The Sons

Book 2: Made in Sweden

by Anton Svensson

Genres: Suspense; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

In the second part of the highly acclaimed and internationally bestselling series Made in Sweden, one brother fictionalises the real crimes of his own family for a remarkable and epic novel.

After six years in prison, Sweden's most notorious criminal Leo Duvnjac is free, acquitted of all but two of the ten bank robberies he and his two younger brothers pulled off.

While behind bars, he befriended Sam Larsen, who was convicted of murdering his own father - and also happens to be the brother of the cop who caught Leo, Detective John Broncks.

With Sam at his side, Leo seeks out his now-law-abiding brothers for one last job and a chance at redemption - or revenge. But Bronks is on to him, and Leo's father has other plans for his sons . . .

Now two sets of brothers will play out the tragic and thrilling destinies of childhoods built on heartbreaking betrayal.

Release date: March 6, 2018

Publisher: Quercus

Print pages: 586

Sample

BLOOD.

He has never thought about how red it is.

How much there is in a woman’s body.

Enough to color an entire kitchen and an entire hall and, step by step, three stories down to the outer door. And still there’s enough left that she’s able to keep on running away.

The rag in his hand becomes darker and darker. He forces his spine outward and braces himself with his feet. He presses all his weight against the plastic rug on the kitchen floor as he rubs away the last patches of blood, rinses out the cloth in the warm, bubbly water in the bucket, and crawls to the doorway and the sticky stuff in the cracks.

What happened here has to stay here. That’s how it works in a family.

Mama whimpered like a wounded animal and, without turning back a single time, ran out, away, pursued by the tracks of blood he rubbed and rubbed until they were all gone.

Leo gets up and stretches his legs, cramped from staying so long in the same position. That’s strange. He should be exhausted. But he somehow feels exhilarated, restless, and calm all at the same time. Stronger than ever. Every thought clear. He knows exactly what he should do. There’s nothing he can compare it to, apart from maybe the first time he drank alcohol, that instant before he became too drunk. But this is better, soft inside and hard on the outside.

The kitchen window has striped curtains and faces the street. Leo peers out and looks for Mama, who’s not there. Of course, it’s just the spatter in the hallway that remains.

And Papa.

Is he still here? Why is he sitting down there in the car as if nothing happened? What’s he waiting for? Police, shit—they could come any minute.

Papa drove here all the way from the prison outside Stockholm and barged in intending to kill her. His eldest son jumped on his back and pressed his arm around his father’s neck, fought him, and forced him to stop hitting.

The kitchen is done, not a trace. It smells clean.

The hallway is worse. She slipped several times there, and the patches are bigger—like pools. But finally there’s less after he has rubbed and scrubbed a bit out into the stairwell and the water has become more of a cloudy red than clear.

He sneaks back to the curtain again.

The yellow Volkswagen van is still parked down there. With Papa in the driver’s seat and the front door open and his left leg sticking out, his wide gray pant leg flapping in the wind and his brown shoe tapping the asphalt.

Papa must be waiting for someone. Why the hell else would he be there?

Does he think Mama will come back?

Or is it that Papa is angry and disappointed that Leo stopped him, just as he got hold of her head and kneed her again and again—has he decided to come back into the stairwell and up to the apartment on the third floor? Is it his turn now? Leo is the one who saw to it that she escaped, that she’s alive.

But the rattled, hyped-up, alive, and almost happy feeling inside takes away the fear. He is not afraid, not even of his father.

In the bathroom, the nurse’s bag with Mama’s medical paraphernalia is spilled out on the terry-cloth bathmat, and the lid with a white cross is ripped open—someone has been rooting around in it. He lets it be. First he must wash off his mother’s blood. The warm water rinses away the scum from his skin. It becomes a beautiful, light-red whirl just before it vanishes down the drain.

Felix was worried. He often is, but this time it was particularly clear that he was not well. And Vincent, his youngest little brother, didn’t say a word. He just closed the door to his room and stayed there.

He checks a third time through the window. Now the police are coming. Fucking Papa just sat there and waited for them! They’ve done it before, picked him up. Four years ago. The time Papa threw a Molotov cocktail and burned down Grandma and Grandpa’s house because Mama was hiding there, but that wasn’t like this. Today it’s Papa who is waiting for the police.

Right away one of them is standing on the stairs, ringing the doorbell. A tall, rather young one is visible through the peephole. When he steps in onto the doormat, he doesn’t see shit. The blood is completely cleaned up.

“Hi, I’m Peter Eriksson. Constable. I just want to say someone’s on the way here. From social services. You don’t need to be worried.”

“I’m not worried. Why would I be?”

“What’s your name?”

“Leo.”

“And how old are you?”

“Old enough.”

“How old?”

“Fourteen.”

Now the cop looks around, inspects the hallway, and leans forward a little to be able to see into the kitchen. But there’s nothing to find; everything is put back. The table stands in its place again, both chairs are picked up and pushed in under it, and even the rag carpet that he turned over to hide the blood spots lies without a crease between the table legs.

“Did it happen here?”

“Did what happen?”

“Your father has already confessed. So I know what happened. I’m here to examine the scene.”

“It was here.”

“Where?”

“It began in the hall. Ended in the kitchen.”

The cop-gaze sweeps through the apartment—along the hall floor, through the doorway into the kitchen.

“I see you’ve cleaned up. I can even smell the cleaning products. But that’s not important right now. Still, I do want to know if your father has been here before.”

“He hasn’t lived with us for a few years now.”

“So he’s never been inside this apartment?”

“No. We moved here from Stockholm four years ago. When Papa went to prison.”

The cop’s hand is on the door handle. It seems as if he’s about leave. No more questions from someone who shouldn’t be meddling.

“There’s one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“The woman coming from social services soon is Anna Lena. She’ll see to it that you and your brothers get help.”

“We don’t need any help.”

“Everyone needs help once in a while.”

And so he leaves. Not one word about what happened to Mama. Papa gave himself up, maybe that’s why.

Felix is still hiding behind the sofa in the living room, but he crawls out as soon as Leo waves at him.

“Is she . . . dead? Leo, is she? Say it, if it’s true.”

“Of course she isn’t dead.”

“Where is she then? Where, Leo? She must be really hurt.”

“She’s a nurse. She knows what to do. Where to go.”

“Where to go? So can he find her there too?”

“No. The police have Papa.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What do you mean, you ‘don’t understand’?”

“Why he came here. And wanted to kill her.”

“Because Mama split the family up.”

“You’re just saying that because Papa said that.”

“No, I’m not. But I know Papa better than you do. He’s just like that. He operates that way.”

“But if he—”

Leo traps his little brother’s agitated, flailing, swinging arms, a torrent that must be shut off.

“Felix—I get it that you are worried. And scared.”

“I—”

“But I know that she’s all right. I saw it. And now I need your help, Felix—with Vincent. Okay?”

Leo lets go of both arms, which seem to understand now. They aren’t flailing or swinging anymore.

“Okay.”

And together they go toward the closed door.

“Vincent?”

Their little brother doesn’t answer. Leo carefully turns the door handle. Locked. He looks in through the keyhole. Blocked, the key in the way.

“Vincent, open up.”

They both lay an ear against the door, hear him breathing heavily in there.

“The nurse’s bag.”

“I saw it. On the bathroom floor. But, Leo, what if he’s hurt himself? If he . . .”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Leo is already on his way. Somewhere. Through the hall, toward the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

“The drainpipe.”

Felix doesn’t like being alone when it’s not his own choice. He looks at the locked door to Vincent’s room, at the wood surface, which has peeling paint at the bottom, and at the door handle that doesn’t move—as if he could make it turn by staring. He knows exactly what Leo plans to do. He knows that when he’s rushed down the stairs, he’ll continue out to the yard, to the back of the building. They climb up there to the balcony if they’ve forgotten the keys. But that won’t help now; it’s Vincent’s door that’s locked. So Leo’s going to climb up the second drainpipe, the one rising to the heavens between Mama’s bedroom and Vincent’s room, near the window that Vincent usually leaves open. That way is much harder. A metal railing runs around the balcony that you can grab on to and lift yourself over. Vincent’s room has only a small window ledge and it’s extremely dangerous—slippery with edges that cut up your fingers. Leo has to hold on to the drainpipe with one hand and reach out and grab the ledge with the other. And then, with a jerk and a swing, he throws himself over. It’s not easy. And what if . . . surely it rained a little before? Then the whole drainpipe gets sticky and slippery like wet brown leaves in the autumn. He doesn’t know what frightens him most: Leo climbing straight up and maybe falling down, or Vincent, who may have hurt himself behind the locked door.

He kicks the door handle and regrets it; he might frighten Vincent.

He should probably just look at it. There’s nothing else to do. Stare. And count the seconds. Until it moves and Leo is standing there and Felix can go in.

Two hundred and forty-eight seconds.

Then it happens, it is actually moving and the door opens.

He has never seen anything like it.

Ever.

He walks toward the bed. Vincent is lying down and Felix doesn’t know if he should touch him. He doesn’t. Instead he tries to catch Leo’s gaze.

“What . . . So Vincent has . . . Why did he bandage himself?”

All over the floor, among toy cars and soldiers, are empty paper boxes that otherwise belong in Mama’s nurse’s bag—and should contain bandages. Now the chalk-white cloth is wrapped all around Vincent. His whole body covered, from his ankles to his thighs to his stomach to his shoulders to his throat to his face. The work of a seven-year-old. There are narrow spaces between the edges of the bandage and his underpants and T-shirt, with his naked skin sticking out through the gaps. Most obvious is the intended opening for the mouth, his breath wetting the woven edges.

“The blood out there . . . shit, Leo . . . it’s . . . Mama’s, right? Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Just Mama’s?”

“Just Mama’s.”

Leo squats down by Vincent’s unmade bed and grabs a bit of bandage that dangles loose from his wrist.

“We’re here now, Vincent, with you. And Papa is far away.”

One hand around the loose cloth and the other on Vincent’s bandaged cheek.

“So I think we’ll ease this shit off now.”

He doesn’t even manage to loosen the first layer. With all his strength Vincent jerks the bandage out of his brother’s grip, and his scream is muffled in the way screams are if you press your face hard against a pillow.

Felix is standing just past the doorway, not really understanding what he’s looking at, when the doorbell rings. Again. And waiting on the other side of the peephole is the woman the police officer mentioned. The social services lady. And that . . . he knows exactly what that means. So he hurries back to his big brother.

“If she sees that goddamn little mummy, Leo, everything will go to hell.”

“Fix it then. And don’t talk so loud. I’ll answer the door and you can take care of him.”

Vincent has managed to sit up in bed. He has gotten the red felt-tip pens and drawn round spots on his bandaged left arm. Felix hears Leo opening the door out there, the social services lady stepping in and the rattling of the hanger when she takes off her coat, and he whispers to his brother, who is just about to begin a rather large spot on the middle of his stomach.

“You have to lie down. Got it? Pretend you’re sleeping.”

“I’m not tired. And you aren’t lying down.”

“The woman out there, Vincent, you hear her, don’t you? She can’t see you like this.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter. But if she sees you . . . with all that shitty . . . with all of that stuff on you, then she’ll take you with her, don’t you get it?”

If he fixes the sheet, unfolds the blanket . . .

“Come on, for fuck’s sake!”

If he turns the pillow and the wet patch of sweat disappears . . . maybe Vincent will lie down then.

“She’s coming in here soon!”

He does it—Vincent gives up. He crawls in and Felix hides him almost entirely. The blanket is tucked in around the bandaged head.

“And now you breathe exactly like you usually do when you’re sleeping. In, out. In, out. Slowly.”

Then he hurries out and meets Leo and the social services lady in the hall. They say hello and she smiles.

“And your little brother? Where is he?”

“He’s asleep. He’s tucked in under the blanket.”

They let the lady peek into the room and she sees what she ought to see, a child who’s sleeping deeply and shouldn’t be disturbed. And that works out well, she explains as she looks at Felix, because now she wants to talk with Leo alone.

“If you tell us how Mama is first.”

“She’s in pain, Felix. But at present she’s in the hospital—they know how to take care of this kind of thing.”

And when they are alone, she and Leo, when Felix is sitting on the sofa and looking at some TV show, she makes an attempt to talk and explain.

“I have visited your mother in the hospital ward where she is staying. The doctors will check on her every hour—and she has to remain there for a few days.”

She puts a hand on his shoulder. He twists downward and steps backward until her hand slides off.

“Your mother wants you and your two brothers to stay here. But it isn’t really possible, is it? Not if you’re alone.”

He doesn’t nod or shake his head. He heard what she said, but he’s not planning to leave the apartment. Not now. Vincent, shit, they can’t go out with him bandaged like a mummy. And if they yank the bandages off him he would get hysterical. That wouldn’t help a fucking thing.

“Felix is eleven. And Vincent is seven. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I understand what you’re saying, he thinks. And I remember what Papa said.

You have the responsibility from now on.

“I can take care of my little brothers.”

“You’re fourteen years old.”

“Look, there are fourteen-year-olds who experience a shitload of worse things. A boy I read about, in Brazil I think, he harpooned fish to get money for his family, but then one day he harpooned himself in the foot, and then—”

“Listen to me. I reasoned with your Mama for a long time.”

Her hand is on his shoulder again—and it stays there even though he twists his body.

“Leo, how are you? Now?”

“Now? I don’t really know . . .”

He knows exactly how he is. But he doesn’t know if it’s the right thing to feel.

“. . . or, it’s all right, I guess.”

Is it okay to feel so incredibly strong? Almost happy. That should be wrong. How can that happen when his inside explodes with the image of Mama bleeding and running away?

“Your mama told me about everything that happened.”

The social worker’s voice. Serious. She wants to know. Now come the questions.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Not a word, to anyone, about what happened. It would just be worse.

“What is it you don’t want to talk about?”

“What you want to know—what Papa did.”

The hand is still on his shoulder.

“Your mama didn’t need to say what he did—I could see that myself. Her injuries. But she said what you did. About your courage. That it was why she was able to run away.”

Everything is released, suddenly. He isn’t at all prepared.

The lovely throb through his body sort of comes to a standstill and is washed away; the happiness and softness leaves every little joint and muscle and thought. And it feels as if he’s going to cry. His whole damned chest is pressed by shit that has to come out. But he has no intention of letting out a drop. To cry now, in front of her, would ruin everything.

He twists himself loose, again, and rushes to the kitchen. But she doesn’t give up and follows him. The food they never ate is still there on the round table, cold. He picks up one dish at a time and opens the oven door; 300 degrees is usually about right.

“Where is Papa?”

His voice is steady, nowhere near crying.

“He isn’t coming back.”

“I get that—I asked where he is.”

“At the police station.”

“In custody?”

“Yes . . .”

He notices her look. They usually have that look—people who think that he shouldn’t be familiar with that word.

“He’s been that before. In custody.”

“You don’t need to be worried that he’ll come back—it’s going to take time.”

“I’m not worried. Why would I be? So I don’t understand actually why we can’t stay here at home a few days.”

“Because you are fourteen years old. Because you and your even younger brothers have experienced something that children shouldn’t have to experience.”

You don’t have a fucking clue what we cope with. Or what shit we’ve seen, he wanted to say, but that wouldn’t be especially smart.

“Leo, listen. This is important. If your mama is away for a long time—we don’t really know yet, do we?—then you’ll have to live with another family.”

“What do you mean . . . ‘another family’?”

“But that might take a little time to arrange. So until that time someone will come here instead and look after you.”

“Come here? Who?”

“I don’t really know yet. We have an on-call list with decent people who help when things like this happen. It will be settled this evening.”

Another family. Leo adjusts the cutlery that has been waiting for a long time on the kitchen table and that must have rattled when Papa kneed Mama in the face. We already have a mother, even if she is lying in a hospital bed. He puts out glasses and ice water in a plastic pitcher—she never managed to bring that out. We already have a father, even if he’s in custody. And last of all he folds the ripped-off paper bits from the paper towel roll ceremoniously, runs the top of his hand over them and strokes them. And that is why I make this decision now.

“Listen.”

He tries to catch her gaze.

“Social services lady?”

He still has no idea what her name is because he doesn’t care.

“Yes?”

“It’s like this . . . If that’s the case, can’t Agnetha look in on us instead?”

“Who is Agnetha?”

“She’s on the second floor. Mama’s friend. She’s up here a lot. And she’s decent, like the people on your on-call list.”

VINCENT IS SITTING in bed—or rather, he’s arched backward. As soon as the social worker disappeared down to the second floor, he sneaked out and ran to the bathroom. And now, afterward, he has to bandage his entire stomach again.

Felix seems to have given up. He is breathing more peacefully and leaning against the edge of the bed. A bandaged little brother perhaps doesn’t alarm him so much anymore.

“What the hell happened out there, Leo? Is she gone? It sounded like she left.”

“She’s coming right back.”

“Did she say anything else about Mama?”

Leo sinks down by his younger brothers, against the same hard edge of the bed.

“Felix—Mama’s going to be gone a few days.”

“How many?”

“A few.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know.”

Felix isn’t satisfied. Leo sees a facial expression that is so familiar, knows that his brother intends to keep asking until he gets an answer. There isn’t one. And it’s as if Felix senses that. Instead of repeating how many, he starts to laugh—a sort of laugh none of them has heard before. More like a giggle, it doesn’t take shape on the inside where it usually does. It comes into being right at the front of the mouth, at the lips, comes from nowhere and isn’t connected to anything. It slowly gains in strength and he starts to talk at the same time, half giggling, half speaking, about the mummy in the bed and the cop and the social services lady and then all the blood spots on the floor—Leo, the blood must have spurted—spurted! Felix is giggling and Leo doesn’t have the energy to listen anymore. He climbs up into the bed, next to Vincent.

“Everything okay, my littlest brother?”

The stomach is finished. Rebandaged in new, careful layers. But the fingers of his right hand are free and Vincent brings these to his mouth before he answers by drawing the loop of the bandage up, a little above the upper lip.

“Yes.”

And then he draws the next loop of bandage down, a little below the lower lip.

“No.”

And again, up. And again, down.

“Yes. No.”

Up and down, the small opening in front of his mouth is closed and opened.

“Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No.”

Until Leo gingerly strokes the bandaged cheek.

“Excellent, little brother. That’s really good.”

Then the doorbell rings again.

He closes the door carefully and hurries toward the monotonous signal. It’s the social services lady and behind her, Agnetha. They are smiling.

“We’ll do what you suggested.”

The social services lady is maybe smiling the most; she’s the one who’s talking.

“So, Agnetha will look in on you, at least this evening and tonight and in the morning. And then we’ll take it from there.”

Her coat is hanging on one of the hooks under the shelf for hats. She buttons one button after another and looks for a long time at Leo, who hopes they remain at a distance so that the giggling won’t erupt.

“But—there’s one condition.”

“Yes?”

“That Agnetha can come and go exactly as often as she needs to. She and I will stay in contact the whole time. Okay, Leo? Okay, Agnetha?”

He nods and they both wait for Agnetha to do the same. But she doesn’t answer. And they soon understand why. Her gaze has become fixed a little farther off in the stairwell, just where Mama stumbled and hit hardest. The only patch he didn’t really wipe away. There was quite a lot of blood there and he was in a hurry.

He waits until they’ve gone.

The cleaning bucket is still in the bathroom where he left it. He fills it with warm water and a dash of dish detergent, wets the rag, and rubs with the whole weight of his body pressed against the stone floor until the last drops that hadn’t been mopped up are gone.

Now he knows exactly what to do.

He opens the door leading to his two brothers—one giggling hysterically, one hiding in bandages—and plops down like before, on the floor with his back against the side of the bed.

“I still don’t know how many days, Felix. But we’ll fix it all the same.”

“What do you mean, fix it?”

“I have thought it all out. And you’re going to help me.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Do you still have the blue case? With the maps?”

“Yes.”

“Get it.”

“Why?”

“The social services lady thinks that we shouldn’t live here anymore. But that’s not going to happen.”

Felix is already giggling less as he gets up more slowly than ever before in order to illustrate how unwilling he is.

“Felix—just get it.”

The blue map case isn’t larger than a postcard, but it’s as thick as a box of chocolates and it flies in a nice arc as Felix throws it from the doorway to the bed, nearly hitting both Leo and Vincent as it crash-lands.

“Satisfied?”

A compass is shoved down in an open pocket on the outside of the case. It gets in the way as Leo scoops up and unfolds the map, which has shrunk all the cycle paths, minor roads, and lanes of Falun to a scale of 1:5000.

“Look here.”

He points somewhere in the middle of the map and Felix tries to do what he says, look, but he doesn’t understand what he should look at.

“What?”

“The roads from the city center to the forest.”

Leo’s index finger dives down to a little section in the outskirts of Falun, not particularly far away. The angular letters form S-L-Ä-T-T-A. Felix knows exactly how the map looks in reality. He has been there a couple of times; they have a really worthless football team.

“And? What about it?”

“I will explain it all, later. When we get there.”

“Where?”

Leo is in a hurry to fold up the map, and Felix almost feels in his body how there’ll be new folds that weren’t there before.

“Where, Leo? And, listen, I want that back when you’re through with it. Don’t ruin it—it cost fifteen kronor.”

“You can have ten shitty maps just like it when I’m done. Come with me now and I’ll show you.”

“Show me what?”

“What you’ll get to see.”

“And the mummy?”

“He said he wanted to be alone. Now he can be. We won’t be gone long.”

LOOKOUT POINT. THE little hill behind the thorn bushes that frame the square. Now they are squatting on the top of it, close to each other. Their hair is blowing and the fallen leaves are dancing drowsily over the open asphalt surface. They can almost forget this awful day for a bit.

“Hey, Leo?”

“Yes?”

“What are we doing here?”

“You’ll see in a minute.”

Then Leo’s cheeks tighten, which means he is entirely focused and has peeled away everything around—he does that sometimes, crawls inside himself. Felix follows Leo’s gaze. A woman, about their mother’s age, strolls across the square. It’s her Leo is studying. Or it might be the leather bag she’s carrying in her hand.

“Do you see it?”

It was the bag. A brown one, which seems not to be especially heavy.

“Yeah.”

“Do you know what’s inside it?”

“Do you?”

“Mmm.”

“What?”

“Twenty-five thousand. Sometimes forty. Sometimes even fifty.”

“Fifty thousand . . . what?”

“Kronor.”

The woman is on the way from the ICA supermarket on one side of the square to the bank on the other side, taking long, determined strides in leather boots with high heels that clatter. The wind carries the sound up to Lookout Point.

“Every day she does this walk, just after the shop closes—the same route, across the square with the bag in her hand—and when she gets there, she puts all the shit in that over there, do you see?”

She pulls out a metal box on the bank’s brick wall, tilts it, and lets the bag drop down, a toothless mouth that gobbles it up.

“Money they made. That goes into their account.”

“How do you know that?”

“The owner’s son usually brags about it in the smoking area.”

Now she’s finished—on the way back, without the bag, to the area’s largest ICA shop.

“Are we done? I want to go home.”

“Don’t you get why we’re here?”

“Vincent is alone. We’re leaving now, Leo.”

“The leather bag. I’m going to take it.”

“Take . . . it?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean . . . take?”

“Swipe. A heist.”

“Heist?”

“That’s American. It means a supercool robbery.”

“That’s not supercool—you know, it won’t work.”

“It’ll work. And I know how. Just before she drops the money down I’ll snatch it.”

“But . . .”

The woman who has high heels on and is Mama’s age has company, so Felix falls silent. A guard in uniform. He is employed to watch over the city center. He marches loop after loop from morning to evening and he meets her now in the middle of the square.

“Shit, Robbie’s big brother. He’s the guard.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Click. They call him that. Click, with the baton. Click, with the big radio. Shit, he knows who you are!”

“I’ll take care of that too.”

Felix looks for a long time at the guard, at Robbie’s big brother. If Leo snatched the bag, then Click would easily catch up with him. Just two or three steps.

“It won’t work. Do you know how quickly Click runs? And if he doesn’t manage to . . . then he’ll recognize you.”

“I’ll never get caught.”

“How can you know that? Freaking idiot! You can’t know that!”

“I said I’ll take care of it. Okay? Masked. That’s what you have to be. And before you strike, you put out false leads.”

The guard seems to be growing. Or maybe it’s that Felix only sees a uniform and a baton and a walkie-talkie. While Leo, at the same time, doesn’t seem to see him at all.

“I want to go home.”

“Just a little while longer.”

“Leo—we’re leaving now. The guard. Robbie’s brother. And—”

“A little longer.”

Felix pulls on one of the sleeves of Leo’s jacket.

“You are exactly like . . . back then! When you wanted to . . .” He pulls a little more. “Fight with Kekkonen. When you took Papa’s knife. You don’t listen and you disappear into yourself. When you aren’t with me—only with yourself.”

Felix gets up and starts walking. Soon he hears steps: Leo’s running gait.

“Felix . . . stop now!”

Until he has managed to catch up and they are walking side by side.

“You have to go along with it.”

“Leo—you can forget it.”

“You’re the one who’s going to lure the guard away!”

“Don’t you get it? I don’t want to be a part of it! And I don’t intend to be a part of it!”

Leo grabs hold of his brother, not hard, but with friendly hands around the tense shoulders so that they both have to stop. And he smiles, even laughs a little, like when they joke around together somet