'Look, there he goes. Axelsson. Not a fucking peep about who he is. He says he's in for GBH. Fuck's sake, the prissy cunt isn't up to pissing against the wind. He's a beast, I can smell it. I fucking sniff these perverts out.'
The cooler air had alerted Hilding. He sat up to watch Axelsson's slow progress.
'I listened to the screws earlier on, and they were on about him, that bugger over there. Like, this place is full up. Every single cell set aside for beasts has someone in it. And that's why he's here, because there was no room anywhere else.'
Dickybird kicked irritably at the gravel and a white cloud of dust rose against the blue sky. He threw the fag-end at the whiteness and it glowed for a while before going out.
'Skåne.'
'Yes, what?'
'You've got a mission.'
'What fucking mission?'
'You've got a six-hour leave coming up. Right?'
'Right.'
'No supervision?' 'Right.'
'You know what you've got to do, then. Like, check out Axelsson's sentence.'
'That's not on. I've got business to see to. Like, I've got a bird, and only six shitty hours.'
Dickybird laughed.
'Forget the bird. Shitheads who double the pool after a drawn first half shouldn't push their luck.'
He pointed at them, first Skåne, then Hilding, then Skåne again.
'Wildboy, you get Axelsson's ID number somehow and tell Skåne. He'll clutch it in his shaky junkie hands and use his leave tomorrow to get the boys at Stockholm registry office to hand over the beast's indictment. And then we'll fucking see. Oh, yeah.'
Hilding scratched his sore until he bled. Then he cleared his throat, for too long. Dickybird interrupted before his lackey could speak.
'Don't even think of arguing. Just do it.'
Lennart Oscarsson stood by the window in his room. It looked out over the exercise yard and football pitch. He observed grown men, offenders who had threatened, beaten up and killed other men, lying on the ground behind the goals, gasping for air. He watched Dickybird and his harem, noted that they stared and pointed at Axelsson, who was walking along the jogging track. It made him gulp with anxiety; he had warned Bertolsson that to place someone with a child porn sentence among the normals could only end one way. In bloodshed. He had seen it before, and only someone unfamiliar with his strange reality could imagine anything different.
He was dying. Another small death with every moment that passed.
His two lives did not mean that he lived more, but that he lived less. Somehow his separate worlds cancelled each other out, consumed each other, so that loving two people, being embraced by two lovers, did not make him feel richer, but as if he'd lost out twice over.
Now Nils was sitting opposite him. They had been holding each other, had agreed that they needed each other. And then Nils had stated his ultimatum.
Lennart understood why. It wasn't that he did not see how living alone, just being somebody's second best, someone who didn't really exist for those who knew them both, would lead up to a point, like now, when they faced each other with an ugly either-or dividing them.
He turned back toward the window, scanning the row of uniform villas just beyond the wall. He lived in one of them. His whole life was in one of those houses, and his wife, whom he had always loved.
The man who stood close behind him now offered him a new life. He could grow old with Nils.
He did not have the strength to keep carrying the lie.
He knew that.
Tomorrow must be the day when he stopped lying.
The whore had been screaming when he pulled off her red shoes. He'd pushed her down then, into the grass, little whores should scream, that was part of it, but there were too many outdoor types about, joggers and strolling OAPs. She hadn't liked it when he kissed the shiny red leather and the metal buckles, she'd screamed a lot, louder than the rest, true, but put it this way, she'd screamed real beautiful. He had to kiss her feet afterwards, maybe he was a bit rough then, more than he needed to be, he had pushed her face into the dry ground for a bit too long. It's hard to handle the little whores, if you're nice to them they just want more cock. This one was just the same.
She'd had lovely feet. Pale pale skin, tiny toes. He had almost forgotten how it was to be with little whores. Four years it had been, how he'd longed for it, wanking wanking wanking, but now there was no need, he'd got at them again.
They acted bad later on. When they had got what they wanted, cock, a hard seeing-to. And when they were silent.
He had hidden this one. A big fir tree, its bottom branches reached the ground and she fitted in underneath. She'd been too mucky, shame to push her down so hard, but he had licked her feet clean. They had tasted of earth.
He had been sitting here for three hours. A useful seat this, not too near but with a good view of everybody who was going in and out. This seemed a proper nursery, he had checked it out before and the children always looked happy.
True, there were the guards. Ordinary baby cops, but always in the way. He'd have to work round them. Same types, in pairs, parked outside every place he'd tried in Strängnäs. But this was Enköping, thirty kilometres down the road, still, here they fucking well were.
Little tiny whores.
He had seen lots already.
Lots with white-blonde hair, that's what he liked best, the pale ones because they were always so soft, their soft pale skin had blood vessels showing through and when he pressed hard with his fingers it left kind of reddish spots.
It was a beautiful church. White, proud and imposing, it dominated the small town, towering so demandingly over it that Fredrik often asked himself if it could ever have been suited to the congregation, or if it was a standard model in the long-ago days when Christianity was law and human beings walked taller.
He liked it very much, regardless of his having left the Swedish Church long ago, because nothing that he couldn't see with his own eyes truly existed for him, and one of the things he could never see was whatever existence was supposed to follow death. Just this church, and just this cemetery, was important to him. It stood for life, for his childhood. Summer after summer, Fredrik had tagged along with his grandad, the church warden, admiring everything he did: digging deep graves, endlessly mowing the grass, arranging the golden numbers on the black board to tell people which hymns to sing. He liked to help. Grandad had allowed him to press the button that started the church bells tolling and, after the service, collect up the bibles on a little trolley with rusty wheels. The tall white altar candles in their heavy brass candlesticks were special and he had to look carefully to make sure that they were properly lined up.
Maybe this was pure, overdecorated nostalgia, but never mind. What mattered was that he'd been very happy, so happy that his grandad had replaced George Best as his idol. He still loved the old man, now a silver-haired ninety-four- year-old, pottering around on his sore legs, sipping black coffee at all times of the day. Fredrik sometimes felt that this part of his past was his only future.
He looked across to Agnes. She was wearing something light-coloured, as they had agreed. She looked worn. In her forties, she had still appeared to be in her early twenties. Now, after three days, the years had caught up with her. As they do. He wanted to hold her, wanted her to hold him. They needed each other now for a little while longer. They would die together. Then without Marie there would be nothing left for them to share.
It was a very quiet funeral, unadvertised. No mourners apart from Fredrik, Agnes and Micaela. No one else, except the two detectives in charge of the investigation, who had asked to be present for technical reasons. After some hesitation he had said yes, they could do what they liked, as long as they kept a low profile and sat at the back.