Two Soldiers

by Anders Roslund

  He now had enough evidence for a court to convict an eighteen-year-old boy of murder.

  He had the whole prosecution. But he still didn’t have the prosecuted.

  Ewert Grens stretched as well as he could in the restricted trunk, it didn’t get any bigger.

  No tape over his mouth, no sock down his throat.

  He could breathe.

  And he yawned, relaxed; the protective plastic covering on the floor of the trunk rustled a bit when he tried to find a more comfortable position.

  now

  part four

  (thirty-seven hours)

  It’s dark outside. He can see through the window. But it can’t be a window, can it, because there’s no bars on it. He must be asleep, dreaming that he’s lying here and the rattling at the metal door, like metal doors rattle when a key is being turned in the lock by a girl who says good morning until he answers.

  The light’s not on.

  Someone screams. He hears it. But a long way off. And a car starts. And an airplane flies over.

  Who’s turned the light off?

  Leon lay back down, stretched, looked around.

  It was a window.

  There was someone who screamed, and there was a car and there was an airplane.

  And he couldn’t hear the key rattling and the voice that demanded a good morning. Because she was dead. And there were three empty rooms and five thin mattresses on a parquet floor.

  He had slept naked without a sheet.

  He had clothes; Gabriel had left them in the car, but he didn’t want to sleep in them.

  A black hoodie—and he who only ever wore gray ones. Black track pants, Adidas, narrow at the bottom—they were good.

  Beside the mattress, piles of empty frozen-pizza boxes, empty paper bags with sugar at the bottom, empty beer cans with cigarettes butts in them, a mound of peanuts, some cheese.

  Barefoot over the warm floor to stand in the middle of the room, closer to the window.

  He listened.

  Another car. A bus. Some distant voices maybe.

  Råby Allé 124. Sixth floor.

  He opened the blinds a touch, looked out over the concrete, buildings, parking lots, still his world.

  They’d slept all day. The rhythm that had been theirs for so long, living only by night. It was as if his body had already forgotten the five months of wake-up at seven a.m. and lockup at seven thirty p.m.

  Alex was asleep beside him, on his back, a gentle snoring. Reza and Uros over by the door to the hall. Marko in the kitchen, in front of the stove and fridge. He let them sleep, the less they moved the better.

  There was a clock on the wall. Quarter past twelve. Six hours to sunrise. He’d always slept with the light on, longed for the light to protect him and show him where as soon as he woke up, now he wanted the opposite, the dark that would hide someone on the run.

  He was about to make some phone calls. Two phone calls. The first to no one. And the second that meant everything.

  Every time he thought about it, the rush, racing around and around inside, forcing his heart to beat faster, making his cock get hard in the way it had when he stabbed the piece of sharp metal in the bitch’s thigh and pressed it against her throat.

  New name. New rules.

  There was still a knocking in his head. She’d banged so hard against the walls of the trunk, she’d twisted and turned and he’d stopped and taped her arms a couple of times more by the Upplands Väsby roundabout, she’d lain there and looked at him and he’d ripped off the tape over her mouth and pushed the sock in as far as it would go, she’d looked at him and he hadn’t looked away.

  He angled the blinds a tiny bit more. The darkness of Råby outside.

  He was home.

  Riot. Escape.

  It was where it always was, in the pouch on the front of his hoodie.

  Cell phone in his hand. He knew that it was tapped. He knew that they were even recording it.

  Kidnapping. Murder.

  It was as if she were still banging on the metal when they’d left the car at a dead end in an industrial park and he’d stopped in front of the closed trunk and shouted that she should shut the fuck up and then hadn’t turned around even when she continued to knock and they’d gotten into another Mercedes and driven off. Several times they’d nearly crashed or run someone over and had laughed with a sense of what felt like release and sung along at full volume to the commercials on the radio and halfway into the city, a fucking police camera had flashed in their faces.

  He closed the blinds again. A mouthful of tepid beer from one of Alex’s cans, a handful of candy from the bag beside it.

  The first number was the telephone’s own number. The second one was the one written in black felt-tip pen on the kitchen counter.

  He recognized Gabriel’s way of holding a pen. The big movements when he pressed hard and always went over the two loops of an eight one more time. His beloved brother who’d made all the necessary changes on the outside so that one of them would always be able to look after things outside when the other one was inside. The escape, breakouts, getaway, it was as much Gabriel’s plan as his, their shared desire to rise higher up the wall. They’d been nine when they started to chip away at the morphine and amphetamine market, and now they were there, together.

  He trusted him. The only one who he—who had never trusted anyone—had chosen to trust.

  He missed him so much.

  When they’d turned off with the pigs’ flash in their face at Brommaplan, they’d driven through Ekerö and into the darkness that had no form, and he’d turned up the music and driven even faster and the hare had hit one of the headlights and the dog that had been so close, they should’ve run it over, and they screamed enough to drown out the radio when the water was finally there, and the beach and the boats and only a few minutes in a skiff to the other side.

  Papers. TV.

  Ten digits on the counter. I’m going to kill them all. In a while, when he wanted to, higher up.

  They’d run along the shore and the two small boats had had padlocks that were easy to cut off with an angle grinder and the guns at their feet on the bottom of the boats and they had been close to land when the helicopter had swooped down to the water with its searchlights and circled and circled and they had pressed themselves against the wet wooden bottom of the boat until they jumped out by Slagstabadet and he knew exactly where they were.

  He clutched the cell phone and felt the rush inside again, right up into his chest like it sometimes did when he was alone and didn’t want to be, even more and even stronger than when he’d held the piece of metal against her throat. He’d known that it was bugged when he dialed the number to his other phone just before he had left the car and before he forced the sock down her throat, had listened to nothing while he spoke. And he was going to do it again. And they would listen again, like before, and they would come here, be here when he made the call to the other number.

  Explosion

  Leon was breathing heavily and his hands were shaking when he looked into the dark windowpane that was a mirror for his huge pupils; he could feel it, he knew it, it was real.

  That whoever got highest up couldn’t get any farther and didn’t need a wall anymore.

  ———

  Someone was standing outside the door.

  Gabriel was sure of it.

  He lay down on her sofa. He’d had his own key since they met but had hardly ever been there. But there had been two civvy pigs coming through Råby, and the kids had warned him and he’d known where to go.

  He wasn’t suspected of anything and couldn’t be arrested.

  Nor Big Ali, nor Jon, nor Bruno.

  But they were looking for them, for their pointless interviews about something no one had any intention of talking about and they’d split up, each gone their own way from the garage, he had crept under the cars between Råby Allé 67 and Råby Allé 114, a route that only he, who had always been here, knew.


  There was someone there, outside. He could hear them.

  He had locked the door, pulled down the blinds, and lain down on her sofa to wait. It was too early to visit Leon. And he had a phone that he wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone on. He’d fallen asleep. Slept the evening away.

  Someone was trying the door handle.

  Gabriel reached down to the floor, Glock 17, it lay so well in his hand and he pulled back the trigger with his index finger, the only gun he’d ever held cocked like this and he liked it, the feeling of more control.

  The door opened. He couldn’t see who it was. Gun in hand, finger on the trigger, he was ready.

  Her.

  His body went soft again, he relaxed, let go of the trigger.

  “Hi.”

  She looked so happy. And she sat down beside him on the sofa, kissed his cheek and forehead and neck, snuggled up closer.

  “I was there today, before the pigs came.”

  She didn’t normally look this happy.

  “The prenatal clinic.”

  She laughed a lot, to be fair, but not like this.

  “A private prenatal clinic.”

  She took his hand, put it to her womb.

  “Here, you see? He put an ultrasound stick up to get close enough. They don’t normally do that here, not so early, only in other countries. But I wanted to. And I had the money.”

  He’d once given her a movie that he thought was the best. He’d watched it with Leon when they were little, again, again, and again, he knew every movement and was prepared every time the main character got wild in the eyes. It was lying on the white shelf under the TV and he put it on.

  “It’s called an ectopic pregnancy and it’s dangerous. And I wanted to know. And I don’t need to worry! Gabriel? He said that I’m five weeks pregnant! Can you believe it?”

  A Clockwork Orange. He liked the first scene best. With the alcoholic who lies there and the others come walking along the tunnel all dressed in white with black hats and beat the loser with sticks while he keeps rattling on. After the very first time, an old DVD player that they’d hidden at Leon’s mother’s, they’d run side by side to the metro and Skärholms Centrum and Åhléns and smashed the display window and gone up to the first floor and the hats that were there, they owned the fucking place, they’d been eleven years old and danced like in the film and with hats on and he’d understood what it was all about.

  “It’s already five millimeters.”

  Wanda kissed his cheek again. And bent down to the DVD player, ejected his disc, and put in her own.

  “There. Gabriel, can you see it?”

  The picture was gray and black and white and grainy and blurred, and she went over and pointed to it and he looked at her finger that was nothing.

  “Five millimeters. Measured from head to bum.”

  She held her hand up on the air, two fingers in front of his face, measured a space as big as a gram of methamphetamine in a yellow capsule.

  “Like half a nail on my finger. But already . . . a person.”

  “Turn it off.”

  “The heart, he said it wasn’t much bigger than a speck of dirt, but that it had already started to beat. And liver and kidneys, they’re not developed, but they’re there. And little buds that are arms and legs. And even an appendix. And—”

  “Turn it off, I said!”

  “—the face, it’s starting to form, the jaws and nose and eyes. You, Gabriel. And me.”

  Whatever it was that was gray and white and nothing was still on the TV screen and the entire picture moved slowly, slowly, like he’d had something to smoke and was feeling good, even though he hadn’t at all.

  “Your earrings?”

  “What about them?”

  “Where the fuck are they?”

  He was still lying down and she was sitting on the floor beside him, her ears at his level. The earrings. From the jewelers on Kungsgatan, two crosses with a small diamond in the middle.

  She had chosen them herself. So she should wear them.

  “It was them that I . . . well, sold.”

  “What the fuck did you say?”

  “The ultrasound. The film, the one you’re watching, it cost money. So I sold them. And there’s enough for—”

  “. . . you fucking . . .”

  “—another visit, another film.”

  Gabriel didn’t call her a whore anymore. He didn’t hit her either. Once he’d vacuumed her. There was nothing left he could do. But he did pull out her film, throw it toward the kitchen, and put his own back in. There was another scene that he liked, when they ring on the door of a big posh house and Mr. and Mrs. don’t want to let them in but do in the end and they’re singing “Singin’ in the Rain” with clown masks on and white clothes and black hats and tape up the man’s and woman’s mouths and use their sticks again, more than once.

  ———

  He’d made the first phone call. To the phone that he was holding in his hand, the one that was tapped, he’d called himself and they’d listen, trace it, come here.

  Leon ran his fingers over the empty kitchen counter. Ten digits in black pen. Gabriel’s writing and the number to a phone that was wrapped in plastic, protected against water. When he was absolutely certain that they were there.

  I’m going to kill all of them.

  Four snoring, snuffling teenagers on mattresses on the floor. Pigs running around all over the fucking country looking for them, and they were lying on a dirty floor only a few meters away, sleeping. He’d leave them be for a while, go and get something, and they’d still be asleep when he got back. That was why he was going there. To get something. That’s what he thought, at least. She hadn’t been to see him once in Aspsås prison. Or Mariefred prison. Or Eknäs young offenders institution. If he worked it out, he didn’t need to work it out, he knew exactly, it was two years and four months since they last saw each other. Even though they lived in the same place between his stints inside. And he hadn’t been prepared that time, neither had she, they were suddenly just standing there beside each other on the platform at Råby station, and she was wearing a black coat and jeans and she had her hair up in a way that made her look old. It was three minutes until the next train and there was no one else there. He hadn’t said anything and she hadn’t said anything. They’d stood still breathing so quietly that it couldn’t be heard until he’d suddenly said at least hello, and he knew that she’d heard but she didn’t turn around and he’d been about to say it again when the train rolled in and they’d gone their separate ways.

  He opened the door, the stairs were empty. He would go out, but not into the concealing dark, he’d go down into the garage and the way they always went when they didn’t want to be seen.

  ———

  He couldn’t sleep.

  They were lying side by side on her white sofa, and he was sweating and shivering and he’d gotten cramps in his feet and calves like he used to when he was little and the skin that had disappeared had still burned.

  Gabriel looked at her. She was asleep and she had no earrings on. He rubbed her soft earlobes with his thumb and index finger. She’d sold them. And bought a gray-and-black picture.

  He had a smoke. He drank two cans of beer. He even got out his gun that was lying in a bag in the hall and took out one bullet at a time and put one bullet at a time back in, but it didn’t help; what he was feeling just got stronger, weed and alcohol and holding a gun normally made him feel calm but not now.

  Her disc. He put it in and started it.

  There was no sound.

  He hadn’t thought about that, last time. The gray and black and grainy, the thing that was moving so slowly, you couldn’t hear it.

  He couldn’t see anything.

  A heart. Two kidneys. Buds that would become arms and legs.

  And if he couldn’t see anything, how could it be there? And moving so fucking slowly?

  It wasn’t there.

  He was there. And Wanda was there. And soo
n Leon, his beloved brother.

  He would be able to touch him for the first time in five months, that was all there was, not her fucking picture, which was her fault.

  ———

  That time, the last time, he’d said hello and she hadn’t even answered.

  She could have turned around, looked at him. But she said nothing, pretended not to hear, just got onto the train and turned her back.

  He was going to get the package. That was the only reason. She would open the door and he would take it and she could be as silent as she fucking liked.

  Leon hurried down the stairs of Råby Allé 124. He should maybe have stayed where he was, but it was night and the others were asleep and would still be asleep when he got back—and he’d be moving around in the dark—and he’d made the first phone call—and they’d be moving very soon anyway.

  He’d known it so well, the place called Slagsta Strand, but he’d lain there between Alex and Marko on the wet planks at the bottom of the boat until the helicopter had done its last sweep and disappeared. Råby was two kilometers and a hundred police officers away. They’d sat on the beach that they used to run to as kids when they were at school, when they’d swum at night, washed away whatever was sticking to their skin. He remembered what it was like to be naked and light and that it was always cold and that he always shivered a bit afterwards, but nothing more; he’d been so young and it was so long ago, faded and hard to get hold of and he felt nothing when he thought about it, nothing except that fucking lump you get from feeling nothing.

  The gray door, right at the bottom, opposite the elevator. He opened it a few centimeters, listened.

  They’d split up at Hallunda Centrum and he’d run over the big hill behind the metro line and down the other side and the helicopter again, the searchlight, flying low, he’d had to lie in the ditch in the short stretch between Botkyrka church and the Shell station that they’d robbed four times the summer they were twelve, he’d got up when the helicopter flew toward Södertälje and he’d run alongside the E4 to the concrete pipe that went under the road to the other side and he’d felt a surge in his legs and stomach and chest when he’d seen the windows with no curtains in the distance and caught the smell that only existed there.