The Beast (39 page)

    They
lined up the bottles on the sawing horses and Ove got the lid off the oil drum
in the corner behind the lawn mower. It was full to the brim with petrol. He
lowered a can under the surface to fill it, watching the bubbles rise.
Dribbling petrol as he went, he walked over to the row of bottles, where Helena
was waiting with a large plastic funnel in her hand. Ola filled the first
bottle to the halfway mark. They moved on to the next bottle; she held the
funnel in place, he poured in petrol until the bottle was half full. They
carried on like that until all the bottles were done and they had used up over
twenty litres of petrol.

    Meanwhile,
Bengt had spread out an old sheet over the wood basket and used his knife to
cut it systematically into forty strips, roughly thirty by thirty centimetres.
He pushed a rolled-up strip into the top of each bottle, so that only a small
head of cloth protruded.

    Then
they all set to, placing the filled and stoppered bottles tidily into a big box
and making sure that they fitted in securely. A small box with ten cigarette
lighters, two each in case one went bust, was put next to the big one.

    It
hadn't taken them that long. There was still an hour or two to go before noon.

    Fredrik
was sitting in the centre of the court. His eyes were closed. He wanted to look
around but he

    Lars
Ågestam (LÅ): Steffansson murdered Bernt Lund without a trace of compassion and
concern about the other man's life. There are, to my mind, no mitigating
circumstances. I will therefore plead that the court recognises his
responsibility for this act by sentencing him to a lifetime prison term.

    couldn't
find the strength to. This was the fifth and last day, and he wanted to be back
in the cell and

    Kristina
Björnsson (KB): Fredrik Steffansson was watching outside the nursery school. He
knew that if he did not shoot Bernt Lund, two more little girls would have been
sexually violated and killed. We even know who they were.

    piss
in the washbasin, just as usual, that was all there was. This room was packed
with people, all around him, making him feel so bloody lonely.

    He
remembered how he had felt the first Christmas after Agnes had left him, a few
weeks before he met Micaela for the first time. He had not kept track of the
passing days, just kept doing the things one must do, so that Christmas Eve
turned up unexpectedly. He had tried to get rid of it but failed, so by five
o'clock in the afternoon, when it was totally dark outside, he had gone out and
tried to have a drink in one of the few Stockholm pubs that were still open.
He'd never forget the people holed up in there, isolated in their communal
solitude. The atmosphere was so bitter and dull that he found it hard to
breathe and staying on was almost unbearable until the programme called
Jonsson's Christmas
started up on the telly over the bar and became a focal
point, which they could gather round for half an hour. The programme was about
them somehow, so they had laughed and warmth had enveloped them all for a
while, until the evening had suddenly passed, one more for the road and a last
cigarette, and then everyone had gone home to his or her scruffy, fusty digs.

    He
could look around the court now. Now, as then, he was surrounded by strangers,
all sucked into a system they didn't truly understand, but which made them feel
cheated of their future. Take the prosecutor,

    LÅ:
According to the criminal law, third chapter, paragraph 1,
whoever takes the
life of another shall be convicted of murder and sentenced to a prison term,
which must exceed ten years and may extend to a life term.

    who
demanded a life sentence, or the defence lawyer,

    
KB:
According to the criminal law, twenty-fourth chapter, paragraph 1
,
an
act which is in self-defence or in defence of others and uses reasonable force
is a crime only if, in view of the nature of the attack, the intent and
significance of what is attacked and other relevant circumstances, it is
self-evidently indefensible.

    who
pleaded reasonable force, or the magistrates, who seemed not to be listening
most of the time, or of course the journalists and court recorders, who sat
behind him, writing away and drawing and memorising, all stuff which he wasn't
allowed to see; he would not learn who they were or what kind of reality they
represented. Furthest back was the public, the audience he supposed, there to
satisfy their collective curiosity, something he detested them for, their
hunger for thrills; they were rubbing their hands with glee at having got close
enough, actually being free in real life to stare at the
dad-whose-little-girl-was-murdered-so-he- shot-the-murderer.

    LÅ:
Mr Steffansson planned the murder of Bernt Lund over a period of four days. In
other words, it was a premeditated act and he did have sufficient time to
reconsider. According to his own statement, Steffansson regarded the killing of
Lund as equivalent to eliminating a mad dog.

    He
didn't want to see them and avoided turning round, they ate him, tore the flesh
of his face and burrowed inside his mind. Micaela was there and he wanted to
show her something, say something, so he had turned a few times to look for
her,

    KB: Reasonable
force is defined as that used when facing threats with regard to life, health,
property or other judicially understood interests, in self-defence or in
defence of others. We believe it self-evident that the lives of two little
girls were endangered and that Fredrik Steffansson, by acting as he did, saved
two young lives

    but
he feared the eyes fastened on him and the noses sniffing for his scent and so
he avoided reminding them and her that he was somebody with something to say.

    Hours
passed as he sat there, facing forward, eyes closed, refusing to listen. He had
seen Marie stuck in a bag on a trolley in the forensic place. Her face had been
beautiful, her chest taped together, and her genitals pierced and cut to
pieces, and her feet were much too clean, and bore traces of saliva. He, who
spoke against, and she, who talked for, had both asked him questions and he had
replied, but it was unreal, meaningless.

    Only
the little girl in the body bag meant anything to him.

    The
summer was dying slowly. The heat that had ruled for so many weeks was
dissolving and being replaced by cooler air, until it seemed only a distant
memory. People started complaining when the showers merged into days of rain,
claimed that they felt the cold, something that recently had been simply
unthinkable. As the damp infiltrated the layers of sweaters and thick trousers,
the newspapers gave up on the dad who shot the paedophile and ran headlines
about how elderly Germans, who could read fish entrails and foretell the
weather, had insisted that conditions this autumn and winter would be dire.

    Charlotte
van Balvas breathed in the chilly, damp air with pleasure. She had longed for
this time of year, when she could walk the streets without sweating and look
around without narrowing her eyes against the light. Her skin went angrily red
in sunlight and she used to hide in the courtroom, hanging back, and then hurry
off to libraries and restaurants, waiting until her time came to join the
others, the happily adjusted ones, in the streets again. Soon pale skin would
look normal.

    She
was forty-six years old. As of this moment, she was frightened.

    She
had seen what they'd done to the prosecutor. They had threatened him and
vandalised his home because he did what he had to do for the society he
represented. To plead a life term in prison for a proven, premeditated murder
was quite in order. As the judge, she had to cope with that troupe of clowns,
the magistrates, although their sole reason for being there was that they had
served their political masters faithfully. She would have to face them soon, at
a meeting out of court, and somehow convince them that according to the law
they all recognised, Fredrik Steffansson really deserved a long prison
sentence.

    She
had no choice, she too represented a society that had outlawed lynch mobs and
their rough justice.

    She
was almost there now. Around her, people walked hunchbacked under their
umbrellas and she wondered about them. What did they think, would they have
fired that gun? Did they believe some human beings had a better claim to live
than others?

    Did
they recognise her?

    After
all, her picture had been in all the papers, she and the magistrates too.

    They
determine the outcome in the paedophile trial.

    Is
killing right? They decide.

    The
court that might make the death penalty part of Swedish law.

    She
thought about the man at the centre of the case, whom she had watched for the
last five days. His face was so fragile, somehow, and so wounded. He had been
trying to avoid looking at the hyenas in the back rows, staring straight ahead
without a break. She had liked what she had seen of Steffansson, and had even
spent her evenings reading one of his books. She did not doubt him when he said
that he had wanted to stop Lund from violating other children, and so force
other parents to descend into his own hell. His reasons were utterly
believable.

    Christ,
there were moments when she wanted to caress his wounded face. She could have
undressed in front of him, he wouldn't have hurt her. He wasn't frightening. It
was unbelievable that he should have scoured the countryside dreaming of
revenge.

    One
of the magistrates had asked her how she would have argued, if it was one of
her own children who had been saved. What if she had lived in the catchment
area of that particular nursery school in Enköping?

    She had
no children, but she wasn't as insensitive as all that. Of course she would've
felt differently.

    As it
was, she didn't answer the question.

    She
was almost there now. The rain was heavier. The large drops collected in
growing puddles and there was thunder in the air.

    She
stopped, stood still, soaked to the skin.

    The
water pouring over her cheeks, down her neck calmed her, made her feel more
courageous.

    She
started off again, having found the strength to walk into the magistrates' meeting,
where she would try to persuade them that the grieving father should have a
unanimous custodial life sentence.