Never Fuck Up

26

Time flies when you have a calling. A life mission. A mantra: Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you wish for peace, prepare for war.

Niklas jogged three times a week. Followed by push-ups, stomach and back exercises. Trained with his knife every day. Practiced the breathing, the control, the feeling. Prepared himself. Exerted himself. One principle was certain: a small war demands as thorough preparation as a big war. The only difference: the number of boots on the ground.

Today, he ran his regular loop. Over the Aspudden school’s paved yard. Four stories of yellowish brick, high windows that let in good light. Not like the Afghan mud bunkers where seven kids shared one textbook. The playground was swarming with kids. School must’ve started again after the summer. Niklas eyed them. Wild, screaming, undisciplined. Still undecided what he thought about kids, anyway. He saw the divide. The guys on one side, the girls on the other. And the subgroups: the nerds, the jocks, the dangerous ones. He saw the violence. A boy, ten years old max, jeans with tears over the knees: pushed a girl who looked to be the same age. She fell. Cried. Lay there by herself. Alone in the world. The boy ran back to his group of friends. Into the camaraderie, the safety of the group. Niklas deliberated: step up, teach the kid a thing or two about pushing people around. Make him feel thirty times more vulnerable than the girl. But now wasn’t the time.

It was the end of August. The sun warmed in an unconvincing way: just the hint of a cool breeze and this would turn into a chilly run.

The past few weeks’d been hectic, valuable, illuminating. His strategy was taking shape. The swarm of conflicts was clearing up. The time for attack was drawing closer. Si vis pacem, para bellum.

He felt the heat rise in his body. First his gut. Then his legs and head.

He reflected over the past few months.

Two days after he’d gotten hold of the list of women’s names from the girl at Safe Haven, he’d gone to a 7-Eleven and bought surf time on the computers. Paper and pen in front of him. Googled the names and telephone numbers. He couldn’t find a full name or address for three of them; maybe they were unlisted. He took notes: a total of seven full names with addresses attached to them. Wondered what the woman from Safe Haven was supposed to do with the numbers. Probably work from home or something, make support calls, coddle the poor souls. Even though everyone knew what was really needed—someone to pacify their men.

He sat thinking. How to search further? Brainstormed possible information sources. Only came up with one—Skatteverket, the national tax authority. Called, checked if the women were married and to whom, or if someone else was listed as a resident at the address in question. At the end of the day he’d written down the names of six men plus their addresses. Six abusers—six enemy combatants.

The following day. Niklas made his first investment—a DCU, as he called it: data control unit. In other words, he bought a laptop and ordered high-speed Internet.

That whole week: He worked on ideas on the computer. Took notes. Created folders for different proposals, information on every person on the list. Four days later, his Internet was installed. Now he could start researching for real. He tried to organize. Theorize. Analyze.

First and foremost: he needed a car. But other things too: equipment for private espionage. A reverse door-peephole viewer, waterproof surveillance cameras, extra camera lenses, wall mikes, earpieces, night-vision binoculars, recording devices, fake license plates. A ton of stuff.

He searched for cars on used-car sites online. Niklas hadn’t lived a life with a close connection to the Internet, but he’d managed to snoop out info about the men. Still, he was a novice: it took half a day to learn the ropes. Which search engines generated relevant hits, which car sites had the best selection, where you could deal with private people and didn’t have to mess with companies, where he could find normally priced future APCs—armored personnel carriers—with four-wheel drive.

He knew next to nothing at this point. He didn’t know when/where/how he was going to need the car. If something was going to have to be transported in it, if he might be shot at by the police, on what kind of terrain it would be driven. Only two things were decided: He had to begin watching the men right away. And the car had to have tinted windows.

First, he checked out a Jeep Grand Cherokee from 2006. In the ad, the seller claimed: extremely good condition, only nine thousand miles, diesel engine. Sounded perfect, the car could handle any terrain. The back windows: big, dark, no visibility. The downside: the price—they wanted three hundred G’s for it. Niklas went out to Stocksund, a ritzy suburb, just to be on the safe side. The car was nice, would’ve been perfect. He was sitting on savings, but war cost money. There’d be more expenses than just the car. He had to watch his wallet.

The next alternative: a four-wheel drive Audi Avant from 2002. Seemed awesome: complete service history, GPS, side air bags, winter tires with rims, xenon headlights, tinted windows. The whole shebang. Niklas couldn’t care less about the fenders, the wheels, the interior, and stuff like that. But the GPS—it hit him: a navigator was exactly what he needed. He wasn’t exactly a pro at finding his way around Stockholm yet. What’s more, the ad said the car’d been driven by a chick. The price: two hundred grand, more than okay. Very good condition, well taken care of! Call to take a look. He punched the numbers into his phone.

The car was being sold by someone named Nina Glavmo-Svensén in Edsviken, Sollentuna.

Vikingavägen: leafy Sven dreamscape. He tinkered with his waist belt. The money order was in there. One hundred and eighty thousand. Also: twenty thousand cash in case there wasn’t any room for haggling. Thanked DynCorp for his financial circumstances. Without their know-how, his money would’ve been paid in cash down there. But now: their connections with banks all over the world solved that problem. Put the money straight into Chase Manhattan’s office, which transferred it directly, via an affiliate in Nassau with better privacy regulations, to safe old Handelsbanken in Stockholm. The remainder of Niklas’s savings after the fiasco in Macao: 500,000 kronor. And now he was going to blow almost half the money.

Number twenty-one. A two-story yellow-painted wood house with a garage. In the garden: two fruit trees past blooming. A sprinkler and an inflatable baby pool on the lawn. It was too good to be true. There had to be some dirt hiding behind the perfect façade.

Niklas rang the doorbell.

A woman opened. The seller, Nina Glavmo-Svensén. For about three seconds, Niklas was speechless. He hadn’t expected that the seller would be his age. Did people who hadn’t even turned thirty yet live in houses like this? He didn’t know what to say. Nina Glavmo-Svensén: hot as hell. Dressed in shorts and a tank top. Crooked smile. A baby on her hip. Niklas couldn’t judge how old it was or if it was a girl or a boy.

He extended his hand, “Hi, I’m Johannes. I wanted to take a look at your car.” A good alias, Johannes.

Nina seemed surprised. Smiled nervously.

Niklas laughed.

Nina looked into his eyes. He returned her gaze. What did he see in there? What was her life like? Who had decided that the car had to be sold? Was it her decision or was there someone else who made the decisions around here? He thought he saw a darkness in her eyes, a hint of sorrow. It wasn’t impossible.

“Good thing you didn’t drive here, it can be hard to find the way.”

They laughed. The mood relaxed.

It was cool in the garage. Three parked cars. The Audi, a Volvo V70, and a black Porsche 911. Niklas pointed to the Porsche. “It was two hundred for that one, right?” Again: laughter.

He checked out the Audi. Good: it wouldn’t attract attention. All the windows but the windshield were tinted. Plenty of space if you folded the backseat down. The xenon headlights gave better distribution of light when driving in the dark. Maybe it wasn’t quite like the Jeep he’d looked at, but the four-wheel drive should be able to handle most terrains. Nina didn’t know exactly how the GPS worked, but Niklas could figure that out on his own. She hadn’t driven it many miles and the service history seemed complete. Couldn’t be better. It would be his—he just had to bring the price down first.

She showed him where the winter tires were. Niklas rolled one out. Examined it.

“You don’t exactly want to think of the winter on a sunny day like today. But these tires are not okay. Much too worn down.” He pressed his finger down as far as it would go. “The tread depth here is only a few millimeters.”

They discussed the car. The winter tires apparently came from another car. The kid on her hip remained calm. Nina smiled at Niklas, laughed at his attempts at jokes. After ten minutes, he said, “I’m very interested in the car. I’ll take it right now for one-eighty. I’m going to need to buy new winter tires, after all.”

Nina gazed into his eyes again. “One-eighty should be okay. But then you can’t have it now. I have to discuss it with my husband when he comes home tonight.”

Again. Niklas’s thoughts flashed: under what conditions did this woman really live? What had her baby been forced to witness in this sun-drenched house? His thoughts were spinning, worse and worse. He made an effort. Tried to smile. “What about one-ninety?”

Nina extended her hand. “We’ve got a deal.”

Meanwhile, he’d gotten a job. As a security guard, after all. He sat in a sentry box and controlled vehicles on their way in and out of the pharmaceutical company Biovitrum’s complex in Solna. Wasn’t even allowed to carry a weapon. Flipped through magazines. The boredom worse than patrolling barbed-wire fences in a sandstorm.

But all the stuff he’d ordered had arrived. It was lined up and waiting on the floor of his apartment.

The base package for eavesdropping through walls: a MW-22 unit. According to the operating instructions, it could handle listening through twelve-inch-thick concrete walls, windows, doors, without a problem. Equipped with an RCA jack: the ability to connect digital functions.

A GPS locating system for vehicles—for cars he needed to track in real time, but couldn’t break into. The system was built into a waterproof protective case with powerful magnets and was secured on the underside of the car’s body. It ran on twelve batteries—the car could be followed over the course of a week with up to five-second updates without the batteries dying. Heavenly high-tech.

There were two types of cameras. First, three CCD cameras for outdoor use, 480TVL, 25-millimeter lens, black-and-white, 0.05 Lux. They were waterproof and could handle temperatures as low as negative thirteen degrees. Should work for the men who lived in single-family homes. In addition, four small surveillance cameras for concealed application. Could be mounted in junction boxes, in wire covers, under lamps, in fuse boxes. Perfect for the apartment dwellers.

A bunch of regular bugs: small mikes with radio transmitter.

A hard drive. Could hold several days’ worth of recordings and transmit remote monitoring through the Internet and other networks. Could handle four surveillance cameras at once. The heart of his operation.

Finally, the small stuff: the reverse door-peephole viewer, extra lenses for the cameras, two different license plates for the car, binoculars, a ladder, the right clothes, books, tools.

He’d already blown more than seventy-five grand. War was expensive—an eternal truth. With luck, it would total less than three hundred grand. He really needed to keep working his security guard job. DynCorps’ money wouldn’t last forever. More expenses awaited. More missions to complete. He regretted his naïveté—why’d he try his luck in Macao?

Still: the Internet was magical. In four weeks, he’d built up an FBI-style hub. Now he just had to get the crap mounted.

He called in sick from work. Sat at home in his apartment from eight in the morning until eight at night: practiced with the gear. Hooked up the cameras one by one. Read the manual as thoroughly as if he were building a nuclear reactor. Tested, tested, tested. Poured water on the outdoor cameras, checked their resistance to shock, put them in the freezer. Learned to apply the mini cameras, to conceal them, to pull their cables along edges and borders to locations where the receiver unit could be placed. Played around with the MPEG hard drive, connected it to his TV at home. Repeated the procedure with the cameras without the manual. Assembled them in the dark. With only one hand. By heart. Tried out the wiretap equipment on the girl next door. Her guy’d either split or stayed away. He heard how she talked on the phone or watched miniseries on TV. The equipment was sick: the beeping sound when she punched numbers into her cell phone sounded as though she were standing twenty inches away. He assembled the GPS system. Secured it under the Audi. Drove around Örnsberg. The box stayed in place under the car, made it through the speed bump on Hägerstensvägen. He checked the receiver. Worked better than the worn-out gear he’d operated in the sandbox. He drove around and checked out where the different men lived. Learned the maps, the blind alleys, the stoplights, the one-way streets. Continued to test out the gear at home, learned to use it better than he’d mastered his firearms down there. He analyzed methodology, memorized locations, planned. Hardly talked to Mom, didn’t think about the murder in the basement at her place, stopped having nightmares. Responded sparingly to Benjamin’s texts. Didn’t give a shit about the doctor’s note he needed for his disability leave. Time passed. The war would soon be upon them.

The following weeks, he went to work as much as he could. They wondered what the hell he was doing, screwing around with the schedule as if it was a grab-a-beer-with-a-bud appointment that you really couldn’t care less about. But what could he do: Si vis pacem, para bellum. The mission took time.

During the bright summer evenings and nights, he sat in the Audi outside the apartment complexes or houses where they lived. Tried to guage the situation. Which ones he should begin with.

All six of them were normal dudes. From the outside. They didn’t have particularly late habits on weeknights. Niklas set the cameras up during three nights in the beginning of August. Worked in silence. It was easy: he’d already zeroed in on the spots where he’d put them. Felt so good not to have to deal with daytime noise pollution: cell phones ringing, the rush of traffic, neighbors pounding on each other. Outside one house: a CCD camera in a tree. Outside the other house: the camera in a bush behind an electrical cabinet. The apartments were harder. How would he be able to see into them? One of the apartments was on the ground floor. He hid the camera in a stairwell on the other side of the street. The distance was a little too great, but it would do for the kinds of photos he needed. The other three apartments wouldn’t work. He’d have to guard them personally.

The only thing he wanted to know: Who were the three biggest assholes? Who should he focus on? Him: a pro. Ice water running through his veins. He could wait.

Back in the present. On his way back over Vinterviken’s allotment gardens. He didn’t see any war scenes today. No blood. No ambush. He thought maybe it was because he was about to begin his own ambush. The weeks’d gone so well. Him: a hunter. A predator. A man who made his mark on history. Who changed circumstances.

The sweat ran down over his eyebrows. His eyes stung. He wiped his forehead with his T-shirt.

The only thing he needed now was a firearm.

It had to come to an end. The rats.

The men.

The enemy combatants.

27

Gloria Palace, Playa de Amadores, Gran Canaria. They could’ve gone to a flashier place: Aruba, Mauritius, or the Seychelles. But what were they supposed to do there? The only reason Thomas made the trip was to get away. And to calm Åsa.

Still: the hotel, Gloria Palace, had four and a half stars from the charter travel company. You couldn’t top that on Gran Canaria. Big rooms with panorama windows looking out over the ocean. A small sofa set and a coffee table with a basket that room service filled with fresh fruit every day. Over thirty channels on the TV, an in-house movie channel, Swedish newspapers, amazing breakfast. One of the pools, the one with seventy-seven-degree water, lay only a few feet away from the Atlantic—you looked out over the waves washing in while calming Muzak played from the hotel speakers. Not to mention the gym: the machines looked like they were bought yesterday. After a workout, his hands smelled of new plastic instead of cop sweat. He worked out every day. It was everything he’d imagined, but better. Åsa loved it. Thomas tried to relax.

His dirty money came in handy. Åsa wondered how they could afford to stay at the closest she’d ever come to a luxury hotel. But it wasn’t that expensive, and Thomas explained that they were spending prize money he’d won at the shooting club. He wasn’t going to pinch pennies. Åsa could get as many treatments as she liked at the hotel’s Thalasso Treatment Center. He rented a Jet Ski and tried scuba diving, tested his swing at the nine-hole golf course, went out for an all-day fishing trip on a boat with some middle-aged Germans. Every night, they ate a three-course meal at one of the à la carte restaurants or took the panorama-view elevator up to the walk on the mountainous strip above the hotel and wandered to Dunas Amadores, the hotel next door.

He grew a beard for the first time, surprised himself every morning in the mirror. It itched, he tried to trim it—but man, it was nice not to have to shave. Åsa claimed that it was prickly. But really: they’d been away for almost two weeks and hadn’t had sex once. Okay, maybe they kissed sometimes, but you could count the number of kisses on the fingers of one hand. Both of them knew the beard wasn’t to blame.

Sometimes he thought he should go to therapy. He loved Åsa—so why didn’t she turn him on? Why did it work better in front of the computer screen than with a real woman? At the same time: therapy wasn’t his thing. What if someone found out?

They were each sitting in a beach chair on the sun terrace. Smeared with the right SPF. The pool’s clear-blue water lapped peacefully. The hotel towered up behind them like a mountain. Eighty degrees out. Gran Canaria was good in that way: the Atlantic climate didn’t turn it into the same kind of oven as, say, Sicily—where they’d been last year.

He tried to read a Dennis Lehane paperback: Darkness, Take My Hand. Let it lie on his belly. Restless, couldn’t read for too long, even though it was a real page-turner. The dialogue was the best he’d ever read.

Åsa lay with her eyes closed, shiny with lotion and sweat. She was “baking,” as she called it. Listening to an audio book. He looked out over the people on the terrace. This wasn’t the worst kind of family-friendly hotel. Neither he nor Åsa would’ve been able to handle seeing happy parents cuddling with their fat little four-year-olds around the edge of the pool every day. The hotel was populated mostly by couples a few years younger than themselves—no kids—and older people in their sixties. As well as a bunch of super chill groups of friends. Four guys who weren’t a day over twenty-five were sitting at the pool bar. Downed parasol drinks like it was light beer. Thomas liked their style. Saw himself the way he’d been a few years ago. What was even better: up and down in the pool, a group of chicks the same age as the guys. He thought, There might not be a lot of good in this world, but nothing can take away the pleasure of a string bikini. Any man who denies it just isn’t right in the head.

A hand on his thigh. Åsa was looking at him. She’d taken the earbuds out.

“Can you believe we only have two days left? Awful.”

Thomas looked at her. Put a hand on her shoulder. He could feel it clearly: she was tenser than usual.

“Yep. Soon it’s time to head home to the fall. But we might still get a few warm days at home. Apparently there’s some nice Indian summer heat going on right now.”

“Thomas, we have to talk. It’s not just the fall. You have to tell me what’s really going on.”

Thomas knew what was on her mind. She couldn’t understand why he wasn’t freaking out about the internal investigation. But it was more than that: Åsa felt left out. Didn’t think he was opening up to her, wasn’t saying what he thought would happen next. He couldn’t explain, but maybe he should.

“We’ve already talked about that. I’ll get the decision in a few days. Then we know. Either they screw their heads back on and nothing happens, or else they prosecute and then I’ll be transferred. But they’ve got to be pretty damn stupid for that to happen.”

“You’re not mentioning the last possibility, Thomas.”

“Stop it. If I get convicted for this thing, we’ll leave the country. It would be a scandal. If that happens, not a single patrol officer should still be working on the force. Everyone would’ve done what I did. Everyone with a pulse.”

“But as far as you can tell, how likely do you think it is that you get convicted and they fire you? Thomas, I need to know. We need to know. We can’t live with this uncertainty. I’ve had a stomachache for two months now. What if it happens? How will we be able to afford the house? How will we be able to take care of a child?”

The final thing sent a burning flare through Thomas. Then he thought, I guess you’ll have to start working full-time, then. But he kept his mouth shut. Didn’t want to discuss this again. Had already been through it four times on the trip. It always ended with irritation. Åsa wanted him to start looking for other jobs. How could she know—what he’d already been offered was out of the ordinary.

“You’re getting all worked up for no reason. They’re not going to fire me. I promise.”

“You stop it. I don’t understand how you can be so calm. Don’t you understand that this isn’t just about you? It’s about both of us, we’re a team. You’re sitting there pretending to be all relaxed when it’s going to affect me too—affect us, our family. We’ve always said that if we adopt a child, it’ll get to grow up in a real house with a yard. Living in a house is safe, secure. How will we be able to afford that if you get fired? Do you even understand what a good stroller, car seat, toys, clothes, crib, and all that costs? And I’m not going to IKEA.”

Her eyes were burning bright against the blue sky.

“To live in a house is not always that safe, I’ll have you know.” In his head, he saw the man who’d been standing outside their window at home. “But I promise, on my badge. It’ll work out. You don’t have to worry.”

She got up. Jerky movements. Typical fury à la Åsa. Went to the bar, or up to the room. He didn’t care either way. Didn’t have the energy to argue.

He closed his eyes. The sun warmed. He saw images in his head.

The last few months: some of the worst of his life. On a par with the weeks after Åsa’s miscarriage. Sometimes confused, often sleepless. Most of all: exploding with worry. But he still didn’t think there was reason to keep going on about it, to talk with Åsa about everything. She hadn’t heard his whole side of the story. She couldn’t help him. Why should he let his worry rub off on her? That would just be cruel.

The investigation into the so-called assault in the bodega was making crawling progress. After the decision’d been made to start a formal inquiry, he’d had to go in for an interrogation with IA. Tell his side of the story. A small, Hägerstrom-like fucker on the other side of the table: Assistant Detective Rovena. Had probably spent the seven years since cadet school behind a desk. Or even more likely: under a desk, ’cause he was so damned scared that something would fall down from the ceiling. Paint, maybe. Or dust? It was insane that a guy like that was even allowed to call himself a cop. He’d probably slid in on some fucking blatte quota. It was clear, this guy didn’t have the stuff.

Thomas told him the way things were. Rovena was interested in the details. How many times did the man strike Lindqvist? Why hadn’t Andrén managed to put handcuffs on the man? When did he decide to use the baton?

“Hey, there’s a great movie about this. You should watch it,” Thomas said. Rovena didn’t laugh at his joke. Didn’t want to watch the video from the surveillance camera. Claimed he would rather listen to Thomas’s own version of events. Bullshit.

Other than that, the investigation shit was all happening in writing.

After the interrogation, Thomas gathered his strength and got in touch with a lawyer. The old suit wrote two letters. In the first, he demanded to see some of the investigation material that Thomas hadn’t been permitted to see. In the second, he attacked the preliminary investigation for allowing an assistant detective to interrogate a police inspector—a subordinate should not be interrogating a superior—and for not noting that Cecila Lindqvist’d actually tried to alert dispatch but had had to abort the attempt due to the fact that Göransson’d acted so aggressively. Thomas wasn’t impressed. The only thing the letters led to was that he had to go in for another interrogation—with a detective chief inspector. All he could do was wait for the decision.

He stayed at home, mostly. Gained a certain degree of understanding for the panic that hit the rabble after they’d been in custody for a few days. And he could still watch DVDs and surf unbelievable quantities of porn. Wanted to work on his Cadillac, but it didn’t give him any peace of mind. The men sent him a box of chocolate, which made him feel stronger. They’d written him a short letter: “We look forward to having the Sharpshooter back.” “The Sharpshooter,” that felt good. Thomas was often the best in their practice shoots at work, so the nickname was right on—there were a lot worse things you could be called on the force. Sometimes he lifted weights in the den. But without any real drive. The days passed. The summer rolled by outside his window like an irritating glare on the TV screen.

After four weeks, he’d gotten in touch with Adamsson. The whole thing felt shady. Adamsson ought to understand that it wasn’t a problem for Thomas to stay at work while the investigation was going on. But as Thomas’d observed before: Adamsson couldn’t be trusted in this case. Thomas knew he should look into things more.

Thomas tried to sound as nice as possible when he called him. “Hey, Adamsson. It’s me, Andrén.”

“Yeah, I can hear that. How are you doing, anyway?” He tried to sound accommodating. But Thomas hadn’t been the one who asked to go on sick leave.

“You know, I don’t think I can take this much longer. I’m pacing around at home like a lost soul, waiting for the verdict.”

“I understand. But I still think it’s best that you stay away. You know, the mood will get weird here if people know you’re just waiting. Either they drop it or there’ll be a trial—that’s just the way it is.”

“Stig, may I ask you something?”

Using his first name, Stig, was really too personal, but Thomas couldn’t care less at the moment. “I have a great deal of respect for you and I always thought we worked well together. If anyone were to ask who’d been my mentor and role model, I would give your name, without a doubt. You’re a straight shooter and don’t compromise with the things we all want to preserve. And I’ve always believed you thought I was one of the good ones. So now I’m wondering, is there anything you can do in this situation? Talk to the police commissioner or someone at IA?”

Stig Adamsson breathed heavily on the other end of the line. “I really don’t know. It’s dicey.”

Thomas could feel it clearly: the irritation was welling up inside him. What was this bullshit? He would’ve done anything for Adamsson and now the old jerk wouldn’t even try for his sake. Adamsson knew something, that much was obvious.

“Come on, Adamsson. I thought we were batting for the same team. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“Do I have to spell it out for you? I. Don’t. Know. Is that clear enough?”

Adamsson pulled the carpet out from under his feet. It was a betrayal. Just like when he’d barged into the morgue. Thomas mumbled something in response. Adamsson said good-bye.

They hung up.

He took sleeping pills in order to fall asleep that night.

Another thing’d been eating away at him, too: the unsolved murder. So many questions. The most probable answer was that the dead guy had some sort of connection to someone in the building. Or else he was a simple burglar that one of the neighbors’d caught red-handed. But something told Thomas it wasn’t a question of coincidence. There was a connection to someone—but how would they find out who when they didn’t even know who the dead man was? The murderer had to have known about the victim’s past. On the other hand: the murderer hadn’t taken care of the slip of paper with the telephone number on it. Other questions were piling up. Why was there no sign that the victim’d resisted? No traces of blood or torn skin from the murder or murderers. The victim wasn’t exactly a small person, there ought to have been a struggle. And the track marks, what was the deal with them? Finally: Whose was the phone number on the slip of paper?

Hägerström’d looked up the registered phone plans—none of the owners appeared to have anything to do with the murder. But could Hägerström be trusted? He didn’t want to think about that right now. And no matter what, there were still the prepaid phone plans that hadn’t been checked yet. The first’d been used by some young girl without a connection to the murder. But the other one? It was still unclear who owned it. Only three numbers’d been dialed. Two people who claimed not to have a clue and a third who Hägerström hadn’t been able to get ahold of.

Just three numbers dialed—something wasn’t right. The only people who used prepaid cards that way were troublemakers.

During the first few weeks of his so-called sick leave, he’d had a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. But a few days after his conversation with Adamsson: dammit, he was going to figure this shit out on his own. As an active-duty police inspector or as a cop on sick leave. The idea about the IMEI number’d been in the back of his mind, but had gotten lost when his problems began to pile up.

He’d written down the phone’s IMEI number even though bringing home classified investigation material was prohibited. Fifteen numbers. A code. A signal that was sent out every time someone placed a call from the phone. No matter the plan. In other words: if the phone’d belonged to someone else, or had belonged to the same person who, for some reason, switched out the prepaid plans often, it was possible to find other numbers that’d been dialed from it.

The question was how. Thomas was no detective, but he knew that this wasn’t exactly rocket science. The detectives did it all the time. He wasn’t going to call Hägerström, though. Didn’t want to call anyone else in Skärholmen to ask, either. Dammit, he wished he knew this shit. Thomas: alone against the conspiracy.

Theoretically, he should be able to get the information from the major phone companies. Demand a search on all calls that’d been made on plans that they owned from a phone with IMEI number 351549109200565. But what would happen if they asked to call him back at the police’s number, just to be certain he was who he said he was? If they asked him to fax his request from a fax machine with the police’s official phone number? But what the hell: he was just on sick leave. He was still a cop. It had to work.

Three days later, he called TeliaSonera, Tele2Comviq, Telenor, and a few smaller carriers. Thomas spoke with his most authoritative voice. TeliaSonera and Tele2Comviq promised to check—it would take a few days. They bought his story. Promised to send their findings to a fax number other than the police’s usual one—Thomas’s private number. No confirmation of who he was, no double-checking from where he was calling. Nothing.

But Telenor.

He introduced himself, but changed certain information. Instead of the Southern District, he said the Western District. If they were to call back to Skärholmen or some other station in his district, everyone would know right off the bat that he was away from work. The Western District was safer. He asked to be connected with someone responsible for technology. He explained the situation. He was calling in regards to a murder investigation with high priority. The police needed to know all the calls that’d been made from the phone with the IMEI number in question. The girl on the other end of the line listened, said yes and mmm—seemed on board. Until he asked her to make it snappy.

“You know, I have to ask you something before you start a bunch of extra work for us here.”

“Okay.” Thomas hoped it’d be a simple enough hoop to jump through.

“Can I call you back at the police’s number? You know, we have our protocol and stuff.”

Thomas felt his hands grow cold and sweaty at the same time. What was he supposed to say now?

He put his bet on the authoritative voice again: “This is what we’ll do. I’ll fax you an official request tomorrow. You’ll get our official fax number to your fax. That’s what we’ll do.”

Silence, tension. Thomas thought he could almost hear the seconds ticking inside the cell phone’s digital clockwork.

“Okay,” the tech chick said. “No problem. We’ll do our best. Just send that fax and we’ll get started.”

Thomas breathed out. Just one problem left now: the fax had to come from the police station. He had to fix this thing with absolutely no suspicion.

The next day he was walking on eggshells. Woke up at 7:00 a.m. without an alarm. Ate breakfast with Åsa. Flipped through travel catalogs with her. It felt good, incredibly good. At the same time: he was thinking of when the best time was to go to the station. When were the least people there? How would he spin it if Ljunggren or Hägertsröm showed up right when he was standing there by the fax machine ready to send the shit? Or worse: Adamsson.

After Åsa left, he sat down in the living room. Remembered how he’d sat there and listened to Springsteen. How he’d made up his mind to keep going. A promise that would be kept.

It felt good. His life needed a boost, to be remodeled from scratch. Like the Cadillac.

Quarter past five: plenty of time before six o’clock. The perfect time of day if you wanted to visit Skärholmen’s police station unnoticed. Right after the second shift’d taken over. The first shift’d left. The new guys would be in the locker rooms.

The fax was next to him on the passenger seat. He’d printed it at home in order to speed things up: in, send, out. Just one thing he couldn’t forget: to bring the fax receipt.

Weird feeling when Skärholmen’s enormous modern-art piece appeared in his line of vision from the highway: a hundred-foot-high rust-colored metal beam with a knot on it. Thomas hadn’t been gone this long from Skärholmen over the past ten years. He didn’t park in the parking garage—all his colleagues parked their private cars there. The risk of running into someone was too great. He parked by the square behind the mall instead.

The clock struck six. He took a deep breath. Got out.

Walked his usual route. Didn’t bump into anyone.

Used the main entrance: most people used the employee entrance when they went home. Swiped his key card. Punched in the code.

The elevator: two detective inspectors in the youth squad stepped out. Greeted him. They weren’t close. Either they didn’t know that he was under investigation and on so-called sick leave, or else they just didn’t give a damn.

Took the elevator up. The hallway looked empty. He walked past his own office, the one he’d shared with Ljunggren and Lindberg. Peeked in. The picture of Åsa was still in its usual place. All the tired old notes from the National Police Association were still pinned to the message board. Ljunggren’s Bajen soccer scarf was still hanging on the wall, as usual. Hannu’s speedway medals were hanging in their normal spots.

Per Scheele was sitting in a room, typing on a computer. He looked up when Thomas walked past. “Hey there, Andrén. Good to see you. How is everything?”

Scheele, two years in the department. Too green. Probably didn’t understand what it was all about or else he was playing dumb. Thomas just nodded, said everything was fine.

The fax was grouped with the other gray plastic monsters: the copy machine, the printer, the scanner.

Preprogrammed phone numbers: Kronoberg, the Western Precinct, the Northern Precinct, the jail, the Southern Prosecutor’s Office, and so on. Thomas fed his letter to Telenor into the fax. Double-checked that it was placed with the right side up. The ultimate mistake would be sending it so that Telenor got a blank page.

Dialed the number. Pressed send. The letter was sucked in. A police secretary walked past behind him in the hallway. Elisabeth Gunnarsson. Not someone that Thomas’d talked to much. She greeted him nicely without any small talk.

His calculation’d been correct: this really was the time of day when the place was the most deserted—except maybe for two in the morning when the night shift started.

The letter was fed out the other side.

Thomas heard a voice behind him. Finnish dialect.

“Andrén, it’s been ages!” It was Hannu Lindberg. “We were almost starting to think that you’d burned out, as they say these days. Didn’t seem like you.”

After Adamsson, Ljunggren, and Hägerström: Lindberg was the worst person he could’ve run into. On the surface: a joking, jovial, happy fart who didn’t turn down a drink or shy away from getting a little rough at work. But at the same time: Thomas’d never had any confidence in him, even though he was always entertaining to listen to. He didn’t trust Lindberg the way he trusted Ljunggren or any of the other three boys he shared the squad car with. There was something about Lindberg that didn’t tally. Maybe it was his smile, which seemed to say: I’ll make you laugh as long as I know you’ve got my back. But if that changes, I’ll be laughing at you.

“Hey there, Lindberg,” Thomas said.

Lindberg looked surprised. “What’re you doing here, you old boxer?” He laughed.

“I had to come in and deal with something. But you know Adamsson’s the one who wants me to be on sick leave, not me.”

Lindberg looked down at the fax. The letter lay with the blank back facing up in the tray. No fax receipt yet.

“Yeah, I figured as much. The whole thing is so fucking messed up. You’ve got our support, just so you know. A couple of us toasted you when we went out for beers on Friday. Ljunggren, Flodén, and me. You should’ve been there. Hell, Adamsson can’t have anything against that, can he?”

The receipt was fed slowly out of the fax machine. Thomas shook his head. “No idea what Adamsson would think about that. The whole thing makes me sick. But hey, Åsa’s waiting down in the car. I just had to fax this one thing. Tell everyone I say hi. Hasta la vista, Hannu.”

Lindberg grinned. Thomas picked up the letter and the fax receipt. Hannu Lindberg looked at him. Was that a hint of suspicion in his eyes? Thomas tried to see if he was eyeing the letter.

He took the stairs down. His heart was beating in time with his steps.

It was done. Smooth.

Like butter.

Back in the present. There he was, alone in a sun chair on Gloria Palace’s terrace. Seventy-seven-degree pool water and a group of smoking-hot Danish twenty-year-olds in front of him. And yet he felt so damned lost.

Still: all cops with balls had to go through tough times sometimes. It was over twelve years since Thomas’d graduated from the Police Academy, always with his sights set on working the streets, to be of some real use. He’d started as a patrol officer in the Southern District right away. Four years later, he was promoted to police inspector. A triumph. A sign that he’d picked the right career. His dad was proud. After that, three calm years. He met Åsa, made sure to end up in the same group as Jörgen Ljunggren and the others. After a while, things went a little too far, he was written up twice for excessive use of force. Some protest in Salem where he’d been called and some fucking wife-beater’d gotten too out of hand. He got off with warnings. And then Åsa had her miscarriage. He’d already realized the world was ankle-deep in shit. Now it just sank a little deeper. He tried to calm down by tinkering with the car. It didn’t work. He beat people up ten times worse, several times a month. Pounded on junkies. Split immigrant lips. Smashed shoplifting Sven swillers. But the spirit in the department was good. There was honor, a code. People didn’t say anything about Thomas using the harder method. You didn’t rat out a colleague who did his job.

Okay, maybe he was a dirty cop. A quasi-racist, overaggressive, degenerate police officer. A rotten human being. But sometimes he missed the good old beat. The part that was about seeking out the truth and nothing else. In the middle of all the shit he’d brought down on himself, in his lust for easy money, there was still a little bit of cop left in him. The one who’d been given a job to do by society: to fight crime. And yet… other thoughts elbowed their way to the front. What would he do about Radovan Kranjic’s offer? He hadn’t made up his mind yet—maybe he’d let the internal investigation’s verdict decide.

At home in Sweden, all the reports from the telephone companies would be waiting for him. They’d promised him that.

At home in Sweden, in a few days, he would know if he would stay or not.

At home in Sweden, reality could do what it wanted with him. He felt ready.

Or not.

28

The cunt parole office at Hornstull was lamer than ever. Mahmud’s mood: cuntier than ever. He’d been an hour early. The receptionist claimed that Erika Cuntwaldson refused to come out and see him. “I’m sorry, she’s in another meeting.” Yeah, right—sure she is. Humiliation tactics were their thing. To always let Mahmud wait. He was gonna fucking pork that bitch in her “other meeting.”

Mahmud eyed the magazines and newspapers. Thought: Gracious Home, Dagens Nyheter—so gay. Name a single ordinary blatte who read shit like that. But the car magazine was okay. Mahmud flipped through it. An article about the new Ferrari. He drooled for a while. Then he thought: Should he split? Clock on his cell read fifty more minutes to go. He should split. But still: Erika was okay, after all. Plus: if things got messy with the parole office the cops would be all up in his shit, and if the cops were up in his shit social services would be all up on him, and so on. If you thought about it, the principle was clear enough: never end up in the system. ’Cause once you’re in, they won’t let you go. Ever.

Mahmud’d borrowed a cellie from Babak that he’d pocketed at his dad’s store. Could hold hundreds of MP3s. Babak’d loaded it with an ill mix. The baddest beat-bangers: P. Diddy, the Latin Kings, Akon. But also: Haifa Wehbe, Ragheb Alama—real Middle Eastern groove. Mahmud leaned his head back. Chilled. He was never gonna let slip that he waited this long to see his parole officer.

He’d dreamed the nightmare again. Back in the woods. Pine trees and fir trees eclipsed the sky. Arms raised to the heavens. The rifle gleamed in a cold light that seemed to be coming from streetlamps. Lamps in the middle of the woods? It seemed weird even in the dreamworld. On the grass in the middle of a ring of men dressed in black—Mahmud was looking diagonally down as if he were floating above the scene—he saw Wisam. Wisam’s hands were black from the blood on his face. It ran slowly. Warm. Hot like a stream of lava. He lowered his head. Stefanovic pointed the rifle at his neck: “We’re killing you, not because you deserve it but because we need it to show up in our balance sheet.” Wisam looked up. Eyes red from crying. A pulsing cut on his cheek. But maybe not. The blood was smearing his cheeks. His chin. Was running like in slow motion. “Help me,” he said.

It wasn’t the first time. Ever since he’d seen the Yugos pick up the Lebanese bro that afternoon. The dreams were fucking with his head. Patient. Persistent. Sharp like a cocaine rush. The forest clearing. The piss in the grass. Akhramenko’s jabs in the ribs of a faceless opponent. Stefanovic’s smile. Gürhan’s grin. Born to Be Hated. He tried to smoke up before going to bed so that he’d have an easier time falling asleep. Didn’t go to the gym or drink Coke too late at night. Only watched boring TV shows. It still didn’t work.

The memories were whipping him.

Stefanovic’d asked him to get in the car. He was dressed in a suit, with a cell phone in hand, and he was in a radiant mood. He turned to Mahmud, “Great thanks for your help.” Then he kept talking into the phone. In Serbian.

They were driving toward Södermalm. Slavic music on the stereo. A red light on Vasagatan. “Was it hard to get ahold of that asshole?”

Mahmud grinned. “No. Shit, man, I’m a dog-catching king.” Now, two months later, that grin almost felt as disgusting as if he’d laughed at his mother’s grave.

Erika rapped her knuckles on the table in front of him. He opened one eye. She smiled. What the fuck was she smiling at? Mahmud kept his earbuds on. Couldn’t hear what she said.

She knocked him on the knee. Tried to say something that couldn’t be heard through the phat beats, 50 Cent.

He took the earbuds off.

Dragged his feet all the way to her room. As messy as usual. Just as much paper, coffee mugs, bottles of mineral water, dead plants, nerdy posters with weird chunky peeps on them. Caption: Botero. Fuck, man, Botero, that’s what she was—a cow.

“Come on, Mahmud, you don’t have to act like a two-year-old just because you showed up early today.”

Mahmud rolled up his earbuds. “Who do you think you are?” And, in a softer voice: “Cunt.”

Erika stared at him. Mahmud knew: you had to’ve known her for a while to know how angry she really was. Erika: you could measure that chick’s fury by how still she sat. Right now: she was moving less than the naked statue on Hötorget.

Thirty seconds of silence. Then Mahmud said, “Okay, I was too early. It was my fault. Sorry. I just get so pissed at your reception chick. Why couldn’t she ask you to see me a little earlier?”

Erika moved her hand—a good sign.

“It wasn’t her fault. I was in another meeting. The whole world doesn’t revolve around you, Mahmud. You’ve got to understand that. Anyway. Let’s forget that now. It’s fly that you’re here.”

Mahmud grinned at her word choice: fly. Man, did she talk like that? In his heart: he couldn’t help thinking Erika was okay after all.

“How’s the job search going? You’ve practically got to be CEO somewhere by now.”

If it’d been anyone else: Mahmud would’ve lost his shit. On purpose. Taken it as a diss. A way of making fun of him. The thing with Erika: deep down, he knew that’s not what she meant. He usually knew that at other times, too, but here—it’s like he couldn’t have a beef with her for longer than five minutes.

“Honest, it’s not going too good. I haven’t been called to interviews lately.”

They talked. Erika chatted on as usual. Told him he had to sign up for a course, be in touch with some job-placement agency, his social worker. That he had to stay in touch with his dad, his sisters. A strong family was important. A social context was important. Old friends were important.

He felt a headache come crawling on. Disturbing. Wisam: an old friend.

He switched on the look-like-you’re-listening look. But couldn’t relax. Tried to soften the headache that was starting to scream: WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?

It felt like he had to hold on to something. Like he was about to collapse. Fall, crawl around like an insect on the linoleum floor. Felt like he wanted to tell everything, spill it all, to Erika. No. Khara. That wouldn’t work. Never.

He held out. Bit the bullet. Said yes to everything Erika wanted to hear yes to.

Fifteen minutes later, they were done.

Thanks, thanks, see you in two weeks.

Fast. Out.

Two hours later. He was staying with Babak for a few days, couldn’t take Dad’s whining.

Things were going good for Babak. He’d gotten a new forty-six-inch Sony flat screen. “Not some cheap sale model,” as he said. “The real stuff, more pixels than there are blattes in Alby. You feel me?” Babak pushed product like never before: blow, weed, even cat. Could talk about it all day: the coke wasn’t like before. It wasn’t just high-class flyers and the Stureplan clowns that were doing it. The opposite. The Sven Svenssons and the Ali Muhammads next door were ripping lines more often than they downed beers. Everyone was doing it. The prices’d dropped like at an after-Christmas sale. Soon: C would be bigger than weed. Babak transformed every coin into paper. The reward: flat screen, chicks, lackeys. Babak’d gotten two clockers who dealt for him. And that’s when the real profits first started pouring in.

Reward of rewards. Two weeks ago, Babak’d bought the number one blatte man’s wish: a BMW. The ride was an ’07, bought as part of a debt settlement with some poor Finn in Norsborg who couldn’t deliver.

Mahmud felt it strong: he was so jealous. Of his brother. Hated the feeling. At the same time, he promised himself: one day he’d own even flyer shit.

Babak said, “What’re you doing? You’re stressing me out. Habibi, sit down. Let’s watch a flick.” Sometimes he sounded so funny: spoke Arabic, but said the word “flick” in Swedish.

Mahmud responded coolly, “Yo, I gotta run some shit by you.”

“No problem. The movie can wait. Fire away.”

“I did something stupid. Cunt stupid.”

Babak did a double take, pretended to look surprised. “Come on, when did you not do something cunt stupid?”

“Seriously, Babak. This stays between us. Only. I betrayed someone I didn’t wanna betray.”

Babak seemed to feel the seriousness. Mahmud paced. Started at the beginning, with the stuff Babak already knew. How he’d been pressed by Gürhan, through Daniel. How his desperation’d grown. How the opportunity’d come like a gift from Allah. The chance to do the Yugos a small favor that they’d pay for royally. To find Wisam Jibril, an old friend from the hood, who’d ripped off Radovan. Babak’d already figured some of it out from before. Been to the Bentley store, heard how Mahmud’d gone door to door in every concrete tower looking for Wisam. But he didn’t know the whole story.

Mahmud stopped his pacing in the middle of the room. “You know, when he came to our place that day and I started talking to him, told him my business idea, suggested we meet up, I knew something else right then.”

“What did you know?” Babak asked.

“I knew I would regret this for the rest of my life. You feel me?”

Babak just nodded.

Mahmud kept going. He described how he’d tricked Wisam into going to the restaurant in Tumba, how the Yugos’d plucked the Lebanese, how Mahmud’d hopped into a BMW and driven off too. But they hadn’t trailed the car that Wisam was in. Instead, they drove in toward the city. Stopped at Slussen. Stefanovic told Mahmud to get out with him. They walked into one of the big buildings behind the Katarina Elevator. Took a cramped elevator up. Stepped out. There was a restaurant up there. White tablecloths, crystal stemware, pro waiters—real deluxe atmosphere. Mahmud’d had no idea there were joints like that on the South Side.

They had a reservation. The waiter seemed to recognize Stefanovic. Like, shit, you know?

Stefanovic ordered a drink. Mahmud didn’t plan on drinking, ordered a Diet Coke as usual. “I hope you like this place. I thought we’d celebrate. As thanks for helping us so much.”

Mahmud ordered foie gras with some kind of pear vinaigrette that was supposed to come with Serrano ham. He asked to have it without the final ingredient.

Stefanovic chatted. About the money he’d made at the K-1 fights, Jörgen Ståhl’s fantastic punches, some new bar by Stureplan. Mahmud liked the way he spit. Stefanovic was drinking wine. The entrées were served. Mahmud’d had a hard time choosing: a lot of fish on the menu and that wasn’t his thing. The waiter set his plate down. Grilled rib eye. Real stuff.

During the entire conversation, in the back of his head: he had to ask the Yugo what they could do about Gürhan and Born to Be Hated. Mahmud looked around. Hardwood floors, men in suits, ill view over the city. A couple of old guys at another table were staring at him and Stefanovic in a Sven way.

Stefanovic wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin.

“Okay, let’s talk business.” He lowered his voice. “First of all, I want to thank you again. It would’ve been hard to find him without you. The guys are taking care of him now. Do you know what I’m saying?”

Mahmud understood, but not really. For some reason, he shook his head.

“You don’t understand? This is how it is. We’re not taking him because he deserves it, but because we need it to show up in our balance sheet. You know, he didn’t really pocket too much in his little airport heist. We managed to take most of it back. So it’s not about the money. It’s about the principle. The rules of the game. Our entire business idea is built on one thing.” He leaned over, whispered into Mahmud’s ear, “Fear.”

Stefanovic took a sip of his wine.

“Anyway. You’ve proven that you’re a good guy. You did your job quickly, without making a mess, and in the right way. We appreciate that. Do you know what the most important thing is in this field?”

Mahmud shook his head.

“That we can trust each other. Trust is the only thing that matters. We don’t work with written contracts or stuff like that. Just trust. Do you understand?”

Stefanovic took a big bite of his food.

What the Yugo was saying sounded okay to Mahmud’s ears. “You can trust me. One hundred percent.”

“That’s good.” Stefanovic finished chewing. “You will get your pay today.”

Mahmud almost couldn’t keep up. It was all happening too fast. He needed to parry with his proposal. Still play according to the rules. He gathered his courage. Sharpened his talk.

“Hold on a sec, Stefanovic. Thanks for saying all that. It feels damn good to’ve been able to help you. Honest, it would’ve been hard for you to find that guy. He hung in my circles, not yours. You gotta be deep in the concrete to pull off a thing like that. And I’d be happy to work more with you. Word on the street is you guys are good. So, I’m yours. But, there’s something else I gotta talk about. I don’t want cash for the gig. I wanna know if you can help me with something else.”

Stefanovic raised his glass as if to make a toast.

“Tell me.”

“You know Gürhan Ilnaz, Born to Be Hated, from Södertälje?”

Stefanovic nodded. Everyone in the world he belonged to knew who Gürhan was—just like everybody knew Mr. R.

“He’s after me. It’s about a debt that I’ve already paid. But they’re piling on more and more, you follow? They’re acting like real pigs, threatening my family and stuff.”

He paused. “So, I was thinking. I just did you a big favor. Instead of cash, can you talk to Gürhan? You know what I mean, just do your thing.”

Mahmud expected another calm nod. Instead: Stefanovic laughed out loud. For at least a minute. Took a gulp of wine. Leaned back in his chair. Kept smiling.

“You can forget about that. Like I said, we’re grateful for what you did. But not so grateful that we’ll do something stupid. You’ll get the money we agreed on. Thirty G’s, right? Maybe you can make the Turk happy with that, what do I know.”

Mahmud tried, “But I helped you big time, man. It’s not a big deal for you to talk to him.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? Forget about it. But you can start selling for us. Then maybe you can save up a little.”

That’s where Mahmud’s story ended. He’d gone into the whole thing, quoted every comment, the full transcript. Almost forgotten that Babak was sitting on the couch, listening.

Now, Mahmud looked down at him.

“I’m fucking crushed, man. You feel me?”

Babak was playing with the DVD case.

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

29

Morning at the pissy guard job. Eyes red. Runny. Ragged underneath. Worse: a headache was pounding on the inside of his skull. Reminded him of his sleep deprivation. Last night again: four hours. Unclear how much longer he could take it. But so far, he was holding it together. The third night in a row that he’d sat outside the different men’s apartments from seven until after midnight. Boredom mixed with jittery suspense. In his head: imagined action scenes mixed with feelings of righteousness.

The project’d been named Operation Magnum. Suitable: in the movie, Travis popped the assholes with a .44-caliber Magnum revolver. It was a powerful weapon. This would be a powerful attack.

Niklas was sitting outside an apartment in Sundbyberg. He tried to see as much as he could with the help of his binoculars. The woman, Helene Strömberg, came home around five o’clock. She worked as a dental hygienist at a public dental clinic by Odenplan. The son came home at five-thirty. Ate dinner alone in front of the TV. The only room into which Niklas had good visibility was the living room. The kid was watching some nature show. Niklas, sarcastic: Real exciting, I thought there were video games for kids like him. The man, Mats Strömberg, came home at seven-thirty. He and Helene ate dinner together. Then Mats watched TV with his son. It seemed like Helene was doing laundry. A harmonious home. Had to be fake. Everything was still. Like the calm in the barracks before an attack. But nothing happened.

Later: from twelve-thirty to two-thirty, he collected the tapes from the cameras outside the two single-family homes and across the street from the apartments. Drove home. Downloaded the footage to his hard drive. Fast-forwarded through the video files one by one. For most of the day, the houses were dark. In the afternoon/night, the lights came on. People came home. Moms, dads, kids. They took their dogs for walks. Drove the kids to practice. Made dinner. Ordinary lives. So far. Or? Maybe the list didn’t contain names of battered women after all. Maybe it was a list of potential recruits to the switchboard, the telephone hotline, or the support network at Safe Haven. Maybe everything was to hell. A money pit. Maybe FISHDO—Fuck it, shit happens, drive on. Should he start making other plans?

What’s more: he had to watch his finances. The job wasn’t earning him much, ten thousand kronor a month, max. He’d poured hundreds of thousands of kronor into equipment, the car, and other stuff. He needed more for living expenses and future expenditures for the Operation. On top of that: the shady broker could reclaim the sublet at any time. What the fuck would he do if that happened?

The dreams returned. He saw Claes in front of him. Bloody hands. Punches to the stomach. Kicks to the face. Images from Iraq. Collin in combat gear. The attack against the mosque. Volumes of the Koran in tattered piles.

August was coming to an end. He waited. Patiently. Something had to happen soon—one of the men would reveal himself for what he was.

Thursday afternoon. End of the workday. One day left till the weekend. Even more time to spend on the Operation.

He called Mom on his way home.

“Hi, it’s me.”

Niklas could hear water running in the background. She must already be at home, washing dishes or something. Good.

“Hey, honey. It’s been too long. Have you stopped picking up my calls?”

He couldn’t take that accusatory tone. “No, but I’m working all the time. I can’t pick up when I’m at work.”

“How is work?”

“Work is shit, Mom. Pure shit.”

“Don’t say that. Maybe it isn’t as exciting as all the stuff you were up to overseas, but it’s safer. For all of us.”

Niklas was on his way to his car, which was parked in Biovitrum’s enormous parking garage. His steps echoed.

“Stop it, Mom. Sometimes you have to do dangerous things to earn your living and sometimes you have to do dangerous things just because you have to.”

“What do you mean? Why do you have to do that? What dangerous things are you doing now?”

“No, I didn’t mean that.” Niklas saw the Audi parked thirty feet away. He unlocked it with the remote-control key. “But maybe you should be more grateful sometimes.”

She stopped clattering with the dishes in the background. “What do you mean? What should I be grateful for?”

Niklas opened the car door. Slid into the driver’s seat.

“All these years you’ve been nagging at me to stop with the warring, as you call it. Every time I’ve been back here you’ve whined. Then, when I do come home for our sake, what do I get? Even more whining. Mom, you have no idea about all the good stuff I’ve done for you. There is so much crap in this city. Do you understand that? Dirt that’s violating my blood. That’s violated you.”

He slammed the car door shut.

“Do you know what scares me, Niklas?”

“Other than insects, pigeons, and heights? No.”

“You scare me. You’re not the way you used to be. Before, you were always hotheaded and full of energy. I know you could get mad then, too, but you were always kind. What’s happening? All you do is talk about gratitude, about crap you see around you. About the parks department not doing their job because there are so many rats in Örnsberg. You sound so strange. Did you go to the open clinic like we talked about? How are you really doing, Niklas? Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? I’ll order pizza.”

First: surprise over her reaction. Quickly replaced by something else: indignation. Disgust. The open clinic was shit. What did she think? He felt his hand begin to shake. He could hardly hold the cell phone steady against his ear.

“Stop it! You’ll see. You’ll all see. I’m not like you. I’m something much greater; I’ll make an impression on people. It’s about impact, Mom, changing the world. And to do that, you have to act. People’s lives, the passage of time. Everyone just walks around and accepts this shit, but who’s doing anything about it? And you, all you’ve ever been is spineless.”

Niklas hung up. That was enough. If not even Mom understood him, it was pointless trying to explain to anyone.

Operation Magnum had to continue. Niklas drove straight out to Sundbyberg.

The Strömberg family’s apartment was on the second floor. Niklas climbed into the backseat of the car. Lay down. Rested the binoculars on his belly. Looked up at the apartment through the windshield. Still dark. It was quarter past five. Good thing he switched out the license plates regularly.

People walked by outside the car. The advantage of getting there so early: easy to find a parking spot. He’d had to give up because of parking a few times. Had to drive to one of the other apartments. It bothered him—he needed the routines.

While waiting for the family to come home he read his newfound genre: Anti-power-imbalance. Anti-porn. Anti-men-who-thought-they-had-the-right-to-do-whatever-the-fuck-they-wanted. Right now: a collection of Judith Butler essays. Scary academic, but it educated him anyway. Made him realize the sickness in Sweden. In the world. The men who abused their strength. The physical imbalance. He saw them as rats who took their chance to suck the blood out of human hearts just because they could. Like filth collecting just because there was room to collect. The shit that soiled every inch of the human body. Invaded the blood, the muscle fibers, the respiratory organs. Dirt. But they didn’t know who they were up against—poor devils.

At six o’clock, the son came home. Went through his regular routine. Turned the TV on before he’d even taken his jacket off. Disappeared into the kitchen. Returned with a bowl. Maybe cereal. Sat down in front of the TV.

But Helene didn’t come home. Seven o’clock came around. The kid talked on the phone a couple of times.

At seven-thirty, the Mats fucker came home. Disappeared into the kitchen. Time passed. This wasn’t going according to the family’s routines. Mats came into the living room. Sat down next to his son in front of the TV, beer in hand. The son got up, disappeared out of sight. Maybe he went to bed, but it was early.

The man remained seated. Chugged beer. Watched TV.

It was around ten-thirty when Niklas saw Helene come walking down the street. He already knew the key code to the building—it was easy to make out, just follow people’s finger movements over the keypad. He’d tried it out several times just to be sure.

It usually took her forty-five seconds to walk up to the apartment.

Correct: forty-three seconds after she’d walked through the front door, Mats rose from the couch. Swayed slightly. Disappeared out in the direction of the entrance hall.

Damn, Niklas couldn’t see what was happening. Considered getting out of the car, positioning himself farther up the street. Getting a better angle, catching a glimpse of the hallway. At the same time: he had to stick to his routines, not rush into anything, not run and wave the binoculars around unnecessarily. He stayed in the car. Waited.

After ten minutes: they came into the living room.

Helene was gesticulating with her arms. Mats was red in the face. Obvious—they were arguing.

Niklas was on tenterhooks. What were they saying in there? How aggressive was the man? He should’ve rigged a wireless listening device, bugged the whole place.

Then he saw it clearly. The man shoved Helene in the chest. Her face contorted; maybe she cried. He shoved her again. She took a few steps back. Was shoved again. His shoves moved them offscreen. Toward the entrance hall again. It was happening now, now a major assault was coming. Surely, soon.

Niklas threw himself out of the car. Grabbed the reverse peephole viewer and his Cold Steel knife. It was dark out. Streetlamps were hanging on wires between the houses. He punched in the code. A soft click as the lock opened. He tore open the door.

Took the steps four at a time. Advanced—adrenaline-focused, attack-tuned. Stealth position—ready to strike.

Strömberg. On the door: a ceramic plate with a colorful text in relief: WELCOME. The sounds from their argument could be heard faintly. Even though Niklas’d been up here and seen the door before, he now had time to think: The perfect picture is more of a lie than ever. Otherwise quiet in the stairwell. He heard his own panting breaths. Placed the viewer over the peephole in the door. Inside: Mats and Helene in a full-scale war. She was sitting on a stool. He was two feet away from her. Screaming. Niklas could hear it now that his head was only inches from the door.

“You fucking ego-bitch. How do you think this is supposed to work? If you’re out on the town all night.”

Mats took a step forward. Helene sat with her face in her hands. Sniveling. Sobbing. Weeping.

Mats kept hollering. Yelled about the conditions for their life together. The raising of their son. Cleaning up the kitchen. Lots of shit. Helene ignored him, never looked up.

Mats took another step forward. “Are you even listening to me? You fucking whore.” He grabbed her hair. Tore her head up. Swollen, red-rimmed eyes. Niklas could feel it. Her fear. Panic. Maybe she knew what was about to come.

Mats held her hair in a firm grip. Forced her to her feet. She tried to loosen his grip with her hands. He let her go. Pushed her toward the closets. She tumbled, tripped, fell. Tried to get up. He stood with his face inches away from hers. Continued shouting. Scolded, screamed, spit saliva.

She hunched down. Grabbed her shoes.

Niklas hardly had time to react. The door swung open. Helene flicked the light switch in the stairwell. Niklas stood there like an idiot, viewer tight in his fist.

Helene ignored him. Rushed down the stairs, still only in her socks. Shoes in hand.

Niklas walked up to the next landing. Listened.

Heard Mats yell, “Come back, calm down.”

His military preparations were worthless—there was nothing Niklas could do.

He waited until Mats closed the door. Walked out to the Audi. Saw Helene farther down the street.

She was walking at a rapid pace, but it looked like she was swaying.

Niklas followed her.

30

On the outside: tan, fit, strong.

On the inside: anxious, expectant, nervous.

The verdict was coming today. Åsa and Thomas’d come home from Gran Canaria the day before. Åsa said that she thought it’d been wonderful. But Thomas knew: the worry was eating away at her too, maybe worse than at him.

The decision would be sent at some point after one o’clock. Åsa was at work.

He went grocery shopping at ten. The sky: hard and gray like concrete, pale like his spirit. The drunks outside the liquor store, the so-called A-team, quieted down when he walked past with his grocery bags—they knew he was a cop. He thought, The A-team must be so damn good at shooting the shit—that’s all they do all day, sit together and talk. Hard-core social workout. Maybe he should send Ljunggren there for a while. Thomas smiled to himself—his colleague might be a hopeless case.

Ljunggren: made him miss his job. But also made him think about everything that was strange. The fax machine at home’d been overflowing when he emptied it yesterday, as soon as he and Åsa’d set down their luggage. At least thirty pages from Tele2 Comviq, ten pages from a smaller carrier, and over forty pages from Telenor. Now he just had to dive right in. Organize the information. Work in a structured manner. Åsa wondered if he wasn’t tired from the long flight. “It took over nine hours with the layover and everything. I’m beat, anyway.” Sure, he was tired, damn tired. But the lists stoked the embers. No, more than that—the lists injected him with pure energy. He wanted Åsa to go to bed right away so that he could start working.

She passed out by nine o’clock. Thomas sat with the lists for four hours. The whole house was dark except for the desk lamp in the office. He crossed off numbers that’d been called from the phone, checked for reoccurring numbers, searched on the Internet. He came up with names—lots of names.

He set down the bags of groceries. Opened the door slowly. Stocked the fridge. He packed in the butter, the pork tenderloin, the cheese, the milk. The last: organic. Åsa was stubborn about that. Thomas didn’t have the energy to argue, even though sensible people knew that that was all a crock of shit.

He took a seat by the telephone. Got out the phone lists. Four numbers stood out. Each of them’d been called at least twenty times between May and June. He was going to call the one with the most calls first—thirty-three of them in May alone. The number must be connected to a prepaid phone—he couldn’t find a registered contractual plan in any of his searches.

Someone picked up on the other end. “Yes.”

Answering the phone “Yes” was weird in and of itself.

“Hi, this is Thomas Andrén. I’m calling from the Stockholm Police Department…”

There was a click on the other end of the line.

Thomas called the number again. Got a busy signal like a raised middle finger right in his face.

The next number had been called a total of forty-two times during May and June. Went to a Kristina Swegfors-Ballénius. The third one was yet another unregistered number. The fourth was the most-called number: someone named Claes Rantzell.

He started with Kristina Swegfors-Ballénius.

A relatively young voice: “Yes, hello, this is Kicki.”

“Hi, my name is Thomas Andrén and I’m calling from the Stockholm Police Department.”

“Okay, and what do you want?” Blatant suspicion on the other end of the line.

“I’m calling in regards to an ongoing investigation into some very serious criminal activity. I need an answer to a simple question. I have a cell phone from which your number was called quite a bit in May and June of this year. The numbers vary, but in May, for instance, you were called eighteen times from this number.” Thomas read one of the numbers from a Telenor prepaid phone aloud to her.

“Could you repeat that?”

Thomas read the number again.

“No, I have no idea,” the woman said.

What was this bullshit? Kristina Swegfors-Ballénius’d been called over forty times from the phone in question—she must know whom the number belonged to. Thomas tried to gauge the tone in her voice. How much was she lying?

“This is in regards to a murder investigation—I mentioned that, right? Not some regular crime. Someone has called you a total of forty-two times. Someone with the same phone who apparently changes his number as often as regular people change toilet-paper rolls. Please try to remember.”

The woman on the other end of the line cleared her throat. “But that’s several weeks ago. How am I supposed to remember something like that, huh?”

Something was wrong—the woman didn’t even want to remember. Her hostility was too great to be regular old cop skepticism.

“Listen up, Kristina Swegfors-Ballénius. If you don’t try to remember fast as hell, I’m going to drive out to Huddinge and go through your cell phone personally.”

Thomas hoped she would take the bait—one, that he showed that he knew where she lived; two, the threat to go through her personal life—but, really, that kind of thing was not allowed. Especially not for a police inspector who was on sick leave, potentially soon to be transferred, maybe even fired.

It sounded like the woman on the other end of the line was sucking snot back up her nose. Then, silence. He could almost hear her thinking. This was perfect: she knew something. Finally: “Um, I’ll look through my cell phone and stuff. Can I call you back in a few minutes?”

Bingo.

He had a feeling she would call him back.

Ten minutes later, Kicki Swegfors-Ballénius called.

“So, I figured out who those numbers belong to. The calls were from my father, John Ballénius. Don’t ask me why, but he changes numbers often. I didn’t recognize them right away, because I usually screen his calls.” Thomas looked down at the lists in front of him. Correlated with what she said: none of the calls that’d been made to her’d lasted for longer than a second or so. Kicki sounded like she was in a better mood, or else she was just kissing ass. Thomas didn’t care either way.

John Ballénius was the name. A shady last name—probably made up; the guy must’ve changed his name. But it didn’t matter. The likelihood that he was about to hit upon his first real breakthrough was greater than ever. The telephone number the dead guy’d had in his back pocket had to belong to this Ballénius guy.

His first day back in Sweden was off to a good start. Thomas was hoping for a lucky day in more ways than one—soon he would be informed about the verdict on his future.

He heated a mini pizza in the microwave and started frying two eggs. Scarfed down the pizza with bizarre speed: less than a minute. A hidden talent: no one ate as fast as he could.

He wasn’t going to give up, even if those fuckers did transfer him. He was going to run his own murder investigation on the side. Without that Hägerström clown. Without anyone. Make a triumphant comeback. At the same time, in the back of his mind, a darker thought: What if they didn’t drop the preliminary investigation, what if they weren’t satisfied with a transfer? What if he was convicted like a criminal, lost his job completely?

He Googled John Ballénius. Zero hits. John Ballénius was apparently not a Web celeb. But on the other hand—who the hell was? Ballénius’s address according to the population registry: a post office box. The Internet was useless. He needed access to the police’s databases. But that was a problem. Even if he weren’t officially on sick leave, every search was registered—not even cops were allowed to snoop around in criminals’ lives. You had to swipe your access card to even start up the computer database and every word you punched in was logged.

Despite that, he made an attempt. Called Ljunggren and asked him to run a search through all the central criminal databases at once. Ljunggren was skeptical. “Dammit, Andrén, what is this? You’re supposed to be chilling out. We’re looking forward to having you back.”

At the same time: Ljunggren knew that from one perspective, it was his fault that Thomas was in the shit right now. That had to be exploited. “Come on,” Thomas said. “If you’d showed up as usual, I wouldn’t even be sitting here. Just do me this one favor.”

“Don’t tell me this has to do with that dead guy we found at Gösta Ekman Road?”

“Come on, just one search.”

Unbelievably enough: Ljunggren agreed. Ran a search while Thomas remained on the line.

Searching all the databases at once meant any relevant hits showed up in the general reconnaissance database, the databases of the tax and the traffic authorities, the National Police’s criminal records, the passport database, and the national database of suspected persons. If someone was shady, he’d turn up somewhere.

Ballénius was there: convicted of assault and a drug-related crime in the eighties. There’d been extensive surveillance done on the guy in the mid-nineties. They’d thought he was a front man for a bunch of companies. But he’d only been convicted for a few DUIs and one minor drug offense. Later in the nineties: personal bankruptcy. Debt-rehabilitation measures were decided upon in 2001. A prohibition against owning and running companies was lifted the same year. So-called consumption debt’d apparently been what cracked him. The guy was down in the bankruptcy pit again in 2003. What the fuck was Ballénius doing? He was right back on track by 2006—registered as a board member in seven companies. Thomas could feel it getting warm. Wrong. Warm was an understatement—suddenly this thing was on fire. The dude was shady. Shady as hell.

What’s more, there was a street address for Ballénius: Tegnérgatan 46. But there were no listed phone numbers.

It was one o’clock already. Still no call from work about the results from the internal investigation. Should he call? He made up his mind: if he hadn’t heard anything by two o’clock, he was going to call.

Åsa called at five past—wanted to hear if the verdict’d come yet. Thomas was irritated. It wasn’t her problem. “I’ll call you after they’ve been in touch. Okay?”

She sounded sad.

The clock struck one-thirty. Still nothing. What pigs—making him wait like some humiliated nobody.

At a quarter to two, his home phone rang. Thomas recognized the numbers on the display.

It was Adamsson’s extension at the station.

“Good afternoon, Andrén. This is Adamsson.”

“Yes, I can see that. Everything okay?”

Adamsson didn’t seem steely or stressed, but the stillness in his voice gave him away. No good news was coming.

“All’s well with me. And you? How are you doing?”

“Åsa and I were on Gran Canaria for two weeks. Really damn nice. Other than that, it’s been a real drag.” Thomas made an effort not to sound too bitter. Adamsson would be his boss again if he came back, and Adamsson was the enemy.

“I understand. But it was the right decision. Strong move, Andrén.” Dramatic pause. Adamsson made it sound like going on sick leave’d been Thomas’s own idea. He continued, “The verdict’s in from IA.” Thomas was holding the receiver so tightly that his knuckles looked white. “It looks good, actually. They’re dropping it. Congrats.”

Thomas felt himself sink into the armchair. Exhale. There were still some sane people left in the police department, it seemed.

Adamsson kept going: “But the police commissioner didn’t like this whole mess. He’s ordering a transfer. And he offered a suggestion, too. Traffic control.”

Thomas didn’t know what to say. A joke. Ridicule. A fucking spit bomb in his face. Worse than that: this was a matter of police honor.

Adamsson tried to sound sympathetic. “I completely understand that this might be difficult, Andrén. But look on the bright side, you’re not being prosecuted. I’ve always liked you. But you know how it is, the police commissioner doesn’t have a choice. It’s too bad that things ended up this way, you’re a good man. Made of the right stuff. And trustworthy too, as I like to say. But now things are the way they are.”

Thomas thought: Thank you, you fucker.

Adamsson continued, “I can just give you one piece of advice. You have to learn self-control. I think you’d do better if you gained a deeper understanding of the situations police work may put you in. Sometimes it’s the right time to act forcefully, but sometimes there is no need for that. Believe me, I’ve been around for enough years to’ve seen pretty much everything. Hopefully, you’ll learn one day.”

Åsa came home two hours later. Thomas was under the car with his headlamp switched off. First, he’d tried to concentrate on the chassis. After forty minutes, he’d given up. Everything just went to hell. He kept forgetting tools so that he had to roll out four times, kept dropping stuff, hit his elbow. He just wasn’t meant to be working on the car right then.

The door to the garage opened. He saw Åsa’s legs and slippers.

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Hi there, I’m under here.”

“I can see that. Did the decision come in?”

Thomas rolled out. Remained lying on the creeper. Looked up at Åsa. He’d made up his mind. It felt overwhelming. Big. But they didn’t deserve better, his traitor colleagues.

“They dropped the internal investigation, but I was transferred. To the traffic unit.”

Her face was upside down. It was still obvious—a smile, relaxation. She breathed out.

“Oh my God, what a relief. That’s wonderful. I thought they’d do something worse.”

“Åsa, it’s fucking awful. How can you say that this is a good thing? Don’t you understand what working in that unit’s going to do to me? I’m going to rot. I can’t do it, I have to fix this. I don’t know how, but please don’t say that it’s a good thing.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s still a relief. Imagine if you were convicted. I can’t help it.”

Thomas got up. “There is one more thing I have to tell you.”

“What?” She looked worried.

“I’ve actually said yes to another job offer. As a head security guard. It’s private. Completely outside the force.”

Åsa continued to look worried.

“I’m taking it.”

“Are you joking with me, Thomas?”

“Not at all. I’m completely serious. It’s a part-time job that I think sounds really exciting. So I’m going to call Adamsson tomorrow and tell him that I’m only taking the traffic job part-time and that he can shove his damn sympathy up his ass. The rest of the time, I’ll do this other thing.”

“Thomas, you can’t do that. That doesn’t sound stable at all.”

Thomas felt tired. Didn’t have the energy to argue anymore.

At the same time: maybe this was the beginning of something new.

31

The worst rain all year, even though it was still summer. It pissed on the city. Smattered against the windshield like machine-gun fire. Sick, if you thought about it. Mahmud remembered the sound of machine-gun rounds from when he was a kid. A family wedding in a Baghdad suburb. Back then you shot because you were happy, Dad used to say.

Hopefully, this was his final run to the Shurgard facility for today. Sköndal. The place looked like a cross between a knight’s castle and a barn. A tower with a big-ass sign: SHURGARD SELF-STORAGE. OUR SPACE, YOUR PLACE. Pale-pink wood look—in actuality, the place was sheet metal. Surrounded by asphalt: parking lots, ramps to storage areas, unloading docks. Last week it’d been the storage facility in Kungens Kurva, the week before that the one in Bromma. He’d been across half the city, but they looked the same everywhere he went.

Mahmud dug the place. The idea was tight. No need to meet the Yugos’ underlings unnecessarily. This operation ran on a strictly need-to-know basis, as Ratko put it. They refilled the stuff as soon as Mahmud informed them he wanted to make a withdrawal. He dropped paper off ahead of time at a Yugo-owned bodega in Bredäng. The Yugos were smart: the rules were tougher than at Guantánamo Bay. Mahmud was a nobody in their world. If he got done, they’d say they’d never seen him, never even heard his name. Again: the setup was thick as cream—from their perspective.

What could he do? His debt to Gürhan was what’d made him do it. Honestly: his promise to Erika Ewaldsson hadn’t been 100 percent bullshit. He really didn’t want to be rolling like this. Muscle juice, that was his thing. He chowed on the stuff himself, so why not finance his own body by dealing some pills? But this—if he got collared again he’d be benched for the long haul.

He’d borrowed Robert’s car. Felt weird. A cute little Golf. Sporty: curved gray leather seats, big Navi Plus, and fresh fenders. Nothing wrong with it, but he’d made his previous rounds in Babak’s deluxe ride. That was all over now. Babak’d cut him off. Since Mahmud’d told him about his collaboration with the Yugos. Babak’d asked Mahmud to pack his stuff and move. Shit—Babak was a whiny fucking pussy. A sharmuta.

Outdoor storage units were a little more expensive, but much easier to get to with a car. You didn’t have to go inside the facility, didn’t have to pass by too many surveillance cameras, didn’t have to face too many petrified peeps. Ratko’d grinned when he’d told him that the storage unit was even insured.

“Get it? If there’s a break-in, at least the insurance company’ll pay us back for the store of balsa we supposedly have in there.”

Mahmud punched in the pin code. Fiddled with the key. His hands were slippery. The security in these places: pin code, keys, surveillance cameras. Still: he felt weak. Flashes of light in front of his eyes. The Range Rover with Wisam in the backseat. Why did he think about that? A player like him had to keep moving. Ditch the past.

’Cause after he’d sold the shit today, he’d be free. Soon his final payment to Gürhan and the Born to Be Hated blattes would be over and done with. Three months of terror drawing to a close. He just had to shovel this last snow. Damn, it was gonna be sweet.

The thirty G’s he’d gotten from Stefanovic plus crazy kronor he’d raked in through weed and blow sales over the past few months’d paid off 95 percent of the debt. And tonight at the gym—the deal was basically sealed with Dijma, a big customer. Tight. Then it would be jalla adios to Gürhan. But even more tight: good-bye to the Yugo swine too—the ones he’d been dumb enough to help liquidate a homie from the block—who he’d slaved for these two months, who’d reamed him so hard up the dirty when he’d asked them for help. He was gonna quit. Do what Erika Ewaldsson’d recommended: Stop with the criminal activity. Become a free man.

Mahmud locked the bag with the shit into his locker at the gym. The wrapping paper and plastic bulked it up. No risk getting it swiped at Fitness Center—if anyone got caught trying to boost something here, he’d first get his balls squeezed a few turns in the cogs of the ab machine and then get his head smashed under three or four plates on the thigh press. After that, they’d make a protein shake out of the sucker and treat the meatheads to samples.

Mahmud walked into the gym. The Eurotechno was blaring. He greeted a couple of big guys by the free weights. What was chill about gyms: a blatte like Mahmud almost never had to feel alone.

On the schedule today: squats. At other gyms: a ton of hooked-up cardio machines and advanced press-and-pull gear designed to isolate muscles you didn’t even know you had. Sci-fi land or whatever. Nothing wrong with that, for some, but according to Mahmud, the key to bulking up was in the basic exercises. Always with free weights. And the squat was king of all free-weight exercises.

There was a lot of talk that squats led to busted backs and other problems. Mahmud knew better: the reason for back pain wasn’t the exercise in and of itself, it was bad technique. The solution was simple for anyone with half a brain. Mahmud’d done his research, talked to the others at Fitness Center. Instead of starting the movement at the hip, you should do what the strength guru Charles Poliquin’d always said: start the squat with your knees.

He loved the exercise. And soon he would go on the juice—then things would get even better. He put 180 pounds on each side of the bar. Began the maneuver by bending his knees slowly. As he lowered the bar, he only moved his hips when he needed to in order to maintain balance. He was going to do three sets of ten. He spit, snarled, growled between his teeth. Felt the blood vessels being pressed to the max. His eyes almost popped. Abbou—it felt good. He was only thinking about the lift, the move, the bend in his knees. No bad memories, no bad conscience, no bad karma.

When he was on the juice he’d be able to handle much more. And damn, he was gonna bulk up. With good discipline, he could gain twenty-two pounds. Inject Stanol and front-load Deca. The ampoules felt unreal, but Mahmud was happy needles didn’t scare him—the injection needles were as big as straws from McDonald’s. Then he’d take some Winstrol to dry out—he didn’t want to look like a balloon.

There were some minor downsides, too. The word at the gym was that your kidneys could take a hit. But he was only gonna do it for eight weeks.

An hour later: Dijma with a gripper in his hands. Dijma: buyer with a big B who never bought on credit—always cash. Dijma: the Albanian who didn’t work out too much, but who sold a crazy bunch of shit. Always applying mad force to the gripper. The muscles in his thumbs big as tennis balls. The nails on the dude’s pinky fingers were long like on a porn star.

Mahmud dug him, a straight thug. Dressed in classic gym getup: sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt, a zippered hoodie. Looked around. No one. A Friday night—the gym was half empty at this time of day.

Mahmud put the weights down. “Hey, Twiggy, stop working your wank muscle and do some free weights instead.”

Dijma grinned. Rules of the hierarchy: Mahmud was bigger, Mahmud sat on the goods. Mahmud delivered. So: Dijma laughed at whatever Mahmud said.

In shit Swedish, “The gear, you got it?” Dijma was apparently stressed today.

“Sure. Fifty, in one package.”

“Fuck, man, you guys were gonna break it up.”

“Chill. You break it up. That’s no problem.”

“Okay, okay. And the price?”

“Nine hundred pesetas.”

“Pesetas?”

“Kronor, man. Fuck, you tired today?”

“Nine hundred kronor? No way. Eight hundred.”

“We’ve said nine hundred every time for months. So don’t think you’re gonna come changing it now.”

“Prices change. And you didn’t break it up.”

Dijma said it like it was some fucking macroeconomic certainty. Mahmud didn’t dig his grouse.

“This is bullshit. Nine hundred, that’s the deal.”

“Eight fifty, not a kronor more.” Dijma was too cocky for his own good.

Mahmud shouldn’t put up with this shit. But still: he needed the cash, bad.

His calculation: if he sold fifty times 850 a gram it would be 42,500. Mahmud’s cut: twelve G’s. Wasn’t enough to cover the final payment of fifteen to Gürhan. He needed nine hundred a gram. Or else he was screwed.

Mahmud took a step forward.

“Dijma, the price is nine hundred. We can negotiate next time, then I’ll give you eight hundred. But today it’s nine hundred. You follow?”

Dijma pumped the grip a few times. Mahmud didn’t drop his gaze.

The Albanian nodded. “For today, okay. Next day, eight hundred.”

Bull’s-eye. Dijma must be stressing about something; he’d folded too easily. Normally, this kind of thing could’ve made for some tense shit. But not today, and it wasn’t Mahmud’s problem—he was gonna celebrate.

They walked down to the locker room. Sat next to each other on the bench. Mahmud handed over the bag of gear. Dijma went into a toilet stall to test it. Mahmud, with a raised voice: “Ey, you don’t trust me or what?” The Albanian didn’t respond. Came out thirty seconds later, thumbs up, pushed over a plastic bucket that said CREATAMAX 300 on the side—normally, bodybuilder milkshake. Today: dough. Mahmud dove his hand in. Fingered the bills.

Totally insane. In a few hours, Mahmud would raise his Stockholm ranking. Lose the Gürhan pigs. Quit the Yugo assholes. Become his own man. Rock for real.

Eleven-thirty, a Friday night in Stockholm: people acted like they were on speed. Had waited all week to go out, plus it’d been pouring all day. But now: the rain’d stopped—summer was back. It might be the last chance for that sweet outdoor buzz, that summer fuck, that weed flight. Muscle cars were driving down Sveavägen to cruise around, around, elbows stuck out through open windows: as Suedi as only Svens could be. The kids on their way from the joints in Vasastan that were about to close. Mission: make their way to Stureplan and guzzle some glamour. Mahmud: on his way to freedom.

Carried his gym bag slung over his shoulder. In it: 45,000 cash in a container that’d once held strawberry-flavored creatine powder. Thirty grand had to be repaid to Robert, for the advance for the Yugos. The remaining fifteen were going to Gürhan. No big sums, obviously. But it was Mahmud’s key to freedom.

He walked downtown. Played with the contents of his pocket. A Redline baggie, five grams. Ducked into the shadows of a building. Fished out a cigarette. Twisted it between thumb and index finger. The tobacco fell into his hand.

He poured the weed onto the paper, mixed it with the tobacco from the cigarette. Licked. Rolled. Ran the lighter flame along the edge of the paper a few times to dry the shit. Lit the spliff. Three deep hits. Smoke rings in the shadows. Relaxed feeling.

This was going to be an ill night.

Robert was waiting in the Golf outside the kabob place near Hötorget. Phat beats could be heard from a several-yard radius.

Rob smiled. Mahmud smiled broader. Jumped into the passenger seat.

Mahmud asked, “You know Fat Joe’s Chinese, right?”

Robert revved the engine. “He’s not fucking Chinese. He’s an Indian.”

“Indian? Haven’t you seen the guy? Mix of Zinji and Chinese. Walla, I swear, man.”

Rob leaned his head back against the seat. Laughed.

Made a U-turn in the middle of Sveavägen. Stepped on the gas. Down to Norrtull. Hardly any traffic. Turned up onto Essingeleden. Southbound toward Södertälje.

Robert changed tracks on the stereo. Sweet Middle Eastern beats. Mahmud liked rap and R & B, but a swinging riff by some Lebanese outclassed most things.

Robert turned the volume down. “Yo, what’s Babak’s beef with you?”

Mahmud didn’t know what to say.

“I don’t know. It’s between us.”

Robert said, “Can’t you talk it out?”

Mahmud didn’t want to drag Robert into this; there was the risk that he wouldn’t understand—react like Babak. Still: the whole thing felt fucked. Babak was his boy.

“It’s cool. I just can’t handle Babak right now, is all.”

Robert didn’t ask anything else.

They drove under the train bridge. Södertälje station. Turned right. Toward the city. Over the channel. Mahmud navigated. Had been there many times before. Dug the place: the closest thing to a blatte-ruled city you could get without it feeling like a godforsaken slum.

The place: Carwash, City & Södertälje. Detailing. The advertising outside: UNBEATABLE PRICES AND ACCESS TO A REPLACEMENT CAR! Robert parked. Leaned back, looked for something on the floor of the backseat. Fished up a wheel lock. Put it on and clicked it into place.

“You know, this is Södertälje. Every other kid born here is a football pro and the rest boost rides.”

A metal door next to the garage. They rang the doorbell. It was dark out.

Mahmud felt for the butterfly knife in his back pocket.

A buzzing sound. A click in the lock. Mahmud opened the door. Concrete floor. Ditec car repair posters on the walls. Ads for maintenance products, car-care packages, equipment, polish, and wax.

Mahmud looked around. Empty.

A voice from the office area. “Look at that, the little Arab. And how are you today?”

Daniel emerged from the shadows. Beside him, a huge dude. Daniel: like a dwarf in comparison. Mahmud’d seen a lot of big guys in his day. At Fitness Center, at K-1, in the concrete, in the pen. Dudes who shat themselves every day under the bench press to get pecs that weren’t even half as big as the beef standing next to Daniel right now. The guy was in the same class as the Belarusian at the K-1 gala.

They went into the office area. A desk, a desk chair, two armchairs. Centerfold chicks on the walls.

Gürhan was sitting in the desk chair. Met Mahmud’s gaze.

“Welcome.” The voice sounded innocent. His eyes were dead.

No chair for Robert and the giant, they had to stand in the background.

Daniel hauled a box with two cords and antennas onto the desk. Mahmud’d heard of that kind of thing in the pen. Some kind of antibugging device. Interfered with the 5-0’s connection if they’d wired the place. Why all the bells and whistles? Why the giant in the background? Why was Gürhan there at all?

Daniel said, “You got the cash?”

Mahmud set the plastic container on the table. Opened the lid. The smell of candy. Took out the fifteen one-thousand-kronor bills. Turned to Gürhan.

“I know I fucked up. Lost your Winstrol. But now I’ve paid back every cent plus your interest. One hundred percent. I paid the whole enchilada.”

He hid his hands under the desk. Sweating like in a fucking sauna.

Daniel continued to respond instead of Gürhan. “No, we don’t agree. You’ve been messin’ this whole time. Been late. Whining like a fucking whore.”

Mahmud stared at him. Didn’t lower his gaze a millimeter. His heart was beating worse than Fat Joe’s base beats. Then: he dissed Daniel. Turned to Gürhan again. “Bullshit. I paid. And I paid double interest. With these fifteen G’s, we’re done.”

Daniel started barking again. “Shut the fuck up. You don’t talk to Gürhan like that. Who do you think you are, you fuckin’ fag? Get out. We don’t want your filthy Arab money.”

Robert looked at Mahmud. Hands in his pockets. Worried. Maybe he had a grip on his knife as hard as Mahmud longed to have on his. The giant took a step forward.

Daniel got up.

“I said leave! And take your nasty candy jar with you.”

Robert looked at Mahmud again. His stress was palpable. Mahmud remained seated. Eyes fixed on Gürhan.

“He’s not calling me a fag one more time. We’re done now. I’ve paid you what you wanted.”

Silence.

Gürhan met Mahmud’s gaze.

Mahmud repeated, “We’re done.”

Daniel lost it. “If you say one more word, I’ll kick your skull in.”

Then: Gürhan raised his hand. “Sit down.”

Daniel turned around. Surprised. Unclear who Gürhan was talking to.

He turned to Daniel. “I said, sit down.”

Daniel tried to protest.

Gürhan repeated, “Sit.”

Daniel sat down. The giant took a step back toward the wall.

“He’s paid what he owed.”

Mahmud could hardly believe it was true. Got up. Robert was breathing heavily in the background.

Gürhan said, “Wait.”

Mahmud turned around. Gürhan’s face was still completely neutral. He said, “Take care, Mahmud.”

Cue: string quartet. Hollywood ending. Finally free to flow.

32

Monday. Niklas woke up at eight even though he hadn’t gone to bed until 4:00 a.m. He’d been to see a doctor yesterday—talked his way into getting certified sick leave. Run through last night’s surveillance videos one more time. One camera’d stopped filming at eleven o’clock. Niklas found it on the ground beneath the tree where it’d been mounted. Someone could’ve seen it and torn it down, that was possible. As long as it wasn’t the guy he was watching. Niklas needed time—he couldn’t get found out, couldn’t arouse suspicions. The Operation was fragile enough as it was.

Despite that: he’d seen enough. Mats Strömberg would be served his punishment. Operation Magnum’s first offensive was in the preliminary stage. Niklas was planning, drawing up an attack strategy. Thought about Collin and the others down in the sandbox. He tried to run through the family’s routines over and over again. Realized: he didn’t know enough about the swine. Needed to keep close watch over him for a few more days.

The day rolled on. He munched Nitrazepam, ate yogurt. Read a book about the radical feminist Valerie Solanas by some Swedish girl named Sara Stridsberg. She thought the way he did, even if the book was a tough read. But the idea was right on. SCUM: Society for Cutting Up Men—a manifesto for action solved problems better than a bunch of pathetic theorizing.

He was supposed to meet Benjamin at six o’clock. Considered canceling. At the same time: Benjamin’d promised to get him a weapons hookup. He needed that.

A few hours left: he read, organized the information he had on the different men, their routines, their patterns, their behavior toward their wives, partners, girlfriends. It was just a matter of domination. The nuclear family was a sealed-off world.

He surfed the Internet. Something new: Niklas’d found websites where people shared his opinions. Feminist chat forums where the comments mirrored his feelings. The hate. The drive. The hunt. For the guilty parties. The men.

It was pouring out. A feeling of purity. Rain’d been a blessing in all the countries where he’d been at war. Often the paramilitary forces, the support units, and the guerrilla men who’d fought on the same side as Niklas would stop for half an hour or so, even in the middle of an attack, to pray to their different gods. Give thanks for the rain, for the ground that would be able to sprout new flowers, bear new crops. Pray for victory on the battlefield. Inshallah.

That’s why going into Friden felt grodier than usual.

Benjamin was already sitting at a table. His beard was wet. Under the table was his dog, Arnold. It got up when Niklas approached. Wagged its nub of a tail languidly. But the eyes—Niklas met its gaze. Like low, intensely glowing embers.

He ordered a Coke Zero.

“Did you go become one of those health freaks while I wasn’t looking?” Benjamin asked.

Niklas didn’t want to drink alcohol. In two hours, he had to get back to Sundbyberg, watch over the Strömberg family in general, the so-called patriarch in particular.

“No, but I saw one on my way over. I think there’s one of those Hare Krishna places around here.”

“Oh man, should I set Arnold loose on ’em?”

Laugh break.

“Did I tell you that I’m gonna start training him for his first fight?”

“Did you dock his tail?”

“Can’t you tell?”

“Yeah, but that’s illegal.”

“Oh, stop. Arnold’s imported from Belgium. They don’t have those crazy rules over there.”

“Okay, and how’s the training going?”

“There’s a dude who breeds these kinds of dogs in Stockholm. He’s taught me a bunch of tricks.” Benjamin’s eyes gleamed. “You starve the dog and let it eye bitches in heat without letting it touch them. Then you tie its legs together, put a cup over its cock so the dog can’t jizz, then spray period blood from the bitches all over the cage, rile it up till it’s about to burst. Arnold’s gonna be crazier than a Tyrannosaurus rex.”

Niklas looked at Benjamin like he didn’t know him. Thought, You’re sick.

He asked if Benjamin’d gotten the hookup. Benjamin smiled, nodded. Looked pleased with himself. Pushed a folded Post-it note across the table. Niklas unfolded it: Black & White Inn, Södermalm. Lucic. Monday night. Benjamin’d doodled a gun at the bottom of the note. The guy was so immature.

Niklas shook Benjamin’s hand. “I won’t forget this.”

They kept chatting. Benjamin went on and on about Arnold’s potential triumphs, then about chicks and business ideas. He downed one beer after the other. Niklas was stressed out. He had to go in ten minutes.

Benjamin made Arnold sit on the seat next to him. The dog’s tongue was dangling from its mouth like a strip of bacon.

Niklas considered his options. Should he stay just to keep Benjamin in a good mood? The guy’d given him a weapons hookup, after all. And the guy’d done him a favor when the cops’d asked about that night this summer. At the same time: he had to go. The Operation was more important right now.

On his way to Sundbyberg. Niklas had too many ideas at once. His goal was clear. To become the kind of person who makes a mark on the world. But he needed resources. The attack demanded cash. The thought ballooned. Maybe he could use Benjamin somehow.

So many people are born who never make a mark. People who might as well not have been born. A hundred years later, who would care if they hadn’t ever been born into the world? Who would care if someone made sure they disappeared from the world?

Doing something with Benjamin. Maybe. Could be a possibility. But there were some major problems: Benjamin wasn’t made of the right stuff. No matter how many fighting dogs or bad-boy tattoos he got: he was a pussy.

Niklas needed someone else. Someone who would actually be able to go through with what he had in mind. Who did he know? He thought about the websites he’d visited over the past few weeks. The feminist people. Maybe he could find someone there?

33

Formally, he’d been given his service weapon back. But no one packed heat in this unit. Thomas carried his anyway. The gun’s weight felt strange in his pocket. His blazer sort of fit crookedly; he kept having to straighten it. Armed, but without a uniform, the way civvies must feel all the time. But for one gigantic difference: that wasn’t the service he was in.

His job at the traffic unit was almost duller than the two months he’d spent waiting for the verdict. The people in the unit were like the geeks in school when he’d been a kid. Or rather, these guys were probably the same wimps, but twenty-five years later. Those things never change: geeks are geeks. Laughed at boring word puns, talked about what kind of food they’d cooked their wives the night before, got worked up about how poor the quality of the new plastic binders in the office was. The unit was in Farsta. Thomas tended to go out alone for lunch—grab a burger or a kebob.

But tonight something was going to happen. A new experience in life. From nine o’clock till late at night: his first assignment for the Yugo boss, Mr. Kranjic. Security-guard duty. Bouncer responsibility. Moodcalming utility. If anyone got cocky/violent/inappropriate—it was his job to take care of the situation. Hard manual labor was his specialty.

He thought: the only downside was that the place he was guarding was a strip club. Not that he had anything against strip clubs. You ended up at places like that sometimes. Hannu Lindberg’s bachelor party; after a work thing four years ago; together with some buds from the shooting club when they’d been to a competition in Estonia. He liked the whole concept. Sitting with a drink in hand watching the chicks swing their hips, pout, twirl around the pole. Unclasp their bras, slowly release their garter belts, let their panties fall to the floor. Lap dances for the heavy tippers. It was hot, relaxed, a damn good time. Never looked as good as what you got online, but reality is always full of flaws. A visit to a strip joint now and then could spice up the everyday. A little silver lining, in his pants.

So when he arrived at the club, mixed feelings: disgust and horniness. What’s more, he felt like he was being unfaithful. Even though things weren’t working with Åsa in the sack, he’d promised himself: I don’t do that kind of thing. It just wasn’t him—the online porn would have to suffice. He told himself the strip club wasn’t cheating.

Another thing was his confusion over being on the other side. He’d been a cop for twelve years.

At the same time: the girls were there, so close. Not just frozen images on a screen or dancing goddesses on a stage that, at best, you got to pinch in the butt. But for real. So thin, provocatively dressed, giggly. So simple to get. So easy to take. They ran in and out of the dressing room with their cell phones since there wasn’t any service in there. Some were only dressed in their show outfits. Tight thighs, lifted tits, inviting dimples. He was staring like a skeevy old drooler.

It was bizarre. At the same time, awesome. Imagine if Ljunggren or Lindberg could see this. Jealous as horny jackrabbits. Imagine if his bosses got wind of his extra gig. Imagine if Åsa found out what he was doing. Stop—he didn’t even want to think that thought.

Thomas was stationed at the cash register out by the entrance. Two other dudes at the joint: a Yugo guy, Ratko, who stayed inside the venue, around the stage. The other guy, Andrzej, a Polack or something, who remained out by the entrance with Thomas.

Andrzej rocked a hard-boiled, testy style. Pushed limits, provoked. When Ratko introduced him to Thomas, he asked, “What are you doing here? Aren’t you a cop?”

Ratko told him to cool it. Thomas didn’t say anything. Just stared straight ahead.

A chick who looked Asian manned the register: Belinda. She tried to make conversation. Thomas, a man of few words. Kept to himself. Didn’t bother with her or the Polack. He was just here to do his job tonight. Easy does it.

During the first few hours, the place was dead. Three or four men an hour slid up to the cash register. Some were soft-spoken. Tried not to attract attention. Thomas thought, You’re already here, so it’s not like anyone’s going to think you got lost or something. Others were rowdier. Joked with the chick at the register, asked if she’d do a show later, wondered if she couldn’t give him a discount ’cause he was a regular, asked her what she wanted for an hour, just a suck.

Belinda turned to Thomas.

“Has Ratko gone over what the deal is here?”

Thomas shook his head.

“So, most girls just do their show, with fixings. You know, some moves and a lap dance. Maybe they’ll allow a slap on the ass and a tongue on their boobs, but no more. But some do other stuff, too. A little hanky-panky, if you know what I mean.”

Thomas understood. He’d been a cop longer than this chick’d had tits.

At eleven o’clock, the volume of the music inside the venue was raised. Ratko was switched out. A guy named Bogdan showed up.

Thomas couldn’t see inside. A pair of red swinging doors separated the entrance area from the showroom. Did he want to see inside? Yes. No. Yes.

Andrzej and Belinda babbled on with each other. Joked, laughed. Discussed the latest episode of some TV show, real-estate prices in the city, which of the girls in the club had real tits. Andrzej claimed he could always tell.

More guys streamed in. Twenty, thirty of them.

Thomas leaned against the wall. Thought about his own investigation. It’d been more than a week since he called John Ballénius’s daughter. Gotten Ljunggren to run a search on the guy in all the government databases. Ordered passport photos. Unfortunately, no phone number seemed to work. But he had an address: 46 Tegnérgatan. Thomas’d gone there both Sunday and Monday nights. Tried on Tuesday and Wednesday morning and night as well. Asked Jonas Nilsson, a former colleague who worked in a squad downtown these days, to swing by and ring Ballénius’s doorbell in the middle of the day on Thursday. No one was home. Either the dude was out of the country, or he was a work junkie, or he was dead.

Thomas tried to call the different numbers that Ballénius’d had over the past few months. All of the plans’d been closed out; there was no forwarding information. He tried the most frequently called number again. The person on the other end of the line hung up on him just like last time. It was a prepaid plan. Thomas didn’t know who the number belonged to. The next most called number was the daughter he’d talked to earlier. The third most called number turned out to be a pizza place on Södermalm. They had no idea who John Ballénius was. The fourth most called number was a man with a real boozer voice who’d done some business with Ballénius, as he put it. When Thomas started asking questions, he hung up.

So Thomas decided to call her again, the daughter, Kicki. Her answer was loud and clear. “I have no idea where my dad is. We haven’t really been in touch in over seven years, but he’s been trying to call me a lot over the past few months. I hung up as soon as I realized it was him. But we already talked about that.” She sounded sincere. Thomas asked her where she thought her father might be if this’d been seven years ago. Kicki thought the old guy ought to be home at Tegnérgatan. Other than that, she didn’t know.

But the fucker wasn’t home. Thomas was no detective, but really, how hard could it be to track down a crooked fifty-year-old in Stockholm? That’s when it hit him: maybe Ballénius was more famous than he’d realized.

Thomas got in touch with Jonas Nilsson again. Gave him some info on Ballénius that he’d gotten from the comprehensive searches he’d done in the databases. Asked Nilsson to check if he or anyone else in the City District knew anything more. Two hours later, Nilsson called back. When he’d asked around at lunch, a bunch of old-timers’d just laughed. Apparently, John Ballénius was a legend in shady circles. Just as Thomas’d suspected.

Nilsson had more to say. Ballénius was a notorious gambler. Poker, sports betting, horses, everything. Back in the day, the guy’d even hung out at Oxen, the gambling club on Malmskillnadsgatan. Thomas knew the place, infamous underground club in the eighties. Lots of stuff’d been written about Oxen: that it’d been a hangout of Christer Pettersson—the man who the majority of Sweden’s population believed murdered Prime Minister Olof Palme.

The best tip the old-timer cops offered was to look for Ballénius at the track at Solvalla or at the casino.

Thomas started at Solvalla. V75. Signs everywhere advertising THE EXTRA SPICE OF THE DAY: THE JUBILEE TROPHY. It was one of the biggest trotting-race events of the year. The informational pamphlets claimed that anyone with a penchant for harness racing should be there. So of course Thomas should be there. Hopefully, Ballénius felt the same way.

The weather was fantastic. People were crowding outside—the worry that the rain would return was as forgotten as the greenhouse effect at a car show. Rowdy atmosphere, excitement in the air. Ads for Agria pet insurance wallpapered the area. Hot dogs, beer, and tote tickets in everyone’s hands. The speakers blazoned out the day’s races. Soon it would begin.

Thomas didn’t think Ballénius would be hanging out in the outdoor grandstands. So, he planned on starting inside the building. It was big, with glass façades, probably 330 feet long. Four stories, but each story was like its own grandstand.

The different floors had different class. At the bottom of the huge building: Ströget, the sports bar. Complete liquor license. Big-screen TVs showing the track better than if you were outside by the standing tables. Cold beer, sausages, burgers made with 100 percent beef. The clientele: mostly younger. Swedish guys in jeans and T-shirts with their wallets slapped down on the tables. A couple of their chicks, girls with their hair pulled into little balls on the top of their heads. A couple of families. Outside: bouncers.

Thomas trusted his gut instinct. If Ballénius was here, he wouldn’t hang on this floor.

The speakers were blaring out the special event of the day: “As you all know, Björn and Olle Goop’s Conny Nobell was last year’s Elite Race champion. But the Goop family never got to make their victory lap in front of our audience. So here at Solvalla we now want to bring your attention to the Elite Race champions. Welcome onto the track, Björn and Olle Goop!”

The next level was called the Bistro—simple tray service with tables on different tiers. View over the track. Still, it cost fifty kronor just to get in. Thomas flashed his badge to the host at the entrance, who asked if something was wrong. Thomas shook his head. Showed the copy of Ballénius’s passport photo. “No, but we’re looking for this man, John Ballénius, do you know him?” The host’s turn to shake his head. The guy was young, couldn’t have been working at Solvalla for long. Recommended that Thomas ask the gaming manager in the restaurant today, Jens Rasten. Thomas walked up to the counter, asked a waitress about Rasten. She disappeared into the kitchen. A man with light brown hair and a beer gut came out.

Faint Danish accent: “Hi, you’re from the police, I hear. I’m Jens Rasten, responsible for the Bistro. How may we help you?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you on such a busy day. I’m looking for a person named John Ballénius. Do you know him?”

Rasten’s eyes turned first to the photocopy of the picture, then angled up to the side. Looked like he was thinking, hard. There was cheering in the background. Down on the track, the Goops were finishing their victory lap.

“They’re amazing, the Goop family,” Rasten said.

Thomas, irritated. What the hell was the Dane talking about?

“Yes, but I was asking you about John Ballénius.”

“Sorry. I don’t know him. But check with the guy over there, Sami Kiviniemi. He’s been here every race weekend for as long as I can remember. He knows everybody.”

Thomas was tired. What kind of stupid game was this? How many people would he have to talk to today? Either they knew the Ballénius dude or he wasn’t here. End of story. Still, he approached Kiviniemi.

In Thomas’s eyes: the dude looked like a caricature of a Finn. Blond beard, sunglasses with mirrored lenses, a crooked smile with a front tooth missing, a baseball cap on his head with the Mercedes-Benz logo on it, a Solvalla bag in one hand. He was wearing a fleece sweater even though it was August.

Sami was talking race talk with another guy.

Thomas didn’t have the energy to play polite. Knocked the Finn on the shoulder. Flashed his police badge with one hand and the photo of John Ballénius with the other. “Do you know who this guy is?”

Sami: shifty eyed. Maybe it was surprise, maybe worry.

He took the passport copy in hand. “Sure, that’s Johnny.”

Thomas started.

“But you’ll never find him here at the Bistro. If he’s here today, which he should be, he’ll be in the luxury place, up there, the Congress. He’s a real hustler, that Ballénius. Real slippery. What’s he done?”

Thomas: already halfway up the escalator. On his way to the uppermost story. His heart was beating like after a workout session.

He arrived. Looked down over the Congress Bar and Restaurant: à la carte restaurant with tables on the grandstand right above the finish line. White tablecloths, wall-to-wall carpeting, low music playing in the background, flat screens and forms for V65, V75, and other games on the tables. The majority: gentlemen in their fifties and sixties. Expectant atmosphere. The first race of the day would start in two minutes.

The host at the entrance referred him to the headwaiter, who looked through his list of reservations. Yup, John Ballénius’d booked his lucky table today. Number 118.

Thomas made his way through the tables. Glanced around, checking out the place: people with their own laptops who didn’t seem to give a shit about the view, women in their forties with hoarse laughs, pens, and betting cards, more ads for Agria pet insurance. On a few tables: champagne in ice buckets. Seemed like some people already knew they’d be celebrating.

Table 118: sixteen feet farther off. He saw him, recognized him from the passport photo. It had to be him—Ballénius. He was sitting with three others: two women and a bald man. Ballénius looked tall, pretty thin. According to the printouts he’d pulled from the official register of licensed companies, he should be around fifty-five years old. Worn face, deeply furrowed forehead, the laugh wrinkles cut across his cheeks like cracks. But there was no laughter in that face. Thomas didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone with such a gray, hollow, sorrowful appearance before.

On the table were plates with entrées, wineglasses and a half-empty wine bottle, two bottles of beer, cards, pamphlets and folders, calculators, pens, cell phones. The women looked dolled up, more elegant than he would’ve expected to be with Ballénius. What ruined the picture: one of them had a bag from the discount grocery store Willys by her side instead of a purse.

Thomas stepped up to the table. Flashed his badge.

Saw John Ballénius’s panicked look plainly.

“Hi there, John. May I ask you a few questions?”

Ballénius’s eyes were unfocused. He was looking off into the distance. Then he nodded.

The women looked like two question marks. One of them wondered if Thomas could wait until after the race. The bald guy didn’t seem to give a shit. Ballénius got up. Walked ahead of Thomas.

They made their way through the tables. Out to the gambling booths. It was completely empty up there now. The race was starting in thirty seconds.

“What do you want?” Ballénius asked, still without looking at Thomas.

“I’m glad I got ahold of you. It’s regarding something pretty serious. A homicide.”

Ballénius faked surprise. “Oh, damn. But what do you want with me?”

Thomas explained quickly. That they’d found a phone number in a dead man’s back pocket. That the number probably went to a plan that Ballénius’d had earlier, which’d been checked with his daughter. The guy leaned against the wall. Screams and cheers could be heard from down in the Congress. The race’d begun. He was gazing somewhere past Thomas.

The dude: jumpy as hell. This wasn’t ideal at all. In a real investigation, they would’ve brought Ballénius in for informational questioning. But now Thomas was running his own race.

“So, now I want to know if you know who the dead guy is.”

John’s eyes flitted past his own. “Where did you find him, did you say?”

“Ten Gösta Ekman road. Out in Axelsberg.”

“Okay.” Ballénius’s sad face contorted. To the extent that it was possible, it looked even more crushed than before.

“Do you know who it might be?”

“No idea.”

“Do you recognize the address?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Thomas was stressed—this was as far from a good interrogation situation as you could get. He had to get something out of him right away. Pulled a fast one.

“Your daughter already told us that you know. I spoke with Kicki yesterday.”

John Ballénius looked shocked. Just stared at Thomas and said, “Kicki?”

“Yes, Kristina. We’ve been speaking quite a bit. I even went out to see her in Huddinge.”

It sounded like John was whimpering. “It that true?”

“Yes, as true as the fact that you know who the dead guy is. Isn’t that right?”

“It could be an old buddy of mine.”

“Are you sure? What’s his name?”

“I don’t know him anymore. It was a long time ago. I don’t know anything.”

Loud cheering in the background. A high-odds horse was about to bring home the race..

“Come on, or else we’ll have to bring you in for questioning.”

“I guess you’ll have to do that, then.”

“Goddammit. Just tell me his name.”

“I told you, I don’t know anything. That was many years ago. He was always a little kooky. Was always kind of weird. I felt bad for him. Real bad.”

“But what is his name?”

John stood still. Then he said, “Claes.”

“Claes what?” Thomas was almost 99 percent sure of the answer. Still: he wanted a confirmation. Come on now, John Ballénius. Come on.

People were coming up from the restaurant. Milling around the gambling booths. The race was over down there. It was time to bet on the next horse. The spaces outside the cash registers were filling up quickly.

Thomas tried to get Ballénius to spill it—it had to be Rantzell who’d been called from Ballénius’s phone. Claes Rantzell.

Suddenly, Ballénius made a jerky motion. Threw himself to one side. Thomas tried to grab him. Got hold of his shirtsleeve, held firm for a microsecond. Then the fabric slid through his fingers.

Ballénius rushed toward the lines by the gambling booths. A ten-foot lead plus the element of surprise. Straight into the crowd. The guy hauled ass like a maniac. Thomas ran after him. Chased the tall man for as long as he could. Even more people were pushing their way toward the cash registers. A few were waving tote tickets. Toasting one another, cheering. He tried to push his way through.

Thomas saw John Ballénius’s lead grow.

He waved his badge. To no avail. There were too many people.

He yelled. Pressed. Tried to push through.

He had to do something.

34

Mahmud was on his way to see his dad. The Iraqi club in Skärholmen, Dal Al-Salam. Robert gave him a ride. They drove in silence. Listened to Jay-Z’s phat beats. Robert drove like a maniac.

It’d been a week since Mahmud’d made his last payment to the Born to Be Hated dudes. He should be happy. He should feel free, independent, unbound. Should.

Everything was fucked up. He was tired. Worn down. Above all, pissed off. They bent him over and did him so hard he wept. Used him like a dumb bitch who just took it. Forced him into the corner of the ring, beat him up mentally like he was a defenseless nobody. A huge betrayal.

Not Gürhan and his boys. But the ones he’d thought would save him: the Yugos—Radovan & Co. Christian fucking crusading Serbs, worse than the Zionists. Fuck them. Easy enough to say, but not so simple to do.

Robert turned to him.

“Habibi, what you thinking about? You look crushed, man.”

“Nothing. It’s cool.”

“All right, big-shot hustler. If you say so.”

They continued to listen to the music.

Last weekend, Mahmud’d been in touch with Stefanovic. Asked to meet up. They set a time and place: Saturday night, Black & White Inn, a bar in Södermalm, Stockholm’s South Side. Stefanovic informed him, “You know, we can’t be meeting up all the time. But I’ll send someone.”

Mahmud was planning on breaking up with the Yugo fuckers. Sell the last round of blow that’d he’d picked up and then: a clean break. Find a normal job. Make Erika E. happy. Above all: make Dad happy.

Tom’d given him a ride that time. The guy liked vintage cars—drove a Chevy from 1981, black with flames painted on the hood. Mahmud didn’t get why. Tom assured him, “The engine and the box are from ’95, so this baby rolls like a skateboard.”

Tom was chill. Had taken a different route than Mahmud, but never looked down on blattes like him. Studied real academic stuff in high school. Mahmud grinned at the thought: it took the guy five years to graduate, but look at him now. Tom, twenty-two years old—had learned the debt-collection industry like a crazy college kid. As he put it, “Soon, I’ll start my own company and then both Intrum Justitia and the Hells Angels’ll have to watch out.”

Tom’d asked Mahmud to take the wheel for a sec. Fished out a manila envelope. Poured the powder on a CD case. Almost impossible to make real lines while they were sitting in the car. They had to wing it. Live on the edge. Tom rolled a bill, sucked a noseful. Took back the wheel. Gave Mahmud the bill. He tried to appreciate the amount. Sucked. Shit, that was probably half a gram. The rush was even stronger on days when he’d worked out before. Two seconds later: his gums tickled, grew numb. Then: schwing.

The lights on the road floated together like in a photograph. The night was mad beautiful. His emotions were soaring. The road was like a long strip on a racetrack, lined by crazy fireworks.

Black & White Inn: a Yugo-owned place. Everyone needed their laundromats. Mahmud and his buds never really made sums big enough to need washing, but he knew that if you played in the big leagues, you had to do it sooner or later. Gürhan’s gang ran their money through dry cleaners, video-rental stores, and other Syriac-run businesses. The Yugos ran restaurants and bars. Maybe even heavier shit: offshore accounts, islands in the West Indies, stocks, and crap like that.

Mahmud had to wait in the car. The rush was too sharp. After fifteen minutes, he felt more normal. They walked in.

Usual pub vibe. Beer ads in old wooden frames and wood paneling along the walls. Wood tables and wood chairs on the wood floor. The people here must have pretty poor imaginations.

The place was half empty. A dude met them. Eyes that looked sunk into his skull. Broad, blanched. Brutal appearance. Led them into some sort of VIP room. Closed the door behind them. Ratko, Stefanovic’s gorilla, was in there, leaning back in a chair. The Yugo was dressed in a relaxed way. Chiller style today than anything Mahmud’d seen him or Stefanovic rock before. Ratko today: T-shirt, black jeans, and Sparco racing shoes. Mouth half open, chin up in the air. Don’t-fuck-with-me attitude. Fight-picking look par excellence. But the dude was usually cool to Mahmud at the gym.

The Yugo nodded. “Hey Twiggy, you good?”

Real ballbuster comment: “Twiggy.” Look in a mirror, Mahmud was twice as beefy as Ratko. But Mahmud was still as high as a skyscraper. Confidence on top. Wanted to take care of this fast. Responded without taking the bait. “I’m a’ight.”

Small talk for five minutes. Then Ratko interrupted the chat: “I understand things’re going well for you, sales-wise.”

Mahmud laughed. Humility wasn’t his thing. “You can call me the King Snowman.”

Ratko grinned along. “Right?” But then his face changed. The smile vanished.

“There was something you wanted to talk about.”

Mahmud rocked, shifted his weight from the right to the left foot.

“I’m gonna start a new life. So I’m gonna quit selling. The gear I picked up a few days ago, that’ll be my last gig. But I already paid for that, so.”

Ratko didn’t say anything.

Mahmud looked at Tom. Tom looked at Mahmud.

Mahmud repeated, “I’m gonna quit selling.”

Ratko pretended like he didn’t hear what he said.

“Yo, you hear me or what? I quit.”

Ratko threw his arms open. “Okay, so you quit. What do you want me to say about that?”

“Nothing.”

“Right, and I’m saying nothing. But what’ll happen to your sister? And what do you think your dad will think?”

Mahmud didn’t understand what he was talking about.

“I mean, if you quit selling, then we’re gonna have to sell the tanning salon where your sister works. Oh, you didn’t know that? We own the place. And we’re gonna have to tell your dad that you’ve been slinging for us. We’ve got pictures of you dropping cash off in the store in Bredäng. We’ve got pictures of you picking the gear up at the storage facilities. We’ve got pictures of you working corners in the city. Above all, we’ve got photos of you and Wisam Jibril. It’s very possible that he might hear what happened to that Lebanese. Because of you. What’ll he think about that?”

Mahmud had trouble producing saliva; his mouth was as dry as sand.

“I think you’re starting to understand now, Mahmud.

Tom took a step forward. “Fuck man, let him quit if he wants to.”

Ratko still had his gaze glued on Mahmud. “I think Mahmud can speak for himself.”

Mahmud just wanted to get out of there. He made an effort. Focused. Had to say something. He said, “Come on. I can quit if I want to.”

Ratko’s reply was like the bite of whip: “Correct.” A short pause, then he added, “But then your sis can forget all about her job and we’ll tell your dad. We’re honest people. He has to know, that’s all.”

In Skärholmen. Back to the present. Robert dropped Mahmud off outside Dal Al-Salam. Mahmud opened the door. A small bell jingled.

Inside, the smoke was thicker than in a hammam. The club couldn’t care less about any potential no-smoking policies: everyone in there was over fifty anyway—why did they need to be healthy? The room: small, square tables with green tablecloths and ashtrays. Plastic chairs, posters with images of the Spiral Minaret on the Abu Duluf Mosque in Samarra, the martyr monument for the Iran-Iraq war in Baghdad, pictures of the desert in Najaf, herds of sheep, camels. An old-fashioned TV was suspended in one corner: Al Jazeera news was on as usual.

The chatter volume was turned up to max. The old guys were doing their usual things. Eating pita bread, drinking coffee with an extreme amount of sugar in it, smoking strong cigarillos and hookahs, playing shesh-besh and patience, flipping through Iraqi newspapers. Mahmud got a kick of nostalgia right away: the bread dipped in baba ghanoush, the hookah smell, the sound of the old men and their frantic discussions, the images of the homeland on the wall.

Mahmud’s dad emerged out of the smoky fog. “Salaam alaikum!” Kissed Mahmud twice on each cheek. Looked happier than usual: maybe that wasn’t so strange—Mahmud hadn’t been to the club since he turned fourteen.

“Don’t you want to say hello to everyone?” Beshar spoke softly. His Iraqi dialect was stronger than usual—ch sounds instead of k sounds. But Mahmud knew what his dad’s friends thought about people like him, even though he’d only been locked up for a short turn. Iraqis who ruined things for everyone else, who soiled the dignity of the community with their criminal records.

Mahmud said, “No, jalla now. I wanna go.”

Beshar shook his head. Mahmud thought, No matter what he says, it’s a relief for him not to have to drag me around in here.

They walked across Skärholmen’s square. The street vendors were hocking their wares as usual. Yelling out their claimed lowest-price guarantees.

They were picking up Jamila at her job, the tanning salon in Axelsberg. Mahmud remembered the Yugos’ threat.

Dad said, “Do you know what has come to pass with Jamila’s friend? Has he stopped molesting her?”

Mahmud thought he used such old-fashioned Arabic words sometimes. Like, what did molest even mean?

“He’s not her friend. He was her boyfriend. I think they broke up and that he doesn’t bother her anymore. I hope so.”

Beshar didn’t know too much about the incident a few months ago when Jamila’s neighbor’d rushed into the apartment and beaten her guy to a pulp. Neither Jamila nor Mahmud wanted to tell him. The dude’d been hospitalized for eight days after he had surgery on his jaw—sucked breakfast/lunch/dinner through a straw. Still, the guy refused to talk to the cops who showed up and wanted to interrogate him. Despite everything he’d done to Jamila—he was a man of honor.

“Do you know what happened to her neighbor?” Beshar asked.

Mahmud had no idea. The guy seemed lethal.

A man with dark, curly hair, a dirty knit sweater, and a mustache was distributing slips of paper. A picture of a little boy in a fetal position. The text: My brother is still in Romania. He can’t travel. He has a very serious joint disease. He suffers a great deal and needs medical help. My family cannot afford to help him. We ask you for a gift. May God bless you!

Beshar dropped a ten-kronor coin into the beggar’s hand when he passed by collecting the slips of paper again. Mahmud looked at him.

“What are you doing? You can’t give money to one of those.”

Beshar turned to Mahmud.“An honorable man is always generous. That is the only thing I want to teach you, Mahmud. You need to maintain your dignity through life. Act like a man.”

“I do, Dad.”

“No, not when you’re selling those pills and fighting with the police and prosecutors. Will you ever change?”

“I’m on the right track. Really, I am. I’m not doing that stuff anymore. That was before prison.” Mahmud could hardly conceal the disappointment in his voice. When would he be able to start controlling his own life? Be free of all the sharmutas who fucked with him. Syriacs, Yugos, the parole office at Hornsfuck.

“You need to act respectfully toward people who deserve it, respect your elders, and always be generous, like toward that poor man we just passed right there. And then you have to take care of your sister. I am too old for that. Just think of all she’s been through. Did you thank her neighbor?”

“Absolutely. I thanked him right after that thing happened. I think it made him happy. But he seems a little weird.”

“That doesn’t matter. Do you know what Allah’s messenger—may blessings and peace be upon him—said about that?”

“About what?”

“About woman.”

Mahmud remembered certain expressions that his dad’d taught him ages ago. “She is a rose.”

“That’s right. You must treat her well. The prophet also said that the best among you are those who treat your wives well. He said only an honorable man honors women. Do you understand? Think of your mother.”

Mahmud thought about his mom. The memories grew hazier with each passing year. Her eyes, her kisses when he was about to go to sleep. The head scarf that she’d stopped wearing during those last years, but that was always hanging in their house like a reminder. Her stories about bandits and caliphs. He wondered who she’d been, really. What would’ve happened if she’d come along to Sweden? Then maybe everything wouldn’t have gone to hell.

They were almost at Jamila’s tanning salon. They passed the indoor subway platform at Mälarhöjden. Beshar moved his prayer beads between thumb and index finger.

Mahmud couldn’t drop the irony of the situation. He’d taken a job with the Yugos in order to escape the Born to Be Hated, to get ahead in life. The result: instead of being chased by Gürhan, he was locked in by Stefanovic. Instead of being free but in debt, he was debt-free but a slave. And Abu was involved both times. They’d popped Wisam. If Dad found out about Mahmud’s contribution to that mess—shit, he didn’t even want to think about it. Then he might as well just go die in a ditch right away.

Axelsberg, with the usual stores. One ICA grocery store and one video-rental place, an ATM, and a hair salon that looked like it hadn’t changed its window display in thirty years. A newly opened Mexican joint in some old building and a beer dive. Finally: Jamila’s tanning salon. Well, maybe not Jamila’s per se— the Yugos owned the place. But she’d been working there for five years.

They walked in. The tanning booths were hidden behind gray doors. Jamila was mopping the floor. Tanning salons: nasty, sweaty, dirty by default. If you didn’t keep it extra clean, not even the worst tanning addicts would show.

Jamila smiled. Beshar smiled. Mahmud watched them. Jamila reminded him of Mom, intense mood swings but always mad nice to Dad. Never talked back, pampered him. But maybe that was good. He got a flashback: the pig head in the paper bag.

Jivan showed fifteen minutes later. She was stressed out, said she had a ton of homework to do. Mahmud remembered his own school years. Babak, Rob, the others—none of them even knew what homework was.

They walked together to the grocery store. Shopped. Then they walked toward Örnsberg, where Jamila lived. Mahmud carried the bags of groceries. Past a playground, a football field, a wooded area. Past the whole Sven suburb with its advantages and privileges. It wasn’t the fact that there was a park, a field, or a forest—they had all that in Alby too—it was that it all functioned so calmly and flawlessly. Fag fathers and day-care teachers in the park with the kids, no chaos. School teams on the football field, but no fights. Maybe he exaggerated the image of his own hood.

Beshar asked Jamila lots of questions. She talked about buying the tanning salon. Finally. The storefront and the business couldn’t cost more than fifty G’s to take over.

Jivan promised, “I’m gonna be a lawyer. Then I can lend you money.”

They laughed.

Outside Jamila’s house. Some dude was packing stuff into an Audi. At first, Mahmud didn’t recognize the guy. Jamila seemed to want to avoid him, turned her face away. After three seconds: Mahmud realized who it was—the neighbor who’d pummeled her boyfriend.

Mahmud stopped. Called out to the neighbor.

The dude looked up. Responded in Arabic, “Salaam.”

Niklas walked up to Beshar. “Hi, my name is Niklas and I live on the same floor as Jamila. Is she your daughter?”

Beshar looked confused. A Swede who spoke his language?

“May God protect you,” Beshar said in a quiet voice.

Mahmud thought, Can’t Dad find something better to say?

At the same time: there was something about that neighbor, Niklas. He radiated something. Coolness. Strength. Hardness. Something that Mahmud needed right now.

35

Left-wing types/anarchist feminists/LGBT socialists/gender Communists. Niklas didn’t care about labels. Didn’t care if they read the same books as he did. Didn’t care what they wrote on their message boards, their blogs, their articles. Didn’t care who they were, why they thought the way they did. Only one thing was clear: he needed more bodies for the attack—and a few of the people on those websites seemed to think like him. Operation Magnum demanded time. More than he could put in on his own. The thought’d been growing lately: he should recruit. And Benjamin wouldn’t do.

Total sleep over the past ten days: less than forty hours. He pursued Mats Strömberg from eight-thirty in the morning until seven-thirty at night, when the guy went home. Most of Niklas’s time was spent in the Audi outside the asshole’s job, an accounting firm in Södermalm. He rented another car for a few days to avoid drawing attention to himself. Used a fake driver’s license that he’d bought online.

He continued to read the right literature—The Girl and the Guilt, by Katarina Wennstam, Under the Pink Comforter, by Nina Björk—dozed off, drank coffee. The rest of the evenings, he watched over the other apartments. Later at night: changed the tapes in the video cameras, watched the footage, organized his information, practiced with his knife, chatted with the left-wing people. He stopped running, didn’t call his mom, Benjamin, or anyone else. But was there anyone else, really? It’s not like his social calendar’d been crammed since he’d moved back home.

He was learning more and more about Mats Strömberg. The dude followed strict routines. Took the same route to the train every day. Bought a cinnamon bun and a coffee at the same shop every morning. Threw the coffee cup in the exact same garbage bin on the street. Either he left with his colleagues at eleven-thirty or he went by himself and bought something thirty minutes later. Alternated between three different lunch spots. Niklas could see straight into the pig’s office; it was on the bottom floor. Six people worked at the place. He wondered how much they knew about Mats Strömberg’s home life.

What’s more: things were happening in one of the single-family homes. Roger Jonsson and Patricia Jacobs—the happy little family without kids. Niklas went through the footage. Realized: the guy was coming home later and later at night. Roger and Patricia were arguing. Obvious: things would blow up soon—he could see it in the man’s eyes. The way he gesticulated at Patricia. Body language that screamed violence.

Other problems: the dirty real-estate fucker’d been in touch. Niklas couldn’t keep living in the apartment. It was just a transitional apartment, as the broker reminded him, and now he’d arranged for a real firsthand rental contract. Ready to go. One hundred and fifty G’s and the contract would belong to Niklas. He’d be in the housing system for real, no more subletting. He had a week to make up his mind. No possibility of prolonging his stay in the pad he had now. Dammit. Getting a firsthand rental contract was a good thing, but he just couldn’t do it right now. His employer was threatening to fire him—Niklas hadn’t gotten a proper doctor’s certificate to explain the days he’d missed. What the fuck was he supposed to do? He needed more people. More money. More time. More weapons. More everything.

Solutions. Within a few days: time to make the hit against Mats Strömberg. When that part was over and done with, a certain amount of time would be freed up. Then he had to shore up his finances, maybe rob a bank. Finally: he was going to make a trip out to Biskops-Arnö Community College—a person he’d chatted with studied there, Felicia. She was studying some bogus thing called Ecology and Global Solidarity. A potential recruit, troop reinforcement, another pair of boots on the ground.

On Monday afternoon, he’d gone to the Black & White Inn to get a weapon. Felt stressed out, wanted to miss as little as possible of Mats Strömberg’s life.

The place was empty. He ordered a mineral water. Sat down at a table. A lone woman behind the bar was readying things for the night. She was slicing lemons. He eyed the menu: drawn with chalk on a blackboard. Plaice with French fries, pork tenderloin with a green pepper sauce. The woman behind the bar ignored him.

After ten minutes, he asked her if Lukic was there.

The woman shook her head. Then she walked over to the pub’s main entrance, turned over the OPEN sign hanging in the little window. Turned to Niklas. “You want stuff?” He nodded. Niklas understood the movement she made with her hand: come with me.

Behind the bar. Through the kitchen. A dude was boiling something in there. A hallway on the other side. Peeling yellow paint on the walls. Flashing fluorescent lights. Past a bathroom, a cleaning closet, a walk-in freezer, a locker room. Like some fucking mafia flick. At the very end of the hall was an office. The woman closed the door behind them. Niklas eyed her. Mouse-colored hair down to her shoulders. Bags under her eyes that makeup couldn’t conceal. Still, strength in her gaze. His warrior instinct spoke loud and clear: this is a true fighter.

She unlocked a wooden cabinet. Lifted out a metal suitcase. Hauled it up onto the desk. Turned the coded lock. Opened it. Four fabric-wrapped bundles. She unrolled the contents. Three automatics and one revolver.

He recognized the Beretta immediately. A lot of boys down there used it—the classic 92/96 series, a basic 9-millimeter handgun that came in lots of different models. Chromed steel, camouflage-colored, aluminum frame, even one with real ivory in the grip.

“That is a Beretta.”

“I know. A ninety-two ninety-six. Tell me about the others.”

“Whatever you want. The other three are Russian. First a revolver, Nosorog, nine millimeter. And this one, this is the same caliber, a Gyurza, special for bulletproof vests. For both righties and lefties. Really good. Finally, a Bagira MR-444, a light handgun, also nine millimeter.”

“And the prices?”

“This one and this one, dirty.” She pointed to the Beretta and the Gyurza. “You can have the American for five thousand and the Russian for four. But they’re good.”

“What do you mean, they’re dirty?”

“I can’t say that they haven’t been involved in robberies or other shit.”

“Then you can forget about them. I want a new one, in the box. What do you want for this one?” Niklas didn’t want a revolver. He picked up the Bagira gun. It was really very light, definitely a plus. But how jam-safe was it? He had no experience with the make.

“Twelve thousand. It’s clean.” She took it back. Wiped it off with the cloth.

“How much ammo do you have?”

“One pack, twenty rounds.”

Problem. He needed at least fifty bullets. Wanted to be able to practice properly with the gun. This wasn’t some rush job.

“How many rounds for the Beretta?”

“A lot. Probably a hundred, I can get ammo like that lots of places.”

Niklas thought: Dammit, she was really the one running this show. At the same time: he couldn’t use a dirty weapon. So far, everything’d been done so meticulously. He’d ordered the spy equipment under a false name and had it delivered to a P.O. box, rotated the license plates on the Audi, used a rental car some days, always hid behind the tinted windows, not spoken with or met anyone who could connect him to his surveillance operation, except for maybe the woman at Safe Haven—but she just had to be on his side. Couldn’t risk it with a gun that might be in the police database. He shook his head. This was shit.

“I won’t buy dirty guns. I won’t buy a revolver that looks like it’s made of plastic. I won’t buy anything that I can’t get at least fifty rounds for. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Calm down. I don’t have anything else right now. So, you’re interested or not?”

Was she playing hardass or was she really like that? It didn’t matter—he needed a weapon. Soon.

“I can’t buy any of these weapons. But could I place an order?”

She nodded.

It felt good. The attack would soon take place, his TACSOP—tactical standard operations procedure. Would set a precedent for the rest of the Operation.

In the car on the way out to Biskops-Arnö. Westbound.

He was thinking about the war. Righteous targets.

The day before, outside his building, he’d run into Jamila together with her brother, sister, and father. The dad seemed to be an upstanding man. He’d thanked him. Just like all of Sweden would do when he’d completed the Operation. Applaud him. A beautiful thought.

It was nine o’clock in the morning. Not much traffic at this time of day. The highway out toward Bålsta and Biskops-Arnö: dull. He thought about Mats Strömberg’s routines. In two and a half hours, he would, most likely, walk out of the door to his office with two or three colleagues.

Shortly before Sollentuna, Niklas pulled over at a Shell gas station. Reeked of gasoline fumes. He filled his tank. The gas was insanely expensive. He thought about what it’d cost ten years ago, when he’d gotten his license. It was probably 50 percent more expensive now. And the price in Iraq: another story altogether. Kicked his anxiety into full gear again. What would happen if he had to keep working alone? If he was forced to move, pay for a rental contract? If nothing came of the gun he’d ordered?

He went in to pay. Cash. A voice behind him in line.

“Oh, hi there.” A smile. He recognized her right away: the woman he’d bought the Audi from, Nina. What the hell was she doing here? Maybe it wasn’t so strange after all, she just lived a few miles away.

“I thought it was you. I saw the car outside. Recognized it from twenty yards away.”

Niklas, irritated. Not good that someone knew where he was and that he was the one driving the Audi. At the same time: he checked her out. Like an angel. Skin as clear as milk, speckled eyes gleaming in the sunlight that shone in through the big windows in the gas station. She met his gaze. Glittered. Her child looked like a child now. Not like a baby. He felt so bad for her. And for the child. He remembered.

He said, “Yes, hi. It drives well.” He felt pathetic. Had to get out of there. Before Nina asked any more questions.

“I see that you got it re-registered. What, you didn’t like my license plate? UFO 544. I thought it was pretty cool.” Again: the smile, the eyes.

“Yeah, it was cool. But I was worried that someone would report me to the Ministry of Defense and stuff.” Good move—a joke, lighten the mood, then leave.

Nina laughed. “You’re funny. So, where are you off to?”

“I’m just out for a ride. I’m working.”

“Well, I’m still on maternity leave. It’s almost getting a little boring. So, what do you do for work?”

Niklas didn’t know what to say. Security guard was so pathetic. He wanted to sound vague. “I work in the private security industry.”

“That sounds exciting. Do you drive the Audi at work?”

“Sometimes.”

“I miss it. It’s perky, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s nice.” He wanted to end the conversation without being rude. “Hey, I’ve got to get going. But it was nice to see you.”

He got into the car. His palms were sweaty. What was happening to him? A normal conversation with a stranger and he felt more nervous than a nineteen-year-old rookie on his virgin tour down in the sandbox.

Farther out. In the countryside. Along the highway: yellow fields about to be harvested. Farms, granaries, tractors.

The exit sign for Biskops-Arnö looked filthy. Reminded him of the signs down there. Always worn down, dirty, buckled. Sometimes riddled with bullet holes.

He drove across a narrow bridge to the island. Parked his car. Looked out over the area. Directly across from the parking lot: large, red-painted wood buildings, old barns. Further off: white stone houses. He kept walking. A grass-covered courtyard. Six flagpoles flying the five Nordic flags and another one, maybe the community college’s own emblem. A couple of people were sitting on the lawn in front of the building. Niklas approached them. A guy with a guitar in his lap. His nose, lip, and eyebrow were pierced. He had dreadlocks that were as thick as his forearms and some kind of hooded sweater that looked like it’d been bought at the bazaar in Kabul. The other two were girls. One had red hair, a shirt that was buttoned all the way up, and jeans that were much too wide. The other was dressed in cotton slacks and a black T-shirt. Ramones was printed across the chest in white lettering. Her earlobes were stretched out by some kind of earring that expanded the actual hole rather than dangling from it. Niklas could’ve fit his thumb through the girl’s earlobe. He thought, What is this place, anyway?

Felicia’d told him to just ask around. The clowns showed him the way to her cottage.

It was made of brown wood with a black sheet-metal roof, didn’t look to be bigger than 320 square feet. He knocked on the door. A girl opened it, wearing just panties and a tank top. Niklas felt awkward. At the same time: there was something incredibly cocky about opening the door for a stranger dressed in so little. The girl knocked on a door. Another girl came out. Shaved head, a ponytail left at the nape of her neck like a Hare Krishna sucker. She was dressed in some kind of kimono and Converse sneakers. Bizarre.

“Hi, are you Johannes?”

Niklas’d kept using his alias in all the conversations he’d had online.

“Yes, hi. It’s great to be here, I’ve looked forward to it. I’m guessing you’re Felicia?”

She nodded. Welcomed him. Asked if he’d found the way okay. Seemed nice. Still, there was something about her look, as if she was studying him.

He remained standing in the doorway. Everything felt so strange.

“Come in,” she said. He took a step inside. They sat in the little kitchen. The cottage was made up of two small bedrooms and a shared kitchen. “This is how all first-year students live.”

She asked him if he’d had a chance to look around the campus at all. Of course he hadn’t. She started to talk about the place: courses in photography, film, writing, culture, history, foreign aid, ecology, and solidarity with developing nations. Niklas listened halfheartedly. Wanted to get a feel for her, the people out there, their attitude, strength. His mission today was to recruit.

They’d been chatting every day for almost two weeks. He knew her beliefs through and through. In his world: she could become a warrior. Patriarchy, as she called it, subordinated women. The gender power structure, that’s what it was called. A permanent siege of social perceptions. How women should be, who they should be, how they should act—everyone was forced into carefully controlled categories. If you stepped outside the lines of demarcation, you were excommunicated. Were no longer counted as a woman, as suitable, as good, as a docile member of society. Even though everyone should know all this by now, there were so many people who just accepted the shit. Ate the shit. Let the men rule, whip them into submission, and never went out into battle. Like an unbalanced war where one side took the liberty of breaking the rules of the game.

And Felicia—she was impressed by his powerful ideas. He could tell—every time he pulled out some war propaganda she responded by describing missions she’d been a part of or would like to do. Demonstrations—demos, as she called them—guard circles outside porn clubs, broken windows, spray-painted façades, trashed interiors, Internet assaults against porn sites, screaming battle cries against government officials, big businesses, and men.

Maybe she was right for him.

Felicia served herbal tea. Her cabinmate, Joanna, chatted about the course she was taking: something about natural medicine. She was going to Brazil next semester to become a shaman, she said. “You can learn so much more in the Amazon than you can in a Western country.” Her eyes glittered over the teacup. “So, what do you do?”

He didn’t know what to answer. Could feel it instinctively: to mention his soon-to-be former job as a security guard was the wrong move. He let her question float in the air for a bit. Took a swallow of tea.

Finally, he said, “I’m unemployed, unfortunately.”

The reaction was not what he’d expected. Felicia almost looked happy. Joanna looked reassured. Felicia said, “Everything’s gotten harder since the pigs took power. Damn right-wing government. Don’t feel left out. There are a lot of us who support you. Who believe in a different kind of society.”

They talked for a while. Felicia was getting riled up talking about how the new government was crushing the old and the weak, women and the low-income bracket. Niklas did his best to keep up, even though Swedish politics wasn’t really his thing. He didn’t care. The most important thing was that she was angry enough.

After a while, Felicia got up. There was some kind of lecture that was open to the whole student body. She wondered if Niklas wanted to come—bringing visitors wasn’t a problem. Of course, okay, that’ll be interesting. Inside, he was nervous. He’d never been to a lecture before. Except for the run-throughs at DynCorp before a mission down there.

A large group of people was gathering outside one of the bigger buildings, which looked like a barn. Felica and her roommate greeted a lot of them. Almost half of them looked like the ones Niklas’d seen earlier on the lawn. They didn’t exactly look like warriors. Still: Felicia’s shaved head gave him hope. A real GI cut, except for the rattail in back.

The barn housed a nice-looking lecture hall. White-painted wood walls, powerful ventilation, lighting, a video projector suspended from the ceiling, chairs with little tables in the armrest that you could fold down and put your notebook on.

The lecturer was dressed in jeans and a red checked shirt. Maybe forty years old. Niklas’d expected something different: a professorial type in a tweed jacket with reading glasses on the tip of her nose. He realized how naïve he was.

Felicia whispered to him, “You’re going to like this.”

The lecturer got going. Introduced herself, rattled off some introductory story about an ad campaign that was currently being run. According to the lecturer, the campaign privatized female identity and in that way cemented a form of politically created gender identification. After that, it just got denser. Talk about gender roles, the gender power structure, gender hierarchies, and sex changes. Niklas looked around. Mixed ages. Felicia was sitting as though in a trance. Shaman Joanna was drawing flowers in her notebook. She was flaky.

He focused on the younger faces. Soldier material? Were they ready to spend nights curled up in the backseat of a car, to work hard as hell with planning during the day, to kick down doors, take care of crying children, attack the enemy combatants?

Finally: he settled on a guy a little farther down in the same row. Short dark hair. A few rings in his ear, all in a row, as if someone’d riveted the metal spiral on a notebook along the outer edge of his ear. The guy looked young: short-sleeved T-shirt, thin, fit arms. Soldier arms. Niklas’d seen them on so many down there, a toughness in the body that allowed them to handle so much more than the beefcakes did. Above all: the guy had focus. His gaze was steely gray, stone hard, stiffly zeroed in on the lecturer. Resolute. A kind of willpower. Maybe he was right for this.

“It’s not as simple as turning the hierarchical world order upside down…” The lecturer gazed out over the audience. It felt as though she was looking straight at Niklas. “But to completely free yourself from that kind of a worldview.”

Niklas nodded in agreement. Dammit, he was going to turn the hierarchies in the Strömberg and Jonsson families upside down. To begin with.

His concentration drifted. He tried to stop himself from closing his eyes. Still, he saw the same old images in his mind’s eye. The ambush at the mosque. The ambushes during his runs in Aspudden. The ambushes from the dream world: Claes Rantzell in bits and pieces. Jamila’s dude in a puddle on the floor. Mats Strömberg whimpering. They pleaded for mercy. A mercy that wasn’t coming.

Felicia, the shaman, and two dudes from the same course that Felica was taking were sitting around the table in the cottage. They’d eaten in the college dining hall. There was no meat—just veggie grub. Felicia looked at Niklas in bewilderment when he questioned the food.

In the background: noisy music.

“Manu Chao is fantastic,” Joanna said. Niklas thought, Maybe for shaman exercises in the woods, but not for war.

Niklas’d bought a couple of bottles of beer and hard cider from Felicia.

Joanna drank out of the bottle without touching the glass to her lips. “It’s not good for your energy.” Felicia laughed. The shaman broad really wasn’t all there in the head.

They discussed their program, the lecture, the general state of the world. Niklas mostly kept his mouth shut. Drank one, two, three, four, five bottles of beer. The dudes were raw—criticizing the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq. Babbled about abuse, illegal weapons, and freedom-fighting bombers. In a couple of days, they were going to partake in a huge demo against the war. Poor nerds—they didn’t know what they were talking about.

At nine o’clock, they went down to a bigger cottage across from the dining hall. It looked like an old community center. Twenty or so people were sitting on couches and armchairs, a couple of people were trying to dance, lazily. The same crap music. The same ecological vibe. The same geeky discussions.

He was starting to feel the beer. Felicia was in a quasi-deep discussion with one of the guys from the pre-game. Joanna was dancing around. He thought, What was this shit, anyway? He needed to draft Felicia, but she didn’t seem to give a fuck.

Everyone around him was talking. The air was sweet and heavy with marijuana. He chugged more beer. Tried to look relaxed. The dude from the lecture showed up. The earrings in his ears gleamed in the dim light. Niklas approached him. The dude was talking to a girl who actually looked totally normal. He positioned himself beside them. Leaned his head in to listen to their conversation. Something about missions, demonstrations, protest ambitions. The first part sounded okay.

The guy stopped talking. Turned to Niklas. At first: completely indifferent, irritated look. Then he extended his hand. “Hi, my name’s Erik. Are you visiting?”

Niklas shook Erik’s hand. Introduced himself as Johannes. The guy had a firm grip. That was a good sign.

“Yes, I’m visiting Felicia. Do you know who that is?”

The girl Erik was talking to didn’t stop staring at Niklas.

“Sure, we’re in the same program, but she’s a year above me. How do you know each other?”

Niklas didn’t know what to say. The Internet sounded stupid. He mumbled something.

Erik said, “What did you say?”

Niklas spoke louder: “I’m here to discuss women’s struggle, the women’s movement, stuff like that. What do you think about that?”

Erik laughed. “Define ‘the women’s movement.’ ”

The girl was still staring. Just as Niklas was about to respond, she also extended her hand. “Hi, maybe we should be introduced, too. My name is Betty.”

“Like sweet Miss Boop?” Niklas thought about the images painted on some of the helicopters down there. Real pinups weren’t allowed anymore, but Betty B. always worked.

The chick puckered her lips. An obvious diss.

Niklas didn’t get it. Was joking not allowed here, or what? But he didn’t want to mess things up with Erik.

“Is your sense of humor part of your investment in the women’s movement?” Erik asked.

“It was just a bad joke. That’s all. But do you really want me to define the women’s movement? I’m passionate about it.”

“That sounds good. Because I am too.”

Niklas got good vibes. Erik might be the right person.

“I think we men have to help them. Women are vulnerable and defenseless. I’ve started seeing all the shit around us here in Sweden. On the streets, in the houses, in the apartments. People go too far all the time. Lots of humiliation and violence. The women’s movement has to go further.”

“Yes, that’s probably true.”

“We have to fight.”

Erik looked lost in thought. “I agree. But what do you mean exactly?”

“I mean what I said, that we have to attack. In some situations, an offensive strategy is the only possible way to defend yourself. And there will never be a war if we just take a defensive stance. Do you understand? We have to use the enemy’s tactics. Violence is always the best antidote to violence.”

Niklas felt fired up. Finally someone who agreed with him. Someone he could speak openly with. Someone who would understand. After all these evenings and nights. A fellow soldier.

He was spewing military terminology, attack strategies, weapon ideas. He outlined possible missions, targets, torture methods, ways to execute them.

Erik just nodded.

“We have to do this. I’m on my way, actually. I’ve come far in the planning stage and the operative part, too. It’ll go boom in a few weeks. But I need reinforcements. What do you think? Do you want in?”

Silence. That Manu Chao crap in the background.

Niklas repeated his question, “Do you want in?”

“Johannes, that was your name, right? I think Felicia’s given you one too many beers.”

Niklas shook his head. He was drunk, but thinking clearly. That was bullshit.

“Not at all.”

“Maybe not, but your ideas are too aggressive. The stuff you’re talking about wouldn’t work. But it was nice to meet you.” The girl next to Erik smiled a satisfied smile.

Niklas felt cold all over. Shit. The guy was full of shit. The girl could go to hell. Erik could go fuck himself. They had no idea what they were talking about. Knew zilch about the fight. About the Operation. About what had to be done.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Niklas said.

Erik turned to the girl. Shook his head. It was clear what he thought about Niklas.

The girl shook her head, too.

He couldn’t believe it. Even here—among the people who claimed to be on his side—they were working against him. They were assholes.

Niklas raised his voice. “You fucking collaborators. You’re betraying the fight.”

Erik started walking away. Knocked his index finger against his temple. The girl followed him. This was just too much. Now they were mocking him, too.

Niklas threw himself at the girl. Grabbed hold of her cardigan. Threw her down on the floor.

She squirmed. Erik tried to shield her.

Niklas stood over her. Didn’t know if he should laugh or cry. Give them a real once-over or get out of there.

36

A week as the Yugos’ made man. Not every night—fuck no—but Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Åsa didn’t ask questions. She said she was happy he’d gotten a side job. During the days, he dozed at his desk at the traffic unit. Gave the other boring cops the cold shoulder. They thought he was arrogant, but he didn’t give a damn—respectfully.

Same deal every night. Hung out by the cash register with Andrzej and Belinda or the other stripper/cashier named Jasmine. Easy money—Thomas made two thousand kronor a night. No fuss, no muss, just regular old horndogs who wanted some fun.

Today: a day off. First, he was going to Barkaby Outlet with Åsa. She wanted to buy a fall jacket. She wanted something “durable,” as she put it. Thomas knew what she meant. He was the same way. Normally, they didn’t give a damn about stupid labels and faggy designer stuff. They cared more about the inside than the outside. But when it came to certain products, Åsa and Thomas wanted the highest quality, which meant the most expensive brands. The clothes had to be able to withstand rain, cold, and sweat. At the same time, be lightweight and comfortable. That usually meant supple Gore-Tex material that breathed but also didn’t let in damp. That meant a lot of money.

He eyed the people in the outlet. Families with snotty three-year-olds. Younger couples who lived in the inner city but wanted to be well equipped for their trip to the Alps. The ordinary nine-to-five set. Were their lives happier than his? Definitely safer. But he probably made more, he hoped.

He thought about the adoption agency’s home visit the other week. Two middle-aged women who seemed totally normal’d came home to their house. Thomas’d expected something different, more wishy-washy types. They’d sat in their kitchen for an hour and discussed child-rearing, parental leave, and the difficulties adopted children face when trying to find their identity. Åsa did the talking, but Thomas made sure to nod in the right places. It actually felt good.

Åsa was overjoyed. “Maybe we’ll be parents soon.”

Finally, they each bought a jacket. North Face brand. Cost over four thousand kronor a pop. Thomas could pay easily: his new job raked in cold cash.

In the afternoon, Thomas was supposed to meet Ljunggren at the shooting club. For the first time in several weeks. Thomas didn’t know if he was getting paranoid, but it felt like Ljunggren was keeping his distance. They’d been close. Hadn’t talked much, maybe, but maintained a humorous rapport. Where did it all go? Maybe Ljunggren thought that Thomas’d messed up one too many times. But that wasn’t possible. Colleagues like Jörgen Ljunggren never whined about someone getting a little too rough. Ljunggren himself—rough was his middle name. Still, there was something there. A line’d been drawn. Between them. Thomas could feel it clearly.

In the car, he thought about the Solvalla incident. John Ballénius’d freaked out, disappeared into the crowd. According to the phone lists, the guy was nowhere near Axelsberg the night Rantzell was murdered, but something was obviously shady. The most important thing: now, Thomas was certain that Rantzell was the dead guy. That was a big step in the right direction.

Right away on the Monday after the incident, Thomas’d called the house-mouse detective who’d taken over the investigation after Hägerström. Stig H. Ronander, a senior guy, with a name that would’ve fit right in at Solvalla. For a brief moment, Thomas considered not doing it. But then he changed his mind. After all, this might be his way back. If he solved the mystery of who the dead guy really was, the possibility of solving the larger mystery increased significantly. He was taking a chance; something about this investigation was rotten. But he couldn’t see that anything negative could come of him helping it along a bit.

Ronander received Thomas’s information skeptically. Questioned how come he’d been asking around about John Ballénius, why the guy’d managed to disappear at Solvalla. Thomas fabricated a little—said that Ballénius’d already been mentioned in the investigation when he’d been helping Hägerström. Tried to refer to the telephone lists without mentioning that he’d ordered them himself. Stig H. Ronander didn’t seem grateful. He could go to hell.

The job, the car, the shooting range. Those used to be the three pillars of Thomas’s life. Now, he didn’t know anymore. The traffic unit was duller than he ever could’ve imagined. The Cadillac didn’t give him any peace. At the same time, he felt right at home at the strip club. Jasmine and Belinda were nice, unaffected.

His transfer and the incident with the man who’d been outside his window that night played tricks on him. Maybe because he lost his ability to defend himself when he rolled into the dark under the car. Maybe it didn’t matter when he was alone. But when Åsa was home—no. Even though their marriage wasn’t exactly stellar: if anyone hurt her he would never forgive himself.

So the shooting range ought to give him peace. But he didn’t like the looks the other guys were giving him after the whole mess at work. He wondered what they thought of him.

The shooting club was located indoors, in a building of its own. Most shooting ranges in Sweden were built inside cabins that’d been opened up along one long end, with shooting booths and targets. You stood and shot, under cover of the roof, but practically outdoors—you froze like a dog. But the Järfälla club was more luxurious: a total of fourteen parallel eighty-foot lanes for precision shooting with the best sound protection Thomas knew of. Everything was located warmly indoors.

Ljunggren was already there. One hand in his jeans pocket, leaning back a little, the other arm extended. A competition gun with an ergonomically correct grip. Baseball cap, protective headgear, broad-legged stance. Ready to shoot. Right before Thomas knocked him on the shoulder, he fired off a shot. A two. Not bad at all.

They shook hands. Ljunggren looked honestly happy to see him. Pounded Thomas on the back. Not like him—usually, the dude avoided physical contact more than he avoided pointless talk. “Didja see the two I just landed?”

Thomas felt happy. “Nice one. You’re not used to scoring that high, huh?” Raw, friendly laughter.

They talked for a while. Everything felt like normal.

Thomas positioned himself in his lane. Put on the headgear. The magazine into the 9-millimeter handgun. Closed his eyes for a few seconds. Breathed in. Come on, focus. Even if his job situation hadn’t gone the way he’d planned, he always needed to be able to focus at the right moment. Fire a shot in the right way when the situation required it. Hit the target in the right body part.

He raised his right arm slowly. Held the gun as steady as possible. His eye sought out the sight marker. Found it. Still, he was trembling. He relaxed. Clear sight. Carefully now. Focus. Increased the pressure on the trigger slowly and evenly. Avoided any flinching in his arm, hand, gun. Almost closed his eyes. His finger moved of its own accord. Had to lose consciousness of the movement that was about to come. Squeeze slowly. One single movement. One with the sight, the bullet’s movement through the air. He felt the recoil, the bullet piercing the target.

The shot came as a shock. The jolt of his hand almost caught him by surprise. Squinted. The hole in the target: a one. Ljunggren said, “It seems like some things don’t change, even if you’re just nailing traffic sinners all day. I’ve missed you, just so you know.”

Thomas didn’t know if he should laugh or cry. It felt so damned good.

After shooting practice Thomas suggested they grab a beer at Friden. Ljunggren had a different suggestion. “Can’t we just drive around a little? Like old times.”

It felt strange, but good somehow. Ljunggren: COO of integrity. Distance-keeper, no-body-contact specialist, macho dude numero uno. His suggestion: a pitying overture. A friend request.

Cops often took their patrol cars to the shooting range. Ljunggren flipped on the police radio, but on low volume. Thomas couldn’t read him: maybe he wasn’t thinking of what he was doing or else he did it to try to create the right atmosphere. He drove slowly, as if they were out on the beat. They were in a suburban area. The leaves on the trees were dry. Despite the rain, it’d been a warm summer. Real September feel—maybe because it was September.

They drove in circles—really like old times. More than three months ago. Felt like an eternity. An eternity of angst. Angst because everything’d gone to hell so quickly.

“Tell me. How are the traffic geeks?”

Thomas explained. What they talked about, their attitude, their food habits. Ljunggren grinned. Finally someone who understood.

“I’ve heard rumors about you, Andrén. That you’ve got a side gig. Is that true?”

Thomas didn’t know what to say. How much did Ljunggren know? This wasn’t really the time to spill the beans. At least not all of them.

“Yep, that’s right. I help a security company. A lot of evenings and nights. So, it’s kind of like before. I mean, Åsa’s used to it.”

Ljunggren nodded. Kept his eyes fixed on the road.

“I bet double my take-home that you make better money.”

Thomas laughed. “I’ll bet four times my take-home that you’ve got better retirement and health insurance than I’ll ever get there. My new job is outside of all that, so to speak.”

“That’s what I suspected. Is it worth it?”

Thomas thought about that for a while. The question’d been bothering him for several weeks. And Ljunggren didn’t even seem to know what it was he was really involved in.

“Let me be entirely open with you, Ljunggren. I don’t know what’s worth it and not worth it anymore. The only thing I know is that if someone pisses on you, you don’t have to be loyal to them anymore. This whole thing I’ve been put through—it’s bullshit. Do you know what happened? They said you couldn’t go on patrol as usual, that you had to cover for someone else. Then they sent me that girl, who could hardly carry the heavy vest to the car. We get called to a crazy boxing champion who goes berserk in a bodega and almost kills her. But, no, we’re not allowed to defend ourselves. We’re not allowed to restore order. Nope, that’ll just lead to whining. Then it’s police brutality. Assault. Excessive force. And Adamsson, that old cocksucker, turns his back on me. Makes me go on disability, asks me to more or less go to hell. Thanks for the support, you wrinkly motherfucker! But you and me, we both know Adamsson. He doesn’t really mind the kind of thing that happened in the bodega. He should’ve been behind me, one hundred percent. But no, this time he left me alone in the lion’s den. I don’t understand why.”

Ljunggren didn’t say anything. As usual.

Thomas kept going. “Sometimes I think, What if. What if it’s all connected? You know that investigation that guy Hägerström was working on? I helped him a little. Okay, I don’t like his kind, but something was sketchy about that murder. So I looked a few things up on my own. And what happens? Just a few days later, all this crap starts coming at me. Like that set it off. Like someone didn’t want me helping Hägerström with that investigation anymore. Like a plot or something.”

Ljunggren turned to Thomas again. “Yeah, that stuff was a little weird.”

“A little weird? It was fucking insane.”

Ljunggren ignored Thomas’s comment. “I don’t know what happened that night. But Adamsson was actually the one who called me and asked me to cover for Fransson. And I just followed orders. But that it’s some kind of plot, no, I don’t think so. That sounds a little too, what’s it called… ?”

“Conspiratorial?”

“Yeah, right, conspiratorial.” Ljunggren paused. Then, in a lowered voice, as if he was thinking about what the word meant, he said, “Conspiratorial, yeah.”

They kept driving around for another hour. It grew darker. The glowing instrument panel in the patrol car made it feel homey. Thomas couldn’t forget what Ljunggren’d just told him. So, Adamsson had been the one who ordered him not to go on patrol. One thought emerged clear as day in Thomas’s muddled mind: now it was obvious. Adamsson was involved somehow.

He didn’t say anything to Ljunggren.

Ljunggren started driving back toward the shooting club to drop Thomas off at his car.

He turned off the engine, but let the instrument panel continue to glow. His hands remained on the wheel as though he were still driving. His gaze somewhere far off, maybe directed at the clubhouse.

“So, there’s something I want to tell you.”

Thomas could tell right away by his tone that something was up.

“What?”

Ljunggren swallowed several times. Cleared his throat. A minute passed.

“We got a call three days ago. A couple tenants who thought maybe someone was dead in an apartment next door. Through the mail slot they could see that there was tons of mail piled up inside the door and no one’d been seen there for several months. I went there with Lindberg. An apartment on Elsa Brändströms Street. We rang the doorbell, knocked. The usual routine. Finally, we tried the door. It was open, so we went in. We looked around, a thick film of dust on everything. Didn’t seem like anyone’d been living there for months. But we didn’t find any dead guy.”

Thomas wondered what his long story had to do with him.

“There was a ton of weird hard-core porn stuff, strap-ons and shit. We found a bunch of booze, a stinking fridge. We didn’t find anything else interesting. It didn’t seem like anyone’d been there for ages. I thought it was a routine check. But then I found a glass with dentures in the bathroom. Then it hit me that the person who’d lived in the apartment could be the smashed-up corpse we found on Gösta Ekman Road. The one you said you were helping Hägerström with. You told me you saw track marks on his arms and that he was missing teeth and stuff. I thought I should tell you. As a favor. In return.”

The silence in the car was complete. Thomas almost thought he could hear Ljunggren’s heart beating. What he was doing: breaking the rules, going against investigation confidentiality. Usually, that wasn’t the kind of thing that worried Ljunggren. But this—there was something bigger happening.

Thomas tried not to sound too interested. “Okay. Thanks for the info. I’m not doing that anymore, so. But, fuck, course I think it’s exciting. So, what was his name? The guy who lived in the apartment?”

Thomas felt goose bumps rise on his arms. Really, he already knew the answer to his question.

“The tenant’s name was Rantzell. Claes Rantzell. But that’s a new name. You can almost tell just by hearing it.”

“What?”

“Rantzell sounds made up, don’t you think? The dude’s name is actually Cederholm. He changed his name a few years ago. Does that ring any bells? Claes Cederholm?”

Thomas shook his head, but the name did sound familiar.

“Claes Cederholm was the chief witness in the Olof Palme murder trial. Get it? This isn’t just some everyday bull. The murder of Olof Palme, Sweden’s prime minister.”

This was insane.

Thomas was in really deep waters.

Really, really deep.