The Beast (ewert grens)

by Anders Roslund

  ’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 w
as so patchy. Everyone knew about them but that was neither here nor there; the ‘not 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.

  There were lots of them out there. For each one down, there was one ready to go.

  Ewert was cursing himself. He should have inspected Lund’s cell then. But the police had been constantly pushed for time, always under media pressure, invariably targets for public outrage. He had felt too harassed to visit Aspsås himself and had sent two junior colleagues to interrogate Lund, whose cell had been stacked to the ceiling with his illegal handiwork. Mostly CDs with thousands of pictures showing tormented children. It was all very bad, and conclusive enough, but if he had gone himself he would have picked up more about the man. Maybe he wouldn’t have been at such a loss now that Lund had got ahead of them.

  Lennart unlocked the door.

  ‘There. All yours. Tidy is one word for it.’

  Ewert and Sven stepped inside and then stopped. Despite its standardised ordinariness - about eight square metres, one window, the usual furnishings - the room was very odd indeed. Full of objects, all lined up, as if for an exhibition. Candlesticks, stones, pieces of wood, pens, bits of string, items of clothing, folders, batteries, books, notebooks, all were arranged in lines stretching along the floor, across the bedspread, the windowsill, the shelves. Each object was separated from the next by what looked like exactly two centimetres. It made Ewert think of an unending row of dominoes, upright until one piece is moved out of place and it’s all over.

  Ewert’s diary had a small ruler marked along its edge. He aligned it with a row of stones. Two centimetres, twenty millimetres exactly, between the stones. The pens on the windowsill were twenty millimetres apart. On the shelves, the books were twenty millimetres apart too, and the same went for the bits of string on the floor and between the battery and the notebook and the packet of cigarettes. Everywhere, twenty millimetres.

  ‘Does it always look like this?’

  Lennart nodded.

  ‘Yes, it does. Before taking off the bedspread at night he puts the stones on the floor, one by one, measuring the distances as he goes along. In the morning he goes through the whole performance in reverse after he’s made the bed and put the bedspread back on.’

  Sven moved some of the pens. Dead ordinary biros. The stones were ordinary stones, one more pointless than the next. Plain, empty folders and notebooks.

  ‘This is too much. I don’t get it.’

  ‘Nothing to it. What is it you don’t get?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something. Why? Why does he lick children’s feet, for instance?’

  ‘Why do you think it matters to know why?’

  ‘It matters who this guy is, inside. Where he’s going, what it’s for. But the bottom line is, I want to find the motherfucker so I can go home and eat some cake and drink a glass. Or three.’

  ‘You’ll never know what he’s like inside. Not a hope, I’m sorry. There’s nothing like a reason in any of all this. He doesn’t know himself why he licks the feet of his victims, dead or alive. I’m convinced he doesn’t have a clue why he lines things up two centimetres apart either.’

  Ewert was holding up his diary at face level. He put his thumb as a marker at the two-centimetre mark, forcing them all to look.

  ‘Control. That’s all. They’re like that, all of them. They enjoy rape, because when they do it they call the shots. Power and control. Though this one is extreme, he’s actually just like the rest. His rows of stones and so forth are all about order, structure, being in charge.’

  He lowered the diary, placed it at the end of the row of stones and swept the lot down on to the floor.

  ‘But we know that. And we know he’s a sadist. We know what power does to men like Lund. His cock goes hard, that’s how it works. He controls someone, that person is powerless. Only he decides how to hurt them and how much. It’s what gives him his kicks, makes him come in front of tied-up, broken nine-year-olds.’

  He did his trick with the diary to the biros on the windowsill. One by one they hit the floor.

  ‘Come to think of it, the pictures. The computer ones. Did he sort them too?’

  Lennart fixed his gaze on the piled-up biros on the floor. No sign of order now. Then he met Ewert’s eyes, looking surprised, as if the question was new to him.

  ‘Sorted? How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, how did he do it? I can’t fucking remember. Faces, eyes, yes. How bloody abandoned they all looked. But not distances, how the images were related to each other.’

  ‘I don’t know. I should, maybe, but I don’t. Didn’t even think about it. But I will find out, if you think it’s important.’

  ‘Yes it is. It’s important.’ Lennart sat down on the bed. ‘Tomorrow, will that do?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘OK, later. When we’re done here. The file is in my room.’

  They turned the cell inside out. They inspected every corner of what had been Bernt Lund’s home for four years, touched everything, sniffed around.

  There was no information to be had. He had not had a plan.

  He had not known that he was going somewhere.

  Fredrik opened the car door. He had driven far too fast, stayed in seventy on the Tosterö Bridge with its thirty- kilometre limit, but he had promised Marie they would be in school by one thirty so there was nothing else for it.

  And it was good that she went to school, because Daddy was working today. Actually, it was a lie. It had been a lie yesterday. She went to nursery school because it was important for her to keep the place, and because having a daddy who worked was part of the scene. Even better, a daddy who worked hard at writing and needed to be alone when he was thinking complicated thoughts. He hadn’t had even a single thought worth thinking for months, and he hadn’t written a word for weeks. He was in the grip of writer’s block and had no idea how to wrench free.

  That was why Frans haunted him at night. That was why he could not make love to the beautiful, naked young woman lying close to him, instead constantly comparing her with someone who filled his thoughts but who didn’t want him, with Agnes. For a long time working, writing, had kept memory and reflection at bay. And perhaps that was what he had always done, avoided emotion through work work work, his mind turning over like an engine racing. Only by moving forward could he be sure to leave the past behind.

  Fredrik had pulled in right in front of the school and parked on a double yellow line despite having been caught once already. It was worth it, rather than driving about aimlessly, looking. He helped Marie out of her seat in the back. On the way up the path to the school door she skipped and jumped in front of him. It was a lovely warm day, what a remarkable summer it had been, and she looked so happy; she hopped on both feet, then her right foot, then both, then her left foot. Micaela and David and all the others were waiting inside, twenty-five children whose names he’d never learned. He should have.

  Just outside the gate a man was sitting on the park bench; must be somebody’s dad, because he’d surely seen that face before. He nodded at the man while he tried fruitlessly to match him with one of the little faces in the crowd inside the school.

  Micaela was standing next to the coat-hangers in the hall. She kissed him, asked if he was properly awake now, and had he missed her? He said yes, he’d missed her. Had he? At night when he couldn’t sleep and sought out her soft body, then he would’ve missed her if she hadn’t been there; he needed her so much and felt less frightened when he could stay close to her and borrow her warmth. Daytime was different. Looking at her, he saw how young she was, too young and too lovely. He didn’t deserve her. Surely her lover should match her youth and beauty? Or did he actually believe all that crap?

  These were things he mulled over all the time. These and, deep inside, the beatings.

  The first time he had sought her out was after the divorce.
She greeted the children when he brought Marie to school, and she was there morning after morning. Then, one day, they walked together for a while, long enough for him to tell her about the pain and loss of separation. She listened. They took more walks together, he kept confessing and she kept listening. Then the day came when they went to his house and made love all afternoon, while Marie and David ran around playing on the other side of the closed bedroom door.

  He helped Marie to change into her indoor shoes, white fabric slip-ons. He took off the red shoes with the shiny buckles and put them on her shelf. Her sign was an elephant. The others had chosen bright red fire engines and football stars and Disney figures, but she had wanted an elephant and that was that.

  She grabbed his arm.

  ‘Daddy, you mustn’t go.’

  ‘But… you wanted to come, didn’t you? Micaela is here. And David.’

  ‘Please stay. Please, nice kind Daddy.’

  He held her in his arms, lifted her up.

  ‘My little sweetheart. But… Daddy must work. You know that.’

  Her eyes met his, her forehead wrinkled. Her whole face pleaded with him.

  He sighed.

  ‘Right you are, I will stay. But just a tiny little while.’

  Marie stayed close to him while she gave her elephant a kiss and followed the contours of its body with her finger: its legs, along its back and all the way down its trunk. Fredrik made a what-can-I-do gesture to Micaela. This was how it had been ever since Marie had started at the nursery almost four years ago, after Agnes had moved away. Every time he had hoped that this would be the day he could leave easily, just say goodbye and go without having a bad conscience about it.

  ‘And how long are you staying today?’

  This was the only thing they really disagreed about. Micaela wanted him to go, to establish that even if he did, he would still be back in the afternoon to pick Marie up. Never mind a few tears, the crying would pass. He always

  told her that since she didn’t have children herself she couldn’t possibly know what he felt like.