The Beast by Anders Roslund, Börge Hellström Page B

Fact.'
        'There's
time enough.'
        'I
love you, Nils. And I want you. But there isn't time, not now.'
        Nils
gave up, but Lennart knew, he saw his lover's disappointment. It was harder for
Nils, he thought, who didn't have someone at home waiting for him, somebody to
lie close to in bed, to make gentle love with. Nils dreamed with Lennart in
mind, only him. No secrets to mull over, only a future when it was simply Nils
and Lennart, nothing and nobody else.
        Lennart
stroked his cheek, kissed his forehead. Nils was so beautiful, proud-looking
somehow. Two years older, there were some grey streaks in his dark hair.
        'I
must be off.'
        'Any
chance of meeting up later today?'
        'Afterwards
I've got to see Bertolsson. He's asked me out to lunch. Maybe it's to be nice
to me, but on the other hand - maybe not. It might be a threat. When I come
back, what about a walk to the water-tower?'
        'I'll
wait for you there.'
        Lennart
held him for longer than he should. Let him free, slowly. Stood up.
        
        
        The grey
concrete wall was seven metres high. It loomed at the edge of the forest and
then snaked along for one and a half kilometres, enclosing five low brick
buildings.
        Some
people were kept inside. Others stayed outside.
        Aspsås
was one of Sweden's twelve Category-B prisons, a medium security rating. The
lifers, murderers and heavy drug-traders were locked up in Cat-A's. Small-time
traders hid inside Aspsås, where there were no long-term men, only
fixed-termers coming and going with sentences between two and four years. One
hundred and sixty men, in eight of the ten units in the wings. Most were repeat
offenders with drug-habits, who would do a house-job to land some dosh, get
fixed, do a job for more dosh, more fixes, do a job, get nicked and twenty-six
months inside, then release, a job, some dosh, fixes, a job, dosh, fix, the
pigs and thirty-four in the jug, release, a job.
        Here,
just as everywhere. Me against you, you against the screws. Only two rules,
don't grass and don't fuck mates who don't want to.
        The
other two units housed sex offenders. Hated, always under threat. Nonces fuck
people who don't want to.
        It
was as if the prisoners' joint shame and self-disgust had to find an outlet, as
if being despised by society outside the wall was so hard to take that the only
thing that could make up for it was to humiliate someone else. We, the
straights, will breathe more easily if we fall in with the ancient prison
compact everywhere that these sex freaks are nastier, more damaged, more excluded
and that I, the murderer, rank more highly than you, the rapist, and that I,
having robbed someone of the right to live, have more dignity than you, who
fucked some sad cunt senseless. Though I've violated, it's not the way you did
it and, surely, you're worse than me.
        Maybe
in Aspsås hatred was greater than in many other prisons because it was a mixed
institution, where a couple of wings had one unit for normal prisoners and one
for sex offenders. Because every Aspsås prisoner was suspect, a placement there
was a potential death sentence for a man doing time for something straight,
like eighteen months for grievous bodily harm. Transfer from Aspsås to another
prison was bad news and could mean a serious beating unless you had papers to
prove you were clean. Without your sentence up front to show anything
different, every incomer was convicted of sex crimes until proven innocent.
        H
Unit was one of the eight normal units, which housed the ordinary lot of
small-time crooks and street drug-dealers, assorted robbers, quite a few with
GBH convictions, and the odd fraudster. These men were either on their way up
in the criminal hierarchy and could expect longer sentences next time round, or
had settled for doing the same pathetic stuff over and over, but were
unsuitable for mixing with drunk drivers