The Beast

'Siw's Classics. Will this do?'

Surely this was the right thing. He said he'd take it.

By now she was smiling very broadly. He blushed again, but felt cross. Was she laughing at him?

'What's the joke?'

'Oh, nothing.'

'I get the impression you're finding this funny.'

'Not at all.'

'Yes you do.'

'It's just that you don't look right. I mean, like the type of person who buys Siw's songs.'

Now he was smiling too.

'What do they look like then? Older than me?'

'I… yeah, not such… a suit.'

'What?'

'Like, cooler.'

Safely outside in the street, he bought an ice-cream and decided to walk to Kung Island, then past the Crime Prosecution Service building, his place of work, and on to Scheele Street and the Violent Crime Squad offices.

He felt quite tense, hung back a little and then almost forgot to knock. The familiar irritable voice.

Ewert Grens was sitting behind his desk, but had swung the chair sideways and was leaning forward with his elbows resting on his thighs. His glaring eyes told his visitor to get lost, he wasn't welcome. No one was.

'I've got something for you. Here.' Lars put the CD down on the desk. 'I'm sorry I was so rude about the music last time.'

Grens said nothing.

'I hope you haven't got all the songs in this collection.'

Still no response.

'I'd like to talk to you for a while. I'll be straight with you, just as I was on Monday. I think you're bloody difficult, and a real bastard at times. But I need you. I haven't got anyone else to turn to in this case, no one who'll offer me the resistance I must learn to deal with. No one who will ask the right questions.'

He gestured vaguely towards the visitor's chair. Was it all right to sit down? Ewert, still not uttering, waved distractedly as some kind of invitation.

'I've got to tell you this. I actually threw up yesterday. Breakfast, lunch, the lot. Sheer funk. Instead of being handed my most important case on a plate, I've ended up having to prosecute a grief-stricken father for shooting at and killing a proven sex murderer. It can only go one way. That is, straight to hell. You don't have to be a genius to work that out.'

Ewert shook his head, cackled briefly with laughter and spoke for the first time.

'Serves you right.'

Ågestam counted the seconds, his old trick in situations like this. Thirteen seconds. That mean old bastard must surely see that he was on top now, was being deferred to.

'I'm going to push for a life sentence.'

He really stuck his neck out and it worked.

'Say that again?'

'You heard me. I'm not going to stand for anybody appointing himself judge and jury.'

'Why tell me? What's the fucking point you're making?'

'No special reason. Well, I wanted to find someone to tell my ideas to. To test them.'

Ewert cackled again.

'Still scrabbling to get up the greasy pole, eh? Life, was that what you said?'

'Aha. Yes.'

'You know, half the punters who end up in prison have committed one or more violent acts. Fucking idiots to a man, but still human beings. And victims as well; almost all of them have been abused one way or the other, usually by their parents. Even I can see where that might lead.'

'I know.'

'Book learning. You should be out there, seeing for yourself.'

Ågestam leafed through his notebook.

'Steffansson freely admitted that he planned the murder over the course of four days. He had time to reconsider, but didn't. Not just judge and jury, he had to be the executioner as well.'

'Planned, yes. But plans fail. He couldn't be sure he'd find Lund.'

'When he did, he still had a choice. He could've alerted the police. Christ, your officers were on the spot. But that would've meant giving up the shooting he had been looking forward to.'

'Sure, sure, he has committed murder. No fucking question about it. But life? No way. Unlike you, I've seen real action, forty years of it, and that has meant sometimes standing by as worse nutters than Steffansson got off with lesser sentences than that. And I've watched hordes of fancy little prosecutors trying to pass themselves off as hard men.'

Ågestam breathed in deeply and checked his notebook again. He was determined to keep his cool and ignore the man's clumsy sarcasm. Then it came to him that what was happening was exactly what he wanted. The sour old bugger was cross-examining him. This would work as a kind of pre-trial trial. He smiled, still turning the pages, but without taking in his notes. He could polish his arguments now, muster his evidence. Great, he liked it, just like an exam oral.

The pause, maybe his smile, had irritated Ewert.

'What's your fucking problem now? Can't find what to say next from your shitty little book? For your information, this is a case of murder with extenuating circumstances. If pleading life gives you a hard-on, go right ahead. But be ready to settle for eight or ten years. You and I are both part of this society, you'd better put that in your notes, because it's a society that failed to protect Marie Steffansson. And other kids.'

'I grasp the point you're making, of course. But does this failure by society justify the summary execution of a presumed sex killer? Consider the possibility that the victim was innocent, at least in this particular case. You know sod all about it, and – more to the point – Steffansson knows sod all about what the man he was shooting at was up to. Think again. Do you really think it is right to kill Lund because he is seen near the site of the crime? Is that the society you'd like to police? Where people take the law into their own hands, DIY executions and all? It will certainly make a change. The laws I learned about don't include anything about a death penalty. We are responsible, Grens. We must demonstrate that in our kind of society, anyone who acts like Steffansson will be locked up. For life. Grieving dad or not.'

Silence. Then the murmur of a Mediterranean-style ceiling fan stopped and the silence became so profound that for the first time Ågestam actually noticed the fan's existence.

He looked at it and then at the elderly man behind the desk. His lined face spoke of a bitterness, a deep-seated fear, that drove both his withdrawal from other people and his aggression towards them. What was the cause? Why was Grens so ready to reject, so prone to swear and accuse and insult? DCI Grens was well known nationally. Already at university Lars had heard the stories about him, the policeman who walked alone, but was better at his job than most. Now, having met the man, he was no longer convinced.

All he saw was a pathetic old sod who had painted himself into a corner socially and had to put up with the consequences, isolated and angry.

I don't want to become like Grens, it's a grim state of mind, he thought, almost as grim as being totally solitary.

Ewert turned over the CD, a flimsy piece of plastic holding twenty-seven tracks. His fingers left greasy marks on the shiny surface.

'Is that it? Are you done?'

'I think so.'

'Fine. When you leave, take this with you. I haven't got the right kit for playing it.'

Ågestam shook his head.

'It's a gift. It's yours now. If you have no use for it, throw it away.'

The elderly man put down the silent piece of plastic.

Today was the Wednesday of the second week since Lund's escape. Two guards had been badly beaten up.

A little girl had died. Her killer had died.

Her father was in custody awaiting trial. He would get prison for life if that poncy little prosecutor got his way.

Sometimes Grens didn't want to be around anymore. He almost longed for when it would all be over.

Dead bodies are worse in hot weather. Sven was reminded of the kind of nature films that he had come to detest. Overbearing voiceovers guide the viewers though sun-baked African landscapes, flies buzz round the microphone and, sooner or later, some kind of furry predator starts running after its prey, jumps and bites its throat, rips the flesh off its bones, gulping down anything edible until sated and ready to amble into the long grass to sleep, leaving the bloody, rotting carcass behind for the flies and the heat to consume it until nothing is left.