Across the street and into the park. Some trees, a lawn, two playgrounds, not much of an oasis, but quite a bit of shade.
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Ågestam knew what he was talking about: Enköping Taxi confirmed that Lund did have school runs. I got eight addresses to nursery schools, four in Strängnäs and four in Enköping. The Dove was one of them.”
“The bastard. Bastard!”
“I’ve already contacted the security companies and our guys. We’ve increased our security.”
Ewert stopped in the middle of the park path.
“Then it won’t be long now. He can’t control himself. He’s a sick bastard, and sick bastards need their medicine.”
He was about to start walking again, down the path, but stopped mid-step.
“What did you mean you’d already called earlier this morning?”
“Exactly what I said. Someone had called this morning and asked the exact same question. Someone calling himself Sven Sundkvist. Someone who also realized Lund probably made school runs. Someone who was also looking for Lund and probably not trying to get him in front of a court.”
They walked in silence, side by side. Ewert felt Sven had more to say, but he’d left his office for a break and a break he was going to take. He whistled loudly and off-key as they walked. “Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Back Seat,” he whistled and breathed and knew that this all would soon be over—the school runs, Lund’s desperation, and the passage of time weakening a quarry—it was coming to a close, as it always did. He’d lived in that other world for so long, met them again and again, he knew what only those who already lived know, that there wasn’t too much more to it.
“Now, Sven. Now you tell me the rest.”
Sven stopped in front of a bench, and they both sat and watched three toddlers play in a sandbox.
“It’s Ewert Grens who you see on TV. It’s Ewert Grens who’s been interviewed. My name hasn’t been mentioned. Only to a few. People here know, of course, and maybe a few at Aspsås, the coroner, and those close to Marie Steffansson, who I interrogated at the murder scene. And from that group, only a few have any motive. I focused there. I started with the father. I didn’t need to go any further.”
Ewert nodded, waved his hand impatiently, wanting him to continue.
“I spoke to Fredrik Steffansson’s current girlfriend, Micaela Zwarts, who works at the Dove. She hasn’t seen him since the funeral. He was, of course, in bad shape, you couldn’t expect anything else, but she’s worried. He hasn’t mourned, not really, hasn’t let it get to him yet. She’s tried to get hold of him—they’ve been living together for a few years—but described him as unreachable, someone she no longer recognized. He was home this morning, apparently. He’d been there while she was at work and left a brief note on the refrigerator, apologizing and saying he’d be back soon.”
Ewert rotated his hand, impatient.
“I also spoke to Agnes Steffansson, the girl’s mother. She’s a clever woman, absentminded with grief, yes, but still she understood immediately and confirmed Zwart’s impression. Fredrik Steffansson has not only failed to grieve, he’s behaved erratically, called her twice after the funeral asking irrelevant questions. She’d taken it as an attempt to stay in contact and talk, but now she’s upset.”
“Go on.”
“She was on her cell, in Strängnäs to pick up Marie’s things at the Dove, but suddenly wanted to stop our conversation and call back again. I waited. She called after twenty minutes. She’d left the Dove and had gone to the apartment building where her father lived until his death. She explained that Fredrik’s questions made her go upstairs, to her father’s old storage room, which they still had. They’d packed up the rest of his things in sacks and left them there.”
Sven cleared his throat. He was upset, finding it difficult to get the words out.
“The deceased father’s hunting rifle had been there. A 30-06 Carl Gustaf, sharp optics, laser sight—why the hell would you keep a rifle in an unlocked storage room?”
Ewert sat still, waiting. Sven hesitated, as if saying it was going to make it happen.
“She was scared. Weeping. It wasn’t there.”
Lars Ågestam wished he could throw up, leaning over the sink in the bathroom at the Swedish Prosecution Authority. It had all been so simple before. He’d been given the big assignment he’d been dreaming of. He had fought and defeated one of the bitterest souls of a used-up generation; the knowledge of Lund’s taxi business had been enough to both shut up Grens and cut into Lund’s lead.
That was before Sven Sundkvist’s call. Now, he was alone.
He didn’t want to deal with a father avenging his daughter’s murder.
He understood what that would entail. A pedophile who killed a five-year-old girl was black and white, easy. It meant media attention, right against wrong, leading public opinion to where it already stood. But this. If the father got there first, if the father used a weapon powerful enough to hit a person three hundred meters away, that was something else entirely. It meant hell and madness, it meant spitting on goodness. He would have to bring charges against a parent acting under the shroud of grief, and, in that moment, he would be acting on behalf of society against the little guy—his big chance would also be his downfall.
He put his fingers down his throat. He had no choice. It had to come out, he had to think clearly, and this was usually how he did it.
It was almost five. The Freja nursery school in western Enköping would be open for another hour. It was located in a beautiful valley with a few small hills on either side, encircled. Fredrik had been waiting in his car for thirty minutes. He’d parked in a field, at the highest elevation, in order to have a clear view of his objective. When he arrived, he did what he’d done at the other addresses: left the car, carefully searched the terrain, making wide circles around the buildings.
It was only when he got back, was about to open his car door again, that he discovered him.
He’d been slightly crouched over, almost right in front of him.
Partly obscured by a small shrub with his back against the root of a fallen tree, slightly downhill from Fredrik, a few hundred meters from the two white buildings. Wearing a green tracksuit, with a pair of binoculars in one hand. He was still, and after half an hour still hadn’t moved, facing the playground and the children inside the fence. Fredrik had verified it with his own binoculars—it was Lund. He’d greeted him six days earlier, and it was the same face, the same posture.
A beast who’d murdered his daughter, taken her away from him, and now he was sitting just a short distance away.
Fredrik tried not to feel, tried to chase or scare the pain away.
Just in front of the entrance to the building stood a police car. Two people in uniforms sat in the front seat, watching, counting down the long, weary hours of duty while staring at a locked gate. It was hot, even hotter inside a stationary metal shell. In the short time Fredrik had been watching them, they’d both stepped out of the car twice, leaning against the hood while smoking a cigarette. The smoke—there was no wind down there—was easy to see.
The occasional bird, now and then the sound of a distant highway, otherwise a quiet, drowsy calm.
Fredrik got out and headed toward the front of the car. He got down on his knees, and his light suit turned a pale green on the legs as he crept along. Elbows on top of the hood, he took aim, leaned against the black metal, moving and pretending to aim until he found a position that was comfortable.
A deep breath. He felt alert, his body limber—it was easy to move.
He took the duffel bag from the back seat, emptied it. It was a heavy rifle, and he hadn’t shot it for at least seven or eight years. He’d gone hunting with Birger, before Marie was born, when they were still desperately trying to find some common ground. Hunting was probably the only conversation they could have, pretending they functioned as son-in-law and father-in-law, that they shared anything more
than their mutual love for Agnes.
Fredrik weighed the weapon in his hand, tossing it up and down a few times. He got back on his knees as he’d done earlier, the rifle between his two hands, leaning against the hood and taking aim for real now. He studied Lund’s back through the crosshairs.
He waited. He wanted to take him from the front.
A quarter of an hour. Then Lund stood up, the tree roots and bushes not hiding him for a moment. He started stretching, leaned forward a few times, loosening his stiff joints.
The laser made its way down onto his body, moving restlessly over a breathing human being. Fredrik lingered a moment near his fly, held it still there a few seconds, then moved on, higher.
Suddenly Lund noticed the red dot wandering along his body and started beating it, as if it were a wasp, aimlessly waving.
Fredrik fired the first shot.
And the sound of a projectile, of death, took over the silence. The waving hands disappeared, Lund was hurled violently backward, fell heavily against the ground.
He tried to get up, slowly, as Fredrik moved the laser point to his forehead, rested it there. It didn’t look the way he’d imagined it would when a head exploded.
————
That silence again.
Fredrik put the gun down on the hood of the car, fell to the ground, first sitting, then lying, holding his head and curling up into the fetal position.
He wept.
For the first time since Marie had been taken from him, he wept and let it hurt, the terrible grief that wanted to get out, that had got stuck, grown, and now was squeezed forward. He screamed, as you do when your life runs out of you.
INTERROGATOR SVEN SUNDKVIST (I): You can sit there.
DEFENSE LAWYER KRISTINA BJÖRNSSON (KB): Here?
I: That’s fine.
KB: Thanks.
I: Interrogation at Kronoberg police station of Fredrik Steffansson. Present in addition to Steffansson are the interrogator Sven Sundkvist, head of the preliminary investigation Lars Ågestam, and defense lawyer Kristina Björnsson.
FREDRIK STEFFANSSON (FS): (inaudible)
I: Excuse me?
FS: I need some water.
I: Right in front of you. Help yourself.
FS: Thanks.
I: Fredrik, could you tell me what happened?
FS: (inaudible)
I: You have to speak louder.
FS: Just a moment.
KB: Is everything all right?
FS: No.
KB: Are you able to participate?
FS: I am.
I: One more time then, can you tell me what happened?
FS: You know what happened.
I: I want you to describe it.
FS: A convicted rapist and serial killer murdered my daughter.
I: I want to know what happened today, in Enköping, outside the Freja nursery school.
FS: I shot my daughter’s killer.
KB: Excuse me, Fredrik, wait a moment.
FS: Yes?
KB: I need to consult with you.
FS: Yes?
KB: Are you sure you want to describe today’s event in that way?
FS: I don’t know what you mean.
KB: I get the feeling that you’re going to talk about what happened today in a very particular way.
FS: I intend to answer their questions.
KB: You know that a premeditated murder carries the risk of life imprisonment.
FS: It’s possible.
KB: I advise you to be careful how you choose your words. At least until you and I have had time for a long, private conversation.
FS: I haven’t done anything wrong.
KB: You choose.
FS: I choose.
I: Are you done?
KB: Yeah.
I: Then I’ll continue. Fredrik, what happened today?
FS: You were the one who informed me.
I: Informed you?
FS: In the cemetery. After the funeral. You were there, you and the limping one.
I: Detective Superintendent Grens?
FS: If that’s his name.
I: At the cemetery?
FS: One of you said it was extremely likely that he’d do it again. I think it was the limping one who said it. I decided right then. It wasn’t going to happen again. Not another child, not another loss. Can I get up?
I: Sure.
FS: I assume you know what I mean. He’s locked up. He manages to escape. You’re not able to catch him. He rapes Marie, then murders her. You still can’t manage to catch him. You know he’ll kill again. You know it. And you’ve proved that you can’t prevent it.
LARS ÅGESTAM (LÅ): May I?
I: Go ahead.
LÅ: You took your revenge.
FS: If a society can’t protect its citizens, then citizens need to protect themselves.
LÅ: You wanted to avenge Marie’s death by killing Bernt Lund.
FS: I saved the life of at least one child. I’m convinced of that. That’s what I was doing. That was my only motive.
LÅ: Do you believe in the death penalty, Fredrik?
FS: No.
LÅ: Your actions suggest otherwise.
FS: I believe that you can save a life by taking life.
LÅ: So you mean you’re capable of determining whose life is worth more?
FS: A child playing outside her school or an escaped serial killer who is planning to desecrate and humiliate and then kill that child? Are their lives of equal worth?
I: I wonder, why didn’t you let the police arrest him?
FS: I considered it. I decided against it.
I: You could have gone over to the police car that was standing just outside the gate.
FS: He managed to escape from prison. He’d previously managed to escape from a mental hospital. If I’d let the police arrest him, and he was sentenced to prison or a new psych department, why wouldn’t he just escape again?
I: So you chose to be both judge and executioner?
FS: There was nothing to choose. There was nothing else. I had only one thought: kill him so that he would never again, under any circumstances, have the opportunity to do what he did to Marie.
LÅ: Are you done?
I: Yes.
LÅ: Very well. Then it’s like this, Fredrik.
FS: Yes?
LÅ: I have to be formal now.
FS: Yes?
LÅ: I must inform that you are now in police custody, on suspicion of murder.
III
(one month)
The name of the village was Tallbacka. Or maybe not really a village, more of a small town: population two thousand six hundred, a supermarket, a small convenience store, a local bank open Tuesdays and Thursdays, a simple restaurant serving lunch during the day and alcohol in the evenings, a closed-down railway station, two small churches and a big empty renovated one.
One day at a time, it was that kind of place.
A place with a present.
With people who started out here.
That was good enough, no smart alecks trying to make their mark. A day was never more than a day, not even here, with two newly built exits from the highway.
Despite this, or maybe because of it, Tallbacka was perhaps to become the best example of what transformed Sweden for a few months into the void between the law and the people’s interpretation of it.
It was a strange summer, a summer anyone would sooner forget.
————
Flasher-Göran. That’s what they called him. He was forty-four years old, had studied to be a teacher, but never worked as one. He’d done one term of student teaching, with six months left at teacher’s college, at a secondary school a few kilometers from Tallbacka. Twenty years ago now, almost half his life, and he still had no idea why. It just happened. One afternoon, on his way home, he suddenly stopped at a playground and took off his clothes. Piece by piece. He’d stood naked a few meters away from the students’ smoking area, singing loudly.
Facing the window where the principal was sitting, he’d sung the national anthem, both verses, loud and off-key. He’d then gotten dressed again, walked home, prepared tomorrow’s lessons, and went to bed.
He’d finished his education and got his certificate. He’d applied to every job within a hundred-kilometer radius, advertised and not. He’d copied his grades and professional certificates every week for a couple of years until he realized that he was never going to get a teaching job. He’d never had to send in a copy of his sentence, but it lay on the top of his stack of papers anyway, hiding the rest, his fines and eternal shame for exposing himself in a playground to minors. He’d considered leaving the neighborhood, looking for a job in another part of the country, beyond his sentence and reputation, but he was, like so many others, too much of a coward, too much of a small-town boy, too much of a Tallbackan.
It was still warm. Not like in the Småland highlands, he’d been there buying tiles yesterday, but hot enough to not be able to wear long pants, to make him sweat profusely, to find the three hundred meters separating his home from the store a long stretch.
He heard them as soon as he crossed the street. They were usually standing there at the kiosk. He’d watched several of them grow up. They were big now, fifteen, sixteen, their voices no longer the voices of young boys.
“Show us your balls!”
“You, pedo, show us now, dammit!”
They had Coca-Cola cans in their hands, a few of them emptied the contents quickly, threw the cans on the ground. They grabbed their crotches with both hands, stood in a line, thrusting their hips.
“Show your balls, pedo! Show us your balls, pedo!”
He didn’t look at them. He’d decided that under no circumstances would he look at them. They screamed louder, and someone threw a soda can at him.
“You fucking pedo flasher! Go home and take your clothes off. Go home and jerk off!”
He continued walking for a few more meters, around the old post office. They couldn’t see him anymore, and they weren’t screaming. The small store stood in front of him, the store that drove the other two out of business, now covered in red price tags with today’s deals.
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