Pen 33

by Anders Roslund

  He’d seen his face. It was him. He knew it was him.

  Five cars in front of him. They drove slowly, in front was a small red car with a huge caravan in tow. It lurched heavily at the sharp curves, so the cars behind kept a respectful distance. He tried to pass, once, twice, but couldn’t as the next curve came and visibility was reduced again to nothing.

  Next exit, toward Tosterö, a right turn just before Tosterö Bridge and central Strängnäs.

  He could see them already in the distance.

  They stood outside the gate, between the Dove’s yard and the street outside.

  Five nursery school teachers and two from the kitchen. Police, four dogs. Some parents he knew, and some he didn’t recognize.

  One of them, with a small child in her arms, who was pointing to the woods. A policeman walked in that direction with the dog, let it sniff, was joined by two more.

  Fredrik drove up to the gate, sat there for a moment before opening the door and stepping out of the car. He was met by Micaela. He hadn’t seen her at first. She’d come from inside the building.

  The coffee was black. No fucking milk, no latte or cappuccino or any other fancy shit, just pitch-black Swedish coffee with no grounds. Ewert Grens stood in front of the vending machine in the hallway. No fucking way he was paying anything extra to put dry white powder into his cup. It tasted bad, like emulsifiers and chemicals, but Sven, he had to have it. He wanted it to look like brown slush, so he gladly paid to dilute it. Grens held the clear plastic cups a good distance apart, as if the light brown liquid might infect the solid black, balancing them as well as anyone could balance something while walking down a newly waxed hallway with a limp. He walked into his office, handed one cup to Sven Sundkvist, who sat shrunken and powerless in the visitor’s chair.

  “Here. Your dishwater.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ewert stopped in front of him. There was something in Sven’s eyes he didn’t recognize.

  “What’s the matter with you? It can’t be that fucking bad to have to work on your fortieth birthday, can it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then?”

  “Jonas just called while you were fighting with the coffee machine.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He asked why I didn’t come home when I said I would. He said I lied.”

  “Lied?”

  “He said adults lie.”

  “And? Get to the point.”

  “He’d seen reports about Lund on television. He asked why adults lie and tell children that they’ll get to see a dead squirrel or a nice doll when all the adult wants to do is use his penis and hit you. That’s exactly what he said. To the word.”

  Sven drank his coffee silently for a moment, collapsed again, turning slightly on the chair, without thinking, to the left, to the right. Ewert moved to the bookshelf, to the tape recorder, searching through his plastic folders.

  “How do you answer something like that? Dad lies, adults lie, some adults lie and use their penis and hit you. Ewert, I can’t do this. I can’t fucking do it.”

  “Seven Beautiful Boys,” with Harry Arnold’s Radio Band, 1959.

  They listened.

  My very first friend was as slim as a saber

  My second was blond and ever so dear

  The lyrics were like ice hockey, banal and unimportant and, therefore, they offered an escape. Ewert swayed his head, with his eyes closed, to a different time, for a few minutes of peace.

  There was a knock.

  Sven looked at Ewert, who shook his head in annoyance. Once more, harder.

  “Yes, come in, dammit!”

  Ågestam. The perfectly combed hair, the ingratiating smile through the partially open door. Grens had little sympathy for overachievers. He didn’t like overachievers playing at being prosecutors, just trying to rise up the ranks faster.

  “What the hell is it?”

  Lars Ågestam flinched, whether from Grens and his irritation or from the singing of Siw Malmkvist.

  “Lund.”

  Ewert looked up from his plastic cup, set it aside.

  “Yes?”

  “He’s been spotted.”

  Ågestam explained that an officer had just gotten off the phone with someone who spotted Bernt Lund a few hours ago in Strängnäs, outside a nursery school. A father, sober and well spoken but scared, had called from a mobile phone and said he saw a face he recognized wearing a cap sitting on a bench. He’d left his daughter there, a five-year-old who is now missing, according to the staff.

  Grens crumpled up the cup, threw it into the bin.

  “Fuck. Fuck!”

  The interrogations. The ugliest he’d ever had. A man who was something else, eyes that never met his.

  Dammit, Grens.

  Lund, I want you to look at me.

  Grens, they’re sluts.

  I hear you, Lund, but I want you to look at me.

  Sluts. Little tiny horny sluts.

  Either you look at me or we cancel this interview, here and now.

  You want to hear? About those little cunts? I know you do.

  So you don’t dare to look at me?

  Pussy wants cock.

  Good. Now let’s look at each other.

  Small little pussies want lots of cock.

  How does it feel to look into my eyes?

  That’s what you have to teach them. Not to think about cock all the time.

  Now, you aren’t doing it anymore. Your eyes are cowards.

  Little pussies are the worst. They’re the horniest, that’s why you have to be rough.

  You want me to put the tape recorder to the side and lose control?

  Grens, have you ever tasted nine-year-old pussy?

  He shut off the music. Put the cassette gently into its plastic case.

  “If he’s so desperate that he’s letting himself be seen before snatching another kid, then the risk is great that he’s lost all inhibitions.”

  He walked toward the coat hanger wedged behind the door and grabbed the jacket that was hanging there.

  “I’ve interrogated him. I know how he thinks. I’ve also read the forensic psychiatric report, and it confirms what I already know, what everyone knows: he has pronounced sadistic tendencies.”

  Grens hadn’t just read the forensic psychiatric report; he’d made sure he understood every word. He’d been more affected in the presence of Lund, and after, than by any other interrogation. No one else had ever gotten to Grens like that before. Made him feel like that, a hate, a fear. Police work had made him pretty cold, he knew that, and had hardened him. It was hell feeling anything when his days were like they were, but Lund and his crimes and his estrangement had made Grens feel for the first time like giving up, sneaking away, quitting. He’d also talked to the psychiatrist who wrote the report, gotten him to say more than he should. They’d talked about Lund and the sadistic rapes he’d committed, about how rage was the same thing as sexuality for him, that harming someone had become desire, making someone powerless had become pleasure. Grens had asked if Lund understood what he’d done, if he understood how the child and the child’s parents felt, and everyone else who was a part of this. The psychiatrist had gently shaken his head and told Grens about Lund’s childhood, his early abuse, how he’d shut out other people to endure it.

  Jacket in hand, Grens pointed first at Sven, then Ågestam.

  “A mild psychiatric disorder. Can you believe it? He rapes little girls and that’s a mild disorder.”

  Ågestam sighed.

  “I remember that. I was at the university then. I remember how strange it was, how pissed off we were.”

  Ewert wriggled into his jacket, turned to Sven.

  “Back to the car. Strängnäs. Fast as hell. You drive.”

  Lars Ågestam stood at the door, should have stepped aside, but hadn’t.

  “I’m going with you.”

  Ewert disliked the young prosecutor. He’d shown that before and would again.


  “So, you’re the investigator in this case now?”

  “No.”

  “Then I think you need to move aside.”

  ————

  Even though the sun was slowly going down, it was still hot out, and the bright light was annoying as they sped south down the E4, out of the inner city, past the inner ring of suburbs, past Kungens Kurva, Fittja, Tumba, Södertälje. They veered off toward the west, took the E20 toward Strängnäs, and Sven breathed easier. Ewert’s hints that he should speed up and his whining about the sun visor not helping enough ceased the moment they changed direction. He could drive even faster now. The traffic wasn’t as heavy, and the sun not so intense.

  They didn’t say much to each other. Bernt Lund had been seen outside a nursery school. A five-year-old girl was gone. There wasn’t much more to say. They each went through what happened, what could have happened, and each scenario ended with the hope that it was a false alarm, that the little girl would suddenly come out of an overlooked playroom, that the father who thought he’d seen Lund was the type whose fear ran away with his imagination.

  Forty-three minutes from central Stockholm to the Dove, a nursery school in Strängnäs.

  Just a few hundred meters away, they realized it wasn’t to be. That this was no false alarm. This was something else, maybe the worst-case scenario. There stood the teachers and childcare workers, the parents and their children running around, two police cars with uniformed personnel and impatient dogs, and all of it signaled fear, confusion, and a kind of solidarity.

  Sven stopped the car back at the fence. One minute. The calm before chaos. Silence before rapid-fire questions. He looked at the people walking around outside their car. They were in constant motion. Anxious people keep moving. That’s what they do. He glanced at Ewert and realized he, too, was watching, interpreting, trying to become a part of the conversation out there without opening the car door.

  “What do you think?”

  “I believe what I see.”

  “What do you see?”

  “That things have gone to hell.”

  They stepped out of the car. Two of the police officers headed their way. They walked toward one of them.

  “Hello.”

  They shook hands.

  “Sven Sundkvist.”

  “Leo Lauritzen. We got here twenty minutes ago. From Eskilstuna, we’re the closest.”

  “This is Ewert Grens.”

  Lauritzen smiled, surprised. Tall, his dark hair in a crew cut, he had the naturalness that people his age, thirty or so, just have, a kind of delicate invulnerability. He held Grens’s hand slightly too long.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. I’ve heard of you.”

  “Really.”

  “It sounds like something you’d hear in a movie. But I just have to say it. You’re shorter than I thought you’d be.”

  The second officer, standing just a few steps away, overheard and hurried forward. She didn’t introduce herself.

  “An hour ago. A police officer in Stockholm called and explained that one of the children at this nursery school had disappeared. A few minutes later, we received additional information. Bernt Lund had been seen in connection with the girl’s disappearance. We activated a general alert. Dog patrols and people from the local working dog club are searching the woods that lead from here toward Enköping. Two helicopters are searching along the roads and shores of Lake Mälaren. We are about to launch a search party. We wanted to wait a bit with that. The dogs need to be able to smell before half of Strängnäs starts running around in the woods.”

  She was sweating profusely, her blond hair glued to her temples. She’d been working in sweltering heat. She excused herself, went back over to a few of the dog owners wearing jackets with the emblem of the Swedish Working Dog Club sewn on the chest. Sven and Ewert looked at each other, as if neither of them really wanted to get started, an aversion to the darkness. Ewert cleared his throat and turned to Leo Lauritzen.

  “The girl’s parents?”

  “Yes?”

  “Have they been informed?”

  Lauritzen pointed toward the fence, toward a park bench standing just outside the entrance to the Dove. A man was sitting on one end of it. Long hair, ponytail down his back, in a brown corduroy suit—leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, staring into the gate or the bush behind it. A woman was next to him, holding him, stroking his cheek.

  “The girl’s father. The one who called. He was the one who saw him on two occasions, about fifteen to twenty minutes apart. Lund was sitting there, conspicuously, on that very bench.”

  “Name?”

  “Fredrik Steffansson. Divorced. The girl’s mother is Agnes Steffansson, lives in Stockholm, Vasastan, I think.”

  “And the woman?”

  “She works here at the school. Micaela Zwarts. She also lives with him. The girl lives part-time at both homes, but apparently in the last year she chose Strängnäs as a home base, with Steffansson and Zwarts. She mostly sees her mother on weekends. The parents agreed, whatever was best for the child. If she wanted to stay here in Strängnäs, she could. Wish everyone could have it that way. I myself am divorced and . . .”

  Grens had already started to walk away.

  “I think I’m going to go and say hello to him.”

  The man on the park bench sat bent over. His eyes stared blankly ahead.

  He sat as if he were in pain. As if the hole in his stomach were leaking concentrated energy, his will to live dripping down on to the grass below, turning it ugly.

  Grens had no children. He’d never wanted any. Therefore, he couldn’t understand what the man in front of him was feeling. He knew that.

  But he could see it.

  Rune Lantz would soon be sixty-six years old. A year since retirement and not a single male friend. Late one Friday in July of last year, he’d emptied the four-cubic-meter reservoir of the apple juice mixer for the last time. He’d turned it off and washed it out and prepared to be relieved by someone on the night shift, someone who would say hello and put on ear protectors and a hairnet and mix the right amount of sugar—a little bit less sugar for juice going to Germany, a little bit sweeter for Great Britain, unbelievably sweet to Italy, and so sweet as to be almost undrinkable for Greece. He left that factory after thirty-four years to find that the friends he’d seen daily were coffee-break friends, bad-mouth-your-boss friends, bet-on-horses-over-lunch-on-Friday friends. Nothing more. Not a single one of them had called or visited since. He himself was equally guilty, never sought anyone out, whether in the factory or at home, wasn’t even sure he missed them. Strange, he thought, you live your life surrounded by people you don’t need or care about, people who are like the TV you keep on in the corner of the living room. Ritual and habit hides emptiness and silence. They are a reflection of yourself that proves you exist, but they don’t mean shit. Not to you, not to anyone else. You disappear, but everything else just keeps going on and on; they mix their juice and fill out their horse-betting slips and laugh over their coffee, and it’s as if you never existed.

  He held on to her hand more tightly now.

  He saw her more clearly now.

  Margareta was still working in the factory. She had two years left and was gone all day, and he’d never before realized how much he needed her. Together, they had the time and life and courage to grow old.

  They walked close to each other, rather slowly, her bad knees and all. The same walk every late afternoon, from their house in the harbor, over the Tosterö Bridge, past the terraced houses, and into the woods. He was already dressed when she came home; the last hour alone in the apartment was the worst, he missed her terribly then, wanted to be walking slowly as one, stepping as one, breathing as one. There were several trails in the forest to choose from. A couple of them had been marked with green and yellow signs, put there for joggers, one hundred meters between each. When it was light, during the spring and the summer and early autumn, they liked to leave the established
trails and look for new ones, through the dense spruce trees and the wild blueberry bushes. Finding your own way was a lot more fun as life started slowly to recede.

  Tonight was one of those nights. They held each other’s hands, left the marked trail after just a few meters, walking side by side in the dry forest. It hadn’t rained for several weeks, the summer and high pressure weighing over the skies of northern Europe made the ground crunchy and the risk of fire high. It was going to be a lousy year for mushrooms.

  A deer. A few rabbits. Birds, quite large, maybe buzzards. They didn’t say much to each other. They didn’t need to. They’d been married for forty-three years and had probably used every sentence they had. Usually one of them would stop, point, hold a hand in the air. They always looked at any animal until it ran off, they had plenty of time—it would soon be evening, and they were too old to hurry anywhere.

  The terrain changed shape, suddenly hilly, and they breathed more heavily. It was nice to feel the blood rushing through your veins delivering oxygen.

  They’d just scaled a small mountain of boulders when they heard the sound approaching.

  They both heard it. A helicopter.

  Above their heads. It flew close to them, close to the ground, dancing along the treetops.

  It was followed by another one.

  Police helicopters. Rune saw them, and Margareta saw them, and they didn’t know why, but both felt an immediate discomfort and anxiety, the intense noise of the engine and the intrusive presence, police officers searching for something, in a big hurry, right here.

  Margareta stopped. She watched the machines overhead until they disappeared behind the trees on the horizon.

  “I don’t like them.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Let’s not go any farther.”

  “Not until they’re gone.”

  “Not even then.”

  She’d been holding her husband by the hand, and now she put his arm around her. That’s where it should be, around her waist. He kissed her lightly on the cheek, it was the two of them against the world, against the helicopters and uniforms and engine noise.