The Beast

Maybe he should have sung along. The organist had played something.

They left the echoing space together. Rebecca had cast some earth on the coffin and uttered the old words. Afterwards she hugged them, but seemed unable to think of anything comforting to say. Her own mixed feelings, grief and anger and vulnerability, made her pull away abruptly, look at them, hug them once more and then walk away.

They stood in silence on the gravel path in the sunshine. Again the past came back to him; it was like the long summers when he had walked here with Grandad.

Now she was in a hole in the ground, like everybody else.

'Please accept our condolences.'

The two policemen had come up behind them. Both were in black suits; maybe it was police etiquette, maybe their own sense of decorum.

'I have no children, but I have lost people close to me. I can at least try to understand how you feel.'

The older, limping policeman, Grens, had sounded awkward, almost harsh, but Fredrik realised that it was seriously meant and had taken an effort.

'Thank you.'

They reached out, shook hands. Sundkvist said something inaudible to Agnes.

'I don't know if it makes any difference to you,' Grens said. 'Still, I'd like you to know that we'll have him locked up soon. A big team is chasing him.'

Fredrik shrugged.

'True, you don't know if it matters to us. It doesn't. It won't bring our daughter back.'

'I can see that, and I'm sure I would've felt the same. But it's our job to find him, bring him to justice so he can be punished and, above all, stopped from committing more of these crimes.'

Fredrik had just taken Agnes' hand, half turning round to walk away. He wanted to be alone with her, share his grief with her. But these words made him look back at the policemen.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, since Tuesday we have kept every nursery and primary school under surveillance.'

'Is that the kind of place where you expect to catch him?'

'Yes.'

Fredrik let go of Agnes' hand, examined her face. She seemed passive, waiting. She would have to wait a little longer.

'What schools, how many?'

'In this town, and around it. Lots of places, it's a large area.'

'And you watch out in this way because you think there's a chance he'll do it again?'

'More than a chance. We're quite certain he'll strike again.'

'How can you be certain?'

'His past history. And the very clear psychiatric profile. Every specialist in the country has examined him; he has probably been probed and prodded more than any other prisoner in the land. The message is the same every time. He'll do it again, and again. His only other option is to kill himself.'

'And you believe this to be true?'

'Well, take just the fact that he let you see him before… before this happened. It is significant. Our psycho- experts think so, anyway. It means that he has thrown off the last restraints and now there is nothing else left in him except lust to destroy, and self-hatred.'

He took her hand again.

The churchyard seemed very large. He was alone. She was alone.

They would carry on living, he perhaps with Micaela, Agnes with someone, not him. But they would always be alone.

He drove Micaela home first, to their home together, and held her for a long time. Then he and Agnes went out for a meal, just the two of them.

They found a place where they could sit outside, it was a cramped backyard, but it meant that they were on their own. A light breeze was blowing, which helped against the heat. Afterwards he drove Agnes to the train, but just as she was about to buy her ticket he offered to take her to Stockholm and she accepted. It meant that they didn't have to say goodbye there and then. Instead they could sit together for another hour. They needed the space, even if it was just to drive a hundred-odd kilometres on busy roads; it would at least afford them the time to try to understand and accept that, by losing their child, they had also lost their relationship with each other, that they were two grown-ups with nothing but their grief in common.

They said little, because there was nothing much to say. She didn't want to go straight back to her empty flat and said she preferred to be dropped off outside a shop. They hugged, she kissed his cheek lightly and he stayed watching until she had disappeared round a corner.

Afterwards he drove aimlessly round central Stockholm, which was strangely empty apart from stray tourists, maps in hand, now that the heat had made most of the people leave. He stopped twice, once to eat an ice-cream on a bench, once to buy mineral water from a bored cafe owner, and drifted on through the gathering dusk as the city went through its evening routines. The night never became properly dark, it was a Nordic summer's night, and anyway the artificial big-city lights shattered the darkness. In the end he parked in a leafy lane on Djurgarden Island and fell asleep, still in the driver's seat, his head leaning against the side window.

His clothes were sticking to him, his light suit crumpled. He had woken early, unwashed and sore after five hours' sleep. Outside, the clucking of bright-eyed ducks mingled with shouting from drunken teenagers going home after an all- night session somewhere.

He started the car and drove unhesitatingly to the Television Centre.

It was three years since he had last seen Vincent Carlsson. He had just moved from newspaper journalism to the national newsdesk of the Rapport and Aktuellt programmes when Fredrik had come to see him. Vincent's place had been at the back of a huge room, where he spent most of his time distributing e-mails and short news items to the buzzing hive of reporters. About a year ago, he had moved to the morning news. As he described it, his new job consisted of carving up events and make news soup from the pieces. He had been made a functional unit in the big news factory, and what with having acquired a wife and children, the regular routine suited him just fine.

After a stroppy porter had made Fredrik wait for the statutory ten minutes, Vincent came down to meet him.

Through the glass window into the corridor Fredrik could see that his old friend hadn't changed; he was tall and dark and kind, with a personal charisma that made him the type of man that women smiled at. They had been to journalism college together, often gone out for drinks in the evening, at which point Vincent would eye up the most delicious bird around and announce that he had to have her. He always got his way; he'd go up to her, chat and smile and laugh and touch her arm and her shoulders and then they'd suddenly leave together. He was like that; it was easy to become fond of him and impossible to tell him to go jump even when he deserved it.

Vincent made the porter open up.

'Fredrik, what are you doing here? Do you know what time it is?'

'Five o'clock.'

'Quarter past, actually.'

They were walking along a corridor without an end in sight. Blue lino, chalk-white walls.

'I'd thought I'd get in touch,' Vincent went on. 'Not as a journalist, of course. But I was afraid to… disturb you. I couldn't think what I could say, without it sounding… wrong.'

'We buried Marie yesterday.'

Fredrik realised that he wasn't making it any easier for his old friend, that he was helpless in the face of something he would never grasp.

'Listen, you don't have to say anything. I know you've thought about it and I appreciate that. But honestly, just give it a miss. It's not what I need now.'

The endless corridor became another corridor.

'What do you need then? You know I'm always happy to see you, whatever the reason, but you're looking so fucking grim. And why just now, early in the morning the day after Marie's funeral?'

They went upstairs, then past the big newsroom.