The Beast (8 page)

    'But,
young man. Regrettably, forty or not forty, you're going nowhere now.'

    Ewert
had bad breath. Normally they never got that close.

    'You're
joking.'

    'Let me
tell you something.'

    Ewert
pointed at his visitor's chair. He was impatient, jabbing towards it with his
index finger. Sven pulled his hand away and went to perch on the edge of the
chair, still ready to leave any minute now.

    'I was
in it up to my neck, the last time.'

    'The
girls in the basement.'

    'Two
girls, both nine years old. He had tied them up, jerked off all over them,
raped them, cut them. Just like the time before. They were lying on this bare
cement floor, staring at us. The medic confirmed that they'd been alive when
Lund cut them, stuck a metal object into them, into the vagina, the anus. I
don't believe it, because I can't bear to believe it. Have you thought about
that, eh, Sven? That you can believe whatever you like, if you put your mind to
it?'

    Ewert
Grens scared quite a few people. He didn't stay put where you left him. His
body was restless inside his creased shirt, his too-short trousers. Sven
understood why people kept away from him, he had avoided the man himself. But
he always felt that it was wrong to set out planning to humiliate someone.
Simple enough rule. Anyway, he'd kept himself to himself until it seemed Ewert
had accepted him. Even selected him, not that Sven understood why. The old boy
must have needed someone and it happened to be him. Now Ewert didn't seem
dangerous any more. Big and grey and intense, but not dangerous.

    He
was sad, grieving over the two girls. He didn't cry, not tears yet.

    'I
did the questioning. I kept trying to look Lund in the eye: No way. No fucking
way. He stared above me, past me, through me. I interrupted the session several
times to demand that he look straight at me.'

    Grens,
you don't get it.

    Grens,
listen.

    I
thought you were one of the guys who'd get it.

    I
don't get the hots for all kids.

    You've
no reason to say that.

    I
only go for some of them, the ones who're a bit… bigger.

    Like
that blonde, plump one.

    You
know the kind.

    That's
important, Grens.

    They're
whores.

    Little
slags with small feet.

    Who
think about cock.

    They
fucking well shouldn't do that, you know.

    Fucking
little slags with tight cunts, they shouldn't be thinking about cock all the
time.

    Human
beings looked at each other when they talked. But no, not him. No way.

    He
looked at Sven. Sven looked at him. They were human.

    'I
understand. And I don't. If he's one of those who don't look at you, then why
wasn't he locked up in a special psycho institution? Like Säters secure? Or
Karsudden? Or Sidsjön?'

    Ewert
bent to pick up the bin. He pulled out the tobacco from under his upper lip.

    'That's
what used to happen. His first time inside he got three years in Säter. But
last time he was caught his mental disorder was diagnosed as minor. And then
it's off to the jug like everyone else. These days. Sex offenders' unit, not a
secure madhouse.'

    Ewert
swallowed whatever it was. Not quite tears.

    Then,
back to normality.

    He
changed the tape. More of Siw's singing, of course.
'Jazz Bacillus, 1959'.
He stood in front of the loudspeaker for a moment with his eyes closed. He
turned the volume up, crouched to pick up the rubbish, returning it to the bin.
Then he straightened, took three steps back to get maximum impact, aimed and
kicked the bin again. This time it went further, hitting the wall by the
window.

    He
started speaking again.

    'Sven,
get this fucking message. -Understand it if you can. Minor mental disorder, that's
what this man has. He gets his kicks from torturing and killing two little
girls. He carves them up. So he's suffering from a minor mental disorder, is
he? Are you hearing me, Sven? Tell me then, what the fuck is a major mental
disorder?'

    It
was still morning, but already hot, twenty-four degrees in the sun. Another
summer's day that would maybe reach thirty degrees in the afternoon, for the
third week in a row.
'Augustin'. Time: 2.08. The Swedish entry for the
Eurovision Song Contest 1959.

    He caught
him in his arms. Held him close. They were of the same height and it was easy
to reach him, to caress his shoulders, the back of his neck, his cheeks. To
kiss him. His lips were soft.

    'I do
need you.'

    'I'm
here for you.'

    Lennart
Oscarsson kissed him again, out of lust and out of habit. He was so glad that
they were together this morning, trusting each other, this fucking awful
morning.

    'Nils.
Did you close the door?'

    'Yes,
sure.'

    'Thanks.'

    He
looked at Nils, at his colleague who was his lover and his appalling secret,
the man he could not look at without being reminded of Karin, his wife who was
his lover and his whole life.

    Nils
sat down in the senior-status leather armchair and tugged at Lennart to make
him sit down in his lap. They hugged.

    'Come
on. Take your clothes off.'

    'I
want to. Believe me, my whole body wants to, but it's not on. Not now. I can't,
I must be at that press conference, ready to answer their questions. I've no
choice. Fact.'

    'There's
time enough.'

    'I
love you, Nils. And I want you. But there isn't time, not now.'

    Nils
gave up, but Lennart knew, he saw his lover's disappointment. It was harder for
Nils, he thought, who didn't have someone at home waiting for him, somebody to
lie close to in bed, to make gentle love with. Nils dreamed with Lennart in
mind, only him. No secrets to mull over, only a future when it was simply Nils
and Lennart, nothing and nobody else.

    Lennart
stroked his cheek, kissed his forehead. Nils was so beautiful, proud-looking
somehow. Two years older, there were some grey streaks in his dark hair.

    'I
must be off.'

    'Any
chance of meeting up later today?'

    'Afterwards
I've got to see Bertolsson. He's asked me out to lunch. Maybe it's to be nice
to me, but on the other hand - maybe not. It might be a threat. When I come
back, what about a walk to the water-tower?'

    'I'll
wait for you there.'

    Lennart
held him for longer than he should. Let him free, slowly. Stood up.

    The grey
concrete wall was seven metres high. It loomed at the edge of the forest and
then snaked along for one and a half kilometres, enclosing five low brick
buildings.

    Some
people were kept inside. Others stayed outside.

    Aspsås
was one of Sweden's twelve Category-B prisons, a medium security rating. The
lifers, murderers and heavy drug-traders were locked up in Cat-A's. Small-time
traders hid inside Aspsås, where there were no long-term men, only
fixed-termers coming and going with sentences between two and four years. One
hundred and sixty men, in eight of the ten units in the wings. Most were repeat
offenders with drug-habits, who would do a house-job to land some dosh, get
fixed, do a job for more dosh, more fixes, do a job, get nicked and twenty-six
months inside, then release, a job, some dosh, fixes, a job, dosh, fix, the
pigs and thirty-four in the jug, release, a job.

    Here,
just as everywhere. Me against you, you against the screws. Only two rules,
don't grass and don't fuck mates who don't want to.

    The
other two units housed sex offenders. Hated, always under threat. Nonces fuck
people who don't want to.

    It
was as if the prisoners' joint shame and self-disgust had to find an outlet, as
if being despised by society outside the wall was so hard to take that the only
thing that could make up for it was to humiliate someone else. We, the
straights, will breathe more easily if we fall in with the ancient prison
compact everywhere that these sex freaks are nastier, more damaged, more excluded
and that I, the murderer, rank more highly than you, the rapist, and that I,
having robbed someone of the right to live, have more dignity than you, who
fucked some sad cunt senseless. Though I've violated, it's not the way you did
it and, surely, you're worse than me.

    Maybe
in Aspsås hatred was greater than in many other prisons because it was a mixed
institution, where a couple of wings had one unit for normal prisoners and one
for sex offenders. Because every Aspsås prisoner was suspect, a placement there
was a potential death sentence for a man doing time for something straight,
like eighteen months for grievous bodily harm. Transfer from Aspsås to another
prison was bad news and could mean a serious beating unless you had papers to
prove you were clean. Without your sentence up front to show anything
different, every incomer was convicted of sex crimes until proven innocent.

    H
Unit was one of the eight normal units, which housed the ordinary lot of
small-time crooks and street drug-dealers, assorted robbers, quite a few with
GBH convictions, and the odd fraudster. These men were either on their way up
in the criminal hierarchy and could expect longer sentences next time round, or
had settled for doing the same pathetic stuff over and over, but were
unsuitable for mixing with drunk drivers and minor first offenders in
Category-C prisons. The unit looked like every other unit in any Swedish
middling-grade prison. A locked, armoured door to the stairwell. A corridor
with a linoleum floor in institutional yellow. Along it, ten cells on each
side, their doors half-open. A small kitchen. Next door, a few tables to eat at
and a TV corner and the green baize of the snooker table. Men slowly shuffling
about, going away and coming back again, wandering off to somewhere to kill
time, trying not to think of the hours that had passed and the hours that
remained, only the present. Longing for zero hour is longing away your life.
Staying alive and passing the time is all that is left when the prison gate is
locked behind you.

    Stig
Lindgren had settled in the TV corner. The set was on, some channel or other,
the sound was turned down and a deck of cards was on the table in front of him.
He was about to deal to the five other players waiting for their hands.

    Stig
collected his cards. Grinned. His gold-crowned front tooth gleamed.

    'No
shit. All aces to me. Again. You're playing like right tossers.'

    The
others said nothing. Checked their cards. Flicked them about.

    'Fuck's
sake. Don't show me your cards.'

    He
was forty-nine, but looked older, lined and worn. Thirty-five years of drug
abuse had lodged amphetamine twitches in his face, spasms pulling his cheek
towards his eye, the eye blinking out of sync. His dark hair thinning. A thick
gold chain round his neck. He weighed eighty kilograms now, well muscled after
nineteen months at Aspsås.