Two Soldiers (20 page)

The last picture they had.

In a couple of hours they would have access to the traffic movements, moment to moment, through the evening and night from all the speed cameras in the area. And a couple of hours after that they would have the first general overview of observations of the older Mercedes and the five young men who had already been spotted all over half of Sweden as well as a couple of places in Finland and some others in Denmark and Norway.

Ewert Grens let the sequence of an empty road run for image after image, a bicycle that passed in the distance where it met a bigger road, several white or light-colored birds, maybe a hare.

The last picture they had. He paused there and put the computer down on the floor.

“Aspsås prison, Österåker prison, Storboda prison.”

The detective superintendent had moved his cumbersome body over to the desk and the map he had taped onto the wall between the two windows.

“They’re not here.”

His hand over a green and blue area to the north of Stockholm municipality.

“And they’re not in Finland, Norway, or Denmark. They’re not in southern or northern Sweden.”

It was crooked, the map, as if he’d been in a hurry when he hung it up, as if he didn’t care. He stood in front of it and looked at Sven Sundkvist and Mariana Hermansson with temples that weren’t pulsing and a mouth that wasn’t twisted.

“They won’t even reach the forest or water.”

The hand moved in toward the gray area on the map that indicated inner city and roads, carried on down.

“They only know asphalt.”

His bent fingers over south Botkyrka: Tumba and Tullinge, over north Botkyrka: Norsborg, Alby, Fittja. And the small area squeezed between them, closest to the E4: Råby.

“And I know where they’re heading.”

The capital was always most beautiful at rest, a couple of
hours into the dark and a few before daybreak. These days he seldom went to sleep before then, the voices in the Homicide corridor had to fall silent, the running around down in the courtyard between various parts of the building that housed the different police organizations had to die down, only then did he dare let loose the thoughts that were conducive to sleep. There had been another time, he had been young and she had been young and they had chosen to get up at this hour, she had forced him to walk close to her through the sleeping city streets that were waiting for first light, and her face had been soft and he had kissed her cheeks and she had laughed a lot and sometimes he had laughed too, a hollow sound that was more energy than anything else. Her hand, Anni’s hand, he could still feel it—it wasn’t bewildered and damp anymore, but warm, and he knew that she wasn’t there, he knew that.

“Hermansson?”

“Yes?”

“Drive faster.”

Detective Superintendent Ewert Grens was sitting in the back of one of City Police’s civilian cars, Sven in front in the passenger seat, Hermansson in the driver’s seat—they had their places and sat in silence in anticipation of what had always been filled by music, his music. They had listened to Siw Malmkvist’s voice and lyrics from the sixties for so long that they had never really learned how to talk to each other in a car and now it was too late to start. Grens glanced over at the glove compartment to the right of the dashboard—close to one of Sven’s arms. He could ask him. In fact, he could even order
him. It would be so easy. He knew that there were still two cassettes in there, alongside the ice scraper and the car manual. Right there. The two that had never been packed away and forgotten and that called to him every time they sat together in silence, compilations that he’d made himself, photos that he’d taken himself and cut out and glued on. It was as if they couldn’t come out, as if they couldn’t be stuffed into the boxes in the store that would never be opened again. Every journey in the car, he sat in the backseat leaning forward and staring at the compartment, didn’t dare sit in the front, didn’t trust his hand, itching to open it. Sven probably knew that they were in there and Hermansson probably knew that they were there too, but neither of them said anything, they could just lie there, as a part and confirmation of something he’d left behind.

“Hermansson, faster.”

Dark beyond the regularly spaced streetlights on the E4 and dazzling lights from the occasional car passing in the opposite direction, the girl named Julia Bozsik was out there, somewhere. She’d had a sharp object pressed into the back of her thigh and then her throat at 18:12 on the timeline. One and a half hours later she was locked in the white car trunk, the last picture they had. Ewert Grens looked over at the dashboard, an avoidance tactic, the clock beside the glove compartment, more than nine hours had passed.

Västberga, Fruängen, Segeltorp, the sleeping southern suburbs.

Nine hours.

In his thirty-seven years in the police he’d been involved in eighteen kidnappings and hostage-takings—police cadet, police constable, detective sergeant, detective superintendent—and had learned that every hour lost between someone’s freedom being snatched and someone else being caught was an hour closer to death. Every time they had failed, not found the hostage alive, more than twelve hours had passed from the time of the disappearance to finding them.

The dashboard clock again. Quarter past three. Two hours and fifty-five minutes left.

“Hermansson?”

“Yes?”

“
Even
faster.”

The eight-lane highway, Bredäng, Sätra, Skärholmen, so familiar, he had driven along it every day, to and from, in those years at the start of the nineties. Someone had just opened the door to a world the police had thus far only observed from the E4, one hand on the wheel and the other winding up the window after spitting at the ugly buildings that didn’t belong. Opened it and discovered networks that were gang primers and weapon depots that were control and power, already greater than its counterweight, and a police station that had been built and then abandoned and was being built up again and he’d been more or less ordered there to create and establish a witness protection program, the way out.

Hermansson drove faster until the streetlights seemed to blend together and he leaned back.

Witness protection.

The only solution for those who wanted to jump ship. The way out in exchange for a protected identity, a new environment, no contact.

He hadn’t been there since. Eighteen years ago. He’d done the same as all the others, looked at the high-rise blocks that were so ugly from a distance as he accelerated, never stopped, never got out, gone back.

Strange. How everything just keeps going. How everything always keeps going.

He started.

That light.

He hadn’t heard the noise of the helicopter three hundred meters above, but the light, the bright search light that came from somewhere under the flying machine was now sweeping the ground and passing cars. And suddenly became another flashing blue light.

Hermansson braked as hard as she could. They rolled slowly onto a well-lit stage.

Ewert Grens glimpsed a metal barrier across four of the lanes, southbound, counted nine, ten, eleven uniformed police with automatic weapons in their hands and stun grenades and tear gas on the belts around their waists. One of them pointed the shiny muzzle of a gun at the car, another moved toward them, flashlight in hand.

“Pull into the side.”

Mariana Hermansson steered toward the only opening in the metal barrier, the right hard-shoulder.

“Drive through. Then stop.”

The rotating blue light.

Grens wiped away the condensation from the side window to see three cars and a police van in front of two motorcycles.

“Let us through.”

A hand had knocked on the window by the driver and Hermansson hadn’t even had time to turn around. Ewert Grens had already wound his window half down.

“
Now
.”

The bulletproof vest, the overalls, the helmet, and even more light from under the long barrel of the gun.

“Don’t you point that at me.”

“You’ll have to wait your turn.”

“And please move to one side so we can get past. You’re standing in the way.”

The bulletproof vest and overalls and helmet remained close, in fact took another step forward, shone the light in the detective superintendent’s face.

“Can I ask you to step out of the car?”

Sven Sundkvist stretched in the passenger seat, turned around, and spoke for the first time since they left the garage at Kronoberg.

“Ewert . . .”

Just one word. There were no more. Grens pushed open the back door and was careful to stand directly opposite the policeman with the light and automatic weapon.

If she’s still alive
.

“We’ve got two hours and fifty minutes left.”

“Excuse me?”

“Let us through.”

“ID.”

The sharp beam of light in his face again. The detective superintendent who was gold command for the entire operation pulled
a fat, almost defiant, wallet out of one of his new jacket’s many inner pockets, which were small and tight for his large, slightly bent fingers. The policeman in the bulletproof vest and helmet took it and rifled through the contents inside the brownish leather, then held the square plastic cards in the beam of the now lowered flashlight.

“Grens?”

“Yes.”

“Ewert Grens?”

The detective superintendent took great care not to look at him when he got back into the car, closed the door, and asked Hermansson to start the engine, to leave the place.

Not until the vehicle started to move, and then he wound down the window again.

“It was in fact me who gave the orders for all this.”

He nodded at the bulletproof vest and helmet.

“And you . . . you’re doing a good job.”

Hermansson picked up speed, Vårby Gård, Vårberg, Hallunda, Ewert Grens leaned forward again.

“National alert. Road blocks. Two helicopters. Two boats. Six dog units. Fifty-eight cars.”

He waved his hand at the windshield.

“But it doesn’t matter.”

And he pointed toward the highway exit and the high-rise apartments looming out of the dark.

“They’re already there.”

———

The road into Råby narrowed where the metro tracks met the first bus stop, a sharp right turn, a sharp left turn, and the long walls of concrete on both sides, covered in graffiti, colors sprayed in layer upon layer to hide even more grayness.

“Here.”

A bike path that became a sidewalk right beside the road.

“Park here. Hermansson, you and I will walk the rest. Fifteen minutes from here. And you, Sven, change places and get behind the wheel.”

Sven Sundkvist looked at his boss in the rearview mirror.

“I’m not staying here.”

Grens had opened the door and started to get out, when he put a hand on Sven’s shoulder.

“How old is Jonas?”

“Sorry?”

“Your son. How old is he?”

“Thirteen.”

“Right.”

“Right?”

“I don’t have any children. Hermansson doesn’t have any children.”

The hand on his shoulder, Sven Sundkvist felt the weight of it, it wasn’t very often that Ewert Grens touched other people.

“So, you stay here, Sven.”

The face in the rearview mirror, the wrinkles, the bald crown, moved to get out of the car for a second time.

“We’re not to go in, Ewert. Not yet. Not anywhere in Råby. And if and when we do . . . not without protection. That was an order.”

“I’ve lost all I can lose.”

Grens’s hand left his shoulder, Sven Sundkvist felt lighter, the touch which had been so circumspect had held him, weighed him down.

“There’s nothing a snotty-nosed eighteen-year-old can take from me.”

———

They walked side by side down the straight asphalt path, past the lower blocks that all looked identical and the slightly higher blocks that all looked identical, a few playgrounds with sleeping swings and climbing frames that had long since lost most of their blue color, a soccer field, underfoot now gravel and earth, a school, a
youth club, and over there advertisements for food shops in a small shopping center and beyond that, even higher blocks that all looked identical.

“He’s escaped fourteen times before.”

Maybe it was getting a bit lighter, late-summer warmth, Mariana Hermansson looked up at the large man who limped and sometimes lost his balance, but rather than slow down, he increased his stride and was therefore sweating profusely, uneven breath in the windless still.

“From foster homes, children’s homes, young offenders’ institutions, prison.”

The shiny face, the jacket that looked new, eyes that flashed a different kind of anger—she couldn’t recall ever having seen him move this fast on foot.

“And every time . . . here. The only place he can bear to be.”

A sudden step to the left, his stiff leg lost its footing and he fell toward her. She raised her arm, ready to take hold of his, when he waved it away in irritation, he’d regained his balance, he didn’t need help.

She looked at someone who was limping, in a rush.

The detective superintendent who was always in his office at City Police, who couldn’t stand to be anywhere else; anywhere else he was just an overweight, balding older man, but in that building he had a name that meant something.

Råby. Or City Police.

Young and hunted. Or older and hunter.

Two worlds. Or the same.

The only place he can bear to be
.

“Eight thousand apartments, Hermansson. Ninety-eight percent rental.”

He stopped and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket.

“Twelve thousand inhabitants. Thirty-two percent leave school as soon as they can without the grades to go on to higher education. Twenty-seven percent unemployment. Fifteen percent early retirement.”

Breathing heavily between each clipped word.

“If she’s still alive.”

Eight thousand apartments. As many storage rooms in the attics and cellars.

“Sorry?”

Ewert Grens looked about, surrounded by high-rise blocks with no color.

“If she’s alive, Hermansson.”

———

When he got closer, he saw that what had partially burned down was a nursery school, and behind the bicycle shed lay a blackened, sooty moped. Grens had already identified at least two piles of equally sooty tires and a fence that lay half in ashes. Fragments of pleasure and security. Of wood and metal and rubber. Of community.

“Ewert—”

Ewert Grens waved at Hermansson, she was to stop there by the building, the first one with seven stories. His phone was ringing and he opened it with clumsy fingers.

Wilson.

“Ewert, we had an agreement.”

“Yes.”

“You’re breaking it.”

The road block. He’d gotten out of the car and in the beam from a small light attached to the barrel of a loaded MP5 Heckler & Koch had shown his ID.

They’d reported it.

“Ewert, we agreed that no one would go in before we were absolutely certain that they were, really were, in Råby.”

You were there, Erik. You and me, we were there, back then
.

“We had an agreement not to warn those who need to be warned.”

You stood beside me, Erik. You know where he’s heading
.

“They’re here. They don’t have anywhere else.”

“Ewert—”

“And I don’t have much time. I need information. Two hours and thirty-two minutes left.”

———

Tens of thousands of square windows with red and green frames.

Ewert Grens stood on the asphalt path that cut straight through between the buildings with identical windows and knew that they were waiting in one of them, maybe they were taking a cautious peep outside right now, watching the two civilian-clad police officers.

He was aware of the unequivocal order that prevented police officers from going into Råby alone, without backup. That right now he was exposing not only himself but also Hermansson to extreme danger.