He rang the bell, waited for a sense of being watched in the small camera above his head and a voice coming through the loudspeaker. Turning round, he looked at his home, at the sitting room and bedroom windows. All dark, roller blinds halfway down. No face to be glimpsed, no body moving about.
'Yes?'
'Oscarsson here.'
'Opening up.'
He stepped inside, blinked, inside an enclosed world now. The other one of his two worlds. Standing in front of the next door, he knocked on the windowpane of the guardroom and waved to Bergh, who was taking his time. Stupid bugger, what made Bergh tick was a mystery. At last he waved back and pressed a button. The door buzzed open; the long corridor behind it smelled of disinfectant and something else, something unmistakable.
A boring day ahead. Unit meeting, communication. The staff were well on their way to losing themselves in a labyrinthine schedule of meetings that they had imposed on themselves. Each meeting made endless pointless decisions about pointless routine matters that landed everyone within an ever more rigid framework. Actual problem-solving needed a different approach, needed sharp minds and driving energy. The meetings fed a sense of security, but created nothing.
And the coffee machine was fucked up as well. He kicked it. Then he fed coins into the soft-drinks machine. Coke apparently contained caffeine too.
'Morning, Lennart.'
'Morning, Nils.'
Nils Roth, senior wing officer. He and Oscarsson had come to Aspsås at the same time and advanced in the service side by side. Together they had experienced the anxiety of the novice change into the weary calm of the veteran. They walked into the meeting room together. The room with its long table, overhead projector, whiteboard could have belonged to any management outfit.
Everybody greeted each other; all eight senior wing officers were there, and the prison governor, Arne Bertolsson. Quite a few were drinking coffee. Lennart looked hard at the mugs and turned to the new man, what was his name, Månsson.
'Where did you get that?'
'The machine.'
'It's out of order.'
'Not when I tried it. Only minutes ago.'
Arne Bertolsson called them to order, sounding irritable. He had been fiddling with the overhead projector. It made a noise, but that was all. The screen stayed blank.
'This thing's bloody useless.'
Bertolsson crouched down to examine whatever buttons he might push next. Lennart looked at him, then at the line-up of men at the table. Eight of them, his immediate colleagues, people in whose company he spent hours and hours, day after day, but had never got close to. Apart from Nils, that is. As for the rest, he hadn't been to their homes and none of them had visited his. A beer in town, the odd football match, but never at home. What did that make them? Not friends, anyway. But they were all of about the same age, and looked alike too. A room full of middle-aged taxi drivers.
Bertolsson gave up.
'Sod this. And the agenda too. Who wants to start?'
Nobody, it seemed. Månsson drank a mouthful of his coffee. Nils scribbled on a notepad. No one spoke. The routine of these meetings had broken down and everyone felt at a loss.
Lennart cleared his throat.
'I'll start.'
The others breathed sighs of relief; something was on the agenda at least.
Bertolsson nodded.
'I've been on about this before, but the fact is, I know what I'm talking about. I suppose no one has forgotten the fatality in the gym? No? Exactly. But has it made any flaming difference whatsoever? The men from the normal units are shuttling in and out of the gym at the same time as my lot. There was another incident yesterday. It might've turned nasty if Brandt and Persson hadn't stepped in promptly.'
Not a peep from the bench of the accused. But he bloody well wouldn't back down. He had seen what the weights could do to a human body.
Having watched everyone in turn as he spoke, Lennart's eyes lingered on the only woman in the room. Eva Barnard and he had clashed more than once before. He couldn't relate to her in any way, she only knew the textbook stuff and not the traditions, the unspoken rules, which drew their power from simply having been there, always.
Bertolsson had picked up the accusation in Lennart's eyes, but wanted to avoid trouble. Not another row, not again. He interrupted.
'More coordination between wings, is that what you want?'
'Yes, it is. Coordination outside the walls is a different matter. This is a jail. It's an unreal place, the exception is the rule inside. Everyone here knows it. At least, ought to know it.'
Lennart kept his eyes fixed on Eva. Bertolsson hated conflicts, but that was too bad. No way would he be allowed to hide this problem out of sight.
'If the wrong type from a normal unit comes across one of my lot, that's it. End of story. Everything goes straight to hell, that's well known. If a nonce gets killed, it's applause all round.'
He pointed at Eva.
'The old lag who stirred it yesterday was a case in point. He's from your unit.'
Now they were both angry. Eva never took the coward's way out, he had to admit that. She didn't scare easily and now she was staring back at him. Ugly and stupid, but brave.
'If you mean 0243 Lindgren, why not say it straight out?'
'I mean Lindgren all right.'
'Lindgren can be a bastard when he's in the mood. The rest of the time he's a model prisoner, calm and quiet. Does zilch in fact. Lies in his cell smoking handrolls, lets the hours pass, doesn't read or watch the telly. He has served forty- two different sentences, and done a total of twenty-seven years inside. Look, he's one of the few who still can speak the old prison lingo. He only stirs up trouble when somebody new turns up. Has to show who's done most time, who knows the score. It's all about hierarchy. Hierarchy and respect.'
'Come off it. Yesterday he wasn't trying to impress a newcomer. He would have killed my man if he hadn't been spotted in time.'
The other officers were becoming restive. What was happening to the proper agenda? Bertolsson let this confrontation run on without comment. Maybe he found it interesting. Maybe he was too fed up to bother.
'Let me finish,' Eva went on. 'Sex offenders are different, Lindgren goes wild at the sight of them. It's something stronger than disgust. I've been through his file and found some reasons why he tries to kill them. For one thing, he was abused himself as a child. Many times.'
Lennart drained the last drop of sweet bubbly muck from the can. Caffeine. He knew perfectly well who Stig 'Dickybird' Lindgren was, no need to lecture him. Dickybird had been a dealer, mostly smalltime, in whatever came his way. By now he was so institutionalised that he was terrified every time he was released. He'd piss against the prison wall hoping that the gate staff would see him. If that didn't do the trick he'd beat up the driver of the first likely bus into town, like the last time out. One way or another he'd be back inside within a few weeks, back to the only place where he felt at home, the only place where people cared enough to know his name.