Beyond All Reasonable Doubt

by Malin Persson Giolito

  He shifted in his chair again. Thank God he’d spent the morning reading up on this. He’d known what she wanted to talk about. And he had read in the newspaper that she was representing Stig Ahlin.

  Could he have said no? Could he have said I don’t think it’s a good idea to see each other? Presumably. When he tried to get hold of her, she never returned his calls. All those times he’d tried, after that night — he’d even gone to her workplace. Planted himself in the lobby since she refused to answer when he called, refused to call back when he left messages. He’d wanted to talk to her; she had refused. Of course, he could have decided not to call her back. Yet the thought had never occurred to him, not until now. And now here he was, and she was talking and talking, but he didn’t hear what she was saying.

  Her mouth — he couldn’t look at her mouth. He must absolutely not think about her mouth — anything but that.

  He already knew everything he needed to know to help her. She wanted to talk about the victim. Defense attorneys usually did. And she wanted to prove that the girl had had it rough, that her life choices placed her in risky situations. It didn’t take a PhD to figure out what Sophia was after.

  * * *

  —

  “That’s about it.” Sophia put her notepad on the table. She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. “But given that this isn’t part of the preliminary investigation material, I believe these must be considered new facts. And I would like to supplement Eija’s witness statement with an opinion on what it might imply. You know, to the extent that there are statistics, psychological interpretations, I want to include those. Anything that could help the court understand the bigger picture.”

  Sophia tried to think of a way to conclude. Adam had raised his arms over his head again. His skin was much paler on the undersides of his arms; she caught a glimpse of the dark, curly hair under the sleeves of his T-shirt.

  “I don’t have much more to tell you,” she went on. “Just…I’m going to include Eija’s story in my petition, but I’d like to place that story in a context, I need to make the court understand her, how they lived, what they did. And why.”

  I’m repeating myself, she thought. Shut up. If he wants to help me, he will. If he doesn’t, I can leave. I never should have come. I never should have contacted him. What was I thinking? I need to leave. Now.

  “And this story suggests that your client is innocent?” Adam spat the word. He had his arms crossed now. “I don’t understand. He still confessed to having sex with her. As I see it, this only explains why Stig Ahlin was able to exploit her. Not why he didn’t kill her.”

  Sophia looked back down at her documents. Those eyes — I don’t want him to look at me, it looks like he hates me. Why did he agree to meet with me if he loathes me so much? She cleared her throat.

  “Stig Ahlin was convicted of murder. The fact that he slept with Katrin doesn’t make him a murderer. There’s no question that if it turns out there were a lot of other potentially violent men in her life, this would be extremely pertinent to the court’s decision.”

  Adam shook his head and didn’t say anything for a moment. Sophia leaned across the table to pull her bag closer and was about to stand up and leave when he began to speak again.

  “Back then, not much was known about teenage girls and their problems,” he said. “We knew about anorexia, but that was about it.”

  “You accept that she might have lived like this?” Sophia dropped her bag again.

  “Without a doubt.” He nodded.

  “Saw lots of men? Allowed herself to be used? Because everything that has come out about Katrin up to this point suggests that she was the responsible type. The most responsible. Is it really likely that her life was like this? That she did that sort of thing? Just tell me what you believe.”

  “You have no idea how many girls in lamb’s wool sweaters and pearl necklaces I’ve listened to. Who have sat there primly, knees together, and told me the most incredible stories.” Adam’s gaze was steady on her. “I think this sounds like a pretty classic example. And even if my colleagues made a hell of a mistake in not digging deeper, I understand why. On a human level, at least.”

  Sophia let him continue.

  “But if we stick to Katrin. This kind of self-harm often begins with an assault. A rape, or a sexual game that goes off the rails.”

  “If that’s what happened, why do you think it never came out? It would have been pivotal. If she had been raped previously. The guy that raped her…” Sophia didn’t finish her sentence. She wasn’t out to find the killer. All she wanted to do was prove that Stig Ahlin wasn’t the only one who could have killed Katrin.

  “Probably because the people who should have known didn’t know that she had been subjected to something, and because those who did know didn’t think it was important. Her parents…” Adam cleared his throat. “She probably didn’t mention anything to them, because if she had they would have told the police, at least after she was murdered. But why would Katrin have told them? There are a hundred reasons for a child not to say anything, and only one reason to tell the truth. It doesn’t mean they’re bad parents — sometimes it’s even the opposite, in certain respects. But there could be something else going on. Another sibling who isn’t doing well or who dies, someone’s sick and gets overlooked. Or a divorce. Dad is unfaithful, and he and Mom are having a shitty time, what do I know?”

  Silence. Sophia cast her eyes down. Adam cleared his throat.

  “She seeks out other adults,” he said. “Ones who see her. Who tell her that she’s good, that’s she’s sexy, damn good at fucking, anything. Of course, it’s easy for us to see that this makes the girls feel even worse in the long run, but it’s not so simple for them.”

  “But she was so young. Isn’t it —”

  “Fourteen. If I were to generalize, I’d say this is more or less the age of debut for these girls. I met one girl who was twelve. In her case, not a single person believed her. Not even me. She had a mild mental handicap and I thought, sometimes that can…there are examples…it can be a reason…I was wrong. We made a hell of a mistake. One of my colleagues had to go to her house and cut her dead body down from the shower rod in her parents’ bathroom. She hanged herself when the prosecutor closed the investigation into one of her friends’ dads. She was twelve. Had just had a birthday.”

  “How do they find these men? Where do they find each other? How do they meet?”

  “Here and there. The Internet wasn’t too widespread yet in 1998. Aftonbladet had some site where they hung out, but it wasn’t very common. I guess it was still doable, though. Where did you say she met your client? At her after-school job? That sounds like a place they might have met, to me. Otherwise, at school, at training camp, at the stables, at the grocery store. You can’t just ban them from going online and assume that’s enough. The only thing that might help is making sure that the kids are mentally all right.”

  Sophia was quiet. Adam stared at her. The water bottle in front of him was empty. He laid it on the table and spun it around.

  “And what are you planning to do with this information?” he wondered. “Conveniently leak to a handy journalist that Katrin Björk was a slut and Stig Ahlin was just a poor bastard who thought he would get to have uncomplicated sex with a girl who was up for anything? Consensually, of course. How was Stig Ahlin supposed to understand that she didn’t want to, if she didn’t say no? I’m guessing that’s how you see it. That Stig Ahlin can’t be blamed and now her parents just have to take this blow too. As if they didn’t already have quite a bit to deal with.”

  Sophia shook her head. She clenched her jaw so hard that pain shot through one of her molars.

  “It’s not about blaming Katrin or her parents.” She stood up. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with this information, other than use it in my petition for a new trial.” Her phone fell out of her bag agai
n. Sophia snatched it up. “What do you think I should do? Ditch Stig Ahlin because he’s a creep? Because he has a horrible view of women? I’m sorry you dislike him, and excuse me for repeating myself, but he was convicted of homicide, not of sleeping with Katrin. You don’t get life in prison for having consensual sex with a woman who has reached the age of consent, even if she is young.”

  Adam was standing now as well. They stood there on either side of the oblong table, Adam with his legs planted wide and one hand clenched in a fist.

  “What do I think you should do?” he wondered. “Nothing, I guess. That bastard deserves to rot in jail. He should never be allowed out.”

  He walked across the room, approached Sophia, and took her arm. She stared at her arm. At his hand. That broad, soft, warm hand was just as she remembered it. He was touching her. What is he doing? she had time to think. Her skin was burning. She yanked free and walked out of the room.

  “You can’t just take off,” he called. “I have to escort you to the lobby. You can’t go by yourself.”

  Sophia heard Adam, but she stalked off anyway. As fast as she could, without turning around. He didn’t come after her, not right away. The elevator was still where she’d left it; the doors opened as soon as she pushed the button. She made it inside before he caught up with her. But he didn’t follow her. The doors closed, and he hadn’t tried to get in. He didn’t touch her again. Then he was gone.

  35

  Sophia and the forensic odontologist, Maria Larsson, met in the cafeteria at the National Board of Forensic Medicine. They were each sipping a mug of coffee, and Maria Larsson was speaking at a rapid pace. She had a job to get back to, and far too much to do.

  “I don’t actually agree with the practice of obtaining expert opinions in crime investigations like this one,” she said, “or at least I very seldom do. My job is to identify dead people. In cooperation with the National Board pathologists I try to find out who died, not who killed whom. Fire victims, big disasters. The tsunami — we were very busy after that.”

  Sophia nodded.

  “But naturally I remember the Stig Ahlin case very well.” The forensic odontologist had put down her coffee and taken off her glasses. She polished them intently with a handkerchief that smelled strongly of eau de cologne. “And I’ve taken a look at the pictures you sent. I wasn’t here then; that was my predecessor, but he’s dead now.” She stopped polishing and aimed a grave look at Sophia. “He was Sweden’s first forensic odontologist. A real legend, just brilliant. A pioneer. He taught me — well, he was…” She paused to put her glasses back on. “But we’re not here to talk about me. So, the analysis in the Stig Ahlin case.”

  “I’m truly grateful,” Sophia began, but she was interrupted by the odontologist, who waved an annoyed hand in the air.

  “What can I say besides the obvious? I agree completely with that analysis. The marks on Katrin Björk’s body are far too inconclusive, far too superficial. That Englishman who performed the examination that was used at the trial…” She laughed. “Actually, I know who he is, met him once at a conference a year or so after the murder. Enthusiastic, eloquent, disturbingly popular among investigators. But naturally, he’s an idiot.”

  Sophia nodded.

  “You don’t believe that the marks match Stig Ahlin’s teeth?”

  “Definitely not.” Maria Larsson seemed almost amused. “And I’m prepared to swear to it. For my part, there is nothing in those pictures that shows with any certainty that the marks on her body came from teeth. If the pathologists confirmed they were, that would change things, but just going on the image of the marks, and disregarding how the girl died, some of them could be insect bites, or a rash.”

  She picked up one of the photographs of Katrin Björk’s dead body that Sophia had placed on the table. She pointed.

  “This irregular, half-moon-shaped mark, for example — when it comes to this one and a few of the others I can at least understand how someone thought they saw an impression left by teeth. In those pictures it undeniably looks like the wound could be a bite mark. But the others? And to go from there to deciding those teeth belonged to Ahlin and no one else? Can you explain that to me?”

  She looked urgently at Sophia, then went on.

  “Oh well. But I seldom get excited for no reason. Especially not when a police officer has stated exactly the results he hopes for beforehand. Because we get to…well, I’m sure you know, our specialty is unique among forensic analysts in that we find out quite a bit about the presumed perpetrator before we start working. We are given a lot of prior information, too much, if you ask me. We are supplied with dental molds and images of what are alleged to be bites, and we’re expected to put those two puzzle pieces together. We’re often held to rather low standards in these examinations. It’s unusual for the odontologist to receive more than one dental cast to compare. Imagine if the police arranged a lineup, but only allowed the witness to see the main suspect. It’s kind of like that. Even when the assumptions are better thought out, though, lots of people are happy to embellish to be accommodating. It’s human nature, and sometimes it’s even necessary. Nothing to get worked up about. Unless you’re Stig Ahlin, that is.”

  “You’re prepared to swear to it, you say? What does that entail?”

  “That I’d be happy to write a brief opinion. It will look more or less like my colleague’s. You can include it in your petition.”

  Sophia squeezed her hands in her lap. This was good, but would it really be enough? She needed more.

  “I mentioned on the phone that there was a dog at the scene of the crime.”

  “Right.” The odontologist drank the last of her coffee. “I know what you’re getting at. But you won’t get me to state that it was a dog. Not even if you provided me with a dental cast of that pooch. Which is dead anyway, I assume? The marks are still too incomplete, no matter what you want me to compare them to. I can’t swear it was the dog, not with a clear conscience. My reputation is on the line here.”

  Sophia’s heart sank. Maria Larsson glanced at her watch.

  “It’s a tricky area. But you should know that after a few decades of slavering uncritically over any complex notion that arrived bearing an official stamp, we scientists have become more and more skeptical toward…Let’s say that there’s an enormous difference in what can be scientifically proven, and exercises in which the results of an analysis depend solely on an expert opinion. I think you should have a decent chance of getting your new trial.”

  “Unfortunately, the courts aren’t equally skeptical,” Sophia said.

  One time, she thought. Only one single time did a Swedish court go against an expert opinion from the National Board of Forensic Medicine. I need a new opinion from the board, one that clearly points away from Stig Ahlin. That would increase my chances for a new trial tenfold.

  “We’ll hope that the legal world catches up soon. Because the thing about experts — what can I tell you?” The odontologist looked at her watch again. “There are about three hundred people in the world who have as much experience in this arena as I do. In the world. Not even those of us in this limited group agree. When we meet, we’re more inclined to disagree about everything. Attorneys who deal with the same sorts of things you do — you’re not on the same page all the time, are you?”

  Sophia shook her head in acknowledgment.

  “You spend half your time arguing and ratting each other out, and the rest of it explaining to each other how many idiots are in your profession?” Maria Larsson grinned. “No one raises a glass for absent friends?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “That’s what specialists are like. It’s something you learn at university. It’s as if that’s the only way to make a name for yourself. And furthermore, there’s no shortage of dentists who’d love to make an extra buck working for the police. Not here in Sweden, but abroad.”

 
I have to get her to say this on tape, Sophia thought. She already knew that forensic odontology was one of the most hotly debated arenas in the forensic sciences, and that it wasn’t a specialty recognized by the National Board of Health and Welfare. But she’d hardly expected to hear it from one of the top experts in Sweden.

  “These sorts of problems are well known in the United States,” said Maria Larsson. “There are tons of notorious cases. You’ve heard of them, I expect?”

  “A few.”

  “The most famous one is the Ray Krone case.”

  Sophia nodded. She’d read that one.

  “Received the death penalty after some guy somehow managed to match his snaggle-toothed dental impression on a Styrofoam cup to the bite marks on the breasts of a woman who was raped and murdered.” She sighed. “He spent ten years in prison before they managed to free him. And what got him out was the new DNA technology. I don’t suppose Stig Ahlin will be that lucky?”

  Sophia shook her head. It seemed important to say as little as possible and let Maria Larsson speak.

  “If you ask me…forensic odontology is indispensable when it comes to identifying a dead body or figuring out how old the deceased is. But it should not be used to finger murderers and rapists.”

  She stood up, pushed her chair in smartly, and picked up her empty mug. She’d promised Sophia fifteen minutes. Thirteen of them had passed. Sophia felt her stomach knotting. She needed to keep talking to Maria Larsson.

  “I know you’re very busy. I really appreciate this. But…” She didn’t know what she should say. “But you did say that it could have been the dog,” she said. “Couldn’t you say so in court too, that it could have been?”

  “No. I’m not going to put it that way. But I will say that the marks are too incomplete to conclude that they were made by human teeth, much less Stig Ahlin’s teeth. I think that should be convincing enough.”