Anders Roslund - The Beast

Fredrik splashed the liquid around with his foot and went on talking.

‘You haven’t got a clue, have you? That my crime is deliberate execution of a foul child-killer. A maniac who might’ve come round to fuck your baby to death. And now it’s your job to keep tabs on me. Enjoying yourself, are you? Feeling socially useful?’

He picked up the juice glass and threw it at the open panel. It shut just in time, before the glass hit and splintered into fragments.

The next moment the panel pulled back and the eyes stared at him again.

‘I should call in support; what you just did is enough for

a spell in restraints. But you asked a question and I’m going to answer it.’

The officer paused and swallowed; the words wouldn’t come at first. Fredrik waited.

‘And the answer is no, I don’t think what I’m doing to you is any use. Fact is, I don’t think you should be here. And I think you did the right thing, shooting that bastard. But that’s neither here nor there. You’re inside and that’s that. Now, do you want the chaplain?’

A locked door. He is on one side, everyone else on the other.

Images floating in the empty space inside his head, closed doors, himself on one side, everyone else on the other, how he had hated it, no panel in that door but panes to look through, three blurry sheets of glass, like in toilet windows, but you could see things if you pushed your face close, what Dad and Frans did in there, in the sitting room, the TV was on loud but he could hear Dad shout that Frans should undress, take it all off, then Dad hit the naked body again and again, he watched the hand moving, the glass distorted everything, making it look absurd, and Frans never uttered a sound. It was their mum who had snitched, she had told Dad why Frans must be punished, and then she just left them to it, went to sit in the kitchen, drinking tea and smoking her endless Camel cigs, while Dad hit and hit and hit until Frans shouted defiantly that he wasn’t strong enough, he didn’t feel it, hit harder. Dad often stopped altogether then.

A locked door. Someone staring.

‘For the last time, mate. Yes or no?’

Fredrik closed his eyes to make the door disappear.

‘Let the duty-saint in then.’

The door opened, he opened his eyes to look, at first unable to take in what he saw.

‘Rebecca? You?’

‘Hello, Fredrik. I’ve worked here before, you know, but this time I asked. I wanted to be here for you, since you won’t be allowed to see anyone else you know. Do you mind?’

‘Please come in.’

He felt so ashamed. Ashamed of being in this bleak cell awash with spilt juice, of wearing sack-like prisoner’s kit, of throwing a tantrum in front of her, of having urinated in the washbasin not very long ago. The joy of seeing her brought tears to his eyes, and that too shamed him.

But she hugged him and stroked his hair, telling him that she understood and that she’d seen locked-up men and women behave much worse.

He looked at her, tried to smile.

‘Do you think I did wrong?’

‘Yes, I do,’ she replied after a pause. ‘You had no right to decide about life and death.’

Fredrik nodded. He had expected her to say that.

‘Despite saving two children, or more, from Lund?’

Once more, she took her time. She meant a lot to this man and had known him for so long. Her responsibility to him weighed heavily.

‘That is such a difficult question, Fredrik. I…’

She was silenced because Fredrik had started to hyperventilate. She put her hand on his chest, and he sank down on the bed, his whole body trembling.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t help myself. It’s all so meaningless.’

Marie’s funeral. The cemetery. The cold floor and the organ filling the church with sound. The little coffin, so very small. Rebecca had stood next to it and spoken. Marie was inside the coffin. The lid was on but he knew they had made her look pretty.

He steadied his breathing and started to speak.

‘Marie is no longer. Everything that was her is gone, her senses, her thoughts. Gone, absolutely. For ever. Do you understand what I am trying to express?’

‘I hear you and I understand, but you know I don’t believe that.’

The noise of the panel sliding back. The eyes.

‘Seems to be plenty going on in there. Everything all right?’

‘Yes, it’s all right,’ Rebecca called back.

‘Fine. Just give us a shout in case.’

Fredrik had stopped trembling, but was still stretched out on the bed, taking deep breaths.

‘It was when I knew that Lund would do it all again that I made up my mind to kill. Get there first. Eliminate him.’ He searched for the right words. ‘You all thought it was a revenge killing, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t personal. You see, I died with Marie. I only came alive to kill him.’

He sat up and slapped his hand on the table, then bent forward and started hitting his forehead against the edge of it until he bled.

‘I killed him. What am I meant to live for now?’

The door opened and this time there were two officers. They wore the same uniforms and identical expressions on their faces.

Marching past Rebecca, they grabbed Fredrik and pinned him to the bed, holding him down until he stopped pushing his head forward into the empty air.

It rained on the first day of the trial, only the second time during that long, hot summer. It was a quiet, persistent rain of the kind that is there before sunrise and keeps being there until dark.

Rain or no rain, it was the most sensational trial in Sweden for years and the queue outside the Stockholm Old Court building had already grown long early that morning. Proceedings were scheduled for the high-security courtroom and attendance was limited to four rows of numbered seats. Only the bigger media companies had been allowed to reserve places and a scrum of journalists led the crowd in the stone-flagged entrance hall.

The security was extensive. Uniformed and plainclothes police were everywhere, reinforced by staff from private firms. Over the weeks that had passed since Lund’s escape, a looming sense of threat had been taking the shape of a faceless citizen, frustrated, aggressive, fuelled by a generalised hatred of paedophiles. This figure embodied a collective engagement by people who did not usually do much more than follow the news and comment from a safe distance, but who were now waiting and watching and preparing for action.

Micaela had got there early, just after seven. It had been chilly and raining a little harder then. She hadn’t seen Fredrik since Marie’s funeral. Now she knew that he had been hunting Lund and then kept in custody with no privileges.

More than anything else she felt frightened. This was her first experience of a court case and she knew she would have to stay still while the man she loved sat alone, just a few metres away from her, charged with murder and interrogated by a prosecutor out to get a lifetime sentence.

Once, not long ago, she had been part of a family. She had slept by Fredrik at night and learnt to hold on to him. Marie had become almost her own child, she had cared for her, fed and clothed and taught her. All gone now, in a few weeks.

She tried to smile at the guard who was checking her handbag, but he didn’t smile back. The electronic checker wouldn’t let her through, she tried three times and it howled every time, until she realised that she still had one of Marie’s bicycle keys in her pocket. Her seat was good though, in row three, just behind the radio and TV reporters. She actually recognised some of them. Instead of speaking to camera from some dramatic location, they were busy taking notes. She peeped; everybody seemed to write in a personal scrawl, very short sentences, but always with a note of the time for each entry. Two artists were sitting right in front, their pencils moving with fleeting ease over their white sheets of paper as they sketched in the background features of the courtroom.