Two Soldiers Read online

  “It’s showing us. You smell. This way, please.”

  Another door, like a room in a hospital. A bed in the middle and pipes and machines on the floor and walls.

  “I want you to pee,” the policewoman held out a white cup, “in this.”

  Wanda sat down in front of her on a big potty, the plastic cup underneath her to catch the urine, like when she went to the school nurse when she was little. Once it was half full she held it up to the policewoman’s fuzzy hand.

  “Please get undressed.”

  She was freezing from before. But more from the inside. Now she really was shivering.

  “Hands behind your head.”

  Rubber gloves that searched her armpits, her scalp.

  “Legs wide, feet further apart.”

  The warmth near her vagina without touching it.

  “Your mouth, open wide, lift your tongue.”

  It’s important that you’re heard.

  Rubber finger under her tongue, the back of her teeth, down her throat.

  Until she pretended to gag, then the policewoman quickly took a step back and Wanda laughed scornfully as Gabriel had said she should.

  “Did that frighten you?”

  “Lie down there, please, and lift up your legs.”

  A bed and the policewoman popped up two metal rails that were secured to the frame.

  You have to make a noise!

  “So you want to see more, do you? Maybe touch me up?”

  The fuzzy arm opened the fuzzy door. A fuzzy doctor in a fuzzy white coat was waiting outside.

  “Not me. And then, Gabriel, what then? But someone who has the right to do it. You have to let them search you. We have a warrant for a full body search. I’m scared, Gabriel, d’you hear? So, it’s your choice. There’s nothing to be scared of, because you’ll be empty this time. Either you put your legs up and let the doctor examine you. And I’m so cold, like I’ll never be warm again. Or you don’t, and I will be forced to call in my two colleagues who are waiting outside and we’ll hold you down while the doctor examines you.”

  ———

  She closed her eyes. Even the fuzziness was too clear. And didn’t open them again until she was dressed and being escorted by two wardens to the visitors’ room.

  He was already sitting there waiting for her.

  ———

  She wasn’t freezing anymore.

  She didn’t feel the tube going up her rectum, a camera lens on the tip, nor the rubber-gloved hand that poked around in her vagina.

  She had done what she was supposed to do. And when she sank into the chair opposite Leon she was as frightened as she always was, but she didn’t need to strip her clothes off and he wasn’t going to touch her as she didn’t have anything for him to take. So they sat there looking at each other, they’d never really spoken before.

  ———

  He was angry with her.

  He didn’t know why.

  She was sitting in front of him and had to sit there for fifty minutes for the visit to look normal. She had done exactly what had been asked of her. And yet, the rage, like he wanted to hit her.

  “Gabriel?”

  And when she looked down, it just made it worse.

  “Yes?”

  “His report.”

  They’d only ever met like this. Once every two weeks for three months and two hundred grams of amphetamine each time. That was all. A fucking whore. Whatever it was that made him want to lean forward and hit her, hit and hit, he didn’t understand it.

  ———

  He looked angry. She didn’t know why. She’d done exactly what they’d asked her to.

  “The kids sold everything, one hundred and eighty-two thousand kronor. And they . . .”

  Wanda tried to remember what she’d repeated, Gabriel had said it was important to get it right.

  “. . . they’ll settle today, tomorrow at the latest.”

  She looked down, if she looked down it was still there.

  “The jewelers in Solna and Huddinge Centrum. Two hundred and sixty-four thousand. Enforcement in Sundbyberg. Twenty thousand. The newsagent by Slussen. Four thousand.”

  His eyes. They were like Gabriel’s when he was shouting, only worse.

  “What else?”

  When he stared at her like that, it was so intense and she forgot, she tried to remember, it was there, it . . .

  “What else?”

  She swallowed, looked down again, at her shoes, glanced over at his.

  “Gabriel . . . he said . . . he said to tell you that the phone . . . it’s still tapped.”

  ———

  Leon raised his hand.

  But he didn’t hit her, he took hold of her face and pressed into her cheeks, forced it up from the floor; she was to look at him.

  “You still live there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Still, all the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Still, in Gabriel’s room?”

  “Yes.”

  Gabriel’s room. My room.

  He leaned closer, whispered that she was good, that they’d searched her and found nothing and couldn’t do it again next time, when it really counted, in fourteen days. She would be here again in exactly fourteen days, and now, as she had to stay for half an hour more, she might as well lie down on the bunk while they passed the time, Gabriel wouldn’t mind, he knew what it was like to be locked up and a brother’s a brother.

  ———

  Gabriel’s room. My room.

  That fucking tension in his chest and stomach and now in his cock.

  Leon wasn’t sure. If that was why he asked her to strip and open her legs. That he had to have a bit of what was there instead of him, someone who lived there all the time.

  She didn’t know—that there was only one love.

  ———

  Leon held her.

  And wanted her to hold him.

  He didn’t look so angry anymore. And when he held her, he did it gently.

  The tattoo on his thigh, the same as Gabriel’s.

  But his back was different, when she ran her hand over it, it was smooth, not pitted like Gabriel’s, which she loved so much.

  And when she lay here like this, the plastic sticking to her skin, she could see the barred window and the gray wall outside.

  Eddie sat on the bed and did nothing. He was waiting. If that’s doing nothing. But it wasn’t boring, like waiting can sometimes be. It was exciting. He was about to sell some more. And every time it felt like he got a little closer. Gabriel had still not said his name but had looked at him more than once over the past few weeks.

  He closed the door to the hall and lay down on the floor, shuffled in under the bed next to a black Puma bag. Inside, if he opened the zipper on the side pocket that tended to get stuck, were twenty small packets wrapped in plastic, ten capsules and half a gram of heroin in each. Last week, white-and-yellow capsules, this week, brown-and-red, but with the same content.

  A jacket like the one Gabriel wore, and under it, a fanny pack where he stashed seven of the little plastic packages. Wax from the shelf under the mirror on his short hair until it was completely rigid and shiny. Gold chain carefully clipped around his neck.

  He stood in front of the mirror for a while, as he always did.

  One point five meters tall. Slim. No facial hair, no spots.

  He knew that he’d look different in a few years and he couldn’t wait. The laughter in his body when he thought about it was such a good feeling, and it was connected to Gabriel and Bruno and Jon and Big Ali who left their cars near the stairs to number 67, and with Leon and Alex and Uros and Reza who were doing time in a real prison right now. And it was also connected to the fact that he was one of the first to know that they’d changed names, and that he was allowed to look after the Puma bag once a week. The laughter came from somewhere deep inside, and he loved it.

  He pulled down the zipper on his hoodie until the heavy gold chain was
as visible as he wanted it to be. He left the room; his mom had set out a snack on the table but he didn’t pay any attention, he just wanted to get away, out.

  Early afternoon and it was quiet down at the center, not many people, first stop Konsum supermarket. He went in and made his way over to the bread counter that was behind the cakes and cookies. He was on his own. A few people over by the fruit counter, he could hear them, some others by the cheese and eggs, no one else. He chose the shelf farthest to the left, the one with white bread, looked around, still on his own. One of the seven packages from his pack, the plastic caught the light, stuck to his hand a bit. He went down on his knees and fixed it with enough tape so that he was sure it would stay there, a bit in under the bread shelf.

  Then he went over to the refrigerators, chose the green milk cartons, in the middle, down on his knees again, and fixed the next package with tape as far in as his fingers could reach. Then by one of the long freezers, where a woman the same age as his mother with a child in a stroller trundled past, and he pretended to be reading something on the packaging until he was on his own again, then chose the corner with the blue boxes of frozen fish—the third package from his pack just fit in the gap between the bottom of the freezer and the stone floor. He carried on toward the cash registers, paid for a Daim bar and a packet of candy, some sickly chocolate and a few bits of foam so the woman at the register would keep quiet and take his fifty-kronor note. She noticed his gold chain, he saw that, and he puffed up his chest a little more. Four packages left in the pack, next shop, ICA.

  ———

  He had stood on the steps by the train platform for half an hour and only had three customers. Things were maybe slower today. Or was it the two cops who had passed by in the middle of it all—it usually took a while then before anyone else dared approach him. No one could see him here either. Apart from the ticket attendant, but she was busy talking to people on her cell phone and just waved anyone who wanted to buy or show a ticket past in irritation.

  Eddie smiled. This was where he’d been standing when Gabriel hit him on the cheek and his ring left a mark.

  A sucker.

  He hadn’t seen him before, but could recognize them straight away, skinny, sweating, stressed-looking, he came up from the subway from the other side. They looked at each other, the boy who had just turned twelve and the man who was thirty-seven, gave each other a hard handshake, the slight boy’s hand in the skinny adult hand.

  “Eight.”

  “Five. Or ten.”

  “I want eight.”

  The older man raised his voice, tried to dominate. So the one-point-five-meter-tall boy leaned forward and waited until the one-point-eight-three-meter-tall adult automatically did the same, close up when the considerably shorter one raised his hand and slapped the other’s cheek.

  “I said five. Or ten. Eddie’s the name.”

  The taller, older man shuddered, stepped back, his hand to the red mark on his cheek that was burning.

  He bit his underlip when he spoke.

  “Five.”

  “Eight hundred per gram. That’s four thousand.”

  The bigger guy with the red cheek pulled some crumpled notes out of his pant pocket, twenty-kronor notes and fifty-kronor notes and hundred-kronor notes and a couple of five-hundred-kronor notes and a handful of coins. Eddie counted them, gave back what he didn’t need, and put the rest straight in his own pocket.

  “Konsum. Milk chiller. At the bottom of the one with the green cartons.”

  Eddie hadn’t even finished speaking.

  The man who had just bought five grams of Russian heroin was already on his way.

  ———

  After that, things picked up. The last three had all come within fifteen minutes.

  When he walked into the elevator in Råby Allé 67, he was shaking, not from fear, but rather from anticipation and when he checked his chain and hair in the mirror, he had a good feeling in his stomach, not lonely, not empty, the laughter inside again.

  Second floor and traces of blood on the balcony that hadn’t been there the last time, but he knew they were the dog’s, twelve fucking bullets. He knocked on the door that said SANTOS and adjusted his chain, which he could see in the shiny door handle, the one he’d got when he strolled into Tumba center, to the jewelry shop on the ground floor, he was to see where the two Securitas guards were and then go back out to the car without looking at the three masked people who came in right then with guns in their hands, and smashed all the glass display cases, filled their rucksacks. As payment, Eddie had chosen the chain that had shone in the middle of the display window, and on the way back to Råby, squashed in the middle of the backseat, he had felt it caressing his neck.

  He knocked again, then rang the bell, Gabriel opened with a bare chest, burned skin everywhere.

  Gabriel’s hall.

  Eddie had stood there nine times before, accounted for a total of 227,000 kronor, his cut 11,350, he knew exactly.

  In Gabriel’s apartment.

  He clutched the banknotes in one hand and ran the other through his shiny hair, it was like his feet were moving of their own accord, the rush inside, he was on his way into the sitting room.

  “Stop right there!”

  The hard voice, he wanted to avoid it, took out the money.

  “Sorry, I . . . seven packets, thirty-five Gs, twenty-eight thousand.”

  Gabriel took it, weighed it, but didn’t count it.

  “Thirty-five Gs. Sixty-five left.”

  “On Friday.”

  Gabriel almost smiled, at least, that’s what it felt like, sat down on the hall carpet and indicated to Eddie he should do the same. Some tobacco from the worn, brown leather pouch in one hand while he opened a small round glass bottle that hung around his neck with the other, a couple of drops in the tobacco.

  Eddie watched carefully as Gabriel used his fingertips to mix the tobacco and fill the Rizla paper, roll it with one hand, light it, and take the first toke then hand it over.

  Cannabis oil from Gabriel’s leather pouch in Gabriel’s hall.

  Eddie took it and inhaled, one more and then he coughed, as if his tongue was stuck to the top of his mouth, words that were too big.

  “One love, brother.”

  The blow to his right cheek was hard.

  “You’re not my brother.”

  Gabriel was sitting close by and pointed toward what Eddie knew was the sitting room.

  “Jon is my brother. Bruno is my brother. They’re my brothers because Leon and I made them members. Maybe, if you continue, if for example you run now and get the plastic bag from the locker in Vivo supermarket for me and look after it until I’m ready—and if you help me in a couple of days with a little something that I want taken to the police station, if you keep doing things like that for me, then maybe one day, you might be my brother.”

  Afternoon. Early evening.

  The whore had been. The kids were done.

  But the good, long day wasn’t over yet.

  Marko still hadn’t completed his initiation test and Gabriel, who was back in Råby, was still waiting; they would clean up inside and outside, at the same time.

  Leon lay on his bed, listening, voices always had the same echo in institutions. Every place surrounded by a barbed-wire fence or a wall had special acoustics, a scale that only existed there and that was hollow. Emptiness for anyone who opened the door from the outside and listened, hopelessness for anyone who had just come in and sat down, security for anyone who went to sleep and woke up in it.

  He had taken off her clothes—taken from her—and felt nothing. He wasn’t as relaxed as he normally was afterwards, not worried that Gabriel had anything against it. He didn’t know why. Except that he’d wanted to hit her. And that this was better.

  He turned on the light. Turned it off. Turned it on.

  He listened to the different-sounding footsteps. The ones that were softer, the muffled sound of slippers, always inmates. The ones th
at were harder, the clacking sound of black boots with heels, always guards. He was waiting for footsteps from the cell farther down, for them to open the cell door, come down the corridor, pass him, the ones that were even softer and more muffled—Marko was the only one in the unit who wore the prison-issue shoes, thin and ugly and free . . . when those steps went past, a good day would have a good finish.

  Leon turned the light on. Off.

  A couple of weeks ago he’d told the lawyer he was to be there in the visitors’ room and the stupid fuck hadn’t come, you have a legally binding judgment, they had smashed up his car and he still hadn’t come, I no longer have any obligations to you as a client, Bruno had put one of the kid’s bloody canaries under his pillow in his bed and he still hadn’t come, and you and I therefore need have nothing more to do with each other, it wasn’t until Jon had broken his right index finger a week later that he’d understood, booked a meeting, taken the papers with him.

  INTERVIEW LEADER JAN ZANDER (IL): I want an answer to my question.

  DANIEL WALL (DW): You mean . . . Central Station?

  The footsteps from Cell 12 went past, Marko’s footsteps.

  They should be by the kitchen now, nearly at the door, going out onto the stairs and up to the first floor, D2 Left.

  INTERVIEW LEADER LEIF LUNDH (IL): What color?

  JAVAD KITTU (JK): Dark, I think. Reza’s were lighter.

  The lawyer had stood with his back to Leon while he read the judgment, the interviews, the technical evidence. The material that had helped to convict him and Alex and Reza and Uros, four and a half years.

  Leon turned on the light, off, on, off.

  Danny Hangaround had talked. Javad Hangaround had talked. And they knew, they all knew, that anyone who talks won’t talk again.

  ———

  Gabriel was sitting on one of the benches in Råby Torg, Bruno on the next bench, warm sun on their faces. Then he appeared, the youngster who was twelve and had greased hair and a thick gold chain, the one who’d given his earnings in exchange for some cannabis oil and the promise of belonging, and had then run off to get one of the bags, the one in the locker in Vivo, between the entrance and the shopping carts. The plastic bag in Gabriel’s hand as they walked toward the metro, through the barriers and up onto the platform for trains to Hallunda, Fittja, Masmo. They knew that Javad would come on the 17:14 train, they had agreed to meet him, explained that he was to collect a package and keep it for the family. Bruno stayed by the exit from Masmo station, behind the kiosk where he had a good overview of everyone who came and went, Gabriel kept going through the suburb, which was just like Råby, the same asphalt, the same buildings, to the door of Masmo Allé 23, first floor, where he sat down on one of the steps to wait—this was where Javad’s mother lived and this was where he was coming.