The Beast (17 page)

    Lars
Ågestam scanned the courtroom. What a drab, disappointing lot.

    The
magistrates, political appointees to a man and woman, watched the proceedings
with bored, ignorant eyes. Judge von Balvas had begun the trial with a totally
unprofessional statement to the effect that she was prejudiced against any
person charged with sexual crimes. Håkan Axelsson, the accused paedophile, had
given up and was unable even to pretend an understanding of what his acts might
have done to the children. The guards behind the accused tried to stare
neutrally into mid-distance, while the seven journalists, who seemed agitated
and were taking notes furiously, would make mistakes about the most
straightforward events in their facts boxes. At least two faces in the public
gallery belonged to familiars, women who turned up to enjoy the performance and
justified it by chattering about their civic rights. And there was the group of
law students, seated at the back as he himself had once been, busily making
over the despair of violated children into a piece of useful coursework, hoping
for a good z:i at least.

    He
felt like insisting that the court should be cleared, or screaming at the lot
of them to keep a very, very low profile, or else. He didn't, of course. Lars
Ågestam was a nicely brought-up young man, a newly appointed prosecutor
ambitious for better cases; he wanted to go up in the world, up up up, and was
smart enough to keep his opinions to himself, to stick to his last and prepare
his prosecutions so carefully that he knew more than anyone else around. Only
an outstandingly good lawyer for the defence would have a chance of getting the
better of him.

    Kristina
Björnsson was an outstandingly good lawyer, bloody well excellent.

    She
was the only one in the room who did not fit in with the overwhelming
mediocrity. She was experienced, even wise. So far he had never come across
anyone else from the defence side who still believed that even the worst, most
moronic of clients was more worthwhile than the size of their fee.
Consequently, she was also one of the few who had the clients' full confidence.

    Kristina
Björnsson had figured in one of the first anecdotes he had been told when he
started attending trials as a student. She was a well-known coin collector and
her collection, allegedly one of the best in private hands, had been stolen
ten-odd years ago. The news started off an almighty fuss inside all the prisons
in the land. An unprecedented, strictly underground search order went out and
within the week two heavies with long ponytails turned up at Björnsson's front
door with her collection, accompanied by an apologetic letter and a bouquet of
flowers. Every single coin was in place. The letter had been laboriously
scripted by three pros in the art and antiques racket, who wanted Kristina to
know they were truly sorry. They wouldn't have traded for the collection if
they had known whose it was, and should she ever fail to acquire a coin
legally, she need only ask and they would see what could be done.

    Lars
Ågestam reflected that if he ever needed a lawyer, Björnsson would be his
choice. She was good this time too. Håkan Axelsson was yet another unfeeling
swine, who deserved nothing better than a very long spell inside, and the
prosecutor should have had a cast-iron case, given that his primary evidence
was a stack of CDs containing digitised images of humiliation and violence.
There were corroborating statements too; some members of Axelsson's paedophile
ring had talked. But still it looked as if this particular sicko would escape
with a couple of years, because Kristina Björnsson had patiently countered
every point the prosecutor made, arguing grave psychological disturbance and
hence her client's need for care in a secure psychiatric unit. She wouldn't get
her care order, of course, but somehow she had persuaded the magistrates of
what had seemed impossible at first: namely that there were other options,
compromise solutions. The magistrates approved, that much was obvious, and one
of them seemed to feel that the exploitation thing had been pushed too hard,
since in his view one of the children had been provocatively dressed.

    Lars
Ågestam raged inwardly. That local council jobsworth, straight from some
political backwater, had been droning on about children's clothes nowadays,
mixing in stuff about human encounters and shared responsibilities; he was
asking for a bloodied nose. Ågestam was very close to telling him and all his
moronic colleagues to go to hell. His career plans would have gone the same
way, of course, ruined in one unsmart move.

    He
had followed the trials of other porn ring members; so far three out of the seven
had been convicted and sentenced to appropriately long terms in prison.
Axelsson was just as guilty, but Björnsson and her tame band of old fools had
reached some unholy agreement, so if Bernt Lund hadn't done a runner that very
morning they might even have doled out a suspended sentence, a serious loss of
face for any aspiring prosecutor. The fact that Lund was on the loose had got
the journalists all excited and they showed more interest in Axelsson than they
had so far, knowing that by now whatever they wrote would shift from page 11 to
page 7 or better. Any link between Axelsson and Sweden's most wanted, most
hated man would turn into many column inches. If only to avoid a nasty public
row, Axelsson would surely get at least one year in prison.

    Once
this was over, Ågestam did not want any more sex crimes. Not for a long while.

    These
cases sapped your strength somehow, no matter if the criminal and the victim
were no more than names on pieces of paper, because he still invariably lost
his professional detachment, his calm bureaucrat's distance. Trouble was,
emotional involvement in a prosecutor was worse than useless.

    So
with any luck, he'd get bank robberies, murder, maybe a little fraud. Please.
Less exciting crimes, less opinionated chatter from everyone. He had tried hard
to understand the child porn fanatics, read all there was to read, attended a
professional course, but nothing fundamental had changed. He wanted no more of
this. Above all, he did not want anything to do with putting Bernt Lund back
inside. Too much emotion, crimes too appalling to think and write about.

    When
they caught Lund he would keep his head well down.

    He
ran out to the car, leaving the front door unlocked, no time to find his keys.

    Marie.

    He
was crying. Tore open the car door. There were his keys, on the same ring as
the ignition key. He reversed the car at speed through the narrow gate.

    She
had not been in the school.

    Micaela
had listened to his urgent flood of questions and statements, put the receiver down
and gone off to look for Marie. First inside, then outside. The girl was
nowhere. He had screamed. Micaela had asked him to please speak more calmly; he
had pulled himself together, then lost control of his voice so that it rose to
a shout again. He always came back to the father on the seat outside and the TV
news and the father who was in the photo taken in front of a prison wall. Then
he put the receiver down and ran for his car.

    He
drove along the winding country roads in a panic, crying and screaming.

    The
father waiting outside the school was the man in the photos, he was sure of it.
He let go of the wheel with one hand to phone the emergency number, stating his
message at screaming pitch. Within a minute he was connected to
the duty officer. He explained that he had seen Lund
outside a nursery school in Strängnäs, his daughter's school, and that she had
disappeared.

    Three
kilometres from the house to the ferry station. He drove on, past the charming
square and the thirteenth- century church, past the cemetery where people were
tending graves in the still heat of late afternoon, but for all his urgency he
missed the ferry. He checked the time, barely four minutes late, pushed the car
horn, blinked with his headlights, all pointless of course. Then he phoned the
ferry. It was quieter than usual and the ferryman heard it ring. Fredrik
managed to explain enough and was promised that they would come straight back
for him.

    Why
had he taken Marie to that fucking school?

    Why
hadn't they simply stayed at home? It had been half past one already.

    Fredrik
watched as the ferry reached the other side of the narrow straits, looked at
the time that kept moving on unbearably. Marie had not been there, not inside
the school and not outside either, and he thought of his little daughter, who
had grown into a human being while he had been with her; maybe she'd grown too
fast. Once Agnes had left, it was Marie who received all his deepest love; he
offered up all the old feeling for Agnes, for everyone, to Marie and she alone
had to cope with that concentrated love, and she stored it and also somehow
returned it. More than once he'd thought it wasn't fair; no one should be made
to represent other people and forced to hold more love than there was room for;
a five-year-old is not very big after all.

    He
phoned Micaela again. No reply. And the same again. Her telephone must be
switched off. The signals rang out and then a tinny voice asked him to leave a
message.

    He
hadn't cried for a long time, not even when Agnes moved out. There had been
times he'd actually tried but it was impossible; it was as if his reservoir of
tears had dried up. Thinking back he realised that as an adult he had never
wept; the flow had been turned off. Until now.

    Perhaps
that was why he still hadn't quite taken in what was happening to him, the
gut-wrenching fear that wouldn't let go and the damnable tears streaming down
his cheeks. He had imagined that weeping might be a relief, but it was not,
only something that poured out uncontrollably, leaving a huge empty space
inside him.

    The
yellow-and-green ferry came chugging back empty, making a thumping noise as it
hit the two rusty steel cables which served as mobile rails in the water. The
closer it came, the louder the noise. He waved towards the cabin, he always
greeted the ferryman, and drove on board. The water spread out all around him
as the ferry moved placidly along its set route.

    The
images kept passing through in his mind. Lund in black and white, a kind of
smile on his face. Then Lund standing in front of the prison wall, between the
guards; he had been waving. That smiling, waving creature raped children.
Fredrik remembered enough about the girls-in-the- cellar case. Lund had
mutilated, torn and beaten his victims until they were like worn-out, rejected
dolls. Fredrik, like the rest of the public, had been outraged and at the same
time unable to cope with what he read about the case, and somehow it was still
as if all that could not have happened, as if the news story could not be true.
The media had been watching every move in the trial for weeks, but he still
didn't fucking well understand.

    The
ferryman was the older of the two, a semi-retired stand-in for the younger one.
He had seen enough to grasp Fredrik's desperation and wisely kept off the usual
chit-chat to pass the time. Fredrik would thank him one day, much later, for
his understanding.

    They
reached the other side, where the ferryman's dog had been tied up. The dog
barked with pleasure at seeing his master again. Fredrik raced off the ferry
the moment it hit land.

    He
was so intensely afraid. Terrified.

    She
would never go away without telling someone. She knew Micaela was there and she
knew she must not go anywhere outside the fence without letting her know.

    That
man. Cap on his head, quite short and quite thin. He had nodded to him.

    Across
Arnö Island, nine kilometres of winding gravel. Then Road 55, eight kilometres
of accident-prone tarmac. Not many cars around at this time of day. He
increased his speed.

    Face
to face. It was him. He knew it was him.