Pen 33

by Anders Roslund

  Grens shouted from his chair.

  “And?”

  Ågestam ignored the aggression, the hatred.

  “I learned a lot. I know how taxis work. I started up a website with taxi info, you know, all possible information that wasn’t gathered elsewhere: phone numbers, business structures, price comparisons. The works. I became a kind of expert, the kind tourists and the press turned to for answers.”

  It was hard to tell if Grens was listening, until he hit the table, breathing raggedly. Sven had seen him grumpy, even savage, but never like this, undignified and out of control.

  “And, you little shit, and?”

  “Bernt Lund drove a taxi. Right?”

  Sundkvist nodded affirmatively. Ågestam continued.

  “He even ran his own business. B. Lund Taxi. Correct?”

  He now turned toward Grens, waiting quietly for him to answer.

  Four minutes.

  A long time when a room is out of balance, when thoughts, feelings, bodies are out of sync.

  Grens hissed.

  “That he did. A shitload of years ago. We know that. We’ve turned that devil’s bankruptcy inside and out.”

  Lars Ågestam let his thin legs lope freely across the room. He no longer walked from wall to wall, but instead almost ran, as if he were in a hurry. His fair hair fluttering, his huge glasses fogging up, he looked more like a schoolboy than ever, a schoolboy who’d made up his mind to rebel and was sticking to it.

  “You’ve checked the company’s finances, structure, scope. That’s good. But you haven’t investigated what it was he did.”

  “It was a taxi. He drove idiots around and got paid for it.”

  “Who did he drive around?”

  “Those records don’t exist.”

  “Not for individuals. But for regularly scheduled trips. Agreements with local governments.”

  He stopped. Ågestam stood between Grens, behind his desk, and Sundkvist, in the visitor’s chair. And then continued the conversation with both of them, making sure to turn from one to the other, emphasizing the fact that he was speaking to both.

  “Every small company has a hard time surviving on private customers alone. Most seek out scheduled trips, we called them school runs. The pay is lower, but the income is dependable. You often take children to nursery schools on your school runs. If you had a taxi as long as Lund did, the chances are high that you made school runs, especially if you were a sick man like him. I think if you were to look closely at Lund’s business, you’ll find contracts for those runs, you’ll find schools he drove to regularly. The ones he knows. The ones he’s fantasized about. The ones he’ll return to.”

  The prosecutor took a comb out of his pocket, put his short hair back in place. His appearance was so proper—a tie, white shirt, gray suit—he liked feeling elegant, complete, ready.

  “Have you investigated it?”

  Ewert sat quietly, staring straight ahead, anger that either needed to come out or be smothered. He’d rarely been this provoked, in his office, over his music, his working methods. Either you respected his way, or you stayed in the hallway with the other idiots. He didn’t know where this accumulated anger came from, why it was so intense, but now it was, had become so, over time, and with age everyone earned the right to be left alone, to avoid having to explain yourself. Others seemed to have a word for this feeling: they called it bitterness. He was completely uninterested, they could call it whatever the hell they wanted to. He had no need to be liked. He knew who he was and tried to bear it.

  He realized the young prosecutor had pointed out something that could be a next step, but he had no desire to show that to him. Sven, however, sat up straighter, seemed appreciative.

  “That seems sensible. That could be something. At least the area of surveillance would be drastically reduced. We lack the time and resources. We’re doing our best, but it’s not easy. If you’re right, we’ll gain time, and we can focus our resources and get closer to him. I’ll look into it immediately.”

  Sven left the room, hurried steps down the corridor. Ågestam and Grens remained where they were, saying nothing. Grens was too tired to yell, and Ågestam could see how tired he was, how tense he’d been.

  Stillness, a break. Until the prosecutor left the center of the room, walked toward Grens, past him, to the bookcase, turned on the tape recorder again.

  “Lucky Lips,” 1966.

  Now you may not be good-looking, and you may not be too rich

  But you’ll never ever be alone, ’cause you’ve got lucky lips

  Raspy, half-rhymes, jaunty. Ågestam left the office, closing the door behind him.

  It had stopped raining. The final drops hit the ground as he exited through the stairwell door. The air was clear, easy to breathe. The clouds were already lighter—the sun about to penetrate them—and it would soon be hot, dry, and stagnant again.

  Fredrik Steffansson held the duffel bag in his hand, walked across the street to his car, put the bag in the empty back seat. The conversation he’d just had with two little boys about their perspective on death was still inside him. David and Lukas had been sitting close to him on the hard floor listening, understanding, and answering his answers with new questions, the musings of a five-year-old and a seven-year-old on body and soul and the darkness no one can see.

  He thought of Marie. He’d thought of her every single moment since last Tuesday, the image of her in death, her still face had blocked any attempt of his to see something else, but now he wanted to think of her as not dead, as she’d been when she lived. He wondered about her concept of death. They’d never spoken about it—they’d never had any reason to.

  Had she understood? Had she been afraid?

  Had she submitted or had she fought?

  Had she known in any way that death might happen at any moment, and that it was the same as eternal solitude in a white wooden coffin with flowers under a freshly mown lawn?

  He drove through the narrow streets of Strängnäs, glancing at his address list: four nursery schools in Strängnäs, four in Enköping. He was sure that he was right. Lund was sitting outside one of them. He was waiting there, just as he had outside the Dove. Fredrik thought about the limping policeman in the cemetery, about how convinced he’d been that Lund would strike again and again until somebody stopped him.

  The Dove first. Marie’s nursery school was on the list, and Lund could just as well be sitting there as anywhere else, like an animal did when it found food. Fredrik had driven the same route for almost four years, knew every house, every street sign, and he hated it. It looked like safety and habit, but was a slowly suffocating grief. He was home, but there would never be home.

  He parked a hundred meters away. In front of the gate stood a car labeled Security and security guards carrying batons, a bit farther away a police car with two uniformed police officers. It felt strange to sit outside the same school where he’d left his daughter six days ago, for the few hours between one thirty and five. If only he hadn’t taken her there! They were so late already. Marie had been nagging, and he felt guilty for sleeping for such a long time. If only he’d stayed at home, if only he had taken her by the hand and walked to town, bought her an ice cream in the harbor like they used to do. If only he’d told her that she, like the other kids, had to stay inside when the heat was so extreme. He sat in the car, waiting. He walked into the woods outside the gate and looked back and forth until he was convinced that Lund wasn’t nearby, wasn’t watching this nursery school.

  He started the car, backed out, drove toward the Grove nursery school, a few kilometers closer to town. He turned on the car radio, it was almost twelve thirty, the news. First, the plane crash outside Moscow, one hundred and sixteen dead, probably a mechanical problem, a Russian plane whose maintenance had been neglected. Then Marie. The hunt for her killer continued. A prosecutor appointed to lead the investigation was interviewed but didn’t have much to say. A police officer, the older one from the cemetery who wa
s apparently named Grens, loudly asked the reporters to disperse. And, finally, a forensic psychiatrist who’d examined Lund on several occasions warned that his behavior included compulsive repetition, because of an internal pressure that could only be satisfied by giving in to violent impulses.

  He stopped and searched the area around the Grove, then drove to the other side of town to the Park and the Creek nursery schools.

  Security services, police cars.

  Lund wasn’t there, hadn’t been there.

  Fredrik left Strängnäs, taking route 55 to Enköping. He drove fast—four addresses to go.

  He looked at the duffel bag. He didn’t hesitate.

  What was right was right.

  The treeless exercise yard was suddenly bearable. The rain had swept in over Aspsås prison and for a few hours dozens of inmates stripped to the waist in prison blue shorts and ran back and forth across the gravel, roaring. For a little while they didn’t have to squint or cower from the dust, or sweat profusely from every move they made.

  Last Thursday’s football match had continued, the second half, and the pot had doubled, ten thousand kronor. Full time and still tied. They lay down like last time, one team behind each goal, but now in the rain with their faces to the sky—immediate coolness.

  Tinyboy lay between Hilding and Skåne. He changed his position and those beside him followed suit, moving a bit farther away.

  “How the hell could you be so stupid, Skåne? How the hell could you double the pot when we never had a chance, not at all?”

  Skåne fidgeted, looked at Hilding, but received no support.

  “It’s . . . a draw. What are you talking about? It’s not like we lost.”

  “Not yet, you fucking junkie. Have any of us had the ball during this half?”

  He raised his head, looked around.

  “Is that right? Is there anyone here who’s done anything besides running and chasing? Extra time, dammit! Don’t you get that? We’ll keep chasing, and they’ll keep kicking the ball to each other.”

  Hilding stared up at the raindrops, finding it difficult to lie still, to keep his finger off the wound on his nose. He was worried, his thoughts far away from some lousy football game with a few thousand riding on it. He kept glancing at Skåne, trying to get his attention. They were the only ones who knew so far, and they were the only ones who knew Tinyboy well enough to know he was capable of killing that pervert.

  Skåne had had his six-hour release this morning. From seven to one. Permission to go to the city without guards. He’d fixed his brother’s car and hurried to Täby to see his woman. They’d had coffee in her kitchen and then almost timidly undressed each other, and afterward he’d lain still against her naked body and she had caressed his face and said that she’d been waiting, that she’d fantasized and longed for this and knew she could wait four more years. He’d stayed half an hour too long and driven faster than he should have into the city. There’d been a traffic jam at the entrance, and he’d lost his patience, parked the car behind a hot dog stand and continued on foot, ran to the bus on Oden Street and hopped off at Fleming Street, ran into the courthouse, where the officer had been slow as hell but finally found the goddamn sentence. Then he’d run back again, to the car and back to Aspsås. He’d made it back with seventeen minutes to spare on the prison clock.

  The sentence contained exactly what he’d feared. He’d returned to the unit just before the football game, told Tinyboy that after the final whistle he’d go through what he’d learned, what he’d already suspected: Håkan Axelsson had been convicted for possession of child pornography. Axelsson had been one of seven in a ring of pedophiles who streamed pictures and video of serious abuse online at a predetermined time. Bernt Lund had been one of the seven; two of the others had already been convicted and sat in the pervert unit at Aspsås. During the match, when for a moment they stood next to each other, Skåne had told Hilding what he knew, what he’d anticipated. Hilding had started tearing at his nose. He knew if Tinyboy found out any of this before Axelsson was moved, there would be an execution. And they didn’t want that, none of them did, an execution tightened security and legitimized extended searches. It would bring in a shitload of guards, and they’d turn cells upside down until they realized they weren’t going to find out a goddamn thing.

  Hilding shook off the gravel that the rain had glued to his body. Tinyboy snapped irritably.

  “Where the hell are you going? We’re still playing.”

  “To the crapper. We won’t start for a few minutes. I can’t take a shit out here. Right?”

  He walked toward the gray building and the door on the gable wall, opened it, and ran toward Axelsson’s cell. Empty. He ran into the john, into the shower, into the kitchen. Empty. He tore at his nose until it bled, and he ran on toward the weight room. He spent a few seconds outside, looking around, then went inside.

  There he lay. On his back on a bench, his hands wrapped around a barbell raised above his chest. He lowered it, raised it again. Bench-pressing eighty kilos. Hilding waited. Axelsson took a deep breath, lowered the metal bar again. With a few quick steps, Hilding arrived before the bar was pushed up completely. He grabbed it, putting the weight of his body onto the barbell and onto Axelsson, pushing it down toward his neck.

  “I’m not doing this because I like you.”

  Axelsson kicked his legs, turning red in the face, having trouble breathing.

  “What the hell is this about?”

  Hilding pushed the bar even harder against his throat.

  “Shut your fucking mouth, pervert!”

  Axelsson quit kicking, stopped resisting. Hilding reduced the pressure slightly.

  “I just talked to Skåne. He looked at your record today. You’re a pervert who fucks kids!”

  Axelsson was scared now. He couldn’t say anything, but his eyes showed he knew what this was about.

  “But this is your lucky day, pervert. You see, I don’t want any murders in this unit. It’s a pain in my ass. So I’m gonna give you one chance. In ten minutes I’m going to tell what I know to Tinyboy. If you’re still here when he finds out, you’ll be fucking lucky to make it out of here in an ambulance.”

  Axelsson’s red face drained of color and he started trembling, spoke forcefully, and tried kicking his way loose again.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Weren’t you listening? I don’t give a shit about you. But I don’t wanna have to deal with any murders.”

  “What the hell do I do? I serve time where they fucking put me.”

  Hilding pressed one last time against his neck. Axelsson coughed, gasped for breath.

  “If you want to survive this day, you better fucking listen. Understood?”

  Axelsson nodded.

  “I’m gonna leave now. Then you take your little pedophile ass over to the guards in this unit and ask to be put into solitary. Request voluntary isolation and tell them we have your records. But you better not say who warned you! Do you understand me?”

  Axelsson nodded, eagerly this time. Hilding stood over him, gave a short laugh, collecting all the saliva in his cheeks, moved his mouth, and stopped just above Axelsson’s face before slowly letting the spit trickle down.

  Grens didn’t want to go home. He was tired, had been sleeping in his office since Lund escaped, as he always did when something unusual happened. He was older now, he knew that, a gray-haired man approaching sixty who had a hard time keeping up with youngsters. His body was moving slower, his arms punching softer, but he still carried the same damn compulsion in his chest. That’s what kept him moving forward and that compulsion didn’t give a shit how many months had been taken from his life. It haunted him and only one answer would suffice: putting a fucking maniac behind bars. The power was there, but his thoughts were increasingly focused a few years ahead, on retirement, endings, death. He’d replaced a real life with this pretend one—he was his profession, and nothing else, no private life, not a father or grand
father or son. He was Detective Superintendent Grens, and he enjoyed the respect and dignity that often entailed but was frightened by how paltry it truly was, how alone he would be, the kind of loneliness that would not be chosen and, therefore, so much more brutal.

  He wasn’t going home this afternoon either. He would wander the corridors and sit in his office listening to Siw, and when the day ended, he’d lie on his sofa and sleep for a while, uneasily as usual, for four or five hours, until the light came back, the desire, the compulsion. A short walk now, when the air was clear and easy to breathe for a moment. He took his beret and walked out of the room, headed to the small park next door, the one with no name. He was about to close the door when Sven came running toward him.

  “Ewert, wait a minute.”

  He looked at his younger colleague, his thin face tense, his cheeks red.

  “You look stressed.”

  “I am stressed. I’ve run into a new problem.”

  Ewert pointed toward the end of the corridor, toward the exit.

  “I’m going out. Need air. If you want to talk, come with me.”

  They walked side by side, Ewert slowly, Sven impatiently, using short steps to maintain the same pace.

  “You had a problem.”

  “I did as we agreed.”

  Sven took a deep breath, looking for something to hold on to, somewhere to begin.

  “Get to the point, boy!”

  “Ågestam’s taxi theory. I called around to all the taxi companies in the Mälardalen region.”

  “And?”

  “I just talked to someone at Enköping Taxi.”

  They stepped out onto the pavement, choked with the exhaust of trash trucks, but Ewert breathed deeply, it had been a long time since air tasted this good.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “The problem is, I spoke with a very clever woman, who really knew the business inside and out—she claimed I’d already called and asked her the same questions. Early this morning.”