The Beast (ewert grens)

by Anders Roslund

  No question, he’d had worse scum in the van, or, at least, scum with heavier sentences. He’d seen it all, put handcuffs on every fucking hard man in the headlines, walked them to the bus and driven them, staring vacantly into the mirror. Many of them were complete cretins. Loonies. Only a few had got their heads round the idea that there’s a cost. If you buy, you’ve got to pay, it’s that simple. Never mind the suckers outside, with their sermons about care and concern and rehabilitation. You buy and you pay. That’s all.

  He could spot the perverts, pick them out every single time. There was something about them, which meant he didn’t need to know the charge. No paperwork required. He saw and hated. Now and then he had tried to explain it over a beer in the pub, tried to convince people that it was possible to spot them and that he knew how. Trouble was, when his mates asked for details he couldn’t say and they reckoned he was prejudiced, possibly homophobic or even anti-everybody. Now he kept his mouth shut: it was too much hassle and not worth the effort. Still, he knew who was who, and the scumbags sensed it, looking away shiftily when his eyes sought theirs.

  This nonce in the back had done the rounds. Åke had driven him at least six times. Back in ’91, a couple of round- trips between trial court and the cells, then again in ’97, after he’d done a runner and been caught once more. Another trip in ’99, from Säter secure to wherever it was. Now he was off to the Southern General Hospital, in the middle of the night. He looked at the face in the mirror and the beast looked back, it was like some pointless competition about who could keep staring the longest. As ever, he seemed normal enough. At least, he would’ve, to most people. A bit shortish, 175 centimetres, say, medium build, close-cropped hair. Calm. Normal. Except, he was a repeat child rapist.

  Red lights at the start of the uphill run along Ring Street. Not much traffic at this time of night. Blue lamps materialised behind him. An ambulance, its sirens blaring. He stayed where he was to let it overtake.

  ‘That’s it, Lund. You’ve got thirty seconds now, then out. We phoned ahead, a doctor is seeing you straight away.’

  Åke didn’t talk with nonces. Never did. His colleague knew that. Ulrik Berntfors felt very much the same way, it was just that he didn’t hate.

  ‘This way we don’t have to wait for our breakfast. And you don’t have to sit in the waiting room with all that kit on.’

  Ulrik gestured at Lund, at the chain across his stomach. It was part of a transfer waist-restraint, complete with leg- irons. He had never had to use one before. Body-belts, yes. Still, it was an order. Oscarsson had phoned up about it, made a special point. Told to undress, Lund had smiled and waggled his hips. He was fitted out with a metal belt round his waist, joined to the leg-irons with four chains running down his legs and to the handcuffs with two chains along his torso and arms. Ulrik had seen these things on TV and once for real, during a study visit to India. Never in Sweden. Here, the main idea was to control offenders by outnumbering them. More guards than villains. Sometimes handcuffs, of course, but not chains inside shirt and trousers.

  ‘How caring. Thanks a lot. You’re great guys.’

  Lund was speaking quietly. He was barely audible. Ulrik had no idea if what he said was meant to be ironic. Then Lund shifted position, chains clanking against each other, until he was leaning forward with his head resting on the frame of the glazed hatch separating the front seats from the back of the van.

  ‘Listen, you two. This is no good. I’ve got chains up my arse. Get me out of this fucking tin body-belt and I give you my word I won’t run.’

  Åke stared at him in the mirror. He speeded up suddenly, shot along the slope up to the Casualty entrance and then stood on the brakes.

  Lund’s chin crashed against the sharp edge of the hatch.

  ‘Fucking screws! What the fuck’s that for? You cunts!’

  Usually Lund spoke calmly and sounded quite educated. Until he felt got at. Then he swore. Åke knew that. It wasn’t just that they all looked alike. They were alike.

  Ulrik was laughing, but only inside. That bugger Andersson, he wasn’t quite right in the head. He kept doing stuff like this, but refused to say a word.

  ‘Too bad,’ he said. ‘Nothing doing, it’s Oscarsson’s orders. You see, Lund, you’re classed as dangerous. A danger to society. So you’d better lump it.’

  Ulrik found it difficult to utter all this. The words seemed to have a will of their own, pushing their way out of his mouth despite his straining facial muscles, tensed to hold back the rumbling laughter inside. If it slipped out and was heard, it would provoke their passenger even more. He spoke, but afterwards, following Andersson’s example, stared silently straight ahead.

  ‘If we take the tinsel off you, we’d be ignoring Oscarsson’s express order. And that’s against the regulations. You know that.’

  The ambulance that had overtaken them was parked next to the ramp outside Casualty. Two male paramedics were running up the stairs to the entrance, two steps at a time, carrying a stretcher. Ulrik caught a glimpse of a woman; the blood in her long hair made it stick to the leg of one of the paramedics. Orange and red don’t go together, he thought, wondering why they wore orange, they must get blood on their uniforms pretty often. Being upset always made his mind wander.

  ‘Oscarsson’s an arsehole! He’s fucking lost it. Why won’t that motherfucker believe me? I said I won’t run! I told him at Aspsås!’

  Lund was shouting through the hatch, then backed away only to throw himself against the windowless wall. The chains of his restraint thumped against the metal side of the van, making Åke momentarily think he’d hit something, turn to look for another vehicle that wasn’t there.

  ‘I fucking told him, you bastards! So you didn’t know? OK, here’s another deal. If you don’t get this lot of chain- mail off me, I’ll be away. Get that, cunts? I’ll walk. Understood?’

  Åke tried to meet his eyes. He adjusted the mirror to find Lund. He sensed the hatred welling up; he had to hit him, that scum had gone too far, had just said ‘cunt’ once too often.

  Thirty-two years. A job a job a job. But he couldn’t hack it any more. Not today. And sooner or later it would all go to hell, whatever.

  He ripped off the seatbelt, opened the door. Ulrik realised what was up, but didn’t have time to act. Åke was going to beat the shit out of the nonce. Lund would get it harder than any of them ever had. Not that Ulrik minded. He stayed where he was, smiling to himself.

  The town was never more silent than a few minutes past four in the morning. After the last customers had left Hörnans Bar to make their way noisily from the harbour along the Promenade towards the old bridge to Toster Island, there was this quiet space, until the newspaper boys delivering the Strängrtäs Gazette fanned out to sprint along Stor Street, opening porch doors and letterboxes.

  Fredrik Steffansson knew it all, he hadn’t slept through the night for ages. He kept the window open, so he could lie in bed and listen to the little town falling asleep and waking again, to the movements of people he mostly knew, or at least recognised. That’s how it is when your world is small-scale. Everything crowds in on you. He had lived here almost all his life. Sure, he had read a lot of books by the right people and gone off to live in Stockholm’s South End, studying comparative religion at the university. Then he had worked in a kibbutz in northern Israel, a few miles from the Lebanese border. But once all that was over and done with, he returned to Strängnäs and the people he knew, or at least recognised. He’d never truly got away, never left growing up here behind him. His memories and his lasting sadness at the loss of Frans tied him to this town. It was here he had met Agnes. He had fallen madly in love with her, she was so sophisticated, exclusively dressed in black, always searching for something. They started living together, but had been about to part when Marie arrived and made them rediscover each other, so that, for almost a year, the three of them were a family. Then Fredrik and Agnes separated for ever, not as enemies, but they spoke only when Marie was to
be delivered or collected. She had to travel from one city to another, because Agnes had moved to Stockholm, living among her beautiful friends, where she really belonged.

  Someone was walking down there in the street. He checked the time. Quarter to five. Bloody nights. If only he could think of something that made sense, his next piece of writing, just the next two pages, but no, it seemed impossible. He couldn’t think at all, the empty time passed as he listened to what seeped in through the window, taking note of when doors closed and cars started. Meaningless accountancy. He had hardly any energy left for writing. When he had delivered Marie to nursery school and settled down at his computer with the day stretching ahead of him, the hours without sleep attacked, tiredness engulfed him. Three chapters in two months was simply disastrous, his powerful publisher wouldn’t put up with it and was already sending out feelers to find out what was up.

  A truck. That sounded like that truck. But it usually didn’t run before half past five.

  Such a thin partition to Marie’s room. He could hear her. She was snoring. How come little children snore like fat old men? Fragile five-year-olds with piping voices, as cute as anything? He used to think it was just Marie, but whenever David slept over they made twice as much noise, filling the silences between each other’s breaths.

  It wasn’t a truck. A bus, that was it.

  He turned away from the window. Micaela slept in the nude, blanket and sheet bundled up at her feet as always.

  She was just twenty-four, so young. She made him feel loved, often randy, and, at times, so old. It would hit him suddenly, often when they were talking about music or books or films. One of them would make a remark about a composition, or someone’s writing, or a play, and it would become obvious that she was young and he was middle-aged. Sixteen years is a long time in the life of guitar solos and film dialogue; they age and fade away and get replaced.

  She was lying on her stomach, her face turned towards him. He caressed her cheek, planted a light kiss on a buttock. He liked her very much. Was he in love? He couldn’t bear the effort of working it out. He liked that she was there, next to him, that she agreed to share his hours, for he detested being lonely, it was pointless, like suffocating; surely solitude was a kind of death. He moved his hand from her cheek to stroke her back. She stirred. Why did she lie there, next to an older man with a child, a man who wasn’t that good-looking, not ugly but certainly not handsome, and not well off, and, arguably, not even fun to be with? Why had she chosen to spend her nights with him, she who was so beautiful, so young and had so many more hours left to live? He kissed her again, this time on her hip.

  ‘Are you still awake?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Did I wake you?’

  ‘I don’t know. What about you, haven’t you been asleep?’

  ‘You know what I’m like.’

  She pulled him close, her naked body against his, sleepily warm, awake but not quite.

  ‘You must sleep, my old darling.’

  ‘Old?’

  ‘You can’t cope if you don’t sleep. You know that. Come on. Sleep.’

  She looked at him, kissed him, held him.

  ‘I was thinking about Frans.’

  ‘Fredrik, not now.’

  ‘I do think about him. I want to think about him, I’m listening to Marie next door and I’m thinking about how Frans too was a child when he was beaten, when he watched me being beaten. When he caught the train to Stockholm.’

  ‘Close your eyes.’

  ‘Why should anyone beat a child?’

  ‘If you keep your eyes closed for long enough you go to sleep. That’s how it works.’

  ‘Why should anyone beat a child, who will grow up and learn to understand and judge the person who’s been beating it? At least, judge the rights and wrongs of that beaten child.’

  She pushed at him to turn him on his side with his back towards her, then moved in close behind him, twisting into him until they were like two boughs of a tree.

  ‘Why keep hitting a child, who will construe the beatings as Daddy’s duty and look to its own failings for the reason. I’m not good enough, not tough enough. The child will tell itself that it’s his or her own fault, partly at least. Christ almighty, I was into that kind of crap myself. I forced myself to believe it, not to feel violated and abandoned.’

  Micaela slept. Her breathing was slow and regular against the back of his neck, so close that the skin became damp. Through the window came the sounds of another bus. It stopped outside, reversed, stopped again, reversed. Perhaps the same one as yesterday, a large coach.

  Lennart Oscarsson carried a secret. He wasn’t alone in this, but felt as if he were. The pain of it rode him, curled up on his right shoulder, slept inside his chest, occupied all the space inside his stomach. Every evening he decided to let it out the following morning. Once he had set it free, he could sit back quietly, contemplating days without a secret for company stretching out ahead.

  He didn’t have the strength, couldn’t do it. He was screaming, but nobody listened. Maybe to scream properly you actually had to open your mouth?

  He did the same things every morning. Sat in the kitchen at their round pine table, spooning yoghurt into his face. Karin was always there at his side. She was his life, this beautiful woman, whom he had loved beyond reason ever since he’d met her for the first time, sixteen years ago. She drank her usual coffee with hot milk, ate rye bread and butter, read the arts pages in the morning paper.

  Now. Now!

  He should tell her now. Then it would have been said. She had every right to know. Others didn’t, but she did. It was so simple. A couple of minutes, a few sentences, that was all. They could finish their breakfasts, leave for their daily work. He would return home that night freed from having to hide it. He put the spoon down, drank the last of the yoghurt straight from the container.

  Lennart took pride in his work at Aspsås prison. He held a senior post, chief officer in charge of a unit, and had ambitions to advance further. He took every opportunity for study leave, joined every course, reckoned you had to show willing, and he did, in the knowledge that somewhere, someone was taking notes.

  Seven years ago he had taken over the running of one of Aspsås’s two units for sex offenders. His working life had become focused on people locked up for violating those whom they had been charged to protect. These men had broken the strongest taboo left in society, they were outcasts; he was responsible for them and for the staff who were employed to care as well as to punish. Punishing and trying to understand, this was what they were meant to do, care and punish and remain aware of the difference. His views were his own, he felt what he felt, but he did show willing, and someone, somewhere, kept notes on his progress.

  At the same time his bloody awful secret had started growing. How he wished he could tell. The outcome couldn’t be any worse than now, when the betrayal lived inside his marriage and made every word he and Karin exchanged suspect, filthy.

  He got up, picked up the dirty dishes and stacked the dishwasher. Wiped the table, rinsed the cloth.

  He wore a blue uniform. Officers’ uniforms looked the same throughout the Swedish prison service, rather like a cab driver’s outfit. He dressed for work in the kitchen: trousers, tie, shirt. Meanwhile he hoped that Karin and he would exchange a few words, about anything as long as it stopped him feeling so bloody hypocritical.

  ‘Look at the weather, Lennart. It’s windy outside. They say it’ll stay like this all day. You need your gloves.’

  Karin came close to him and stroked his cheek. He pressed his face against her hand, rubbed against it, needing the contact. She was so beautiful. He wished she knew.

  ‘It’s not cold yet. And I’ve only got a few hundred metres to go.’

  ‘You know that’s not the point. You’ll regret it afterwards, when your joints start hurting.’

  She held out his leather gloves. He put them on. Kissed her, first her lips, then her shoulder. Put on his jacket and stepped out
side, looked across to Aspsås. It was only two minutes’ stroll away. Its grey concrete wall dominated the village.

  When Åke Andersson climbed out of the driver’s seat, he was propelled by an emotion different from anything he had felt before. His rage, his damned hatred, had overwhelmed him.

  He had taken a lot of crap from prisoners for thirty years, hated them but stayed in control, silently driven them from police cells to courts, from hospitals to prisons. He had ferried the lowlife but left the talking to his mates, just kept his eyes on the road and minded his own business. But that fucking beast was too bloody fucking much.

  Åke had nearly lost it last time he had had to transfer that animal, knowing that he was holed up in the back of the van, knowing about the tortures he’d carried out, what the girls had looked like when he’d finished with them. Afterwards, his sneering grin and utter callousness haunted Åke’s dreams, the crimes were replayed over and over again, throughout the nights; one bad morning he didn’t get to the loo in time and threw up in the hall, as if his enforced control had congealed and swelled his stomach until there was no more room.

  It was that third ‘cunt’ coming through the hatch that tore it. Åke lost his grip, had no idea what he should do next, no sense of duty left. He couldn’t answer for the consequences now; his mind was filling with images of the little girls, their cut-up genitals, they’d been tortured with a pointed metal object. His big body hurled itself towards the back door of the van.

  Ulrik Berntfors had driven Lund once before, that was all, on the second day of the girls-in-the-basement trial. He’d been new to the job and the trial was the biggest he’d been involved in, lots of journalists and photographers crowding the reserved seats. Two nine-year-old girls; it pulled at the heartstrings and sold newspapers. He was ashamed of his reaction at the time, he hadn’t really thought about the girls, not understood, had been too inexperienced. He had simply felt special, almost proud, as he walked along at Lund’s side. But afterwards his own daughter asked him why Lund had killed the two girls, why he’d wanted to destroy them. She was only a year older than the victims and had read every piece of news carefully, formulating questions for her dad, who knew the man who had done it and had walked next to him, as seen on TV, lots of times. Of course he couldn’t answer her, but understanding was dawning on him. His daughter’s fears and her questions had taught him more about his job than any course he had attended.