When he was finally allowed to retire, Jonas would be thirty-two. Fuck's sake! What would they say to each other then?
Ewert understood, even though he had no family and his time in uniform, for him, was his entire life. He ate, drank, breathed police work. Even so, he too had felt that it was meaningless, but, worse luck for him, having made policing part of his being meant he would cease to exist when it ended. He understood all right, but couldn't be bothered with his insights.
'Ewert.'
'Yes.'
'I want to go home.'
Ewert had gone down on his knees, collecting the scattered rubbish from his second go at the wastepaper basket. Mushy pieces of banana peel had left stains on the pale brownish carpet.
'I know you do. And so you will. As soon as we've got Lund.'
His head popped up over the edge of the desk, looking at the alarm clock.
'It's been six and a half hours now and we still know bugger all. Nil. Looks like you'll have to wait for your birthday cake.'
'I took that picture, did you know that? In the Kristianstad Palais, back in 1972,.'
He bowed to Sven, made a sweeping gesture with one arm.
'Would you like to dance?'
Then he turned round and began a solo dance. Strange to behold, the tough old policeman with his limp, weaving round his desk to the tune of early sixties folk pop.
They used Sven's car. The box with the gateau and the carrier bag with the bottles were pushed away on the rear window shelf. The heatwave had emptied the centre of the capital, anyone who could, got away, longing for parks, beaches, open water, a breeze. The hot dark tarmac was unresponsive, everything bounced off it, even breath.
They were heading for the E18 route north-westwards out of town. Sven drove fast, past two lights on amber, then two on red, and the few cars waiting for green hooted angrily every time he ignored the signals. A national alert was on, two dozen constables from the City Police were at their beck and call, but still they hadn't learned one single new thing.
'He licks their feet, you know.'
Ewert, staring straight ahead, had broken the silence in the car. Sven shivered, almost slipping out of the overtaking lane and into a bus.
'Never seen anything like it. I've seen raped children, murdered children, even children tortured with sharp metal objects, but this… never. Lying there on the concrete floor, looking as if they'd been thrown there, covered in muck and blood, but with perfectly clean feet. The medic confirmed that their feet were coated in saliva, lots of it. He had been licking them for minutes on end, probably before and after killing them.'
Sven drove faster. The bottle bag slipped about on its shelf, rattling insistently.
'The shoes too. Their clothes were in neat piles, a few centimetres apart, shoes last. A pair of pink leather shoes and a pair of white trainers. The clothes were as dirty as the girls. Gravel, dust, blood. Not the shoes. They shone. Plenty of saliva, more than their feet. He must have been at it for even longer with the shoes.'
The summer lull affected even the traffic on the E18. Sven stayed in the fast lane, overtaking all other cars at speed. He could not bear talking, didn't want to ask questions about Lund, didn't want to learn more about him. Not just now. He almost missed the junction with the much smaller road to Aspsas, stamped on the brakes and wrenched the car across three lanes.
Lennart Oscarsson was waiting in the parking lot, ready to greet them. He looked haunted and nervous. He knew what Grens thought about his decision to leave two guards with the responsibility of transporting Lund across the city at night.
Ewert didn't hold out his hand at once; he hung back for a few seconds because it amused him to shame one of the many idiots that cluttered up his life.
'Hello there,' he said finally.
They shook hands quickly, Sven was introduced and the three of them started walking together towards the main entrance. Bergh was in the guard's post and nodded at Ewert, a familiar face. Sven was different.
'Where do you think you're going?'
Lennart turned back.
'Come on, Bergh. He's with me. City Police,' he said irritably.
'I've no notification.'
'They're investigating Lund's escape.'
'None of my business. Unlike who gets in here, which is. So why no notification, then?'
Sven intervened, just in time to stop Oscarsson from shouting something he'd regret later.
'Look, here's my ID. OK?'
Bergh studied the mug shot and entered Sven's ID number in the database.
'Hey, it's your birthday today. What are you doing here, mate?'
'Never mind. Are you letting me in?'
Bergh waved him through and they filed into the corridor. Ewert laughed.
'What a tosser! Why do you keep such an idiot around? He makes it harder to get in than out of this place.'
His mood changed as they walked along the regulation passageways with their regulation murals. Some showed a bit more talent than others; all were would-be therapeutic projects led by hired consultants. He sighed. Always blue background, always the obvious symbolism of open gates and birds flying free and more liberation shit of that sort. Organised graffiti for grown-ups, signed
Lennart opened a metal door. Inside, a noisy gang of inmates were being escorted to the gym by two officers in front and two behind. Ewert sighed again. He knew quite a few of the villains, had interrogated them or testified against them. There were even a couple of ancient lags that he had run in during his days on the beat.
'Hi there, Grensie. On the chase, are you?'
It was Stig Lindgren, one of the inhabitants of the World of Outcasts. He was a permanent fixture behind the walls and would never survive anywhere else. Lock him up and throw the key away, the old fucker had no other options. Ewert had grown fed up with his type.
'Shut your gob, Lindgren, or I'll tell your useless mates why you're called Dickybird.'
Then upstairs to A Unit, sex offenders only.
Lennart walked ahead, Ewert and Sven followed, looking about. Regulation stuff again: television corner, snooker table, kitchen, cells. But the crimes were different in that they aroused as much hatred in the World of Outcasts as among ordinary citizens.
They reached cell number eleven. Alone among the others in the corridor this door was bare. The temporary occupants of the rooms behind all the other doors had decorated them laboriously with posters and newspaper cuttings and photos.
Ewert had time to think that he should have been here six months ago. He should have stepped inside the door to Lund's cell. At the time he had been investigating a child pornography ring, which had given him his first real insight into the closed society of new-style paedophiles, structured round internet connections and databases and secret mail addresses. He had seen their images of naked or partly undressed children, penetrated and humiliated children, tortured children, lonely children. Initially, he and his colleagues had thought that this pornography exchange was part of a foreign network of dark vice and profit and inscrutable agreements, but it turned out differently, more discreet, smarter and more challenging.
Just seven men, a select society of serious, recidivist sex offenders. One locked up, most of them just released from prison.
They had created their own virtual display cabinet. Their contributions to the show were downloaded on the net and run on their computers at set times, as if following a performance schedule. Once a week, same time,
