Life Deluxe (21 page)

Viktor just stared back at him. Jorge tried to understand. The guy’s eyes were full of fear. And still he was bugging out. What the fuck was his problem?

After a few seconds: Jorge paused to breathe. Stared. Was still standing up. Locked on Viktor’s eyes.

“Are you done?” Viktor asked. “ ’Cause I’m starting to get really fucking tired of you.”

“Say that again.”

“I said, you’re such a fucking bore. You’re so full of shit that it’s coming out of your ears.”

Jorge’s temper: went totally ballistic. He roared. Took a step toward Viktor. “
No me jodas
, you motherfuckin’ cocksucker!”

Viktor: dropped some cocky comment like a grenade. Stood up.

Everyone’s trouble scale: on deep red alert.

Mahmud also stood up. “Cool it, Viktor.”

Viktor screamed, “Come on, you fucking clown, come on!”

Tom stood up. “Viktor, sit down. Chill out, dammit.”

Too late.

Jorge threw himself the final feet. If this fucker wanted to get beat, let him have it.

Everything was bubbling up inside him: Paola’s shitty gratitude, Viktor’s attitude, the difficulties they were having with the gate and the vault.

He shoved Viktor in the chest with full force.

The guy went tumbling backward. Hit the couch.

Jorge: over him.

Bitchslapped that
zorra
. Smack, smack.

Viktor tried to wave off Jorge’s arms. Flailed his arms like a chick.

Tried to get up.

Jorge fed punches: hit the jerk-off with a few half-ass jabs.

Then it ended. Javier and Mahmud were restraining him. Took a grip around his waist. His arms.

Viktor’s cheeks were as red as Jimmy’s mother’s shack—the dude was spitting dirty words. Then he turned around.

Ran out of the house.

Ten minutes later. Jorge’d calmed down. Was sitting in the kitchen with Mahmud and Tom. In one corner: an old stove—like a hundred years old or something. Black iron, initials carved onto the front, lots of curlicues on the handles. Jorge didn’t understand why you’d save a piece of junk like that.

The others were still sitting in the living room.

Tom was speaking to Jorge in a low voice: “I think Viktor’s really fucking scared.”

“So why the fuck’d you drag him into this?”

“My bad, I’ll take that. But honest, he’s scared for real.”

“ ’Cause we’re gonna torch some cars?”

“No. Don’t you know who Viktor is?”

“Yeah, a vagina.”

Tom drummed his fingers on the table.

“What is it?” Jorge said.

Tom stopped drumming. Waited a couple of microseconds. “Viktor is dating Radovan Kranjic’s daughter.”

Jorge stared at him.

Tom said, “The dude’s got bad financial problems. The guy’s scared our operation’s gonna go to hell. But most of all, he’s scared for his life. He’s wound up in a family that’s dangerous for real.”

Early summer was rolling in with full force, even at the penitentiary. The cells were brighter, there was birdsong from the outer walls, a warm breeze swept over the rec yard. You could usually tell by the inmates, Esmeralda said. Better morning moods, physical restlessness, and more broad jokes. You know, warm-up before game time.

But now: the atmosphere was at rock bottom. The reason, according to Esmeralda: there were too few fans in the stands and shitty team spirit on the field.

A cold conflict in the cage, which could break out into full-fledged war at any moment. Again. The fight in JW’s cell: Omar plus sidekick had jumped the Tube. The president had given Crazy Tim a real whipping. And JW had taken so many hits with the chair leg that he’d had to fix a tooth, get two stitches in his eyebrow and eight in his thigh, and be cared for in the infirmary for four days.

Hägerström was pleased with the results of his plan. Torsfjäll was even more pleased. He pulled some strings so that the Tube and Crazy Tim were transferred out. That was par for the course. If serious conflicts arose, you split up the troublemakers. Someone got bus therapy, someone might have to go into the box for a few weeks. Or else you punished them in other ways. Guarded parole could be revoked, or the worst threat of all: strike their EPRD—they wouldn’t be released after two-thirds of their time. For JW, that would mean up to two more years behind bars.

But the linchpin was that Omar Abdi Husseini was staying, he wasn’t going to switch prison or unit. And JW would stay put as well. Two cocky cocks in one chicken coop.

In other words, JW was left alone with his new nemesis. He would have to squirm. He would have to worry. What’s more, he was probably missing his paperwork and his phone.

Now there was something he wanted from Hägerström.

The days passed. Hägerström worked like a maniac, picked up every shift he could get. He wanted to be at the prison all the time.

JW kept to himself even more than before the conflict. Mostly sat in his cell. During lunch, he walked with the younger guy, Charlie Nowak, near him at all times. But the feeling was different than before. Charlie Nowak tried to take command. Play JW’s bodyguard, control the situation. But without the Tube and Crazy Tim, there was no patent power, no heavy names.

Fear of more attacks hung heavy in the air, even if no one wanted to show it.

At night, Hägerström tried to come up with things to say. Jotted down different scripts. Tried to get inside JW’s head. They knew he had used the CO Christer Starre before. But the question was, how?

Hägerström would know soon. Hopefully.

He got another weekend with Pravat. They ate lunch at Grandma Lottie’s again. Homemade meatballs with macaroni for Pravat and veal filet with roasted potatoes for Martin and Grandma. They ate in the dining room. A checked oilcloth tablecloth on the table. A cloth napkin in Pravat’s little lap.

Grandma pointed at the tablecloth. “I bought that yesterday for the little nugget’s sake.”

Hägerström laughed, “Really? For Pravat’s sake?”

Lottie set down her knife and fork and carefully wiped her mouth with the cloth napkin. Martin could tell that she was about to come out and say something.

“To what do we owe your new lack of coiffure?”

Martin had shaved off all his hair a few weeks ago. As far as he could remember, no one in their family had ever had a buzz cut.

“It’s easier this way.”

Mother looked at him. Changed the subject. “Martin, why did you come over so rarely when Father was alive?”

The question came as a surprise. Martin Hägerström’s mother usually acted according to a golden rule: never start uncomfortable discussions in the family. She had tolerated a lot from Father in her day. Working around the clock several days a week, insane tantrums, and
possibly extramarital affairs. But she didn’t fight in public. He’d never even heard her argue with Father. That trouble would descend over her family because of her? Over Lottie Hägerström’s dead body.

According to Mother, uncomfortable questions had no place in the Hägerström family. But what she’d just said was different. Maybe it was because Father was gone. That it was just her and Martin.

Martin didn’t even know what to respond. He should probably just tell her the truth. How difficult it had been to see Father after his divorce from Pravat’s mom. How Father had looked at him in a strange way.

Divorces just didn’t happen among Mother and Father’s friends. Hägerström knew that one of Carl’s friends had gotten divorced, but right now he couldn’t remember who. At the same time, Mother must understand that he was happier without Anna, though not without Pravat.

Hägerström and Anna’s life had been so filled by the adopt-a-child project that they hadn’t been able to see how little else they had in common. And their sex life was a joke. It had been from the very beginning.

But now, in front of Pravat—he couldn’t do it.

Some of the finest paintings from Father’s collection were hanging on the walls in the dining room. There was a Miró and a Paul Klee. The latter showed a number of viaducts that had begun to move. They marched, paraded, colorful, leggy. Buildings that moved—it was a bizarre protest. The bridge revolution, the stable viaducts’ revolt. Maybe that was the way Mother was feeling right now. A solid structure that had stood still its entire life, immobile in its concrete foundation—that finally took a step.

He drove Pravat straight to day care on Monday morning. Hägerström had the rest of the day off. The prison administration had forced him to take a day off since he had worked so much recently. He had lunch with his brother at the upscale downtown staple, Prinsen. He bought two shirts and a pair of jeans at the NK department store.

That night he settled into the couch in the living room. Switched the TV on. Zapped between channels. The news.
CSI: Miami
. Some talent show:
Idol, Top Model, Let’s Dance
, every starry-eyed-nobody-who-wanted-to-be-somebody. He wasn’t familiar with the shows, but he knew that he didn’t want to watch them. He paused at a documentary
about Russia: old KGB soldiers in death squads who executed dissident journalists.

He went out into the kitchen. Put a capsule into his Nespresso machine. Livanto, intense coffee with a roasted flavor. He listened to the buzz from the machine. Brought the coffee back to the TV.

The documentary made him think about his own military service. The coastal rangers were supposed to defend the country’s borders but, above all, carry out guerrilla operations if the country was invaded. That was back in the days when the Russians were seriously considered a threat to Sweden.

He had finished the coffee. And three glasses of Bordeaux too. Hägerström wasn’t used to all this free time.

He wondered what he should do. In one way, sitting at home without even finding something decent to watch on TV was a waste now that he was finally back in the city. He could watch a movie. He could look at pictures of Pravat and let himself drift off into daydreams. He could go to bed and try to sleep. Or else he could call someone, go out, and have something more to drink. But who? He was thirty-eight years old, and it wasn’t even a weekend. All his friends were either married with kids or divorced—but still with kids. What were the chances that they would be able to grab a spontaneous beer? He knew the deal. If you wanted to see one of them, you had to plan it, often weeks in advance. The only one he could think of who might be willing to throw himself out into the Stockholm night to see him was Thomas Andrén, his former colleague. He had a kid too these days—also an adopted son—but he usually never said no. On the other hand, they hadn’t seen each other in over two years. And what was more, rumor had it that he had crossed over to the other side. Hägerström didn’t feel like seeing him tonight.

An hour later: he was sitting alone at Half Way Inn by Mariatorget—his favorite haunt.

In the beginning of his career, he’d worked at the police station near here. A few of his colleagues used to grab a beer or two after work, mostly on Fridays, but sometimes on other days of the week too. It wasn’t Hägerström’s kind of place. But still: a beer or a glass at Half Way Inn, and his head felt better after a day at work.

And there was one more thing. Half Way Inn was in Södermalm, the southern part of the city. For Hägerström, that was radical. When he graduated from the Police Academy in the mid-1990s, he had even moved here. A small apartment near Hornstull. He could still see his mother’s, father’s, and brother’s faces when they found out where it was. “Södermalm—but
why
?”

Nowadays Hägerström had calmed down. He still preferred to go out in Södermalm, but he lived in Östermalm. He was over making a point of things. He just chose what worked best, and Östermalm was home, after all.

The place was a classic British pub with an aquatic theme. An old-fashioned sign hung over the door:
HARDY & CO. FISHING RODS
. A plastic swordfish in the ceiling. A brass railing along the length of the bar. Green Scottish plaid wallpaper on the walls, and photos of the Highlands, bagpipers, and ships. There was nasty old wall-to-wall carpeting on the floor, soaked in years’ worth of spilled beer.