Free The Beast by Anders Roslund, Börge Hellström Page A

door.
        Dickybird
stood quite still.
        His
unseeing eyes followed the newcomer until he had disappeared. Then he focused, first
on Hilding and then on the rest of them, and shouted down the empty corridor.
        'What
the fuck. What the fuck.'
        No
one showed. Nothing but an open door.
        That
finger poking at his chest. Dickybird shouted again.
         'You
fucking listen. Racklar di romani, tjavon?'
    ----
        

        
        Lennart
saw him, waiting by the tower on the east side of the wall. It was their usual
meeting place, at lunchtime or in the afternoon, when the shifts had changed over.
Nils looked young, in shirtsleeves with his jacket thrown over one shoulder. A
mere boy, waiting for his sweetheart.
        Only
a few seconds left to watch him unnoticed. Lennart slowed down. Nils was facing
the other way, the way Lennart normally took; today was different because he
had gone out for lunch at the old inn on the village square, he and Bertolsson
had feasted on steak and fresh garden peas. Bertolsson had dropped him off
halfway to the prison, because Lennart had said that he wanted to walk, needed
time to think over what had happened, to try to get his mind round the
note-scribbling and the microphones and the camera being shoved into his face.
Strange to think that for a few minutes of midday news he had been inside all
those homes, with his ready-made statements about how criminals ought to be
managed.
        It
was still windy, a change after weather dominated by high pressure for the best
part of a month. It had been an eternity of stagnant heat, sweating and
irritation, always something itching, always something troubling around the
corner.
        Nils
smiled. He had caught sight of Lennart and couldn't wait. He started strolling
towards his lover, came close, held him and wouldn't let go, kissed his
forehead and then his cheek.
        'Did
you see it?'
        'I
did.'
        They
walked across the grassy slope, keeping a space between them. Seventy metres to
go before they were safely into the wood. Behind the first fir tree they
reached out and found each other's hand. They walked on, holding hands tightly.
        'We've
done all we could. At all levels of the service.'
        'Stop
worrying.'
        'Environmental
adjustment training. Pills. Group therapy. Person-to-person stuff.'
        'It
wasn't about that, I mean, not about what you or the service had done or not
done. It was television, for Christ's sake, a reality entertainment show. Point
the camera at the culprit, strip him naked, make him sweat and lose his cool
and jabber. Make him look shifty. Then the editorial people think it's a
red-hot show and your average couch-potato enjoys every minute, because it lets
him forget his own bloody awful life. He can laugh at the bureaucrat who's
looking sad and stupid and dead ignorant. Screw them all. It's not about
content and meaning, it's about scoring points, making people look weird.'
        'Nils,
you don't see what I'm after. We did try, we threw everything we've got at
Lund. What happened? He grabs the first chance he gets, makes mincemeat of two
guards and runs off. Now he's on the loose some damned place. All he's after is
getting to toss off on dead little girls.'
        They
were out of the wind now, following a path that wound its way through the
dense, untidy forest of fir and spruce to the water-tower on the hill. It was a
two-and-a- half-kilometre round-trip. Walking briskly, they'd have half an hour
to themselves behind a shed near the tower; now and then they made love there.
Few walkers came that way and were easily spotted because the path was the only
possible route. Everywhere else the forest formed an impenetrable wall.
        Nils
clutched Lennart's hand harder, pulling him towards the shed.
        'Come
on.'
        'Listen,
I can't. I'm really sorry. I said different, I know, but I can't now. I needed
to talk, quite