Two Soldiers (13 page)

Another toke, even broader grin.

He’d even shot at him.

three days to go

Early morning. If it was even that. Maybe the tail end of the
night. She lay back down on the bed and smoked a cigarette. There was still a strong smell of THC, the potent cannabis oil had saturated their pores, clothes, wallpaper. They had all been smoking when she got there, even the young kid was there, he’d looked really happy and laughed loudly when he tried on the bulletproof vests again and again and lifted his top several times and pointed at the two round marks that were as big as a five-kronor coin. She’d helped them carry all the new stuff down later, the things they’d been working on in the kitchen, the bulletproof vests and hoodies and T-shirts, with the new logo sewn or ironed on, their new name, they’d carried it all down into a storeroom in the cellar of Råby Allé 22.

She’d waited until the kid had gone and then asked Gabriel to get the others to do the same, but he’d refused, so she pointed to the bedroom and he’d followed her in and closed the door.

Now he was lying beside her just as naked as she was, and he was smoking as well. Soon they would hang up the blanket to keep out the sun, and she reached out a hand to stroke his cheek and he didn’t move, didn’t push it away, didn’t shout at her, and she knew that the time was right.

She rolled onto her side, stretched over to get hold of the plastic stick that she’d put on the floor under the bed so it would be easy to get hold of and held it up for him to see; he seemed to be calm still.

“See this?”

He leaned forward.

“Yes.”

“Can you see what it is?”

“A drug test.”

He automatically looked for the red plus sign and saw it.

“A
positive
drug test.”

He had pissed in public in every secure home, secure training center, and young offenders’ institution.

“No.”

“But I can see it. It’s red! Why the hell have you tested positive?”

Wanda gripped the stick even harder, her breathing labored in a way that wasn’t normal for her.

“It’s a pregnancy test.”

He didn’t move.

“Gabi?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Feel.”

She took his hand and put it on her stomach.

“Here.”

And tried to keep it there while she spoke.

“If you . . . it’s like a . . . sesame seed. Do you hear me, Gabriel? As big as a sesame seed! There’s . . . there’s a bulge in the middle . . . a heart. It’s not beating yet. But it’s there.”

She could normally tell what to expect from his eyes.

They were empty. She couldn’t see anything.

Not even his movements, when he stood up and left the room without a word, told her anything.

Gabriel had heard sesame seed and heart, but nothing more.
He walked naked from the bedroom into the kitchen. Jon was sitting on a chair by the table drinking something and didn’t even have enough time to turn around. Gabriel’s fist hit him in the middle of the face. He went into the sitting room where Bruno was lying in the sofa, watching some movie or other when Gabriel grabbed hold of his T-shirt and pulled until they were both looking at each other—his forehead hard against Bruno’s nose and cheek, twice. His pants were lying on the floor and he put them on, his hoodie and socks were somewhere else. He ran barefoot to the car, wearing nothing on top. Out of Råby, onto the highway toward Södertälje, he drove past Botkyrka church at two hundred kilometers an hour and it was hard to see the road through his tears, but with one hand on the wheel he managed to open the glove compartment and nudge out a gun and check that there was still a bullet in it. He spun the cylinder that had room for six bullets and cocked the trigger as he normally did when he felt he ruled the world, but he didn’t feel like that, in fact, he felt the complete opposite. He pulled the trigger again, the clicking sound, and he cocked the gun, and pulled the trigger again, and again, click, click.

He stopped the car, cocked the gun for the fourth time, he closed his eyes and it clicked, two bullet chambers left, one full, one empty.

He pulled the trigger again and his eyes stung and watered even more when he dropped the fucking gun on the seat beside him.

two days to go

Eddie held on to the toilet door handle.

What had seemed easy at Gabriel’s and when he lay in bed waiting for the morning, was no longer as easy. His sleep had been fitful, as if he wanted to wake up the whole time, the hours in the dark had been in the way, then suddenly he was part of the day again and this.

He took a couple of deep breaths as he sometimes did when he was about to do something his body didn’t want to do, then pushed down the handle and opened the door, closed it behind him, locked it and put the rucksack down on the toilet seat.

He’d jumped out of bed when the alarm clock finally went off, slicked his hair back with enough wax to make it shine, picked up
his gold chain from the chest of drawers and clipped it on around his neck, checked in the mirror, and pulled down the zipper on his jacket so he was sure the chain was visible. The evening before he’d kicked in another window on the ground floor of the school and taken the rucksack from his locker; he’d kept it beside him in the bed through the night and he’d held it in his arms while he waited for his mom to get ready so they could walk the five hundred meters from Råby Allé 102 to Råby police station.

Pereira had been waiting for them in reception, said hello and tried to be nice, then walked in front of them along the corridor and into the room where the Section Against Gang Crime sat. He’d been there twice before—at ten and eleven—and Pereira didn’t have the authority to question him, it felt cool when the pig bastard drove him home in one of the police cars and parked outside his stair. It was after that he’d spoken to Leon and Gabriel for the first time, and they’d instructed him about the next time, about rights, about accusations, but mostly that you could lie as much as you wanted when you were suspected of a crime.

He turned around and looked at his mother a couple of times while they sat on Pereira’s sofa; he’d tried to catch her eye but she’d just looked down, she nearly always did when he looked at her, it was a long time since she’d looked him in the eye.

He had sat across from Pereira just like he should. He had looked at him just like he should. He had sighed when the recorder was put on just like he should.

And he had answered just like he should.

After a while he’d got up from the chair and walked around the room a couple of times, glanced over at the photos on the wall; he’d recognized so many of them, Leon and Gabriel and Alex and Bruno and Big Ali and Jon and Reza and Uros, and it had said Råby Warriors and Ghetto Soldiers above them, and maybe one day, later, he would be there too.

He had paused by the photos that would soon be moved to the left wall, at the top, looked at Leon and Alex who were doing time in a seriously high security prison, felt the soft bubbles in his belly whenever he thought about it. In a few years from now he would have done all that too, and maybe he’d even have done time in prison.

He’d given the right answer every time. And hoped that Leon would soon read the interview, that their lawyer would take it to him, that he would see that Eddie was the sort who didn’t talk.

He sat on the plastic toilet seat and looked at the rucksack that was standing on the floor, looking back at him.
When you’re done. When Pereira has asked his questions that you haven’t answered
. In there, behind the white wall, he was sitting in there, the pig bastard, in his big office.
Say that you’ve got to go for a piss and choose the one just outside the room
. He took two deep breaths like he normally did, but it didn’t make him feel any better, as if he was two people, one that had bubbles in his body and the other who just wanted to get up and walk out, beside his mom the whole way home.
Open the top of the cistern and lay it upside down on the sink
. He tried the door handle one more time, to check that it was locked, two more deep breaths and then he carefully unscrewed the flush-button, it got a bit stuck on the thread and he had to use a bit more pressure than he’d expected, but soon it loosened and clinked when he dropped it down onto the porcelain sink.
Take the plastic tube out of the rucksack
. Holding the filled container in one hand, he peeled off the paper from the seven adhesive cushions and attached the plastic tube to the underside of the cistern lid, feeling along the plastic wrap that would protect the cell phone; it was on and properly attached.
And finally, cut off the wires that stick out from the end of the tube
. He caught the long, thin worms that were sticking out of the bottom of the plastic tube and got hold of them
with pliers that slipped in his sweaty hands.
Each one. It’s important that they’re as short as possible
. He cut, ran his hand over them, cut again, even closer.

From now on, the detonators were unstable.

From now on, the current from one single telephone signal could cause an explosion and a pressure wave that would kill everything in the near vicinity.

Eddie screwed the cistern top back on, flushed several times until he was certain they could hear it, put two toilet rolls and a pile of hand towels in his rucksack to fill it up, and then opened the door and went back to his mom, who was standing waiting for him by the coffee machine farther down the corridor. Even now, she didn’t look at him.

tomorrow

He couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t possible.

If he just let his eyes disappear into the white light, if he didn’t close his eyes, didn’t even blink.

He didn’t sleep.

He sometimes thought about a mother. Every now and then about a father.

Always and only at night, always and only when he looked into the bright light, as if he couldn’t chase them away then and they were there with him in the cell, on the chair and on the floor and by the wardrobe and sometimes sitting on the sink, but mostly in the bed beside him and he lay perfectly still so he wouldn’t touch them.

Sometimes he imagined that she touched him, carried him, a hand on his cheek or maybe it was his dad’s hand, but it wasn’t, because he’d never touched him, it just felt like that, and he did what he always did, stood up and shouted
I’m going to kill them all
and tried not to think about four sticky hands over his body. But tonight, when he lay down again, they came back and he even recognized their voices: his mother’s from so long ago and his dad’s that had never existed; voices that said something he couldn’t hear.

Leon turned the light off, turned it on, turned it off, turned it on. And rolled over toward the barred window; if he lay on his side he could see out across the dark of the prison yard, the faint profile of the wall, even the church tower in the distance, but not the sky, not yet.

The carbon rods. The mash. The car. The ladder. The grinder. The boat
.

He trusted them. Gabriel, Alex, Marko, Reza, Uros, Jon, Bruno, Big Ali. His brothers. But he didn’t trust the whore, she was trying
to take something from him, and he didn’t trust Smackhead, he smiled too fucking much and had the light on during the day. But he had to, had to trust them. They were the only two who could do the most important things.

He turned the light off, on.

Everything had to happen in the right order. Everyone had to do the right thing. Everyone had to be in the right place.

He looked at his watch, five to twelve, nearly midnight.