Sami turned off into Vitabergsparken, pushing the stroller ahead of him up the slope toward the Sofia Church. He could see the silhouette of a man in a black jacket waiting for him outside the entrance to the house of God. His head was shaved, and there was a strikingly wide scar looping around it. As though his halo had fallen and branded him for life.
Toomas Mandel.
“Shitty business,” was the first thing Mandel said as they greeted one another. “Real shitty.”
Sami sighed. The whole city knew what had happened. He had no idea how the rumor had spread, he hadn’t started it. But now it was too late to do anything about it. Everyone knew he had been screwed over by the Turk, who seemed to have gone up in smoke; everyone knew the whole frozen shellfish business had gone down the drain.
Sami shrugged. He was still pushing the stroller ahead of him like a plow, and Mandel fell in step with him. The two men walked through the park toward Nytorget.
“You thought about it?” Mandel asked.
Sami nodded. “I’m not sure. I’m really not sure, you know?” he said. “I’ve got thousands of questions. Or hundreds, at least.”
“Ask away. I’m not sure I have all the answers yet,” Mandel cautiously replied, “but I’m working on it.”
“Tell me about the gates again. They shut when the alarm goes off, was that it? And there were how many guards…?”
“Sixteen guards on site at night,” Mandel replied.
“But that means sixteen people calling for backup. You know? If every guard calls in backup, and one car turns up per guard… That’s like, a hundred pigs. How long do we have?”
It was a good question. Carrying out a raid on Täby Racecourse was all about speed. The money was kept waiting in a locked room for the guards to come and pick it up at midnight. Getting into that room wouldn’t be the problem, it was getting out afterward that they still needed to solve.
While Mandel explained his plan, they turned right toward Malmgårdsvägen. Sami listened carefully and asked questions.
Ten days had passed since Sami stood on the dock in Frihamnen, waiting for the boat of prawns that would never arrive. When he got back home that morning, it had been without the champagne he had been planning, and with a despondency he couldn’t hide.
Karin had been awake, eating dry, sticky prunes straight from the bag in the kitchen. The outer walls of their building on Högbergsgatan were cracked, and a cold draft rolled in across the floor. Karin had been wearing a long, white terry dressing gown that Sami had given her for Christmas, and she pulled it tight around her body.
“You think I’m gross now, right?” she asked.
He smirked and shook his head.
“I’m used to it,” he replied. He still hadn’t taken off his coat.
“What? Did I eat prunes last time?”
“Yeah.”
She hadn’t been able to control her craving for prunes then either. She was just over seven months into this new pregnancy; the baby was due in early April, meaning there would be just under a year between the two children.
“There should be a law against having kids this close together,” she said.
She stared angrily at the prunes. After every bag, she was forced to spend an hour on the toilet. She had told him to stop her from eating too many of them, but when he saw her greedy eyes on the bag, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything.
“Why can’t I have cravings for something healthy?” she asked. “Some people just want broccoli.”
Sami didn’t reply, and it was only then that Karin looked up.
“What is it?” she asked. “What happened?”
The easygoing tone was gone, replaced by a concerned crease on her forehead and a look completely lacking in affection.
Sami had just turned fifteen when he first fell in love with Karin. She had been unobtainable, and he had no idea how they could have ended up in the same class. Karin was from the city and Sami the suburbs, she was from the middle class and he from somewhere below. Months had passed before he even dared to speak to her, much longer before he worked up the courage to actually ask her out. Sami and his brothers had always talked openly about girls, but he didn’t dare say a word about Karin, terrified that his brothers would take an interest in her before he had time to get anywhere himself.
He was seventeen when they finally got together. For a couple of months, his experience was straight out of some predictable teenage American film, a time when every single song on the radio seemed to have been specially written for him and Karin. And then one evening he happened to tell her about something he had done, a break-in. Or happened to; he was boasting about it. He felt tough, grown up; it was something he had done with his big brother. Now he couldn’t even remember what they stole. Karin had broken up with him a few minutes later. Just like that. He had caused the exact opposite of what he wanted. But her explanation had been clear. She didn’t want to—ever—be with a criminal.
It had taken him a few years to win her back, but since then the pattern had repeated itself. Time and time again. Before she agreed that they should have a baby, he had promised once and for all that he was done with his old life. They had a future together, a life in which she wouldn’t have to worry about the police turning up one day to take him away, lock him up and throw away the key. And the fact she was choosing to believe him, she had firmly explained, was proof of her love. But her belief had since been tested a number of times, and the frown on her forehead was a clear sign that this was another such occasion.
Sami explained what had happened, that he had been set up and the frozen prawns had been a lie, and Karin breathed out.
“Business can always be sorted out,” she comforted him.
He didn’t know where she got her strength from.
When he told his brothers what had happened later that evening, their reaction was very different. They shouted and swore, and spent an intense twenty-four hours searching for Hassan Kaya. But the Turk had gone underground, or else he was holed up with their money in the Taurus Mountains. There was no sign of him. Once his brothers realized that, they had sighed, sworn some more and told Sami that he didn’t need to look so damn guilty. They had invested in the business together, and all three of them had been screwed over. That was that. It was no one’s fault but Hassan Kaya’s, and if that bastard ever turned up again…
To his friends who had invested money and who got in touch, one by one, as the rumors started to spread, Sami said the same thing over and over again. He would fix it. He would deliver. He had promised them a good investment, had promised them interest, and they would get it. Not in the form of earnings from frozen shellfish, but somehow.
He said the same to everyone he met, people who took his defeat as a sign of weakness and gullibility. The plan was still to go straight, to take on the role of a father. He would leave the life of crime behind him.
The difference was that he just needed to do one last big job to get back on his feet first. And the sooner it could happen, the better.
“I know how it sounds,” Sami had said when he got in touch with Mandel. He’d heard that the Estonian had something in the pipeline. “You know what I mean? It’s not that I don’t know how it sounds, one ‘last’ job, but I mean it. I want to do one more job, and whether that’s yours or someone else’s depends on what turns up first.”
Sami stopped dead.
What?” Toomas Mandel asked anxiously.
“Quiet.”
Sami was completely motionless, listening intently. Mandel did the same. He couldn’t hear a thing.
“Is it the pigs?”