He would have to watch out, he realized, though he was already longing to get back into bed after breakfast. Ideally with Alexandra. He smiled at the thought. He wasn’t in a proper relationship right now, though he did know a couple of women who wanted just that. If he didn’t actively fight it, he might easily end up in one with Alexandra Svensson. Just because it felt nice to know whom you would be spending the night with, and it was better than giving out keys to several women at once. He was well aware that that wasn’t a good enough reason to move in with someone, which meant he had to try to keep Alexandra Svensson at arm’s length. He was letting her sleep over for professional reasons, and he had to bear that in mind.
He climbed out of bed. After the obligatory visit to the bathroom, he pulled on his T-shirt and underwear from the day before. He was far from as comfortable with his own naked body as she was with hers.
He found her by the counter in the kitchen. She was standing with her back to the door, squeezing oranges against the juice press with both hands. Her round bottom trembled with the vibrations it was sending through her body. He laughed quietly.
“Can I help?” he asked.
“Very manly of you, Michel,” she replied without turning around. “But I think I can manage to make some orange juice without your help? You could, like, take out the coffee cups? Do you want anything else? Should I toast some bread?”
“No, don’t worry,” he said. Coffee and juice was a perfect breakfast.
She moved around his kitchen as though she was at home; she had even rearranged the furniture. He took out two cups and two glasses and put them down on the counter. He couldn’t help but glance at her small breasts as he did it.
“Stop it,” she said with a smile when she realized.
He tried, but he couldn’t help himself.
“Are you working tonight?” he asked.
They were sitting at the kitchen table. Alexandra had pulled on a dressing gown so as not to distract her lover, one made of silk that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in Maloof’s wardrobe.
“Yep,” she replied with a nod. “I tried to put together a time sheet for May where I wouldn’t have to see Claude, but no matter what I do he just turns up anyway. I mean, it doesn’t matter. He’d never dare do anything. But, I don’t know, he’s creepy.”
Maloof nodded. The kitchen smelled of cinnamon, something it only ever did when Alexandra was there. He didn’t know why, maybe it was her perfume.
“You get it, right?” she asked, continuing without waiting for an answer. “He thinks he’s, like, the world’s best boss. He’s been through management courses. And he’s basically promising me a career. I mean, what does he think? There are fourteen of us working nights, when we’re all in, which only happens on Tuesdays and Thursdays. What kind of career is that going to be, exactly?”
“Right, right. Is there… more to do on Tuesdays and… Thursdays, or something?” Maloof wondered.
“Mmm. We take the most money then. But, I mean, day shift on Fridays, there’s never more than maybe seven, eight people? So what’s he thinking? Am I meant to be the boss of three people and him the other four?”
She laughed. Maloof did too.
“It’s like,” she said, “get it together, you know?”
“Right, right.”
“I don’t want to go straight home,” Alexandra said with a sigh, changing the subject. “It’s going to be a nice day. If you wanted, we could have a picnic.”
This was how Maloof’s knowledge of the cash depot in Västberga grew. Each time he saw Alexandra, she revealed something else that could prove useful. That morning alone, he had learned that it was the morning after a Tuesday or Thursday that they should strike.
It was a long-winded way of planning a job, but this was how he worked. Thoroughly.
Alexandra’s dressing gown slipped open when she twisted to close the window. He couldn’t resist the urge, and reached forward to move his fingertips gently over her small nipple, which immediately hardened at his touch.
“Or,” she said with a shiver, “we could blow off the picnic and do something else?”
It was Alexandra Svensson’s description of the counting department that eventually convinced Maloof that Ezra Ray had stolen the right documents from the town planning office. She had described the big room on the sixth floor as being “banana shaped” several times now. What she was trying to say was that the open-plan office where she worked was constructed in some kind of arc, a gentle curve, across the top of the building.
Maloof had been in the café by the bowling alley in Heron City on the afternoon when Sami had given him the drawings. The thundering of the balls and the crash of the occasional strike had drowned out the canned music. Each had ordered a cup of black coffee, and Maloof had leafed through the stack of papers that Sami had brought in a plastic bag from H&M.
“But the fact he stole them,” Maloof had asked, “isn’t that basically like… announcing we’re planning something?”
“Do you know when someone last requested these documents?”
Maloof had shaken his head. Sami’s leg bounced impatiently beneath the table.
“October 1979. That was the last time. And before that, it was 1970. Said so on a note that came with them. Like some kind of library card.”
“Right, right,” Maloof had said, though he had never taken out a library book in his life.
“If someone only asks to see these drawings every thirty years, there’s not much risk in borrowing them for a few months, right?”
“No, no, of course,” Maloof replied, searching through the pile of papers and realizing why no one was interested.
The drawings were indecipherable. It was impossible even to tell whether the Vreten 17 building really was the G4S cash depot.
When Maloof got home from Heron City that day, he had spread out the drawings on the floor and started to methodically go through them. What made them particularly difficult to interpret was the large, open atrium that cut straight through the building. There was a glass dome on the roof, in the shape of a sharp pyramid, and beneath that, the huge space opened out. The various floors were built around that square void in the center.
After an hour or so, he managed to find the room Alexandra had been talking about. Its curved form was the only one like it in the entire building, and the key to understanding the drawings. Using that room as his starting point, Maloof was able to work out far more over the days that followed.
It didn’t worry him that he still wasn’t sure what the lower floors of the building were like. He found what he assumed was the vault, split between two levels, but knew there was no point attempting to break in there. Not just because Alexandra had talked about the legendary security system, but also because he had been hearing stories about officials from the Swedish Central Bank going there to study the setup before updating their own security systems for years.
The vault was one of Scandinavia’s most expensive. If you had access to a small army, you could probably get in, but otherwise it was better not to even try.
Every night, Maloof called Sami and gave him an update on his progress. The exhausted father was enthusiastic rather than helpful.
“OK,” he said to Maloof, “but is it going to work? What do you think?”
“Yeah,” he told Sami. “Just like she said. You blow a hole through the roof, and that takes you straight to place we’re aiming for. It… should take five, ten minutes. No more.”
There was a general rule that if it took more than fifteen minutes to get in and out of a bank or post office, the police would have time to arrive. But five to ten minutes felt good.