He was breathing deeply, easily. His body was flexible and willing. He felt alert.
Next, he pulled the heavy rifle from the boot. He hadn't used it for many years, not since he had gone hunting with Birger. That was well before Marie was born, maybe seven or eight years ago. He and his father-in-law had tried hard to find something they could share other than their love of Agnes. Hunting was just about the only thing they could at least pretend to enjoy together.
Fredrik balanced the gun in his hand, rocking it up and down. Then he returned to the place he had located, kneeled and lifted the rifle, his hands steadied by leaning on the hood of the car. He got Lund in his sights and centred the cross hairs on his back.
He waited. He wanted to hit him from in front.
Another quarter of an hour passed and then Lund rose. The roots of the tree and the bushes no longer protected him as he stretched to exercise his stiffened joints.
The laser beam searched him out, moved tremblingly over the breathing body. Fredrik held it for a moment on the target's crotch. Then upwards.
Suddenly Lund discovered the red dot and swatted at it as if at a wasp, pointlessly flapping his arms about.
Fredrik released the trigger. The first shot shattered the silence.
For a moment nothing else existed.
The flapping arms disappeared. Lund had been thrown violently backwards and crashed heavily to the ground.
He tried to get up, slowly.
Fredrik moved the bright dot to the man's forehead, let it rest there for a second.
The sight of an exploding head was somehow unexpected.
Then the silence closed in again.
Fredrik put the gun on the car hood, sagged until he reached the ground, then lay down holding his head, twisting until he was curled up like a foetus.
He wept.
For the first time since Marie had gone his tears came. It hurt; the bloody unbearable grief had grown inside him, out of sight. Now it was pushing its way out and he screamed the way you do when you are about to lose your life.
Chief interrogator Sven Sundkvist (SS): This way, please. Kristina Björnsson, barrister (KB): Right. Thank you.
SS: The interrogation of Fredrik Steffansson is taking place in Kronoberg prison. The time is twenty fifteen. Present with Steffansson are the chief interrogator Sven Sundkvist and Steffansson's legal representative, Kristina Björnsson, solicitor.
Fredrik Steffansson (FS): (inaudible)
SS: Sorry? What did you say?
FS: Please, I'd like some water.
SS: It's just in front of you. Help yourself.
FS: Thank you.
SS: Fredrik, could you please tell us what has happened.
FS: (inaudible)
SS: Speak up.
FS: Bear with me.
KB: Are you all right?
FS: No.
KB: Can you carry on?
FS: Yes.
SS: Let's start again. Please describe what has happened.
FS: You know already.
SS: Describe the events in your own words.
FS: A previously convicted sex killer murdered my daughter.
SS: I would like you to concentrate on what happened in
Enköping today, outside the nursery school Freja. FS: I shot my daughter's murderer and killed him.
KB: Sorry, Fredrik, hold it there.
FS: What now?
KB: I'd better have a few words with you.
FS: Yes?
KB: Are you sure you should describe today's events in those terms?
FS: I don't see what you're driving at.
KB: I get the impression that you're about to describe the events in a particular way.
FS: I simply intend to answer the questions.
KB: You must be aware that a premeditated murder is punishable by a lifetime prison sentence. 'Life' means between sixteen and twenty-five years.
FS: Right you are.
KB: I'm advising you to be careful about how you express things. At least until you and I have had a long talk, face-to-face.
FS: I haven't done anything wrong.
KB: It's your choice.
FS: So it is.
SS: Have you finished?
KB: Yes.
SS: OK, let's start again. Fredrik, what happened today?
FS: It was you who gave me the crucial information.
SS: What information?
FS: After the funeral, in the churchyard. You were there and the other policeman, the one with a limp.
SS: DCI Grens?
FS: That's the one.
SS: And what happened in the churchyard?
FS: One of you two, the guy with the limp I think, said that the risk that Lund would do it again was very great. That's when I made up my mind. No more acts like that. Not another child, not another loss. All right if I get up, move about?
SS: Fine.
FS: I'm assuming that you understand what I'm trying to say. Look, that man was locked up. He escapes. You can't catch him. He tortures and kills Marie. He is still on the run, police chase or no police chase. You know that he'll do it again, to some other child. You know. And you know you can't stop him, you've demonstrated that.
Lars Ågestam (LÅ): May I join you?
SS: Please have a seat.
LÅ: I put it to you that your intention was to take revenge.
FS: If society cannot protect its citizens, they have to do it themselves.
LÅ: You wanted to avenge Marie's death by killing Bernt Lund.
FS: I've saved the life of at least one child. Of that I'm convinced. That's what I did it for. That was my real motive.
LÅ: Do you believe that the death penalty is just, Fredrik?
FS: No.
LÅ: This action of yours suggests that you do.
FS: I believe that taking a life sometimes saves lives.
LÅ: And you're the judge of whose life should be taken and who should be saved?
FS: A child playing outside its school? Or an escaped sex killer, who's planning to violate and then slaughter that very child? And their lives are supposed to be worth the same?
SS: I would like you to say why you weren't prepared to let the police go after him.
FS: I did consider it. But I decided against it.
SS: All you had to do was approach the officers stationed by the school gate, isn't that so?
FS: Lund succeeded in escaping from the prison. Before that, he escaped from a secure mental hospital. If I'd left it to the police, at best he would've been captured and sent to a prison or a mental hospital. What if he had escaped again?
SS: So you decided to be both judge and executioner? FS: I had no choice. It was my only option. My one single thought was how to kill him so that he wouldn't be able to do again what he did to Marie. Under any circumstances whatsoever.
LÅ: Have you finished?
SS: Yes.
LÅ: That's all, then. Fredrik, please listen carefully.
FS: Yes?
LÅ: I must put this to you formally.
FS: Go ahead.
LÅ: Fredrik Steffansson, I have to tell you that you are charged with murder and will be tried in court.
III
The village was called Tallbacka. Village? Actually, it was quite a sizeable community, with roughly two thousand six hundred inhabitants. There was a small supermarket, a kiosk, a branch office of the Co-op savings bank, a rather plain licensed restaurant, open both at lunchtime and in the evenings, a closed railway station, one large, recently restored church, which was forever empty, and two more popular free churches.
You took the day as it came, that was the kind of place it was.
It was a here-and-now for the people there, lives which had started in this place.
It was good enough for them, thank you; only stuck-ups wanted to get away. A day was a day, no more and no less, no matter that the town had been tarted up with two new slip-roads from the dual carriageway.
Despite being that kind of community, or maybe because of it, over the following months Tallbacka was to become the most clear-cut example, among many others, of what was a new legal phenomenon. It was here that people demonstrated the vacuum separating legally correct court proceedings and the public's interpretation of exactly what they signified.