Stockholm wasn’t all that big, after all. The blur of pines filled her vision, dark and wintergreen, swaying in time with the train; clickity-clack, clickity-clack.
Wiping all traces of someone off the record , she thought. Could that really be possible? An organization as proxy on all documents, one that maintains contacts with the authorities and signs contracts. Is that actually legal?
She took out her pad and pen and started making outlines.
If city councils actually buy the services of Paradise, everything must be above board , she figured.
Then there was the money; how much did the removal process cost?
She leafed through her notes.
Three thousand, five hundred kronor a day per person. The amount might be reasonable, she really couldn’t tell.
Methodically, Annika outlined possible costs:
Five people working on a full-time basis: say they earned fifteen thousand kronor a month, plus social security expenses, which would amount to one hundred thousand kronor a month in total. And then there was the housing: say they had ten houses that each cost ten thousand a month in rent or interest – that would cost another hundred thousand. What else? Medical care was provided by the county councils. The city councils provided welfare payments, the state health insurance paid sick benefits, and legal aid footed the bill for lawyers.
Expenditure should come to about two hundred thousand a month.
What about revenue?
Three thousand, five hundred a day would amount to a monthly total of one hundred and five thousand kronor per person.
If they help a woman and a child each month, they make a profit often thousand kronor , she realized.
Disconcerted, she stared at her calculations.
Could that really be true?
She went through the numbers again.
Sixty cases at three thousand, five hundred kronor a pop per day for three months per case would come to nearly nineteen million.
For the past three years their expenditure had been somewhat more than seven million, which would mean a profit of almost twelve million.
Something must be wrong , Annika thought. I’ve based my calculations on estimates and assumptions. They might have more expenses, ones that I don’t know anything about. Maybe they have doctors and psychologists and lawyers on retainer, and lots of contacts standing by around the clock all year long. That would certainly be expensive.
She packed her stuff back down in her bag, leaned back against the seat and let herself be rocked to sleep. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack.
The sounds were always the same, Anders Schyman thought. Chairs scraping, a talk show droning away on the radio, CNN on the TV with the volume turned down low, papers rustling, a cacophony of male voices rising and falling, short emphatic sentences. Laughter, always laughter, in hard, rapid bursts.
The smells: the ever-prevalent aroma of coffee, a whiff of sweaty feet, aftershave. A lingering trace of tobacco on someone’s breath. Testosterone.
The management group met every Tuesday and Friday afternoon to run through larger projects and long-term strategies. The members were all male and over forty, they all drove company cars and wore identical dark blue flannel sports coats. He knew that they were referred to as ‘the Flannel Pack’.
They always met in a fancy corner office belonging to Torstensson, the editor-in-chief, which overlooked the Russian embassy. They always had Danishes and macaroons. Jansson would be the last one to arrive, as usual. He always spilled coffee on the carpet, never apologizing and never cleaning up the mess. Schyman sighed.
‘Well, perhaps we should . . .’ the editor-in-chief said, not knowing where to look. No one took any notice of him. Jansson strolled in, sleepy-eyed, his hair on end and with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
‘No smoking,’ the editor-in-chief said.
Jansson spilled coffee on the carpet, took a deep drag on his cigarette and sat down at the far end of the table.
Wiping all traces of someone off the record , she thought. Could that really be possible? An organization as proxy on all documents, one that maintains contacts with the authorities and signs contracts. Is that actually legal?
She took out her pad and pen and started making outlines.
If city councils actually buy the services of Paradise, everything must be above board , she figured.
Then there was the money; how much did the removal process cost?
She leafed through her notes.
Three thousand, five hundred kronor a day per person. The amount might be reasonable, she really couldn’t tell.
Methodically, Annika outlined possible costs:
Five people working on a full-time basis: say they earned fifteen thousand kronor a month, plus social security expenses, which would amount to one hundred thousand kronor a month in total. And then there was the housing: say they had ten houses that each cost ten thousand a month in rent or interest – that would cost another hundred thousand. What else? Medical care was provided by the county councils. The city councils provided welfare payments, the state health insurance paid sick benefits, and legal aid footed the bill for lawyers.
Expenditure should come to about two hundred thousand a month.
What about revenue?
Three thousand, five hundred a day would amount to a monthly total of one hundred and five thousand kronor per person.
If they help a woman and a child each month, they make a profit often thousand kronor , she realized.
Disconcerted, she stared at her calculations.
Could that really be true?
She went through the numbers again.
Sixty cases at three thousand, five hundred kronor a pop per day for three months per case would come to nearly nineteen million.
For the past three years their expenditure had been somewhat more than seven million, which would mean a profit of almost twelve million.
Something must be wrong , Annika thought. I’ve based my calculations on estimates and assumptions. They might have more expenses, ones that I don’t know anything about. Maybe they have doctors and psychologists and lawyers on retainer, and lots of contacts standing by around the clock all year long. That would certainly be expensive.
She packed her stuff back down in her bag, leaned back against the seat and let herself be rocked to sleep. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack.
The sounds were always the same, Anders Schyman thought. Chairs scraping, a talk show droning away on the radio, CNN on the TV with the volume turned down low, papers rustling, a cacophony of male voices rising and falling, short emphatic sentences. Laughter, always laughter, in hard, rapid bursts.
The smells: the ever-prevalent aroma of coffee, a whiff of sweaty feet, aftershave. A lingering trace of tobacco on someone’s breath. Testosterone.
The management group met every Tuesday and Friday afternoon to run through larger projects and long-term strategies. The members were all male and over forty, they all drove company cars and wore identical dark blue flannel sports coats. He knew that they were referred to as ‘the Flannel Pack’.
They always met in a fancy corner office belonging to Torstensson, the editor-in-chief, which overlooked the Russian embassy. They always had Danishes and macaroons. Jansson would be the last one to arrive, as usual. He always spilled coffee on the carpet, never apologizing and never cleaning up the mess. Schyman sighed.
‘Well, perhaps we should . . .’ the editor-in-chief said, not knowing where to look. No one took any notice of him. Jansson strolled in, sleepy-eyed, his hair on end and with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
‘No smoking,’ the editor-in-chief said.
Jansson spilled coffee on the carpet, took a deep drag on his cigarette and sat down at the far end of the table.
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