The Beast (ewert grens)

by Anders Roslund

  ‘Quarter of an hour. At most.’

  Marie heard him and tightened her grip on his arm.

  ‘Daddy must stay. Stay with me.’

  Then David came along, running, his face covered in warpaint stripes in garish poster paints. He ran past Marie, but called to her to come along. She let go of Fredrik’s arm and followed him.

  Micaela smiled.

  ‘Look how easy it is! It’s the best I’ve seen. She’s forgotten about you already.’

  She stepped closer, very close.

  ‘But I haven’t.’

  A light kiss on his cheek. Then she turned and went away too.

  Fredrik was at a loss. He watched her go, then went into the play-room. Marie and David and three other kids were piled up together, painting each other’s faces, shouting about Sioux Indians or something. He waved at Marie, she waved back. When he left, their war cries followed him to the door.

  The sun hit his face. What about a coffee in the shade? After picking up a paper from the newsagent at the main square? But he made up his mind to go to his writer’s den on Arnö Island, just, to sit there and wait. He’d start the computer, read his notes, probably write nothing but at least be prepared.

  He opened the gate, nodded again to the father on the bench, who must be waiting for someone, and went to get his car.

  He liked this nursery. It had looked just the same four years ago. The little gate, white-painted wooden walls and blue shutters.

  He had been sitting on this seat for four hours. There must be at least twenty kids in there. He had watched as the children came and went, always with a mother or a father, no kids on their own. A pity, it was easier then.

  Three of the girls had gym shoes on. Two had weird sandals with long straps tied round their legs. Some were barefoot. So the heat was fucking unbearable, but he didn’t like this going barefoot thing. One of them had worn red leather shoes, shiny, with metal buckles. They were the best, really beautiful. She had turned up late, her dad had brought her. A blonde little whore. Her hair had natural curls, she tossed them about while she was speaking to her dad. Not much on, just shorts and a plain T-shirt, she must’ve dressed herself. She seemed happy. Whores were always happy. This one had hopped and jumped all the way to the front door and her dad had nodded to him, a kind of greeting, and he had returned it, it was only polite. The dad had taken longer to come back out than the rest of them, and when he passed, he had nodded again. What a weirdo.

  He tried to spot the blonde whore through the window. Lots of heads came past but not the blonde with curls. She’d come looking for cock; whores like plenty of hard cock. She was hidden in there, only shorts and T-shirt on, and her red shoes with metal buckles, bare legs. Good. Whores should show skin.

  Dickybird was holed up in the TV corner. He felt knackered, like he always felt after he had smoked pot, and the classier the shit was the more dog-tired he got. Pure kif had the biggest effect and this lot had been the fucking best ever. The Greek, who flogged it, had spoken nothing but the truth when he said he’d never sold better, no argument with that, it was good shit and Dickybird knew what he was talking about, he had been through some in his day.

  He looked at Hilding in the chair opposite. Wildboy Hilding wasn’t so wild now, that was for sure; he looked shagged, with that spaced-out look on his face, and he didn’t even scratch that fucking awful sore of his, his hand that was usually somewhere at nose height was resting on his knee. Dickybird bent over and tapped his mate on the shoulder, Hilding’s eyes opened and Dickybird signed, one thumb up and index finger pointing towards the showers. Good stuff, and more in there, behind the tile next to the strip-light. Enough for at least two more goes. Hilding got the message, his thumb went up and he smiled, before sinking deeper into his armchair.

  Plenty of tramping about in the unit today, no peace for the wicked. First the new one, the skinhead who didn’t have a fucking clue about what went and what didn’t round here, seemed to fancy that he could just hang out doing his own fucking thing. Name of Jochum Lang, apparently, what kind of piss-awful name was that? But that was what the nice new young screw had said when he asked. One of them hitmen, seemingly, a bloody bailiff, long list of GBH and manslaughter, but a shortish sentence because of all the sad tossers out there who didn’t dare to witness against him. Still, he had to learn, no messing about in this unit, he’d have to get used to it.

  And then Hitler, who had been pissing himself on the telly, but was thick enough to show his face on the unit afterwards, sneaking a short cut to his sex hellhole. Pissed his pants on-screen, knew he should keep his head down, so he had said fuck all when he ran into them; they had been zonked then and Hitler must’ve smelled the hash fumes but kept going, trotting along to his bunch of perverts. They should be terminated, the whole lot of them.

  To top it all, Grensie. What next? Marched through the unit by Hitler, limping as always; the old copper was a fucking cripple and had been around for longer than was good for him, so maybe he got a hard-on thinking about the old times, but he should be dead by now. He had been one of the Stockholm cops sent down to Blekinge in 1967, he had seen Per’s bleeding goolies and escorted the bawling thirteen-year-old to a young offenders’ prison.

  Bekir shuffled the cards, cut and dealt. Dragan put two matches in the pot and picked up his hand. Skåne did the same. Hilding pushed his cards into a heap and went to the john. Dickybird picked up his cards one by one. Crap cards. Bekir dealt like an old maid. They picked new cards, he swapped all except one, king of clubs, useless but he never gave up all his cards, on principle. The four new ones were crap too. No points. He put out king of clubs, two of hearts, and four and seven of spades. Last trick. Dragan played queen of clubs, and since the ace and the king had both gone he slapped the table in triumph. The matches were his, worth a hundred quid each. He reached out to grab them, but Dickybird raised his hand.

  ‘Hi you! What do you fucking think you’re doing?’

  ‘The pool’s mine.’

  ‘No way. I haven’t shown.’

  ‘The queen is high.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘No? What the fuck?’

  He put his last card down. King of clubs.

  ‘There.’

  Dragan started waving his hands about.

  ‘What the fuck! The king went before.’

  ‘Too bad. Here goes another one.’

  ‘You can’t have two fucking kings of clubs.’

  ‘Can’t I? Seems I can.’

  Dickybird pushed Dragan’s hands away.

  ‘That’s my lot now. Goes to the top card. You owe me, girls.’

  He laughed out loud and banged on the table. The screws in the guards’ box, three guys who passed most of their working time chatting, turned round to place the source of the noise. They watched as Dickybird threw a pile of matches high in the air and tried to catch them in his mouth. They shrugged, turned away.

  Hilding walked along the corridor from the toilet. He moved slowly, but seemed more alert than before. He was holding a sheet of paper.

  ‘Hi there, Wildboy, listen to this, who do you think scooped the whole fucking pot? Who’s sitting here with thousands of smackers owing to him, eh?’

  Hilding wasn’t listening; instead he showed Dickybird the paper.

  ‘Look at this, you should read it, Dickybird. It’s a letter. Milan got it today. He showed it to me in the crapper. Thought I’d better tell you. It’s from Branco.’

  Dickybird collected the matches, put them into a matchbox.

  ‘Oh fuck off, sweetie. I can’t be arsed reading letters that aren’t to me.’

  ‘I think you should. And Branco thinks you should.’

  Dickybird stared at the sheet of paper in his hand, turned it over, tried to give it back.

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘OK, just read the last bit. From there.’

  Hilding pointed and Dickybird looked.

  ‘Errr… I…’ He cleared his throat. ‘“I hol
d… hope…” My eyes aren’t right today, they’re aching something awful. Hilding, you read this shit.’

  He carried on rubbing energetically while Hilding read the last few lines.

  ‘It says, “I hope there are no misunderstandings about where Jochum Lang fits in. He is my friend. Here is a piece of good advice for you. You treat him nicely. Signed Branco Miodrag.” And I recognise the handwriting.’

  Dickybird had been listening in silence, standing very still. Now he held out his hand, took the letter and made his eyes follow the ink pattern of the signature. A Serb or some other fucking wog. He threw the letter on the floor, then the matchbox, and stamped on the lot. He looked up and towards the cell doors in the corridor, then met the eyes of the men around him. Hilding slowly shook his head. Skåne did the same, and so did Dragan and Bekir. Dickybird was bending to pick up the paper with the black imprint of the sole of his shoe when he heard a cell door open at the far end of the corridor.

  It was like the guy had been hanging around inside, just waiting for the right moment. Jochum walked towards the still half-kneeling Dickybird.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Jochum, no need for any papers. You don’t need to show me nothing. We thought we’d just fool around a bit.’

  Jochum kept walking past him, not looking his way, but just as he passed he whispered something, and it sounded like a shout in the silence.

  ‘You had a letter then, tjavon?’

  The nursery school was called The Dove. It had always been called The Dove, but the reason why was unclear. There were no living birds anywhere near. Was it Dove as in Love or as in Peace? No one knew, not even a redoubtable lady from the local council who had been around for ever, or at least ever since The Dove had opened, the first modern day- nursery school in town.

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon, normally the time for outdoor play, but the school had shut itself off from the onslaught of the heat and the children were allowed to stay inside. It had become obvious a while ago that their small bodies couldn’t cope in the open playground. With thirty degrees in the shade, it must have been fifteen more in the full sun.

  Most of the twenty-six children didn’t want to go outside, but Marie did. She was bored with playing Indians and having her face painted, because none of the others were any good at painting; they did lines and picked colours like brown or blue. She thought red rings were great, but nobody else liked them, they just didn’t want to do rings at all. She almost kicked David when he said no, he didn’t want to, but then she remembered he was her best friend and you weren’t meant to kick your best friend, not for little things anyway. So she changed into her outdoor shoes and went outside to play because the pedal-car was free. It was bright yellow.

  She drove for quite a long time, twice round the house, and three times round the play-shed, and up and down the long path, and then she tried it inside the sandpit but the silly car wouldn’t do it, so she kicked it like she’d wanted to kick David and said nasty things to it. But it didn’t move. And then a dad came, the one who’d been waiting on the bench all day. Her daddy had nodded to him, like saying hello. The dad seemed nice. He asked if it was OK to lift the car, and she said yes please and then he did. She said thank you and he smiled, but then he looked sad and said did she want to look, there was a tiny dead baby rabbit next to the seat and it was such a shame.

  Officer in charge of the interrogation Sven Sundkvist (SS):

  Hello there.

  David Rundgren (DR): Hello,

  SS: My name is Sven. What’s yours? DR: I… (inaudible)

  SS: Did you say David?

  DR: Yes.

  SS: That’s a nice name. I’ve got a son who’s almost your age. Two years older. His name is Jonas.

  DR: I know someone called that too.

  SS: Do you like him?

  DR: He’s one of my friends,

  SS: Do you have lots of friends?

  DR: Yes. Quite a lot.

  SS: That’s very good. Brilliant. Is one of your friends called Marie?

  DR: Yes.

  SS: Did you know that I wanted to talk to you about Marie especially?

  DD: Yes I did. We’re to talk about Marie.

  SS: Brilliant. Do you know what I want to do first? I’d like you to tell me how school went today.

  DD: OK.

  SS: Nothing unusual happened?

  DD: What?

  SS: Was everything like it always is?

  DD: Yes. Like always.

  SS: Everybody played with different things?

  DD: Yes. Mostly we all played Indians,

  SS: Everybody played Indians?

  DD: Yes. Everybody. I had blue lines,

  SS: Did you? Blue lines… and everybody played, all the time?

  DD: Well, almost. Almost all the time.

  SS: Marie too? Did she play all the time?

  DD: Yes, at first. But not later on.

  SS: Not later on? Please tell me why she didn’t play any more.

  DD: She didn’t like (inaudible) lines. I did. Then she went outside. She was cross because she wanted rings. Nobody else wanted rings ’cause everybody liked lines better. Lines like my (inaudible). And then I said to her that you must have lines too and she said no, I want rings, but nobody wanted to paint rings. And then she went outside. Nobody else wanted to go outside. It was too hot. We were allowed to stay in and we did. And we played Indians,

  SS: Did you see when Marie went outside?

  DD: No.

  SS: Not at all?

  DD: She just went. She was cross, I think,

  SS: Did you see Marie later?

  DD: Yes. Through the window.

  SS: What did you see through the window?

  DD: Marie and the pedal-car. She’s almost never had it. And she got stuck.

  SS: How do you mean, stuck?

  DD: Stuck in the sandpit.

  SS: She was in the pedal-car and it was stuck in the sandpit.

  So what did Marie do next?

  DD: She kicked it. The car.

  SS: She kicked the car. Did she do anything else?

  DD: And she said something,

  SS: What did she say?

  DD: I didn’t hear.

  SS: And what happened afterwards, after she had kicked the car and said something?

  DD: The man came,

  SS: What man?

  DD: The man who came.

  SS: Where were you?

  DD: Inside. Looking out through the window.

  SS: Was it far… were they far away?

  DD: Ten.

  SS: Ten what?

  DD: Ten metres.

  SS: Marie and the man were ten metres away?

  DD: (inaudible)

  SS: Do you know how far away ten metres is?

  DD: It’s quite far.

  SS: But you’re not quite sure exactly how far?

  DD: No.

  SS: Tell you what, David. Come over here to this window.

  Look at the car over there. OK?

  DD: OK.

  SS: Is that car as far away as Marie and the man?

  DD: Yes.

  SS: Really truly?

  DD: Yes, that’s how far it was.

  SS: And when the man had come along, what happened?

  DD: He helped Marie lift the pedal-car. He was quite strong.

  SS: Did anybody else see the man lifting the car?

  DD: No. It was only me there. In the hall.

  SS: No teacher?

  DD: No. Only me.

  SS: What did the man do afterwards?

  DD: He said things to Marie.

  SS: What did Marie do?

  DD: She said things to him. They talked.

  SS: What clothes did Marie have on?

  DD: The same ones.

  SS: The same as when?

  DD: The same that she had on when she came to school.

  SS: Can you remember what Marie had on? Colours and so on?

  DD: She had a green T-shirt. Humpie has got one just like
that.

  SS: And?

  DD: Her red shoes. Her best. With metal things,

  SS: Metal things?

  DD: For closing them. So they stay on.

  SS: Trousers? Skirt?

  DD: I can’t remember,

  SS: Maybe a skirt?

  DD: Maybe. Not proper trousers, it was too hot.

  SS: What about the man? What was he like?

  DD: Big. And strong, he could lift the pedal-car out of the sandpit.

  SS: Can you remember what he was wearing?

  DD: Trousers. And a top. I think. And a baseball cap.

  SS: What kind?

  DD: The kind you have on your head.

  SS: Can you remember anything about the cap?

  DD: Yes. It was like the ones they sell in Statoil garages.

  SS: What did Marie and the man do next?

  DD: They walked away.

  SS: Where did they go?

  DD: To the gate. And the man fixed the thing.

  SS: What did he fix?

  DD: The lock-thing on the gate.

  SS: The hook on top that you’ve got to lift straight up to open the gate?

  DD: Yes. He did that,

  SS: Then what did they do? DD: They went outside in the street. SS: Do you remember which way they walked?

  DD: Just out. I couldn’t see.

  SS: Why did they leave?

  DD: Don’t know. We’re not allowed. To go out, I mean. It’s not allowed.

  SS: How did they look? What mood were they in?

  DD: Not angry.

  SS: No? Not angry, but instead…?

  DD: They were pleased, a bit.

  SS: Did they look pleased when they left?

  DD: Not angry, anyway.

  SS: How long could you keep watching them?

  DD: Not long. Not after the gate,

  SS: So they disappeared?

  DD: Yes.

  SS: Is there anything else you want to tell me?

  DD: (inaudible)

  SS: David?

  DD: (silence)

  SS: Never mind. You’ve been very, very helpful, David. You’re very good at remembering things. Would it be all right if I left you here for just a little while? I’d like to speak to some other men.

  DD: I’m all right.

  SS: Afterwards I’ll go and get your mummy and daddy. They’re waiting for you downstairs.