100
Mats Berggren wasn’t frustrated, he was furious. Unlike Caroline Thurn and the other policemen and -women in the conference room, Berggren couldn’t hide what he was feeling. He was neither a diplomat nor a politician; in that moment he was just a fat, annoyed police officer who, for reasons unknown, was being forbidden from hauling in an unquestionably guilty robber.
“This is completely insane!” he repeated. “Everything the Serbs told us happened exactly like they said it would. What is there to think about, surely we just need to bring Petrovic in?”
The late-afternoon sun was low in the sky, shining in through the windows out onto Bergsgatan. The light brutally revealed ancient coffee rings and fresher grease marks on the rectangular table. Those unlucky enough to be sitting with their backs to the corridor had no choice but to squint, as the high windows had no curtains. Breathing heavily, Berggren turned to Caroline Thurn, who was sitting a few seats away.
“Right, Caroline?” he said.
“Mats is right,” Thurn replied, since her loyalty in that room was to her partner. But she also added: “It’s just a question of when we do it.”
After the press conference, Thurn had been mentally exhausted, despite having been able to keep to the background. She hated attention almost as much as she disliked meetings. Like this one. Being cooped up in a room with four walls and a couple of windows, discussing what needed to be done, was the polar opposite of going out and actually doing it. All she could do was bite her lip and keep going, her specialty. She was painfully aware of the play that was going on right now. The people around the table were positioning themselves. They were strengthening their brand and making sure to keep a line of retreat open by bringing up their reservations and concerns. Which they could later remind everyone of, if and when it was necessary. The hundreds of microphones belonging to the Swedish and foreign media would continue to be pointed at every police officer who happened to walk by outside, and they would be a constant reminder that no one could escape. This was a police operation in which, sooner or later, all those involved would have to explain how and why they had acted like they had. The media would love uncovering the constant battle between the county and national police forces, Thurn thought.
Berggren continued his moaning; he wanted to bring Petrovic in, and Thurn felt a certain sympathy for his desire to actually get out there and do something. But it wasn’t time yet.
Prosecutor Lars Hertz was standing at the front of the room, next to a huge whiteboard. He was wearing light, well-ironed clothes, something that distinguished him from the crumpled, ashen police officers around the table. He had taken command of the meeting, and he loved the role. His blue eyes shone. The board next to him was covered with notes. Names, dates and arrows drawn in both red and green marker. Though they would use the special cleaner to rub it all out at the end of the day, faint traces of the ink would be left behind.
Berggren got up. He paced back and forth along one wall of the room, making everyone else nervous. His breathing was strained.
“Maybe you should sit down, Mats,” Thurn said. “Even though I do understand your frustration.”
It was still Wednesday, September 23. The day had been drawn out and endless since the alarm was first raised at a quarter past five that morning. Thurn had stopped off at her apartment to take a shower and change her clothes earlier in the day, and she had since tied her unruly ponytail up into a soft bun that sat low on the nape of her neck.
During the morning, it would have been quicker to count the Stockholm police officers who weren’t working on the robbery in Västberga than the other way around. Representatives from practically every department and unit within the National Criminal Police force were gathered around the meeting table in police headquarters. Since the national police commissioner had been forced to stay at the Ministry of Justice, explaining to various ministers why hundreds of police officers outside G4S had stood by while the robbers flew away with their loot, Hertz was leading the meeting.
“But we know who he is,” Berggren whined stubbornly, though he did as Thurn told him and sat down.
Even early on that morning, the evidence they had been collecting ahead of the fifteenth—among it the recordings of Zoran Petrovic—had been revisited. Her colleagues may not have known quite how much Thurn had been listening to the tapes, but it was clear to each of them that she knew the material better than anyone else. She was also the only one to know with certainty that there were no direct references to the helicopter heist.
Hertz talked about Serbia, terrorist organizations and criminal networks in Europe.
“Which fucking network? We know who he is,” Berggren interrupted for the third or fourth time.
“If we bring in Petrovic now,” Hertz said, “then everyone else we want to talk to will disappear within a few hours. That’s how it works. And we don’t want to make it that easy for them.”
The police officers around the table would have nodded in agreement if Hertz hadn’t been so inexperienced.
“He’s probably right,” Thurn eventually said.
“If we have the name of the main suspect before twelve hours have even passed,” Hertz continued with a conciliatory smile, “then I suggest we keep working on this for another twelve. Maybe that way we’ll find them all?”
The meeting ended and people disappeared in different directions. There were mountains of leads to work through. Back in Thurn’s office, she and Berggren continued to rifle through the material from the earlier surveillance operation. They focused on the huge number of names and people Zoran Petrovic had been in contact with.
They produced two separate lists. The first was of known criminals, and the second of those without criminal records. But all the damn nicknames and code words made the lists difficult. There were over a hundred people in each.
Their work wasn’t made any easier by the constant interruptions by people from other departments who wanted to discuss their findings. Thurn was considered some kind of expert on Petrovic by that point. She wanted nothing more than to fob them off and finish working on the lists, but as usual she couldn’t be rude. She patiently made time for every single person who stuck his or her head in the door to ask for help.
But eventually, midway through a monologue by a young colleague from the Suspect Profile Group, Thurn got up from her desk, grabbed the thin jacket that had been hanging over the back of her chair, and left the office. She just left. Enough desk work now. It was after eight, and darkness had fallen over Kungsholmen.
101
“How was the conference?”
Annika Skott shouted from the hallway, and Niklas Nordgren heard the outer door close a moment later. Then she noticed the smell.
“Hey… what are you doing?” she shouted.
A few seconds later, she came into the kitchen and found Nordgren by the stove. The huge pot bubbling away smelled incredible, garlic and bay leaves. It was just after seven in the evening, but the sun was still shining in through the window.
“We finished around lunch, and I didn’t think there was much point going back to work,” he explained. “So I stopped off at Östermalmshallen and bought some lamb.”
He said nothing about having walked most of the way home to Lidingö from Östermalm, a distance of over six miles. Which, in turn, was just a fifth of the total he had walked that day.
The endorphins were refusing to leave his body, he couldn’t stop smiling. In his attempts to go back to being the ordinary Niklas Nordgren, the calm and slightly sulky man who liked to keep himself busy, the exact opposite had emerged. He felt even more wound up than he had that morning.