The Beast (ewert grens)

by Anders Roslund

  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 trai
ning 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.

  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.

  S
ven 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’ll have to wait for your birthday cake.’