LÅ: Mr Steffansson, I must remind you that Sweden, like very many other countries, has outlawed the death penalty.
FS: If the police had managed to catch him in the end the likely sentence would've been closed psychiatric care. It's even easier to escape from institutions like that.
LÅ: Where does that take your argument?
FS: Obviously, putting Bernt Lund away inside, anywhere, means nothing more than delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later he is back on the run, ready to kill more children.
LÅ: And so it follows that you have the right to act as police, prosecutor, judge and executioner?
FS: You deliberately pretend not to understand me. You twist what I say.
LÅ: Not at all.
FS: I can only repeat what I've said before. I didn't kill Lund because I personally wanted to punish him or get anything else out of it. I killed him because, for as long as he was alive, he was dangerous. It was like what people do with a mad dog.
LÅ: A mad dog?
FS: The reason for killing a rabid dog is that it is a risk to others. Bernt Lund was a rabid dog. I did what anyone might've done.
After every stage in the court proceedings she spent a long time waiting around, hoping that he would be escorted past her. She wanted to see him. They might even exchange a word or two. She tried different exits and entrances in turn, but saw neither him nor his guards.
After the first day, he stopped shaving and bothering with a tie. She felt that he cared less and less, that he was about to give up. Now and then they exchanged glances and she tried to look very calm and reassuring, as if she knew it would turn out all right in the end.
Agnes no longer came along.
A few journalists had dropped out, but one of the two policemen on the case was there every day. She spoke a little to Sundkvist and liked his mild-mannered style; he was much easier to relate to than most police.
Every day she drove back to Strängnäs and the home that belonged to them both. She had trouble sleeping at night.
He got out at his familiar metro station and strolled slowly home through the quiet suburban streets, humming a little to himself. It was that kind of evening, mild and warm and somehow long, as if the next day was far away.
The moment Lars Ågestam turned into his own street, he saw it. The car was eye-catching, the black lettering distinct against its shiny red surface.
The letters were bounding along, attacking him.
Peddo lover.
You fuck kids.
Arsehole.
Who's the psychopath?
The words had been painted on both doors. And on the roof. And on the bonnet. Whoever it was had announced his hatred with spray paint and destruction. If something could be broken, it had been. All the car windows were reduced to splinters, the headlamps had been ruined and the mirrors were simply gone.
He remembered vomiting with fear in the CPS toilet when he learned what kind of case he was landed with. Somehow he had foreseen all this.
And then here was his house. It was a solid bungalow from the forties with a finish of yellow render. A bevy of relatives had come to help him put on a coat of fresh yellow paint that summer. Now the black letters screamed at him from the bright background, running all the way across the façade, starting at the kitchen window, over the door and on to the sitting room window. The black spray paint looked the same as on the car, and the writing did too.
That alien hand had written one sentence.
You will die soon, arselicker.
Marina, his wife, was in the front garden, just metres away from the huge, angular letters, swinging in the hammock they had bought in a sale just a week ago.
Her eyes were closed and she seemed utterly detached.
He went up to her, but she said nothing, only coughed nervously. He hugged her.
The trial had been going on for three days. What had to happen finally did. Public awareness of the father who had shot his daughter's killer and killed him, risking a lifetime in prison, had permeated everything.
That threatening being, the faceless citizen, acted accordingly.
He couldn't bear to stay in a house with letters sprayed all over it. He had got out of bed to empty his bladder and couldn't get back to sleep, just lay there, his nakedness uncovered to let Marina have the duvet, searching the shadowy ceiling for answers.
He thought about his battered car. The spray-painted text, telling him what he was.
He was an arsehole. A psychopath. He loved paedophiles. He fucked children.
Marina's red and swollen eyes had avoided meeting his. She kept looking away. When he asked if she had been frightened, she shook her head, and when he wanted to know if she had been hurt or abused in any way, she shook her head, and when he held her tight, she turned away. In bed she lay facing the wall, leaving him alone with his psychopathy and his ruined car. After a while his breathing deepened, she noticed, but she kept staring at the wall until he had whispered her name again and again and she yielded, slipping into his arms and asking him to forgive her. Their skin, their nakedness touched and they made love for longer than they normally did; afterwards they held each other for a while before she turned back to face the wall again.
He had to get up.
Wandering naked round the house, he checked the time. Half past three. He made himself a mug of coffee, poured a glass of milk and another of orange juice, got out bread and cheese. He started reading yesterday's papers, looking for what all the media called the paedophilia trial and marvelling at the space allocated to it, page after page of text and pictures.
But it didn't work; his fears, his restlessness, his anger were whirling inside him and he couldn't just sit there drinking coffee.
He went back into the bedroom, dressed and picked up his briefcase, then kissed Marina's shoulder, and when she twitched and opened her eyes he explained where he was going, that he wanted to think in peace while the city woke. She murmured something he couldn't catch. When he left, her back was almost up against the wall.
He walked slowly, wanting to be alone with his thoughts in the sleeping city. But before he set out, after walking the seven paces along the path of concrete slabs set into the lawn, he turned round to take it all in.
You will die soon, arselicker.
The early-morning light seemed to magnify the letters and make their blackness more prominent. The writing was crude and had an awkward stiffness that made the whole thing look unreal. Surely it would all fade and vanish, dribble off the wall into sticky puddles among the roses in the border?
Then he passed his car, new a year ago. He had borrowed to cover the cost. It was vandalised beyond all hope, wrecked like the cars he'd seen in the far-flung suburbs of Latin American cities. It would be taken away. Would the intrusive words go away?
It took him two hours to walk from the western suburbs to the city centre, carrying his jacket over his shoulder and the briefcase in his hand. His black shoes didn't fit him too well and pinched here and there, but he had time to think, to try to understand.
What was all this about? He had wanted to be a prosecutor and that was what he did. He had been looking for a big case, and that was what he'd got. End of story. He wasn't up to it, he was too young, not mature enough. Not good enough.
An important brief meant getting lots of attention. Threats, as well as praise, were a consequence of being in the spotlight. Sure, he knew that. He had seen it affect older colleagues. Why did some vulgar graffiti scare him?
He knew, but couldn't tell why it should be so, that their lovemaking in the midst of Marina's silence meant that he was alienated from who he had been. He had lost a dream and would age abruptly as he carried this trial to its conclusion, pushing for the maximum sentence. Afterwards? A desert. Nothing was self-evident any more. But, seemingly, he was on his own.