They had nowhere to go because there was nothing to leave.
Identical concrete buildings inside a wall that kept the rest out.
A world within the world.
Lennart Oscarsson stood at his window, stretched. Aspsås over there with identical roofs and deserted playgrounds in a tiny town, Aspsås in here with gravel yards and rectangular soccer fields in an even smaller space. He wanted security, he spent his nights in an idyll but would never understand why he had chosen to spend his days in a high security prison, one of three Swedish maximum security prisons for only the most dangerous criminals with long prison sentences.
He stretched again, swallowed a persistent yawn, and walked over to the door as someone had knocked, a timid hand on the boss’s closed door. Martin Jacobson. And a very young woman whom Oscarsson had only met briefly at an interview and vaguely recognized, but had never really spoken to.
“Julia. Julia Bozsik. I work in Block D. D1 Left.”
With a friendly gesture, he showed her over to the new sofa and they sat down with their arms first on, and then around, a square cushion each. Lennart Oscarsson had consciously worked to recruit more women into what was a traditional and sometimes stale male domain and he was glad, almost proud, to see the young person in front of him, who wasn’t much older than the youngest inmates in some of the units.
“Now, how can I help you?”
Julia turned toward the prison governor, whom she’d barely met, let alone spoken to. He seemed friendlier than his office, which was far too big and far too formal, and she could look at him without feeling she was being studied, assessed.
“A couple of nights ago . . .”
A sofa in the prison governor’s office.
She looked around, she felt uncertain, sometimes . . . it wasn’t always easy to figure out where you were heading or why.
Jesus
. . . a prison?
Three years doing science at high school. Unemployed for a few days in summer and an appointment with the job center.
She had never seen a prison before.
She had never spoken to, known, or even met a criminal before.
Three days later—after three days’ training—she had signed for her uniform and done her first day and was supposed to be responsible for them.
“A couple of nights ago, the nightshift was . . . sorry, pure hell. Nine cells, nine inmates who didn’t sleep, who started . . . it sounded, I can’t explain it any other way, like they were constantly moving, noisy and aggressive, tidying their cells, making their beds, pulling off the sheets, making them again, pulling them off, pulling them off.”
After three days’ training, she had put on her uniform and taken responsibility for them, but for the most part she’d been scared. Of the young guys. Their aggression, their hate was tangible and overwhelming. Not that the older ones were any better, they sized her up and commented on her body but never triggered the same feelings—the uneasiness, discomfort, the young guys could lose it at any moment and their hate was different, so potent.
“Last night was the same. Awake, restless. And since I opened up this morning, they’ve all been complaining about headaches and done just about anything to get a sick note and some sleep. The ones who didn’t get one, the ones we forced to go to work, are confused—one managed to knock over four pallets on his first attempt to pick them up with the forklift, and then drove straight into one of the workshop walls—another one hid in one of the toilets in the laundry, turned off the light and stayed there for three hours, he’d jammed the lock and door handle with two rubbish bins.”
The uneasiness, the fear, from the first day she’d walked the locked corridors prepared for a fist in her face or a piece of sharpened metal
in her back at any time, she’d been so tense, so terrified of these men who didn’t for a moment care about the consequences—the men who hated, exploded, lashed out—and soon she realized that she was creeping along the gray concrete walls and had tried to deal with it, was trying to deal with it, she looked straight ahead so she would never show how frightened she really was, always looked people in the eye, laughed too loud for too long, talk, talk, she knew that the fear only existed if she didn’t hide it well enough.
Jesus
. . . a prison?
“Thank you . . .”
Martin Jacobson, who was sitting at the other end of the new sofa, nodded to his young colleague.
“. . . no one sleeping, confused, unpredictable. You don’t need to hear anymore, do you, Lennart?”
The governor gave a light shrug, maybe he sighed, remembered the smacking lips and darting eyes.
He had seen it and guessed correctly.
“No, you don’t need to explain anymore.”
He looked at his colleague, friend. They had worked there for so long, seen it time and again.
“I’ve looked into it.”
Martin Jacobson was unaware that he leaned forward, hands on the coffee table.
“And I’m quite certain that the drugs were smuggled in by a visitor three days ago. Nine zero two two, Jensen. D1 Left, Cell 2.”
He flicked through a small notebook, spiral-bound with thin red lines.
“The visitor—a young woman, seventeen years old, registered at an address in Råby, Botkyrka municipality. She’s called . . . hold on a moment . . . Wanda Svensson.”
“Jensen? Came here about four, max five months ago?”
“Råby. Father from Botkyrka. Mother from Zagreb.”
“Aggravated assault, armed robbery, blackmail?”
“Four and a half years.”
“Gang related?”
“Correct.”
He got up, was heading toward the window when he suddenly stopped. Not yet. He liked to stand there alone.
“And her?”
“Like most of them. No convictions. A bit of flesh and a container.”
They looked at each other again, they had also seen this so many times: young, easily manipulated girlfriends with no criminal record who first opened their legs for boys who wanted to be what they thought men were like and then wider for those who wanted to be what they thought high-status criminals were like.
“I want to get an extra dog here, from Hall prison.”
Her voice was calm and matter-of-fact and sounded much older than twenty-one, it was easy to like.
“Search every cell with a dog after lockup. D1 Left and D2 Right. Every cell, common rooms, and the wardens’ room.”
The prison governor was still standing in the middle of the floor, halfway over to the window; it looked like it would rain.
Dogs.
The prison service had increased the number of dogs from two to twenty-five. It wouldn’t make any difference if they increased it to one hundred and twenty-five. Someone who needed drugs, who screamed for more methamphetamine or heroin or subutex, always found new ways to get it.
“And tomorrow, general UA.”
UA.
Piss analysis.
Lennart Oscarsson knew, just as Martin Jacobson knew, just as anyone who had spent their life in a blue uniform in a Swedish prison knew, that an inmate who pissed positive would have problems when the eyes and ears of the authority focused on his unit and he would be punished harshly by his fellow inmates who wanted to take drugs in peace. They knew that inmates would therefore rather refuse to piss and accept the prison punishment of more days behind bars, than test positive and end up with a broken arm.
She wanted something. She believed in something.
“Dogs. UA.”
He wasn’t going to destroy it. Time would do that.
“Of course. We’ll organize that.”
He’d stopped halfway over to the window. Now, as they closed the door behind them, he went over and looked out at the gray, heavy clouds that were thicker, darker.
Jensen.
Block D. D1 Left.
He remembered the face that had stared at him two days ago, the wild, darting eyes, the dry lips, the persistent smacking sound.
Like all the others. Like every other young man in every other high security prison. No father in the picture. Serious crime from the age of twelve. Like all the others who knew nothing about the society they didn’t belong to.
Like all the others who knew nothing about the society they didn’t belong to
.
He had read every file, compared all their stories and every time been astounded by the very simple knowledge test that they were asked to take on arrival.
None of them had ever been able to answer even one question.
Not one.
They knew nothing about the Swedish state and Europe and the world. They had no knowledge of anything outside their own community, which would never become too big.
He couldn’t understand it. They were eighteen years old. And going nowhere.
Criminal network of young men who have grown up in different Stockholm suburbs, with Råby as the hub.
Down there—through the glass and light rain, on the benches by the fence in the middle of the prison yard—they always sat there, right now he counted four, five, six, seven of them from different places and various groups, but each with a cigarette in hand, the same age, the same pose, part of a posse that protected, shut out everything else.
Fraternity, family, bound together by loyalty, friendship. Commit crimes together or with other criminals.
He crossed over to his desk and the pile of white A4 sheets that were lying stapled together, two by two, on the brown, empty surface, pulled the top one over.
Eight, maybe nine full members. All previously convicted of serious crimes. Four, possibly five are currently in prison serving long sentences.
He held the two sheets of paper firmly in his hand, one of several regular reports from the Prison Service Intelligence Unit, prepared when a number of serious incidents inside the prison walls were confirmed to be gang-related.
This report, one gang, one of many.
Dramatic developments in the group. New rules, new members, new name. Now moved to the target list for priority serious organized crime.
Lennart Oscarsson should have sighed, but he didn’t even do that anymore. He knew that this was just the start. The gap that had become a chasm was now a huge fucking hole, which people fell into headlong and which would be one of the great mysteries of Swedish and European society today, tomorrow, and forevermore.
He turned his gaze to Aspsås again and the red terraced house, so close, so unbelievably far away.
He picked up the phone, the number some way down one of the two white sheets of A4.
“Hello?”
He recognized Pereira’s cautious voice, the kind that doesn’t fit the face.
“It’s Oscarsson.”
“What can I do for you?”
The prison governor was still holding one of many reports from the PSIU.
“You were looking for a reason.”
“Yes?”
“Well, Pereira.
Now
we’ve got a reason.”
A room like no other.
Small, square pictures of staring men.
José Pereira rocked back and forth, his black shoes light on the floor. He often stood like this. He went closer, paused by a cheek, a nose, a pair of eyes, face by face.
On the back wall—the shorter one closest to the corridor—all in a row, green and yellow drawing pins in the corners of each grainy photograph of passport size, small notes underneath them, gang connection, ID number, address.
Target list Alcatraz
.
On the first of the two long walls further into the room and behind four identical desks with computers, files, folders, photos of the same men pinned up in the same way, but organized by group—
Hells Angels MC
(twenty-two staring faces),
Bandidos
(eighteen staring faces),
Red & White Crew
(fourteen staring faces),
X-Team
(twelve staring faces),
Outlaws MC
(nine staring faces). On the second of the long walls, if he took another step forward and stretched out his arm, he could pull them all down—
Wolfpack Brotherhood
(eleven staring faces),
Syrian Brotherhood
(thirteen staring faces),
BFL Uppsala
(seven staring faces),
OG
(ten staring faces),
WYG
(six staring faces),
Råby Warriors
(eight staring faces),
ASIR
(thirty-seven staring faces),
Chosen Ones
(twelve staring faces).
José Pereira drank some of the black coffee from the new machine that had been installed in one of the corridors of Råby police station only yesterday. There wasn’t any noticeable difference—the same bitterness, the same bite—and he did the same as everyone else, swallowed and waited for the caffeine to kick in in his chest and stomach.
He looked at the walls and the faces staring at him, his everyday. When he had been allocated to the new police station in the south of Stockholm nineteen years ago, he was convinced that serious organized crime divided up among gangs with silly English names was something that belonged to the cinema and popcorn and Los Angeles. How quickly that had changed. The men who stared so aggressively from the first long wall—the ones who were most dangerous, most violent right now. The men on the other long wall—they were nearly as dangerous and therefore perhaps even more violent, trying to get ahead, so they had to be more visible more often in order to position themselves in a rank they hadn’t yet achieved. The ones on his desk, he ran his finger along the edges of the files that were stacked in blue and green piles, another seventeen organizations, more terrible names that would soon strike with as much force. Right here, in the southern suburbs. The growth was faster and stronger than anyone could understand; he turned, looked around, there was no wall space left.
“Now?”
“Yes.”
He nodded to two men in civvies who were each sitting on a chair drinking the bitter, pungent coffee, drug squad, surveillance, his pretext. They got up and hurried through the police station that had been built in the mid-nineties for twenty-two policemen in north Botkyrka, of which only four remained three years later. He had seen his colleagues redeployed, one after another, as all the mailboxes, windows, and chimneys in the building were doused with flammable liquid which then turned into flames, when the threat grew with every intervention, when the tires on private cars were slashed so many times that they didn’t bother to change them anymore and just watched the seats and engine burn.
“Left through the door. Four minutes’ walk. Råby Allé 67.”
The buildings, the asphalt, the smell of smoke. All part of a place that had become as much his as theirs. He knew and recognized the voices, faces, he knew which buildings were hottest in summer and where the wind blew coldest in winter.
They had only scraped the surface back then.
Identified open drug-dealing, emptied vehicles of guns, sawed-off shotguns, automatic guns, confiscated knives, axes, nunchucks, and batons from young men.
At the time, there had been more criminal groups in this concrete wilderness of high-rise blocks to the south of Stockholm than ever before in the entire country. It was a national issue. Which resulted in the Fittja Commission, the Special Gang Unit, the Section Against Gang Crime. Their patch started as Råby, then grew into Botkyrka, which expanded into Södertörn.
After three years only four were still there. And now, for a long time there had been just one, one person gathering information and building up a new police force with the sole aim of breaking up criminal networks in the southern suburbs of Stockholm.
José Pereira walked half a step ahead of the drug squad officers, past a burned-out rubbish room, two new piles of burned tires, the car that the fire brigade had abandoned in the morning, the moped that had so recently been in flames.
He no longer noticed it, in the way that we no longer see what’s always been there.
“There. The stairs in the middle. Second floor.”
The building looked like all the others. Seven stories, access balconies, colors that varied from gray to worn-thin gray, and orange doors that screamed from afar.
“Three windows without curtains, blankets over the two to the left, kitchen and bedroom.”
He had learned their names between the ages when they started to walk and later ride a bicycle. He had read through red files in social welfare offices, exchanged information with the principals of secure training centers and homes, had already had a clear picture of Leon Jensen and Gabriel Milton’s criminal activities by the time they were nine, without being able to do anything except wait. Until they reached fifteen and could be sentenced. Until they had developed so much in their criminal career that the only thing to do was to lock them up.
The stairwell smelled of steam and food. The steps were too short and too close. The door out onto the balcony whined as it had the last time.
“Second on the left. Says
SANTOS
on the mailbox.”
He had watched them grow up, grow together. When they were twelve, someone had whispered Råby Warriors for the first time and he had listened and thought
what kind of nonsense is that
?, but then watched them expand. Leon Jensen and Gabriel Milton had become Alexander Eriksson and Bruno Viani, and others, Reza Noori and Ali Abdulahi and Jon Lindh and Uros Koren—he had started to monitor the twelve-year-old boys and witnessed the birth of criminals with a wide variety of talents: drugs, robbery, assault, contempt of court. He had watched them commit crimes together and seen the moment, he was sure of it, when they had somehow decided.
He closed in on the front door, checked the handwritten name,
SANTOS
, nodded to the two officers who were standing with their legs apart, hands to holsters.
He rang the bell.
Nothing.
José Pereira studied the flaking orange door, for a couple of months now the meeting place for the four who weren’t in prison serving sentences right now, who were holding the fort and controlling the drugs in Råby, or rather, controlling the whole of Råby. He knew they were on their way and that they were about to succeed, that they would soon boast their own criminal halo. In recent weeks, several of his credible sources had reported, as had the prison service intelligence unit, that after six years they had now changed name, structure, rules—Ghetto Soldiers,
Jesus
,
another ridiculous name
—which meant more hate, violence, death.
He pressed the black plastic bell again. It wasn’t working. Or maybe it was being drowned out by the volume of the TV set.
He knew they were on the move, but not where to, or why, or how.
He had been looking for a reason. Oscarsson’s phone call—Pereira turned back from the two drugs officers with their feet firmly on the ground, and thumped the orange surface hard with his hand—the reason, he’d got it now.
———
He was sweaty, her soft fingers on his uneven skin, she almost dared to look him in the eye.
Gabriel, never forget who u r, bro.
He’d heard the doorbell ring twice and when they hammered on the door, he’d seen them through the gap between the blanket and the window frame. Three of them. They were like the guys in prison. They would stand there ringing the bell until someone opened. They could do that. It didn’t matter, whatever there was to find was in the trailer down in the garage, hired in someone else’s name, or in the supermarket lockers at ICA and Konsum, and the changing rooms at the pool, and a couple of lockers at school, in several elevator shafts and under the freezers in shops, but most of it was with people who stored it for them because they wanted to, or those who kept it because they had to.
We r the power, brutha.
Her fingers were gentlest furthest down, just where his back met his ass, his skin was less folded there.
He looked at her.
She had taken off her earrings, they were lying on the floor and he didn’t like it, he picked them up,
you’re to wear them
, and waited while she put them on, where they were supposed to be, she’d chosen them herself and he hadn’t sold them and so she had to wear them.
And we’ve got soldiers who’ll do exactly what we ask them to do brutha.
When they hammered on the door,
open up
, for the second time, he shouted even louder than the TV in the sitting room,
fucking open it
he shouted until he was sure that someone had heard and hauled themselves up.
———
“Pig bastard.”
The one they called Big Ali was a good few centimeters taller than the three men he glowered down at, his head nearly touching the top of the doorframe, the eyes that had so recently been staring at them from a wall in the police station were now two big and obviously drugged-up pupils, his arm movements spiky, his voice aggressive—amphetamines.
“I want to talk to Gabriel.”
José Pereira was standing in front of someone he’d questioned every month since he was fifteen—three years, thirty-six times—someone he’d talked to for hours but didn’t know at all.
“And behind the fucking pig, two more.”
Big Ali made a smacking sound with his mouth, pointed at the two police officers who were standing there half a step behind.
“I want to talk to Gabriel. Not you.”
A violent film on the television, Pereira was certain. The volume was turned up, loud music, loud shouting.
“I’m gonna get you,
you fucking pig
.”
His plate-size pupils and body that couldn’t stand still, Big Ali had managed to punch the air in front of him several times before a considerably shorter, muscular young man took hold of his arm,
get the fuck inside
, and pushed him away, stood there in his place by the front door, erect penis, bare chest, bare feet.
“Pereira.”
“Gabriel.”
José Pereira had seen the badly disfigured body so many times before, the needle tracks, craters in his veins, but still couldn’t get used to it. Eighty-five percent of the skin was warped by burn scars, and Pereira couldn’t look away, couldn’t pretend to see anything else.
“A woman, Pereira.”
His groin only a couple of meters away, stirred, a couple of pelvic thrusts back and forth, as if this boy in the doorway was pointing at something with his hard-on.
“Råby cock needs a woman. And I rolled off her. So what the fuck do you want, eh?”
His legs, the skin, it was different.
On one thigh an infected, oblong sore; on the other a new tattoo that started by the groin, every black, powerful line bulging out from the skin, letters that were difficult to read from where Pereira was standing right now.
“These are my colleagues from the drug squad. We have a search warrant.”
Gabriel looked at the piece of paper in the policeman’s hand.
“You know what . . . this isn’t my apartment.”
“We have the prosecutor’s permission to search
the apartment where you stay on a regular basis
.”
“Forget it.”
“I’d appreciate it if you moved to one side.”
A hand grabbed for the piece of paper, it rustled slightly as he hit it.
“You know you’re not going to find anything here, you bastard.”
José Pereira knew that. He knew that this was the only place where they definitely
didn’t
keep anything. That wasn’t why he was standing here looking at an eighteen-year-old dick.
They were on the move.
It was his responsibility to find out where.
“
I’m gonna get you, you fucking pigs
.”
A voice farther into the apartment, Big Ali’s voice, maybe he was punching the air in front of him again with his fists.
“He’s shouting very loud. Unlawful threats. Not so smart.”
Gabriel Milton’s organ had flagged somewhat and was no longer pointing at the three policemen.
“Not my problem. Did you want anything apart from to get in?”
“My colleagues . . .”
“Do they suck you off?”
“My colleagues have some questions about your visit to Aspsås prison the other day.”
The eighteen-year-old smiled, at least, that’s what it looked like.
“Maybe you misunderstood.”
“Your girlfriend.”
“What about her?”
“She was there.”
“And what the fuck’s that got to do with me?”
“She—”
“Did you see me in Aspsås or did you not see me in Aspsås?”
“Your girlfriend was there. A few hours later, D1 Left was full of speed. We think there’s a connection. That you were the supplier, that you provided her with the drugs.”
Gabriel Milton really did smile this time, it was obvious now when he looked at the two guys behind Pereira.
“Do they give a good blow job?”
Even broader grin.
“Or is it you that sucks off them?”
———
Four in prison. Four at large.
Half in, half out, like all the others, like every other gang.
They were following the same pattern, showing the same signs, treading the same path. Little boys who turned into reports and briefs and investigations, who, after a couple of years had gotten themselves a name and started to commit crimes together, were moved to a blue or green file on one of the Section Against Gang Crime desks to be monitored and reported on regularly, who a couple of years later were given a position at the bottom of the first long wall, the one for groups that were dangerous and violent, the position for staring faces that, in the police’s own ranking system, belonged to those who ruled, who right now were deemed to be the most dangerous, most violent, at the forefront of organized crime.