‘Maybe he wanted to give you and me a little clue in case anything ever happened to him,’ Bäckström said. ‘A sort of extra insurance.’
‘I wondered that as well,’ Nadja said. ‘But in that case why not give the actual amounts? Why does he say that Farshad gets ten times as much as Hassan, and on one occasion twenty times as much, and that Afsan gets four times as much as Hassan?’
‘That’s quite natural. Farshad is their leader, Afsan is his younger brother, and Hassan on the other hand is just a cousin from the country who’s allowed to pick up a few crumbs.’
‘The general assumption seems to be that the money came from the Akalla raid nine years ago, that time when they more or less tore a whole security depot apart,’ Nadja said. ‘Farshad leads the operation, Hassan gets the heavy work and drives the truck through the wall, and little brother Afsan gets to stuff the bags. I can maybe buy the fact that Farshad gets most, but shouldn’t Ben Kader have given a larger share to Hassan Talib than to Afsan Ibrahim?’
‘Maybe they deposited different amounts with Danielsson the banker?’ Bäckström said, smiling slyly at her.
‘Maybe,’ Nadja said with a shrug. ‘Another possibility could be that we’re completely wrong about it all, in spite of Toivonen and his tip-off.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That the initials FI, AFS, and HA mean something completely different, other people, maybe not even people, something else entirely,’ Nadja said, shrugging again to emphasize her point.
‘But you only ever give money to people, surely?’ Bäckström said. ‘You said yourself that you’re convinced this is about money, and the initials match their names. They’re not exactly common names either. I think you’re worrying unnecessarily,’ Bäckström said.
‘I’ve been wrong before,’ Nadja said, getting up.
‘We’re going to solve this,’ Bäckström said, nodding to instill courage and comfort now that his only colleague worthy of the name seemed to be faltering.
‘Yes, I don’t doubt that,’ Nadja said.
60.
Before he left the fortress, Bäckström took the chance to leaf through the bundles of paper that Nadja had given him.
Doesn’t sound like they were ever in the church choir, Bäckström thought, when he had finished reading.
Farshad Ibrahim was thirty-seven years old and had arrived in Sweden when he was four. Dad, mom, two older sisters, and an aged grandmother. Six people in total, all of them political refugees from Iran.
In Sweden the family was augmented with two younger brothers for Farshad. Afsan, now thirty-two, and little brother Nasir, twenty-five. Grandmother died the year after they came to Sweden. The two older sisters were married and had moved out of the family home. These days five people lived in the big villa in Sollentuna. The three Ibrahim brothers and their parents, and the real head of the family was Farshad, since his father had suffered a serious stroke three years before.
In any moral sense, he was a highly dubious leader. When he was fifteen Farshad had stabbed and killed a schoolmate of the same age. He was found guilty of manslaughter and handed over to Social Services. This didn’t seem to have had any sort of positive effect on his life. Possibly it made him craftier, seeing as it was another ten years before he was sent to prison for the first time. Four years for aggravated robbery, most of the sentence being served in the same secure unit as one of Superintendent Toivonen’s most assiduous informants.
A few months before he was due to be released he had been moved to an ordinary prison so that he could be prepared for his future life outside the walls. This too proved to be an ambitious failure.
After just one week, one of Farshad’s fellow prisoners had been found strangled with a washing line in the institution’s laundry. Everything suggested that Farshad had taken the chance to get rid of a squealing faggot. Everything, that is, except conclusive evidence and a resolutely silent Farshad.
When he finally got out he was almost immediately suspected of the big raid on the security depot in Akalla. He was taken into custody for three months, said nothing, and was released on lack of evidence. Farshad was now a man with a reputation. Ben Kader’s heir, even though Ben Kader was Moroccan and Farshad Iranian. A Muslim, teetotaler, no suspicions of drug use. And no casual female contact — in fact, no women at all, apparently, if you didn’t count his mother and two sisters. Above all, no parking fines, no speeding offenses, no disorderly conduct. Dangerous, silent, only three people he seemed to trust and had any sort of relationship with: his two younger brothers, Afsan and Nasir; and his cousin Hassan Talib.
Two younger brothers who, judging by their criminal records, were following in Farshad’s footsteps, or at least were trying to without quite succeeding. In the eyes of society it was probably Nasir, the youngest, who looked like the black sheep of the family, since he had served three prison sentences in the space of four years, and all by the age of twenty-five. Grievous bodily harm, rape, robbery. According to the notes in police records, he was also well acquainted with both sex and drugs, and didn’t seem to care much what form these took. But no alcohol. A dutiful Muslim in that respect. Not your usual Swede, who drank and spilled the beans on everyone and everything to anyone who could be bothered to listen.
Brought in for questioning by the police more than a hundred times over the years. Initially in the company of his mother and Social Services. A silent Nasir.
‘My name is Nasir Ibrahim,’ Nasir said, before rattling off his ID number. ‘I have nothing more to say.’
‘You’re just like your older brother Farshad,’ yet another police interviewer would say.
‘That’s my eldest brother you’re talking about. Respect, when you talk about him.’
‘Of course,’ the interviewer would say. ‘Let’s start there, and talk about your eldest brother, Farshad Ibrahim. He’s well known for showing other people respect.’
‘My name is Nasir Ibrahim, eighty-three zero-two zero-six...’
Never any more than that when there were police officers around. Out on the town was another matter. There were surveillance pictures, bugged conversations, and reluctant witnesses to testify to that. On a couple occasions even Farshad had been forced to discipline his brother in an almost Old Testament way, even though they were both Muslims.
Hassan Talib was the country cousin in both a metaphorical and a literal sense. He had moved to Sweden with his family some years after the Ibrahim family. He spent his first years in his new homeland with his extended family in the house in Sollentuna. Thirty-six years old, thirty-three of them spent in Sweden. Convictions for manslaughter, grievous bodily harm, robbery, making unlawful threats, extortion. Suspected of murder, a number of armed robberies, yet another murder, and one attempted murder. Three prison sentences totaling ten years, of which he served eight. Farshad’s bodyguard, muscle, right-hand man. A terrifying figure, two meters tall, one hundred and thirty kilos, shaved head, dark, deep-set eyes, stubble, grinding jaws as if he were constantly chewing something.
The sort whose head little Siggy would like to comb a parting on, Bäckström thought. He got up abruptly and gave his well-cut yellow linen trousers a shake.
‘Come on, punks, come on, all of you, make my day!’ Detective Superintendent Evert Bäckström snarled.
61.