Anders Roslund - The Beast

‘So bloody what?’ Ewert raged.

Ågestam ignored the aggression, the hatred.

‘I learned a lot about how the trade works, so much so that I had enough material for a webpage called Taxilnfo. You know the kind of thing, stuff not normally put together, like telephone numbers, business structures, price comparisons. The lot. As a matter of fact, I made myself into some kind of expert. People turned to me, like tourist agencies and so on. The press.’

Ewert was stirring again; it was hard to work out whether he had actually taken in one single thing, he kept thumping on the desk and breathing noisily. Sven had seen him in bad moods before, barking at people or whingeing, but never quite like this, beyond any dignity or control.

‘You stuck-up twit, now what?’

‘Bernt Lund has been a taxi driver, isn’t that so?’

Sven nodded.

‘Even set up his own business, B. Lund Taxis or something?’

He had turned to Ewert now, and was waiting quietly for a reply.

Four minutes passed.

That is a long time to wait when a room is out of kilter and thoughts, feeling, bodies all seem out of sync with each other.

‘He did,’ Ewert hissed. ‘A long time ago. We’ve been all over it, turned that fucking bankruptcy nest inside out.’

Ågestam no longer walked from one wall to the next; he had set his thin legs free and was almost running about, as if in a hurry or a state of jittery nerves. His light- coloured, slightly too long hair flopped, his large glasses misted over and his whole being reverted to a kind of boyishness; he became a rebellious, determined schoolboy once more.

‘I understand, you’ve checked the firm’s economic base, found out how it was set up and how big it was. Good. But did you look at what he actually did?’

‘He drove a car. Taxied the locals from A to B and trousered the fare.’

‘Whom did he drive?’

‘There are no fucking records.’

‘No, not of individuals, but bookings are recorded if they are made by named organisations, local councils for instance.’

He stopped and stood still between Ewert, seated at his desk, and Sven, in the visitor’s chair, continuing to talk and carefully including both of them, turning this way and that to show that they were both being addressed.

‘It is problematic for small outfits in the taxi business to manage on occasional fares, from pick-ups and so on. Most of them like to have fixed runs on their books, we call them school runs. Fixed bookings pay less well but you can count on the income. Typically, actual school runs involve young children, who are ferried to nursery or primary school. If you’ve been in the trade for as long as Lund had, the odds are that you’ve got several runs of this kind. And, of course, it’s especially likely with somebody as sick as he is. In other words, I suggest you trace his regular bookings record. My prediction is that you’ll find some for little kids to be taken to places which he’ll have got to know well. And fantasised about, and maybe wants to return to.’

Ågestam pulled a comb from a trouser pocket and tidied his short-back-and-sides. His appearance mattered, it was correct, white shirt and discreet tie, grey suit; he liked feeling proper, complete, prepared.

‘Will you investigate this?’

Ewert stared ahead in silence, bursting with anger; he had to give vent to it or let it die a death. He had rarely been so provoked. This was his room, his music, his way of working. You either respected it or you could stay outside in the corridor with the rest of the goons. He couldn’t fathom the origin of his accumulated rage, or why it had grown so overwhelming, but never mind, that’s how he felt, and now when all that time had passed and he had aged in his job, he could just be himself, without having to explain why he was this way or that. True, some people used the word bitterness to describe his mindset. No matter, he wasn’t interested in their fucking choice of words and had no urge to be liked by all and sundry. He knew who he was and had learned to put up with it.

He realised that the young prosecutor had pointed out something that should be one of their next tasks, but it went against the grain to admit it.

Sven reacted differently. He sat up straight and looked appreciative.

‘This sounds like a good lead. It could well be just as you say, and if so, our catchment area, as it were, could be significantly reduced. We’ve gone all out on this case, tried to find time and resources, but we’re short of both. That’s a fact. If you turn out to be right, we’ll gain time and we can focus on resource use. And it should bring us closer to him. I’ll start checking this at once.’

He left. They heard his swift footsteps disappear down the corridor, but stayed were they were, without speaking. Ewert had no more energy left for shouting and Ågestam realised how drained he felt, and how tense he had been.

An interlude. Stillness, silence. Then Ågestam moved away from the centre of the room, walking past Ewert and over to the bookshelf. He started the tape recorder. ‘Throw It Away’, originally called ‘Lucky Lips’ in 1966.

Scratchy. Too jolly. Desperate rhymes.

Ågestam went away and closed the door behind him.

It had stopped raining. The last drops were splashing on the ground when he came out on the front steps. The air was clear and easy to breathe. The clouds had thinned, letting the sun through, and soon it would be hot, dry, dusty again.

Fredrik crossed the street quickly, carrying the sack. He put it on the back seat of his car. He was preoccupied; inside his head he was talking to two small boys about death. David and Lukas had been sitting close to him on the hard brick floor, listening to him and understanding, but always throwing his answers back at him, batting new questions his way; at five and seven years of age they were grappling with their wonder about body and soul and the dark that no one can see.

Marie came back to him. He had thought of her every single moment since Tuesday; the image of her still, withdrawn face had blocked every attempt to see anything else. Now he actively tried to recall her as she had been before she died, the little being for whom he lived. What had she thought about death? They had never talked about death and dying, never had a reason to.

Had she understood?

Had she been frightened?

Had she closed her eyes? Fought?

Had she realised, in any sense, that death could happen, just like that, and death meant eternal solitude, inside a flower-decked white coffin underneath a freshly mowed lawn?

He set out to drive through the narrow streets of his hometown. There were four addresses on his list here, and four in Enköping. He was certain of being right. Lund would be sitting outside one of these schools, waiting, as he had done outside The Dove. Fredrik remembered the old policeman and what he had said when they met in the cemetery, how utterly convinced he had been that Lund would violate again and again, until someone stopped him.

First call, The Dove. It was on the list and Lund might as well have returned there as gone elsewhere, like an animal returning to a place where it has once fed. Fredrik had driven this route for almost four years now, and knew every house, every street sign. He hated it. The appearance of safe, contented habit held within it a suffocating grief. He was at home, but it would never be home again.

He parked a few hundred metres away. A Securitas van with truncheon-carrying guards had drawn up near the gate, and a little further away was a police patrol car with two uniformed officers. How strange to sit here again, as he had done six days earlier, when he had left his daughter at the school for a few short hours. Why? They had been so late that day. But Marie had nagged and he had felt guilty because he had stayed in bed all morning. If only he had said no and taken her hand to go for a walk, maybe into town to buy an ice-cream at the harbour, as they often did. If only he had told her that she mustn’t go outside in the afternoon heat, but stay in with the other children.