Pen 33

by Anders Roslund

  She was standing in the hall when he opened the door. She held some masks in her hand, a Big Bad Wolf and a Pig. She shouted Daddy and wanted to go outside, wanted to play. Hurry, hurry, she was so eager, as five-year-olds are.

  He sat down at the kitchen table. A carton of juice in the fridge, he emptied it into three large glasses. The house, so quiet, so heavy.

  He moved the chair, from the table to the phone that hung on the wall. Micaela would soon come home, he had to hurry. Two calls. Then he’d be done.

  He was searching for the Enköping phone book, knew he had it in the bottom of a drawer, below the local Strängnäs book. He searched through the yellow pages. He found the number, figures he recognized next to the company’s big logo. He’d called them several times before.

  A female voice.

  “Taxi Enköping.”

  “Hello. My name is Sven Sundkvist. The personnel department, please.”

  “One moment please. I’ll connect you.”

  A few seconds, Fredrik cleared his throat, took a deep breath.

  “Taxi Enköping, Liv Steen speaking.”

  “This is Sven Sundkvist, police detective at the Stockholm Police Violent Crime department.”

  “How may I help you?”

  “I’m looking for information concerning a former driver that you worked with by the name of Bernt Lund. Social security number 790517-0350. A company called B. Lund Taxi.”

  “Okay.”

  “This is urgent.”

  “What is it you’d like to know?”

  “I want to know what his regularly scheduled trips were when he was driving for you.”

  “Yes . . . there were quite a few.”

  “I just need the regularly scheduled trips that went to daycares and schools.”

  “Well . . . I don’t know, we don’t usually disclose that kind of information.”

  Fredrik hesitated. The woman was doing what she was supposed to do. He wasn’t accustomed to lying, didn’t like it. He’d always found it difficult to decide where the line was and whether or not he’d passed it.

  “I’m investigating a murder.”

  “I don’t know if that makes any difference.”

  “You might have read about it. The five-year-old girl. Raped and murdered.”

  It was hard to say. He couldn’t do much more. The woman hesitated.

  “Sundkvist, was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I call you back?”

  “Of course.”

  A long pause.

  “Well, I don’t want to bother you. We’ll do this now.”

  “Thank you.”

  Fredrik could hear her looking through folders. The snapping sound as the metal rings that held the papers in place opened and closed. His rain-soaked suit stuck to his skin, like before, when he’d been sweating.

  “Eight regularly scheduled trips to nursery schools. Four in Strängnäs and four in Enköping.”

  “The addresses, please.”

  She flipped through a few more. She gave him the addresses. He recognized the four in Strängnäs. One of them was the Dove . . . Lund had been familiar with the school. He’d been there many times before, had made trips there for almost a year. He’d returned to where he felt safe, where he knew how the children moved, what the entrances and exits looked like.

  Fredrik thanked her for the help, hung up. One more call. To Agnes.

  “It’s me again.”

  “I’m still too tired for this.”

  “I know. I just need the key to the storage. Do you know where it is?”

  “There is no key. Because there is no lock. I never cared about that stuff. Those were my father’s things. They had nothing to do with me.”

  “Thanks.”

  He wanted to end the call. He knew what he needed to know now.

  “What are you going to do there?”

  “Some of . . . Marie’s stuff is there. Things she made at school and gave to him. I want to get them.”

  “Why?”

  “I just do. Do I need to justify that?”

  Fredrik stood in front of the refrigerator. He was thirsty. One more glass of juice.

  He wrote a note, a few lines, explaining that he’d be gone for a bit but would soon come back. He put it on the refrigerator, a ladybug magnet on top.

  It was still raining, a little less now. He walked across the street to the house there, eight apartments behind a villa-style façade. He took the elevator up to the top floor.

  He stood up from the bench.

  It was made of hard, thick wooden planks covered with graffiti. He’d been sitting there since this morning, four hours. He was stiff and sore in his body.

  He’d seen the sluts several times now. He knew how they moved, how they looked, how they talked with each other. They were beautiful sluts, like the others, not much on their chests, but long slim legs and eyes that had seen cock.

  There were two who he liked the most, two blondes, equally happy. He knew their names. They spoke so loudly. He’d taken photos of them when they arrived and when they left. He’d looked at those pictures a lot. It almost felt like he knew them.

  ————

  They were pretty big.

  Sluts that age know what they want.

  When their parents dropped them off, they barely waved. He thought often about those kinds of sluts, the ones who believed they got to decide; thought about what he would say to them, how he would touch them.

  ————

  He felt alone. He’d been watching for so long. He wanted them to be together, all three.

  The parents would come late. That’s what those kinds of parents did. He checked his watch. Five past eleven. He had nearly six hours to go.

  ————

  In the afternoon.

  Just like with the others.

  Sluts were usually outside then. It had been hot before, but now, after the rain, they would be outside even longer. They always were. It was going to be chaotic, everybody in the yard at the same time. The cops wouldn’t notice anything.

  He knew exactly how he was going to do it.

  It was dark. Fredrik had been here once before, when they’d cleaned out Birger’s apartment and put whatever few possessions he had that weren’t trash into the storage room. Birger had stopped mid-breath. From one moment to the next, he’d left life for death—they’d found him naked in bed with the Boating News still in his hands, half-sitting, half-lying, the bedside lamp lit on the table next to a diary bearing the current date, where he’d recorded the temperature and precipitation, noted a visit to the grocery store, a trip to hand in lottery tickets to the tobacco shop on the corner, and a few lines beneath that remarked that he felt tired and wasn’t sure why, but had taken two Tylenol to avoid an incipient headache.

  Fredrik had never really gotten to know him. He’d been a man who was difficult to connect with, tall, heavy, aggressive. It was hard to understand that he could be Agnes’s father. They were so incredibly different, in both manner and appearance.

  He opened the unlocked storage room door. A few boxes of clothing, a floor lamp, two armchairs, four fishing rods, a bicycle cart. At the far end, some duffel bags. He was stepping into the narrow space, squeezing past the two armchairs, when he heard the door open.

  He stopped. Waited quietly in the dim light. At least two voices. They were whispering.

  The high voice of a boy.

  “Hello!”

  New whispers.

  “Hello! Here we come! And a lot more people too!”

  He recognized the voice and smiled. He was about to shout when the other visitor, until now silent, started to speak. A little older, a little tougher.

  “Ha! There, you see! I knew it. It always works.”

  The two boys started to move forward, searching through the storage space. They breathed deeply, said nothing. A few minutes, then Fredrik saw them, they were close, a few units away. He didn’t want to scare them.


  “Hello, David.”

  Too late. They were frightened, startled, looking around desperately.

  “It’s just me. Fredrik.”

  Now they saw him, too. Followed his voice in the darkness to where he stood waving between the two armchairs. David, short and dark with messy hair, a head shorter than his companion—a strong, ruddy boy Fredrik didn’t recognize. They stared at him, at each other, they’d just met the ghost they’d been searching for and were, therefore, disappointed when they found that the awful and horrid thing was just somebody’s father in the wrong place.

  David pointed at Fredrik.

  “Ah. It’s just Marie’s dad.”

  David had been Marie’s best friend. They’d known each other since their first steps, same playground, same nursery, they’d eaten dinners together, stayed at each other’s houses, woken up before the other one. They’d been like the siblings neither of them had. David had just said, It’s just Marie’s dad, then suddenly fell silent, looked away ashamed. He shouldn’t have made Marie’s father sad, he shouldn’t have said Marie’s name, she’d become dead now. She wasn’t going to exist anymore.

  He pulled at his companion’s arm, wanting to go, wanting to get away from there and from dead Marie’s father.

  “Boys, stop.”

  David was crying when he turned around.

  “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

  Fredrik stepped out of the storage space. He wondered if five-year-old children understood the concept of death. Did they understand that a dead person didn’t exist, didn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, that a dead person would never be able to go to the playground again? He didn’t think so. He didn’t understand it himself.

  “David, come here. And you, too. What’s your name?”

  “Lukas.”

  “Come here, too, Lukas.”

  Fredrik got down on the floor, a reddish-brown brick, filthy and uneven. He pointed to the floor beside him, wanting the boys to sit down.

  “I want to tell you something.”

  They sank down on either side of him. He put his arms around them.

  “David?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you remember when we played last time?”

  David smiled.

  “You were the Big Bad Wolf. We were the Little Pigs. We won. We always win.”

  “You won. As usual. But was it fun?”

  “Yep. Really fun. Marie is fun to play with.”

  She stood there. She smiled. She said they should play one more time. He sighed, like he always did, and she laughed, and they played one more time.

  “She was. She was fun to play with. And she laughed a lot. You know that, David.”

  “Yep. I know that.”

  “Well then, you also know that you don’t need to be afraid to say Marie’s name. Not when I’m here and not otherwise.”

  David gazed down at the brick floor. He tried to understand. He turned to Lukas, then to Fredrik.

  “Marie is fun to play with. I know her. I know she’s become dead.”

  “She has.”

  “You aren’t sad because I say her name.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  They stayed on the floor for another half hour. Fredrik told them about the funeral, that a priest had poured earth on the coffin, that it had been lowered into the ground. David and Lukas, a thousand questions about why a person has blood in their stomach, about why a child could die before an adult, how it’s strange that first you can talk to someone, and then you can’t.

  He hugged them both, realized when they’d left that this was the first time he’d spoken about her death. They’d forced him. He’d explained, and they hadn’t been satisfied, and he had to explain again. He’d even talked about his grief, told them he hadn’t cried yet, and they’d indignantly asked him why, and he said he didn’t know, that it was incomprehensible, that sometimes a person has so much sadness inside, they can’t get it out.

  They closed the door behind them, and he was alone again. Completely silent for a while. He took off, into the storage bin, between the armchairs, all the way in to the two duffel bags. He lifted them, turned them upside down. A big pile—books and pots and old clothes. It was in the second bag. It was huge, got stuck in the fabric, he had to shake it loose.

  It was a good rifle. That’s what Birger had said. He’d hunted quite a bit in his last years—moose, deer, rabbits. He’d been proud of it, took care of it. That was one of the images Fredrik had of him—Birger at the kitchen table in the evening, dismantling his rifle, tediously cleaning every part of it, then reassembling it, in order to sit for a long time and take aim at everything and everyone.

  Fredrik picked the rifle up from the floor. He put it in the empty duffel bag, carried it under his arm as he walked away.

  Siw Malmkvist sang so loudly the walls shook. “You’ve Only Been Playing with Me,” a cover of “Foolin’ Around,” 1961. As if her voice ricocheted across the room, capturing itself and becoming a duet, even stronger, even more insistent.

  I know that you’ve been foolin’ around on me right from the start

  So I’ll give back your ring and I’ll take back my heart

  Ewert Grens had hissed at his visitors, telling them three’s a crowd, and they could only stay there if they kept quiet. This was the third time he’d played it for them, the volume slightly higher each time. Sven Sundkvist and Lars Ågestam looked at each other, Ågestam questioningly and Sven shrugging his shoulders. This was just how it was. They’d have to sit there until Siw finished singing. Ewert held her photo in his hand, one he’d taken himself in Kristianstad in 1972, while singing along with every word, louder during the chorus. Siw fell silent, a few seconds of the crackle of an LP, Ågestam was about to speak when the intro began again. The detective superintendent raised the volume slightly and waved irritably at Ågestam to sit back down and keep his mouth shut.

  But when it’s you, a fool I’ll always be

  Lars Ågestam couldn’t take any more Siw. He was in a hurry, he was the one in charge.

  He didn’t want any more sex crimes, any more flashers, or pedophiles, or rapists. He wanted more than that, wanted to move up up up.

  So yesterday he’d been assigned to this. Another sex crime.

  But, also, the ticket to his future.

  He’d found it difficult not to laugh out loud when he’d been assigned officer in charge of the pursuit of Bernt Lund. Every newscast, every front page, the country was standing still, the murder of a five-year-old girl by a pedophile serial killer who’d escaped from prison dominated the media. This was his opportunity. His breakthrough. Suddenly, he’d become one of the most interesting people in Sweden, at least for the moment.

  So honey fool around, you know right where I’m at

  Don’t worry if I’m lonesome ’cause I’m used to that

  No more, not now. Not another line of these clumsy lyrics.

  He stood up, walked over to Ewert Grens’s bookcase and the bulky tape recorder and pressed the stop button.

  The room was completely silent.

  Sven stared at the floor. Ewert started to shake, his face turning red. Lars Ågestam knew he’d just broken the police station’s oldest unwritten rule, and he couldn’t care less.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, Grens. But I can’t listen to any more of those bad rhymes.”

  The detective superintendent screamed.

  “Get the fuck out of my office!”

  Ågestam had made up his mind.

  “You’re sitting around listening to cheesy music rather than doing your job.”

  Grens continued screaming.

  “I was listening to this and working harder than anyone else, when you were still shitting yourself! Get the hell out of here before I do something I regret!”

  Ågestam went back to the chair he’d just left, sat down defiantly.

  “I want to know where we stand now. And once you tell me what I want to know, I’ll give you a
lead you don’t have yet. And if it’s a good one, I’ll stay. If not, I promise to go. Agreed?”

  Grens decided to throw the little fucker out. He despised opportunistic prosecutors, university boys who’d never taken one on the jaw. This one would have to crawl away. He was on his way toward him when Sven stood up.

  “Ewert. Calm down. Let him do what he says. Let him try to give us a new lead. If he doesn’t have one, he’ll leave.”

  Ewert hesitated. Ågestam took advantage of the pause, turned abruptly toward Sven.

  “So, where are we?”

  Sven cleared his throat.

  “We’ve investigated all previously known addresses. And we continue to monitor them.”

  “His pedophile friends?”

  “We’ve visited them all. They’re under surveillance.”

  “Tips?”

  “Streaming in. Newscasts. Newspapers. The public is listening, looking, and we’re drowning in information—he’s basically been seen all over the country. We’re going through them one at a time. So far they’ve led to nothing.”

  “Possible next targets?”

  “We’re guarding as many as we can, we’re in touch with every daycare and every school within a fifty-kilometer radius of the last sighting.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not much.”

  “So you’ve hit a dead end?”

  “Yes.”

  Ågestam waited silently. Grens threw his diary onto his desk, raised his voice.

  “Say what you have to say, you little prick. Then leave.”

  The prosecutor stood up, walked slowly around the room. From wall to wall.

  “I’ve driven a lot of taxis. That was how I financed my studies. For five years I drove people around this whole city. Good money at the time. That was before deregulation, before there was a taxi on every street corner.”