Anders Roslund - The Beast

‘Fuck it, Dickybird, you’re kidding.’

Dickybird grabbed the pipe, drew happily.

‘No kidding. Why the fuck should I? I’d like to try it. Test it on the first beast who turns up. I want to have a go, feel what it’s like to jab with the ice-pick and get it in and twist it.’

Lennart Oscarsson was in a hurry. He had spent far too long behind the shed by the water-tower. It had been hard to leave, Nils hadn’t wanted to let go of him and he had not wanted to leave his lover either. He swept past the guard, bloody Bergh again, didn’t they have anyone else?

Lennart was on his way to A Unit, which housed twenty sex offenders, all sentenced for gross acts of violation, men who couldn’t be placed with normal prisoners. This was the type of inmate that is always found on the lowest rung of the prison hierarchy, the type that breeds hatred, lust to inflict pain. If I torment one of them, I don’t have to torment myself.

Bergh waved. Then he did a thumbs-up, possibly an attempt at irony. Or maybe he was too much of an idiot to work out that for a few minutes of that news programme, Lennart had been stripped naked on camera. He couldn’t be bothered to do or say anything in response.

Hurrying along the first corridor, he decided to turn right, walk upstairs to H Unit. By taking a short cut through H he’d gain quite a bit of distance and a few extra minutes. He took two steps at a time, thinking about Karin and the lie he’d have ready for her at breakfast tomorrow, and about Nils, who had begged him to break free from his marriage, Nils, who did that every time they made love, saying that he would become Lennart’s new family, and then about Åke Andersson and Ulrik Berntfors, two men he had worked with for many years and who, for some reason, must have opened the rear door of the van and allowed out one of the most dangerous people in the country, Bernt Lund, now at liberty to go where he liked, full of obscure desires, looking for little girls. Then facing the media came back into his mind, the press conference he had spent several years preparing himself for, but which had turned into a rape.

Not, of course, that anyone had touched him, but the humiliation inflicted by the camera and the mike just felt so bad. had turned up believing that he was to be a participant, not stripped and shown off. It took a while before it dawned on him that he was simply being used.

Only a few waking hours had passed of this day. How bloody complicated life could be.

Sometimes he felt too weary to carry on. He was losing the race against time, middle age was catching up and soon old age would. He had found no way to slow down and reflect quietly, he seemed unable to calm down, to tell himself his task was completed, he was done, somebody else could take over. But no, it was forever must do this in order to get on with that, and then it was the next thing. He wanted to close his eyes and wait for it all to stop, he wanted to do just what he did when he was little, close his eyes and withdraw until whatever it was had been decided and done because Mum and Dad were at home and had fixed everything.

He unlocked the door to H Unit, knowing perfectly well that everyone, colleagues and inmates alike, disapproved of what he was doing, too much bloody pointless running about, but he felt he had to use the short cut this time. He saw a couple of colleagues, couldn’t recall their names but said hello vaguely, nodded at some of the lads who were playing cards in the TV corner.

He passed the shower-room door and just outside it almost ran into Dickybird Lindgren and his seedy little sidekick. Stoned out of their heads, both of them. Blankly staring eyes, fluttering movements, there was even hash in the air, wafting out from the showers.

The sidekick mumbled Hi, Hitler. Dickybird Lindgren was giggling uncontrollably, wanted to shake, offered congratulations, fancy being on the telly. Lennart ignored the hand held out towards him. Lindgren had beaten one of his charges to death in the gym, no question; he was certain who had done it, and so were his colleagues. Sadly, no one had seen or heard anything at all, and even in prison, you get nowhere without evidence.

He hurried on, one more locked door, then across the yard to the next building, up two flights. He was in his own territory, the sex offender reserve.

They were waiting for him, lined up in the meeting room.

‘I’m sorry I’m late. Far too late. It’s been one of those days.’

They all smiled, sympathetically he supposed. The television set in the lobby had been on when he passed through, so they had presumably watched him. Five new trainees with their pens and notebooks, due to start work tomorrow among the paedophiles and rapists in the special units, waiting for the induction talk seated at the standard-issue meeting-room table.

The first day of their new life.

Beast.

This was the word he always began with, writing it on the shiny whiteboard with a solvent-smelling green pen.

B-E-A-S-T.

Silence. All five fiddled with their pens, trying to decide the pro and cons: do I write that down? Is note-taking seen as a good thing? Or would I make an ass of myself? The beginners were feeling lost and he didn’t help them. He continued with his talk, now and then turning to the board to note down a key word, or a few figures.

‘Nonces, beasts, are kept in two units here. They stay for two to ten years, roughly, depending on how bad the act was. How sick they are.’

Silence. This time it lasted longer than usual.

‘In this sad little country of ours there were fifty-five thousand criminal convictions last year. I don’t know how people fit it all in. Of that lot, five hundred and forty-seven were for sexual offences. The courts handed out a prison sentence in less than half of these cases.’

Some of them were happily taking notes. Figures were easier to deal with. Statistics don’t require judgement.

‘Since we’re all aware that Swedish prisons accommodate about five thousand inmates at any one time, the current lot of two hundred and twelve sex offenders shouldn’t cause any strain on the system. It is only in the order of four per cent, if you think about it, or one in every twenty-five. But these men do create trouble. Each and every one is a problem, because each one is hated, and a target for acts of aggression. That’s why they’re put in separate units. Here at Aspsås, for instance. But there’s a but. Now and then we don’t have a free place and then any new customers must be hidden in one of the normal units. And if, or when, the rest of the so-called straight villains get to know that there’s a nonce around in the unit for some reason - yes, it has happened here - then we’re all in deep trouble. They’ll keep beating him up until we move in and take him away.’

A man in his forties, presumably retrained from some other job, put his hand up like a schoolboy.

‘Now, that word, beast. You wrote it on the board, you use it, and other words of that kind.’

‘And?’

‘Is it important?’

‘I couldn’t say. But we use these words here. In a day or two, you will too. We know what it is about. Bestial acts.’

Lennart paused. He knew what would come next and wondered who’d start. Maybe the young woman sitting near him, she looked the part. The younger they were, the longer they had ahead of them, so they were the most hopeful for ways to bring about change. They had yet to contend with time, which saps energy and strength but, by way of compensation, builds up experience and adaptability.

But no, it was the re-trainee again.

‘Do you think you’ve got the right to be that cynical?’ He was upset. ‘I don’t get it. So far, my training has reinforced what I knew already, which is that people are individuals, and must not be objectified. It alarms me that you, my prospective boss, should express such views.’