The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (27 page)

‘This is an exercise dammit!’

‘And?’

‘Every combat exercise needs a combat leader. But you don’t get that! Because you didn’t do your military service.’

‘I’ll only say this once. Stop it.’

‘Stop what?’

‘Just stop it.’

‘If we end up in a tight corner you’ll thank me.’

‘Tight corner?’

‘If you hesitate in battle, you die. It’s that fucking simple.’

‘Listen … if we end up in the middle of a battle, it will be your fault.’

Jasper got closer, staring him down. Vincent had seen that look before – like the time Jasper had bought a nightstick and walked around waiting for someone to look at him funny. Until he decided Big Steffe had and whacked him twice on the wrist. He’d had that same look when the bone broke,
so easy, did you see that, just like a dry twig
. He’d regretted it later that evening, worried as hell, not about Steffe but about getting in trouble, that he wouldn’t be able to do his military service. And now he stood there staring at Felix with those same eyes. That was when Leo opened the door and walked in with a large cardboard box in his arms.

‘What’s going on here?’

Neither Felix nor Jasper said anything as they both took a step back.

‘Nothing,’ said Vincent.

‘I can see something’s going on.’

Jasper dropped his weapon on the workbench for a second time.

‘They’re questioning my expertise, and I’m fucking tired of it!’

‘Not your expertise – your attitude!’ said Felix.

‘Attitude? I’ve never questioned your expertise on a building site, when you told me I was holding my hammer too high on the handle or put it back in the wrong damn box – I’ve listened to you and respected you! So you need to fucking listen to me when I’m teaching you something I’m good at!’

Leo stood right between them, pushing them both gently in opposite directions.

‘Jasper? Shut up.’

‘You said I should teach them everything I know.’

‘Keep your mouth shut and clean your gun. And you, Felix? Listen to Jasper when it comes to stuff like this – he knows what he’s talking about. He knows how you should protect yourself. Just like he protected you! When those fucking idiots from the round house beat you up, and he stayed there even though he’d taken a baseball bat to the head, he stayed there and kept beating them until I could get there. Don’t you remember that?’

They were tired, he knew it. And tense.

‘OK?’

He waited for one of them to continue bitching, as they usually did. But this time there was only silence, the silence he’d first stepped into.

‘Good. Let’s do this one last time.
With
vests. Fully equipped.’

Leo opened the box and handed everyone a bulletproof vest. Never order equipment from a Swedish company. If the cops were to start investigating security companies, requesting that they disclose information, that was precisely the type of lead they might find. This, American Body Armor, a supplier to the US Army, was a safer bet.

‘If everyone looks the same.’

The second box had been under their worktable for a while now. Four new jumpsuits, blue like before, all identical.

‘If no one stands out it’ll be a hell of a lot harder to give good descriptions.’

One last time.

Dress rehearsal. Fully equipped. Target takeover.

From a Dodge to a makeshift bank and back again.

Exactly 180 seconds.

Then the cashiers’ desks would return to being wooden planks and plywood, while the bank walls and windows and vault would become a sticky ball of rolled-up tape.

‘Take the petrol can and bin bag and follow me out,’ said Leo, nodding to Jasper.

He led him to the back of the garage, where a wall stood between them and their neighbour’s house and hedge towards the main road. A rusty oil drum was standing just a few metres away, and Leo emptied out a bin bag full of stuff that Jasper doused with petrol.

‘Five fifty p.m. Ten minutes till closing time. Everybody’s trying to get their errands done in time.’

Two matches. Sketches, drawings, maps all started to burn.

‘And Jasper – you have to stay in control.’

‘I know what the hell I’m doing.’

The flames ate up their plans and escape routes.

‘Like when you put the barrel of the gun into that security guard’s mouth?’

The key was not to lose control. To never, ever become part of the violence, but to direct it. He’d seen it in his father’s eyes long ago, and now it was in Jasper’s eyes – eyes that were being controlled rather than in control.

‘Or when you shot up the security van even though we could see the lights of the cop cars in the distance?’

The difference between crushing a nose with a punch and burning down a house.

‘Look at me, Jasper. I have to be able to depend on you. Can I do that?’

Nineteen hours and twelve minutes left.

‘Yes. You can depend on me.’

LEO WATCHED AS
his little brother unbuttoned his bulletproof vest to the waist and pulled the strap one notch tighter. They were crouching in the back of one of the two vans Felix had stolen late last night. They couldn’t see outside, but Leo nevertheless knew exactly where they were, exactly how far they had to go.

‘What if I get stuck?’ asked Vincent.

‘Stuck?’ replied Leo.

‘What if I get stuck in the window?’

‘Which window?’

‘The cashier’s window. When I’m on the way through?’

He was going to rob his first bank in four minutes and twelve seconds.

‘You won’t get stuck.’

‘But if I do?’

‘Vincent, look at me. You won’t get stuck.’

They’d been looking for a van with a handyman’s insignia on its sides, and they’d found the perfect one. A huge logo saying
HEATING SOLUTIONS
, a vehicle that could be driven up close to a bank without setting off any immediate alarms – and everyone who saw it would be able to give a clear description later.

Leo grabbed the rear door handle for balance as the van leaned – the last roundabout. Twenty metres left – a noticeable bump as they left Handelsvägen, crossed the pavement and rolled onto the Svedmyra Square. The last stretch, tyres braking on wet asphalt, a sucking sound gliding along the floor.

Leo straightened his ear protectors and verified that the microphone was firmly connected to the collar of his jumpsuit, waiting while Vincent, Jasper, and Felix adjusted their own ear protectors. Now they pulled down the cloth over their faces – from this distance, it looked as if someone had cut three pieces out of a magazine and pasted them directly onto the fabric, paper eyes, paper mouths.

‘Mickey Mouse!’ Jasper smiled as he held his hands against his ear protectors, which stuck out like big round balls under the black fabric.

‘Mickey Mouse, damn it!’

‘Jasper, that’s enough,’ snapped Leo.

‘Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse, Mickey …’

‘Enough.’

Leo had only just calmed Vincent down; Jasper’s nervousness was harder to watch, a man preparing for adult violence by acting like a child. Their first real bank robbery. They all had their own way of coping.

‘Testing.’

The transmitter was in the right-hand pocket of his jumpsuit, index finger on the small angular button, and he spoke softly.

‘One two. One two.’

His voice in their heads. The voice that would soon be leading them.

‘Felix, the police scanner?’

Felix had parked the van in such a way that he was able to see the entire bank in the side mirror, and in the rear-view mirror he could see the three bank robbers preparing to jump out.

‘Set to the right frequency. Encrypted. We’ll know exactly where the cops are.’

‘Good. Vincent?’

‘Yes?’

‘We’re gonna go straight through them.’

‘Straight through.’

The sound of four automatic weapons being loaded simultaneously ran around the walls and floor.

‘In five …’

The time was five fifty p.m.

‘Four …’

Leo put his hand gently on the rear door handles.

‘Three, two …’

‘Wait!’

Felix turned the rear-view mirror.

‘There’s an old man with a walking frame on his way out. And there’s an old lady behind him.’

Leo lowered his weapon. He’d counted down. Vincent had been calm, Jasper focused. It had been the time.

‘Felix, damn it …’

‘We have time. We’ll just let them walk out.’

‘There’s no fucking old man with a walking frame! No fucking old lady! From now on … they simply do not exist. We go straight through them. The only thing that’s in there is our money!’

‘Are you finished?’

‘Felix, we …’

‘An old man with a walking frame. And an old lady.’

Felix turned the rear-view mirror a little.

‘They’re out now.’

EIGHT STEPS TO
the glass door of Handels Bank. Leo first. Vincent one step behind, Jasper two steps behind him.

It was raining a little, the smell of late autumn leaves through the fabric of the mask, wet and slippery and brown, glued to the cobblestones of the square. And everywhere, eyes. People sitting in a row, drinking beer in the window of the pizzeria, and the florist and his wife in warm clothes
inside their flower tent, and the two customers at one of the bank’s ATMs who had just turned round.

Real leaves and real eyes. Real rain. Real people. Real sky and real wind.

A real bank door.

No more practising. There was no turning back.

Vincent focused only on Leo’s neck. If he just looked into it and stayed there, and kept walking at the same pace, he’d make it to the bank and follow him inside.

If this is going to work, they have to see a grown man. Do you understand, little brother?

Six steps left. Five steps. Four steps.

Inside, the bank cashiers will be sitting behind their windows, and they need to be convinced that there are three adult males coming through those doors.

The bulletproof vest took up so much space, pushing against his jumpsuit, making it difficult to move normally.

You have to stand up straight when you walk. Put down your entire foot.

And the submachine gun hanging diagonally over his shoulder still chafed like before.

Imagine you weigh more, you’re heavy, and you know where you’re going.

And no matter how much he looked into Leo’s neck, it felt as if he wasn’t getting any closer to the bank by being so careful to put down his entire foot.

He wasn’t getting …

He wasn’t …

‘Vincent?’

Leo had stopped with only a single step left to the door. He turned round, put his hand on Vincent’s shoulder and spoke into the microphone they could all hear through their earphones.

‘You go straight through them.’

A big brother’s voice inside his little brother’s head, one that had always been there. And now Leo moved his hand to his collar and the microphone in order to cover it, then leaned forward and with the other hand lifted Vincent’s ear protector.

‘Vincent?’

And whispered.

‘You know I love you.’

And then turned round, to the bank.

Leo opened the glass doors, and Vincent followed him inside.
I love you
. Only Mamma ever said that. They walked through the narrow entrance, hot air blowing from above, and he wondered what Leo had really meant. Was he trying to make his little brother relax and walk like a man? Or maybe they were really going to die, and Leo knew it, but didn’t know how to say it.

There was no longer any sound.

It was silent as Leo fired eighteen shots at the surveillance camera, which turned inside out like a flower, long wobbly petals around a lens – silent as Jasper fired fifteen shots at the second camera, which fell apart, piece by piece, onto the floor.

‘Blue Four!’

Leo shouted at him, lips moving behind the black fabric, but he didn’t even hear it.

‘Blue Four!’

Vincent glanced towards the bodies crouched at his feet, their arms draped over their heads.

‘Blue Four – the cashier’s window!’

And he started moving again.

Towards the cashiers. He saw the woman in the yellow quilted jacket too late – stepped on her arm while the cashier slammed and locked the door, and threw herself down behind the counter.

If the window was closed …

If he couldn’t jump up on the counter and crawl through it …

If he got stuck …

‘Sixty seconds!’

Leo ran up beside him, shouting something, then that movement as he raised his rifle again, bouncing gently on his knee, his left hand against the wooden handle. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty shots.

‘Blue Four – now!’

Suddenly Vincent was able to hear again. Everything was crystal clear.

The glass hung in the air for a moment longer, as if the thousands of pieces had not yet understood that they should fall, and he rushed towards the cashier’s now missing window, wearing a vest that no longer felt tight, a belt that no longer chafed. He could hear the sole of his left boot crushing glass into the stone tiles as he took a run at it, a sharp, hissing sound as he landed on the cashier’s counter, the sole of his right boot grinding glass
into the wooden panel, as if chewing on ice cubes, then both his boots hitting the floor on the other side, crushing shards into the carpet. And as he ran towards the inner door to let in Blue Three, then back towards the cashier screaming
give me the keys to the vault
, the voice he used sounded like the one he’d practised – and it worked. Fingers with red nail polish stretched up towards him, holding a set of keys.

‘Ninety seconds!’

Leo was standing in the middle of the bank with six people at his feet: the young woman in the yellow quilted jacket who hadn’t made a sound when Vincent stepped on her; a man in a coat and brown loafers who refused to lie down until he forced him to with the butt of the gun; an elderly lady pressed against the counter following him with her eyes, not pleading, not afraid, more like she wanted to record what was happening; two guys behind a big palm tree near the front window around Vincent’s age, who would talk later of how they’d been there, in the middle of a robbery; and the woman holding a shopping bag, from which cornflakes and bread and a red container of baby formula had rolled out.