On the third day he started to drink. He felt like dying, the way he always imagined he would feel when his body had weakened and death came close. Surely dying is easier if your body has given in? He tried to keep such thoughts away and the alcohol did its job, paralysing his will and separating him from the day, his hovering fears and his damned loneliness.
Since then he had stayed in bed most of the time, though sleep was not to be even thought of. When she was there he held her. Sex was beyond him; he was too fatigued even to go and get a bottle, even to eat. Micaela wanted to call a doctor, but could not persuade him however hard she tried. Fredrik had said no to bereavement counselling and a session with a psychologist, and he wouldn't see a doctor either.
Maybe that was why he hardly reacted when Kristina Björnsson phoned at half past eleven in the evening. They had exchanged a glance saying 'journalists' when the phone rang, but in the end Micaela had answered.
Once she had understood what Kristina was saying she began arguing hysterically. The lawyer seemed to be reassuring, in a legal way, but as Fredrik listened he felt unresponsive, dulled. He could not take an interest in all this emotion. Nothing was and nothing mattered.
The main message from Kristina was that the prosecution had appealed and the case would be tried again in a higher court. One consequence was that he would be arrested again the next day and put in a remand prison cell. He took this in, with a sudden sense of relief.
So they would take his daily existence away from him.
They would take his days and nights, hour by hour, turning time into a process that bypassed him and therefore lacked reality for him. Of course, he would still be forced to participate. It would help him to avoid seeing what was really going on here, at home. Afterwards was another matter.
When the call ended, he went back to bed. He kissed Micaela intensely, and knew he would try to make love to her again.
It was a black car. Their cars were always black, and had double rear-view mirrors and tinted glass that you couldn't see through from the outside. Three plainclothes policemen had picked him up early in the morning. He recognised two of them, the older one with the limp and his younger, polite companion. The third one was a big young man, who drove the car.
The police didn't harass him and waited quietly while he held Micaela until he finally felt he could bear to let go of her. No one spoke as the car travelled at speed towards Stockholm with an officer on a motorbike in front and another black car following them.
After a while Grens told the driver to lower the radio volume and play a CD he'd brought. Sundkvist asked if that was really necessary and Grens mumbled irritably. He carried on grousing until the driver said oh, hand over the fucking disc.
Grens had closed his eyes and was rocking slowly to and fro.
Siw Malmkvist. Frederik was sure of it.
For all your cheating talk about cars and stuff,
I might as well walk and leave you in a huff…
Fredrik shuddered. The text was so stupid, and Siw's jolly-hockeysticks voice belonged to the past, the '50s and early '60s, to a less knowing, more naive Sweden with high hopes for the future. Or maybe that lost innocence was just a growing myth. For him at least those years had meant his father and the beatings and his mother smoking her eternal Camels, while she looked the other way. No Siw then, to help sing the sorrows away, and she was no good now either; her world was all lies and escapism. It was on his tongue to ask the old Siw fan next to him what he was escaping from, and what stone had he been living under all this time.
Siw sang all the way, all the fifty minutes it took to get to Kronoberg remand prison. Grens didn't open his eyes once. The other two were staring into the distance, obviously lost in their own thoughts.
Then the car turned into Berg Street and they saw the crowd.
Many more demonstrators this time. If it had been about two hundred then, outside the Old Court, it was more like five hundred now.
They were facing the prison, shouting in unison, waving placards and hitting out with them, screaming abuse, spitting, throwing stones towards the gate from time to time. It only took a few seconds for someone to spot the outrider and the two black cars, and a few seconds more for an advance guard to start running in their direction. The first arrivals grabbed each other's hands and lay down on the ground in an uninterrupted ring round the three vehicles, preventing them from driving anywhere.
The large young driver looked around for a moment and grabbed the radio.
'Urgent assistance required! Repeat, urgent! More units to Berg Street.'
A voice came back almost immediately.
'How many?'
'Hundreds! Demonstrators, outside Kronoberg prison.'
'Units on their way. With you any moment now.'
'Risk of prisoner escape!'
'Drive on! Drive on!'
Fredrik stared at the people outside the car windows, heard their shouting and read their placards. What was all this in aid of? He didn't understand. He didn't know these people. What did they want with his name and his story? It was none of their business what he had done, it had been his battle, and his very own hell. Lots of these people were lying on the ground, risking life and limb. For what? Did they really know? Did they think he was grateful? He hadn't asked for this.
There was no difference between the demonstrators and the journalists camping outside his gate. They extracted life from the lives of others; now they were using him for their own purposes, it was his turn. Why this need? It wasn't as if they had all lost their only child, or aimed a gun at another human being and shot to kill. He wished he had the courage to wind the window down, ask them about these things and force them to meet his eyes.
But the four of them inside the car sat as if paralysed, under siege. The big young man at the wheel was obviously stressed, breathing heavily and making meaningless gestures, alternately releasing the handbrake and shifting through the gears. Grens and Sundkvist seemed utterly calm and still, just waiting patiently.
Then the voice came over the radio.
'Alert all cars. Assistance required! Go to Kronoberg prison, Berg Street entrance. Demonstrators, about five hundred. Stone-throwing. Please disperse. Nothing else. And take your personal opinions home with you.'
Fredrik realised that Grens was observing him, watching for his reaction. Nothing doing. Fredrik had heard what they'd all heard; he was astonished, but showed nothing and said nothing.
The young driver changed gear to reverse. Raced the engine. Released the brake and let the car move back ten- odd centimetres, as if to test the courage of the demonstrators.
They stayed put. And they screamed.
He shifted to first gear and let the car crawl forward for a metre, no more, again racing the engine. They stayed, and instead of screaming they shouted out their contempt in sing-song voices. Fucking cops. Filthy pigs.
Suddenly some of them got up and walked towards the car. One had a stone. He threw it at the rear window. The glass broke and the stone bounced against the seat between Fredrik and Ewert. It fell to the floor after hitting the driver's seat. Fredrik felt splinters of glass cutting the back of his neck. It hurt. He looked at Grens and saw blood flowing down his cheek.