The Helicopter Heist

97

Stenson’s ordinary working hours ended one hour after the first publication, the one he alone was responsible for: images of the white helicopter lifting off from the roof in Västberga. By seven, people had started pouring into the office, and Stenson knew he should have gone home after a long night. But it was impossible. There was a sense in the air that something historic had happened, and this was his story, even if the paper’s head start over its main competitor had narrowed. The tabloids, morning papers and Swedish public media were all at the scene out in Västberga, along with a huge number of foreign correspondents—all starved of any internationally interesting news from the Scandinavian backwater where they had been stationed. The scene at the crossroads of Västberga Allé and Vretensborgsvägen was chaotic, and a press conference had been scheduled at police HQ in Kungsholmen for later that day.

Stenson darted between the desks with very little to do, following the foreign coverage of the robbery with the rest of his colleagues. Their European colleagues from the closest time zones were already broadcasting the news by eight, but it took a few hours before the Americans woke up.

On CBS, the focus was on the fact that no one had been hurt. There was talk of the heist being like something from a Hollywood movie, and when they described the skillful robbers, they used an image of Tom Cruise in an action sequence of some kind.

On CNN, they concluded that reality, yet again, had exceeded fiction.

The online headlines from the English papers were, in typical fashion, all humorous plays on words:

“Chopper Heist Is Swede-ly Done,” wrote the Sun. “It was a heist that would have caught the imagination of any Hollywood producer,” wrote the Times. “But not even Danny Ocean—despite having three George Clooney films to play with—thought of using a helicopter.”

The coverage seemed much more focused on reviewing the robbers’ methods, drawing parallels to the world of film, than it was on reporting a crime.

Stenson knew that he wouldn’t be invited to the press conference at police headquarters after lunch; he was just a temp from the recruitment company. But at eleven thirty, the paper’s star reporter—who had won out and been awarded the prestigious job of covering the robbery by the deputy editor—came over to his desk.

“You can come along if you want, Stenson,” he said. “You were first, after all.”

Tor Stenson nodded. His pride swelled like a sponge in a bathtub.

98

The American airlines would have been out of the question. With Sami Farhan’s criminal record, the obligatory tourist visa applications made it impossible for him to fly via the United States.

Both Air France and British Airways flew from Arlanda to the Dominican Republic, via Paris and London respectively. But the flights also left at six thirty in the morning, and such tight margins weren’t acceptable. If everything had gone according to plan, they were meant to have landed in Norsborg at five thirty. Having only an hour to make it up to Arlanda after that would have been too tight.

That left Swiss Air as the only viable alternative. The first leg left at ten in the morning, and he would land—after a change in Zurich, and thanks to the time difference—in Punta Cana early the same evening.

When Sami climbed out of the car at Arlanda and walked into the international terminal, heading for the check-in desks, he felt as though a huge spotlight on the ceiling were following his every move through the departure hall. It seemed to him that everyone was staring, that the police officers talking outside the 7-Eleven were getting ready to pounce.

By the time he handed over his passport to collect his ticket, he could barely talk, his mouth was as dry as sand, and he pulled at the neckband of his T-shirt so hard that it stretched. A few minutes later, standing in the line for Security, his legs were trembling so much that he was shaking all over.

It wasn’t even seven in the morning yet.

Just over an hour earlier, he had been standing on a rooftop in Västberga, about to climb into a helicopter.

He could barely believe it when they let him through Security, and when he sat down to wait by the still-empty gate, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all just a trap. They were giving him false hope, they wouldn’t let him leave the country.

During the brief moments when Sami failed to keep up his cautious nervousness, two opposing feelings rose inside him:

The first was a bubbling feeling of joy, something like letting go of a small plastic ball you’ve been pressing to the bottom of the bath.

They had done it. Shit, they had actually managed to do it.

The second feeling was one of paralyzing anxiety when he thought about Karin and the boys back home on Högbergsgatan.

He closed his eyes and suddenly found himself in Vitabergsparken. It was spring, and the air smelled like grass; Karin was walking alongside him, right by his side, he could make out the scent of her shampoo, she was holding John’s hand. The boy was wearing a denim jacket and a pair of what had once been white Converse, laughing his cackling little laugh when a huge dog suddenly approached them. The dog was white and shaggy and as big as the stroller Sami was pushing ahead of him up the hill. John ran forward, toward the dog, and he hugged it, clinging to its neck. Karin followed him, squatted down and stroked its nose and head. Sami knew she wanted him to take the baby out of the stroller, but he hesitated. He didn’t like dogs. And so Karin got to her feet, picked up the baby and let his tiny hand, no bigger than a tablespoon, stroke the dog’s white fur, so he could see how soft it was.

Suddenly, between him and his family, a crack appeared in the ground. It ran along the path, the gravel falling into the dark opening, and the pang in his heart was followed by a sinking feeling of melancholy that he knew all too well.

Sami stood on one side, looking at them—Karin and the kids next to the huge white dog—on the other. Suddenly, Karin jumped onto the dog’s back, lifted the boys up in front of her and then the dog ran away, away from the perilous opening, up the hill. Sami shouted, he shouted again, but no one could hear him.

His heart was pounding like two bass drums, his veins ready to burst in his temples, the tears streaming down his cheeks, and then he woke with a start. He couldn’t have been asleep for more than a few seconds, but he glanced suspiciously around the room. Everything looked the same as before.

Almost two hours passed before it was finally time to board the plane. To Sami, it felt like an eternity. But afterward, he would look back and remember it as no more than a few seconds. Even as he walked down the windowless tunnel between the terminal and the plane, he couldn’t believe it was true.

They had done it.

By the time he sat down in his seat and fastened his belt, his anxiety had sucked the last of his strength out of him. He fell asleep with his mouth open before the plane even made it onto the runway.

99

The big room that had been put at their disposal for the press conference was far too small. At the very front, standing next to temporary screens bearing the police emblem, were the day’s key figures: the police spokesman, Christer Ade, and behind him, Task Force Leader Caroline Thurn from the National Criminal Police. County Police Commissioner Caisa Ekblad and the National Police Commissioner, Therese Olsson, were also present. Each looked surprised at the size of the assembled media in front of them.

Christer Ade waved his arms and shouted out the rules of conduct in both Swedish and English. As a rule, journalists were terrible at taking orders, and it took almost ten minutes just to get the people and the cameras into the right places and for them to stop talking.

The many languages being spoken in the room gave everyone the sense that the world’s eyes, that early afternoon of September 23, 2009, were focused on police headquarters in Kungsholmen. It felt like the oxygen was going to run out even before the questions began, and Ade asked someone from the BBC to open the windows and let in some fresh air. But when the sounds of the city came rushing in to the media’s assembled microphones, tape recorders and cell phones, they were quickly closed again. The journalists would rather suffocate than not do their job.

Once the noise levels in the room had fallen low enough that Ade thought he could make himself heard, he loudly cleared his throat and began by outlining what had happened. Nothing he said was news to those in the room:

“The robbery was well organized, well planned and technically well equipped. All in all, that may lead to a number of different hypotheses about who was involved, and during this afternoon and evening—”

“Have any arrests been made?” the reporter from Aftonbladet, Sweden’s biggest tabloid, impatiently interrupted him, waving a yellow microphone in the air.

Ade realized that there was no point continuing his prepared statement. He answered Aftonbladet’s question with the particular kind of authority that can only be learned in media training courses.

“No. We have questioned a number of people, the type we usually question in situations like this, but… no. At present, no one is being held in custody for the robbery in Västberga.”

“Martin Hogan, New York Times. How much did they steal?” The correspondent’s broad American accent caused everyone else to turn around.

He had neither a tape recorder nor a microphone. Instead, he was holding a small notepad and a pen in his hand, as though it were still the 1980s.

Ade switched to English.

“According to G4S, the robbers have stolen a ‘large but unconfirmed sum’ of money. We don’t know any more than that at present.”

“Why didn’t the police storm the building?” a columnist from Sweden’s leading newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, wanted to know. The paper’s news reporter, standing next to her, was irritated at not having thought of the question himself.

Christer Ade glanced at the national police commissioner, who shook her head almost imperceptibly. And yet Ade took a step to one side, as though to indicate that it was time for someone who had been directly involved to answer the question. County Commissioner Caisa Ekblad cleared her throat.

“There were indications that the robbers were heavily armed,” she said in English. “We may be dealing with individuals with military training and equipment here. We wanted to wait for the right resources.”

Her words made the room explode with excitement.

“Were they mercenaries?” the Washington Post reporter shouted.

“There are reports of helicopters exploding. Can you confirm that?” a representative from the French channel TF1 asked. “We know the police cars were stopped by the chains across the access roads!”

Therese Olsson took a step forward. There was something so authoritative in her movements that the room immediately fell silent. She replied first in Swedish and then in very good English.

“We are defining this robbery as an extraordinary event. This means that police forces from across the county are working on the case. The police chief from the Norrmalm district was the commanding officer this morning, working alongside two operation heads, one in Västberga and one in Arninge. The operation is now working alongside us and the serious, organized crime unit. Which means that we are on high alert across the country.”

They loved it.

Caroline Thurn was standing in the shadows, right behind County Commissioner Ekblad, and realized that she would make it through the press conference unscathed. Neither Olsson nor Ekblad could hand over to Thurn at this point; it would make it look like they were shirking their responsibilities.

From her ringside seat, Thurn could feel that the atmosphere in the room was different than usual. Not just because of the number of journalists and nationalities. The questions were being asked in a very different tone, and there was a very different sense of expectation and intensity. At first, she assumed it was just because of how spectacular the robbery had been. Pictures of the helicopter taking off were already plastered across the Internet. No one had been hurt, they had gone in through the roof; this was the type of raid people loved.

But after listening to the commissioners for a while, and realizing that none of the reporters asked any follow-up questions about the course of action the police would be taking, she became doubtful.

A team from Japan and another from Taiwan pointed their cameras at Therese Olsson and asked, in unison, how likely it was that the robbers had left the country.

“We’re watching our borders and airspace closely,” Olsson replied, sounding very reassuring.

But since the police had no idea who had carried out the raid—not even Zoran Petrovic’s involvement was a given—keeping an eye on the country’s airspace wouldn’t help, Thurn thought.

The Japanese reporter seemed satisfied, however, and didn’t follow up with the obvious objection.

In that moment, it dawned on Thurn why this particular press conference was different. What she had already felt in the corridors of the police station over the past few weeks, a reluctant admiration for the robbers’ planning and professionalism, was now shaping the questions and attitudes of the assembled media. Ordinarily, the press would be trying to find a scapegoat, or else they would direct their interest toward the victims. The staff at the cash depot had undeniably gone through a deeply unpleasant morning, but no one had been physically hurt, no one had been subjected to a concrete threat.

These journalists, photographers and cameramen, Thurn realized, were here to create heroes.

In a few days’ time, in a week or a month, the fact that the police had known about the robbery in advance would come out, she thought. It wasn’t hard to imagine what the headlines would be like when that happened: “Police Force Knew Everything, Robbers Escaped.” She discreetly glanced around the room. The bright eyes, the loud voices. This, she thought, was just the beginning.

Tor Stenson cleared his throat. The press conference was coming to an end, and so were his chances. He needed to ask a question, something none of the other journalists had thought of, and he had to make sure it was caught on film. There was a job at stake. It had been a long night, morning and day, and weariness washed over him in waves. But suddenly, the question came to him.

Stenson pushed forward a few feet and waved the tabloid’s microphone in the air. Therese Olsson nodded.

“My name is Tor Stenson,” he said, “and I was first to publish the images of the robbers’ helicopter this morning. My question is, where were the police helicopters during the robbery?”

He could see from Olsson’s face that she knew the answer but didn’t want to say it. He glanced at the cameras around the room. They were rolling. Stenson breathed out. The job had to be his now. He waited for her answer.

100

Mats Berggren wasn’t frustrated, he was furious. Unlike Caroline Thurn and the other policemen and -women in the conference room, Berggren couldn’t hide what he was feeling. He was neither a diplomat nor a politician; in that moment he was just a fat, annoyed police officer who, for reasons unknown, was being forbidden from hauling in an unquestionably guilty robber.

“This is completely insane!” he repeated. “Everything the Serbs told us happened exactly like they said it would. What is there to think about, surely we just need to bring Petrovic in?”

The late-afternoon sun was low in the sky, shining in through the windows out onto Bergsgatan. The light brutally revealed ancient coffee rings and fresher grease marks on the rectangular table. Those unlucky enough to be sitting with their backs to the corridor had no choice but to squint, as the high windows had no curtains. Breathing heavily, Berggren turned to Caroline Thurn, who was sitting a few seats away.

“Right, Caroline?” he said.

“Mats is right,” Thurn replied, since her loyalty in that room was to her partner. But she also added: “It’s just a question of when we do it.”

After the press conference, Thurn had been mentally exhausted, despite having been able to keep to the background. She hated attention almost as much as she disliked meetings. Like this one. Being cooped up in a room with four walls and a couple of windows, discussing what needed to be done, was the polar opposite of going out and actually doing it. All she could do was bite her lip and keep going, her specialty. She was painfully aware of the play that was going on right now. The people around the table were positioning themselves. They were strengthening their brand and making sure to keep a line of retreat open by bringing up their reservations and concerns. Which they could later remind everyone of, if and when it was necessary. The hundreds of microphones belonging to the Swedish and foreign media would continue to be pointed at every police officer who happened to walk by outside, and they would be a constant reminder that no one could escape. This was a police operation in which, sooner or later, all those involved would have to explain how and why they had acted like they had. The media would love uncovering the constant battle between the county and national police forces, Thurn thought.

Berggren continued his moaning; he wanted to bring Petrovic in, and Thurn felt a certain sympathy for his desire to actually get out there and do something. But it wasn’t time yet.

Prosecutor Lars Hertz was standing at the front of the room, next to a huge whiteboard. He was wearing light, well-ironed clothes, something that distinguished him from the crumpled, ashen police officers around the table. He had taken command of the meeting, and he loved the role. His blue eyes shone. The board next to him was covered with notes. Names, dates and arrows drawn in both red and green marker. Though they would use the special cleaner to rub it all out at the end of the day, faint traces of the ink would be left behind.

Berggren got up. He paced back and forth along one wall of the room, making everyone else nervous. His breathing was strained.

“Maybe you should sit down, Mats,” Thurn said. “Even though I do understand your frustration.”

It was still Wednesday, September 23. The day had been drawn out and endless since the alarm was first raised at a quarter past five that morning. Thurn had stopped off at her apartment to take a shower and change her clothes earlier in the day, and she had since tied her unruly ponytail up into a soft bun that sat low on the nape of her neck.

During the morning, it would have been quicker to count the Stockholm police officers who weren’t working on the robbery in Västberga than the other way around. Representatives from practically every department and unit within the National Criminal Police force were gathered around the meeting table in police headquarters. Since the national police commissioner had been forced to stay at the Ministry of Justice, explaining to various ministers why hundreds of police officers outside G4S had stood by while the robbers flew away with their loot, Hertz was leading the meeting.

“But we know who he is,” Berggren whined stubbornly, though he did as Thurn told him and sat down.

Even early on that morning, the evidence they had been collecting ahead of the fifteenth—among it the recordings of Zoran Petrovic—had been revisited. Her colleagues may not have known quite how much Thurn had been listening to the tapes, but it was clear to each of them that she knew the material better than anyone else. She was also the only one to know with certainty that there were no direct references to the helicopter heist.

Hertz talked about Serbia, terrorist organizations and criminal networks in Europe.

“Which fucking network? We know who he is,” Berggren interrupted for the third or fourth time.

“If we bring in Petrovic now,” Hertz said, “then everyone else we want to talk to will disappear within a few hours. That’s how it works. And we don’t want to make it that easy for them.”

The police officers around the table would have nodded in agreement if Hertz hadn’t been so inexperienced.

“He’s probably right,” Thurn eventually said.

“If we have the name of the main suspect before twelve hours have even passed,” Hertz continued with a conciliatory smile, “then I suggest we keep working on this for another twelve. Maybe that way we’ll find them all?”

The meeting ended and people disappeared in different directions. There were mountains of leads to work through. Back in Thurn’s office, she and Berggren continued to rifle through the material from the earlier surveillance operation. They focused on the huge number of names and people Zoran Petrovic had been in contact with.

They produced two separate lists. The first was of known criminals, and the second of those without criminal records. But all the damn nicknames and code words made the lists difficult. There were over a hundred people in each.

Their work wasn’t made any easier by the constant interruptions by people from other departments who wanted to discuss their findings. Thurn was considered some kind of expert on Petrovic by that point. She wanted nothing more than to fob them off and finish working on the lists, but as usual she couldn’t be rude. She patiently made time for every single person who stuck his or her head in the door to ask for help.

But eventually, midway through a monologue by a young colleague from the Suspect Profile Group, Thurn got up from her desk, grabbed the thin jacket that had been hanging over the back of her chair, and left the office. She just left. Enough desk work now. It was after eight, and darkness had fallen over Kungsholmen.

101

“How was the conference?”

Annika Skott shouted from the hallway, and Niklas Nordgren heard the outer door close a moment later. Then she noticed the smell.

“Hey… what are you doing?” she shouted.

A few seconds later, she came into the kitchen and found Nordgren by the stove. The huge pot bubbling away smelled incredible, garlic and bay leaves. It was just after seven in the evening, but the sun was still shining in through the window.

“We finished around lunch, and I didn’t think there was much point going back to work,” he explained. “So I stopped off at Östermalmshallen and bought some lamb.”

He said nothing about having walked most of the way home to Lidingö from Östermalm, a distance of over six miles. Which, in turn, was just a fifth of the total he had walked that day.

The endorphins were refusing to leave his body, he couldn’t stop smiling. In his attempts to go back to being the ordinary Niklas Nordgren, the calm and slightly sulky man who liked to keep himself busy, the exact opposite had emerged. He felt even more wound up than he had that morning.

“That smells incredible,” said Annika. “God, I’m hungry. I’m just going to get changed. Then you can tell me everything.”

She disappeared into the bedroom, as always, to take off her tax adviser clothing and put on something more comfortable.

Nordgren continued to stir the pot.

It was going to be tough to tell her about the conference he’d told her he was attending when, in fact, he had actually been sleeping the days away in a too-short bed on Runmarö. He wasn’t a good liar to begin with, but a conference of hundreds of electricians would—as Nordgren imagined it—be an unbearably boring story.

But the real problem was that his body was still singing.

That was how it felt. As though his muscles, synapses and connective tissues were celebrating in secret.

They had done it.

102

Thurn took the elevator down to the garage, and as she climbed into her car she knew she wouldn’t be going home.

She still wasn’t sure. In her new-smelling Volvo, she could no longer avoid the questions that had been bothering her all day. How could someone who had planned a robbery involving at least twenty people, requiring thousands of hours of careful planning, manage not to give anything away for an entire month? Especially someone like Petrovic, who had said plenty of other revealing things, suggesting he hadn’t been aware of the microphones until, perhaps, the end.

How could her colleagues in police headquarters be so sure that this previously unknown man was the brains behind the spectacular helicopter heist?

It didn’t add up.

She turned left onto Scheelegatan, drove over the Barnhus Bridge and then took another left.

Zoran Petrovic lived no more than five minutes from police headquarters.

Caroline Thurn had never seen him in person, but she knew where he lived. When she parked her car outside his door, it was almost eight thirty in the evening.

She had to see him.

She wouldn’t know until she saw him.

She had spent so many nights with him, with that incessant voice in her ears, that self-confident tone, the way he placed himself at the center of the universe. She couldn’t help the fact that she was equal parts impressed and annoyed with him. But she had to supplement everything she knew with a real person’s gaze, movements and presence. It was the only way to be sure.

After half an hour, a young woman came out of the building, and Thurn took the opportunity to sneak in. She climbed the stairs to Petrovic’s apartment and rang the bell, not quite knowing what she would say if he answered. But there was no one home, and when she picked the lock and went in, she didn’t see anything that gave her a particular feeling either way.

With a sigh, she returned to the street and waited on the sidewalk.

He appeared just after ten, walking down Upplandsgatan in a short, thin jacket. She spotted him from a distance and immediately knew it was him. Tall and slender as a flagpole. She took a step out into the middle of the sidewalk just as he was about to reach the door, and he had no choice but to stop.

“Sorry,” she said, “but you don’t know what time it is, do you?”

Zoran Petrovic glanced at her with a wry smile. Thurn allowed him to look her up and down, to value and judge her. There was a certain timidity to him, she thought, but for a few seconds he brushed that to one side, stood up straight and went onto autopilot.

“Not too late for a drink,” he replied.

She must have passed his first appraisal, but she couldn’t sense any concrete conviction behind his invite. Despite the mocking smile, which she assumed was meant to pique her interest, he seemed more tired than anything.

She smiled.

“Thanks,” she said. “But I don’t think so.”

She looked him deep in the eye, utterly indifferent to whether he had misunderstood her.

“OK,” he replied, with a certain sense of relief. “That’s fine. It’s been a long day, but there’ll be others. Do you live around here?”

She smiled. Studied him. The uncertain flash in his eyes when she replied with a laugh: “I work nearby.”

And then she turned and walked away.

She felt better.

She was sure.

It was him.

103

Work in police headquarters was complicated on Thursday, September 24, by the sheer number of crime scenes that had to be examined. The forensic resources they had at their disposal simply weren’t enough.

To begin with, they had to go through the robbers’ entry route into the cash depot in Västberga. From the roof to the balcony on the fifth floor, and then up to Counting on the sixth. The helicopter had been found early on Wednesday, and along with it a good deal of abandoned equipment that could yield traces of DNA. By lunch, a pair of gloves and a balaclava had been found in a trash can by a bus stop a few miles away from the launch site on Värmdö. These had been sent for analysis along with the two bomb devices that had been placed outside the hangar.

The investigations of the various crime scenes were taking place more or less simultaneously, which meant that on Thursday morning, neither the prosecution authority nor the National Criminal Police had a good overview of what was actually known or expected. Paradoxically, information was also leaking out of police headquarters like a surging spring river. The Swedish media seemed to be completely up to date with the investigation, and by afternoon, Hertz realized that it was quicker to read the online version of the evening papers than it was to wait for internal updates.

The content was identical.

On the morning of Friday, September 25, Detective Chief Inspector Caroline Thurn was called into a meeting at the prosecution authority on Fleminggatan. Since the walls of police headquarters seemed to have ears, they had given up holding meetings there.

Therese Olsson was already waiting when Thurn arrived, as were Berggren and a couple of other colleagues. There was a tangible sense of excitement in the room. Traces of blood had been found at G4S during the previous day. And not in just one place, but several, most clearly by the damaged door into the cash depot. As the computers in the basement raced to find a clear match in the extensive Swedish crime register, bets were currently being made.

Names from the investigation flew through the room.

“One hundred on Zoran Petrovic.”

“I’ll bet two hundred,” said Berggren.

“Three fifty on Michel Maloof,” said the youngster from the Suspect Profile Group.

Maloof was one of hundreds of names in Thurn and Berggren’s list of criminals who had been in contact with Petrovic during August.

Thurn didn’t take part in the betting. It wasn’t how she thought police work should be done.

They spent a few minutes discussing their surveillance options and how the day could best be spent, but everyone fell silent when the phone on Hertz’s desk started to ring. Breathlessly, they stared at the prosecutor as he listened tensely, noted something down and then nodded.

He hung up and said: “Sami Farhan?”

It was a question.

“Sami Farhan?” Caroline Thurn repeated, astonished. “That’s the middle brother.”

“You know who he is?” Hertz asked. He sounded surprised.

But Prosecutor Lars Hertz was the only person in the room with no idea who the Farhan brothers were.

“Farhan?” said Therese Olsson. “But… he doesn’t have anything to do with Zoran Petrovic, does he?”

“He’s not mentioned in the investigation reports or on the tapes,” Berggren confirmed. “He’s not on our lists.”

“Who is Farhan?” Hertz asked in frustration.

“Do you remember the robbery at the National Museum?” Berggren replied. “The art heist? Just before Christmas a few years ago?”

“That was Sami Farhan and his brothers. Among others,” said Thurn.

“But there’s no mention of him anywhere in our investigation,” said Hertz.

Berggren got up.

“OK,” he said. “Let’s go and pick up Farhan.”

“No,” said Hertz.

“No?”

“No.”

Berggren looked dismayed.

“I want to find the money first,” said Hertz.

The room was silent.

“I want to find the money, then we can haul them all in. Without the cash, the media will lynch us.”

“It’s too late,” said Berggren.

“I’m afraid you’ll never find the money, Lars.” Thurn backed up her colleague. “I agree with Mats that it’s better to drop that thought.”

“Twenty-four hours,” Hertz insisted. “Let’s give ourselves twenty-four hours. If we haven’t gotten anywhere by tomorrow morning, we’ll go and pick up Farhan and Petrovic and his entire damn address book. OK?”

“Is that a promise?” asked Berggren.

“That’s a promise,” Hertz replied.

“I’d like to bring in Petrovic personally,” said Caroline.

Thurn’s colleagues turned to look at her, but no one asked why. They all knew the answer would be polite but insignificant.

104

Michel Maloof had spent Wednesday with Zoran Petrovic, trying to find out exactly what had happened. True to character, he had brushed his anger, disappointment and surprise to one side, and he worked methodically. Who had sent the text message to Petrovic’s phone during the early hours of the morning? How could Maloof’s number have been used without his knowledge? Who was behind the wheel of the boat, and where had it gone? Where was the leak, who had tricked them?

But when evening came around and he was still none the wiser—other than finding out that if someone knew his phone number, it was fairly easy to use the cellular network to make it appear on Petrovic’s display—Maloof was overwhelmed by a weariness that caused him to sleep through the night and well into Thursday.

When he woke, it was late afternoon, and he felt completely crushed.

They had done it, that was sure.

But the money was gone.

Sami and Nordgren still didn’t have a clue. In their respective worlds, everything was as it should be, and Västberga was still the perfect job. The thought of telling them made Maloof feel even more desperate. He knew what Sami would say; he would point to Petrovic and blame him. It was the simplest explanation, but only if you hadn’t seen the surprise in the Yugoslavian’s eyes when he realized what had happened that morning.

Whoever had screwed them over had also screwed over Petrovic.

At eight that evening, Maloof called Alexandra Svensson. He couldn’t bear being alone any longer. He needed the full attention of a sympathetic woman, warm skin for the night ahead.

But Alexandra didn’t answer. Her phone rang, but there was no answering machine linked to the number, there never had been. He tried several times that evening, all without success. Something might have happened to her, but he didn’t have the energy to worry about it. Thoughts of the money, the boat and the phones were still spinning through his mind, and he didn’t have room for anything else. He fell asleep just after midnight, and dreamed he was flying low through the air.

On Friday, the first thing Maloof did was to call Alexandra Svensson, before he had even climbed out of bed. By eight o’clock, when she still hadn’t answered, he was starting to get seriously worried. He decided to find out what had happened. He knew she lived in Hammarby Sjöstad, but he couldn’t remember the exact address. Maloof had never been to her sublet sublet, but she had told him where it was.

Or had she? He usually remembered addresses.

After a cup of black coffee, he called G4S and asked the switchboard if he could speak with the head of HR. He was told that Ingela Planström wouldn’t be in before nine, and so at nine on the dot he called back.

“Planström,” she answered.

“I’m calling about Alexandra Svensson’s father,” Maloof said. “It’s of the utmost importance that we get hold of Alexandra as soon as possible, but she isn’t answering her phone. Do you have an address where we can reach her?”

“Her father?” said the head of HR, sounding nervous. “Is he ill? Just a moment… Here. Sickla Kanalgata Six.”

“Thanks so much,” said Maloof, hanging up.

Just over twenty minutes later, he climbed out of his Seat in Hammarby Sjöstad. There was an intercom in the doorway to Sickla Kanalgata 6, and he pressed the buzzer. He heard a rustling over the speaker, but before he had time to say anything, the door buzzed open, and Maloof stepped inside. There was a list of residents in the entrance hall, and Alexandra’s apartment was on the second floor. He ran up the stairs and knocked.

A young woman Maloof had never seen before opened the door, a slim blond in jeans and a T-shirt.

“Oh,” he said, surprised. “I didn’t know… I’m looking for Alexandra?”

“Yeah?” the woman in the doorway said.

“Alexandra Svensson?” Maloof clarified.

“Yeah. That’s me.”

“No… but… the other Alexandra Svensson,” said Maloof. “Who lives here.”

Alexandra Svensson stared at him. She shook her head, not understanding what he meant.

“I live here. I’m Alexandra Svensson. What do you mean?”

105

There are over one hundred thousand islands in the Stockholm archipelago, and just as many capes and bays.

Lena Hall had spent the summers of her childhood on the island of Utö, and was so used to the archipelago that she would never underestimate the rocks that weren’t marked on the nautical charts. She had learned to sail before she was ten, chugged around in a small dinghy with a five-horsepower outboard motor, fishing for perch in the streams and pike in the reeds by the time she was twelve. Now she was behind the wheel of a motorboat, moving southward through Hårsfjärden at a speed of thirty knots. The morning of Friday, September 25, was cold, and the water lay still and calm. The boat’s metal hull cut through the water like a knife through warm butter, and the wind in her hair was cold as ice. Autumn had arrived.

Lena slowed down as she approached land, and she headed along the coast.

It was one of these bays, she just wasn’t sure which. She always got them confused. He had forbidden her from putting up any markers.

She pulled out a small pair of binoculars, but before she had time to raise them to her eyes, she spotted movement on the island.

A black dog.

It was standing on a rock, its paws in the water, looking out to sea. Lena slowed down again and set a course toward the rocky beach and the dog. When she focused, she spotted two more dogs at the very edge of the woods. She smiled, and knew she had found the right place.

As she slowly drifted toward land, the dogs caught sight of her, and all eight gathered around the boat as she dragged it up onto the pebbles. The old man and his walking stick didn’t appear before Lena had jumped ashore. She was in the process of unloading the mailbags when, suddenly, he was behind her.

“In your element, I see,” he commented.

“You had no idea, did you?” she said. “Every summer vacation in the archipelago. Not that far from here, actually.”

He shook his head. He hadn’t known.

During the seventies, he had been head over heels in love with the woman who would much later become Lena Hall’s mother. When Lena’s biological father vanished from the scene a decade or so ago, it had been natural for him to offer what help he could. From a distance, of course.

And now she had helped him.

Lena disappeared into the cramped cabin of the boat and returned with the last of the bags. She threw it over the railing.

“How much is in there?” he asked, peering at the haul without any interest.

“No idea,” she said. “Haven’t counted it, I just took what was mine.”

“You can move it up into the woods,” he told her. “I’ll take care of it from there.”

She did as he said. It took her less than five minutes, occasionally tripping over a black dog that wanted to help out.

Once she was finished, she couldn’t help but ask.

“What about Michel?”

Lena would miss Michel, she had grown to like him. She wouldn’t miss Alexandra Svensson, however. She could just imagine Alexandra’s disappointment on Tuesday, when she didn’t turn up for the usual class at Friskis & Svettis. She would never have to listen to Alexandra Svensson’s long stories about her job or her loneliness again.

“Michel Maloof’s a good boy,” the old man replied.

Lena smiled, she agreed.

“I meant with the money,” she said. “Is he going to get any?”

“We’ll have to see how it goes,” the old man replied.

Lena nodded, not knowing whether he was just saying what he thought she wanted to hear. She pushed the boat back off the shore and jumped on board before it drifted out of the bay. Once it had moved deep enough, she lowered the motor.

It took the old man almost an hour to move the five mailbags up to the house. He used a wheelbarrow, but thick tree roots had grown over the path and sharp stones stuck up at each side, threatening to burst its tire. On top of that, he had a bad back. The dogs, as always, hoped it was a game, and they got in his way several times, making him stop and set down the wheelbarrow to wave them away.

People foraging for berries and mushrooms usually came close to his cottage only a couple of times a year, but it wasn’t worth the risk. He would sort and store the money in his earth cellar. He pulled the money from the bags and sorted it into plastic sacks according to denomination. Then he piled the plastic bags on top of one another in the small cardboard boxes he unfolded as he needed them. Finally, he stacked his new boxes on top of the old ones, and once he had done four bags, he stretched, sighed deeply, and decided that was enough.

He took the fifth bag into the cottage with him, setting it down next to the boots by the inner door.

It was eleven o’clock, which meant it was time for a cup of coffee. But as he moved to fill the machine with water, he noticed a crack in the pot. He ran his finger over the glass, but he couldn’t feel anything. Still, he could see it clearly.

He filled the machine with water and measured the coffee into the filter, but his eyes were fixed on the crack the entire time. It had happened before. He had no idea where the cracks came from, but the exact same thing had happened a few years earlier. He had paid no notice to it at the time, but the pot had later broken, sending scalding hot coffee pouring onto the worktop and burning his thigh.

He would have to go into Handen to buy a new one.

He hated taking the bus into Handen. He sighed and decided he could do it next week.