Suspicion was precisely what he needed. He felt his racing heart slow, his nerves give way to energy and this new challenge sharpen his focus. This was how he worked.
He was only ever nervous before the task itself, never while he was sorting it out. He nodded and enthusiastically shook Rick Almanza’s hand over the table.
“English. No problem. I’m truly honored.”
Anders Mild went back over to his boss’s side of the table and sat down.
Maloof debated whether to move over to the whiteboard, but decided against it. It wasn’t like he had anything to draw on it, anyway.
He glanced at the lapel on Mild’s jacket, where there was a small G4S logo badge. Michel Maloof had been robbing secure transport vehicles bearing that same logo since his early teens. Did the two men opposite realize that they had just let one of Sweden’s most notorious robbers into the boardroom of the world’s biggest security firm?
3
Out in the hallway, Sami Farhan tied his boots, pulled on a thick, dark green down jacket over his polo shirt and was just about to step into the stairwell when he heard John wake.
He paused in the doorway, his fingers silently drumming the handle, listening tensely. The cot was in their bedroom, by the window. Since it was only six in the morning, he had pushed the door shut to avoid waking Karin or the boy. He stood completely still for a moment, and the babbling seemed to stop, but then he heard an expectant gurgle that gradually increased in volume.
The baby was definitely waking up.
Sami gently closed the front door and quickly made his way back down the hall and into the bedroom, still wearing his coat and boots. Karin was sleeping, but she turned anxiously in the big double bed. She had been up at least two or three times during the night, he wasn’t exactly sure. Sami lifted the tiny body from the cot and held the boy against his soft down jacket, gently rocking and lulling the little bundle. But his efforts were doomed to fail. John was hungry, and no amount of rocking would fix that.
“What time is it?”
Karin mumbled into the pillow. Sami carefully lowered the baby onto the bed next to her. The scent of breast milk practically made John howl, and Karin pulled back the covers, revealing her round, pregnant belly as she uncovered her breast.
“Where are you off to so early?” she asked, still not knowing what time it was.
Sami was sweating under his thick coat. He stood there irresolutely, rocking nervously, as though he were still holding the baby. He couldn’t tear his eyes from them. The pregnant woman breastfeeding the tiny child. His family. The scent of bodies filled the room. Skin, closeness.
“Are you going to school?” she asked.
He grunted. It could be interpreted as a confirmation without actually being one.
“What’s the time?”
The minute Karin opened her eyes and turned her head, she would see the digital clock on the bedside table. He told the truth.
“Five past six.”
“Have they started doing dawn lectures or something?”
She smiled, but her eyes were still closed. The baby guzzled.
Sami was enrolled at the Kristineberg culinary school, in his second semester. He had always been good at cooking, but now he was going to learn the trade from scratch. He had promised her. When she got pregnant for the first time, she had given him an ultimatum. In her usual clear way, she had explained that if there was a risk that the father of her child would end up in prison, she would find a new one, one who had different ambitions in life. Either Sami stopped using his days to plan one spectacular robbery or break-in after another, or he could clear off right then, before he became emotionally attached to the baby. And vice versa.
There had been no question for Sami, it had been obvious. He was willing to do anything for Karin’s sake.
That was why he had applied to Kristineberg. He had finally decided to get himself a real job.
“The whole class is going out to Frihamnen to meet the boats coming in with shellfish,” he answered, bending the truth slightly.
Like always, he talked with the help of his arms and hands. He showed the direction of Frihamnen, mimicked the boats moving into the harbor and made a gesture that might have represented some kind of shellfish.
“Go,” Karin whispered with a smile. “Get going. We might fall asleep again…”
He nodded. Tapped his foot like he was keeping time with a techno tune at double speed. But still, he couldn’t move. John was feeding noisily. Karin could sense his hesitation. She opened her eyes and looked at him, standing fully dressed in front of her.
“You’re so damn handsome.” She smiled. “Don’t just stand there being so ridiculously handsome, get going.”
He smirked, nodded again and freed himself from the spell by turning abruptly and heading back out into the hall. He ran down the uneven stairs of their old building on Högbergsgatan. Those thousands of hours in the ring during his teenage years had left their mark; he practically flew down them.
As he stepped out into the cold February air, he allowed himself to fill with pride. During all their meetings and discussions last autumn, he had kept the feeling to himself. There had been so many loose ends that he hadn’t wanted to talk about it in advance. But now he finally dared believe it was actually going to happen.
Sami jogged down the street. The snow that had fallen during the night would blow away as the day wore on. When he turned the corner onto Katarina Västra Kyrkogata, the bare trees in the churchyard were like black silhouettes against the dark gray sky. The sun wouldn’t rise for hours yet.
The plan was to be back home with Karin by lunch, after a quick stop at Systembolaget to buy a magnum of Moët to celebrate.
When he reached the car, he sat down behind the wheel with a smile on his face. Without Karin and John, he reminded himself, he would never have made it this far. Without them, maybe he wouldn’t have even tried.
He drove toward Katarinavägen, thinking about all the warnings he had been given over the years. Bitter former bachelors who missed their carefree lives. Those who knew enough to say that babies meant no sleep to begin with, then no sex, followed by no life. He would say they were partly right. He was sleeping badly and his sex life was nothing to boast about.
But John was a miracle who outweighed it all.
Change was always difficult. People stayed in the same jobs for year after year because they didn’t dare try anything else. They hung out with childhood friends they had long since grown apart from, who were easier to call up than finding anyone new. Sami’s childhood had been one long journey of discovery through the southern Stockholm suburbs. If it had been twenty or forty different addresses in the end, he had no idea, but it didn’t matter. In his day, the segregation hadn’t been what it was today. Back then, people had just been lumped together, Muslims, Christians and Jews. Turks, Iraqis and Yugoslavians. He had learned to get along with everyone, had found it easy to talk and become friends with both Finnish migrants and African refugees. He had become a chameleon, been forced to learn how to quickly adapt to new situations.
It was something he made use of now. He had thought it before, but this time it was real. For Karin’s and the kids’ sake, both born and unborn, he would leave the criminal life behind him. He would shed his skin. Not delete any of the thousands of names in his contacts list, but add some new ones instead.
It wasn’t the easiest way to go about it, but it was his way.
Sami Farhan drove across Skeppsbron and through Blasieholmen. It was Tuesday morning, and the traffic in central Stockholm was still sparse. Across the water, he could see Af Chapman, the ship that had been turned into a youth hostel. Its illuminated white hull lay quietly in the water, which was as black as a pool of ink.