Beyond All Reasonable Doubt

by Malin Persson Giolito

  At least he’d increased his vocabulary. If it was, in fact, a perk to learn a ton of innovative words for sex organs — it wasn’t as if he could include it on a CV.

  He felt his heart growing lighter as the number of emails in the in-box decreased.

  How does Sophia Weber stand it? he thought. No wonder she’s so grumpy. It couldn’t be easy to be the attorney who managed to land a dream case like Stig Ahlin’s and then receive these sorts of reactions. Tinfoil-hat types who said they knew who shot Olof Palme or who had killed Katrin Björk. Those clowns. How had they even learned how to turn on a computer? But Gustafsson & Weber should have a secretary for this stuff. They should be using him for real tasks, important tasks.

  Anyway, he was almost done. He could call that girl he’d met out at Sturecompagniet last night. She’d been decently impressed when he told her he was working at a law firm over the summer. He’d also told her why he preferred criminal law instead of that fill-in-the-blanks jurisprudence they did over at Norrmalmstorg. He could tell her he was working on the Stig Ahlin case, but they’d decided to finish early for once. She would like that.

  The in-box was almost empty when he clicked on an email from Ida Sörensson.

  “I need to meet with you,” the brief note said. “There’s something I want to tell you, it’s really important. I know things about Stig Ahlin and the murder of Katrin Björk.”

  She had included her phone number and address.

  The intern hesitated. Had he noticed that email before? The name didn’t mean anything to him.

  Whatever, he thought. Who killed Palme? I know! I was possessed by the devil, and he told me. Naturally, whatever she wanted to share would be along those lines. Fuck it. A copy of the email was in the pile he’d given to Sophia too. She had a copy of all the crazy emails. They couldn’t accuse him of being careless. So he clicked the trash symbol. The computer made a crunching noise.

  That’s that, he mumbled to himself, pleased. It was only five o’clock — time for a beer. Or a drink, if the girl from yesterday wanted to tag along. If she did, it would have to be drinks. Although in that case he’d have to go home first to put on a tie. Lawyers wore ties. He would make a date with her, hurry in a few minutes late, and loosen his tie as he sat down. And he would tell her how they were in the process of preparing Stig Ahlin’s case for the court of appeals. But no details — she would understand, client-attorney privilege and all. She would definitely like that.

  He scrolled through the in-box, selected the rest of the emails and erased them as well. Then he turned off the computer.

  Law. A noble occupation.

  45

  It took a few days, but daily life went back to the way it had been.

  Planned out. Every hour.

  Short walk. Long walk. They were let out like dogs, and each activity had a name. They were herded in various directions like livestock and fed like lab rats. Even their free time was scheduled. If they wanted to sit in their rooms between activities, the door had to remain open. It could only be locked from the outside.

  Stig Ahlin still wasn’t allowed to run alone in the mornings before the general wake-up call. Now they were saying it was out of concern for his security. He was a high-risk inmate. But Stig knew the real reason.

  They hated him. The inmates. The staff. All of them. Stig knew it. It hadn’t mattered before. He used to persuade himself he didn’t care about them anyway. But Lasse Wilander had changed that fact. He made Stig see them for what they were. Paltry. Small. Pathetic. They refused to let him run alone because they wanted to demonstrate their power, that they controlled him. Also, they were afraid that someone on the outside would find out he had received special privileges.

  But Stig’s petition for a new trial had been granted. For extraordinary reasons. And even if Sophia Weber wouldn’t say it out loud, Stig was starting to realize that this meant he would soon be out of here. Lasse Wilander had taken it for granted. Had even said it, more than once. He allowed Stig to believe it, to talk about it. When the program aired, Stig sat on his bed and realized that Wilander was right. And with that insight came the flood of contempt.

  Stig wanted them to see who he was. For them to speak to him the way he deserved. He wanted to look them in the eyes and see that they knew they were wrong. See the shame. He wanted to make them feel ashamed. About everything, but especially for having believed they could break him by refusing him his solitary exercise time, by delaying his mail, by pretending to have misplaced his packages. Such small people. Worthy only of contempt.

  He still woke up at the same time. But these days he didn’t remain in bed. He had put together an exercise program instead. Push-ups, sit-ups. All the drills he could think of. For weights he used books. When the door opened he was drenched with sweat and the oxygen in his cell was nearly depleted. He headed straight for the showers; these days he never had to wait his turn.

  After breakfast he went to the workshop, where he sat down and got to work. The machines immersed everything in flashing metal. The blade whined; the plane shrieked like a madman; the band saw howled. The heat was almost unbearable. Outside it was a cool summer day, unusually rainy and chilly. But in here it was hot. Still, he put on his work coveralls and ear protection and safety goggles. Thick gloves and special shoes.

  As soon as it was exercise time, he ran. None of the other inmates bothered him anymore. He still counted, but now he was counting down. One day at a time. Soon he would be out of here. And they would be ashamed. He would make them regret their actions. And pay for what they had done to him. At least a million kronor per year in damages. Money for a life abroad.

  And he made his way through the days. He knew now that they couldn’t stop him anymore. Soon it would all be over.

  * * *

  —

  A red cottage with white trim, in the middle of the forest. In the yard was a swing hanging from a knobby apple tree. White roses climbed the facade and in the outhouse was a rag rug, a washing pan made of floral porcelain, and moisture-swollen royal postcards in frames on the wall. Inside was all oiled wood floors, plaster walls with wainscoting, and a wood-burning stove. There were two small bedrooms, one with a pair of twin beds, the other with a view of the lake.

  Adam had been renting the place for two weeks, the two weeks he was supposed to spend alone with the children. They were three days in and the weather was getting better and better.

  Adam had put up a tent in the yard. They’d gathered bark in the woods and started to whittle a boat each. He’d also built a herd of cows out of pinecones and matches, filled egg-carton stalls with lush clover, and unpacked beads and watercolors in the kitchen. In the shed he had found a tangled net and two fishing poles. There were worms in the overgrown herb garden on the east side of the house.

  “Dad,” his son whined while Adam was lying in the hammock after lunch. “There’s nothing to do.”

  On the first night they ate tacos. On the second night he made homemade meatballs and French fries. On the third night they had pancakes for dinner. Served with ice cream, warm raspberries, and lightly whipped cream.

  “Dad,” his daughter cried. “I want lingonberry, why didn’t you get any lingonberry jam?”

  He had brought his favorite books from when he was a boy and filled one of the shelves with them. So far, neither his son nor his daughter had read a single one. The two magazines they’d bought before the trip were unread as well, but they had played with the accompanying plastic toys until they fell apart. It had taken twenty minutes.

  Tomorrow would be hamburgers. The shed was full of charcoal for grilling. Or should they get out the sleeping bags and flashlights and sleep in the tent tonight?

  How bad could the mosquitoes really be?

  46

  It was a struggle for Sophia to keep from screaming uncontrollably. They’d been at it for over three hours. The sun was
blazing outside. Thunder was in the air and she was starting to think that Hans Segerstad was crazy.

  He said he wanted to argue the case.

  They didn’t yet have a date for the hearing, to be sure, but it wouldn’t be long, and it wasn’t likely to be far in the future once they received it. They had to be prepared. So she had said when she asked Hans to come by her office. Sophia was the one who wanted them to meet, at least once before Hans took off on vacation. To divide up the work, to the extent there was any work to divide up.

  There was no way she could have predicted that Hans would be struck by delusions of grandeur.

  Hans Segerstad knew next to nothing about the practicalities of a trial. He didn’t have her detailed knowledge about the case, nor did he have any intentions of putting in the work it would take to learn. Yet he had just casually thrown out that he felt he should give the closing arguments in the case.

  Sophia could hardly believe her ears. This was her case. She had Segerstad to thank for getting in contact with Ahlin, but now he had to live with the consequences of asking Sophia to handle the petition for a retrial. Anything else was unthinkable.

  Hans Segerstad didn’t understand the gravity of this situation. He thought his reputation as a renowned academic was exactly what this court of appeals hearing needed, and that his age and merits were of more import than what he called her “impeccable preparatory work.”

  With each word that came from his mouth, Sophia became angrier. Preparatory work. Now she was almost afraid to say anything, afraid she would lose control. Hans had taken a chair on the other side of her desk. Next to him towered her unread pile of guilty-conscience material. At the top was the collection of nutjob emails the summer intern had printed out and dropped off at her office.

  She tried to calm herself before speaking.

  Along one side of her office ran the timeline of the Stig Ahlin case. She turned her back to Hans Segerstad and gazed at it instead. She ran a hand along the very first sheet, the one that showed the emergency call made near the time of Katrin Björk’s death.

  No matter what he says, Hans Segerstad knows he’s not the one who got Stig Ahlin that new trial, she thought. I did. He can give as many interviews as he wants, I don’t care. He can go on every TV channel in Sweden and claim that I played an important part in his petition and not vice versa. But he will not take my work away from me. That is out of the question.

  She kept looking at the timeline. It covered an entire wall. The case files were in piles beneath it.

  Everything from the preliminary investigation and all the other material I could find on the inquiry. I know it by heart and Hans doesn’t. He doesn’t know anywhere near as much as I do.

  Hans Segerstad has gotten what he needs. He’s been celebrated; he has gotten to feel immortal. The trial is my turn. I need to argue it. And if he is freed, I’ll know I did the right thing. I’ll know he’s innocent. Then he will be innocent.

  “Not on your life,” she said at last. “I’m Stig Ahlin’s attorney, not you. There is no need to discuss this any further. If you insist, I’ll tell Stig Ahlin that he has to choose one of us. And if that happens, you won’t even get a seat in the gallery. Because even if you manage to convince everyone else the opposite is true, Stig Ahlin knows which one of us did the work.”

  “What’s all of this?”

  Hans Segerstad had picked up the stack of printouts. He read the top one, frowning.

  “Those came from some of the many wackos who write to me,” Sophia replied. “To me. I’m the one they want to tell off. Because I’m Stig Ahlin’s attorney, I’m the one who was appointed, and I’m the one who will handle his defense — his whole defense, including the closing arguments.”

  “This is insane,” said Hans Segerstad. “Where do people get the time? Where do they get the energy to write this sort of crap?”

  The professor slowly paged through the stack.

  “Never mind,” he said suddenly, putting down the documents. “Let’s get lunch. If you’re doing the trial, you’re buying.”

  * * *

  —

  Stinging nettles. Mosquitoes. Wasps. Vipers. Spanish slugs. No Internet, no TV. Rain. Every day. Each time he thought, Surely today the weather will be nice, another downpour broke out.

  They had driven to Heron City mall, where the children got Happy Meals and they watched two movies. Adam slept through the first and woke up with a strand of saliva dangling from his lower lip and his lap full of popcorn. In the middle of the second film, his daughter dozed off. Adam made a lame attempt to wake her, but soon gave up.

  He let his son sit in the front as they drove back to the cottage. Even so, he got carsick and puked cascades into his Happy Meal box. It only leaked a little.

  When they returned home, the hot water was out. Adam heated three pots of water on the stove and bathed the kids in a plastic tub on the kitchen floor.

  Then he went out and sat on the kitchen stairs and cried.

  * * *

  —

  The tasks Stig performed in the workshop were monotonous, but they took a certain amount of concentration. Still, he could see from the corner of his eye how his neighbor at the wide-belt sander rose as smoke began to pour from his machine. Just a few seconds later, sparks were flying across the stone floor. The dust in the exhaust vent had ignited. It was burning like a propane flame.

  It didn’t occur to Stig to help. Instead he took a step back from his workbench.

  His fellow inmates did the same. None of them had a mind to try to stop this.

  Stig took off his safety goggles and observed the chaos.

  The guards panicked. One of them ran in one direction and yanked the fire extinguisher from its rack. The other shouted about dust explosions and opened the sliding doors into the adjacent hall, then turned around and yelled something at his colleague.

  The whole room filled with smoke from the burning motor and a thick haze from the extinguisher.

  Suddenly only one guard was left in the room. The other had taken off, leaving the sliding door wide open. Was he getting help? Stig moved a little farther away from the remaining guard, who was busy putting out the fire; he could hardly be seen in the cloud of powder and dust.

  Stig looked at the door, which was now wide open. Open, unguarded, a gaping wound. On the other side was an identical workshop. The entire job annex was made up of workshops, side by side, separated by well-sealed doors. But now the isolated sex crimes unit was no longer isolated. Nothing separated their team from the other work teams.

  In all his years in this prison, Stig had never seen a unit besides his own. He had never seen those who worked there, what they looked like, the people he was supposed to be protected from.

  But now he did. There they stood. Twelve men. Side by side. Gazing in, at the tumult. At him. Two of them began to move toward the opening. They pulled off their visors and safety goggles, dropping them on the floor. Coming closer.

  Stig looked over at the guard. The extinguisher was empty, and he called for someone to bring one from the other workshop. But the guard wasn’t looking in Stig’s direction.

  The two inmates from the next room had seen Stig. Recognized him. They looked at one another. No discussion was needed — each knew what the other was thinking, what they must do. They simply separated from their group as if on command. Now they were heading for him.

  Stig knew what was about to happen. The guard was turned away. He was busy with the fire and wasn’t watching Stig.

  47

  Sophia and Hans Segerstad had gone out for lunch, and then Hans strolled toward Central Station; he would be heading home to Uppsala. In a few days he would take off for three weeks in Italy.

  “You can do this,” he declared just before he left. There were no hints of their earlier conversation about who should argue the case in court. He di
dn’t mention it. His voice was breezy, not accusatory or wounded. It didn’t seem like he was angry about what Sophia had said, or even slightly upset.

  Sophia lingered in the sidewalk seating and gazed at Kungsträdgården. The park was crowded: blemished legs, unshaved armpits, fungus-ridden feet. Bare skin where there should have been clothing. Lemminglike streams of a different sort of people than were usually found here. The Stockholmers had fled when the city seethed beyond recognition. Now it was the city of country folk, of Germans and Norwegians, of sandals, sweat, and shorts.

  She looked down at her empty coffee cup. Was it time to go, or should she have a refill? Treat herself to that extra cup of coffee? She was relieved that she’d avoided an argument with Hans. Relieved, but also, in some sense, abandoned. The oppressive heat had made her feet swell. Her shoes hurt, but she couldn’t take them off — she’d never get them back on. Her T-shirt stank; she stank.

  It didn’t sound appealing, going back to the office. She could call Grandpa. They could go out sailing for a few days. No one would miss her. She had time. There was no reason for her to stress out as long as they hadn’t been given a date for the proceedings. Furthermore, she knew the case file by heart. There was no way she was going to forget it, and if she had trouble relaxing she could start writing her arguments out in the archipelago.

  “Extraordinary reasons,” the Supreme Court had said. That was a strong statement.

  The appeals court trial is just a formality, she thought. In truth, I know that. There’s no reason for me to worry. He’ll be released. Soon.

  She took her phone from her bag to call Sture. He would want to come along.