Beyond All Reasonable Doubt

by Malin Persson Giolito

  “Sibbe,” he gasped out. “Everyone calls me Sibbe.”

  Ludwig took the man’s hand and gave him a brief nod.

  “Sebastian,” he declared, turning to Sophia again. “We didn’t sleep with each other. Not for real. I don’t want you to think that that night…I have to protest. You don’t know me. Not as you should. In a biblical sense, ‘know’ is synonymous with —”

  Sophia shook her head. “We won’t be sleeping together again. Not tonight, and not any other night.”

  She caught sight of Anna across the table. They made eye contact and Anna raised her glass.

  Fantastic party, Sophia mimed.

  Anna gave her a big smile and shook her head firmly. She always had known what Sophia was thinking, even before Sophia admitted it to herself.

  No, Anna mimed back. Bad idea. Really bad idea.

  * * *

  —

  Sophia had known it would come. It always did, especially from people like Sibbe. Sooner or later, in various ways. But tonight it had taken much longer than usual for the question to come up. Sophia and Ludwig had managed to get all the way through the appetizer and two helpings of the main course.

  Sibbe had taken off his jacket. The woman in the sequined dress had turned to the man on her right. Sibbe’s only company was his glass of wine.

  “Hey you!” he spat. “Anna’s bestie. The hotshot attorney. I read about you in the paper. There was an article about you in one of those incredibly serious evening papers. You’re the one who decided to get Stig Ahlin out of the slammer. Damn straight, that’s you, isn’t it?”

  Sophia nodded. He had obviously forgotten that he’d mentioned it when they first said hello.

  “I have a question.” His voice was far too loud. “I wanna know something.”

  Sophia nodded again. It was best to get this over with.

  “How the hell can you live with yourself? Would you defend any old pervert at all? Or do you only spend time on celebrities like Stig Ahlin?”

  This had little to do with today’s article. Sophia was frequently faced with versions of this question when she was at parties and was forced to converse with her neighbors at the table. When she said she was an attorney who specialized in criminal cases, there it was. Could she defend what the Nazis did during World War II? Could she work for Charles Manson, or that Austrian guy who’d locked his own daughter in the basement and fathered a bunch of children with her? And how did she manage? Did she laugh all the way to the bank, or was she just generally bananas?

  “Would you…” Sibbe didn’t rack his brains long. “Would you be able to defend someone who raped your little sister? What if Stig Ahlin had attacked your sister, would you still think it’s so important to get him out then? Huh?”

  Sophia had had this discussion so many times that she could rattle off her responses in her sleep.

  Ludwig pulled her close.

  “You have a little sister?” he mumbled into her ear, a little too loudly. “God in heaven, that sounds fantastic. And you never told me. Can she join us tonight? I swear I’ll pay you the most attention. But while you’re resting? Please? I’ll be extra obliging and I won’t get tired and fall asleep.”

  “Well?” Sibbe was almost shouting by now. It was becoming very difficult for the rest of the dinner guests to pretend they hadn’t noticed him.

  Sophia turned to him.

  “No,” she said curtly.

  Ludwig shook his head in concern and pointedly shifted to the side. He was no longer mumbling in her ear.

  “Just as I suspected. If you had a sister, obviously I would have slept with her already. And my wife would have found out. And then you, your sister, and my wife would have started a book club together, gone off on vacation with the kids, and blocked me on Facebook.”

  Sibbe started laughing. There was no way of telling whether it was at Ludwig’s joke or because Sophia had admitted that there were people she couldn’t imagine defending. But he leaned across the table toward Ludwig and raised his hand for a high five. Ludwig aimed a measured look at him and refused the offer.

  “I don’t have a little sister,” Sophia said. “But I would, without a doubt, defend someone who had raped your little sister, Sibbe.”

  Sibbe’s face changed color and he began to squirm in his chair. It was silent around the table now. But no one was looking at Sophia or Sibbe. The woman in the sequined dress left her place to stand farther away. Her eyes were darting here and there; she was doing everything she could not to look at her table escort. No one was looking at Sophia or Sibbe as they did their utmost to pretend they hadn’t heard anything.

  “Oh, I see.” Sibbe raised his voice. “You like rapists. Men who kill little kids. And I bet you think pedophiles can make terrific day care teachers. Because they deserve the opportunity to do any kind of work they like once they’ve served their time. And you’d be happy to see that time shortened as much as possible. Because…” He raised his voice even more. “Did you know that only one out of every five rape charges leads to a conviction?”

  “Well,” Sophia hesitated. She didn’t want to discuss statistics with someone who wouldn’t listen. “That depends on…” Sophia was trying to speak in muted tones. “Should we take this to the kitchen? Have a nice, quiet conversation? To keep from ruining dinner for…”

  Sibbe’s face was beginning to turn purple. Now he was shouting. The other guests glanced around uneasily. Anna’s husband had vanished from the table; he was putting their youngest daughter to bed.

  “Do you think those numbers are good? Do you think that’s right? Jesus, you’re even stupider than you look. Do you know how many people are too afraid to report assault because they’re afraid no one will believe them? Do you know how many rapes never even lead to charges? Do you think that’s the way it should be? Is that the just society we want? Is that the kind of country we want to live in? And while people like you whine about how we should reduce sentences and raise the standard of evidence, we men have to take the blame for people like Stig Ahlin.”

  Sophia sipped her wine. From across the room, Anna met her gaze. She looked nervous.

  I’m trying, Anna, she thought. I’m trying to get him to calm down. But I’m no good at this. Can’t I cuff him one instead?

  Anna wiped her mouth with her linen napkin. It could be her imagination, but Sophia thought Anna’s hand was trembling. Could that be Sibbe’s girlfriend sitting across from her?

  “It’s a goddamn disaster,” Sibbe howled. “A failure of unbelievable dimensions. That we can’t punish people who commit that kind of crime. What is it going to take? Gang rapes, where the rapists go free because it’s impossible to prove who was watching the door and who was doing the raping? Why don’t we just lock them up and throw away the key?”

  Ludwig shook his head and stood up. Sophia tugged at his arm.

  “Hold on,” she said quietly. “Don’t mind him. Let’s have dessert instead. He’ll tire himself out soon.”

  “Attorney Sophia Weber!” Sibbe was spitting with rage. “It’s thanks to you, you and your colleagues, that we can’t afford to take care of our elders. That we have drug dealers selling just outside our children’s schoolyards. How can you live with yourself?”

  Then it was quiet. When Sibbe realized that Ludwig Venner was standing, he lost his train of thought. He watched in surprise as Ludwig bent down, picked up his dessert fork, and tapped his glass.

  “You remind me of someone…,” Ludwig mumbled, still facing Sibbe. “Or something. I can’t quite recall what it is…” He looked away from Sibbe and focused his attention on the other guests instead.

  The gathering looked up at him. Their relief at the interruption was so obvious that it was palpable.

  “I’m not the one who escorted our hostess to the table this evening,” Ludwig said at last. He was speaking slowly, almost d
rawling, and he turned to Anna, who had returned to her chair and was smiling broadly. “So, I’ll only give a short speech. Much shorter than I’m accustomed to. Definitely not longer than forty-five minutes.”

  Ludwig nodded at Anna’s dinner escort, who raised his glass in understanding. After waiting for the other guests’ chuckling to die down, Ludwig continued.

  “I’m sure it’s a violation of good etiquette, but I’d really like to thank you, Anna. For finally allowing me to escort Sophia Weber to the table. If you had any idea how long I’ve been begging…I hadn’t realized that I just had to be unhappy and recently divorced first. But anyway, thank you.”

  The guests laughed in relief. Sophia exhaled.

  “Right?” Ludde turned to Sibbe, who gave a reluctant nod. “We’re having a pleasant time, we’re incredibly grateful that we were invited and can spend a fantastic evening in the company of some pretty incredible people.”

  Ludwig paused. He observed his glass, letting the dark red wine slide up to the edges, letting the crystal glitter in the candlelight.

  “Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve,” he said. “Which raises a number of thoughts. You might think I’m joking, but I do occasionally think about something other than what makes good TV. Not often, but still.” He looked at his glass again. “Aw…I don’t really know what I want to say. I’m mostly just standing here because the alternative would have been to take this out to the yard and start throwing punches.”

  The guests laughed again and allowed him to go on.

  “Fighting for a woman’s honor. That usually makes good TV, of course. Although Sophia is much better at fighting than I am. Honestly, I couldn’t even ward off a mosquito. Sophia Weber, on the other hand…” Ludwig lifted Sophia’s hand and kissed it melodramatically. Sophia shook her head. “This woman sees to it that we can live in a better society.”

  Ludwig looked at Sibbe again. Then he raised his eyes and his glass toward Anna. “Anna. I want to thank you, your husband, your children, your mother, your fantastic mother…and my own mother, of course, I want to thank her too. And the jury, my producer, MGM, CBS,…” Anna laughed. “…the Academy…everyone who called in and voted for me. Thank you. And Anna, if you’re thinking of closing up shop and making room for the rest of us on the stock exchange, I’d suggest you chain yourself to the stove. Because damn, your cooking…”

  They all raised their glasses. The mood was calm once more. Anna pantomimed a thanks and blew a kiss to Ludwig. The buzz around the table resumed. The woman across from Sophia had returned to her seat.

  Before Ludwig sat down, he leaned across the table, touched his glass to Sebastian’s, and hissed, “You remind me of one of those cracked, brown pieces of soap my grandmother used to have, out in the country. You pass yourself off as someone who works for the common good, but it soon turns out you just leave a layer of paraffin all over everything. What a cowardly bastard you are. Smarmy and shameless. All at once. Let’s get one thing straight, little Sibbe. My family owns four of Sweden’s biggest daily papers, and we control 80 percent of the commercial Swedish-language TV channels. I can’t keep track of how many gossip rags, publishing companies, and radio channels we own. If you don’t shut your mouth right now, I’ll assign some of my best journalists to make sure your pathetic life is ruined. It doesn’t matter which line of business you happen to pollute with your presence…if I want to destroy you, I can, before we ring in the new year.” He looked at his watch. “I have just over twenty-four hours. Shouldn’t take more than half that.”

  Then he leaned back toward Sophia and whispered, “You’ll have to excuse me. That wasn’t one of my better speeches. Far too emotional and grandiose. I didn’t have time to call in my speechwriter. But still, I think I’ve done my part, foreplay-wise. May I suggest we go home to your place?”

  “I want dessert first.”

  “Of course, we’ll have dessert. Two helpings each. You’re going to need all the calories you can get. If you like, we’ll have coffee as well. Not that I think you’ll have trouble staying awake, but I can get you some. Milk and sugar, Attorney?”

  27

  Twenty-four hours until the new year. One thousand, four hundred and forty minutes. This would be his fourteenth calendar year behind bars.

  Before Stig Ahlin began to work out again, there had been a six-month period during which he could hardly get out of bed. That, in combination with the cheap, energy-rich, taste-deficient food they served, had caused him to gain weight. He managed to put on forty pounds before he started running and reversing the trend and regaining control over his body.

  But there had been something refreshing about letting his body swell. The fat transformed him, turning him into someone else. A tired blob of lard whose body ached in places it never had before. And it was oddly freeing. The man he became was able to get through the baffling days; the man he had recently been would never have survived.

  During his fat months, he devoted every spare minute to watching TV, meaningless TV, entertainment TV. No news, no live debates, no documentaries. Preferably nothing that was even in Swedish. Only empty images.

  One day, an American legal drama series was on. In one scene, the prosecutor was trying to convince the members of the jury that the defendant was guilty of intentional homicide rather than manslaughter. The defendant had stabbed the victim, and the prosecutor directed the jury to count.

  “Count silently to yourself, count to twenty-four, and with each second that passes, imagine carefully how you must pull the knife from the woman’s body and take aim again: one stab, two stabs, three stabs, four stabs, five, six, seven, eight. Think quietly to yourself all the way up to twenty-four stabs of the knife, and then go out and decide how this ongoing, drawn-out, senselessly repetitive lethal violence should be categorized.”

  This would never happen in a Swedish courtroom. Not even in Stig’s own trial would the prosecutor have dared to say such a thing. It was theatrics, pure and simple.

  Stig watched the entire show. When the arguments were over, the TV jury handed back their sentence: life in prison, no parole. Life in prison.

  As the credits rolled, Stig stood up. The next day he began to work out. And then Stig began to count.

  He counted the days that had passed since he was arrested. He counted the days that had passed since he was jailed. The nine months that had passed before the appeals court sentenced him to prison for homicide. The two weeks it had taken before he was moved from the jail to Kumla Prison. And the four months he’d had to wait before arriving at the facility that had become his home. He counted every day. Every morning when Stig woke up, he measured the time that had passed.

  Because whether you believed time was linear, dynamic, or even circular, it could be sorted. Into days, hours, weeks, and years. Stig found a certain comfort in that. That time was the same for everyone, even if it might be experienced in different ways. Now. Four thousand, eight hundred and sixty-seven days. When Stig went to jail, Ida was not yet five. Now she would soon be eighteen, legally an adult. But when he thought of the day he had been arrested, it felt like yesterday.

  Time flies, even when you’re not having fun. In reality, it was only the individual days that dragged on for an unbearable eternity. Those were the ones he’d been robbed of. One at a time. And he kept counting.

  One, two, three, Stig thought as he ran. Four, five, six…

  28

  Sophia was the first to wake. She stole into the kitchen. In the fridge, which was still well stocked from Christmas, was a carton of eggs and half a carton of cream. Sure, the cream was a few days past its best-by date, but it smelled okay. She emptied it into a bowl and whisked it along with the eggs and a few drops of white truffle oil. From the freezer she took a package of bacon, which she laid in a cast-iron skillet. Her Italian coffeemaker only took a few minutes. She fried the omelet in extra-salted butter.

  “You ha
ve to marry me.”

  Ludwig propped himself up in bed and pulled Sophia toward him. Once she’d set down the tray, he stuck his hands up under her T-shirt.

  “Never,” she said. “And stop that right now. I told you yesterday. My breasts are not stress balls.”

  “But I can’t imagine a life without these. I mean, you. And I’d forgotten you can cook too. How, how, how could I forget that? How is it possible? Oh!”

  He stuck his hands back under her shirt. Sophia smiled.

  “I like you too. But we’re not getting married. We’re not going to do this again, either. Even though it was nice.”

  Sophia wormed away from him and sat down on the bed, handing him one mug of coffee and downing half the other. Then she stood up. Ludwig grabbed her arm and pulled her back down.

  “Why not? And what are you doing? This kind of coffee should be enjoyed, not bolted down like a shot. Are you in a hurry?”

  “If I had to guess, you would manage to remain faithful to me for two days,” she said. “And only if it was a weekend and I didn’t let you out of sight the whole time. After that you would sleep with absolutely anyone, and then I’d be forced to have a chat with one of my old clients, someone who knows what to do with guys like you, and then your mom would be very sad because there wouldn’t even be enough left of you to give you a proper burial, and I like your mom. I really like your mom an awful lot. So, no. The answer is no. We’re not getting married. We’re not going to have a relationship, not as a joke and not for real, and yes, I am in a serious hurry. I have to be at Grandpa’s in an hour. But first I have to pick up the car and I should swing by the office too.”

  Ludwig took a bite of omelet, moaned softly, and took another.

  “But Sophia. Please. What about how I’m filthy rich, honestly for real totally loaded, like Scrooge Mc-Fucking-Duck. Couldn’t you marry me for my money?”

  He extended a forkful of eggs. Sophia opened her mouth and allowed herself to be fed.