile. At the same time, she looked down at the floor. He recognized the behavior. Over there, a woman never looked a man in the eye, except the whores.

“Do you speak Arabic?” she asked.

“Yeah, a little. I can be neighborly, anyway.”

They laughed.

“Nice to meet you. My name is Jamila. I guess I’ll see you around. In the laundry room or something.”

Niklas introduced himself. Said, “See you later.” Then she disappeared into her place.

Niklas kept standing outside his door.

Happy, somehow. Despite the rat he’d seen down there.

In the kitchen, four hours later: him and Mom. Niklas was drinking Coca-Cola. She’d brought a bottle of wine. On the table: a bag with almond cookies that she’d picked up too. She knew Niklas loved those particular cookies. The dry, sweet taste when the cookie got stuck in the roof of your mouth. Nursing-home cookies, Mom called them. He laughed.

The apartment was sparely furnished. There was a worn wooden table in the kitchen. Covered with round stains from warm mugs. Four wooden chairs—extremely uncomfortable. Niklas’d hung a T-shirt over the back of Mom’s chair to make it a little softer.

“So, tell me. What really happened?”

It was like pushing a button. Mom leaned over the table as if she wanted him to hear better. It poured out of her. Disjointed and emotional. Hazy and horrified.

She told him how a neighbor’d woken her up. The neighbor said something’d happened in the basement. Then the police showed up. Told everyone, “No need to worry.” They asked strange questions. The neighbors were standing outside, on the street. Talking in low, frightened voices. The police cordoned off the area. Sirens on the street. Armed policemen in motion. They took pictures of the stairwell, the basement, outside. Asked her to produce identification. Wrote down her telephone number. Later, she saw a wrapped human body being rolled out from the basement on a stretcher.

She slurped wine between words. Her head hung over the glass. Her poor posture was apparent even when she sat down.

And then, today, they’d brought her in for questioning. They’d asked all kinds of things. If she had any idea who the dead person could be. Why a murdered man was found in her apartment building. If she’d heard anything, seen anything. If any of the neighbors’d been acting strange lately.

“Was it scary?”

“Very. Just imagine. Being interrogated by the police as if you were involved in a murder, or something. They asked over and over again if I knew who it could be. Why would I know that?”

“So they don’t know who it is?”

“I have no idea, but I don’t think so. If they did, they wouldn’t have asked so many times, right? It’s so terrible. How can they not know? The police don’t do any good these days.”

“Did you see the dead guy?”

“Yes. Or, no, actually. I saw something that could have been a face, but it’d been covered up so much. I don’t know. I think it was a man.”

“Mom, there’s something I need to ask of you. It might sound strange, but I really want you to think about this. You know, considering my background it would be best if—”

He interrupted himself. Poured more Coke. It clucked out from the can.

“…I don’t want you to tell the police about me. Don’t mention that I’m home again. Don’t mention that I was living with you. Can you promise me that?” Niklas looked up at Marie.

She was sitting in silence. Staring at him.

6

They stopped for coffee—Thomas and Ljunggren, as usual. Even though it was only four o’clock in the afternoon, Ljunggren was already on his eighth cup of the day. Thomas wondered: Was Ljunggren’s stomach made of steel, or what?

The café: a taxi joint by Liljeholmen. A TV in one corner playing an Italian league soccer game on high volume. Uncomfortable metal chairs and tables with checked tablecloths. Spread out on the tables: newspapers and housewares catalogs. Perfect place for cops to chill—they were waiting for an assignment worthy of the name.

Ljunggren’s radio handset was on the table. The calls from dispatch could hardly be heard over the soccer announcer’s excited commentary. Fiorentina was proving that it wanted to join the top of the Italian league and was mopping the floor with Cagliari. The Dane Martin Jørgensen’d just made the 2–1 goal. Well placed. Beautiful.

They were each reading a newspaper. As always, not much conversation. They nurtured their peaceful rapport.

But Thomas had trouble focusing. The articles in the newspaper just floated on past. He flipped through it, distracted. Couldn’t stomach the Fiorentina buzz either. He couldn’t drop that basement thing. Normally, he’d forget as soon as he was back at the station. Showered, dried himself off, put on his civilian clothes. Assault, murder, rape—whatever it was—it ran off with the soap. But this was eating away at him. The image of the busted face kept coming back. With every page he turned of the newspaper, he’d see the tatters of flesh; the sunken, broken nose; the swollen eyes. The track marks on the arm. The bloody, peeled fingertips. The empty mouth.

Thomas thought it was a strange routine for real cops—as soon as things got exciting, the crap was turned over to the house mice. Desk cops—the criminal detectives—dudes who’d crawled off the street and into paper shuffling. They were often older officers with bad backs or knee problems—as if sitting still at a desk all day was going to help your back. Or else they came with other baggage, they’d “burned out,” as they say. Everyone knew that was just baloney. But sometimes: young jokers fresh out of the Police Academy who were too feeble to do the real job. Thought they could be Kurt Wallander. Thomas knew—90 percent of the investigations they dealt with were shoplifting and bike thefts. Yeah, high drama. Sure.

Dispatch announced, “We’ve got a drunk driver who thinks he’s Ayrton Senna on the E4, southbound. Anyone near Liljeholmen? Over.”

There was a break in the soccer game. Thomas heard the radio loud and clear.

Saw on Ljunggren’s face that he’d heard it too.

They grinned their usual grins.

Responded, “We can’t take it. We’re near Älvsjö. Over.”

A little white lie to get off scot-free. Dispatch had no idea how close to the place they really were.

Thomas thought, You could call their work ethic shitty. Call it lazy. Call it cheating. But the ones in charge deserved what they got—if you don’t invest in the police, don’t expect to get anything back. And some drunkard who thought the highway was a racetrack would never get more than a month anyway—so what was the point?

Ljunggren poured his ninth cup. Slurped.

Ljunggren had to drive the last hours of the day’s shift alone. Thomas was called to an investigation meeting. Or, as it was formally called, a debriefing. They wanted him to describe his vibes from the early morning of June 3. Give the suits a broader, better, richer story to go on. They needed more than just the technicians’ photos, written reports, and interrogation transcripts.

He was going to headquarters, which is to say, Kronoberg. Which is to say: paradise for detective house mice/paper pushers/little girls. He got a ride with a female cop he’d never met before. Didn’t have the energy to chat. Greeted her politely—after that, they kept their traps shut for the rest of the ride.

Thomas’d written half a page, his incident report. It was bullshit: standard phrases, abbreviations. Off. Andrén and Off. Ljunggren were called at 00.10 hours on the night in question. Arrived at 10 Gösta Ekman Road at 0016 hours. Some members of the general public were gathered outside the building as well as ca. 8 people in the stairwell. A list of times, names of officers that’d arrived on the scene, senior officers, info-reporting, and so on. After that, brief descriptions: Undersigned attempted CPR. CS photographed. Observations: traces of blood and vomit on the walls/floor. VIC, WMA, facedown, severe swelling and wounds. In back pocket: receipts, unidentified slips of paper. BUS on the scene at ca. 0026 hours. SOCO arrived at ca. 0037 hours.

Thomas hated to write incident reports for two reasons. First of all, he couldn’t handle a keyboard. Simple problems tripped him up. He hit the Caps Lock key by accident. Took three minutes to understand what’d happened. He hit the Insert key when he was trying to backspace—every single letter he wrote deleted the text he’d already written. He couldn’t handle that shit. Had a fit. Rewrote half the report from scratch because it was deleted in time with the edits he made. His irritation almost boiled over. Who’d invented those keys, anyway?

Second: It didn’t matter what actually happened. What mattered was that you showed that you’d followed the rules. In reality, he’d skipped doing CPR. But anyone would’ve skipped that part. You have to protect yourself—such is the life of a cop. What made it into the report was another thing altogether.

The main entrance on Polhemsgatan was newly renovated. Gleaming marble floors, polished metal, and huge white designer lamps. Thomas couldn’t believe how they chose to spend their money. Some dudes in the Southern District’d been using the same service weapons for twenty years, but here, at the home of the fancy cops, they spent millions on redoing an entranceway. How exactly did a luxury foyer give Swedish citizens a better city? No end to the fucked-up priorities.

He flashed his badge at the welcome desk. Asked them to call the inspector he was there to see: the head of the preliminary investigation, Martin Hägerström. Room 547. Fifth floor. Odds were: a great view.

On the ride up the elevator was crammed with desk people, mostly women. He didn’t recognize a single face. Did they fill the entire department with girls these days? He fixed his eyes on the elevator buttons—the button with a 5 on it, to be more precise. Adhered to strict Swedish elevator etiquette: get on, sweep your eyes over who’s in there, then fix your gaze on a point on the wall, the control panel, or the inspection certificate. Then keep it there. Don’t move. Don’t turn your head. Don’t look around again. Above all: don’t, under any circumstances, look any of your fellow passengers in the eyes.

Every single button was lit. Someone was getting off at every floor. It was going to be a long ride.

Fifth floor: he found his way to the room. The door was closed. He knocked. Someone called, “Come in.”

Inside: chaos—so messy you could’ve easily hidden a motorcycle in the room. A bookcase along one wall, filled with books, magazines, and binders. Expanding files bursting with paper in piles on the floor. Incident reports, seizure reports, witness contact information, case documents covered the rest of the floor—some in plastic folders, others not. The desk was cluttered with similar stuff: witness-interrogation transcripts, preliminary-investigation memos, and other junk. Coffee cups, half-empty bottles of mineral water, and orange peels everywhere. Chocolates, tobacco tins, and pens in a pile right in front of the computer screen. Somewhere under all that paper, there must be a keyboard. Somewhere in all that mess, there must be a detective inspector.

A thin guy stepped forward. The dude must’ve been standing behind the door.

Extended his hand.

“Welcome. Thomas Andrén, right? Martin Hägerström is my name. Detective inspector.”

“Newly appointed, or what?” Thomas didn’t like his clowny style: the corduroy pants, the green shirt with the top two buttons undone, the chaos in the room, the dude’s messy hair. The un-uniformed ease.

“Not really. I was transferred six months ago, from Internal Affairs. They have so much work piled up here. Needed backup, you know. How are things over where you are? Skärholmen, right?”

Hägerström moved some documents piled on a Myra designer chair. Gestured for Thomas to have a seat. Two words were echoing in his head: Internal Affairs—the rat squad. Martin Hägerström was one of Them. The two-timers, the quislings, the traitors. The ones whose job it was to nail other cops, colleagues, brothers. The unit to which they brought people plucked from other districts in the country so that they wouldn’t have any buddies in the area where they worked. All cops’ number one worry. All normal men’s number one enemy. All hierarchies’ lowest rung.

Thomas met his gaze with a steely look.

“Okay. You’re one of those.”

Hägerström stared back, giving him an even harder look.

“That’s right. I’m one of those.”

Hägerström pulled out a new legal pad and a pen from somewhere.

“This isn’t going to take long. I just want you to tell me briefly what you saw, who you spoke to, how you experienced the situation in the stairwell and the basement the day before yesterday. I have your report and all, but we haven’t finished investigating the crime scene and I’ve only brought in about a third of the people in the area for questioning. We really don’t know for sure if the basement was the actual scene of the crime. Sometimes you need some fleshing out to get a better picture.”

Thomas sat down, too. Looked out through the window.

“What kind of fleshing out do you need? I don’t know anything other than what I wrote in the report.”

The fastest way to avoid lengthy debriefings was usually to refer to the report. Thomas wanted to get out of there. This was a waste of time.

“Let’s start with what happened when you got there. How you discovered the body.”

“Doesn’t it say in the report?”

“It says here that you, and I’m quoting, ‘found the dead person in the basement, outside storage unit number fourteen.’ That’s all.”

“But that’s how it was. On the landing, on the first floor, there was a little family dressed in bathrobes wondering what was going on. They told me he was lying down there. I went down. The door was locked so I opened it with a skeleton key. First thing I saw was blood and vomit on the floor of the basement. Then I saw the body. It was lying facedown. But you’ve got photos of that, don’t you?”

The detective wouldn’t give up. Kept asking for details. What the family in the stairwell’d looked like. How the basement was built. How the body’d been lying. Thomas realized that he’d applied the wrong tactic—he should’ve been more detailed to begin with. This was taking all fucking night. After an hour of questioning, Hägerström stood up.

“Want coffee?”

Thomas declined. Remained seated. Hägerström disappeared out of the room.

Thomas’s thoughts drifted off. He yearned to be somewhere else. He thought about his shooting club. His Infinity gun, his other guns, the powerful focus he felt when he stood with the ear guards on and fired off ten straight 9-millimeter rounds right in the mug of the paper cutout. He could say it without shame: he was one of the Stockholm police force’s best shots.

Hägerström came back into the room again. Seemed to want to make small talk for a while.

“You know, you patrol officers are underrated. I often think your first impressions are important. I mean, we usually nail most of the heavy perps through investigations. All the information we collect lets me sit here in my chamber, tie up the loose ends, and get them prosecuted. You know, from my desk. But we need input from the street, from reality. From you.”

Thomas just nodded.

“I’ve got ideas for new ways of collaboration. The desk people together with the guys who are really out there. Detectives and patrol officers. You’d set up teams with both. There’s so much knowledge that’s lost today.”

“Are we done here? Can I go?”

“No, not yet. I want to discuss one final thing with you.”

Thomas sighed.

Hägerström kept going. “We usually talk about different types of violent criminals. I’m sure you remember that from the Police Academy. The professional criminals and the psychologically disturbed. For example, the professional criminals can plan well, are manipulative, and sometimes have psychotic tendencies. Often they are relatively intelligent—at least we’d call them street-smart. The psychologically disturbed, on the other hand, are usually lone wolves. Many have had problems or experienced some sort of trauma growing up. They can live for many years without committing any crime, but then something cracks and they commit some aggravated sexual or violent assault. The thing is that their deeds are different. They move in different fields, commit different kinds of shit. Completely different types of murders. The professional criminals—economically motivated criminals—often kill swiftly and cleanly, leave their victims where they can’t be tied to the crime, and don’t make any unnecessary bloody business out of the whole thing. The psychologically sick have different motives. It can be sexually related, it can be a real mess, they often go after people in their direct vicinity, or hurt many people at once. They might leave their victims as if they want them to be found, like a message to their surroundings. Or a call for help. Considering the nature of this murder, I’m sure you can already guess what my question is. Spontaneously, what’s your view of this murder—professional criminal or psycho?”

The question came as a surprise. For some strange reason, Thomas felt honored—this paper-pushing detective valued his version of things, his opinion and intuition. He rejected the thought. The dude was sucking up. He answered appropriately—which is to say, rudely.

“I mean, he didn’t exactly look happy, so it was probably pretty painful.”

Hägerström didn’t get the joke.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he didn’t look happy, he had a strange facial expression. Bloody, might be the right word.”

Their eyes locked again. Neither lowered their gaze.

“Andrén, I don’t appreciate your kind of humor. Just answer the question, please.”

“Didn’t I just do that? Considering how damn bloody that basement was, it must’ve been a real psycho freak who made the hit.”

Thirty seconds of silence—a long time between two men who didn’t know each other.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get to leave soon. I just have one more question. What is your spontaneous, preliminary opinion about the cause of death?”

No point in making a fuss. If he did, the detective might keep him there even longer just to fuck with him. He offered his honest view: “I really don’t know. The dead guy had deep track marks on his arm, so it could’ve been an overdose that did him in, in addition to the assault.”

Hägerström’s mouth fell open, looked honestly surprised for a brief moment. Caught himself. Flipped back to throwing his weight around. “Didn’t I say I didn’t like your kind of humor?”

It was Thomas’s turn to look surprised. What did the guy mean? It wasn’t a joke.

“Hägerström, I’m gonna be honest now. I don’t like people from Internal Affairs. I think we should stick together and not spend time ruining the lives of good professionals. But I want to be accommodating and answer your questions, just so I can get out of here. The problem is that, right now, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“No? I mean I want you to answer my question. What is your spontaneous, preliminary opinion about the cause of death? No fucking track marks, please.”

“Like I said, I don’t know. It was probably the assault, but it could’ve been an overdose, too. Considering the track marks.”

Hägerström leaned forward. Articulated, “There were no track marks or needle wounds. The corpse was completely free of that kind of injury.”

Silence again. Both were evaluating the situation. Their faces: less than three feet away from each other.

Finally, Thomas said, “Sounds like you didn’t read my report. The corpse’s right arm looked like a sieve. If he or someone else pumped drugs into all those holes, he could just as well have caught a chill from an overdose. Do you understand?”

Hägerström rummaged among the papers on his desk. Picked one up; it was Thomas’s report. The detective handed it over. Half a page. Terse sentences that he recognized. But there was something wrong about the end. There were words missing. Had he forgotten to save the last lines? Had his problems with the damn keyboard made parts of the text disappear, or had someone else deleted it?

He shook his head. Not a word about the needle wounds in the report.

Thomas looked up from the report.

“This is bullshit.”

7

Abbou—Mahmud was impressed. According to his own view of things, Mahmud wasn’t the guy to get caught off guard by fly whips, boosted bling, or fat stacks. He was the guy who’d rolled in an ill Audi before things went wack. The blatte who’d slung juice for a hundred G’s a month. Muscle man. Pussy pariah. Million Program myth.

But he felt like a newbie in this situation. They were sitting in the most expensive ringside seats. You had to be someone in fighter Sweden to even be allowed to buy seats like this. And the king who’d made this happen was definitely someone—King of Kings, Radovan.

Things had to be nice when the Yugo boss himself graced the scene. A couple of big fights were being decided tonight. The odds were high: in other words, thick rolls involved. Course the boss wanted to see up close when the boys in the ring had their foreheads smashed in and the dough rose like crazy.

Master’s Cup, K-1. K-1 stood for the four K’s—karate, kung fu, kickboxing, and knockdown karate—that all went head to head with the same rules. But in reality, most styles were allowed. Ruthless animals who were used to owning the ring at their home gyms had to limp off the mat, beaten to bits. Bare-chested fighters pummeled each other so hard you could feel it all the way up in the nosebleed seats. Eastern European giants tore through Swedish immigrant boys one by one: kneed chins, dislocated arms, elbowed noses. The audience howled. The fighters roared. The judges tried to break up punch sequences that would floor a rhino.

The fighters came from Sweden, Romania, the former Yugoslavia, France, Russia, and Holland. Fought for the titles—and for who would advance to the big K-1 competitions in Tokyo.

Mahmud caught a glimpse of Radovan, eight seats away in the same row. Fired up like everyone else. At the same time, Il Padre maintained his calm, his dignity—a boss never breaks a visible sweat. The Yugo brand equaled dignity, which equaled respect. Period.

Mahmud’d arrived at the arena with time to spare—five-forty. People were lining up outside to buy returned tickets. Security was worse than at the airport. The only advantage: here, they didn’t care that he was a Muslim. He had to pass through metal detectors, put his belt, keys, and cell phone through. They ran a manual metal detector over him. Groped his balls like fags.

At six o’clock he sidled up to the seat with the right number. No one was seated around him yet. It was way too early. The Serbs let him wait. Mahmud’s thoughts zipped off to an unwanted place. Almost a week since the nightmare in the woods. The wound on his cheek would probably heal fine. But his wounded honor—he wasn’t so sure about that. Really, though, he knew—there was only one way. A man who lets someone walk all over him is not a man. But how the fuck would a vendetta go down? Gürhan was VP in Born to Be Hated. If Mahmud so much as breathed cockiness, he’d be as screwed as Luca Brasi.

What’s more: Daniel, the Syriac who’d made him eat the gun, had called two days ago. Asked why Mahmud hadn’t started paying off his debt yet. The answer was a given: not a chance Mahmud could get anywhere near enough gold in three days. The Daniel dude told him to fuck himself—that wasn’t Gürhan’s problem. Couldn’t Mahmud borrow? Couldn’t Mahmud sell his mother? His sisters? They gave him a week. Then he had to make the first payment: one hundred thousand cash. No escaping it. Right now, the knife was at his throat. The Yugos might be his chance.

At the same time: reluctance. He thought about his talk with Dad a few days ago. Beshar’d taken early retirement. Before that, he’d slaved away as a subway engineer and janitor for ten years. Busted his knees and back. Struggled for the Svens, for nothing. Proud. So proud. “I’ve paid every cent of my taxes and that feels good,” he liked to say.

Mahmud’s classic answer: “Dad, you’re a loser. Don’t you get it? The Svens haven’t given you shit.”

“Don’t you call me that. You must understand. It’s not about Swedes this or Swedes that. You should get a job. Do right for yourself. You embarrass me. Can’t they arrange something through the parole office?”

“Nine-to-fives are no good. Check me, I’m gonna be someone without a job and shit like that.”

Beshar just shook his head. He didn’t get it.

Mahmud’d known it already when he and Babak’d shoplifted their first candy bars. He could feel it in his whole body when they juxed cell phones from seventh graders in the hallway and when he blazed his first spliff in the schoolyard. He wasn’t made for any other life. He’d never get on his knees. Not for the parole people. Not for Gürhan. Not for anyone in Sven Sweden.

Twenty-five minutes later, a ways into the first fight, showtime: Stefanovic slid into the seat next to him. They didn’t shake hands, the dude didn’t even turn around. Instead he said, “Glad you could make it.”

Mahmud kept watching the fight. Didn’t know if he should turn to Stefanovic or if they were supposed to take care of the talk on the DL.

“Course. When you guys ask, you come. Right?”

“Usually, yes.”

They sat silently in the din.

Now and then Stefanovic turned to a guy sitting on his other side. Mahmud knew who it was: Ratko. He rolled with another huge Yugo, Mrado, who Mahmud used to hang with before he got locked up. It was damn shifty, those guys always said hi to Mahmud when they ran into each other at the gym, but here they didn’t move a muscle. Normally, Mahmud didn’t tolerate shit like that. But today he needed the Yugos.

Mahmud checked the place out. The Solna sports center: probably four thousand people rubbing elbows in the bleachers. Bodybuilding dudes—he said hi to some of them—young blattes with too much juice in their bodies and gel in their hair, combat-sports freaks who loved the smell of blood. Cheaper versions of himself—he loved that he wasn’t sitting up there with them. Ringside, another style ruled. More suits, more glamour, more expensive Cartier watches. Older, calmer, more respectable. Stirred into the mix: twenty-five-year-old honeys with tight, low-cut tops and highlighted hair. Somber bodyguards and underlings. Mahmud hoped he’d be spared running into anyone from Gürhan’s gang.

The spotlights lit up every fighter that entered the ring. On one short side: the fighters’ national flags, size XL, on the wall. On the other: the K-1 logo and the full name of the competition written across a banner: MASTER’S CUP—RUMBLE OF THE BEASTS. Speakers blared out the guys’ names, their clubs, and nationalities. 50 Cent on max volume between fights. During breaks, babes with fake tits, hot pants, and tight T-shirts with ads on them held up signs with the number of the next round. Shook their booties as they sashayed around the ring—the crowd howled louder than at a knockout.

The emcee of the night was standing in the ring, his soaring mood cranked up to max: Jon Fagert—full-contact legend, now a suit-clad combat-sports lobbyist.

“Ladies and gentlemen, tonight is the night we’ve all been waiting for. The night when true sportsmanship, tough training, and, above all, bone-hard spirit decide the fights. Our first real title game tonight is within K-1 Max. As you all probably know, the competitors are not allowed to weigh over one hundred and fifty-four pounds within this subclass of K-1. Let me welcome two fighters into the ring who have solid successes behind them. One is the winner of the Dutch Thai Boxing Society’s national tour three years in a row. He’s got nasty speed, feared backward kicks, and famous right jabs. The other is a legendary vale tudo fighter with more than twenty knockouts to his name. Ernesto Fuentes from Club Muay One in Amsterdam against Mark Mikhaleusco from NHB Fighter’s Gym in Bucharest—please welcome them up!”

In the middle of the applause Stefanovic said something straight out into the air, as if he were talking to himself. “That fairy up there, Jon Fagert. He’s a clown. Did you know that?”

Mahmud followed suit—Stefanovic didn’t want the whole arena to see that they were talking, of course. He watched how Ernesto Fuentes and Mark Mikhaleusco stretched one final time before the fight. Then he answered, speaking straight out into the air, “Why?”

“He doesn’t understand who picks up the tab for this whole spectacle. He thinks it’s some kind of charity. But even a player like that’s gotta understand that if you put dough in, you want bread back. Right?”

Mahmud wasn’t really listening, just nodded along.

Stefanovic continued, “We’ve built up this business. You with me? The gym where you work out, Pancrase, HBS Haninge Fighting School, and the other joints. We recruit good people from there. Make sure that guy up there and the other enthusiasts can have their fun. Did you put any money down, by the way?”

The discussion was weird. They could’ve been buzzing about anything. Stefanovic had his poker face on. The entire time: ice cold.

Mahmud responded: “No, who’s hottest?”

“The Dutch guy, I put forty G’s on the Dutch guy. He’s got dynamite in his fists.”

The audience was taut, like thousands of rubber bands ready to snap. The fight began.

Mahmud wasn’t completely green. He watched fights on Eurosport sometimes. Regular sports didn’t interest him; he didn’t get anything out of it. But watching the fights on TV gave him an adrenaline rush.

The Romanian had blinding technique, speed, timing, and footwork. Sick round kicks and jump kicks à la Bruce Lee. Punch sequences fast, like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. World-class blocking. No doubt about it—Stefanovic was gonna lose his dough.

The Romanian maintained the upper hand through the end of the first round.

The music switched on: gangsta rap on max. The trainers dabbed the fighters’ faces. Rubbed Vaseline on them so the punches would slide off easier. A chick swung her cheeks diagonally across the ring. Held up a sign with the number 2 on it.

The gong sounded. The fighters stepped back into the ring. Sized each other up for a few seconds. Then all hell broke loose. The Romanian continued to impress. Landed a perfect round kick to Fuentes’s head. The guy sank to his knees. The judge counted off.

One, two.

The audience roared.

The Dutch man’s saliva: like a spider’s thread from his mouth down to the floor.

Three, four.

Mahmud’d seen a lot of fights in his life. But this—perfection.

Five, six.

Fuentes stood up. Slowly.

The audience howled.

A few seconds left of the second round. The punches echoed. The Romanian tried to get three punches in. The Dutch guy lowered his chin, raised both gloves in front of his face. Successful block.

Mahmud glanced at Stefanovic. The Yugo’s face was rigid like a rock. No sign of panic about the forty G’s that were about to be flushed down the toilet.

The third round began.

Something’d happened. It was like the Romanian was kicking in slow motion. Looked tired. But Mahmud was watching from closer up than most—the guy wasn’t even out of breath. This had to be rigged. Was that really possible? Massive advantage two minutes ago, and now it looked like he was the one who’d almost been down for the count. Someone ought to react.

Slowly but surely, Fuentes took over the fight. Heavy punches, low kicks, and rapid kicks to the head. The Romanian fought like a girl. Retreated ringside at every advance. Waved his arms in front of his face without even touching the Dutch man on the nose.

It was stupid. Felt like an American WWE fight. Fake.

The rounds passed by one by one. The dudes in the ring grew more tired.

Mahmud almost laughed. Even if it was a rigged fight, Stefanovic was gonna get rich—and his boss, R., would probably get even richer.

The gong sounded. The fight was over. The Romanian was barely standing. The judge grabbed hold of their gloves.

Raised Ernesto Fuentes’s arm.

For the first time, Stefanovic turned to Mahmud. A smile barely flickered across his lips—but his eyes glowed like embers.

“Okay, soon we’ll talk business. The next fight is going to be huge. I promise, they’re giants, he-men. It’s what everyone’s here to see. The audience is going to be in ecstasy. Deafening support for the Swedish guy. That’s when we’ll talk. When everyone’s attention is directed at the ring and no one can hear us. You follow?”

Mahmud followed. Soon, he’d get his chance. If only the Gürhan fag knew. Mahmud was about to cut a deal with the Yugos.

A half hour later: it was time again. Mahmud was in his seat, waiting. During the intermission, he’d walked around. Said hi to people he knew, buzzed with the guys from the gym. People were happy to see him out. “Welcome back, Twiggy. Now it’s time to get cracking and bulk up again.” They were right—the slammer was no place to work out. It should be perfect: lots of time, no booze, no unhealthy food. But you couldn’t sneak any juice in there, you couldn’t even buy dietary supplements in the prison commissary. Plus: the gym at Asptuna sucked. But the biggest difference was that it just wasn’t the same thing on the inside. The pen sucked you dry. Mahmud’d lost forty-four pounds.

The Yugos were the right move for him. He wanted up—was going up. Six months in the pen couldn’t stop him. Not a chance he’d let himself get benched. And anyone who wanted up knew one thing: sooner or later you have to deal with R., so you might as well do it on sweet terms. Play on the same team as the Yugo boss. Mahmud: the Arab they couldn’t gyp, the man who went his own way. This was soooo right. He just wondered what it was they wanted him to do.

Radovan came walking down a set of stairs. Trailed by a posse. Mahmud recognized a few of them: Stefanovic, of course. Goran: known as the city’s booze and smokes smuggling king. The Ratko dude. A couple other beefy guys he recognized from the gym. A trail of skanks.

Stefanovic sat down next to Mahmud again.

Jon Fagert stepped into the ring. Looked out over the sea of people. Silence settled.

“Honored guests. Today is a big day. One of the two men who are soon going to go head to head in the ring will advance. Not just to anything. Not to yet another championship fight in their individual genre. No, on to something much bigger. To the ultimate championship for the sport of sports. What I’m taking about, of course, is the K-1 championship in the Tokyo Dome in December, where more than one hundred thousand people will be in the audience. First prize is over five hundred thousand dollars. One man will advance tonight. One man is strong enough. One man has the best fighting spirit. Soon, we’ll know which one.”

Smoke billowed out beside two entrances to the ring.

One silhouette appeared at each end.

The music played “Also Sprach Zarathustra” from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Fagert raised the volume: “Ladies and gentleman, I have the honor of introducing two giants. From Belarus, straight from Minsk’s Chinuks Gym, we have the former Spetsnaz soldier with more than twenty K-1 championships to his name. The man with the iron fists, the beast, the death machine, the legend: Vitali Akhramenko.”

The audience roared.

One of the silhouettes moved forward. Took a step out from the smoky fog. The spotlights followed his heavy steps. The feeling: like a god who made an entrance in the valley of death.

He was the biggest human being Mahmud’d ever seen, and Mahmud worked out at Fitness Center. Over seven feet tall. Defined muscles like on a comic-book figure. Chest wide as a sumo wrestler. Biceps broader than Mahmud’s thighs.

Jon Fagert continued, making himself heard over the music: “And in the other corner we have a Swedish super fighter, straight from HBS Haninge Fighting School with over ten knockouts to his name. The powerhouse, the tank, the fighting god, our very own Jörgen Ståhl.”

The atmosphere felt like a heavy-metal concert. The music pounded. The spotlights played. Jon Fagert’s eyes flashed. The little punks in the bleachers were in ecstasy.

Jörgen Ståhl advanced slowly. Allowed the cheering to build gradually. Dressed in a cape with the HBS logo on the back. Black tribal tattoos covered almost his entire upper body. On one forearm in black inked letters: Ståhl Is King. Mahmud thought about Gürhan’s tattoo.

Stefanovic opened his mouth, kept his eyes on the ring.

“People are crazed. A couple punches and some blood and those kids up in the bleachers think it’s a world war. They know nothing. Did you bet, by the way?”

“Didn’t bet last time, didn’t bet this time. But it seems like you cashed in.”

“That’s right. This time, I’ve put in one hundred large. On the Belarusian. He’s an animal, I swear. This could be epic. What do you think?”

Mahmud thought, Is Stefanovic trying to make me insecure? He’s ending every sentence with a stupid question.

“I don’t really think nothing about it. You seem to know what you’re doing.”

“Listen, the Belarusian is a three-hundred-pound old man, but he’s got the technique of a two-hundred-pound kid. And speed isn’t the only thing deciding this—timing is even more important. You’ll see. He’s going to let all hell break loose on that Swede. Course, we’ve got a hunch about it, too.”

Mahmud wondered when Stefanovic was gonna get to the point.

The fight began up in the ring. Akhramenko tried to land a left uppercut on Ståhl. The Swede blocked good. This was like heavyweight boxing but with low kicks to the legs.

“Mahmud, we trust you. Do you know what that means?”

Yet another question. Might be the beginning of the real talk they were supposed to have.

“You can trust me. Even if I hung out with Mrado, I know he made some trouble for you guys. And even if I’m not a Serb. You use Arabs. Our people don’t have anything against each other here.”

“That’s right. Maybe you already know one of them, Abdulkarim. He’s out of the game right now, but you can’t find a better man. Are you like him?”

“Like I said, you can trust me.”

“That’s not enough. We need men who are one hundred and fifty percent loyal. It happens that we bet on the wrong fighters, so to speak.”

Mahmud knew what he was talking about—everyone knew. Lately there’d been a lot of shit going down in Stockholm’s underworld. That kind of thing happened: someone thought they’d be the new king of the hill, someone wanted to challenge the boys at the top, someone’s honor got stepped on. There were plenty of examples. The war between the Albanians and the Original Gangsters, the shoot-out in the Västberga cold-storage facility between different factions within the Yugo mafia, the executions in Vällingby last month.

Up in the ring, Ståhl was landing a series of kicks to Akhramenko’s calves and quick alternating punches to his head. Maybe the Sven was gonna take it home after all.

Stefanovic continued, “You could be our man. To see if you make the cut, I’d like to ask you for a little favor. Listen carefully.”

Mahmud didn’t turn around. Continued to eye the fight. The first round ended. The Swede was bleeding near the eyebrow.

“Have you heard about the hit against Arlanda Airport? It was going smooth but then it went to hell. We’d planned it just as well as we always do. I think you know what I mean. Had the guards in our pockets. Knew the routines, the surveillance cameras, when the delivery of bills would arrive, the emergency exits, the escape routes, the exchangeable cars, caltrops, everything. There were four guys on the team, two of ours and two from your side of town, North Botkyrka. Three went into the grounds at Arlanda, into the storage area where the gear was stashed. One stayed outside. Everything went according to plan. When they’d pushed the bags out on the pallet to the getaway car, they were met by the guy who’d waited outside, dude number four. With gun in hand. Pointed at them. You follow?”

“You got done.”

“We got done right up the ass. Hard. There were bills for more than forty-five million. And that dude, he took it all. Had the other three dump the crap in the car. Then he split.”

“You’re kidding? Who’s the guy?”

It took a while for Stefanovic to answer. Ståhl and Akhramenko were dancing around each other slowly. The Belarusian looked tired. Ståhl bounced away as though he knew how Akhramenko was gonna hit. Blocked. Ducked. In the zone, working it. Ståhl almost got a knee in. The ref broke it up. Sent them back to their positions.

“The guy’s name is Wisam Jibril. Lebanese. Heavy on CIT gigs. You know, cash in transit. Remember him? Something of a guru in your crowd, I think. He’s been missing since the Arlanda hit. Pronounced dead in the tsunami catastrophe a few years ago, just like so many others made sure to be. With forty-five of Radovan’s millions.”

Suddenly it was obvious why they’d chosen him. Wisam Jibril: one of Mahmud’s gods growing up. Three years older. Went to the same school. From the same hood. Same gang. And Mahmud’s dad’d known Wisam’s mom, too. It was as if they were asking him to rat out family. Fuck.

Still, he heard himself say, “What makes you think I can find him?”

“We think he’s back in Sweden. People’ve seen him around town. But he knows we’re not happy. No one seems to know where he lives. He’s careful. Never goes out alone. Hasn’t even been in touch with his family, at least not as far as we know.”

Stefanovic let the words hang in the air for a second. Then he hissed, “Find him.”

Up in the ring, the giants were going at it. Ståhl was alternating between feeding uppercuts and jabs. The Belarusian guard was gradually being lowered. His head hung, he seemed unfocused. After two more minutes: bam. The Swede landed a brutal power punch. The Belarusian bounced against the ropes. Ståhl went in close. Grabbed Akhramenko’s neck. Pressed the giant down. Kneed him with full force. The sound of something cracking in Akhramenko’s jaw. The mouth guard went flying. A brief second: silence in the arena. Then he sank down to the mat.

Mahmud’s thoughts were in mad tumult. First and foremost: the offer from the Yugos was in many ways an easy gig. To find a dude like Wisam couldn’t be impossible, if he was in Stockholm. At the same time: the guy was a family friend. The guy was from his hood, an Arab. What did that say about Mahmud’s honor? At the same time: he needed this more than ever. With the debt to Gürhan. And his own honor to win back.

Stefanovic got up. The man’d just lost a hundred G’s. Maybe there were still some clean sports left—the Yugos didn’t seem to control everything in this city, after all. Mahmud eyed his face. Completely expressionless.

Stefanovic turned to him.

“Call me when you’re done thinking. By Monday.”

Then he left.

8

Niklas’d been in the shower for forty minutes. Mom was at work so it didn’t matter: he could occupy the bathroom for as long as he liked.

How long was she going to be staying with him? Okay, of course a dead person in the basement was unpleasant. But it was good, too. Maybe it had made her think, change.

Unfortunately, Niklas’d also been dragged into it. Later today he was going in for questioning by the police. Questions were spinning around in the steam under the showerhead. He wondered what they thought they were going to get out of him. How should he deal with questions that got too personal? It was strange—how did they even know that he’d been living with his mom? Maybe some neighbor’d ratted him out, or else it was Mom who’d let it slip.

Damn—this meant trouble. He’d actually thought he’d be spared. It had to be one of Mom’s neighbors. Scared, shocked, nervous. Spit out stuff that really should have nothing to do with it. Probably told the cops that a young man’d been living with her, maybe her son. He just couldn’t think of who’d even seen him in the building.

The shower was crappy. Rust-brown dirt between the tiles. White residue on the showerhead that looked like old toothpaste. The water barely drained. Didn’t seem like the off-the-books broker asshole had the drain cleaned out too often. A thought in Niklas’s head: Civilized man couldn’t survive long without holes. Holes were the basis of cleanliness. A busted shower drain, and life got difficult. Too much toilet paper in the toilet or hair in the sink—a quick way for a bathroom to quit working. And the kitchen—things ran out through small holes in the drain, disappeared forever from the world of the cushy and comfy. Without them having to think about where it all went. No one cared what really happened with everything that didn’t belong in an ordered household: hair, toothpaste spit, food scraps, old milk, excrement. Holes were the most important ingredient in the recipe for comfort. They maintained Western citizens’ embarrassing ignorance about real filth. It was actually pretty remarkable that nothing ever came up out of those holes. Infringed on the pretend spotlessness. Invaded the inner sanctity of the home. But Niklas knew—he didn’t trust the holes. Didn’t need them. He’d survived without them under circumstances that were significantly worse than anything a Sven could even imagine.

He shuddered at the thought of what could come up through holes. Horror stories from childhood. Real experiences from Basra, Fallujah, the desert, the mountains. Every man who’s lived too long in a barracks knew what he was thinking about. As soon as you set your foot outside the zone, the sewage pipes were flooded with floating shit.

Freshly showered and clean, in front of the TV. Newly bought DVD player in gleaming plastic. Fatigue and lethargy, overlapped. He was still sleeping like shit at night. Eight years in tents, barracks, compounds, cramped one-bedrooms with other men—it’d made its mark. Loneliness hit him every night like the recoil from a poorly handled assault rifle. Not that he totally freaked out—just like a pounding in his soul that disturbed the balance.

He abstained from popping some of the pills Mom’d brought yesterday: Nitrazepam. Good for calmer nerves, sweeter thoughts, better sleep. But today he needed to be sharp. The people he was meeting today would be able to tell right away by looking at his pupils if he was on something.

He watched Taxi Driver. Really not the right thing for him at the moment. Robert De Niro doing psychotic shooting exercises in front of the mirror. De Niro at a café with the whore—a crazy young Jodie Foster. The shootout with the psycho in the stairwell. Blood everywhere. It didn’t look real. Strange red color, too runny somehow.

The loneliness kept ticking away. He thought, Really, a human being is always alone. You can’t get closer to your fellow man—no matter how good a friend—than you do to your neighbor in the tent. Physically, it can be so close that his bad breath ruins a whole night’s sleep. But in your mind, you never get so close that you can’t get up, pull your pants and shirt on, and disappear forever. And your tent neighbor wouldn’t give a shit.

Niklas was alone. Just him.

Against everyone else.

He closed his eyes for a moment. Listened to the dialogue in the movie.

Time passed as slowly as on surveillance duty down there. SSDD—Same shit, different day. Same anxious thoughts, but in a living room instead.

It was almost time for him to go. Off to the interrogation.

On the subway into the city. Sweden was a different country than the one he’d left—more anonymous, but at the same time more rushed. Back then, he often felt like he was just visiting. Now he really was just visiting. But all the time.

He thought about his exercises. The knives. Polishing the weapons. Well-known situations. Relaxed tasks. The interrogation didn’t really worry him. For the most part, cops were clowns.

Ten minutes later, he walked into the police station. The female guard in the reception area had gray hair parted down the middle. Acted like a stiff soldier. No smile, short, concise questions. Who are you here to see? When? Do you have the extension?

After five minutes, the policeman came and got him.

The interrogation room: empty save for a poster. Pictured a few people around a table toasting one another happily. They might be drinking Aquavit. Maybe it was Midsummer. It was ages since Niklas’d celebrated Midsummer. The cop’d obviously tried to lighten the mood. Two wooden chairs with plush seat cushions, a table that was screwed into the floor, a computer with a small thumb drive attached to it, a cord that was suspended from the ceiling with a wireless mike on the end. The attempt at coziness wasn’t too successful.

The police officer introduced himself. “Hi, my name is Martin Hägerström. And you’re Niklas Brogren?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay. Welcome. Please, have a seat. Do you want some coffee?”

“No, I’m fine. Thanks.”

Martin Hägerström sat down across from him. Logged in to the computer. Niklas eyed the guy. Corduroy pants, knit sweater. His shirt collar was popped. His hair was too messy, he couldn’t be a real cop. Roving gaze. Conclusion: this was a guy who wouldn’t survive more than three hours in the desert.

“First, some routine stuff. You’re here for informational questioning. That means that you’re not suspected of anything. But we’re still going to record everything that’s said in here. Then I’ll transcribe it and you’ll get to approve it. That way, there won’t be any misunderstandings. If you need to take a break, just let me know. There are coffee machines and bathrooms out in the hall. Anyway, I’m assuming you know why you’re here. On June second, a man was murdered at Gösta Ekman Road. Right now, we’re gathering as much information as we can about this incident. The man hasn’t been identified and he was in pretty bad shape. You’ve been staying with your mom in the building for a few weeks, so I thought I’d just ask if there’s anything in particular you’ve been thinking about.”

The policeman was typing something on the computer while he spoke.

The situation reminded Niklas of his job search the other day. He’d sent his résumé to a couple places. Was called to an interview at Securicor. But, really, he should be able to get a job at significantly more interesting places. The headquarters were in Västberga. Ten-foot-high fence. Three guarded entrances to get through before he met the HR nerd. But with six bullets in a semiautomatic Heckler & Koch Mark 23, he would’ve made it through their checkpoints, easy as pie.

Sometimes his own thoughts scared him—he could never relinquish his focus on security. But that was also why he was worthy of more than some regular guard job.

The job interview’d almost put him to sleep. The fat interviewer had a crew cut, but probably didn’t know what it felt like to have so many lice in the beds in the barracks that it didn’t matter how many Tenutex cocktails you took. The only thing that helped was shaving it all off. He droned on about staff and technical surveillance on hire for both the public and private sectors in all of Sweden. Blah, blah, blah. Guard factories, offices, stores, hospitals, and other places in order to create a safe work environment and reduce the risk of unlawful entry. Whatever.

It wasn’t Niklas’s kind of thing. He didn’t ask a single question. Toned himself down. Acted super shy. Didn’t get the job.

Back from his thought trip. He looked up. Martin Hägerström’s run-through was over. It was Niklas’s turn to speak. He took a deep breath, tried to relax.

“I don’t really have much to say about what happened in the building. I’ve worked abroad for a few years and needed somewhere to stay before I got my own place. I mostly stayed at home, at Mom’s, went for a run sometimes, and went to a few job interviews. So I basically haven’t met anyone else in the building. From what I know, everyone is normal enough.”

“How was living with your mom at your age?”

“Pretty hard, actually. But don’t tell her that. I don’t have anything against my mom, but you know how it is.”

“Yeah, I could never handle more than, like, four hours, then I’d pretend I had some important interrogation or something.”

They grinned.

The cop continued, “What kind of work did you do abroad?”

“I studied for a few years. And then I was in the security industry, mostly in the States.”

Niklas watched the cop’s reaction. Some cops could practically sniff out a lie.

“Interesting. Do you know if there was any bad atmosphere in the building? Did anyone have any old beef or something like that?”

“No, I wasn’t there long enough and Mom’s never said anything about that.”

“Can you describe the neighbors in the building?”

“I don’t know them. It’s been so long since I actually lived there. I was pretty young, back then. Mom’s never said anything weird about them. No one criminal, or anything like that. Anymore.”

“Anymore?”

“Well, we lived there when I was little, too. Back then it wasn’t exactly the calmest building on the block.”

“It was rough? How so?”

“Axelsberg in the early eighties, before a lot of young hipsters moved in. Back then, there were real blue-collar people there, if you know what I mean. A lot of alcoholics and stuff.”

“Okay, so you weren’t thinking of anyone in particular?”

“Well, I guess a few of them still live in the building. Enström, for example. And there were a bunch of characters. Like Lisbet, Lisbet Johansson. She was really fucking weird.”

“How so?”

“She screamed in the stairwell and stuff. I remember one time she started fighting with my mom in the laundry room. Tried to hit her with a hamper. They had to call the cops.”

Niklas fell silent. Felt like he’d said too much. But that could be a good move, too. He had to give this Hägerström guy something to chew on.

“Well, that doesn’t sound like fun. Then what happened?”

“Nothing happened. Mom just tried to avoid her. And I don’t remember what I did. I was young back then.”

“It sounds like a strange affair. Does she still live in the building?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know where she lives.”

“We’ll have to look into that.”

Hägerström typed frenetically on the computer.

“In that case, I only really have one more question for you.”

“Okay.”

“Where were you between nine o’clock and midnight on June second?”

Niklas was prepared. Figured the question had to come up at some point. He tried to smile.

“I’ve looked into that. I was having some beers with an old buddy of mine.”

“All night?”

“Yeah, I think we watched a movie too.”

“All right. What’s his name?”

“Benjamin. Benjamin Berg.”

On the subway platform, on the way back to his illegal rental. The announcer called out, “The trains are running according to schedule.” Niklas thought, Sweden is strange. Eight years ago, when he left, it was assumed that the trains would run on time. Now, after the sellouts, the privatization, the alleged professionalism—that shit never seemed to work—it was apparently worth calling attention to the fact that the trains were running on time for once.

He knew better than anyone: private alternatives look shiny, efficient, rational on paper. PMCs—private military companies, also known as security contractors. Private solutions. Cost-efficient. Perfect for low-intensity hotbeds. High-risk international operations. In the Iraqi sand and dirt, it could be catastrophic. Violent beyond all imagination. He tried to fight off the thoughts. How he, Collin, and the others’d been lowered down from the helicopter. Screamed out their warnings and then rushed through the narrow alleys. It’d been raining—the red mud splashed all the way up on his flak jacket. How they’d crushed the wooden door to the house.

The police interrogation’d gone well. They probably wouldn’t make any trouble for him or Mom. He hoped Mom would get over the whole thing soon. Move back home. Leave him alone.

Benjamin’d promised him a huge favor: if anyone asked how long Niklas’d stayed there on June 2, he was going to say all night.

The Aspudden stop. He got off.

Long, straight steps along the platform. Not a lot of people around. It was four o’clock in the afternoon.

Then, a movement. Down to the left.

On the tracks.

He looked down. Stopped.

Wrong move.

What he didn’t want to see: a large animal behind the electrical cable. Small black button eyes without regard.

Wasn’t very visible. Maybe it wasn’t visible at all anymore. But he knew it was there. Below. Coming from the tunnel.

Waiting for him.

Five minutes later: he was home. Mom was still at work.

The bedroom in the apartment was hardly furnished. A double bed in one corner. A pillow and a comforter. A poster on the wall from the Moderna Museet in Stockholm—some exhibit fifteen years ago—strangely painted female figures. The word nonfigurative was written across the bottom of the poster. Mom brought it when she came over after the incident in her building. White IKEA wardrobes that were needlessly big. On one of them, the door hung crookedly on its hinges.

He lay down on the bed. There were bottles of pills on the floor.

Thought: Rat fuckers in the area. Rat cunts on his running trail. And now rat shits in the subway.

He shook out two 5-milligram tablets. Broke one in half in his hand. Put one whole and one half tablet on his tongue. Went into the kitchen. Drank a gulp of water. Washed them down.

Lay down in the couch in the living room.

Turned on the TV. Tried to relax.

Woke up after only a few minutes.

He heard voices. Sounds from the TV? No.

Loud voices again, close by.

They came from the other side of the wall. Someone screaming.

He recognized something. Arabic diphthongs.

He listened. Lowered the volume on the TV.

After a while, he understood. A fight in the apartment next door. It had to be the girl he’d met in the stairwell. Yes, he heard a woman’s voice. And someone else. Maybe her guy, dad, lover. They yelled. Screamed. Disturbed.

He tried to hear what they were arguing about. Niklas’s Arabic: very basic, but enough to pick up some dirty words.

“Sharmuta,” the man’s voice yelled in there. That was harsh—whore.

“Kh’at um’n!” Harsher—go fuck your mother.

She screamed again. Louder. More aggressive. At the same time, there was panic in her voice.

Niklas sat up on the couch. Pressed his head closer against the wall.

Felt the stress creeping up in him—the unease of taking part, uninvited, in the private lives of other people. And even worse: the unease in the girl’s voice over there.

She shrieked. Then there was a sharp sound. The girl grew silent. The man screamed, “I’m gonna kill you.”

More thudding sounds. The girl begging. Whimpering. Pleading for him to stop.

Then another tone, without aggression.

Just terror. A tone Niklas’d heard so many times before.

The new sounds felt closer than anything he’d heard in Arabic.

More familiar.

More like his own story repeating itself.

The chick in the apartment next door was taking a beating.

9

Dinner: pork tenderloin and a baked potato. Garlicky cream sauce and salad. Thomas didn’t touch the salad. Honestly: vegetables were for women and rabbits. Real men don’t eat salad, as Ljunggren said.

Åsa, his wife, sat across from him, prattled on as usual. Today, it was about the garden. He picked up a word here and there. Immortelles, planted in May: faintly scented flowers in a blend of colors during the summer.

The only scent he registered: the smell of dirt, violence, and death. The scent that always followed an officer on patrol. No matter how much you tried to think about other things—the city’s stench stuck. The only colors he saw: concrete gray, police blue, and blood red from poorly aimed injection needles and assaults. No matter how many flowers Åsa planted, the shades of violence always made up the primary color scales in his mind.

To some people, Stockholm was a charming, cozy, genuine city. Picturesque, with polite and forthcoming people, clean streets, and exciting shopping areas. To cops, it was a city filled with booze, vomit, and piss. To many people, it was egalitarian public-service centers, interesting cultural projects, trendy cafés, and beautiful façades. To others—just façades. Behind them: beer dives, junkie crash pads, brothels. Battered women whose friends ignored their bruised faces, heroin junkies who shoplifted a half hour’s worth of bliss in the local grocery store, teen punks from the projects who reigned free—knocked down old people who were on their way to the bank to pay their rent. Stockholm: Mecca of thieves, drug dealers, and gangs. Horndog water hole. Hypocrite playing field. The welfare state’d breathed its last, labored breaths sometime in the eighties, and no one gave a damn. The only place where the two worlds seemed to meet was at the state-run liquor store. One side was looking for upscale, boxed wine for a dinner party, the other was looking for a quart of hard stuff for the night’s booze-out. But soon there’d probably be two different liquor stores, too—one where only the dutiful citizenry was welcome and another for the rest. Class warfare in the liquor-store line. Thomas thought about his dad, Gunnar. He’d passed away from prostate cancer three years ago, only sixty-seven years old. In a way, Thomas was glad his old man didn’t have to see this shit. He’d been a real working-class hero, a man who’d believed in Sweden.

But someone had to clean up. The question was just if it was his responsibility. He doubted the system too much. Broke the rules too much. Shit, he felt like some bitter detective in a sleepy Swedish crime thriller. Whining about society and solving crime. That wasn’t really his thing, was it?

“Maybe we should get a little greenhouse? What do you think, Thomas?”

He nodded. Woke from his reverie. Heard the pain in her voice. How she longed for him to soften. How their problems might be solved through him. He loved her. But the problem involved both of them. They couldn’t have kids. Angst squared. No, fuck, cubed.

They’d tried everything. Thomas’d stopped drinking for several months, they tried to have sex as often as they could, Åsa popped hormones. Two years ago, they got close. Huddinge Hospital worked miracles. Åsa got his stuff injected directly through a catheter—artificial insemination. Weeks went by. The pregnancy went according to plan. They passed the twelve-week line, when most people start telling others. When it should be safe. But something went wrong—the baby died in the fifth month. They had to cut Åsa open to get it out. In his fantasies, he saw how they plucked out the dead fetus—his child. Saw arms, legs, a tiny body. He saw a head, a nose, a mouth. Everything.

He wanted it so badly. A must, something that’d seemed given. A condition for the good life. Adoption was always a possibility. They’d get approval. Childless, middle class, stable, orderly—at least on paper. Ready to love a little one above all else. But the idea didn’t jibe with him—Thomas didn’t like the thought of it. His entire body itched with resistance. Sometimes he was ashamed of the reason. Sometimes he stood by it, straight-backed. It wasn’t right. Not at all. But the reason he didn’t want to adopt was that he wanted a kid that looked like him and Åsa. No Chinese, African, or Romanian. He wanted a kid who would fit into the kind of family life he wanted to build. Go ahead, call him a racist. A prejudiced ass. A Neanderthal. He couldn’t care less, even if he obviously didn’t go to work and broadcast his feelings on the issue—he’d never adopt anything but a Nordic child.

Åsa wouldn’t forgive him.

Their house was too small to fit a family, anyway. In Tallkrogen. Twelve hundred square feet in white-painted wood. Split level. The hall, the kitchen, a guest bathroom, and the living room were on the first floor. Upstairs: two small bedrooms, a small TV room, and a bathroom. They used the TV room as an office/gym. An exercise bike and a padded bench. A couple of free weights, a barbell in a cabinet along with binders, a sewing machine, and a couple of dress patterns in a pile. An office chair that Thomas’d been allowed to take home when they reorganized the precinct. Otherwise, empty. Thomas didn’t like to collect junk.

He called it a dollhouse. That was the feeling he got, anyway. The house didn’t even have a mudroom or a real basement. It wouldn’t work, especially not if they were able to adopt kids. Where the hell were they going to put a crib, a changing table, a Ping-Pong table?

After dinner, he went in to the computer. Closed the door behind him. Turned it on. The Windows logo jumped around on the screen like a lost soul.

Clicked on the Explorer icon. Was reminded of his greatest fear—that Åsa would get computer savvy enough one day to know how to find his porn searches in Explorer’s history. He should ask someone at work if it could be erased.

But that wasn’t what he was here to do this time. He rummaged around in his pocket. Pulled out a USB memory stick. Thomas: as far from a computer geek as you could get, but it felt better to carry what he needed in physical form than to e-mail it. At regular intervals, he’d checked nervously that the USB was still there. If he were to drop it, if someone were to find it, check what was on it, and realize it was his—the questions would pile up worse than at a hard-core cross-examination in court.

He inserted the memory stick into the computer. A plopping sound. A window opened on the screen. One file on the memory stick, named Autop.report.

The computer made a spinning sound. Adobe opened up. The autopsy report was less than three pages long. First he scrolled down to the bottom—signed by Bengt Gantz, chief forensic pathologist—as it should be. He started reading from the beginning. It took time. He read it again.

And again.

Something was weird. Nasty weird—in the autopsy report, there was no mention of the track marks in the arm or if they’d tested the body for increased levels of drugs or other junk.

It couldn’t be a coincidence. When Thomas’d seen his report at Hägerström’s, and realized that the last lines about the potential cause of death were missing, he’d wondered, sure. Thought it was strange, but hadn’t thought more about it. But a forensic pathologist didn’t miss stuff like that. The track marks were conspicuous. Either the examiner didn’t want to write about them for some reason or—the thought hit him and stuck right away—someone else’d edited it out. And this same someone must’ve edited out the same thing from his report.

He had to calm down. Feel it out. What he should do. How he should act. Never during his years as a cop had he experienced anything like this.

Åsa was tidying in the kitchen. Didn’t even look up when he opened the door and stepped into the garage. It was routine. Thomas worked on his Cadillac whenever he had time. Anyway, it was an investment. He could put some of the extra cash he made in the field into it without anyone asking. But even more important: the car was like mediation for him. A place, like the shooting range, where he relaxed. Felt at home. It was his little Nirvana.

There was another thing in the garage too: the big locked gray metal cabinet. Åsa and he called it the tool cabinet, but she was the only one who thought there were tools in it. Sure, he kept some tools and gear for the car in there, but 80 percent of the cabinet was filled with more important stuff: weed confiscated from a bunch of Arabs in Fittja, hash plucked from Turkish druggies in Örnsberg, amphetamines surrendered by Sven junkies in the subway, a couple packs of Russian growth hormone found in a parking garage in Älvsjö, cash from countless hits along stops on the red subway line. And so on. His little gold mine. A kind of retirement fund.

The car gleamed. Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz from 1959. A beauty he’d found online six years ago. It was in Los Angeles, but he didn’t hesitate. Every single time he’d confiscated something from the dregs, this car’d been his goal. Without the money he’d made outside of his crappy police salary, it would never have been his. But it was. He’d picked it up with his old man, who was still in good shape back then. Drove it from Los Angeles to Virginia in one stretch. Twenty-seven hundred miles. Fifty-five hours on the road. At the time, Åsa wondered how he’d been able to afford it and it’d been twice as expensive as he’d told her.

It was wonderful. The Cadillac’s V8 engine—better known among car lovers as a Q-345—the pistons alone had taken him six months to fix. Now they were like new. It guzzled gas like a truck.

The car that was parked in front of Thomas now was from a different planet than modern junk. He was almost done. Had fixed the chrome, bought new upholstery, installed purple metallic power-seat adjustments, mounted the back fenders, imported a new grille from the States, played around with the new synchromesh gearbox. Gotten the right whitewall tires, fog lights, air-conditioning, tinted windows on the sides. Adjusted the back axle, the carburetor, the brakes. Acid-washed and zinced every single metal part.

Eldorado Biarritz: the car that’d first introduced the back tail fins and the twin back lights. A style icon without compare, a miracle, a legend among cars. The most rock ’n’ roll money could buy. Most of these cars were no longer even drivable. But Thomas’s car rolled smoothed as hell. It was unique. And it was his.

The only big thing left to do was to fix the hydraulic suspension. Thomas knew what he wanted—to return to the original suspension, it was as simple as that. He’d saved it for last. Otherwise, the car was perfect.

Thomas put on his overalls, strapped on his headlamp. Rolled in under the car. His favorite position. Darkness surrounded him. In the light from the headlamp, the car’s undercarriage appeared like a world of its own, with continents and geological formations. A map he knew better than any other place in the world. He didn’t pull out the wrench right away. Studied the car’s parts. Just lay there for a while.

Someone’d deleted both his and the pathologist’s description of the track marks and the possible cause of death. The pathologist himself? Someone within the police? He had to do something. At the same time—it wasn’t his problem. Why should he care? If the doctor didn’t want anything written about the track marks, maybe he had his reasons. Annoying to have to write a bunch of extra crap about that in the autopsy report. Or else it was one of Thomas’s colleagues who didn’t want it known that an unidentified dude’d been injected to death. So, let it be that way. He wasn’t the type to rat anyone out, to screw things up, to dig up dirt when it concerned other officers. He wasn’t like that guy Martin Hägerström.

On the other hand—he could wind up in trouble himself. If the mistake in the autopsy report was investigated, the question could arise as to why he’d left relevant information out of his own report. That was a risk he didn’t want to take. And whoever’d deleted his text was unknown. It’s not like he was messing things up for some colleague he knew. If you wanted to cover something up, then at least come clean to your co-workers.

It wasn’t okay. He should talk to someone. But who? Jörgen Ljunggren was out. The dude was almost dumber than a reality-TV blonde. Hannu Lindberg, one of the men Thomas usually drove with, might understand, but the question was if he’d agree. To Hannu, anything that didn’t concern money or police honor was not worth bothering about. The other guys on the beat didn’t feel close or reliable enough. They were good men, that wasn’t it, but they weren’t the kind who wanted to think too much. He thought about Hägerström’s comment: “The desk people together with the guys who are really out there. There’s so much knowledge that’s lost today.”

Thomas didn’t have the energy to think more about it. He turned the headlamp off. Continued lying where he was for another three minutes before he rolled himself out.

Stood up. Rinsed his hands under a hose in the garage.

Pulled out his cell phone. He’d saved Hägerström’s number.

Martin Hägerström picked up. “Hägerström.”

“This is Andrén. Are you alone?”

“Absolutely. You’re not on patrol?”

“No, I’m off. Calling from home. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Shoot.”

Thomas began in a monotone voice. Didn’t want Hägerström to think he’d become friendly toward him.

“I took the autopsy report home. I know it’s material that’s under investigation and that you’re not supposed to take it out of the building, but I don’t give a shit about that crap. I didn’t want to print and read it at the station. And you’re right, it doesn’t mention the track marks. You’re probably not surprised since you said there wasn’t anything written about them in my incident report either, but I know I wrote about them. It’s not likely that Gantz, the forensic pathologist, who’s used to carving up bodies, would’ve missed them. To be completely honest, no one, not even you, could’ve missed them. Did you see the body?”

Silence on the other end of the line.

“Hägerström?”

“Yes, I’m here. I’m thinking. What you’re saying sounds very strange. It seems to me there are only two explanations: Maybe you’re messing with me. You didn’t write shit about any holes or cause of death at all and only want to screw up my investigation. That’s the most likely solution to your little mystery. Or something’s really wrong. Something that I’m going to get to the bottom of. And I haven’t seen the body. But now I intend to do so. Just so you know.”

Thomas didn’t know what to say. Hägerström belonged to the other side. But, strictly speaking, the guy was handling himself impeccably. Strictly speaking, Thomas should hang up. Never let a rat like Hägerström talk to him that way. Anyway, patrol officers like Thomas shouldn’t meddle with detectives’ investigations. Still, without knowing why, he heard himself say, “I think it’s best if I come with you. So that someone can show you where those track marks were.”

10

Early signs of summer: small white flowers in brown lawns, outdoor seating being set up at cafés, defrosted dog shit. Thirteen-year-old girls in too-tiny miniskirts even though it was only fifty-seven degrees out. Soon it would be here: the Swedish summer. Warm. Light. Filled with chicks. Mahmud longed for it. Now he just had to bulk up in time and iron out the shit he’d ended up in.

He was hanging out by a little hole-in-the-wall shop. Hair wet after his workout. Aching muscles. Sweet exhaustion.

Waiting for his homie Babak. It was six o’clock and they should be closing in there by now. Weird that he hadn’t come out yet. Mahmud tried to call. No answer. Fired off a text, pulled a standard joke: “Remember when we rode the train and I stuck my head out and you stuck your ass out. Everyone thought we were twins. Call me!”

Irritated. Not really with Babak, the boy was always late, but with the whole situation. Everything was going to hell. Less than five days left. Mahmud hadn’t scraped together more than fifteen thousand in cash yet. It didn’t even cover a fifth of what Gürhan wanted. What the fuck was he supposed to do? Same thought on repeat like a sampled loop: the Yugos are my only chance.

He eyed the electrical cabinet he was leaning up against. Covered in tags, Ernesto Guerra stickers, the Giant face sprayed on, sticker ads for, like, forty thousand different record stores. He thought, The Svens did so much crap. That was their luxury—they could follow unnecessary, unfathomable, unmanly pursuits: demonstrate in order to trash small shops in Reclaim the Streets riots, organize weird Goth parties in Gamla Stan where everyone looked like corpses, hang out at cafés and study for a whole day. But the Svens didn’t know shit about life with a capital L. What it was like when you had to translate at the welfare office so your parents could explain that they couldn’t afford winter jackets. What it was like to grow up in the Million Program concrete without a future. To see the dignity in your father’s eyes crushed every time some official mistrusted him—a highly respected man where he came from who was dragged through the Swedish dirt like a whore over the square in the home country. They questioned why he didn’t get a better job even though he was an educated engineer, why he didn’t speak better Swedish—gave him forms to fill out even though they knew he couldn’t read the Swedish alphabet. Pork their mothers.

Mahmud loved his dad and his sisters. He had his homies: Babak, Robert, Javier, and the others. The rest could go fuck themselves.

He was gonna beat them all. The Born to Be Hated players. The Sven pussies. The Stockholm brats. The Ernesto Guerra clowns. Make a comeback. Show who was boss. Cash in. The blatte from the Million hood was gonna be king. Crush ’em. Pluck ’em. Only the Yugos would help him.

Four hours earlier he’d called and told Stefanovic yes—he was gonna find Wisam Jibril for them. King Mahmud Bernadotte—when he was done with the assignment, Gürhan was gonna taste his fat cock.

Mahmud thought about what he had to do. To count with the Yugos was to count with everyone. If he succeeded with this—plucking the Lebanese, fulfilling Radovan’s wishes—his name would spell Mahmud the Man. Not like today: Mahmud the Dude Who Wants Up but Hasn’t Gotten Anywhere Yet.

Right after the call to Stefanovic, Mahmud called Tom Lehtimäki—a buddy from way back. Tom was into econ and stuff like that. Worked for some debt-collecting agency. A golden contact who stepped up right away. Two hours after the call, Tom’d already asked a court to fax over all the paperwork from the trial regarding the Arlanda Airport robbery. They refused to fax that much paper. Sent the shit snail mail instead. Apparently the case’d been closed—the prosecutor’d given up the hunt for the perps. But there was still a battle going on between the bank and the transportation company. Mahmud could hardly believe it—the court was giving him good service. Sometimes he loved Svenland.

He woke from his reverie. Checked the time on his cell. Why hadn’t Babak shown yet?

They were going out tonight. Gonna do the city. Run their race—the bitches were theirs for the picking. Wham-bam. He hummed in Arabic—Ana bedi kess. I love pussy.

He was sick of waiting, climbed the half stair into the store.

Inside: packed.

The store was tiny, like a hot-dog stand. Sweat stench and lots of buzz. Babak was standing behind the glass counter. A shadow of stubble over his cheeks, neatly waxed side part, shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Mahmud would never say it aloud, but Babak had swag. Beside Babak: his dad and a couple other relatives. His dad was dressed in a fake Armani T-shirt. His uncle and cousins in button-downs. They crowded around, peddled and chatted. Babak was busy with a customer. Mahmud loved the place. The atmosphere was mad un-Suedi: another world, another country. People haggled like crazy, screamed to make themselves heard. Three young black guys were begging for the best price for a box of stolen cells. Babak’s dad threw open his arms, made a face like they’d asked to date his daughter. “You think I made of money? Max hundred each, I give.” Mahmud smiled to himself—the guy couldn’t get more home country. An island in Sven Sweden.

The shelves were loaded with used cell phones, MP3 players, chargers, wireless phones, calling cards, alarm clocks. There were cell-phone cases in various colors under the counter, along with watches and unlocked iPhones. On the counter: plates with Babak and his dad’s dinner. Tomatoes, raw onion, feta cheese, and pita bread. Authentic.

At least fifteen people waited in line. They were selling their old or stolen cell phones, wanted help unlocking SIM locks, were dropping off watches for repair. Most of all they bought calling cards for übercheap international rates. On the walls were ads for different cell-phone manufacturers, everything from old Ericsson legends—black brick phones—Now with dual band!—to iPhones. But above all: price lists for the calling cards. Jedda, Jericho, Jordan. You name it.

Babak finished with the customer. Turned to Mahmud. “Habibi, give me five minutes. We just gotta close the shop.”

A half hour later: they were down on the street together. Walking toward Skärholmen’s subway station.

Mahmud laughed. “I love your dad’s store, man. Real authentic feel.”

Babak threw his arms out, imitated his dad. “Did you see how he was dealin’ with his bros? They didn’t have a chance, man.”

They jumped the turnstiles. Heard the attendant yell something after them. Faggot—let him hide in his booth and scream his throat raw.

They walked toward the platform. Old wads of gum formed a pattern on the ground. Mahmud was in a better mood.

The train rolled into the station. To Babak’s place. Time to start poppin’.

Later at Babak’s: Mahmud, Babak, and Robert in the apartment in Alby. A one-bedroom, 520 square feet. Pictures of his family and different Egyptian images on the walls. Babak didn’t have jack shit to do with Egypt, but for some reason he dug sphinxes, hieroglyphs, and pyramids. Babak used to say, “You know, the Egyptians, they like the baddest empire ever. They invented all that shit you think Europe did. Written language, paper, warfare. All that good shit. You feel me?”

In the living room: two camel-colored leather couches with a glass-top coffee table—covered in empty Coke cans, remote controls for the stereo, TV, DVD, cable box, and projector. Covers to Xbox 360 games: Halo 3, Infernal, Medal of Honor. Rizla papers, weapon magazines, porn rags, a dime bag with some weed.

Babak got a Coke from the fridge. Sat down on one end of the couch. Mahmud flipped through a weapons magazine: Soldier of Fortune. Eyed sick army knives that the Gurkha warriors used. Couldn’t find more hard-boiled killers than that. Robert rolled a fatty. Slowly ran his tongue along the Rizla paper. Stuffed with tobacco and weed. Didn’t twist off the end; the weed pouted out like a real zoot. Let the flame lick the outside of the spliff.

He lit up. Took big puffs. In the background, the Latin Kings. Dogge’s high-pitched voice speaking right to them.

Rob handed the joint to Mahmud. Between his thumb and index finger. Took a deep hit. Sucking. Sampling. Soaring. Sooo sweet.

He blew smoke out through his nose, slowly.

“Remember back in school? There was a guy named Wisam. Wisam Jibril, I think. He was a couple years older. Word round the way is, he got into some heavy shit.”

Rob seemed totally out of it. Nodded like in his sleep.

Mahmud gave him a shove.

“Yo, snap out of it. It wasn’t fucking hash you smoked.”

He turned to Babak instead.

“Remember him? Wisam Jibril?”

Babak looked up.

“I don’t remember no Wisam. What about it?”

“Yo, come on. He was kinda short. Had a couple years on us. Hung with Kulan, Ali Kamal, and those guys. Remember?”

“Sure. That blatte. He got fat on cash, I think. You know, his mom and dad went back to Lebanon.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know.”

“But you haven’t seen him lately?”

Mahmud thought about what Babak’d said: Wisam’s family’d left the country—bad. Might make it harder to find him.

“That was a long time ago. He hung out downtown. Right after I did that grocery store hit, remember? I ran into him at the clubs a couple times.”

An opening. “Where’d you run into him?”

“I told you, the clubs.”

“But which ones?”

Babak looked like he was thinking hard.

“Thing is, I think it was at Blue Moon Bar every time.”

“Oohkaay.” Mahmud imitated Tony Montana’s pronunciation in Scarface. “If you hear anything about him, put the word out I wanna see him.”

He shoved Rob.

“Listen up, you too. I wanna see Wisam Jibril.”

It felt good. Mahmud’d gotten a lead. Spread the message. Gotten closer. But now it was time to drop the questions for a while.

They lit a new joint an hour later. Deliberated, speculated, syncopated. They could talk for hours. About old homies from the concrete, workout routines, Babak’s dad’s store, cool weapons in the magazine, Sven Sweden’s pathetic attempt to integrate them. Mahmud told them about the fight gala in the Solna sports center: Vitali Akhramenko’s steel jabs, the mouth guard that went flying. But he shut up about the Yugos’ assignment—Babak and Rob were soldiers, but you just didn’t talk about shit like that.

Most of all: they buzzed about roads to success. Robert told them about four buddies of his from northern Stockholm. Real smart boys who’d cooked up a sick plan. He was getting worked up telling his own story: “You know, the boys made a payment to that cruise company, Silja Line, I think, for thirty-five big ones, cash. Same day, they called Silja and said they’d paid by accident—that Silja wasn’t owed any dough. Course the Silja clowns paid it all back with a check. One of the boys’ brothers’d worked for a bank or something and knew that it takes a couple days for places like Silja to get their payments registered. If you made a withdrawal on a Thursday or Friday, there’s no chance in hell they’ll notice anything until Monday. So, they could work for two days, no problem. They copied the check—that’s easy, just run it through a color copier—and headed out on tour. They split the banks up between them and marked all the places they were hitting on a map. The point was it’d go faster if they split into two teams. But they fucked it all up.”

Mahmud interrupted him.

“How the fuck’d they sink that ship? Those guys sound like mad pros.”

“Yeah, I was getting to that. Listen. One of the offices was closed for renovations, but it said you could go to this other office instead. Thing was, the other office was in the part of town the other team was covering. So they went to the same office twice. It coulda worked anyway, but they happened to go to the same teller too. Get it? She started asking questions. Small bank offices like that don’t get too many checks for big sums. And both from Silja, too.”

Mahmud laughed. “Habibi, know what it prove?”

Robert shook his head. Gulped some Coke.

“It prove, no matter how smart you are, it can still fucking go to hell. Violence, that’s the only tight way. Right? If they’d had a gun they could’ve made that bitch shut up.”

Robert took a last hit off the doobie. “You’re right. Weapons and explosives. So, when we gonna do something big, huh?”

Mahmud winked at him. “Soon.” He really wanted to do something big soon.

They ordered a cab. Mahmud was dressed in his usual going-out getup: white button-down with the top buttons undone, jeans that were a little too tight—looked good when his thighs were on display—and black leather shoes.

Mahmud checked for the wad of cash in the inner pocket of his jacket—thirty-five hundred kronor bills that he couldn’t burn tonight. Gürhan’s money. But Babak’d promised to treat. Tonight they were gonna blow a big load.

The E4 highway northbound. Mostly taxis and buses. It was eleven-thirty at night. They asked the cabbie to tune the radio to The Voice. Mahmud and Robert rocked to the beat in the backseat. Babak sang, “She break it down, she take it low, she fine as hell, she about the dough.” Justin, 50 Cent, and plenty of bitches.

Mahmud loved the feeling. Gearing up to go. The camaraderie. Swedish society tried to trample them every day of their lives. Still, there was so much joy left for the weekend.

Twenty minutes later, they arrived at Stureplan. They tipped the cabbie two hundred. Like kings.

The line outside Hell’s Kitchen looked more like the fans at the front of the guardrails at a massive concert. People surged forward, waved their arms, gripped their purses tight, jumped to see better, yelled at the bouncers, pressed on. Pressed hard. Pressed in toward the glamour. The head bouncer was standing on an electrical cabinet—pointed at people who were allowed in. The other bouncers patrolled back and forth; the small earpieces they wore made them look like hard-core secret-service agents. The real brats glided easily through the sea of people. Self-tanner chicks with platinum locks trailing. The rest had to hand over crumpled five-hundred-kronor bills, promised to buy drinks for over a thousand kronor, insisted they were famous, rich, people worth betting on. Immigrant guys threatened to beat up the bouncers—they knew they didn’t have a chance anyway. The bitches pushed with their boobs out and their lips parted—promised blowjobs, a fuck, a threesome. Anything to get in.

Mahmud saw the same thing in 90 percent of the people in line: desperation. In other words—it was business as usual out here.

Mahmud, Babak, and Robert—they weren’t heavy hitters yet. Normally, they didn’t have a chance at luxury places like Sturecompagniet and Hell’s Kitchen. But Babak was fucking jonesing. Mahmud would rather go to Blue Moon Bar on Kungsgatan, look for Wisam. Ask people in the bar questions. What’s more: he didn’t understand how Babak thought they were gonna get in.

But Babak wasn’t pulling any punches. Eye contact with the head bouncer up on his throne. He spread his fingers. The bouncer raised his eyebrows, didn’t get the message. Babak took a step forward, pressed himself against the barricade. Leaned toward the bouncer. “I got the hookup. Ten grams.” The bouncer winked. Raised the velvet rope.

They were allowed into the area with the cash registers. Two hundred and fifty kronor each. Shit, it cost to be on top. But who gave a fuck at this point—they were in.

What a fucking miracle. Mahmud and Robert eyed Babak. He grinned. “You didn’t know? I’m the snowman.”

Inside: the tight boys dominated. Magnum and regular-sized bottles of champagne in ice buckets everywhere. Dudes with silk kerchiefs in their breast pockets, slicked-back hair, and, on the hottest ones: fluffier manes combed back. Unbuttoned striped shirts with cuff links that gleamed, expensive-looking blazers, slim-cut distressed designer jeans, leather belts with monogram-shaped buckles: Fendi, Gucci, Louis Vuitton. Some with ties, but most rocked open necks—that offered the most opportunity to flaunt their chests. What’s more: a couple of worn-out rockers with sideburns and trucker hats. Mahmud didn’t understand why they’d been let in.

Fine girls were sitting in booths sipping vodka tonics or letting the dudes treat them to bubbly. Silver-spoon bred, young socialites, bumpkins who fronted.

But also a dapple of other types of people: C-list celebs. Reality-TV stars, talk-show hosts, performers. Surrounded by chicks with designer purses over their shoulders and Playboy jewelry around their necks who danced facing out toward the place.

Last but not least: Jet Set Carl, top playboy on all Stureplan bitches’ list of dicks to suck. Even Mahmud and his homies knew about the guy. The dude owned three places downtown, his real name was Carl something, Mahmud didn’t know what. The only thing he knew: the player was mad jet set. Hence the name.

Not a lot of real blattes in there. Maybe a few adopted and well integrated. Like people who did music stuff, media, or other crap. Honestly: Mahmud couldn’t feel any less at home—but the honeys were fly. He undid another button on his shirt. Babak ordered a bottle of Dom at the bar.

Mahmud glanced at his reflection in the ice bucket that was brought along with Babak’s champagne.

Liked his look. Broad eyebrows, black hair slicked back with so much gel that he could’ve had the same hairdo for three weeks without a single hair falling out of place. Full lips, solid jaw, perfectly even stubble over his cheeks.

He saw the reflection of Babak and Robert walking toward him behind his back. Turned before they reached him.

Babak, surprised: “How’d you see us?”

Mahmud said, “Ey, buddy, with this many pumas in one place you gotta have eyes in the back of your head. Don’t wanna miss one.”

A smile played on his lips.

They laughed. Gulped champagne. Did their best to make eye contact with the chicks around them. No success—it was as if they were invisible. Finally, Rob went up to a couple chicks. Said something. Offered bubbly.

They turned him down. Brutal.

Kh’tas—cunts. It was unfair.

“Let’s split.”

Mahmud wanted out, wanted to go to Blue Moon Bar instead. Ask around for the Lebanese.

Babak laughed. “No, let’s split a bag o’ yay instead.” Ha-ha-ha.

An hour later. The C-rush’d settled. But still: Mahmud felt like the city’s finest Million Program blatte, the world’s number one smartest concrete detective—Sherlock fucking Holmes. He was gonna find Wisam. Make him confess where he’d buried Radovan’s Arlanda cash. Force him to deliver. Give himself the chance to impress. Get the Yugos’ protection.

Robert slid onto the dance floor with a honey that looked like jailbait. Mahmud and Babak stayed put at the bar as usual.

Then he saw something he didn’t want to see. The sound died. His head burned. Around him: a little island of panic. A few yards away at the bar—Daniel and two other guys from that night.

Mahmud froze. Stared at the bottles on the other side of the bar. Tried to focus his gaze. Fuck. What was he gonna do? Panic washed in waves against the inside of his skull. The memories returned: the grind of metal in his mouth. The roulette sound from the spinning cylinder. Daniel’s grin.

He tried not to glance over at them. Had to keep his cool. Did they see him? If they came up to him he didn’t know how he’d react. Babak didn’t seem to notice him wigging out. The people around him grew blurry.

Afterward, when Mahmud thought about the situation, he couldn’t remember how long he’d been standing that way. Nauseous. Stiff. How many scared thoughts’d zipped through his brain.

But after a good while he looked up. They were gone.

He didn’t give a shit about Babak and Robert. Saw that Babak was trying to snare a puma. Coke rings around the girl’s nose. Lipstick on Babak’s cheeks. Good for him.

Mahmud wanted out. And he had to get to Blue Moon Bar. Now. He slipped out of Sturecompagniet. The line outside was three times as long as when they’d arrived. The desperation in people’s eyes—thirty times as thick. The head bouncer was still at his post, deciding in or out, winner or loser, life or death.

Up Kungsgatan. The air was colder. Where’d the summer run off to?

He thought about sinking a burger, but decided not to. Needed to do his thing at Blue Moon. Farther up, he saw the place.

Blue Moon Bar was boasting a good line, too.

Short, wide bouncers in excess. Mahmud thought, You gotta be a midget to get a job here, or what?

Mahmud slid straight up to the VIP entrance. Past the line. Up to a bouncer. Met Mahmud’s gaze. That special understanding between big dudes.

He pulled a classic move—this place wasn’t as hard to get into as Sturecompagniet—offered a five-hundred-kronor bill, without saying a word.

The bouncer cube asked, “You alone?”

Mahmud nodded.

The bouncer pushed the bill away. “It’s cool.”

Mahmud went inside. Paid the hundred-kronor entrance fee; the price wasn’t as wack as the other place. Surprised by the bouncer’s class. Mahmud’d actually been treated good.

He eyed the place. The lower level: surplus of guys—Syriacs with mullets and shirts unbuttoned, showing their shaved chests; Svens with groomed beards; brothas with sideways caps and fake bling in their ears.

A blue glow was blinking in time to the techno: “This is the rhythm of the night.”

He moved on. The next level: a more even division of the sexes—meat market galore. People entwined on the dance floor, dudes squeezing tits in couch corners, bitches licking those same dudes’ ears and massaging their cocks through their pants. Wunder-Baum—Mahmud would’ve loved to pick up some little honey.

But not now.

He stepped up to the bar. Ordered a mojito. Usually boozing wasn’t his style, other than maybe bubbly for the bitches’ sake. He liked smoking up and getting high—but not so loaded you lost control. Only Svens drank away their dignity that way. And if you got in a fight, you didn’t have a chance. Plus: too many calories.

He was leaning against the bar. The mojito with a cocktail straw in his hand. Stirred. The ice cubes made his teeth hurt. He counted face-suckers.

He leaned over toward the bartender who’d served him. The guy was in his mid-twenties, Asian appearance.

“You know who Wisam is? Wisam Jibril, chill guy from Botkyrka. Lots of dough. Used to come here. Remember him?”

The bartender shrugged his shoulders. “No idea. Does he come here often?”

“Don’t know. But he used to hang here all the time a few years back. Did you work here then?”

The bartender dude wiped a glass. Looked like he was considering. “No, but check with Anton. He’s been here every damn weekend for the past five years. Totally crazy.” He pointed at another guy in the bar.

Mahmud tried to get the Anton boy’s attention for, like, five minutes. No success. Plenty of time to really check him out. Tight T-shirt that showed off the black tribal tattoos on his biceps, fake-messy hairstyle, broad leather bands on both wrists, metal rings on his fingers. The guy wasn’t built but in okay shape.

Finally: Mahmud tried another trick. Waved the five-hundred-kronor bill again. Anton reacted. A classic.

He tried to speak over the music. Pointed over toward the first bartender. “He said you’ve worked here awhile. Remember Wisam Jibril? He used to hang here all the time.”

Anton smiled. “Course I remember Wisam. A legend in his day.”

Mahmud placed the bill on the bar.

“This isn’t a good place to talk. Wanna go somewhere quieter for a few? My treat.”

Anton didn’t seem to get it. Continued pouring a drink for a chick who looked totally stoned. Didn’t he understand the most common memory aid of them all?

But after a few seconds, Anton stepped out from behind the bar. Ushered Mahmud in front of him. Toward the men’s bathroom.

The dude positioned himself by a urinal. Pulled out his dick.

Mahmud next to him: did the same thing. Bad move—he got stage fright, couldn’t squeeze a drop. That’d never happened before. He was usually the fucking pissing king. But he knew why—the memory of the piss stain from the forest returned.

He looked down: the drain was chock full of tobacco and gum.

“Tell me. You seen him here lately?”

Anton zipped his fly.

“Yessiree. Wisam used to hang here all the time. Slayed ladies like a b-ball pro, Dennis Rodman–style. You know, he’s had sex with over two and a half thousand chicks. Can you believe that? Two and a half thousand, damn.”

“Who? Dennis Rodman or Wisam?”

“Rodman, of course. But Wisam was awesome. He’s got that little extra something. When he goes in for the kill, no lady can resist.”

Mahmud thought, Yessiree—the dude was an even bigger Sven clown than he looked.

“Okay. But have you seen him lately?”

“Actually, yes. For the first time in three years, I think. There were so many rumors, you know. That he’d made millions on the stock market. That he sold stuff. That he had a manual for how to blow CITs. You know, all kinds of stuff. But people talk so much.”

Bingo—Anton’d heard stuff about Jibril.

“All I know is he spent dough with class. I mean, I’ve seen some stuff.”

Ka-ching, right there.

Mahmud had to tread carefully now, wanted to avoid having the bartender think his interest in Wisam Jibril was a little too big.

Mahmud looked around. “Damn,” was all he could muster.

Anton looked questioningly at him. What else did he want? Mahmud gripped his arm.

The bartender looked up. Mahmud stared back. Held the guy’s forearm hard. Felt the guy’s muscles tighten in his grip. Sent a signal, clear as day: If you leave now, there’ll be problems.

Mahmud didn’t wait. Pulled Anton into a toilet stall.

“Tell me more. What do you know?”

The bartender fidgeted. Eyes wide open. Still, he didn’t resist. Mahmud fingered the roll of bills in his pocket. Pulled out a grand.

Anton didn’t move a muscle. Looked like he was thinking. Then he spilled.

“He was here for, like, two hours. Picked up two chicks. That was a few weekends ago. I’m pretty sure it was May Day. I don’t know that much else. Honestly, I have no idea.”

Mahmud picked up on the second to last sentence: “That much else.” What did the guy mean? He obviously knew more.

“Anton, out with it. You know something.” He flexed the muscles in his forearms. Black letters against olive skin. Alby Forever. Had the desired effect.

“Okay, okay. The chicks were here last weekend. They chatted with me for a few minutes and were totally blown away. Wisam’d apparently rained money on them like he was an oil sheik. He took the girls back to his apartment, I don’t know where it is. And the girls probably don’t know either, ’cause they told me they were shitfaced. He drove them around in his new car. A Bentley.”

Mahmud didn’t understand.

Anton spelled it out: “B-E-N-T-L-E-Y. Totally insane. That’s all I know. I swear.”

Someone pounded on the door. “Boys, this isn’t a fairy bar. Come outta there.”

Mahmud’d gotten enough info for tonight. He had some leads to follow up.

Opened the door. Stepped out of the stall, shoving the jerk who’d bullshitted outside.

Left Anton with the laughs.

11

Niklas worked out in the apartment after his run. He was driven by routine. His philosophy: all training is built on habit, duplication, repetition. Alternating four times fifty push-ups with some leg exercises. Switching up four sets with free weights for his biceps with forty times sixty sit-ups. He sweated like a pig in an army tent. Stretched thoroughly. Wanted to keep the litheness in his muscles. Rested on the couch for fifteen minutes.

Stood back up. Time for the climax—tanto dori katas, knife warfare. Jogging was to measure himself, for conditioning and fat burning. The push-ups and the muscle exercises were necessary to maintain strength and to look decent. He’d admit it any day: vanity was his thing. But tanto dori was something else: relaxation and power. He could do it for hours. Like meditation. Forget everything else. Go into himself. Go into the movements. Go into the knife. The sweeps, the steps. The stabs.

He’d learned the technique six years ago from a couple of elite officers in a company he’d worked with in Afghanistan. Since then, he’d trained as often as he could. You needed space to do the movement sequences, it was like dancing. Couldn’t always do it when you were out in the field. But the empty apartment was made for close-combat technique.

First, be still. Heels together. Feet out at a ninety-degree angle. Arms down, in front of your gut. The knife in your right hand with the thumb resting on the flat side of the blade. Left hand in a light grip over the right hand. Head down, chin tucked in. Deep breaths through your nose. Then attack. All the muscles explode. A step forward with your right leg. Weight low. Exhale through your mouth. Air and muscles tighten your stomach. Important: no big movements—or your opponent will see right away what you’re planning on doing. Sharp cut with the knife. Twist it on the recoil.

He went through the kata with concentration.

This one took four and a half minutes. Every movement’d been practiced separately at least five hundred times. Stabs to the abdomen. Gutting techniques. Chop-chop methodology.

Originally, it was some Japanese thing. But the soldiers who taught him in Afghanistan mixed and added. The techniques of the different katas covered everything. Cramped spaces like elevators, prison cells, and toilet stalls. Techniques for combat in cars, boats, and airplanes. Unstable environments, combat in heavy vegetation, on slippery surfaces, in silence. Water techniques where the slowness of the motions created new possibilities to predict the opponent’s next move, close combat in stairwells—special blocking techniques for punches or stabs coming from diagonally above. As long as Niklas carried a knife, he never needed to be worried up close.

At the same time: worry was a healthy sign down in the sandbox. The men who stopped feeling even so much as a sting of fear in combat often lost their grip. The mercenary industry didn’t tolerate any real crazies. They were sent home. Or were eliminated.

He was happy that he’d gotten the chance. Not a lot of Swedes in the world got to fight in real combat. U.N. pussies mostly guarded refugee camps. He knew; he’d tried to be one of them.

After showering, he took two Nitrazepam. Loneliness wore him down. He needed friends. Benjamin, the dude who’d gotten him the dirty real estate hookup, was the only friend he could remember having in high school, before his time in the mountain brigade during his mandatory military service in northern Sweden, up in Arvidsjaur. Maybe Benjamin was the only buddy he’d ever had. Niklas’d seen him last week for the first time in ages. They were meeting up again today.

He popped another downer. Walked out. Toward the subway. Kept his eyes peeled for rats.

The subway car’d been subjected to a graffiti assault. Niklas closed his eyes. Tried to sleep. He thought about the screams he’d heard from the neighbors. The girl in there with the Iraqi accent must’ve gotten it bad. He hadn’t seen the guy who’d done it to her yet. But when he did, Niklas doubted he’d be able to control himself.

He was lost in thought. Human beings lived in Hobbes’s world. Niklas knew that better than anyone. You couldn’t point out who was good and who was evil. Couldn’t paint life over with some sort of morality paint. Pretend like there was right and wrong, good and evil. That was bullshit. Everyone was at war with everyone else. Someone had to go in, take control. Someone had to make sure people didn’t beat, shoot, or blow one another up. Someone had to take power. No one had the right to whine about the system without first trying to do something about it, with all their might. That’s why the mujahideen deserved to be respected. It was a war. They weren’t any worse people than the soldiers in his unit. The only difference was that his men had better weapons. So they took control.

In a way, it was the same deal with the girl in the apartment next door. Her man did his thing. She should do hers—knock him dead. Right way.

He got off the subway. They were meeting up at Mariatorget. Tivoli, a bar. To grab a beer. Niklas sat down at a table.

After a while, he showed up. Benjamin: shaved head with a beard like some old ZZ Top guy. Bull neck. Snub nose that’d probably taken quite a few hits over the years. Still had his sunglasses on. Niklas thought about what the Yanks liked to call those ugly, cheap shades: BCG—birth control glasses—you couldn’t get anywhere near a chick with those babies on. Benjamin walked with the same rocking gait he’d always had. Cocky to the max: hands in the pockets of his open jacket, swinging with every step he took.

Niklas’s first thought when he’d met Benjamin last time was that he’d seriously changed since they were kids. Back then: he was the guy who wasn’t really able to read situations. Who droned on about boring stuff—like that his mom’d accidentally dyed the white load of laundry blue—for a little too long. Who didn’t change his T-shirt after gym class. Whom the girls never glanced at, but who still sent little notes to the coolest chick in the class, writing how much he liked her and wondering if she wanted to make out sometime. He was never bullied; there was a reason for that. But he was never part of the group, either. From time to time he’d go berserk. If someone provoked him, taunted him about his hand sweat, teased him about his name, or just made up some crap about his mom. It was scary. He became like a trapped animal. Could whip guys who were two years older than him. Pound their heads into the gravel on the soccer field, pummel them with rocks. And that’d attracted Niklas. It got better in junior high. Benjamin started taking tae kwon do instead. Four years later, he took home bronze in the Junior Nationals. Became someone worth counting on.

They shook hands. Benjamin’s handshake: the hypertense grip of a bodybuilder. Was he trying to prove something?

“Hey, Benjamin. Things’re good?”

“Absolutely.”

“Any questions about me lately?”

“Actually, yeah. Cops called this morning and asked me how long you’d hung out at my place on that night last week.”

“And?”

“I said we hung out all night, watched the Godfather movies and stuff.”

“Thanks. Honestly, I owe you one.”

They walked over to the bar and ordered drinks. Benjamin tried to heckle Niklas for speaking such bad Swenglish. Niklas didn’t crack a smile.

He ordered a Guinness. Benjamin, a mineral water. Niklas paid for both.

“You don’t want anything else?” Niklas asked.

Benjamin shook his head. “No. I’m deffing.”

Niklas didn’t get it. Eight years in the bush, often without beer, booze, or good grub, had made him yearn for the real stuff.

They sat down.

Chatted. Niklas didn’t really understand what Benjamin did these days. Apparently he’d worked as a bouncer. Then a house painter. Then he’d been unemployed. Now something vague.

Niklas thought about his own story. The CV of his life: a few highlights—but mostly his childhood was filled with boredom, alienation, and fear. Boredom while waiting at home in the apartment every Saturday for Mom to come home from work. Alienation at school. How everyone must’ve known that something wasn’t right in Niklas Brogren’s household, but never said anything. Terror that the asshole was going to beat Mom to death. Fear of falling asleep at night, of all the nightmares, of the sound of Mom’s pleading, screams, tears. Of the rats. And then the highlights. Being drafted. The year with the mountain brigade. The adrenaline kicks before battle. The first time he’d fought under real fire in Afghanistan. Parties with the guys in Iraq after well-executed missions.

Benjamin looked up from his chatter.

“Hello. Earth calling. Are you with me, or what?”

“No worries, I just drifted off a bit.” Niklas laughed.

“Oh yeah, where to?”

“You know, thinking about Mom and stuff.”

“Oh, okay. I can tell you something that’ll put you in a better mood. I joined a shooting club. Did I tell you that already? It’s fun as hell. Soon I’ll get my license and get to buy a twenty-two. You gotta wait for higher caliber revolvers. But maybe you don’t think that’s all that special. I bet you’ve shot up a storm, huh?”

“I guess you could say that. But we mostly practiced with guns for fun down there.”

“Cool. You can get tricked by all that stuff, right? You watch a bunch of American movies where they do all those weird grips. Holding the gun sideways in your hand like it doesn’t weigh anything.”

“Yeah, I know, that doesn’t work.”

“It doesn’t work for shit.”

“Yep. That’s Hollywood stuff. You get lousy accuracy with a grip like that. Your whole hand shakes with every shot, like on some senile fuck. It’s kind of like running. You see them do that all the time in those flicks, too. They run and shoot. But everyone who’s been around at all knows that doesn’t work.”

“You gotta practice. What kind of heat did you guys pack?”

Niklas wasn’t really supposed to talk about that stuff. He tried to steer the conversation in a different direction. “I don’t really remember. But hey, you got a girl these days?”

“How can you not remember what gun you had? Come on.”

It was a matter of honor. Some stuff you just didn’t babble about to people on the outside: the arsenal, where you’d done assignments, who the other guys in the company were—and how many people you’d killed. Even if you quit a private army, you had to stick to the rules. The vow of silence was valid until death did you part. Niklas would never leak. He wasn’t the type. Why couldn’t Benjamin just accept that?

Benjamin eyed him.

Niklas was short: “You just don’t talk about that stuff, is all.”

Benjamin’s eyes narrowed. His brow furrowed. Was he pissed off?

“Okay. I understand. Nemas problemas.”

Everything was cool. They chatted for a while longer. The weather was nice. Benjamin told him that he’d bought a game-bred fighting dog. He was proud of the name: Arnold. Had it practice on fenders that he hung up on the carpet rack in the inner courtyard of his building. When its jaws locked, sometimes it kept hanging on for over twenty minutes. Couldn’t let go. Helplessly humiliated by its own stubbornness.

In the middle of their chat, Niklas’s phone rang. He continued to jive with Yankee taste in music—his signal was that Taylor Hicks song.

“Hi Mom.”

“Hi. What are you doing?”

“I’m hanging out with an old friend, Benjamin. Remember him? Can I talk to you later, maybe?”

He didn’t try to hide the irritation in his voice.

“No, I have to tell you something.”

“Can we talk about it in twenty minutes?”

“Please. Listen. I think I know who they found in my basement.”

Niklas’s hair stood on end. He felt cold all over. Hoped Benjamin wouldn’t hear or understand what they were talking about. Pressed the phone harder against his ear.

“I think Claes tried to be in touch with me that day. We hadn’t seen each other for over a year. I didn’t think about it then, that’s how he is, you know. I know you never liked Classe, but he’s meant a lot to me, you know that. Anyway, he hasn’t been in touch since. Isn’t that strange? I thought of it yesterday and tried to call him. No answer. But he has so many different numbers so I don’t really know which one he uses. I tried to call a couple of his old friends. But they weren’t worried at all, said Claes is always hard to get ahold of. I even texted him. But he hasn’t gotten back to me. This is terrible, Niklas. Awful.”

“Mom, it doesn’t have to mean anything. He might be out of the country.”

“No, wouldn’t someone know that, then? And Claes usually calls back. It must’ve been him. I’m sure of it. He’s gone. Murdered. Who could’ve done something like that?”

“Mom, I’ll call you in three minutes.”

Niklas hung up. Felt like he was going to hurl. Got up. Benjamin gave him those narrowed eyes again.

“I have to go. Sorry. But this was nice. Let’s stay in touch?”

Benjamin looked surprised.

On the way down into the subway. The thoughts were spinning even worse now: insane, bizarre. Niklas called his mom back. Told her to take it easy. That Claes was probably fine. That Claes was an asshole so she shouldn’t care either way.

She cried anyway.

He thought, Claes deserved what he got. Justice’d finally been served. God’d answered a prayer.

He said, “Mom, you have to promise me one thing. Don’t tell anyone about this. It wouldn’t be good. Can you promise me that?”

12

Like a tattoo on Thomas’s retina: the basement guy’s busted face, torn up like a lottery ticket scratched with a meat cleaver. It was hard core and harrowing. At the same time, genius execution. If he hadn’t gotten curious, broken the rules, and checked the guy’s arm, everything would be so simple. Now: something was wrong. Okay, to accidentally delete a few lines from his own report—it could happen. But the forensic pathologist’s report? That was improbable. He wondered if Hägerström believed him or the reports. Probably the latter.

Usually, it was the opposite. Say someone pounded on a junkie; once everyone saw the track marks on the arms and tests were taken to show the levels of illegal substances in the blood, it was assumed that it was an overdose and the investigation was shut down within a few weeks. Here the assault was the overly obvious part. The track marks were hidden.

He met Hägerström at the entrance to Danderyd Hospital, a large complex just outside the central city. Ljunggren remained in the patrol car. Sulky—he’d been whining about going here the whole way from Skärholmen. “Come on, you really gotta look at that dead drunk again?” Thomas responded that a detective’d asked him to come, that he had to. Ljunggren didn’t quit it. “What’s he after, that Hägerström? You know where he worked before, right?” Thomas just mumbled in response, “I know, he’s a traitor.”

Hägerström came walking toward him near the entrance to the hospital. He was shorter than Thomas remembered. Kind of rolled on his feet, rising on his toes at the end of each step. Thomas thought this was a walking style that must’ve been developed by Hägerström as a teenager in order to gain a few inches in height. Then the walk’d been solidified, made permanent. He wasn’t in uniform—dressed in a cotton jacket, jeans, a bag slung over his shoulder. Thomas thought, Typical detective style. They don’t understand the importance of wearing a uniform when approaching people—the power it commands. If his type even had uniforms.

Danderyd’s morgue was situated a good distance from the regular hospital area. First they walked through the hospital’s hallways. Came out the back. Between smaller buildings, special clinics, old housing units for nurses, rehabilitation gyms. A kind of park. An underpass. Onward on a gravel path near the water.

They walked in silence until Thomas said, “You could’ve told me it was half a day’s hike to get to this place. This is wasting taxpayer time, don’t you think?”

Hägerström turned to him. Stopped.

“I thought we could use this time to talk.”

“Okay.”

“You know I’m from Internal Affairs. I know all about people like you. Your kind is everywhere in the Swedish force. People who do everything.”

It was an attack. Every policeman knows what it means to be willing to do “everything.” Some cops got a little too rough in the field sometimes. Many of them focused on demonstrators—beat animal-rights activists and antifascists bloody. Others made sure heroin addicts, alcoholics, and homeless people got what they deserved. Some cops looked the other way at minor crime in exchange for certain offers—under-the-table rental contracts for apartments, stolen property, free tickets to the racetrack. Others didn’t report pimps if they got a lay now and then. Then there were others, not many, who did “everything”—they didn’t just rough people up too much sometimes or look the other way at crimes committed by others in exchange for certain favors—they were deep in the shit themselves. Dirty businessmen. Bad seeds. Fallen cops.

Thing was, it really wasn’t true. He wasn’t like that. “That wasn’t a very nice thing to say,” Thomas responded coolly.

Hägerström ignored the comment. Just went on, “But you’re a smooth player, too. I might call you street-smart. I know your kind, guys like you don’t subject themselves to unnecessary risks. And that’s why I can’t drop the thought that maybe, this time, you’re being honest. Your reaction when you were up in my office in Kronoberg seemed unprompted. Your call the other night was unwarranted, unless you really wanted to tell me something. And that’s why we’re here now, going to the morgue together. I’m not going to rule out that you actually saw something that didn’t make it into the report.”

Thomas was more impressed than he cared to admit. Hägerström was stretching it, sure—he didn’t do everything. But still, the guy was right on: he didn’t like risks.

“The investigation is ninety-five percent desk work and five percent field research,” Hägerström said. “But if something goes wrong with that five percent, like the medical report, for instance, then the whole investigation goes kaput. It’s worth double-checking every fact.”

Thomas nodded.

“This isn’t just any old homicide. Homicides with no known suspects are always tricky. But in this case we don’t even know who the deceased is. That’s unusual. The face was beaten beyond recognition, so routine methods of identification are out. The fingertips were cut, so that kind of database search is impossible. Which also points to the fact that whoever committed the crime knew that our old print system doesn’t read handprints, which they do in a lot of other European countries. We’re so damn behind in Sweden.”

“Big surprise.”

“Lose the sarcasm. It’s actually a real problem.”

“Yeah, I understand that. And I assume the teeth are busted.”

“Unfortunately. The guy hardly had any teeth left in his mouth, so we can’t run anything through the dental database either. He probably had dentures, and the murderer pocketed them. We’ve checked his blood type, but the guy’s A positive, the most common type in Sweden. That won’t get us anywhere.”

Thomas thought about the dead guy’s toothless mouth. It sounded totally hopeless; there had to be something to go on. “Can’t you run his DNA?” he asked. “We take spit samples on every fucker we pick up these days.”

“Yeah, sure. We can check it, but for that to work he needs to be in the database already. Then we can check his liver, scars, birthmarks, whatever. But to search for cirrhosis and scars is difficult. Too general. We need something else. If this dead guy’s in the DNA database, great. But the database is pretty new, from 2003. And, like you said, nowadays we swab everyone. But we only started doing that a couple of years ago.”

“Right. I’m guessing it’s got something to do with a terrorist law.”

“That’s probably correct. But for him to be in the database from 2003 he must’ve done some heavy stuff. To be completely honest—and my gut feeling is pretty strong about this—I don’t think we’re going to find him in the DNA database.”

“But since someone went to all the effort to get rid of the dead guy’s prints, he should be in the fingerprint database. Right?”

“My thoughts exactly. That seems unnecessary otherwise. And what does that suggest?”

“Lots of stuff, but nothing certain. The person or persons who ended the old guy knew he was in the fingerprint database. But the killer also knew Mr. Dead hadn’t been arrested for any serious crimes in recent years, because then he’d be in the DNA database.”

“Pretty much, but of course it’s not certain that the perps knew him personally. They could’ve been hired assassins. That doesn’t make it any easier.”

“So, what do we do?”

“Well, the usual stuff. To start, the technicians’ve swabbed the whole basement level of the building and half the stairwell. But that kind of thing often doesn’t yield as much as you’d think.”

“Why not?”

“There are always plenty of clumsy fools messing things up. Someone opens a window, so any potential fiber traces blow off with the wind, people clomp around inside the cordoned-off area so the DNA material gets all mixed up. But we do other stuff, too. Knock on doors in the area, look into missing-persons databases to try to figure out if there’s a match. Wait for further answers from SKL—you know, the forensic lab. We’ve questioned the people who were first on the scene, the neighbor who called in the murder, you, the other officers on patrol. The usual, you know. You have to ask the right questions. Open-ended questions, don’t expect specific answers, get people to really remember and not make things up. That’s the key.”

Thomas’d heard detective talk before. Martin Hägerström sounded like them—tried to make it seem like he was on top of things.

“Right now, the hottest lead we’ve got is an incomplete phone number. There was a folded piece of paper with a cell-phone number in the victim’s back pocket. Unfortunately, it’s a bit smeared. The slip must’ve been sweating in there for quite a while. One digit is illegible. That gives us ten possible numbers that we’re checking up on now. Hopefully the person with the number knows who the man is.”

Hägerström stopped talking. In front of them: a long, rectangular brick building. White tin roof. Small, square windows and a wide entrance. Above the entrance were big black letters against a gray background: DANDERYD MORGUE—COLD CHAMBERS.

They went in.

A small waiting room. An unmanned reception desk. Hägerström fished out his cell phone. Called someone.

They had to wait. Thomas and Hägerström were standing with their arms crossed. Silent. After ten minutes, a man in a blue county uniform came into the waiting room. He extended his hand.

“Hi, Christian Nilsson, autopsy technician. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. We’re a little understaffed today. You wanted to look at the guy who came in from the Southern District police, right?”

It was cool in the autopsy room. Nilsson explained: it was really cold in the room where they kept the actual cold chambers—freezing. Thomas thought, Is that why the guy looks like he walked through a snowstorm? There was a thick layer of dandruff on his shoulders.

This was Thomas’s first time at a morgue. Patent feeling of unease in his gut—something was on the move in there. He looked around. White tiled walls. Two stainless-steel autopsy tables in the middle of the room. Above each: a strong lamp—dentist-style, but bigger. Gigantic floor drains. Thomas thought about what they probably flushed down those drains after a completed autopsy. On the shelves: bowls, instruments, tools, scales. Everything was made out of stainless steel.

Right when they were about to step inside, Nilsson’s phone rang. He picked it up. Walked off a few feet. Spoke in a low voice for a minute or so. Thomas and Hägerström remained standing in silence.

Nilsson led them on toward the cold chambers. There was a sticker on the metal door: At this workplace the atmosphere is good, friendly, and relaxed—but a little stiff. Thomas thought: Clever—like cop humor.

The room where the bodies were stored was freezing cold. Same white tiles on the walls. They entered through the short end of the room—the two long ends were completely made up of compartments that could be pulled out like drawers: the cold chambers. There were air fresheners strung up. Didn’t help. The corpse smell wasn’t thick, but it filled the room nonetheless, like a tickling sensation in the nose—Thomas breathed through his mouth.

Nilsson pulled a drawer out. Stainless steel. The corpse was wrapped in a white cloth with the county emblem on it. Two feet stuck out. An identity tag was tied around the big toe in the classic manner. Nilsson looked at it, showed Thomas and Hägerström: Nr. E 07-073. Identity unknown. Admitted at above given date. Southern Police District, dossier number K 58599-07. Danderyd Morgue’s notes: Autopsy completed. Resp. autopsy technician: CNI.

Hägerström nodded and set his shoulder bag down on the floor.

He lifted the cloth away from the face.

Thomas was cold. Breath rose like steam from everyone’s mouth but the corpse’s. Just like outdoors on a cold winter’s day.

There wasn’t much to see. The whole mug: like ground beef. Thomas’d seen a lot of dead people. Examined dead people. Touched and squeezed dead people. Tried to perform mouth to mouth on dead people. He’d seen even more pictures of dead people. Beaten to bits, abused, raped, injured. Flesh wounds, bullet holes, stab wounds. He considered himself a veteran at this. Still—the feel of the morgue disgusted him. The nausea came as a surprise. He turned his face away. Heaved.

His radio crackled. He didn’t realize that it was his at first, since he’d set it to only receive calls from his own squad car. “It’s yours,” Hägerström said.

Thomas responded, “This is Andrén. Over.”

“Hey, it’s Ljunggren. You gotta come out now. And book it. There’s a shoplifter in Mörby Centrum. We’re the closest car.”

“I’ll be there in five. Just gotta wrap up here.”

“No, come now. Code red.”

“This won’t take long. It’s just a shoplifter, anyway.”

“Get with it. Where are you?”

“I’m still with Martin Hägerström. We’re taking a look at the body.”

Moment of silence.

“Forget Hägerström. Let him look on his own. I’m not waiting. Come out, now.”

Hägerström looked at Thomas.

“Ljunggren, we’ll talk later. Over and out.” Thomas switched the radio off.

Hägerström didn’t say anything. The autopsy technician continued to pull away the wrapping, slowly. It was held together with little clips. Took time. Thomas wondered if they’d really be understaffed at this place if this guy just learned to pick up the pace.

Thomas felt the suspense growing in his stomach, pushing the nausea away.

They could now see the entire white body inside the chamber. The wounds were only visible if you looked closely. The autopsy technicians’d done a good job.

“On which arm did you see the track marks?” Hägerström asked.

Thomas walked over to the right arm. Pointed.

Hägerström picked up the arm. No marks. He ran his hand over the dead man’s arm. Thomas wondered what it felt like. Then, in the spot where Hägerström’d run his hand, he saw them: the needle marks.

“Sometimes you have to pull the skin apart a little to see,” Hägerström said. “It gets all saggy.”

Thomas felt like a badass CSI agent.

Hägerström picked up his bag from the floor. Rummaged around in it. Fished out a digital camera.

“Time to document what the forensic pathologist obviously didn’t see.”

At that moment, they heard a sound from the autopsy room. The door flew open. A suit-clad man entered. It was Stig Adamsson, unit chief, head of the Patrol Unit in the Southern District. Thomas’s boss.

“Hägerström, you have no authority to be here,” Adamsson said with a powerful voice. “The same goes for you, Andrén. Put that frozen dead guy back.”

Hägerström remained calm. Slowly put the camera back in its case.

“What’s going on, Adamsson? I’m in charge of this investigation. I investigate when I want and where I want.”

“No, you need a permit from the prosecutor to do this kind of thing. Damn it, Hägerström, you could get charged with official misconduct for this. The dead man’s already been autopsied and the forensic pathologist’s done his job. You can’t just clomp in here and pull out corpses like this.”

“I’m sorry, but I disagree.”

“In what way, may I ask?”

For the first time, Hägerström raised his voice a notch.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing. But I’m the lead investigator on this case. That means I own this investigation. Even if I don’t have permission to be here, it’s not your place to meddle. Understood?”

Adamsson looked up. He wasn’t used to being talked to like this.

The morgue was quieter than death.

Nilsson pushed the corpse back into the chamber. It echoed in the cold room.

Steam rose from Adamsson’s nostrils.

“I am your superior, Hägerström. Don’t forget that.”

Then he walked out. Long, deliberate, angry steps.

They remained silent until they were back out on the gravel path. Thomas assumed that Ljunggren’d left with the car, so he’d have to catch a ride with Hägerström instead.

“Were we just in a movie, or what?” Hägerström asked. Grinned.

Thomas couldn’t help himself; he grinned back.

“I don’t fucking know.”

“If they made a movie about your life, who’d play you?”

“Why would anyone make a movie about me?”

“’Cause of what just happened, for instance. It’s like a damn thriller.”

Thomas almost laughed out loud. But he held back. To keep his distance.

“He’s a real old ballbuster, Adamsson. But I don’t get what he was doing here.”

“Exactly. Something is way off.”

“But what?”

“I have no idea,” Hägerström said. “Yet.”

13

The gym: beef-marinated, gorilla-infiltrated, muscle-fixated. Fitness Center: the place where Stockholm’s meatiest men hung out around the clock. The place where you didn’t show unless your biceps were at least sixteen inches in diameter—unpumped. But also—the place where the camaraderie wasn’t just based on a shared interest in bodybuilding and Dbols. The gym was open twenty-four/seven, year-round. Maybe that’s why it was a watering hole for so many of Radovan’s boys. Minions with the right attitude: protein shakes scored high, fat biceps scored higher, the Yugo boss came in first place.

Always techno blaring from the speakers. Tedious, monotonous, and taxing, according to some. According to Mahmud: the only beat that kicked in his will to pump iron. Plastic plants in white pots on the floor. Faded posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Christel Hansson on the walls. Old machines with peeling paint. Sweat-soaked handles, fixed up with black electrical tape. Whatever—all serious guys use gloves. Anyway: machines are for pussies. Hard-core players rock free weights.

Mahmud’d started working out there a few years before he got locked up. Now he was back. Loved the place. Loved that it’d given him the chance to work for the Yugos. It was a networking hub. People told stories about R.’s legendary life. The boss who’d started from scratch, who’d arrived with two empty hands at the Scania factory in Södertälje sometime before Mahmud was even born. Two years later, he’d made his first million. The guy was a legend, like a god. But Mahmud knew more: there’d been people at the gym who didn’t jibe with Rado. A couple old buddies of his. They weren’t exactly living in style these days. If they were even living.

Today: Mahmud did his pecs. Two hundred twenty pounds on the bench press. Slow, controlled lifts. Muscle training was a purely technical sport. Easy to separate the newbies from the vets—the twigs lifted too fast, allowed the arm’s angle to change in the wrong way.

He tried to think about the juice he was gonna go on soon; a few shortcuts never hurt anybody.

Impossible to concentrate. Two days left till Gürhan’s deadline and Mahmud hadn’t scored a single peseta more. His dad couldn’t lend him any. Plus, Mahmud didn’t want to drag Abu into this. His sis’d already lent him five grand. Maybe her shabab could get more, but he wasn’t home. He’d tried to buzz with Babak and Robert during their night out the other day. His homies, boys he could trust—but they didn’t have any tall stacks to shave off. Babak’d promised to scrounge up thirty grand by Thursday. Robert could loan him ten, but Mahmud couldn’t get it till later today. He had other buds too: Javier, Tom Lehtimäki, guys from before that he really dug. But to borrow money? No, a man with honor didn’t do that from just anybody.

All in all: he was still short forty big ones. What the fuck was he gonna do? Rob a bodega? Push baking powder on the corner? Beg for more time? Fat chance. He had to find that guy he had to find. Get the Yugos’ protection.

Mahmud put the bar back on the bench. The thought remained: WHAT THE FUCK WAS HE GONNA DO? The same feeling of panic hit him as when he’d seen Daniel and the other Born to Be Hated players at Hell’s Kitchen. Felt like the room was spinning. His head was pounding.

He stared up at the ceiling. Closed his eyes. Did everything he could not to think about what would happen if Gürhan didn’t get his cash at the designated time.

Later, he calmed down. Worked his triceps. One arm at a time over his head. A sixty-five-pound weight in his hand. Lowered it slowly down behind his back. His elbow remained in a straight position. Even slower extension. Smooth movements. An ache in his muscles. Felt good.

He thought more about the assignment. He hadn’t understood everything in the lawsuit paperwork Tom’d helped him get. But one thing was certain: someone in the security company responsible for the Arlanda vault was so dirty he must shit bribe dough. Tom’d helped him get the contact info for a couple guards that were known to do some special deals on the side sometimes.

Mahmud’d already called one of the guards, tried to be as polite as he could. Didn’t work. The Sven guard went all mall cop on him. Crabby, testy, cocky. Claimed he’d never heard of any Wisam Jibril—or even the Arlanda robbery. No better luck with the other guys whose numbers he’d gotten from Tom—no one wanted to admit they knew Jibril. Maybe they were telling the truth. But that they didn’t know about the Arlanda robbery? Real believable. Sure.

Wisam Jibril: ghetto superstar, concrete hero. Was lying low. Trying not to be seen. Discovered. Revealed. But not like a pro—he’d returned to Sweden, to begin with. And: player lived la dolce vita, rained bills. Deluxed the luxe. Apparently let the money flow worse than a Kardashian. Mahmud was gonna follow Wisam’s cash trail.

Over this past week Mahmud’d asked around for Wisam at as many places as he could think of. The clubs around Stureplan, the pizza places in Tumba, Alby, and Fittja, the gyms in the city. Asked around with old buds of the guy’s family, project boys who hadn’t rotted all the way through and bitches who used to run around with Wisam when they were kids. He’d even asked around at a couple mosques and prayer centers. Zero success. But he knew about the Bentley.

Babak parked the car at Jungfrugatan. BMW M5: five hundred meaty horsepower under the blue enamel. Sport seats, cherrywood paneling, GPS. Extra everything. Sure, Babak’d borrowed it from his bro, but still—it was a hot whip. The chill part? Babak’s bro lived in a rented studio, 345 square feet. Even Babak had to laugh. But everyone knew: we’re not like the Svens who dream about some gray house in the shit suburbs. That crap was for squares. We don’t care about where we live in the same way. We care about class. And a man without a manly car is a man without dignity.

“Jalla, it’s time.” Mahmud grinned.

They climbed out of the car.

Östermalm in the summer sun. Below them was Strandvägen. On the other side, people were walking out toward the Djurgården park. Lots of boats and seagulls on the water below. What were all these people doing here, anyway? Didn’t the Svens work in the middle of the day?

He turned to Babak. “Check this. They whine that we don’t work and just look at ’em now.”

“Mahmud, no way you can crack Suedi thinking. They say we don’t work, just live on welfare. But then the same Svens say we take their jobs. How’s that make any sense?”

He saw the Bentley dealership a few yards farther up. The sign: BENTLEY SHOWROOM, in black letters on the façade above the display windows that reached all the way down to the pavement. The door was propped open.

It was empty in there. He reached into his pocket: the brass knuckles were in place. Looked at Babak. Nodded. Babak patted his hand over his breast pocket. Mahmud knew what was inside the right side of the jacket: a sawed-off baseball bat.

Mahmud walked into the store. Babak remained standing outside on the street, clearly visible from inside the Bentley place.

White-painted floor and walls. Spotlights in the ceiling. Four big cars on display: two Continental GTs, one Arnage, and one Continental Flying Spur. Normally, Mahmud would’ve been staring those juicy bits down like crazy. Today, he didn’t even check them out.

Still empty in there. Doesn’t anyone work here? He yelled, “Hello?” A guy appeared from a door behind a white counter that looked like a bar. Red pleated slacks, light-colored blazer with a kerchief in the breast pocket. Under the jacket: a tailored shirt with broad stripes, the top buttons undone. His cuff links were shaped like the B in the Bentley logo. On his feet: loafers with thin leather soles and gold buckles. Backslick brat times a million. Didn’t seem professional. Mahmud thought, Who’d ever consider buying a car from this clown?

“Hi there. How may I help you?”

Raised eyebrows. Was it a diss or a hint of fear? Mahmud didn’t look like he belonged in the showroom.

“I just wanna check out your Bentleys. You got more in than these?”

“What you see here is what we have.”

The player wanted to play tight-lipped. Signaled: You don’t look like a buyer. Mahmud didn’t give a fuck, he wasn’t here to shop.

“But you got more in storage somewhere, right?”

“Sure, we have a storage facility in Denmark and we build according to demand. It takes two to eight weeks to order a car from there.”

“Can you get a Continental GT with nineteen-inch alloy fenders?”

“Absolutely.”

“You sold a model like that in the last few months?”

Mahmud glanced outside. Saw Babak out there. Made eye contact. The brat followed Mahmud’s gaze. Also saw Babak. Looked back at Mahmud. Was that worry in his eyes?

“I think so,” he said.

Mahmud quit playing the interested customer.

“I’m asking ’cause I wanna know if you sold a car like that to a dude named Wisam Jibril.”

Silence in the showroom.

“Hey you, I asked you a question.”

“Yes, I heard that. But I don’t know if we sold a vehicle to anyone by that name. We don’t ask our customers what their names are.”

“I don’t give a shit. You sell a model like that to an Arab lately?”

“May I answer with a question? Why are you asking?”

“Quit it.”

“But how am I supposed to know who is an Arab and who isn’t? Anyway, there is no reason for me to give a further account of my customers. A lot of people don’t want to broadcast this kind of purchase, if you know what I mean.”

Mahmud looked out the window again. Babak was in position. Mahmud walked over to the entrance. Closed it. “All right, McBrat. This is how it is.” He walked back to the shop boy, or whatever he was. “I need to know if Wisam Jibril bought a car here, either directly or through someone else. That’s all. You with me?”

Mahmud was a hard-core guy. His broad jaw formed a square face. Today, he was rocking a tight, short-sleeved V-neck T-shirt and track pants. Freshly pumped arm, shoulder, and pec muscles were clearly visible through the thin fabric. His tattoos accomplished what they usually did. Obvious to anyone: unnecessary to mess with this dude.

Still the guy said, “I can’t answer that. I don’t know what it is you want, but I am going to have to ask you to leave the store now.”

The guy walked over to open the door. Mahmud caught up with him. Three long steps. Grabbed the guy’s arm. Hard. The brass knuckles around his fist, hand in his pocket.

“Come with me, buddy.”

At first, the brat barely seemed to realize what was happening. Babak came in. “What the hell are you doing?” the brat asked. They couldn’t care less about his whining. Mahmud held the hand with the brass knuckles down along the length of his leg. Didn’t want it to be visible from the outside.

“Ey, come with us now. We won’t do nothing bad.”

The brat—not a fighter. They dragged him into the inner room behind the cars. Closed the door. An office: stylin’ oak desk, a flashy-looking computer and pens. Bottles with ink, or something. This was probably where they signed the contracts for these million-kronor cars. Mahmud told the shop kid to sit down. The guy looked more scared than a seven-year-old shoplifter caught barehanded.

“It’s simple. We’re not going to fuck with you anymore. Let’s try this one more time. We just wanna know if you’ve sold a Continental GT to an Arab named Jibril. It’s also possible that he was with someone else who bought it, like, on paper. But you know. You’re the only place in town that sells these cars and you can’t sell too fucking many a month. Am I right?”

“What is it you want, really? You can’t do this.”

“Shut up. Just answer the question.”

Mahmud took a step closer. Stared the kid down. Clear as day how this prejudiced brat saw him: a huge, lethal blatte from some war zone somewhere where they killed one another for breakfast. A bloodthirsty demon.

“We sold a car like that two months ago,” he finally peeped. “But it wasn’t to an Arab.”

“Do better.”

“No, it wasn’t an Arab. It was a company.”

Mahmud reacted right away. There was something the kid wasn’t saying.

“Stop playing now, bratty, you know more. What, Arabs can’t have companies?”

Mahmud opened the door. Peered out. No one in the showroom. He bitch-slapped the shop boy. Gave him his craziest look.

“Racist.”

The dude was still sitting on the desk chair. His cheek red like a stoplight. Looking straight up at Mahmud. Babak with the baseball bat in his hand.

Mahmud hit him again. This was awesome—pure American interrogation technique.

The brat’s eyes watered. Drops of blood fell from his nose. But at least he held the tears back.

“I don’t know. Honestly.”

Mahmud exploded. Kicked the guy in the chest. Inspired by Vitali Akhramenko’s crazy kicks in the Solna sports center. The desk chair went flying into the wall. The guy fell on the floor. Screamed. His eyes twitched. Maybe a tear.

“Fuck, man, you’re crazy.”

Mahmud didn’t answer. Punched the guy straight in the face. Bull’s- eye. Felt like something broke.

The guy shielded his face. Curled up. Mahmud leaned down.

“Tell me, now. ’Cause it’ll just get worse for you.”

The brat bitch whimpered, “Okay, okay.”

Mahmud waited.

The guy whispered, “This is how it was. We sold a Continental two months ago. There were two guys in the store, I think. On paper, the official buyer was a company, but one of the guys was getting the car. Definitely.”

In a calm voice Mahmud said, “Can we see that paper?”

The front door slammed shut. It sounded like someone had knocked something onto the floor out in the hall—maybe it was Mom’s umbrella, maybe it was the bicycle pump that was always propped up against the dresser.

It must be him.

No one else came over to their house in the middle of the week without ringing the doorbell, and no one else shut doors with such a definitive sound.

It must be Claes.

Niklas raised the volume on the TV. He was watching the same movie for the third time this week: Lethal Weapon. Mom didn’t like it when he watched what she called “scary and violent” movies, but she didn’t have the energy to stand up to his protests. He’d learned that a long time ago—Mom always gave in if you asked enough times.

But Claes, he didn’t give in. Niklas knew it was pointless to even ask Mom anything when Claes was there. Not because Mom was less easy to convince, but because Claes got involved and ruined everything. He forbid Niklas to do what he wanted—to watch movies, to go out at night, to get candy from the grocery store. Claes messed everything up. And the old man wasn’t even his real old man.

But sometimes he was nice. Niklas knew when—it was when Claes’d gotten money from his job. He didn’t keep track of exactly when that happened, but it happened too seldom. On those days, Claes came over with a bag of chips and some Coke, a couple of movies, and raspberry licorice. Always raspberry licorice for some reason, even though there was lots of much better candy. He brought bags for him and Mom that looked heavy. Niklas recognized the white bags with the text RECYCLING AT SYSTEMET, meaning the state-run liquor store. He knew what the sound of clinking bottles meant. Sometimes they uncorked that very same night. Sometimes they waited until the weekend. The result varied with Claes’s mood.

Claes came into the living room and positioned himself in front of the TV, right when Mel Gibson was about to dislocate his own shoulder. He looked at Niklas where he lay, slouched down in the couch. One of the sofa cushions was about to tip over the edge and fall down on the floor.

“Niklas, turn the movie off,” he said.

Niklas sat up on the couch and reached for the remote control. The numbers on the hard buttons’d been worn off. The TV was old and looked like it was sitting in a wooden box. But at least there was a remote control.

He turned the TV off. The video continued to run in silence.

“Turn the video off, too. It’s unnecessary to keep it turned on. Don’t you care that your mom doesn’t like it when you watch shit like that?”

Niklas opened his mouth to say something, but no sound came out.

Mom came in and stood in the doorway.

“Hi Classe. How was your day? Can’t he watch the movie a little? You and me can make dinner.”

Claes turned to her.

“I’m damn tired, just so you know.”

Then he sat down on the couch next to Niklas and turned the TV on again. The news was on.

Niklas got up and went into the kitchen. To Mom.

She was peeling potatoes, but stopped when he came in. She took a beer from the fridge.

“Niklas, can you go bring this to Classe? It’ll make him happy.”

Niklas looked at the cold beer. There were small drops on the outside of the can, like it was sweating. He thought it looked funny and wondered to himself, The fridge was cold—so why was it sweating? Then he said, “I don’t want to. Claes doesn’t need a beer, Mom.”

“Why can’t you call him Classe? I do.”

“But his name is Claes.”

“Yes, that’s true, but Classe is nicer.”

Niklas thought Classe was an uglier word than corduroy.

Mom took the beer herself and brought it out to Claes.

Niklas lay down on the bed in his room. It was too short; his toes stuck out. Sometimes it felt a little embarrassing: he was about to turn nine years old and he still slept in a kid’s bed. The same bed that he’d had his whole life, Mom said. They couldn’t afford a bigger one. But on the other hand, he almost never had any friends over anyway.

He picked up an old issue of Spider-Man from the floor and started reading. His stomach was growling. He’d learned at school—that meant you were hungry.

Yes, he was super hungry.

No real food came, even though the hours passed. He ate toast with jam and drank chocolate milk instead. The potatoes that Mom’d peeled were lying unboiled in the pot. Out in the living room were two empty pizza cartons, a bunch of empty beer cans, and Mom and Claes on the couch. They were watching some other movie. His Lethal Weapon, which a friend’s dad had copied for him, was still lying on the floor in front of the VHS player.

But it wasn’t the unfairness of not being allowed to finish the movie that hurt. It was the volume of Claes’s voice. Niklas knew what it meant.

Sometimes when he was this drunk, he was nice. But more often, he was scary.

It was only eight o’clock.

He went back into his room. Tried to concentrate on Spider-Man. There was a huge fight with the Juggernaut. Spider-Man threw his web over the entire street and hoped that it would stop the tank-like man.

Claes’s laughter and Mom’s giggles could be heard through his reading.

Juggernaut didn’t care about Spider-Man’s web. He kept walking with heavy steps that made deep impressions in the New York pavement. The web was stretched more and more.

Suddenly, the door to his room opened.

Niklas didn’t look up. Tried to seem unconcerned.

Read a few more panels: Spider-Man’s web didn’t break. The buildings shook.

It was Claes.

“Niklas, why don’t you go down to the basement for a while? You can play that table-hockey game or something. Mom and me, we need some time to ourselves.”

It wasn’t a question, even though it sounded like one. Niklas knew that.

Still, he kept reading. Juggernaut kept walking. The web held up. But the concrete in the buildings where Spider-Man’d fastened it didn’t.

“Did you hear me? Can you go downstairs for a while?”

He hated it when this happened. He wondered what they did when he had to go down to the basement like this. Claes asked now and again. The worst part was that Mom was always on the jerk’s side. Since she seemed happy tonight, Niklas did as he was told.

He got up. Rolled the comic book in his hand, grabbed the house keys in his other hand, and left the apartment. The stairwell was dark; he had to turn the lights on.

He pressed the button for the elevator.

It usually didn’t last for more than a half hour or so. Then Mom would come down and get him.

14

Last night: Niklas was in a tunnel. Spots of lights in the ceiling. Echoes of heavy breathing. He turned around. He wasn’t being chased. He was the one doing the chasing. The tanto knife in one hand. The tunnel brightened. Who was ahead of him? A man. Maybe it was some bearded warrior from down there. Maybe it was the illegal broker. Then he saw: Claes turned his head. Opened his eyes wide. There was spit around his mouth. Niklas took long strides. The Mizuno shoes held up. The old guy stared. White light filled the tunnel. It was impossible to see anything.

Taxi Driver for the second time today. Knife katas for two hours. Niklas, bare-chested. Like Travis. The sweat dried. Concentrating on the katas took its toll. He went into the kitchen and drank a few gulps of water. A luxury: to be able to drink straight from the tap. In Iraq, what came out of the tap was sewer water, if anything came out at all.

He felt nasty tired. The nightmares were really hitting him hard.

He sat down. Looked around. Despondent.

Mom’d moved back home. That heightened his loneliness. Eight years with buddies. Now: six weeks of loneliness. It was about to break him. He needed a job. Needed something to do. A goal in life. Very soon. Then there was the other thing too: Mom’s suspicions. She’d told him she was completely certain the dead guy was Claes. Niklas thought of his nightmare again.

It was raining outside. What kind of summer was this, anyway? Thank God for the rain to wash the trash off the sidewalk.

He ate from a bag of chips. Saw Claes’s face in front of him. Crunched the ruffled, fried potato slices between his front teeth. Claes was gone now. The story’d gotten a happy ending. Niklas felt relieved.

He turned the DVD on again. His favorite scene. Travis tries to apply for a job as a taxi driver. The guy hiring asks, “How’s your driving record? Clean?” Travis’s pitch-perfect answer: “It’s clean, real clean. Like my conscience.”

Niklas agreed. Whatever he’d done, his conscience was clean. There was a war out there. Fabricated moral strictures collapsed under extreme circumstances as easily as a concrete Iraqi house under a grenade attack. Just the rebars remained, stuck up out of the ruins like sorrowful arms.

He turned the movie off. Unpacked his real knives, not the weapon he trained with. Spread them out on the coffee table. One MercWorx Equatorian, a heavy knife with a hefty bolster. Amazing to slice with—you didn’t even need to put any force into it. Next to it, a CBK, a concealed backup knife. A compact little fucker. The handle was shaped like a half circle at a vertical angle from the blade in order to rest in the palm and make the knife shorter, easier to hide. The sheath was specially designed with a lock mechanism so that you could strap it anywhere: behind your back, under your arm, around your calf. Last but not least, his baby: a Cold Steel Recon Tanto. Crafted according to Japanese tradition with a single blade in layer upon layer of Damascus steel—the Rolls-Royce of knife metal. Freakishly well balanced, the blood groove perfectly positioned on the blade, an ebony handle that fit like it was tailor-made for his hand. He gazed at his reflection in the blade. Beauty defined. So gorgeous. So clean.

It was unusual to use a knife in war. But really, it was the ultimate form of combat. Man to man. No high-tech heat-detecting weapons with night vision. Just you against your opponent. Just you and the cold steel.

Niklas leaned back against the couch. Claes was dead. The world was a little bit better. Mom was a million times freer.

He snapped the movie back on.

“It’s clean, real clean. Like my conscience.”

Niklas thought about calling her to hear how she was doing. But he was too tired right now.

Something was bothering him. Loud voices. From the neighbors again. He lowered the volume. Got up. Listened. Same Arabic as the last time he’d heard screaming. He turned the TV off completely. Put his ear against the wall. Almost stopped breathing. Heard everything.

A man’s voice: “You gotta understand, you’re hurting me.”

The girl, Niklas’s neighbor Jamila: “But I haven’t done anything to you.”

“You know what you’ve done. It hurts me. Get that? I can’t do this, I can’t live my life like this.”

They kept on. Screaming. Arguing. Wouldn’t give up. Didn’t seem like it was going to turn violent this time, at least.

Niklas sat back down on the couch, but didn’t switch the TV back on. Heard fragments of sentences from the argument.

Fiddled with one of his knives again. Took out the sheath. Slowly pushed the knife in.

The racket on the other side of the wall continued.

Fifteen minutes went by.

He turned the movie back on. Could barely hear them. Travis got to know Iris, Jodie Foster: they had coffee together.

Half an hour went by.

The fight in the apartment next door grew louder. Niklas raised the volume on the movie.

Iris to her pimp: “I don’t like what I’m doing, Sport.”

The pimp didn’t give a shit. “Ah, baby, I don’t want you to like what you’re doing. If you like what you’re doing, then you won’t be my woman.”

Niklas stared at the screen. Tried to shut out the sounds from the neighbors. But he could hear them over the movie.

He raised the volume. Iris screamed. The pimp screamed louder. The volume was unbearable. But it shut out the noise from the fight in the apartment next door. Niklas tried to concentrate. His thoughts came crashing down: Claes murdered, his mother unhappy. Niklas’s childhood neighbors must’ve raised the volume on their TV sets, too. Tried to erase the noise from Mom. From him. From Claes.

But somehow, he could still hear it. He knew things weren’t right over there on the other side of the wall.

The movie was moving toward its climax. The crescendo. The moment of truth. The victory of justice. Travis takes things into his own hands. He passes by the pimp on the street. “Do I know you? How’s Iris? You know Iris?” And the pimp just lies straight to his face. “I don’t know nobody named Iris.”

This couldn’t go on. The volume. The neighbors. Claes. Travis.

He could hear thuds against the wall again. He had to turn the TV off. Couldn’t let what was happening over there happen.

The woman on the other side was weeping. Screaming. Niklas knew what was going on. Everyone knew. But no one did anything.

He strapped the Cold Steel knife behind him, under his jeans. Stepped out of the apartment, into the hallway.

Listened. It was still going on in there. The man yelling. The woman whimpering.

He rang the doorbell.

Silence.

He rang it again.

They said something to each other in voices too low for him to hear.

The peephole grew dark; someone was eyeing him from the other side.

The door opened.

A man. Maybe thirty years old. Stubble. Black shirt. Wide jeans.

“Hi, what do you want?” The guy looked completely calm.

Niklas shoved him hard in the chest. Into the apartment. Closed the door behind him. The guy looked shocked. But snapped out of it faster than expected.

“What the hell are you doing? You stupid fuck.”

Niklas ignored the provocation. He was a pro. A fighting machine.

In a calm voice, he said, “Never hurt your woman again.”

At the same time, he grabbed the back of the guy’s head. Shoved it down. Against his knee. Force from two directions. The knee’s upward power, and both his arms tearing the head down. Until they met.

The guy tumbled into the wall. Spit blood. Teeth. Howled. Cried.

Niklas let fly three fast jabs with full force into the guy’s ribs.

The man collapsed.

Niklas kicked him in the back. The guy shielded his head with his arms. Screamed. Begged for mercy.

Niklas bent down. Pulled his knife out. The tip against the guy’s pulsating throat. It gleamed more beautifully than ever.

“Never do that again.”

The guy sniffled. Said nothing.

“Where is your woman?”

The guy kept sniffling.

“Where is Jamila?”

He really didn’t have to ask.

The neighbor girl stood in the doorway leading to the living room. A fat lip and a bruise over one eye.

In Arabic, Niklas said, “Never let him hurt you again. I’ll come back.”

15

The reliability of people who claim to have witnessed things was ranked. The National Police had their own internal guidelines: a rating system for eyewitness accounts, evaluation criteria for reliability. Really, it was self-evident stuff that just wasn’t formally recognized: what an orderly Swedish small-business owner said held up better in court than what a pot-smoking eighteen-year-old nigger might try to explain. What a regular, working Sven witnessed was always valued higher as evidence than whatever some heroin-rotted disability-check collector claimed. The investigative work had to be focused, which is to say reduced—only prime-minister and foreign-minister assassinations were allocated unlimited resources. The machine-gun method—to shoot at every clue you had in the hopes that you hit something—didn’t work. Society couldn’t waste endless amounts of cash. So, you knew who to listen to. Whose accounts garnered results. Served as good evidence. For a prosecution and for a conviction.

A policeman’s account was always given the highest reliability rating. That’s the kind of account you’d put resources toward following, the kind that held up in court.

The situation now: two policemen had seen the track marks on the unidentified man’s arm. Two policemen could confirm that the cause of death’d not been properly investigated by the forensic pathologist. That an additional autopsy was required. That Adamsson’d stopped them from photographing the corpse, the arm, the marks. Something was wrong. According to the worldview of the court, two policemen didn’t lie.

Still, nothing happened.

Thomas just didn’t get it. It was obvious: Stig Adamsson’d wanted to stop them for some reason. But Adamsson wasn’t just anybody. Thomas actually liked the guy. Everyone knew him: he belonged to the real old school. A man whom Thomas would ordinarily ally himself with, a man who dared to call a spade a spade, who didn’t meddle when something had to get done. In a way, he reminded Thomas of his old man—honest in a tough way—except Adamsson was right wing, politically. Adamsson was a reservist in the army and a shooting fanatic. Warm advocate for tougher caliber, harder methods, fewer weaklings on the force. Well-known opponent of the influx of women and niggers. There were other rumors circulating about Adamsson during the seventies and eighties when he was a part of the Northern District’s feared SWAT team. Drunks grabbed by the team and dumped half-dead in abandoned lots outside the city, junkies picked up for nothing and worked over with wet phone books—to avoid visible fractures and wounds—union cops who were bullied, women in the department who were sexually harassed until they transferred out. That kind of stuff often impressed Thomas. A lot of Adamsson’s kind’d probably been weeded out over the years, but not him—the old guy was too good.

Hägerström almost seemed to take it lightly. He chuckled when Thomas, with mixed feelings, called him the day after the morgue visit. “That old fart Adamsson is going to feel some heat for this. Promise.”

Thomas wanted to know more. To be honest: despite Martin Häger-ström’s background, what he really wanted was for Hägerström to bring him onto the investigation officially.

They talked about different scenarios for a while. Hägerström had theories. “I think it’s probable that the dead guy was an addict. Maybe he was going to break in and rob some stuff or just crash in the basement. Someone followed him down there, or maybe just ran into him by chance, and beat him to death. Afterward, the perpetrator got scared and sliced the guy’s fingertips to make things harder for us.”

Thomas didn’t believe Hägerström’s version for a second.

“That can’t be it. It can’t be a chance encounter. If it was, why all the hush-hush about the track marks? And why would someone go to all that effort for a regular junkie?”

“You might be right.”

“And why did someone slice his fingers and pocket the dentures?”

“Okay, okay. You’re right. The most likely scenario is that someone probably both shot him full of something—drugs, poison, or whatever—and beat him to death. That seems in line with the rest of the way this was executed. Nothing has been left to chance.”

“No, and anyway, the question remains: Why was nothing written about the track marks? Why was my report edited?”

For the first time since Thomas’d gotten to know Martin Hägerström, the man had no ready answer.

There was nothing more to say. But Thomas still wanted to keep talking. He asked, “And the telephone number. That note in his back pocket. Have you gotten anywhere with that?”

Hägerström tried to explain. “We still can’t decipher the last digit in the number. We’ve looked up every possible combination that’s linked to a phone plan. That’s all of them except for two. We’ve looked up the people connected to those plans. Of the eight, we’ve brought five in for informational questioning, and it hasn’t led anywhere. You know, they just don’t have anything to do with this. They have no idea who the dead man might be, two were under twelve years old, and so on.”

Thomas listened tensely. Damn it, not even when he was working on his Cadillac could he drop the thoughts of that murder. He asked the obvious question: “And the two prepaid plans? Have you ordered lists from the phone companies?”

Hägerström laughed. “Maybe you should be a detective, Andrén.”

Thomas ignored the comment. Hägerström probably didn’t mean to mess with him.

Hägerström went on, “We’ve ordered and received the lists. We still can’t see who took out the prepaid plans; you can’t see that with those kinds of plans. But we can see what other numbers the two prepaid cards have called. Based on that, I expect to know who the two plan owners are within a few days. Then we move on and bring them in for questioning. But that’s going to take a whole bunch of phone calls.”

Thomas thought: that kind of busywork was typical detective crap. Hägerström only had himself to blame, that office rat. Still: Thomas would consider helping him.

Later that night: time for some reality—intervention work. In normal speak: patrolling. Thomas was standing by his locker in the changing room. Preparing himself for a night in the cruiser with Ljunggren. Despite the routine, the uneventfulness of it all, the boredom—patrolling was when things happened. Thomas always looked forward to these rounds. The crackle from the radio, their grins when they ignored a call and chilled in the car instead. And then, sometimes, when shit hit the fan, it really came flying.

Ljunggren hadn’t shown up yet. They still hadn’t talked about the morgue incident the other day. Thomas looked forward to discussing the case. To hearing Ljunggren’s thoughts. He wondered where he was. Ljunggren wasn’t usually late.

Thomas got dressed slowly. Like a ritual. The M04 jacket and pants for outerwear: thick, dark blue material made of aramid fibers. Water-repellent, fire-resistant, junkie-hag-with-dirty-fingernails-proof. But Thomas didn’t like it—the reflector tape over the chest was nerdy, the absence of a drawstring at the bottom of the jacket made it feel baggy, the crisp noise it made when you walked sounded like ski clothes. The old uniform was better.

His belt rattled like a toolbox: the collapsible baton in a holder, handcuffs, radio, pepper spray, helmet holder, the old baton holder, key chain, a Leatherman, a gun holster. At least twenty-two pounds of gear.

He saw the body in front of him. The track marks. The washed cuts in the face that wasn’t a face anymore. The tag around the big toe. The pale, bluish skin that almost looked waxy. He didn’t know why he just couldn’t just let the issue go.

It was obvious: he ought to do something. With or without Hägerström. On the other hand—why should he care? Saving the world, that wasn’t his calling. It wasn’t his style to go out of bounds and be all serious. Not his thing to nail other cops. He should drop it. Stop thinking about it. Keep doing his own little deals. Keep cashing in a few kronor here and a few kronor there.

He got his gun out of the firearms locker. SIG Sauer P229, semiautomatic, 9 millimeter. Eight cartridges. The gun was completely made of matte black metal, with grooves on the grip. Small—but still better than the old gun, the Walther. Everyone in the Southern District knew where Thomas stood on these issues. A few years ago, a petition was made among the patrol officers: all police inspectors with the requisite license should be allowed to carry a personal firearm. Real stuff, like a Colt .45. Thomas’s name topped the list. Of course. When you had to fire for effect, the Walther would stop a high-charging lunatic with an ax about as effectively as if you were shooting a spitball through a straw. So, how would that end? With one, two, three shots to the chest. Then the policeman would catch heat ’cause the asshole happened to die. Give the police real weapons so that they could bring down a threatening perp right away, with one shot to the leg. So many fewer would bite the dust. The current SIG Sauer was a step in the right direction. Bullets that expanded on contact with tissue—spread at impact. Perfect.

Where the hell was Ljunggren? Thomas was dressed, charged up. Ready for a ride through reality. He picked up the intercom phone hanging on the wall by the lockers.

Katarina, the coordinator in charge tonight, picked up.

“Hiya, Andrén here. You know where Jörgen Ljunggren is?”

“Ljunggren had to cover for Fransson. So we’re having Cecilia Lindqvist drive with you. She’s on her way. Should be there in a few.”

“Excuse my French, but who the fuck is Cecilia Lindqvist?”

“A new patrol—you haven’t met her? She started four months ago.”

“You’re kidding. You want me to go on the beat with a cadet? I’d rather drive alone.”

“Cut it, Andrén. That’s against the rules. She’ll be there any minute. Stop whining and start loading.”

Thomas sighed. Katarina was a hardass. He liked her.

“Hey, you have to double check your scheduling. This is bullshit.”

“Yeah, right. You think I’m in charge of this?”

“No, I know. I’ll have to talk to management. I gotta go now. See ya.”

He started packing. Took out his bag, as big as a hockey trunk. Loaded up the heavier gear first: the leg guards, the helmet, and the gas mask on the bottom. Then the caution tape, flares, an extra radio, a first-aid kit, the old rubber baton, and a reflector vest. In the side pocket: forms, rubber gloves, and the Breathalyzer.

He dragged the bag and the heavy bulletproof vest out to the garage. Straight to their spots in the trunk.

And when exactly was this Cecilia planning on showing up? Did she think she was going out on some little exercise, or something? The rabble couldn’t care less that she was green. The rabble didn’t wait for late arrivals. He couldn’t wait around any longer.

He got into the car. Called Katarina again.

“I’m leaving. Cecilia Lindqvist still hasn’t showed. When she deigns to arrive, I can swing by and pick her up.”

“Okay, you do what you want. But you know what I think. I’ll tell her.”

He started the car. It would feel kind of good to be patrolling by himself for a while tonight. He needed time to think.

Right when he started backing out from the parking spot, the door to the garage flew open. A girl came running toward him, her trunk flung over her shoulder. He stopped. Rolled down the window. Looked at her.

She said, “Hi, I think we’re patrolling together tonight.”

Thomas eyed her: Cecilia looked okay. Medium-dark blond, short hair. Distinct cheekbones. Blue-green eyes. She seemed stressed out. Her forehead: sweaty.

Thomas pointed to the trunk.

“Throw it in back. Did you bring the heavy vest, too?”

“No, I was going to go back in for it. Will you wait?”

Thomas looked at her. He couldn’t believe they hired people who couldn’t even carry the trunk and the heavy vest at the same time.

An hour of boredom later. Cecilia tried to talk. Thomas thought she almost seemed hysterically scared of silence in the car. She discussed the differences between the Police Academy’s current program and the way it’d been back in his day. Thomas wondered why she thought she had a clue. She asked questions about the chiefs in the Southern District. Commented on the attorney general’s latest proposal to increase the uniformed presence on the street. Thomas wasn’t interested. Didn’t she get it? Sometimes it was okay to just listen to the police radio without talking.

After twenty minutes, she seemed to figure it out. Started to calm down, but still asked a bunch of stuff: “Have you heard about the new car thefts they’re investigating?” And so on.

Dispatch sent a call for anyone in the vicinity of Skärholmen. Apparently some kind of apartment brawl there.

Thomas didn’t even have to lie. They’d just driven past the Shell gas station on Hägerstensvägen, more than a mile away.

“Good thing we’re not in Skäris.”

Cecilia sat in silence.

They were cruising Thomas’s regular route along Hägerstensvägen. Past the center of Aspudden. Past Örnsberg’s subway station. It was eight o’clock. Still bright outside. A nice summer night.

The police radio rattled on. A drunk driver was slaloming down the Södertälje road northbound. Attempted robbery in an apartment on Skansbergsvägen in Smista. A teenage brawl down by the water outside the Vårbacka school in Vårby Gård. Maybe they should try to pluck the drunkard on the Södertälje highway. That was in their direction, after all.

Thomas sped up.

The radio crackled again. “The twenty-four-hour bodega in Aspudden. We’ve got an intoxicated man who is acting very aggressively. Can someone go there immediately? Over.”

Cecilia looked at Thomas.

“We have to take that. We’re just a minute away.”

Thomas sighed. Did a U-turn. Flipped the flashers on. Sped up.

Fifty seconds later, they pulled up next to the bodega. He could see through the window right away that something was wrong: instead of lining up by the cash register to pay for smokes, porn rags, or candy, a bunch of people were standing as if grouped together, but they weren’t. All looking at the same thing, but not acting together. Typical Swedish public crime scene. People were there, but still no one was where they were needed.

At the front, by the cash register, a large man with dirty clothes had the shop clerk’s arm in a grip, a young guy who looked totally crushed: on the verge of tears, darting gaze, trying to get the support of someone in there. The other clerk was trying to pry the man’s grip off. Tore at his huge hands.

The man roared: “You fucking cunts. Every fucking thing is going to hell. You hear me? Every fucking thing.”

Thomas took the lead. Rocked his strong, authoritative voice. “Police. It’s time to knock it off. Release him, please.”

The drunkard looked up. Hissed, “Pigs.” Thomas recognized him. The old-timer was big. Completely lethal appearance: ice-blue eyes, boxer’s nose, two scars over one eyebrow, bad teeth. But the guy didn’t just look lethal. He was a former boxer, used to hang out with the park-bench alcoholics, the so-called A-team, in Axelsberg—a walking barrel of dynamite. Was collecting disability or something, but probably had enough power in his fists to severely hurt the clerk kid. This could really get nasty.

Thomas walked up to the register. Put one hand on the A-teamer’s hands. The other clerk let go of his grip. In a calm voice Thomas said, “Let him go. Now.”

Cecilia was behind him. Fiddling with the radio. Maybe she was going to call for backup.

Then, something unexpected happened: the old guy released the clerk. Rushed at Cecilia. Thomas didn’t have time to react. Turned around.

The guy dealt Cecilia a blow to the chest. She wasn’t prepared. Tumbled into a shelf of penny candy. Yelled, “What the hell are you doing?” Good—finally, some balls.

Thomas tried to lock the guy in a grip. Damn it, he was stronger than you might think. Turned to Thomas. Head butt. Contact almost directly over Thomas’s nasal bone. A millimeter down to the middle and his nose would’ve broken. Hurt like hell. He saw stars. Blacked out for a brief second. He roared.

The drunkard threw himself at Cecilia, who was back on her feet again. The guy was too dangerous. This was chaos. This was not okay. They couldn’t wait for backup.

She tried to push him away. The guy tried to get three punches in. Struck her shoulder. Cecilia backed up. Could be immediate blackout if the guy got in a good hit.

Thomas speed-analyzed the situation. It wasn’t time to use his service weapon. Too many people in the store and the guy wasn’t dangerous enough yet. But Cecilia was weak. They could never take this giant alone. Maybe with their batons.

He made another attempt. His nose was pounding like crazy. He tried to grab hold of the guy’s arm, get him in a grip behind his back. A lost cause. The ex-boxer was wild like an animal. High on booze and his little display of power. Knocked Thomas off. Shoved him. He lost his balance. Tripped over a tower of soda bottles. They went flying all over the floor.

“Use the baton, damn it,” Thomas yelled, on his knees.

Cecilia tried to shield herself. Pulled out the collapsible baton. Opened it.

The guy threw a punch at her stomach. She hit him over the thighs.

The effect: less than a bitch slap. The old drunk was too crazy to care about the whip of the baton. Pushed her up against the window. Thomas picked up his baton. Hit the guy over the back. Really hard. He reacted. Turned around again. Cecilia was about to collapse. The guy threw a punch in Thomas’s direction. He ducked. Struck again with the baton. And again.

Cecilia was on her feet behind the guy. She hit him. He roared. Threw a jab at Thomas again.

Thomas put some real force into it. He had to bring an end to this now. Lashed the old drunk once over the neck. Another time over the thigh. The guy kept on roaring. Thomas hit him again over the legs. The guy sank to the ground. Screamed. Kept kicking Cecilia from where he was, down on the floor. She got more lashes in. The booze-hound shielded his head with his arms. Cecilia gave him hell again. Hit the guy over the head, chest, back.

She was in a panic. Thomas understood her.

This’d spiraled out of control.

16

One of the first things you learn in the slammer: don’t pace in your cell. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Instead: stay in your head and you can travel far beyond the prison walls. Like Mahmud used to do: fantasize about a BMW Z4 coupe cruising smoothly down Kungsgatan on a sweet spring day, pocket full of bills, headed to a hot party, chill homies, willing honeys. Freedom at its finest.

But now, in his room at Dad’s place, he paced back and forth like a monkey in a cage. Nauseated. Dizzy. Head pounding. Only one day left.

He’d managed to scrape together eighty large. Total. He was twenty short. He’d gotten in touch with Daniel the day before—to negotiate with them. But the dude refused to understand: Mahmud was happy to pay interest as long as they were cool with eighty G’s in the first installment.

“Forget it. We said one hundred. One hundred is what Gürhan’s gonna get. Day after tomorrow.”

Click.

Mahmud slept extra crappy that night. His time asleep: shorter than a mosquito’s cock. An explosive headache. Anxious thoughts were spinning out of control.

He couldn’t even go work out. The only thing he could think about: where Wisam was. When he’d grabbed that gangsta, no one could hurt him. He didn’t plan on charging Stefanovic cash. Just asking for a favor in return—that they show Gürhan who’s in charge.

He talked to his homeboy Tom Lehtimäki: mad CSI dude—the Finn helped him work with the info he already had. Get facts. Sort possibilities. Analyze leads.

The company that’d bought the car from the Bentley brat down on Strandvägen was called Dolphin Leasing AB. The paper he’d swiped from the brat didn’t say much: Dolphin Leasing AB had a P.O. box in Stockholm. A registration number. The document was signed by a John Ballénius—some fucking name. Tom explained: the registration number was the company’s organization number—all companies in Sweden had to have that kind of thing. Mahmud called the Swedish Companies Registration Office. Got information about who was on the board. Two shysters with Swedish names. The first was John Ballénius. The other was Claes Rantzell. Both had P.O. box addresses: classic shadiness. Mahmud paid a visit to the post office. A fatso in a small office in Hallunda. Mahmud rocked the same style as he had toward the boy in the Bentley dealership. Why mess with a winning concept? After ten minutes, he had the home addresses for both of the two men. Tegnérgatan downtown and Elsa Brändströms Street in Fruängen.

Mahmud looked them up with Tom’s help. They called the passport authority, went to Kungsholmen—got copies of the old guys’ passport photos. They didn’t drive any flashy cars, according to the national registry of motor vehicles. But, according to the tax authorities, they were saddled with some heavy tax debt. Mahmud went to John Ballénius’s address, Tegnérgatan. Waited outside. After four hours, the guy came staggering up the street laden with two bags from the liquor store. Looked half-marinated in booze. Still good—now he had his eye on the guy. Mahmud went to the other dude’s address. Waited all night. Nothing happened. Either Rantzell stayed home twenty-four/seven, or he was abroad, or he didn’t actually live there. Craven cunt.

Most likely the guys were front men for the leasing company. Stinky fish like that couldn’t buy flashy cars, at least not if they wanted to register and insure them. Wise guys knew the solution was luxury rentals.

The guard lead from the robbery’d unfortunately not panned out. A couple hustlers he’d spoken with’d heard talk that the Lebanese was back in town, maybe they’d even seen him, but no one knew where Wisam Jibril was hiding. Mahmud and Tom’s conclusion: the only lead Mahmud could go on was the Bentley.

He had to get one of the golden oldies to talk.

But how? Time was ticking by.

He called Babak and Robert. Even called Javier and Tom. Needed more help than ever. Couldn’t face any more attempts at negotiation with Daniel or Gürhan. More humiliation. In twelve hours, he had to have that cash. Twenty grand more. Couldn’t be impossible.

They met at Robert’s house.

Mahmud served up a blunt—weed rolled in cigar leaves instead of cigarette paper. Tried to seem a thousand times more chill than he really felt. They buzzed quick cash schemes. He needed to get his homies amped. Hoped they didn’t see the panic in his eyes.

Robert alternated between hip-hop and Arabic hits. His apartment was so permanently hotboxed that you mellowed out just by walking through the door.

Babak was babbling as usual.

“We should do like the heavy boys, Fucked for Life and those guys. Go to Thailand and just plan.”

“Just plan?” Robert looked at Babak. “What about the hookers?”

Babak laughed.

“Okay, we’ll bukkake some Thai chicks, too. But mostly plan.”

Mahmud dug the way they spit.

Babak said, “Who are we, anyway? What should we do? Society already fucked us. We knew that early, right? School, high school, that shit wasn’t our beat. College, not on the map. But not slaving away at a McDonald’s or working as a cleaner forever either. None of that bullshit. And now there ain’t no good jobs for us to get. And honestly, we don’t want their normal jobs anyway. Just look at your dad, Mahmud. Sweden isn’t for blattes like us, not even the straitlaced ones.”

Mahmud was listening.

“Imagine a scale, you know what I mean. On one side you put the Sven life, nine-to-five, maybe an okay car, and some bust-your-nuts gig, a house somewhere. On the other side you put excitement, freedom, bitches, and cash. And the feeling. The feeling of being a don. Which side’s got the most weight? It’s not even a fucking choice, man. Who doesn’t want to swag it up, go from ashy to classy? Give society the finger, you feel me? They’ve pissed on us anyway so why not piss right back on ’em? Just think, the feeling, to be a Yugo boss, Gürhan Ilnaz or one of those real hustlers.”

Robert took deep hits off the blunt. “You’re right, man. No sane fucker’s gonna choose nine-to-five. But, yo, know what the thing is?”

Babak shook his head.

“The thing is, how you get there. Right? You can work corners for years, still someone else’s skimming off the top. Or else you can do all that fraud shit, like the guys I was telling you about, who tried to gyp Silja Line. But that’s gotta be too much stress.”

“True. That’s why we gotta go to Thailand. We gotta stop working corners and doing this petty bullshit. Explosives, that’s what it’s all about, yo, like I always say.”

Mahmud and Robert, at the same time: “You mean CIT?”

“Ey, I do. We learn to explode, we can do anything. Know what that’s called? The big fish call it technical crime. That’s the real shit, the kind of shit that needs planning, that needs technique. Plastic explosives, percussion caps, fuses—I don’t got a clue, but the guys who can do explosives can do anything. Imagine, getting ten million on a hit instead of a few grand here and there.”

Mahmud thought about the Arlanda hit, and Jibril.

“You can buy recipes for CIT knocks in Södertälje,” Robert said. “I know people.”

“Yeah, but then they gonna skim off the top again. Fuck, man, we gotta be on our own. Mahmud, don’t you know some Yugo who could teach us?”

Mahmud almost got pissed.

“You playin’? Those aren’t my people.”

“But maybe they know this shit. They’re warriors. Seems like most of ’em were down in Yugoslavia ten years ago.”

Robert kept sucking on the blunt. “I’ll tell you something—never trust the Yugos. They don’t got a proper hierarchy, not like the Hells Angels, the OG, or the Brotherhood. No rules. They’re not working for the next generation. Every Yugo’s just thinking about his own skin and don’t build nada for no one else. You know why they done so well in Sweden? ’Cause they were here first and ’cause they get a fuckload of support from their country down there. They’ve fucking owned this town for twenty years now, kept restocking with Serbian gats from their war, new soldiers who’ve been primed to come up here for work. But know what I think? They gonna disappear. They a clan, not an organization. They don’t got a chance against the HA and the others. The Yugos’ time is over. One more thing. They’re getting all Sven and shit. You feel me?”

Mahmud was shook—the Yugos’ time was over? Had he bet on the wrong fighter? He didn’t even want to think about what Rob’d just said. He had to get cash.

They kept buzzing.

After a while, they hatched a tight idea—they should crash a party nearby that Babak knew about. Babak sold E to the guy having the bash, Simon. So it was his time to cash in on some of Simon’s debt tonight: sweet Sven with a severe smiley habit. It was the kid’s birthday. And Babak wasn’t invited. That alone was a reason to show the boy who was boss.

The mood heightened. After a few minutes, it got even better—Robert surprised them with a bonus for the night: Rohypnol.

Three pills and two beers. Unbeatable combination: Benzo-buzz. Aggro-energy.

Mahmud felt it clearly: his blood was pumping better than the others’—he could do whatever he wanted.

They rolled to Simon’s birthday party.

It was cold out. They parked Robert’s car. Mahmud, Babak, and Robert waited outside the kid’s building. Babak’d called. Asked to come up and say happy birthday. Simon’d been reluctant. Worlds colliding—he didn’t want his low life to mix with his high life. The whole thing was simple: Babak wasn’t invited. Babak wasn’t happy. Simon knew that Babak wasn’t invited. Ergo: Simon knew that Babak wasn’t happy. Simon’d managed to have Babak agree to meet outside. Pleaded, “It’s my birthday, can’t you cut me some slack today?”

The guy came out of the building. Stood waiting outside by the road. A pale bean pole with hair dyed black. Another guy, maybe Simon’s friend, remained standing in the entranceway. Hard to see, the streetlight was reflecting in the glass section of the door.

Babak: high as a Dubai skyscraper. Looked at Simon.

“Happy birthday. You got my cash or what?”

Mahmud remained in the background. Eyed Babak’s forehead. He was breaking out. His forehead gleamed. Typical side effect of muscle pills.

“Babak, I’m not supposed to pay you until next Sunday. And there’s no chance in hell I can get it for today, anyway. Forget about it. You’ve already pocketed half of what I made last month.”

Simon knew the rules. He had to be punished now. But the thing about tonight: he would’ve been punished either way.

A shove. Simon stumbled back a couple of steps. Babak was steaming. Robert was steaming. Mahmud felt so happy—back on the street, a chance to score. He wanted in. Wanted to feel the kick. Took a step forward.

“You fucking cunt. What are you, slow? Hand over the cash.”

The friend stuck his head out through the front door. From a distance, he looked tired, dark circles under his eyes. He yelled, “What the hell are you doing?”

Babak took a solid grip on Simon’s arm.

“Tell your nasty little buddy over there to shut up. You say you don’t got cash, but someone’s gotta pay, right? You bought four bottles from me, but you only paid for two. Who you think’s gonna cover the other two, huh? You promised you’d fix it. You want me to spend my own money, huh?”

“But I promised I’d get it.”

“Forget that. We’re gonna go up to your little fag fest and you’re gonna get the dough now.”

There were fourteen people in the apartment, a large studio with a spacious kitchen. The boys were playing FIFA on a PS3. Ill graphics.

Babak went straight into the kitchen. Dragged Simon along. Mahmud sat down in front of a computer, scrolled through the MP3s. Fucking pussy music. Didn’t they have any black beats?

Robert leaned against the wall. Arms crossed. Both he and Mahmud knew something was gonna pop. Knew they were perceived as gorillas. Waited for Babak’s signal.

Obvious: Robert was bugging out. Mahmud could feel the brass knuckles in his pocket. Babak was out in the kitchen with Simon, could feel the vibes, was probably tweaking.

The party seemed more like a dull night in than a birthday bash.

Aside from Babak and Simon, there were some chicks in the kitchen. When Babak walked in, the bitches went into the living room.

One of the chicks put her hands on her hips. Said, “You have to stop playing. It’s so boring when you just sit there.”

No real response. The soccer playing continued.

Obvious tension in the room.

Babak came into the living room. The number one blatte. No sign of Simon. Mahmud dug the situation. Babak nodded. Finally time to rumble. Babak took a step forward. Mahmud positioned himself in front of the couch, broad stance. The gamers looked up.

Babak, with a thicker accent than usual: “Turn off the fucking PlayStation. This is a robbery.”

Real R2-aggression, no boundaries. Mahmud slipped on the brass knuckles. “And don’t whine, you’ll regret it.” He slid his hand over his throat. Robert, next to him: backed up with a butterfly.

“Empty your pockets. Cash, phones, subway passes, whatever you got. You know what we want. Put the shit on the table.”

The guys looked like they were gonna shit themselves. Mahmud thought the girls’ faces grew as white as cocaine, despite the layer of self-tanner. They pulled out their cell phones reluctantly. A couple of them fished out subway passes and wallets.

Mahmud did the collecting. Emptied cash out of wallets. Left the plastic. Gathered the subway passes and cell phones. Hauled stuff over to Babak and Robert. They shoved it all into their jacket pockets.

So easy. The Svens just handed it over.

One of the girls looked totally gone. Like someone’d slipped a Valium in her beer. Mahmud shoved her.

“Ey, yo. Give us your stuff.”

She hardly reacted. Handed over her subway pass. Nothing else.

Time to split.

Robert was riled up. Wanted to fight. Started roaring. Waving the knife around. Aimed a kick at one of the guys in front of the TV. Mahmud dragged him out. Babak slammed the door shut.

They ran down the stairs.

The high was still thick. He felt so fucking angry.

Could easily’ve beaten the shit out of anybody.

Yelled in the stairwell.

Almost forgot all the stress and anxiety over his problems: the Gürhan fucker, Erika at the parole office, Dad’s whining.

Down on the street.

Into Robert’s car.

Tried to calm down.

One final roar. They rolled the window down, hollered, “Alby forever!”

The effect of the Rohypnol was dropping off. Soon back to reality.

They counted the money in the car: 4,800 kronor. Twelve subway passes. Could be flipped for 200 kronor a pass. Sweet phones. Twenty DVDs from Simon’s bookshelf. And, yup: the PS3 game. Nice haul. Mahmud tried to do the math in his head. Hoped the boys would lend him more. Maybe it’d be enough.

Babak and Robert: angel homies—let Mahmud keep the whole enchilada on credit.

Now he had one day to flip the subway passes, the phones, the movies, and the game.

He hoped it would be enough.

17

Niklas and Benjamin ordered a second round of beers. Type: Norrlands, bottles. The Swedish smoking ban was sweet. But Benjamin was complaining. “Honestly, before all you had to do was treat the ladies to a smoke, get a free reason to start chatting.”

His T-shirt today was black with Outlaws written in white letters across the front, plus the image of a motorcycle. Niklas thought either his old buddy was acting like a bad boy, or he actually was one.

The bar was situated in Fridhemsplan. According to Benjamin: Fridhemsplan was sweet dank-dive paradise. And this bar, Friden, was apparently the mother of all dank-dives. They laughed.

Niklas liked the place. It wasn’t his first time there, but his first in eight years. Exemplary pricing: the beer hardly cost more than when he’d left Sweden. Cute waitresses. Comfy couches, loud volume, cheap grub. Wood paneling along the walls. A number of banners with different soccer-team emblems were hung up above the paneling. Beer ads and glitter that looked like Christmas decorations. Their beers arrived in warm glasses straight from the dishwasher. The peanuts were served in bowls that resembled ashtrays. Mixed crowd: mostly AIK soccer fans and drunks, but a bunch of younger types, too. He dug the atmosphere.

Benjamin went to the bathroom. Niklas studied his right hand. There was some swelling over the middle knuckle. He remembered: three fast punches. Good technique: 80 percent of the punch’d been absorbed by the knuckles on his pointer and index fingers. Broken at least one of the asshole’s ribs. Rightly so.

Benjamin returned. Tried to pinch one of the waitresses in the butt before he sat down in the booth with Niklas. She didn’t even react. A relief. Niklas didn’t want any trouble.

Benjamin smiled. “It’s damn strange. The stench in the bathrooms in this place is exactly the same as the stench in the bathrooms in the ER at Mariapol, remember? That nasty place we got sent when we were smashed as kids?”

“When was the last time you were in the ER there? That’s gotta be ten years ago.”

“Sure, but I promise you, that stench gets stuck in your nostrils like a fucking piercing.”

“Good thing we’re near the entrance, then, so you can get some fresh air.”

They laughed. Benjamin was okay, after all. Maybe Niklas would get used to living in Sweden.

Two beers later. Niklas was starting to get buzzed. Benjamin claimed that he needed at least eight brewskies for it to even show up in a cop’s Breathalyzer. Niklas said he talked more bullshit than a merchant in the souk. They laughed again. It felt good to laugh together.

The entire time, in the back of Niklas’s head: he’d made the world a better place the other day. A safer place for innocent women.

They kept talking. Benjamin went on about the shooting club, about some chick he was going on a date with later that night, about some business he had up his sleeve. Sometimes he asked Niklas a lot of questions. About how often he’d been under fire in Iraq, how you reload in the dark, if you could grease a gun with olive oil, when you used dumdum ammunition. The theater of war, like make-believe. But overall, Benjamin was a know-it-all—thought he knew everything about weapons he couldn’t even spell the names of. Niklas told him stories from Iraq. He left out details like names, but he could feel how much he loved to describe life in the sandbox. In actuality, though: no one who didn’t have operational experience of combat in war could ever really know what it was about. You couldn’t read your way to stuff like that or watch movies or play video games to understand it.

Something was happening by the entrance to the bar. They looked over. A fifty-year-old guy was engaged in a loud discussion with a bouncer in charge of the coat check.

The guy was holding a liquor-store bag in each hand. Apparently wanted to check them and still be allowed to bring a bottle inside. Niklas and Benjamin looked at each other again. Laughed. But it was a fake laugh. The man reminded Niklas of darker times.

Two large men sat down next to them. Ordered a beer each. Benjamin eyed one of them. Leaned over. Spoke to Niklas in a low voice, “Check out his jacket. Looks like he’s in the same shooting club as me. Cool.” Niklas wasn’t as impressed.

Benjamin started to ask him questions again. Niklas thought he was raising his voice. Did he want the men at the table next to them to hear? He couldn’t care less. Started telling his story.

“You know, we were lugging around so much equipment that we sounded like a wandering junkyard when we left base camp. Battle rattle, that’s what we call it. Call radio, flak jackets, night-vision equipment, at least twenty magazines apiece, grenades, med kits, helmets, sleeping bags and tents in case we weren’t coming back that night, food boxes, maps, everything. We thought it’d take three hours there and three hours home, same route. The only good thing about dragging all that junk around was that the beer would be six hours colder when we got back.”

Benjamin laughed out loud.

Niklas continued, “In and out, none of our boys were gonna get hurt. That’s the rhythm of missions like that. The Red Crescent or Amnesty International can tally the points when we’re done. Honestly, we’re not the ones turning those villages into targets. They turn themselves into targets. Give food and shelter to suicide bombers and the suicide bombers’ brains. They only have themselves to blame. No matter what happens, no way we could kill more people than they did with their car bombs all over Bahgdad.”

Even though Niklas was speaking loudly, Benjamin wasn’t really listening. His eyes danced. Kept glancing at the man wearing the shooting club’s emblem at the table next to them. Finally, Niklas stopped himself.

“If there’s something you want to say to that guy, just say it.”

Benjamin nodded. Turned to the guy at the table next to them.

“Hey, I just gotta ask. Are you active in the Järfälla Gun Club?”

The man turned his head slowly. Like he was thinking, Are you stupid, or what? Interrupting me in the middle of a conversation? He eyed Benjamin.

But what came out wasn’t aggressive.

“Yes, I’ve been a member for over twelve years. Are you interested in joining?”

“I’m already a member. Joined a few months back. But I gotta say, it’s awesome. How often do you shoot?”

Niklas eyed the man. He actually looked interested in the conversation. The guy had short blond hair. Close to forty. A striped shirt unbuttoned at the neck and blue jeans. Maybe it was the focus in his eyes, maybe it was the fact that he looked so put together but still hung out at Friden. The man had to be a cop.

They chatted. The guy told them about the shooting club. About the number of members. About what guns he owned. Benjamin absorbed it all like a sponge. The shooting club guy’s colleague joined in. Told them about his firearms. Turned out, they were both cops. Right every time—Niklas’s eye for people never failed him.

An hour later. More gun talk than he’d ever experienced among the boys in the barracks down there. The two cops were nice. The bar was nice. The conversation was decent.

Benjamin got up. He had to go meet his date. Was apparently already late. Shook hands with the cops. Niklas and he decided that they’d be in touch later that week. Was Niklas making a friend?

One of the policemen, the one who wasn’t a member of the shooting club, also got up. Had to go home to his family. Niklas and the cop who remained seated looked at each other. Really, it was weird to stay with someone you didn’t know—but what the hell, why not?

They ordered another round. Kept talking guns. Niklas was getting drunk.

The cop ordered Salisbury steak with pepper sauce. “A classic,” as he called it. “This place has really great, classic grub. Might be hard to believe, but.”

Niklas ordered more peanuts.

When the gun talk ran dry after fifteen minutes or so, the policeman asked him, “So, what do you do?”

“I’m looking for employment.”

Niklas’d learned that that’s how you said it. Not “unemployed”—that was not a dynamic state of being. Instead you should be on your way, in motion, on the hunt—for a job. Bullshit. He was unemployed. And he was fine with that for now, but the money would run out at some point.

“Okay. So what kind of job do you want?”

“I could imagine doing some sort of security guard job. Maybe in the subway. But not just sitting still somewhere guarding a building. That’s too dull.”

“That’s good. We need more good security guards. And people who have the guts to roll their sleeves up, if you catch my drift.”

Niklas wasn’t completely sure he understood. The cop sounded bitter somehow.

“Yeah, sure. I’d roll my sleeves up. I’ve worked hard in my day.”

They looked at each other.

“What kind of work’ve you done?” the cop asked.

“I’ve been in the armed forces. I can’t really talk about it.”

“That’s understandable. We need people like you. Do you understand what I mean? Someone’s got to clean up the trash. The security guards are often too sissy. Not to mention the police. They’ve started to recruit such whiny pussies that it makes you wonder if ordinary men are supposed to be in the minority.”

“You’re right. The police need more authority.”

“Addicts, pedophiles, men who beat up their women. People don’t care as long as it doesn’t affect them. But we’re not allowed to get rough, ’cause then everyone gives us a lot of grief. I’m going to tell you something. You really want to listen to a bitter old cop?”

“Absolutely.” It was interesting. No one could agree more that the cops should be harder on men who abused women.

The cop really got into it.

“I take my job seriously. I really try to stop the rabble that’s taking over this city. So, the other day, they sent me on the beat with a little girl. Fresh out of the Police Academy, no experience at all. Thin, delicate chick. I don’t understand how they recruit these days. Anyway, we got sent to a twenty-four-hour bodega where some drunk’d seen red and started picking a fight with the staff. The problem was, I recognized the guy. He’s an old boxer, strong as hell. Aggressive like a teenager. But my colleague, she was too green, didn’t get what was going on. It got ugly. The boxer-boozer attacked her. She couldn’t stand up to him. It got even uglier. He attacked me too. And when we were trying to bring him down, and it wasn’t easy, let me tell you, it got uglier still. The old guy was mad as hell, strong as a bull, swinging punches like fucking Muhammad Ali. Look at my nose.”

The cop paused. Niklas was into the story.

“What happened?”

“He clocked me. If I’d been out with a male colleague, someone from my usual gang, for example, that never would’ve happened. But now, now this girl’s there and we can’t bring the asshole down the normal way. He was just too tough. So we used the batons. A lot. Until we got him down and could cuff him.”

Another pause. The cop swallowed. The gravity in his eyes gleamed again.

“And now they’re talking excessive force. You understand?”

Niklas was surprised at the turn. This felt private, intimate.

“Sure. It sounds fucked up. You were just doing your job.”

“This is society’s demise we’re talking about. If the police allow a bunch of violent old fuckers to go around and do whatever they want without us being able to fight back, then who’s going to stop them? If the police let a bunch of junkies deal drugs, who’s going to keep young people from dying prematurely? If the police can’t do anything about domestic violence, who’s going to make sure innocent women aren’t humiliated?”

Niklas nodded in time to the outpouring. The last thing the cop said cut deep. This was bigger than he’d thought—Sweden was in worse shape than he’d expected. If the police didn’t do the job, who would do it?

He felt drunk. The cop kept talking about society’s decline. Niklas’s thoughts galloped off. Again and again: if the cops don’t take care of it, then someone else has to.

18

Journalists are the rats of humankind; fake-PC-dyke-Communist politicians are the cockroaches of the earth; and Internal Affairs police investigators are the bloodsuckers of the world. They live off of other people’s ruin. They thrive on betrayal: spit on loyalty, dignity, and respect. They let Sweden down. Let everyone down who is working for a better country.

Thomas knew that most cops who loved the more confrontational side of police work, those who didn’t just waste away behind a desk or pussy out as soon as the heat was turned up, would, at some point during their career, be subjected to internal investigations. That was just par for the course; the police department was forced to stage a little self-scrutiny from time to time to keep the politicians and the public happy. But sometimes it got serious—when the media got involved. When journalists who knew nothing about life on the street started to scrutinize, criticize, theorize. Hunt. The beaters were consequence-neutral—they didn’t give a damn what happened to the individual policemen whose heads they wanted on a spit. The media should be outlawed.

That’s why he wasn’t really too surprised when, three days after the articles appeared in Aftonbladet, Expressen, Metro, City, and probably a bunch of other newspapers, he saw the envelope in his mailbox at work. Internal Affairs (IA), Stockholm County. The message was brief.

His nose was pounding after the head butt from that fucking boozehound. He felt nauseated.

They were going to commence an investigation against him—and that could lead to suspension and transfer, or, worse, dismissal. It could lead to a charge of professional misconduct being brought against him. He remained standing in front of the mailbox, the letter in hand. Didn’t know what to do.

Read the verdict again. Saw the report number again. Ai 1197-07. Thought of all of those who’d been through this before him.

His phone rang.

“Hello, Andrén. This is Stig Adamsson. Are you in?”

After the incident at the morgue, Thomas didn’t trust Adamsson one bit. What did he want now? Could it have to do with the murder? More likely, it had to do with the Internal Affairs investigation that he’d just found out about. He responded, “I just got in.”

“Great. You think you could come by my office? The sooner the better.”

Six colleagues were standing around the coffee machine in the hall. They greeted him. Everyone knew. He could tell. He could see right away which ones were on his side. A discreet nod, a wink, a wave. But two of them stared straight through him—there were quislings among the patrol officers too. Thomas made a point of greeting the four who were his friends.

The door to Adamsson’s room was closed. According to police etiquette, that meant you were expected to close it after you when you went inside.

Thomas knocked. Heard a quiet “Come in” from inside.

Adamsson was sitting in front of his computer with his back to the door. A tired, old ballbuster. The unit chief turned around.

“Hey, Andrén. Have a seat.”

Thomas pulled out the visitor’s chair and sat down. He was still holding the letter from IA in his hand. Stig Adamsson looked at it.

“This is really unfortunate.”

Thomas nodded. Could he trust Adamsson?

“So, I’m guessing everyone already knows?”

“Well, you know how it is. Talk spreads faster than wildfire around here. But I heard it by the formal route. They made this a rush job and everything, sent it straight to the prosecutor. They’re dragging the girl into it too, Lindqvist.”

“So, what do you think? Will the media calm down?”

“They always calm down. But if you’re unlucky, some damn politician’s going to add his two cents, too. Unfortunately, that usually sets a fire under IA’s ass. And then the police commissioner’s got to make a decision about where you’ll be working, too.”

“When will that happen?”

Adamsson put both hands on the table. They were rough hands. Hands that’d taken their fair share of hits in their day: probably been pricked on injection needles, dug through vomit, but also dealt a few more blows than most. He sighed.

“I just spoke to him. He’s going to wait for IA’s verdict. If they make a case of it, prosecute you and get a conviction, there’s a risk that you’ll have to quit altogether. If they drop the preliminary investigation, the situation is more hopeful, but even then there’s a risk that we’ll have to transfer you.”

Thomas didn’t know what to say.

“Andrén, I just wanted to tell you that I completely understand. I’ve read your report and the assault report. I mean, I know Torsten Göransson from way back. He was a good boxer, twenty-five or so years ago. Trained at Linnéa. You know that club?”

“Of course.”

“A real beast. Then something went wrong. Or else it’d gone wrong already before the boxing. I don’t know. Anyway, he’s been convicted of assault at least five times before. Summa summarum: you were totally right to use the batons. And it’s not your fault that the new collapsible batons are too weak. And it’s not your fault that Cecilia Lindqvist is too weak.”

Thomas nodded in time to Adamsson’s harangue. He thought, Shouldn’t the guy at least mention the incident at the morgue? But he didn’t say anything. Instead he said, “Exactly. If we’d been two regular officers we’d have been able to handle him without using the batons so much. I appreciate your support, Adamsson. It feels good. But, can you tell me one thing?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Who made the call for me to take the shift with Cecilia Lindqvist? Everyone who knows me knows I don’t work too well with little girls.”

“I honestly don’t know who made that call. But Ljunggren had to cover for Fransson, who was sick. So we had to put someone in. That’s just the routine, you know that. But I’ll look into it.”

Thomas nodded. Adamsson didn’t say anything. His facial expression, however, said: This conversation is over.

Thomas wanted to say something about the morgue. Get a sensible explanation.

But no words came. He got up.

“One more thing, Andrén. Take a few weeks off. Go on disability for a month or so. I really think you should. It’ll be hard, being here.”

It was an order.

On his way home, Thomas drove the roundabout way across Norrmalm. Didn’t take the Essingeleden highway. Needed time to think. The lower part of Fleminggatan: Irish pubs and small restaurants. He thought about his and Ljunggren’s night at Friden. The places he was driving past now didn’t exactly radiate glamour. But Friden still took home the dumpy prize.

Then it hit him: he couldn’t exactly put his finger on what it was, but Ljunggren’d been acting weird. First he’d been all about them grabbing a beer after work. And then, when they got to Friden, it was like he had nothing to say. Ljunggren wasn’t the world’s most talkative person, sure—still, they usually conversed at their own pace, exchanged a few words. Analyzed the day. Complained about their bosses, worthless colleagues. Evaluated the women in the place. But yesterday, Ljunggren’d seemed scattered. Flitted between topics and kept bringing up the same thing over and over: the way Thomas’d dealt with the drunk boxer. And all of that could’ve been normal, except for his comment after a while, a few minutes before those guys at the next table over started talking to them. As if Ljunggren’d had to force his question out: “Hey Thomas, you’re not mad at me, are you? I mean, I got called to something else, that’s why they sent that chick.” But even that wasn’t strange—of course he felt bad about what happened. But the thing he said after that—after Thomas’d shaken his head and said it wasn’t his responsibility—was all to hell:

“Andrén, now that they’ve started this whole internal investigation you’ll stop digging around in that Hägerström crap, right?”

At first, Thomas hadn’t understood what he meant. Then it became clear what he was implying. His only response was, “I’m still a cop. So I’ll keep doing what cops do.”

Thomas drove across the Central Bridge toward Slussen. Riddarholmen, with all the courthouses, was on his right. Where they claimed that justice was served in Sweden. Lady Justice was blind, they said. It was true, she was blind.

He added up the facts. Someone’d deleted things from his report. Someone’d deleted things from the forensic pathologist’s autopsy report. Adamsson wanted to stop him and Hägerström from taking pictures of the corpse. Then something else hit him: Ljunggren’d called him while he was at the morgue—tried to get him to come on a call, said something about a shoplifter in the Mörby mall. Not only had he asked him to stop the murder investigation, maybe he’d tried to trick him too.

Summation of his analysis: there was only one explanation for all the weirdness piling up in his head. Someone wanted to stop him from continuing his search. That someone might be Ljunggren. But how much power did Jörgen Ljunggren have to make things like that happen? No, it wasn’t Ljunggren. And Adamsson? Maybe. Thomas had to find out more.

But right now, he couldn’t care less who it was. He had to do something on his own. He made a U-turn at Slussen.

Twenty minutes later he got out of the car in front of Danderyd’s morgue. The sky was a clear blue. His nose still hurt like hell. He thought about the smell in the room with the cold chambers. He thought about Hägerström. Suddenly, he changed his mind. Called Hägerström.

He didn’t pick up. Thomas left a message. “Hi there, it’s Andrén. A lot of shit happened today. You might already know about it, but I’ll tell you later. Anyway, I’m going in to see the pathologist right now. Just so you know.”

When he’d hung up, he realized that Hägerström was really the enemy. Being disloyal to police colleagues was what Hägerström’s past life was all about. Those IA rats.

He rang the bell at the welcome desk. An autopsy technician came out. He looked surprised.

“Hi, may I help you?”

“Yes. I was here a few days ago. Andrén, Southern District.”

“Right, now I recognize you.”

Not an unusual reaction from people who’d previously only seen him in uniform. As if he were a completely different person in his civilian clothes. But considering the Adamsson incident, maybe this little autopsy technician ought to have a better memory.

“You’re Christian Nilsson?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

Thomas lowered his voice. Unnecessary to speak too loudly. Nilsson might get stressed out by the thought that someone could come into the waiting room and hear.

“You were present at the autopsy of the corpse that me and my colleague were looking at the last time we were here?”

“I don’t remember exactly, it’s been busy here lately.”

“Okay. Then I can tell you that you were present, the autopsy report says so. The dead man’s face was basically torn off and the guy had no teeth, so we need more input to make a positive ID. Can you tell me something? Was there anything special about the victim’s right arm?”

“As far as I remember, things got a little tumultuous when you were here last. And I can tell you straight away that I don’t remember all the details from that autopsy, unfortunately. But if you want, I can get my report so that you can see what it says in it.”

Thomas considered his options. The autopsy technician seemed cocky, but it wasn’t certain that he was hiding something. Things had gotten pretty weird when Adamsson stormed in. Thomas asked him to get the report. There was always a chance that the track marks were mentioned in that version. He came back after three minutes. Without the report.

“Unfortunately, I can’t give you the report. You’re no longer a part of the investigation, as far as I can tell.”

Thomas thought: If the guy says “as far as” one more time, I’ll crack his skull. Then he said curtly, “Get your boss, Bengt Gantz. Now, please.”

The autopsy technician stared him in the eyes. Turned on his heel and disappeared through the door.

Ten minutes later, a tall, thin man came into the waiting room. The same uniform coat as Nilsson. Thomas wondered why it’d taken so long. The forensic pathologist’d probably been elbow-deep in some corpse, or else he was worried about his major miss in the autopsy report.

Three slow steps. Almost as if he was trying to act dignified.

“Hello. My name is Bengt Gantz.” Slow drawl. “I don’t want to be unpleasant in any way, but we have been informed that you are not a part of the team involved in this preliminary investigation. Therefore, in the present situation, our privacy rules do not permit us to give you access to journal material, reports, or other things of that nature.”

Thomas thought, The doctor dude’s language is nerdier than a pompous defense attorney’s. He tried to calm down.

“I understand. But I just have a very simple question. You seem to have forgotten certain information in the autopsy report. It concerns findings on the victim’s right arm. Do you remember anything in particular about that?”

The forensic pathologist actually looked like he was thinking it over. He closed his eyes. But what came out was all wrong. “As I said, we are unfortunately not able to comment on this case at all. I’m sorry.”

Thomas thought Gantz’s attempt at a smile to smooth things over was the most disingenuous thing he’d ever seen.

“Okay. Then let me try another tactic. I know that the victim had track marks on his right forearm. At least three of them, on the underside of the arm, about six inches from the wrist. My colleague, Hägerström, can also attest to the injection holes being there. I am now giving you a very simple chance to change your autopsy report so that you won’t get slammed with professional misconduct. Grave misconduct, too. What do you say? My suggestion is completely free of charge.”

It worked in a way. But not in the intended way.

The doctor breathed heavily. Lost his formal way of talking.

“No. What is it you don’t understand? My report was completely correct. There were no track marks. No signs of narcotic influence. Nothing like that. And spare me your insinuations that I’m guilty of some kind of professional misconduct.”

Thomas didn’t say anything.

“I am going to have to ask you to leave now. This is becoming highly unpleasant.”

All the warning bells were ringing. All the vibes were pointing to the same thing. More than ten years on the streets made him good at picking up on the signals when something wasn’t right. To read the atmosphere when someone pulled a fast one. The small signs that someone was lying. The movement of the eyes, the sweat on the forehead, the exaggerated emotional outbursts.

Gantz hadn’t shown a single physical sign of genuine agitation.

It was crystal clear: the doctor jerk was lying about something.

Thomas went out to his Cadillac as soon as he got home. Rolled into his own world. Tried to shut the thoughts out. There was too much shit.

But maybe that’s how it’d always been—full of shit, that is. Just that sometimes the shit all happened in one and the same month.

His thoughts drifted toward the investigation. Hägerström’d asked the National Laboratory of Forensic Science to try to decipher the last digit in the telephone number. Meanwhile, he’d looked up lists he’d gotten from the phone carriers Telenor and Telia for the two prepaid plans. Thomas hadn’t been able to resist, even though Hägerström was the enemy—he’d called him. Hägerström’d figured out who the Telenor card belonged to—Hanna Barani, nineteen years old, from Huddinge. The girl said she’d been at a graduation party on June 2, and that agreed with the coordinates. She’d been moving between a cell phone tower in Huddinge and one on Södermalm. Hägerström talked to the girl anyway, even though there was nothing that suggested she had anything to do with it.

But the Telia plan remained. Only three calls made, which was a strangely small number. Hägerström’d looked up the three numbers. They belonged to Frida Olsson, Ricardo’s Car Service, and Claes Rantzell.

He called them. Got ahold of Frida Olsson and the car guy. Neither of them had any idea who the prepaid number might belong to. Hägerström couldn’t get ahold of Claes Rantzell. They were back to square one.

Thomas tried to focus on the car. Toyed with the suspension. It had to be super comfortable, smoother driving than all the Citroëns in the world. But at the same time it had to exude vitality—couldn’t look like some fucking go-cart.

It worked. All the thoughts about the bullshit released their grip on him. He devoted his energy to the car.

Åsa came home two hours later. Went right into the kitchen. Started cooking. Thomas knew: he had to tell her soon. They ate while she talked about their garden and work colleagues who didn’t treat each other with respect. Then she went into their big project: adoption. They’d been in touch with an agency. Soon they were going to get a home inspection. Maybe, maybe joy would be theirs within a few months. Thomas couldn’t concentrate. He should—the adoption issue was important. Åsa was actually important too, though he often forgot that. But the only thing he was thinking about: why Hägerström didn’t call him back.

After dinner, they watched a movie together. Executive Protection, a Swedish flick. Åsa saw several movies a week so she had to compromise to lure him to the TV couch. The cop scenes were worthless. But the scenes with weapons were believable enough. For once, they seemed to get that a seasoned cop never shoots with a straight arm. The recoil is all wrong—you’ll give yourself a tennis elbow.

They went to bed early. It was only eleven o’clock. She rolled close to him. Åsa: who used to wake such feelings of lust in him. Now they could hardly carry on a conversation, they didn’t laugh together the way they used to, they didn’t have a normal sex life—he just wasn’t turned on anymore.

“I’m tired tonight. Sorry.”

Her sigh was deep. She knew that he knew how disappointed she was. It just made it worse.

They turned the lights out.

He couldn’t sleep. Thought everything through once more. It was too late to go out to the car; the tinkering was never good when he was too tired.

The room wasn’t completely dark. Light seeped through under the curtains. He opened his eyes. Could make out the chair where he always piled his clothes. Åsa’s face. He stared up at the ceiling. Tried to calm down.

The phone rang. A quick glance at the clock on the radio. Two-thirty. Who the hell was calling at this time? Thomas fumbled for the phone.

A calm male voice said, “Is this Thomas Andrén?”

Thomas didn’t recognize the voice. Åsa moved next to him.

“Yes,” he responded quietly.

“Go to the window.”

Thomas got up. He was dressed only in his boxers. Peeked through the curtain. The sky was brightening.

“I’m standing by the streetlamp across from your house. I’m here all the time. Even when Åsa is home alone.”

“What the hell do you want?”

Thomas saw a man in dark clothes on the other side of the street, about twenty yards away. It had to be him.

“Stop poking around in things that don’t concern you.”

“What? Who are you?”

“Stop poking around in what you found in Axelsberg.”

“Who are you?”

The silence on the line sliced through his ear.

Thomas looked over at the pile of clothes on the chair again. Was his service weapon there?

Then he looked out again. The man by the streetlamp was gone.

He knew there was no point in going out looking for him.

He knew he couldn’t leave Åsa alone right now.

19

Afterward, Mahmud felt more naïve than a two-year-old.

They’d met up at the McDonald’s in Sergelgången. Mahmud usually dug downtown. Remembered the years in junior high when him and his buds’d hung out there more than at home. The raids between the department stores: Åhléns, Intersport, and PUB. Pit stop at Mickey D’s to fuel up before they moved on to Kungsgatan. Down toward Stureplan. Scared the brat kids—stole their Canada Goose jackets, swiped their cell phones, boosted easy money. Carefree moments. They were kings then. When the tight-pants prepsters feared them. Back when the pen felt farther away than, like, Sundsvall up in the north.

But now, on his way to see Gürhan’s Born to Be Hated boys, he felt nauseous. Like a nasty punch to his stomach. Maybe an omen.

The cell phones, the video game, the bus passes, and the DVD films’d been sold at majorly discounted prices. Inshallah—he thanked the God he didn’t believe in for video game markets and Babak’s dad’s hole in the wall. Even so—the gear didn’t get him far. Nine G’s total. Fuck. Really couldn’t ask Abu about this. If only he’d had something to sell he would’ve: Dbols, hash, anything—even horse. But he didn’t have anything left: had even flipped his gym membership card, with nine months left on it, for one G. Lugged his TV and DVD player to Babak’s dad’s store. Pulled in another four thousand. Finally, violated his honor: pawned his necklace—it’d belonged to his mother. Made him two G’s. If he couldn’t buy it back his life wasn’t worth piss.

Still, there were four G’s missing. Whatever. He couldn’t get more paper now and time was running out like water in the desert. They just had to accept it.

He stepped inside. Burger smell. Families with kids. Blattes behind the counter—half were probably engineers and the rest doctors. Sven Sweden would rather have them flipping burgers than using their real skills.

Daniel was sitting in the back of the place. Shoving food all over his face like a pig. Next to him: the two other blattes Mahmud’d seen at Hell’s Kitchen.

Daniel looked at him. “Hey, habibi, you don’t gotta look like I popped your sister’s cherry.”

Mahmud sat down.

“Funny.”

Daniel was taking big nasty bites out of a Big Mac.

Mahmud’s left leg started shaking uncontrollably under the table. He hoped no one saw. Focused—maintained his dignity. Would never let himself be humiliated in front of them again.

Daniel stared.

“Funny? Why aren’t you laughing, if you think it’s so funny?”

Mahmud didn’t have an answer.

They ignored him. Daniel kept buzzing with the other two dudes. In the middle of the chatter, he handed Mahmud an empty McDonald’s bag. Nodded. Gestured with his hand: put it under the table.

Mahmud fumbled with his hand in his inside pocket. Quickly shoved the bills in under the table and into the bag.

Daniel accepted the bag with a grin wider than the Joker’s in the Batman movies. Kept talking to the gorillas. Down with his hand under the table. A quick glance to check the bills’ denomination. Then—a classic: don’t look down again, count under the table while you keep conversing. Clean.

It took awhile. Daniel looked questioningly at him.

Mahmud leaned over.

“It’s only ninety-six. I couldn’t get more.”

Daniel hissed, “You cunt. Gürhan said one hundred. Take your dirty cash back. Next week, we want two hundred. No joke.”

The bag was back on the table again.

Daniel and the other two got up. Walked out.

The dad with his kids at the table next to theirs was staring.

Mahmud was left alone. Stared back.

“What the fuck you looking at, motherfucker?”

That night: slumped down in the leather couch at Babak’s place. Tried to tone the whole thing down. Babak was wondering: “Are they loco, or what? You give ’em ninety-six in two weeks and they’re not happy. What they got on you, man?”

Mahmud acted unperturbed. Almost grinned.

“Eh, you know. I don’t wanna get in trouble. You got weed, or what?”

Inside: he knew exactly what they had on him. They were ready to pop him at any time. And they’d seen him piss himself. All he wanted now was to forget the whole thing.

They watched a movie: Scarface, probably for the twentieth time. Mahmud’s dream: to be as crazy as Tony Montana. “You wanna play rough? Oookey.” Bam, bam, bam.

Babak kept talking about how sweet they’d been the other night.

“We juxed those little fags in their own crib. They just sat there. Didja see that bitch who was like in a trance or somethin’? And Simon, he’s never gonna mess with me again.”

Mahmud wanted to go home.

On the way. Took the train one stop to Fittja. His dad called his cell. Mahmud didn’t pick up. Didn’t have the energy to talk to him right then. Dad called again. Mahmud hit silent. Let all the signals go through without picking up. He was seeing him in fifteen minutes, anyway.

Across from him: a bleached blonde with long-ass nails. Mahmud liked the look: it was kinky somehow. He thought about his sister. She’d lent him five thousand. They mostly saw each other at Friday dinners at Dad’s house and with his little sister, Jivan, once every three months or something. After Beshar’d been to the mosque.

Jamila’s dude’d done time, too. At Österåker, for possession. Mahmud’d never liked him. He wasn’t good to Jamila. Some girls always seemed attracted to assholes, and Jamila was a girl like that. Something weird’d happened a few days ago: one of Jamila’s neighbors’d apparently stormed in during an argument. Beat her guy like he was a snotty schoolkid. And Jamila’s guy wasn’t the kind who usually took shit. Mahmud tried to understand what’d happened, asked Jamila for details. She just shook her head, didn’t want to talk more about it. “He knows Arabic,” she said. Maybe there were Svens with honor after all?

Mahmud was standing outside his front door. Dad opened it before he’d even rung the doorbell. Was he looking through the peephole, or what?

Mahmud could see right away: something was wrong. Dad in tears. Nervous. Scared. When he saw Mahmud he threw his arms around him. Cried. Howled.

“They can never take you away from me.”

Mahmud led him into the living room. Sat him down on the couch. Got him a cup of tea with mint leaves. Stroked his cheek. Held him tight. Like Abu’d done for Mahmud so many times before. Calmed him. Hugged him.

Dad told his story. With pauses. Disjointed. Broken.

Finally, Mahmud understood what’d happened.

They’d been there.

Three guys. Dad’d opened the door. They’d handed him a plastic bag. And they’d told him something like, “Your son’s in the shit. If he messes with us, we’ll crush you.”

In the bag: the head of a pig.

For his dad. A religious man.

Impossible to fall asleep. Mahmud was twisting and turning six million times. A single thought in his head: he had to find Wisam Jibril.

He opened his eyes. Stood in front of the window. Looked out at the street through the curtains. Remembered his first showdowns with spitballs when he was seven years old. Him, Babak, and another blatte soon figured out that spitballs were for wusses. Moved on to slingshots, blowguns, and throwing stars. Once, Babak accidentally blew a staple that hit a girl in his class in the eye. The chick lost sight in her left eye. The racist teachers put Babak in special ed.

It was two o’clock. The sky would brighten soon.

This wasn’t working. He had to do something.

An hour later, he was walking down Tegnérgatan. Hadn’t borrowed a car. Had ridden the night bus into the city, jazzed like a speed junkie. Was going to wake up John Ballénius—was gonna whip that fucker until he told him where he could find Jibril.

The entrance to the building was locked. Of course. Even though nothing dangerous happened downtown, all the Svens had to have key codes on their buildings. Why were they so fucking scared of everything?

He walked back and forth on the street for a while. Two people were winding their way home. He let them pass. Picked up a loose cobblestone. Like working out at Fitness Center. Dragged it over to the building’s entrance. Threw it through the glass. Damn, the crash was loud. Hoped he only woke up half the building. He reached his hand in, opened the door.

Walked up to Ballénius’s door. Rang the doorbell. Nothing happened. The old guy was obviously sleeping.

Rang the doorbell again. Silence. No rattling sound from a door chain. No one shuffling around in there.

Rang the bell for a third time. For a long time.

Totally dead.

Cunt Ballénius didn’t seem to be home.

Mahmud considered: pros versus cons. He could try to break in. See if he could find anything that might lead him to Jibril. On the other hand: if the Ballénius fucker was out at a bar and was planning on coming home soon, he’d see that his apartment had been broken in to. Could call the cops, who’d be there in two minutes.

That wouldn’t work. The risk of tripping up was too big.

But his next idea was better: the other front man never seemed to be home. Mahmud’d waited outside his house for almost a day and a half. Even paid some kids to ring the guy’s doorbell once an hour. Nada.

Sweet. He could do that. Break into Rantzell’s house. Pocket some leads.

This was the first time since they’d crashed the party that he’d felt okay. The king was on the move again. The Yugos’ new darling would make his grand entrance. He called for a cab—worth spending some of his hard-gathered stash. Had it drive him back to Fittja. Down in the basement. Got his crowbar. Back to Elsa Brändströms Street in the same cab. Wham-bam.

The time: four-thirty. It was light out. Desolate. He tested the door to the building. It was open. What luck. Shouldn’t they be more scared about break-ins here in the crap suburbs than downtown on Tegnérgatan?

It said Rantzell on a paper slip on a door. Mahmud peeked in through the mail slot. Saw a hall. Should he ring the doorbell? No, others in the building might hear. Might get suspicious. He picked up the crowbar. Ran his hand along the door to find a good place to shove it in. The door moved. It was open. Weirdish.

Was Claes Rantzell at home? Didn’t he lock the door? Mahmud slid into the apartment.

Closed the door quickly behind him. Inside: the stench swept over him. Rotten meat. Shit. Junkie crash-pad fumes. He almost threw up. Pulled his sweatshirt up over his nose. Tried to breathe through his mouth. Who lived like this?

Enough light in the apartment so that he didn’t have to flip any switches. He called out. Not a sound in response.

In the hall: a couple of worn-out black shoes and two jackets. Flyers and mail on the floor. Mahmud remembered not to touch anything with his fingers. To the right was a kitchen, straight ahead was a living room, to the left a bedroom.

First the kitchen. Unwashed plates and cutlery, the sink brown with dirt. A packet of Jozo salt was standing next to an empty milk carton. The kitchen table was covered in bags, ravioli cans, beer bottles, and glasses. On the floor: old cigarette cartons, paper, a carpet that was so dirty that he couldn’t tell what color it really was. What kind of a pigsty was this, anyway? Dig the irony: the guy’s company was listed as the owner of a Bentley. Mahmud opened the cupboards. Almost empty, except for a few glasses and two pots.

Then the living room: a leather couch and a leather armchair. Kind of like Babak’s place. Two paintings on the wall. One was of a shorthaired boy with a tear in his eye. The other looked more like a photo: some army general or something. A couple of shelves filled with old encyclopedias, a dozen paperbacks, and velvet cushions with lots of medals pinned on them. Ugly. A TV, a VHS player, and a dried-up cactus in the window. The living room gave Claes Rantzell away: four or five beer bottles, two wine bottles, half a bottle of whiskey, a handle of vodka. The guy was a boozehound.

Mahmud didn’t touch the shit. There wasn’t time. He wanted to get out of there quick. Pulled his sweatshirt sleeves down over his hands. Tore the books out of the bookshelf just to take a quick look. Nothing hidden there.

Finally, the bedroom. Double bed. The junkie seemed to live alone—only one pillow. Dirty. Stained comforter. Yellowish sheets. An oriental rug on the floor that had to be fake. A mirror on the ceiling. Porn magazines open on the nightstand: a chick blowing one guy, jerking off another, and getting pissed on by a third. Mahmud approached the closet. There had to be something interesting somewhere. Inside: jeans, shirts, drawers with underwear and socks. A wooden box. He opened it.

Freakshow. Whose house’d he come to, the chairman of the Sodomite Association? Chock-full of sex toys. Dildos—veiny super cocks—Anal Intruder, a strap-on, a leather leash, a riding whip, a couple of thin chains, a leather mask with a zipper over the mouth, a stud choker. Some latex armor, handcuffs, a blindfold, anal beads, lubricant, a couple bottles of poppers, all kinds of oils.

Mahmud: porn watcher, pious Muslim, pornographer. Papa’s boy. Thought, This is sick.

Then he grinned. Sven men are losers.

He continued to tear through the closet. Threw out old shoes, T-shirts, bags, LP records. Finally—maybe something of value. Farthest in, attached to the wall: a small locked key cabinet. He applied the crowbar. Pulled. The cabinet cracked open. Inside: small keys that looked like bike keys. And two bigger keys. Looked like they went to padlocks.

He was feeling stressed. Even if he hadn’t seen Rantzell for a few days and the guy didn’t pick up his phone, he could come home at any moment. He grabbed the larger keys.

Stopped for a second in the hallway. What was he going to do now? Maybe the keys went somewhere. But where? He looked at them again. He recognized them. Assa Abloy. Tri-circle. Like the ones to the padlock on his locker at the gym. Like to the basement storage locker at Dad’s house. A little idea worth testing. He left the apartment.

Took the stairs up. There was no attic. Took the stairs down. The basement storage lockers were a mess. Behind the wooden boards and bars: a bunch of Suedi gear. Winter jackets, skis, suitcases, books, and boxes. Why didn’t they just toss this shit? Did they think they were gonna make big bucks at the Skärholmen flea market, or what?

He tried out the keys in every lock. Thoughts of Wisam Jibril were mixed with thoughts of his father. Images of Gürhan’s monster grin mixed with the heads of pigs. He felt manic. The keys just had to fit somewhere.

He tried lock after lock. After at least ten failures: one of the keys fit into a storage locker. It was half-empty in there. A rolled-up carpet, a couple of boxes. Plates in one and porn magazines in the other.

He kept trying the other key in different locks. The other one fit in the lock of the next storage locker over. He thought, Rantzell pulled an old trick—steal someone else’s empty storage locker. Mahmud went in. Lots of bags on the floor. Fuck. He looked in one of them: documents. Numbers, names of companies, letters from the tax authorities. He didn’t have the energy to keep digging. Could it be valuable? He didn’t have the energy to think. Grabbed two bags. Walked up. Out.

The morning sun was glowing beautifully on the street.

Mahmud thought, Maybe I’m back on track.

Sunday. His cell phone clock showed one o’clock. Sweet, he’d slept for six hours. Then he remembered how they’d treated his father. And that Dad hadn’t woken him up all morning. An angel, as usual.

He thought about the night; it was hazy in his memory. What’d he achieved? A couple of bags with documents. Congrats, Twiggy. What crap.

Beshar was sitting in the kitchen. Had his usual Middle Eastern coffee with five sugar cubes in it. Murky as a mud puddle. Big, dark eyes. In Arabic, “How did you sleep?”

Mahmud hugged him.

“Abu, how did you sleep? It’ll be okay. No one’s gonna hurt us. I promise. Where’s Jivan?”

Beshar rapped the table with his knuckles. “She’s at a friend’s house. Inshallah.”

Mahmud got some juice from the fridge. A cooked chicken breast.

Dad smiled. “I know you work out, but is that really a good breakfast?”

Mahmud grinned back. His dad would never understand what it meant to build for real. Protein-rich food without an ounce of fat didn’t even figure in his world.

They sat in silence.

Beams of sun lit up the kitchen table.

Mahmud wondered what kind of person his dad could’ve been if they’d stayed in Iraq. A great man.

Then: the doorbell rang.

Mahmud saw the panic in Dad’s eyes.

His entire body was racked with anxiety. Mahmud went into the bedroom. Got an old baseball bat. Brass knuckles in his pocket.

Looked out through the peephole. A dark guy that he didn’t recognize.

The bell rang again.

Dad positioned himself behind Mahmud. Before he opened the door, he said to Beshar. “Abu, would you please go into the kitchen?”

Ready as hell. Just so much as a twitch from the guy outside and he was gonna crack his skull like an egg.

He opened the door.

The guy outside extended his hand. “Salaam alaikum.”

Mahmud didn’t understand.

“Don’t you recognize me? We went to school together. Wisam Jibril. I heard you’ve been looking for me.”

Beshar laughed in the background.

“Wisam, it’s been ages. Welcome!”

20

Today, Niklas felt safer on his run. He’d bought two pairs of shin guards, the kind made for soccer players. Strapped them to his calves. To reduce the risk of rodent bites.

He thought about his nightmares. Thought about Claes, who was dead. About his mom.

He thought about his visit to the open adult psychiatric clinic in Skärholmen. Mom’d forced him to go.

“You’re always complaining about how you can’t sleep, that you have nightmares,” she said in an accusatory tone. “Shouldn’t you get some help?”

She kept nagging, even though Niklas hadn’t even told her what the dreams were really about. He didn’t need that kind of help, head doctors weren’t his thing—but he did need sleeping pills. The nights were crap. Maybe he should follow Mom’s advice after all.

He went to the clinic’s drop-in hours in the middle of the day. Thought there’d be fewer people at that time, the shortest wait. That was a mistake—the waiting room was full. Another sign that something wasn’t right in this country. Niklas felt like turning back at the door. He wasn’t a weak person who needed others. He was a war machine. People like him didn’t go to shrinks. Still, he stayed. Mostly because he wanted to get a prescription for the pills as soon as possible. But also: to be spared Mom’s pestering.

The armchair that the doctor offered Niklas was pretty comfortable. He’d expected some stiff Windsor chair, but this felt nice. The psychologist, the psychiatrist, the doctor—or whatever her formal title was—scooted her armchair closer and took her glasses off.

“So, welcome. My name is Helena Hallström and I’m a psychiatrist here at the clinic. And you are Niklas Brogren. Have you been to see us before?”

“No, never.”

He checked her out. Maybe ten years older than he was. Dark hair in a ponytail. A searching gaze. Hands in her lap. He wondered what her family life was like. She was in charge here, that much was clear. But at home?

“So, I’ll tell you a little bit about what we do here. I don’t know anything about why you’re here, but our goal is to work to help you, based on a mutual evaluation of your needs. All to help you achieve an increased quality of life. We have a broad and varied assortment of treatments, and we’ll see what is best for you. Maybe pharmacological or psychosocial efforts. Or both. And in a lot of cases, nothing is needed.”

Niklas didn’t even have the energy to try to listen to what she was saying.

“So, Niklas, why are you here today?”

“I can’t sleep. So I thought maybe you could help me with sleeping pills.”

Helena put her glasses back on. Gave him that searching gaze.

“In what way can’t you sleep?”

“I have a hard time falling asleep and I wake up several times during the night.”

“Okay, and why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know. I just think about a lot of stuff and then I have weird dreams, too.”

“And what is it you think about?”

Niklas hadn’t come here to talk about his thoughts or his nightmares. Maybe he’d been naïve, he realized now. At the same time, he really wanted to get a prescription for those pills.

“I think about all kinds of things.”

“Like what, for example?” Helena smiled. Niklas liked her. She seemed to care. Not a soldier like him, but maybe she was still a person who’d understood society’s mistakes.

“I think a lot about the war. And about the war here at home that no one is doing anything about.”

“I’m not quite following. Could you explain a little more, perhaps?”

“I’ve been in the military for many years. In active combat, so to speak. And I have a lot of memories from that. They bother me sometimes. I know you have to let that shit go and move on, and that’s what I’m doing, so it’s fine. But since I got back home, I’ve come to understand that there’s a war going on in Sweden, too.”

She wrote something down.

“Did you experience violence in the military?”

“You can say that.”

“Maybe those memories are troubling you?”

“Yeah, but the war bothers me more, the war against all of you.”

“Against us? How do you mean?”

“Against you women. You’re attacked on a daily basis. You’re subjected to attacks, offensives. I’ve seen it. It happens all the time, on the streets, in the workplace, at home in the apartments. And you don’t do anything about it. But you’re the weaker party so maybe that’s not so strange. But society doesn’t do shit, either. I often imagine what I could do.”

“And what is it you imagine?”

“I think and dream, both. There are a lot of methods and I used a couple of them the other night. I heard noises from the neighbors. Don’t forget that I’m an expert at this.”

She nodded faintly. “Niklas, there are different terms within psychiatry.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There are different names for different types of thoughts. Sometimes we talk about delusions. Delusions can be positive symptoms for, for instance, psychoses. There are different types of thoughts like that, but all are more or less incompatible with your immediate surroundings. Your perception of reality becomes skewed. It can cause sleeplessness, but also feelings of anxiety. Sometimes people who have been subjected to trauma or where there are other underlying reasons may experience these kinds of symptoms.”

“What?”

“I think it may be a good idea for you to come back here at a regular time, not during our drop-in hours. To talk some more about the thoughts you’ve been having.”

This was starting to go too far. He just wanted the pills. Helena could talk about whatever delusions she wanted. Niklas saw the rats. He saw the women. He’d heard what that cop’d said about society not giving a damn. It wasn’t a lie—the police officer’d said so himself. It wasn’t some unrealistic perception of reality, not symptomatic of anything but Sweden’s slow rot.

“Yes, maybe, but do you think you could give me a prescription for sleeping pills?”

“Unfortunately, I can’t do that at this time. But I really recommend that you book a time with us. I’m sure we can help you.”

“I don’t feel like I’ve made myself understood. But that’s okay. I can take care of myself and I think it’s time for me to go. I can work on my sleeping problems on my own.”

He got up. Extended his hand.

Helena got up as well. “I think that sounds like a good idea.”

They shook hands. She said, “But know that we are always here in case you need to discuss your thoughts again. Would you like to book a time for another appointment?”

“No, that’s okay. Thank you for your time.”

He left. Was not planning on going back.

Later, he thought about the guy who’d come by to thank him the day before yesterday: Mahmud. Big dude. Wide as a Hummer. Head that somehow continued into a neck that was just as wide—veins like worms along his neck. His face was square, hair so black it almost looked dark blue. Probably too many Dbols and protein shakes. But the guy was genuinely grateful. Apparently the girl who lived next door to Niklas was his sister. The dude rang his doorbell at eleven-thirty at night. Niklas didn’t mind that it was so late, but it was still suspicious. He peered out through the peephole. Prepared himself for the worst—that the neighbor’s boyfriend’d brought his buddies over for payback. Every muscle tensed as he unlocked the door. The knife in one hand.

But when he opened the door, he was faced with a box of chocolates that was being offered to him. Mahmud’s words in Arabic: “I want to thank you. You’ve given my sister hope back. More people should do as you did.”

Niklas accepted the gift.

“Call me if you ever need anything. My name is Mahmud. My sister has my number. I can take care of most things.”

That was it. Niklas hardly had time to react. Mahmud walked back down the stairs. The front door slammed shut.

Niklas thought about what he was going to do later that day. Visit a women’s shelter—Safe Haven. He’d read an article about it in Metro yesterday:

It was shocking. Everyone failed women. Shuffled them around like cattle. It couldn’t be tolerated.

Maybe this could be his thing: he was planning to get in touch with them to offer his services. Safe Haven ought to be interested, considering the current situation. Protection. Intervention. Security. Just like at the private security company where he’d applied for a job.

On the subway on his way into the city. He was freshly showered. Felt clean.

Mom’d called him earlier today. But it was sick—she was totally crushed because of the Claes thing. Wouldn’t stop talking about telling the police. But Niklas knew better. If they ratted to the police, it could all be game over.

She asked him straight out: “Niklas, why is it so important to you that we not tell anyone?”

He tried to explain. At the same time, he didn’t want to make her upset. Responded in a calm voice, “Mom, you have to understand. I don’t want the police getting suspicious and starting to dig into my past. I’ve got a whole bunch of money from before that I’m sure the tax authorities would be interested in, too. It’s unnecessary. Don’t you think?”

He hoped she would understand.

Niklas closed his eyes. Tried to forget the images from his nightmares. The blood on his hands. The way Claes looked when Niklas was young. The world was sick. There was no point in playing along. Someone had to break the silence. Like the cop he’d met at Friden’d said, “This is society’s demise we’re talking about.” Despite that: the logic was disturbed by the fact that his mom was crushed. It was a beautiful thing that Claes was gone. A heroic deed that ought to be celebrated. But she didn’t understand this. She, the one for whom the deed was done. She, who gained from it more than anyone else. She should say thank you, like that Mahmud guy.

The train was pounding out a sort of beat in his head. He tried to forget about his mom. Force himself to think about something else. His own problems. The job search that wasn’t leading anywhere. His resources that wouldn’t last forever. Curse the fact that he’d thought he could double his little fortune on the gambling floor—right before he came home to Sweden he’d done a turn in Macao. Naïve, foolish, risky. But maybe it wasn’t so strange, considering all the success stories he’d heard Collin and the others tell. Everyone seemed able to bring it in. Except for Niklas, as it turned out. Half of his assets’d been lost before he could rein himself in.

Niklas opened his eyes. It was almost time to get off. Mariatorget’s subway platform was rolling away outside the window. He eyed the Åhléns CD ads on the train car. Thought, Certain things in life never change. The clarity of the starry night sky in the desert, Americans’ difficulty learning foreign languages, and Åhléns CD ads on the Stockholm subway. He grinned. It was nice when things remained the same. Except for one thing: some men’s attitude toward women. He couldn’t drop that shit. Men like that were rats.

He got off at Slussen. Checked the address one more time on the slip of paper he had in his back pocket—5 Svartensgatan. Walked along Götgatan. It had been remade into a pedestrian street. Population: a mix of scenesters in tight jeans, Converse sneakers, sweatshirts, and Palestinian scarves, and trendy families with kids and three-wheeled strollers—the dads sporting thick-rimmed glasses and carefully cropped stubble. Niklas’d been struck by the phenomenon before: in Sweden, young hipsters wore the keffiyeh as if it were something cool, just another piece of clothing. For Niklas, it was just as bizarre as if people ran around in jellabiya and a full beard.

Summer was in high gear. Niklas felt at home. Put his sunglasses on. Thought about all the coma-like hours he’d spent on guard duty. In the heat. Always a light sand wind that hit like a gust against your cheeks and forehead.

He took a left. Up a hill. Svartensgatan. Cobblestones. Old-fashioned. Number five: from the outside, it looked like an old church. No windows above the entrance, but higher up—large clerestory windows that must illuminate a huge room inside. A small plaque next to the door: Safe Haven. A heart, the female symbol, a house. Nice. A small camera lens behind a Plexiglas bubble above the buzzer.

He buzzed.

A woman’s voice: “Hi, may I help you?”

Niklas cleared his throat.

“Yes, my name is Niklas Brogren and I would like to discuss how I may be of help to Safe Haven.”

The woman’s voice was quiet for a brief second. Niklas expected to hear a click from the door’s lock.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t allow any men in here. But we are grateful for all the help we can get in other ways. You can donate money to us. Or call us at zero six forty-four zero nine twenty-five. We’re open weekdays from nine to five.”

Silence. Had she hung up on him? He gave it a try anyway. As humbly as he could.

“I understand. But I think you need to meet with me in order to understand. I have quite a lot to contribute.” Niklas took a deep breath. Could he open up? Yes, he wanted to. “I grew up with a mother who was a victim of domestic abuse.”

The woman on the other side of the camera was still there. He could hear her breathing. Finally, she said, “Oh, I understand. Your mother can call us too. At the same number. We have a website, too. But unfortunately I can’t let you in. Our rules are pretty strict out of courtesy for the women we help here.”

Niklas looked into the camera. This was not what he had expected. All those nights he’d fallen asleep to Mom’s whimpers. All he’d been doing lately on behalf of abused women. And now—they refused to let him in. What the fuck was this?

“Wait, come on. Let me in. Please.” He grabbed hold of the door handle. Pulled. It was a big door.

“I’m sorry. I’m going to turn the speaker system off soon. The women that we help have often been subjected to such traumatic experiences that they don’t even want men in their surroundings. We have to respect that, and that goes for you too. I’m turning this off. Bye-bye.”

There was a crackle from the speaker. Niklas pressed the buzzer down again even though he knew it was pointless. Goddammit.

What was he supposed to do now?

He took a few steps out onto Svartensgatan. Looked up at the big windows. Maybe the buzzer woman could see him. Understand that he just meant well. He thought about his conversation with the cop the other night. The cops didn’t do jack shit. Safe Haven apparently didn’t do jack shit either. No one gave a damn. No one did jack shit. Everyone just capitulated to the power of violence.

21

Thomas was at home all afternoon, doing nothing. Then he tried to work out a little. Boring. Gray feel to the house. Took a cold shower. Not even that gave him a kick, which it usually did. He ran his fingers over his nose. It’d healed okay.

He went down to the grocery store. Bought two car magazines. Boring, too. Gathered his courage. Called Åsa. Told her about the preliminary investigation that’d been initiated against him and the consequences it could have on his job.

She was worried. Very, very worried.

“But Thomas, nothing can happen if you get cleared, right?”

“Unfortunately things can happen anyway; they might decide to transfer me.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound too bad.”

“I might lose my job, too.”

“But you’ve paid unemployment insurance this past year, right?”

Of course he hadn’t. Unemployment insurance was for parasites. He tried his best to calm her.

It was all so damned terrible.

At one o’clock, a guy came to install an alarm system in the house. Åsa’d wondered about that too, but he’d explained that break-ins were on the rise in the area.

An hour later: finally—he rolled into the dark under the Cadillac. The beam of light from his headlamp played across the underside of the car. It was cleaner than snow. He waited to pick up his tools. Lay still for a moment. Collected his anxieties like cogs in a row.

The man who’d stood outside his window, Ljunggren’s strange behavior, the risk of being fired. The forensic pathologist who insisted that a report that was fucked all to hell was correct. Bullshit, all of it.

He thought about the murder investigation. The few cell-phone numbers that’d been called from the prepaid card didn’t lead anywhere. Thomas’s conversation with the forensic pathologist yielded nothing. But it’d gotten a reaction—the man outside his house. Hägerström still seemed to think they had something to go on, but Thomas didn’t see what. Maybe the lab’s further analysis would yield something—fabric fibers, hairs, skin cells—but the odds were low. The prepaid card number ought to lead somewhere. The drunks and junkies always used prepaid cards. Prepaid cards were the street equivalent of pin codes. If you wanted to play safe, you never got a registered phone plan.

Then he thought of something. Crazy that he and Hägerström hadn’t thought of it before. Rule on the street: switch out your prepaid card as often as possible and switch out your phone as often as possible. Why would you switch out your phone if you used a prepaid card, anyway? The answer filled his head right away—because everyone knew that a phone’s serial number could be tracked even to a prepaid card. In other words: every phone’s individual so-called IMEI number showed up in the plan. The IMEI number was always sent to the carrier you used for every phone call that was made. He didn’t know what the acronym IMEI stood for, but one thing was certain—the hunt wasn’t over yet.

He rolled out from under the car. Stood up in the garage. Took off the headlamp. Stretched. Felt like he’d gotten up after an entire morning lazing around in bed. A new chance. A new day.

The thought was so clear. Life boils down to a few moments and this was one of them. A crossroads. He could choose. Either he had a seat on the bench, let some clowny detectives crush him. Let the rabble win. Or else he and Hägerström solved this thing, even if he risked losing his job doing it, even if Hägerström was a quisling. They wouldn’t walk all over him.

He called Åsa again, asked when she was coming home. She would be home in an hour. Didn’t dare call Hägerström from the landline or his cell phone. He considered going to police headquarters at Kronoberg to get ahold of him personally. But that wasn’t a good idea—the person or persons who were monitoring him didn’t need to know what was on his mind right now.

Thomas felt too worked up to roll back under the car again. He sat down in an armchair in the living room and waited. He could hear birdsong outside. It was two-thirty. Summer was in full swing. The neighborhood was silent except for a car or two that was shuttling home grocery bags and kids from soccer practice.

He turned on the stereo. The Boss, rocking.

In Thomas’s mind the step was already taken. Maybe he would lose his job. Maybe worse things would happen. But this was one of those moments. When life takes a turn.

22

Mahmud and Wisam Jibril were sitting together with Beshar in the kitchen. Unlikely. Unbelievable. Totally unreal. Dad was serving coffee, wanted to hear what Wisam was up to these days. The blatte gave a sketchy answer. “I work with venture capital, invest in different companies. I buy all or part of the stock and try to redesign a little.”

Mahmud smiled. His dad probably understood Wisam’s so-called business about as much as he understood Swedish stand-up comedians on TV—but he loved it when boys from the block became successful the honest way. Too bad it was a lie.

Dad prattled on. Buzzed about old memories. About excursions to the Alby public pool and the Malmsjön lake near Södertälje, a music festival with the Caravan society, Ramadan nights in the Muslim Cultural Center. Everything used to be better. Before. Before his wife, Mahmud’s mom, died. Wisam’s parents’d gone back to the home country. “Maybe we should all do that,” Beshar said.

Wisam nodded along. Probably to be nice to Dad. Mahmud didn’t remember shit. But it was okay—this way he didn’t have to come up with what to tell Wisam.

After twenty minutes, Mahmud said, “Abu, is it okay if you let us talk alone for a minute? I have to discuss some business with Wisam.”

Dad told him to calm down. Remained seated for another five minutes. Babbling.

When Dad’d settled down in front of the TV in the living room, Mahmud closed the door.

“Your dad is awesome.”

“Absolutely. We’re a small family, as you know.”

“How are your sisters doing?”

“Jamila and Jivan are good. Jamila’s dude just caged out from the pen. He’s an asshole.”

“Why?”

“He beats her.”

“Fuck that, man, but you know how some people are. They have to do that shit, or whatever. But you know what happens with people like that on the inside.”

“I know. I did time, too.”

“I know. How long was your stint? And what was it you didn’t do?”

Mahmud laughed.

“Six months. And I hadn’t sold testosterone ampoules. But it’s enough for a blatte to have broad shoulders to get nailed for shit like that.”

Wisam grinned back. A couple seconds of silence. Mahmud eyed Wisam’s watch: a Breitling.

“It’s gotta be ten years since we were in school together. What do you live on now?”

“Life is so sweet I can taste it, you feel me? I do business, like I told your dad. Venture capital, sort of. I venture my money, but I can get fat capital back.” He laughed at his own joke.

Mahmud laughed along. Acted all nice. Wanted the W-blatte to feel trust.

Wisam stopped himself in the middle of his laugh. “But my money is for a good cause. I donate to the Fight.”

“The fight?”

“Yeah, twenty-five percent goes to the Fight. We brothers gotta understand what these fucking places, Europe and the U.S., are doing to us. They don’t want us here, they don’t want us to live like we want to live. They don’t want to follow moral codes. Really, if you think about it, they act like the heathen monkeys they are. How did you miss the Fight? What planet’ve you been living on these last few years?”

“Planet Alby.”

“The Zionists, the U.S., Great Britain, all are sworn enemies of us brothers. And you know, they’re after me personally, too. The Serbs. You know what they did to people like us in Bosnia? They’re worse than Jews.”

What was he smoking? Was he kidding? Wisam sounded like fucking Osama bin Laden. Mahmud didn’t want to get into that whole discussion.

Wisam kept pouring it on: U.S.A., the great Satan. The humiliation of Muslim brothers. The Western world’s contempt for all righteous people.

Mahmud didn’t really know what he was supposed to do now. Should he call Stefanovic right away? But he didn’t, under any circumstances, want anything to go down in the apartment while Dad was home. Maybe it was better to get as much info as possible out of Wisam about where to find him later. And decide to meet up at some good place, just to be safe.

He brownnosed: “The Fight is important. The crusaders and the Zionists are humiliating our entire world.”

Wisam nodded.

Mahmud switched topics. “Another thing, I heard about your business. That’s why I wanted to see you. I’ve got an idea that I’d like to run by you. Maybe you’ll dig it. Maybe you’ll even want to support it.”

“Shit, man. You gotta be eager for some financing. I’ve heard from, like, five people that you’re looking for me. What’s your story?”

“It’s got to do with hair and tanning salons.” Mahmud actually thought the idea was sweet. “You know, there are hair and tanning salons all over the city. My sister works at a tanning salon. It’s crazy how people can tan and cut their hair as much as they do, but somehow it runs. The money’s almost all under the table. But there’s a problem, there’re no chains. You follow?”

Wisam looked interested.

“We gotta do a chain, like 7-Eleven or Wayne’s Coffee, except for hair and tanning salons.”

“You know, chains are hard. There’s crazy competition. Hard to get in, like shoving a sofa up Paris Hilton’s asshole, you feel me? Not an easy thing to do. It takes investments, slick marketing, all that shit. But it’s an interesting idea. I like that you’re thinking business. You thought more about it? Like, what places do we buy, for example?”

Mahmud took a deep breath. This was the important part.

“I don’t want to talk about it here. Not with Dad sitting in the next room. The idea isn’t exactly lily white, you know what I’m sayin’, and my dad is the most law-abiding person I know. And, I gotta get to the gym now. But I have a suggestion, can I buy you lunch sometime? What do you think?”

23

Niklas needed alcohol. He went into the Old Beefeater Inn on Götgatan. Sat down at a small table. Popped two tablets of Nitrazepam. Ordered a bottle of Staropramen. The waitress arrived with the bottle and a tall glass on a tray. Poured the beer slowly, as if it were a Guinness.

Niklas looked around. Packed with people. The big windows were open toward the street. It was four o’clock. Götgatan went through a costume change—the keffiyeh-wearing hipsters and families with kids were exchanged for a different mix of people. More Benjamin’s style: beefy boys with tattoos, tired-looking broads with frizzy hair, young guys in soccer jerseys.

The beer tasted good in the heat. He ordered another one before he’d even drained half the glass. Staropramen, the spring of life.

Niklas’s thoughts were spinning. Safe Haven’d given him the cold shoulder. But the battered women out there’d just been given reinforcement by elite forces number one. The mercenary who gutted more dirty men than a dull Swedish cop could even count. It was time for an offensive strategy, a mission on enemy territory. He’d trained eight years for this.

He fingered his concealed backup knife. It was strapped to his leg, as always. Sipped his beer. Wiped the foam from his upper lip.

Calculated: in Sweden, people always got off work around five o’clock. In an hour, someone ought to come out of Safe Haven.

He ordered another beer.

The air outside was still warm. People were walking slowly back and forth along Götgatan, scouting outdoor spots at the bars and restaurants. So far, the mood was calm, but in a few hours, loud male roars would explode the night like mortars.

He leaned against the fence across from the entrance to Safe Haven. Waited. The time: quarter to five.

Thought about how he would introduce himself. If he should explain what he wanted right away, or if he should talk about other stuff first. Decided not to refer to the conversation over the intercom system.

Finally, the front door opened. A slight woman dressed in jeans and a jean jacket came out. A shoulder bag slung over one shoulder and a bike helmet in hand. He wondered if she was the one he’d spoken to earlier. He had to act now, or else she would get away on her bike.

Niklas stepped forward.

“Hi, my name is Niklas and I think I can be of help to you.”

The woman looked jumpy. Scanned the street. Seemed to be searching for an answer.

“No, I think you’re mistaken. I don’t think we know each other. Have a nice day.”

“Wait. We don’t know each other. But I know about you. You’re doing good work.”

The woman tried to smile. “Are you the person I spoke to on the intercom two hours ago? I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help you. But here, take a card and give it to your mother.”

This didn’t feel right. Perplexing. Confusing. Infuriating. She was turning him down again. What the fuck were they doing at Safe Haven? Here they had a golden opportunity and they didn’t even give a damn about it.

He raised his voice: “You’ve got to believe me. I just want to help you. Why don’t we get a beer somewhere so I can tell you more?”

“Sorry, I have to go home now. You’ll have to call us instead, during our open hours.”

“No, wait. I want to tell you here and now. I used to be a soldier.”

The woman started walking toward her bike, which was locked to the fence Niklas’d been leaning against earlier.

Niklas grabbed her arm. “Wait.”

She spun around. Eyes wide. “Please, let me go.” Her tone was sharp. She was a traitor. If she wasn’t going to make more of an effort for the cause, she might as well go fuck herself. If Safe Haven was going to turn down his services, they didn’t really want to fight.

He held on to her. “I’m only going to say this one more time. We are going to go talk about this right now.”

The woman started screaming. A few yards down the street, two girls in their twenties stopped in their tracks. Niklas wondered where the hell they’d been three seconds ago. But now they were standing there like two idiots, staring. Fumbling for their cell phones.

Niklas made a grab for the woman’s shoulder bag. She screamed something about an assault. He tugged at the bag. He was going to get something out of this, goddammit.

Got ahold of it. Pulled. Ran.

The woman shrieked.

He ran down the hill. Heard yelling behind him. Was it the chicks with the cell phones? He headed for the subway. Almost fell down the escalator. It felt like people were hollering. Someone tried to stop him. He ran down the platform.

A train rolled into the station. He jumped on.

The doors closed.

Inside: almost empty. Serene. Stuffy. Still.

He was holding the woman’s shoulder bag in his hand.

Opened it.

Paper. A planner. A wallet. A hairbrush. Junk.

Looked again: documents. Information about Safe Haven. Suggested strategies for battered women. Drafts of texts for a website. And a list: women’s names and phone numbers. It could only be one thing: battered women. The woman he’d just grabbed the bag from was probably going to call them.

This was huge. An opening. The names of ten women whom Niklas could help. Behind the names: ten men who were going to get what was coming to them.

Two thoughts collided in his head: He was going to find them. He would do his thing to them.

Niklas’d found his calling. His mission. Everything had new meaning. The offensive had begun.

24

The big question: How dangerous could this get for Åsa? Thomas planned to act on his own. Screw the guy outside his window. Screw Adamsson’s recommendations—the old-timer was not on his side this time, that much was obvious. Fuck anyone who wanted to stop him. Move ahead with the search for the IMEI number and the prepaid card owner’s identity. Find the person who’d murdered a still unidentified man.

Today: Monday. The first day of his foray into the world of detectives. Kurt Wallander, you can hit the showers. Thomas Andrén’s in town.

Åsa left home early as usual. She’d wanted to make love again last night. Thomas felt stiffer than he’d felt in ages. Åsa massaged his back, rubbed massage oil on him. Slow motions over his shoulder blades. Hard, softening pinches over the shoulders. She ran the palms of her hands along his lower back. Exactly what he needed. The problem started when she began licking his earlobe. Thomas pulled his head away—it tickled. She wouldn’t leave him be. Åsa stroked the inside of his thigh. He settled one leg over the other. She stroked his chest. He lay still. Finally, she gave up. Rolled over to her side of the bed.

Thomas called Hägerström at ten o’clock that morning.

He sounded out of breath when he picked up.

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Andrén, I think you’re bad luck.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I just got transferred. Cut off from the investigation.”

Thomas looked out the window. Didn’t see anyone on the street. What he’d just heard made him feel cold all over.

“What’re you talking about? That can’t be true. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’m kidding about as little as the boys from Internal Affairs are kidding about you right now. Got called into my boss’s office today. Apparently, it was inappropriate that I continue with the investigation on the grounds that you’d been involved and that you’re suspended now on suspicion of grave professional misconduct and assault. My boss said it was best that everyone involved was switched out.”

“But come on, that’s totally insane. It’s a conspiracy.”

“Yes, it is insane. I don’t know what to think. Why the hell did you have to beat up that drunk, anyway?”

“Hey, I don’t want to hear that crap. That guy was lethal and they’d paired me up with a hundred-thirty-pound girl. We were forced to use the batons. So you can back off.”

Hägerström’s shortness of breath seemed to increase on the other end of the line.

“I’m from IA, don’t you forget that. The kind of nauseating rationalization you’re pulling made my ears rot long ago. There are always excuses, blah, blah, blah. But it’s bullshit. You made a fool of yourself, used excessive force against a human being, which I know you’ve done many times before.”

“Hägerström, cut it out. Don’t be such a fucking cunt.”

“Apparently you think you can talk to me any way you like. It was nice getting to know you too. Good-bye.”

Hägerström slammed the phone down.

Thomas continued to stare out the window. Phone still in his hand. Even Hägerström refused to understand how the situation in Aspudden’d ended up the way it did. IA’s stained way of thinking ap-parently didn’t wash out too easily. What a fucking asshole. Impossible to understand how that man could’ve ever seemed even remotely pleasant.

Now he was alone. Alone against an unknown threat. Alone against an internal investigation. Alone in the hunt for a murderer.

He lay down on the bed. Didn’t even want to tinker with the car. Didn’t want to set his foot in the station. Get stared down, whispered about, gossiped over.

He tried to take a nap. Pointless—it was only ten-thirty. He wasn’t tired, but still completely beat.

His brain felt empty.

He remained lying where he was. Didn’t have the strength to get up.

He must’ve fallen asleep after all. His cell phone woke him. He felt groggy. Fumbled for the phone. Didn’t recognize the number. Tried to hide how confused and drowsy he was.

“Hello, this is Andrén.”

“Hi, my name is Stefan Rudjman. I don’t know if you know me?” Slight accent. Thomas didn’t recognize the voice. At the same time: the last name rang a bell.

“People also call me Stefanovic.”

Thomas was skeptical. Hostile attitude. Could this have something to do with the threat against him and Åsa the other night?

“Okay, what do you want?”

“I understand that you’ve gotten into some trouble at work. We have an offer for you that we think may be very attractive.”

“Know what? Your threats don’t bother me.”

Stefanovic was silent a second too long—was it genuine surprise or a threatening theatrical pause?

“I am afraid you misunderstand me. This is not a matter of threats at all. We think our offer may provide you with unforeseen possibilities. It’s regarding a job. Would you like to meet with us?”

Thomas didn’t understand what the guy was talking about. Cockiness mixed with a Slavic accent. Something wasn’t right.

“I don’t know who you are and I don’t understand what this is about. Would you please be so kind as to tell me what job it is you’re talking about?”

“With pleasure. But I think it’s better if we meet up. Then I can explain in more detail. The conditions may be advantageous for you. Why not give it a chance? Meet us and discuss it. When might you be available?”

Thomas didn’t know what to say. Was this some damn telemarketing scheme? Was it a practical joke? On the other hand: he didn’t have anything better to do. Everything’d gone to hell anyway. He might as well meet this guy, whoever he was.

“I’m available today.”

“That’s better than expected. We’ll pick you up. Shall we say four o’clock? Is that suitable?”

They took the tunnel under Södermalm, the south side of the city. Rush hour hadn’t started yet. Out on Sveavägen. Took a right toward Roslagstull. And down Valhallavägen. Then Lidingövägen. Turned off toward Fiskartorpsvägen.

Thomas wondered where they were going. The man driving’d introduced himself as Slobodan and asked Thomas to get into the backseat of a Range Rover.

They drove in silence. Thomas wished he had his service weapon, but he’d been forced to turn it in once the internal investigation began.

Along the side of the road he could see the mixed vegetation in the Lill-Jansskogen forest.

They turned onto a narrow gravel road and up a hill.

Finally, the car stopped. Slobodan asked him to get out.

They were on a height. A building in front of him: a sixty-five-foot tower. It must be Lill-Jansskogen’s ski-jumping tower. Thomas remembered it from his childhood. He’d been there with his parents. The winters were so much more wintry back then. Someone appeared to have renovated the tower recently. The concrete was almost gleaming in the sunlight.

A burly man walked toward him. He looked to be in his thirties. Dressed in dark-blue pleated slacks and a well-ironed shirt.

The man extended his hand.

“Hi, Thomas. I’m glad you could come so soon. I’m Stefanovic.”

Stefanovic showed Thomas into the tower.

The bottom floor looked clean and new. An empty welcome desk with a computer screen mounted on it. There was a poster on the wall: WELCOME TO FISKARTORPET’S CONFERENCE HALL. WE CAN ACCOMMODATE UP TO FIFTY GUESTS. PERFECT FOR YOUR KICK-OFF, COMPANY PARTY, OR CONFERENCE. The floor looked like it’d recently been sanded and finished.

Thomas followed the Yugo up the stairs. Couldn’t be much of a conference center yet—it was empty everywhere.

At the top of the tower was a large room. Windows in three directions. Thomas looked out over the Lill-Jansskogen forest. Over Östermalm. Farther off, he could see City Hall, the church spires, and the high rises by Hötorget. The farthest he could see: a glimpse of the Globen arena. Stockholm was spread out before him.

A sofa group, a dining table with six chairs, a minibar against the one windowless wall, filled with bottles and stemware. In the sofa group: a man. He rose. Walked slowly over to Thomas. Shook his hand with a firm grip.

“Hi, Thomas. Thank you for coming on such short notice. It’s fantastic. My name is Radovan Kranjic. I don’t know if you’ve heard of me.” The man had the same Slavic accent as Stefanovic.

Thomas understood right away. The man in front of him wasn’t just anybody. Radovan Kranjic: alias the Yugo Boss, alias R., alias Stockholm’s Godfather. A man whom the little guys hardly dared mention by name. Whose reputation was harder than granite. A legend in Stockholm’s underworld. It felt bizarre. At the same time, exciting.

“Yes, I’ve heard of you. You have—how shall I put it?—a certain reputation in my line of work.”

Radovan smiled. The dude radiated authority like Marlon Brando.

“People talk a lot. But as far as I’ve understood it, you have a certain reputation as well.”

Normally, Thomas would’ve gotten defensive right away when someone implied something like that. But with this guy—in a way, they were cut from the same cloth; he could feel it instinctively. So instead, he laughed.

They took a seat on the couches. “May I offer you something strong?” Radovan asked.

Thomas said yes. Stefanovic poured two glasses of whiskey. Good stuff: Isle of Jura, aged sixteen years.

Radovan scratched his cheek with the back of his hand. Reminiscent of Don Corleone for real.

The Yugo boss began explaining. Outlined his business. He worked with horses, cars, boats, import/export. A lot from the former Soviet Union. Benzes driven up from Germany. Machine parts from retired Swedish factories to Polish coal plants. It was business development, expansion, and opportunities. Thomas listened. Wondered if Radovan actually believed his own spiel.

Finally: Radovan seemed to be getting to the point. He sipped his drink. “Okay. So, now you know what it is I work with primarily. But I do some other stuff on the side, too. I’m active in what we call the erotica business, if you know what I mean. The subject’s gotten so touchy in Sweden these days. We try to provide our customers with the most pleasant environment and staff possible. Erotica doesn’t have to be filthy movie theaters where lonely men sneak in at night. Erotica can be professional, businesslike, and well managed. After all, erotica is the world’s largest form of entertainment. Our girls are classy and maintain high international standards. Do you understand what I’m getting at?”

Thomas sat in silence. Wound tight. At the same time, elated. What was this all about? Why was Stockholm’s most powerful mafia boss sitting here and telling him about the next big thing in pimping? Was it a test? Had they gotten hold of the wrong person? Was this connected to the murder investigation he and Hägerström’d been caught up in?

Then he realized that Radovan’d asked him a question. He met the Yugo boss’s gaze. “I think I understand what you’re getting at.”

Radovan went on, “You can make yourself money when you’re young. With money you get boats, fast whips, babes. Whatever you want. But when you get older, like me, you want something more—control over the situation. The ability to feel at ease. And that’s where you come in, Thomas. I have, as you noted, a certain reputation. But so do you. We need people like you in our organization. Men who don’t back down when the situation calls for some extra effort. Men who don’t follow narrow rules out of old habit, but who think about what is right and rational instead. Men who are men, to put it simply.”

Radovan made a theatrical pause. Let the flattery sink in.

Thomas dropped his gaze. Looked out over Stockholm again.

“You’re a cop, I’m aware of that. That’s what makes you so interesting. You’ve got connections, credibility, insight. At the same time, we know that you, just like me, write your own rules when you need to. It’s important to have your own rules, you know. Without your own rules, you won’t get far in life. We have information that you do some things on the side now and then. You’re a cop who does everything, as people usually say. We need people like you.”

Thomas didn’t respond.

Radovan went on, “Let me make this brief. You’re probably going to lose your job because you defended yourself and your female colleague against an inebriated animal. I can turn that catastrophe into a new beginning for you. I want to hire you for my organization.”

25

Mahmud’d talked to his Yugo contact for a helluva long time—the perfect place’d been decided: Saman’s Coal Grill in Tumba. It had outdoor seating, there were a lot of people in motion around there, the right kind of joint for a blatte like Mahmud to meet up at. Not suspicious. The only downside he could think of was that it was hard to park nearby.

They were gonna meet up at five on Tuesday afternoon. Wisam’d suggested the time himself. Jibril dug Mahmud’s chosen meeting spot. “Our kind of grub,” he’d said.

Tumba in the summer: almost empty of people except for some teens with too little to do. Mahmud arrived at a quarter to five, grabbed a table near the exit.

Beyond the outdoor seating area, parked more or less on the sidewalk: a pimped Range Rover with tinted windows. Mahmud glimpsed Ratko. Both hands resting on the steering wheel, steel expression. If the 5-0 or some ticket bitch showed up he’d have to move right away. On the other side of the street: a BMW with even darker windows. Mahmud couldn’t see who was sitting in it, but his contact, Stefanovic, had instructed him, “If anything derails, you call me. I’ll be nearby.”

Mahmud waited. Eyed the kids farther down the street. He saw himself in them. Thought about the little marijuana plantation that Robert’d had in that apartment he’d been house-sitting for his aunt.

He wondered why Wisam didn’t show. He’d sounded upbeat on the phone the day before. Mahmud was proud of the hair-and-tanning-salon buzz, the made-up business ideas he’d pulled in Dad’s kitchen—really, it was Jamila’s idea. And all that about the Fight. Mahmud knew the talk—he’d met friends from before who didn’t talk about anything else. The U.S.’s hate toward the righteous around the world. The Jewish conspiracy to start a war against the Muslims by plotting 9/11. Great Britain’s colonial imperialist capitalism. But Mahmud knew better: cash was king. The secret Jew Americans who sought to repress blattes like him didn’t have enough power. The British clown-lords who wanted to dominate his brothers—their days were pretty numbered. Lack of cash was the problem. And the answer was simple. His people needed dough. As soon as you got money, everything got solved. Especially for him.

Quarter past five. Wisam still hadn’t shown. Stefanovic’d instructed him: we can’t wait with the Range Rover for more than twenty minutes. The risk of whiny meter maids and cops was too great.

A couple minutes passed. Mahmud didn’t understand what’d happened.

He eyed the clock on his phone. Eighteen minutes past five. Suck a dick.

And then, by the pedestrian crossing—there he was: Wisam. Track pants. Hoodie. Sneakers. Real Million style. Mahmud was surprised by his own thought: Am I doing the right thing? The guy is like me. A project blatte with swag. My brother.

No way. He had to let the thought go.

Wisam passed the Range Rover. Saw Mahmud. Nodded. At the same time: two guys jumped out of the car. Dark jeans. Leather jackets. Yugo classique. Stepped up behind Wisam. One said something to him. The other was hiding something in his hand. Put it against Wisam’s stomach. The blatte’s eyes grew wide. Looked down at the thing against his stomach. After that, it was like he grew limp. The beefcakes led him into the Range Rover. It started up.

Mahmud stood up. Slapped a hundred-kronor bill on the table. Left the change.

Saw the Range Rover drive up a side street. Disappear.

It was always quiet down in the basement. But the silence didn’t bother Niklas. He actually liked it, it gave him time to think. But he hated the dark. Or, rather, the risk that the dark would come. Because if you didn’t flip the timed switch often enough, the lights would switch off automatically. He had devised his own simple system. He flipped the switch every other minute so as not to risk it. It was lucky that he knew how to tell time.

When he got down there, he pulled out the table-hockey game. It was old. The outer players couldn’t move behind the goalie like in the newer games. But the goalie himself could move behind the goal, which was a big danger—to leave the net unattended. But now it didn’t matter—he couldn’t trick himself, after all. Instead, he practiced passes. The right wing to the center, who made a goal. The center back to the right wing, who whipped the puck with the back of his stick into the net.

He was really pretty good. Too bad they didn’t have a table-hockey game at his after-school program.

Still, time crawled.

He flipped the light switch at even intervals. He had time to do about fifteen strings of passes between times.

Mom should’ve come down ages ago to tell him to come back up. It was already nine-thirty.

Maybe he should go up on his own. But he wanted to wait. One time he hadn’t waited—when he’d tired of the table-hockey game he’d taken the elevator up of his own accord. The living room and kitchen were empty and the door to Mom’s bedroom was closed. He called for her without getting an answer. He called again and finally heard her yell from her bedroom, “Stay where you are, Niklas. I’ll be out.”

Mom came out dressed in a bathrobe—which was strange—and she was really mad. She grabbed his arm, hard, harder than he could ever remember her doing before, and threw him on his bed. Then she yelled at him for a while. Without him really understanding why.

No, he wasn’t going to go upstairs of his own accord. She had to come down and get him.

He kept practicing strings of passes at the goal.

A half hour went by. He kept track of the time well since he was flipping the light switch every other minute.

The hockey game was boring, he thought. Tedious: pass from the wing to the defenseman, make shooting motions using his entire arm, usher the puck into the goal, the left defenseman back to the wing, wrist shot, straight in. The monotony made him tired. But what should he do?

He heard a strange sound.

Behind the hockey game.

Something rustling.

He looked carefully. Followed the wall.

An animal.

It stared at him from its perch on the moving box. A rat.

A huge black rat. The eyes were blank, evil, porcelain marbles. The tail like a long worm on the box.

The terror grabbed hold of him at once. Fear that welled up from his gut. He didn’t dare move.

The rat sat still. Seemed to be watching him.

Niklas stood even more still. The only thing he could think was, Please don’t let it jump at me, please don’t let it touch me.

Then the lights went out.

And he screamed. He screamed like he’d never screamed before. Everything came at once: the tears, the horror, the panic. He bawled out his terror, his fear of the dark and the animal that’d been staring at him.

He fumbled for the light switch. At the same time, it felt like his entire brain would explode at the thought of accidentally touching the animal.

Where was the light switch?

He searched with his hands along the wall in quick motions. Hoped that this would scare the rat away.

Finally, he found it.

He turned the lights on. Tumbled toward the door. Opened it. Sprinted up from the basement to the ground floor. Skipped the elevator. Ran up all the seven flights of stairs in one go.

Tore open the front door. Breathless, with a sob still stuck in his throat.

As soon as he came in, he was struck by another kind of panic. The rat was forgotten. The sounds he heard killed off all his other fears. The screams were coming from the living room. He knew them so well. He’d heard them so many times before.

The coffee table was pushed aside toward the TV. All three sofa cushions were scattered on the floor. A beer lay spilled nearby. Beside the sofa was his mother, on her knees.

Above her stood Claes, beating her.

Niklas started screaming.

Mom was crying. She was bleeding from the nose and her blouse was torn over the shoulder.

Claes turned to him. His fist was still held high in the air. “Go back down to the basement, Niklas.”

Then he let his fist fall. It hit her across the back.

She looked at Niklas. Their eyes met. He saw terror. He saw sorrow and pain. He saw love. But he also saw something else—he saw hate. And he could feel it clearly, clearer than he’d ever felt anything—he hated Claes. More than anything in the world.

She called to him, “Please Niklas, it’s okay. Go to your room. Please.”

Claes’s fist fell again. He roared. “You fucking cunt, you care more about that little shit than me.”

Mom screamed. Collapsed.

Claes kicked her belly.

Niklas ran into his room. Before he closed the door he saw Claes kick her again. This time in the head.

He shut his eyes and covered his ears with his hands.

The sounds pushed their way through.

He tried to think about the rat in the basement.