Beyond All Reasonable Doubt
Page 34
But it didn’t help. One day when she was called to the station, it wasn’t to be questioned. She was told the police would not be devoting any further resources to her daughter. The investigation would be closed. But Marianne shouldn’t worry, because they would make sure Stig was sent away for murder, that he would never be set free.
Marianne understood what they meant. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t throw him in jail for what he’d done to Ida. But as long as he was convicted of murder, he would never be able to harm Ida again and she would be spared more interrogations, more examinations. Their new life could begin.
Only then did Marianne take an interest in the murder of Katrin. Because what the police didn’t say was that if Stig couldn’t be convicted of killing Katrin Björk, he would be a free man, and no one would be able to stop him from demanding joint custody.
It took a few days for Marianne to understand. For her to put the two events together and realize what they meant.
Why would the police have wondered, What were you doing when Katrin Björk was killed? What was your husband doing that night? Tell us what you witnessed. Tell us how you happen to know that there is no way your husband could be responsible for that murder.
Of course, no one asked Marianne. No one knew. Not even Stig knew what she’d seen.
But they did ask Stig.
“What were you doing the night Katrin Björk was murdered?”
“I was at home,” he replied. “Home alone in my apartment, watching TV. Eating leftovers. I went to bed early.”
The police didn’t believe him.
* * *
—
Marianne stepped out of the car. Tall cumulus clouds dotted the sky. A breeze whistled through the treetops and everything smelled like freshly mown grass. She sat down on a bench farther on that afforded a view of the cemetery. The neat lines of gravestones, arranged like mathematical tables, tidy paths, raked smooth.
The prim and proper organization of the cemetery reminded her of a grid-patterned city, the city where she grew up. That evident sterility. With rules everyone could understand. When Marianne was a child there were no accidents, no crimes, no dirty old men. Until one day, when Marianne was thirteen. A girl was found dead in the basement of the apartment building where they both lived.
Marianne had played with her a few times, even though the other girl was younger. Before she was found she had been reported missing. It was in all the papers, along with a photo of the girl. And a description of her clothing. She was wearing red jeans from Gul&Blå at the time of her disappearance, the very same ones Marianne had asked for for her birthday. When the girl was found, it said in the paper that she had been violated. Marianne understood only vaguely what this meant. A few days later, the girl’s father was arrested. He had done it.
Marianne stood up. The cemetery was large, the biggest in Stockholm. She couldn’t even see where it ended. Gently sloping rises, flowers gathered in identical vases, stuck in the ground so they wouldn’t blow over. Each gravesite was marked by a granite headstone. Dark gray, red, black, blue. Polished, raw, matte, smooth. Marianne couldn’t see the open grave where Ida would put Stig’s urn.
So many people had told her Stig had abused Ida, that they’d found signs of assault. Ida said things to suggest it was true. And Marianne had felt like it could be so.
Had she known for sure? No. Had Ida begged her, Mama, save me? No. But the possibility, the risk, had determined each action she took moving forward.
Yet she wasn’t ashamed; how could she be ashamed of this? There was no way she could have done anything different.
The other part, though — that haunted her. This was her punishment. Because when Marianne closed her eyes, it wasn’t Ida’s body she saw but Katrin’s. The girl Marianne had sacrificed. And the unknown man who had taken her life. The killer could still be alive; he could have harmed someone else. And Marianne was the one who’d made that possible.
A hole in the ground. Lined with plastic so it wouldn’t collapse. A pile of symbolic earth beside it. Ida would place Stig’s remains there. An employee would fill the hole with dirt, cover it with grass, mask the opening. No stone had been ordered for Stig. The grave would be marked with a number. It hadn’t been said out loud, but both Marianne and Ida understood what it would mean if they wrote out his name.
No one had asked Marianne what she’d been doing while Katrin Björk was dying. Why would they have? And she had no choice. It was not an option to tell them what she knew.
Katrin
1998
The nurse inhales the chilly morning air. It’s twenty to six and she’s waiting at the ambulance bay. Bay. That’s what it’s called. This is where Katrin Björk’s body will be delivered to the National Board of Forensic Medicine in Solna. Here she will be received and admitted.
The board’s own vehicle slowly approaches the doors. It stops right in front and the driver and his colleague say a brief hello to the nurse before lifting down the stretcher and rolling the body inside.
The examination room is the size of a small gym. The ceiling is high. The early summer morning sun finds its way into the room through the frosted glass and the half-drawn blinds. Everything smells faintly of chlorine and an odor few people recognize. The already spotless room has recently been cleaned again. Everything has been rinsed away; all traces of the previous examination have been washed down the drains; the grates have been rinsed and cleaned. This is done before each new autopsy.
The nurse puts on a pair of gloves and opens the body bag. She clears her throat mildly and asks for help transferring the girl onto one of the imperceptibly tilted autopsy tables of shiny steel. Then she signs the delivery confirmation as required by the ambulance service and begins to fill in the first form.
The girl was fifteen years and eleven months old; her body weighs 115 pounds and is sixty-five inches tall. The nurse has to write carefully; the ink pen is messy.
Katrin will be weighed, measured, opened up, photographed, turned over, and sewn back together again. This is where they will go through her body, square inch by square inch. They will sample her coagulated blood, the remains of what was once her saliva and secretions. Someone will scrape under her nails; someone else will open her mouth. They will take samples from her vagina and use a special shiny metal tool to hold it open. Her pubic hair will be combed with a special implement made for this very purpose. They will cut tissue from her body, microscopically thin slices. She will be placed under extra bright lights to undergo a quality-assured and accredited evidence-collection protocol. A flake of skin, a fingerprint, a defensive injury that left marks. Laboratories, instruments, techniques for analysis.
The instruments have already been prepared, laid out in straight rows on a cart. Another cart full of sterile packages, cotton balls, tweezers, pipettes, test tubes, small beakers, slightly larger beakers, litmus paper, everything that will store the samples, is also ready for use. The camera is charged, all the old images deleted.
Preparing Katrin for the autopsy will be quick, the nurse thinks. The girl’s body is already naked, and she is not to be washed. The clothing that was found at the crime scene, a pair of panties and a cotton dress, have already been packaged up to be sent to the Division for Forensic Toxicology in Linköping.
Then the woman stops what she’s doing and looks at her hands. They feel stiff; her joints are suddenly achy. Her heart is pounding, and her tongue is hot and swollen in her mouth.
She breathes in deeply, pressing her fist to her sternum. Is it because of my own little girl? she wonders. Is it because of that hollow under the collarbone that she has too? Or is it because the dead girl’s hair has curled at her neck, as if she only fell asleep and got a little sweaty?
Then the woman squeezes her fists, opens her hands again, blinks her eyes clear, forces her shoulders down. It’s a body. There’s no other meaning to this tal
e.
The two doctors who will perform the autopsy step through the door, their hands up, wearing the department’s protective blue gowns and white plastic aprons.
“I’m almost done,” the nurse says quietly.
They nod. There’s no real hurry, not in that way. One of the doctors goes to browse through the police documents, to look at the crime-scene photographs. Not much time has passed since they left the scene, but they still want to remind themselves of what they saw.
They have written preliminary notes of their own and discussed in low voices how to go about this job, what they should look for first, what they must absolutely not forget. Nothing will be left to chance; they don’t want to risk unnecessary mistakes.
Katrin is on her back, her palms up and her legs slightly apart. Around her neck is a pearl necklace. A single strand of sticky, yellowish, freshwater pearls. The nurse leans over her, feeling as gently as she can for the clasp.
How strange that it didn’t break, she has time to think, just before the necklace snaps in two. The pearls dance on the floor. The doctors stop speaking, look at one another.
The room is filled with the sound of clattering pearls as they vanish under counters and cabinets, side tables and desks. It sounds like more pearls than it actually is.
And then everything is quiet again.
Malin Persson Giolito was born in Stockholm in 1969 and grew up in Djursholm, Sweden. She holds a degree in law from Uppsala University and has worked as a lawyer for the biggest law firm in the Nordic region and as an official for the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium. Now a full-time writer, she has written four novels including Quicksand, her English-language debut. Persson Giolito lives with her husband and three daughters in Brussels.
Rachel Willson-Broyles holds a bachelor’s degree in Scandinavian Studies from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. She started translating while a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received a PhD in Scandinavian Studies in 2013. Her translation of Malin Persson Giolito’s Quicksand was published in 2017. Willson-Broyles lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.
You might also enjoy this title by Malin Persson Giolito:
NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES
Named an NPR BEST BOOK OF 2017
Named BEST SWEDISH CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR
by the Swedish Crime Writers Academy
An incisive courtroom thriller and a drama that raises questions about the nature of love, the disastrous side effects of guilt, and the function of justice
An excerpt from the opening pages of Quicksand
Lying next to the left-hand row of desks is Dennis; as usual he’s wearing a graphic T, ill-fitting jeans, and untied tennis shoes. Dennis is from Uganda. He says he’s seventeen, but he looks like a fat twenty-five year old. He’s a student in the trade school, and he lives in Sollentuna in a home for people like him. Samir has ended up next to him, on his side. Samir and I are in the same class because Samir managed to be accepted to our school’s special program in international economics and social sciences.
Up at the lectern is Christer, our homeroom teacher and self-described social reformer. His mug has overturned and coffee is dripping onto the leg of his pants. Amanda, no more than two meters away, is sitting propped against the radiator under the window. Just a few minutes ago, she was all cashmere, white gold, and sandals. The diamond earrings she received when we were confirmed are still sparkling in the early-summer sunshine. Now you might think she was covered in mud. I am sitting on the floor in the middle of the classroom. In my lap is Sebastian, the son of the richest man in Sweden, Claes Fagerman.
The people in this room do not go together. People like us don’t usually hang out. Maybe on a metro platform during a taxi strike, or in the dining car on a train, but not in a classroom.
It smells like rotten eggs. The air is hazy and gray with gunpowder smoke. Everyone has been shot but me. I haven’t got even as much as a bruise.
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