Two Soldiers

by Anders Roslund

  The third punch was to his jaw and cheek.

  “You can never leave.”

  “Love you, brother.”

  “Gabriel, Gabriel, you’re a part of the plan, you can’t just fucking leave . . .”

  The remote control in Leon’s hand, it was shaking.

  “. . . no one can leave. You know that! It was you and me that wrote that.”

  “I’ve made up my mind, brother. You know . . . love, I feel . . . her fucking belly, like you and me, like you and your mom before, you know . . . love, brother.”

  ———

  His cigarettes and a lighter were in the pouch of his hoodie.

  Leon opened the packet and lit a cigarette. Just one drag. He left the smoking, glowing cigarette on one of the silent TV sets, picked up a remote control instead, and looked at Gabriel, standing like a statue, who met his eyes and let his arms hang loose at the side of his torso. He gripped the oblong piece of plastic in his hand when he punched him with full force on the left temple and then waited while Gabriel fell to the floor.

  He lay there.

  Arms pressed even closer to his body, still obviously passive, and Leon looked him in the eyes when he aimed the first kick to his thigh.

  “No one leaves.”

  The next kick higher up, his ribs.

  “No one.”

  ———

  Gabriel lay on the floor, without moving, when Leon sat on his chest, one leg on either side of a body that knew, was waiting. The smoking cigarette on the TV, Leon turned, took hold of it, and looked at Gabriel’s silent face when he pressed it for the first time against the 15 percent of skin that had never been damaged, on the forehead.

  “Your dad was burned alive.”

  The second time, on his left cheek.

  “My dad disappeared.”

  Left cheek, once more, but this time lower down, the glowing end stuck a bit when he pushed hard.

  “Alex’s dad kicked the shit out of him and Reza’s dad drank himself to death and Uros’s dad sits on a bench on Råby Torg and shouts cock at anyone who passes and Marko’s dad . . .”

  He turned to Marko, who was standing by the window in front of the closed blinds, and pointed a finger to his head, fired.

  “. . . blew his brains out.”

  Leon pressed the cigarette into the healthy skin again, on the right cheek now, twice.

  “And you . . . you say that you’re going to be . . . a dad?”

  Gunnar Werner closed the door to the eighth floor and the Section for Electronic Communications Interception and went over to the elevator. It had been one of those evenings; he had stayed a bit longer, then a bit longer still—a late-night sandwich in a real home, in front of the television, the news and half an hour of Frank Sinatra with his eyes closed in the sitting room armchair had become more and more distant—as if he had been waiting for something without knowing what.

  Now he knew.

  And he had to be quick.

  His cell phone ready in his hand as he approached the basement. In the space of a few minutes he’d made twelve calls and each time after a few rings had been transferred to Detective Superintendent Ewert Grens’s voicemail. After some minutes he’d worked out the possible position of the phone—it was, within a sixty-meter margin—somewhere in the parking lot under the Kronoberg headquarters.

  He stepped out of the elevator and into a concrete space.

  Many more vehicles than were there during the day. The air was different, less pollution and less oil. And another sound, he could hear the humming monotone of the air vents in the silence.

  He dialed again. No answer. He called again and started to walk behind the rows of cars listening out for what he should be able to hear. He kept calling until he came to the main door, turned to the right, around the next corner.

  It wasn’t until he approached the closed-off area that belonged to Forensics that he heard it.

  Faint at first, then clearer. In there? He opened the unlocked door and went in.

  Only one car. A white Mercedes. He’d never seen it before, never stood so close, and yet it was as if he’d sat in it, driven it through the Stockholm suburbs. He knew the sound of it accelerating and braking suddenly, when someone lying down banged on the metal, even how it sounded when someone stopped breathing in the large trunk.

  The ringing was louder and he went closer, it was coming from inside the car, somewhere near the front seat.

  He opened the door on the passenger side. There it was. The dashboard with a small shelf in the middle, between the speedometer and the clock.

  A cell phone. But no detective superintendent.

  There was a strong smell of glue. Thin plastic like a membrane covering each seat and red and white flags to mark bloodstains. He stood with the door open and realized that what had seemed urgent was probably too late, he closed it again and started to walk toward the exit when he thought he heard someone breathing.

  He turned around, there, a black shoe.

  He approached the pale skin between dark socks and dark pant legs that was sticking out from the trunk.

  Ewert Grens. And he was asleep. On his side, legs pulled up, head turned, his body touching every metal wall.

  “Ewert?”

  No response.

  But the large man was breathing steadily between soft snores. Gunnar Werner put a hand on one of the crushed pant legs, tugged at it gently.

  “Ewert?”

  “Yes?”

  His face was creased, his eyes squinting as he looked for the voice that had spoken.

  “Ewert, you were asleep.”

  “No.”

  “You were sleeping in Nils Krantz’s murder scene.”

  “I was working.”

  Gunnar Werner smiled as he put his hand down into the trunk.

  “Good, Ewert, good. That you’re so meticulous.”

  Grens saw the same-aged hand and took hold of it, Werner pulled and a large, aching body unfolded. His leg that hurt when he couldn’t lie with it straight. His neck that hurt most of the time. He sat on the edge of the trunk and stretched his arms over his head.

  “You obviously wanted something.”

  Ewert Grens was smiling vaguely now too.

  “Important enough to interrupt an examination of the crime scene.”

  The much taller and thinner detective sergeant who was an expert at intercepting and listening to phone calls held out a small digital recorder.

  “I didn’t go home this evening. I sat watching a long thin line on a computer screen. And sometimes, you know, we get surplus information.”

  Grens was on his feet and Werner closed the trunk, put the recorder on top and checked his watch.

  “Twelve minutes ago. And twenty-eight minutes ago. At zero zero twenty and zero zero thirty-six.”

  They listened in the cavernous garage that had walls and a floor that carried the sound, made it grow. A faint peep from a button being pressed on a phone immediately became something sharp that penetrated into the recently rested brain.

  “Someone dialing a number.”

  “I can hear that.”

  Ten digits, ten peeps like small daggers. And then another, a peep that was longer knives with shorter intervals.

  “Engaged tone.”

  “I can hear that as well.”

  Gunnar Werner would shortly go back to the Section for Electronic Communications Interception. The fact that he’d spoken to Grens about something he wasn’t supposed to only hours ago was bad enough, but standing here talking again in a place where anyone might pass was risking more than it was worth.

  “Leon Jensen’s phone. Both calls. And he’s ringing himself.”

  “Him . . . ?”

  “Himself. Engaged. The phone he shared with Mihailovic, that he took with him from Unit D1 Left. The one he used in the car during a murder and that we already have a tapping warrant for in connection with something else.”

  He stopped the recorder, put it in his jacke
t pocket, and started to walk slowly away.

  “Two calls from the same place.”

  He waited for Grens, who hurried after him, his heels clacking loudly.

  “And I’m almost certain I know where from. From which building and even from which floor.”

  It smelled of burned flesh.

  An unpleasant smell that invaded your nose and overpowered every other taste in your mouth.

  He’d phoned twice, they’d listened to the engaged tone and were on their way, they would sit down there, together. The first call would bring them there. The next call, the number that Gabriel had written on the counter in the kitchen, just one signal to a cell phone wrapped in a plastic bag in a cistern behind a toilet.

  Leon stood in the hall of the empty apartment that they’d slept in for twenty-four hours and had to leave immediately. Thirty minutes max, maybe twenty, no more. Four to choose between, all connected to the underground garage and with a view of Råby police station.

  Five white circles.

  Gabriel was still lying on the floor in front of images on TV screens with no sound.

  Five white circles with small black specks in the middle, like ash scattered on snow. Two circles on each cheek and one on the forehead. In a few hours, seeping blood blisters, in a few days, infected wounds, in a few weeks pink craters in the skin, in a few months tender scars.

  Leon stepped over the silent TVs and went out to the kitchen counter. You will never leave us. He pulled the plastic bag that only recently had been lying at the bottom of a trash container toward him. You will never leave me. He lifted up the bolt and barrel, fitted it to the slide and frame, pushed in the full magazine, eight bullets. You’re my brother, my only brother, we’re on the top fucking wall, you and me, you and me, Gabriel! One piece left, a decimeter long, black, round piece of metal, he picked it up and screwed it onto the muzzle.

  “You can burn the rest. I won’t be back.”

  The long, black thing on the muzzle of the gun was a silencer, it was easy to see when he held it up, pulled back the safety lever with his thumb, and aimed at the burned circle on his forehead.

  “Do what the fuck you like. I’ve made up my mind. I’m out.”

  Leon aimed, finger on the trigger.

  And then turned around, fired one shot at a time, a hole as big as a five-kronor coin in each screen.

  “Well, fifty thousand then, Daddy.”

  “You’re not getting any fucking money from me.”

  “That’s what it costs.”

  “It was fucking well you and me that built this up!”

  “Fifty thousand. And then you can leave. I don’t need you.”

  ———

  Ewert Grens walked with Gunnar Werner through the Kronoberg garage to a car with the Västerort Police emblem on the door.

  Twenty-eight hours of silence from someone on the run. Then suddenly . . . a sign of life.

  Werner had picked up a telephone signal.

  Twelve seconds the first time and eighteen seconds the second time.

  You rang yourself. Twice. You risked being discovered. As if you wanted to be discovered.

  “Address?”

  “Råby Allé 124.”

  “Floor?”

  “Six.”

  That rush—closing in on a murderer, someone who has declared that another person’s life is less valuable than their own and has taken it with them—it came from deep down inside and carried him through nights of hell.

  Grens looked at the telephone that had been lying on a plastic surface on a passenger seat.

  Sixteen missed calls.

  Werner.

  He nodded, thanked a police sergeant who had done more than he needed and was now on his way back to other voices that would become sound files in a court case.

  “Where are you?”

  Ewert Grens had got in, turned the ignition key, and made a call.

  “Råby, the big office. And I’ve finished putting together the information about the minors. Even when I don’t include the ones who don’t really have enough connection, there’s still twenty-seven left. I’ve got addresses, observation logs, reports . . .”

  “Not necessary.”

  “. . . a list of . . .”

  “Pereira, it’s not necessary.”

  José Pereira’s voice was tired, but not because it was night or he was sleepy.

  “I’m listening.”

  “He’s there, Pereira. Close to you.”

  “Where?”

  “Less than four hundred meters away.”

  Ewert Grens had seen him being born.

  “I want you to wake the firearms command team on duty.”

  José Pereira had seen him grow up.

  “I want them to do a raid.”

  They’d known ever since where he was heading, where it would end.

  “In fifteen minutes.”

  ———

  Leon turned off the cell and put it in the pouch of his black hoodie. A bugged telephone can be traced. That was what he’d wanted and he knew that it didn’t matter who he called, what he talked about or for how long. He didn’t want it anymore. They had about five, he guessed, max ten minutes left. Alex, Uros, Reza, and Marko were on their way out into the hall, and he’d hung back by the TVs on the sitting room floor that had just shown a face from the front, profile from the left, profile from the right, by the crossed-out digits in black felt tip on the kitchen counter that were the number of a cell phone in a plastic bag in a toilet that he would ring when they were there. And by someone who had been the only person he’d ever trusted and who now had five circular marks on his face.

  “If I was you, I’d get my ass out of here, fast.”

  He held open the front door, turned around.

  “And don’t forget . . . fifty thousand.”

  He closed it. Opened it again right away. Gabriel was still lying on the floor and they looked at each other. Not for very long, neither of them had much time, but enough for it to hurt.

  ———

  Ewert Grens had perhaps driven faster out of the city than ever before as he headed south on the E4.

  He’d seen him being born. He was going to see him arrested.

  Someone who was wanted had turned on the phone, phoned himself, waited a while, then turned it off.

  Is that what you want, to be found?

  The road block they’d been stopped at the night before, Grens wound down the window to the same helmet and bulletproof vest, a lowered gun with a sharp beam of light.

  “We met yesterday.”

  “We did.”

  “And this time?”

  “This time I think I’ll let gold command through.”

  The helmet and vest smiled briefly, then grinned when he saw that the person he was smiling at was smiling back.

  The highway exit and the main road and then the asphalt walkways to the door of Råby Allé 124. Ewert Grens parked between the deserted playground and two park benches, walked over to three police vans and two police cars and another two from the dog patrol.

  “Sixth floor?”

  “Six apartments. Hit them all at the same time.”

  Two policemen on either side of the main door, dark helmets, visors down, new uniform, and automatic weapons in their hands.

  “When?”

  “Four minutes ago.”

  The detective superintendent carried on over to the stairs when one of the dogs, an Alsatian, jumped up, front paws on his shoulders, growled in his face, snapped at a beige jacket sleeve to show that he’d come too close. Grens pushed his hand against the animal’s chest, a hard thrust, and it lost its balance, four paws on the ground, and he looked at it, shouted sit in a loud voice until it did. He nodded to the dog handler who had a dog that did its job, and went up the stairs, running as fast as he could up the six flights of steep stairs.

  An elevator that was standing still. Five apartments that were temporarily sealed off. And the sixth that was open, or rath
er, didn’t have a door.

  He went closer.

  The door had been removed and was leaning against the wall by the entrance, splintered wood where the hinges had been—a piston and the pressure of compressed air.

  He paused briefly in the hall. The smell, faint but recognizable, of burned flesh. And it was stronger in the living room, by the four TV sets in the middle of the floor, each screen with a hole in it and, if he got down on his hands and knees and felt them with his finger, bullet holes. Mattresses, pillows, he counted five beds. Empty beer cans and half-eaten cakes. The parquet floor was covered in splinters of glass from two windows, a rope outside each that was moving gently in the wind, forced entry from two sides at the same time.

  “I’ve spoken to the neighbors on this floor.”

  José Pereira picked up a box and shook it, which according to the picture on the side had had a TV in it.

  “Three of the apartments were abandoned in full haste. They saw what was happening and got frightened and vanished so they wouldn’t need to talk. So that leaves two. The neighbors on . . . this side, a family with three children who’ve seen nothing, they were all asleep when we forced entry. And . . . here, two sisters, I’m guessing Polish, who described being woken up by loud voices and then what they called a dull bang, three, maybe four times.”

  They turned and looked at the four TV sets that didn’t work anymore.

  “They crept out to have a look through the peephole, two at different heights, so they could both look at the same time. And they both agree. Five young men, all in hoodies and track pants, left the apartment first and then some minutes later, a sixth one left.”

  Ewert Grens kicked one of the cardboard boxes lightly and it slid across the parquet floor. TV sets?

  “When?”

  “They think about ten minutes before we got here.”

  “And they’re reliable?”

  “Yes.”

  So near. And yet so far.

  “Then they’ll be in the next apartment already.”

  The coffee in Råby police station was much worse than in the corridors of Kronoberg. Bitter, almost sour, and ridiculously weak. It wasn’t often that Grens said no to a plastic cup of warmth, but having really tried with the first and poured out the second, he just shook his head when Pereira went to get a third.