Never Fuck Up: A Novel (43 page)

Thomas didn’t know if he should laugh or cry. It felt so damned good.

After shooting practice Thomas suggested they grab a beer at Friden. Ljunggren had a different suggestion. “Can’t we just drive around a little? Like old times.”

It felt strange, but good somehow. Ljunggren: COO of integrity. Distance-keeper, no-body-contact specialist, macho dude
numero uno
. His suggestion: a pitying overture. A friend request.

Cops often took their patrol cars to the shooting range. Ljunggren flipped on the police radio, but on low volume. Thomas couldn’t read him: maybe he wasn’t thinking of what he was doing or else he did it to try to create the right atmosphere. He drove slowly, as if they were out on the beat. They were in a suburban area. The leaves on the trees were dry. Despite the rain, it’d been a warm summer. Real September feel—maybe because it was September.

They drove in circles—really like old times. More than three months ago. Felt like an eternity. An eternity of angst. Angst because everything’d gone to hell so quickly.

“Tell me. How are the traffic geeks?”

Thomas explained. What they talked about, their attitude, their food habits. Ljunggren grinned. Finally someone who understood.

“I’ve heard rumors about you, Andrén. That you’ve got a side gig. Is that true?”

Thomas didn’t know what to say. How much did Ljunggren know? This wasn’t really the time to spill the beans. At least not all of them.

“Yep, that’s right. I help a security company. A lot of evenings and nights. So, it’s kind of like before. I mean, Åsa’s used to it.”

Ljunggren nodded. Kept his eyes fixed on the road.

“I bet double my take-home that you make better money.”

Thomas laughed. “I’ll bet four times my take-home that you’ve got better retirement and health insurance than I’ll ever get there. My new job is outside of all that, so to speak.”

“That’s what I suspected. Is it worth it?”

Thomas thought about that for a while. The question’d been bothering him for several weeks. And Ljunggren didn’t even seem to know what it was he was really involved in.

“Let me be entirely open with you, Ljunggren. I don’t know what’s worth it and not worth it anymore. The only thing I know is that if someone pisses on you, you don’t have to be loyal to them anymore. This whole thing I’ve been put through—it’s bullshit. Do you know what happened? They said you couldn’t go on patrol as usual, that you had to cover for someone else. Then they sent me that girl, who could hardly carry the heavy vest to the car. We get called to a crazy boxing champion who goes berserk in a bodega and almost kills her. But, no, we’re not allowed to defend ourselves. We’re not allowed to restore order. Nope, that’ll just lead to whining. Then it’s police brutality. Assault. Excessive force. And Adamsson, that old cocksucker, turns his back on me. Makes me go on disability, asks me to more or less go to hell. Thanks for the support, you wrinkly motherfucker! But you and me, we both know Adamsson. He doesn’t really mind the kind of thing that happened in the bodega. He should’ve been behind me, one hundred percent. But no, this time he left me alone in the lion’s den. I don’t understand why.”

Ljunggren didn’t say anything. As usual.

Thomas kept going. “Sometimes I think, What if. What if it’s all connected? You know that investigation that guy Hägerström was working on? I helped him a little. Okay, I don’t like his kind, but something was sketchy about that murder. So I looked a few things up on my own.
And what happens? Just a few days later, all this crap starts coming at me. Like that set it off. Like someone didn’t want me helping Hägerström with that investigation anymore. Like a plot or something.”

Ljunggren turned to Thomas again. “Yeah, that stuff was a little weird.”

“
A little
weird? It was fucking insane.”

Ljunggren ignored Thomas’s comment. “I don’t know what happened that night. But Adamsson was actually the one who called me and asked me to cover for Fransson. And I just followed orders. But that it’s some kind of plot, no, I don’t think so. That sounds a little too, what’s it called . . . ?”

“Conspiratorial?”

“Yeah, right, conspiratorial.” Ljunggren paused. Then, in a lowered voice, as if he was thinking about what the word meant, he said, “Conspiratorial, yeah.”

They kept driving around for another hour. It grew darker. The glowing instrument panel in the patrol car made it feel homey. Thomas couldn’t forget what Ljunggren’d just told him. So, Adamsson had been the one who ordered him not to go on patrol. One thought emerged clear as day in Thomas’s muddled mind: now it was obvious. Adamsson was involved somehow.

He didn’t say anything to Ljunggren.

Ljunggren started driving back toward the shooting club to drop Thomas off at his car.

He turned off the engine, but let the instrument panel continue to glow. His hands remained on the wheel as though he were still driving. His gaze somewhere far off, maybe directed at the clubhouse.

“So, there’s something I want to tell you.”

Thomas could tell right away by his tone that something was up.

“What?”

Ljunggren swallowed several times. Cleared his throat. A minute passed.

“We got a call three days ago. A couple tenants who thought maybe someone was dead in an apartment next door. Through the mail slot they could see that there was tons of mail piled up inside the door and no one’d been seen there for several months. I went there with Lindberg. An apartment on Elsa Brändströms Street. We rang the doorbell, knocked. The usual routine. Finally, we tried the door. It was open, so we went in. We looked around, a thick film of dust on everything.
Didn’t seem like anyone’d been living there for months. But we didn’t find any dead guy.”

Thomas wondered what his long story had to do with him.

“There was a ton of weird hard-core porn stuff, strap-ons and shit. We found a bunch of booze, a stinking fridge. We didn’t find anything else interesting. It didn’t seem like anyone’d been there for ages. I thought it was a routine check. But then I found a glass with dentures in the bathroom. Then it hit me that the person who’d lived in the apartment could be the smashed-up corpse we found on Gösta Ekman Road. The one you said you were helping Hägerström with. You told me you saw track marks on his arms and that he was missing teeth and stuff. I thought I should tell you. As a favor. In return.”

The silence in the car was complete. Thomas almost thought he could hear Ljunggren’s heart beating. What he was doing: breaking the rules, going against investigation confidentiality. Usually, that wasn’t the kind of thing that worried Ljunggren. But this—there was something bigger happening.

Thomas tried not to sound too interested. “Okay. Thanks for the info. I’m not doing that anymore, so. But, fuck, course I think it’s exciting. So, what was his name? The guy who lived in the apartment?”

Thomas felt goose bumps rise on his arms. Really, he already knew the answer to his question.

“The tenant’s name was Rantzell. Claes Rantzell. But that’s a new name. You can almost tell just by hearing it.”

“What?”

“Rantzell sounds made up, don’t you think? The dude’s name is actually Cederholm. He changed his name a few years ago. Does that ring any bells? Claes Cederholm?”

Thomas shook his head, but the name did sound familiar.

“Claes Cederholm was the chief witness in the Olof Palme murder trial. Get it? This isn’t just some everyday bull. The murder of Olof Palme, Sweden’s prime minister.”

This was insane.

Thomas was in really deep waters.

Really, really deep.

*  *  *

Dig the procedure: cut the crystals with the razor blade. To break apart the stones. No face mask like when he’d laced blow with Tetramisole—animal medicine—earlier this week. No latex gloves. No Yugo standing over his shoulder watching his every move. Goading him. Distrusting him. Shitting on him. Just Mahmud, alone at his digs. His crib was a few blocks away from Robert’s. Take note:
his own
crib. Stylin’. Even Dad was proud.

On the TV: Brazil against Ghana in some kind of international friendly. He didn’t give a shit.

He cut up more than he needed. Like a rhythm. Irritation flowing out of him. Pissed-offness that was about to explode. Everything with the Yugos was fucked. Snorting was sweet. But these last few months, Mahmud’d started going for a heavier rush. Once the cocaine flakes were cut up, all they needed was three drops of water to dissolve. He picked up the disposable needle. The cocaine wasn’t like the doping shit—made his veins contract. It was maybe the tenth time in his life that he mainlined blow. Still remembered his virgin crank four weeks ago. White dynamite—the rush like a trip to paradise. Robert and him, together in a mad high-def video-game world.
Grand Theft Auto
number fourteen million. Un-fucking-real.