Anders Roslund - The Beast

‘It was only a matter of time before Bernt Lund would attempt another crime. We are all agreed that this is the case, after studying his personality profile. My client is convinced that by taking Lund’s life he saved the life of at least one child.’

‘Too fucking true!’

Ove smiled, leaned over to plant a kiss on his wife’s cheek.

The eager reporter tried again, the question that she hadn’t been allowed to put earlier.

‘How does your client feel?’

‘As well as can be expected in the circumstances. I don’t need to remind you that he has lost his little daughter in the most distressing way possible. Also, as a citizen, he is deeply disappointed that society failed to protect not only his child, but also other potential victims. Instead he himself is locked up and will stand trial. He is taking the consequences of ineffective law enforcement.’

Helena stroked her husband’s cheek. Then she took his hand and pulled him up, as she rose from the table.

‘He did the right thing.’

She lifted her glass in a toast, turning first to Bengt, then to Ola and Klas and, finally, to her husband.

‘Do you know what he is, that Fredrik Steffansson? Do you? He’s a hero, a real old-fashioned hero. Here’s a toast to Fredrik Steffansson!’

They all followed her lead, silently raised their glasses and emptied them.

They stayed in the pub for longer than they usually would. Jointly they arrived at a decision, not the means of bringing it about, but that it would happen. They had passed the critical stage and the process would continue.

It was their Tallbacka, their community, the very stuff of how they lived day after day.

Lars Ågestam was bewildered, even though there weren’t that many people about, but then he never had been any good at big stores. Six floors, escalators, free offers and tastings, rumbling messages over the loudspeaker system, credit card machines, queuing numbers. All the time, the pressure to buy buy buy. The queuing customers were daunting, too many; someone smelled strongly of sweat, someone’s kids made a noise, some people acted as lost as he felt, a woman dropped the clothes she had picked to try on, a bloke kept searching for something in sportswear, and everything everything everything had been transported from elsewhere to end up here, neatly packaged and priced.

Simply being inside this living hell floored him, but he couldn’t think of another place to go. He never bought music, mainly because he had no time to listen, except to the car radio. The music department fazed him completely, shelf after shelf of recordings by alleged celebrities he’d never heard of. He spotted a young woman at an information counter. She was probably very pretty, though it was hard to tell behind the make-up and a hair-do that covered her eyes.

‘Siw Malmqvist, have you got anything by her?’

She smiled. Was it a friendly smile or a sneer? How do young women smile?

‘I think so, somewhere in the Swedish section. I’ll have a look.’

She stepped outside her enclosure and waved to him to follow. He watched her back and blushed. Her clothes were, well… revealing.

She held out a CD. The cover photo showed a woman, young back then, long ago.

‘Siw’s Classics. Will this do?’

Surely this was the right thing. He said he’d take it.

By now she was smiling very broadly. He blushed again, but felt cross. Was she laughing at him?

‘What’s the joke?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘I get the impression you’re finding this funny.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Yes you do.’

‘It’s just that you don’t look right. I mean, like the type of person who buys Siw’s songs.’

Now he was smiling too.

‘What do they look like then? Older than me?’

‘I… yeah, not such… a suit.’

‘What?’

‘Like, cooler.’

Safely outside in the street, he bought an ice-cream and decided to walk to Kung Island, then past the Crime Prosecution Service building, his place of work, and on to Scheele Street and the Violent Crime Squad offices.

He felt quite tense, hung back a little and then almost forgot to knock. The familiar irritable voice.

Ewert Grens was sitting behind his desk, but had swung the chair sideways and was leaning forward with his elbows resting on his thighs. His glaring eyes told his visitor to get lost, he wasn’t welcome. No one was.

‘I’ve got something for you. Here.’ Lars put the CD down on the desk. ‘I’m sorry I was so rude about the music last time.’

Grens said nothing.

‘I hope you haven’t got all the songs in this collection.’

Still no response.

‘I’d like to talk to you for a while. I’ll be straight with you, just as I was on Monday. I think you’re bloody difficult, and a real bastard at times. But I need you. I haven’t got anyone else to turn to in this case, no one who’ll offer me the resistance I must learn to deal with. No one who will ask the right questions.’

He gestured vaguely towards the visitor’s chair. Was it all right to sit down? Ewert, still not uttering, waved distractedly as some kind of invitation.

‘I’ve got to tell you this. I actually threw up yesterday. Breakfast, lunch, the lot. Sheer funk. Instead of being handed my most important case on a plate, I’ve ended up having to prosecute a grief-stricken father for shooting at and killing a proven sex murderer. It can only go one way. That is, straight to hell. You don’t have to be a genius to work that out.’

Ewert shook his head, cackled briefly with laughter and spoke for the first time.

‘Serves you right.’

Ågestam counted the seconds, his old trick in situations like this. Thirteen seconds. That mean old bastard must surely see that he was on top now, was being deferred to.

‘I’m going to push for a life sentence.’

He really stuck his neck out and it worked.

‘Say that again?’

‘You heard me. I’m not going to stand for anybody appointing himself judge and jury.’

‘Why tell me? What’s the fucking point you’re making?’

‘No special reason. Well, I wanted to find someone to tell my ideas to. To test them.’

Ewert cackled again.

‘Still scrabbling to get up the greasy pole, eh? Life, was that what you said?’

‘Aha. Yes.’

‘You know, half the punters who end up in prison have committed one or more violent acts. Fucking idiots to a man, but still human beings. And victims as well; almost all of them have been abused one way or the other, usually by their parents. Even I can see where that might lead.’

‘I know.’

‘Book learning. You should be out there, seeing for yourself.’

Ågestam leafed through his notebook.

‘Steffansson freely admitted that he planned the murder over the course of four days. He had time to reconsider, but didn’t. Not just judge and jury, he had to be the executioner as well.’

‘Planned, yes. But plans fail. He couldn’t be sure he’d find Lund.’

‘When he did, he still had a choice. He could’ve alerted the police. Christ, your officers were on the spot. But that would’ve meant giving up the shooting he had been looking forward to.’

‘Sure, sure, he has committed murder. No fucking question about it. But life? No way. Unlike you, I’ve seen real action, forty years of it, and that has meant sometimes standing by as worse nutters than Steffansson got off with lesser sentences than that. And I’ve watched hordes of fancy little prosecutors trying to pass themselves off as hard men.’

Ågestam breathed in deeply and checked his notebook again. He was determined to keep his cool and ignore the man’s clumsy sarcasm. Then it came to him that what was happening was exactly what he wanted. The sour old bugger was cross-examining him. This would work as a kind of pre-trial trial. He smiled, still turning the pages, but without taking in his notes. He could polish his arguments now, muster his evidence. Great, he liked it, just like an exam oral.