Two Soldiers

by Anders Roslund

  He sat down on the edge of the bed, stretched out his legs, unfolded Pereira’s unofficial documentation. Serious drugs crimes. Arson. Serious firearms offenses. If he’d been of age when he was arrested for just one of the crimes, he would have been sentenced to anything from fourteen years to life.

  In a few years. You’re him. And it’s you we’ll be looking for when you have succeeded. And no matter what I do, no matter how much your mother in the kitchen does, it won’t make any difference, you’ve already been discovered, you will never be anything, the only thing you’ll do is serve time.

  He leaned back and lay down on the bed, head on a pillow with a picture of Bambi, it was soft, like the sofa in Homicide.

  ———

  Leon stood by the angled blinds, cell phone in hand, a number on a kitchen counter already saved. He would stand there until the lights in the office were switched on again, until they sat down on the sofa and the chairs and looked at the wall.

  The very first time.

  They’d been selling Gabriel’s morphine for nearly a year and expanded into amphetamines. Pereira had arrested him and he’d sat in the big office with the desk and the policemen and the files, and he’d been so proud, arrested, for real, until he’d seen the wall and all the names and faces that he admired and they hadn’t been there. He’d sat in front of it, waiting, he’d been nothing, then the social worker came and Pereira was given permission to ask his questions. His mom. The social worker had been his mom and they’d gone home together afterwards and he hadn’t been on the fucking wall and he’d stabbed a short knife in the table four times.

  Five arrests later and they were there. Right at the bottom of the second wall.

  Is that me, in the picture? And that one, that photo, is that Gabriel?

  He’d really liked the pictures, and every time he came back and was waiting to be questioned, he would look up at the wall, and every so often they’d been moved higher up and someone who had got to the top couldn’t get any farther, and someone who eight years later was at the top when the wall disappeared, would stay there.

  ———

  Ewert Grens rolled over onto his right side, left arm pressed against a small shelf as he slid over the edge of a boy’s bed and onto the floor. It was considerably harder getting up from a piece of furniture designed for a body that was one meter five and weighed forty-five kilos, than it had been lying down.

  There was a book under the bedside table. A notepad, European geography. He looked through the texts, which were illegible, not one single word was spelled correctly, not one sentence made sense, the same hand that sold drugs with authority, hid weapons, and threatened people to death—a high achiever in crime. Hand on the shelf as he stood up, he went back out into the hall, thanked the woman who’d made up the bed with colorful Bambi and Mickey Mouse bedsheets and fought against a force she could neither see nor understand. He left through the door that still bore witness to forced entry and out into a neighborhood that was still asleep, on his way back to the police station and new faces for the next visit.

  ———

  Grens stood for a while on the steps in the warm air before going in. All these windows that seemed to be watching each other.

  You’re here.

  He wanted to wave, to shout out loud, anything that was more than nothing.

  And maybe it’s you that’s watching me right now.

  Twenty-four hours. He was no closer.

  ———

  José Pereira was standing in front of the wall in the Section Against Gang Crime when Grens came in, folder in his hand, studying clipping after clipping.

  “And now . . . who?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  One of the pictures from a school yearbook, one of the ones sitting in the middle of a row arranged by height in a photograph that strived for symmetry, another face with only a few signs of puberty.

  “Perhaps him. Just as involved in criminal activities, just as young. The same prognosis.”

  Ewert Grens looked at yet another twelve-year-old—as if it were the same face and the same body, over and over again.

  “Råby Backe 23. A mother and a younger brother. Give me five minutes, Grens. You start to walk, I’ll catch up with you.”

  There were three large windows in the room. Ewert Grens looked out through the one in the middle, he still had the urge to wave and shout out for a sign, just one.

  You’re there. I know it.

  You phoned yourself. Twice and a damn busy signal. You gave yourself away. You wanted to give yourself away! You wanted us to come here and to strike and to fail.

  And I can’t grasp why.

  He looked at Pereira, who held up a hand showing all five fingers, I’ll be there soon, and he started to make his way out into the warm air again, slow steps while he waited for company and this time the light wind carried a smell, he was sure, something he knew but couldn’t put his finger on.

  ———

  Now.

  He pulled the blinds up the whole way.

  The lights were on again in the room on the first floor of the police station, glaring ceiling lights, and someone was moving around in there.

  They were there.

  They’d escaped, broken out, and been brought together, they’d climbed to the top and now were going to do what no one else had done.

  Leon gripped the cell phone hard in his hand, index finger on the green ring button. He pressed it. And the signal made its way to a telephone hidden in a toilet only a few hundred meters away.

  Now.

  ———

  The smell.

  It came with the wind. It was inside. It was in his head and chest, chasing around and wanting out, it smelled stronger, more.

  Ewert Grens stopped.

  You’re here. You wanted us to come here. You knew that we were listening to you when you murdered her and you knew when you called yourself a while ago, and you know now, and you’re using us.

  The smell.

  It’s in my head, inside. I can smell it again now.

  The one that’s like marzipan.

  ———

  He ran. He wasn’t particularly far away.

  He ran toward the police station and Pereira, who was inside. And he thought about a motorcycle officer who had run toward a car and hammered a screwdriver with a wrench and opened a car trunk, and afterward said that he did it all wrapped in a peculiar silence.

  The silence that Grens was running in now.

  Not even the sound of his own footsteps.

  He had got halfway when he saw the first windows being blown out, shattering, falling to the ground.

  And still no sound, as if there was no explosion at all.

  She looked at the cloth in the middle of the table, arranged to cover the four holes from four stabs of a knife. He’d been nine years old and forced the sharp edges into the soft wood.

  It was lying on the edge of the white cloth, her tooth.

  Ana had played with it for a while, pulled at it, it was loose, one of her upper front teeth. His fist had hit her cheek, mouth, and jaw. She left it on the kitchen table when she went over to the sink, a glass of cold water, one more, then out into the hall the pain stabbing with every step, her hip, her thigh, he had kicked her twice, the third time between the legs.

  He’d never hit her before. It had always been there on the few occasions that they’d run into each other in recent years, the hate, the aggression, but Gabriel had always been beside him and she’d never been frightened, he had never exploded in the same way when Gabriel was there to balance, to neutralize.

  She stopped. Her hand on the brown wallpaper.

  She had decided so long ago. She just hadn’t understood it then. She had waited for them in a room in the social services office and gradually become a part of the sickness. The long lines of young boys—children—who instead of coming closer, only got more distant. They had just started out on their journey and would never chan
ge direction. They had sat on the chair in front of her desk and she had sat on the chair next to them in front of the police desks and the only thing the two authorities could agree on was that it was too late.

  Hand against the wall, the pain eased a bit and she hobbled over to the window, opened it, breathed in the darkness that was still warm.

  A disease. Outside her body. That was what it felt like at first. Until the afternoon when José Pereira had phoned and asked her to come down to the police station to be present at yet another interview with yet another minor, which turned out to be an interview with a minor who this time was her own son.

  The gentle breeze on her cheeks, Råby dawn, she needed air, the kind of air that was to be found on the other side of these concrete walls.

  The symptoms of the disease had also worked their way into her body. Gang formation, criminality, alienation. Leon. Her son. And she had screamed and cried and watched and embraced, but the ones who gave the diagnosis, who had the authority and power, hadn’t recognized the disease, understood how it developed, it was still happening outside their bodies and what cannot be seen does not exist and symptoms that are not stopped and continue to spread, slowly become death.

  Another controlled intake of the warm dark.

  She had decided then. And again when the policeman who had once forced her onto the kitchen floor had stood at her door and asked her to listen to a murder. And again only a couple of hours ago with the first punch.

  She almost laughed.

  How many times can a woman make a decision?

  She knew that what had slowly died had to be buried in order to make way for what would grow and renew; she had decided that that was the case and now she had to get the fireman to decide the same.

  She leaned out of the window. Over there, the empty square and the empty shopping center, the snorting metro.

  And the other noise. That sounded like a big bang.

  The strange thing was, she was certain that it was somehow also connected to Leon and the disease that they had driven past on the E4 without seeing.

  Gabriel lay down on her white sofa and looked at them. He was bleeding a bit, the material took on another color.

  He had almost never been to her place. Now it was his only home.

  He’d known before they even rang the bell and told her that she had to go out, he’d known they would come. She had to go out and go anywhere but here. Wanda had cried for a while, protested, but without raising his voice, he couldn’t do it, his ribs like knives, he’d held her by the shoulders and walked beside her to the door and the stairs, and then gone in again without locking the door, without even closing it.

  He was lying there now while they went through her apartment and aimlessly picked up her things that meant nothing to any of them but was just a demonstration of power. They’d sat down at the sitting room table, Jon, Big Ali, Bruno. He could have challenged them. Maybe even hurt them, even killed. But he hadn’t challenged—they weren’t doing anything wrong, just as Leon hadn’t done anything wrong. The kicks, the punches, not even the five round burn marks on the only part of his skin that was untouched, Leon had just done what he had to do.

  And that fucking awful moment when he was lying on his back on the floor and Leon opened the door again and they’d looked at each and known that it was the last time.

  Gabriel undid his pants and pulled them off, nodded at Big Ali, Jon, Bruno. Their eyes that weren’t laughing and weren’t crying. He was grateful that they’d taken knock-off Rohypnol, eight milligrams each no doubt; it was his fault, not theirs, they had to look at him without feeling. He lay down, it would be easier for them to get to it then, and Jon pressed the round sanding disc against his right thigh and the month-old tattoo that was still raised, and Big Ali put the plug in, you’ve got fifty thousand in fines, he bled heavily when the sanding machine reached maximum speed, but he said nothing and they stopped after a while, sat down by the table while his thigh bled all over the rest of her white sofa, you won’t get fucking fifty thousand, it was fucking me who started all this, they had to wait for half an hour, four milligrams more of Rohypnol and the beginnings of a scab that they sanded again, fifty thousand in fines and you’ve got three hours, and between each round, a bit more color bled away, he moved after a while so that a big pool wouldn’t develop, and that was when he heard the explosion and felt a flutter of pride; he knew exactly what it was.

  ———

  Martha Pereira closed the door and he had stood for a while outside. He had never met her before. Now a single parent with two children. The person she had chosen to share her life with would never open the door again, sneak up behind her, kiss her neck, whisper her name, ask who was going to pick up the two girls from soccer. She had asked Grens to leave in a friendly manner and closed the door.

  There was nothing more to say. That’s the way it is. No one sneaks up behind you anymore, no one whispers your name, no one kisses your neck. And you don’t react in the way others expect you to react because you’ve never understood how you’re supposed to react. There are no fucking words.

  Ewert Grens gripped the steering wheel with both hands as he drove away, he would drive until this was over, one hand to the wheel when his cell phone rang.

  “Ewert?”

  Gunnar Werner from floor eight. He’d stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “Zero four forty-two.”

  “Yes?”

  “You were right. He called. Again. Exactly then.”

  That smell. Inside his head. The smell of marzipan when he ran through the soundless dark without footsteps and without shattering glass blasting out and falling to the ground.

  They were hunting for someone who was also on the hunt, who knew that they were listening and wanted them to be there just then.

  04:42.

  He’d called. And a building had exploded.

  “Where from?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Werner, I . . .”

  “I need four towers to determine the exact position. I’ve only got two. The others . . . one of the servers isn’t responding, but to hazard a guess, another ten minutes to get an update, perhaps a quarter of an hour.”

  ———

  Grens held both his hands firmly on the wheel. So you let the image of what’s no longer there block out the images that press in on you because you don’t understand that what you’re frightened of has already happened.

  “Ewert?”

  Gunnar Werner and the cell phone and just one hand.

  “Yes?”

  “Zero four forty-two. We’re there. We know where from. And how.”

  “Werner?”

  “A call from one cell phone to another. The exact position of Leon Jensen’s phone—Råby Allé 146, fourth floor. The exact position of the receiving phone . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “. . . Råby police station. In a corridor right outside the Section Against Gang Crime.”

  Ewert Grens checked the dashboard clock: 05:37. Nearly an hour, like last time, he was long since gone.

  ———

  Even when he had ordered twelve members of the special firearms command and four civilian intelligence officers to raid the apartment on the fourth floor of Råby Allé 146, he’d realized that they would be hiding somewhere else. An hour and thirteen minutes was an eternity in an anthill with passageways to eight thousand apartments and as many cellar storerooms.

  Five mattresses and five pillows. Beer cans and cake wrappers.

  Grens looked out through the open window, Råby police station down there, you could see it so clearly from here, the three big windows on the first floor that were gone, one of the fire brigade’s small red command vehicles parked in front of them, alongside Nils Krantz’s dark blue forensics van, the curious and distressed onlookers on the paths trying to get closer, and at the front, the pens and cameras that he always avoided.

  You were standing here. When I turned around and lo
oked for you, when I went in, when I went out, you could see me all the time. You knew and you were in control. And now you know that we know that you knew. And you don’t have control any longer.

  Ewert Grens adjusted the communications radio that was hanging from his breast pocket.

  The voices, hectic, but he could follow them.

  They had managed to move somewhere else, but this time he had three dog patrols at his disposal, which had already picked up several trails and disappeared in different directions.

  “He lost it down by the door to the cellar!”

  Something scraping, labored breathing. Grens turned up the voices in his breast pocket.

  “But he picked it up again, I’d guess about twenty-five meters away!”

  The fugitives had separated for the first time and were no longer running in a pack. They would never leave Råby. And splitting up here, in such a limited space, increased the chances of the dogs keeping track of at least some of them.

  Grens left the window and walked toward the abandoned front door.

  He had got closer.

  ———

  The crowd was bigger than it had seemed from above. Several rows, tightly packed, and the crush that always develops when lots of bodies wait together, moving forward, a wave of energy. Ewert Grens systematically elbowed his way through, climbed over the police cordon at precisely the spot where he’d turned and run back a few hours ago when he’d realized what was about to happen.

  Three big holes where there had recently been windows, the Section Against Gang Crime where he had spent so much time over the past day or two. Large and small shards of glass on the ground, he walked over several, an unpleasant jarring sound as they were ground against the asphalt. He had got as far as the red command vehicle when he Detective Superintendent Grens heard the first voices that he’d never understood the point of and just a minute, Detective Superintendent Grens had therefore never paid any attention to. They wanted something and he was supposed to give it. He wasn’t interested in such one-sidedness. So he did what he always did, didn’t bother to turn around. Until one of them jumped over the cordon and ran after him, put his hand on his shoulder.