Two Soldiers (11 page)

eleven days to go

Sixty-eight seconds.

He had run to his shelf when the alarm went, overalls, helmet, pack on his back, twenty-five kilos and then the heavy fucking tactical body armor they’d borrowed from the army because some health and safety advisor wasn’t happy about axes being thrown around.

He hated it, still didn’t understand it. Eleven thousand eight hundred people who loved their homes, who were proud of them and lived and breathed in a world that two hundred other people held captive.

The body armor was to protect him from them; he took it off and threw it on the floor, kicked it—not today.

Thom looked at the big clock in the changing room. Seventy-seven seconds. He’d make it.

The third fire in Råby this evening, a container and a moped and a climbing frame, and every time stones and hate. And out there, farther afield, Råby’s fires had spread to the other suburbs in southern Stockholm, Hallunda and Alby and Vårberg, in the same way that a few years ago Rosengård in Malmö had set light to Oxie and Hermodsdal, and Backa in Gothenburg had engulfed Tynnered and Biskopsgården, and it wasn’t going out, it just kept moving, growing.

He ran to the truck and his place at the front right, a look at the young driver and another at the crew manager whom he’d worked with for so long, and the Number One and Number Two who were both quite new but solid. A nod toward the exit, siren on and off, they sped to an address that was in fact a level two, which required an escort, police cars that were always busy elsewhere.

“Råby Allé. About twenty-five onlookers.”

They had seen the smoke some way off, and as they got closer to the block it was obvious that it was concentrated in one particular stair.

“Black smoke coming out main door. Over and out.”

Thom turned off the walkie-talkie, opened the door, and ran toward the intense heat.

———

Ana was standing where she usually did, by the kitchen window on the third floor with a view over the greater part of Råby Allé, a half-drunk cup of coffee in her hand, and in a while, maybe another cigarette. She had seen them sneak into the entrance a few hours ago, down into the cellar, seven of them in hoodies and track pants, ten years old, maybe twelve. She had stood there waiting for the first signs of smoke and the sound, faint at first and then getting stronger.

———

The Number One and Number Two had gotten out the small hose and metal pipe
turn on the water
and rolled it out to twenty-five meters
more length
and turned on the pump
we need more hose
and when it wasn’t enough had rolled out the bigger hose and then, armed with a crowbar, they ran toward the locked door to the cellar.

Thom adjusted his earpiece and moved closer to get a better overview. “
Less water
.” A metal door, ten seconds. A security door, ninety seconds. They were in. “
Tires. Mattresses. Clothes
.” He turned up the volume on the earpiece. “
Still mainly smoke
.” Two voices, breathing heavily in nine hundred degrees, a concrete cellar without ventilation and with water that quickly became steam, six minutes in there, no more.

They were in control.

The whole cellar was drenched in water. He moved closer and prodded the remains of a bicycle tire with the toe of his boot, he wouldn’t need to post someone here to make sure it was out. A strange feeling of relief. Not a single threat. No stones or bottles. He looked around, it was a long time since they’d extinguished a fire in peace.

“Thom?”

They had dismantled the pump and rolled up both hoses. He had just sat down in his place when the call came.

“Yes?”

“Car fire. Råby Allé. The garage, basement.”

———

She leaned her forehead against the glass that felt warmer. Every day a little closer, a little more. Seven years ago, five years ago, the fire had always been a bit farther away, a trash can, a park bench, and one time a fence. In more recent years, cars, the school, a couple of nurseries, and now the buildings, our homes.

Ana stretched up, standing on her toes while the basement burned, black smoke, something with oil that oozed into the apartment.

She needed fresh air.

She went into the hall then out into the stairwell, slapped the cover of the garbage chute on the floor below hard, opened it to remove the damn fucking plastic bag that she should throw to the bottom, but a cry started in her chest and erupted into her throat and she slammed it shut, a bang that echoed as she went down the stairs. She pushed open the front door onto a beautiful summer evening, a gentle warm breeze, but walking toward the smoke was like going back to another time when the kids who wore track pants and set fire to things had been other ten-year-olds and twelve-year-olds; she had run out every time and screamed at them, grabbed hold of them, held them, and tried to understand. And she hadn’t understood, and they had heard her screams.

———

The black cloud. Oil smoke. Burning cars indoors were the worst. The last time, a couple of weeks ago, the same garage, and they had had to evacuate ninety-one apartments when the poisonous smoke belched into three stairwells via the elevator shaft. Thom jumped down from the truck that had moved two hundred meters and opened the big garage door.

The smoke hit them like a wall.

The attack hose, the supply hose, metal pipes, pump, connection, foam.

He went to where he should stand as the firefighters rushed toward the source of the fire, which was parked by a concrete wall: a gray Mazda.

He didn’t see them before it was too late.

Four of them with something oblong in their hands as they ran toward the unrolled hoses, stabbing at them, once, twice, three times.

“Turn off the water.”

The driver, who was looking after the pump, had heard, and a few seconds later the water and foam that was pushed out in fountains had dried up, as more of them approached—Thom counted up to thirty kids around the damaged hose. And that feeling he had had for the first time only a couple of weeks ago—something that had snapped somewhere deep inside when a paving stone and an axe had morphed into saliva that dribbled from his neck down to his chest—he felt it again now, only stronger. He realized that this was what it was all about, this was why they’d been able to put out the fire in the cellar in peace, the feeling of relief had just been a distraction when this was where they would be lured, and then attacked. And it burst again right there, despite the fact that he’d sworn it would never happen, he lunged into the midst of the arms that were stabbing at the hoses, caught a glimpse of a gold chain and the slicked-back hair, grabbed the thin boy’s arm, forced it back until the knife fell on the ground.

Thom was panting, eased his grip.

It was only a kid.

He’d been so close to lashing out.

“I’m going kill you.”

The boy’s face that had spat at him last time gathered ammunition and spat again. Then smiled, swept the now empty hand in front of Thom’s face, aimed his fingers at his head, looked him in the eye, pretended to cock a gun, fire.

“Eddie’s the name.”

The fingers again, the fingers that shot.

“Next time I’ll kill you.”

Thom faced what was being aimed at his temple, he was shaking like he used to a long time ago when he sometimes went too far, he looked into the black smoke and then over at the tower block and the sky, then turned around.

———

She didn’t push to the front. She’d thought about it, about talking to him, the fireman she needed to help her in order not to kill or injure anyone, but decided to wait, maybe he would be more accessible next time. Instead she had watched, near enough to feel the threat and frustration and yet far enough away not to be part of it.

Ana started to walk slowly through the dark and the Råby where she’d lived all her life, except for the four and half years behind barbed wire in Hinseberg prison for women, the Råby that she loved and hated and that had been her starting point for the years at college and studying social work and her driving force as a newly employed social worker in the social welfare office that no one else wanted to work in; the Råby she had searched for and carried and decided to keep.

When she left Råby Allé and headed toward the buildings at the lower end of Råby Backe, the smoke disappeared, the taste of oil.

It hadn’t been possible to reach them. Not at home. They had sat at her kitchen table, nine years old and part of Råby’s amphetamine market, separately they had been strong and rebelled, but it had still been possible to talk to them, they gave each other strength, protected each other, united like a wall that just sat there, in the way.

Not even the two at her kitchen table. Not even the one she had carried in her arms.

And then when two had become three, four, five, six, seven, eight, when she had moved them from the kitchen table to the social services desk, when she had threatened and cried and forced her colleagues to recognize these children who behaved like criminal men and the bulk of the social services’ work had involved eight boys who had called themselves Råby Warriors, nothing had changed.

One love
.

She and her colleagues had offered tailor-made solutions, employment, good financial terms and conditions. They didn’t have a chance. There were other employers, recruitment officers who knocked on the door and said
one love
and
brother
and came from agencies with names that weren’t Manpower or any other temping agency, networks that offered simple solutions and lots of money.

Another love
.

Råby Backe and Västra Ringen and the smell of smoke had vanished, the warm summer breeze was undisturbed where she sat on one of the benches overlooking Råby Torg.

It had once been so full of life.

Her gaze rested on a bench in the middle of the square. That boy was sitting there, the one who had just shot the fireman with his fingers. She’d seen him around for a while now, Deniz’s son, and he was becoming more and more like her own son, it was already too late.

He didn’t notice her, was waiting for someone, maybe something. Maybe the guy who just walked past, who went over to him and greeted him and took some papers out of his pocket and then left again, twice his age but obviously submissive, frightened of a twelve-year-old boy.

She looked at him through the dark that hid her and wanted to go over too.

She wanted to hold him, pick him up, carry him away, and not let go until he’d understood.

It was dark.

But not completely dark, like it can be in summer. And quiet. He didn’t like it at all, like everything was empty and hollow, like nothing existed. There wasn’t much he could do about it on a bench in the middle of Råby Torg, but at home he always had the bedside lamp on all night. He hoped Leon and Gabriel would never find out.

There was the bastard. He nodded to him and the skinny fuck stuck out his hand and said hello, gave him some crumpled notes that had nestled in his pocket and in return he told him about the place in ICA, under the shelf for chocolate and sweets; he had put the plastic package there just before the supermarket had closed and an eager hand would tear it away as soon as they opened in the morning.

He would sit on the bench a little longer; it wasn’t time yet.

He tried to think about something other than the dark and started to laugh when his thoughts focused on the car they had set alight, his fingers against the old man’s head and pretending to shoot him, saying I’m going to kill you. The feeling that he sometimes had in his stomach, like a great cloud drifting around, disappeared, and the other feeling that was more like bubbles came back, fingers in the air again, and he fired at an imaginary head and thought about a towel in a locker in a school and what was wrapped inside it and that he would have one like that one day.

Eddie checked the time on his cell phone, got up, and only spotted her after he’d gone a few steps, the woman standing over there, watching him, whose hair was turning gray and was probably as old as his mother. The woman who never showed him any respect and was mean, a social worker who saw through him, as if she knew everything
about him. She knew who he was, she did. And he knew who she was. And if it hadn’t been
His
mother, he would have aimed and shot at her as well.

A couple of minutes’ walk to Råby Allé 44, in through the main door and down to the basement—he was the first one—sat down on the step closest to the elevator.

No windows. Not here, right at the bottom.

Compact darkness, a tapping sound from the door to the cellars, another when the elevator clunked into action and then stopped. Dark. Silent. He had a towel in his locker at school, if he’d had it in his hands, been holding it, things wouldn’t feel so fucking hollow, so fucking empty.

He couldn’t turn on the light. They’d be here soon and they didn’t like it when he did that.

Soon.

Soon.

He knew why he was sitting here. It was connected to the fact that he’d sold more drugs than normal in the past month. And that he had a gun in his locker that was missing two bullets. And that there were only eleven days left.

The front door opened.

Footsteps coming in and down into the basement toward him.

Things weren’t hollow anymore. It wasn’t empty.

“One love, brother.”

He said it, and got a slap on the ear. A punch on the shoulder. He’d said it and they’d seen him. Maybe he should say it again?

A flashlight in his face. Bruno. And Jon. They each had a shoebox with them.

He looked around.

“Gabriel?”

“Later.”

He swallowed his disappointment, tried not to show it.

Bruno gave him a shoebox before he went back up the stairs, pressed the elevator button, waited, opened the door, pressed the button and they went back down. He took a ten-centimeter-long piece
of metal from his pocket, unscrewed the small screw above the door handle of the elevator shaft with his finger, put the piece of metal in the square hole that was left and turned it, opened the door onto nothing.

There was a faint light above their heads from the lift, standing one floor up. They carefully lowered themselves into the elevator shaft one at a time and jumped the last meter or so down to the floor. The flashlight shone on the big black blanket that Bruno pulled away, and the beam hit an unopened twenty-five-kilo hessian sack and two boxes. First the sack and what looked like small round balls, like rabbit shit, like the ones the dwarf rabbit that Eddie and his sister had begged for used to leave in a pile on the rug in the hall. The small round balls would fill both the shoeboxes. Then the two boxes, long rows of little tubes in one, about a centimeter in diameter and ten centimeters long, and some longer, wider tubes in the other. Bruno picked up one of each sort and put them in his back pocket.

Bulk industrial explosives. Detonators. Sticks of dynamite.

One of six elevator shafts in Råby Allé that was being used as a storage space.

Eddie had seen them for the first time only a couple of weeks ago; someone from the elevator company was going to inspect and quality-assure all the elevators in the area and they had managed, with less than half an hour’s warning, to shift everything into the cars in the garage, seven twenty-five-kilo sacks of bulk industrial explosives and sixty-two sticks of dynamite and several thousand detonators. It had been stored in the cars for a few days until the elevator company went on somewhere else, and then promptly moved back that night.

The black blanket back over the bag and boxes, they jumped up from the bottom of the elevator shaft, used the piece of metal in the square hole to lock up, and hurried back up and out of the door and over to Råby Allé 67 and the apartment with the orange door off the balcony on the second floor.

———

Eddie could smell it out in the hall. Marzipan. It smelled just like marzipan. He looked at Bruno, at Jon, and they nodded. He could go in.
That feeling in his stomach
. He’d been allowed to sell more, to look after guns, move their explosives.
That bubbling feeling
. And now he was on his way into their kitchen and would see them preparing it.

And maybe, but only maybe, he would be allowed to put it out somewhere.

Wanda on the sofa in the sitting room. Big Ali beside her, lying down, a movie on the TV that Eddie recognized, which looked good, he’d also have to watch it sometime.

Gabriel was standing by the table in the kitchen. Eddie looked at him. And he almost looked back.

They had already laid out a thick plastic tube and a roll of plastic wrap on the table. Both shoeboxes with the bulk industrial explosives, the detonators, and the sticks of dynamite beside them. Eddie went closer and caught the smell again, the smell of marzipan. He put his nose up to it, it was the dynamite, he was sure of it.

Gabriel waited until they were all quiet, tapped Bruno on the shoulder with his fist when he wasn’t. Then he turned the tube upright and put it back down on the table. He pressed a detonator into a stick of dynamite and pushed them both through the small hole at the bottom of the tube until they had disappeared except for the long wire that was left dangling. Then he turned the tube upside down and poured in what Eddie still thought looked like rabbit shit, but what he now knew was bulk industrial explosives, the pressure of which squeezed the life out of human bodies more than ordinary explosives.

He knew that it had to be pressed down hard into the tube, that was important. And that the top had to be firmly attached. And that the plastic wrap had to be wound around, layer by layer, as it was to be stored near water for several days. Eddie followed Gabriel’s hands as he made seven adhesive cushions on every side of the tube, took a recently stolen cell phone from the charger on the counter, and fixed
it to the tube with even more plastic wrap, opened a rucksack and put what was now ready at the bottom.

“You look after it.”

Gabriel’s hands opened one of the outer pockets on the rucksack and put in a pair of pliers and then handed the whole thing over to the twelve-year-old boy who was standing close, dying to be part of it.

“Keep it until I tell you we’re going to use it.”

Two small hands reached out, took it, held it in his arms.

“Until next time one of us is hauled in by the pigs.”

Gabriel looked at the little boy who wanted so much. One point five meters tall, holding a red rucksack in his arms. Face of a child, eyes of a child.

That’s what you are really, just a child.

If I was going to sell the amount of drugs that you do.

If I was going to keep a gun in a locker at ICA or at school, like you do.

If I was to stand there with a bomb in my arms like you are right now, if the police came, I’d get fucking five years.

But you, you’re perfect, you’ll get an appointment with a social worker and then be taken to the movies by a support worker.

Eddie saw that Gabriel was looking. At him. He held the rucksack even harder and felt the laughter in his stomach again; it was the first time he’d been so far into Gabriel’s apartment, and he had seen them and they had seen him.

He didn’t want to go, leave them, out into the dark that was hollow.

He didn’t go home. Not yet. He walked along Råby Allé, then past Råby Backe to the school, which was totally empty.

He looked in through the window on the ground floor—all dark. He counted to three and then kicked his foot through it. If he bent down and twisted his body, he could get through without catching his clothes on the jaggedness.

Eight minutes. Before the security guys would get here. He had forgotten how loud the alarm was, it hurt deep into his ears.

It was always totally weird to walk down the school corridor alone in the dark like this. He went over to his locker and opened it, forced the red rucksack in with all the math books and geography books and the gun, the locker was full now. As the alarm continued to wail loudly, he walked slowly back, the way he’d learned to, back to Råby Allé 102 and an apartment on the sixth floor and a door that was always open. His room was straight in to the left and he heard voices from the kitchen, his mother and someone else; he lay on the bed with his clothes on and turned on the light. He was tired and about to fall asleep and the lamp would be turned off in the morning when he woke up, it always was; his mom, when he was asleep.