Two Soldiers (7 page)

When the eighteen-year-old with a tense face had finished reading and in silence pushed the large pile of paper back toward the lawyer’s empty chair, when the brown briefcase was packed and closed, when the female, and very young, prison warden had opened the door to let the inmate who was serving a long sentence return to his cell, the lawyer looked her in the eyes, not for long but long enough to see the fear she tried to hide with her determined movements and firm voice, you could see it and feel it and he felt sorry for her, he would be
outside
the walls very shortly.

“By the way . . .”

Leon Jensen had been sure to shake his hand hard afterwards, squeezed the bandaged index finger, before he walked away.

“I was asked to tell you that your dog died a few days ago.”

Now he stopped and turned around, waiting to hear the continuation.

“An American Staffordshire terrier attacked a civilian-clad policeman in an apartment on the second floor of Råby Allé 67 and so was shot to death by a total of twelve bullets.”

His client just stood there, listening, but didn’t react.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“I heard what you said.”

The lawyer hadn’t known how he would express his pain, and so had waited until he had to and now was uncertain how to carry on.

“And?”

“And what?”

“The dog, you, I’m . . .”

He probably hadn’t heard. So the lawyer who thought the metal splint around his finger was uncomfortable, now hurried to add, in an even louder voice: “But the good news is . . . your friend . . . the one who was being held for unlawful threats and causing bodily harm has been released due to lack of evidence—the prosecutor couldn’t prove that the dog had been unleashed with intent.”

The lawyer had been running, but stopped when he got to the spiral staircase down to the underground passage and locked doors. He didn’t think that the person he was talking to had heard. So he went even closer, was almost shouting, when his client suddenly turned around.
You get what you deserve
. For a while, the lawyer stood looking at the door he couldn’t see through and felt that the security camera by the ceiling was a bit too close when it zoomed in on his face; he was almost certain that was what his client had said.

José Pereira was close to the town with its proud, white
church and rows of terraced houses, the sort of place he knew he could never live in himself, but still envied the people who did, who lived close together, had contact with each other. He had a wife whom, in one week’s time, he had loved for exactly fifteen years and they had two girls together, born fourteen minutes apart and he still hadn’t found a good enough word to describe what he felt for them, because
love
wasn’t even a start. Every now and then he was struck by guilt because he was the one who kept them in a small apartment in a part of the city called Södermalm; he loved the cafés, the restaurants, the crowds of people, bumping into him or her, watching them for a while and knowing they would probably never meet again, everything that wasn’t Aspsås, the town he was now driving into.

A dog had been shot twelve times.

The square, dumb, slavering dog had remained clamped onto the policeman’s arm and continued to tear it apart.

He had been looking for an answer. He had found his answer. He had seen the skin on a thigh that was otherwise covered in 85 percent burns that had healed long ago, but was now an infected wound where a name had once been that now had to disappear. A name he had known of for so long and tried so hard to counteract. And then on the other thigh, a new name to show that they had left something behind, that they were on their way, wanting more room.

José Pereira had called an ambulance. His colleagues from the drug squad left the building at high speed, the ambulance’s blue lights flashing. One sat beside the gurney with his hand on the shiny, wet forehead of the man lying on it, who was in deep shock, trying to calm him.

He had never experienced anything like it before, a life that carried on even after several lethal shots that should have killed it had been fired. And he had never seen an arm so mauled before either.

He had walked back to the police station on the edge of Råby alone and gone into the large room that was the hub of all the work with gang crime in south Stockholm; he had stood silently by the two long walls and then moved the eight faces, who until now had called themselves Råby Warriors, from their position at the top of the second wall, to a new position at the bottom of the first, and given them a new sign—Ghetto Soldiers.

They were established.

They had evolved from social services’ files into police files on a desk, into faces on the second wall and now into faces on the first.

They had succeeded.

He turned off the highway exit, passed the church and headed for a gate in the enormous wall, waited with the engine running while it opened and then carried on over to central security, where only those who visited frequently enough to be recognized were allowed to park. He stayed in the car, as he sometimes did, preferring to finish listening to a song on the radio that he liked but didn’t know the name of. It was also normally when he tried to understand just how long a person could take it. And if, in the end, it really mattered. Nineteen years at the heart of the battle against organized crime. And he’d seen it increase, not decrease—more frequent, not less; more violent, more fierce—and soon, they already knew, another five thousand young Swedish lads would work their way into the criminal network, as many as all of those who were now in prison.

He recognized the prison warden who was sitting behind the glass in central security, one of the older ones, who waved him through with a friendly smile before he’d even managed to find something that resembled ID, and he walked on toward the stairs to the first floor and Oscarsson’s office, a cart with tea and coffee by the sofa, steam rising as the prison governor chose his brew.

“Green?”

“Black.”

Two cups, one green, one black.

“And Martha?”

“She’s fine. She sends her greetings.”

“And the girls?”

“Growing up.”

José Pereira smiled and Lennart Oscarsson smiled cautiously back, as if he didn’t really dare, afraid that what was between them might hurt. Pereira knew the prison governor had also had a family once, but he’d let them go and so lived ever more lonely in the house you could see from his desk, if you leaned over slightly. And every time the question arose, because it always did—
And the girls
?—it was as if he didn’t really want an answer, didn’t want to know that the other person still had their children close and that everything was fine, and José Pereira always felt a little awkward when he answered, as though by telling the truth he made someone who was missing something miss it even more.

“You were right.” Pereira put down his cup of black tea. “I’ve upgraded them. They’re on the move. And I want to know where.”

The tight smile had vanished and Pereira was grateful for it, he’d done the right thing, getting straight to the point rather than elaborating on the two girls that he cared for more than anything else in the world.

“I wondered if you’d seen this anywhere in the prison?”

He’d carried the sketch in a plastic sleeve in his hand, afraid to fold it.

“The most recent and clear indication that the group is expanding.”

He put the piece of paper down on the table between them. A sketch of the new tattoo that had been on Gabriel Milton’s right thigh.

“Ghetto Soldiers?”

“Until very recently, Råby Warriors. First a local name, then something more . . . philosophical. Tumba Lords became Fucked For Life. Bredäng Legion changed to Red Generation. Hallunda Boys . . .”

“A prison organization.”

“Have you seen it?”

“Never. But the name . . . we’ve come across it here several times in recent years. One of the ones that you only hear
inside
, an organization that protects you when you’re doing time. But the fact that it also exists outside . . .”

“Leon Jensen, Alexander Eriksson. Full-blown members. Daniel Wall, some kind of hangaround. I’ve also got information about another person who’s about to become a full member. That would make it nine. The sources I’ve been talking to have mentioned some kind of . . . initiation.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know yet. I don’t know who’s being tested. Nor on whom.”

Lennart Oscarsson picked up the sheet of paper, closely studied a good sketch of a thigh, and words obviously drawn by a handmade machine, then he got up. There were some shelves behind his desk, and on the top one was a plastic bag. He opened it and took out an electric shaver.

“We confiscated this yesterday. D1 Left. Jensen and Eriksson’s unit.”

José Pereira looked at the Braun electric shaver; he also saw a bent spoon handle, a pen that had been emptied of its contents, and a pipe cleaner.

“Where? Who?”

He’d seen a couple of similar things before. But this was unusually well made.

“In the cell and bed of a man who’s done a lot of time and who’s pretty notorious thanks to his combination of unpleasant aggression and astonishing technical skills in the classroom, but who looks like a . . . wreck. His name is Sonny Steen. But he’s usually just called Smackhead.”

Pereira looked at the prison governor.

“Sonny Steen?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t say any more, but Lennart Oscarsson noticed something akin to irritation, perhaps confusion, when Pereira got up and walked around the room. His face was still agitated, or was it confused, when he picked up the machine from the table and carefully poked at the various parts.

“A shaver. A ballpoint pen. A needle from a wire brush. A spoon. A bit of tape. Each thing separately, each part allowed in a maximum security prison. But only in parts.
Not
together.”

He turned it over, opened it, looked for a socket, and plugged it in, a needle that whirred and punctured the air with a regular beat.

“I want to go in.”

“Go in?”

“D1 Left. To Jensen. Alone.”

“You know you can’t do that.”

“And you know that I’ve done it before.”

The governor of Aspsås prison took the whirring electric shaver, turned it off, put it back in the plastic bag.

And shook his head.

“I would strongly advise you not to do that.”

“I have to.”

“Your safety. In there . . . I can’t guarantee anything.”

“If I’m going to get the answer I need . . . I have to be alone. You know that. Too much face to lose.”

Oscarsson gave an exasperated shrug, pointed at his desk, at the chair where he’d recently been sitting.

“I’ll sort out an interview room. If none of the visitors’ rooms are available, you can use my office, here, my chair, sit down.”

José Pereira didn’t sit down. He stayed standing where he was and would continue to do so.

“I have to challenge him. His authority. And to do that, I have to go in on my own, when I want to, show that I’m not afraid. Challenge him.”

They looked at each other in silence. One who wanted a confrontation, and one who could refuse him the chance.

“Excuse me.”

Neither Pereira nor Oscarsson had heard her knock.

“You wanted a report.”

The door was half open and Julia Bozsik stood on the threshold until the governor waved to her to come in.

“Well?”

“D1 Left. General UA.”

“And?”

“We . . . we couldn’t analyze anything. They all poured it out. One after the other.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Then we know. They’d test positive, every single one of them. And I’ll make sure we get a search warrant. OK?”

She nodded and was pulling the door closed behind her just as Oscarsson called after her.

“Bozsik?”

Her head appeared in the gap.

“Yes?”

“Can you take our guest down into the unit?”

Pereira turned to Oscarsson, gave a brief nod, thank you, then turned to the young prison warden.

“José Pereira. Section Against Gang Crime.”

Julia studied the man in civilian clothes.

“You’re a policeman?”

“Yes.”

“With all due respect—I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to visit the unit. Or . . . any other unit in the prison, for that matter.”

He had already started to walk.

“I need information. And in fact that’s precisely what I want them to know, that I’m looking for information.”

He stopped, waited for her to catch up.

“And I take full responsibility for my own safety.”

Down the stairs and into the underground passage. The first camera by the first locked door; he glanced over at her, a very young prison officer who had just advised a considerably older policeman against visiting the place where she spent eight hours a day.

“You’re frightened.”

Her eyes. And her manner of speaking, almost
too
self-assured.

She stood facing the locked door and didn’t answer.

“You’re frightened of them.”

The door made the clicking sound they were waiting for, she pushed it open, and they walked in silence along the concrete corridor to the next locked door, the next camera.

He didn’t say any more. She still didn’t look at him.

Until she suddenly turned.

“Yes.”

The clicking sound again. But they stayed standing where they were.

“I
am
frightened.”

The door clicked again, and the camera zoomed in on the two people who didn’t seem to hear it.

“Every time they look at me.”

Now they opened the door, carried on toward the final locked door in the underground passage, then turned right, up the stairs to Block D. She stopped, halfway.

“They don’t care what happens. Do you understand?”

He looked into the eyes that were trying so hard to be professional and to cope, but couldn’t face doing it much longer.

“Yes.”

He hoped that she would realize soon, look for another life.

“I understand.”

One flight up. The unit called D1 Left.

“I go on my own from here.”

She looked at him for slightly too long, as if she wanted to talk more about what she couldn’t mention to anyone else there, as she had to be strong.

“In that case, wait here.”

She was perhaps only nine, ten years older than his two girls. And he didn’t even know what her first name was. But she had still trusted him, revealed what she otherwise kept hidden. He waited while she disappeared into the wardens’ office and then came back with a rectangular piece of plastic in her hand, gray with a red button on the side.

An alarm.

“
Just in case
.”

He smiled at her, accepted it, and put it in the front pocket of his pants.

A long corridor. TV corner, kitchen, billiard table. Farther down, sixteen cells, eight on each side.

Suddenly, as if everything had stopped. A peculiar silence.

The two who were playing billiards and were only concerned about their next shot had stopped playing, followed him with a concentrated frown, billiard balls demonstratively thrown up, down, up, down, in the air until they were sure he’d seen. The four who were playing cards at the round table had turned down the volume on the TV, and glared at him in silence. The ones standing in the kitchen, one by the fridge and one by the stove, turned around and it was they who shouted, twice, three times,
pig in the pen
.

José Pereira walked on, but not so fast, looked around, recognized at least three of them. The one to the left at the card table, one of the faces that had been moved from the second to the first wall this morning—Alexander Eriksson, full member. The one beside him, cards in hand, one of those so-called hangarounds, prepared to do whatever it took to be accepted—Marko Bendik. And the one in the kitchen by the fridge, the one who’d made the tattooing machine that was lying between the teacups on Oscarsson’s desk—Sonny Steen, Pereira was sure it was him, even though it was a long time ago now and he’d aged in the way that only junkies do.

“I’m looking for Leon.”

José Pereira peered down the corridor, while they stood or sat and looked at him and didn’t answer. He closed his hand around the rectangular piece of plastic in his pocket, and felt what she felt, fear.