Two Soldiers (40 page)

The smoke really was there, it was obvious now.

Gabriel peeled the material away, went into the kitchen and then the bedroom, it was strongest out in the hall by the front door; he opened it.

The stairwell was full of smoke.

Jon and Bruno and Big Ali were standing at a distance, he could make them out through the gray mist. They were holding the entrance door open, and the draft was blowing the smoke inward, toward the apartment. He heard the fire alarm going off,
fifty thousand, Daddy
, and it was only now that he saw what was burning,
within the hour, Daddy
, a stroller, the fabric was almost gone, and they shouted to him before they closed the door and left.

———

Ana stood on her toes, she hadn’t been able to see much more than the building’s shiny roof and narrow chimney, she was short, and somehow—when sharp elbows shoved—she always seemed to end up farther away. She leaned cautiously back so that she wouldn’t bump into anyone who was standing close by, and if, at the same time, she leaned slightly to the left the powerful and regular pulsing almost disappeared. It started in her mouth and the hole where her front tooth had been, carried on down into her chest, and culminated around her hip and pelvis. She had only ever experienced such all-consuming pain once before—a bed in a cell in a prison, he had pressed against her so hard from inside and then closed his eyes when he lay on her stomach, until now, almost the same pain.

She had been standing by the open kitchen window in the apartment, watching the dawn, when she heard the dull explosion and realized that it was connected with Leon and the disease. She had run down the hall and down the stairs and out the back toward the noise that had already disappeared. It was still quite dark but she had already from a distance seen the smoke pouring out through the three windows with the light from the police station office shining above it, and what was gray and swirling became so clear, almost beautiful. She’d been one of the first to get there and there had been plenty of space, she’d stood quietly and looked at the room that she’d visited so many times and she could hear his voice, surprised by his big nine-year-old movements, he had been so proud, she’d sat beside him just as she always sat beside them and no matter how much she’d reached out to him, it hadn’t been far enough.

She had stopped some distance away from the windows that were no longer there and watched the smoke diminish, more people had come and it started to be crowded and then the cameras had come and there was more of a crush, and one of them, she couldn’t remember who, one of them had a recorder and a pen, had whispered that he’d heard from reliable sources that a policeman had died in there. She’d looked at him and he didn’t have a clue who she was and that she’d given birth to a son eighteen years ago and she’d just nodded vaguely and realized that it was true, a policeman had died. She cried tears that were no longer there and screamed a scream that could no longer be heard, and the crowd had grown without understanding that a disease like this, when no one sees it and treats it, it will continue to spread.

She had recognized the fireman as soon as he’d climbed out of the car, which was considerably smaller than the truck he normally used and it had
LEADING
FIREFIGHTER
written on it. A couple of the police officers who were on guard had made sure that the mass of bodies dispersed somewhat and then removed the blue-and-white cordon when the red car drove up to the front door and parked by the broken glass that lay all over the asphalt

She would wait for him. She had decided.

She would wait until he came out again, and this time she would not stop talking until he had understood.

———

To harm people
.

Thom had stopped halfway down the stairs out of Råby police station to talk to a large detective superintendent from City Police, who had a limp.

More than buildings
.

He had carried on down toward the crowd and the red car, opened the door to the driver’s seat, and sat down with his chest heavy on the wheel.

And hadn’t got any farther.

He had the key in his hand that was shaking so much that he immediately dropped it on the floor in the space between the accelerator
and the clutch. He had gripped the wheel with hands that slowly slipped down, off. A person he had come to like had been sitting in there. On the floor. Leaning against one of the external walls, in his lap the organs that had been squeezed out of his inside.

Thom leaned forward. If he held his left hand hard around his right wrist, if he could just keep his fingers still, he would be able to reach out and pick up the oblong piece of metal and put it into the ignition and start the car and leave this place.

It was quite simple, he couldn’t take any more.

And maybe that was why he heard both the quiet spoken call from the communication radio on the dashboard, as well as the regular beeping from the pager in his front pocket, despite the fact that they were simultaneous. Perhaps that was why he’d let the key stay where it was between the pedals and opened the trunk and taken out the powder extinguisher and started to run toward the entrance a couple of minutes away. Perhaps a very ordinary call to a burning stroller would for a short while force him to think about something other than someone who was not breathing.

———

Ana had leaned a little more to the left and a little more back and just there, just as she was about to fall onto the curious and upset onlookers beside her, it was as if the pain didn’t reach her. The tall fireman had disappeared into the building twenty minutes ago and she kept an eye on the entrance and his red car. The police station wasn’t burning anymore, it was quite a while since she’d seen the smoke become transparent in the bright lights, he was done and could come out any moment.

The office that was missing three windows.

Leon, who she hadn’t managed to reach out to, no matter how much effort she made.

The social worker who had seen other Leons with other mothers who also did their utmost, but still didn’t manage. She often thought about them, where they were heading, which prison they would go to, which prison wardens they would harm, kill, how they would look at
their mothers as they raised their arms to hit them for the first time, what the policeman who worked in the police station they would blow up was called. But most often she thought about the boy who had also been nine the first time, but now was twelve, the one who was called Eddie and who over the years was the one who was most like Leon. His mother had sat beside him and made a plea, in the way that Ana had pleaded for them to take over, do whatever to get him away from what she didn’t have the power to reach. Afterward they’d sat in the social services office and had coffee. After every new interview with Eddie, who was too young to be prosecuted, they had continued to drink coffee. Ana really liked her company; they had both seen what those outside did not want to see, the disease and its symptoms, and from her conversations with Deniz she had come to understand that even if someone has long since given up hope that she will ever manage to reach the one she loves, she can perhaps make sure that others do.

She had jumped when the detective inspector, who had once forced her to the floor, worked his way through the crowd, climbed across the cordon, and went into the building, the anxiety that came in the wake of his lumbering frame never seemed to diminish. A few minutes later, the tall man she had been waiting for came out through the door, hurried toward to the red car, and then sat for a long time behind the wheel without going anywhere. She had started to push her way toward him, with a lighter heart, when he suddenly sprang up, took a fire extinguisher out of the trunk, and began to run.

She had run after him.

She hadn’t taken her eyes off him, run,
run
, Råby Allé 114. He disappeared in through the door.

Ana was standing outside now.

She closed her eyes, gathered what was inside, and let it sink to her stomach, let it lie there, feel it, let it slowly up through her chest again, up through her throat, until it rested between her temples and forehead and she once again trusted her ability to speak and move with control.

“Hello.”

He was standing in front of a blackened metal frame between the doors to the two apartments on the ground floor. There was the pungent smell of burned fabric, but there wasn’t much smoke now. She went closer—this time they had set fire to a stroller.

“I want to talk to you.”

He hadn’t heard her come in and spun around, studied the woman who had tried to engage him several times before.

“You . . . again?”

“I . . .”

He put down the fire extinguisher beside the burned metal frame and waved his hand at her.

“Go.”

“I won’t go. Not this time.”

He shook his head.

“Then I’ll go.”

A last look at the extinguished stroller before he picked up the fire extinguisher that hadn’t been used and walked toward the door.

She ran in front of him, stood in his way.

“I need your help.”

“Please can you get out of the way.”

“You can help me.”

“
Move
!”

She kept her eyes on him all the time; he wasn’t going to look away. As she started to take off her clothes.

Item by item in a pile on the stone floor.

The fireman shook his head in pity and turned away so he didn’t have to see the pale body that was cold, bastard Råby, which was suffocating him with its frustration.

“Look at me.”

She moved, around him,
wasn’t going to let him look away
.

She had decided.

“I’ll stand here until you look at me.”

Thom closed his eyes, swallowed. Then he turned around to face her again.

“Thank you.”

He had already caught a glimpse of her face, the blue cheek and swollen chin and upper jaw, the gap there, a missing front tooth. She took hold of his hand with care and pointed at her right breast, her voice still slightly too loud.

“I want you to look at this.”

He had never seen a discolored, swollen, woman’s breast before.

Underneath it, he could rest his eyes there, a hand’s width of pale, cold skin.

And then her hip and the red mark that was gradually changing color, her thigh, both of them, someone had aimed at her pelvis.

“Don’t you understand?”

Leon beside her on a chair at the police station, nine years old, she had stretched herself without reaching him
.

“I need your help . . .”

Eddie beside her on a chair at the police station, nine years old, Deniz had stretched herself without reaching him
.

“. . . with this, with what’s . . . happening . . . to get it to . . . stop. Forever. Without hurting anyone.”

She pointed at the stroller behind him, then at the police station, maybe also at the buildings out there, or maybe it was the sky.

“I don’t understand.”

His hand, she hadn’t let go of it.

“What . . . is it you want me to do?”

———

The burning stroller, the gray smoke. And Jon and Bruno and Big Ali who had seen him and left.

Gabriel lay down on the white sofa. He wasn’t bleeding anymore. He had emptied Wanda’s bathroom cabinet of painkillers and whatever it was that was pulsing slowed down, the enormous hole on his right thigh stung more than it stabbed.

A sooty black metal frame with metal wheels outside the apartment door.

He knew what that meant. He’d done things like that himself. Alex who had been arrested for various reasons on suspicion of
assaulting one of the greengrocers who had a stall on the square and who hadn’t paid his monthly dues, and a woman had seen it and reported him and decided to stand witness. She had three children. And Gabriel and Leon had set fire to the same number of strollers and rolled them into the elevator and up to outside her door. She’d understood and the same evening withdrew her witness statement and Alex was released without charge and escaped a year and a half in prison.

He tried to feel something. Leon had won. Pay, or we’ll hurt your family. It didn’t feel like he’d expected it to feel. It didn’t feel like anything.

It was easier to get up from the sofa this time, all his weight on his left leg when he went into the kitchen and pulled out and turned around the top drawer in the cupboard beside the sink and pulled off one of the rolls of banknotes that were taped to the back. The apartment door again, the metal frame was standing there and he kicked it, a quick glance through the glass at the large crowd outside the police station. He would have liked to be able to go there and stand among the onlookers and see the consequences of the explosion he himself had planned and created. They had nothing on him. He wasn’t formally a suspect, just as Jon, Big Ali, and Bruno weren’t formally suspects. The police search out there was for the five fugitives who had killed a prison warden first, and now a policeman. He should be able to go out there, move around freely, but knew that someone who is not suspected of anything, and therefore cannot be arrested, might well have information and so could be pulled in for questioning and information and he wanted to avoid that—sit there in that building, look at the floor, and refuse to answer the questions. So he hurried past the glass door two floors down and chose—when he cautiously opened the metal door into the underground garage and spotted a couple of police cars on guard by the entrance—to crawl along the filthy concrete between the rows of parked cars to the rusty Chevrolet that had stood in the same place for a few years. And that no one touched. Their mailbox. He had detached the roll of tape from under the bumper and attached the
banknotes in their place near the back left-hand wheel, one hundred five-hundred notes.

Leon had won. And Gabriel didn’t feel anything.

———

Ewert Grens was still holding the communications radio in his hand, careful to catch every word. “I can see them again!” He rushed out of the half-blasted office that had once constituted the heart of the Section Against Gang Crime, crossed a floor covered in bits of porcelain and plaster and wood and the sort of metal that was used in cell phones. “Still two of them! On their way in the door!” Out of the building, past shouting mouths and four hundred and fifty meters to a vandalized entrance in a graffitied wall, Råby Backe 17, he got there at the same time as fourteen members of the Special Firearms Command.