Anders Roslund - The Beast

Did they recognise her?

After all, her picture had been in all the papers, she and the magistrates too.

They determine the outcome in the paedophile trial.

Is killing right? They decide.

The court that might make the death penalty part of Swedish law.

She thought about the man at the centre of the case, whom she had watched for the last five days. His face was so fragile, somehow, and so wounded. He had been trying to avoid looking at the hyenas in the back rows, staring straight ahead without a break. She had liked what she had seen of Steffansson, and had even spent her evenings reading one of his books. She did not doubt him when he said that he had wanted to stop Lund from violating other children, and so force other parents to descend into his own hell. His reasons were utterly believable.

Christ, there were moments when she wanted to caress his wounded face. She could have undressed in front of him, he wouldn’t have hurt her. He wasn’t frightening. It was unbelievable that he should have scoured the countryside dreaming of revenge.

One of the magistrates had asked her how she would have argued, if it was one of her own children who had been saved. What if she had lived in the catchment area of that particular nursery school in Enköping?

She had no children, but she wasn’t as insensitive as all that. Of course she would’ve felt differently.

As it was, she didn’t answer the question.

She was almost there now. The rain was heavier. The large drops collected in growing puddles and there was thunder in the air.

She stopped, stood still, soaked to the skin.

The water pouring over her cheeks, down her neck calmed her, made her feel more courageous.

She started off again, having found the strength to walk into the magistrates’ meeting, where she would try to persuade them that the grieving father should have a unanimous custodial life sentence.

It was raining outside. He was standing by the window, peering out between the bars in an attempt to find the cause of the rapping sound which had irritated him for too long now. It was a loose piece of metal guttering. He watched the dull-coloured, jagged strip of metal, watched the raindrops hitting it, registering each tap as pain, winced with each grinding noise as the wind tugged at it.

He went to lie down on the bed, staring up into the grimy ceiling and at the bare walls and the locked door, with its locked observation panel. Maybe he could escape by closing his eyes. But he had spent too much time asleep these last few weeks, and he could no longer immerse himself in unconsciousness.

It had been three weeks since they put him here.

The warders laughed when he said he thought it was a long time. Sweden, they told him, kept people in remand prison for longer than most other countries. Fuck’s sake, he was lucky to have his case in court so soon. Some people waited for months, even years.

You see, they told him more than once, he was that lucky because he had shot the nation’s top-ranking paedophile and the media were chasing the story night and day. You don’t have a clue, they added, about the time others had to endure, a strange waiting time without an end anywhere in sight, a time for suicide after evening bang-up.

He heard steps approaching.

Someone was coming to see him.

He made a quick calculation; lunch was still at least an hour away.

He glanced at the door. There was someone there. Eyes looking in through the opened flap.

‘Fredrik?’

‘Yes?’

‘Visitors for you.’

He sat up in bed, drew his fingers through his hair. This was the first time for days that he had given a thought to his hair.

The door opened. In stepped the chaplain and his lawyer. Rebecca and Kristina. And they were beaming at him.

‘Hi there. Ghastly weather, it’s raining.’

He couldn’t be bothered saying anything. These two were people he liked and he should open up, speak to them, but he didn’t have the strength. Conversation was misplaced in here, where even the source of light was ugly and lifeless.

‘What do you want?’

‘It’s a good day!’

‘What? I’m tired. It’s that bloody tapping noise.’ He pointed vaguely towards the window. ‘Listen. Can’t you hear it?’

They did listen. Then they both nodded, yes, what an annoying sound that was. Rebecca fiddled with her dog-collar for a moment and then she put her hand on his shoulder.

‘Fredrik, it’s your turn to listen. Please. Kristina is bringing you good news.’

She turned to the lawyer, who went to sit on the bed next to him. A comforting presence, a plump body and a calm voice.

‘And this is what I’ve got to tell you. Fredrik, you’re a free man.’

He heard what she said, but did not speak.

‘Do you understand what I’m saying? You are no longer in detention. The magistrates didn’t agree, but a majority came down in favour of “an act of reasonable force”. That’s final.’

So that was what she was on about. So what?

‘Fredrik, listen. You can walk out of this cell. You can take off the bin-bags they’ve dressed you in. And tonight, only you decide if a door is to be locked or not.’

He got up and went over to the window. The noise was louder than ever. It was raining heavily now; there might be a thunderstorm during the night.

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean? What don’t you know?’

‘I don’t know if this means anything. What’s the point? I might as well stay here.’

His time as a National Service conscript came back to him. How he had hated soldiering, counting every minute until they’d let him go home, and then, one day, when he finally stepped outside the barrack door and left through the open gate, what should’ve been a dream-come-true only made him feel deflated and empty. It was like that again.

‘I don’t think you understand at all. You see, I’m finished.’

The two women glanced at each other. They didn’t grasp what he felt and they deserved an explanation.

‘I am… I don’t exist. I don’t have anything that I value. I did have a child. She does not exist. She suffered at the hands of someone who’d made others suffer, and now he doesn’t exist either. I thought life was inviolable. And then I went and shot someone to death. If you lose who you are and what you have… I’m at a loss. I don’t fucking know.’

They stayed. Eventually he changed into his own clothes, readied himself to change into another world.

He was not banged up any more.

Walking away from his cell, he nodded to the officer, the guy with the eyes. He bought a coffee from the squeaky machine in the corridor.

Then he marched straight past the twenty-odd journalists who were perched on the stairs, wanting to get at him, at his face. He said nothing. He knew nothing.

Rebecca and Kristina had ordered a taxi for him. He hugged them and left.

Bengt Söderlund ran as fast as he could through Tallbacka. He had been running all the way from home, a taste of blood in his mouth, his hip hurting like when he was a schoolboy running the cross-country competition and winning, not because he was the strongest or the best trained or anything like that, but because he was the most determined.

He was running as if he couldn’t get ahead fast enough, as if every second was precious. He could see from a distance that the lights were on in Ove and Helena’s house, and their car was there. He kept running, waving a piece of paper as he went, up the steps, through the door and into the sitting room.