The Beast

by Anders Roslund

  He stopped by the window, turning his back to the meeting room. The sun was high in the sky and it hadn't rained for a long time. Clouds of dust rose from the exercise yard, where the inmates were walking or jogging alongside the barbed-wire fence or playing football. In a far corner he spotted two men strolling very slowly, with oddly jerky movements. It was Lindgren and his henchman, obviously still too high to walk normally.

  * * *

  Micaela had left early. He must have been asleep. Night after night he performed the same ritual of listening to the sounds coming through the window until the town slowly started to wake up, the noises made by the first newspaper boys, the first lorries. Then, at about half past five, he fell asleep. His body gave in at last, exhausted by the restless hours when his mind had been crowded with thoughts. Suspended in empty space, he dreamed on until late in the morning.

  Vague mental images of the morning; Micaela lying naked on him and him not responding, her whispering you boring old thing, kissing his cheek, leaving him for the shower; Marie's room on the other side of the bathroom wall, the hissing of water through the pipes awakening her and David; Micaela making them all breakfast while he stayed put, his legs refusing to get him out of bed, then slowly slipping back into that isolated space and dreaming again.

  At eleven o'clock he was woken by the shrieks and yells of the creatures in one of Marie's videos and finally got up.

  He must start sleeping at night. He couldn't carry on like this.

  Couldn't.

  He no longer did any work, and he didn't engage with the people close to him. The morning used to be his best time for writing, either at home or in his writer's den on Arnö Island. Not any more. Marie had learned to amuse herself in the mornings. Thank God, Micaela worked in Marie's nursery school and had persuaded her colleagues that it was fine for the child not to turn up until after lunch, day after day.

  But he felt so ashamed, like an alcoholic who's promised eternal sobriety in the evening and wakes up with a hangover the morning after. And his head ached.

  Tomorrow would be different.

  'Hello, Daddy.'

  His lovely little daughter. He lifted her up.

  'Hello, sweetheart. Am I getting a morning kiss?'

  Marie pressed her moist lips against his cheek.

  'David's gone now.'

  'Has he?'

  'His daddy came to pick him up.'

  But they know I'm a responsible person, he thought, they know me. Oh, never mind. He shrugged and put Marie down.

  'Have you had anything to eat?'

  'Micaela gave us things.'

  'But that was hours ago. Aren't you hungry?'

  'I want to eat in school.'

  How long did they keep the food for the children? It was quarter past one now. Ten minutes to get dressed, five minutes to get there if they took the car.

  'So you shall. Let's get dressed.'

  Fredrik pulled on a pair of jeans and a white shirt. A bit warm for a hot day, but he felt he looked silly in shorts, his legs were so pale. Marie came running to show him a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

  'Fine, that's nice. And which shoes?'

  'The red ones.'

  He put them on her feet and fastened the metal buckles with some kind of buttons underneath.

  Ready to go.

  The phone rang.

  'Daddy. The phone!'

  'Leave it. We must go.'

  'Wait.'

  Marie ran to pick up the phone in the kitchen, standing on tiptoe in her shiny red shoes to reach. Her face lit up when she heard who it was.

  'Daddy, it's Mummy!'

  He nodded, and listened while Marie told a long story about the Big Bad Wolf and how it chased the pigs but they won anyway, and how they'd run out of bath foam except they hadn't, because she knew where there was another bottle, two bottles, on the bottom shelf in the cupboard. She was laughing most of the time. Then she gave the receiver a smacking kiss and handed it to him.

  'It's for you. Mummy wants to talk.'

  His mind was still too drowsy to separate the woman's voice he heard now from his body's memory of the naked Micaela. The voice belonged to Agnes, a woman he had once desired more than anyone else and who had asked him to leave her; her voice and the sensation of Micaela's young body drifted together and merged, and he felt slightly dizzy and breathless. Then he had a strong erection and turned away, Marie mustn't see it.

  'Yes?'

  'When are you turning up?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Marie is with me today.'

  'No she isn't. It's not until Monday. We swapped, remember?'

  'We did nothing of the sort.'

  He was too tired. Not now. Not today.

  'Agnes, this is too much. I'm tired and in a hurry. I won't argue, Marie is just next to me.'

  He handed the receiver to Marie, at the same time twirling his hands in the air. It was their special sign for being in a hurry.

  'Mummy, I can't. I'm late for school.'

  Agnes was too good a mother to show Marie how irritated she was. She always put Marie's interests first and he loved her for it.

  'Bye, Mummy. Must go now.'

  She didn't quite manage to put the receiver back and it crashed against the top of the microwave oven. He caught hold of it.

  'There, sweetheart. Let's go!'

  He caught sight of the kitchen clock. They could still be there by half past one and they would let her stay until quarter past five. It meant she would get her lunch, though a bit late, and then she could play outside for a bit in the afternoon. It would feel almost like a whole day and she'd be pleased when he picked her up.

  * * *

  Half past one. Sven stared at the green alarm clock on Ewert's desk. Technically, he had been off duty for two hours. The bottles of wine and the gateau were waiting for him in the car. He was ready to go home, he wanted to be with Anita and Jonas, have a nice meal with them. It was his fortieth, after all.

  Sven felt that working for the Metropolitan Police was much less important now than he used to think. Once, not that long ago, he wouldn't have hesitated to work on his wedding night, even to divorce, rather than compromise about taking on the late shifts.

  He had begun to confide in Ewert how he felt now, especially during the last year, when they had become closer. Sven had tried to explain his totally out-of-order indifference about which moron had carried out which moronic offence, and whether it was that one or some other useless bugger who was arrested for it. Tough. Shit happens. He was a man in his middle age but ready for retirement, he was bored with the detecting and the caring. All he wanted to do was things like relaxing over breakfast in the garden, taking long walks on the beach and being there for Jonas when he came running home from school with his young life in his backpack.

  Twenty years of work done, twenty-five more to go. It practically made him hyperventilate, just thinking of that unbearable passage of time inside dull police stations, among the files of incomplete bloody awful investigations. When he was finally allowed to retire, Jonas would be thirty-two. Fuck's sake! What would they say to each other then?

  Ewert understood, even though he had no family and his time in uniform, for him, was his entire life. He ate, drank, breathed police work. Even so, he too had felt that it was meaningless, but, worse luck for him, having made policing part of his being meant he would cease to exist when it ended. He understood all right, but couldn't be bothered with his insights.

  'Ewert.'

  'Yes.'

  'I want to go home.'

  Ewert had gone down on his knees, collecting the scattered rubbish from his second go at the wastepaper basket. Mushy pieces of banana peel had left stains on the pale brownish carpet.

  'I know you do. And so you will. As soon as we've got Lund.'

  His head popped up over the edge of the desk, looking at the alarm clock.

  'It's been six and a half hours now and we still know bugger all. Nil. Looks like you'l
l have to wait for your birthday cake.'

  'Care For My Heart', originally called 'Pick Up the Pieces', with choir and orchestra, recorded in Sweden, 1963. Siw Malmqvist, her third mixed tape. On the box, an out- of-focus photograph of Siw, beaming at the admiring camera.

  'I took that picture, did you know that? In the Kristianstad Palais, back in 1972,.'

  He bowed to Sven, made a sweeping gesture with one arm.

  'Would you like to dance?'

  Then he turned round and began a solo dance. Strange to behold, the tough old policeman with his limp, weaving round his desk to the tune of early sixties folk pop.

  They used Sven's car. The box with the gateau and the carrier bag with the bottles were pushed away on the rear window shelf. The heatwave had emptied the centre of the capital, anyone who could, got away, longing for parks, beaches, open water, a breeze. The hot dark tarmac was unresponsive, everything bounced off it, even breath.

  They were heading for the E18 route north-westwards out of town. Sven drove fast, past two lights on amber, then two on red, and the few cars waiting for green hooted angrily every time he ignored the signals. A national alert was on, two dozen constables from the City Police were at their beck and call, but still they hadn't learned one single new thing.

  'He licks their feet, you know.'

  Ewert, staring straight ahead, had broken the silence in the car. Sven shivered, almost slipping out of the overtaking lane and into a bus.

  'Never seen anything like it. I've seen raped children, murdered children, even children tortured with sharp metal objects, but this… never. Lying there on the concrete floor, looking as if they'd been thrown there, covered in muck and blood, but with perfectly clean feet. The medic confirmed that their feet were coated in saliva, lots of it. He had been licking them for minutes on end, probably before and after killing them.'

  Sven drove faster. The bottle bag slipped about on its shelf, rattling insistently.

  'The shoes too. Their clothes were in neat piles, a few centimetres apart, shoes last. A pair of pink leather shoes and a pair of white trainers. The clothes were as dirty as the girls. Gravel, dust, blood. Not the shoes. They shone. Plenty of saliva, more than their feet. He must have been at it for even longer with the shoes.'

  The summer lull affected even the traffic on the E18. Sven stayed in the fast lane, overtaking all other cars at speed. He could not bear talking, didn't want to ask questions about Lund, didn't want to learn more about him. Not just now. He almost missed the junction with the much smaller road to Aspsås, stamped on the brakes and wrenched the car across three lanes.

  Lennart Oscarsson was waiting in the parking lot, ready to greet them. He looked haunted and nervous. He knew what Grens thought about his decision to leave two guards with the responsibility of transporting Lund across the city at night.

  Ewert didn't hold out his hand at once; he hung back for a few seconds because it amused him to shame one of the many idiots that cluttered up his life.

  'Hello there,' he said finally.

  They shook hands quickly, Sven was introduced and the three of them started walking together towards the main entrance. Bergh was in the guard's post and nodded at Ewert, a familiar face. Sven was different.

  'Where do you think you're going?'

  Lennart turned back.

  'Come on, Bergh. He's with me. City Police,' he said irritably.

  'I've no notification.'

  'They're investigating Lund's escape.'

  'None of my business. Unlike who gets in here, which is. So why no notification, then?'

  Sven intervened, just in time to stop Oscarsson from shouting something he'd regret later.

  'Look, here's my ID. OK?'

  Bergh studied the mug shot and entered Sven's ID number in the database.

  'Hey, it's your birthday today. What are you doing here, mate?'

  'Never mind. Are you letting me in?'

  Bergh waved him through and they filed into the corridor. Ewert laughed.

  'What a tosser! Why do you keep such an idiot around? He makes it harder to get in than out of this place.'

  His mood changed as they walked along the regulation passageways with their regulation murals. Some showed a bit more talent than others; all were would-be therapeutic projects led by hired consultants. He sighed. Always blue background, always the obvious symbolism of open gates and birds flying free and more liberation shit of that sort. Organised graffiti for grown-ups, signed Benke Lelle Hinken Zoran Jari The Goat 1987.

  Lennart opened a metal door. Inside, a noisy gang of inmates were being escorted to the gym by two officers in front and two behind. Ewert sighed again. He knew quite a few of the villains, had interrogated them or testified against them. There were even a couple of ancient lags that he had run in during his days on the beat.

  'Hi there, Grensie. On the chase, are you?'

  It was Stig Lindgren, one of the inhabitants of the World of Outcasts. He was a permanent fixture behind the walls and would never survive anywhere else. Lock him up and throw the key away, the old fucker had no other options. Ewert had grown fed up with his type.

  'Shut your gob, Lindgren, or I'll tell your useless mates why you're called Dickybird.'

  Then upstairs to A Unit, sex offenders only.

  Lennart walked ahead, Ewert and Sven followed, looking about. Regulation stuff again: television corner, snooker table, kitchen, cells. But the crimes were different in that they aroused as much hatred in the World of Outcasts as among ordinary citizens.

  They reached cell number eleven. Alone among the others in the corridor this door was bare. The temporary occupants of the rooms behind all the other doors had decorated them laboriously with posters and newspaper cuttings and photos.

  Ewert had time to think that he should have been here six months ago. He should have stepped inside the door to Lund's cell. At the time he had been investigating a child pornography ring, which had given him his first real insight into the closed society of new-style paedophiles, structured round internet connections and databases and secret mail addresses. He had seen their images of naked or partly undressed children, penetrated and humiliated children, tortured children, lonely children. Initially, he and his colleagues had thought that this pornography exchange was part of a foreign network of dark vice and profit and inscrutable agreements, but it turned out differently, more discreet, smarter and more challenging.

  Just seven men, a select society of serious, recidivist sex offenders. One locked up, most of them just released from prison.

  They had created their own virtual display cabinet. Their contributions to the show were downloaded on the net and run on their computers at set times, as if following a performance schedule. Once a week, same time, Saturday, at eight o'clock. They sat in front of their screens, waiting for that week's images, and every week their demands escalated. Next time must somehow offer more than last time; naked children had been enough but not any more, children sitting still had to start moving and touching each other. Then touching wasn't enough; the children had to be raped, then raped more viciously. The next set of photographs must score more highly than the previous lot, at any cost. Seven paedophiles, a closed circle, showing off their own crimes in their own neatly scanned and formatted pictures.

  They had been at it for almost a year before they were caught.

  All the time they had been competing with each other, running qualifying heats in child pornography.

  Bernt Lund had been one of the seven. He was the only one in prison, the only one who could solely contribute photos that had been taken in the past, but his crimes meant that his high status was beyond dispute, as was his right to join the ring.

  When the ring was broken, three of the others were convicted and sent off to serve fairly long prison sentences. A fourth, a man called Håkan Axelsson, was being tried, but the remaining two had not been charged because the evidence was so patchy. Everyone knew about them but that was neither here nor there; the 'no
t proven' classification was sufficient to free them. And so they were free to recruit new child porn contacts in the shadowy marketplace that had grown up around the investigation.