Stig Lindgren had settled in the TV corner. The set was on, some channel or other, the sound was turned down and a deck of cards was on the table in front of him. He was about to deal to the five other players waiting for their hands.
Stig collected his cards. Grinned. His gold-crowned front tooth gleamed.
'No shit. All aces to me. Again. You're playing like right tossers.'
The others said nothing. Checked their cards. Flicked them about.
'Fuck's sake. Don't show me your cards.'
He was forty-nine, but looked older, lined and worn. Thirty-five years of drug abuse had lodged amphetamine twitches in his face, spasms pulling his cheek towards his eye, the eye blinking out of sync. His dark hair thinning. A thick gold chain round his neck. He weighed eighty kilograms now, well muscled after nineteen months at Aspsås.
Once he was outside again and back on speed he'd soon be down to sixty.
He got up suddenly and flapped about, looking for the remote control among the cards and newspapers on the table.
'Where's the fucker?'
'Are you playing fucking cards or what?'
'Shut it. Where's the thing? The remote. Go get it, Hilding. Dump the cards. Gotta find it!'
Hilding Oldéus quickly put his cards down and started pulling nervously at the same newspapers that Dickybird had just been over. Thin and short, with a high-pitched, edgy voice, ten trips in eleven years. When he was on heroin, he had started scratching an itch near his right nostril and somehow couldn't stop. Now it was a chronically infected sore.
The remote wasn't on the table. Hilding ran around, searching at random on tables and windowsills. Dickybird pushed the coffee table out of the way, stepped forward between the irritated but silent card-players and turned the volume up.
'Quiet, girls! Hitler is on now.'
In the TV corner, in the kitchen, in the corridor, everywhere, people stopped doing whatever it was. Hurrying to the TV, they lined up behind Dickybird. The midday news programme. Somebody whistled appreciatively when the next item was announced.
'You heard. Shut up.'
Lennart Oscarsson. Someone held out a microphone. Behind him, Aspsås prison.
Oscarsson looked stressed. He was unused to TV cameras, unused to having to explain why something he was responsible for had been utterly buggered up.
… how was Lund able to escape…
… as I was trying to say…
… this prison is allegedly secure but…
… it didn't happen here…
… what do you mean, 'not here'…
… a hospital visit, to the Southern General, under
guard…
… under guard…
… two of our most experienced warders… only two…
… two of our most experienced warders and a waist restraint…
… on whose recommendation… … he beat them both down and… who considered two guards enough… and escaped in the prison transport van… Oscarsson's face was shown in close-up. He was sweating, his moist, nervous face held on screen for a long time, the camera enjoying his nakedness, picking out the drops of sweat on his forehead.
Television is all surface and immediacy. Oscarsson had been on leadership training courses and been filmed in media practice sessions, but this was for real. He was gripped by a deep-seated, churning anxiety; he was very tense and kept swallowing, his eyes had an uncertain, shifty look. He took too long to think up answers, stumbled over his words too often and forgot to come out with his prepared statements, despite knowing that you must have something definite to say and keep repeating it, regardless of what you're asked. The situation was so in-your-face, fear had flooded his mind and drowned the lessons he had learned; what with the camera and the microphone and the insistent reporter, he was exposed with his trousers down to every backwoods citizen watching the news. He tried to produce sensible answers, but his mind was taken up by images of Nils, or of Karin, watching him on screen. Would he embarrass them? Did they understand what it was like? He longed to feel close to one of them, longed to feel hands touching his face, his neck, stroking his chest, his hips.
'What a fucking loser!'
Dickybird had issued a command. Hilding heard it and cut the silence in the room.
'Hitler's coming across like a fucking retard.'
Dickybird moved and landed his fist hard on the back of Hilding's head.
'Shut the fuck up! Got that? I'm listening!'
Hilding twisted nervously in his chair, picked at the sore on his nose and said nothing.
He had learned his lesson the first time inside, only seventeen years old and on an eight-month stretch for robbery; he had done a central Seven-Eleven shop, as high as a kite but would need to buy more horse soon, he knew, and was close to panic. He threatened the shop assistant, a young woman, with a kitchen knife and robbed the till, didn't get much, just two 500-kronor notes. Still, it was enough for a deal with the trader round the corner; he was negotiating when the police arrived on the scene. Back then prison had seemed strange and very frightening. He quickly tired of looking out for himself and adjusted to the fact that there would always be at least one man who ran the show and protected a faithful arselicker. He had been brown-nosing Dickybird in other prisons, once in '98 and then again in '99, and he was no worse than the other unit bosses.
The TV image switched to a different setting. Oscarsson's pained face was still there, but further away, with the Aspsås wall in the background. The camera panned slowly from the top of the wall to the sky and back again, a visual cliché in the quickly produced news item. A voiceover, factual to the point of dreariness, reiterated some points. Bernt Lund had been given permission to visit hospital and had escaped from a secure transport that morning; he had been found guilty of several brutal rapes of underage girls, a series that had culminated in the so-called basement murders, when his victims had been two nine-year-olds; he had served four years of his sentence in solitary confinement at Kumla, but had recently been moved to one of the special units for sexual offenders at Aspsås, and since he was classified as very dangerous, it was in the public interest to show a picture of him.
A black-and-white still came on screen; it showed Bernt Lund dressed in a white shirt and dark pants, and smiling at the camera.
Dickybird stepped closer to the set.
'See that bastard from hell? That's the beast I kicked the shit out of in the gym yesterday. That fucking arsehole!'
Dickybird was screaming and those standing closest to him jumped and moved away a bit. They had been around at other times when he had freaked out about the nonces.
'What are the bastards fucking well coming here for? Why here?'
As he screamed, he shoved the memories into the back of his mind. He did that every time. Home in the Svedmyra house, that sodding awful image of his uncle at his dad's funeral. He was five. Per's hand suddenly stroking his back and then slipping down to his bum.
'I'll cut their cocks off!'
Memories, crowding his head, he was forced to think about them, see them in his mind's eye, relive them. Per said they should pop into Dad's workshop, put his hand on top of the little boy's best trousers, right in front, then pulled the trousers down, and the underpants. And pulled down his own trousers. Held him close, pushed at his bum with his knob.
'Hilding, it's got to be done. Cut it all off. Balls, the lot!'
He cleared his throat thoroughly and collected plenty of juice, spat it at Bernt Lund's smiling black-and-white face on the TV screen, then stared at the splattered face, watching as the saliva trickled down across that cold smile behind the glass screen and dripped on to the floor.
The group scattered. Some retreated to their cells, some ambled off down the corridor, some stayed and picked up the cards again. Dickybird sat back in his old chair, but shook his head when Hilding gave him his hand of cards. The images in his head were refusing to go; somehow they resisted, however hard he tried to concentrate, calling o
ut and slapping his thighs hard. Still an out-of-control mechanism projected one image after another. Per in their small holiday house in Blekinge; his big hands had been doing the same things, the boy was bleeding heavily and he hid his underpants so Mum wouldn't see them. She never looked in the old cupboard in the shed.
'Shit, Dickybird, come on, let's play.'
'Forget it. Not me. You carry on.'
'Bugger Hitler. Come on, let's start.'
'Bugger yourself. Leave me alone or you'll get it where it hurts. Again.'
Images. Now he was thirteen and stoned out of his mind, he had mixed beer and preludin. He got Larren to come along, Larren who was a big boy and quite fearless. They hitchhiked to Blekinge, walked to the house, stepped inside, passed Laila, who was washing up, and found Per in the sitting room. No one realised what was happening, not until Larren grabbed hold of Per and he himself started stabbing at Per's balls with an ice-pick.
'House!'
'What the fuck?'
'Eights and sixes.'
'That's no fucking house.'
'It fucking well is. Dickybird, explain to that shithead.'
'You heard me. I'm not interested. Play with yourselves.'
Keys were rattling. Two screws coming through the main door.
Dickybird checked them out. They'd brought somebody new. Meant to replace Bojo, he guessed. This morning Bojo's cell had been empty, he'd been transferred to Hall in a hurry. The lads had got it in for him, but someone had alerted the screws and the wing boss responded instantly. No blood on the floor in this unit, at least not for a bit.
The new guy was a big bugger. Shaved head, shit-coloured skin, one of them tanning-shop poofs. Dickybird sighed as he watched the group of men step inside, the screws keeping an eye. They walked past the TV corner and the card-players took note now. The new guy stared straight ahead, dead to the world. He was taken to Bojo's cell, went inside but left the door open.
'Who's that fucker?'
Dickybird pointed. Hilding drew a deep breath, tried to remember.
'Don't know. Never saw him before. Has anybody?'
Dragan shook his head. Skåne shrugged. Bekir picked up two cards from the table.
'Fucking leave it. Let's play, I've got a good hand.'
Dickybird focused on the open cell door and waited. That was what he usually did, waited until they came out. Then he told them the score.
One hour passed. One hour and twenty minutes. Then he came out.
'Oy, you! Over here.'
Dickybird waved, it was a command. The new inmate heard him, but kept his eyes ahead, ignored the hectoring voice. He walked almost demonstrably slowly into the kitchen and drank water straight from the tap. The large shiny head glistened with scattered drops.
'Hey! Over here!'
This was irritating, it was Dickybird's unit and he decided who did what. That skinhead had no fucking rights.
'Here!'
Dickybird pointed at the floor in front of his chair, waited. The new man didn't shift.
'Now!'
He didn't get it, that shaved moron didn't fucking get it.
Hilding could sense the silence and glanced nervously at Dickybird, grabbed the deck of cards, sticking a finger up to show the others that they should hold it. But Dragan and Skåne and Bekir had caught on long ago; it was time to teach the skinhead a lesson. Not that the beating was their problem, they just had a grandstand view! They too could sense the silence; it looked like a fight, quite a few good rounds coming up.
They squared up to each other. The new guy was walking towards Dickybird and stopped when there was only a hand's breadth separating them.
Dickybird had never been faced down before and had no intention of letting it happen now. The skinhead was taller than he was, probably one hundred and eighty-five, and had this fucking big scar running from his left ear down to the corner of his mouth. It was clean, could've been a knife but more likely a razor. He had seen razor scars before, they looked like that.
'I'm Lindgren, Dickybird Lindgren.'
'And?'
'We usually say who we are, round here.'
'Fuck off.'
The images started up in his mind, Per and Larren, Per's balls bleeding something fucking awful, Auntie Laila over by the sink screaming her head off, Dickybird himself running about with the ice-pick lifted shouting that if anyone wanted a taste he'd stick it in, Per wailing; he had jabbed with the ice-pick at his eyes when Larren suddenly let his uncle go. Not eyes, that was Larren's bottom line.
Dickybird was trembling. He tried to hide it but everyone noticed; he shook and hesitated and spat, this time on the floor.
'Where are you from?'
The new guy yawned. Twice.
'Police cells.'
'So fucking what, of course it's the cells, don't mess with me. Do you have your papers?'
Once more.
'Listen, Icky-dicky. That's you, isn't it? You must know I'm not allowed to bring my sentence in here.'
Dickybird shifted his weight from left to right leg. Per was dead long ago, a corpse with not much left of its balls. The ice-pick had been kept as evidence, shown over and over to the authorities, on the long way from Blekinge to the young offenders' institution.
'Fuck your sentence, I'm not interested. What I want to know is what's the score. Like, I don't want no sodding nonces or faggots in this place.'
Weird how a room can suddenly shrink, how sounds become words that turn into spoken messages that bounce off the walls and take up space, suck up energy until there is no more, only intakes of breath in the silence, and piled- up expectations.
The new guy shouldn't have been able to get any closer but somehow he did. He was hissing, sending a shower of saliva into the air between them.
'You asking for special treatment then? Is that it?'
One of them must give way, look down or away, but they stayed facing each other.
'There's just one thing you've got to fucking remember, Dickybird. No one, and I mean no one, calls me a faggot or a nonce. And if it comes from some shot-up, junk-crazed old wanker, then there'll be bad, bad trouble.'
The skinhead poked at Dickybird's chest with his index finger, several times, hard. Still hissing, he mumbled something incomprehensible.
'Hotikar di rotepa, burobengf
Prison lingo.
Then he poked Dickybird's chest once more, turned and walked back to the cell with the wide-open door.
Dickybird stood quite still.
His unseeing eyes followed the newcomer until he had disappeared. Then he focused, first on Hilding and then on the rest of them, and shouted down the empty corridor.
'What the fuck. What the fuck.'
No one showed. Nothing but an open door.
That finger poking at his chest. Dickybird shouted again.
'You fucking listen. Racklar di romani, tjavon?'
* * *
Lennart saw him, waiting by the tower on the east side of the wall. It was their usual meeting place, at lunchtime or in the afternoon, when the shifts had changed over. Nils looked young, in shirtsleeves with his jacket thrown over one shoulder. A mere boy, waiting for his sweetheart.
Only a few seconds left to watch him unnoticed. Lennart slowed down. Nils was facing the other way, the way Lennart normally took; today was different because he had gone out for lunch at the old inn on the village square, he and Bertolsson had feasted on steak and fresh garden peas. Bertolsson had dropped him off halfway to the prison, because Lennart had said that he wanted to walk, needed time to think over what had happened, to try to get his mind round the note-scribbling and the microphones and the camera being shoved into his face. Strange to think that for a few minutes of midday news he had been inside all those homes, with his ready-made statements about how criminals ought to be managed.
It was still windy, a change after weather dominated by high pressure for the best part of a month. It had been an eternity of stagnant heat, sweating and irritatio
n, always something itching, always something troubling around the corner.
Nils smiled. He had caught sight of Lennart and couldn't wait. He started strolling towards his lover, came close, held him and wouldn't let go, kissed his forehead and then his cheek.
'Did you see it?'
The Beast Page 6