Two Soldiers

by Anders Roslund

  ———

  They hadn’t stayed there as long this time.

  She had heard a machine, then running, tried to work out where she was.

  The doors opened, closed.

  Now there were five of them, shouting and laughing loudly, punching the roof and the windows, stopped suddenly, repeated shots from an automatic rifle, then drove on again, fast and on small roads with sudden movements, and it was now that she heard for the first time that they were talking about her. At first she thought she was imagining it, but the voice was clear; it was explaining that they didn’t need her anymore and another one asked if they should kill her here or wait a while. She wondered if Jocke was still waiting for her, if he was worried and had gotten up, maybe even walked around to look for her and then started to make phone calls. She could see him in the middle of Medborgarplatsen surrounded by men and women holding hands when her toes and feet and knees and thighs gradually left her body, she tried, she did, but couldn’t get any air, great gulps of air and the socks got stuck in her throat, and it was hard to swallow as she slipped away, gone.

  now

  part three

  (twenty-three hours)

  Silence.

  It sat in his chair, possibly bent forward with its elbows on the wooden surface, looking at him. It stood over by the closed door, leaning back, looking at him. It lay beside him on the old corduroy sofa that was brown and had lost most of its stuffing and, what’s more, was too short to accommodate his stiff leg. It lay there and snuggled closer, touched his shoulder.

  Detective Superintendent Ewert Grens smiled at it, a nod of recognition.

  He wasn’t frightened anymore.

  He had been, to begin with, when the noise from Hantverkargatan and the cars accelerating at the bottom of the steep hill crowded in through the window, and the footsteps and voices that passed in the corridor didn’t dissipate. He had started to hear things he had never heard before, because the music used to block them out, Siw Malmkvist’s voice, so soft, and the songs from so long ago, connected to a part of his life long gone. It had taken a whole year and he had on several occasions rushed down the stairs to the City Police property store, run with the shadows looming in his chest, filled out the reclaim form in detail at the wooden counter and then regretted it, closed his eyes for a moment and turned his back to the shelves, breathing deeply until he could face leaving again—they were there, so close, waiting among the property confiscated during criminal investigations, the sealed cardboard boxes of cassettes and a cassette player and loudspeakers and a black-and-white photo of the singer that he’d taken himself and then mounted in a silver frame, the boxed-up music that had accompanied him every day for thirty years and had taken up all his space and thoughts.

  And all the silence.

  He started by managing to get through one day. The next morning, he had decided to try for one more day.

  Then another day.

  And then, some months ago, he’d fallen asleep and woken up on the sofa and felt what he had avoided for so long—he wasn’t frightened, the silence could scream at him as much as it wanted, sitting leaning forward or standing leaning back or squeezing onto the sofa that was his alone—what couldn’t be heard was almost beautiful.

  He got up and walked through the room at one end of the Homicide corridor, opened the window that faced out into the Kronoberg courtyard, the air pleasant and warm, looked at the buildings that housed various parts of the Swedish police force and dealt with a criminality that was growing by the hour. More and more. More frequent. More violent. It had also changed appearance and clothes in recent years, a widening gap between the small-time junkies who ran around wielding kitchen knives and the open executions that were intended to send messages about respect.

  He left the window open, as warm outside as it was inside, went back to the desk and the files that were stacked one on top of the other, lifted them up one at time, looked through documents that described violations and lives that would never be the same. He wondered where it was all coming from, the contempt, the illusion of the right to injure.

  And despite it all, he could hear the birds.

  The ones sitting in the small trees that would soon turn yellow, which were planted here and there, too far apart, along the asphalt path that led from the City Police to Swedish National Police Board, sinewy trunks that seemed to lack branches, but there the birds sat, looking up at the thin moon and singing their hearts out.

  He dropped the files down on the desk, filling the surface between the telephone and coffee cups. They would stay there and he wouldn’t return to them for another couple of hours, other people’s violence and lives where he always sought refuge, but not now, not today. He opened the white wardrobe that was squeezed into a corner of the room with two full bookshelves and an unlocked safe. The training gear that he never used next to uniforms he had long since grown out of. In between them, still in its plastic covering, a jacket—he took it out; it smelled new.

  Ewert Grens held it, lifted it up to the strong ceiling light. A beige color that he liked a lot. The protective plastic covering clung to the arms; he pulled it off with great difficulty, bit by bit, filling the trash can. It fit him just as well as it had in the shop. He looked at the small mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door, turned around, his head craning to have a look. There was a comb on the small shelf under the mirror, he picked it up and pulled it through his thin hair that was more like a gray halo around his crown.

  Someone walked past in the corridor.

  The birds started up again, singing even louder; there seemed to be more of them.

  Otherwise, silence.

  Until the damn phone on his desk launched an attack, shrill signals, despite being covered by one of the files.

  He let it ring.

  Hand over the smooth fabric. It was a long time since he had worn a new jacket. Ten years. To the day. What if he did up two buttons? Maybe three. He angled the wardrobe door slightly—it was hard to see from shoulder to shoulder in the narrow, rather dirty mirror.

  The phone was still ringing. He counted twelve. Sixteen. Twenty-two.

  “Yes?”

  “Ewert?”

  Erik Wilson. He talked louder than his predecessor, Göransson, had done. The younger they were, they more effort they had to make to sound as small as they didn’t want to be.

  “What do you want?”

  “I know you’re not on duty. But you’re here.”

  “I’m always here.”

  “I need your help.”

  Farther down one of the jacket sleeves, a crease. If he rubbed his fingertips back and forth over it . . . it disappeared, slowly.

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  The metal comb through his hair once more, like a whirlpool on the right-hand side, but it normally flattened after a while.

  “I haven’t got time. I was on my way out.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “Sometimes it is.”

  The voice that was nearly twenty years younger, that was about to give an order, coughed, took a deep breath.

  “I wouldn’t be calling unless it was important.”

  If he pulled the sleeves. That almost made them longer. Covered his wrists and part of his hand, and then the shirt, white, the cuff showing.

  “What do you think, Wilson? A beige jacket?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “At the start of September, do you think it works?”

  He was still there. His breathing was audible. But the words, they took longer.

  “Ewert?”

  “Yes? Do you think it works? Or should it be something darker? Stripes, maybe?”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Jackets, Wilson! What color are you wearing?”

  “Gray.”

  “Not beige?”

  “No.”

  Ewert lowered the receiver, look
ed in the wardrobe mirror again. He had somehow imagined that today would be different.

  If he’d wanted that, he would have slept at home.

  He didn’t sigh.

  “How important?”

  “Eighteen zero five hours. Aspsås prison. An eighteen-year-old, a nineteen-year-old, and a twenty-year-old. Escape, hostage, knives.”

  “I see.”

  “Eighteen forty-five hours. Österåker prison. A nineteen-year-old. Escape, automatic weapon. We’re certain of it. Same guys.”

  “Right.”

  “Nineteen twenty-five hours. Storboda prison. A twenty-year-old. Escape, automatic weapon. Same guys.”

  “Right.”

  “I want you to take over.”

  “Take over?”

  “Gold command.”

  Ewert Grens slipped the shiny metal comb into a narrow plastic sleeve, pushed the training gear and uniform back in with one hand while he used the other to close the wardrobe door, crossed the worn linoleum through the silence that was no longer music, to the large window and the courtyard that still refused to accept the dark completely.

  He snorted.

  “Gold command. I thought that sort of thing was for bureaucrats. Really senior police commanders. Like . . . you.”

  “Ewert, I—”

  “And . . . it’s twenty to two in the morning. More than seven and a half hours have passed. Half the Swedish police must be running around in the woods and the other half will be at home watching it on TV. So why the hell are you phoning me in your gray jacket, Wilson, interrupting . . . now?”

  A late summer’s night with air that was almost warm. He opened the window a fraction more, followed the shadows that lengthened where the lamps along the asphalt met forgotten lights in offices here and there in the sleeping body of the building.

  “Because I now know something I didn’t know then.”

  “Which is?”

  “That you’re the best suited.”

  “Suited?”

  “Yes.”

  Four floors down. He leaned out. He was heavy, falling from here wouldn’t take many seconds.

  “Aspsås prison. The one we think planned it. His name is Leon.”

  “And?”

  “Leon Jensen.”

  Grens straightened up and left the window, hobbled in agitation across the floor, his stiff leg resisting more than usual.

  “Jensen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Youth unit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Born in nineteen hundred and ninety-two . . . three?”

  “Yes.”

  Like the others.

  “I want you to be in charge from now on.”

  Like all the others.

  “Ewert?”

  A short strip of plastic on one sleeve. Hard to get hold of. His nails kept slipping; he pulled it a couple of centimeters, and then again, uneven edges that were too small, he let it stay where it was.

  “I’m going to hang up. I’ve got some phone calls to make.”

  ———

  It usually didn’t take very long. He’d seen the telephone upstairs, on the small table with rounded legs, Anita’s side.

  “Sven?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sit up.”

  Ewert Grens always wondered whether his colleague got out of bed and hurried around on the cold floor to the phone so as not to wake her and then went back so that he could lie down again. Or whether he carefully rolled closer and stretched out his arm.

  “I’m sitting up.”

  “Sit up.”

  The telephone always makes an irritating scratching sound when someone holds it in one hand and presses it against wrinkled sheets as he tries to haul himself up and clear his throat to rouse a voice that has just gone to sleep.

  “Sven?”

  A terraced house in Gustavberg that resembled a home. One of the few, the only one, where Ewert Grens was a regular visitor and felt welcome.

  “Are you sitting up properly and listening?”

  Sixteen years, working together.

  The telephone calls could come at any time. But mostly, any time of night. And the man sitting naked on the hard edge of a bed, fumbling for the light switch, had long since realized he had either to switch jobs or accept.

  He had accepted.

  “Ready.”

  “Good. I want you sitting here. In half an hour.”

  ———

  He didn’t know many telephone numbers by heart. But dialed the next one as soon as he got the tone.

  It kept ringing.

  He looked at the clock. Ten to two. He let it ring.

  Then he smiled, got up from the desk, went out into the dark Homicide corridor.

  He could hear it. A few closed doors down.

  Past the coffee machine, the vending machine, the photocopier, toward the noise that got louder.

  Her door was open. The desk lamp was on.

  “You’re not answering?”

  She hadn’t heard him coming. A quick glance at someone leaning a heavy body against the doorframe.

  “Ewert?”

  “It’s ringing.”

  “I haven’t got time.”

  “It’s me that’s calling.”

  She looked at the cell phone, then at her boss.

  Now it was her turn to smile.

  “It’s you that’s calling.”

  His voice. Something about the tone. Like a pleased parent. If he’d had children, that is.

  “Hermansson.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  That voice again.

  “And you’re still here.”

  “It just happened.”

  He wasn’t aware that it was noticeable. As it probably wasn’t there. Whatever it was that sounded like he was proud.

  “How’s it going?”

  She ran her index finger down the spines of the thick files.

  “I’ve gone through fifty-two open cases with a fine-toothed comb. We can close twelve of them. No conclusion. All minor crimes. Preliminary investigation closed. We won’t get any further.”

  She was wearing a uniform, the black one that was more like a boiler suit and was still in a box in his office, he hadn’t even bothered to unpack it.

  “Put the rest to one side.”

  He was still standing in the doorway, filling it, as if he’d put it on and it had got stuck.

  “Hermansson?”

  “You’ve got a new jacket.”

  “Hermansson?”

  “Yes?”

  “Put them aside.”

  He turned and was already walking away down the corridor, echoing in the emptiness.

  “My office. In twenty-five minutes.”

  ———

  He lay on the faded brown corduroy sofa, fingers against the stripy fabric that no longer ran the same way, as he stared at the ceiling, looking for the newest cracks, he couldn’t remember them being so tangled. It had until very recently been a quiet weekend. Ten armed robberies and four rapes. Now he had a pain in the middle of his chest, he couldn’t understand it, it was so long ago.

  He looked at Sven and Hermansson. Each sitting on a chair, waiting. There was no music in the room, but her voice hung in the air, filled their weariness and confusion. Two more beats, then he would get up, lean in toward the computer, see what he couldn’t face seeing.

  “Ewert?”

  A hand in the air.

  “One moment.”

  The last verse. She went up half a note. He was convinced he could hear her, there, the refrain one more time. He listened and then sat up.

  “Could you open the window, Sven?”

  “You’ve already opened it. Wide.”

  “The air is so stuffy in here.”

  The laptop was waiting in the middle of the rickety coffee table. Ewert Grens selected the file named ASPSÅS and double-clicked, nineteen documents, moved the cursor to one on the top left cal
led CAMERA 4. He clicked again and slid along the thin, black timeline to a sequence of pictures on the stretch that marked 18:10, which according to the governor was the exact time that the search patrol opened the heavy metal door and went into the empty cell with only half a window.

  They studied the grainy, jumping image in silence.

  A section of green grass. A slice of the asphalt-covered yard.

  And—Grens guessed around thirty, maybe even forty meters away—the rectangular, three-story building that the prison staff called Block D.

  He moved the cursor back an hour.

  He let the recorded sequence of images age one second at a time, concentrated eyes watching from the corduroy sofa and the plain chairs, one after the other, grainy, jumpy, the grass, the asphalt, the concrete building, a bit later a bird flew past the camera, then another, otherwise all calm.

  Perhaps it was a bit lighter, maybe the colors were stronger, or maybe it was just their imagination—a late afternoon should feel good in early September.

  There. There.

  A flash.

  Like sparks, or even flames in a cell window, quite far to the left on the first floor of the gray building.

  They all leaned closer to the screen without being aware of it.

  Fifty-seven seconds.

  The gray building, the rows of crossed bars, everything was calm.

  There.

  The same window. Sparks.

  “Do you see what I see?”

  Ewert Grens had turned his head, he hadn’t received an answer, their faces, frozen.

  They saw it a third time.

  A flash.

  Mariana Hermansson nodded, her voice a touch too loud.

  “Like . . . I don’t know . . . a welding flame, only more, bigger.”

  The solid detective superintendent with a stiff neck and gammy leg threw himself back on the corduroy sofa, sinking deep into what was far too soft.

  “So now we know how.”

  He snorted.

  “Now we’ll check when.”

  ———

  He moved the cursor closer to the long, thin black worm that went across the screen, a peculiar line that decided time and moved the viewer forward, backward, even farther back, something that had happened recently could reoccur or never have happened.

  Cell 2. Unit D1 Left.

  It had been empty at 18:10.