The Beast (ewert grens)

by Anders Roslund

  The rest of the group round the pub table still didn’t see the point, but figured Bengt had checked things out, as he usually did.

  ‘Yeah? If the girl’s dad is let off, that’s it. The moment we hear, we have a licence to act, to deal with that perv once and for all. I, for one, won’t put up with having a paedophile around this place. Not as a neighbour, not any- fucking-where in this community. We’ll let him have it and then claim that we acted with reasonable force.’

  The overweight barman, ex-owner of one of the defunct grocer’s shops, brought them another round, carrying three glasses in each hand. They got stuck in, feeling good, but then Elisabeth spoke up.

  ‘Bengt, listen. You’re going over the top.’

  ‘Christ, we’ve been over this before. Go home if you don’t like it.’

  ‘How can you think it’s right to kill someone just to solve a problem? That dad is not a hero at all. He’s setting a bad example.’

  Bengt slammed his glass down on the table.

  ‘So what does madam think he should’ve done then?’

  ‘Well… talked to the man who did it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can always get somewhere by talking.’

  ‘Now I’ve fucking heard it all!’

  Helena turned to face Elisabeth, her eyes narrowing with dislike.

  ‘I must say I don’t understand you, Elisabeth. Do you have a problem with seeing things the way they really are or what? Exactly what are you supposed to talk about with a crazy sex killer who’s just murdered your own child? Maybe his tragic childhood? Maybe he had the wrong kind of toys? Lousy potty training? You must tell us.’

  Ove rose and put his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, what do you think he was there for, outside that school? Well, I can tell you one thing, it wasn’t the time and place for some kind of psycho session about what-a- very-sad-upbringing-blah-blah.’

  Helena had put her hand over Ove’s and started to speak when her husband stopped to draw breath.

  ‘You can say the dad had no right to shoot that paedophile. But he would have been even more wrong not to kill him. That’s obvious to me, anyway. OK, life is precious, I agree with that, but circumstances alter cases. If I’d been where he was and had a gun I could handle, I would’ve done just the same. What is it you don’t understand about that, Elisabeth?’

  She made up her mind as she left the restaurant. This was the end for her and Bengt, she had given up on her husband for good.

  She walked straight back home and told her daughter, the one child she was responsible for, to pack just what she could carry. Then she filled two suitcases with their clothes and put everything in the car; she had to take that.

  The summer evening was darkening, turning into night, when she left Tallbacka for ever.

  The cell was one hundred and seventy centimetres wide, two hundred and fifty centimetres long, and contained a narrow bed, a small bedside table and a washbasin handy for pissing at night and washing in the morning. He was wearing a greyish, sagging suit, with the prison initials stamped on the sleeves and trouser-legs. Full restrictions applied, which meant no newspapers, no TV or radio and no visitors, except the chief interrogator, the prosecutor, the defence lawyer, the prison chaplain and prison officers. Fresh air was permitted for one hour daily; it amounted to a supervised stroll in a steel cage on the roof. Just now the heat up there was suffocating and he had asked to be let off the last half-hour every day so far.

  He was lying on the bed. There was not a thought in his head. He had tried to eat and given up after a few mouthfuls. It tasted like shit, all of it. The tray with the plate and the glass of orange juice stood on the floor. He hadn’t eaten since Enköping. Anything he tried had come back up, as if his stomach wanted to be left in peace.

  The walls around him were grey, empty. His eyes had nothing to look at and nothing to look away from. The harsh light from the fluorescent tube in the ceiling somehow got behind his closed lids, coating his eyeballs with a bright membrane.

  The observation panel on the door squeaked; someone was looking in at him.

  ‘Steffansson, you wanted to see the chaplain, right?’

  Fredrik met the staring eyes.

  ‘Call me Fredrik. I don’t like being a surname.’

  ‘OK, start again. Fredrik, do you want to see the chaplain?’

  ‘Anyone, as long as he or she doesn’t wear a uniform.’

  The officer sighed.

  ‘Make up your mind. Yes or no. She’s right here, next to me.’

  ‘That’s news. I’m stuck in here to isolate me from everybody else, some motherfucker’s decided that I’m a danger to society, isn’t that so? Or is everybody else a danger to me? Tricky. Do you know who I am, anyway?’

  He sat up on the edge of the bed abruptly. Then he kicked the tray. Bright yellow orange juice spread all over the floor.

  The officer sighed, he had seen this so often. The prisoners who broke down started by being aggressive, irrational, threatening, then they collapsed and pissed their pants. Steffansson was cracking up, obviously.

  Fredrik splashed the liquid around with his foot and went on talking.

  ‘You haven’t got a clue, have you? That my crime is deliberate execution of a foul child-killer. A maniac who might’ve come round to fuck your baby to death. And now it’s your job to keep tabs on me. Enjoying yourself, are you? Feeling socially useful?’

  He picked up the juice glass and threw it at the open panel. It shut just in time, before the glass hit and splintered into fragments.

  The next moment the panel pulled back and the eyes stared at him again.

  ‘I should call in support; what you just did is enough for

  a spell in restraints. But you asked a question and I’m going to answer it.’

  The officer paused and swallowed; the words wouldn’t come at first. Fredrik waited.

  ‘And the answer is no, I don’t think what I’m doing to you is any use. Fact is, I don’t think you should be here. And I think you did the right thing, shooting that bastard. But that’s neither here nor there. You’re inside and that’s that. Now, do you want the chaplain?’

  A locked door. He is on one side, everyone else on the other.

  Images floating in the empty space inside his head, closed doors, himself on one side, everyone else on the other, how he had hated it, no panel in that door but panes to look through, three blurry sheets of glass, like in toilet windows, but you could see things if you pushed your face close, what Dad and Frans did in there, in the sitting room, the TV was on loud but he could hear Dad shout that Frans should undress, take it all off, then Dad hit the naked body again and again, he watched the hand moving, the glass distorted everything, making it look absurd, and Frans never uttered a sound. It was their mum who had snitched, she had told Dad why Frans must be punished, and then she just left them to it, went to sit in the kitchen, drinking tea and smoking her endless Camel cigs, while Dad hit and hit and hit until Frans shouted defiantly that he wasn’t strong enough, he didn’t feel it, hit harder. Dad often stopped altogether then.

  A locked door. Someone staring.

  ‘For the last time, mate. Yes or no?’

  Fredrik closed his eyes to make the door disappear.

  ‘Let the duty-saint in then.’

  The door opened, he opened his eyes to look, at first unable to take in what he saw.

  ‘Rebecca? You?’

  ‘Hello, Fredrik. I’ve worked here before, you know, but this time I asked. I wanted to be here for you, since you won’t be allowed to see anyone else you know. Do you mind?’

  ‘Please come in.’

  He felt so ashamed. Ashamed of being in this bleak cell awash with spilt juice, of wearing sack-like prisoner’s kit, of throwing a tantrum in front of her, of having urinated in the washbasin not very long ago. The joy of seeing her brought tears to his eyes, and that too shamed him.

  But she hugged him and stroke
d his hair, telling him that she understood and that she’d seen locked-up men and women behave much worse.

  He looked at her, tried to smile.

  ‘Do you think I did wrong?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she replied after a pause. ‘You had no right to decide about life and death.’

  Fredrik nodded. He had expected her to say that.

  ‘Despite saving two children, or more, from Lund?’

  Once more, she took her time. She meant a lot to this man and had known him for so long. Her responsibility to him weighed heavily.

  ‘That is such a difficult question, Fredrik. I…’

  She was silenced because Fredrik had started to hyperventilate. She put her hand on his chest, and he sank down on the bed, his whole body trembling.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help myself. It’s all so meaningless.’

  Marie’s funeral. The cemetery. The cold floor and the organ filling the church with sound. The little coffin, so very small. Rebecca had stood next to it and spoken. Marie was inside the coffin. The lid was on but he knew they had made her look pretty.

  He steadied his breathing and started to speak.

  ‘Marie is no longer. Everything that was her is gone, her senses, her thoughts. Gone, absolutely. For ever. Do you understand what I am trying to express?’

  ‘I hear you and I understand, but you know I don’t believe that.’

  The noise of the panel sliding back. The eyes.

  ‘Seems to be plenty going on in there. Everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all right,’ Rebecca called back.

  ‘Fine. Just give us a shout in case.’

  Fredrik had stopped trembling, but was still stretched out on the bed, taking deep breaths.

  ‘It was when I knew that Lund would do it all again that I made up my mind to kill. Get there first. Eliminate him.’ He searched for the right words. ‘You all thought it was a revenge killing, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t personal. You see, I died with Marie. I only came alive to kill him.’

  He sat up and slapped his hand on the table, then bent forward and started hitting his forehead against the edge of it until he bled.

  ‘I killed him. What am I meant to live for now?’

  The door opened and this time there were two officers. They wore the same uniforms and identical expressions on their faces.

  Marching past Rebecca, they grabbed Fredrik and pinned him to the bed, holding him down until he stopped pushing his head forward into the empty air.

  It rained on the first day of the trial, only the second time during that long, hot summer. It was a quiet, persistent rain of the kind that is there before sunrise and keeps being there until dark.

  Rain or no rain, it was the most sensational trial in Sweden for years and the queue outside the Stockholm Old Court building had already grown long early that morning. Proceedings were scheduled for the high-security courtroom and attendance was limited to four rows of numbered seats. Only the bigger media companies had been allowed to reserve places and a scrum of journalists led the crowd in the stone-flagged entrance hall.

  The security was extensive. Uniformed and plainclothes police were everywhere, reinforced by staff from private firms. Over the weeks that had passed since Lund’s escape, a looming sense of threat had been taking the shape of a faceless citizen, frustrated, aggressive, fuelled by a generalised hatred of paedophiles. This figure embodied a collective engagement by people who did not usually do much more than follow the news and comment from a safe distance, but who were now waiting and watching and preparing for action.

  Micaela had got there early, just after seven. It had been chilly and raining a little harder then. She hadn’t seen Fredrik since Marie’s funeral. Now she knew that he had been hunting Lund and then kept in custody with no privileges.

  More than anything else she felt frightened. This was her first experience of a court case and she knew she would have to stay still while the man she loved sat alone, just a few metres away from her, charged with murder and interrogated by a prosecutor out to get a lifetime sentence.

  Once, not long ago, she had been part of a family. She had slept by Fredrik at night and learnt to hold on to him. Marie had become almost her own child, she had cared for her, fed and clothed and taught her. All gone now, in a few weeks.

  She tried to smile at the guard who was checking her handbag, but he didn’t smile back. The electronic checker wouldn’t let her through, she tried three times and it howled every time, until she realised that she still had one of Marie’s bicycle keys in her pocket. Her seat was good though, in row three, just behind the radio and TV reporters. She actually recognised some of them. Instead of speaking to camera from some dramatic location, they were busy taking notes. She peeped; everybody seemed to write in a personal scrawl, very short sentences, but always with a note of the time for each entry. Two artists were sitting right in front, their pencils moving with fleeting ease over their white sheets of paper as they sketched in the background features of the courtroom.

  There was Agnes, in the last row, across the aisle. Micaela had turned to look for a fraction too long and had been seen. They nodded politely at each other. It was strange, the way they had kept themselves to themselves. She had answered the phone a couple of times when Agnes called Marie, but all that meant was a brisk exchange of This is Agnes, I’d like to speak to Marie please and One moment,

  I’ll get her, the sum total of knowing each other for three years.

  Then she spotted the two policemen who had asked questions of everybody in and around the school that day. The older one with the limp was the boss. The younger one was nice and patient, he might be religious, free church probably. They had seen her and nodded, so she nodded back.

  The room was almost full and she could hear protesting shouts from people outside, who realised they wouldn’t get in. Someone was booing at the guards, someone else was calling them ‘Fascist pigs’.

  There was a door at the back of the dais, which she hadn’t noticed until it suddenly opened and the officials of the court filed in. The judge came first, a woman called van Balvas, followed by the magistrates, who all looked rather elderly, local politicians mostly, on their way out of active life. She had read about these people in the paper. There had been quite a lot about the prosecutor too, and she had seen him on the telly, such a puffed-up young man, somehow sounding like a precocious kid. He was maybe a couple of years older than herself, which made her feel very young. The defence lawyer was different, her manner as calm and in control as it had been when they had talked in her office.

  Then Fredrik, last of all, flanked by two court officers.

  They had made him wear a suit and tie, not like his usual style at all. How pale he was. He looked so frightened. He felt like she did. His eyes stayed fixed to the floor, avoiding the crowd in front of him.

  Van Balvas (VB): Your full name, please.

  Fredrik Steffansson (FS): Nils Fredrik Steffansson. VB: And your address?

  FS: Hamngatan 28, Strängnäs.

  VB: Are you aware of the reason why we are here today?

  FS: What a weird question.

  VB: I will ask you again. Do you understand why we are here today?

  FS: Yes.

  She smoked three cigarettes during the break in a sad- looking lobby with sombre oak-panelled walls and worn seating. One of the journalists spoke to her, he wanted to know how Fredrik was feeling and she explained that she had not been allowed to see him because she was only his partner. The journalist had offered her cigarettes of that strong kind without filters that people in southern Europe smoke. Just one ciggie made her feel dizzy. Fredrik detested her smoking and she hadn’t touched a cigarette for months.

  Agnes had been standing alone a bit away, sipping mineral water. They both avoided eye contact; what was the point of seeking each other out? They had so little in common. They did not even share points of reference, except this, an experience complete in itself.

  A
young journalist with thinning hair and earphones was sitting on one of the wooden benches taking notes from a tape-recording. Next to him, an older reporter. One of the court artists was showing him a drawing of a moment she recognised from the hearing. There was Fredrik, making a gesture with his hand as the prosecutor held up a photo of the nursery school in Enköping, taken from the place where Fredrik had been when he shot that man.

  Lars Ågestam (LÅ): Mr Steffansson, there is something I don’t understand. Why did you not inform the police officers, who were only a few hundred metres away, exactly in your line of sight?

  FS: There was no time.

  LÅ: No time?

  FS: I knew that two guards couldn’t control Lund when he was a prisoner in chains. What chances had two policemen, half asleep anyway, against an unrestrained, armed Lund?

  LÅ: So you didn’t even try to contact them?

  FS: I couldn’t run the risk of him getting away. And maybe taking another girl with him. LÅ: But I still don’t understand. FS: Don’t you?

  LÅ: Why did you have to murder Bernt Lund?

  FS: What’s so fucking difficult about that?

  VB: Mr Steffansson, sit down. And please refrain from swearing.

  FS: Do you have a problem hearing what I say? The massed forces of law and order couldn’t treat Lund out of his madness or keep him safely locked up or catch him after he had murdered Marie. I don’t have to explain myself any more, surely?

  VB: For the second time, Mr Steffansson, sit down. Perhaps your lawyer can help?

  Kristina Björnsson (KB): Fredrik, calm down. If you want to state your case, you must be allowed to stay in here. FS: Could someone get rid of these two?

  KB: If you remain seated and calm, the officers will sit down too.

  Once only did their eyes meet. It was during the prosecutor’s first interrogation, which had started after the opening statements. Fredrik had become very angry, but they had made him sit down again and then he turned round, looking for her and Agnes, and he had tried to smile a little, she was sure he did. She had lifted her fingers to her lips to throw him a kiss. Her sense of loss seemed to solidify in her belly; she missed him so much and it was horrible to see him there in his suit and tie, white-faced, ready to be taken away.