Pen 33

by Anders Roslund

  The Kronoberg jail cell was one hundred and seventy centimeters wide and two hundred and fifty centimeters long. A narrow bed, a small table beside it, a sink he could wash himself in every evening and piss in at night. Fredrik wore a blue-gray uniform that hung on his body, KVV in capital letters on the sleeves and legs. Completely restricted—no newspapers, no radio, no television. No visits apart from the interrogating officer, prosecutor, his defense lawyer, the chaplain, and the prison staff. Fresh air for an hour each day, a prescribed break in a steel cage on the roof of the building. The heat stood still there, and, so far, he’d always asked to end his fresh air after less than half an hour and go back down again.

  Now, he lay in bed, thinking of nothing. He had tried to eat. The tray with his plate and juice cup was on the floor. Everything tasted like shit, and he’d put it down after just a few bites. He hadn’t really eaten since Enköping. Whatever he got down came back up again, as if his stomach were in search of peace.

  The walls around him were empty and gray. There was nothing to look at, nothing to focus on. He closed his eyes, and the fluorescent light shone through his eyelids.

  Suddenly, there was a creak from the door. Someone was looking at him through the hatch.

  “Steffansson! You wanted to see a priest?”

  Fredrik looked at the hatch, two pairs of eyes staring in.

  “My name is Fredrik. I’m not a last name.”

  The hatch was closed, but reopened again soon.

  “Whatever you want, Fredrik. You wanted to see a priest?”

  “I wanted to see anyone who isn’t wearing a uniform or locking my door.”

  The guard sighed.

  “Well, what do you want? She’s standing here beside me.”

  “Well, there you go! Otherwise, I’d think the point of you keeping me here was to isolate me completely from the outside world. For some damn reason you seem to think I’m a danger to society if I’m free, right? And now that I’m sitting here, you think everyone else is a danger to me. Do you even know who you’re looking at?”

  He sat up in bed, kicked the tray. The cup of orange juice fell over, yellowish liquid spreading all over the floor. The guard stayed silent. He could see that the prisoner was close to collapsing. He’d seen it before. They often became aggressive, loud, threatening, just before they collapsed in a heap and pissed themselves.

  Fredrik splashed his foot in the liquid.

  “You have no idea. You’re looking at a man whose crime is that he willfully executed a child killer. A child killer who would have fucked and butchered another five-year-old if he’d had the chance. Now it’s your job to guard the man who may have saved the life of your child. Do you like that job? Do you feel like you’re really making a contribution to society?”

  He picked up the tray and threw it against the door. The guard shouted, closed the hatch just before the tray clattered against it.

  It took a minute. Then they were there again, those staring eyes.

  “I should call for reinforcements. What you just did qualifies you for the restraints. But I’ll answer your question.”

  Fredrik waited. The guard swallowed, hesitated.

  “No. My answer is no. I don’t think what I’m doing at the moment is making a contribution to society. I don’t think you should be sitting here at all. You were right to kill him. But now you are sitting here. It’s that simple. So I’ll ask my question again. Do you want to see the priest or not?”

  He was on one side, and the others were out there. Hurried images. That closed door, he hated it. Instead of a hatch, this one had three small windows with thick, blurry glass like you’d find in a bathroom, and what he could see through those windows wasn’t quite clear—his father and Frans in the living room, the TV on, Pappa screaming at Frans to take his clothes off, hitting him, Fredrik could just make out the hand and Frans’s naked body through the distorted glass. Frans didn’t make a sound. Their mother had reported him and said that Frans deserved a beating for something minor, for coming home late, or spilling a glass of milk, or leaving the light on, and then she’d disappeared. She sat in the kitchen drinking tea and smoking Camels, while their father hit and hit and hit until Frans screamed defiantly that he wasn’t hitting hard enough, that he could take more, he could hardly feel it. Then, their father stopped.

  The closed door. A guard with staring eyes.

  “One more time. Then we’ll leave. What do you want?”

  Fredrik closed his eyes.

  “Let the priest in.”

  The door opened. He didn’t understand.

  “Rebecka?”

  “Fredrik.”

  “Why you?”

  “I’ve ministered here before. Now I offered my services. I thought you might want to see me, since you don’t get to meet any outsiders. Is that okay?”

  “Come in.”

  He was ashamed. Because he was sitting in a four-square-meter cell with a gray prison uniform hanging off him, because he’d just pissed in a sink, because there was juice spilled all over the floor, because of his tantrum at the guard. And because he started to weep with joy as soon as she sat down on his bed.

  She hugged him. Stroked his hair, his cheek.

  “I understand. No need to apologize. I’ve seen people react worse than this to locked rooms.”

  He looked at her, trying to smile.

  “Do you think what I did was wrong?”

  She sat in silence for a long time, considering her answer.

  “Yes. I think so. It’s not your right to decide between life and death.”

  Fredrik nodded. He’d expected that answer.

  “You know what I did? Saved the lives of other children? If I hadn’t killed Lund, they’d be dead by now. You know that. Would that have been better?”

  She took her time again. She’d known the man next to her since he was a child. She’d buried his daughter just over a week ago. Her words meant more than others, her responsibility was greater.

  “It’s a difficult question, Fredrik. I don’t know . . .”

  She broke off.

  Suddenly, Fredrik started to hyperventilate. She put her hand on his chest.

  He was shaking all over.

  “I’m so sorry. I can’t help it. It’s so meaningless.”

  The funeral. The cemetery. The cold floor. The sound of the organ bouncing between the walls. The coffin, such a tiny coffin, so short and so narrow. With flowers on it. Rebecka had been standing there. Right next to it, saying something. Marie had been inside. He hadn’t seen her, the casket had been closed, but they’d made her look nice, combed her hair and put her in a dress.

  He took a couple of deep breaths.

  “Marie no longer exists. She can’t feel. She can’t see. She can’t smell. She can’t hear. Not now. Not since. She doesn’t exist, not in any way. Don’t you understand? Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

  “You know I don’t agree with you. But I understand why you see it that way.”

  The hatch on the closed door opened again. The staring eyes.

  “It’s noisy in there. Is everything all right?”

  Rebecka raised her hand to the door.

  “Everything is fine.”

  “Well then, shout if you need something.”

  Fredrik was still lying down. His breathing was heavy, but he wasn’t shaking anymore.

  “When I realized that Bernt Lund was planning more murders, I decided then. I was going to shoot him. Kill him. Stop him before he could do it again.”

  He was searching for the words.

  “You all think this was about revenge. But this had nothing to do with revenge. I died with Marie. When I decided to kill him, I was alive again.”

  He stood up, hit the table with his hand, then bent forward, slamming his head repeatedly against the tabletop.

  He was bleeding heavily from his forehead.

  “I killed him. What should I live for now?”

  The door opened.
The guard stepped into the cell along with his colleague—same uniform, same facial expressions. They passed Rebecka, approached Fredrik, took each of his arms and forced him away from the table. They pressed him down hard against the bed and held him there until he stopped throwing his head forward into the empty air.

  It rained on the day the trial began. It was only the second day of precipitation, a gentle rain in an unusually hot summer, the kind of rain that waits as the day dawns and then patiently lingers, and continues to linger, until evening, until darkness.

  The line had been long since early in the morning. It was the most high-profile Swedish trial in the last few years, and it would be held at the Stockholm Court House, in the old courtroom there. Long before nine o’clock journalists and the public started crowding into the old stairwell of the stone foyer. The number of spaces was limited to four rows and, with the exception of a few large media companies that had reserved seats, the spaces were first come, first served when the doors opened.

  The coverage was extensive. Uniformed and plainclothes police officers stood next to the security companies’ hired staff. There was the sense of a threat, the faceless citizen. In the weeks that had passed since Lund’s escape and murder, frustration, anger, and a shared hate of pedophiles had given rise to a collective purpose among those who usually did no more than observe or comment. All of this was present, waiting, preparing, bubbling.

  Micaela stood at the front. She’d arrived just after seven o’clock. It had rained a bit more by then, was almost cold. She hadn’t seen Fredrik in almost two weeks, since Marie’s funeral.

  He had disappeared to what she now knew had been his pursuit of Lund. Then to the Kronoberg jail with full restrictions.

  She was scared.

  It was her first time in a courtroom, and the man she loved would be sitting a few meters in front of her, charged with murder, interrogated by a prosecutor who was asking for life imprisonment.

  She’d had a family. Fredrik, who’d slept next to her at night, whom she’d learned to hold on to. Marie, who’d almost felt like her own, whom she fed and dressed and cared for. More her family than anything else she’d ever had.

  Just a few weeks and it had all ended.

  She smiled the best she could to the officer who searched the contents of her bag. He didn’t smile back. She then had to go back and forth through the metal detector three times to get it to stop beeping. She’d had a key in her jacket pocket, one of Marie’s bicycle keys. She got a good seat, third row, just behind the news agency and two TV stations. She recognized a few of the reporters, the ones who were usually reporting from some exotic locale. Now they sat taking notes on small pads with short sentences. She tried to decipher what they were writing, but it was illegible—she could see that both had written the time at the top, and that they continued to put the time next to each new note they took. A little farther away sat two sketch artists. Their pencils flew over the white sheets of paper, the contours of walls, floors, chairs. They were sketching the background, and soon they’d fill it with people.

  She saw Agnes behind her and to the side, in the last row. She turned around for a moment too long and was discovered. Agnes nodded, and she nodded back politely. It was strange that they’d never spoken to each other. She had answered the phone a few times when Agnes asked for Marie, just a short Can I speak to Marie? and a short Here she comes, that was all, three years of communication. Farther away sat the two police officers who’d questioned her, the children, their parents, and anyone else who’d been in the vicinity of the Dove on that day. The older one, the one who was in charge, who limped; the younger one, who was more patient and seemed calm, a little religious. They saw her too, and both nodded. She nodded back.

  It was packed. More people were waiting outside, she could hear protests from some of the people who hadn’t made it in. Someone booed at the guards, one person was calling them fascist pigs.

  There was a door behind the podium. She didn’t see it until it opened, and they walked in one by one, in single file. First the judge, a woman, van Balvas. Then the lay judges, she’d never seen them before but had read about them in the newspaper, all of them older, local politicians moving away from their everyday occupations. The prosecutor, Lars Ågestam, whom she’d seen on TV, a small, pompous ass, the precocious type just a few years older than her, who made her feel very young. The defense lawyer, Kristina Björnsson, looked as confident and as calm as she had when they’d met in her office near Humlegården.

  Fredrik came last. Two prison guards beside him.

  They’d dressed him in a suit—she’d never seen him in a tie before. He looked pale. As scared as she was.

  He kept his eyes on the floor, avoided looking out over the courtroom.

  VAN BALVAS (VB): Your full name.

  FREDRIK STEFFANSSON (FS): Nils Fredrik Steffansson.

  VB: Address?

  FS: 28 Hamn Street. Strängnäs.

  VB: Do you know why we’re here today?

  FS: What a fucking question.

  VB: I’ll repeat the question. Do you know why we’re here today?

  FS: Yes.

  She smoked three cigarettes during the break. One of the journalists had placed himself beside her in the depressing waiting room with dark heavy oak paneling on the walls and hard, worn wooden benches, somehow authoritative, placed in the middle of the room. He’d asked her how Fredrik was doing, and Micaela replied that she didn’t know, that they weren’t allowed to talk to each other, that she lived with Fredrik, but wasn’t considered close enough to be a visitor, and then when he opened up his pack of southern European cigarettes with no filters, he’d offered her one and she’d accepted. She knew that Fredrik hated it when she smoked. It had been several months since the last time, but now she smoked them rapidly, one after another, and felt dizzy from how strong they were. Agnes was standing by herself a bit farther away drinking from a bottle of mineral water. They avoided looking at each other. There was no reason to seek each other out. What would be the point? They had no common reference points. A young, thin-haired journalist sat on one of the wooden benches, headphones on, taking notes from a recording. Beside him was his elder, one of the journalists she recognized. He was looking at sketches made of a moment in the courtroom: Fredrik gesturing with his hand and the prosecutor showing a picture of a nursery school in Enköping, taken from the very spot where Fredrik had taken his shot.

  LARS ÅGESTAM (LÅ): Fredrik Steffansson, I don’t understand. I don’t understand why you didn’t alert the police officers who were less than a few hundred meters in front of you.

  FS: I didn’t have time.

  LÅ: Didn’t have time?

  FS: If two specially trained prison guards couldn’t take down Bernt Lund when he was in body chains, how would two half-asleep police officers be able to capture an armed Bernt Lund?

  LÅ: You didn’t even try to contact them?

  FS: I couldn’t risk him getting away with another little girl.

  LÅ: I still don’t understand.

  FS: No?

  LÅ: I don’t understand why you had to kill Bernt Lund.

  FS: What is it that’s so damn hard to understand?

  VB: Mr. Steffansson, please sit down.

  FS: Didn’t you hear what I said? You had already proved that you were unable to keep him locked up. That you were unable to treat him for his problem. That you couldn’t even capture him after he murdered Marie. What more do I need to explain?

  VB: I repeat, Mr. Steffansson, would you please sit down? Ms. Björnsson, can you please assist me?

  KRISTINA BJÖRNSSON (KB): Fredrik, calm down. If you want to make yourself understood, you have to stay here.

  FS: Can you get rid of them?

  KB: When you calm down, the guards will sit down again.

  Their eyes met only once, after an hour of opening arguments, during the prosecutor’s first examination. He’d been forced down into his chair after a fit of rage, and once he wa
s sitting he turned around, looked at her and Agnes, a faint smile. She was positive that he tried to smile. She’d brought her hand to her mouth, blowing him a kiss. She could feel it in her gut again, how much she missed him, how he sat there dressed in a suit and tie, his face pale. He was on his way away from her.

  LÅ: May I remind you, Fredrik, that Sweden is one of many countries that does not have the death penalty.

  FS: If he had been arrested, if the police managed it, he would have been sentenced to psychiatric care. It’s even easier to escape from that.

  LÅ: Really?

  FS: If Bernt Lund had been arrested, we would only have postponed the inevitable. He was going to kill more children.

  LÅ: And so you chose to act as the police, prosecutor, judge, and executioner?

  FS: You choose to misunderstand.

  LÅ: Not at all.

  FS: I’ll say it again. I didn’t kill him because I wanted to punish him. I killed him because he was very dangerous as long as he was alive, what you would do with a mad dog.

  LÅ: Mad dog?

  FS: You put it down so it won’t keep putting people in danger. Bernt Lund was a mad dog. I put him down.

  She lingered long after each hearing. She hoped he’d be moved past her, so she could see him, meet him. She sat outside different exits, waiting outside various entrance doors, but she never saw the prison guards and never saw him.

  He’d stopped shaving after the first day of the trial. He no longer wore a tie. It was as if he didn’t care anymore, as if he were giving up. Their eyes met sometimes during each session. He turned around, and she tried to look calm, like she knew everything would turn out well.

  Agnes no longer came, the occasional journalist had disappeared, and the two detectives took turns sitting there. Micaela talked a bit to the younger one, Sundkvist, he was nice, softer than police officers usually are.

  After the trial ended each day, she went back to Strängnäs, to the home she shared with Fredrik.

  She had difficulty sleeping at night.