The driver shouted what the fuck what the fuck, pulled out his handgun and wound down the window. Directing it skywards, he fired a warning shot. The people close to the car threw themselves to the ground. He kept the gun in place for a little longer and then something struck his arm, making him lose his grip on it. It fell, and a young man, maybe twenty, not much older, picked it up, held it with both hands and pointed it towards the driver's face.
'Drive! Fuck's sake! Drive!' Ewert howled.
The driver had a gun held to his head. In front of him were people lying on the ground.
He hesitated.
The bullet passed close to his left ear and went through the windscreen in front of him. Now he heard nothing any more. He focused on a tree at the end of the street and put his foot down. Voices cried out and the car bumped as he drove it over human bodies. He left Berg Street at the same moment as the police buses arrived.
The demonstrators got up and ran towards the new vehicles, packed with policemen in full riot control gear, who found themselves locked in, surrounded. The buses shook as the crowd threw themselves against them, rocked them a couple of times and then pushed them over on their sides.
The men outside lined up, some with their trousers down. When the flak-jacketed police officers crawled out, they were pissed on.
He wasn't put in the same cell. This one was on another floor, and higher up. Apart from that, it looked identicaclass="underline" the same size, the same furnishings, a bed, a table and a washbasin. He had changed into the sack-like prison uniform. The same restrictions applied: no papers, no radio, no TV and no visitors.
He didn't mind at all.
There was no way this kind of thing would break him. This was how it was. He didn't want to read the papers anyway, or meet anybody. He didn't want to long for anything.
When they escorted him to his cell, another prisoner had spoken to him. Fredrik recognised him by sight; he was one of the nation's pet criminals. An engaging character, who charmed the public but seemed unable to stop himself from committing some simple-minded new crime every time he was released from prison. Maybe he was trying to avoid the other society, the one outside the walls. This prison pro looked startled and then walked straight up to Fredrik, slapped his back and said that as far as he was concerned Fredrik was a hero. 'You mustn't let the bastards get to you,' he said, adding, 'If the screws don't treat you right, just let us know and we'll have it fixed so you're looked after properly.'
The screws did treat him right. It might have been their own decision or there might have been forces pushing them, but there was definitely less of the staring through the bloody observation panel, and he got mugs of coffee more often than he should've, and when he was taken to the wire cage on the roof for his exercise session he got more than his allotted hour; he knew that and the screw knew that. Some days he actually got a double ration, two hours spent behind a fence with razor wire on top, but with the sky above.
Every second day Kristina Björnsson visited him, speaking about documentation and strategy. Actually there was nothing more to present now than there had been the first time round, and the arguments in the Court of Appeal would be no different from those she had presented previously. Her reason for coming along was to keep Fredrik's courage up, give him greetings and messages from Micaela and try to persuade him that there was a future for him.
He appreciated it. She was just as able and as kind as he had been told she would be.
Still, he saw through her efforts to cheer him up. This time it would not be like the magistrates' court, where the one reservation about freeing him had come from the only person with legal training, the judge. This time everyone with any influence on his sentence would be lawyers, men and women who evaluated reality in terms of the written law. What mattered this time was paragraphs and praxis. He was resigned to a heavy sentence.
He told Kristina that, which upset her very much. She told him that this in itself would condemn him, because the court could sense when the accused expected a conviction. It had the same effect as a confession. And the reverse was true too. There were several examples, many of which he recognised. She had defended clients who had committed the most imbecile crimes, but who went free because they felt they should, and what they felt became shared by everyone in the courtroom.
The duty officer knocked on his door. He had brought a tray of food, meat and two veg, a glass of juice. Fredrik shook his head, he simply wasn't interested. Yes, it looked very tasty, but no, he wasn't hungry. He felt eating was somehow disgusting, and a betrayal, as if to eat was to pretend that nothing had really changed. If he didn't eat, he didn't join in. This was not his life. He had had no choice in the matter.
When the trial began, he was transported every morning to a new high-security court, also located in Berg Street. The threat from demonstrators had been noted and acted on. This time the interrogations in court were shorter and the questioning stricter. Some witness statements were replaced by tape recordings. He sat in the same place as before and gave in principle the same answers. He felt they were all in a play and that the last time round had been a rehearsal. Now it was time for the premiere and their performances would get expert reviews. He tried his best to sit straight, keep calm and look convinced of his right to be freed in the end. The last bit was hard, because he didn't care. He wasn't at all sure that he wanted to go back home. Could they read that? It must show.
The trial took only three days.
He was done with longing. Every night he lay on the bed in his cell, trying to trace something worth living for in the piss-coloured ceiling.
One hour.
He didn't have many friends, not now and not ever, really. The ones he remembered lived far away now, in other towns, and didn't share his daily life. If he did time in prison, it would not change his relationship with them that much.
One hour.
His parents were gone. He had no brothers or sisters.
One hour.
He had Micaela. He loved her, surely he did? But she was still young and it wasn't right for her to have to be with someone in endless mourning for his lost child.
One hour.
Micaela said that she wanted to be with him, always. Of course he believed her when she said that, but it could so easily change in the future. One day she would have to go on, to leave him behind. No one could bear having a violated five-year-old pushed down her throat every day.
One hour.
That ceiling really was just the same colour as urine.
One hour
So strange.
One hour.
He had been running all his life, trying to pack every minute with significance, fearful of facing emptiness and of not existing any more.
One hour.
He had kept his days fully booked, from restlessness and fear of being alone.
One hour.
Back then, when he depended on people near him, and sought them out.
One hour.
Then it all changed. He had no need for the fucking here and now. He had what he needed here. That piss-yellow ceiling. Time on his hands. His thoughts. He was powerless to influence or change anything and it made him calm, calmer than he had ever been, like someone dead.
The court took almost a week to arrive at his sentence. It was postponed twice; every note mattered and every word was charged with meaning. This was a judgement that would be exposed to media scrutiny from the word go. The broadsheets would print the statement in full and legal experts with screen savvy would analyse it on TV. The case of the dad who shot the murderer of his five-year-old daughter would be followed by people who shared his grief over the loss of a child by people who thought murder was murder, never mind who was killed by people who celebrated his courage, which removed a threat from society which its forces of law and order had been unable to cope with by people who saw his act as an indefensible vengeance and felt only a long prison sentence would be sufficient warning against private militias by people who had tormented and killed presumed sex offenders, on the basis of the sentence reached in the first instance.