Beyond All Reasonable Doubt

by Malin Persson Giolito

  “You said that already. Do you have any material left from back then? Notes? Is there anyone I should talk to? Who can tell me more about Katrin?”

  “I doubt it. But you should take a look at her old classmates. As I recall, everyone knew what she was up to. Now, all these years later, I don’t imagine they’d have any problem discussing it. Or they would. People can be awfully strange. You can always give it a shot.”

  They fell silent. Sophia was about to end the call when she heard his voice again. It was crackly.

  “Have you spoken with his ex-wife? Or his daughter? Do you have anything new from the daughter? She must be grown up by now, right?”

  The call dropped.

  * * *

  —

  Sophia stayed put for a moment, watching the people welling up off the escalator. An endless stream of people with purses hugged to their chests and eyes on the ground. There would be no new suit for her today. Why would she buy one? Blazers and skirts, blazers and dresses — she had plenty of those. They would tide her over for quite some time. Anyway, she could afford a suit even when it wasn’t on sale. That way she could skip the crowds.

  She walked around to the down escalator. This was a good day to go to the office. A really good day.

  Lars Gustafsson was already there when Sophia stepped through the door. He was standing behind the reception desk and sorting the mail. He was wearing jeans and a very strange T-shirt. It took a moment for Sophia to realize it was a child’s drawing. Someone, probably one of Lars’s grandkids, had drawn a giant head with legs next to something that looked like a cross between a flower and a sun.

  “It’s me and my wife,” he said. “Isn’t it fantastic? He’s only four. I got it for Christmas. We’re playing soccer, I think. In the drawing, that is.”

  “Fantastic,” Sophia agreed.

  She glanced toward the offices. Björn Skiller appeared to be there as well. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Christmas break, Midsummer, the day after Easter — the best time to be productive for a law firm. The phones were quiet; the courts were closed. The lawyers could write briefs, contracts, or, if nothing else, articles.

  “What are you doing here?” Lars handed her a glossy ad brochure and two window envelopes. She accepted them and put the brochure straight in the wastebasket.

  “Stig Ahlin. I wanted to try to get as much done as possible before the Christmas holidays are over.”

  “Smart. When are you planning to submit it?”

  “Well, there’s no point in submitting it if we don’t have anything to present.”

  “But you do?”

  Sophia gave a tiny smile. “Maybe. I’m going to give it another month. Then we’ll try. He’s already waited too long.”

  “What about the media? How is that going?”

  “I’m sure it will work itself out.”

  She went to the kitchen. The coffeepot was half full; she picked it up and sniffed its contents. Lars and Björn must not have been here for long; it seemed fresh. And it was hot too. She poured a cup, went to her office, closed the door, and sat down at her desk.

  Always the same ritual, and she never got tired of it. Something happened to her. Her heartbeat slowed, her breathing calmed. How could she have thought shopping was a good idea, when she could be at work?

  Her computer whirred to life. She brought up the folder where she’d started sorting the case materials to make it easier to find what she was looking for. There were no more than forty documents in the interrogation folder, and she knew exactly which one she needed.

  First, she wrote a name on a notepad: Eija Nurmilehto — not exactly a common one. Not in exclusive Djursholm, anyway. Sophia hoped Eija hadn’t married and changed her name. If she had, it would slow Sophia down; she would have to wait for the Swedish authorities to finish up their celebration of the birth of Jesus. But if she was in luck, this woman wasn’t the marrying kind.

  A search of the name on hitta.se brought up four hits. But only one had the same birthday as the woman who’d been interviewed in the investigation into Katrin Björk’s murder. Her birthday was listed right there online, in a box next to her address and phone number, in the event Sophia wanted to send flowers. Sophia could also click on a link to a satellite image of the woman’s home. Maybe to find out what sort of flowers she had in her window.

  Sophia ignored the satellite images and drank the last of her coffee. It had taken under ten minutes to find the woman. She pulled over the phone and dialed the number. The woman answered on the third ring. With her full name, to be safe. She still used her maiden name. It was unclear whether she was married. But it was obvious she had children — Sophia could hear them in the background.

  24

  It took forty-five minutes by public transport to get from Östermalmstorg to the suburb where Eija Nurmilehto lived.

  When Sophia called, Eija had said that Sophia could come to her house. Eija herself never went into the city. Especially not during the Christmas sale days. Anyone who went downtown on December twenty-ninth must be awfully stupid, as Eija had informed her. And she wasn’t, she’d added. Awfully stupid, that is.

  Sophia had nothing against going the other direction, although she did find herself hesitating at the entrance to the subway. The cold had suddenly arrived, and her thin leather boots felt slippery. There was a neat line of taxis right next to the stairs. But there was no money for such extravagances, not for this case.

  In the stairwell, Sophia regretted having dressed up. It didn’t exactly look as if Eija had cleaned up in anticipation of a guest. She lived on the first floor. The balcony, visible from the street, was overloaded with pizza boxes, other boxes, ad circulars, broken toys, and a bike with one tire.

  As Sophia stepped through the door, Eija was removing a big pile of window envelopes that had been lying unopened under the mail slot. The apartment smelled stuffy. Sophia tried to say hello to a boy in his early teens who crowded past her and through the door. He didn’t return her greeting.

  Eija Nurmilehto had been in Katrin’s class when Katrin was murdered. Only one year later she had dropped out of school to set out on the journey that crash-landed her in this apartment. Naturally, since she was the same age as Katrin would have been, almost to the day, Eija Nurmilehto was younger than Sophia. Yet she seemed older.

  Eija and Sophia found themselves standing in the hall. A half-decorated Christmas tree was visible in the living room; ornaments had been hung only on its lower branches. The typical day care ornaments, a couple of Christmas crackers, cardboard snowflakes, a green tissue-paper tree.

  This was how it usually looked in the homes of her child clients who had been forcibly removed from their parents’ care, Sophia thought. A tree decorated by little kids. And they could never reach high enough.

  Sophia was about to wonder aloud if she would have to ask her questions in the hall when Eija dropped her arms to her sides, turned around, and went to the kitchen. The table was set: a mug each. Breakfast hadn’t been cleared away, just shoved off to the side. A dirty butter knife, a half-full bowl of soggy chocolate flakes. A sweaty rind of cheese. I should have brought a cake, Sophia thought.

  “I don’t have anything to offer,” Eija said, reaching for the coffeepot, “besides coffee. Do you want some? I don’t have any milk. Or soy milk.”

  “Please,” said Sophia. “I’d love some coffee.”

  She sat down and accepted her mug.

  “As you understand, I read your interview.”

  “That’s strange,” said Eija. “I thought they’d tossed those.”

  “No. That sort of thing isn’t thrown away. What led you to believe otherwise?”

  Silence. Eija stood up. She removed the cheese from the table, threw it in the garbage, and put the breakfast dishes in the sink. She picked up Sophia’s cup and wiped the table with a Wettex cloth that actua
lly seemed clean. Then she sat back down.

  “I read your interview,” Sophia said again. “It seemed to me you wanted to say something about Katrin, but you weren’t given the chance. I suppose the officer had planned to question you again, but then Stig Ahlin showed up and you were forgotten. I’d like you to tell me what you know.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s bullshit. People like that cop, he didn’t listen to me. He didn’t want to know. Because it didn’t fit, what I had to say. It didn’t fit in. He didn’t want to listen to what I knew. They weren’t planning to come back. No way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  In fact, she knew exactly. The police officer had taken one look at Eija Nurmilehto and made up his mind about who she was. She was a hysterical teenager with extremely apparent issues. Eija had nothing in common with well-mannered Katrin, with her single-family home and private riding lessons. But Sophia couldn’t exactly say so. She needed to find out what this girl knew. And she would remain polite and obliging until she succeeded.

  The coffee was ice-cold. Sophia drank it without feeling it. She rested her elbows on the table and tried to sound friendly.

  “How did you and Katrin become friends? Couldn’t you start by telling that story?”

  Eija glared at Sophia.

  I know what you think of me, Sophia thought. But give me a chance. You want to tell your story. I can tell. You never would have said I could come here if you didn’t long to talk about what you know. Ever since Katrin died, you’ve been waiting for someone to listen. Well, here I am. I beg you to start talking.

  Eija seemed to brace herself. At first it looked like she was about to stand up and ask Sophia to leave. But then she changed her mind.

  “It just happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Katrin was the prettiest girl in the class,” said Eija. “One night we ended up sitting next to each other on the bus. Or she came to sit next to me. And we started chatting. I don’t know if you get how weird that was.”

  “I spoke to a journalist who said Katrin was having a tough time. That no one wrote about it, because she was dead, and they didn’t want to make things even harder on her parents.”

  Eija’s eyes narrowed slightly. She was listening.

  “I’m not interested in piling a bunch of crap on Katrin,” Sophia said. “But I want to know about her life, because if I don’t know…I’m trying to find out what it was really like.”

  “I don’t know if it’s a good idea for me to tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  Eija didn’t respond. She turned her face away. Tears flowed from her eyes, but she didn’t seem to register the fact. She let them trickle down to her throat without wiping them away.

  “It’s too late now.”

  “Try me,” Sophia implored her. “I’m listening.”

  Katrin

  1997

  Katrin stopped visiting the stables. It wasn’t fun anymore, just annoying. The mucking, the grooming, the hoof-picking, the lists, the constant competition, the constant posturing. Who will get to handle the privately owned horses? Who can get Dove on the bit? Where did you find that jacket? Who can do three flying changes down one long side of the ring? Get him in the corner, use your legs, look at the obstacle, heels down, shoulders back, soft hands. Isn’t it time to consider buying your own pair of white breeches, and stop borrowing from the other girls? Do you always ride with spurs?

  In the past she could sit in the stall for hours, but now she felt antsy after just a few minutes.

  She told Dad it had gotten to be too much, with school and everything. He understood; he didn’t think this was odd at all. Horses were something you grew out of. The stables were for little girls, and now she was big. And anyway, it was a pain to drive her back and forth all the time. She nodded. It had certainly been a long time since Dad had to give her a ride — she usually took the bus. But she nodded. Yes. She had a lot of other stuff going on. It was just as well. She would do something else.

  Katrin stopped returning Sara’s and Lina’s calls. They called a lot. Each evening they left messages: “Call me back as soon as you can.” Sure, Katrin said, but she didn’t feel like talking to them. They wanted to babble for hours, preferably all three of them, on a party line, just press star, and then they would talk over each other, someone thought she was cute, someone had lost a ton of weight, ohmigod she was so skinny, she had to be bulimic, and someone might have had an abortion, and someone was always talking shit, who did she think she was?

  “Say I’m in the shower and I’ll call later.” She mimed it: No, not now, I’m not home. I’ll call later, in a while, in just a minute.

  Did you have a fight? Dad wondered once. No, she said. Definitely not. They’re my best friends. I just want to watch TV for a while, I have to do my homework, finish this chapter, iron this blouse.

  Those times they did talk after all, Katrin lay on her bed, on her back, looking up at the ceiling and letting them babble. She agreed with what they said; she laughed when they laughed. But it was annoying to listen; there was so much else.

  Katrin always went to school. She attended all her classes and was never tardy. But she didn’t sit in front anymore. It wasn’t a big deal, she could sit wherever she liked, and she was still the smartest in her class, so why should she have to raise her hand just because she knew the answer? The important thing was that she did her lessons. And she handed in all her homework and always got the best grades on tests, or at least almost the best. It wasn’t hard — she studied and memorized and didn’t even feel it. As long as she didn’t have to sit in front. She couldn’t handle sitting there anymore.

  Her friends went to concerts and movies, went shopping. There was a café in the city where everyone liked to go. Katrin didn’t join them. She didn’t have time.

  She didn’t quit basketball. Not entirely. She went to games, but why should she attend practice? She still made her baskets. When they changed clothes afterward, she took long showers so everyone else was almost done by the time she got out. She never put on makeup while everyone else was crowded around the mirror, borrowing each other’s mascara. And she took the bus home.

  Eija Nurmilehto was different. She didn’t ride, she didn’t play basketball, she didn’t listen to Pearl Jam. She only used makeup to make herself uglier than she already was, and she smelled like a gym bag that had been left in a locker too long, like the swimsuit Katrin had forgotten to hang to dry. Everyone knew she shoplifted from ICA, and Eija’s phone number was scratched into the bus stop outside school. “Wanna fuck?” it said next to it. Everyone knew it was the right number, that it went to Eija’s house, because everyone had tried calling it only to hang up when someone answered.

  When Katrin walked up to Eija on the bus that day, it was just a random occurrence. She wasn’t thinking I want to talk to that girl, but when she sat down and started talking it felt like she would never be able to stop. She followed Eija home, lay on the floor in her room in the middle of all that dust and staleness, and talked and talked. She stayed until Eija said, “You have to leave now, because my mom will be home soon.”

  Eija never told Katrin anything, never called to ask if she thought some guy was into her. Eija only said hello if Katrin greeted her first, and she listened without saying anything back. Eija was just there. And Katrin told her everything she never said to anyone else.

  The guys she had gotten to know at a party. Upper-secondary school guys who’d come by to check out the younger girls. The ones who would soon be starting at their school, who would soon be legal. That’s what they’d said; Katrin had been standing with Sara and Lina, and they laughed. She didn’t. But one guy, the one with curly hair falling over his forehead, he stood behind the others, looking at her. They started talking, he came home with her, made su
re she got all the way home without falling down and passing out somewhere. They made out and he got her number.

  That was six months ago. He’d gotten a haircut since then. And they never hung out together with her friends, only his.

  Sometimes he was the one who called, but often it was one of his friends. In the middle of the night. Katrin knew; she always kept the phone under her pillow. Just in case. If her dad woke up and answered first, they hung up. Dad typically didn’t ask any questions, he just went back to bed. An hour or so later they’d call back. And she would answer when the phone clicked, even before the first ring.

  But Dad was hardly ever the one who answered. She was too quick.

  They wanted her to come out. By herself. No one else from her school was there. She was special. The only one of the young girls to be invited. The only one her age. It’s a party. Wicked cool. A fucking rager. Come on. Don’t be such a drag. Wear whatever. Doesn’t matter. Hell, come naked. Ha ha ha.

  There were night buses. There were taxis she could call to pick her up on the corner. She took the money from Dad. Sometimes the guys said they could come pick her up. There was always someone with a moped. Sometimes they “borrowed” a car. With or without a license. Never totally sober. There were always ways. Dad never suspected a thing.

  Many times she just danced. She liked that. The music. When they played the music so loud it thumped in her chest. Everything else disappeared. She closed her eyes and danced; they watched. Sometimes that was all. Sometimes she just gave someone a blow job. She didn’t have sex with anyone but him. He often made out with someone else. Sometimes it all went to shit. Those times, she did things she’d claimed she’d never do.

  When she got home, she put on two sweaters. Slept in her clothes. Usually she would unplug the phone. And put it back in its spot. She wouldn’t plug it in again until she had gotten up, showered, and eaten breakfast.

  It started with him, with his buddies, but it didn’t stop there. She felt them looking; she could see in their eyes what they thought of her. She understood how they talked to her; it was there in their voices, what they meant. They wanted her — she should have been the one with power over them. But that wasn’t the case, and it was unbearable. Dad didn’t notice a thing.