Anders Roslund - The Beast

Ewert swallowed whatever it was. Not quite tears.

Then, back to normality.

He changed the tape. More of Siw’s singing, of course. ‘ Jazz Bacillus, 1959’. He stood in front of the loudspeaker for a moment with his eyes closed. He turned the volume up, crouched to pick up the rubbish, returning it to the bin. Then he straightened, took three steps back to get maximum impact, aimed and kicked the bin again. This time it went further, hitting the wall by the window.

He started speaking again.

‘Sven, get this fucking message. -Understand it if you can. Minor mental disorder, that’s what this man has. He gets his kicks from torturing and killing two little girls. He carves them up. So he’s suffering from a minor mental disorder, is he? Are you hearing me, Sven? Tell me then, what the fuck is a major mental disorder?’

It was still morning, but already hot, twenty-four degrees in the sun. Another summer’s day that would maybe reach thirty degrees in the afternoon, for the third week in a row. ‘ Augustin’. Time: 2.08. The Swedish entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 1959.

He caught him in his arms. Held him close. They were of the same height and it was easy to reach him, to caress his shoulders, the back of his neck, his cheeks. To kiss him. His lips were soft.

‘I do need you.’

‘I’m here for you.’

Lennart Oscarsson kissed him again, out of lust and out of habit. He was so glad that they were together this morning, trusting each other, this fucking awful morning.

‘Nils. Did you close the door?’

‘Yes, sure.’

‘Thanks.’

He looked at Nils, at his colleague who was his lover and his appalling secret, the man he could not look at without being reminded of Karin, his wife who was his lover and his whole life.

Nils sat down in the senior-status leather armchair and tugged at Lennart to make him sit down in his lap. They hugged.

‘Come on. Take your clothes off.’

‘I want to. Believe me, my whole body wants to, but it’s not on. Not now. I can’t, I must be at that press conference, ready to answer their questions. I’ve no choice. Fact.’

‘There’s time enough.’

‘I love you, Nils. And I want you. But there isn’t time, not now.’

Nils gave up, but Lennart knew, he saw his lover’s disappointment. It was harder for Nils, he thought, who didn’t have someone at home waiting for him, somebody to lie close to in bed, to make gentle love with. Nils dreamed with Lennart in mind, only him. No secrets to mull over, only a future when it was simply Nils and Lennart, nothing and nobody else.

Lennart stroked his cheek, kissed his forehead. Nils was so beautiful, proud-looking somehow. Two years older, there were some grey streaks in his dark hair.

‘I must be off.’

‘Any chance of meeting up later today?’

‘Afterwards I’ve got to see Bertolsson. He’s asked me out to lunch. Maybe it’s to be nice to me, but on the other hand - maybe not. It might be a threat. When I come back, what about a walk to the water-tower?’

‘I’ll wait for you there.’

Lennart held him for longer than he should. Let him free, slowly. Stood up.

The grey concrete wall was seven metres high. It loomed at the edge of the forest and then snaked along for one and a half kilometres, enclosing five low brick buildings.

Some people were kept inside. Others stayed outside.

Aspsås was one of Sweden’s twelve Category-B prisons, a medium security rating. The lifers, murderers and heavy drug-traders were locked up in Cat-A’s. Small-time traders hid inside Aspsås, where there were no long-term men, only fixed-termers coming and going with sentences between two and four years. One hundred and sixty men, in eight of the ten units in the wings. Most were repeat offenders with drug-habits, who would do a house-job to land some dosh, get fixed, do a job for more dosh, more fixes, do a job, get nicked and twenty-six months inside, then release, a job, some dosh, fixes, a job, dosh, fix, the pigs and thirty-four in the jug, release, a job.

Here, just as everywhere. Me against you, you against the screws. Only two rules, don’t grass and don’t fuck mates who don’t want to.

The other two units housed sex offenders. Hated, always under threat. Nonces fuck people who don’t want to.

It was as if the prisoners’ joint shame and self-disgust had to find an outlet, as if being despised by society outside the wall was so hard to take that the only thing that could make up for it was to humiliate someone else. We, the straights, will breathe more easily if we fall in with the ancient prison compact everywhere that these sex freaks are nastier, more damaged, more excluded and that I, the murderer, rank more highly than you, the rapist, and that I, having robbed someone of the right to live, have more dignity than you, who fucked some sad cunt senseless. Though I’ve violated, it’s not the way you did it and, surely, you’re worse than me.

Maybe in Aspsås hatred was greater than in many other prisons because it was a mixed institution, where a couple of wings had one unit for normal prisoners and one for sex offenders. Because every Aspsås prisoner was suspect, a placement there was a potential death sentence for a man doing time for something straight, like eighteen months for grievous bodily harm. Transfer from Aspsås to another prison was bad news and could mean a serious beating unless you had papers to prove you were clean. Without your sentence up front to show anything different, every incomer was convicted of sex crimes until proven innocent.

H Unit was one of the eight normal units, which housed the ordinary lot of small-time crooks and street drug-dealers, assorted robbers, quite a few with GBH convictions, and the odd fraudster. These men were either on their way up in the criminal hierarchy and could expect longer sentences next time round, or had settled for doing the same pathetic stuff over and over, but were unsuitable for mixing with drunk drivers and minor first offenders in Category-C prisons. The unit looked like every other unit in any Swedish middling-grade prison. A locked, armoured door to the stairwell. A corridor with a linoleum floor in institutional yellow. Along it, ten cells on each side, their doors half-open. A small kitchen. Next door, a few tables to eat at and a TV corner and the green baize of the snooker table. Men slowly shuffling about, going away and coming back again, wandering off to somewhere to kill time, trying not to think of the hours that had passed and the hours that remained, only the present. Longing for zero hour is longing away your life. Staying alive and passing the time is all that is left when the prison gate is locked behind you.

Stig Lindgren had settled in the TV corner. The set was on, some channel or other, the sound was turned down and a deck of cards was on the table in front of him. He was about to deal to the five other players waiting for their hands.

Stig collected his cards. Grinned. His gold-crowned front tooth gleamed.

‘No shit. All aces to me. Again. You’re playing like right tossers.’

The others said nothing. Checked their cards. Flicked them about.

‘Fuck’s sake. Don’t show me your cards.’

He was forty-nine, but looked older, lined and worn. Thirty-five years of drug abuse had lodged amphetamine twitches in his face, spasms pulling his cheek towards his eye, the eye blinking out of sync. His dark hair thinning. A thick gold chain round his neck. He weighed eighty kilograms now, well muscled after nineteen months at Aspsås.

Once he was outside again and back on speed he’d soon be down to sixty.