Jonas Bonnier - The Helicopter Heist - A Novel Based on True Events

But the minute he put the boy down in his bed, a mattress on the floor in the room Karin had previously used as her office, Sami himself had felt wide awake. He had sat down on the sofa in the living room and tried to work out what he was going to say. It was impossible.

By five, he had dozed off again, and he slept through until seven. He woke to the sound of Karin trying to make coffee as she prepared the gruel for the one-year-old. She had been up since six, and she handed Sami a bottle and pointed to the baby, who was sleeping in the stroller in the hallway. After that, she staggered into the bedroom, pulled the door shut and slumped onto the bed with the hope that a few hours’ uninterrupted sleep would allow her milk to thicken enough for the next feed.

This isn’t right, he thought.

I can’t leave her like this.

Not now, not for a week, not even for a day.

But he had no choice.

Going underground and disappearing from the system was his way of protecting Karin and the kids. Both in the long and the short term.

Sami wasn’t planning to be sent away again. He couldn’t, not now that he had created all of this. A home. A family.

His plan was to stay away for almost three weeks, but he was doing that to avoid being sent away for three years.

Or even longer.

It wasn’t that prison scared him. If you got into the game, you had to accept the rules. But for his family, things were different.

Sami made lunch and gently woke Karin by taking her a tray of food, a ham-and-cheese omelet and a large glass of milk. For once, both boys were sleeping.

He put the tray on the bed and sat down by her feet. He watched as she wearily sat up. She was so incredibly beautiful. Like always when he watched her without her knowledge, he knew that he could never be with anyone else.

“I have to go away,” he said.

The words came suddenly, and he surprised himself. However he had been imagining their conversation would start, it wasn’t like this.

She had just picked up the cutlery to start eating, but she put it back down.

“No,” she said firmly.

Her eyes were serious.

“Honestly, love, it’s got to wait. Whatever it is. I need all the help I can get right now.”

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

He sat perfectly still. Karin could count on one hand the times she had seen him sit motionless like he was right now. She allowed the silence to grow before she asked the question.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to go away,” he repeated.

“Where?”

He couldn’t meet her eye. He turned to look out of the window. He pulled at his sweater, which suddenly felt tight.

“I can’t say.”

“Don’t do it,” she said. “You promised.”

She spoke quietly, so as not to wake the boys. There was no anger in her voice, just sadness. That made everything worse.

“I know,” he said. “I’ll keep my promise.”

He meant it. He wasn’t going to live a criminal life. He truly believed that.

“So you can tell me where you’re going then,” she said. “Is it overnight?”

“It’s for a few weeks,” he said.

That made her explode.

“You can’t!” she shouted.

The tray tipped. Milk sloshed out of the glass.

“You can’t just go away for a few weeks! Not without telling me where you’re going. Not when we’ve just had a baby!”

And at that very moment, the baby started crying in the hallway. Sami took it as an excuse to get up.

“Did you hear what I said!” she shouted after him.

4:54 p.m.

It’s a few minutes before five. His shift ends then, when the evening and night staff take over. But it’s been quiet all afternoon, so he goes out to get changed a couple of minutes early.

He has been working at the Statoil gas station on Magelungsvägen in Bandhagen for almost two years now, and he likes his job. There’s a small gang of them that usually work shifts together, three guys and two girls, and they’ve also started hanging out after work. When he first arrived from the north five years earlier, he had trouble finding a job and making new friends. He got by, lived in sublet sublets like everyone else, and the days passed. He heard about the job at the Statoil station by chance while he was working overtime for a pizzeria in Högdalen, delivering pizzas on a moped he’d stolen from outside the Globe Arena. He had happened to stop there for gas and heard the manager complaining about how they were one man short that night.

He started immediately, eating the pizza he had been carrying rather than delivering it.

They gave him more and more night shifts, and after a year or so he started working during the day.

That was what everyone there wanted; no one feels like sabotaging their circadian rhythms.

Like always, they pause outside the gas station for a while, chatting before they head home. His gym bag is on the floor between his feet. It’s pretty big, an overnight bag, but he often has it with him, so no one thinks anything of it.

It’s Tuesday evening and nothing much is going on, there’s nothing worth watching on TV. Someone invites the others over to watch a film; The Girl Who Played with Fire came out in theaters on Friday, but it’s already up on Pirate Bay.

Ordinarily, he likes their film nights, but this time he says no.

The others laugh and make fun of him. Does he have something secret on the go? Someone secret?

He laughs with them and says there’s no secret at all, he’s going to work out. He gestures to his bag.

As a joke, one of the other guys bends down to grab it and remove the obstacle to their film evening.

But when he takes the handles and tries to lift the bag from the ground, he’s completely unprepared for the weight of it. He can’t even make it budge.

“What the hell?”

Inside the spacious gym bag is a long, thick chain. One that has metal barbs soldered onto it and which will be stretched across Elektravägen at the crossroads with Västbergavägen in a few hours’ time.

He swings the bag up onto his shoulder.

He’s keen for it to look like a simple motion.

Then he laughs at how heavy it is and starts making his way toward the bus stop.

He has a job to do. He takes out his phone and makes a call.

5:01 p.m.

The minute the phone rings, everything gets under way. Months of planning, years of dreaming about the building in Västberga.

It’s time.

Michel Maloof gets up from his chair and goes over to the kitchen counter. He picks up and hears his chain man say that he’s on the way. His task for the night is to stretch the string of caltrops across Elektravägen at the crossroads with Västbergavägen, and also across Västberga Allé by Drivhjulsvägen, to put a stop to any police cars which might come racing out of the station on Västberga Gårdsväg.

Maloof quickly confirms and then hangs up.

He returns to his chair by the window. It has rapidly become his favorite spot in the newly built, sparsely decorated apartment in Norrtälje that Zoran Petrovic swore no one would be able to link to them. Petrovic knows the guy who installed the HVAC when the apartment were built a few years earlier, who’s the one who got them the key.

Maloof has been staring out that kitchen window for four days now, and there’s one thing he’s sure of: He’ll never move to Norrtälje.

His mind turns to Alexandra Svensson. He hasn’t missed anything more than her soft body over these past few days. The scent of her skin has filled his dreams. He can’t remember that ever having happened before.