The Beast (20 page)

    He
had to go down to Lund's unit. On the way he nodded to two faces from the groups
of trainees, people who wished they'd been placed anywhere but in a sex
offender unit for their half-year of learning on the job. They despised their
charges, not that he didn't feel the same; they all did, the staff spat at the
perverts all the time.

    The
unit was silent and empty, an abandoned corridor, closed doors. The inmates
were in the workshop; all were on work assignments, which is to say they did
wood-turning, rings and building bricks to make educational toys, for a couple of
kronor per hour. And whatever else was wrong with sex offenders, you had to
admit that they trotted off to produce whatever rubbish was demanded of them
without a murmur, no pissing about on the whole, unlike the so-called normals,
drug-crazed would-be lifers, guys inside for robbery and violence and fraud,
non-stop trouble the lot of them, either going on strike or doing a sickie.

    He
stopped outside cell 11, Bernt Lund's empty cell, let himself in. Lund was
still on the loose, halfway through day two. They mostly couldn't cope for
long; it took concentration to keep out of sight, always stay watchful, do
without sleep, and it also required strength and money. Chased by dozens of
policemen, trailed by the public on the alert, the hiding places grew fewer
with every breath.

    The
room with its orderly rows of objects looked the same, except for the pile on
the floor. He remembered how Grens, the old maniac, had knocked a lot of stuff
off with his diary. The thin bloke, whose fortieth birthday had been ruined,
had looked nervously at his colleague and then sighed when Grens aimed and did
it again.

    The
bedspread with its blotchy stripes was already ruffled and Lennart sat down on
the bed, then lay down to see what Lund had seen, night after night. What had
it been like for him? Had he been wanking with closed eyes, fantasising about
little girls? Or had he thought up plans, how to rule and control a child,
destroying its naivety the moment he set to work on it? Had he ever tried to
empathise with the child's fear and humiliation? What had it been like, living
with his guilt in an eight-metre-square cell, alone with it evening, night,
morning; it must have threatened to suffocate him until all he could do was run
from it, beating two screws senseless to get away.

    Someone
knocked. Who? The door opened and Bertolsson, the governor, stepped inside.

    'Lennart?
What on earth are you up to?'

    He
sat up, tried to smooth his unruly hair.

    'I
can't really tell. I came here and… I wanted to know what it was like.'

    'And?'

    'Nothing.
None the wiser.'

    Bertolsson
looked around the cell.

    'Christ.
What a complete nutter.'

    'I
think that's it. My new insight. Lund didn't understand a thing. No remorse.
He's incapable of seeing any point of view other than his own.'

    Bertolsson
kicked the piled-up objects on the floor. It didn't fit. Chaos on the floor,
total conformity and order everywhere else. Lennart couldn't be bothered
explaining.

    'Too
bad. I've been looking for you because I need to talk to you about another
madman. One of Lund's colleagues, as it were. One of the seven in the child
porn ring.'

    'Who's
that?'

    'Name
of Axelsson. Håkan. Couple of minor past convictions. Sentenced tomorrow in the
child pornography case. He'll have to do time, but probably won't get as long a
spell as he deserves. Enough to miss out on both Christmas and Easter, though.'

    'Where
do I come in?'

    'He's
at Kronoberg now, which means transfer to here, but you haven't got any
vacancies.'

    Lennart
yawned, a big, long yawn, thought for a minute and lay down again.

    'I'm
sorry. These characters make me tired.'

    Bertolsson
ignored him.

    'That
is to say, this cell is empty, but won't be for long. Lund should be back
pronto.'

    'There
you are. Sex crime is quite the fashion. Perverts are queuing up.'

    Bertolsson
straightened the slats in the blind to let in the bright sunlight. A day was
happening out there. It was easy to forget. Inside the institution, specific
days did not stand out, one from the other; instead everything congealed into
lumps of months, years, into waiting.

    'We'll
have to place him in one of our normal units. Just for a couple of days, a week
at most. Until we find a cell somewhere more appropriate.'

    Lennart
started to sit up, got halfway, leaned on his elbow and turned towards his
boss.

    'Arne,
what are you saying now?'

    'He's
not allowed to bring the indictment into the unit anyway.'

    'It doesn't
fucking well matter. The others will find out and you know what will happen
next.'

    'Just
a few days. No more. Then he'll be transferred.'

    Lennart
sat up straight.

    'Hold
it. I know you know. If he is finally transferred anywhere from a normal unit,
it will be in an ambulance. No other option.'

    It
wouldn't smell; he had been here before and he knew that. It didn't help to
know. Already on the stairs, his nose, his brain instinctively registered the
stench of death.

    Sven,
as a detective inspector based in Stockholm, had of course visited the
Institute of Forensic Medicine more times than he could remember, it was part
of his job. He knew he had to turn up, but he also knew that he would never,
ever stop hating it, that he would never, ever learn to watch the dead man or
woman, human beings who had been breathing, talking and laughing not long
before, being opened up and sawn into chunks by a man - almost always a man -
in a white coat. The stranger's hands would root around inside the corpse,
examine the torn-out innards under bright lights, throw the whole lot back
inside the carcass and roughly stitch it together. To cover up what they had
done, the corpse on its trolley would be decorously draped, so as not to offend
the bereaved who came to inspect it and declare that this was indeed the person
they had been living next to, when they had all been full of hope.

    Ewert
was standing next to him while they waited for someone to open the security
lock from the inside. Sven thought of how differently his colleague reacted to
the dead the mortuary. Ewert didn't seem to sense the presence of death. To
him, the dead were just things. Before leaving, he would often lift the cloth,
pinch some accessible body part and say something vaguely funny, as if to prove
it beyond insult.

    The
medic had arrived at the other side of the glass door and was looking for his
key-card. It was Ludvig Errfors, one of the most experienced guys here. Sven
had time to tell himself that he was pleased that Errfors had been picked,
because after all an autopsy on a child must be the hardest to do; they'd be
less used to dissecting children. If any one of them was likely to have come
across enough little bodies for the procedure to become routine, then this was
the man.

    Errfors
found his card and the lock clicked open.

    After
the greetings, the pathologist asked about Lund. They told him there was no
news. He shook his head and started speaking about the autopsies of the two
dead girls in the Skarpholm cellar. It had been his case and he kept commenting
on it, while he briskly led the way downstairs.

    He
was saying that he had never before seen such extreme violence towards
children.

    Then
he stopped in mid-step, turning a very serious face up at them.

    'That
is, not until today.'

    'Explain.'

    'I
recognise the type of violence. Lund's trademark.'

    Bottom
of the stairs, then a short corridor, first room on the right. That was where
Errfors usually worked.

    The
dreaded trolley was there, right in the middle of the room. And now there was a
smell, though not strong. The ventilation system hummed, steadily shifting
volumes of air. If it hadn't been a mortuary, Sven would not have known that
the smell came from a dead body.

    They
didn't have to put on sterile green gowns; Errfors was too experienced not to
know when rules could be broken. He switched off all the lamps apart from the
one over the trolley, its bright cone of light illuminating the stage in the
darkened space.

    'This
is how I prefer it. No reflections from shiny surfaces to disturb the
examination.'

    They
saw a child's face, looking peaceful, as if asleep; recognised Marie from her
parents' photos.

    Errfors
was rummaging in a plastic case. He produced a pair of big black-rimmed glasses
with magnifying lenses, and a couple of A4 sheets of paper.

    'Now.
She is less serene-looking under the cover.'

    The
room was silent, well sound-insulated; the rustling of bits of paper invaded
their aural space.

    'Traces
of semen were found in her vagina and anus, and on her body. The perpetrator
ejaculated over the body, before and also after death.'

    He
lifted the cover. Sven turned his face away. He could not bear to look.

    'A
hard object with a sharp point has been forcibly introduced into her vagina and
caused severe internal haemorrhaging.'

    As he
listened carefully, Ewert observed the exposed body of the little girl. He
sighed.

    'He
did exactly that last time.'

    'The
acts were more brutal then, but yes, you're right. The MO was the same.'

    'Seems
he used a curtain rail then.'

    'Could
be, but I haven't been able to identify the object. Only that it was hard and
pointed.'

    The
pathologist produced the next sheet of paper.

    'I
have established the cause of death. A powerful blow, probably the edge of the
criminal's hand, directed against the larynx.'

    Ewert
noted the big bruise across her throat. He turned to Sven, who was still
looking away.

    'Hold
on, you.'

    'I
can't stand it.'

    'No
need. I'm doing the looking.'

    'Thanks.'

    'Still,
you should note that we've got him.'

    'We've
got fuck all.'

    'Not
once we pick him up. He has ejaculated all over her. Just like last time,
there's semen all over the place. And we've kept samples from last time. One
DNA test will do the trick.'

    She
had been lying in the wood. In his mind, Sven saw Margareta and Rune Lantz, an
elderly couple still in love, sitting together and holding hands while the
tears trickled from their eyes, right through the interrogation. Hers had been
worst, a silent flow every time she was forced to describe what she had seen.

    Let's
sit down here. This stone.

    Yes.

    I
want to ask you questions here, with the place in view. Can you cope with that?

    Yes.

    I
want to know what happened, right from the start.