Beyond All Reasonable Doubt

by Malin Persson Giolito

  Sophia nodded. Relief spread through her body. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Lars was the first to believe she was doing the right thing.

  “I know. And Stig Ahlin does his utmost to make lawyers hate him right back. Segerstad basically gave me the job.”

  “But Stig Ahlin accepted you. You’re his attorney, not Hans Segerstad. And I’m jealous as hell. I wish I’d had the chance, myself.”

  “You’re the first one I’ve talked to who doesn’t think I’m nuts.”

  Lars laughed. “You spend too much time with the wrong people and not enough with me. People are stupid. I’ve known that for a long time. But that’s not why I wanted to have a word with you. I wanted to warn you. I know how you are when you get going on a case. You want to do absolutely everything on your own.” Lars stroked his tie. “Accept help, Sophia. Get protection, if you want to. You don’t have to take the whole blow yourself. Because people are going to come after you, unpleasant people. You realize that, right? You have no idea how many people spend time hating folks they don’t even know. Some of them can be truly nasty. You’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg so far. Once it gets out that you’re Stig Ahlin’s attorney, you’ll learn stuff about hatred you never knew before. But remember, the whole firm is behind you. You’re not alone.”

  “Thanks,” Sophia said. “I appreciate it.”

  “Have you gotten any reactions yet?”

  Sophia thought of Anna’s anger. Her voice that would hardly hold, her eyes accusing Sophia of betrayal. Grandpa’s scorn and condescending comments. Anna-Maria’s disgust. The way the guards at Emla had looked at her. How they had taken an extra-long time to go through her bag, how she had been subjected to a body search. A quick one, of course, nothing more serious than a pat-down outside her clothes, but she had never been searched like that at a prison before. Not even when she was visiting her clients there on drug charges. She hadn’t reacted at the time, at Emla, but now her colleague’s question made her think about it.

  Had she gotten any reactions? Yes. And not just from people she knew. The same day she visited Stig at the prison, just before eight in the evening, she’d received a couple of anonymous emails from someone, or several someones, who clearly knew she had agreed to be Stig Ahlin’s attorney just a few hours earlier.

  It was strange, but Sophia hadn’t found it frightening. That sort of thing happened every week. She worked to help asylum seekers stay in the country; she represented women and children who’d been victims of crimes, and she defended men who were accused of rape. All of these things riled up people who wanted to share with the rest of the world what they considered to be rightful rage. It was typically worst when she expressed her opinions to the media — any opinion at all. She’d spoken about this with colleagues, and they all said the same thing: women who expressed opinions in public had to learn to tolerate those anonymous emails.

  Most of them were about sex. From men who wrote that they hated her or wanted to fuck her. If only Sophia got some dick, she would change her mind, that was the general sentiment. Sometimes they said she should be sterilized, to keep the world from ending up with any more people like her. Very rarely they said she should just be beaten black and blue, but even those emails were usually based on the idea that she needed to be punished, that’s what she must want most of all, it made her horny. That she said things she shouldn’t because no one had ever truly filled her up.

  The emails she’d received since deciding to work with Stig Ahlin weren’t dangerous. They didn’t say she needed cock; they said nothing about sex, violence, or forced sterilization. Sophia hadn’t been scared when she received them. Only surprised that they’d arrived so soon after her visit to Emla.

  Sophia rose from Lars’s visitor’s chair. It was noon, time to head over to Grand. It would take no more than ten minutes if they walked.

  “No,” she said at last. Insignificant emails from anonymous jokesters were not the sort of reaction Lars was referring to.

  “None at all?” Lars sounded unconvinced.

  “I’m not worried about Internet trolls. Those dudes just sit around clattering their hate into a keyboard. It’s never any worse than that.”

  Lars Gustafsson nodded slowly.

  “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “You know best. Just promise you’ll ask for help when you need it.”

  15

  Hans Segerstad still kept an office in the law school building at Uppsala. No one had wanted to take it from him. In addition, he continued to serve as an adviser to a few of the research students he’d taken on before his retirement. He needed a place to meet with them.

  Sophia arrived at his building twenty minutes before their appointment, and instead of waiting she decided to try the door code they’d used back when she was a student. Ten sixty-six, the Battle of Hastings. It still worked. She went straight up to Segerstad’s office. It, too, looked as it always had. Shelves full of books, crammed in every which way, stacked on the floor. The wastebaskets were overflowing, and crumpled pieces of paper lay on the worn, dingy Persian rug.

  Segerstad had always forbidden the janitors from entering his office when he wasn’t there to make sure nothing would be disturbed. He was worried that his incomprehensible arrangement would be ruined if it came in contact with cleaning agents. Sophia guessed that large parts of his office hadn’t been cleaned since he moved in.

  In any case, her old professor was well prepared for their meeting. The conference table, with space for six, was covered in binders and documents: the case file.

  Three rows of stacked papers, and the top one was the preliminary investigation. Interviews, notes, protocols, phone records, photographs, and forms gathered in binders and plastic folders, held together with black binder clips. The stacks in the next row were even taller. This was the slush pile, the leftovers: page after page of extra information that didn’t belong in the material that had laid the ground for the charges.

  The bottom row was the least comprehensive. It contained the two rulings, the one from the district court and the one from the appeals court, and the appeal that had been sent to the Supreme Court. There were also a number of other decisions concerning Stig Ahlin’s time in prison and one pile Sophia wasn’t sure about.

  “What’s this?” She tapped the top sheet of paper, then picked it up and began to read.

  “Various medical records. Stig Ahlin has seen a number of his former colleagues in recent years. He’s given me access to those as well.”

  “What do you want to do? Where should we start?”

  The professor took half a step back as if to consider his work. He seemed satisfied. Despite the apparent chaos in his office, he was famous for his sense of order. This was one of the reasons they worked so well together. As a lawyer, Sophia had learned that half the battle was already won if you were more familiar with the file than your opponent was. The case file was the only reality you needed to care about when you were preparing for a hearing. Certainly, the principle of orality was in play: nothing except what was presented to the court during the hearing could be used to reach the final decision. But everyone who’d worked at a court or with court proceedings knew that this was where the secret lay. It was crucial to know the written material so well that you were the one who guided what came up in oral arguments and how it was presented.

  In a case like this, when the challenge was to try to prove that a decision had been wrong, and so off the mark that the Supreme Court would be forced to rip it up, you had to go back. Find that one thing everyone else had missed. Or what had been buried under other information, most likely by the person who had been more familiar with the file.

  “How much have you had time to read?”

  Hans Segerstad had taken a seat in his desk chair. He looked at Sophia, who was still standing by the stacks of documents.

  “The rulings, of course, and most of the preliminar
y investigation. I’ve still got quite a bit of the slush pile left, but I’ll be done with that soon.”

  Sophia noticed the creases on Hans’s forehead. He didn’t believe her.

  “I didn’t have much to do last week.”

  Hans nodded slowly. He knew it was a lie.

  “So, if I asked you what Katrin Björk had eaten for dinner on the night of the murder, you would be able to account for —”

  “The dinner was standing untouched in her parents’ home. Fish, salad, and a freshly baked chocolate cake. The autopsy showed that she had sampled the batter. Quite a bit, I assume, given that some of it was still in her stomach. And she had eaten something else a few hours before the murder, I think it was yogurt and a sandwich. Something along those lines. You don’t need to test me, I’m a fast reader. You know I am.”

  Hans gave a reluctant smile. “Well then. Okay, if you had to limit yourself to three things, where would you start digging?”

  “Where would I start? I’d keep away from what you’ve done already.”

  Hans Segerstad laughed appreciatively. “Smart. What’s going on? Are you getting so old you’re starting to show respect for your even older colleagues? Have you stopped believing I’m always wrong?”

  “Hardly.” Sophia had picked up one of the documents she hadn’t seen before. “I’d stay away because I don’t think what you’ve already written — about the evaluation of evidence and the need to create precedent in this particular arena — I don’t think that’s going to get us our new trial. Not a chance. We need something entirely different.”

  Segerstad snorted. “So, what I’ve done is completely worthless?”

  “Yes. Or, not completely.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But it will be worthless if we don’t come up with the other part. The part that will get us a new trial.”

  “And naturally, you’ll be the one to figure that out. May I ask what it is?”

  “You wanted three things, you said? Because good things come in threes?”

  “Because no one has time for anything beyond that.”

  “Then we should start with the rulings. And the way I see it, there really were exactly three factors that got Stig Ahlin convicted, and three things we need to show are incorrect. If we’re going to convince the Supreme Court to grant a new trial.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Sophia smiled. It was always like this, no matter what they were discussing. He sat down, settled in comfortably, posed questions and assessed her answers, graded her. She stood up and presented what she’d learned. He told her whether she was right or wrong. It was like ballroom dancing. They knew the steps.

  “First of all, there’s what isn’t in the decisions. The demonization of Stig Ahlin. The fact that he was depicted as the worst person imaginable. When he confessed to not only knowing Katrin Björk, but also having had a sexual relationship with her, it appeared extremely improbable that she would have known someone equally horrible, or possibly even more horrible. We have to change that image. The findings rule out alternative perpetrators. We must show that to be wrong. And by that I don’t mean we have to solve the mystery, that we have to find whoever did it. We only have to open up the possibility that he exists. Not finger someone and give his name and description, just open that door. In order to do that we need to get to know Katrin better. I don’t believe in saints. I don’t believe that Katrin Björk was one. Hell. Surely not even Mother Teresa could have been a saint as a teenager, right?”

  “How will you do it? Did you find something in the preliminary investigation?”

  “Yes. Something we can start with, anyway. There’s an interview with an old friend of Katrin’s that caught my attention. She claimed Katrin had a lot of boyfriends. And that she hated the guys at school. I’d like to talk to her again.”

  “Do you think you’ll learn anything new that way?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m not ruling it out. Because the investigation contains next to nothing about Katrin. And far too little about the life she lived. They did some routine work at first, but then…it’s as if everything ground to a halt when Stig Ahlin came onto the scene. Once he showed up, they focused entirely on him. They were so overjoyed that they dropped everything else. And Katrin could have had another boyfriend. I think it’s unpardonably sloppy that there’s nothing else in the file. Surely that can’t have been it? Surely there’s no way Stig Ahlin was her first and only guy. A fifteen-year-old doesn’t go from grooming the prettiest pony in the stables to jumping in bed with a thirty-five-year-old doctor who likes hookers. At least not without stopping somewhere else along the way.”

  Hans nodded slowly.

  “Good. Find out as much as you can about Katrin and her male acquaintances. We’ll need that. About her problems. Her parents. What was her home life like? I’ve always thought it was remarkable that a responsible girl like her slept with Stig Ahlin. But I’m sure you know nothing about that stuff, right? I assume you were hardly the rebellious type. You were probably conscientious through and through.”

  “Yep,” said Sophia.

  “And there are experts on this kind of thing too, these days. We know more than we did in 1998. About the destructive behaviors of young girls. You know — when they cut themselves or burn themselves with cigarettes. A sweet girl sleeping with a thirty-five-year-old doctor who likes hookers. Why would she do that? Who can explain it? Do you know anyone?”

  Yes, I do, she thought. But he’s with his family, putting up Christmas decorations and buying presents for his wife so she’ll forgive him for working too much.

  “I’ll give some thought to who we could ask,” she said. “Someone who would know. But I’ll start with the friend. That will give me an idea.”

  That journalist. The one who’d written the article about Katrin. The one that didn’t simply heap praise. She’d already called him, but he hadn’t answered. I have to try again. He might have something important to tell me.

  “What else? What’s the second part?”

  “The incest allegations. Those are a huge problem, even if he was never charged. Because they colored everything else. The image of Stig Ahlin. That’s not going to get us our new trial either, but if we can prove that the investigation was lacking in that area, it might help us along the way. Since the Supreme Court is already aware of all the problems with incest cases in the nineties, it’s as if they’re already limbered up for it. I think they’ll listen to what we have to say on that front.”

  Hans Segerstad poked his tongue into his cheek. He leaned forward.

  “I don’t think you should dig around in that. I hear you, and I might even agree that you have a point. But as you said yourself, it’s no cause for a new trial. The incest allegations didn’t play a role in the case, nor will they be part of our petition. Let that go.”

  “But they were a big part of the public image of ‘that monster Stig Ahlin.’”

  “We’re not appealing to the public, we’re dealing with the Supreme Court. Let it go, I said. Not even you will have time to deal with everything. What’s the final piece in your trinity?”

  Hans Segerstad was smiling again. He knew very well what it was.

  “Stig Ahlin confessed that he knew Katrin, that he had a relationship with her. That was a big mistake. If I may say so. But the strongest evidence that he was present at the scene of the homicide was the part about the bite marks. Tooth prints? That it was his particular set of teeth. Tooth prints, is that the phrase?”

  Hans shrugged. “The marks left by a bite. Bite marks. Go on,” he urged.

  “Those are a very big problem,” she declared. “They’re why he was convicted. Without them, he would have been acquitted.”

  Hans Segerstad nodded.

  “The prosecutor submits an opinion that says the bite marks are…I don’t recall the exact numbers…
that with some degree of certainty, they came from Stig.”

  Hans Segerstad rose, took a document from the table, and read it aloud.

  “‘Can, with certainty, be said to correspond to…’”

  “Right.” Sophia gave a deep sigh. “And on that basis, the court claims it’s proven that the marks came from Stig’s teeth, and that it is proven beyond all reasonable doubt that Stig Ahlin caused those wounds when he murdered her. They rule out the possibility that Stig bit her, but someone else killed her.”

  Hans put the document back down and resumed his spot behind his desk.

  “You disagree?”

  “I’m not as convinced that this opinion is God’s word, carved into an incontestable stone tablet and handed down, with no middleman and no room for alternate interpretations, to Moses or the judge at court.”

  “Do I understand correctly that you’re not a fan of CSI?” Hans spun in his chair.

  “No. You know I’m not. I am sick to death of how the courts are overpopulated with people who’ve gotten the idea that forensic medicine is an exact science.”

  Hans Segerstad chuckled in satisfaction.

  “Still, there’s one part you have to agree with,” he said. “If Stig did bite her, then it’s reasonable to say he also killed her. On that point, at least, I agree with the judges. We have to do something about that analysis. Because the court believed it.”

  “That is definitely our biggest problem. But we can’t settle for just calling the methodology into question in a general sense. That happened at both district court and appeals court. We need to demonstrate that the results were in error. The prosecutor doesn’t want to send the samples for new, official testing. We’ll have to do that on our own. And those tests must show, plain and simple, that those were not Stig Ahlin’s teeth. If we can prove that, the Supreme Court must grant a new trial.”

  Sophia and Hans fell silent. They considered this for a moment. There wasn’t much more to say. Really, nothing could be certain. It was far from a given that the Supreme Court would grant a new trial just because they managed to produce new test results that contradicted the old ones. The Supreme Court very seldom granted new trials. New information wouldn’t be enough. It would also have to be sensational. And not even then could they be certain to get a retrial. It was close to impossible.