Bertolsson turned on the overhead projector. It made a sound. Made a sound but projected nothing. He squatted down and pushed every button he could find. Finally, he gave up.
“Let’s forget about this. Forget the agenda. Who wants to start?”
Nothing. No one said a word. Gustafsson drank his coffee, Nilsson wrote in his notebook, Lundström looked out of the window, and the rest stayed silent. Someone had taken their routine away from them, and they were all lost, without their data.
Oscarsson cleared his throat.
“I can start.”
The others breathed out. Now there was at least a temporary agenda.
“I’ve brought this up before, but I know what I’m talking about. Has anyone forgotten the assault on Salonen? Inmates from the regular units are running from the gym to the kitchen at the same time as my people. We had another incident yesterday. Something unfortunate might have happened if Brandt and Persson hadn’t intervened.”
Oscarsson was observing each of them as he talked. Mostly looking at Eva Bernard. He really couldn’t stand her. She didn’t understand the prison rules of tradition and time, the rules found outside their folders that just existed and were followed.
“You’re talking about—”
Bertolsson understood that accusatory gaze and didn’t want any fights, not now, not again, and so he interrupted.
“—coordination?”
“Yeah. This is not general society. Not reality. Everyone in this room knows that. Everyone here should at least know that much.”
Oscarsson didn’t take his eyes off Eva Bernard. Conflict-averse Bertolsson was not going to be able to avoid this, not going to hide from this problem again.
“If the wrong person from the general units were to run into one of mine, there might be hell to pay. Everybody approves of killing a pedophile.”
He pointed at her.
“The son of a bitch who incited yesterday’s incident is exactly the type. And he’s in your unit.”
Eva Bernard met his gaze.
“If you mean 0243 Lindgren, just say so.”
“Yes, Lindgren.”
“Stig ‘Tinyboy’ Lindgren is a bastard. At least, when he wants to be. When he doesn’t, he’s a model prisoner. Calm. Does absolutely nothing. Lies around in his cell smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, never reads, never watches TV, just lets the hours go by. He’s served twenty-seven years. Forty-two separate convictions. He’s one of those who speaks Romani. He only acts up when someone new enters the unit, and he has to show them who’s been there longest. It’s about the hierarchy. And respect.”
“This isn’t about a new inmate. This is about yesterday. He would have killed my guy if he hadn’t been discovered. And you know it.”
Gustafsson had put down his coffee cup. Nilsson had flipped to a blank page in his notepad. Lundström was staring out through another window. Bertolsson stayed silent, as though he thought this was interesting. As though he didn’t feel up for it.
“Can I finish speaking? He goes after sex offenders. And only them. He gets . . . well, what he feels for them is more than hate. I’ve gone through his records. There’s a reason why he wants to kill them.”
Lennart Oscarsson knew very well who Tinyboy Lindgren was. A small-time crook who’d become institutionalized, who got so scared every time he was released he’d piss on the wall outside hoping one of the guards would see. And if that weren’t enough, he’d knock down the driver of the first bus on his way from the prison. That’s what he’d done the last time around. He usually made sure that within a month or two he was back in the only society he knew how to live in, the place where people knew his name.
“You said Romani.”
Månsson, the new temp from Malmö, whose first name he couldn’t remember, looked at Eva Bernard.
“Yes.”
“You said Stig Lindgren spoke Romani.”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Eva Bernard smiled superciliously. It was that smirk that made people dislike her. She didn’t have to discuss the attack with Oscarsson anymore, now she had the upper hand. Now she was in charge. She turned to Malmö-Månsson.
“Yes, how could you know about it?”
Månsson may be new, but he’d just learned a valuable lesson. He wouldn’t show his ignorance in front of her again.
“Forget it.”
She continued.
“It was common in the past. The inmates spoke it to each other—a prison language—not the Romani that the Roma speak, another one, used exclusively in prisons. Now it’s almost disappeared. Only people like Lindgren still know it—the inmates who’ve lived longer inside these walls than out of them.”
She was pleased. Oscarsson had jumped on her and insinuated her lack of knowledge of prison traditions, and she’d proved he was wrong.
Meanwhile, Bertolsson finally managed to get the projector to function. An image, an agenda, he looked relieved. They’d been about to derail, but now he could start over. He was about to thank the eight principal officers for their ironic applause when he heard a telephone ring. Not his, it was turned off, as all the others should be.
“It’s me. It’s mine. Sorry. I forgot to turn it off.”
Oscarsson had stood up, was searching the inside pocket of his jacket.
Two rings. He didn’t recognize the number. Three rings. He shouldn’t answer. Four rings. He answered it.
“Oscarsson here.”
Eight people were listening to his conversation.
“Yes?”
He sat down.
“What the hell are you saying?”
His voice was faint.
“Not . . . him.”
Now he was shouting. But you could barely hear him. His faint voice had lost even more of its force.
“Not him! Do you hear what I’m saying, not him!”
His colleagues sat completely still. Oscarsson was always so proper. Now he was standing in front of them shaking.
“That was the guards’ station.”
He shut off the phone, red in the face, breathing heavily.
“There’s been an escape. One of mine. At Söder Hospital. Bernt Lund. He overpowered both of the guards and stole the bus.”
The police station on Bergs Street in Stockholm was filled with the music of the ’60s Swedish pop star Siw Malmkvist, at least as far as the hallway on the second floor. It was like this every morning, and the earlier it was, the louder it was, a C-120 cassette tape, the big kind, common in the ’70s. The same plastic cases, the same tapes for thirty years, three mixed tapes of her songs in various orders. This morning, “Mother Is like Her Mother” and “Nothing Comes Close to Old Scania,” Metronome 1968, the A- and B-sides on the same single. A black-and-white picture of Siw in front of a microphone, wearing a short housecoat and holding a broom.
Ewert Grens, who had received the stereo as a birthday present when he turned twenty-five, took it to work and put it on his bookshelf. He had switched offices a few times before he became a detective superintendent and every time he did he carried the tape deck himself, in his own arms. He always got to work first, never later than five thirty in the morning—two hours with no idiots at his doorway or on the phone. At half past seven, he lowered the volume, because of the fucking whining of the other people around him. He always made them wait a while though and never lowered the volume of his own accord. If they wanted him to do something, they had to ask.
It was as if he lived in black and white, like one of Siw’s key changes.
Large, heavy, tired. A strip of gray hair wrapped around Grens’s skull. He walked with a striking, jerky gait, almost a limp. His neck stiff because a few years ago he’d ended up in a noose-snare while the SWAT team he was leading was apprehending a Lithuanian hitman. He spent quite a bit of time in the hospital after that.
Grens had been a good cop. He didn’t know if he was one anymore. If he even wanted to be. Did he keep working because h
e didn’t know what else to do? Had he turned work into something more than what it was, something that seemed important for a while? Why the hell should anyone even remember him after a few years? New people kept coming. They had no knowledge of history, no clue about anything important until recently, no idea who had informal power in the station or why. We have to teach ourselves. We shouldn’t forget that. It should be part of our training, our deprogramming, being forced to understand how small this all is. You’re here for a limited amount of time, no more. There were also those who’d come before him, and he hadn’t cared about them either.
There was a knock on the door. One of the idiots. Someone coming to gently ask him to lower the volume.
Sven.
The only person in this building with any sense.
“Ewert.”
“Yes?”
“Now, for Christ’s sake.”
“Yes?”
“Bernt Lund.”
He woke up, stretched, stopped what he was doing.
“Bernt Lund?”
“He’s escaped.”
“He’s . . . ?”
“Again.”
Sven Sundkvist liked Grens, tolerated his sarcasm, his unpredictability, his fear of being forced to retire and face the fact that thirty-five years is thirty-five years and no more. At least Ewert Grens wanted something. He was surly and grouchy, but he believed in what he did. Unlike many of their colleagues.
“Tell me more, Sven!”
Sundkvist explained the transfer from Aspsås prison to the Söder Hospital Emergency department. Explained how Bernt Lund used his body chains to attack two guards and steal their van. Explained that Lund was moving freely out there, probably already sitting somewhere, watching girls, small children, who were just getting to school.
Grens stood up, pacing restlessly back and forth across the room as Sven explained, limping around the desk, moving his big body between the chairs and flower pedestal. He stopped in front of the trash can, took aim with his good foot, and gave it a kick hard enough to send it through the air.
“How the hell could Bernt Lund be transported into the city with just two prison guards! How the hell could Oscarsson approve that? If he’d just picked up the phone and let us know, we’d have sent a car over, and Satan himself wouldn’t have been set loose!”
The can had been full of banana peels and empty envelopes, now scattered on the floor.
Sven had seen this before. He just had to wait for a moment.
“Åke Andersson and Ulrik Berntfors. They’re good. Andersson is tall, at least two meters, I think. Around your age.”
“I know who Andersson is.”
“And?”
“Another time. Not now.”
Sven suddenly felt tired, and the feeling overwhelmed him. He wanted to go home. To Anita, to Jonas. He was already finished for the day. He didn’t have enough energy to think of all the children who might be desecrated at any moment. He couldn’t think about Bernt Lund. He’d switched to the morning shift. They were supposed to celebrate. He had wine and cake in the car. They were just about to toast him.
Grens could see that Sundkvist was somewhere else. His eyes were fading. Grens regretted kicking that damn trash can. Sven didn’t like that sort of thing. He spoke again, more calmly this time.
“You look tired.”
“I was about to head home. It’s my birthday.”
“Well . . . happy birthday. How old?”
“Forty.”
Grens whistled loudly and bowed.
“Well, well. Give me your hand.”
He held out his hand. Sven took it. Grens pressed it for a long time. Held him tightly as he began to speak.
“Unfortunately, young man, forty or not, you have to stay a little longer.”
He pointed at his visitor’s chair, impatient, urging with his index finger. Sven tore himself away from Grens’s hand, sat at the very edge of the chair, still on his way out.
“Sven, I was there last time.”
“Last time?”
“Two girls, nine years old. He’d tied them up, masturbated on them, raped them, cut them up. Just like the time before that. We found them lying on the basement floor, staring up at us. The coroner found traces of metal objects in the vagina and anus. I won’t believe it. I can’t believe it. Have you ever thought about that, Sven, that if you just make up your mind you can believe anything you want to?”
His wrinkled shirt, too-short pants, restless body. He scared a lot of people. Ewert Grens was loud. Sven himself had avoided him. Nobody deserves to be insulted—it was as simple as that. So he avoided him until, for reasons that remained obscure to him, he’d been accepted by Grens, almost chosen. Everybody needed somebody, and that somebody became Sven.
“I did the interrogation. I tried to look him in the eye. It was impossible. He looked above me, beside me, through me. But he wouldn’t meet my eyes. I stopped the interrogation several times, asked him to look at me.”
You don’t understand, Grens.
Dammit, Grens.
I thought you’d be someone who would understand.
I’m not turned on by all little girls.
How the fuck can you say that?
I just like the ones who are a little bigger.
The chubby blond ones.
That type.
It’s important, Grens.
Sluts.
Tiny sluts with tiny pussies.
All they do is think about cock.
They really shouldn’t be doing that.
Tiny sluts with tiny pussies shouldn’t walk around thinking about cock.
“Sven, people look at each other when they talk. But it was impossible. Impossible.”
He looked at Sven. Sven looked at him. They were people.
“I understand. Or, I don’t understand. If he couldn’t look you in the eye, if he was that type, why wasn’t he put into psychiatric care? Säter? Karsudden? Sidsjön?”
“He was. The first time. Three years at the Säter Institution. But this last time his mental disorder was diagnosed as mild. And then they put you in prison. Not the loony bin.”
Ewert walked over to the tape recorder, changed the cassette to another one by Siw. He stood in front of the speaker, stopped for a moment, eyes closed, “The Jazz Bug,” 1959, original: “The Preacher.” He raised the volume, squatted down, and picked up the banana peels and crumpled paper, put them back in the trash, took three steps back, getting a really good start, and kicked it even farther this time, against the wall and window.
“Sven, a mild mental disorder? Two nine-year-old girls. If that’s a mild mental disorder, then tell me, what the hell is a grave mental disorder?”
The wall, gray concrete and two meters high, ran along the forest’s edge for one and a half kilometers, encircling five low brick buildings.
The ones out there and the ones inside.
Aspsås prison was one of twelve with level-two security in Sweden. They put the murderers and the big-time drug dealers in Kumla, Hall, and Tidaholm, level-one security. Aspsås was full of small-time crooks, no life sentences, often just two to four years, prisoners who came and went. Eight departments, one hundred and sixty inmates. Most were drug-addicted professional criminals: a break-in, a little dough, get high, another break-in, cops, twenty-six months, get out, break in, a little dough, the cops, thirty-four months, get out, one more break-in.
Just like everywhere else. Me against you, you against the guards. Only two rules: you don’t squeal and you don’t fuck those who don’t want it.
Aspsås also had two units for sex crimes. For those who did just that: fuck those who didn’t want it.
Hated. Threatened.
It was as if all the shame and self-loathing of the inmates had to be directed somewhere—I can’t stand to be despised by the society on the other side of the wall, so I hate someone who has committed an even worse crime than me; I can breathe easier if we all decide there’s someone else even uglier tha
n us, even more damaged, even more outside—an ancient agreement in prisons all over the world—I, a murderer, am hierarchically superior to you, the rapist; I, who have taken someone’s right to live, have more dignity than you who forever took away someone’s trust, my violation is less criminal than yours.
At Aspsås the hatred was perhaps even greater than at other prisons. Here they kept the normal units in the same buildings as the sex offenders. An eighteen-month term could be a potential death sentence if you ended up at Aspsås. Everyone here was suspected of sex crimes. Those who were transferred to another prison after Aspsås took a lot of beatings if their papers weren’t in order. Without your verdict in hand you were considered a rapist until proved otherwise.
Unit H was one of eight normal sections for low-level junkies, burglars, assaulters, and the occasional swindler, those on their way up in the criminal hierarchy who’d end up with longer sentences the next time around, or the ones who just kept committing the same shitty offense again and again and couldn’t serve with the drunk drivers and petty first-time offenders anymore. A unit that looked like all the other units in all the other prisons for all the other repeat offenders with medium-length sentences. A locked reinforced steel door to the stairwell. A corridor with yellow linoleum. Half-open cells on both sides, ten to the right, ten to the left. A small kitchen. A few dining tables. A TV corner. Right next to it, the green felt of a pool table. Back and forth, inmates moving slowly, headed somewhere to kill time, never think about the hours passing by and the hours that remain, there’s only now, if you’re longing for release you’re longing your life away, and life is the only thing that exists when the doors are locked.
Stig Lindgren was sitting in the TV corner. The card deck in front of him on the table, the television muted on some channel, it was his deal, he and five other card players were waiting for queens and kings. Stig Lindgren was known as Tinyboy around here and in the rest of this country’s other prisons—he’d served time at most of them.
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