The Beast (37 page)

    FS:
What a weird question.

    VB: I
will ask you again. Do you understand why we are here today?

    FS:
Yes.

    She
smoked three cigarettes during the break in a sad- looking lobby with sombre
oak-panelled walls and worn seating. One of the journalists spoke to her, he
wanted to know how Fredrik was feeling and she explained that she had not been
allowed to see him because she was only his partner. The journalist had offered
her cigarettes of that strong kind without filters that people in southern
Europe smoke. Just one ciggie made her feel dizzy. Fredrik detested her smoking
and she hadn't touched a cigarette for months.

    Agnes
had been standing alone a bit away, sipping mineral water. They both avoided
eye contact; what was the point of seeking each other out? They had so little
in common. They did not even share points of reference, except this, an
experience complete in itself.

    A
young journalist with thinning hair and earphones was sitting on one of the
wooden benches taking notes from a tape-recording. Next to him, an older reporter.
One of the court artists was showing him a drawing of a moment she recognised
from the hearing. There was Fredrik, making a gesture with his hand as the
prosecutor held up a photo of the nursery school in Enköping, taken from the
place where Fredrik had been when he shot that man.

    Lars
Ågestam (LÅ): Mr Steffansson, there is something I don't understand. Why did
you not inform the police officers, who were only a few hundred metres away,
exactly in your line of sight?

    FS:
There was no time.

    LÅ:
No time?

    FS: I
knew that two guards couldn't control Lund when he was a prisoner in chains.
What chances had two policemen, half asleep anyway, against an unrestrained,
armed Lund?

    LÅ:
So you didn't even try to contact them?

    FS: I
couldn't run the risk of him getting away. And maybe taking another girl with
him. LÅ: But I still don't understand. FS: Don't you?

    LÅ:
Why did you have to murder Bernt Lund?

    FS:
What's so fucking difficult about that?

    VB:
Mr Steffansson, sit down. And please refrain from swearing.

    FS:
Do you have a problem hearing what I say? The massed forces of law and order
couldn't treat Lund out of his madness or keep him safely locked up or catch
him after he had murdered Marie. I don't have to explain myself any more,
surely?

    VB:
For the second time, Mr Steffansson, sit down. Perhaps your lawyer can help?

    Kristina
Björnsson (KB): Fredrik, calm down. If you want to state your case, you must be
allowed to stay in here. FS: Could someone get rid of these two?

    KB:
If you remain seated and calm, the officers will sit down too.

    Once
only did their eyes meet. It was during the prosecutor's first interrogation,
which had started after the opening statements. Fredrik had become very angry,
but they had made him sit down again and then he turned round, looking for her
and Agnes, and he had tried to smile a little, she was sure he did. She had
lifted her fingers to her lips to throw him a kiss. Her sense of loss seemed to
solidify in her belly; she missed him so much and it was horrible to see him
there in his suit and tie, white-faced, ready to be taken away.

    LÅ:
Mr Steffansson, I must remind you that Sweden, like very many other countries,
has outlawed the death penalty.

    FS:
If the police had managed to catch him in the end the likely sentence would've
been closed psychiatric care. It's even easier to escape from institutions like
that.

    LÅ:
Where does that take your argument?

    FS:
Obviously, putting Bernt Lund away inside, anywhere, means nothing more than
delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later he is back on the run, ready to kill
more children.

    LÅ:
And so it follows that you have the right to act as police, prosecutor, judge
and executioner?

    FS:
You deliberately pretend not to understand me. You twist what I say.

    LÅ:
Not at all.

    FS: I
can only repeat what I've said before. I didn't kill Lund because I personally
wanted to punish him or get anything else out of it. I killed him because, for
as long as he was alive, he was dangerous. It was like what people do with a
mad dog.

    LÅ: A
mad dog?

    FS:
The reason for killing a rabid dog is that it is a risk to others. Bernt Lund
was a rabid dog. I did what anyone might've done.

    After
every stage in the court proceedings she spent a long time waiting around,
hoping that he would be escorted past her. She wanted to see him. They might
even exchange a word or two. She tried different exits and entrances in turn,
but saw neither him nor his guards.

    After
the first day, he stopped shaving and bothering with a tie. She felt that he
cared less and less, that he was about to give up. Now and then they exchanged
glances and she tried to look very calm and reassuring, as if she knew it would
turn out all right in the end.

    Agnes
no longer came along.

    A few
journalists had dropped out, but one of the two policemen on the case was there
every day. She spoke a little to Sundkvist and liked his mild-mannered style; he
was much easier to relate to than most police.

    Every
day she drove back to Strängnäs and the home that belonged to them both. She
had trouble sleeping at night.

    He
got out at his familiar metro station and strolled slowly home through the
quiet suburban streets, humming a little to himself. It was that kind of
evening, mild and warm and somehow long, as if the next day was far away.

    The
moment Lars Ågestam turned into his own street, he saw it. The car was
eye-catching, the black lettering distinct against its shiny red surface.

    The
letters were bounding along, attacking him.

    Peddo
lover.

    You
fuck kids.

    Arsehole.

    Who's
the psychopath?

    The
words had been painted on both doors. And on the roof. And on the bonnet.
Whoever it was had announced his hatred with spray paint and destruction. If
something could be broken, it had been. All the car windows were reduced to
splinters, the headlamps had been ruined and the mirrors were simply gone.

    He
remembered vomiting with fear in the CPS toilet when he learned what kind of
case he was landed with. Somehow he had foreseen all this.

    And
then here was his house. It was a solid bungalow from the forties with a finish
of yellow render. A bevy of relatives had come to help him put on a coat of
fresh yellow paint that summer. Now the black letters screamed at him from the
bright background, running all the way across the façade, starting at the
kitchen window, over the door and on to the sitting room window. The black
spray paint looked the same as on the car, and the writing did too.

    That
alien hand had written one sentence.

    You
will die soon, arselicker.

    Marina,
his wife, was in the front garden, just metres away from the huge, angular
letters, swinging in the hammock they had bought in a sale just a week ago.

    Her
eyes were closed and she seemed utterly detached.

    He
went up to her, but she said nothing, only coughed nervously. He hugged her.

    The
trial had been going on for three days. What had to happen finally did. Public
awareness of the father who had shot his daughter's killer and killed him,
risking a lifetime in prison, had permeated everything.

    That
threatening being, the faceless citizen, acted accordingly.

    He
couldn't bear to stay in a house with letters sprayed all over it. He had got
out of bed to empty his bladder and couldn't get back to sleep, just lay there,
his nakedness uncovered to let Marina have the duvet, searching the shadowy
ceiling for answers.

    He
thought about his battered car. The spray-painted text, telling him what he
was.

    He
was an arsehole. A psychopath. He loved paedophiles. He fucked children.

    Marina's
red and swollen eyes had avoided meeting his. She kept looking away. When he
asked if she had been frightened, she shook her head, and when he wanted to
know if she had been hurt or abused in any way, she shook her head, and when he
held her tight, she turned away. In bed she lay facing the wall, leaving him
alone with his psychopathy and his ruined car. After a while his breathing
deepened, she noticed, but she kept staring at the wall until he had whispered
her name again and again and she yielded, slipping into his arms and asking him
to forgive her. Their skin, their nakedness touched and they made love for
longer than they normally did; afterwards they held each other for a while
before she turned back to face the wall again.

    He
had to get up.

    Wandering
naked round the house, he checked the time. Half past three. He made himself a mug
of coffee, poured a glass of milk and another of orange juice, got out bread
and cheese. He started reading yesterday's papers, looking for what all the
media called
the paedophilia trial
and marvelling at the space allocated
to it, page after page of text and pictures.

    But
it didn't work; his fears, his restlessness, his anger were whirling inside him
and he couldn't just sit there drinking coffee.

    He
went back into the bedroom, dressed and picked up his briefcase, then kissed
Marina's shoulder, and when she twitched and opened her eyes he explained where
he was going, that he wanted to think in peace while the city woke. She
murmured something he couldn't catch. When he left, her back was almost up
against the wall.

    He
walked slowly, wanting to be alone with his thoughts in the sleeping city. But
before he set out, after walking the seven paces along the path of concrete
slabs set into the lawn, he turned round to take it all in.