He was still at the office in Kungsholmen, and he sighed loudly when she told him about her hunch.
“And you’re aware that it’s three thirty on a Friday?” he said.
“Meaning what?”
“People are heading home, Caroline,” Berggren explained. “It’s the weekend. They want to spend time with their families, eat chips and watch some TV show with an overexcited host who laughs at their own jokes.”
Thurn didn’t watch TV, she wasn’t even sure whether there was one in the apartment on Strandvägen.
Before she moved into the nine-room apartment with views over the water, she had instructed the auction firm Bukowski’s to sell everything that might be of value. Anything left behind had been stashed in one of the rooms looking out onto the courtyard. That was almost six years ago now, and Thurn still hadn’t opened the door. She would deal with it one day, but not quite yet.
“Plus,” Berggren continued, “G4S doesn’t fit the information we have. The building in Västberga has six floors. And we know that Panaxia’s starting a big move the day before, meaning there’ll be people running all over the place and that security’ll be lower.”
“That’s what the tip we have said,” Thurn replied. “Which isn’t the same thing as knowing it. I just want to check one last time.”
Berggren was careful not to sigh audibly again.
Thurn’s need to be in control was about as big as Berggren’s appetite.
“Do you want me to do anything?” he asked.
“No need,” Thurn replied. She wanted to add that it was Friday afternoon and that he should prioritize his family, but then she realized that she didn’t even know if Mats Berggren had a family.
Caroline Thurn never asked her colleagues personal questions. It meant she could avoid being asked the same kind of thing in return.
On that overcast Friday afternoon, the task force leader drove through town toward Västberga. Like always, there was a lot of traffic heading south, and she had to join a long convoy of trucks. But Västberga Allé, the street that cut straight through the industrial area, was deserted.
Work at the loading docks often finished early in the afternoon ahead of the weekend, and the offices there were already empty. Thurn drove slowly past the deserted buildings and then slowed down further as she approached the G4S building at the corner of Vretensborgsvägen. Work there went on seven days a week, but even cash depots were quiet on Friday afternoons.
Thurn glanced out of the side window. The six-story building was like a fortress on the inside, and the cash depot’s vault was in a completely different league from the Panaxia safe in Bromma.
No, Thurn thought, it was reasonable to assume that this wasn’t the building the robbers were planning to attack. Besides, Thurn could practically see all the way to the police station on Västbergavägen. Given the choice, Panaxia was better in every respect.
She drove on.
Rather than doing a U-turn, she turned right at Vretensborgsvägen. She sped up and was just about to take another right onto Drivhjulsvägen, looping the block and continuing north, back toward the highway, when she glanced in her rearview mirror.
She slammed on the brakes.
It was sheer luck that there were no cars behind her.
From where she was sitting, she could see the G4S building from behind. It had to be built into a hillside, or at least a steep slope.
From this side, it looked like the building had four stories.
42
Hans Carlbrink, the head of the National Task Force, was the type of officer who made the general population hesitate before calling the police. His career path had been through the military, which was also where his references and attitude toward the world came from. His sense of discipline was stronger than his sense of justice, and if you wanted to emphasize his positive sides, you might say that he radiated some kind of equality. He was equally arrogant toward victims and perpetrators, civilians and police officers, men and women.
Caroline Thurn and Mats Berggren drove out to Solna, where Carlbrink’s men were stationed and the police helicopter was now safe behind walls and barbed wire. It was late in the afternoon on Saturday, September 12. Carlbrink gave the tall, fit Thurn an appreciative glance and then turned to Berggren and stared at his considerable stomach with a look of disgust. He showed his visitors into a windowless room to one side of the canteen, a room that gave Thurn the feeling that it was being used in an attempt to demonstrate how tough the conditions were for the Task Force.
“Three more days,” said Carlbrink.
They were in agreement that it was a frustrating and unusual experience to be counting down the days. The reason for not just bringing Petrovic in, thereby preventing the robbery, was that the information they had was already a month old. Plenty could have changed, and Thurn spared a thought for the technicians who spent all day, every day listening to the slippery Montenegrin refuse to give himself away. What exactly did they have on him?
All the same, Thurn couldn’t deny that the excitement rose with every day that passed. Her colleagues from National Crime nodded in understanding whenever they passed her office, and with just three days to go, all those involved could feel their hearts beating that little bit quicker. Even the minister for foreign affairs had been in touch for an update.
They sat down at a tired old conference table.
Thurn got straight to the point and explained what she had discovered the previous evening. That the G4S depot in Västberga was also, if you chose to look at it from a certain angle, a four-story building.
“But G4S isn’t planning a move on Tuesday,” Berggren butted in.
His usual whininess had increased in this new environment. He felt uncomfortable under Carlbrink’s elitist gaze, and he hated the uncertainty that Thurn had introduced into the equation.
“We don’t know that,” said Thurn. “I haven’t asked them.”
“Come on, it’d be pretty unlikely?”
Thurn agreed.
“My point is that we can’t rule out Västberga. And my question, Hans, is whether we should station some of your men out in Västberga and some out in Bromma?”
Carlbrink nodded. That was perfectly doable.
“I’ve heard there’ll be around twenty people?” he said.
“Involved in the preparations,” Thurn replied. “I doubt there’ll be twenty people there during the actual robbery.”
“It’s not a problem,” Carlbrink said, smiling as though he were eating something tasty. “Let them come. Twenty or thirty. We could probably handle it. My suggestion is that we make sure to have enough men and equipment to be able to take down a helicopter in both Västberga and Bromma. But that we leave the majority wherever you feel it’s more likely to happen.”
“Which is Bromma anyway, right Caroline?” asked Berggren.
Thurn looked unsure.
“If you’d asked me yesterday,” she said, “I would’ve been sure. But now I don’t know anymore.”
43
Niklas Nordgren was struggling to concentrate. He was sitting on the stool by his desk in the hobby room, and through the wall, he could hear the TV news from the living room. Rather than soldering the phone case in front of him, he was listening to the host’s serious voice reporting on the death of the American actor Patrick Swayze.
He wasn’t worried about Annika coming in and seeing what he was doing. The wall between their worlds, between a normal and a criminal life, may have been thin, but it was thick enough. Annika would never open the door to his hobby room without knocking first. And if her thoughts were elsewhere and she did happen to come in without warning, she wouldn’t understand what he was doing. She wouldn’t recognize the explosive putty he was pushing into the cell phones he was busy priming.