Two Soldiers (47 page)

“Shut the fuck up!”

There hadn’t been much more to say.

Grens had got up, folder in his hand and both the plastic cups in his jacket pockets, when he pointed to the lamp, which was on.

“Turn it off. Try to get some sleep.”

He’d walked toward the door, opened it, and then stood there.

He’s not going to turn it off. He never turns it off
.

And then he turned around again.

“Or else . . . leave it on. I normally do.”

And when he was about halfway down the remand corridor, the voice that always screamed shouted: “Respect!”

He had heard and the strange warmth spread from his feet all the way to his stomach again.

“Respect, pig bastard!”

He woke early.

A couple of hours of deep sleep on the soft sofa between five and seven and he was rested, every muscle relaxed, easy in his heart that so often raced.

He sat down in front of the pictures on the computer and the eighteen-year-old he’d visited two nights in a row. A ninety-minute escape divided over forty-three cameras and three prisons. The thin timeline on the bottom of the screen moved him forward and back with the same unmasked figure. He paused for a long time on the picture from the prison wall, leaned back to focus on the unfocused. First the hands that were carrying a serious firearm along the top of the wall, which meant power, having power. Then the face, so proud when it looked into the camera and shouted something.

No yesterday. No tomorrow.

You neither live before nor after, but only have now to lose.

But if I don’t move the timeline any more this time. If I stop and zoom in on your eyes instead.

I see something else.

What you’re actually frightened of, I, if anyone, can see it, how damn lonely you are.

He turned from the computer to the open folder and the eighteen-year-old photograph that he’d taken himself outside a red house.

He compared them.

The picture of Daniel Jensen, who under the witness protection program had become Sonny Steen and was standing outside a youth hostel, and the picture of Leon Jensen, who would never be anyone else, standing high up on a prison wall.

They were the same age, the same height, the same slim build and tight lips and staring eyes.

They could have been brothers. They were father and son.

You could change the name.

But not the past.

Grens turned around and put in a new tape. He opened a new window on the computer screen, the
population register
, and first wrote in
date of birth 1975
and
Jensen Daniel
without getting any hits, an old name that no longer existed; then he wrote in the same date of birth, but this time with the name
Steen Sonny
.

Hit.

He existed. And he was alive. People who had abused drugs so much and for so long seldom were.

Current address
.

Ewert Grens read it, looked away, read it again.

Box 38, 175 23 Aspsås
.

He got up. He sat down again.

The PO box was in the post office in Aspsås. The address of every inmate in Aspsås prison. Daniel Jensen, who was Sonny Steen, was living out his sentence in the prison where Leon Jensen had so recently been serving
his
sentence.

The heat in his throat and cheeks; he didn’t like that pulsing sensation.

The same prison.

Grens’s restless fingers on the keyboard opened another window, logged into the police
criminal records register
.

He had housed him in a beautiful youth hostel outside Nässjö, under a witness protection program that had lasted for two months, until his first relapse. According to the register, he got his first conviction only six months later. And since then, in and out, twenty-seven convictions, sentences of two months to a year, drugs offenses, burglary, a couple of assaults.

He reached for the phone.

“Good morning.”

“How can I help you?”

“Ewert Grens. I’d like you to help me with a name.”

He’d called Lennart Oscarsson, the governor of Aspsås prison. They had only met on a couple of occasions, the first time long ago when a misjudged decision had led to the release of a convicted pedophile who had killed again, and then more recently a couple of years ago when the governor’s orders had forced a CHIS to kill two inmates.

“OK.”

“Sonny Steen.”

“What about him?”

“I want to know which unit he’s in.”

“Why?”

Ewert Grens had opened the door to a home in the middle of the night, in a terraced house where time had stood still. He’d put severe pressure on an already stressed man in his own kitchen and Oscarsson had in desperation taken off his uniform and cut it into tiny squares.

“Would you rather I came to your house? Again?”

Lennart Oscarsson didn’t answer.

The sound of another keyboard, a few seconds, no longer.

“Block D.”

“Right?”

“Unit D1 Left.”

The same feeling as just a few minutes ago when he’d read and reread a PO box address on the computer screen.

His throat, his temples, pulsating.

“D1 Left.”

“Yes.”

The folder on the desk—the one who was eighteen years old and standing in front of a red house. The frozen image on the computer—the one who was eighteen and standing on the edge of a prison wall.

“It’s the same unit. It’s the same unit!”

“Same as what?”

It was quite a cool morning, mid-September, and his breath became small clouds when the moisture met the cold air. Ewert Grens walked the short stretch between the police headquarters on Bergsgatan and the public prosecutor’s office on Kungsbron, took the
elevator up seven floors, he saw Ågestam already from a distance and rushed into his office without knocking.

“I want you to do me a favor.”

“You didn’t knock.”

“I want you to place Leon Jensen in Aspsås for the remainder of his time on remand, before the hearing.”

“For someone who thinks that knocking is important, you’re pretty damn bad at it yourself.”

“In the same cell as before he escaped.”

Lars Ågestam sighed and put his pen down in one of the two desk organizers.

“Leon Jensen is on remand with full restrictions.”

Grens took a step into the room. But he didn’t sit down. He couldn’t remember ever having done that here.

“You’ve already got everything you need for a judgment. Blood, DNA, fibers, fingerprints, time of death. You have probable cause. You know that he’ll be convicted.”

“And I’m saying no.”

“You couldn’t keep him in a more secure place than in that prison,
and that unit
, where the young woman he murdered worked. With her colleagues, Ågestam! They will, believe me, watch over every visit to the bathroom, change of underpants, every wink of the eye, twenty-four-seven. And they will wait and hope for a chance to get . . . even more control.”

The public prosecutor wasn’t as young any longer; Grens could see obvious wrinkles that he’d never noticed before around his eyes and his hair was starting to recede. Ågestam straightened his glasses and tightened his lips.

“I have never previously even considered moving a murder suspect, a
double
murder suspect, from a remand cell to a cell in a normal unit
before
he’s been sentenced.”

One more step. And then, the detective superintendent sat down for the first time in the office he disliked so much. It was hard to decide whether Grens or Ågestam looked more troubled.

“It’s very important.”

“Important?”

If you dare to believe.

“For me.”

“I don’t understand. Why would it be important?”

Someone who is going to be locked up for the rest of his life for murder.

Someone who is going to be locked up for the rest of his life, because the need for someone who builds machines from bits and pieces doesn’t exist on the other side of the wall, where bits and pieces are allowed.

If you dare to believe
.

“That’s all I can say.”

Lars Ågestam looked at the large man who seemed so small on the low chair. He had once called him by his first name, Lars, he had said, and Ågestam had, without understanding why, been filled with horror and hoped that he would never hear it again from Ewert Grens’s mouth. Now the detective superintendent had sat down on a chair in his office for the first time, and from the low piece of furniture was forced to look up at the prosecutor behind his desk. This, this was even worse than
Lars
, and he would remove that chair after this visit, never risk having to be in this position again.

“Ågestam, he’s going to end up there. And the only thing that remains for us to do, for you, is arrange a couple of hearings, and I’ll take responsibility for that, we’ll go to Aspsås and hold the hearings there.”

The still relatively young public prosecutor and the considerably older policeman.

They would never understand each other. And they didn’t really want to either.

“OK, we’ll do it. But it’s your responsibility, Grens. From now on, you are personally responsible for the consequences.”

A day passes so quickly.

After his visit to the public prosecutor’s office, Ewert Grens had gone back to his office and stayed there. There was no time for any other investigation until the next nightly meeting. He had plundered the vending machine out in the corridor of strawberry yogurt and dry, plastic sandwiches, while he read his way through to the end of the folder about what had happened in the past—it was dark outside when he stopped at a report at the end of the investigation that was nearly two decades old, two handwritten pages, tightly spaced, about an arrest in an apartment on the third floor, Råby Allé 34,
TOMAS
on the door. His own handwriting in blue ink. He tried to remember why it had not been typed, if it had been more urgent than usual, if he hadn’t wanted to hand it to anyone else to print and copy, it only took one hand to be involved in a witness protection program that didn’t play ball for lives to be put at risk. He sat down by the open window and read the text of a man who was twenty years younger. One of the few reports that included the name Ana Tomas, as well as Daniel Jensen. A young member of a criminal gang, classified as highly dangerous, who was being threatened and was frightened after losing an internal power struggle, had asked for help from the enemy, the only way out, had turned to the investigating detective sergeant and been exploited, told them about all the members, hangarounds, prospects, and, finally, about his pregnant girlfriend, who on his orders was storing a kilo of heroin in a pasta jar; she would subsequently be arrested, held on remand, convicted and sentenced, and then transported to Hinseberg prison for women. Six months later she gave birth to a son there.

Leon Jensen.

Now he was being detained in the left-hand corridor, several floors up, accused of murder.

Meanwhile, Marko Bendik was in Huddinge remand prison, Uros Koren in Uppsala remand prison, Alexander Eriksson in Nyköping remand prison, and Reza Noori in Gävle remand prison, without any means of communication, accused of aggravated assault and kidnapping. A total of five hangarounds had also been sent to various remand prisons in northern Sweden, three prospects to different Paragraph 12 secure training units, and eight minors called in for questioning in the presence of their single mothers at the social services offices.

And the girlfriend.

Gabriel Milton’s girlfriend.

They had arrested her on a concrete floor at the top of a building after he’d told them that she had acted as a courier for several months, and now she was also being held in the building—in the women’s unit in Kronoberg remand prison.

Drug supplies to Aspsås prison, Österåker prison, Storboda prison, stuffed plastic bags up her vagina. Serious drug crimes and four, maybe even five, years in Hinseberg.

A generation later. But the same consequences. Even a pregnant girlfriend.

It was past midnight.

Carrying the folder with him, he left the office and took the elevator up to the remand jail. And when he stood beside the warden and knocked on the door, when the hatch was pulled to one side, he saw a bedside lamp that was on.

“You?”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t asked them to call you.”

“Your last night here—tomorrow night you’ll be sleeping in Aspsås again. I still have things I want to discuss with you.”

Plastic cups just like before, one on the window ledge and one in his hand when Grens sat down.

“I’ve known you all your life. Or that’s to say . . . I’ve known about you all your life.”

He held up the photograph they had looked at together once already, and that now didn’t seem to be as frightening.

A newly born baby with wet hair on a wet stomach. A barred window visible in the background.

“The photo, it was me who took it.”

The eighteen-year-old boy reached out his hand. For the first time, he held the photograph, himself.

“I was there. When you were born. I only had a few seconds. That was how long you lay there. Before someone else took over your care.”

“You were there?”

“Yes.”

“And I only lay there for a few seconds?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t say that yesterday.”

“I’m telling you today.”

Leon Jensen held the paper, picked at the photograph until it started to come loose at the edge.

“But we also met another time. When you stayed with me. For two weeks.”

Leon didn’t say anything. Maybe he didn’t understand.

Ewert Grens searched for the face far beneath the other one that was now so hard and tense, searched for the two-year-old in between various homes.

“Your mom called me from a phone booth in Hinseberg prison. She was crying. And asked me to look after her son until the next foster family had been arranged. I still don’t understand why, but, well—a policeman—a prisoner is always allowed to call the police.”

Grens pointed at the picture that was now slightly frayed at the edges.

“You didn’t like porridge. You refused. But you loved rosehip soup.”

She had phoned the policeman who had arrested and questioned her. And he had mumbled yes and for two weeks had looked after a child. A holiday, he’d said. The only child who had ever been in the
apartment in Sveavägen. He’d never had a clue about what to do with children, but the boy had eaten and pooped and slept and was still healthy when he was picked up by the new foster family one Sunday evening.

He had no doubt said afterward that she could phone him if she needed help. But had never contacted them himself. Not the mother. Nor the son. He knew that she’d called again several years later and that he hadn’t answered, let her report the boy’s first conviction and sentence on an answering machine, and could Ewert do anything about it? He had then registered every new conviction and sentence for a while and thought about getting in touch, but hadn’t done it; it wasn’t a conscious choice, he just never got around to it.

“Pig bastard.”

His voice wasn’t hard when he said it. No scorn. And then for the first time he drank more than a sip of the coffee.

“Pig bastard! Rosehip soup?”

Leon Jensen was almost smiling, some more coffee, then a long silence until Grens coughed.

“What I said yesterday. That he was a heroin addict, that he was on high doses; took a gram at a time and was scared of doing cold turkey and of being locked up and that’s why he disappeared when he got permission to visit your mom when you were born.”

“Yes?”

“That was a lie.”

“A . . . lie.”

“I shouldn’t tell you the truth. But I will.”

Leon sat completely still. And over the next couple of minutes, Ewert Grens gave him a summary of an eighteen-year-old investigation involving a gang member who had informed on his brothers and was one of the first to join a Swedish witness protection program.

“No overdose?”

“No.”

“So how did he die then?”

“He was placed in a youth hostel.”

“How did he die?”

“He got a new identity.”

“Did you not fucking hear what I said, pig bastard? How did he die?”

“No contact. He wasn’t allowed any contact. But after a while, the drugs, the other life, he relapsed, started to commit crimes again.”

“What is it you don’t understand?
How did he die
?”

“He got caught. Was convicted under his new name. And since then . . . he’s been going in and out.”

It was only now. That he understood.

“What the fuck are you saying?”

“I—”

“That . . . he snitched on the others?”

Grens nodded.

“Yes.”

“That he snitched on the others, like Gabriel did on me and that he’s . . . alive?”

“I don’t know anything about Gabriel. But yes, he’s alive.”

“That . . .”

Leon Jensen was shaking when he stood up from the bunk and took a step toward his visitor. Grens got up at the same time, they stood opposite each other, close, and the detective superintendent watched the teenager’s balled hands closely. Until the young body turned around and punched the concrete wall with full force. And again. Ewert Grens wasn’t particularly good at placing a gentle hand on someone else’s shoulder, but he did, and Leon turned back, shaking, spitting. Twice he spat at him, the first time on the left shoulder, then the right pant leg by the knee. Grens stood still and looked at him, even when he took out a handkerchief and wiped the beige shoulder and gray pant leg.

It was the kind of saliva that was gone the moment it disappeared.

That wasn’t always the case with saliva.

But he had nothing more to say, so he turned and closed the door behind him.

“And now, fucking pig bastard?”

The rectangular hatch. Every time. The mouth that didn’t know what to say until a back had been turned.

“Who the fuck is he now, fucking pig bastard?”

His name is Sonny Steen
.

“I don’t know what his name is now.”

“And where—”

In the unit where you were so recently
.

“And I don’t know where.”

“Fucking bastard pig, I—”

“That’s the way it works. I’m not supposed to know. What his name is. Where he is.”

The elevator down. The dark corridor where he felt so safe. The coffee machine greeted him as he passed.

A small strip of light. An office with the door ajar. He stopped, his face suddenly in her doorway.

“Are you still here?”

“Are
you
still here?”

Mariana Hermansson had headphones on; they got caught in her hair when she took them off.

“Today’s interviews. And Jensen is saying nothing. Not to me, not to Sven.”

Ewert Grens went farther into her office. The piles of paper that previously covered most of her desk had now been divided into several smaller piles on the floor. She had summarized all communication between the fugitives in the form of diagrams, lists, and maps, from the evening when Julia Bozsik was suffocated to death in a car trunk—all cell phone traffic and the eight towers the calls were transmitted from.

“We’ve got enough evidence. But I want a confession.”

“Maybe you’ll get your confession, Ewert. When I question him again tomorrow. At
Aspsås prison
.”

She looked at him. She wanted to know why.

A prison before the prisoner was convicted?

He didn’t answer; sat down on the chair in front of her instead and waited.

“How are things, Ewert?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re wandering around here in the middle of the night.”

“I’ve always done that.”

“You have always done that. But you look . . . you look like you . . . the past few days, Ewert, there’s something.”

He didn’t need a rectangular hatch. His mouth still had no idea what it was about to say.

“How many murders have I investigated?”

Mariana Hermansson looked at someone who wanted something, it was the middle of the night, and who didn’t know how to go about it. And instead of doing what he normally did, had sat down and started talking about something completely different.

“The last time . . . you asked me to count, do you remember?”

He remembered.

“You have investigated two hundred and eighteen murders. Including these two.”

“Two hundred and eighteen.”

“Yes.”

“And I’ve always been relieved, often proud, when I’ve sent a murderer to where he belongs. To a cell. Locked up. As I think that murderers should pay. It sounds so simple. But then I am simple.”

“Yes, you are so simple, Ewert.”

“But this time . . . I don’t know, I feel . . . something different.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“So, if you want me to help . . .”

“You’ll be good enough to leave.”

He pointed to her door.

“We’re in
my
office, Ewert. You’re sitting on
my
chair.”

He looked at her. And then looked around, stood up, and started to leave.

“That’s good, Ewert.”

“What?”

He stood in her doorway and threw open his hands.

“
What’s
good?”

“You’ve never felt anything. If it’s not been about you. If you’re feeling something now, if it’s confusion, frustration, whatever, Ewert, if for once it’s about someone else, that’s good.”

“Good?”

“Yes.”

“How can it be good to solve a murder and not feel . . . relieved? Or proud?”

He shook his head and continued walking.

“Only you know that.”

She smiled.

“Did you hear that? Only you know that, you old bastard.”

He had been on the way back to his office, and then he wasn’t anymore.

He went in the other direction, to the seventh floor again and the left-hand remand corridor and a cell far down and a final visit. And he thought about a father who was still alive, because a policeman named Grens had helped him out of a world where those who stayed died young.

He was alive, but had been dead to his son.

That was how it always was. Moments, decisions that will affect someone else’s life forever.

Moments that you can’t influence yourself, but that are fixed, steer, take over.
What you are scared of, Ewert, has already happened
. He had learned that, in the end.

But the boy on the edge of the wall holding a heavy weapon and shouting loudly at the security camera? Ewert Grens would always despise anyone who assumed the right to injure a life, but this time, it was the circumstances he despised, the ones that created the person who injured,
what you are scared of, Ewert, has already happened and will happen again
.

He knocked on the cell door and opened the hatch.

Leon Jensen was lying on his back on the small cell’s narrow bunk. Grens could see that he was awake, his eyes closed, but his breathing shallow.

“You asked a question earlier.”

“And you can fuck off, pig.”

He turned onto his side, his back to the door.

“You wanted a name.”

“I spat on you.”

“Well, you’ll get it. The name.”

“And I’ll do more than spit at you next time.”