Anders Roslund - The Beast

The room with its orderly rows of objects looked the same, except for the pile on the floor. He remembered how Grens, the old maniac, had knocked a lot of stuff off with his diary. The thin bloke, whose fortieth birthday had been ruined, had looked nervously at his colleague and then sighed when Grens aimed and did it again.

The bedspread with its blotchy stripes was already ruffled and Lennart sat down on the bed, then lay down to see what Lund had seen, night after night. What had it been like for him? Had he been wanking with closed eyes, fantasising about little girls? Or had he thought up plans, how to rule and control a child, destroying its naivety the moment he set to work on it? Had he ever tried to empathise with the child’s fear and humiliation? What had it been like, living with his guilt in an eight-metre-square cell, alone with it evening, night, morning; it must have threatened to suffocate him until all he could do was run from it, beating two screws senseless to get away.

Someone knocked. Who? The door opened and Bertolsson, the governor, stepped inside.

‘Lennart? What on earth are you up to?’

He sat up, tried to smooth his unruly hair.

‘I can’t really tell. I came here and… I wanted to know what it was like.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing. None the wiser.’

Bertolsson looked around the cell.

‘Christ. What a complete nutter.’

‘I think that’s it. My new insight. Lund didn’t understand a thing. No remorse. He’s incapable of seeing any point of view other than his own.’

Bertolsson kicked the piled-up objects on the floor. It didn’t fit. Chaos on the floor, total conformity and order everywhere else. Lennart couldn’t be bothered explaining.

‘Too bad. I’ve been looking for you because I need to talk to you about another madman. One of Lund’s colleagues, as it were. One of the seven in the child porn ring.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Name of Axelsson. Håkan. Couple of minor past convictions. Sentenced tomorrow in the child pornography case. He’ll have to do time, but probably won’t get as long a spell as he deserves. Enough to miss out on both Christmas and Easter, though.’

‘Where do I come in?’

‘He’s at Kronoberg now, which means transfer to here, but you haven’t got any vacancies.’

Lennart yawned, a big, long yawn, thought for a minute and lay down again.

‘I’m sorry. These characters make me tired.’

Bertolsson ignored him.

‘That is to say, this cell is empty, but won’t be for long. Lund should be back pronto.’

‘There you are. Sex crime is quite the fashion. Perverts are queuing up.’

Bertolsson straightened the slats in the blind to let in the bright sunlight. A day was happening out there. It was easy to forget. Inside the institution, specific days did not stand out, one from the other; instead everything congealed into lumps of months, years, into waiting.

‘We’ll have to place him in one of our normal units. Just for a couple of days, a week at most. Until we find a cell somewhere more appropriate.’

Lennart started to sit up, got halfway, leaned on his elbow and turned towards his boss.

‘Arne, what are you saying now?’

‘He’s not allowed to bring the indictment into the unit anyway.’

‘It doesn’t fucking well matter. The others will find out and you know what will happen next.’

‘Just a few days. No more. Then he’ll be transferred.’

Lennart sat up straight.

‘Hold it. I know you know. If he is finally transferred anywhere from a normal unit, it will be in an ambulance. No other option.’

It wouldn’t smell; he had been here before and he knew that. It didn’t help to know. Already on the stairs, his nose, his brain instinctively registered the stench of death.

Sven, as a detective inspector based in Stockholm, had of course visited the Institute of Forensic Medicine more times than he could remember, it was part of his job. He knew he had to turn up, but he also knew that he would never, ever stop hating it, that he would never, ever learn to watch the dead man or woman, human beings who had been breathing, talking and laughing not long before, being opened up and sawn into chunks by a man - almost always a man - in a white coat. The stranger’s hands would root around inside the corpse, examine the torn-out innards under bright lights, throw the whole lot back inside the carcass and roughly stitch it together. To cover up what they had done, the corpse on its trolley would be decorously draped, so as not to offend the bereaved who came to inspect it and declare that this was indeed the person they had been living next to, when they had all been full of hope.

Ewert was standing next to him while they waited for someone to open the security lock from the inside. Sven thought of how differently his colleague reacted to the dead the mortuary. Ewert didn’t seem to sense the presence of death. To him, the dead were just things. Before leaving, he would often lift the cloth, pinch some accessible body part and say something vaguely funny, as if to prove it beyond insult.

The medic had arrived at the other side of the glass door and was looking for his key-card. It was Ludvig Errfors, one of the most experienced guys here. Sven had time to tell himself that he was pleased that Errfors had been picked, because after all an autopsy on a child must be the hardest to do; they’d be less used to dissecting children. If any one of them was likely to have come across enough little bodies for the procedure to become routine, then this was the man.

Errfors found his card and the lock clicked open.

After the greetings, the pathologist asked about Lund. They told him there was no news. He shook his head and started speaking about the autopsies of the two dead girls in the Skarpholm cellar. It had been his case and he kept commenting on it, while he briskly led the way downstairs.

He was saying that he had never before seen such extreme violence towards children.

Then he stopped in mid-step, turning a very serious face up at them.

‘That is, not until today.’

‘Explain.’

‘I recognise the type of violence. Lund’s trademark.’

Bottom of the stairs, then a short corridor, first room on the right. That was where Errfors usually worked.

The dreaded trolley was there, right in the middle of the room. And now there was a smell, though not strong. The ventilation system hummed, steadily shifting volumes of air. If it hadn’t been a mortuary, Sven would not have known that the smell came from a dead body.

They didn’t have to put on sterile green gowns; Errfors was too experienced not to know when rules could be broken. He switched off all the lamps apart from the one over the trolley, its bright cone of light illuminating the stage in the darkened space.

‘This is how I prefer it. No reflections from shiny surfaces to disturb the examination.’

They saw a child’s face, looking peaceful, as if asleep; recognised Marie from her parents’ photos.

Errfors was rummaging in a plastic case. He produced a pair of big black-rimmed glasses with magnifying lenses, and a couple of A4 sheets of paper.

‘Now. She is less serene-looking under the cover.’

The room was silent, well sound-insulated; the rustling of bits of paper invaded their aural space.

‘Traces of semen were found in her vagina and anus, and on her body. The perpetrator ejaculated over the body, before and also after death.’

He lifted the cover. Sven turned his face away. He could not bear to look.

‘A hard object with a sharp point has been forcibly introduced into her vagina and caused severe internal haemorrhaging.’