Free Two Soldiers by Anders Roslund

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