Anders Roslund - The Beast

Images. Now he was thirteen and stoned out of his mind, he had mixed beer and preludin. He got Larren to come along, Larren who was a big boy and quite fearless. They hitchhiked to Blekinge, walked to the house, stepped inside, passed Laila, who was washing up, and found Per in the sitting room. No one realised what was happening, not until Larren grabbed hold of Per and he himself started stabbing at Per’s balls with an ice-pick.

‘House!’

‘What the fuck?’

‘Eights and sixes.’

‘That’s no fucking house.’

‘It fucking well is. Dickybird, explain to that shithead.’

‘You heard me. I’m not interested. Play with yourselves.’

Keys were rattling. Two screws coming through the main door.

Dickybird checked them out. They’d brought somebody new. Meant to replace Bojo, he guessed. This morning Bojo’s cell had been empty, he’d been transferred to Hall in a hurry. The lads had got it in for him, but someone had alerted the screws and the wing boss responded instantly. No blood on the floor in this unit, at least not for a bit.

The new guy was a big bugger. Shaved head, shit-coloured skin, one of them tanning-shop poofs. Dickybird sighed as he watched the group of men step inside, the screws keeping an eye. They walked past the TV corner and the card-players took note now. The new guy stared straight ahead, dead to the world. He was taken to Bojo’s cell, went inside but left the door open.

‘Who’s that fucker?’

Dickybird pointed. Hilding drew a deep breath, tried to remember.

‘Don’t know. Never saw him before. Has anybody?’

Dragan shook his head. Skåne shrugged. Bekir picked up two cards from the table.

‘Fucking leave it. Let’s play, I’ve got a good hand.’

Dickybird focused on the open cell door and waited. That was what he usually did, waited until they came out. Then he told them the score.

One hour passed. One hour and twenty minutes. Then he came out.

‘Oy, you! Over here.’

Dickybird waved, it was a command. The new inmate heard him, but kept his eyes ahead, ignored the hectoring voice. He walked almost demonstrably slowly into the kitchen and drank water straight from the tap. The large shiny head glistened with scattered drops.

‘Hey! Over here!’

This was irritating, it was Dickybird’s unit and he decided who did what. That skinhead had no fucking rights.

‘Here!’

Dickybird pointed at the floor in front of his chair, waited. The new man didn’t shift.

‘Now!’

He didn’t get it, that shaved moron didn’t fucking get it.

Hilding could sense the silence and glanced nervously at Dickybird, grabbed the deck of cards, sticking a finger up to show the others that they should hold it. But Dragan and Skåne and Bekir had caught on long ago; it was time to teach the skinhead a lesson. Not that the beating was their problem, they just had a grandstand view! They too could sense the silence; it looked like a fight, quite a few good rounds coming up.

They squared up to each other. The new guy was walking towards Dickybird and stopped when there was only a hand’s breadth separating them.

Dickybird had never been faced down before and had no intention of letting it happen now. The skinhead was taller than he was, probably one hundred and eighty-five, and had this fucking big scar running from his left ear down to the corner of his mouth. It was clean, could’ve been a knife but more likely a razor. He had seen razor scars before, they looked like that.

‘I’m Lindgren, Dickybird Lindgren.’

‘And?’

‘We usually say who we are, round here.’

‘Fuck off.’

The images started up in his mind, Per and Larren, Per’s balls bleeding something fucking awful, Auntie Laila over by the sink screaming her head off, Dickybird himself running about with the ice-pick lifted shouting that if anyone wanted a taste he’d stick it in, Per wailing; he had jabbed with the ice-pick at his eyes when Larren suddenly let his uncle go. Not eyes, that was Larren’s bottom line.

Dickybird was trembling. He tried to hide it but everyone noticed; he shook and hesitated and spat, this time on the floor.

‘Where are you from?’

The new guy yawned. Twice.

‘Police cells.’

‘So fucking what, of course it’s the cells, don’t mess with me. Do you have your papers?’

Once more.

‘Listen, Icky-dicky. That’s you, isn’t it? You must know I’m not allowed to bring my sentence in here.’

Dickybird shifted his weight from left to right leg. Per was dead long ago, a corpse with not much left of its balls. The ice-pick had been kept as evidence, shown over and over to the authorities, on the long way from Blekinge to the young offenders’ institution.

‘Fuck your sentence, I’m not interested. What I want to know is what’s the score. Like, I don’t want no sodding nonces or faggots in this place.’

Weird how a room can suddenly shrink, how sounds become words that turn into spoken messages that bounce off the walls and take up space, suck up energy until there is no more, only intakes of breath in the silence, and piled- up expectations.

The new guy shouldn’t have been able to get any closer but somehow he did. He was hissing, sending a shower of saliva into the air between them.

‘You asking for special treatment then? Is that it?’

One of them must give way, look down or away, but they stayed facing each other.

‘There’s just one thing you’ve got to fucking remember, Dickybird. No one, and I mean no one, calls me a faggot or a nonce. And if it comes from some shot-up, junk-crazed old wanker, then there’ll be bad, bad trouble.’

The skinhead poked at Dickybird’s chest with his index finger, several times, hard. Still hissing, he mumbled something incomprehensible.

‘Hotikar di rotepa, burobengf

Prison lingo.

Then he poked Dickybird’s chest once more, turned and walked back to the cell with the wide-open door.

Dickybird stood quite still.

His unseeing eyes followed the newcomer until he had disappeared. Then he focused, first on Hilding and then on the rest of them, and shouted down the empty corridor.

‘What the fuck. What the fuck.’

No one showed. Nothing but an open door.

That finger poking at his chest. Dickybird shouted again.

’You fucking listen. Racklar di romani, tjavon?’

Lennart saw him, waiting by the tower on the east side of the wall. It was their usual meeting place, at lunchtime or in the afternoon, when the shifts had changed over. Nils looked young, in shirtsleeves with his jacket thrown over one shoulder. A mere boy, waiting for his sweetheart.

Only a few seconds left to watch him unnoticed. Lennart slowed down. Nils was facing the other way, the way Lennart normally took; today was different because he had gone out for lunch at the old inn on the village square, he and Bertolsson had feasted on steak and fresh garden peas. Bertolsson had dropped him off halfway to the prison, because Lennart had said that he wanted to walk, needed time to think over what had happened, to try to get his mind round the note-scribbling and the microphones and the camera being shoved into his face. Strange to think that for a few minutes of midday news he had been inside all those homes, with his ready-made statements about how criminals ought to be managed.

It was still windy, a change after weather dominated by high pressure for the best part of a month. It had been an eternity of stagnant heat, sweating and irritation, always something itching, always something troubling around the corner.

Nils smiled. He had caught sight of Lennart and couldn’t wait. He started strolling towards his lover, came close, held him and wouldn’t let go, kissed his forehead and then his cheek.