The Beast Read online

  For a moment nothing else existed.

  The flapping arms disappeared. Lund had been thrown violently backwards and crashed heavily to the ground.

  He tried to get up, slowly.

  Fredrik moved the bright dot to the man's forehead, let it rest there for a second.

  The sight of an exploding head was somehow unexpected.

  Then the silence closed in again.

  Fredrik put the gun on the car hood, sagged until he reached the ground, then lay down holding his head, twisting until he was curled up like a foetus.

  He wept.

  For the first time since Marie had gone his tears came. It hurt; the bloody unbearable grief had grown inside him, out of sight. Now it was pushing its way out and he screamed the way you do when you are about to lose your life.

  Chief interrogator Sven Sundkvist (SS): This way, please. Kristina Björnsson, barrister (KB): Right. Thank you.

  SS: The interrogation of Fredrik Steffansson is taking place in Kronoberg prison. The time is twenty fifteen. Present with Steffansson are the chief interrogator Sven Sundkvist and Steffansson's legal representative, Kristina Björnsson, solicitor.

  Fredrik Steffansson (FS): (inaudible)

  SS: Sorry? What did you say?

  FS: Please, I'd like some water.

  SS: It's just in front of you. Help yourself.

  FS: Thank you.

  SS: Fredrik, could you please tell us what has happened.

  FS: (inaudible)

  SS: Speak up.

  FS: Bear with me.

  KB: Are you all right?

  FS: No.

  KB: Can you carry on?

  FS: Yes.

  SS: Let's start again. Please describe what has happened.

  FS: You know already.

  SS: Describe the events in your own words.

  FS: A previously convicted sex killer murdered my daughter.

  SS: I would like you to concentrate on what happened in

  Enköping today, outside the nursery school Freja. FS: I shot my daughter's murderer and killed him.

  KB: Sorry, Fredrik, hold it there.

  FS: What now?

  KB: I'd better have a few words with you.

  FS: Yes?

  KB: Are you sure you should describe today's events in those terms?

  FS: I don't see what you're driving at.

  KB: I get the impression that you're about to describe the events in a particular way.

  FS: I simply intend to answer the questions.

  KB: You must be aware that a premeditated murder is punishable by a lifetime prison sentence. 'Life' means between sixteen and twenty-five years.

  FS: Right you are.

  KB: I'm advising you to be careful about how you express things. At least until you and I have had a long talk, face-to-face.

  FS: I haven't done anything wrong.

  KB: It's your choice.

  FS: So it is.

  SS: Have you finished?

  KB: Yes.

  SS: OK, let's start again. Fredrik, what happened today?

  FS: It was you who gave me the crucial information.

  SS: What information?

  FS: After the funeral, in the churchyard. You were there and the other policeman, the one with a limp.

  SS: DCI Grens?

  FS: That's the one.

  SS: And what happened in the churchyard?

  FS: One of you two, the guy with the limp I think, said that the risk that Lund would do it again was very great. That's when I made up my mind. No more acts like that. Not another child, not another loss. All right if I get up, move about?

  SS: Fine.

  FS: I'm assuming that you understand what I'm trying to say. Look, that man was locked up. He escapes. You can't catch him. He tortures and kills Marie. He is still on the run, police chase or no police chase. You know that he'll do it again, to some other child. You know. And you know you can't stop him, you've demonstrated that.

  Lars Ågestam (LÅ): May I join you?

  SS: Please have a seat.

  LÅ: I put it to you that your intention was to take revenge.

  FS: If society cannot protect its citizens, they have to do it themselves.

  LÅ: You wanted to avenge Marie's death by killing Bernt Lund.

  FS: I've saved the life of at least one child. Of that I'm convinced. That's what I did it for. That was my real motive.

  LÅ: Do you believe that the death penalty is just, Fredrik?

  FS: No.

  LÅ: This action of yours suggests that you do.

  FS: I believe that taking a life sometimes saves lives.

  LÅ: And you're the judge of whose life should be taken and who should be saved?

  FS: A child playing outside its school? Or an escaped sex killer, who's planning to violate and then slaughter that very child? And their lives are supposed to be worth the same?

  SS: I would like you to say why you weren't prepared to let the police go after him.

  FS: I did consider it. But I decided against it.

  SS: All you had to do was approach the officers stationed by the school gate, isn't that so?

  FS: Lund succeeded in escaping from the prison. Before that, he escaped from a secure mental hospital. If I'd left it to the police, at best he would've been captured and sent to a prison or a mental hospital. What if he had escaped again?

  SS: So you decided to be both judge and executioner? FS: I had no choice. It was my only option. My one single thought was how to kill him so that he wouldn't be able to do again what he did to Marie. Under any circumstances whatsoever.

  LÅ: Have you finished?

  SS: Yes.

  LÅ: That's all, then. Fredrik, please listen carefully.

  FS: Yes?

  LÅ: I must put this to you formally.

  FS: Go ahead.

  LÅ: Fredrik Steffansson, I have to tell you that you are charged with murder and will be tried in court.

  * * *

  III

  (A MONTH)

  The village was called Tallbacka. Village? Actually, it was quite a sizeable community, with roughly two thousand six hundred inhabitants. There was a small supermarket, a kiosk, a branch office of the Co-op savings bank, a rather plain licensed restaurant, open both at lunchtime and in the evenings, a closed railway station, one large, recently restored church, which was forever empty, and two more popular free churches.

  You took the day as it came, that was the kind of place it was.

  It was a here-and-now for the people there, lives which had started in this place.

  It was good enough for them, thank you; only stuck-ups wanted to get away. A day was a day, no more and no less, no matter that the town had been tarted up with two new slip-roads from the dual carriageway.

  Despite being that kind of community, or maybe because of it, over the following months Tallbacka was to become the most clear-cut example, among many others, of what was a new legal phenomenon. It was here that people demonstrated the vacuum separating legally correct court proceedings and the public's interpretation of exactly what they signified.

  This was a remarkable summer, one nobody would want to remember.

  Göran was known locally as Flasher-Göran. He was forty- four years old, a trained teacher, who had never worked since his practitioner's term at a nearby school twenty years ago.

  Twenty years was nearly half his lifetime, but he still hadn't been able to work out why he did it.

  One afternoon, his duties done for the day, he had stopped in the schoolyard and undressed. He took off one piece of clothing after another. Standing stark naked, just a few metres away from the patch of ground set aside for smokers, he sang the national anthem, both verses, loudly but badly. Then he dressed again, wandered off home, prepared the lessons for the following day and went to bed.

  They had allowed him to finish his training and sit the examination, which he passed. During the few years that followed, he applied for every teaching post that came up w
ithin a radius of a hundred or so kilometres of Tallbacka. Despite endless labour at hot copiers, producing more pages of his ever more polished curriculum vitae, he never even got an offer of an interview. There was no need to copy his sentence, which always floated up on top of his applications somehow, obscuring the rest of the documentation. He had paid a fine, but it had not helped to mitigate the never-to- be-forgotten shame of having exposed himself in front of under-age school children, in the schoolyard and during school hours.

  Many times he had considered leaving and going somewhere far away, where he could apply for jobs untainted by rumours and speculation. Like many others in Tallbacka, he was too gutless, too muddled, too local.

  The day was very warm. True, it had felt even hotter yesterday, when he'd been away buying roof tiles, but anyway, he was sweating and couldn't be bothered changing from shorts to trousers. The three hundred metres to the shop seemed a long way.

  He heard them when he crossed the road. He had known several of them since they were toddlers, but now they were big boys of fifteen or sixteen, with voices like grown males.

  'Show your knob then!'

  'Fucking peddo! Come on, flash!'

  They emptied any Coke left and threw away the cans, to start a performance of shouting and rubbing their crotches rhythmically with both hands.

  'Flash cock. Flash cock. Peddo, peddo, peddo.'

  He didn't look their way. He was determined not to look, whatever. They shouted louder and louder. Someone threw a can at him.

  'Fucking peddo show-off! Go home. Get it out and wank!'

  He walked on, just a short stretch to go now, for once he was round the corner of the old post office they wouldn't be able to see him anymore and the shop wouldn't be far away. It was the only shop left, now that it had seen off its two rivals. It stood there alone, displaying red sale price tags and today's special bargains.

  He was tired, just as he had been every day this long, hot summer. After his hurried walk, breathing heavily, he sat down on the seat outside the shop, to watch the passers- by with their carrier bags. They were all people he knew at least by name. On the next seat along sat two girls of about twelve or thirteen; one was his neighbour's daughter, the other her friend. They were giggling the way girls do, laughing too hard to stop. They had never shouted at him, they simply didn't see him except as 'him next-door', the man who came round to cut the grass sometimes.

  Christ, there was the Volvo. On the road going past the shop.

  He always got a tummy ache when he spotted it. It meant trouble. Someone would have a go at him.

  The driver slammed on the brakes and the car shuddered to a halt. Bengt Söderlund climbed out. He was a large, powerfully built man of about forty-five, who wore denims with a pocket for a measuring rod, hammer and Stanley knife, and a cap with the text Söderlund Contractor. He walked up to the girls and spoke loudly to them, and to Flasher-Göran and to Tallbacka at large.

  'You two, come on! Get into the car. Now!'

  He grabbed each girl by the nearest shoulder. They crouched a little, sensing anger, twisted to get away, gave up, ran off towards the car.

  Söderlund went up to Flasher-Göran, gripped his collar to pull him upright and shook him hard. It hurt, the shirt collar burned against his neck.

  'Caught you at it this time. Now I've seen for myself what you're up to. Swine!'

  The girls in the car stared, too baffled even to attempt understanding.

  'I don't fucking believe it. That's my daughter. Like to show it to her? Is that it?'

  By now the gang of teenage boys had turned up. They had heard the noises of a car braking and a man shouting. It was a laugh to watch Söderlund set on Flasher-Göran, it made their day. They ran the last bit to get close.

  'Hey! Kill the peddo!'

  'Kill him!'

  Hands to crotches, wanking.

  Söderlund didn't look their way, only gave his victim a last shake before dumping him on the seat. Walking back to his car he delivered his final words at the top of his voice.

  'Get your fucking head round this. You've got two weeks. If you haven't buggered off by then we'll kill you. You filthy swine! Two weeks, that's it!'

  The car drove off with a roar.

  The boys were still hanging about, but they had stopped their act, stopped shouting abuse.

  They had taken in what Söderlund had said and grasped that his words were for real.

  The evening was beautiful, very still and twenty-four degrees in the shade. Bengt Söderlund went outside. He turned towards his neighbour's house and spat. He had come to detest the sight of it.

  Bengt was a Tallbacka man born and bred, and had worked in the family building firm until he finally took over the running of it. Both his parents had died within a few weeks of each other; their fading away gained speed until they simply weren't there any more. He had never considered death before. Not his problem, put it that way. Now death invaded his life. After burying his father and his mother he was left alone, facing his past, the time that had made him. His daily round, his safe nest and the venue for his parties and adventures too.

  He and Elisabeth had been in the same class at school and started going out when they were both sixteen. They had three children, two who were old enough now to have moved away, and one late baby, who was growing up too, but still sheltering in the space between the worlds of a child and an adolescent.

  This was his place. He knew what it smelt like, what passing cars sounded like. Time had a special quality here, it was unhurried, and seemed to last for longer.

  At noon the homespun restaurant next to the shop filled with local bachelors spending their luncheon vouchers and chatting; they were working men who had never learned to cook. By late afternoon the cafe transformed into a plain, smoke-filled and rather crummy pub. It was a safe, neutral hang-out for couples who weren't churchy and had nowhere else to go; it offered a discounted Beer of the Week, with peanuts to go and two gaming machines in a corner.

  Bengt had called round, asking everyone to meet up in the pub that night. He was furious and alarmed and ready to chuck any notion of compromise. Elisabeth didn't want to join them, they were too worked up for her taste, but Ola Gunnarsson did, and so did Klas Rilke and Ove Sandell and Helena, his wife. Bengt had known these people since their schooldays. The men had all played football for Tallbacka FC, season after season, and got drunk together at parties in the community hall. They were really children, who had stayed on to try out adulthood.

  They had talked about that freak Göran many times.

  In every process there is a stage where either it is halted, or it starts on a new, more or less unstoppable course. That was where they were at with their local pervert. The future was waiting for their decision.

  Bengt bought his mates a pint of Special each and double portions of peanuts. He was eager to share what occupied his mind, the way Flasher-Göran had been lurking outside the shop and the girls sitting so close and how he had felt and what he had done. Then he paused, looked around and drank deeply. White flecks of foam covered his lips.

  He unfolded a piece of paper he had brought and showed it to the others.

  'Look! I got his sentence from the magistrates' court today. I've had it with that bastard, that's for sure. I was so fucking furious. After I'd given him a piece of my mind I got into the car and headed for town. Drove like a bloody maniac. I got there just when they were shutting up shop. Christ, the time it took; they rooted around in their files and whatever. No computerised records in this day and age, would you believe it?'

  Everyone leaned forward to see, trying to read the text, upside-down if necessary.

  'Look at it! Here it is, in black and white. Swinging his dick in front of the kids. Fuck's sake, there's nothing between him and the beast that got shot in Enköping.'

  Bengt let his packet of cigarettes do the round, lit one himself.

  'Ove, remember? Your little sisters were among the kids, you know.'


  He fixed his eyes on Ove Sandell, knowing that he felt the same way.

  'That's right. He showed off his cock, right in front of them. Filthy. If I'd been there I would've killed him. Blasted him there and then. No problem.'