Beyond All Reasonable Doubt

by Malin Persson Giolito

  —

  Once Ida left, the silence returned. Sounds that usually couldn’t be heard indoors were faintly audible in the background. The tourists, the gulls, the street musicians. Kids crying, cars honking, a church bell.

  Sophia stood in her office for a while, looking at the timeline. There was nothing on it about what had happened to Ida. It wasn’t legally relevant. She didn’t want to have to think about it. Especially not right now. She tore the papers off the wall and crumpled them into her overflowing wastebasket.

  The remaining binders went into the empty boxes and Sophia dragged them out to stow them behind the reception desk. When she returned she would ask the temp receptionist to finish sorting them, file what needed to be filed, and toss the rest. The important thing was that shelves in her office were empty once more. The case file was put away. She closed and locked the office door. It was time for vacation.

  50

  It was tradition. Every year they spent a weekend in Sörmland, at the home of Norah’s best friend and her husband. This year he hadn’t wanted to think about it. He’d intended to plan something else, to do one of the many things he used to wish, as a married man with small children, that he could still do. But when Norah asked if he wanted to come along anyway, for the kids, and because they were his friends too, he said yes. Breathlessly, as though the chance might vanish if he was too eager.

  “Just like always, Dad,” his daughter said in the car, looking at him in the rearview mirror.

  Anxious — his daughter sounded anxious, and he said, “Of course, it’s just like before,” and glanced at Norah. She gave him a tentative smile, leaned into the backseat, and stroked her daughter’s cheek. Not even Norah wanted to protest.

  As usual, Adam, Norah, and the kids stayed in the guesthouse. When they said it would be perfect, that they were happy to stay there, their friends had looked relieved. Still, their hostess offered him the sofa up in the house, but Norah shook her head silently, and that was the end of that. No one had expected Adam to say what he wanted. Everyone knew Norah was in charge here. She was the one who’d asked Adam to move out. It was all up to her — every decision about what they would do from now on.

  They had dinner down by the dock. The warmest evening of the summer. They’d laughed at the same stories, the same memories they’d been telling and retelling for years now. And the children had fallen asleep an hour ago. Adam had put them to bed; Norah had stayed behind, had looked up at Adam and mimed a thank you.

  As night fell, the air became chilly. Norah had drawn a blanket over her shoulders and Adam had wriggled into his sweater. But they stayed where they were. A fresh bottle was uncorked; a thermos of tea was put out on the table, and each time someone rose Adam was afraid Norah too would say, Good night, time for me to hit the hay. He was afraid because he didn’t know what he would say then, whether he should rise to join her or wait until she was ready to get in bed before he followed.

  But the minutes passed, the sea grew dark, and the shore vanished into the dusk. The moon rose above the water and then the two of them were the only ones left.

  * * *

  —

  Norah flailed angrily at the mosquitoes swarming around her. Adam took a newspaper from the table and rolled it up, front side in, and waved it in her direction. He never had as much trouble with mosquitoes as she did. Norah took the paper from him and smacked him on the shoulder.

  “Did you get it?” Adam wondered.

  Norah smiled, shook her head, and looked down at the paper.

  It had been lying there all night, on the edge of the table, with its black headline and large photo. They’d discussed it, of course, how could they keep from talking about Stig Ahlin?

  “Was he guilty?” someone had asked Adam.

  “I don’t know,” he’d heard himself say. “But regardless, he shouldn’t have been killed.”

  They agreed about that. Beaten and stabbed to death on a concrete floor by three fellow inmates. No one deserved that. Not even Stig Ahlin.

  There was a picture of Sophia inside the paper, but they hadn’t said much about her. She wasn’t important to them.

  “I’ve worked with her,” Adam had said. But no one had paid attention. There had been a big interview with Sophia. She’d looked like her normal self, her ponytail at the back of her neck, a white T-shirt, those piercing eyes. Adam had looked at the photo, but not for long.

  “She’s a good attorney,” he had mumbled. No one had reacted to that either.

  Adam had written Sophia an email. That was only two weeks ago, but it felt like an eternity. Two days after the decision on the new trial was handed down, he had walked off, just before he was supposed to eat lunch with the kids in that cottage he’d rented. It had taken him ten minutes of walking to find a spot with coverage enough to send an email. That had felt less intrusive than a text. Not as personal. But she had never responded.

  Had what he had written been unclear? He hadn’t wanted to congratulate her, but he had said that she had done an important thing. Last time they saw each other had been so strange. He’d sounded like he was accusing her of something. He had upset her.

  But most of all he’d just wanted to have contact with her, any way he could. To see her. He had thought a lot about her, out there in the forest. But Sophia hadn’t responded. She never responded.

  Norah whacked him on the shoulder with the paper again. More gently this time.

  “I can’t take it anymore,” she whispered. “They’re everywhere. I’m going up to bed.”

  Adam placed his hand over hers; he took the paper and set it on the table, front page down.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go for a swim instead. They can’t bite us in the water.”

  At first, she said nothing. And he could hardly breathe. Because she was in charge now. These decisions lay with her, and her only. Then she stood up. She pulled off her shirt and stepped out of her pants and underwear.

  Just before she dove in, Norah’s eyes flashed. He followed her.

  The water was warm and silky, but he was shivering as if with fever. Norah’s bare skin shimmered under the surface. She swam four strokes away from him before turning around to let him catch up. As he took her by the waist and pulled her close, the surface rippled. He stood on the soft bottom to put her legs around him.

  As she took his head in her hands, he kissed her. Her fingers in his wet hair, her chest against his. The water lilies turned away from them as he pressed into her, and everything was just like always.

  51

  Sophia let Sture take the rudder. Her grandfather knew all the islets and skerries out here, the labyrinth of sea and islands. He knew them by heart, the way you know an irregular verb. He could rattle off the locations of treacherous underwater rocks; he knew how to find a narrow inlet deep enough to sail into. She still needed the nautical maps. Grandpa teased her about it anytime he got the chance.

  Instead she went up and lay down on the foredeck. They had a tailwind, the breeze from the stern, and the sails unfurled like butterfly wings on either side of the bow. The boat was flush, with the wake gurgling behind.

  “How are you feeling?” Sture asked.

  Sophia groaned.

  “Oh no, my little Fia. None of that. No more of your teenage behavior. Even if I do happen to be the country’s foremost professor of psychiatry through the ages, I must be allowed to pose a relatively simple question to my granddaughter.”

  Sophia squinted into the sun. How am I feeling? Do I even know?

  “There are lots of people who think it’s a good thing Stig Ahlin is dead,” she said instead. “Even if he wasn’t guilty of the murder. They say that in a greater sense, it’s still good that he was punished. For what he did to his daughter.”

  Sophia felt the boat lurch. She steadied herself with her elbow and glared at Sture. One time he had tipp
ed her overboard when she was lying there like this.

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  Sture set the boat back on its original course. The sails filled quickly, and Sophia cautiously lay back down.

  “I’m afraid it’s the best answer I can give you.”

  “So, you’re not feeling so hot,” Sture muttered. “It’s still eating at you.” He looked up at the top of the mast. “Is it important to you? To know whether Stig Ahlin was guilty or not?”

  “What do you mean?” Sophia sat up. She took the pillow she’d been using from under her head and placed it under her bottom instead. “No, not really. It’s not a question I typically ask myself in my work. If I did, I couldn’t be an attorney.”

  “But it was different with Ahlin,” Sture declared.

  Sophia nodded. “I thought that was why I was doing it. Because I was going to get an innocent man freed. But then he was murdered. Because his fellow prisoners wanted to keep me from getting him out. And to be honest, I don’t know if Stig Ahlin was innocent. I don’t even know what that means. To be innocent.”

  “I dug up those interviews with Ida when she was little.” Sture had engaged the autopilot and was about to open a pilsner. “I know you said it wasn’t necessary, but I was still interested.”

  Sophia drew up her knees.

  “And I don’t know,” Sture went on. He paused. “That kid, she said things that don’t make me entirely comfortable with what happened later. You know, there are certain things it’s easy to overanalyze when you listen to children. At least, if you already suspect they have been victimized somehow.”

  The wind whipped a little and the leech began to flutter. Sophia came down off the deck and took over the rudder. Sture shuffled off a bit, leaning back and taking big gulps of his beer.

  “Your grandmother always touched you,” Sture said. “As if she owned you.”

  Sophia smiled.

  “No man can touch his kids that way.”

  Sophia adjusted the sail and their course. Sture put down his beer and helped her sheet in the jib.

  Grandma touched me like I was a part of her, she thought. As if she owned me. Always, constant, close. Touching my bottom, stroking my belly. Lifting my hair and kissing the back of my neck. Helping me with ointments when my bottom stung. Checking that the birthmark in my groin hadn’t started to grow. Way into my teens, she crawled into bed with me and cuddled up close when I was crying. Looking extensively at my changing body. Scanning me when I showered to see how my pubic hair was growing, asking me about discharge and periods, contraceptives and masturbation.

  She accepted a fresh beer from Sture and drank it slowly.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” she said. “Do you think Grandma did something she shouldn’t have?”

  Sture just looked at Sophia. His eyes darkened. Slowly he shook his head. Then he swallowed and shook his head once more.

  “Definitely not. I just mean that there are ways of being with your children that can be obtrusive, but still perfectly correct. And when little kids talk about stuff like that, it’s not a given that we can interpret what they’re saying the right way. And I should have been better at hugging you when you were little. More like Grandma. But when I was a child, parents didn’t hug as much. At least not in my family.”

  “But there’s no comparison here,” Sophia said. “There was still something strange about Ida’s stories. I didn’t go to day care and say that I slept naked in Grandma’s bed. Because with Grandma I was always safe. Everything she did was obvious and right. Ida’s stories were…” She swallowed. “I should have let Ida say what she wanted when she was up in my office. It was clear there was something she wanted me to know. Something she would have told me, if I’d given her the chance. She wanted to ease her conscience in some way I wasn’t expecting. We should have talked about options for moving forward in the judicial process.”

  “Do you really think she’d want to?”

  “No, not a chance. But the thing about Ida,” Sophia went on. “It’s not just what she said. She did such strange things too. A four-year-old playing sexual games, in that odd way she did, doesn’t that suggest something had happened to her?”

  “Maybe,” said Sture. He drank the last of his beer. “But what? And does it mean it had to be her dad who did it? I have no idea.”

  Suddenly the evening breeze died down. The wind was fickle. The boat nearly stopped short and the sails collapsed to the mast. Sophia went up on deck to bring them down; there was no point in sailing any more today. Sture started the engine. Time to head to harbor for the night.

  “Don’t worry about what Stig Ahlin did or did not do,” said Sture. “You’ll never find out whether he was guilty. Of one thing or the other. But what you did for Stig Ahlin was really…you have to allow yourself to feel, my lovely Fia. It was a damn good job. You should be pleased with yourself, as fantastically proud as I am.”

  * * *

  —

  Up on land, Sophia found early blueberries and a few chanterelles. They ate the mushrooms fried in butter along with smoked herring, fresh spinach, and boiled new potatoes. She served the berries with whipped cream.

  Now they were sitting on either side of the cockpit and drinking coffee. The last of the daylight clotted over the water and fog blew toward the outer skerries in gauzy bands. A mink dove from a rock into the inky water and swam off like furry quicksilver under the surface.

  “I remember,” Sture said quietly, “when you sat on my lap and held the rudder, you couldn’t have been more than six. I heard you counting. ‘What are you counting?’ I wondered. Do you remember what you said?”

  Sophia shook her head. No, she thought. I never remember that sort of thing.

  “‘I’m counting the colors of the sea,’ you said. ‘Do you think anyone can count that high?’”

  52

  “I’ll wait in the car,” Marianne had told her daughter on the way to the cemetery. “I’m happy to drive you there, but you’ll have to bury him yourself.”

  Ida hadn’t reacted.

  “I didn’t say anything to the lawyer,” she’d said instead. “I went up to her office. But I didn’t tell her. Because I don’t want you to be charged with perjury.”

  Marianne couldn’t help but smile. Her clever daughter with her complicated words. She meant well, but she knew nothing about that stuff. Marianne would not be convicted of perjury; she had never lied. Not to the court, not in interrogations. She had never said anything she didn’t know to be true. Because no one had asked her. Why would they have?

  Yet she was glad Ida hadn’t said anything. Because now Ida believed she had rescued her mother from prison and dishonor. Marianne thought this might make Ida feel better. As if she were guilt-free. Because she was — Ida and everyone else. No one knew what Marianne knew. Not even Marianne herself, at first.

  That night. Marianne remembered it all in great detail. The early-summer light. And the hatred. It had settled in her body and infected her blood.

  Ida was picked up right after lunch. Marianne had taken a sick day and had packed Ida’s bag the night before. Ida had her own backpack as well, with her blankie, a doll’s baby bottle, and her favorite puzzle. It was missing four pieces.

  When the social worker rang the doorbell, Ida began to cry; she usually did, when they had guests. Marianne couldn’t bring herself to comfort her. She just handed her daughter over, prying her sweaty little hands from her body.

  “Bye, sweetie,” she had said. “See you very soon. You’re going to have a nice time. And Mommy will pick you up in two days. Two days will go by very, very fast.”

  Ida would be away for two nights, and once the social worker had strapped her into the car and driven off, Marianne was struck by rage. A fury that resembled nothing other than, possibly, birthing pains. With that rage coursing through her b
ody she got in the car to see Stig. She wanted to confront him. She would force him to confess. And if he didn’t confess what he had done to her daughter, if he didn’t take responsibility, she would kill him.

  This was the first time she had hated another person. And the consequences were self-evident.

  But Stig hadn’t been home. Instead she sat outside his house, on the street. She stared straight into his apartment with its large picture windows. When they divorced, he’d gotten himself a showpiece apartment. Twice the size of the one Ida and Marianne lived in.

  When Stig got home from work she allowed him to park in the garage and go into the building and up the stairs and into his apartment. He didn’t see her. I’ll go in in a minute, she had thought. But that’s as far as she ever got. Her body betrayed her. Her hatred didn’t make her brave, only weak.

  As if paralyzed, she stayed in the car, watching Stig turn on the ceiling lights, watching him as he sat in front of the TV, as he went to bed and turned out the lights. Filled with contempt at her own fear, she stayed there until after six in the morning, when the bright summer night turned into a brand-new day. Then he woke up. When he left the building to get in his car and go to work, she too started her car and drove off.

  Marianne had sat in her car, just like now, watching Stig. She hadn’t slept; how could she have slept? She hadn’t dozed off. Not for a second. She was there the whole time. And Stig never left. He ate in front of the TV and went to bed early.

  The second night Ida was gone, Marianne slept like a log. The sleeping pills she’d been prescribed suddenly worked, and then she picked up Ida and the investigation went on. The night outside Stig’s apartment faded to an uncomfortable reminder of her own weakness.

  Each week it was something new. Conversations with the police. Doctors’ visits. Talking with the psychologist. Talking to the day care. Nothing else mattered. In Marianne’s world, this was all there was.