The Beast (10 page)

    Dickybird
was trembling. He tried to hide it but everyone noticed; he shook and hesitated
and spat, this time on the floor.

    'Where
are you from?'

    The
new guy yawned. Twice.

    'Police
cells.'

    'So
fucking what, of course it's the cells, don't mess with me. Do you have your
papers?'

    Once
more.

    'Listen,
Icky-dicky. That's you, isn't it? You must know I'm not allowed to bring my
sentence in here.'

    Dickybird
shifted his weight from left to right leg. Per was dead long ago, a corpse with
not much left of its balls. The ice-pick had been kept as evidence, shown over
and over to the authorities, on the long way from Blekinge to the young
offenders' institution.

    'Fuck
your sentence, I'm not interested. What I want to know is what's the score.
Like, I don't want no sodding nonces or faggots in this place.'

    Weird
how a room can suddenly shrink, how sounds become words that turn into spoken
messages that bounce off the walls and take up space, suck up energy until
there is no more, only intakes of breath in the silence, and piled- up
expectations.

    The
new guy shouldn't have been able to get any closer but somehow he did. He was
hissing, sending a shower of saliva into the air between them.

    'You
asking for special treatment then? Is that it?'

    One
of them must give way, look down or away, but they stayed facing each other.

    'There's
just one thing you've got to fucking remember, Dickybird. No one, and I mean no
one, calls me a faggot or a nonce. And if it comes from some shot-up, junk-crazed
old wanker, then there'll be bad, bad trouble.'

    The
skinhead poked at Dickybird's chest with his index finger, several times, hard.
Still hissing, he mumbled something incomprehensible.

    'Hotikar
di rotepa, burobengf

    Prison
lingo.

    Then
he poked Dickybird's chest once more, turned and walked back to the cell with
the wide-open door.

    Dickybird
stood quite still.

    His
unseeing eyes followed the newcomer until he had disappeared. Then he focused, first
on Hilding and then on the rest of them, and shouted down the empty corridor.

    'What
the fuck. What the fuck.'

    No
one showed. Nothing but an open door.

    That
finger poking at his chest. Dickybird shouted again.

    
'You
fucking listen.
Racklar di romani, tjavon?'

    Lennart
saw him, waiting by the tower on the east side of the wall. It was their usual
meeting place, at lunchtime or in the afternoon, when the shifts had changed over.
Nils looked young, in shirtsleeves with his jacket thrown over one shoulder. A
mere boy, waiting for his sweetheart.

    Only
a few seconds left to watch him unnoticed. Lennart slowed down. Nils was facing
the other way, the way Lennart normally took; today was different because he
had gone out for lunch at the old inn on the village square, he and Bertolsson
had feasted on steak and fresh garden peas. Bertolsson had dropped him off
halfway to the prison, because Lennart had said that he wanted to walk, needed
time to think over what had happened, to try to get his mind round the
note-scribbling and the microphones and the camera being shoved into his face.
Strange to think that for a few minutes of midday news he had been inside all
those homes, with his ready-made statements about how criminals ought to be
managed.

    It
was still windy, a change after weather dominated by high pressure for the best
part of a month. It had been an eternity of stagnant heat, sweating and
irritation, always something itching, always something troubling around the
corner.

    Nils
smiled. He had caught sight of Lennart and couldn't wait. He started strolling
towards his lover, came close, held him and wouldn't let go, kissed his
forehead and then his cheek.

    'Did
you see it?'

    'I
did.'

    They
walked across the grassy slope, keeping a space between them. Seventy metres to
go before they were safely into the wood. Behind the first fir tree they
reached out and found each other's hand. They walked on, holding hands tightly.

    'We've
done all we could. At all levels of the service.'

    'Stop
worrying.'

    'Environmental
adjustment training. Pills. Group therapy. Person-to-person stuff.'

    'It
wasn't about that, I mean, not about what you or the service had done or not
done. It was television, for Christ's sake, a reality entertainment show. Point
the camera at the culprit, strip him naked, make him sweat and lose his cool
and jabber. Make him look shifty. Then the editorial people think it's a
red-hot show and your average couch-potato enjoys every minute, because it lets
him forget his own bloody awful life. He can laugh at the bureaucrat who's
looking sad and stupid and dead ignorant. Screw them all. It's not about
content and meaning, it's about scoring points, making people look weird.'

    'Nils,
you don't see what I'm after. We did try, we threw everything we've got at
Lund. What happened? He grabs the first chance he gets, makes mincemeat of two
guards and runs off. Now he's on the loose some damned place. All he's after is
getting to toss off on dead little girls.'

    They
were out of the wind now, following a path that wound its way through the
dense, untidy forest of fir and spruce to the water-tower on the hill. It was a
two-and-a- half-kilometre round-trip. Walking briskly, they'd have half an hour
to themselves behind a shed near the tower; now and then they made love there.
Few walkers came that way and were easily spotted because the path was the only
possible route. Everywhere else the forest formed an impenetrable wall.

    Nils
clutched Lennart's hand harder, pulling him towards the shed.

    'Come
on.'

    'Listen,
I can't. I'm really sorry. I said different, I know, but I can't now. I needed
to talk, quite simply. Freely, away from the damned camera. That's all. Talk to
you, Nils. You're so sane. Please help me. Explain things to me.'

    Nils
stroked his temples, then his hair.

    'My
beloved.'

    Lennart
closed his eyes, feeling Nils's breath as he spoke.

    'Listen,
it's over now, done. Finished. No one can hope to understand people like Bernt
Lund and that's what makes him so dangerous. To us, but also a danger to
himself too. Sometimes it's impossible to defend oneself against another human
being. They are there. Man is the only species of mammal capable of such acts
against itself, of cold-blooded killings, to the point of extinction. We're
worse than animals, more like demons, uniquely prepared to self-destruct. It's
incomprehensible, but true.'

    They
held each other.

    Someone
was walking along the path, and was about to pass the shed without noticing
them, tricked as usual by the wall of spiky conifers. Lennart clung to Nils,
who hugged him tight, and was overwhelmed by a sudden wave of longing, of
desire for Karin, of wanting her body. He could see her thighs, her breasts. He
felt for her, and missed her.

    They
both wanted to tug at the foil wrapping, their probing fingers colliding,
fumbling.

    Inside
the foil was a square piece of blackish-brown, glassy resin. They had ordered
top-class pressed kif. It gave best sucks, each single drag kicked like a
fucking horse.

    It
had been hard putting up with waiting for it, and once they knew it was there,
they had longed to telescope the empty spaces of Aspsås, the hours of waiting.

    They
had ordered from the Greek, pooling enough dough to pay for half the order,
which meant owing more than was really healthy. They should've kept their heads
down and stuck to ordinary compressed Moroccan or even green mix, but Hilding
had been eager, nagged and pleaded and brown-nosed until Dickybird caved in.
When the pure hashish order had been placed all they could do was sit around
waiting for three days.

    The
Greek had delivered. Glowing with satisfaction, they held the piece of hash
close to the shower-room lamp and admired the shiny fragments.

    'Hey!
Spot the glass?'

    'Course
I fucking spotted it.'

    'Looks
like good shit.'

    Hilding
produced a lighter and handed it to Dickybird, who used the flame to heat the
foil from underneath. About one minute usually did the trick. The flat brown
lump softened enough to be kneaded and shaped with his fingertips. Hilding had
brought tobacco. Three-quarters baccy to one Turkish worked just fine.

    'Smells
good.'

    'Fucking
well does.'

    Hilding
made himself tall, stood on tiptoes and pushed on one of the ceiling tiles, the
one nearest the lamp. It gave easily and he pulled out a corn-pipe. He handed
it to Dickybird, who scraped the bowl, packed it, lit the mix and dragged to
heat it through. Then he had another drag before handing the pipe to Hilding,
who put it in his mouth in a hurry.

    Every
round they had two drags each, handing the pipe over in silence. The only
sounds came from a couple of dripping taps. One of the lamps kept blinking.
Drip blink drip blink drip blink. It was great stuff, better than last time.

    'Fuck
it, Wildboy Hilding. Fuck it.'

    Dickybird
inhaled a couple more times, then held out the pipe and giggled.

    'D'you
know, Wildboy? We're in this fucking shower- room and smoking great pot and
don't think about this place. Like that it's the best place for doing the
nonces.'

    Dickybird
kept giggling. Baffled, Hilding looked at him.

    'What
are you on about?'

    'We
didn't ever check it out.'

    'The
fucking shower-room, is that what you're on about? So what? Fuck's sake, we've
whipped any number of nonces and rapists and faggots in here. They say that in the
States the cons set on each other in the shit-houses, right there between the
crappers. What's so special?'

    Dickybird
couldn't stop giggling. That was what usually happened once he got started on
good pot, he felt kind of childish and then as randy as hell, though in the end
the images would come back and start scaring him; he'd be back with all that
shit about Per and his cock and getting hold of that ice-pick and Per's
screaming and his bleeding balls.

    He
drew deeply on the pipe, holding on to it to tease Hilding, patting the lad's
head with his other hand.

    'Wildboy,
you don't get it, do you? Poor sap. You see, this ain't about whipping, it's
about something else.'

    Hilding
reached out for the pipe, but Dickybird held on to it stubbornly.

    'Listen.
Next time we get one of these beasts on the unit we'll lie in wait for the
bastard, hang on until he's in the shower. When he's in there, water going all
over him, then you start a racket outside in the yard, so all the duty screws go
pounding off to deal with it.'

    Hilding
wasn't in the mood for this stuff. He tried to get at the pipe again.