The Beast

by Anders Roslund

  'I did.'

  They walked across the grassy slope, keeping a space between them. Seventy metres to go before they were safely into the wood. Behind the first fir tree they reached out and found each other's hand. They walked on, holding hands tightly.

  'We've done all we could. At all levels of the service.'

  'Stop worrying.'

  'Environmental adjustment training. Pills. Group therapy. Person-to-person stuff.'

  'It wasn't about that, I mean, not about what you or the service had done or not done. It was television, for Christ's sake, a reality entertainment show. Point the camera at the culprit, strip him naked, make him sweat and lose his cool and jabber. Make him look shifty. Then the editorial people think it's a red-hot show and your average couch-potato enjoys every minute, because it lets him forget his own bloody awful life. He can laugh at the bureaucrat who's looking sad and stupid and dead ignorant. Screw them all. It's not about content and meaning, it's about scoring points, making people look weird.'

  'Nils, you don't see what I'm after. We did try, we threw everything we've got at Lund. What happened? He grabs the first chance he gets, makes mincemeat of two guards and runs off. Now he's on the loose some damned place. All he's after is getting to toss off on dead little girls.'

  They were out of the wind now, following a path that wound its way through the dense, untidy forest of fir and spruce to the water-tower on the hill. It was a two-and-a- half-kilometre round-trip. Walking briskly, they'd have half an hour to themselves behind a shed near the tower; now and then they made love there. Few walkers came that way and were easily spotted because the path was the only possible route. Everywhere else the forest formed an impenetrable wall.

  Nils clutched Lennart's hand harder, pulling him towards the shed.

  'Come on.'

  'Listen, I can't. I'm really sorry. I said different, I know, but I can't now. I needed to talk, quite simply. Freely, away from the damned camera. That's all. Talk to you, Nils. You're so sane. Please help me. Explain things to me.'

  Nils stroked his temples, then his hair.

  'My beloved.'

  Lennart closed his eyes, feeling Nils's breath as he spoke.

  'Listen, it's over now, done. Finished. No one can hope to understand people like Bernt Lund and that's what makes him so dangerous. To us, but also a danger to himself too. Sometimes it's impossible to defend oneself against another human being. They are there. Man is the only species of mammal capable of such acts against itself, of cold-blooded killings, to the point of extinction. We're worse than animals, more like demons, uniquely prepared to self-destruct. It's incomprehensible, but true.'

  They held each other.

  Someone was walking along the path, and was about to pass the shed without noticing them, tricked as usual by the wall of spiky conifers. Lennart clung to Nils, who hugged him tight, and was overwhelmed by a sudden wave of longing, of desire for Karin, of wanting her body. He could see her thighs, her breasts. He felt for her, and missed her.

  They both wanted to tug at the foil wrapping, their probing fingers colliding, fumbling.

  Inside the foil was a square piece of blackish-brown, glassy resin. They had ordered top-class pressed kif. It gave best sucks, each single drag kicked like a fucking horse.

  It had been hard putting up with waiting for it, and once they knew it was there, they had longed to telescope the empty spaces of Aspsås, the hours of waiting.

  They had ordered from the Greek, pooling enough dough to pay for half the order, which meant owing more than was really healthy. They should've kept their heads down and stuck to ordinary compressed Moroccan or even green mix, but Hilding had been eager, nagged and pleaded and brown-nosed until Dickybird caved in. When the pure hashish order had been placed all they could do was sit around waiting for three days.

  The Greek had delivered. Glowing with satisfaction, they held the piece of hash close to the shower-room lamp and admired the shiny fragments.

  'Hey! Spot the glass?'

  'Course I fucking spotted it.'

  'Looks like good shit.'

  Hilding produced a lighter and handed it to Dickybird, who used the flame to heat the foil from underneath. About one minute usually did the trick. The flat brown lump softened enough to be kneaded and shaped with his fingertips. Hilding had brought tobacco. Three-quarters baccy to one Turkish worked just fine.

  'Smells good.'

  'Fucking well does.'

  Hilding made himself tall, stood on tiptoes and pushed on one of the ceiling tiles, the one nearest the lamp. It gave easily and he pulled out a corn-pipe. He handed it to Dickybird, who scraped the bowl, packed it, lit the mix and dragged to heat it through. Then he had another drag before handing the pipe to Hilding, who put it in his mouth in a hurry.

  Every round they had two drags each, handing the pipe over in silence. The only sounds came from a couple of dripping taps. One of the lamps kept blinking. Drip blink drip blink drip blink. It was great stuff, better than last time.

  'Fuck it, Wildboy Hilding. Fuck it.'

  Dickybird inhaled a couple more times, then held out the pipe and giggled.

  'D'you know, Wildboy? We're in this fucking shower- room and smoking great pot and don't think about this place. Like that it's the best place for doing the nonces.'

  Dickybird kept giggling. Baffled, Hilding looked at him.

  'What are you on about?'

  'We didn't ever check it out.'

  'The fucking shower-room, is that what you're on about? So what? Fuck's sake, we've whipped any number of nonces and rapists and faggots in here. They say that in the States the cons set on each other in the shit-houses, right there between the crappers. What's so special?'

  Dickybird couldn't stop giggling. That was what usually happened once he got started on good pot, he felt kind of childish and then as randy as hell, though in the end the images would come back and start scaring him; he'd be back with all that shit about Per and his cock and getting hold of that ice-pick and Per's screaming and his bleeding balls.

  He drew deeply on the pipe, holding on to it to tease Hilding, patting the lad's head with his other hand.

  'Wildboy, you don't get it, do you? Poor sap. You see, this ain't about whipping, it's about something else.'

  Hilding reached out for the pipe, but Dickybird held on to it stubbornly.

  'Listen. Next time we get one of these beasts on the unit we'll lie in wait for the bastard, hang on until he's in the shower. When he's in there, water going all over him, then you start a racket outside in the yard, so all the duty screws go pounding off to deal with it.'

  Hilding wasn't in the mood for this stuff. He tried to get at the pipe again.

  'Fuck it, Dickybird, it's my turn.'

  Dickybird had another fit of the giggles, threw the pipe in the air, caught it and handed it to Hilding, who dragged deeply, twice.

  'I told you to listen. So, the nonce is in the shower. I go in first, or Skåne, anyway, someone kicks the freak in the balls to get him down and we start giving it to him. Then we cut his throat. And then we butcher the stiff, carve him into small, small pieces. Break any fucking leftover bits of bone and unscrew the crapper and push all the bits down the pipe. And then we fix the seat on again and pull the chain. Flush the bits down. Use the shower to wash the blood away!'

  By now Hilding had forgotten about smoking, though he still held on to the pipe. He looked uneasy. His face was usually empty, uncertain, almost mask-like, but now it expressed something that was disgust mixed with pleasure. He sensed Dickybird's hate, it was like a drug trip and it was exciting to hate along with him. It was just that somehow Dickybird had slipped too close to the edge. Hilding remembered when the last perv had got his comeuppance in the gym, fucking dead meat, he'd been beaten over and over with bells and discs until he stopped twitching.

  'Fuck it, Dickybird, you're kidding.'

  Dickybird grabbed the pipe, drew happily.

  'No kidding. Why the fuck
should I? I'd like to try it. Test it on the first beast who turns up. I want to have a go, feel what it's like to jab with the ice-pick and get it in and twist it.'

  Lennart Oscarsson was in a hurry. He had spent far too long behind the shed by the water-tower. It had been hard to leave, Nils hadn't wanted to let go of him and he had not wanted to leave his lover either. He swept past the guard, bloody Bergh again, didn't they have anyone else?

  Lennart was on his way to A Unit, which housed twenty sex offenders, all sentenced for gross acts of violation, men who couldn't be placed with normal prisoners. This was the type of inmate that is always found on the lowest rung of the prison hierarchy, the type that breeds hatred, lust to inflict pain. If I torment one of them, I don't have to torment myself.

  Bergh waved. Then he did a thumbs-up, possibly an attempt at irony. Or maybe he was too much of an idiot to work out that for a few minutes of that news programme, Lennart had been stripped naked on camera. He couldn't be bothered to do or say anything in response.

  Hurrying along the first corridor, he decided to turn right, walk upstairs to H Unit. By taking a short cut through H he'd gain quite a bit of distance and a few extra minutes. He took two steps at a time, thinking about Karin and the lie he'd have ready for her at breakfast tomorrow, and about Nils, who had begged him to break free from his marriage, Nils, who did that every time they made love, saying that he would become Lennart's new family, and then about Åke Andersson and Ulrik Berntfors, two men he had worked with for many years and who, for some reason, must have opened the rear door of the van and allowed out one of the most dangerous people in the country, Bernt Lund, now at liberty to go where he liked, full of obscure desires, looking for little girls. Then facing the media came back into his mind, the press conference he had spent several years preparing himself for, but which had turned into a rape.

  Not, of course, that anyone had touched him, but the humiliation inflicted by the camera and the mike just felt so bad. had turned up believing that he was to be a participant, not stripped and shown off. It took a while before it dawned on him that he was simply being used.

  Only a few waking hours had passed of this day. How bloody complicated life could be.

  Sometimes he felt too weary to carry on. He was losing the race against time, middle age was catching up and soon old age would. He had found no way to slow down and reflect quietly, he seemed unable to calm down, to tell himself his task was completed, he was done, somebody else could take over. But no, it was forever must do this in order to get on with that, and then it was the next thing. He wanted to close his eyes and wait for it all to stop, he wanted to do just what he did when he was little, close his eyes and withdraw until whatever it was had been decided and done because Mum and Dad were at home and had fixed everything.

  He unlocked the door to H Unit, knowing perfectly well that everyone, colleagues and inmates alike, disapproved of what he was doing, too much bloody pointless running about, but he felt he had to use the short cut this time. He saw a couple of colleagues, couldn't recall their names but said hello vaguely, nodded at some of the lads who were playing cards in the TV corner.

  He passed the shower-room door and just outside it almost ran into Dickybird Lindgren and his seedy little sidekick. Stoned out of their heads, both of them. Blankly staring eyes, fluttering movements, there was even hash in the air, wafting out from the showers.

  The sidekick mumbled Hi, Hitler. Dickybird Lindgren was giggling uncontrollably, wanted to shake, offered congratulations, fancy being on the telly. Lennart ignored the hand held out towards him. Lindgren had beaten one of his charges to death in the gym, no question; he was certain who had done it, and so were his colleagues. Sadly, no one had seen or heard anything at all, and even in prison, you get nowhere without evidence.

  He hurried on, one more locked door, then across the yard to the next building, up two flights. He was in his own territory, the sex offender reserve.

  They were waiting for him, lined up in the meeting room.

  'I'm sorry I'm late. Far too late. It's been one of those days.'

  They all smiled, sympathetically he supposed. The television set in the lobby had been on when he passed through, so they had presumably watched him. Five new trainees with their pens and notebooks, due to start work tomorrow among the paedophiles and rapists in the special units, waiting for the induction talk seated at the standard-issue meeting-room table.

  The first day of their new life.

  Beast.

  This was the word he always began with, writing it on the shiny whiteboard with a solvent-smelling green pen.

  B-E-A-S-T.

  Silence. All five fiddled with their pens, trying to decide the pro and cons: do I write that down? Is note-taking seen as a good thing? Or would I make an ass of myself? The beginners were feeling lost and he didn't help them. He continued with his talk, now and then turning to the board to note down a key word, or a few figures.

  'Nonces, beasts, are kept in two units here. They stay for two to ten years, roughly, depending on how bad the act was. How sick they are.'

  Silence. This time it lasted longer than usual.

  'In this sad little country of ours there were fifty-five thousand criminal convictions last year. I don't know how people fit it all in. Of that lot, five hundred and forty-seven were for sexual offences. The courts handed out a prison sentence in less than half of these cases.'

  Some of them were happily taking notes. Figures were easier to deal with. Statistics don't require judgement.

  'Since we're all aware that Swedish prisons accommodate about five thousand inmates at any one time, the current lot of two hundred and twelve sex offenders shouldn't cause any strain on the system. It is only in the order of four per cent, if you think about it, or one in every twenty-five. But these men do create trouble. Each and every one is a problem, because each one is hated, and a target for acts of aggression. That's why they're put in separate units. Here at Aspsås, for instance. But there's a but. Now and then we don't have a free place and then any new customers must be hidden in one of the normal units. And if, or when, the rest of the so-called straight villains get to know that there's a nonce around in the unit for some reason - yes, it has happened here - then we're all in deep trouble. They'll keep beating him up until we move in and take him away.'

  A man in his forties, presumably retrained from some other job, put his hand up like a schoolboy.

  'Now, that word, beast. You wrote it on the board, you use it, and other words of that kind.'

  'And?'

  'Is it important?'

  'I couldn't say. But we use these words here. In a day or two, you will too. We know what it is about. Bestial acts.'

  Lennart paused. He knew what would come next and wondered who'd start. Maybe the young woman sitting near him, she looked the part. The younger they were, the longer they had ahead of them, so they were the most hopeful for ways to bring about change. They had yet to contend with time, which saps energy and strength but, by way of compensation, builds up experience and adaptability.

  But no, it was the re-trainee again.

  'Do you think you've got the right to be that cynical?' He was upset. 'I don't get it. So far, my training has reinforced what I knew already, which is that people are individuals, and must not be objectified. It alarms me that you, my prospective boss, should express such views.'

  Lennart sighed. He had played his role in these performances many times before. If he met them later on in their careers, a few years older and in a new job, they'd joke about it and agree that it was perfectly reasonable for a beginner to have such unfulfilled ambitions.

  'Look, your views are your own,' he said. 'Call me cynical if you get off on that, but first tell me just one thing: did you come here, to the sex unit at Aspsås, because you want to work with nonces and deobjectify them, because it's your dream to make them better people?'

  The man, due to start in A Unit tomorrow, quietly put his hand down.
>
  'Did you say something?'

  'No.'

  'So, the reason you came here was…?'

  'I had to.'

  Lennart tried to hide his satisfaction. His was the leading part in this piece of theatre and he knew how the play would end. He looked at his pupils one at a time. Everyone had reacted somehow, sulked or tried to find new numbers to write down or shifted uneasily in their seats.

  'All of you, then. Who has applied to work in the sex units at Aspsås? Of your own free will, that is. Honestly now.'

  He knew the answer. After seventeen years he had yet to meet one single colleague who had dreamed of a successful career among the paedophiles in A and B Units. You were told to do time here, and you applied elsewhere immediately to get away from here. Lennart had agreed to the head warder's post, attracted by the hitch in salary and the hope of using his seniority to bounce into a boss position somewhere else. He walked slowly behind his five trainees, intending to leave the question and the possible answers for them to think about. Once they were sure, they might accept their placement during the coming months.