RK: Then we made mincemeat of him. All of us. It didn't take long.
CI: When did he die?
RK: I'd brought a sledgehammer too. When I hit him with that he was a goner.
CI: When did you use the hammer?
RK: Later. To make sure, see? CI: Make sure he was really dead?
RK: That's it. You're allowed to kill mad dogs. That's what they said in court.
The man was practically unidentifiable when the gang had finished with him, but two local police constables assumed, on the basis of what he was wearing, that he was a man called Gurra B, something of an established feature in the park. For the last thirty-odd years, he had sat around shouting and using foul language within the hearing of passing women.
They had taken their clothes off as soon as the front door closed behind them and made love as if they would never stop, holding on to each other, hot and sweaty, their bodies slippery, sticky, not letting go of the other for the rest of that day and the night that followed. Both behaved as if they feared that somebody would step into the room to take their nearness away and then they would die, as if feeling the other's bare skin on your own was not simply comforting but the only way to survive. Fredrik had never taken a woman in this needy way; he had to have her and stay close to her, she was a human being he must unite with absolutely. He inhaled her smells, caressed her, bored into her with his penis, but nothing satisfied him, she wasn't enough. He tried everything to get closer to her, bit her a few times, her buttock, thigh, shoulder. She laughed, but he was serious about wanting all of her, in him.
Fredrik stayed in the house that week, while the journalists were waiting outside with their eager smiles and cameras and questions. He was determined to hide until they'd gone away. Twice Micaela went out to shop for food and they stayed glued to her side all the way to town and back. They followed her into the supermarket, pursuing her up and down the aisles and asking her questions about how he felt. Micaela kept her promise to say nothing. When she got home and closed the door behind her, loud voices were calling her name.
He avoided Marie's room. Yes, she was there. Though she wasn't, not for real. The room kept demanding his attention, he couldn't put it out of his mind, even though he didn't want to think about it. They must move, sooner or later; if there was any life worth living it must be somewhere else, not here, among the remains of the past.
He was free, but still captive. He didn't read the papers or watch TV, it was all too much. A girl had been killed and a father had killed the killer; surely that was all there was to it. He could not see why the public interest should demand yet more publicity.
He had had a life once, but not any more. And they were trying to rob him of the tiny existence he claimed by making it public.
He had clung to Micaela as fiercely on the second day as on the first. They made love many times, mingling energy and grief and comfort and guilt and fear with their love- making. The last few times the act had become almost mechanical intercourse; they were pressing and squeezing in ways which they had learned would please the other and bring on an orgasm quickly. Too tired to look at or truly feel each other, the whole thing had become tense and nervous. In the end they both felt like crying as they looked together at his penis entering her, powerless to change what they were doing and too exhausted to do it again, although they knew that the driving, suffocating anxiety would still be there when they lay back, drained.
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 Bjornsson 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
Grens had closed his eyes and was rocking slowly to and fro.
Siw Malmkvist. Frederik was sure of it.
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
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?'
