The Beast Read online

  LÅ: According to the criminal law, third chapter, paragraph 1, whoever takes the life of another shall be convicted of murder and sentenced to a prison term, which must exceed ten years and may extend to a life term.

  who demanded a life sentence, or the defence lawyer,

  KB: According to the criminal law, twenty-fourth chapter, paragraph 1, an act which is in self-defence or in defence of others and uses reasonable force is a crime only if, in view of the nature of the attack, the intent and significance of what is attacked and other relevant circumstances, it is self-evidently indefensible.

  who pleaded reasonable force, or the magistrates, who seemed not to be listening most of the time, or of course the journalists and court recorders, who sat behind him, writing away and drawing and memorising, all stuff which he wasn't allowed to see; he would not learn who they were or what kind of reality they represented. Furthest back was the public, the audience he supposed, there to satisfy their collective curiosity, something he detested them for, their hunger for thrills; they were rubbing their hands with glee at having got close enough, actually being free in real life to stare at the dad-whose-little-girl-was-murdered-so-he- shot-the-murderer.

  LÅ: Mr Steffansson planned the murder of Bernt Lund over a period of four days. In other words, it was a premeditated act and he did have sufficient time to reconsider. According to his own statement, Steffansson regarded the killing of Lund as equivalent to eliminating a mad dog.

  He didn't want to see them and avoided turning round, they ate him, tore the flesh of his face and burrowed inside his mind. Micaela was there and he wanted to show her something, say something, so he had turned a few times to look for her,

  KB: Reasonable force is defined as that used when facing threats with regard to life, health, property or other judicially understood interests, in self-defence or in defence of others. We believe it self-evident that the lives of two little girls were endangered and that Fredrik Steffansson, by acting as he did, saved two young lives

  but he feared the eyes fastened on him and the noses sniffing for his scent and so he avoided reminding them and her that he was somebody with something to say.

  Hours passed as he sat there, facing forward, eyes closed, refusing to listen. He had seen Marie stuck in a bag on a trolley in the forensic place. Her face had been beautiful, her chest taped together, and her genitals pierced and cut to pieces, and her feet were much too clean, and bore traces of saliva. He, who spoke against, and she, who talked for, had both asked him questions and he had replied, but it was unreal, meaningless.

  Only the little girl in the body bag meant anything to him.

  * * *

  The summer was dying slowly. The heat that had ruled for so many weeks was dissolving and being replaced by cooler air, until it seemed only a distant memory. People started complaining when the showers merged into days of rain, claimed that they felt the cold, something that recently had been simply unthinkable. As the damp infiltrated the layers of sweaters and thick trousers, the newspapers gave up on the dad who shot the paedophile and ran headlines about how elderly Germans, who could read fish entrails and foretell the weather, had insisted that conditions this autumn and winter would be dire.

  Charlotte van Balvas breathed in the chilly, damp air with pleasure. She had longed for this time of year, when she could walk the streets without sweating and look around without narrowing her eyes against the light. Her skin went angrily red in sunlight and she used to hide in the courtroom, hanging back, and then hurry off to libraries and restaurants, waiting until her time came to join the others, the happily adjusted ones, in the streets again. Soon pale skin would look normal.

  She was forty-six years old. As of this moment, she was frightened.

  She had seen what they'd done to the prosecutor. They had threatened him and vandalised his home because he did what he had to do for the society he represented. To plead a life term in prison for a proven, premeditated murder was quite in order. As the judge, she had to cope with that troupe of clowns, the magistrates, although their sole reason for being there was that they had served their political masters faithfully. She would have to face them soon, at a meeting out of court, and somehow convince them that according to the law they all recognised, Fredrik Steffansson really deserved a long prison sentence.

  She had no choice, she too represented a society that had outlawed lynch mobs and their rough justice.

  She was almost there now. Around her, people walked hunchbacked under their umbrellas and she wondered about them. What did they think, would they have fired that gun? Did they believe some human beings had a better claim to live than others?

  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 wa
s 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.

  'Now we'll fucking go for it!' he shouted.

  Helena looked up, startled. She had been reading a book, curled up naked in an armchair.

  He had never seen her naked before. If he had, he would have realised that she was beautiful, but he couldn't stop for a proper look now, he was walking round her, holding up his paper, casting eager glances through the window. Was Ove in the garden? Where was he?

  'Bengt, what's the matter? What's up? Ove is in the basement bathroom, showering.'

  'I'll fetch him.'

  'Hang on. He'll be here soon.' 'I'll go.'

  He went down the basement steps clumsily, hurriedly. No problem about finding the way; he and Elisabeth had been using that shower during the time when he was rebuilding their bathroom. She had wanted a larger one, and he had pulled all the stops out, ruined a cupboard, but she got her effing bathroom.

  He pulled back the shower-curtain, big birds against a blue background. Ove turned round so quickly he almost fell, crouching, until he took in who it was.

  'Here! See this! Now we'll fucking go for it!'

  Ove dried himself quickly, wrapped the towel round his hips and followed Bengt back upstairs. Bengt was still waving his paper, his trophy held up for the admiration of the audience. Back in the sitting room, Helena was waiting for them. She had put on a dressing gown.

  'You have no idea! This is it!'

  He spread out the paper on the table and they bent forward to read.

  'I pulled it from the TV site on the web, the news page. Just twenty minutes ago. Actually, nineteen minutes. Look at the time, eleven a.m.'

  While they read, Bengt paced about impatiently.

  'Are you done? Do you get it? They let him out. On grounds of reasonable force! He shot that monster and saved the lives of two little girls. And the verdict was "reasonable force"! He'll be back home tonight knocking back a drink, I'd say! Four votes against one, you know, only the judge didn't go along with it, but the other lot didn't hesitate!'

  Ove started reading the whole thing again from the beginning. Helena relaxed back in her armchair, holding her hands in the air in a gesture of amazement.

  Bengt leaned over her and hugged her. Then he slapped Ove on the back.

  'Now's the time! We'll do him now! It's our fucking right. Now we'll get him! Reasonable force, of course! No more, no less! Reasonable force!'

  They waited until darkness had fallen. All five of them spent the afternoon in Bengt's house, sitting around, chatting at times and drinking cups of coffee. Darkness, when it came around half past ten, was not pitch-black, just dark enough to make people faceless.

  They went out into the garden to acclimatise their eyes to the blurred outlines. It was very quiet. Tallbacka was always quiet at that time of night and many windows had already gone dark, because it was a place where the day began and ended early. Bengt went inside for a moment, snapped his fingers and felt Baxter's tongue licking his hand.

  Then they went together to the shed, unlocked the padlock, lifted out the boxes, first the heavy one with the petrol-filled bottles, then the small box with the cigarette lighters. Ove and Klas minded the bottle-box. Ola distributed the lighters, two each.

  They walked far enough to be able to see into the house next door. All the lights were on, and from were they stood they could follow him wandering about, from the kitchen to the sitting room and then towards the bathroom. When the bathroom light went on, Bengt ordered Baxter to sit and walked the few steps to a telephone pole. He climbed up far enough to reach the wire. He was surprisingly agile and got there quickly. From one of the many pockets in his jeans, he produced a pair of pliers and cut the wire.

  The bathroom lamp still glowed when Bengt slid down and moved to the next pole, which had a locked box halfway up. He opened it with the key to his own, identical box and locat
ed the mains switch.

  The house next door went dark.

  They waited. It took longer than they had expected.

  But Flasher-Göran finally got a couple of candles going.

  Then he found the torch. They watched the light flickering across the walls.