The Beast (27 page)

    Ågestam
waited. Ewert slapped his diary against the desk.

    'Get
on with it, you little prat,' he said angrily. 'And then leave.'

    The
young prosecutor got up, walked slowly round the room, from wall to wall.

    'I've
got a lot of experience of the taxi trade,' he began. 'Driving taxis was how I
financed my five years at university. I drove people all over the area. Good
money. It was in the days before deregulation. It's different now, with a taxi
lurking at every street corner.'

    'So
bloody what?' Ewert raged.

    Ågestam
ignored the aggression, the hatred.

    'I
learned a lot about how the trade works, so much so that I had enough material
for a webpage called Taxilnfo. You know the kind of thing, stuff not normally
put together, like telephone numbers, business structures, price comparisons.
The lot. As a matter of fact, I made myself into some kind of expert. People
turned to me, like tourist agencies and so on. The press.'

    Ewert
was stirring again; it was hard to work out whether he had actually taken in
one single thing, he kept thumping on the desk and breathing noisily. Sven had
seen him in bad moods before, barking at people or whingeing, but never quite
like this, beyond any dignity or control.

    'You
stuck-up twit, now what?'

    'Bernt
Lund has been a taxi driver, isn't that so?'

    Sven
nodded.

    'Even
set up his own business, B. Lund Taxis or something?'

    He
had turned to Ewert now, and was waiting quietly for a reply.

    Four
minutes passed.

    That is
a long time to wait when a room is out of kilter and thoughts, feeling, bodies
all seem out of sync with each other.

    'He
did,' Ewert hissed. 'A long time ago. We've been all over it, turned that
fucking bankruptcy nest inside out.'

    Ågestam
no longer walked from one wall to the next; he had set his thin legs free and
was almost running about, as if in a hurry or a state of jittery nerves. His
light- coloured, slightly too long hair flopped, his large glasses misted over
and his whole being reverted to a kind of boyishness; he became a rebellious,
determined schoolboy once more.

    'I
understand, you've checked the firm's economic base, found out how it was set
up and how big it was. Good. But did you look at what he actually did?'

    'He
drove a car. Taxied the locals from A to B and trousered the fare.'

    'Whom
did he drive?'

    'There
are no fucking records.'

    'No,
not of individuals, but bookings are recorded if they are made by named
organisations, local councils for instance.'

    He stopped
and stood still between Ewert, seated at his desk, and Sven, in the visitor's
chair, continuing to talk and carefully including both of them, turning this
way and that to show that they were both being addressed.

    'It
is problematic for small outfits in the taxi business to manage on occasional
fares, from pick-ups and so on. Most of them like to have fixed runs on their
books, we call them school runs. Fixed bookings pay less well but you can count
on the income. Typically, actual school runs involve young children, who are
ferried to nursery or primary school. If you've been in the trade for as long
as Lund had, the odds are that you've got several runs of this kind. And, of
course, it's especially likely with somebody as sick as he is. In other words,
I suggest you trace his regular bookings record. My prediction is that you'll
find some for little kids to be taken to places which he'll have got to know
well. And fantasised about, and maybe wants to return to.'

    Ågestam
pulled a comb from a trouser pocket and tidied his short-back-and-sides. His
appearance mattered, it was correct, white shirt and discreet tie, grey suit;
he liked feeling proper, complete, prepared.

    'Will
you investigate this?'

    Ewert
stared ahead in silence, bursting with anger; he had to give vent to it or let
it die a death. He had rarely been so provoked. This was his room, his music,
his way of working. You either respected it or you could stay outside in the
corridor with the rest of the goons. He couldn't fathom the origin of his
accumulated rage, or why it had grown so overwhelming, but never mind, that's
how he felt, and now when all that time had passed and he had aged in his job,
he could just be himself, without having to explain why he was this way or
that. True, some people used the word bitterness to describe his mindset. No
matter, he wasn't interested in their fucking choice of words and had no urge
to be liked by all and sundry. He knew who he was and had learned to put up
with it.

    He
realised that the young prosecutor had pointed out something that should be one
of their next tasks, but it went against the grain to admit it.

    Sven
reacted differently. He sat up straight and looked appreciative.

    'This
sounds like a good lead. It could well be just as you say, and if so, our
catchment area, as it were, could be significantly reduced. We've gone all out
on this case, tried to find time and resources, but we're short of both. That's
a fact. If you turn out to be right, we'll gain time and we can focus on
resource use. And it should bring us closer to him. I'll start checking this at
once.'

    He
left. They heard his swift footsteps disappear down the corridor, but stayed
were they were, without speaking. Ewert had no more energy left for shouting and
Ågestam realised how drained he felt, and how tense he had been.

    An
interlude. Stillness, silence. Then Ågestam moved away from the centre of the
room, walking past Ewert and over to the bookshelf. He started the tape
recorder.
'Throw It Away', originally called 'Lucky Lips' in 1966.

    
I've
heard what they say, you have been aroun'

    
Squiring
pretty girls all about town

    Scratchy.
Too jolly. Desperate rhymes.

    Ågestam
went away and closed the door behind him.

    It
had stopped raining. The last drops were splashing on the ground when he came
out on the front steps. The air was clear and easy to breathe. The clouds had
thinned, letting the sun through, and soon it would be hot, dry, dusty again.

    Fredrik
crossed the street quickly, carrying the sack. He put it on the back seat of
his car. He was preoccupied; inside his head he was talking to two small boys
about death. David and Lukas had been sitting close to him on the hard brick
floor, listening to him and understanding, but always throwing his answers back
at him, batting new questions his way; at five and seven years of age they were
grappling with their wonder about body and soul and the dark that no one can
see.

    Marie
came back to him. He had thought of her every single moment since Tuesday; the
image of her still, withdrawn face had blocked every attempt to see anything
else. Now he actively tried to recall her as she had been before she died, the
little being for whom he lived. What had she thought about death? They had
never talked about death and dying, never had a reason to.

    Had
she understood?

    Had
she been frightened?

    Had
she closed her eyes? Fought?

    Had
she realised, in any sense, that death could happen, just like that, and death
meant eternal solitude, inside a flower-decked white coffin underneath a
freshly mowed lawn?

    He set
out to drive through the narrow streets of his hometown. There were four
addresses on his list here, and four in Enköping. He was certain of being
right. Lund would be sitting outside one of these schools, waiting, as he had
done outside The Dove. Fredrik remembered the old policeman and what he had
said when they met in the cemetery, how utterly convinced he had been that Lund
would violate again and again, until someone stopped him.

    First
call, The Dove. It was on the list and Lund might as well have returned there
as gone elsewhere, like an animal returning to a place where it has once fed.
Fredrik had driven this route for almost four years now, and knew every house,
every street sign. He hated it. The appearance of safe, contented habit held within
it a suffocating grief. He was at home, but it would never be home again.

    He
parked a few hundred metres away. A Securitas van with truncheon-carrying
guards had drawn up near the gate, and a little further away was a police
patrol car with two uniformed officers. How strange to sit here again, as he
had done six days earlier, when he had left his daughter at the school for a
few short hours. Why? They had been so late that day. But Marie had nagged and
he had felt guilty because he had stayed in bed all morning. If only he had
said no and taken her hand to go for a walk, maybe into town to buy an
ice-cream at the harbour, as they often did. If only he had told her that she
mustn't go outside in the afternoon heat, but stay in with the other children.

    He
sat in the car for a little longer and then went into the woodland that began
near the gate. He looked everywhere, checking all the surrounding area until he
was convinced that Lund wasn't anywhere around, watching the school. Next he
went on to The Wood, a nursery school a few kilometres away and closer to the
centre of town, listening to the radio news as he drove. The top item was the
aeroplane accident near Moscow, one hundred and sixteen fatalities probably due
to a technical malfunction in a poorly maintained Russian plane.

    After
that, most of the time was spent on Marie and the murder hunt. There was an
interview with the prosecutor who was leading the investigation, but he had nothing
much to add. The older of the two policemen from the cemetery told the reporter
rather loudly to get lost. The last part was an interview with a forensic
psychiatrist, who had examined Lund several times in the past. He warned of
what he called Lund's obsessional need to repeat his behaviours; the man was
under constant internal pressure, which could only be relieved by acting out
violent fantasies.

    Fredrik
pulled up near The Wood. Checked, and drove on to The Park and The Stream.

    Everywhere,
security guards and police cars.

    Bernt
Lund wasn't at any of these schools. Probably hadn't gone back to any of them.

    Fredrik
left Strängnäs on Road 55 to Enköping, driving quickly. Four addresses to go.

    He
glanced at the sack in the back seat.

    He
felt no hesitation.

    Right
was right.