He hadn’t been there since. Eighteen years ago. He’d done the same as all the others, looked at the high-rise blocks that were so ugly from a distance as he accelerated, never stopped, never got out, gone back.
Strange. How everything just keeps going. How everything always keeps going.
He started.
That light.
He hadn’t heard the noise of the helicopter three hundred meters above, but the light, the bright search light that came from somewhere under the flying machine was now sweeping the ground and passing cars. And suddenly became another flashing blue light.
Hermansson braked as hard as she could. They rolled slowly onto a well-lit stage.
Ewert Grens glimpsed a metal barrier across four of the lanes, southbound, counted nine, ten, eleven uniformed police with automatic weapons in their hands and stun grenades and tear gas on the belts around their waists. One of them pointed the shiny muzzle of a gun at the car, another moved toward them, flashlight in hand.
“Pull into the side.”
Mariana Hermansson steered toward the only opening in the metal barrier, the right hard-shoulder.
“Drive through. Then stop.”
The rotating blue light.
Grens wiped away the condensation from the side window to see three cars and a police van in front of two motorcycles.
“Let us through.”
A hand had knocked on the window by the driver and Hermansson hadn’t even had time to turn around. Ewert Grens had already wound his window half down.
“Now.”
The bulletproof vest, the overalls, the helmet, and even more light from under the long barrel of the gun.
“Don’t you point that at me.”
“You’ll have to wait your turn.”
“And please move to one side so we can get past. You’re standing in the way.”
The bulletproof vest and overalls and helmet remained close, in fact took another step forward, shone the light in the detective superintendent’s face.
“Can I ask you to step out of the car?”
Sven Sundkvist stretched in the passenger seat, turned around, and spoke for the first time since they left the garage at Kronoberg.
“Ewert . . .”
Just one word. There were no more. Grens pushed open the back door and was careful to stand directly opposite the policeman with the light and automatic weapon.
If she’s still alive.
“We’ve got two hours and fifty minutes left.”
“Excuse me?”
“Let us through.”
“ID.”
The sharp beam of light in his face again. The detective superintendent who was gold command for the entire operation pulled a fat, almost defiant, wallet out of one of his new jacket’s many inner pockets, which were small and tight for his large, slightly bent fingers. The policeman in the bulletproof vest and helmet took it and rifled through the contents inside the brownish leather, then held the square plastic cards in the beam of the now lowered flashlight.
“Grens?”
“Yes.”
“Ewert Grens?”
The detective superintendent took great care not to look at him when he got back into the car, closed the door, and asked Hermansson to start the engine, to leave the place.
Not until the vehicle started to move, and then he wound down the window again.
“It was in fact me who gave the orders for all this.”
He nodded at the bulletproof vest and helmet.
“And you . . . you’re doing a good job.”
Hermansson picked up speed, Vårby Gård, Vårberg, Hallunda, Ewert Grens leaned forward again.
“National alert. Road blocks. Two helicopters. Two boats. Six dog units. Fifty-eight cars.”
He waved his hand at the windshield.
“But it doesn’t matter.”
And he pointed toward the highway exit and the high-rise apartments looming out of the dark.
“They’re already there.”
———
The road into Råby narrowed where the metro tracks met the first bus stop, a sharp right turn, a sharp left turn, and the long walls of concrete on both sides, covered in graffiti, colors sprayed in layer upon layer to hide even more grayness.
“Here.”
A bike path that became a sidewalk right beside the road.
“Park here. Hermansson, you and I will walk the rest. Fifteen minutes from here. And you, Sven, change places and get behind the wheel.”
Sven Sundkvist looked at his boss in the rearview mirror.
“I’m not staying here.”
Grens had opened the door and started to get out, when he put a hand on Sven’s shoulder.
“How old is Jonas?”
“Sorry?”
“Your son. How old is he?”
“Thirteen.”
“Right.”
“Right?”
“I don’t have any children. Hermansson doesn’t have any children.”
The hand on his shoulder, Sven Sundkvist felt the weight of it, it wasn’t very often that Ewert Grens touched other people.
“So, you stay here, Sven.”
The face in the rearview mirror, the wrinkles, the bald crown, moved to get out of the car for a second time.
“We’re not to go in, Ewert. Not yet. Not anywhere in Råby. And if and when we do . . . not without protection. That was an order.”
“I’ve lost all I can lose.”
Grens’s hand left his shoulder, Sven Sundkvist felt lighter, the touch which had been so circumspect had held him, weighed him down.
“There’s nothing a snotty-nosed eighteen-year-old can take from me.”
———
They walked side by side down the straight asphalt path, past the lower blocks that all looked identical and the slightly higher blocks that all looked identical, a few playgrounds with sleeping swings and climbing frames that had long since lost most of their blue color, a soccer field, underfoot now gravel and earth, a school, a youth club, and over there advertisements for food shops in a small shopping center and beyond that, even higher blocks that all looked identical.
“He’s escaped fourteen times before.”
Maybe it was getting a bit lighter, late-summer warmth, Mariana Hermansson looked up at the large man who limped and sometimes lost his balance, but rather than slow down, he increased his stride and was therefore sweating profusely, uneven breath in the windless still.
“From foster homes, children’s homes, young offenders’ institutions, prison.”
The shiny face, the jacket that looked new, eyes that flashed a different kind of anger—she couldn’t recall ever having seen him move this fast on foot.
“And every time . . . here. The only place he can bear to be.”
A sudden step to the left, his stiff leg lost its footing and he fell toward her. She raised her arm, ready to take hold of his, when he waved it away in irritation, he’d regained his balance, he didn’t need help.
She looked at someone who was limping, in a rush.
The detective superintendent who was always in his office at City Police, who couldn’t stand to be anywhere else; anywhere else he was just an overweight, balding older man, but in that building he had a name that meant something.
Råby. Or City Police.
Young and hunted. Or older and hunter.
Two worlds. Or the same.
The only place he can bear to be.
“Eight thousand apartments, Hermansson. Ninety-eight percent rental.”
He stopped and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket.
“Twelve thousand inhabitants. Thirty-two percent leave school as soon as they can without the grades to go on to higher education. Twenty-seven percent unemployment. Fifteen percent early retirement.”
Breathing heavily between each clipped word.
“If she’s still alive.”
Eight thousand apartments. As many storage rooms in the atti
cs and cellars.
“Sorry?”
Ewert Grens looked about, surrounded by high-rise blocks with no color.
“If she’s alive, Hermansson.”
———
When he got closer, he saw that what had partially burned down was a nursery school, and behind the bicycle shed lay a blackened, sooty moped. Grens had already identified at least two piles of equally sooty tires and a fence that lay half in ashes. Fragments of pleasure and security. Of wood and metal and rubber. Of community.
“Ewert—”
Ewert Grens waved at Hermansson, she was to stop there by the building, the first one with seven stories. His phone was ringing and he opened it with clumsy fingers.
Wilson.
“Ewert, we had an agreement.”
“Yes.”
“You’re breaking it.”
The road block. He’d gotten out of the car and in the beam from a small light attached to the barrel of a loaded MP5 Heckler & Koch had shown his ID.
They’d reported it.
“Ewert, we agreed that no one would go in before we were absolutely certain that they were, really were, in Råby.”
You were there, Erik. You and me, we were there, back then.
“We had an agreement not to warn those who need to be warned.”
You stood beside me, Erik. You know where he’s heading.
“They’re here. They don’t have anywhere else.”
“Ewert—”
“And I don’t have much time. I need information. Two hours and thirty-two minutes left.”
———
Tens of thousands of square windows with red and green frames.
Ewert Grens stood on the asphalt path that cut straight through between the buildings with identical windows and knew that they were waiting in one of them, maybe they were taking a cautious peep outside right now, watching the two civilian-clad police officers.
He was aware of the unequivocal order that prevented police officers from going into Råby alone, without backup. That right now he was exposing not only himself but also Hermansson to extreme danger.
Two hours and twenty-four minutes.
He had no choice. They were here. And those who knew where they were, were too.
“Hermansson.”
He pointed at something, perhaps her feet.
“You stay here.”
Mariana Hermansson looked at him, at the buildings behind him, at the square farther back with empty benches and overturned bicycle shelters, and farther away, a deserted platform between two metro lines, and if she stretched up, a glimpse of the highway exit.
“No.”
“To keep going where we’re heading is my responsibility alone.”
He had seen her annoyed, even angry before, her eyes like those he remembered in another face long ago that had been the same age, and worn the same uniform, and disappeared, no longer existed.
“What exactly are you saying?”
He had liked it. He still did.
Someone demanding.
“You know, I grew up in a place like this. You know that. Rosengård, Malmö, what happened there, Jesus, Ewert, Stockholm, you’re years behind.”
“I don’t care, Hermansson. You’re staying here.”
She gripped the hand that was pointing at her, or maybe it was her shoes it was pointing at, forced it down, to one side.
“Look around.”
He didn’t. High-rises. Asphalt. He had already seen it all. High-rises. Asphalt.
“I can read this better than you can, Ewert. And I’m more protected here than you will ever be.”
She had grabbed his hand, forced it away.
Someone who demanded something.
Ewert Grens smiled, perhaps, he wasn’t sure.
She had been sitting in her office when he went to look for her in the middle of the night. People who do that don’t need to mix with other people who talk too much and tell you that you’re playing your music too loud; they don’t need to celebrate Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve or even birthdays, which come around with such regularity, because he or she is doing something important and that means that he or she can continue being alone. She had stood up and he hadn’t needed to explain, she had changed out of her uniform into her own clothes, known how high-rises like these, asphalt like this, worked.
His smile, the one that was almost proud.
———
A seven-story building like all the others, rows of even darker windows, balconies with alternate orange and blue doors. Grens tilted his head back, three floors up, somewhere in the middle. The only window with lights on.
They had stopped by the edge of the huge parking lot that separated the building called Råby Allé 67 from the others. About half of the clearly marked spaces were empty, the other half was a long row of older, well-used cars.
With two exceptions.
The detective superintendent sighed.
Every damned investigation. So unbelievably predictable. So unbelievably fucking wearisome that they always lived up to the preconceptions, as if they intentionally reinforced the stereotype until they became it. I am a gangster. I put on my gangster costume so you’ll know that I’m a gangster because then I look how you think I should look. Even the same fucking car models. This one, the black shiny one that was parked nearest, Audi R8, the sort that people used to escape the police, four-wheel drive, powerful engine. And the one parked beside it, a silver Mercedes CLK 500, the sort that successful criminal role models bought with cash and then drove around in while everyone else admired it and longed for it.
“Sven?”
Ewert Grens had gone over to the gleaming, silver car. With one hand leaning heavily on the hood, he looked up into the lightening dark, in his other hand a cell phone.
“Yes?”
“Are you still sitting in the car?”
“Yes.”
“Go to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.”
He could picture his colleague waiting in the car, a slim, middle-aged man who now undid the safety belt and leaned over toward the passenger seat in order to reach the computer on the dashboard.
He imagined he could even hear him pressing the three buttons.
“OK?”
“Look up BGY 397 and . . . hang on a moment . . . GZP 784.”
More tapping.
He wondered whether the slim body was still leaning over, or whether it had moved over and was sitting up straight in the passenger seat.
“Mercedes, silver, 2013 model. Current owner, Gabriel Milton. And . . .”
“Yes?”
“. . . Audi, black, 2013 model. Current owner, Gabriel Milton. Previous owner, Leon Jensen.”
Hand still heavy on the shiny hood.
He was standing on the other side of the parking lot, facing the block of apartments.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Hermansson nodded at the two cars.
“That this is what it’s all about?”
Grens shook his head, rapped the metal with his hand.
“No. I don’t get it. You rob a bank. You don’t want to be suspected. You don’t want the police to see. And . . . then . . . then you go out and buy something like this, something shiny for eight hundred thousand. No. I don’t fucking get it.”
“Because the benefits of looking rich, Ewert, successful, far outweigh the risk.”
She stood between the two cars that cost as much as she earned in five years.
“Three things—be seen, heard, and acknowledged. You need it. I need it. We all need it. It’s human. Otherwise we don’t function. At all. But here . . . just running around robbing banks and getting loads of money you can’t show to anyone . . . that’s of no interest. But what is interesting, however, is showing that you’re successful. And to do that, you need shiny trophies like this. And you show them off and don’t give a damn about a detective superintendent with an apartment on Sveavägen who doesn’t get it. Seen, heard, and acknowledged, Ewer
t. That’s all.”
He rapped the metal of the hood once again and started to walk across the parking lot toward the seven-story building and a window in the middle where there was still light. Apartments that had been just as gray nineteen years ago, he had spent a lot of time in several of them, slowly, gradually herding motivated gang members, one by one, into the witness protection program and afterwards been so pleased with himself—after all, he had defined what was to be seen as a one-off incident, something that should be observed, but that was part of a passing phase.
He hadn’t fully understood the extent of it, the impact. That it would grow, and was still growing.
Ewert Grens nodded to Mariana Hermansson, beside him in front of the dark building and the window that broke the darkness with its light, and they went in different directions along the asphalt that led on to a strip of grass around the back; they met again but still didn’t say anything, they didn’t need to, another window with the light on up there, the same apartment, on the second floor, somewhere in the middle.
The elevator in the stairwell wasn’t working and Grens panted loudly as he tried to keep up with Hermansson, climbing the stairs that were too shallow, out onto the balcony, the warm dawn air on his cheeks and brow.
He stopped.
The door was waiting, about fifteen steps away.
Name Gabriel Milton Personal ID number 931017-0015
In a search of the police authorities’ database just before they left Kronoberg, Ewert Grens had got thirty-two hits when he opened the Criminal Intelligence Database, observed at Hötorget twenty minutes after an armed robbery of Securitas cash-in-transit delivery at Kungsgatan, then looked through the Suspect Identification and Recognition Database and got a total of eighteen hits, questioned in connection with suspected illegal possession of firearms, and finally eight hits in the police criminal records, major theft, §4 Chapter 8, assaulting a police officer, §1 Chapter 17, aggravated assault, §5 Chapter 3. Via three computer screens he had met the teenager who had recently been behind that door.
“We can’t go in, Ewert.”
Ear to the door, silence.
“Ewert, right now, no one is suspected of a crime.”
He pressed the doorbell that didn’t work, then kicked the orange surface and took a step back.
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