Beyond All Reasonable Doubt

by Malin Persson Giolito

  25

  Eija blew her nose.

  “Do you know who the guys were?”

  She nodded. “More or less.”

  “And she was in love with one of them?”

  “That, I’m not totally sure. In some ways, maybe. But he…she wanted to. She knew he didn’t really want her, and then she tried to…it’s hard to explain, there was so much going on. So many guys.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  Eija shook her head.

  “Was she in love with Stig Ahlin?”

  Eija shook her head again. She snorted; it almost sounded like a laugh.

  “I mean, she told me about a guy she met at work, that happened once. I didn’t realize it was him at first, but later on I thought it must have been. But she talked about a lot of different people. Stig Ahlin was no one.” She shook her head harder. “She wasn’t in love with Stig Ahlin, not a chance. He was one of the creeps, yeah, Christ, that’s what we called them. She met a few of those. Quite a few. Stig Ahlin was a fucking pig, she never would have fallen in love with him.”

  But sleep with him, Sophia thought. That she wanted to do.

  “What do you mean when you say Stig Ahlin was no one?”

  “That he wasn’t important.”

  “He was a thirty-five-year-old doctor who slept with her. She was fifteen. That was ‘nothing’?”

  “Yeah.”

  Sophia didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.

  “You don’t get it,” Eija declared. “I knew you wouldn’t get it. How could you?”

  I don’t need this, Sophia thought. It’s enough that I know.

  “Then what happened?”

  “I told her she had to talk to her parents, or else I would tell the school nurse. She had to stop. I was worried about her.”

  “What did she do?”

  Eija gazed out the window. A young boy was frantically waving his arms over his head; Eija waved back and nodded. Her son, Sophia thought. Eija smiled.

  “I’m watching,” she mumbled, toward the window. Without taking her eyes from the boy, she said, “I worked as a maid in a hotel for a few years. A halfway sleazy one downtown. I was supposed to clean twenty rooms per day. On Sundays and Thursdays, when there were a lot of checkouts, it was rough. Lots of crap to clean up, you know? You have no idea the things people leave in their rooms. Out in the open, totally visible, even though they know someone has to…I’ve seen a lot. Streaks of shit in the toilet, tied-up condoms, bloody underwear, used pads left on the bathroom floor, sex toys. You think they were ashamed? The hell they were. Because the only person who would see was the maid. And who could I complain to, what the hell was I supposed to say? Pick up your own fucking shit? The maid doesn’t exist. I didn’t exist. I’m not a real person.”

  Eija aimed a thumbs-up at the window and smiled. The boy out in the yard had finished his show. She brought her hands together in silent applause and kept talking without looking at Sophia.

  “What did Katrin do? She ditched me. She stopped calling, stopped visiting, I no longer existed. I was never a real person to Katrin. That’s why she could tell me everything. It was like telling a dog. But even more anonymous and insignificant. When I suddenly started speaking when spoken to, when I made demands of her, questioned what she was doing, she dropped me. Actually, she threw me as far away as she possibly could. She had definitely not signed up for anything like that. I’m not stupid. I understood what she was doing. Everyone assumed I had done something. Or actually, I suppose they didn’t give a shit. I never said anything to the school nurse. Talking to her parents wasn’t an option, but the school nurse, I should have…she asked me how I was, one time, but I didn’t speak up then either. I was just so hurt that Katrin dissed me like that, and then she died, and it was too late.”

  Eija took a ragged breath, stood up, and left the kitchen. Sophia let her go.

  On the fridge were two pieces of paper, schedules of some sort. There were freshly ironed red curtains in the window. In one corner stood a box. There were various Christmas decorations on a chair right next to it. It’s actually quite neat here, Sophia thought.

  Eija returned. On her way through the door she raised one hand to gesture at the half-decorated tree in the next room.

  “The kids and I are taking down the tree. It’s early, but they bring over a container to start collecting large items tomorrow, already. If we wait until after New Year’s, it will be too full. And I took the opportunity to do one of those clean-outs that you always plan but never do. Most of the stuff is already on the balcony.”

  Sophia blushed. Eija blew her nose.

  “Katrin wasn’t…I’m making her sound like a hell of a snob, and sometimes she was, but I liked her anyway. She was scared. Or scared isn’t the right word. She did all that stuff, she got stuck in it, and once you’re stuck you feel like you don’t have any right to say no, to get out of it. You think it’s fucking disgusting, but you keep doing it anyway. It sounds crazy, but that’s how it is. And she shouldn’t have been murdered, she really shouldn’t have.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police about that guy?”

  “Who? That first dude?”

  Sophia nodded.

  “Why would I have?” Eija blew her nose again. “Katrin was nothing to him. He hardly knew who she was. Plus, I didn’t know his name. I never met him. No, it wasn’t him. Everyone knows that. It was that creep. Professor Death. I’m totally sure…it’s obvious he’s the one who did it.”

  Sophia looked down at her mug. Surely she wasn’t obliged to drink any more.

  “It must have been tough for you.”

  Eija considered Sophia. Her eyes narrowed. The fridge hummed, and a door slammed in the stairwell. Eija didn’t take her eyes off Sophia.

  “You probably had someone like me too. Although I’m sure you’ve forgotten her. Because she didn’t mean anything.”

  “Maybe,” Sophia said cautiously. She met Eija’s gaze.

  Never, she thought. Anna and Carl are my family. And I’ve never had friends besides them.

  “Have you ever known someone who does absolutely everything no one should ever do?” Eija asked. “Have you ever hated yourself so much you only want it to hurt, hurt so bad you can’t feel anything else? No, you haven’t.”

  Sophia loosened her cashmere scarf. She had left it on, wound around her neck. Eija seemed to be waiting for her to take over. Sophia couldn’t think of anything to say. Her shirt bunched awkwardly around her waist and her skirt felt too tight.

  “Well, I’ve stopped feeling like that,” Eija said at last. “And it doesn’t hurt all that much anymore.”

  * * *

  —

  Sophia had planned to stroll for a bit. But after just a few hundred yards, she realized she didn’t even know which way the city was. She found a metro station and traveled to T-Centralen downtown. Black ice glistened under the streetlights. She walked quickly, eyes on the ground and hands in her pockets, all the way across Vasagatan, up Tegelbacken and Jakobsgatan, down Malmtorgsgatan. As she reached the Ministry for Foreign Affairs she glanced toward the opera house, where a taxi was letting off a woman in an ankle-length mink coat. A man wearing only shirtsleeves was waiting to be let into Bakfickan, the small restaurant attached to opulent Operakällaren. Sophia hurried on, down to Strömgatan.

  They were fuzzy, those memories from her own teen years. The feeling that her hair was always greasy, her pants always too tight, and that her makeup never quite stuck. She recalled sorting all her records in alphabetical order, making mixtapes and sitting in her room listening to the same song over and over again. She remembered copying down English song lyrics in her diary, daydreaming about boys now long forgotten, and crying herself to sleep a few times because she was convinced she wasn’t quite good enough. Still, she’d had a decent time of it. Becau
se there was also the joy, closeness, kisses, the first time someone gazed into her eyes, touching her, the completely stunning sensation of wanting more, of not being able to stop for anything in the world.

  She guessed she’d done well, as a teenager. Making it through had helped her feel stronger, better equipped for life. She had been lucky somehow.

  Sophia walked up onto Norrbro, grabbed the railing of the bridge, and gazed down at the dark water. The current flowed down, away, out to the archipelago. The sea smelled stagnant and stuffy here. Dirty gray scum swirled around the abutments. She stood there for a moment, perfectly still.

  The seabirds weren’t around this time of year; they wintered at the garbage dumps outside the city. Only the pigeons and house sparrows were left. They huddled in bushes and alleys, near air vents and exhaust fans. The ice had already formed at Årstaviken, a layer the thickness of a fingernail, as dark as the night in which it was created. But it was getting colder now. With every degree below freezing, it would thicken and brighten. Spring seemed so far off. The ice-out and her boat, shrink-wrapped for the winter, its mast dismantled. It was something to look forward to, she supposed. The feeling a little too big, a little too hasty; these weren’t things she put into words. Not emotions she would admit to, if someone asked.

  The snow began to fall in large flakes, down toward the black water; the white bits disappeared in the darkness. Sophia lifted her face, closed her eyes.

  When she was a child, she had climbed trees, a book stuffed in her waistband, up, high, close to the trunk. Once she lost her grip, the bark crumbled into dust in her hand, she broke a nail straight across the middle and fell to the ground. Ten feet or perhaps only seven; she landed on her back and got the air knocked out of her. It felt like her lungs were collapsing. She spent a few seconds waiting to die, then had to force herself to open her mouth, expand her chest, force the air back into her body. She remembered sitting up, leaning against the trunk, and concentrating on inhaling and exhaling. In. Then out. She must not feel — not her back, not her foot, not her head, nowhere that might hurt. She must only concentrate on that one thing. Breathing. In and out.

  Katrin had been fifteen years old. Sophia’s client had slept with her, had undressed her, touched her, taken her. Even if he hadn’t killed her, he was one of the ones who had destroyed her. Who had made her impervious to help.

  Sophia stared hard at the black water. She swallowed. Sour, watery bile gathered in her mouth and she had to concentrate.

  I don’t need to defend the rest of it, she thought. But that didn’t make her feel better.

  Breathe. In and out. Don’t feel. Sophia turned her face up to the snow. The sound had vanished; the wind had died down and the streets were empty. Never was the city as quiet as under new-fallen snow. If I don’t focus on my client, no one will. I’m the only one he has.

  Sophia began to walk home. It was getting colder and colder. The snow melted against her cheeks, but not on the ground; it muffled her steps.

  She walked faster, pulling her hands up into the sleeves of her coat and hugging herself.

  I don’t need to contact Stig’s daughter. That has nothing to do with this. Breathe in, breathe out. Nothing more.

  26

  Whose ridiculous idea was it to have a party the day before New Year’s Eve?

  “It’s not a party,” Anna had responded when Sophia asked. “I just thought we could get together at a time when people can actually get babysitters. To eat and chat and have a nice evening. Without taking a Russian firecracker to the eye.”

  Not a party, Sophia had thought as the taxi turned off at Anna’s house. The driveway was lined with lit torches. There were two-foot snow lanterns on either side of the front stairs. The glow from the lanterns flickered against the wood paneling and rowanberry branches at the front door. When she walked into the dining room, she thought it again: Just a simple dinner.

  The table was set for sixteen, with ceramic plates, each a different color. They looked like they had been kneaded into shape by an amateur. Although she certainly couldn’t rule out the possibility that Anna had made them, Sophia assumed they were by some famous Danish designer and insanely expensive. Each guest had also been supplied with a set of glasses: a dimpled water glass and three different types of crystal wineglasses, all scored at an antiques fair in Brussels. The napkins were of the same natural linen as the thick tablecloth and had been placed into rings of braided leather along with a sprig of myrtle and a tiny, dark red Christmas rose. In the center of the table stood a row of thick red candles, of various lengths, linked together with braided leather to match the napkin rings. In one of the corners stood the twenty-foot Christmas tree, one of Anna’s four decorated trees, if you didn’t count the two in the yard. The dining room tree was ornamented with hand-painted glass balls, red velvet ribbon, and actual lit candles.

  Sophia found her place. SÅFIA, it read on the place card, in handwritten letters with a backward F.

  So humble, Sophia thought. Letting the kids help set the table.

  The other guests were also on their way in. Anna hurried by, her youngest daughter on her hip. She was in her sock feet; she’d left her five-inch heels on the floor by her chair. Her eyes were frantic, but she looked happy. Then Anna found her husband, handed their daughter to him, and returned to the dinner table. She stood by Sophia, placing an arm around her and pressing a hand to her cheek. Sophia smiled and hugged her back.

  The appetizers were already on the table, along with six full breadbaskets. Sophia set down the champagne glass she’d been instructed to bring to the table and looked at her plate: three grilled oysters.

  “Naturally,” Sophia whispered in Anna’s ear, “we’re having oysters and champagne. You have to, when you’re celebrating having a babysitter.”

  The wine was already open on one sideboard; on another stood an enormous cheese plate, a gigantic bowl of salad, and three Pavlova tarts with fresh passion fruit. The buffet of entrees was laid out in the attached kitchen, resting on the warmers of Anna’s ten-foot stove. Grilled chicken thighs, warm lentil salad, and mashed sweet potatoes with Västerbotten cheese.

  Before Anna could respond, one of the male guests approached them.

  “So much effort you’ve put in here.”

  Sophia didn’t recognize him. He had full lips and a small chin. He’d already taken off his tie; it was sticking out of his jacket pocket like a balled-up sock. His hands were on his waist.

  “Or should I say, has been put in here?” He coughed. “Truly impressive.”

  Anna laughed in response. She gestured vaguely with one hand and vanished into the kitchen.

  The man watched Anna go.

  “Women really are skilled,” he said. “At hiring services, that is.”

  He chuckled in self-satisfaction. Sophia bit her cheek. She was just about to turn around and head for the kitchen to see if she could be of help when she discovered Anna’s oldest son Emil rushing after his mother with an apron around his waist.

  If only you knew, Sophia thought. What Anna can do.

  “Sebastian,” said the man with the sock-tie, extending a thin hand. “But everyone calls me Sibbe.”

  “Sophia Weber.”

  “Aha!” Sibbe pulled the tie from his pocket and slowly began to roll it up. “Anna’s famous lawyer friend. I read an article about you in the paper today. Stig Ahlin’s lawyer, eh? Interesting. Nothing but strong women this evening! I’ll have to watch it, so I don’t get affirmative-actioned out of here.”

  The chuckling started up again. Sibbe took his seat and crossed his arms. He eyed her thoroughly. Up and down. Taking his time.

  Don’t say anything, Sophia thought. Smile instead. Just smile.

  But Sibbe didn’t remain seated long. A skinny woman with duck lips, a sequined dress, and waist-length hair had approached the table. Sibbe bolted up. He conscientiou
sly pulled out a chair for her.

  At the same time, Sophia felt someone put an arm around her waist. She looked to her left. It was Ludwig Venner. For a brief time, he had lived in the same student corridor as Sophia and Anna, back in Uppsala. As far as Sophia remembered, he had also studied law, although she didn’t think he had sat exams in any subjects. Instead he had run a radio station from an empty basement laundry room in one of the student housing units. These days he was the CEO of the Venner Group’s six largest commercial TV channels.

  “Ludwig!” Sophia cried happily.

  “Mmm,” he breathed into her ear. “I’ve been waiting so long.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Sophia said, placing a hand on Ludwig’s shoulder and pushing him away. “I heard she finally kicked you out. She did the right thing.”

  “Yes,” Ludwig nodded. “She really did. But now, here I am. The only single person here this evening. Only male single one, that is. And that means it’s my turn to escort you to the table. I’d almost started to lose faith.”

  “Proof that time passes, if nothing else.”

  “Proof, my dear Sophia, that we have one foot in the grave. Or that you’ve slept with everyone else.”

  Sophia smiled. She let him kiss her on the cheek and then took her seat.

  “If we’re being honest, I’ve slept with you too,” she said. “But don’t worry. I have to get up early tomorrow. You’ll get your eight hours of sleep and be well rested for the new year. I imagine you have tons to do. I heard you’ve made an offer to the Norwegians.”

  The man across from them had caught sight of Ludwig and was leaning across the table. He kept his balance with one hand; the other was extended as far as he could reach.