There was no point contradicting him. Planning and setting the stage for an operation like that was one thing. Carrying it through was something else entirely. Holding your nerve and staying calm was vital.
The older man spoke.
‘There are a number of unfortunate circumstances that we need to be wary of,’ he said firmly. ‘The media reporting, for one thing. I wasn’t expecting to see articles with names and photos of the deceased until tomorrow morning at the earliest.’
‘No, I don’t think any of us were.’
‘Damn the police. Every investigation leaks like a blessed sieve.’
There was a pause.
‘This makes rather a mess of the timetable,’ sighed the older man. Particularly for our friend abroad. When do we expect her back?’
‘Monday, we thought.’
‘Does that seem credible? I mean, if the news is already out?’
‘Most of it can be explained away,’ the younger man said in a matter-of-fact tone.
He looked awful when he attempted a smile. A series of operations to correct his injury had only achieved half of what had been hoped for. And now he had decided to settle for looking this way. The crooked smile had become his trademark.
The older man got up and went over to the window.
‘I’m not very happy about the defection we had before all this happened. It disturbs me, I have to say. The fact that there’s someone out there who knows too much. I hope you’re right – that we can still consider him our friend. Things look bad for us otherwise.’
‘You know he hasn’t had his share yet,’ said the younger one. ‘That should keep him in line. And he was deep in the shit himself when he backed out. He could never shop us and keep in the clear himself.’
It was an argument that seemed to reassure the older man, who briskly moved on to the next point on the agenda.
‘I understand there was a problem with our latest daisy,’ he said, taking a seat in the wing-back chair by the bookshelf full of dictionaries and encyclopedias.
The younger man’s face hardened. For the first time since his arrival he looked visibly worried, and his words confirmed the fact.
‘That’s more of a problem. Unfortunately we weren’t able to pick our flower before he spread the good news, as it were, to some of his friends. Or one, at any rate. Who then got in touch with the vicar.’
The older man knitted his brow.
‘Have we any way of assessing the scale of the damage?’ he asked.
‘Yes, we’re pretty sure we can. And as I say, he didn’t let on to many people. Unfortunately, we haven’t got his friend’s name. But I’m on the case.’
The men fell silent. It was almost as if the sound had been absorbed by the bookshelves covering almost the full length of the walls and the expensive rugs on the floor. It was the older man who found his voice first.
‘And the next daisy?’
The younger man’s deformed smile appeared again.
‘He’s paying on Sunday.’
‘Good,’ said the older one. ‘Good.’
And he added:
‘Will this one live?’
Silence again.
‘Probably not. He seems to have blabbed, too, broken the rules.’
The other man paled.
‘This wasn’t the way we envisaged things going. We can’t have any more failures like this. Maybe we need to suspend the operation for the time being?’
The younger man did not seem capable of seeing that disaster could be imminent.
‘Let’s wait and see how our friend on the other side of the law plays his cards during the day today.’
The older man pursed his lips.
‘It shouldn’t be a problem. He knows what will happen if he makes the mistake of betraying us.’
His stomach hurt as he said the words, almost as if they made him afraid of himself.
STOCKHOLM
Tony Svensson was a creature of habit. His world basically revolved round three places: network HQ, the car repair shop, and his home. They opted for the repair shop.
It was all achieved without too much fuss. He spat and swore as the police cars screeched to a halt outside where he worked, but once he appreciated the seriousness of the situation, he stopped resisting. The officers who were there to pick him up said he even smiled as the cold metal of the cuffs closed round his wrists. As if the feeling rekindled memories from a time he had almost forgotten.
The prosecutor agreed that there was sufficient proof for suspecting Tony Svensson of unlawful menace. The emails and phone lists were more than enough. It remained to be seen whether they could get a prosecution out of it; it depended how cooperative Agne Nilsson was. Unlike Jakob Ahlbin, he was still alive and able to testify about the threats. If he was willing. Not many people dared to testify against groups like Tony Svensson’s.
Peder and Joar were to conduct the interview. The energy which interviewing normally injected into Peder failed to materialise when he had to work with Joar. He glanced sideways at his colleague as they stood in silence in the lift. A pink shirt under his jacket. As if that was the sort of thing you could wear in the force. Another of those signs.
There’s something weird about that guy, thought Peder. And I shall damn well find out what it is, even if I have to drag it out of him.
Tony Svensson was waiting for them in the interview room where they had taken him after his formal admission to custody.
‘You know what crime you are suspected of?’ asked Joar.
Tony Svensson smiled and nodded. It was obvious he had been through all this before and he was taking the whole thing phlegmatically. As if you simply had to reckon on things sometimes going wrong, and then you had to take the consequences.
Had he not been so unkempt, he might even have passed for good-looking. But his shaven head, tattooed arms and oil-rimmed nails made him look like the gangster he was. His eyes were dark. Like two pistol bullets aimed at Peder and Joar.
He’s sharp, Peder judged instinctively. That’s why he’s so cool. And because he’s managed to get his solicitor here already.
‘It would be helpful if you answered in words, so it can be heard on the tape,’ Joar pointed out in a friendly way.
Rather too friendly.
Peder went cold. There was something spooky about the role Joar was adopting. Too balanced to be true. As if he might suddenly fly off the handle, throw himself across the table and kill the person on the other side.
Psychopath, that was the word that flashed into Peder’s mind.
‘Jakob Ahlbin,’ he said in a steady voice. ‘Does that name ring a bell?’
Tony Svensson hesitated. His solicitor tried to catch his eye, but Svensson avoided his look.
‘I may have heard the name some time,’ he answered.
‘In what context?’ asked Joar.
Tony Svensson brightened up again.
‘He interfered in the private affairs of me and my friends; that was how we got to know each other.’
‘In what way did he interfere?’ asked Peder.
A sigh escaped the shaven-headed man on the other side of the table.
‘He tried to come between us, make trouble.’
‘How?’
‘By poking his nose into a conflict that had nothing to do with him.’
‘What conflict?’
‘Nothing I want to go into.’
Silence.
‘Maybe a conflict that concerned someone who didn’t want to stay in your group?’ said Joar, leaning back with his arms folded on his chest.
Just the way Tony Svensson himself was sitting.
‘Yes, maybe it was,’ replied Tony.
‘So what did you do?’ asked Peder.
‘When?’
‘When Jakob Ahlbin took an interest in things that were no business of his.’
‘Ah, you mean then.’
Tony shifted his position and the solicitor leafed unobtrusively though his papers. In his thoughts he was clearly already on the way to the meeting with his next client.
‘I tried to make him see that he should stick to his own affairs and leave other people’s out of it,’ Svensson said.