The Beast (ewert grens)

by Anders Roslund

  Then they went together to the shed, unlocked the padlock, lifted out the boxes, first the heavy one with the petrol-filled bottles, then the small box with the cigarette lighters. Ove and Klas minded the bottle-box. Ola distributed the lighters, two each.

  They walked far enough to be able to see into the house next door. All the lights were on, and from were they stood they could follow him wandering about, from the kitchen to the sitting room and then towards the bathroom. When the bathroom light went on, Bengt ordered Baxter to sit and walked the few steps to a telephone pole. He climbed up far enough to reach the wire. He was surprisingly agile and got there quickly. From one of the many pockets in his jeans, he produced a pair of pliers and cut the wire.

  The bathroom lamp still glowed when Bengt slid down and moved to the next pole, which had a locked box halfway up. He opened it with the key to his own, identical box and located the mains switch.

  The house next door went dark.

  They waited. It took longer than they had expected.

  But Flasher-Göran finally got a couple of candles going.

  Then he found the torch. They watched the light flickering across the walls.

  A few more seconds, as the torchlight lit up the hall. It was moving towards the front door.

  Bengt had a grip on Baxter’s collar. The dog knew what he was meant to do, soon. Attack. When his master ordered.

  ‘Baxter. Get him.’

  The torchlight behind the glass panel in the door, and the door opening.

  Bengt let Baxter go at the same moment as Flasher-Göran stepped outside. Baxter ran, barking loudly.

  The man in the doorway realised the danger and managed to slam the door shut just as the dog got near enough to jump at him.

  ‘Baxter. Watch.’

  The dog settled down in front of the door, ready to spring.

  Bengt tried to follow the shadow of the man as he ran through the house and decided that Flasher-Göran must have gone into the kitchen. He shouted in that general direction.

  ‘Was that scary, Göran? All dark and cold for you? Help’s coming. You’ll get heat and light soon enough, Göran.’

  He pointed at Ove, Ola and Klas, who quickly went back into the shed and hauled the heavy petrol container out on to the lawn. From there they rolled it across to Flasher- Göran’s house. When they were close enough, they unscrewed the top before rolling it right round the house, letting the petrol soak into gravel paths and flower borders.

  Meanwhile Helena had completed her job. She had placed the petrol-filled bottles in five equal groups.

  They all lit the rags in their bottles, one by one, holding each one still just long enough for the flame to take, and then began fire-bombing the house in front of them.

  Five explosions at roughly the same time, but all in different parts of the house.

  And five more, and again and again. Eight times. Always new small fires, slowly growing and meeting.

  Bengt produced a piece of paper from one of his pockets. In a loud voice, to be heard above the roaring of the fire, he read out the court’s judgement on Fredrik Steffansson, the man who shot to kill, but who went free because he had killed the paedophile who had violated his daughter.

  Just as he had finished, the kitchen window opened. Flasher-Göran leapt out, screaming. He fell heavily to the ground.

  Bengt had time to think that if only Elisabeth had been here to watch, she would have understood what it was all about.

  Flasher-Göran was moving where he lay, and Bengt called Baxter away from his watch at the front door. The dog ran towards the man, who was trying to get up, jumped on him, sank his teeth into the arm with which the man tried to protect himself, and started tearing it apart.

  IV

  (A SUMMER)

  The whole of Tallbacka flared up the day the trial was concluded. The attack against the man who had exposed himself in the schoolyard twenty years before and been sentenced to a fine was the first of nine acts of violence against alleged paedophiles. The spate of criminal violence was in each case claimed to be an exertion of reasonable force.

  Three of the mob attacks, all of which involved grievous bodily harm, led to the death of the victims.

  The chief investigator (CI): I will start the interrogation now. Bengt Söderlund (BS): Fire ahead.

  CI: The questions concern the events that followed the throwing of the petrol bombs. BS: Aha.

  CI: I’m unhappy about your attitude.

  BS: What would seem to be the trouble? CI: You appear sarcastic.

  BS: If you don’t fancy my answers I wouldn’t half mind leaving now.

  CI: We’ll both stay here. I’m prepared to carry on for as long as it takes. This session will be finished faster if you reply to my questions properly. BS: So you say.

  CI: What happened after the last bottle was thrown?

  BS: The house caught fire.

  CI: What did you do?

  BS: I read aloud.

  CI: What did you read?

  BS: A court indictment.

  CI: Pull yourself together, man!

  BS: I read out a court’s judgement.

  CI: What judgement would that be?

  BS: About the father from Strängnäs. He shot a paedophile who’d killed his daughter. It was what the court said about him.

  CI: Why did you read that?

  BS: Because society thought he did the right thing when he shot the paedophile. Get it? These perverts must be eliminated.

  CI: After you’d read this, what did you do?

  BS: I noticed that Flasher-Göran had jumped out. From the kitchen window.

  CI: Then what did you do? BS: Set Baxter on him.

  CI: You set your dog on him?

  BS: Sure.

  CI: And what did your dog do?

  BS: Bit the fucker.

  CI: Describe.

  BS: Bit his arm, thighs. Had a couple of good goes at his face.

  CI: For how long?

  BS: Until I called Baxter off.

  CI: Yes, yes. For how long?

  BS: Two minutes, maybe three.

  CI: Make up your mind.

  BS: More like three. Yeah, three.

  CI: And then what did you do? BS: We left.

  CI: You left. Where did you go?

  BS: Home. And we phoned for the fire brigade. That place was going like a bomb and we didn’t want it to spread. It was fucking well next door, you know.

  Göran from Tallbacka did not survive his injuries, notably a bite across his throat. The fatalities also included a man in Umeå, who had two previous convictions for sex offences. Passing by a playground on the edge of the town, he was set upon by four teenage boys wielding pieces of iron piping, and beaten to death.

  The chief investigator (CI): I will start the tape recorder now. Ilrian Raistrovic (IR): Cool.

  CI: Are you feeling better now?

  IR: Yeah. I just needed, like, a break.

  CI: We’ll carry on then.

  IR: Yeah, sure. No fucking problem.

  CI: Did you hit more often than the rest of the gang?

  IR: Dunno.

  CI: That’s what the others said.

  IR: Must be OK then.

  CI: Why did you hit him?

  IR: Fucking peddo, he was asking for it.

  CI: Peddo?

  IR: Like he’d been at two small chicks, touched their tits, stuff like that. He had kids himself. They were his kid’s pals, right?

  CI: How did you hit him?

  IR: Like, I hit. At him.

  CI: How many times?

  IR: Dunno.

  CI: Try to guess.

  IR: Like twenty. Maybe thirty.

  CI: Until he died. IR: Yeah, I guess.

  In Stockholm, two days later, a particularly gross act of violence was perpetrated against a drunk, who was surrounded by a group of shouting young men equipped with baseball bats.

  The chief investigator (CI): Where were you sitting? Roger Karlsson (RK): On the other
bench.

  CI: What were you doing there?

  RK: I was watching him. I know that guy. He’s at it all the time. CI: At what?

  RK: Doing it to females. Little ones, CI: What did he do?

  RK: He screamed at them, there were three coming along. Calling them names. Whores.

  CI: He shouted at them that they were whores? RK: He tried to grab their arses when they passed.

  CI: Did he do it?

  RK: He was too fucking slow. But he did try.

  CI: What did you do?

  RK: They ran away. He scared them. He always scares females.

  CI: But what did you do?

  RK: Let him have it. The bat. In his belly.

  CI: Were you alone?

  RK: Fuck, no. The others came along.

  CI: What others?

  RK: There were, like, some of us. Waiting, see?

  CI: Did everyone bring a weapon?

  RK: We all had bats.

  CI: What did he do when you first hit him?

  RK: He shouted something like, what’s that you’re doin’?

  CI: What did you do?

  RK: I shouted back. Told him he was a perv.

  CI: And then what happened?

  RK: Then we made mincemeat of him. All of us. It didn’t take long.

  CI: When did he die?

  RK: I’d brought a sledgehammer too. When I hit him with that he was a goner.

  CI: When did you use the hammer?

  RK: Later. To make sure, see? CI: Make sure he was really dead?

  RK: That’s it. You’re allowed to kill mad dogs. That’s what they said in court.

  The man was practically unidentifiable when the gang had finished with him, but two local police constables assumed, on the basis of what he was wearing, that he was a man called Gurra B, something of an established feature in the park. For the last thirty-odd years, he had sat around shouting and using foul language within the hearing of passing women.

  They had taken their clothes off as soon as the front door closed behind them and made love as if they would never stop, holding on to each other, hot and sweaty, their bodies slippery, sticky, not letting go of the other for the rest of that day and the night that followed. Both behaved as if they feared that somebody would step into the room to take their nearness away and then they would die, as if feeling the other’s bare skin on your own was not simply comforting but the only way to survive. Fredrik had never taken a woman in this needy way; he had to have her and stay close to her, she was a human being he must unite with absolutely. He inhaled her smells, caressed her, bored into her with his penis, but nothing satisfied him, she wasn’t enough. He tried everything to get closer to her, bit her a few times, her buttock, thigh, shoulder. She laughed, but he was serious about wanting all of her, in him.

  Fredrik stayed in the house that week, while the journalists were waiting outside with their eager smiles and cameras and questions. He was determined to hide until they’d gone away. Twice Micaela went out to shop for food and they stayed glued to her side all the way to town and back. They followed her into the supermarket, pursuing her up and down the aisles and asking her questions about how he felt. Micaela kept her promise to say nothing. When she got home and closed the door behind her, loud voices were calling her name.

  He avoided Marie’s room. Yes, she was there. Though she wasn’t, not for real. The room kept demanding his attention, he couldn’t put it out of his mind, even though he didn’t want to think about it. They must move, sooner or later; if there was any life worth living it must be somewhere else, not here, among the remains of the past.

  He was free, but still captive. He didn’t read the papers or watch TV, it was all too much. A girl had been killed and a father had killed the killer; surely that was all there was to it. He could not see why the public interest should demand yet more publicity.

  He had had a life once, but not any more. And they were trying to rob him of the tiny existence he claimed by making it public.

  He had clung to Micaela as fiercely on the second day as on the first. They made love many times, mingling energy and grief and comfort and guilt and fear with their love- making. The last few times the act had become almost mechanical intercourse; they were pressing and squeezing in ways which they had learned would please the other and bring on an orgasm quickly. Too tired to look at or truly feel each other, the whole thing had become tense and nervous. In the end they both felt like crying as they looked together at his penis entering her, powerless to change what they were doing and too exhausted to do it again, although they knew that the driving, suffocating anxiety would still be there when they lay back, drained.

  On the third day he started to drink. He felt like dying, the way he always imagined he would feel when his body had weakened and death came close. Surely dying is easier if your body has given in? He tried to keep such thoughts away and the alcohol did its job, paralysing his will and separating him from the day, his hovering fears and his damned loneliness.

  Since then he had stayed in bed most of the time, though sleep was not to be even thought of. When she was there he held her. Sex was beyond him; he was too fatigued even to go and get a bottle, even to eat. Micaela wanted to call a doctor, but could not persuade him however hard she tried. Fredrik had said no to bereavement counselling and a session with a psychologist, and he wouldn’t see a doctor either.

  Maybe that was why he hardly reacted when Kristina Björnsson phoned at half past eleven in the evening. They had exchanged a glance saying ‘journalists’ when the phone rang, but in the end Micaela had answered.

  Once she had understood what Kristina was saying she began arguing hysterically. The lawyer seemed to be reassuring, in a legal way, but as Fredrik listened he felt unresponsive, dulled. He could not take an interest in all this emotion. Nothing was and nothing mattered.

  The main message from Kristina was that the prosecution had appealed and the case would be tried again in a higher court. One consequence was that he would be arrested again the next day and put in a remand prison cell. He took this in, with a sudden sense of relief.

  So they would take his daily existence away from him.

  They would take his days and nights, hour by hour, turning time into a process that bypassed him and therefore lacked reality for him. Of course, he would still be forced to participate. It would help him to avoid seeing what was really going on here, at home. Afterwards was another matter.

  When the call ended, he went back to bed. He kissed Micaela intensely, and knew he would try to make love to her again.

  It was a black car. Their cars were always black, and had double rear-view mirrors and tinted glass that you couldn’t see through from the outside. Three plainclothes policemen had picked him up early in the morning. He recognised two of them, the older one with the limp and his younger, polite companion. The third one was a big young man, who drove the car.

  The police didn’t harass him and waited quietly while he held Micaela until he finally felt he could bear to let go of her. No one spoke as the car travelled at speed towards Stockholm with an officer on a motorbike in front and another black car following them.

  After a while Grens told the driver to lower the radio volume and play a CD he’d brought. Sundkvist asked if that was really necessary and Grens mumbled irritably. He carried on grousing until the driver said oh, hand over the fucking disc.

  Grens had closed his eyes and was rocking slowly to and fro.

  Siw Malmkvist. Frederik was sure of it.

  For all your cheating talk about cars and stuff,

  I might as well walk and leave you in a huff…

  Fredrik shuddered. The text was so stupid, and Siw’s jolly-hockeysticks voice belonged to the past, the ’50s and early ’60s, to a less knowing, more naive Sweden with high hopes for the future. Or maybe that lost innocence was just a growing myth. For him at least those years had meant his father and the beatings and his mother smoking her eternal Camels, while she looked t
he other way. No Siw then, to help sing the sorrows away, and she was no good now either; her world was all lies and escapism. It was on his tongue to ask the old Siw fan next to him what he was escaping from, and what stone had he been living under all this time.

  Siw sang all the way, all the fifty minutes it took to get to Kronoberg remand prison. Grens didn’t open his eyes once. The other two were staring into the distance, obviously lost in their own thoughts.

  Then the car turned into Berg Street and they saw the crowd.

  Many more demonstrators this time. If it had been about two hundred then, outside the Old Court, it was more like five hundred now.

  They were facing the prison, shouting in unison, waving placards and hitting out with them, screaming abuse, spitting, throwing stones towards the gate from time to time. It only took a few seconds for someone to spot the outrider and the two black cars, and a few seconds more for an advance guard to start running in their direction. The first arrivals grabbed each other’s hands and lay down on the ground in an uninterrupted ring round the three vehicles, preventing them from driving anywhere.

  The large young driver looked around for a moment and grabbed the radio.

  ‘Urgent assistance required! Repeat, urgent! More units to Berg Street.’

  A voice came back almost immediately.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Hundreds! Demonstrators, outside Kronoberg prison.’

  ‘Units on their way. With you any moment now.’

  ‘Risk of prisoner escape!’

  ‘Drive on! Drive on!’

  Fredrik stared at the people outside the car windows, heard their shouting and read their placards. What was all this in aid of? He didn’t understand. He didn’t know these people. What did they want with his name and his story? It was none of their business what he had done, it had been his battle, and his very own hell. Lots of these people were lying on the ground, risking life and limb. For what? Did they really know? Did they think he was grateful? He hadn’t asked for this.

  There was no difference between the demonstrators and the journalists camping outside his gate. They extracted life from the lives of others; now they were using him for their own purposes, it was his turn. Why this need? It wasn’t as if they had all lost their only child, or aimed a gun at another human being and shot to kill. He wished he had the courage to wind the window down, ask them about these things and force them to meet his eyes.