They were let in by a police officer, one of the policemen who’d come to the Dove nursery school yesterday from Stockholm, an older man who limped slightly.
“Ewert Grens, detective superintendent. We met yesterday.”
“Fredrik. I recognize you. This is Agnes. Marie’s mother.”
They greeted each other quickly, then went down one floor to a hospital corridor. He saw the other officer from yesterday, the one who had interviewed him. Behind him stood a doctor with a white coat and tired eyes.
“We haven’t met. Sven Sundkvist, detective.”
“Agnes Steffansson.”
“This is Ludvig Errfors. The coroner. He’s performed the autopsy on Marie.”
Autopsy on Marie.
The words screamed at them.
Hateful, piercing, final.
————
Twenty-four hours of hell hope hell hope hell hope was aching inside their bodies—just after lunch one day ago, Fredrik had left the person they both breathed for at her school, and now, in a sterile room at a forensic medicine center, they both had to look at her destroyed body and confirm that it was her.
They held on to each other.
Sometimes people hold on to each other until they shatter.
The summer stood still.
The sultry air was difficult to breathe.
He didn’t notice. He was weeping.
Sundkvist had concentrated on soon, soon air, soon life, soon soon soon. He couldn’t break down in front of them, the parents who’d held each other in front of the hospital gurney and nodded affirmatively when they saw her face. The father had kissed the girl’s cheek, the mother had collapsed on top of her, her head against the fabric covering the girl’s body. They’d screamed like he’d never heard anyone scream before. They’d died together in front of him, and he’d tried to keep his gaze fixed somewhere above them, on a point on the wall, soon away from this fucking gurney, soon out of this fucking room, soon up up up the stairs and out into air that didn’t smell like death.
They’d held on to each other as they left, and he’d run out of there as soon as they’d gone, the corridor stairs door. He’d wept and had no wish to stop.
Grens also came, passed him, took him by the shoulder.
“I’ll be in the car. I’ll be waiting there. This is your time, take as much as you need.”
Ten minutes? Twenty? He had no idea. He cried until he was empty, until there was no more. He cried their tears, as if they didn’t have room for all of them, as if they all had to share in the grief.
Ewert patted him lightly on the cheek when he sat down in the car.
“I’ve been sitting here listening to shitty radio. The news is all about Bernt Lund and Marie’s murder. It doesn’t matter which fucking station I choose. They have their summer murder and from now on they’ll be following every step we take.”
Sven grabbed hold of the steering wheel in front of him, pointed at it, then at his boss.
“Do you want to drive?”
“No.”
“Just for now. I really don’t want to.”
“I’ll wait here until you’re ready to turn the key. We have time.”
Sven sat still. A few minutes. The radio changed from one indistinguishable pop song to another. He turned toward the back seat.
“You hungry for some cake?”
He reached for the box, pulled it toward him. Farther in the back lay the plastic bag with wine bottles. He put what remained of his party on his lap.
“It’s a princess cake. That’s what Jonas wanted. With two roses on it. One for me, one for him.”
He snapped the string, opened the box, put his nose close to the green marzipan.
“Twenty-four hours in this heat. It’s worse than sour.”
Ewert flinched from the sudden stench, grimaced, disgusted by the smell of rancid cream, pushed the carton from Sven’s knee, as far away as possible. He turned the car radio up, changed the station, changed it again.
The same words, a mantra, in newscast after newscast.
Child murder. Escape. Rapist. Bernt Lund. Aspsås. Police hunt. Grief. Horror.
“I can’t listen to this shit anymore, can’t stand to have this in my face. Can’t you turn it off, Ewert?”
Sven grabbed a bottle out of the bag, inspected the label, nodded, and uncorked it.
“I think I need a little of this.”
He put the bottle to his mouth, swallowed. Once. Three times.
“Do you understand? I turned forty yesterday. I celebrated by going to Strängnäs to interrogate an elderly woman who’d found a raped and murdered girl in the woods. Then I came here today, looked at that little girl, was told she had traces of semen in her anus, that a sharp object had been rammed into her vagina. I saw her parents fall apart as they held her. I don’t understand it. Not any of it. I just want to go home.”
“It’s time to go.”
Ewert grabbed the bottle out of Sven’s hand, held out his palm for the cork, pushed it into the neck again, and placed the bottle at his feet.
“It’s not just you, Sven. We are all equally frustrated, equally destroyed. But what good does it do? We have to find him. That’s what matters. Get him before he does it again.”
Sven started the car, backed out carefully from the large parking lot at the roundabout between the Forensic Medicine Center and the Karolinska Hospital. The lot was crowded despite the summer holidays, cars parked tightly in the usual Stockholm manner, as close to the next car as possible.
Ewert continued.
“Because I know what it’s about for him. I’ve interrogated him, and I’ve read everything. Every line that the psychologists and psychiatrists have written. He will do this again. It’s just a matter of time. He’s abandoned all self-control, so he’ll keep doing this until he’s apprehended, or until he destroys himself.”
Tinyboy sought the shade. The exercise yard had no trees, walls, fences to hide behind or to stop the sun. Sweat ran down his back, and the big gravel yard had turned into a dry dusty cloud bordered by walls of gray stone. They’d tried playing football, two five-man teams and five thousand kronor in the pot, but after the first half ended in a draw, they quit, shoulders aching, red, and every breath an agony. Both teams lay down behind their goals and hadn’t gotten back up again. Two representatives, one from each side, met in the center circle, declared that they themselves would gladly continue, but, for the sake of their opponents, they’d stop the game and take back the bet. Skåne, one of the negotiators, came back, sat down between Hilding and Tinyboy.
“Just like we wanted. They’re totally fucking exhausted. The Russian can hardly breathe.”
“Good. Good.”
“On Monday, we’ll play the second half. I raised our stake. Doubled it. They can’t fucking play.”
Hilding winced, looked anxiously at Tinyboy while scratching the long deep sore on his nostril. Bekir sat quietly, Dragan, too.
Tinyboy spat in the dry gravel.
“What the fuck? You doubled it? And who pays if we lose?”
“Shit, Tiny, we won’t lose. They have no real goalie.”
Tinyboy raised his head, studying their opponents on the other side of the field—still lying down, trying to hide from the sun, drained of all energy.
“You must be fucking high, Skåne, you motherfucker. Have you seen them play? Were you here? We had some good fucking luck, that’s it. But okay, Skåne. Okay. What the hell. Why the hell not? Let’s do it. Double the fucking pot, because you’ll cover it if we lose. You can cover it. If we win, we share equally. Two grand each. Fair and square.”
Skåne defiantly shook his head and walked a few meters away. He lay on his belly in the dust, doing push-ups, counting aloud so the others could hear, ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred fifty, and two hundred fifty. His wide neck shiny with sweat running down. He groaned and emptied all the frustration of this summer, and of the four years he still had to go.
Tinyboy
stared at the sun, opening his eyes to bright sunlight, then closing them, making pricks of light and colors and waves and rhythms behind his eyelids. It was something he’d done since he was a child. It was easier to escape when all you had to do was close your eyes.
“And the fucking hitman then?”
Hilding felt the question, didn’t want to touch it.
“What about the hitman?”
“Haven’t seen him today.”
“Why the hell would I know that?”
“That’s your fucking job. Jochum Lang and Håkan Axelsson, they’re new, and they’re your fucking job. You should explain to them how the hell it works.”
“Like your conversation with Jochum?”
“Shut up.”
“What the fuck should I tell him? I’m not saying anything, not after Branco’s letter.”
The wind was blowing gently. The first breeze they’d felt for several days. It came suddenly, like sand, caressed their faces, and they stopped talking for a moment. Tinyboy sat up, wanted to breathe in something for a moment other than this oppressive heat. When he turned toward the wall, he saw him walking along the concrete, sandy-haired and bearded, one of the two new guys who arrived this morning. He followed him with his eyes, every step. He took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, lit one of the many halves that lay there. He didn’t stop looking at the solitary walker, and slowly became irritated and waved his arms.
“There he goes. Axelsson. No one has a fucking clue who he is. Says he’s here for assault. What the hell, the motherfucker couldn’t piss on a football! I bet anything that fucker is a perv. I can feel it. I can smell those fucking bastards.”
Hilding had woken up from the temporary coolness. He sat up, too, next to Tinyboy and watched Axelsson’s slow walk.
“I heard the guards earlier. They were talking about the creep unit. That it was full. Every fucking cell is filled with pervs. Maybe that’s why he’s here. They can’t put him anywhere else.”
Tinyboy kicked the gravel in annoyance. White dust rose toward blue sky. He threw his cigarette down. It glowed for a while, then slowly went out.
“Skåne.”
“Yeah.”
“Look at me.”
Skåne turned toward him.
“Yeah?”
“You have a job.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You have six hours’ leave. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“No guards. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you know what you should do. You should look up Axelsson’s record.”
“But I can’t. I got other things to do. Six shitty hours, I have a fucking girl.”
Tinyboy laughed.
“You can forget that. Idiots who double our bet after a draw don’t get a choice.”
He pointed at them, first Skåne, then Hilding, then Skåne again.
“Hilding Wilding, would you be so kind as to get hold of Axelsson’s social security number? Then you give it to Skåne, who’s gonna get his junkie ass to Stockholm District Court tomorrow and request to see Axelsson’s record. Then, motherfuckers. Then, we’ll see!”
Hilding ripped at the skin of his nose until it bled, clearing his throat for a long time, but was interrupted by Tinyboy before he could start talking.
“No goddamn arguments. Just do it.”
————
Lennart Oscarsson often stood in his office in the same place, at the same window. Calm. That’s what he felt here. He had a good view of the yard and the football field, where he could watch grown men who’d threatened, assaulted, killed, lie on their backs in the sun panting heavily. He recognized Tinyboy and his harem—how they pointed and stared at Håkan Axelsson who was walking along the sawdust trail. He swallowed nervously. He warned Bertolsson not to put a convicted child pornographer in with the regular population. This would end badly. He’d seen it before, and only those who didn’t live in this strange reality could think anything else.
The slut had screamed when he took off her red shoes. He’d pressed her to the ground then, to the grass. Sluts should scream, but there’d been too many other people in the area, joggers and retirees taking walks. She hadn’t liked it when he kissed the red patent leather and the metal buckles. She’d screamed louder than the others, yes, she had, and her scream was beautiful. He had to kiss her feet later. Maybe he’d been too harsh on her, pressing her face for a long time against the dry ground. It’s hard with sluts. If you’re nice to them they just want more cock. She was the same.
She’d had beautiful feet. The skin so light, toes so small. He’d almost forgotten what small sluts felt like. Four years, he’d been waiting, and now he didn’t need to anymore. Now, they were with him again.
Sluts were the worst afterward. Once they got their cock. Once they were silent.
He’d hidden her. A large fir, branches that reached the ground, he found her a place underneath it. She’d been dirty—it was stupid to press so hard. He licked her feet clean. They tasted like soil.
————
He’d been sitting here for three hours now. It was a good bench, not too close, but still he could see everyone coming and going. It seemed like a good nursery school. He’d been here before, and the kids always looked happy.
There were guards. Just ordinary cops, but they were in the way. He’d have to get around them. In Strängnäs there’d been two outside every building. But this was Enköping, thirty kilometers away. He hadn’t anticipated that they’d be here as well.
————
Little tiny sluts.
He’d seen a few already.
Almost all blondes, he preferred light-skinned sluts. They were always softer, their skin. He could see their blood vessels clearly, and red spots appeared when you pushed hard with your fingers.
It was a beautiful church. Proud, white, powerful, dominating the small town, much too big, too demanding. He wondered if it had been built for a congregation of that size or if it was just the standard size, built in a time when Christianity was the law, and humanity and the universe were on a different scale.
Fredrik Steffansson liked it a lot. It had been a long time since he’d left the Swedish Church. He believed in what he could see, and he saw no life beyond death. But this church, this cemetery, was much more than that. This was his life. His childhood. Summer after summer, when he’d devotedly followed his grandfather, the sexton, to his job here. He’d watched him dig deep graves, mow a lawn that went on forever, put up the golden metal numbers of the hymns on a blackboard. He’d helped his grandpa as much as he would allow: every Saturday pressing the button that rang the church bell, after every service gathering the Bibles and putting them on a wagon with a rusty wheel, putting long shiny white candles in heavy brass candlesticks on the altar and then making sure they stood in a straight line. He realized this was nostalgia, polished memories, but he didn’t care. What he did care about was that his grandfather had become his idol instead of some football player, that he still loved this ninety-four-year-old silver-haired man who walked around in his kitchen on stiff legs sipping boiled coffee, that it had been a happy time; the only future he recognized today.
He saw Agnes in the distance. She wasn’t dressed in black—they’d both agreed on bright summer clothes—and had her eyes on the ground. She looked haggard. She was forty years old but had never before looked more than twenty. Three days and the years had started catching up with her. Sooner or later time always catches up. He wanted to hold her. He wanted her to hold him. They needed each other now, and in just a moment they were going to die together. Without Marie they would be forever separated.
They’d chosen a small funeral. No announcement, no invitations. Fredrik and Agnes. Micaela. No one else. Nothing more. The two officers leading the investigation wanted to attend and justified it with investigative reasons. He’d hesitantly said yes, as long as they kept quiet and stood at the back, they could do what they
wanted.
He walked alone across the lawn, crossing between well-tended graves with lots of flowers and graves that time had covered with black moss, making their inscriptions difficult to read. He’d walked here as a child, back and forth, looking at the headstones, reading the names, figuring out how old they had been, wondering about the woman who was born in 1861 and died in 1963, about the boy born in 1953 who died in 1954, about how life could have such varying lengths that one would have the chance to grow up and find their way and another didn’t even get the chance to learn to walk.
His own daughter would soon be buried. She’d had five years.
“Fredrik?”
He hadn’t seen her approach. She laid her hand gently on his shoulder.
“Fredrik, how are you?”
He spun around quickly.
“I didn’t hear you.”
She smiled. One of the good people. He’d known her as long as he could remember. Grandpa had thought highly of her, helped her out regularly. He’d kept working until he was seventy-five, and especially at the beginning, when she was just out of school, inexperienced, a woman in a domain of men, he’d supported, protected, and smoothed the way for her, the congregation’s new priest. Fredrik realized later that she must have been very young back then, as a child he’d seen her as one of the elderly. As an adult, they were suddenly in the same age range.
“I will never be able to understand how you feel, but I’ve been thinking about you. Every second since last Tuesday.”
“Rebecka. I’m glad it’s you.”
“I’ve been a priest for three decades. This is the worst fucking day of them all.”
Fredrik winced. Her expletive ricocheted off him, off the gravestones, off her faith. He’d never seen her as anything other than a great comfort, but now her face was broken, the softness and calm had turned hard and tense and torn.
————
Fredrik looked at the coffin. Wooden planks with flowers on it, right there in front of him. He held Agnes. They stood in the front row, every movement echoing through the empty church. He couldn’t understand that there was a child in there. His child. Who he’d been talking to, laughing with, holding just a few days ago. Agnes wept and shook. He pulled her closer, held her tighter.
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