Anders Roslund - The Beast

The ferryman was the older of the two, a semi-retired stand-in for the younger one. He had seen enough to grasp Fredrik’s desperation and wisely kept off the usual chit-chat to pass the time. Fredrik would thank him one day, much later, for his understanding.

They reached the other side, where the ferryman’s dog had been tied up. The dog barked with pleasure at seeing his master again. Fredrik raced off the ferry the moment it hit land.

He was so intensely afraid. Terrified.

She would never go away without telling someone. She knew Micaela was there and she knew she must not go anywhere outside the fence without letting her know.

That man. Cap on his head, quite short and quite thin. He had nodded to him.

Across Arnö Island, nine kilometres of winding gravel. Then Road 55, eight kilometres of accident-prone tarmac. Not many cars around at this time of day. He increased his speed.

Face to face. It was him. He knew it was him.

Now, five cars ahead, driving slowly, a small red car hauling an enormous caravan that tilted dangerously on the bends and made the next car keep a respectful distance. Fredrik kept trying to overtake, but was forced back by the curves in the road.

A slip-road, a right turn, then the bridge and central Strängnäs.

He spotted the crowd from far away.

People were clustering at the gate, in the playground and in the street outside The Dove. Five nursery school teachers, two catering assistants from the kitchen, four policemen with dogs, some parents he recognised and some he didn’t.

One of them, carrying a small child, was pointing towards the wood. A policeman with a dog went off in that direction, then two more followed.

Fredrik stopped outside the gate and stayed in the car for a while.

When he got out, Micaela came towards him. She hadn’t been outside, but had been waiting for him inside the school.

His coffee was black. No messing about with effing milk, especially no latte or cappuccino or any of that fashionable crap, just no-frills, real Swedish black coffee, filtered to get rid of the dregs. Ewert Grens contemplated the coffee machine; he wouldn’t pay a penny extra to get a dollop of evil-tasting emulsified muck in his mug, but Sven had to have his dose of the glop, he was prepared to pay good money to get this pale-brown chemical-flavoured stuff in his cup. Ewert kept the plastic cups well apart in case Sven’s was toxic and limped gingerly back along the shiny corridor floor to his room. Sven was slumped in the visitor’s chair. He looked exhausted.

‘Your poison. Here.’

Sven roused himself enough to take his cup.

‘Thanks.’

Ewert stopped in front of him; there was something new in Sven’s eyes.

‘What’s up with you? It can’t be that fucking bad to work on your fortieth.’

‘No.’

‘So what’s wrong?’

‘Jonas called me. While you were struggling with the coffee machine.’

‘And?’

‘He asked why I hadn’t come home. I’d told him I would. He said grown-ups lie all the time.’

‘What did he mean, lie?’

‘It seems he saw the TV news about Lund. So he asked why grown-ups lie, like they tell a child they’ll show it a dead squirrel or a nice doll, but all the grown-up wants is to do bad things to the child with his willy and then hit the child. That’s word for word what Jonas said to me.’

Sven sank back in his chair and sipped his coffee in silence. Absently, he started swivelling the chair, left, then right, back again. Ewert was rooting among his tapes.

‘So how do you reply? Daddy lies, all grown-ups lie, some of them lie and poke at you with their willy and hit you. I can’t stand this, Ewert. It’s too bloody awful.’

Siw was singing now. ‘ Seven Great Guys’, with Harry Arnold’s Radio Band, 1959.

They listened. My first friend was slender, built like an arrow, My second was blonde and I loved him so much

The song was bland and silly, but offered a kind of escape because it was so pointless. Ewert closed his eyes, wagging his head to the beat. For a few minutes he was in another, more peaceful time.

There was a knock on the door.

They exchanged glances. Ewert shook his head irritably, but there was another, firmer knock.

‘Yes!’

It was Ågestam. Ewert recognised the neatly combed fringe and the ingratiating face in the doorway; he had no time for busy little boys and especially none for the busy boys who pretended to be public prosecutors but couldn’t wait to get on and up in the world.

‘What are you after?’

Ågestam was visibly taken aback, though it wasn’t clear what bothered him most, Ewert’s bad temper or the room resounding with Siw’s voice.

‘It’s about Lund.’

Ewert put his coffee cup to the side.

‘What about him?’

‘He has turned up.’

Ågestam explained that the duty officer had just concluded a telephone conversation with someone who’d reported a sighting outside a nursery school in Strängnäs, just a few hours ago. The father of one of the children had called on his mobile; he had sounded sane and articulate, but very frightened, after realising that he had recognised the man wearing a baseball cap who had been sitting on a bench outside the school gate. He had seen this man when he delivered his daughter to the school, and now the girl had disappeared.

Ewert scrunched up the plastic mug, threw it in the bin.

‘Christ bloody fucking almighty.’

Those interrogations came back to him. The worst ever, the ugliest.

The man in front of him, there was something about him that wasn’t human. Those eyes that evaded his own.

Grens, you must fucking listen to me.

Lund, I want you to look at me.

Grensie, they’re sluts, you should know that.

I’m interrogating you, Lund. And I want you to look at me.

Sluts. Little ones, really small horny sluts, needing it.

Look at me now. Or else I’ll suspend the interrogation immediately.

You want to know this. About their tight tiny cunts. I knew you would.

Why not look at me? Don’t you dare?

The cunts want cock inside. Hard cock.

Good. Now we’re looking at each other.

Small, very small cunts. They want plenty of seeing to.

How do you feel now, when you’re looking me in the eye?

And you’ve got to teach them, you know. They mustn’t think of fucking all the time.

You can’t stand it much longer now. Your eyes look shifty. Cowardly.

The smallest cunts are the worst, they’re the horniest. That’s why you’ve got to be firm, teach them a lesson.

You want me to switch the tape recorder off and have a go at you. You want me to lose control.

Grens, have you ever tasted cunt on a nine-year-old?

He turned the music off. Removed the cassette gently, put it away in the proper plastic box.

‘So he’s allowed himself to be seen before he’s got hold of a kid. If he’s that desperate the risk is that all his inhibitions have gone west.’

He took his jacket from its hook by the door.

‘I was in charge of interrogating Lund. I know how his mind works. And I’ve read the forensic psychiatrist’s report. It just confirmed what I knew already. Lund has got pronounced sadistic tendencies.’

Actually, he had not only read the psych report, he had gone through it word by word because he was determined to understand any fucking ghastly thing there was to be understood. Nobody and nothing had affected him like the sessions with Lund; during the interrogations and afterwards, the man evoked hatred and fear and more.

Ewert would willingly admit that his years in the police had made him rather cold, even hard and difficult; allowing himself to have feelings would have made most days pretty hellish. But Lund’s crimes and total alienation had made him want to give up, crawl away, sensing for the first time that his job might be of no use. He had talked to the psychiatrist who wrote the report, discussed Lund and his sadistic rapes and the anger that drove his sexuality, fusing lust with inflicting pain, pleasure with forcing submission. Ewert had asked if Lund had some kind of insight into what he was doing; did he have any understanding of the feelings and reactions of the child and its parents and others who got involved? Cautiously, the psychiatrist had shaken his head and gone on to speak about Lund’s childhood, how he’d been abused from an early age and how, in order to stand it, he had shut out other people.