The Beast

III

The village was called Tallbacka. Village? Actually, it was quite a sizeable community, with roughly two thousand six hundred inhabitants. There was a small supermarket, a kiosk, a branch office of the Co-op savings bank, a rather plain licensed restaurant, open both at lunchtime and in the evenings, a closed railway station, one large, recently restored church, which was forever empty, and two more popular free churches.

You took the day as it came, that was the kind of place it was.

It was a here-and-now for the people there, lives which had started in this place.

It was good enough for them, thank you; only stuck-ups wanted to get away. A day was a day, no more and no less, no matter that the town had been tarted up with two new slip-roads from the dual carriageway.

Despite being that kind of community, or maybe because of it, over the following months Tallbacka was to become the most clear-cut example, among many others, of what was a new legal phenomenon. It was here that people demonstrated the vacuum separating legally correct court proceedings and the public's interpretation of exactly what they signified.

This was a remarkable summer, one nobody would want to remember.

Göran was known locally as Flasher-Göran. He was forty- four years old, a trained teacher, who had never worked since his practitioner's term at a nearby school twenty years ago.

Twenty years was nearly half his lifetime, but he still hadn't been able to work out why he did it.

One afternoon, his duties done for the day, he had stopped in the schoolyard and undressed. He took off one piece of clothing after another. Standing stark naked, just a few metres away from the patch of ground set aside for smokers, he sang the national anthem, both verses, loudly but badly. Then he dressed again, wandered off home, prepared the lessons for the following day and went to bed.

They had allowed him to finish his training and sit the examination, which he passed. During the few years that followed, he applied for every teaching post that came up within a radius of a hundred or so kilometres of Tallbacka. Despite endless labour at hot copiers, producing more pages of his ever more polished curriculum vitae, he never even got an offer of an interview. There was no need to copy his sentence, which always floated up on top of his applications somehow, obscuring the rest of the documentation. He had paid a fine, but it had not helped to mitigate the never-to- be-forgotten shame of having exposed himself in front of under-age school children, in the schoolyard and during school hours.

Many times he had considered leaving and going somewhere far away, where he could apply for jobs untainted by rumours and speculation. Like many others in Tallbacka, he was too gutless, too muddled, too local.

The day was very warm. True, it had felt even hotter yesterday, when he'd been away buying roof tiles, but anyway, he was sweating and couldn't be bothered changing from shorts to trousers. The three hundred metres to the shop seemed a long way.

He heard them when he crossed the road. He had known several of them since they were toddlers, but now they were big boys of fifteen or sixteen, with voices like grown males.

'Show your knob then!'

'Fucking peddo! Come on, flash!'

They emptied any Coke left and threw away the cans, to start a performance of shouting and rubbing their crotches rhythmically with both hands.

'Flash cock. Flash cock. Peddo, peddo, peddo.'

He didn't look their way. He was determined not to look, whatever. They shouted louder and louder. Someone threw a can at him.

'Fucking peddo show-off! Go home. Get it out and wank!'

He walked on, just a short stretch to go now, for once he was round the corner of the old post office they wouldn't be able to see him anymore and the shop wouldn't be far away. It was the only shop left, now that it had seen off its two rivals. It stood there alone, displaying red sale price tags and today's special bargains.

He was tired, just as he had been every day this long, hot summer. After his hurried walk, breathing heavily, he sat down on the seat outside the shop, to watch the passers- by with their carrier bags. They were all people he knew at least by name. On the next seat along sat two girls of about twelve or thirteen; one was his neighbour's daughter, the other her friend. They were giggling the way girls do, laughing too hard to stop. They had never shouted at him, they simply didn't see him except as 'him next-door', the man who came round to cut the grass sometimes.

Christ, there was the Volvo. On the road going past the shop.

He always got a tummy ache when he spotted it. It meant trouble. Someone would have a go at him.

The driver slammed on the brakes and the car shuddered to a halt. Bengt Söderlund climbed out. He was a large, powerfully built man of about forty-five, who wore denims with a pocket for a measuring rod, hammer and Stanley knife, and a cap with the text Söderlund Contractor. He walked up to the girls and spoke loudly to them, and to Flasher-Göran and to Tallbacka at large.

'You two, come on! Get into the car. Now!'

He grabbed each girl by the nearest shoulder. They crouched a little, sensing anger, twisted to get away, gave up, ran off towards the car.

Söderlund went up to Flasher-Göran, gripped his collar to pull him upright and shook him hard. It hurt, the shirt collar burned against his neck.

'Caught you at it this time. Now I've seen for myself what you're up to. Swine!'

The girls in the car stared, too baffled even to attempt understanding.

'I don't fucking believe it. That's my daughter. Like to show it to her? Is that it?'

By now the gang of teenage boys had turned up. They had heard the noises of a car braking and a man shouting. It was a laugh to watch Söderlund set on Flasher-Göran, it made their day. They ran the last bit to get close.

'Hey! Kill the peddo!'

'Kill him!'

Hands to crotches, wanking.

Söderlund didn't look their way, only gave his victim a last shake before dumping him on the seat. Walking back to his car he delivered his final words at the top of his voice.

'Get your fucking head round this. You've got two weeks. If you haven't buggered off by then we'll kill you. You filthy swine! Two weeks, that's it!'

The car drove off with a roar.

The boys were still hanging about, but they had stopped their act, stopped shouting abuse.

They had taken in what Söderlund had said and grasped that his words were for real.

The evening was beautiful, very still and twenty-four degrees in the shade. Bengt Söderlund went outside. He turned towards his neighbour's house and spat. He had come to detest the sight of it.

Bengt was a Tallbacka man born and bred, and had worked in the family building firm until he finally took over the running of it. Both his parents had died within a few weeks of each other; their fading away gained speed until they simply weren't there any more. He had never considered death before. Not his problem, put it that way. Now death invaded his life. After burying his father and his mother he was left alone, facing his past, the time that had made him. His daily round, his safe nest and the venue for his parties and adventures too.

He and Elisabeth had been in the same class at school and started going out when they were both sixteen. They had three children, two who were old enough now to have moved away, and one late baby, who was growing up too, but still sheltering in the space between the worlds of a child and an adolescent.

This was his place. He knew what it smelt like, what passing cars sounded like. Time had a special quality here, it was unhurried, and seemed to last for longer.

At noon the homespun restaurant next to the shop filled with local bachelors spending their luncheon vouchers and chatting; they were working men who had never learned to cook. By late afternoon the cafe transformed into a plain, smoke-filled and rather crummy pub. It was a safe, neutral hang-out for couples who weren't churchy and had nowhere else to go; it offered a discounted Beer of the Week, with peanuts to go and two gaming machines in a corner.

Bengt had called round, asking everyone to meet up in the pub that night. He was furious and alarmed and ready to chuck any notion of compromise. Elisabeth didn't want to join them, they were too worked up for her taste, but Ola Gunnarsson did, and so did Klas Rilke and Ove Sandell and Helena, his wife. Bengt had known these people since their schooldays. The men had all played football for Tallbacka FC, season after season, and got drunk together at parties in the community hall. They were really children, who had stayed on to try out adulthood.

They had talked about that freak Göran many times.

In every process there is a stage where either it is halted, or it starts on a new, more or less unstoppable course. That was where they were at with their local pervert. The future was waiting for their decision.

Bengt bought his mates a pint of Special each and double portions of peanuts. He was eager to share what occupied his mind, the way Flasher-Göran had been lurking outside the shop and the girls sitting so close and how he had felt and what he had done. Then he paused, looked around and drank deeply. White flecks of foam covered his lips.

He unfolded a piece of paper he had brought and showed it to the others.

'Look! I got his sentence from the magistrates' court today. I've had it with that bastard, that's for sure. I was so fucking furious. After I'd given him a piece of my mind I got into the car and headed for town. Drove like a bloody maniac. I got there just when they were shutting up shop. Christ, the time it took; they rooted around in their files and whatever. No computerised records in this day and age, would you believe it?'

Everyone leaned forward to see, trying to read the text, upside-down if necessary.

'Look at it! Here it is, in black and white. Swinging his dick in front of the kids. Fuck's sake, there's nothing between him and the beast that got shot in Enköping.'

Bengt let his packet of cigarettes do the round, lit one himself.

'Ove, remember? Your little sisters were among the kids, you know.'

He fixed his eyes on Ove Sandell, knowing that he felt the same way.

'That's right. He showed off his cock, right in front of them. Filthy. If I'd been there I would've killed him. Blasted him there and then. No problem.'

They drank to that. A group of boys came in, the lads from outside the shop, the mock-wankers. The gang drifted over to the gaming machines, hung around watching the players, applauded when anyone won anything. One or two tried it on, went to the counter to order a beer. No go. Nobody even tried to get change for the machines, that line cut no ice. The limit was eighteen for drink and gambling, and that was that, even in Tallbacka.

Helena, Ove's wife, was impatient. She knocked on the tabletop to catch their attention and then looked at each one of them, in the end addressing her husband.

'Ove, we've got girls of our own now.'

'So we do.'

'So is it their turn soon?'

'They should've cut his balls off back then, after the sentence.'

Bengt nodded, then rose and pointed in the direction of his house.

'I don't get it, there are two thousand decent people in this place. Who's my neighbour? A filthy paedophile! What can I do? Will someone kindly tell me what I'm meant to do!'

The gang of wankers were getting fed up with peering over the shoulders of the gamers. Instead they got hold of the remote control and switched the telly on. The sound was too loud and Bengt waved irritably at them until the volume was low enough.

'You don't answer. What am I supposed to do? Fuck's sake, we can't keep someone like that here. No way.'

Helena suddenly shouted, so loudly that her voice cracked.

'Away with him. He's got to go. Ove! Do you hear me?'

Bengt chewed a handful of peanuts. Slowly swallowed.

'Right. We must get him out of here. If he won't, we'll shove. What I'm saying is, if he isn't gone in two weeks' time I'll do him in.'

Another round, Bengt paid again and kept the receipt. He was going to write it off against the firm's expenses. Meals, he called it.

They started drinking from the large cool glasses, but were stopped short when Ove suddenly wolf-whistled. The piercing sound cleaved through the smoke-laden air. Instant silence. Ove pointed at the telly and shouted in the direction of the boy with the remote.

'Hey, turn it up!'

'Fucking make up your mind.'

'We want to hear this. Turn up the telly or I'll clock you one.'

The camera had been following Fredrik Steffansson, being escorted slowly along one of the corridors in the Kronoberg remand prison. He had pulled his jacket over his head.

'It's that father, the one who shot the paedophile. Killed the beast.'

Stillness had fallen over the pub, as most people stared at the screen. Fredrik Steffansson waved dismissively at the camera, shook his head and then stepped outside the image. A woman came along, then stood in front of him. The camera moved to close-up and a microphone materialised in front of her mouth. It was Kristina Björnsson, the defence lawyer.

'You're quite right. My client does not deny the actual event. He did shoot Bernt Lund. It was a deliberate killing, planned several days ahead.'

The camera panned in even closer. A reporter tried to get a question in, but she raised her voice and continued.

'This was not murder, however, but something quite different. It was reasonable force, used in extreme circumstances.'

Bengt was amazed and delighted. He slapped the table.

'Did you hear that!'

As he looked around, the others nodded slowly. They followed every camera-move keenly, took in every new argument by Steffansson's lawyer.

'It was only a matter of time before Bernt Lund would attempt another crime. We are all agreed that this is the case, after studying his personality profile. My client is convinced that by taking Lund's life he saved the life of at least one child.'

'Too fucking true!'

Ove smiled, leaned over to plant a kiss on his wife's cheek.

The eager reporter tried again, the question that she hadn't been allowed to put earlier.

'How does your client feel?'

'As well as can be expected in the circumstances. I don't need to remind you that he has lost his little daughter in the most distressing way possible. Also, as a citizen, he is deeply disappointed that society failed to protect not only his child, but also other potential victims. Instead he himself is locked up and will stand trial. He is taking the consequences of ineffective law enforcement.'

Helena stroked her husband's cheek. Then she took his hand and pulled him up, as she rose from the table.

'He did the right thing.'

She lifted her glass in a toast, turning first to Bengt, then to Ola and Klas and, finally, to her husband.

'Do you know what he is, that Fredrik Steffansson? Do you? He's a hero, a real old-fashioned hero. Here's a toast to Fredrik Steffansson!'

They all followed her lead, silently raised their glasses and emptied them.

They stayed in the pub for longer than they usually would. Jointly they arrived at a decision, not the means of bringing it about, but that it would happen. They had passed the critical stage and the process would continue.

It was their Tallbacka, their community, the very stuff of how they lived day after day.

Lars Ågestam was bewildered, even though there weren't that many people about, but then he never had been any good at big stores. Six floors, escalators, free offers and tastings, rumbling messages over the loudspeaker system, credit card machines, queuing numbers. All the time, the pressure to buy buy buy. The queuing customers were daunting, too many; someone smelled strongly of sweat, someone's kids made a noise, some people acted as lost as he felt, a woman dropped the clothes she had picked to try on, a bloke kept searching for something in sportswear, and everything everything everything had been transported from elsewhere to end up here, neatly packaged and priced.

Simply being inside this living hell floored him, but he couldn't think of another place to go. He never bought music, mainly because he had no time to listen, except to the car radio. The music department fazed him completely, shelf after shelf of recordings by alleged celebrities he'd never heard of. He spotted a young woman at an information counter. She was probably very pretty, though it was hard to tell behind the make-up and a hair-do that covered her eyes.

'Siw Malmqvist, have you got anything by her?'

She smiled. Was it a friendly smile or a sneer? How do young women smile?

'I think so, somewhere in the Swedish section. I'll have a look.'

She stepped outside her enclosure and waved to him to follow. He watched her back and blushed. Her clothes were, well… revealing.

She held out a CD. The cover photo showed a woman, young back then, long ago.

'Siw's Classics. Will this do?'

Surely this was the right thing. He said he'd take it.

By now she was smiling very broadly. He blushed again, but felt cross. Was she laughing at him?

'What's the joke?'

'Oh, nothing.'

'I get the impression you're finding this funny.'

'Not at all.'

'Yes you do.'

'It's just that you don't look right. I mean, like the type of person who buys Siw's songs.'

Now he was smiling too.

'What do they look like then? Older than me?'

'I… yeah, not such… a suit.'

'What?'

'Like, cooler.'

Safely outside in the street, he bought an ice-cream and decided to walk to Kung Island, then past the Crime Prosecution Service building, his place of work, and on to Scheele Street and the Violent Crime Squad offices.

He felt quite tense, hung back a little and then almost forgot to knock. The familiar irritable voice.

Ewert Grens was sitting behind his desk, but had swung the chair sideways and was leaning forward with his elbows resting on his thighs. His glaring eyes told his visitor to get lost, he wasn't welcome. No one was.

'I've got something for you. Here.' Lars put the CD down on the desk. 'I'm sorry I was so rude about the music last time.'

Grens said nothing.

'I hope you haven't got all the songs in this collection.'

Still no response.

'I'd like to talk to you for a while. I'll be straight with you, just as I was on Monday. I think you're bloody difficult, and a real bastard at times. But I need you. I haven't got anyone else to turn to in this case, no one who'll offer me the resistance I must learn to deal with. No one who will ask the right questions.'

He gestured vaguely towards the visitor's chair. Was it all right to sit down? Ewert, still not uttering, waved distractedly as some kind of invitation.

'I've got to tell you this. I actually threw up yesterday. Breakfast, lunch, the lot. Sheer funk. Instead of being handed my most important case on a plate, I've ended up having to prosecute a grief-stricken father for shooting at and killing a proven sex murderer. It can only go one way. That is, straight to hell. You don't have to be a genius to work that out.'

Ewert shook his head, cackled briefly with laughter and spoke for the first time.

'Serves you right.'

Ågestam counted the seconds, his old trick in situations like this. Thirteen seconds. That mean old bastard must surely see that he was on top now, was being deferred to.

'I'm going to push for a life sentence.'

He really stuck his neck out and it worked.

'Say that again?'

'You heard me. I'm not going to stand for anybody appointing himself judge and jury.'

'Why tell me? What's the fucking point you're making?'

'No special reason. Well, I wanted to find someone to tell my ideas to. To test them.'

Ewert cackled again.

'Still scrabbling to get up the greasy pole, eh? Life, was that what you said?'

'Aha. Yes.'

'You know, half the punters who end up in prison have committed one or more violent acts. Fucking idiots to a man, but still human beings. And victims as well; almost all of them have been abused one way or the other, usually by their parents. Even I can see where that might lead.'

'I know.'

'Book learning. You should be out there, seeing for yourself.'

Ågestam leafed through his notebook.

'Steffansson freely admitted that he planned the murder over the course of four days. He had time to reconsider, but didn't. Not just judge and jury, he had to be the executioner as well.'

'Planned, yes. But plans fail. He couldn't be sure he'd find Lund.'

'When he did, he still had a choice. He could've alerted the police. Christ, your officers were on the spot. But that would've meant giving up the shooting he had been looking forward to.'

'Sure, sure, he has committed murder. No fucking question about it. But life? No way. Unlike you, I've seen real action, forty years of it, and that has meant sometimes standing by as worse nutters than Steffansson got off with lesser sentences than that. And I've watched hordes of fancy little prosecutors trying to pass themselves off as hard men.'

Ågestam breathed in deeply and checked his notebook again. He was determined to keep his cool and ignore the man's clumsy sarcasm. Then it came to him that what was happening was exactly what he wanted. The sour old bugger was cross-examining him. This would work as a kind of pre-trial trial. He smiled, still turning the pages, but without taking in his notes. He could polish his arguments now, muster his evidence. Great, he liked it, just like an exam oral.

The pause, maybe his smile, had irritated Ewert.

'What's your fucking problem now? Can't find what to say next from your shitty little book? For your information, this is a case of murder with extenuating circumstances. If pleading life gives you a hard-on, go right ahead. But be ready to settle for eight or ten years. You and I are both part of this society, you'd better put that in your notes, because it's a society that failed to protect Marie Steffansson. And other kids.'

'I grasp the point you're making, of course. But does this failure by society justify the summary execution of a presumed sex killer? Consider the possibility that the victim was innocent, at least in this particular case. You know sod all about it, and – more to the point – Steffansson knows sod all about what the man he was shooting at was up to. Think again. Do you really think it is right to kill Lund because he is seen near the site of the crime? Is that the society you'd like to police? Where people take the law into their own hands, DIY executions and all? It will certainly make a change. The laws I learned about don't include anything about a death penalty. We are responsible, Grens. We must demonstrate that in our kind of society, anyone who acts like Steffansson will be locked up. For life. Grieving dad or not.'

Silence. Then the murmur of a Mediterranean-style ceiling fan stopped and the silence became so profound that for the first time Ågestam actually noticed the fan's existence.

He looked at it and then at the elderly man behind the desk. His lined face spoke of a bitterness, a deep-seated fear, that drove both his withdrawal from other people and his aggression towards them. What was the cause? Why was Grens so ready to reject, so prone to swear and accuse and insult? DCI Grens was well known nationally. Already at university Lars had heard the stories about him, the policeman who walked alone, but was better at his job than most. Now, having met the man, he was no longer convinced.

All he saw was a pathetic old sod who had painted himself into a corner socially and had to put up with the consequences, isolated and angry.

I don't want to become like Grens, it's a grim state of mind, he thought, almost as grim as being totally solitary.

Ewert turned over the CD, a flimsy piece of plastic holding twenty-seven tracks. His fingers left greasy marks on the shiny surface.

'Is that it? Are you done?'

'I think so.'

'Fine. When you leave, take this with you. I haven't got the right kit for playing it.'

Ågestam shook his head.

'It's a gift. It's yours now. If you have no use for it, throw it away.'

The elderly man put down the silent piece of plastic.

Today was the Wednesday of the second week since Lund's escape. Two guards had been badly beaten up.

A little girl had died. Her killer had died.

Her father was in custody awaiting trial. He would get prison for life if that poncy little prosecutor got his way.

Sometimes Grens didn't want to be around anymore. He almost longed for when it would all be over.

Dead bodies are worse in hot weather. Sven was reminded of the kind of nature films that he had come to detest. Overbearing voiceovers guide the viewers though sun-baked African landscapes, flies buzz round the microphone and, sooner or later, some kind of furry predator starts running after its prey, jumps and bites its throat, rips the flesh off its bones, gulping down anything edible until sated and ready to amble into the long grass to sleep, leaving the bloody, rotting carcass behind for the flies and the heat to consume it until nothing is left.

Every time he had to attend an autopsy such images haunted him with an inevitability he dreaded. In this place, barely a week ago, he and Ewert had observed the meaninglessly peaceful face of a little girl whose body had been ripped apart. He had not had to watch the damage done to her, he had been allowed to look away in an attempt not to face the lack of meaning all over again.

Perhaps that was why she had seemed so unreal. Far too young to die, still promising so much life. He couldn't help remembering her tiny feet, their sadistic cleanliness.

Ewert's concerned voice, without a trace of sarcasm, brought him back to the present.

'Hey, Sven. How are things?'

'This place gives me the creeps. I can't help it. Errfors seems a perfectly nice, normal bloke, so why did he pick this hellhole for his place of work? How does he stand it? Rooting around in cadavers. What kind of a life is that?'

They were walking through the central archive, past sliding metal shelving packed with files, folders, boxes. It was a vast catalogue of death. The dead had become lines on paper, arrayed in alphabetical order. Sven had been here once before, he and a young medic who had helped him in a search. He hoped he'd never have to do it again, these data searches made him think uneasily about interfering with graves.

Ludvig Errfors was waiting for them in the same autopsy room as before. He was in civvies, no sterile wraps, and as jolly and easy-going as ever.

'It's quite spooky, you know. I dealt with the victims in the Skarpholm case, then with the Steffansson girl, and here I am doing the PM on their killer.'

Ewert slapped the dead man's leg lightly.

'This monster was bound to end up here. But you feel sure he did it this time?'

'As I said last week, the MO was as good as identical with the Skarpholm case. Gross violation. I've been doing this job for longer than they advise anyone should, and I must say, I haven't seen anything like it. Not towards a child.'

'But you'll get your conclusive proof,' he went on, pointing at the body. 'In time for the trial we'll have checked the DNA in a semen sample and compared it with samples taken from the victims' bodies. You and the judges and so forth will get the data, in black and white.'

'The prosecutor lad is going for life. For Steffansson.' Ewert paused, looked at the surprised faces. 'Oh, yes. Trying to grow into his posh suit.'

Errfors pushed the trolley into the circle of strong light, then remembered about Sven.

'I believe you took it a bit badly last time,' he said with a kind smile. 'This body is rather mauled, so maybe you'd better look away for a moment.'

After registering a quick nod from Ewert, Sven turned away.

'Obviously, the face is well and truly gone,' Errfors was saying. 'One of Steffansson's bullets hit the forehead, with explosive effect. The teeth were reasonably intact, so we could identify him from his dental record.'

He adjusted the light to illuminate the lower torso.

'The other bullet hit his hip. It seems to have been the first shot. The pelvic bone is partly shattered. The bullet went straight through the body, here. The two impact wounds fit with what the witnesses said about having heard two bangs. That's it. We've finished now.'

Sven turned back to the shrouded body. He remembered Lund's face. What was the point of being Lund, of living with such sickness? If you must destroy your own species, do you still have the right to be counted as a human being? In this building, prompted by the presence of all the lifeless bodies, Sven felt unable to escape these apparently unanswerable questions.

They got ready to leave.

'Before you go, I think you'd want to see these. I kept them for you. Here. I found them on Lund's body when I undressed it.'

A handgun. A knife. Two photographs. A hand-written note.

'The gun, you'll be able to check it out, was in a holster strapped to his lower leg. The knife was also in a strap-on holster, on his forearm this time. By the way, this type of knife is new to me. The edge is exceptionally sharp.'

Ewert took charge of the plastic bags with the weapons. So Lund had been armed, prepared to defend himself.

'Fancy that young idiot going for life. Banging up someone who rid the land of an armed crazy, out hunting little girls.'

Sven took the bags with the photos and piece of paper. He looked at them under the light and was still staring at the amateurish images when he started to speak.

'New photos, these. Little girls, same ones on both pics. Photographed outside the nursery school where Lund was lurking when he got shot. Seems that the girls went to that school. We'll confirm it of course, but it's likely.'

Ewert wanted to see.

'Christ, look at this. Lund must've made a note of their names. It looks like he wanted two victims this time too.'

He looked at the photographs once more. Two little girls, about the same age as Marie Steffansson, blonde hair bleached by the summer sun, sitting on the edge of a sandpit, smiling towards life. He cackled, as he had when speaking to Ågestam earlier that day.

'What have we got here? Proof that Steffansson saved the lives of two children by killing Lund. It's thanks to the accused that two sweet six-year-olds can still smile today.'

Then he did the weird thing that Sven had observed before, slapped the body on the trolley, pinched it and shook it a bit, mumbling inaudibly with his head turned away.

Bengt Söderlund and his family were spending the summer holidays at home for the fifth year running. Once they'd tried Gotland, the lovely island everyone talked about, but never again. Hiring the cottage was expensive, it rained all the time, there was nothing to do and the week they had paid for seemed endless. The following year they hired a cottage in Ystad on the south coast instead, but the whole place was windy and dead flat. They travelled around a bit but Osterlen looked just the same, so that was that, no need to go back for more. Two years in a caravan, but what with gridlocked roads and kids who wouldn't go to sleep that was a wash-out, and then, to cap it all, that stay on Rhodes in a nightmare heatwave lasting the entire fortnight, well, thanks, but no thanks. They had figured a city break in Stockholm might be a good idea, but even that was a disappointment; the place was packed with crazed townies, the types who walk up escalators.

They had agreed that enough was enough. Staying at home meant Bengt could keep an eye on the business. It was good for family life too. They could take the kids swimming in the lake, go for walks in peace, even get some sex in peace when the girls were away on sleepovers with their friends. And they could see more of their own friends, drink coffee in the garden, have folks round for supper once in a while.

Bengt and Elisabeth were drinking morning coffee when Ove and Helena came strolling past their open kitchen window. They waved. Come in! Time for elevenses, coffee and cinnamon rolls, two each. Ove and Helena were easy to get on with. Almost ten years ago now, things had become tense for a while, just a silly episode at a party when Ove and Elisabeth had ended up doing rather more than holding hands. The coolness between the couples lasted until it dawned on everyone that Tallbacka was too small to hide in. They had a shouting match, it cleared the air and afterwards they tacitly agreed to bury the whole affair. Both Ove and Elisabeth had had a bit too much to drink, but it had been a harmless fling; neither had had the slightest intention of ruining their marriages.

Ove had brought a morning paper and over the coffee and buns the four of them started talking about the case that dominated that national news. Now that the Russian plane accident had been sorted, the headlines were all about the paedophile who had killed a little girl, and the dad who then shot his daughter's killer. They could all engage with this; the girl and the dad were part of every family in the land.

In fact, since the first reports of the crime, they had talked about this story whenever they'd met. All, that is, except Elisabeth. She fell silent every time, and when they asked her why, she said they were getting far too excited and far too angry and it was no good. They tried to persuade her, but when she still would have none of it, they carried on regardless. Getting excited was no crime, and if she wasn't interested, too bad.

Now it was all cosy and familiar.

Bengt poured the coffee, dark-roast, its scent filling the kitchen. There was real cream with it, and the buns of course, saved since yesterday to give them the dry, crispy crust that made them especially nice to dunk in coffee.

Then he pointed at the passport photo of Fredrik Steffansson that the papers had used since his arrest.

'That guy. I'd have done the same. Wouldn't have thought twice.'

Ove soaked a piece of bun in his mug.

'Me too. You know, if you've girls in the house that's it, you've to think like he did.'

Bengt examined the page in the paper closely.

'But I wouldn't have done it just because of what he said, you know, because he was thinking of other kids. I would've done it for me. To get my own back.'

He looked at the people round the table to gauge their reactions. Both Ove and Helena nodded. Elisabeth stuck her tongue out.

'Are you crazy? What's that for?'

'I'm fed up with you lot. All you ever do is jabber on and on, morning, noon and night. Flasher-Göran, paedophiles, always the same stuff. Every time we meet. Hate, hate, hate.'

'Bugger off then. You don't have to stay.'

'I mean, listen to you! It's just crap. Revenge for what? All Göran ever did was stand naked next to the flagpole. He didn't touch anyone. What's the harm in that?' Elisabeth breathed out in a sob, and after clearing her throat to steady her voice, her eyes were still shining with tears. 'I don't seem to know you any more. You sit in my kitchen pretending to care, but you're just spoiling for a fight. I've had enough! You're pathetic!'

Helena put her mug down and grasped Elisabeth's hand.

'Hey, Elisabeth. Calm down.'

Defiantly, Elisabeth pulled her hand away.

'Let her piss off if that's what she wants. She must like them, the paedophiles. Eh? Is that it?' Bengt raised his voice and turned to his wife. 'I've worked my whole life, slaved like a fucking dog. And the society I live in locks up someone who's saved children's lives! But I don't deserve any better. Is that how you see it?'

He turned to the window and spat. And heard a door open.

He knew just which door.

'Fuck's sake. That's him, that sodding pervert. He's going out.'

Flasher-Göran was locking his front door. Bengt looked round at Elisabeth.

'Pathetic? Wasn't that what you said?'

Then he stuck his head out through the window.

'You deaf or something?' he roared. 'I don't want to see you. Stay inside. Filthy swine!'

Göran looked towards the familiar voice, and continued walking down the gravel path to the gate. Bengt snapped his fingers, twice.

His Rottweiler came padding along obediently.

'Baxter. Come.'

The dog ran up to the window to stand by his master. Bengt grabbed its collar, held it, then let go with a sudden command.

'Baxter! Go! Get him!'

The big dog leapt out through the window, ran across the lawn and jumped the fence to the garden next door, barking loudly as it went. Göran heard it and realised what was happening. His heart started thumping with fear. He ran. The garden shed was the nearest safe place. His stomach was out of order, he couldn't control it, he shat himself, ran the last bit with faeces trickling down his legs, grabbed the door handle, got inside, pulled the door shut. The dog threw itself against the door, barking excitedly.

Bengt was watching from the window, Helena and Ove at his side. He was almost hysterical, applauding his dog and shouting to it.

'Good dog! Well done, Baxter! The peddo is where he belongs. Baxter! Watch!'

The dog stopped barking, sat down and fixed its eyes on the door handle.

Bengt, laughing now, clapped his hands for a little longer. Then he turned away from the window and caught the look in Elisabeth's eyes, saw how much she despised him. She shook her head slightly at him.

He suddenly realised that she was ugly, old and ugly, with her sneering face and flabby tits.

She could never make him want her, long for her again, not any more.

The cool release brought by the rain seemed a distant memory now. The heat was back. It was more obvious in the prison, where the high perimeter wall trapped the air over the flat expanse of the gravel yard. Hilding had gone out for a walk, wearing a pair of shorts and nothing on the bony upper half of his body. No one else was around. He was worried. Dickybird would soon discover it, he'd know who'd done it, and that it was his closest friend and ally would mean zilch. Hilding would be worked over. He expected it. If you nick from your mate you get hammered, simple as that. And he had nicked something important.

He had got Axelsson out of harm's way. The peddo had got the message, crawled off to the screws and licked arse. They saw his point right enough and tucked the fucking nonce away in seg wing. Sure enough, Dickybird had lost it when he heard; he figured the beast had been warned off, but couldn't be sure. Above all, he couldn't be sure who'd done it. He went berserk, screaming and kicking at the wall. Still, he had calmed down afterwards. He even agreed to a couple of games and magically got two tens of diamonds in one of the rounds.

Hilding scratched his sore and kept walking, from one pair of goal posts to the other. He counted each round. Sixty-seven so far. Thirty-three left.

He shouldn't have gone and smoked all the shit. But what the fuck, the Axelsson business had taken it out of him, he'd had it by then. He had earned just a small one, like a prize, kind of. Alone in the shower-room, he got the resin out and rolled himself one. It had been as fucking bloody marvellous as last time, his body felt all relaxed, he smoked another small one and then, somehow, the rest went the same way. It felt brilliant. But that night he suddenly realised that this time he was really asking for it. Afterwards he stayed awake, waiting for the morning and the beating that would come. Except it didn't.

Two days ago that was. Soon he'd attack. Hilding waited and scratched.

One more round. The hundredth.

Sweat was pouring off him. Maybe he should do another hundred. It was almost like getting high, this steady walking in the hot sun. His thoughts flowed slowly and easily. He decided to keep going until someone else came outside.

After one hundred and fifty-seven goes, the Russian turned up with a ball under his arm. Hilding went to take a cold shower; the water burned in his sore. Then he put on clean kit, pants, socks and shorts, and started walking in the corridor, driven by his anxiety. Three hundred times he passed the cells, reached the pool table and turned back. Everything was quiet, apart from the telly. It was on, as usual. The news was about the murder of the little girl and then about Lund. He forced himself to listen to distract himself from his growing fear.

He hadn't been in such a state for years, ever since he came under Dickybird's protection. But now he was the one who'd screwed up. He had to do something different, blow his mind. Must.

He knocked on the door to Jochum's cell, first once, then again when there was no reply. Jochum opened up. He had been asleep, it showed.

'What the fuck?'

'I'm Hilding.'

'So what? Beat it.'

'Just wondered if you were thirsty.'

He had made up his mind. He had to do it, anything to get rid of that piss-awful ache inside him. So it meant more stealing. It would help if Jochum came along. Dickybird had too much respect to mess with him.

Jochum came outside.

'Where is it?'

'Come. I'll show you.'

Jochum went back inside his cell, then came out again wearing a pair of slippers. He closed the cell door behind him.

That sod never left the door open. No one ever caught as much as a glimpse inside his cell. Hilding led the way along the route he had just walked three hundred times, past the kitchen, the shower-room, the pool corner.

Fixed to the corridor wall was a fire-fighting contraption, a pipe made of red-painted metal attached to a black hose. The instructions for use ran into too many words to take in, especially with flames raging around you. Hilding looked around. No screws. He produced a toothbrush mug from the pocket of his shorts and unscrewed the stopper on the pipe.

'Try this. Plain fucking water, a loaf and some apples.' He filled the mug. The brew smelled bad; he almost retched. 'This stuff is rotgut. Tastes like shit! But what the fuck!' He swallowed the murky fluid. 'It kicks. Just don't fucking taste it!'

He filled the mug again and handed it to Jochum.

'It's been settling for almost four weeks. It's clearing. And must be ten per cent, easily.'

Jochum swallowed, gagged, held out the mug.

'Another one.'

They got through five mugs each. Warmth began to spread through their bodies, and calm; the alcohol was reaching their souls.

They used to brew in the bucket at the back of the cleaners' cupboard, but doing it in the emptied fire-gadget was better, it was a closed container and easier to get at. The loaf was for alcohol, and the fruit helped the taste a bit.

'Screw coming!'

Skåne had been on the alert this time, warning everyone. It was rare for them to turn up in the unit so suddenly. Hilding put the stopper in place and they wandered off; they met a screw on the way, he looked hard at them but didn't stop them.

Hilding and Jochum, nicely pissed now, went along to sit on the sofa, united for a while by booze; no one says no to a drink with a mate.

The TV news was still chewing over the Lund murder; the whole unit had followed the hunt and by now most people had had enough. The kid's dad had blown the head off the fucking nonce, showing the beasts what the score was. Hilding and Jochum took no notice of the flow of words and images, just sat back feeling relaxed.

'Where's that tinker mate of yours anyway? I haven't seen him for days.'

'Dickybird?'

'Yeah. The Diddler.'

Jochum grinned. Hilding grinned. Fucking good that, the Diddler.

'Holing up in his cell, he can't hack all that. The shit on the telly.'

'He can't stand the fucking telly?'

'It's like… I don't know. The stuff about the girl and the nonce. It spooks Dicky. Or something. Like, he knows he could've done Lund in himself. Before he scarpered.'

'So what? It's been done.'

'But the kid wouldn't have been… you know.'

'Happens.'

Hilding looked around, noted the screw on his way out and lowered his voice.

'Dicky has a daughter too. That's why.'

'And so?'

'He's got to think like that.'

'Why just him? Lots do. Don't you?'

'Sure. But his daughter lives near where it happened. Strängnäs. Well, Dicky thinks so, anyway.'

'Thinks? Doesn't he know?'

'Never even clapped eyes on her in his life.'

Jochum slid his hand across his shaved scalp, turned away from the TV for a moment to look at Hilding.

'I don't get this. It wasn't his kid who was done, right?'

'No. But it could've been. That matters for Dicky.'

'Give over.'

'That's how he thinks. He's got this photo of her. He had it blown up and put it up on the wall, it's like a fucking big poster.'

Jochum threw his head back and laughed, a drunk's wild laugh.

'The tink has fucking lost it, no question. There he is, head stuffed fit to burst with what might've happened but didn't and can't any more 'cause the nonce is a goner, he's been shot to bits. The guy is dreaming, must be in worse shape than I thought. He needs a shot of your brew, more than anyone.'

Hilding stiffened, scared again.

'Fuck's sake! Don't tell him!'

'What?'

'About us having a drink.'

'Scared of the Diddler, are you?'

'Just take it easy. Don't tell him.'

Jochum laughed again and gave Hilding the finger. Then he turned back to the set.

More reports about the nonce killing.

The prosecutor, a dead correct-looking bugger with a blond fringe; they had squeezed him up against a wall in the court stairwell and stuck a microphone in his face.

Just the type, a climber, no experience. He needed shaking up a bit.

Lars Ågestam did not quite grasp the full implications of it all until he had seen Fredrik Steffansson in the interrogation room.

At first the case had seemed a gift from the good fairy. Then the fairy shape-changed into an evil witch, the case came to involve a grieving parent and his just anger, and Ågestam had thrown up in the CPS office toilet from utter dread.

But once Steffansson was arrested, the prosecutor had ceased to be simply someone about to become a has-been, as far as his legal career went.

Now his situation was far worse.

Worse because of his constant fear, a fear that meant he could not cross the street without looking over his shoulder. A fear of death.

In court, he entered a plea that Steffansson should be kept in custody until his trial, on the basis that he was someone 'on sufficient grounds suspected of murder'. For the defence Kristina Björnsson, his opponent in the Axelsson case, argued that custody was not required, since her plea was that Steffansson had acted with 'reasonable force'. Expanding on this, she claimed that if freed, Steffansson would not represent any danger to the public, nor act so as to complicate the investigation, nor defect prior to the trial. Björnsson's conclusion was that her client should be ordered to report daily to the police in Eskilstuna.

Van Balvas, the sitting judge, took only a minute or two to decide that Fredrik Steffansson was indeed suspected of murder on sufficient grounds and should therefore remain in custody until tried. The date of the trial would be determined presently.

She rapped the desk with her gavel. Then all hell broke loose.

First, the crowd inside, near the front door. They wielded microphones and pushed him up against the wall of the stairwell.

Steffansson has become a popular hero.

Has he?

He saved the lives of two little girls.

So far, we have no proof of this.

Bernt Lund had their photos.

Steffansson is accused of having murdered somebody.

Lund knew the girls' names. He kept watch on their nursery school.

Allegedly, Steffansson has committed murder. If that is so, his act must be my chief concern.

In your opinion, should someone who has prevented the death of innocent citizens be rewarded by a long prison sentence?

No comment. Your question is out of order.

In your opinion, did Steffansson do the right thing?

Bringing about someone's death can never be the right thing.

Why?

If it is proven that we have a case of premeditated murder, there is no option in law.

Is that so?

Premeditated murder must be judged for what it is.

A lifetime prison sentence, then?

The most severe punishment available in law must be considered.

You would prefer that the two little girls had been violated and killed, would you?

What I'm saying is that there is no exemption for grieving dads who commit murder.

Do you have any children?

Afterwards, he confronted the rest of them. The public. People had watched, listened, read. Now they shouted at him, threatened him, phoned him to say vile things. Every time he put the receiver down the phone rang again, demanded more of him.

You're a shit. Establishment lackey.

I'm only doing my job.

Fucking tin soldier. Paragraph-crazy bureaucrat.

If someone is suspected of breaking the law, it is my duty to prosecute that person.

You're a dead man if you go for that dad.

What you just said is intimidation and against the law.

DIE!

Intimidation is a punishable offence.

We'll kill your family, one by one.

He was frightened. All this was for real. The menacing callers were mad, of course, but also representative of a wider public hatred. And they meant what they said. This was serious.

He went off in search of Ewert Grens.

Their last talk, when he had exposed his worries about the prosecution, should have changed things, opened doors to a new understanding. Or so he had hoped. Not at all; the old boy was just as difficult, just as unapproachable. In fact, he received the news that Ågestam was scared by threats to himself and his family with a broad grin. The young prosecutor was close to tears, he didn't want to be, not here of all fucking places, but Grens pretended he hadn't noticed. Instead he said that threats were par for the course, something a tough prosecutor had to expect, and when there was something more concrete than voices on the phone to report, he was welcome back.

Lars slammed the door behind him when he left.

A slow walk back through the hot, stale city air. He had been passing concentrated, dark-yellow urine for days; he supposed it was because the heat and humidity made him sweat so much. Stopping at a newsagent's for a bottle of mineral water and a copy of the big morning paper, he saw that his picture was on the front page, under the headline Prosecutor insists: life for popular hero.

Everyone stared at him, even the tourists; he met droves of them, dripping with cameras and camcorders and whatever.

He walked as fast as he could, quick march all the way to the CPS office.

He stepped into his room and the phone rang.

He just looked at it. It rang eight more times.

He focused on the police investigation documents, read and reread, until the ringing stopped.

Bengt Söderlund went over the story about Baxter again, how the dog had been nailed to the spot all day, all evening and through the night until the following morning, when he obeyed his master's command to leave. They had heard all this twice before, Elisabeth who didn't want to hear at all, Ove and Helena, who had seen it from the beginning, Ola Gunnarsson and Klas Rilke, who laughed louder every time. The same thing had happened in school, when someone had found out something new about a teacher, maybe a smart nickname, and they kept having hysterics about it all through upper school; or in the men's locker room at the Tallbacka Sports Club, when they fixed boot-studs and put on embrocation for aching muscles, going over and over the time the opponents' fat, useless goalie had been kicked in the balls.

This evening they had spent some time playing the gaming machines in the bar and then wandered off to sit at their usual table, before they lost too much of their hard-earned money. Everyone had a beer, enjoyed being there and toasted Baxter, who had made them laugh.

They were only halfway through the first pint; a warm- up, there was more to come, at least another three or four.

The discussion would take off, alcohol stimulated the flow of words.

Bengt drank more slowly than usual. He had made up his mind during the week and prepared himself properly by reading a lot of deadly dull law handbooks. He had the evening all worked out in his head.

He raised his glass to his companions.

'Drink up, boys and girls. I've got something to say afterwards.'

They drank. Bengt signalled to the barman to bring another round, and then he began.

'I've been thinking. Drawn up a plan of action, you might say. We had better get some law and order round here.'

The others moved closer, stopped drinking and sat still. Elisabeth clenched her jaw and stared down at the tabletop. Her face was flushed.

'Remember last time we were here? Remember what Helena said?'

He smiled at Helena.

'Right at the end, before closing time, she stood up and asked us to listen. The late-night news was all about the killing of the paedophile, the father who shot that sex maniac. Afterwards Helena said something that stayed with me. She said, that man is a hero. A hero of our time. He wasn't going to let a fucking pervert get away with murder. He didn't hang about waiting for the police. They had messed up before, so he took it in his own hands to act.'

Helena beamed.

'I meant what I said. That man is a hero. Good-looking, too.'

She pushed playfully at her Ove, smiled at him. Bengt nodded impatiently. He had more on his mind.

'The trial will start soon. It will take five days and the sentence will come at some point during the last couple of days. We'll be around when it is.'

He looked around triumphantly.

'The defence is pushing for something called "reasonable force", and so are ordinary folk all over the country; they'll fucking riot if the court comes out in favour of locking him up. I bet it won't take the risk. The set-up will be the usual, only the judge has law training and the rest are magistrates, not trained in the law so they won't stick to paragraphs. See what I'm saying? He might well go free, and that's when we strike. Then it's our turn.'

The rest of the group round the pub table still didn't see the point, but figured Bengt had checked things out, as he usually did.

'Yeah? If the girl's dad is let off, that's it. The moment we hear, we have a licence to act, to deal with that perv once and for all. I, for one, won't put up with having a paedophile around this place. Not as a neighbour, not any- fucking-where in this community. We'll let him have it and then claim that we acted with reasonable force.'

The overweight barman, ex-owner of one of the defunct grocer's shops, brought them another round, carrying three glasses in each hand. They got stuck in, feeling good, but then Elisabeth spoke up.

'Bengt, listen. You're going over the top.'

'Christ, we've been over this before. Go home if you don't like it.'

'How can you think it's right to kill someone just to solve a problem? That dad is not a hero at all. He's setting a bad example.'

Bengt slammed his glass down on the table.

'So what does madam think he should've done then?'

'Well… talked to the man who did it.'

'What?'

'You can always get somewhere by talking.'

'Now I've fucking heard it all!'

Helena turned to face Elisabeth, her eyes narrowing with dislike.

'I must say I don't understand you, Elisabeth. Do you have a problem with seeing things the way they really are or what? Exactly what are you supposed to talk about with a crazy sex killer who's just murdered your own child? Maybe his tragic childhood? Maybe he had the wrong kind of toys? Lousy potty training? You must tell us.'

Ove rose and put his hand on his wife's shoulder.

'Fuck's sake, what do you think he was there for, outside that school? Well, I can tell you one thing, it wasn't the time and place for some kind of psycho session about what-a- very-sad-upbringing-blah-blah.'

Helena had put her hand over Ove's and started to speak when her husband stopped to draw breath.

'You can say the dad had no right to shoot that paedophile. But he would have been even more wrong not to kill him. That's obvious to me, anyway. OK, life is precious, I agree with that, but circumstances alter cases. If I'd been where he was and had a gun I could handle, I would've done just the same. What is it you don't understand about that, Elisabeth?'

She made up her mind as she left the restaurant. This was the end for her and Bengt, she had given up on her husband for good.

She walked straight back home and told her daughter, the one child she was responsible for, to pack just what she could carry. Then she filled two suitcases with their clothes and put everything in the car; she had to take that.

The summer evening was darkening, turning into night, when she left Tallbacka for ever.

The cell was one hundred and seventy centimetres wide, two hundred and fifty centimetres long, and contained a narrow bed, a small bedside table and a washbasin handy for pissing at night and washing in the morning. He was wearing a greyish, sagging suit, with the prison initials stamped on the sleeves and trouser-legs. Full restrictions applied, which meant no newspapers, no TV or radio and no visitors, except the chief interrogator, the prosecutor, the defence lawyer, the prison chaplain and prison officers. Fresh air was permitted for one hour daily; it amounted to a supervised stroll in a steel cage on the roof. Just now the heat up there was suffocating and he had asked to be let off the last half-hour every day so far.

He was lying on the bed. There was not a thought in his head. He had tried to eat and given up after a few mouthfuls. It tasted like shit, all of it. The tray with the plate and the glass of orange juice stood on the floor. He hadn't eaten since Enköping. Anything he tried had come back up, as if his stomach wanted to be left in peace.

The walls around him were grey, empty. His eyes had nothing to look at and nothing to look away from. The harsh light from the fluorescent tube in the ceiling somehow got behind his closed lids, coating his eyeballs with a bright membrane.

The observation panel on the door squeaked; someone was looking in at him.

'Steffansson, you wanted to see the chaplain, right?'

Fredrik met the staring eyes.

'Call me Fredrik. I don't like being a surname.'

'OK, start again. Fredrik, do you want to see the chaplain?'

'Anyone, as long as he or she doesn't wear a uniform.'

The officer sighed.

'Make up your mind. Yes or no. She's right here, next to me.'

'That's news. I'm stuck in here to isolate me from everybody else, some motherfucker's decided that I'm a danger to society, isn't that so? Or is everybody else a danger to me? Tricky. Do you know who I am, anyway?'

He sat up on the edge of the bed abruptly. Then he kicked the tray. Bright yellow orange juice spread all over the floor.

The officer sighed, he had seen this so often. The prisoners who broke down started by being aggressive, irrational, threatening, then they collapsed and pissed their pants. Steffansson was cracking up, obviously.

Fredrik splashed the liquid around with his foot and went on talking.

'You haven't got a clue, have you? That my crime is deliberate execution of a foul child-killer. A maniac who might've come round to fuck your baby to death. And now it's your job to keep tabs on me. Enjoying yourself, are you? Feeling socially useful?'

He picked up the juice glass and threw it at the open panel. It shut just in time, before the glass hit and splintered into fragments.

The next moment the panel pulled back and the eyes stared at him again.

'I should call in support; what you just did is enough for

a spell in restraints. But you asked a question and I'm going to answer it.'

The officer paused and swallowed; the words wouldn't come at first. Fredrik waited.

'And the answer is no, I don't think what I'm doing to you is any use. Fact is, I don't think you should be here. And I think you did the right thing, shooting that bastard. But that's neither here nor there. You're inside and that's that. Now, do you want the chaplain?'

A locked door. He is on one side, everyone else on the other.

Images floating in the empty space inside his head, closed doors, himself on one side, everyone else on the other, how he had hated it, no panel in that door but panes to look through, three blurry sheets of glass, like in toilet windows, but you could see things if you pushed your face close, what Dad and Frans did in there, in the sitting room, the TV was on loud but he could hear Dad shout that Frans should undress, take it all off, then Dad hit the naked body again and again, he watched the hand moving, the glass distorted everything, making it look absurd, and Frans never uttered a sound. It was their mum who had snitched, she had told Dad why Frans must be punished, and then she just left them to it, went to sit in the kitchen, drinking tea and smoking her endless Camel cigs, while Dad hit and hit and hit until Frans shouted defiantly that he wasn't strong enough, he didn't feel it, hit harder. Dad often stopped altogether then.

A locked door. Someone staring.

'For the last time, mate. Yes or no?'

Fredrik closed his eyes to make the door disappear.

'Let the duty-saint in then.'

The door opened, he opened his eyes to look, at first unable to take in what he saw.

'Rebecca? You?'

'Hello, Fredrik. I've worked here before, you know, but this time I asked. I wanted to be here for you, since you won't be allowed to see anyone else you know. Do you mind?'

'Please come in.'

He felt so ashamed. Ashamed of being in this bleak cell awash with spilt juice, of wearing sack-like prisoner's kit, of throwing a tantrum in front of her, of having urinated in the washbasin not very long ago. The joy of seeing her brought tears to his eyes, and that too shamed him.

But she hugged him and stroked his hair, telling him that she understood and that she'd seen locked-up men and women behave much worse.

He looked at her, tried to smile.

'Do you think I did wrong?'

'Yes, I do,' she replied after a pause. 'You had no right to decide about life and death.'

Fredrik nodded. He had expected her to say that.

'Despite saving two children, or more, from Lund?'

Once more, she took her time. She meant a lot to this man and had known him for so long. Her responsibility to him weighed heavily.

'That is such a difficult question, Fredrik. I…'

She was silenced because Fredrik had started to hyperventilate. She put her hand on his chest, and he sank down on the bed, his whole body trembling.

'I'm sorry, I can't help myself. It's all so meaningless.'

Marie's funeral. The cemetery. The cold floor and the organ filling the church with sound. The little coffin, so very small. Rebecca had stood next to it and spoken. Marie was inside the coffin. The lid was on but he knew they had made her look pretty.

He steadied his breathing and started to speak.

'Marie is no longer. Everything that was her is gone, her senses, her thoughts. Gone, absolutely. For ever. Do you understand what I am trying to express?'

'I hear you and I understand, but you know I don't believe that.'

The noise of the panel sliding back. The eyes.

'Seems to be plenty going on in there. Everything all right?'

'Yes, it's all right,' Rebecca called back.

'Fine. Just give us a shout in case.'

Fredrik had stopped trembling, but was still stretched out on the bed, taking deep breaths.

'It was when I knew that Lund would do it all again that I made up my mind to kill. Get there first. Eliminate him.' He searched for the right words. 'You all thought it was a revenge killing, but it wasn't. It wasn't personal. You see, I died with Marie. I only came alive to kill him.'

He sat up and slapped his hand on the table, then bent forward and started hitting his forehead against the edge of it until he bled.

'I killed him. What am I meant to live for now?'

The door opened and this time there were two officers. They wore the same uniforms and identical expressions on their faces.

Marching past Rebecca, they grabbed Fredrik and pinned him to the bed, holding him down until he stopped pushing his head forward into the empty air.

It rained on the first day of the trial, only the second time during that long, hot summer. It was a quiet, persistent rain of the kind that is there before sunrise and keeps being there until dark.

Rain or no rain, it was the most sensational trial in Sweden for years and the queue outside the Stockholm Old Court building had already grown long early that morning. Proceedings were scheduled for the high-security courtroom and attendance was limited to four rows of numbered seats. Only the bigger media companies had been allowed to reserve places and a scrum of journalists led the crowd in the stone-flagged entrance hall.

The security was extensive. Uniformed and plainclothes police were everywhere, reinforced by staff from private firms. Over the weeks that had passed since Lund's escape, a looming sense of threat had been taking the shape of a faceless citizen, frustrated, aggressive, fuelled by a generalised hatred of paedophiles. This figure embodied a collective engagement by people who did not usually do much more than follow the news and comment from a safe distance, but who were now waiting and watching and preparing for action.

Micaela had got there early, just after seven. It had been chilly and raining a little harder then. She hadn't seen Fredrik since Marie's funeral. Now she knew that he had been hunting Lund and then kept in custody with no privileges.

More than anything else she felt frightened. This was her first experience of a court case and she knew she would have to stay still while the man she loved sat alone, just a few metres away from her, charged with murder and interrogated by a prosecutor out to get a lifetime sentence.

Once, not long ago, she had been part of a family. She had slept by Fredrik at night and learnt to hold on to him. Marie had become almost her own child, she had cared for her, fed and clothed and taught her. All gone now, in a few weeks.

She tried to smile at the guard who was checking her handbag, but he didn't smile back. The electronic checker wouldn't let her through, she tried three times and it howled every time, until she realised that she still had one of Marie's bicycle keys in her pocket. Her seat was good though, in row three, just behind the radio and TV reporters. She actually recognised some of them. Instead of speaking to camera from some dramatic location, they were busy taking notes. She peeped; everybody seemed to write in a personal scrawl, very short sentences, but always with a note of the time for each entry. Two artists were sitting right in front, their pencils moving with fleeting ease over their white sheets of paper as they sketched in the background features of the courtroom.

There was Agnes, in the last row, across the aisle. Micaela had turned to look for a fraction too long and had been seen. They nodded politely at each other. It was strange, the way they had kept themselves to themselves. She had answered the phone a couple of times when Agnes called Marie, but all that meant was a brisk exchange of This is Agnes, I'd like to speak to Marie please and One moment,

I'll get her, the sum total of knowing each other for three years.

Then she spotted the two policemen who had asked questions of everybody in and around the school that day. The older one with the limp was the boss. The younger one was nice and patient, he might be religious, free church probably. They had seen her and nodded, so she nodded back.

The room was almost full and she could hear protesting shouts from people outside, who realised they wouldn't get in. Someone was booing at the guards, someone else was calling them 'Fascist pigs'.

There was a door at the back of the dais, which she hadn't noticed until it suddenly opened and the officials of the court filed in. The judge came first, a woman called van Balvas, followed by the magistrates, who all looked rather elderly, local politicians mostly, on their way out of active life. She had read about these people in the paper. There had been quite a lot about the prosecutor too, and she had seen him on the telly, such a puffed-up young man, somehow sounding like a precocious kid. He was maybe a couple of years older than herself, which made her feel very young. The defence lawyer was different, her manner as calm and in control as it had been when they had talked in her office.

Then Fredrik, last of all, flanked by two court officers.

They had made him wear a suit and tie, not like his usual style at all. How pale he was. He looked so frightened. He felt like she did. His eyes stayed fixed to the floor, avoiding the crowd in front of him.

Van Balvas (VB): Your full name, please.

Fredrik Steffansson (FS): Nils Fredrik Steffansson. VB: And your address?

FS: Hamngatan 28, Strängnäs.

VB: Are you aware of the reason why we are here today?

FS: What a weird question.

VB: I will ask you again. Do you understand why we are here today?

FS: Yes.

She smoked three cigarettes during the break in a sad- looking lobby with sombre oak-panelled walls and worn seating. One of the journalists spoke to her, he wanted to know how Fredrik was feeling and she explained that she had not been allowed to see him because she was only his partner. The journalist had offered her cigarettes of that strong kind without filters that people in southern Europe smoke. Just one ciggie made her feel dizzy. Fredrik detested her smoking and she hadn't touched a cigarette for months.

Agnes had been standing alone a bit away, sipping mineral water. They both avoided eye contact; what was the point of seeking each other out? They had so little in common. They did not even share points of reference, except this, an experience complete in itself.

A young journalist with thinning hair and earphones was sitting on one of the wooden benches taking notes from a tape-recording. Next to him, an older reporter. One of the court artists was showing him a drawing of a moment she recognised from the hearing. There was Fredrik, making a gesture with his hand as the prosecutor held up a photo of the nursery school in Enköping, taken from the place where Fredrik had been when he shot that man.

Lars Ågestam (LÅ): Mr Steffansson, there is something I don't understand. Why did you not inform the police officers, who were only a few hundred metres away, exactly in your line of sight?

FS: There was no time.

LÅ: No time?

FS: I knew that two guards couldn't control Lund when he was a prisoner in chains. What chances had two policemen, half asleep anyway, against an unrestrained, armed Lund?

LÅ: So you didn't even try to contact them?

FS: I couldn't run the risk of him getting away. And maybe taking another girl with him. LÅ: But I still don't understand. FS: Don't you?

LÅ: Why did you have to murder Bernt Lund?

FS: What's so fucking difficult about that?

VB: Mr Steffansson, sit down. And please refrain from swearing.

FS: Do you have a problem hearing what I say? The massed forces of law and order couldn't treat Lund out of his madness or keep him safely locked up or catch him after he had murdered Marie. I don't have to explain myself any more, surely?

VB: For the second time, Mr Steffansson, sit down. Perhaps your lawyer can help?

Kristina Björnsson (KB): Fredrik, calm down. If you want to state your case, you must be allowed to stay in here. FS: Could someone get rid of these two?

KB: If you remain seated and calm, the officers will sit down too.

Once only did their eyes meet. It was during the prosecutor's first interrogation, which had started after the opening statements. Fredrik had become very angry, but they had made him sit down again and then he turned round, looking for her and Agnes, and he had tried to smile a little, she was sure he did. She had lifted her fingers to her lips to throw him a kiss. Her sense of loss seemed to solidify in her belly; she missed him so much and it was horrible to see him there in his suit and tie, white-faced, ready to be taken away.

LÅ: Mr Steffansson, I must remind you that Sweden, like very many other countries, has outlawed the death penalty.

FS: If the police had managed to catch him in the end the likely sentence would've been closed psychiatric care. It's even easier to escape from institutions like that.

LÅ: Where does that take your argument?

FS: Obviously, putting Bernt Lund away inside, anywhere, means nothing more than delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later he is back on the run, ready to kill more children.

LÅ: And so it follows that you have the right to act as police, prosecutor, judge and executioner?

FS: You deliberately pretend not to understand me. You twist what I say.

LÅ: Not at all.

FS: I can only repeat what I've said before. I didn't kill Lund because I personally wanted to punish him or get anything else out of it. I killed him because, for as long as he was alive, he was dangerous. It was like what people do with a mad dog.

LÅ: A mad dog?

FS: The reason for killing a rabid dog is that it is a risk to others. Bernt Lund was a rabid dog. I did what anyone might've done.

After every stage in the court proceedings she spent a long time waiting around, hoping that he would be escorted past her. She wanted to see him. They might even exchange a word or two. She tried different exits and entrances in turn, but saw neither him nor his guards.

After the first day, he stopped shaving and bothering with a tie. She felt that he cared less and less, that he was about to give up. Now and then they exchanged glances and she tried to look very calm and reassuring, as if she knew it would turn out all right in the end.

Agnes no longer came along.

A few journalists had dropped out, but one of the two policemen on the case was there every day. She spoke a little to Sundkvist and liked his mild-mannered style; he was much easier to relate to than most police.

Every day she drove back to Strängnäs and the home that belonged to them both. She had trouble sleeping at night.

He got out at his familiar metro station and strolled slowly home through the quiet suburban streets, humming a little to himself. It was that kind of evening, mild and warm and somehow long, as if the next day was far away.

The moment Lars Ågestam turned into his own street, he saw it. The car was eye-catching, the black lettering distinct against its shiny red surface.

The letters were bounding along, attacking him.

Peddo lover.

You fuck kids.

Arsehole.

Who's the psychopath?

The words had been painted on both doors. And on the roof. And on the bonnet. Whoever it was had announced his hatred with spray paint and destruction. If something could be broken, it had been. All the car windows were reduced to splinters, the headlamps had been ruined and the mirrors were simply gone.

He remembered vomiting with fear in the CPS toilet when he learned what kind of case he was landed with. Somehow he had foreseen all this.

And then here was his house. It was a solid bungalow from the forties with a finish of yellow render. A bevy of relatives had come to help him put on a coat of fresh yellow paint that summer. Now the black letters screamed at him from the bright background, running all the way across the façade, starting at the kitchen window, over the door and on to the sitting room window. The black spray paint looked the same as on the car, and the writing did too.

That alien hand had written one sentence.

You will die soon, arselicker.

Marina, his wife, was in the front garden, just metres away from the huge, angular letters, swinging in the hammock they had bought in a sale just a week ago.

Her eyes were closed and she seemed utterly detached.

He went up to her, but she said nothing, only coughed nervously. He hugged her.

The trial had been going on for three days. What had to happen finally did. Public awareness of the father who had shot his daughter's killer and killed him, risking a lifetime in prison, had permeated everything.

That threatening being, the faceless citizen, acted accordingly.

He couldn't bear to stay in a house with letters sprayed all over it. He had got out of bed to empty his bladder and couldn't get back to sleep, just lay there, his nakedness uncovered to let Marina have the duvet, searching the shadowy ceiling for answers.

He thought about his battered car. The spray-painted text, telling him what he was.

He was an arsehole. A psychopath. He loved paedophiles. He fucked children.

Marina's red and swollen eyes had avoided meeting his. She kept looking away. When he asked if she had been frightened, she shook her head, and when he wanted to know if she had been hurt or abused in any way, she shook her head, and when he held her tight, she turned away. In bed she lay facing the wall, leaving him alone with his psychopathy and his ruined car. After a while his breathing deepened, she noticed, but she kept staring at the wall until he had whispered her name again and again and she yielded, slipping into his arms and asking him to forgive her. Their skin, their nakedness touched and they made love for longer than they normally did; afterwards they held each other for a while before she turned back to face the wall again.

He had to get up.

Wandering naked round the house, he checked the time. Half past three. He made himself a mug of coffee, poured a glass of milk and another of orange juice, got out bread and cheese. He started reading yesterday's papers, looking for what all the media called the paedophilia trial and marvelling at the space allocated to it, page after page of text and pictures.

But it didn't work; his fears, his restlessness, his anger were whirling inside him and he couldn't just sit there drinking coffee.

He went back into the bedroom, dressed and picked up his briefcase, then kissed Marina's shoulder, and when she twitched and opened her eyes he explained where he was going, that he wanted to think in peace while the city woke. She murmured something he couldn't catch. When he left, her back was almost up against the wall.

He walked slowly, wanting to be alone with his thoughts in the sleeping city. But before he set out, after walking the seven paces along the path of concrete slabs set into the lawn, he turned round to take it all in.

You will die soon, arselicker.

The early-morning light seemed to magnify the letters and make their blackness more prominent. The writing was crude and had an awkward stiffness that made the whole thing look unreal. Surely it would all fade and vanish, dribble off the wall into sticky puddles among the roses in the border?

Then he passed his car, new a year ago. He had borrowed to cover the cost. It was vandalised beyond all hope, wrecked like the cars he'd seen in the far-flung suburbs of Latin American cities. It would be taken away. Would the intrusive words go away?

It took him two hours to walk from the western suburbs to the city centre, carrying his jacket over his shoulder and the briefcase in his hand. His black shoes didn't fit him too well and pinched here and there, but he had time to think, to try to understand.

What was all this about? He had wanted to be a prosecutor and that was what he did. He had been looking for a big case, and that was what he'd got. End of story. He wasn't up to it, he was too young, not mature enough. Not good enough.

An important brief meant getting lots of attention. Threats, as well as praise, were a consequence of being in the spotlight. Sure, he knew that. He had seen it affect older colleagues. Why did some vulgar graffiti scare him?

He knew, but couldn't tell why it should be so, that their lovemaking in the midst of Marina's silence meant that he was alienated from who he had been. He had lost a dream and would age abruptly as he carried this trial to its conclusion, pushing for the maximum sentence. Afterwards? A desert. Nothing was self-evident any more. But, seemingly, he was on his own.

He got to Scheele Street just after six o'clock. The Old Court was silent and still. A couple of gulls were rifling through the bins. Thanks to a helpful nightwatchman he had spent so many nights and early mornings here that in the end the magistrates had relented and, uniquely, allowed him his own set of keys. The young prosecutor had spent a significant part of his life in the old stone building.

He climbed the massive staircase all the way to the secure courtroom, went to sit in the place he occupied during the trial and opened his folder, spreading out the documents first on the tabletop and then, when he ran out of room, on the floor.

He had been working for forty-five minutes when the door opened.

'Hey, Ågestam.'

The rough voice was only too familiar. It was actually hateful. He kept his eyes on his work.

'Look, your wife told me that I could find you here. I'm sorry, I think I woke her.'

Grens didn't ask if he was welcome. He limped inside. His shoes had hard leather soles and his right footfall echoed round the room. Passing behind Ågestam, he glanced quickly at the pile of papers and went to sit in the judge's seat.

'That's what I do. Start early, when it's quiet. No fucking idiots around to annoy me.'

Ågestam carried on as he was, checking points of law, memorising questions, arranging observations.

'Can't you stop doing whatever it is when I'm talking to you?'

Ågestam turned, furious, facing the intruder.

'Why should I? You have no fucking time for me. It's mutual.'

'That's why I'm here.' Grens fiddled with the judge's gavel and cleared his throat. 'I've made… an error of judgement.'

Ågestam became still, in mid-movement, his eyes fixed on the older man, whose face was strained as he searched for words.

'When I've made an error I admit it.'

'Very well.'

'And I was wrong this time. I should've taken your ramblings seriously.'

The large, worn courtroom was as silent as the quiet streets outside, this early morning on a warm summer's day.

'You should've had police protection. You'll get it. We have a patrol car in place outside your home already. There's a car downstairs as well. The officer is on his way here to see you.'

Ågestam went to the window. Just then a policeman shut the door to his car and turned to walk towards the front steps of the court building.

The young prosecutor sighed. He felt suddenly very tired, as if the sleep he had missed that night was claiming him now.

'It's rather late in the day,' he said.

'That's a fact.'

'Yes, yes. Too true.'

Grens was still holding the gavel. He swung it, made a sharp noise that bounced off the walls.

He had said what he had come to say, but still gave no sign of leaving and didn't speak either. Ågestam felt tense. The crippled old bugger simply sat there. What was he waiting for?

'Are you done? I'm here to work.'

Grens didn't answer, only smacked his lips irritatingly.

'Is that a signal? The all-clear?'

'One other thing. I've bought one of those CD players. I put it in my room, next to the tape recorder. I can play that disc of yours now.'

He stayed there, sitting quietly in the judge's seat. Ågestam got on with his work, trying to muster the arguments that would persuade the media-conscious magistrates that a premeditated murder was simply that, and hence must be judged accordingly, regardless of any other circumstances. He wrote, scribbled out, reformulated. Grens, leaning back and staring at the ceiling, seemed half asleep, only making his presence felt now and then by that maddening noise with his lips.

By half past eight, voices from outside reached them. People were shouting, loudly enough for the sound to get through the double windowpanes.

They both went over to have a look and opened a window, letting in a gust of warm, gentle air. The open place in front of the court was no longer empty. They both started counting; roughly two hundred people had come along. They were facing the main entrance. The crowd was in perpetual motion; it looked like a collection of charged particles with waves of movement going through it, pulsating as people advanced towards the entrance and were pushed back by a line of policemen carrying plastic shields.

People were shouting and waving placards. It was a loud demonstration against the judicial process that was about to start up again in half an hour's time. These people wanted to show their anger and scorn against a society that couldn't protect them and yet was prepared to convict a lone citizen who had tried to act in their defence.

Grens and Ågestam exchanged a glance, and Grens shook his head.

'What do they think they're doing? As if that bloody racket would make a difference. They're off their fucking heads. Our boys won't let them in, threatening behaviour or not.'

A stone flew through the air and hit a policeman at the end of the line. Ågestam shuddered instinctively, suddenly reminded of his house and his car, and of Marina, who perhaps was awake by now. She would see the patrol car, it would surely comfort her. He met Grens' eyes again and felt he had to explain.

'They're scared, nothing more or less. Scared of sex offenders to the point of blind hatred. If a father kills one of them, he'll naturally become a popular hero. He was the one who did what they'd like to but don't dare to do.'

Grens snorted.

'You know what? I've got no time for mobs. All my life I've gone for them, broken them up. But not all mobs are the same. That man was a hero, they didn't make him one. He did what we couldn't. He eliminated a public menace.'

Reinforcements were arriving. The dozen police in front of the court were backed up by another twelve, arriving in two mini-buses. The buses came to a sudden halt when two of the demonstrators walked towards them and the men in full riot gear rushed out to join their colleagues. The wall of men and shields grew more solid.

Slowly the crowd calmed down. It stayed watchful, but the shouting grew less strident and the anger less obvious.

Ågestam closed the window and the room was silent again. He had barely been able to stop himself from jabbing Grens with his elbow. There was something overbearing in the man's tone of voice, something that irritated him like hell. Why was he always like that? Instead he started to review aloud the arguments he would soon use to the court.

'I don't understand this, Grens. How do you mean, a hero who has eliminated a menace?'

'Steffansson made people feel safer.'

'He's a murderer. Lund was a murderer. Two of a kind. The people down there seem to think he shouldn't be tried at all. Are we meant to regard personal courage as a mitigating circumstance? I don't think so.'

'I can only repeat that his action meant protection. Nobody else had given them that.'

It seemed all ordinary people agreed that he had screwed up the case. He ought to think like them.

He did. And he did not.

'And I repeat that no one has a right to kill, no one. You don't know me, Grens, and so you can't work out if, really, at heart, I don't agree that blowing the head off a sex maniac is a good idea. As it is, I'll insist that anything short of a lengthy spell in the jug would be a mistake. Society must not send out signals saying anything other than when you kill, you must pay.'

Ågestam went away to order his papers, to clear the floor and the desktop. Grens lingered by the window, watching as the crowd began to disperse. Then he went on to his usual seat at the back of the room, from where he had watched the trial since day one.

The door opened and a porter entered. After him, the journalists streamed in, followed by the members of public who had managed to be at the head of the queue and got past the strict security checkpoint.

The trial of Fredrik Steffansson was on its fifth and last day.

Bengt Söderlund woke early. Two weeks of holiday left. The days were precious now. He had only slept for a few hours every night during the previous week. Only when he kept busy did he have a chance to forget that Elisabeth and the girl had gone and that he didn't even know where they were. At first he had hardly been off the phone, trying her parents and friends and mates from her old job, but no one had seen her. Once that was clear, he didn't bother with telling them why he asked. He wouldn't have any of these buggers laughing at him, no way.

They had agreed to meet at half past nine. He snapped his fingers and Baxter came running to his side. Only a few minutes to go, so he checked at the sitting-room window and there they were, Ove and Helena, Ola and Klas.

They said hello, shook hands, that's how they'd been greeting each other since they were quite young. That's how you did it in Tallbacka.

His garden shed was large and easily seen from Flasher-Göran's windows, so he would see them go inside, and wonder what they were up to. He could stick his wondering up his arse. In the shed Bengt had lined up, end to end, his two tried and trusted sawing-horses, made of long, sturdy planks supported by angled legs. Ove and Klas brought a large plastic sack each, filled with empty glass bottles, in total forty, about half of them for wine, three quarters of a litre capacity, and half for mineral water, 33cc capacity.

They lined up the bottles on the sawing horses and Ove got the lid off the oil drum in the corner behind the lawn mower. It was full to the brim with petrol. He lowered a can under the surface to fill it, watching the bubbles rise. Dribbling petrol as he went, he walked over to the row of bottles, where Helena was waiting with a large plastic funnel in her hand. Ola filled the first bottle to the halfway mark. They moved on to the next bottle; she held the funnel in place, he poured in petrol until the bottle was half full. They carried on like that until all the bottles were done and they had used up over twenty litres of petrol.

Meanwhile, Bengt had spread out an old sheet over the wood basket and used his knife to cut it systematically into forty strips, roughly thirty by thirty centimetres. He pushed a rolled-up strip into the top of each bottle, so that only a small head of cloth protruded.

Then they all set to, placing the filled and stoppered bottles tidily into a big box and making sure that they fitted in securely. A small box with ten cigarette lighters, two each in case one went bust, was put next to the big one.

It hadn't taken them that long. There was still an hour or two to go before noon.

Fredrik was sitting in the centre of the court. His eyes were closed. He wanted to look around but he

Lars Ågestam (LÅ): Steffansson murdered Bernt Lund without a trace of compassion and concern about the other man's life. There are, to my mind, no mitigating circumstances. I will therefore plead that the court recognises his responsibility for this act by sentencing him to a lifetime prison term.

couldn't find the strength to. This was the fifth and last day, and he wanted to be back in the cell and

Kristina Björnsson (KB): Fredrik Steffansson was watching outside the nursery school. He knew that if he did not shoot Bernt Lund, two more little girls would have been sexually violated and killed. We even know who they were.

piss in the washbasin, just as usual, that was all there was. This room was packed with people, all around him, making him feel so bloody lonely.

He remembered how he had felt the first Christmas after Agnes had left him, a few weeks before he met Micaela for the first time. He had not kept track of the passing days, just kept doing the things one must do, so that Christmas Eve turned up unexpectedly. He had tried to get rid of it but failed, so by five o'clock in the afternoon, when it was totally dark outside, he had gone out and tried to have a drink in one of the few Stockholm pubs that were still open. He'd never forget the people holed up in there, isolated in their communal solitude. The atmosphere was so bitter and dull that he found it hard to breathe and staying on was almost unbearable until the programme called Jonsson's Christmas started up on the telly over the bar and became a focal point, which they could gather round for half an hour. The programme was about them somehow, so they had laughed and warmth had enveloped them all for a while, until the evening had suddenly passed, one more for the road and a last cigarette, and then everyone had gone home to his or her scruffy, fusty digs.

He could look around the court now. Now, as then, he was surrounded by strangers, all sucked into a system they didn't truly understand, but which made them feel cheated of their future. Take the prosecutor,

LÅ: According to the criminal law, third chapter, paragraph 1, whoever takes the life of another shall be convicted of murder and sentenced to a prison term, which must exceed ten years and may extend to a life term.

who demanded a life sentence, or the defence lawyer,

KB: According to the criminal law, twenty-fourth chapter, paragraph 1 , an act which is in self-defence or in defence of others and uses reasonable force is a crime only if, in view of the nature of the attack, the intent and significance of what is attacked and other relevant circumstances, it is self-evidently indefensible.

who pleaded reasonable force, or the magistrates, who seemed not to be listening most of the time, or of course the journalists and court recorders, who sat behind him, writing away and drawing and memorising, all stuff which he wasn't allowed to see; he would not learn who they were or what kind of reality they represented. Furthest back was the public, the audience he supposed, there to satisfy their collective curiosity, something he detested them for, their hunger for thrills; they were rubbing their hands with glee at having got close enough, actually being free in real life to stare at the dad-whose-little-girl-was-murdered-so-he- shot-the-murderer.

LÅ: Mr Steffansson planned the murder of Bernt Lund over a period of four days. In other words, it was a premeditated act and he did have sufficient time to reconsider. According to his own statement, Steffansson regarded the killing of Lund as equivalent to eliminating a mad dog.

He didn't want to see them and avoided turning round, they ate him, tore the flesh of his face and burrowed inside his mind. Micaela was there and he wanted to show her something, say something, so he had turned a few times to look for her,

KB: Reasonable force is defined as that used when facing threats with regard to life, health, property or other judicially understood interests, in self-defence or in defence of others. We believe it self-evident that the lives of two little girls were endangered and that Fredrik Steffansson, by acting as he did, saved two young lives

but he feared the eyes fastened on him and the noses sniffing for his scent and so he avoided reminding them and her that he was somebody with something to say.

Hours passed as he sat there, facing forward, eyes closed, refusing to listen. He had seen Marie stuck in a bag on a trolley in the forensic place. Her face had been beautiful, her chest taped together, and her genitals pierced and cut to pieces, and her feet were much too clean, and bore traces of saliva. He, who spoke against, and she, who talked for, had both asked him questions and he had replied, but it was unreal, meaningless.

Only the little girl in the body bag meant anything to him.

The summer was dying slowly. The heat that had ruled for so many weeks was dissolving and being replaced by cooler air, until it seemed only a distant memory. People started complaining when the showers merged into days of rain, claimed that they felt the cold, something that recently had been simply unthinkable. As the damp infiltrated the layers of sweaters and thick trousers, the newspapers gave up on the dad who shot the paedophile and ran headlines about how elderly Germans, who could read fish entrails and foretell the weather, had insisted that conditions this autumn and winter would be dire.

Charlotte van Balvas breathed in the chilly, damp air with pleasure. She had longed for this time of year, when she could walk the streets without sweating and look around without narrowing her eyes against the light. Her skin went angrily red in sunlight and she used to hide in the courtroom, hanging back, and then hurry off to libraries and restaurants, waiting until her time came to join the others, the happily adjusted ones, in the streets again. Soon pale skin would look normal.

She was forty-six years old. As of this moment, she was frightened.

She had seen what they'd done to the prosecutor. They had threatened him and vandalised his home because he did what he had to do for the society he represented. To plead a life term in prison for a proven, premeditated murder was quite in order. As the judge, she had to cope with that troupe of clowns, the magistrates, although their sole reason for being there was that they had served their political masters faithfully. She would have to face them soon, at a meeting out of court, and somehow convince them that according to the law they all recognised, Fredrik Steffansson really deserved a long prison sentence.

She had no choice, she too represented a society that had outlawed lynch mobs and their rough justice.

She was almost there now. Around her, people walked hunchbacked under their umbrellas and she wondered about them. What did they think, would they have fired that gun? Did they believe some human beings had a better claim to live than others?

Did they recognise her?

After all, her picture had been in all the papers, she and the magistrates too.

They determine the outcome in the paedophile trial.

Is killing right? They decide.

The court that might make the death penalty part of Swedish law.

She thought about the man at the centre of the case, whom she had watched for the last five days. His face was so fragile, somehow, and so wounded. He had been trying to avoid looking at the hyenas in the back rows, staring straight ahead without a break. She had liked what she had seen of Steffansson, and had even spent her evenings reading one of his books. She did not doubt him when he said that he had wanted to stop Lund from violating other children, and so force other parents to descend into his own hell. His reasons were utterly believable.

Christ, there were moments when she wanted to caress his wounded face. She could have undressed in front of him, he wouldn't have hurt her. He wasn't frightening. It was unbelievable that he should have scoured the countryside dreaming of revenge.

One of the magistrates had asked her how she would have argued, if it was one of her own children who had been saved. What if she had lived in the catchment area of that particular nursery school in Enköping?

She had no children, but she wasn't as insensitive as all that. Of course she would've felt differently.

As it was, she didn't answer the question.

She was almost there now. The rain was heavier. The large drops collected in growing puddles and there was thunder in the air.

She stopped, stood still, soaked to the skin.

The water pouring over her cheeks, down her neck calmed her, made her feel more courageous.

She started off again, having found the strength to walk into the magistrates' meeting, where she would try to persuade them that the grieving father should have a unanimous custodial life sentence.

It was raining outside. He was standing by the window, peering out between the bars in an attempt to find the cause of the rapping sound which had irritated him for too long now. It was a loose piece of metal guttering. He watched the dull-coloured, jagged strip of metal, watched the raindrops hitting it, registering each tap as pain, winced with each grinding noise as the wind tugged at it.

He went to lie down on the bed, staring up into the grimy ceiling and at the bare walls and the locked door, with its locked observation panel. Maybe he could escape by closing his eyes. But he had spent too much time asleep these last few weeks, and he could no longer immerse himself in unconsciousness.

It had been three weeks since they put him here.

The warders laughed when he said he thought it was a long time. Sweden, they told him, kept people in remand prison for longer than most other countries. Fuck's sake, he was lucky to have his case in court so soon. Some people waited for months, even years.

You see, they told him more than once, he was that lucky because he had shot the nation's top-ranking paedophile and the media were chasing the story night and day. You don't have a clue, they added, about the time others had to endure, a strange waiting time without an end anywhere in sight, a time for suicide after evening bang-up.

He heard steps approaching.

Someone was coming to see him.

He made a quick calculation; lunch was still at least an hour away.

He glanced at the door. There was someone there. Eyes looking in through the opened flap.

'Fredrik?'

'Yes?'

'Visitors for you.'

He sat up in bed, drew his fingers through his hair. This was the first time for days that he had given a thought to his hair.

The door opened. In stepped the chaplain and his lawyer. Rebecca and Kristina. And they were beaming at him.

'Hi there. Ghastly weather, it's raining.'

He couldn't be bothered saying anything. These two were people he liked and he should open up, speak to them, but he didn't have the strength. Conversation was misplaced in here, where even the source of light was ugly and lifeless.

'What do you want?'

'It's a good day!'

'What? I'm tired. It's that bloody tapping noise.' He pointed vaguely towards the window. 'Listen. Can't you hear it?'

They did listen. Then they both nodded, yes, what an annoying sound that was. Rebecca fiddled with her dog-collar for a moment and then she put her hand on his shoulder.

'Fredrik, it's your turn to listen. Please. Kristina is bringing you good news.'

She turned to the lawyer, who went to sit on the bed next to him. A comforting presence, a plump body and a calm voice.

'And this is what I've got to tell you. Fredrik, you're a free man.'

He heard what she said, but did not speak.

'Do you understand what I'm saying? You are no longer in detention. The magistrates didn't agree, but a majority came down in favour of "an act of reasonable force". That's final.'

So that was what she was on about. So what?

'Fredrik, listen. You can walk out of this cell. You can take off the bin-bags they've dressed you in. And tonight, only you decide if a door is to be locked or not.'

He got up and went over to the window. The noise was louder than ever. It was raining heavily now; there might be a thunderstorm during the night.

'Oh, I don't know.'

'What do you mean? What don't you know?'

'I don't know if this means anything. What's the point? I might as well stay here.'

His time as a National Service conscript came back to him. How he had hated soldiering, counting every minute until they'd let him go home, and then, one day, when he finally stepped outside the barrack door and left through the open gate, what should've been a dream-come-true only made him feel deflated and empty. It was like that again.

'I don't think you understand at all. You see, I'm finished.'

The two women glanced at each other. They didn't grasp what he felt and they deserved an explanation.

'I am… I don't exist. I don't have anything that I value. I did have a child. She does not exist. She suffered at the hands of someone who'd made others suffer, and now he doesn't exist either. I thought life was inviolable. And then I went and shot someone to death. If you lose who you are and what you have… I'm at a loss. I don't fucking know.'

They stayed. Eventually he changed into his own clothes, readied himself to change into another world.

He was not banged up any more.

Walking away from his cell, he nodded to the officer, the guy with the eyes. He bought a coffee from the squeaky machine in the corridor.

Then he marched straight past the twenty-odd journalists who were perched on the stairs, wanting to get at him, at his face. He said nothing. He knew nothing.

Rebecca and Kristina had ordered a taxi for him. He hugged them and left.

Bengt Söderlund ran as fast as he could through Tallbacka. He had been running all the way from home, a taste of blood in his mouth, his hip hurting like when he was a schoolboy running the cross-country competition and winning, not because he was the strongest or the best trained or anything like that, but because he was the most determined.

He was running as if he couldn't get ahead fast enough, as if every second was precious. He could see from a distance that the lights were on in Ove and Helena's house, and their car was there. He kept running, waving a piece of paper as he went, up the steps, through the door and into the sitting room.

'Now we'll fucking go for it!' he shouted.

Helena looked up, startled. She had been reading a book, curled up naked in an armchair.

He had never seen her naked before. If he had, he would have realised that she was beautiful, but he couldn't stop for a proper look now, he was walking round her, holding up his paper, casting eager glances through the window. Was Ove in the garden? Where was he?

'Bengt, what's the matter? What's up? Ove is in the basement bathroom, showering.'

'I'll fetch him.'

'Hang on. He'll be here soon.' 'I'll go.'

He went down the basement steps clumsily, hurriedly. No problem about finding the way; he and Elisabeth had been using that shower during the time when he was rebuilding their bathroom. She had wanted a larger one, and he had pulled all the stops out, ruined a cupboard, but she got her effing bathroom.

He pulled back the shower-curtain, big birds against a blue background. Ove turned round so quickly he almost fell, crouching, until he took in who it was.

'Here! See this! Now we'll fucking go for it!'

Ove dried himself quickly, wrapped the towel round his hips and followed Bengt back upstairs. Bengt was still waving his paper, his trophy held up for the admiration of the audience. Back in the sitting room, Helena was waiting for them. She had put on a dressing gown.

'You have no idea! This is it!'

He spread out the paper on the table and they bent forward to read.

'I pulled it from the TV site on the web, the news page. Just twenty minutes ago. Actually, nineteen minutes. Look at the time, eleven a.m.'

While they read, Bengt paced about impatiently.

'Are you done? Do you get it? They let him out. On grounds of reasonable force! He shot that monster and saved the lives of two little girls. And the verdict was "reasonable force"! He'll be back home tonight knocking back a drink, I'd say! Four votes against one, you know, only the judge didn't go along with it, but the other lot didn't hesitate!'

Ove started reading the whole thing again from the beginning. Helena relaxed back in her armchair, holding her hands in the air in a gesture of amazement.

Bengt leaned over her and hugged her. Then he slapped Ove on the back.

'Now's the time! We'll do him now! It's our fucking right. Now we'll get him! Reasonable force, of course! No more, no less! Reasonable force!'

They waited until darkness had fallen. All five of them spent the afternoon in Bengt's house, sitting around, chatting at times and drinking cups of coffee. Darkness, when it came around half past ten, was not pitch-black, just dark enough to make people faceless.

They went out into the garden to acclimatise their eyes to the blurred outlines. It was very quiet. Tallbacka was always quiet at that time of night and many windows had already gone dark, because it was a place where the day began and ended early. Bengt went inside for a moment, snapped his fingers and felt Baxter's tongue licking his hand.

Then they went together to the shed, unlocked the padlock, lifted out the boxes, first the heavy one with the petrol-filled bottles, then the small box with the cigarette lighters. Ove and Klas minded the bottle-box. Ola distributed the lighters, two each.

They walked far enough to be able to see into the house next door. All the lights were on, and from were they stood they could follow him wandering about, from the kitchen to the sitting room and then towards the bathroom. When the bathroom light went on, Bengt ordered Baxter to sit and walked the few steps to a telephone pole. He climbed up far enough to reach the wire. He was surprisingly agile and got there quickly. From one of the many pockets in his jeans, he produced a pair of pliers and cut the wire.

The bathroom lamp still glowed when Bengt slid down and moved to the next pole, which had a locked box halfway up. He opened it with the key to his own, identical box and located the mains switch.

The house next door went dark.

They waited. It took longer than they had expected.

But Flasher-Göran finally got a couple of candles going.

Then he found the torch. They watched the light flickering across the walls.

A few more seconds, as the torchlight lit up the hall. It was moving towards the front door.

Bengt had a grip on Baxter's collar. The dog knew what he was meant to do, soon. Attack. When his master ordered.

'Baxter. Get him.'

The torchlight behind the glass panel in the door, and the door opening.

Bengt let Baxter go at the same moment as Flasher-Göran stepped outside. Baxter ran, barking loudly.

The man in the doorway realised the danger and managed to slam the door shut just as the dog got near enough to jump at him.

'Baxter. Watch.'

The dog settled down in front of the door, ready to spring.

Bengt tried to follow the shadow of the man as he ran through the house and decided that Flasher-Göran must have gone into the kitchen. He shouted in that general direction.

'Was that scary, Göran? All dark and cold for you? Help's coming. You'll get heat and light soon enough, Göran.'

He pointed at Ove, Ola and Klas, who quickly went back into the shed and hauled the heavy petrol container out on to the lawn. From there they rolled it across to Flasher- Göran's house. When they were close enough, they unscrewed the top before rolling it right round the house, letting the petrol soak into gravel paths and flower borders.

Meanwhile Helena had completed her job. She had placed the petrol-filled bottles in five equal groups.

They all lit the rags in their bottles, one by one, holding each one still just long enough for the flame to take, and then began fire-bombing the house in front of them.

Five explosions at roughly the same time, but all in different parts of the house.

And five more, and again and again. Eight times. Always new small fires, slowly growing and meeting.

Bengt produced a piece of paper from one of his pockets. In a loud voice, to be heard above the roaring of the fire, he read out the court's judgement on Fredrik Steffansson, the man who shot to kill, but who went free because he had killed the paedophile who had violated his daughter.

Just as he had finished, the kitchen window opened. Flasher-Göran leapt out, screaming. He fell heavily to the ground.

Bengt had time to think that if only Elisabeth had been here to watch, she would have understood what it was all about.

Flasher-Göran was moving where he lay, and Bengt called Baxter away from his watch at the front door. The dog ran towards the man, who was trying to get up, jumped on him, sank his teeth into the arm with which the man tried to protect himself, and started tearing it apart.