Two Soldiers (6 page)

José Pereira clutched the now slightly crinkled piece of paper hard, a search warrant from the public prosecutor.

“So, we want to come in.”

The eighteen-year-old smiled again, a partially erect penis that was thrust back and forth a couple of times, turned around, and closed the door.

———

They were on the move.

It was his responsibility to find out where.

———

He clutched the search warrant in one hand and pushed open the orange, unlocked door and stormed into the empty hall, which was where he heard the voice again, Big Ali’s voice from what he presumed was the kitchen, the hulking body holding the harness and collar of a black-and-white, almost square, dog, which he released and then shouted something as it moved silently through the sitting room, past the TV, past the sofa, toward the hall and the front door and the colleague who was already farther in. José Pereira had never shot a dog before. The first shot hit the dog mid-jump, right-hand back leg, as the beast launched itself, jaws wide, at an unprotected neck and the unprepared and civvy-clad drugs officer put up his left arm in defense, sharp teeth straight through the black sleeve of his jacket and the skin of his forearm, muscles, sinews. The dog didn’t even notice. The adrenalin smothered the pain and it continued to pull and tear when the policeman fell to the floor. Pereira shot at it again and his colleague behind him fired as well, both aiming at a point just behind the ear, the most effective way to kill a dog, and despite the powerful body moving all the time, despite the risk of hitting the man now lying in agony on the floor, they continued to fire—eight, nine, ten times. The animal gradually loosened its grip, fell heavily to the floor, then José Pereira took a step forward and fired another two shots into the lifeless body.

“You stay fucking still.”

His colleague had slipped past him and gone into the apartment, his gun pointing into the sitting room at the one they called Big Ali, who was screaming
fucking pig cunts
and punching the air.

José Pereira aimed
his
gun at the one standing closest, in front of him. It was Gabriel Milton.

“Fucking get down on the floor.”

The naked body looked at him with a sneer as he lay down on the linoleum floor. Twelve shots had been fired only meters away. The
man next to him had a mauled arm and was still screaming. It was as if the young face didn’t register any of it. He wasn’t frightened. He wasn’t upset. And when he lay as he did now—on his stomach with his right leg out for comfort—the tattoo that had been difficult to read became clear. It started on the hip and went the whole way down the thigh to the knee; José Pereira had never seen the legend before, fourteen letters in the hall light,
GHETTO SOLDIERS
, across the burn scars.

They were on the move and now he knew where.

twenty-two days to go

He was still tired.

Eight grams the first day, eight grams the second day, and he’d forgotten to count on the third. It was a couple of days ago now, but it was still in his body, spasms around the eyes, mouth smacking, chin that went back and forth of its own accord that gave him this weird look, but most of all the fucking sweat on his forehead and temples and scalp. He leaned closer to the mirror above the sink, he looked like fucking Smackhead.

It would last a while yet, he knew that. The voices were the worst. He had to be able to deal with them outside the cell, they were always there when he’d done two nights in a row, so real and they talked shit about him, almost as if they really existed and he couldn’t pretend they weren’t there even though they talked about things he didn’t want anyone to know.

Leon adjusted the bedside lamp, it had to be on full.

He had written a bit, tidied, masturbated, made his bed, taken down the curtain rail, unscrewed the wardrobe, screwed the wardrobe back together again, put back the curtain rail, written a bit more, jerked off again, tidied, made his bed. In every cell, D1 Left, the same. The whole unit was wired, awake twenty-four seven, refusing to work, inmates who locked themselves in.

He had dished it out for free and the suspicious looks and questions had disappeared after the first gram, they had consumed it until it was gone in the way that druggies in prison always do, and the whore mule was known to those who needed to know, prison management. And the next time they would check, they would get a search warrant and she would stand there, empty.

Until then, until he got what he really needed.

He turned the bedside lamp a bit, the light hit the concrete wall and was brighter, his grandmother had often done that, chased off the dark with light that protected. And sometimes, but only for a second, he was sure that the woman who was his mother had done it too, the one who’d stopped coming to visit when he went to Bärby or maybe it was him who’d asked her to stop coming, probably was.

The light from the bedside lamp dissolved into the light coming from the window.

He stayed lying on the bed, but turned toward the bars, a sky, some clouds, the only things he could see from here.

In twenty-two days.

He knew what was needed,
the first wall
, how it worked, what separated one wall from another.

Until they were there, until they were at the top, until it was gone
.

“I’m going to kill them all!”

He shouted it again and again, until the rattling outside the door stopped, a key was turned, and the door opened.

The bitch guard.

“What’s . . . going on?”

He didn’t answer.

“You were shouting, what . . .”

“Close the door, will you.”

She stayed standing where she was, not much older than him. She stood there and pretended that she didn’t feel uncomfortable.

“UA.”

It had worked
.

“You think so?”

UA today. And next time, the dogs and a search warrant and she’d be empty
.

It had worked
.

“Urine test, now. Test room.”

He took his time getting undressed and then turned around to face her when he left the cell naked and walked down the corridor.

“If you’re wanting to see it, you can have a look now.”

She followed half a step behind and noticed that one of his thighs looked septic, bloody, and the other had a tattoo that looked completely new, a name of some sort, difficult to read.

A small room that wasn’t much bigger than a cell, opposite the TV corner and beside the fish tank. One of the mirrors was on the floor in front of the toilet, two others on either side of it where the guards could see his penis, not taking their eyes off it for a moment, it was to be his piss and completely fresh.

Julia Bozsik wore latex gloves when she handed over the white jug and met his eyes when he thrust his pelvis at her several times.

Scared.

She was so scared.

And she mustn’t be, mustn’t, mustn’t show it.

“And what if I . . . don’t piss? If I . . . think that people like you should die?”

“If you refuse to take a urine test, I will report you and you will have your sentence extended by ten days. And then next time, ten more.”

Scared. She was very scared.

He thrust his pelvis at her one more time, then smiled, held the jug up to his penis for the first few drops. He had pissed in Eknäs and Bärby and several times in Mariefred, but always in a special hospital unit, with nurses in white uniforms handing out and collecting the plastic jugs. This fucking piss parlor inside the unit, it already stank.

“You want to see more?”

The plastic mug in his hand as he filled it all the way up to the rim, held the yellow liquid out toward her and then just as she was about to take it, turned it upside down, poured the contents right in front of her feet, making sure that nothing got on her shoes, never risk the possibility of being accused of assault.

“You wanted me to take a piss. Otherwise you were obviously going to give me time. So I did what you said. I pissed.”

A line outside the door when he left, Smackhead and Alex and Virtanen and Västerås and Marko and the Count. He stopped briefly at the front of the line, the old skinny guy who was always fucking smiling.

“You know what to do, Smackhead.”

He was to take the jug, fill it with piss while they watched, and then he was to pour it out, close, but not on their feet.

A whole unit that refused. If they had been in any doubt, they now knew, there was plenty of drugs
.

Leon walked away, he still didn’t understand it, that fucking smile, he wanted to punch him, hated those parted lips, it was as if . . . but here, not with the guards here, and he carried on, naked, back to his cell.

———

He didn’t even see the bars anymore. And the wall was transparent. And there, the sun, the sky, the other life.

Twenty-two days.

“I’m going to kill them all!”

He and Alex were in Aspsås—maximum security, class 1.

Reza was in Österåker and Uros in Storboda—high security, class 2.

Locked up and watched for years, because people who shouldn’t have talked had talked.

This time she knocked. The bitch. And he’d gotten dressed.

“You asked for visitation rights.”

“Yes.”

“Visitors’ room 2.”

Down the unit corridor, the long passage under the yard and the stairs up to central security and the visitors’ room on the right, where he’d undressed that whore a week earlier and emptied her of two hundred grams of amphetamine.

The narrow bed with its sticky plastic cover over the mattress, the toilet rolls by the condoms at the end, the dripping tap on the sink,
the small table in the middle of the room and the view between the bars on the window.

And the lawyer.

On the chair, with his briefcase on his knees, fat and bald, he couldn’t remember his name, something beginning with P maybe. He’d actually used up all his visitation rights for the period, but with lawyers it was all right. They were like pigs and priests, came when you called on them and you could do it as often as you liked.

Leon sat down on the other chair, waited while the lawyer opened his briefcase and put a pile of papers on the table.

“I’ve got what you asked for.”

“So, I’ve been hearing things.”

Leon pulled the papers over.

“Someone thought I should read these. He said, ‘If you’re changing walls, you should read.’”

Stockholm. Central Station. The Forex office. Quite late. It was dark outside.

He had been holding a gun. Alex with one Kalashnikov replica, Reza with the other. Uros had been sitting waiting in the car outside, engine running.

“I’ve been hearing things. People have been saying things they shouldn’t say.”

The short, stocky lawyer shifted position; the wooden chair was uncomfortable, they always were in prison visiting rooms. The higher the level of security, the more uncomfortable the chairs, as if the punishment included the visitors.

“What do you want?”

The lawyer felt very uneasy.

He knew what the young man in front of him wanted, why he had called for a meeting with his legal representative. He knew where it would lead.

He could feel it in his stomach, he always felt tension and discomfort there—some people felt it in their chest, others across their brow, but for him, always in the pit of his stomach.

“The interviews.”

The lawyer had his hand on another pile of papers, his fingers were sweaty and didn’t want to let go.

“I want to read the interviews.”

He was obviously pressing harder with his right index finger and the metal splint under the white bandage snagged the paper. Until he saw that Jensen was looking at it, then he pulled it back, as if it had been broken again.

“You want to read them?”

The lawyer had witnessed this sort of thing several times before. Gang members who demanded to see their judgments, the whole investigation—the basis of what became a prison sentence—to find out who’d blabbed, who would have to pay later.

“Do you want me to say it again? What exactly is it that you don’t understand?”

Then, the same story every time. Once he’s read the papers, the gang leader flushes out those who can’t be trusted anymore, makes his organization stronger, protects it.

“I want to see the interviews with Daniel Wall and Javad Kittu.”

A client who normally doesn’t read anything, not a book, not a paper, but after the judgment has been pronounced requests the
transcripts of interviews and other proceedings, technical evidence, and then studies every single word, interprets every single comma.

“All of them?”

“It’s my right.”

Leon followed the bandaged finger as it leafed through hundreds of pages. The Central Station and Forex office, how they’d howled like dogs in the car afterwards, they had owned the world as they always did, he’d wound down the window on the bridge outside the parliament and screamed even louder and Reza had taken off his top and leaned his whole naked torso out, and Uros had swung from the cars on the right to the cars on the left and then the right again, and Alex had sat in the back singing his fucking heart out, they had headed out of the city and off the highway into Råby, honking like fuck, they had laughed like fuck and all the dollar bills were stuffed into a wardrobe in Danny Hangaround’s apartment, and the other foreign money under the bed in Javad Hangaround’s apartment, they had divvied up the Swedish money in a café in the shopping center and each bought a new car that would be parked in the garage in the basement and a new TV with white varnished loudspeakers and for six nights in a row had sat at the best table in the club, nearest the window with a view over Stureplan.

“Yes, you do have a right to read it.”

The lawyer turned toward the barred window and wall, his back to the prisoner and the papers that he didn’t want anything to do with right now.

“And it’s my right not to know why.”

Sometimes, when he didn’t feel like he did in the pit of his stomach, he could laugh at their pseudo-morals, pseudo-honor, pseudo-respect. All those big words for all those little boys.

“These ones, this file, the interview with Daniel Wall.”

But with the boy sitting on the other side of the table, it was more. More than just flushing out, punishing, protecting, strengthening.

That was what he felt in his stomach. Someone who didn’t know himself.

“And there, the final interview with Javad Kittu.”

The lawyer who had been sitting with his back to him while he read now got up and walked over to the window, looked at the unmoving concrete wall.

Now and then he turned around, looked over at the table and the eighteen-year-old turning the pages, reading, turning the pages, reading,

at the determined aggression that was looking for the answer that wasn’t just staring at the floor or keeping your mouth shut with a smile or shouting
fucking pig
, an answer that would always mean punishment later.