The Beast (ewert grens)

by Anders Roslund

  Soon his daughter would be buried under this lawn. She was only five years old.

  ‘Fredrik?’

  She stood behind him, cautiously touching his shoulder. He wheeled round.

  ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  She smiled a little.

  ‘How are you? Forget that, I’d never understand. But I want you to know that I’ve thought of you every second since I heard.’

  She was one of the good people. He had known her for as long as he could remember; Grandad had liked her, despite his reservations about female ministers. He was an elderly man by then, but he had supported her from the start, done everything to help the young woman in a world of men. Later on, Fredrik had realised that she had been very young back then, although he had seen her as a grown-up among all the others. Now that they were adults together, he felt they were contemporaries.

  ‘Rebecca,’ he said. ‘I’m so glad it’s you.’

  ‘I’ve been in this job for thirty years now. This is my worst fucking awful day ever.’

  Fredrik was taken aback. Her swear word hit him, hit the gravestones, her faith. He had always seen her as security personified, but when he looked up her face was no longer gentle and calm; it had turned tense and brittle, it seemed fractured.

  Fredrik stared at the coffin in front of him. Wooden boards, flowers. He held on to Agnes, she to him. They were standing in the front pew. Every movement set up an echo in the empty church.

  There was a child in that coffin. His child. He could not grasp the fact, he felt it was just a very short time since she had been there and they had talked and laughed and hugged. Agnes shook with weeping. He held her tighter still. He seemed to have no tears left. The grief had invaded him, stolen everything. All that was left was that gaping wound inside him.

  She is no more.

  She is no more.

  She is no more.

  Maybe he should have sung along. The organist had played something.

  They left the echoing space together. Rebecca had cast some earth on the coffin and uttered the old words. Afterwards she hugged them, but seemed unable to think of anything comforting to say. Her own mixed feelings, grief and anger and vulnerability, made her pull away abruptly, look at them, hug them once more and then walk away.

  They stood in silence on the gravel path in the sunshine. Again the past came back to him; it was like the long summers when he had walked here with Grandad.

  Now she was in a hole in the ground, like everybody else.

  ‘Please accept our condolences.’

  The two policemen had come up behind them. Both were in black suits; maybe it was police etiquette, maybe their own sense of decorum.

  ‘I have no children, but I have lost people close to me. I can at least try to understand how you feel.’

  The older, limping policeman, Grens, had sounded awkward, almost harsh, but Fredrik realised that it was seriously meant and had taken an effort.

  ‘Thank you.’

  They reached out, shook hands. Sundkvist said something inaudible to Agnes.

  ‘I don’t know if it makes any difference to you,’ Grens said. ‘Still, I’d like you to know that we’ll have him locked up soon. A big team is chasing him.’

  Fredrik shrugged.

  ‘True, you don’t know if it matters to us. It doesn’t. It won’t bring our daughter back.’

  ‘I can see that, and I’m sure I would’ve felt the same. But it’s our job to find him, bring him to justice so he can be punished and, above all, stopped from committing more of these crimes.’

  Fredrik had just taken Agnes’ hand, half turning round to walk away. He wanted to be alone with her, share his grief with her. But these words made him look back at the policemen.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, since Tuesday we have kept every nursery and primary school under surveillance.’

  ‘Is that the kind of place where you expect to catch him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Fredrik let go of Agnes’ hand, examined her face. She seemed passive, waiting. She would have to wait a little longer.

  ‘What schools, how many?’

  ‘In this town, and around it. Lots of places, it’s a large area.’

  ‘And you watch out in this way because you think there’s a chance he’ll do it again?’

  ‘More than a chance. We’re quite certain he’ll strike again.’

  ‘How can you be certain?’

  ‘His past history. And the very clear psychiatric profile. Every specialist in the country has examined him; he has probably been probed and prodded more than any other prisoner in the land. The message is the same every time. He’ll do it again, and again. His only other option is to kill himself.’

  ‘And you believe this to be true?’

  ‘Well, take just the fact that he let you see him before… before this happened. It is significant. Our psycho-experts think so, anyway. It means that he has thrown off the last restraints and now there is nothing else left in him except lust to destroy, and self-hatred.’

  He took her hand again.

  The churchyard seemed very large. He was alone. She was alone.

  They would carry on living, he perhaps with Micaela, Agnes with someone, not him. But they would always be alone.

  He drove Micaela home first, to their home together, and held her for a long time. Then he and Agnes went out for a meal, just the two of them.

  They found a place where they could sit outside, it was a cramped backyard, but it meant that they were on their own. A light breeze was blowing, which helped against the heat. Afterwards he drove Agnes to the train, but just as she was about to buy her ticket he offered to take her to Stockholm and she accepted. It meant that they didn’t have to say goodbye there and then. Instead they could sit together for another hour. They needed the space, even if it was just to drive a hundred-odd kilometres on busy roads; it would at least afford them the time to try to understand and accept that, by losing their child, they had also lost their relationship with each other, that they were two grown-ups with nothing but their grief in common.

  They said little, because there was nothing much to say. She didn’t want to go straight back to her empty flat and said she preferred to be dropped off outside a shop. They hugged, she kissed his cheek lightly and he stayed watching until she had disappeared round a corner.

  Afterwards he drove aimlessly round central Stockholm, which was strangely empty apart from stray tourists, maps in hand, now that the heat had made most of the people leave. He stopped twice, once to eat an ice-cream on a bench, once to buy mineral water from a bored cafe owner, and drifted on through the gathering dusk as the city went through its evening routines. The night never became properly dark, it was a Nordic summer’s night, and anyway the artificial big-city lights shattered the darkness. In the end he parked in a leafy lane on Djurgården Island and fell asleep, still in the driver’s seat, his head leaning against the side window.

  His clothes were sticking to him, his light suit crumpled. He had woken early, unwashed and sore after five hours’ sleep. Outside, the clucking of bright-eyed ducks mingled with shouting from drunken teenagers going home after an all- night session somewhere.

  He started the car and drove unhesitatingly to the Television Centre.

  It was three years since he had last seen Vincent Carlsson. He had just moved from newspaper journalism to the national newsdesk of the Rapport and Aktuellt programmes when Fredrik had come to see him. Vincent’s place had been at the back of a huge room, where he spent most of his time distributing e-mails and short news items to the buzzing hive of reporters. About a year ago, he had moved to the morning news. As he described it, his new job consisted of carving up events and make news soup from the pieces. He had been made a functional unit in the big news factory, and what with having acquired a wife and children, the regular routine suited him just fine.

  After a stroppy porter had made Fredrik wait for the statutory ten minutes
, Vincent came down to meet him.

  Through the glass window into the corridor Fredrik could see that his old friend hadn’t changed; he was tall and dark and kind, with a personal charisma that made him the type of man that women smiled at. They had been to journalism college together, often gone out for drinks in the evening, at which point Vincent would eye up the most delicious bird around and announce that he had to have her. He always got his way; he’d go up to her, chat and smile and laugh and touch her arm and her shoulders and then they’d suddenly leave together. He was like that; it was easy to become fond of him and impossible to tell him to go jump even when he deserved it.

  Vincent made the porter open up.

  ‘Fredrik, what are you doing here? Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘Five o’clock.’

  ‘Quarter past, actually.’

  They were walking along a corridor without an end in sight. Blue lino, chalk-white walls.

  ‘I’d thought I’d get in touch,’ Vincent went on. ‘Not as a journalist, of course. But I was afraid to… disturb you. I couldn’t think what I could say, without it sounding… wrong.’

  ‘We buried Marie yesterday.’

  Fredrik realised that he wasn’t making it any easier for his old friend, that he was helpless in the face of something he would never grasp.

  ‘Listen, you don’t have to say anything. I know you’ve thought about it and I appreciate that. But honestly, just give it a miss. It’s not what I need now.’

  The endless corridor became another corridor.

  ‘What do you need then? You know I’m always happy to see you, whatever the reason, but you’re looking so fucking grim. And why just now, early in the morning the day after Marie’s funeral?’

  They went upstairs, then past the big newsroom.

  ‘I need your help with something. You can do it, I know. And it’s the only help I need now.’

  Vincent led the way into a room with desks in three of its corners.

  ‘The newsroom is no good. You’d hate it. We broadcast stuff about Lund and you and Marie and policemen all day long. They’d get frantically interested to see you walk in. This is better and nobody comes here before eight o’clock.’

  He wandered off to get them both a mug of coffee.

  ‘Here. Drink this, you look like you need it.’

  They drank some coffee in silence; a minute or so passed while they avoided each other’s eyes.

  ‘Listen, we’ve plenty of time. I’ve asked the other editor to take over my bit for a while. She is terrific, much better than me. All the viewer will notice is a clear programming improvement.’

  Fredrik reached out to pull a cigarette from a packet on another desk.

  ‘All right if I take a fag?’

  ‘I thought you stopped smoking ages ago.’

  ‘I’ve just started again.’ He extracted a cigarette, no filter, a foreign brand that he didn’t recognise.

  For a moment they sat in a white mist of smoke.

  ‘Vincent, do you remember the last time you helped me out?’

  ‘Sure do. You were worried about Agnes.’

  ‘I thought she was shagging that bloody awful economist. I was wrong. But it was thanks to you that I got to know what kind of bloke he was.’

  ‘So, what next?’ Vincent waved a little irritably at the tobacco-smelling cloud and Fredrik stubbed his cigarette out in his coffee mug.

  ‘More of the same, please.’

  ‘Same what?’

  ‘Personal data. Absolutely anything you can find.’

  ‘And who am I supposed to check?’

  Fredrik pulled out a note from the inside pocket of his jacket.

  ‘640517-0350.’

  ‘Really? And who’s that?’

  ‘It’s Bernt Lund’s ID number.’

  They had argued afterwards. Their voices rose, the arguments crossed each other, but it was a confrontation in which compassion won out. Now they were close to an agreement.

  ‘It’s not that I’m breaking the law, because strictly speaking I’m not. But I am trampling on what I believed our friendship to be, breaking its rules.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘How can you say that? If I help you find personal data on the man who killed your child, then I’m doing the one thing for you that I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Only this. It’s all I need.’

  ‘You’re on a slippery slope, very much so.’

  ‘Stop debating issues, for Christ’s sake. Just help me.’

  Vincent stood for a moment, to signal what he’d prefer to do. Then he sat down again and switched on the nearest computer.

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What’s the fucking data you want?’

  ‘I want everything. Everything you can find.’

  Incoming e-mails were stacking on the screen, on top of the morning schedules. Vincent moved the lot, found the right dialogue box, keyed in a name and a password, and the database homepage flickered into life. A list of links to other databases. Company Register, Trade and Trade Associations Register, Swedish Business Information Service, Automobile Register, Address Register, Property Register.

  ‘The number. You had it, his ID number.’

  ‘640517-0350.’

  The screen flickered. It was a hit.

  ‘Let’s go. You want to know where he has stayed?’

  The morning sun had reached the glazed wall of the office. The still air grew warm.

  ‘Is it OK to open the window? It’s getting hard to breathe.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Fredrik rose and opened two of the windows wide. He hadn’t realised how the light-coloured suit had made him sweat. He breathed in deeply, once, twice. Vincent’s arm went up in the air.

  ‘Bernt Asmodeus Lund. The last entry is a care-of address.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Care of Håkan Axelsson, Skeppar Street 12. Somewhere in Östermalm. But it’s from quite a few years ago; presumably Lund has been kept locked up since then. Otherwise, nothing. Skeppar Street is the last on record.’

  Fredrik stood behind Vincent now, his back still aching from sleeping jammed into the car. The fresh air felt good, though.

  ‘What about earlier addresses?’

  ‘There are two. First, going back in time, Kung Street 3, in Enköping, and before that, Nelson Lane, Piteå.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Everything that’s recorded here. If you want older addresses still, you’ve got to contact the tax office in Piteå.’

  ‘Fine, that’s enough for now. But there must be more facts. I want all the facts.’

  Fredrik kept his place behind Vincent for nearly an hour, making notes on the flimsy in-house stationery. He had found a pad on the desk with the packet of cigarettes.

  Bernt Lund had been registered as the owner of a property in Vetlanda, a block of flats in a remarkably high taxation band at an address in the outskirts of the small town.

  The business transaction data included a long list of unpaid debts. His Inland Revenue account was in the red and he had failed to pay his state education loans. Several attempts to recover his assets had been made and failed.

  His driving licence had been suspended.

  He was a partner in two sleeping limited companies trading in trust holdings.

  He had held four posts on sports clubs’ steering committees.

  On the whole, Lund’s life outside was hard to follow, because he had moved around a lot, always trailing financial complications. Now and then he had obviously attempted to organise relationships with others. As Fredrik took notes, he sought to understand what it was he needed, tried to read the reality he could not reach.

  Vincent turned and looked at his old friend.

  ‘I wish you’d skip this.’

  Fredrik didn’t answer, just clenched his jaw tight and stared back.

  ‘Fine. Glare away. It doesn’t change what I think.’

  Vincen
t rose, took the two mugs and wandered off to the machine in the corridor outside. Fredrik looked at his disappearing back for a moment. Then he picked up one of the two phones and dialled her number.

  ‘Hi. It’s me.’

  He had woken her.

  ‘Fredrik?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not now. I took a sleeping tablet, I’m still too weary.’

  ‘Just one thing, a question. When we cleared your dad’s flat there were two sacks full of stuff. Where did they go?’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘I simply want to know.’

  ‘I don’t have them. The sacks were left in the attic, back in Strängnäs.’

  Vincent came back carrying the refilled mugs. Fredrik put the receiver down.

  ‘Agnes - it wasn’t easy.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Terrible.’

  Vincent nodded, handed Fredrik a mug, drank some coffee himself.

  ‘Let’s do whatever has to be done; it’s hotting up out there. A plane has come down near Moscow.’

  He started searching the Trade Register, essentially listings of small and medium-sized businesses. Again the ID number was the magic key opening all locks to a stranger’s life.

  ‘B. Lund Taxis.’

  ‘What?’ Fredrik had heard, but asked anyway.

  ‘It’s a cab firm, registered as B. Lund Taxis. It hasn’t been deregistered.’

  Fredrik came over to read for himself.

  ‘Look. It was set up in 1994.’

  Fredrik laughed, just a short bark.

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’re laughing at fucking nothing, are you? Remember who I am?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing.’ Fredrik laughed again.

  ‘Come off it. You turn up here, just twenty-four hours after you buried your daughter, still wearing your funeral suit, and you stand around having a giggle. At nothing. Excuse me for asking. And shut up.’

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘Calm down? That’s so fucking great. Fantastic. Now what do you want? Business data?’