Pen 33

by Anders Roslund

  He was tired. As tired as he’d been every day of this long, hot summer. He sat down on the bench outside the store, breathing heavily from his brisk walk. He watched people he knew go in and out, heavy bags in their hands on their way to a bike or car. A little farther away, on the next bench, sat two girls, twelve or thirteen years old. The neighbor’s daughter and her classmate. They giggled as girls that age do, laughing as if they couldn’t stop. They’d never shouted at him. They didn’t even see him. He was a neighbor who cut the grass sometimes, nothing more.

  The Volvo.

  On the road outside the store. His stomach always ached when he saw it. He knew it meant trouble, someone on the hunt for him.

  It braked abruptly. A short skid, then stop. Bengt Söderlund opened the door and rushed out. A large, powerful man, forty-five, wearing a baseball cap with Söderlund’s Construction on it and blue work pants with ruler, hammer, and knife hanging on them. He reached the girls’ bench, yelling at them, at Flasher-Göran, at Tallbacka.

  “Into the car! Now!”

  He grabbed both girls by their shoulders, they cringed when they realized his rage, wanted to get away. They ran to the car, got in the back seat, and locked the door.

  He continued on to the next bench, grabbed Flasher-Göran’s collar, pulled hard on it, forcing him up.

  He shook him, and it hurt, the collar burned against his neck.

  “For fuck’s sake. Now I got you, caught you in the fucking act!”

  The girls in the car looked at the two men and then turned away as they usually did.

  “You’re fucking disgusting. That’s my daughter. I bet you wish you could get your hands on her, right?”

  The teenage boys had heard the car screech to a halt, heard the bellowing. They could see Söderlund and Flasher-Göran were in the middle of a fight and fights were fun. They came running. Not much happened around here, so you had to be there when something did.

  “Kill the pedo!”

  “Kill the pedo!”

  All in a line, hands on their crotches, thrusting their hips.

  Bengt Söderlund didn’t look at the crowd, just gave Flasher-Göran another thorough shake, then pushed him away, down onto the bench. He walked to the car, opened the locked door with a key, then turned around and shouted.

  “I’m not sure you understand, you fucking pervert! Two weeks. That’s what you get. Two shitty weeks. If you haven’t disappeared by then, I’ll kill you.”

  He got in the car, started it violently, and it howled in protest. The boys still stood there, a few meters away. They’d seen Bengt Söderlund. They immediately stopped thrusting and shouting.

  They’d understood his words. He meant them.

  ————

  It was a beautiful evening. Seventy-five degrees, no wind. Bengt Söderlund left his home, looked at his neighbor’s house, which he’d come to hate, spat at it. He was born here, had gone to school here, had started working at his family’s construction company and taken it over just a few years later, only weeks before both of his parents started to slowly waste away until one day they disappeared completely. He’d never thought about death before. It wasn’t his. Then he’d stood in it and squelched it with his feet, got stuck in it, buried both his mother and father, and realized that he was his own past, him and nobody else. This was his daily life, his party, his security, his adventure. He’d been in the same class as Elisabeth. They’d been going steady since ninth grade, and now they had three kids, two who’d left home and the baby of the family, who was hovering in that realm between girlhood and womanhood.

  He knew how it smelled here.

  He knew how it sounded when a car passed by on its way somewhere else.

  He knew what an hour felt like. How it lasted longer here.

  The lunch joint next to the grocery store was filled with the young men of Tallbacka at this time of day, the ones who weren’t at work and who’d never learned to cook for themselves. They bought lunch coupons—buy ten, get one free—ate simple food, and tried to visit each other, watching as morning turned to afternoon. In the evening it turned into a bar, two poker machines in one corner, this week’s beer special and peanuts at a bargain price. It was a shitty dive, but it was the only neutral place for the single men and women of Tallbacka to meet if they weren’t members of one of the local evangelical churches.

  Bengt asked them to show up there, called them when he got home feeling angry and scared and uncompromising. Elisabeth hadn’t wanted to come along—she didn’t approve of their hatred—but Ola Gunnarsson was there, and Klas Rilke, and Ove Sandell and his wife Helena. He’d known them all for their entire lives. They’d gone to school together, played football together, season after season, in the Tallbacka Football Club, drank alcohol for the first time together at parties at the community center—they’d been children who stayed here in order to have the time to grow up.

  They’d talked about the flasher many times before.

  But in every process there is always one crucial step, the moment when things either stop or go further. That was where they stood now. They had the future inside themselves.

  Bengt Söderlund had bought everyone a beer and a couple of bowls of nuts. He was excited, wanted to tell them about this afternoon’s confrontation with Flasher-Göran outside the grocery store, and he did, told them about the bench and the girls sitting close by, then looked at the others, raised his glass to his mouth, and let his lips turn white with foam. He held a paper in his hand, showed it to them, unfolded it.

  “Here it is. I picked it up at the courthouse today. Enough is enough. I was so pissed off when I shook him, I drove like hell into town, and got there just before they closed. It took a hell of a lot of searching. This was before they used computers, archived everything by hand in folders in alphabetical order.”

  They all leaned forward, trying to read it, even upside down.

  “That fucking pervert’s record. In black and white. Showed his cock to children. Hell, there’s no difference between him and that pervert they shot outside Enköping.”

  Bengt Söderlund lit a cigarette, passed the pack around.

  “Your little sisters were there, Ove.”

  He looked at Ove Sandell. He knew he had him.

  “He showed them his dick. My little sisters. I wasn’t there. I would’ve killed the bastard. I don’t give a shit. I’d have cut him.”

  They toasted.

  The boys who’d been grinding their hips in a row went over to the already occupied poker machines. They watched, applauded the occasional win. They didn’t try to order beer, they wouldn’t get any, didn’t even put any money into the change machine—they’d tried that enough times already. Eighteen was the limit, even in Tallbacka.

  Helena Sandell was impatient, knocked the table to get everyone’s attention. She examined them one by one, stopped at her husband.

  “We have our own girls now, Ove.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “When will it be their turn?”

  “They shoulda castrated him. Back then. When he was convicted.”

  Bengt nodded, rose from the table, looked and pointed in the direction he’d come from.

  “There are more than two thousand people in this fucking town. How the fuck did I end up with a fucking pedophile as my neighbor? Well? Can anybody answer that?”

  The gang of boys had grown tired of watching people play poker machines. They’d borrowed the remote lying on the counter, turned on the television. Too loud, Bengt waved irritably at them until they lowered the volume.

  “Nobody’s answering. What should a person do? How the hell can we let his type live here? How the hell can we do it?”

  Helena Sandell yelled until she was hoarse.

  “He has to go. He has to go! You hear me, Ove?”

  A few peanuts, Bengt chewed slowly, swallowed.

  “He has to go. And he won’t go unless we help him out. I promise here and now that if he’s not gone in two weeks I
will kill him.”

  One more round, Bengt paid again, he’d take it as a business expense, they usually just wrote food and drink on the receipt.

  They drank the new round until Ove started to wolf whistle, the sound cut through the thick smoke, instant silence on the premises. He pointed at the television, at the boys with the remote.

  “Hey, turn it up.”

  “Make up your damn minds.”

  “Now we want to hear it. Turn that shit up before you get a slap.”

  Fredrik Steffansson on the screen. Walking in slow motion through a corridor at the Kronoberg jail. A jacket over his head.

  “Damn, it’s the father. The one who shot that pedophile outside Stockholm.”

  Still silence in the bar. Several tables looked at the monitor, at Fredrik Steffansson as he waved at the camera, shook his head, and then disappeared, out of picture. In front of him stood a woman. The camera focused on her face, the defense lawyer Kristina Björnsson, a microphone in front of her mouth.

  “It’s true. My client does not deny the factual circumstances. He shot Bernt Lund and planned it for several days.”

  A close-up on her face as a reporter tried to interrupt with a question, but she continued, louder.

  “But this is not about murder. This is something completely different. We maintain self-defense.”

  Bengt Söderlund hit his hand on the table.

  “Fuck yeah.”

  He looked around and the others nodded slowly, followed each camera motion across the screen, each new statement.

  “It was only a matter of time before Bernt Lund would repeat this crime. We know that. We can see this in the profiles made of him. My client Fredrik Steffansson, therefore, argues that by taking Lund’s life he saved the life of at least one child.”

  “That’s right. Damn right.”

  Ove Sandell smiled, leaned over, kissed his wife on the cheek. The reporter’s voice again, the question she wasn’t able to ask before.

  “How is he?”

  “Considering the circumstances, good. He has lost his daughter. He’s disappointed that society could not protect her or other prospective victims. He’s the one who’s locked up now awaiting trial. He’s the one who has to suffer the consequences of society’s incompetence.”

  Helena Sandell caressed her husband’s cheek, took him by the hand, stood up, and pulled him up, too.

  “He’s right.”

  She lifted her glass, toasted the television, then Bengt Söderlund, Ola Gunnarsson, Klas Rilke, and finally her husband.

  “Do you know what he is, that Steffansson? Do you have any idea? A hero. Do you know that? A genuine hero. Cheers, cheers for Fredrik Steffansson!”

  They all raised their glasses, drank silently until their glasses were empty.

  ————

  They stayed there longer than they usually did. They’d made up their minds. They didn’t know how yet, but they’d decided. They’d taken a step, allowed the process to continue. It was their Tallbacka, their life, their reality.

  It wasn’t that busy, it really wasn’t, but all the same he couldn’t find his way—he could never find his way around big department stores. Six floors, escalators and food samples and loudspeaker announcements and queue tickets and credit card machines and buy buy buy, and someone in line and someone smelling strongly of sweat and screaming children and the perfume department with its hollow-eyed saleswomen and the woman leaving clothes outside the fitting room and the man looking for swimming trunks and everything everything everything shipped and packaged and priced.

  Lars Ågestam had tired of it before he even arrived. But he didn’t know any other stores. He never bought music, had no time to listen to it, and, besides, he had a radio in the car. The record department was dizzying with its long rows of unknown quantities. It felt as if they were falling on top of him as he leaned back to avoid them. In the middle, a young woman—possibly beautiful, it was difficult to tell beneath heavy makeup and hair in her eyes—stood at the information desk.

  He waited there for her to finally notice him.

  “Yes?”

  “Siw Malmkvist.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you have her?”

  The young woman smiled, with indulgence or maybe understanding—who knows why young women smile anyway?

  “Of course we do. Somewhere in Swedish music. There has to be something there.”

  She exited the information desk through a little gate, motioned for him to follow her. He watched her back, his cheeks turning red. Her clothes were revealing. She searched through the rows, soon pulled up a cover with a picture of a woman who’d been young a long time ago.

  “The Classics of Siw. That’s what it’s called. Is that what you were looking for?”

  He held it in his hand, weighing it. This had to be what he was looking for.

  She smiled broadly as she took his money. He blushed again, but also became annoyed, she was laughing at him.

  “Is something funny?”

  “No.”

  “You seem to be laughing at me.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “It’s just that you don’t look like the type to be purchasing Siw.”

  He smiled.

  “What do they look like? A little older?”

  “They don’t wear suits.”

  “Okay.”

  “And cooler.”

  He walked along Kungs Street with The Classics of Siw, an ice cream in hand, across the bridge to Kungsholmen, passed his office at the Prosecution Authority, and headed toward Scheele Street, toward the Department of Violent Crimes.

  He felt tense, lingered a little too long outside the door, couldn’t bring himself to knock.

  That irritated voice. He went inside.

  Grens was sitting just as he had been when Lars left here last time, behind his desk, on the edge of his chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs. He stared at Lars, the same look that he gave to everyone: go to hell, you’re not welcome here, no one is.

  Ågestam stepped into the room. Into the contempt.

  “Here.”

  He put the CD on the table.

  “Because I was rude last time.”

  Grens looked at him but said nothing.

  “I don’t know if you already have it. I’ve only seen your tape deck.”

  Not a sound. Grens stretched his lips, remained silent.

  “I’d like to speak with you for a moment. I’ll be honest, just as I was last Monday. I think you’re a surly, dreary boor, but I need you. I have no one else to test this against, no one else who can give me some perspective, ask the right questions.”

  He pointed to the visitor’s chair, gesturing to ask if he could sit down. Grens was still quiet, a tired hand in the air, a kind of invitation.

  Ågestam leaned back, searching for a good way to start.

  “I threw up yesterday. I went to the toilet and emptied my breakfast and lunch. I was scared. I’m still scared. This might be the most important thing I have ever done. I have a pedophile serial killer shot dead by a grieving father on my hands, and it could go terribly wrong. I’m not stupid. I know it’ll be a living hell.”

  Grens shook his head. He chuckled. For the first time since his guest entered the room, he spoke.

  “That might have been good for you.”

  Ågestam counted. Quiet, inside. He counted the seconds, which was what he usually did, thirteen seconds. He’d humbled himself. Asked for help. The old bastard couldn’t see that. He had to play his prestige game. Ågestam tried to ignore it.

  “I’m going to ask for a life sentence.”

  That worked. He got his attention. That he had an opinion meant something.

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  “Just what I said. I don’t want people running around taking the law into their own hands.”

  “Why the hell are you telling me this?”

  “I do
n’t know. I’d like to work through my thoughts. See if they’re sound.”

  The detective chuckled again.

  “You little fucking climber. Life?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re all idiots anyway. I’ve always thought so. Half of the people serving time in our prisons have been convicted of violent crimes more than once. They’re idiots, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t human beings. Almost all of them have been the victims of violent crimes, often at the hands of their own parents. So even I can understand that sometimes it just ends up that way.”

  “I’m aware of all of that.”

  “You should learn it again, Ågestam, for real this time. Don’t just read a few books.”

  The prosecutor pulled a black notebook out of the inside pocket of his jacket. He flipped back and forth, searching through his notes.

  “Steffansson has admitted that he planned the murder. He had four days to come to his senses. He took it upon himself to act as police, prosecutor, judge, and executioner.”

  “He didn’t know if he would be able to go through with it. He didn’t know if Lund would show up.”

  “Steffansson had plenty of time. He could have contacted you. Your men were standing guard just a few hundred meters away. If he had contacted you, he could have refrained from shooting Lund.”

  “Sure, it’s murder. No doubt about it. But life? Never. Unlike you, I’ve been working in this town for forty years. I’ve seen bigger fools than Steffansson get away with more. I’ve seen other prosecutors pretending to be hard men.”

  Ågestam breathed deeply, ignored the sarcasm, the personal attacks. He wasn’t going to be pulled into that again, not going to fall for it. He flipped through his notebook again. He swallowed his anger and slowly began to smile. This was exactly what he’d wanted; the surly old devil was acting just as he’d expected him to. It was as if the trial had already begun, and he was polishing his questions, his mode of proof—it was an exam.

  Grens was unhappy with the pause, swore just loud enough to be heard.

  “What the hell are you up to? Looking for arguments in your book? It’s murder. But it’s murder with extenuating circumstances. Request a long sentence if you think you need to, but content yourself with eight, or maybe ten years tops. You and I are society. Do you understand that? The society that couldn’t protect Steffansson’s daughter or anyone else.”