Never Fuck Up: A Novel Read Free Page B

little
High Chaparral
when they’re mad.”
    Niklas held his gaze. Stared for two seconds longer than normal social codes would allow if he were laughing it off as a joke.
    The broker finally got the message—this was not the time to try to be funny. “Whatever,” he said. “I can still help you. We’ll get you a sublet for those three months when you’ll need to wait. Does that work? I can put you in a sweet one-bedroom, five hundred and forty square feet, in Aspudden. If you want it, you can have it next week. But it’ll cost a little extra, of course. What do you think?”
    He needed something even sooner. “If I pay more, can you get it faster?”
    “Faster than that? You’re really cutting it close, I have to say. But sure, you can get it the day after tomorrow.”
    Niklas smiled inside. That sounded good. He had to get away.
    Better than expected, actually.
    To disappear so quickly.

3

    The Southern District might not have the most incident reports per capita, but it always had the most major crime. The City District, downtown, definitely topped the numbers, everyone knew that, but that’s because the scum from south of Södermalm came into the city and did a lot of petty shit there. Shoplifted, pocketed cell phones, harassed, started bar brawls.
    Thomas thought, The south—real ghettos that the politicians don’t give a damn about. Fittja, Alby, Tumba, Norsborg, Skärholmen. Everyone knew the names of the northern shit holes: Rinkeby and Tensta. Diversity aid and cultural organizations abounded. Support efforts were focused. Project money rained down. Integration institutes invaded. But in the south, the gangs ruled for real. Iraqis, Kurds, Chileans, Albanians. The Bandidos, Fucked for Life, Born to Be Hated. You could spend ages burping up calamities. Topped the Swedish lists in number of firearms, number of guys who refused to talk to cops, number of reported blackmail attempts. The criminals organized, copied the MC clubs’ hierarchies, pulled together their own steel-fisted gangs. The teen punks followed the examples set by older bank robbers/drug dealers/thugs. A well-trodden road. To a shit life. The list was endless—all the facts were there. In Thomas’s eyes, didn’t matter what you labeled those niggers and losers—they were all scum, the lot of them.
    He’d heard all the theories that the social-service ladies and the youth psychologists droned on about. But what were they really supposed to do with all those behavioral, cognitive, dynamic, psychiatric, blah-blah-istic hypotheses? No methods worked anyway. No one could clean it up. They spread. Reproduced. Multiplied. Took over. Once upon a time he too might have thought there was a way to stop it. But that was a long time ago now.
    Things used to be better. A cliché. But as Lloyd Cole sings, the reason it’s a cliché is that it’s true.

    Yet another night on the beat. Thomas was driving calmly. Let his hands rest on the wheel. Knew he’d get his ear chewed off at home for signing up for the night shift all week. He didn’t really need the extra money—even though that’s what he told Åsa. A police inspector’s base salary wasn’t even worth a tenth of the drugs he confiscated on a regular night. It was an insult. Ridicule. A loogie in the eye of all the honest men who really knew what needed to be done. So if they took back a little, it was only right.
    There were five or six of them who took turns driving these routes together. Circled the areas around Skärholmen, Sätra, Bredäng. Damned the development to hell. Skipped the PC bullshit and the Commie fake-empathy crap. They all knew the deal—break the swine or roll over and die.
    Thomas’s partner tonight, Jörgen Ljunggren, was sitting in the passenger seat. They usually switched sometime around 2:00 a.m.
    Thomas tried to count. How many times’d he and Ljunggren slid through the slowly darkening summer nights like this? Without unnecessary chitchat. Ljunggren with