Anders Roslund - The Beast

Dickybird was holed up in the TV corner. He felt knackered, like he always felt after he had smoked pot, and the classier the shit was the more dog-tired he got. Pure kif had the biggest effect and this lot had been the fucking best ever. The Greek, who flogged it, had spoken nothing but the truth when he said he’d never sold better, no argument with that, it was good shit and Dickybird knew what he was talking about, he had been through some in his day.

He looked at Hilding in the chair opposite. Wildboy Hilding wasn’t so wild now, that was for sure; he looked shagged, with that spaced-out look on his face, and he didn’t even scratch that fucking awful sore of his, his hand that was usually somewhere at nose height was resting on his knee. Dickybird bent over and tapped his mate on the shoulder, Hilding’s eyes opened and Dickybird signed, one thumb up and index finger pointing towards the showers. Good stuff, and more in there, behind the tile next to the strip-light. Enough for at least two more goes. Hilding got the message, his thumb went up and he smiled, before sinking deeper into his armchair.

Plenty of tramping about in the unit today, no peace for the wicked. First the new one, the skinhead who didn’t have a fucking clue about what went and what didn’t round here, seemed to fancy that he could just hang out doing his own fucking thing. Name of Jochum Lang, apparently, what kind of piss-awful name was that? But that was what the nice new young screw had said when he asked. One of them hitmen, seemingly, a bloody bailiff, long list of GBH and manslaughter, but a shortish sentence because of all the sad tossers out there who didn’t dare to witness against him. Still, he had to learn, no messing about in this unit, he’d have to get used to it.

And then Hitler, who had been pissing himself on the telly, but was thick enough to show his face on the unit afterwards, sneaking a short cut to his sex hellhole. Pissed his pants on-screen, knew he should keep his head down, so he had said fuck all when he ran into them; they had been zonked then and Hitler must’ve smelled the hash fumes but kept going, trotting along to his bunch of perverts. They should be terminated, the whole lot of them.

To top it all, Grensie. What next? Marched through the unit by Hitler, limping as always; the old copper was a fucking cripple and had been around for longer than was good for him, so maybe he got a hard-on thinking about the old times, but he should be dead by now. He had been one of the Stockholm cops sent down to Blekinge in 1967, he had seen Per’s bleeding goolies and escorted the bawling thirteen-year-old to a young offenders’ prison.

Bekir shuffled the cards, cut and dealt. Dragan put two matches in the pot and picked up his hand. Skåne did the same. Hilding pushed his cards into a heap and went to the john. Dickybird picked up his cards one by one. Crap cards. Bekir dealt like an old maid. They picked new cards, he swapped all except one, king of clubs, useless but he never gave up all his cards, on principle. The four new ones were crap too. No points. He put out king of clubs, two of hearts, and four and seven of spades. Last trick. Dragan played queen of clubs, and since the ace and the king had both gone he slapped the table in triumph. The matches were his, worth a hundred quid each. He reached out to grab them, but Dickybird raised his hand.

‘Hi you! What do you fucking think you’re doing?’

‘The pool’s mine.’

‘No way. I haven’t shown.’

‘The queen is high.’

‘Nope.’

‘No? What the fuck?’

He put his last card down. King of clubs.

‘There.’

Dragan started waving his hands about.

‘What the fuck! The king went before.’

‘Too bad. Here goes another one.’

‘You can’t have two fucking kings of clubs.’

‘Can’t I? Seems I can.’

Dickybird pushed Dragan’s hands away.

‘That’s my lot now. Goes to the top card. You owe me, girls.’

He laughed out loud and banged on the table. The screws in the guards’ box, three guys who passed most of their working time chatting, turned round to place the source of the noise. They watched as Dickybird threw a pile of matches high in the air and tried to catch them in his mouth. They shrugged, turned away.

Hilding walked along the corridor from the toilet. He moved slowly, but seemed more alert than before. He was holding a sheet of paper.

‘Hi there, Wildboy, listen to this, who do you think scooped the whole fucking pot? Who’s sitting here with thousands of smackers owing to him, eh?’

Hilding wasn’t listening; instead he showed Dickybird the paper.

‘Look at this, you should read it, Dickybird. It’s a letter. Milan got it today. He showed it to me in the crapper. Thought I’d better tell you. It’s from Branco.’

Dickybird collected the matches, put them into a matchbox.

‘Oh fuck off, sweetie. I can’t be arsed reading letters that aren’t to me.’

‘I think you should. And Branco thinks you should.’

Dickybird stared at the sheet of paper in his hand, turned it over, tried to give it back.

‘Forget it.’

‘OK, just read the last bit. From there.’

Hilding pointed and Dickybird looked.

‘Errr… I…’ He cleared his throat. ‘“I hold… hope…” My eyes aren’t right today, they’re aching something awful. Hilding, you read this shit.’

He carried on rubbing energetically while Hilding read the last few lines.

‘It says, “I hope there are no misunderstandings about where Jochum Lang fits in. He is my friend. Here is a piece of good advice for you. You treat him nicely. Signed Branco Miodrag.” And I recognise the handwriting.’

Dickybird had been listening in silence, standing very still. Now he held out his hand, took the letter and made his eyes follow the ink pattern of the signature. A Serb or some other fucking wog. He threw the letter on the floor, then the matchbox, and stamped on the lot. He looked up and towards the cell doors in the corridor, then met the eyes of the men around him. Hilding slowly shook his head. Skåne did the same, and so did Dragan and Bekir. Dickybird was bending to pick up the paper with the black imprint of the sole of his shoe when he heard a cell door open at the far end of the corridor.

It was like the guy had been hanging around inside, just waiting for the right moment. Jochum walked towards the still half-kneeling Dickybird.

‘Fuck’s sake, Jochum, no need for any papers. You don’t need to show me nothing. We thought we’d just fool around a bit.’

Jochum kept walking past him, not looking his way, but just as he passed he whispered something, and it sounded like a shout in the silence.

‘You had a letter then, tjavon? ’

The nursery school was called The Dove. It had always been called The Dove, but the reason why was unclear. There were no living birds anywhere near. Was it Dove as in Love or as in Peace? No one knew, not even a redoubtable lady from the local council who had been around for ever, or at least ever since The Dove had opened, the first modern day- nursery school in town.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon, normally the time for outdoor play, but the school had shut itself off from the onslaught of the heat and the children were allowed to stay inside. It had become obvious a while ago that their small bodies couldn’t cope in the open playground. With thirty degrees in the shade, it must have been fifteen more in the full sun.

Most of the twenty-six children didn’t want to go outside, but Marie did. She was bored with playing Indians and having her face painted, because none of the others were any good at painting; they did lines and picked colours like brown or blue. She thought red rings were great, but nobody else liked them, they just didn’t want to do rings at all. She almost kicked David when he said no, he didn’t want to, but then she remembered he was her best friend and you weren’t meant to kick your best friend, not for little things anyway. So she changed into her outdoor shoes and went outside to play because the pedal-car was free. It was bright yellow.