Beyond All Reasonable Doubt

by Malin Persson Giolito

  Stig Ahlin didn’t talk about himself. If he could help it, he didn’t think about himself either. Especially not about his daughter. The thoughts of Ida were the worst ones.

  * * *

  —

  The December air, refrigerator-cold, struck Sophia as she stepped through the door at the prison lobby and into the courtyard where the prison’s transport vehicles arrived.

  She walked back the way she’d come and stood at the bus stop. Thirty-two minutes before the bus would arrive to pick her up. For exactly twenty-five minutes she did a Sudoku. Then she made up her mind and called Hans Segerstad.

  He answered immediately. He began talking before she could even say hello. He must have been sitting by the phone and waiting for her call.

  “I know he’s unpleasant,” he was quick to say. “But it’s not like you have to marry him. Don’t let yourself be frightened off. I guess he’s never been the ingratiating type, and I suspect anyone would end up a little grumpy after spending thirteen years in that place. I hope you’ll allow me to explain something before you —”

  Sophia interrupted him. “Don’t worry. I’m calling to tell you why I’ve decided to help with Ahlin’s petition for a new trial.”

  Hans laughed. “That sounds good. That sounds really good.”

  Sophia pictured Hans in her mind, holding his ancient cell phone in one hand — it was the same model her grandfather insisted on using — and slowly clenching his other hand into a fist, victorious. The phone already smeared with moisture and warmth.

  “There are three reasons I want to work on this,” she said. “The first and most important one: it makes me fucking suspicious that all these fuckers are so fucking sure of everything.”

  “My, Sophia, that’s a lot of swearing.”

  “Why is that? In a case based on circumstantial evidence? Two unanimous courts of law convicted him. Not until they appealed to the Supreme Court did anyone even quake in their well-shined lawyer shoes. One single justice wanted to grant him certiorari. Everyone else was dead certain he was guilty and saw no reason to review the case. The police, the prosecutors, the district court, the court of appeals. Not to mention the all-knowing general public. It’s been fourteen years since Katrin Björk died; people hardly remember who they were married to fourteen years ago, but they remember that this man is guiltier than Judas. And the first reaction is always that this must be because he is guilty. It was my first reaction too. But that was before I started reading the case materials.”

  “I see you’ve noticed the discrepancies between the public image of Stig Ahlin and what actually emerged in the criminal investigation.”

  “Yes.” Sophia nodded at her phone. “I have. And it’s strange. I’ve certainly seen circumstantial evidence cases before. But one based on shakier grounds would be hard to find.”

  Hans chuckled in satisfaction.

  “Second, I think it’s too simple. A conscientious, successful doctor with no criminal record beats a little girl to death. I refuse to accept it. Not even his wife — and she accused Stig of doing the greatest evil one can imagine in real life — not even she claimed he was violent. More the opposite. But the fact that he gave her hickeys, that makes him some sort of vampire. I don’t believe Stig Ahlin is the type to suddenly see red, or that everything just went black all of a sudden, or however people usually explain it. I can’t put it together. Not even if he freaked out when he realized how young she was, or because she demanded more from him than he wanted to give. I can’t make it work. That’s my second reason.”

  Sophia was totally out of breath; she paused to recover.

  “But I’ll only help you on one condition.”

  “What’s the third reason?”

  “Oh, right. The third reason, okay. Hold on. Hmm. What was I thinking? Oh!” Sophia threw her free hand into the air. “Forget the third reason. That’s why I want to help you. Or, well, him.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sophia was thrown off balance. Hans, saying thanks?

  Hans Segerstad had thanked her. It had been important to him that she accept the case, that she, and not just anyone, should be the one to help. He was admitting as much. She hadn’t expected that.

  “You’re welcome. But there are a few things I want you to know. I have one condition. Because God have mercy if you’re wrong. I’m not helping you with this case because you want to change case law about the evaluation of evidence. It’s not a technicality, not for me, and I’ll refuse to take part if you’re planning a trick like that. You have to promise me. I’m far from convinced that he’s innocent. You are sure, and I’ve found enough red flags that I’ll trust you on it. And I’ll continue to help you as long as I do. But if that changes, you’ll have to fly solo again. Because we’re going to do something positive now. I feel like doing something positive. Yeah, there it is! That’s my third reason. I want to do something positive.”

  “I do too, Sophia.” Hans Segerstad sounded serious now. “It’s not a familiar feeling, I’ll tell you that. But I feel the same way. And besides, we’ll never be granted a new trial just based on some technicality.”

  “If I come to find he’s as guilty as everyone thinks, I’m out. I don’t give a shit if you think it’s ethical or not. I’m out, right away. If that happens, I don’t have time for this anymore. Here comes my bus.”

  And I want to get that retrial, Sophia thought as she boarded the bus. That’s my fourth reason. Get an innocent man freed, that was my dream once upon a time. It should still be my dream. That dream never starred a friendly, charming type who already had the world on his side. The dream was never about an easy case.

  She took a window seat. It was the same driver she’d had on the way there. At the back of the bus sat a woman with a child in her arms. When the bus turned back toward the main road again, she saw the outermost fence of the facility she’d just left.

  She had once had to visit a client’s room in a housing barracks. There had been fighting among the inmates and all the visiting rooms were being used as temporary isolation cells. They couldn’t forbid visits from attorneys, so she had been escorted out of the main building, past the workshops, through the exercise yard, and into the corridor where her client was kept. When she arrived at her client’s room they unlocked the door for her, allowed her to step in, and then closed the door behind her.

  The air had been heavy with the sour odors of her client, and the blinds had been down. Her client was on his bed, and there he had to stay or else there wouldn’t be room for them both. It had felt like being locked in a closet with someone she didn’t know.

  Sixty-five square feet. One twin bed bolted to the wall. At the foot of the bed was a TV; it too was mounted on the wall. Next to the bed was a narrow desk; above the bed was a bookshelf. All the furniture was bolted down, impossible to budge.

  Stig Ahlin didn’t want her to petition for his sentence to be time-limited.

  “I’m somewhat safe in here.”

  So he’d said.

  Sophia rested her forehead against the cool windowpane. She had met many people who were serving life sentences; she’d looked into their eyes, listened to their pleas. Heard them beg her to do something, anything, as long as someone did something, as long as something happened. As long as she broke the tedium.

  One time, one of her clients asked her to petition for a new trial in a case of manslaughter he’d never confessed to. When she asked what new facts she could present, he’d said he wanted to confess. He was prepared to do anything, if only she could get him out of the routine life he was forced to follow. If only something would happen.

  The bus slowly got up to speed. She was leaving Emla Prison and its surrounding community behind. Fields and managed forests flew past the window.

  Stig Ahlin, though, he hadn’t asked her for anything. He’d never asked anyone for help, not even Hans Segerstad.
On the day his verdict took effect, he had stopped asking the system for help. Had he adapted? Did he accept what had happened? Could a man who claimed to be innocent still come to terms with a life sentence?

  That smothering, restrictive boredom. No one had painted the building, no one had put up wallpaper; there was no budget for renovations and replacements. And the guys he had for company didn’t do being supportive friends or sitting in circles and holding hands. In the kitchen where the prisoners could prepare food, all the knives had been dulled and their handles chained to the work surface. Stig Ahlin should want to get out of there. That should have been his greatest wish. It was inconceivable that he felt safer behind bars.

  “I didn’t murder Katrin Björk.”

  That was what he said. But he hadn’t asked Sophia to believe him.

  13

  Every day but Sunday, for an hour each session, Stig Ahlin ran. Altogether he went between forty-five and fifty miles per week. It wasn’t as if he took a day of rest because of his religious beliefs. He didn’t have any. There were fewer staff around on Sundays, so there was no one to take him to the gym and watch him while he ran.

  He knew he should be grateful. It was an almost bafflingly generous privilege that they opened his door an hour earlier than anyone else’s, just so he could run. He also knew that it was a privilege that could be taken away at any time. And then he would have to settle for running during exercise time, along with everyone else, the people he shared his life with. The common wife killers, rapists, and whore fuckers. The ones who would get on the treadmill and walk slowly for an hour, just to keep him from using it. The ones who shouldn’t even be there. They were the ones who had kicked the weight racks until it was decreed that free weights would no longer be allowed at prison gyms. Who grabbed a handle on one of the machines and wound it aimlessly in different directions before letting go. Who would shove a pencil into the mechanism, to break it, just so he couldn’t run.

  For the first few years, Stig Ahlin had been assigned to run in the exercise yard. The sex crimes isolation unit’s yard was forty-five by sixty-five yards. He had run around and around, leaning slightly inward, with those unbearable fools standing and walking in the center, staring until their eyes bulged out of their skulls. He had tired them out. His hamster-wheel circus made them dizzy and the unit director had decided he could have an hour, not all on his own, of course, but almost.

  Now he was allowed to work out across the yard, in the gym. The guards were all the same — sitting on a chair, reading the paper and checking their phones as if waiting for an important message.

  It was never quiet. The HVAC system hummed. The treadmill rumbled. Stig landed with his whole weight. Sometimes he increased the incline to keep from running into the handles in front of him. The guard’s radio squeaked and growled.

  Stig had no music; he didn’t do interval training. He just ran as fast as he could until he could taste iron. He fixed his eyes on the wall in front of him. For the first few years there had been a mirror there. It had vanished along with all the free weights. All that was left was the rectangle of darker paint that showed where it had been.

  The room thundered when Stig Ahlin ran. And each booming step on the rubber belt was a reminder of what it wasn’t, what it could never be.

  Over 4,700 days without the sounds of rubber soles on gravel, grass, asphalt or sand, moss, dirt, or rock. Hour upon hour without his own time or control of his own movements. The belt relentlessly moved his feet back, forcing his muscles to counter with forward motion.

  The belt could be angled upward, and he could regulate its speed himself. But there was nothing he could do to get the sensation of truly running. It was impossible to produce, even as a distant mirage. The sound got in the way.

  Still he ran. He ran because they let him, but also because he didn’t have to. And for one minute — he never knew ahead of time when it would happen — the sound might disappear, into the pain of aching muscles, when his brain let go out of exhaustion. Then everything went silent. Then his brain could rest.

  He ran almost every morning. Every evening at quarter to eight, his door was locked from the outside.

  The days went by. That was about it.

  TWO

  14

  “Any new cases?” Lars Gustafsson, founder of Gustafsson & Weber and its oldest staff member, gazed around sleepily.

  It was the Friday before the week of Christmas, and Sophia and her colleagues had decided to have a brief meeting before heading off for their annual Christmas luncheon. The entire staff was present in the conference room. Everyone was drinking black coffee except Anna-Maria, who was drinking two liters of chai with soy milk.

  They would be dining at the Veranda at Grand Hôtel. Sophia had prepared by skipping breakfast and walking to work. She suspected most of her colleagues had done the same, and that they were dreaming of all the food they would soon get to eat as they sat there. Jansson’s Temptation, little meatballs fried dark brown, six different kinds of ham, gravlax, and generously stuffed lamb sausage. Freshly baked sourdough and knäckebröd from a brick oven. Cheeseboards, egg-and-anchovy salad, truffle omelets, salmon pudding, Västerbotten quiche, lutefisk, fingerling potatoes, and soused herring with sour cream and fresh chives. Cheesecake, angel food pudding, fruit crumbles, ris à la malta, almond cream tarts, saffron bread, fruit salad, raspberry mousse, dream cookies, and French chocolate cake with whipped cream. Perhaps Lars Gustafsson wasn’t tired at all. His mind was just elsewhere.

  “I have to be at county court at ten tomorrow morning.” Björn Skiller, the firm’s youngest partner, hardly looked like he was thinking about food. “A deportation verdict. The enforcement part. A family. Two kids, ages three and two. The mother is pregnant.”

  “What country?” Anna-Maria had stopped typing on her phone.

  “Afghanistan.”

  Everyone fell silent. There was nothing to say. Anna-Maria went back to her phone.

  “Does anyone have good news to share?” Lars wondered.

  Sophia took a deep breath. “I’ve decided to help Stig Ahlin petition for a new trial.”

  Sophia tentatively looked around. Anna-Maria was shaking her head in dismay. Lars raised his eyebrows.

  “Of course you have,” Björn mumbled.

  Sophia had expected Anna-Maria to be upset. But that didn’t matter much. Anna-Maria was always getting upset. Sophia was, however, a bit anxious about what her fellow partners would say. Their finances were strained. Helping out on a case like this was pure loss.

  “Do you have time for that?” Lars had crossed his arms.

  “I really want to do this.” Sophia cleared her throat.

  I want to, she thought. It’s been a long time since I had such strong feelings about a case.

  “You’re going to like it.” It took effort to keep from looking like she was asking permission. “When I’ve gotten a little farther I’ll brief you. You might not think it’s a good idea right now. But you’ll change your minds when you know more.”

  Lars aimed a faint smile at Sophia. She thought he seemed annoyed. I should have talked to him earlier, she thought. I should have told him a different way.

  “It sounds like something you could entertain us with over lunch. We can get a little tipsy and pretend that we’re still idealists who believe in the system and our role within it.”

  Björn snorted. It was meant to be a laugh. Sophia nodded, and Anna-Maria excused herself and left. It had been half an hour since she’d used the bathroom.

  Lars and Björn, too, stood up and headed for their offices. Sophia went to the reception desk to see if she could find any fruit. Just as she was sinking her teeth into a wrinkled apple, Lars stuck his head out of his office and called down the short hallway.

  “Do you have a spare minute?”

  Sophia nodded. Apple in hand, she took a seat in the chair
before Lars’s desk. She frantically finished chewing so she could defend herself.

  “It’s not going to affect our other cases,” she said at last.

  She knew she didn’t truly need to make excuses. She could do as she pleased, and work on whatever she thought was important. But Lars had the right to ask. If she couldn’t cover her share of the rent, his practice would be on the line as well.

  Lars waved her off.

  “I don’t doubt that for a second. In fact, I think it’s an important case. Well done, Sophia. Well done. We’ll always make it through. Let me know if you need help, because we can certainly bring on an intern. You know I like interns.”

  Sophia felt her throat close up. She swallowed.

  “I know you do.” She swallowed again. “I hate interns. Especially the young chicks you choose.”

  Lars grinned. “I don’t choose only female interns. Although they do work better. They know how to prioritize. Not like those millennial guys. You have no idea how many baffling things men today have to make the time for in order to self-actualize. Learn to play guitar, go to the gym, hang out with their girlfriends. I met a twenty-four-year-old recently who told me he liked to go mushroom-picking.” Lars shook his head in misgiving. “Just when you think you’ve heard everything, you meet a man who likes mushroom-picking.”

  Sophia smiled. “Mushrooms are delicious.”

  Lars snorted. “Sure. Of course. But why waste a gifted mind like that? Anyway. Intern or no. You can always ask me for help, right?”

  “Watch out. I might take you at your word.”

  “That’s the idea.” Lars looked Sophia in the eye. “I’m happy to help. Seriously. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a homicide case botched as badly as Stig Ahlin’s. Ever. What did you do to get in on it? I thought he hated lawyers.”