Anders Roslund - The Beast

‘Did you see it?’

‘I did.’

They walked across the grassy slope, keeping a space between them. Seventy metres to go before they were safely into the wood. Behind the first fir tree they reached out and found each other’s hand. They walked on, holding hands tightly.

‘We’ve done all we could. At all levels of the service.’

‘Stop worrying.’

‘Environmental adjustment training. Pills. Group therapy. Person-to-person stuff.’

‘It wasn’t about that, I mean, not about what you or the service had done or not done. It was television, for Christ’s sake, a reality entertainment show. Point the camera at the culprit, strip him naked, make him sweat and lose his cool and jabber. Make him look shifty. Then the editorial people think it’s a red-hot show and your average couch-potato enjoys every minute, because it lets him forget his own bloody awful life. He can laugh at the bureaucrat who’s looking sad and stupid and dead ignorant. Screw them all. It’s not about content and meaning, it’s about scoring points, making people look weird.’

‘Nils, you don’t see what I’m after. We did try, we threw everything we’ve got at Lund. What happened? He grabs the first chance he gets, makes mincemeat of two guards and runs off. Now he’s on the loose some damned place. All he’s after is getting to toss off on dead little girls.’

They were out of the wind now, following a path that wound its way through the dense, untidy forest of fir and spruce to the water-tower on the hill. It was a two-and-a- half-kilometre round-trip. Walking briskly, they’d have half an hour to themselves behind a shed near the tower; now and then they made love there. Few walkers came that way and were easily spotted because the path was the only possible route. Everywhere else the forest formed an impenetrable wall.

Nils clutched Lennart’s hand harder, pulling him towards the shed.

‘Come on.’

‘Listen, I can’t. I’m really sorry. I said different, I know, but I can’t now. I needed to talk, quite simply. Freely, away from the damned camera. That’s all. Talk to you, Nils. You’re so sane. Please help me. Explain things to me.’

Nils stroked his temples, then his hair.

‘My beloved.’

Lennart closed his eyes, feeling Nils’s breath as he spoke.

‘Listen, it’s over now, done. Finished. No one can hope to understand people like Bernt Lund and that’s what makes him so dangerous. To us, but also a danger to himself too. Sometimes it’s impossible to defend oneself against another human being. They are there. Man is the only species of mammal capable of such acts against itself, of cold-blooded killings, to the point of extinction. We’re worse than animals, more like demons, uniquely prepared to self-destruct. It’s incomprehensible, but true.’

They held each other.

Someone was walking along the path, and was about to pass the shed without noticing them, tricked as usual by the wall of spiky conifers. Lennart clung to Nils, who hugged him tight, and was overwhelmed by a sudden wave of longing, of desire for Karin, of wanting her body. He could see her thighs, her breasts. He felt for her, and missed her.

They both wanted to tug at the foil wrapping, their probing fingers colliding, fumbling.

Inside the foil was a square piece of blackish-brown, glassy resin. They had ordered top-class pressed kif. It gave best sucks, each single drag kicked like a fucking horse.

It had been hard putting up with waiting for it, and once they knew it was there, they had longed to telescope the empty spaces of Aspsås, the hours of waiting.

They had ordered from the Greek, pooling enough dough to pay for half the order, which meant owing more than was really healthy. They should’ve kept their heads down and stuck to ordinary compressed Moroccan or even green mix, but Hilding had been eager, nagged and pleaded and brown-nosed until Dickybird caved in. When the pure hashish order had been placed all they could do was sit around waiting for three days.

The Greek had delivered. Glowing with satisfaction, they held the piece of hash close to the shower-room lamp and admired the shiny fragments.

‘Hey! Spot the glass?’

‘Course I fucking spotted it.’

‘Looks like good shit.’

Hilding produced a lighter and handed it to Dickybird, who used the flame to heat the foil from underneath. About one minute usually did the trick. The flat brown lump softened enough to be kneaded and shaped with his fingertips. Hilding had brought tobacco. Three-quarters baccy to one Turkish worked just fine.

‘Smells good.’

‘Fucking well does.’

Hilding made himself tall, stood on tiptoes and pushed on one of the ceiling tiles, the one nearest the lamp. It gave easily and he pulled out a corn-pipe. He handed it to Dickybird, who scraped the bowl, packed it, lit the mix and dragged to heat it through. Then he had another drag before handing the pipe to Hilding, who put it in his mouth in a hurry.

Every round they had two drags each, handing the pipe over in silence. The only sounds came from a couple of dripping taps. One of the lamps kept blinking. Drip blink drip blink drip blink. It was great stuff, better than last time.

‘Fuck it, Wildboy Hilding. Fuck it.’

Dickybird inhaled a couple more times, then held out the pipe and giggled.

‘D’you know, Wildboy? We’re in this fucking shower- room and smoking great pot and don’t think about this place. Like that it’s the best place for doing the nonces.’

Dickybird kept giggling. Baffled, Hilding looked at him.

‘What are you on about?’

‘We didn’t ever check it out.’

‘The fucking shower-room, is that what you’re on about? So what? Fuck’s sake, we’ve whipped any number of nonces and rapists and faggots in here. They say that in the States the cons set on each other in the shit-houses, right there between the crappers. What’s so special?’

Dickybird couldn’t stop giggling. That was what usually happened once he got started on good pot, he felt kind of childish and then as randy as hell, though in the end the images would come back and start scaring him; he’d be back with all that shit about Per and his cock and getting hold of that ice-pick and Per’s screaming and his bleeding balls.

He drew deeply on the pipe, holding on to it to tease Hilding, patting the lad’s head with his other hand.

‘Wildboy, you don’t get it, do you? Poor sap. You see, this ain’t about whipping, it’s about something else.’

Hilding reached out for the pipe, but Dickybird held on to it stubbornly.

‘Listen. Next time we get one of these beasts on the unit we’ll lie in wait for the bastard, hang on until he’s in the shower. When he’s in there, water going all over him, then you start a racket outside in the yard, so all the duty screws go pounding off to deal with it.’

Hilding wasn’t in the mood for this stuff. He tried to get at the pipe again.

‘Fuck it, Dickybird, it’s my turn.’

Dickybird had another fit of the giggles, threw the pipe in the air, caught it and handed it to Hilding, who dragged deeply, twice.

‘I told you to listen. So, the nonce is in the shower. I go in first, or Skåne, anyway, someone kicks the freak in the balls to get him down and we start giving it to him. Then we cut his throat. And then we butcher the stiff, carve him into small, small pieces. Break any fucking leftover bits of bone and unscrew the crapper and push all the bits down the pipe. And then we fix the seat on again and pull the chain. Flush the bits down. Use the shower to wash the blood away!’

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.