He opened a new tab, found a picture of a dolly and brought it up alongside Google Earth.
Staring at the two images, he called Nordgren.
“Hey. Listen… you can probably turn off the computer.”
The line was silent. Maloof could hear Nordgren breathing.
“Are you telling me you’ve… have you found it?”
“Right, right.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Yeah. Ninety-nine percent.”
“Unbelievable.”
“I’ll double-check tomorrow. OK. Sleep well.”
“Finally,” Nordgren declared.
Myttinge was to the north of Värmdö.
Maloof picked up Sami Farhan at Slussen just before lunch, and they drove out toward Gustavsberg in Maloof’s silvery-gray Seat. Thanks to the highway, it didn’t take much more than half an hour to reach Värmdö, but then the road past Ängsvik and Siggesta Gård was narrow and curving. There was no other traffic, but it was still hard to get up to the speed limit.
And then, suddenly, they saw it.
The hangar.
It was to one side of the road, unassuming and without any kind of surveillance. The fence surrounding it was made of ordinary chicken wire. They found a small forest trail around a bend in the road and parked the car, walking back to the hangar to make sure they really had found the right place.
The police had put up stickers on both the buildings functioning as the helicopter depot and on the gates. There were two small hangars, and through the window on the side of one, they could see a helicopter.
On the way back into town, Sami was in high spirits.
“It’s like they’re keeping it in a child’s house.”
“Right, right,” said Maloof.
“Getting in there with Nick’s mobile bombs’ll be a piece of cake.”
They drove over Danvikstull and then continued along Stadsgårdsleden where the huge ferries lay in wait for their paying conference attendees.
“I can give you a ride home,” said Maloof. “I don’t have to be anywhere until two.”
“Could you drop me off by Sergels Torg instead?” Sami asked. “I promised Karin I’d swing by that stroller shop to see if they have any spare wheels.”
While Sami went into great detail about the stubborn locking feature on the wheel of the stroller, Maloof drove along Skeppsbron, passing the king’s ugly castle and heading straight after the bridge. Kungsträdgården Park was lush and green, beautiful even without any elms, and there were people sitting on the grass around the statue of Karl XII, enjoying the heat. The schools had gone back already, but you couldn’t tell; summer vacation still seemed to be ongoing.
“God, that looks nice,” Sami remarked at the lightly dressed sun worshippers sitting with their picnics. He lowered the window on his side of the car.
Maloof slowed to a halt as the bus ahead of them pulled into a stop.
“What the HELL!”
It was Sami who had shouted. It came completely out of the blue, and Maloof, who had been just about to pull away, slammed on the brakes.
“Look! What the hell, LOOK!”
“What the hell is it?”
Maloof felt a cold wave course through his body. It was quickly followed by a rush of adrenaline.
“It’s him!” Sami shouted, pointing out the window. “The Turk! Hassan Kaya! That’s the fucking prawn thief!”
And before Maloof had time to process what was happening, Sami had opened the door and was sprinting across the road. A red Porsche screeched to a halt and the people who had just left the bus had stopped and were pointing, but Sami continued to run.
“YOU BASTARD!” he shouted.
“STOP!” shouted Maloof.
28
Early the next morning, after their meeting at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Thurn and Berggren were called into the prosecutor’s office on Östermalmsgatan. They met at a 7-Eleven not far from there at quarter to nine. Each bought a coffee, and Berggren couldn’t resist paying another five kronor for a sweet bun to go with it. To make the defeat less painful, he had eaten it by the time he left the shop. Thurn had trouble not looking away as he made a mess of himself. He was ashamed and could completely understand her.
“Want a napkin?” she asked.
He shook his head and licked his sticky fingers. “Let’s go now,” he said. “I’m curious. I heard it was something really impressive. You know, same level as the National Museum.”
Berggren was referring to one of the most audacious heists in Swedish criminal history. The robbers had struck two days before Christmas Eve, on a Friday just before closing, when the museum had been virtually empty. They had grabbed three priceless paintings no bigger than postcards, two Renoirs and a Rembrandt, and shoved them inside their coats. And then the robbers had run twenty yards to a waiting boat, which had disappeared into the pitch-black darkness of Stockholm’s open waters.
Caroline Thurn mumbled something inaudible.
“You worked on that, right?” Berggren asked. He didn’t want to sound too curious.
“Yeah,” Thurn replied. “Ali Farhan sent his younger brothers in to steal the paintings. There were loads of us on that case. We never would’ve managed it without the FBI. But we got them in the end. Not just the Farhan brothers either, there were plenty of others involved. They ended up being convicted of receiving stolen goods.”
“Right,” Berggren said, pretending to recall the information that he and every other police officer already knew in detail; almost as much had been written about the subsequent investigation as the robbery itself. “No, it’s one thing to wave an automatic weapon in the air, but it’s trickier to do business afterward.”
Caroline Thurn didn’t reply. She wasn’t sure she agreed. Doing business required different skills, of course, but did that have anything to do with the level of difficulty? And how were you meant to assess the risks being taken? When criminals put their lives on the line, it was often for a fraction of the amount of tax that director Henrik Nilsson withheld from the Swedish state. And the only risk Nilsson was taking was a few petty fines. In the traditional world of crime, the risk was no longer relative to the reward; it was in the newer criminal sphere, the world of banking and finance, that the big money was up for grabs.
Still, a crime was a crime, Thurn thought, regardless of whether it happened behind a desk or out on the street.
Prosecutor Lars Hertz was sitting in one of the impersonally decorated rooms along the long, dark corridor in the Swedish Prosecution Authority’s offices.
He leaped to his feet and greeted the two police officers with a firm, enthusiastic handshake when they came into his room. Hertz was a man in his prime, seemingly fit and fashion conscious in a slim-fitting, well-ironed white shirt. He looked kind, the furrows on his brow suggesting a troubled thoughtfulness, the thick mop of blond hair and blue eyes screaming energy and youth.
Berggren, who had begun panting as he made his way up the stairs, pulled out a tissue from his pocket and wiped his forehead as he sat down on the austere wooden chair in front of the prosecutor’s desk. Thurn sat down next to him.
“So,” Hertz began, “as I understand it, this is something of a sensational story?”
Berggren took out a notepad and pen. It was a habit of his; he could think more clearly with a pen and paper in hand, even if he rarely read through his notes afterward.
“What’s sensational?” Thurn asked. She hated the word, it sounded like a vulgar tabloid headline and had no place in serious police work.