The Beast (9 page)

    Once
he was outside again and back on speed he'd soon be down to sixty.

    He
got up suddenly and flapped about, looking for the remote control among the cards
and newspapers on the table.

    'Where's
the fucker?'

    'Are
you playing fucking cards or what?'

    'Shut
it. Where's the thing? The remote. Go get it, Hilding. Dump the cards. Gotta
find it!'

    Hilding
Oldéus quickly put his cards down and started pulling nervously at the same
newspapers that Dickybird had just been over. Thin and short, with a
high-pitched, edgy voice, ten trips in eleven years. When he was on heroin, he
had started scratching an itch near his right nostril and somehow couldn't
stop. Now it was a chronically infected sore.

    The
remote wasn't on the table. Hilding ran around, searching at random on tables
and windowsills. Dickybird pushed the coffee table out of the way, stepped
forward between the irritated but silent card-players and turned the volume up.

    'Quiet,
girls! Hitler is on now.'

    In
the TV corner, in the kitchen, in the corridor, everywhere, people stopped
doing whatever it was. Hurrying to the TV, they lined up behind Dickybird. The
midday news programme. Somebody whistled appreciatively when the next item was
announced.

    'You
heard. Shut up.'

    Lennart
Oscarsson. Someone held out a microphone. Behind him, Aspsås prison.

    Oscarsson
looked stressed. He was unused to TV cameras, unused to having to explain why
something he was responsible for had been utterly buggered up.

    … how
was Lund able to escape…

    … as
I was trying to say…

    …
this prison is allegedly secure but…

    … it
didn't happen here…

    …
what do you mean, 'not here'…

    … a hospital
visit, to the Southern General, under

    guard…

    …
under guard…

    … two
of our most experienced warders… only two…

    … two
of our most experienced warders and a waist restraint…

    
…
on whose recommendation… … he beat them both down and… who considered two
guards enough… and escaped in the prison transport van…
Oscarsson's face
was shown in close-up. He was sweating, his moist, nervous face held on screen
for a long time, the camera enjoying his nakedness, picking out the drops of
sweat on his forehead.

    Television
is all surface and immediacy. Oscarsson had been on leadership training courses
and been filmed in media practice sessions, but this was for real. He was
gripped by a deep-seated, churning anxiety; he was very tense and kept swallowing,
his eyes had an uncertain, shifty look. He took too long to think up answers,
stumbled over his words too often and forgot to come out with his prepared
statements, despite knowing that you must have something definite to say and
keep repeating it, regardless of what you're asked. The situation was so
in-your-face, fear had flooded his mind and drowned the lessons he had learned;
what with the camera and the microphone and the insistent reporter, he was
exposed with his trousers down to every backwoods citizen watching the news. He
tried to produce sensible answers, but his mind was taken up by images of Nils,
or of Karin, watching him on screen. Would he embarrass them? Did they
understand what it was like? He longed to feel close to one of them, longed to
feel hands touching his face, his neck, stroking his chest, his hips.

    'What
a fucking loser!'

    Dickybird
had issued a command. Hilding heard it and cut the silence in the room.

    'Hitler's
coming across like a fucking retard.'

    Dickybird
moved and landed his fist hard on the back of Hilding's head.

    'Shut
the fuck up! Got that? I'm listening!'

    Hilding
twisted nervously in his chair, picked at the sore on his nose and said
nothing.

    He
had learned his lesson the first time inside, only seventeen years old and on
an eight-month stretch for robbery; he had done a central Seven-Eleven shop, as
high as a kite but would need to buy more horse soon, he knew, and was close to
panic. He threatened the shop assistant, a young woman, with a kitchen knife
and robbed the till, didn't get much, just two 500-kronor notes. Still, it was
enough for a deal with the trader round the corner; he was negotiating when the
police arrived on the scene. Back then prison had seemed strange and very frightening.
He quickly tired of looking out for himself and adjusted to the fact that there
would always be at least one man who ran the show and protected a faithful
arselicker. He had been brown-nosing Dickybird in other prisons, once in '98
and then again in '99, and he was no worse than the other unit bosses.

    The
TV image switched to a different setting. Oscarsson's pained face was still
there, but further away, with the Aspsås wall in the background. The camera
panned slowly from the top of the wall to the sky and back again, a visual
cliché in the quickly produced news item. A voiceover, factual to the point of
dreariness, reiterated some points. Bernt Lund had been given permission to
visit hospital and had escaped from a secure transport that morning; he had
been found guilty of several brutal rapes of underage girls, a series that had
culminated in the so-called basement murders, when his victims had been two
nine-year-olds; he had served four years of his sentence in solitary
confinement at Kumla, but had recently been moved to one of the special units
for sexual offenders at Aspsås, and since he was classified as very dangerous,
it was in the public interest to show a picture of him.

    A
black-and-white still came on screen; it showed Bernt Lund dressed in a white
shirt and dark pants, and smiling at the camera.

    Dickybird
stepped closer to the set.

    'See
that bastard from hell? That's the beast I kicked the shit out of in the gym
yesterday. That fucking arsehole!'

    Dickybird
was screaming and those standing closest to him jumped and moved away a bit.
They had been around at other times when he had freaked out about the nonces.

    'What
are the bastards fucking well coming here for? Why here?'

    As he
screamed, he shoved the memories into the back of his mind. He did that every
time. Home in the Svedmyra house, that sodding awful image of his uncle at his
dad's funeral. He was five. Per's hand suddenly stroking his back and then
slipping down to his bum.

    'I'll
cut their cocks off!'

    Memories,
crowding his head, he was forced to think about them, see them in his mind's
eye, relive them. Per said they should pop into Dad's workshop, put his hand on
top of the little boy's best trousers, right in front, then pulled the trousers
down, and the underpants. And pulled down his own trousers. Held him close,
pushed at his bum with his knob.

    'Hilding,
it's got to be done. Cut it all off. Balls, the lot!'

    He
cleared his throat thoroughly and collected plenty of juice, spat it at Bernt Lund's
smiling black-and-white face on the TV screen, then stared at the splattered
face, watching as the saliva trickled down across that cold smile behind the
glass screen and dripped on to the floor.

    The
group scattered. Some retreated to their cells, some ambled off down the
corridor, some stayed and picked up the cards again. Dickybird sat back in his
old chair, but shook his head when Hilding gave him his hand of cards. The
images in his head were refusing to go; somehow they resisted, however hard he
tried to concentrate, calling out and slapping his thighs hard. Still an
out-of-control mechanism projected one image after another. Per in their small
holiday house in Blekinge; his big hands had been doing the same things, the
boy was bleeding heavily and he hid his underpants so Mum wouldn't see them.
She never looked in the old cupboard in the shed.

    'Shit,
Dickybird, come on, let's play.'

    'Forget
it. Not me. You carry on.'

    'Bugger
Hitler. Come on, let's start.'

    'Bugger
yourself. Leave me alone or you'll get it where it hurts. Again.'

    Images.
Now he was thirteen and stoned out of his mind, he had mixed beer and preludin.
He got Larren to come along, Larren who was a big boy and quite fearless. They
hitchhiked to Blekinge, walked to the house, stepped inside, passed Laila, who
was washing up, and found Per in the sitting room. No one realised what was
happening, not until Larren grabbed hold of Per and he himself started stabbing
at Per's balls with an ice-pick.

    'House!'

    'What
the fuck?'

    'Eights
and sixes.'

    'That's
no fucking house.'

    'It
fucking well is. Dickybird, explain to that shithead.'

    'You
heard me. I'm not interested. Play with yourselves.'

    Keys
were rattling. Two screws coming through the main door.

    Dickybird
checked them out. They'd brought somebody new. Meant to replace Bojo, he
guessed. This morning Bojo's cell had been empty, he'd been transferred to Hall
in a hurry. The lads had got it in for him, but someone had alerted the screws
and the wing boss responded instantly. No blood on the floor in this unit, at
least not for a bit.

    The
new guy was a big bugger. Shaved head, shit-coloured skin, one of them
tanning-shop poofs. Dickybird sighed as he watched the group of men step
inside, the screws keeping an eye. They walked past the TV corner and the
card-players took note now. The new guy stared straight ahead, dead to the
world. He was taken to Bojo's cell, went inside but left the door open.

    'Who's
that fucker?'

    Dickybird
pointed. Hilding drew a deep breath, tried to remember.

    'Don't
know. Never saw him before. Has anybody?'

    Dragan
shook his head. Skåne shrugged. Bekir picked up two cards from the table.

    'Fucking
leave it. Let's play, I've got a good hand.'

    Dickybird
focused on the open cell door and waited. That was what he usually did, waited
until they came out. Then he told them the score.

    One
hour passed. One hour and twenty minutes. Then he came out.

    'Oy,
you! Over here.'

    Dickybird
waved, it was a command. The new inmate heard him, but kept his eyes ahead,
ignored the hectoring voice. He walked almost demonstrably slowly into the
kitchen and drank water straight from the tap. The large shiny head glistened
with scattered drops.

    'Hey!
Over here!'

    This
was irritating, it was Dickybird's unit and he decided who did what. That
skinhead had no fucking rights.

    'Here!'

    Dickybird
pointed at the floor in front of his chair, waited. The new man didn't shift.

    'Now!'

    He didn't
get it, that shaved moron didn't fucking get it.

    Hilding
could sense the silence and glanced nervously at Dickybird, grabbed the deck of
cards, sticking a finger up to show the others that they should hold it. But
Dragan and Skåne and Bekir had caught on long ago; it was time to teach the
skinhead a lesson. Not that the beating was their problem, they just had a
grandstand view! They too could sense the silence; it looked like a fight,
quite a few good rounds coming up.

    They
squared up to each other. The new guy was walking towards Dickybird and stopped
when there was only a hand's breadth separating them.

    Dickybird
had never been faced down before and had no intention of letting it happen now.
The skinhead was taller than he was, probably one hundred and eighty-five, and
had this fucking big scar running from his left ear down to the corner of his
mouth. It was clean, could've been a knife but more likely a razor. He had seen
razor scars before, they looked like that.

    'I'm
Lindgren, Dickybird Lindgren.'

    'And?'

    'We
usually say who we are, round here.'

    'Fuck
off.'

    The
images started up in his mind, Per and Larren, Per's balls bleeding something
fucking awful, Auntie Laila over by the sink screaming her head off, Dickybird himself
running about with the ice-pick lifted shouting that if anyone wanted a taste
he'd stick it in, Per wailing; he had jabbed with the ice-pick at his eyes when
Larren suddenly let his uncle go. Not eyes, that was Larren's bottom line.