Anders Roslund - The Beast

He walked alone across the grass between the graves. Some were visited and had flower tributes, some were not; stones covered in moss and lichen that made the inscriptions unreadable. When he was a child he had walked here, peering at all the names and dates, calculated the ages of the dead and wondered at lives that were sometimes so short while others could be so long, at babies who never learned to walk, and at grown-ups who had been given a chance to choose what lives to lead.

Soon his daughter would be buried under this lawn. She was only five years old.

‘Fredrik?’

She stood behind him, cautiously touching his shoulder. He wheeled round.

‘I didn’t hear you.’

She smiled a little.

‘How are you? Forget that, I’d never understand. But I want you to know that I’ve thought of you every second since I heard.’

She was one of the good people. He had known her for as long as he could remember; Grandad had liked her, despite his reservations about female ministers. He was an elderly man by then, but he had supported her from the start, done everything to help the young woman in a world of men. Later on, Fredrik had realised that she had been very young back then, although he had seen her as a grown-up among all the others. Now that they were adults together, he felt they were contemporaries.

‘Rebecca,’ he said. ‘I’m so glad it’s you.’

‘I’ve been in this job for thirty years now. This is my worst fucking awful day ever.’

Fredrik was taken aback. Her swear word hit him, hit the gravestones, her faith. He had always seen her as security personified, but when he looked up her face was no longer gentle and calm; it had turned tense and brittle, it seemed fractured.

Fredrik stared at the coffin in front of him. Wooden boards, flowers. He held on to Agnes, she to him. They were standing in the front pew. Every movement set up an echo in the empty church.

There was a child in that coffin. His child. He could not grasp the fact, he felt it was just a very short time since she had been there and they had talked and laughed and hugged. Agnes shook with weeping. He held her tighter still. He seemed to have no tears left. The grief had invaded him, stolen everything. All that was left was that gaping wound inside him.

She is no more.

She is no more.

She is no more.

Maybe he should have sung along. The organist had played something.

They left the echoing space together. Rebecca had cast some earth on the coffin and uttered the old words. Afterwards she hugged them, but seemed unable to think of anything comforting to say. Her own mixed feelings, grief and anger and vulnerability, made her pull away abruptly, look at them, hug them once more and then walk away.

They stood in silence on the gravel path in the sunshine. Again the past came back to him; it was like the long summers when he had walked here with Grandad.

Now she was in a hole in the ground, like everybody else.

‘Please accept our condolences.’

The two policemen had come up behind them. Both were in black suits; maybe it was police etiquette, maybe their own sense of decorum.

‘I have no children, but I have lost people close to me. I can at least try to understand how you feel.’

The older, limping policeman, Grens, had sounded awkward, almost harsh, but Fredrik realised that it was seriously meant and had taken an effort.

‘Thank you.’

They reached out, shook hands. Sundkvist said something inaudible to Agnes.

‘I don’t know if it makes any difference to you,’ Grens said. ‘Still, I’d like you to know that we’ll have him locked up soon. A big team is chasing him.’

Fredrik shrugged.

‘True, you don’t know if it matters to us. It doesn’t. It won’t bring our daughter back.’

‘I can see that, and I’m sure I would’ve felt the same. But it’s our job to find him, bring him to justice so he can be punished and, above all, stopped from committing more of these crimes.’

Fredrik had just taken Agnes’ hand, half turning round to walk away. He wanted to be alone with her, share his grief with her. But these words made him look back at the policemen.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, since Tuesday we have kept every nursery and primary school under surveillance.’

‘Is that the kind of place where you expect to catch him?’

‘Yes.’

Fredrik let go of Agnes’ hand, examined her face. She seemed passive, waiting. She would have to wait a little longer.

‘What schools, how many?’

‘In this town, and around it. Lots of places, it’s a large area.’

‘And you watch out in this way because you think there’s a chance he’ll do it again?’

‘More than a chance. We’re quite certain he’ll strike again.’

‘How can you be certain?’

‘His past history. And the very clear psychiatric profile. Every specialist in the country has examined him; he has probably been probed and prodded more than any other prisoner in the land. The message is the same every time. He’ll do it again, and again. His only other option is to kill himself.’

‘And you believe this to be true?’

‘Well, take just the fact that he let you see him before… before this happened. It is significant. Our psycho-experts think so, anyway. It means that he has thrown off the last restraints and now there is nothing else left in him except lust to destroy, and self-hatred.’

He took her hand again.

The churchyard seemed very large. He was alone. She was alone.

They would carry on living, he perhaps with Micaela, Agnes with someone, not him. But they would always be alone.

He drove Micaela home first, to their home together, and held her for a long time. Then he and Agnes went out for a meal, just the two of them.

They found a place where they could sit outside, it was a cramped backyard, but it meant that they were on their own. A light breeze was blowing, which helped against the heat. Afterwards he drove Agnes to the train, but just as she was about to buy her ticket he offered to take her to Stockholm and she accepted. It meant that they didn’t have to say goodbye there and then. Instead they could sit together for another hour. They needed the space, even if it was just to drive a hundred-odd kilometres on busy roads; it would at least afford them the time to try to understand and accept that, by losing their child, they had also lost their relationship with each other, that they were two grown-ups with nothing but their grief in common.

They said little, because there was nothing much to say. She didn’t want to go straight back to her empty flat and said she preferred to be dropped off outside a shop. They hugged, she kissed his cheek lightly and he stayed watching until she had disappeared round a corner.

Afterwards he drove aimlessly round central Stockholm, which was strangely empty apart from stray tourists, maps in hand, now that the heat had made most of the people leave. He stopped twice, once to eat an ice-cream on a bench, once to buy mineral water from a bored cafe owner, and drifted on through the gathering dusk as the city went through its evening routines. The night never became properly dark, it was a Nordic summer’s night, and anyway the artificial big-city lights shattered the darkness. In the end he parked in a leafy lane on Djurgården Island and fell asleep, still in the driver’s seat, his head leaning against the side window.

His clothes were sticking to him, his light suit crumpled. He had woken early, unwashed and sore after five hours’ sleep. Outside, the clucking of bright-eyed ducks mingled with shouting from drunken teenagers going home after an all- night session somewhere.