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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