Anders Roslund - The Beast

After a while he decided to take a short walk. He went down to the water’s edge and observed people messing about in boats, a simple but pleasing show that was always on.

Still nothing written, not a word. He must stay until he had one phrase that looked worth keeping on paper.

The telephone rang.

These days it was always Agnes. Everybody else had stopped trying. Knowing what a rude bastard he was when someone disturbed him in mid-sentence, it was amazing that he hadn’t realised sooner that people had been scared off. It was only when the writer’s block had tightened its grip and the screen stayed forever blank that he discovered how emptiness had crept up on him. He didn’t know what to think about it, his isolation seemed both beautiful and ugly.

‘Yes?’

‘No need to sound so cross.’

‘I’m writing.’

‘What are you writing?’

‘Well. It’s a bit slow at the moment.’

‘That’d mean nothing, then.’

It was no good lying to Agnes. They had seen each other naked too often.

‘Yes, roughly. I’m sorry. What do you want?’

‘We’ve got a daughter, remember? I’d like to know how she is. We do phone each other at times and it’s always about her, you know that. I tried earlier, but you made Marie put the phone down so I didn’t get to hear anything. Now I want some answers.’

‘Marie is fine. Really, she is, all the time. For one thing, she’s one of those rare people who don’t suffer when it’s as hot as it is now. She gets that from you.’

He had a vision of Agnes’ tanned body, imagined what she looked like now, curled up in her office chair, wearing a thin dress. He had longed for her every morning, every day, every night until he learned to control it by shutting her image away, learned to be brisk and no-nonsense and free.

‘What about school? What happens when you leave her there now?’

Aha, Micaela, you want to know about Micaela. Good! Agnes must be troubled by his relationship with a woman much younger than either of them. Never mind that it wouldn’t make Agnes come back to him, she wouldn’t crawl just because he loved someone who was as beautiful as that, but he felt good about it. Childish maybe, but enjoyable.

‘It’s much better now. This morning it took maybe ten minutes and then she was off, playing Indians with David.’

‘Indians?’

‘Yes, that’s what they’re up to now.’

He started to wander about holding the phone, left the small kitchen with the table where he worked and went into the even smaller sitting room to sit down in an armchair. Her timing had been perfect, he couldn’t have endured staring at the blank computer screen for much longer.

He was just about to ask her about her life in Stockholm, how she was getting on, although this was something he hardly ever did because he feared what she might say, maybe that she loved her new life and had found somebody special to share it with, but then his mind suddenly fixed on an image on the mumbling television set in the middle of the room.

‘Agnes, wait. Hold it.’

The black-and-white still showed a smiling man with short darkish hair. Fredrik recognised the face. He had seen it recently. He had seen it today: it was the man on the seat by the school gate, the father waiting outside The Dove. They had nodded to each other. Now a new image, still of the father, but this time in colour. The photo had been taken inside a prison; there was a wall behind the man and he was flanked by two prison guards. He was waving to the camera, or at least that was what it looked like.

Fredrik turned the sound up. The excitable voice of a reporter came on; they were all taught to sound like that, to rattle off words with the same emphasis on every one, neutral voices without personality.

The voice said that the father on the bench, the man in the pictures, was Bernt Lund, a thirty-six-year-old who had been convicted in 1991 of several violent rapes of underage girls, then convicted again in 1997 for more rapes of children, and finally found guilty of the so-called Skarpholm cellar murders, two nine-year-old girls who had been sadistically abused and killed. He had been held in one of the secure units for sex offenders at Aspsås prison, but today, in the early hours, he had escaped from a hospital transport.

Fredrik sat there, silently. He couldn’t hear, raised the volume but still couldn’t hear.

That man in the picture. Fredrik had nodded to him.

A man from the prison had a microphone shoved in his face; he was sweating profusely and stammered when he spoke.

An older, grim-faced policeman said he had no comment and added a plea for the public to communicate any information about sightings.

He had nodded to that man, twice. The man had been sitting there all the time; Fredrik had nodded on the way into the school, and again on the way out.

Fredrik had turned rigid, but now he could hear Agnes shouting in the phone; her sharp voice hurt his ears. Let her jabber.

He shouldn’t have nodded. Shouldn’t have.

‘Agnes,’ he finally said into the receiver. ‘I can’t talk any more. I must phone somewhere. I’ll put the phone down now.’

He pushed the button and waited for a signal. She was still there.

‘Agnes! Fuck’s sake! Get off the line!’ He threw the phone on the floor, ran into the kitchen, grabbed his mobile and rang Micaela, rang the school.

Lars Ågestam scanned the courtroom. What a drab, disappointing lot.

The magistrates, political appointees to a man and woman, watched the proceedings with bored, ignorant eyes. Judge von Balvas had begun the trial with a totally unprofessional statement to the effect that she was prejudiced against any person charged with sexual crimes. Håkan Axelsson, the accused paedophile, had given up and was unable even to pretend an understanding of what his acts might have done to the children. The guards behind the accused tried to stare neutrally into mid-distance, while the seven journalists, who seemed agitated and were taking notes furiously, would make mistakes about the most straightforward events in their facts boxes. At least two faces in the public gallery belonged to familiars, women who turned up to enjoy the performance and justified it by chattering about their civic rights. And there was the group of law students, seated at the back as he himself had once been, busily making over the despair of violated children into a piece of useful coursework, hoping for a good z:i at least.

He felt like insisting that the court should be cleared, or screaming at the lot of them to keep a very, very low profile, or else. He didn’t, of course. Lars Ågestam was a nicely brought-up young man, a newly appointed prosecutor ambitious for better cases; he wanted to go up in the world, up up up, and was smart enough to keep his opinions to himself, to stick to his last and prepare his prosecutions so carefully that he knew more than anyone else around. Only an outstandingly good lawyer for the defence would have a chance of getting the better of him.

Kristina Björnsson was an outstandingly good lawyer, bloody well excellent.

She was the only one in the room who did not fit in with the overwhelming mediocrity. She was experienced, even wise. So far he had never come across anyone else from the defence side who still believed that even the worst, most moronic of clients was more worthwhile than the size of their fee. Consequently, she was also one of the few who had the clients’ full confidence.

Kristina Björnsson had figured in one of the first anecdotes he had been told when he started attending trials as a student. She was a well-known coin collector and her collection, allegedly one of the best in private hands, had been stolen ten-odd years ago. The news started off an almighty fuss inside all the prisons in the land. An unprecedented, strictly underground search order went out and within the week two heavies with long ponytails turned up at Björnsson’s front door with her collection, accompanied by an apologetic letter and a bouquet of flowers. Every single coin was in place. The letter had been laboriously scripted by three pros in the art and antiques racket, who wanted Kristina to know they were truly sorry. They wouldn’t have traded for the collection if they had known whose it was, and should she ever fail to acquire a coin legally, she need only ask and they would see what could be done.