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

“Oh,” he said, surprised. “I didn’t know… I’m looking for Alexandra?”

“Yeah?” the woman in the doorway said.

“Alexandra Svensson?” Maloof clarified.

“Yeah. That’s me.”

“No… but… the other Alexandra Svensson,” said Maloof. “Who lives here.”

Alexandra Svensson stared at him. She shook her head, not understanding what he meant.

“I live here. I’m Alexandra Svensson. What do you mean?”

There are over one hundred thousand islands in the Stockholm archipelago, and just as many capes and bays.

Lena Hall had spent the summers of her childhood on the island of Utö, and was so used to the archipelago that she would never underestimate the rocks that weren’t marked on the nautical charts. She had learned to sail before she was ten, chugged around in a small dinghy with a five-horsepower outboard motor, fishing for perch in the streams and pike in the reeds by the time she was twelve. Now she was behind the wheel of a motorboat, moving southward through Hårsfjärden at a speed of thirty knots. The morning of Friday, September 25, was cold, and the water lay still and calm. The boat’s metal hull cut through the water like a knife through warm butter, and the wind in her hair was cold as ice. Autumn had arrived.

Lena slowed down as she approached land, and she headed along the coast.

It was one of these bays, she just wasn’t sure which. She always got them confused. He had forbidden her from putting up any markers.

She pulled out a small pair of binoculars, but before she had time to raise them to her eyes, she spotted movement on the island.

A black dog.

It was standing on a rock, its paws in the water, looking out to sea. Lena slowed down again and set a course toward the rocky beach and the dog. When she focused, she spotted two more dogs at the very edge of the woods. She smiled, and knew she had found the right place.

As she slowly drifted toward land, the dogs caught sight of her, and all eight gathered around the boat as she dragged it up onto the pebbles. The old man and his walking stick didn’t appear before Lena had jumped ashore. She was in the process of unloading the mailbags when, suddenly, he was behind her.

“In your element, I see,” he commented.

“You had no idea, did you?” she said. “Every summer vacation in the archipelago. Not that far from here, actually.”

He shook his head. He hadn’t known.

During the seventies, he had been head over heels in love with the woman who would much later become Lena Hall’s mother. When Lena’s biological father vanished from the scene a decade or so ago, it had been natural for him to offer what help he could. From a distance, of course.

And now she had helped him.

Lena disappeared into the cramped cabin of the boat and returned with the last of the bags. She threw it over the railing.

“How much is in there?” he asked, peering at the haul without any interest.

“No idea,” she said. “Haven’t counted it, I just took what was mine.”

“You can move it up into the woods,” he told her. “I’ll take care of it from there.”

She did as he said. It took her less than five minutes, occasionally tripping over a black dog that wanted to help out.

Once she was finished, she couldn’t help but ask.

“What about Michel?”

Lena would miss Michel, she had grown to like him. She wouldn’t miss Alexandra Svensson, however. She could just imagine Alexandra’s disappointment on Tuesday, when she didn’t turn up for the usual class at Friskis & Svettis. She would never have to listen to Alexandra Svensson’s long stories about her job or her loneliness again.

“Michel Maloof’s a good boy,” the old man replied.

Lena smiled, she agreed.

“I meant with the money,” she said. “Is he going to get any?”

“We’ll have to see how it goes,” the old man replied.

Lena nodded, not knowing whether he was just saying what he thought she wanted to hear. She pushed the boat back off the shore and jumped on board before it drifted out of the bay. Once it had moved deep enough, she lowered the motor.

It took the old man almost an hour to move the five mailbags up to the house. He used a wheelbarrow, but thick tree roots had grown over the path and sharp stones stuck up at each side, threatening to burst its tire. On top of that, he had a bad back. The dogs, as always, hoped it was a game, and they got in his way several times, making him stop and set down the wheelbarrow to wave them away.

People foraging for berries and mushrooms usually came close to his cottage only a couple of times a year, but it wasn’t worth the risk. He would sort and store the money in his earth cellar. He pulled the money from the bags and sorted it into plastic sacks according to denomination. Then he piled the plastic bags on top of one another in the small cardboard boxes he unfolded as he needed them. Finally, he stacked his new boxes on top of the old ones, and once he had done four bags, he stretched, sighed deeply, and decided that was enough.

He took the fifth bag into the cottage with him, setting it down next to the boots by the inner door.

It was eleven o’clock, which meant it was time for a cup of coffee. But as he moved to fill the machine with water, he noticed a crack in the pot. He ran his finger over the glass, but he couldn’t feel anything. Still, he could see it clearly.

He filled the machine with water and measured the coffee into the filter, but his eyes were fixed on the crack the entire time. It had happened before. He had no idea where the cracks came from, but the exact same thing had happened a few years earlier. He had paid no notice to it at the time, but the pot had later broken, sending scalding hot coffee pouring onto the worktop and burning his thigh.

He would have to go into Handen to buy a new one.

He hated taking the bus into Handen. He sighed and decided he could do it next week.

First and foremost, I’d like to say a huge thanks to Niclas Salomonsson. It’s as simple as this: without Niclas, there wouldn’t be a book. I’d also like to thank everyone else who has worked on this project at Salomonsson Agency; no one named, no one forgotten. Then there are you few who have read the various versions of the manuscript and, through your ideas and opinions, made the novel better. For that, aside from Niclas, I’d especially like to thank Helena, Ulrika and Daniel. A special thanks to Love and Ina too. Just to be on the safe side.

Alongside court transcripts and interviews, a number of authors and journalists have made this plunge into 2009 and the events leading up to the helicopter heist, culminating on that dramatic night in September, much easier. The huge amount of journalism connected to both the robbery and the trial provided me with a real sense of the time line, the gossip and the facts. In particular, I’d like to mention Sveriges Radio and P3 Dokumentär, where Anton Berg did such fantastic work and enabled both the staff at G4S and task force leader Hans Knutsen-Öy of the National Criminal Police to have their say. Håkan Lahger’s careful, well-written book Helikopterpiloten also made my job much easier.

But above all, of course, I’d like to thank Goran Bojovic, Charbel Charro, Safa Kadhum and Mikael Södergran for having endured hours and days with me, my notepad and my thousands of questions.

Jonas Bonnieris a screenwriter and journalist as well as a novelist. He was the CEO & President of the Bonnier Group from 2008 to 2014. Bonnier lives with his wife and two children in Miami.