The Beast (ewert grens)

by Anders Roslund

  Åke hated, Ulrik knew that. Not that they’d ever talked about it, but it hadn’t been hard to work out. And maybe one day Ulrik would too, when scum like Lund had screamed ‘cunt’ at him once too often. He had done the person-to- person contacts, so far. Someone had to. Driving these people was a job. But when Lund shouted ‘cunts’ for the third time, he realised that this was it. He knew, from the moment Andersson got up.

  Maybe if he kept observing the steps leading up to the Casualty door, he wouldn’t have to see whatever was going on. If it came to an inquiry, he didn’t want to have to lie.

  The area in front of Casualty was quiet, no parked cars, no people. That’s what Åke said afterwards, adding that even if it hadn’t been so deserted, even if other people had been about and able to watch what he did, he probably wouldn’t have noticed. Running to the back of the bus, rage and hatred blinkered him.

  He pulled the door open. The handle was small. His hand was made on the same scale as the rest of him and it was hard to push it in between metal and metal.

  Then everything went horribly wrong.

  Bernt Lund was screaming ‘cunt, cunt’ over and over, in a high falsetto voice. He hit out with the chains gripped in one hand, the long chains that ran under his clothing, linking handcuffs, leg-irons and belt. Åke didn’t have time to see, to take in what was happening, as the heavy iron links tore into his face and ripped it open. He fell to the ground and Lund leapt out of the van, swinging the chains against the fallen man’s head and face until his victim passed out. Then he used his boots, kicking belly, kidneys, crotch, kicking and kicking until the tall guard lay quite still.

  Ulrik had kept staring straight ahead. Åke was taking his time beating the hell out of the nonce. Lund was still screaming ‘cunt’; he could obviously take a lot. Then Ulrik began to feel bad about it. Åke had been at it for too long, enough now for Christ’s sake, or things might go seriously wrong. When he opened the door to climb out and stop him from causing some kind of emergency, Lund moved in. Using a long chain he broke the window, hit Ulrik in the face, pulled him outside and kept hitting. All Ulrik remembered afterwards was the hellish screeching voice and the moment Lund pulled his trousers down to hit his exposed penis with the chain, screaming that he would have buggered them if they hadn’t been such big bastards. Too big for him, only little whores would take him inside, only small arses were good enough.

  The distance between his front door and the steel gate leading to his place of work was 180 paces. Lennart Oscarsson counted them almost every time. Once he’d done the distance in 161 paces, his record. It was a few years ago, when he was really fit. Until the assault he used to train with the inmates in the gym. Then, early one morning, someone beat a sex offender to pulp with dumbbells and barbells. The medic had said the marks were clear and easy to identify. No one had known the first thing about the incident, of course. Not one single fucking soul had noticed that a human being was being clubbed, presumably screaming his head off, unseen and unheard, until the final darkness fell. The weight-training area was awash with blood afterwards, yet apparently no one had the faintest idea why. For a long time afterwards he didn’t go there. Not because he was frightened; nobody was quite cretinous enough to risk a new round of sentencing just to get even with a boss. It wasn’t fear, it was disgust, he couldn’t bear being in a room where one of the men in his charge had been robbed of his right to a life.

  He rang the bell, waited for a sense of being watched in the small camera above his head and a voice coming through the loudspeaker. Turning round, he looked at his home, at the sitting room and bedroom windows. All dark, roller blinds halfway down. No face to be glimpsed, no body moving about.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oscarsson here.’

  ‘Opening up.’

  He stepped inside, blinked, inside an enclosed world now. The other one of his two worlds. Standing in front of the next door, he knocked on the windowpane of the guardroom and waved to Bergh, who was taking his time. Stupid bugger, what made Bergh tick was a mystery. At last he waved back and pressed a button. The door buzzed open; the long corridor behind it smelled of disinfectant and something else, something unmistakable.

  A boring day ahead. Unit meeting, communication. The staff were well on their way to losing themselves in a labyrinthine schedule of meetings that they had imposed on themselves. Each meeting made endless pointless decisions about pointless routine matters that landed everyone within an ever more rigid framework. Actual problem-solving needed a different approach, needed sharp minds and driving energy. The meetings fed a sense of security, but created nothing.

  And the coffee machine was fucked up as well. He kicked it. Then he fed coins into the soft-drinks machine. Coke apparently contained caffeine too.

  ‘Morning, Lennart.’

  ‘Morning, Nils.’

  Nils Roth, senior wing officer. He and Oscarsson had come to Aspsås at the same time and advanced in the service side by side. Together they had experienced the anxiety of the novice change into the weary calm of the veteran. They walked into the meeting room together. The room with its long table, overhead projector, whiteboard could have belonged to any management outfit.

  Everybody greeted each other; all eight senior wing officers were there, and the prison governor, Arne Bertolsson. Quite a few were drinking coffee. Lennart looked hard at the mugs and turned to the new man, what was his name, Månsson.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘The machine.’

  ‘It’s out of order.’

  ‘Not when I tried it. Only minutes ago.’

  Arne Bertolsson called them to order, sounding irritable. He had been fiddling with the overhead projector. It made a noise, but that was all. The screen stayed blank.

  ‘This thing’s bloody useless.’

  Bertolsson crouched down to examine whatever buttons he might push next. Lennart looked at him, then at the line-up of men at the table. Eight of them, his immediate colleagues, people in whose company he spent hours and hours, day after day, but had never got close to. Apart from Nils, that is. As for the rest, he hadn’t been to their homes and none of them had visited his. A beer in town, the odd football match, but never at home. What did that make them? Not friends, anyway. But they were all of about the same age, and looked alike too. A room full of middle-aged taxi drivers.

  Bertolsson gave up.

  ‘Sod this. And the agenda too. Who wants to start?’

  Nobody, it seemed. Månsson drank a mouthful of his coffee. Nils scribbled on a notepad. No one spoke. The routine of these meetings had broken down and everyone felt at a loss.

  Lennart cleared his throat.

  ‘I’ll start.’

  The others breathed sighs of relief; something was on the agenda at least.

  Bertolsson nodded.

  ‘I’ve been on about this before, but the fact is, I know what I’m talking about. I suppose no one has forgotten the fatality in the gym? No? Exactly. But has it made any flaming difference whatsoever? The men from the normal units are shuttling in and out of the gym at the same time as my lot. There was another incident yesterday. It might’ve turned nasty if Brandt and Persson hadn’t stepped in promptly.’

  Not a peep from the bench of the accused. But he bloody well wouldn’t back down. He had seen what the weights could do to a human body.

  Having watched everyone in turn as he spoke, Lennart’s eyes lingered on the only woman in the room. Eva Barnard and he had clashed more than once before. He couldn’t relate to her in any way, she only knew the textbook stuff and not the traditions, the unspoken rules, which drew their power from simply having been there, always.

  Bertolsson had picked up the accusation in Lennart’s eyes, but wanted to avoid trouble. Not another row, not again. He interrupted.

  ‘More coordination between wings, is that what you want?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Coordination outside the walls is a different matter. This is a jail. It’s an unreal place, the
exception is the rule inside. Everyone here knows it. At least, ought to know it.’

  Lennart kept his eyes fixed on Eva. Bertolsson hated conflicts, but that was too bad. No way would he be allowed to hide this problem out of sight.

  ‘If the wrong type from a normal unit comes across one of my lot, that’s it. End of story. Everything goes straight to hell, that’s well known. If a nonce gets killed, it’s applause all round.’

  He pointed at Eva.

  ‘The old lag who stirred it yesterday was a case in point. He’s from your unit.’

  Now they were both angry. Eva never took the coward’s way out, he had to admit that. She didn’t scare easily and now she was staring back at him. Ugly and stupid, but brave.

  ‘If you mean 0243 Lindgren, why not say it straight out?’

  ‘I mean Lindgren all right.’

  ‘Lindgren can be a bastard when he’s in the mood. The rest of the time he’s a model prisoner, calm and quiet. Does zilch in fact. Lies in his cell smoking handrolls, lets the hours pass, doesn’t read or watch the telly. He has served forty- two different sentences, and done a total of twenty-seven years inside. Look, he’s one of the few who still can speak the old prison lingo. He only stirs up trouble when somebody new turns up. Has to show who’s done most time, who knows the score. It’s all about hierarchy. Hierarchy and respect.’

  ‘Come off it. Yesterday he wasn’t trying to impress a newcomer. He would have killed my man if he hadn’t been spotted in time.’

  The other officers were becoming restive. What was happening to the proper agenda? Bertolsson let this confrontation run on without comment. Maybe he found it interesting. Maybe he was too fed up to bother.

  ‘Let me finish,’ Eva went on. ‘Sex offenders are different, Lindgren goes wild at the sight of them. It’s something stronger than disgust. I’ve been through his file and found some reasons why he tries to kill them. For one thing, he was abused himself as a child. Many times.’

  Lennart drained the last drop of sweet bubbly muck from the can. Caffeine. He knew perfectly well who Stig ‘Dickybird’ Lindgren was, no need to lecture him. Dickybird had been a dealer, mostly smalltime, in whatever came his way. By now he was so institutionalised that he was terrified every time he was released. He’d piss against the prison wall hoping that the gate staff would see him. If that didn’t do the trick he’d beat up the driver of the first likely bus into town, like the last time out. One way or another he’d be back inside within a few weeks, back to the only place where he felt at home, the only place where people cared enough to know his name.

  Lennart told himself that he must stop eyeballing that silly frump. Look at Nils instead. But Nils kept his eyes down, scribbling away, no, he was doodling. How did he take this? Did he feel uneasy? Ashamed? Lennart knew that Nils didn’t care for the way he challenged Eva and had said so, asking him to leave it. Fuelling the general dislike of her just meant that they would never take any notice of the good work she often did. Admittedly.

  Lennart knew that he wanted to talk to Nils about that bloody awful secret, their secret. And he waited to see if Nils would look up, just for a moment. I need your help now, Nils, look at me, what the fuck do we do next? I must tell Karin.

  ‘Did I hear you mention something about a prison language? You said Stig Lindgren could speak it.’

  Månsson, the new recruit from Malmö, sounded interested. What was the man’s first name? Now he wanted to know more.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Could you explain?’

  Eva was pleased that the exchange with Lennart was over, and that she had the upper hand now. She was in charge. As she turned to Månsson, she smiled in the self-satisfied way she had, which fuelled the general dislike.

  ‘I suppose it’s natural that you wouldn’t know.’

  This Månsson boy was new, but he had just learned something useful. Which was not to mess with her.

  ‘Sorry. Forget it.’

  ‘No, no. No problem. This prison-speak was used by the inmates all the time. It was a special communication, for cons only. By now it’s practically extinct. Only old lags like Lindgren know it. Men who’ve led their lives more inside than outside the walls.’

  She felt good. Lennart had jumped on her, suggesting that she was ignorant of prison life. She’d shown everyone that she knew all right. What a loser, he’d been so stupid he reckoned he could muzzle her. Must have forgotten that she got the last word every time he tried it on.

  Bertolsson had managed to start the overhead and an image showed on the screen. The agenda. He looked as relieved as he felt. This meeting had been about to run off the rails, but now he was back in control. He acknowledged the ironic applause from his colleagues.

  Then a phone rang. It wasn’t his mobile. He had switched it off, as everyone should have done. The governor, already fed up, was close to blowing a fuse.

  Lennart got up.

  ‘Sorry. It’s mine. Christ, I forgot all about it.’

  A second ring. He didn’t recognise the number. A third. He shouldn’t answer. A fourth. He gave in.

  ‘Oscarsson here.’

  Eight people were listening in. Not that it bothered him.

  ‘And?’ He sat down. ‘What the fuck are you saying?’

  His voice had changed. It sounded screechy. Upset.

  Nils, who knew him well, was instantly convinced that this was serious. He couldn’t remember Lennart ever sounding so alarmed.

  ‘Not him!’ A cry, in that high-pitched voice. ‘Not him! It can’t be! You heard me, it can’t be.’

  His colleagues were very still. Lennart seemed close to a breakdown. He, who was always cool and collected. And now he was shaking.

  ‘Bloody fucking hell!’

  Lennart ended the call. His face was flushed, he was breathing through his mouth. His dignity had gone. The room waited.

  Lennart got up, took one step back, as if to take in the whole scene.

  ‘It was the man on the gate, that idiot Bergh. Told me we’ve got a runner. One of mine, on transfer to Southern General Hospital. Bernt Lund. He beat up both guards and went off in the van.’

  Siw Malmqvist’s winsome voice was flooding the police station at Berg Street in Stockholm. At least, the corridor at the far end of the ground floor was awash, as it was every morning. The earlier it was, the louder the voice. It came from a huge, ancient cassette player, as big as any ghetto-blaster. The old plastic hulk had run the same tapes for thirty years, three popular compilations with Siw’s voice singing her songs in different combinations. This morning it was ‘My Mummy is Like Her Mummy’ followed by ‘No Place is as Good as Good Old Skåne’, A- and B-sides of the same 1968 Metronome single, with a black-and-white shot of Siw at a microphone stand, holding a broom and wearing a mini version of a cleaner’s overall.

  Ewert Glens had been given his music machine for his twenty-fifth birthday and brought it to the office, putting it on the bookshelf. As time went by he changed office now and then, but always carried it to its new home, cradling it in his arms. He was Detective Chief Inspector now, still always the first in and never later than half past five in the morning; that meant he had two or three hours without any prats bothering him, invading his space in person or on the phone. Round about half past seven he would lower the volume; it caused a lot of bloody moaning from the useless crew pottering about outside. Still, he would always make them whinge for a while. They fucking well wouldn’t catch him turning the sound down unless someone asked first.

  Grens was a large man, heavy and tired. His hair had receded to a grey, bushy ring. He moved in short, brisk bursts, due to his odd gait, a kind of limp. His stiff neck was due to a near-garrotting, a memento of leading a raid on the premises of a Lithuanian hitman. They kept Grens in hospital for quite a while afterwards.

  He had been a good policeman, but didn’t know if he still was. At least, he wasn’t sure if he felt up to it for much longer. Did he hang on to his job because he couldn�
�t think of anything better to do? Had he inflated the importance of policing, made too much of it to drop everything when the time came? After a few years, not one of the buggers round here would remember him. They’d recruit replacement DCIs, new lads without a history, lacking a sense of what had mattered before, who had had power back then, informally of course, and why that was.

  He often thought that everyone should be taught how to debrief, from the word go, whatever job you were training for. Novices should learn that the professional ins-and-outs they came to value were worthless in the end, and that you were around in your job only for a short while. It was a small part of your life that was at stake; you were there one moment, gone the next. Look at himself. There’d been others ahead of him and did he care about them? Hell, no. He didn’t.

  Someone knocked on the door. Some saddo who had come to plead with him to turn down the music. Sodding bunnies.

  But it was Sven, the only one in the house with some steel in him.

  ‘Ewert?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Big trouble.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Bernt Lund.’

  That got to him. He raised his eyebrows and put down the paper he held.

  ‘Bernt Lund? What’s with him?’

  ‘He’s walked.’

  ‘The fuck he has!’

  ‘Again.’

  Sven Sundkvist liked his old colleague and didn’t get fazed by the old boy’s sarcasm. He knew that Ewert’s bitterness, his fears, came from being too close to the day when he’d be forced to stop working, the day when he would be told that thirty-five years in service amounted to no more or less than precisely thirty-five years.