Maybe her experience was that men who got in touch online didn’t always turn up?
They went into the restaurant together and were shown to a secluded table. They spent a moment reading the menus, but when the waiter came back to take their orders, he said that the chef wanted to surprise them instead.
“I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
Alexandra gave Maloof a questioning look, and with a smile and a quick laugh, he explained that he knew the owner.
Zoran Petrovic owned several places on Upplandsgatan.
They had a good night together. There was no other way to describe it. Maloof had decided in advance not to ask about either Västberga or G4S. If she wanted to talk about cash depots then he would listen. With interest. But if she decided not to, which had been the case for the majority of their dinner, he wasn’t going to insist. He was convinced that he had to win her trust first, and only then could he approach the questions he was interested in. It was all about patience.
As it happened, Alexandra Svensson wasn’t a particularly secretive person. Neither was she quiet. She talked openly about herself and her life. She had grown up in Nacka, studied economics at Stockholm University and dropped out to start working before she graduated. She liked having a regular income every month, it made her feel safe. She was subletting, or maybe she was subletting a sublet, a studio in Hammarby Sjöstad, and she said a few words about the secure transport company where she had worked for almost two years, and that she liked it.
“But basically half my wage goes to flowers,” she confessed.
“Flowers?”
“I love flowers,” said Alexandra Svensson. “When you get home and there are, like, flowers on the table, when it smells like roses and hyacinths… Is there anything better?”
“Yeah,” said Maloof. “No.”
“I’ve got a little herb garden in the kitchen, too. Nothing exotic. Basil, rosemary and, like, coriander. I think. Then there’s my balcony. I don’t know what I’d do without it.”
“No,” said Maloof.
“This time of year, all you can really do is plan ahead. But I’ve got all my geraniums in pots in the basement and as soon as it gets a bit warmer I’ll bring them up and put them out on the balcony again. I had, like, no idea they could even survive over winter, but they can.”
“Right, right.” Maloof smiled with a laugh.
Alexandra suddenly grew serious, and looked straight into his brown eyes. “It’s so easy to talk to you,” she said. “Like, I really think that. Really.”
“Right,” he replied, flashing all his teeth in a wide smile. “It’s… I think so too.”
“Cheers, Michel.”
She raised her glass and they sipped their red wine.
They were on their second bottle.
Alexandra Svensson continued. She hardly needed any encouragement; she took his opinions and thoughts for granted, and the evening passed without him having to give anything but his attention.
Something he was willing to give her.
They went back to Michel Maloof’s apartment through a Stockholm that was damp, empty and dark, and he didn’t even have time to take out the teacups before she had pushed him up against the wall with her tongue in his mouth. He was slightly shorter than she was, but he was surprised by her strength. She forced him to the floor in the living room and grabbed the blanket Maloof’s mother had made, the one that had been on the sofa, so that they wouldn’t be naked on the parquet floor.
After that unexpected and intense lovemaking session in which they had barely taken off their clothes, they sat down at the kitchen table and smoked—he had a pack of Marlboros stashed next to the spices in cupboard above the stove—before they went into the bedroom to make love again. This time more considerately.
Afterward, Maloof wanted to do nothing but sleep. It was four in the morning and he was tired from too much red wine and too many monologues. But it was right then, as he was on the verge of falling asleep on the soft down pillow, that she started talking about the building in Västberga.
He forced himself to wake up.
A few minutes later, he finally understood why the old man in the woods had suggested he meet Alexandra Svensson.
9
“Maybe it’s best if the uniforms wait outside?” Kant said in the elevator on the way up through the third of the five Hötorget buildings in central Stockholm.
Björn Kant, director of the Regional Public Prosecution Authority, was in his sixties and was one of Sweden’s most experienced criminal prosecutors. Seeing him walk the streets of the capital like an ordinary citizen, rather than sitting behind a desk, was an uncommon occurrence. The last time he had personally taken part in an arrest had to have been some time during the seventies, Caroline Thurn thought.
The prosecutor’s crumpled, dark brown suit even seemed more creased than usual.
“You want them to stay outside?” she asked. “Why?”
“No, it’s just…” Kant replied, “this isn’t an ordinary… I mean, there’s no need to embarrass the man. I don’t know what kind of meeting he’s in, and…”
“Embarrass?” Thurn repeated. She was surprised. “We’re here to arrest him. Maybe that is something he should find embarrassing?”
She was genuinely surprised. Though she was only half Kant’s age, she had worked as a task force leader with the Swedish Police Authority’s Criminal Investigation Department for four years, and during that time she’d had plenty of dealings with the prosecutor. She had never thought of Kant as anything but efficient, objective and decisive.
She glanced at him now, standing next to her in the dark elevator in which one of the lights wasn’t working. Thurn had a wiry, hard body, as tall as she was slim, with sharp features and blond hair tied up in a messy ponytail whose sole purpose was to cause as little bother as possible.
“Is that why you’re here in person?” she asked. “To make sure I don’t ‘embarrass’ our suspect?”
They had been working on the investigation with Interpol for almost two months now, and there was no doubt that Director Henrik Nilsson, with his thick, gray, combed-back hair and healthy tan, currently in a meeting on the eighteenth floor of the skyscraper, was much more than a simple tax evader. Thurn was convinced that the man had blood on his hands, even if he had made sure it was only flecks, splattered from a distance. He was a criminal and he would be brought to justice.
During the investigation, Björn Kant had been less convinced about the extent of Nilsson’s activity than Thurn, but that he was guilty of a number of financial crimes was something they both agreed on.
“I know you think it’s irrelevant, Caroline,” Kant said. He was having trouble looking her in the eye. “But you know that he hunts pheasants with the minister for enterprise.”
“That makes no difference!” Thurn blurted out.
With them in the elevator were the two uniformed police officers Thurn had more or less grabbed along the way. Both were staring at the floor, pretending they weren’t hearing the conversation that was going on next to them.
“All I’m saying is that we should take it easy,” Kant mumbled, knowing that his more pragmatic side wouldn’t be appreciated by the young, and still shockingly naive, task force leader.
Certain police officers grew cynical after their first week on the job, but others were more resilient. The fact that Thurn had managed to retain her confidence in her fellow man year after year, despite everything she had been through, was an achievement in itself. Kant respected her highly for it, but he also knew that if the moral compass was working, it did no harm to act smoothly.