The Beast Page 27

A voice came back almost immediately.

  'How many?'

  'Hundreds! Demonstrators, outside Kronoberg prison.'

  'Units on their way. With you any moment now.'

  'Risk of prisoner escape!'

  'Drive on! Drive on!'

  Fredrik stared at the people outside the car windows, heard their shouting and read their placards. What was all this in aid of? He didn't understand. He didn't know these people. What did they want with his name and his story? It was none of their business what he had done, it had been his battle, and his very own hell. Lots of these people were lying on the ground, risking life and limb. For what? Did they really know? Did they think he was grateful? He hadn't asked for this.

  There was no difference between the demonstrators and the journalists camping outside his gate. They extracted life from the lives of others; now they were using him for their own purposes, it was his turn. Why this need? It wasn't as if they had all lost their only child, or aimed a gun at another human being and shot to kill. He wished he had the courage to wind the window down, ask them about these things and force them to meet his eyes.

  But the four of them inside the car sat as if paralysed, under siege. The big young man at the wheel was obviously stressed, breathing heavily and making meaningless gestures, alternately releasing the handbrake and shifting through the gears. Grens and Sundkvist seemed utterly calm and still, just waiting patiently.

  Then the voice came over the radio.

  'Alert all cars. Assistance required! Go to Kronoberg prison, Berg Street entrance. Demonstrators, about five hundred. Stone-throwing. Please disperse. Nothing else. And take your personal opinions home with you.'

  Fredrik realised that Grens was observing him, watching for his reaction. Nothing doing. Fredrik had heard what they'd all heard; he was astonished, but showed nothing and said nothing.

  The young driver changed gear to reverse. Raced the engine. Released the brake and let the car move back ten- odd centimetres, as if to test the courage of the demonstrators.

  They stayed put. And they screamed.

  He shifted to first gear and let the car crawl forward for a metre, no more, again racing the engine. They stayed, and instead of screaming they shouted out their contempt in sing-song voices. Fucking cops. Filthy pigs.

  Suddenly some of them got up and walked towards the car. One had a stone. He threw it at the rear window. The glass broke and the stone bounced against the seat between Fredrik and Ewert. It fell to the floor after hitting the driver's seat. Fredrik felt splinters of glass cutting the back of his neck. It hurt. He looked at Grens and saw blood flowing down his cheek.

  The driver shouted what the fuck what the fuck, pulled out his handgun and wound down the window. Directing it skywards, he fired a warning shot. The people close to the car threw themselves to the ground. He kept the gun in place for a little longer and then something struck his arm, making him lose his grip on it. It fell, and a young man, maybe twenty, not much older, picked it up, held it with both hands and pointed it towards the driver's face.

  'Drive! Fuck's sake! Drive!' Ewert howled.

  The driver had a gun held to his head. In front of him were people lying on the ground.

  He hesitated.

  The bullet passed close to his left ear and went through the windscreen in front of him. Now he heard nothing any more. He focused on a tree at the end of the street and put his foot down. Voices cried out and the car bumped as he drove it over human bodies. He left Berg Street at the same moment as the police buses arrived.

  The demonstrators got up and ran towards the new vehicles, packed with policemen in full riot control gear, who found themselves locked in, surrounded. The buses shook as the crowd threw themselves against them, rocked them a couple of times and then pushed them over on their sides.

  The men outside lined up, some with their trousers down. When the flak-jacketed police officers crawled out, they were pissed on.

  * * *

  He wasn't put in the same cell. This one was on another floor, and higher up. Apart from that, it looked identical: the same size, the same furnishings, a bed, a table and a washbasin. He had changed into the sack-like prison uniform. The same restrictions applied: no papers, no radio, no TV and no visitors.

  He didn't mind at all.

  There was no way this kind of thing would break him. This was how it was. He didn't want to read the papers anyway, or meet anybody. He didn't want to long for anything.

  When they escorted him to his cell, another prisoner had spoken to him. Fredrik recognised him by sight; he was one of the nation's pet criminals. An engaging character, who charmed the public but seemed unable to stop himself from committing some simple-minded new crime every time he was released from prison. Maybe he was trying to avoid the other society, the one outside the walls. This prison pro looked startled and then walked straight up to Fredrik, slapped his back and said that as far as he was concerned Fredrik was a hero. 'You mustn't let the bastards get to you,' he said, adding, 'If the screws don't treat you right, just let us know and we'll have it fixed so you're looked after properly.'

  The screws did treat him right. It might have been their own decision or there might have been forces pushing them, but there was definitely less of the staring through the bloody observation panel, and he got mugs of coffee more often than he should've, and when he was taken to the wire cage on the roof for his exercise session he got more than his allotted hour; he knew that and the screw knew that. Some days he actually got a double ration, two hours spent behind a fence with razor wire on top, but with the sky above.

  Every second day Kristina Björnsson visited him, speaking about documentation and strategy. Actually there was nothing more to present now than there had been the first time round, and the arguments in the Court of Appeal would be no different from those she had presented previously. Her reason for coming along was to keep Fredrik's courage up, give him greetings and messages from Micaela and try to persuade him that there was a future for him.

  He appreciated it. She was just as able and as kind as he had been told she would be.

  Still, he saw through her efforts to cheer him up. This time it would not be like the magistrates' court, where the one reservation about freeing him had come from the only person with legal training, the judge. This time everyone with any influence on his sentence would be lawyers, men and women who evaluated reality in terms of the written law. What mattered this time was paragraphs and praxis. He was resigned to a heavy sentence.

  He told Kristina that, which upset her very much. She told him that this in itself would condemn him, because the court could sense when the accused expected a conviction. It had the same effect as a confession. And the reverse was true too. There were several examples, many of which he recognised. She had defended clients who had committed the most imbecile crimes, but who went free because they felt they should, and what they felt became shared by everyone in the courtroom.

  The duty officer knocked on his door. He had brought a tray of food, meat and two veg, a glass of juice. Fredrik shook his head, he simply wasn't interested. Yes, it looked very tasty, but no, he wasn't hungry. He felt eating was somehow disgusting, and a betrayal, as if to eat was to pretend that nothing had really changed. If he didn't eat, he didn't join in. This was not his life. He had had no choice in the matter.

  When the trial began, he was transported every morning to a new high-security court, also located in Berg Street. The threat from demonstrators had been noted and acted on. This time the interrogations in court were shorter and the questioning stricter. Some witness statements were replaced by tape recordings. He sat in the same place as before and gave in principle the same answers. He felt they were all in a play and that the last time round had been a rehearsal. Now it was time for the premiere and their performances would get expert reviews. He tried his best to sit straight, keep calm and look convinced of his right to be freed in the end. The last bit was hard, because he didn't care. He wasn'
t at all sure that he wanted to go back home. Could they read that? It must show.

  The trial took only three days.

  He was done with longing. Every night he lay on the bed in his cell, trying to trace something worth living for in the piss-coloured ceiling.

  One hour.

  He didn't have many friends, not now and not ever, really. The ones he remembered lived far away now, in other towns, and didn't share his daily life. If he did time in prison, it would not change his relationship with them that much.

  One hour.

  His parents were gone. He had no brothers or sisters.

  One hour.

  He had Micaela. He loved her, surely he did? But she was still young and it wasn't right for her to have to be with someone in endless mourning for his lost child.

  One hour.

  Micaela said that she wanted to be with him, always. Of course he believed her when she said that, but it could so easily change in the future. One day she would have to go on, to leave him behind. No one could bear having a violated five-year-old pushed down her throat every day.

  One hour.

  That ceiling really was just the same colour as urine.

  One hour

  So strange.

  One hour.

  He had been running all his life, trying to pack every minute with significance, fearful of facing emptiness and of not existing any more.

  One hour.

  He had kept his days fully booked, from restlessness and fear of being alone.

  One hour.

  Back then, when he depended on people near him, and sought them out.

  One hour.

  Then it all changed. He had no need for the fucking here and now. He had what he needed here. That piss-yellow ceiling. Time on his hands. His thoughts. He was powerless to influence or change anything and it made him calm, calmer than he had ever been, like someone dead.

  The court took almost a week to arrive at his sentence. It was postponed twice; every note mattered and every word was charged with meaning. This was a judgement that would be exposed to media scrutiny from the word go. The broadsheets would print the statement in full and legal experts with screen savvy would analyse it on TV. The case of the dad who shot the murderer of his five-year-old daughter would be followed by people who shared his grief over the loss of a child by people who thought murder was murder, never mind who was killed by people who celebrated his courage, which removed a threat from society which its forces of law and order had been unable to cope with by people who saw his act as an indefensible vengeance and felt only a long prison sentence would be sufficient warning against private militias by people who had tormented and killed presumed sex offenders, on the basis of the sentence reached in the first instance.

  On the Saturday, at fourteen minutes past nine in the morning, the court's deliberations were complete. Copies of the sentence in its entirety were available from the porters' room outside the secure courtroom in Stockholm Old Court.

  The journalists were queuing early, mobile phones at the ready to contact the editors and with photographers in tow to record images of the bundles of paper from every angle. The prosecutor was there, and the defence lawyer, and a handful of curious onlookers.

  Fredrik was told through the observation panel he hated so much. The officer who had favoured him with extra coffee and exercise time opened the flap and whispered loudly to him that it was a fucking disgrace, there would be a riot, that was for sure. A ten-year stretch.

  The Court of Appeal had sentenced him to ten years in prison.

  * * *

  Dickybird felt depressed about beating up Hilding like that; the guy was dead meat now. Why had Hilding been such a stupid bastard? It was fucking idiotic, doing all that stuff. He'd had it coming to him. Nicking all the kif, for a start, then hanging out with that bloody hard man and getting rat-arsed on the brew from the fire extinguisher. Hilding must've known he'd get a working over, had to. Fuck's sake, what would the lads say if Hilding got away with the lot and kept farting about as usual, without being taught a lesson? No way. No way! But he shouldn't have smashed the little shit up, not like that. Hilding had looked a right misery. They'll stitch him back together again, that's for sure, but he won't come back here. He'll transfer to Tidaholm, maybe. Or to Hall. That's how they always handled it.

  And that fucking peddo Axelsson got away when he was warned off. He's hiding in seg now.

  Not many of the gang left. Hilding off to the sick wing. Bekir on release. Skåne is still around, and Dragan, but that's no fucking company. Then there's the Russian and all the other useless sods.

  He felt bad about it. He shouldn't have kept hitting the poor guy, just stopped when he'd got a bit hurt.

  He looked out though the window.

  Still pissing out there. No change for weeks. The weather's gone from bad to worse, first weeks and weeks when it's so hot your dick sags, and then more weeks of raining too hard to stick your nose outside. Bloody awful.

  The rain was pouring off the tall wall and the goalposts were cracking.

  Two men were out in the yard, trudging round the track. He couldn't make out who they were, in their raincoats with hoods pulled down over their foreheads.

  In here four of the lads were playing pool. The Russian wandered about, grunting from time to time, chalking his cue and sinking some balls. Then Janoz, more grunting; he sank the black and lost.

  Dickybird had never liked pool, strictly for the birds, all that poking about with a long stick on a green tablecloth. Cards now, that was different. But not today. Didn't feel like it. Besides, Jochum was at the table playing poker with Skåne and Dragan, dealing and bluffing. It wasn't the same when Hilding wasn't around.

  Nothing else to do, he had to get out, some fresh air, never mind the fucking rain.

  When he reached the exit, he slowed down to check out the three prison officers, who were chatting inside their cubicle, the lazy bastards, sitting on their arses all day and getting their dough monthly, what an easy life.

  He couldn't see them, but their voices were loud, excited. The sound was muffled and hard to make sense of, but now and then words and phrases were clear enough.

  One word got to him. Sex offender. That came again several times, and then there was more. Long sentence… with Oscarsson… pervs' unit.

  Fuck's sake. What were they on about? Not another one, hadn't the screws got the point when Axelsson ran, because they'd traced his ID and got hold of his indictment and would've killed the bastard if he hadn't got the wind up?

  Usually the screws went about like zombies, rattling with their fucking keys and saying fuck all, but now they were pissing themselves, nobody shut up for a second. Hero. Murdered. Sex offender.

  Dickybird could hardly stand still. One more mother- fucking peddo. Here!

  His face had become flushed and angry, rage filled his whole body.

  Then he heard a chair being pulled back and moved quickly away from his listening point, but he was still close enough to hear their last sentences as they came out, waving their hands about, clearly very agitated. One of them asked, why send the hero here? Someone agreed; he didn't get it either, cons with sentences that long didn't usually come to Aspsås. First one said that anyway the guy had done his thing, he wouldn't attack anyone else.

  They turned to enter the unit, and the Russian shouted, 'Screws!'

  Dickybird went to pick up a raincoat and a pair of welly boots and went off into the streaming rain. Rage was bubbling up from deep inside him; it felt as if he was suffocating. He was shaking.

  Now they'll fucking see! That's final! Trying to push another peddo into his unit, no way, they'd better think again; if that kidfucker came here he wouldn't leave alive.

  * * *

  Fredrik decided to pee in the basin, rather than asking the guard out there to take him to the toilet. He'd just have to deal with their questions about his sentence.

  Ten years.

  He couldn't get his mind
round it. Kristina had visited him yesterday afternoon, wanting to go through the sentence, explain the motivations and persuade him that they should appeal again, take his case to the Supreme Court. She wanted to test the limits of the plea of 'reasonable force' and set up a precedent. He had refused, said he simply wasn't interested. He had had enough. Chewing over past events was meaningless to him. Prison, no prison, what the hell, it didn't bother him.

  Ten years from now he'd be almost fifty.

  He washed his hands and went to stand in the middle of his cell.

  His little girl had been fouled, torn to pieces by a sadistic killer, who would have done what he wanted with other little girls if Fredrik hadn't killed him. The consequence for him was ten years of solitude, isolated from the world. He had to laugh.