The Man From Beijing

by Henning Mankell

  He looked at her. She nodded. He could begin.

  The Judge

  5

  A moth detached itself from the darkness and fluttered restlessly around the desk lamp. Birgitta Roslin put down her pen, leaned back in her chair and watched the moth’s vain attempt to force its way through the porcelain shade. The noise of its fluttering wings reminded her of something from her childhood, but she couldn’t pin it down.

  Her memory was always especially creative when she was tired, as she was now. Just as when she was asleep, inaccessible memories from long ago might crop up out of nowhere.

  Like the moth.

  She closed her eyes and massaged her temples with her fingertips. It was a few minutes past midnight. She had heard the night security officers passing through the echoing halls of the court building as they made their rounds twice. She liked working late at night, when the place was empty. Years ago, when she had been an articled clerk in Värnamo, she had often gone into the empty courtroom late in the evening, switched on a few lights, sat down and listened to the silence. She would imagine she was in an empty theatre. There were echoes in the walls, whispering voices still living on after all the drama of past trials. Murderers had been sentenced there, violent criminals, thieves. And men had sworn their innocence in a never-ending stream of depressing paternity cases. Others had been declared innocent and reinstated as honourable men.

  When Birgitta Roslin had completed her probationary period and been offered a post as an articled clerk in Värnamo, her intention had been to become a prosecuting counsel. But during her clerkship she changed course and began to specialise in what was to become her eventual career. To a large extent this was due to Anker, the old district judge, who made an indelible impression on her. He displayed exactly the same patience as he listened to young men who told obvious lie after lie in an attempt to avoid responsibility in paternity cases as he did when faced with hard-boiled men of violence who showed no remorse for their brutal misdeeds. It was as if the old judge had instilled in her a new degree of respect for the judicial system she had previously taken for granted. Now she actually experienced it, not just in word, but in deed. Justice meant action. By the time she left Värnamo, she had made up her mind to become a judge.

  She stood up and walked over to the window. Down below in the street a man was peeing against the wall. It had been snowing in Helsingborg during the day, a thin layer of powdery snow that was now whirling along the street. As she watched the man nonchalantly, her mind was working overtime on the judgement she was busy preparing. She had allowed herself until the following day, but it had to be ready by then.

  The man down below moved on. Roslin returned to her desk and picked up her pencil. She always worked with pencil until she’d finalised her work.

  She leaned over the messy pages with all their alterations and additions. It was a simple case and the evidence against the accused was overwhelming; nevertheless, she was having problems making her judgment.

  She wanted to impose sanctions, but was unable to.

  A man and a woman had met in one of Helsingborg’s dance restaurants. The woman was young, barely twenty, and had drunk too much. The man was in his forties and had volunteered to see her home, then was invited into the flat for a glass of water. The woman had fallen asleep on the sofa. The man had raped her, without waking her up, then left. The next morning the woman had only a vague memory of what had happened on the sofa. She contacted the hospital, was examined, and it was established that she had had intercourse. The man was charged. The case came to court a full year after the incident had taken place. Birgitta Roslin had presided over the trial and observed the young woman. She had read in the preliminary case notes that the woman earned her living by working as a temporary cashier in various supermarkets. It was clear from a personal statement that the woman was in the habit of drinking too much. She had also been found guilty of petty theft and was once sacked for neglecting her duties.

  In many respects the accused was her opposite. He worked as an estate agent, specialising in business premises. Everyone gave him good references. He was unmarried and earned a high salary. He did not appear in police records, but Birgitta Roslin felt that she could see through him as he sat before her in his expensive and well-pressed suit. She had no doubt that he had raped the woman as she lay asleep on the sofa. DNA tests had established beyond doubt that intercourse had taken place, but he denied rape. She had been a willing partner, he maintained, as did his counsel, a lawyer from Malmö whom Roslin had come across before. It was one person’s word against another’s, an irreproachable property broker versus a drunken checkout girl who had invited him into her flat in the middle of the night.

  Roslin was upset about not being able to convict him. She couldn’t shake the feeling that on this occasion a guilty man would go free. There was nothing to be done.

  What would that wise old bird Anker have done? What advice would he have given her? He would certainly have shared my concern, Roslin thought. A guilty man is going to be set free. Old Anker would have been just as upset as I am. And he would have had as little to say as I do. There’s the rub as far as judges are concerned: we have to obey the law in the knowledge that we are releasing a criminal without punishment. The woman may not have been an angel, but she would have to live with that outrageous injustice for the rest of her life.

  She left her desk chair and went to lie down on the sofa. She had paid for it herself and put it in her office instead of the uncomfortable armchair provided by the National Courts Administration. She had learned from Anker to hold a bunch of keys in her hand and close her eyes. When she dropped the keys, it was time to get up. But she needed a short rest. Then she would finish writing her judgement, go home to bed and produce a clean copy the next day. She had worked through everything there was to work through and confirmed that there was no question of a guilty verdict.

  She dozed off and dreamed about her father, of whom she had no personal memories. He had been a ship’s engineeer. During a severe storm in the middle of January 1949 the steamship Runskär had sunk in the Gävlebukten, with all hands on board. His body had never been found. Birgitta Roslin had been four months old at the time. The image she had of her father came from the photographs in her home. The picture she remembered best was of him standing by the rail of a ship, smiling, his hair ruffled and his shirtsleeves rolled up. Her mother had told her it was a ship’s mate holding the camera, but Birgitta Roslin had always imagined that he was actually smiling at her, despite the fact that the photograph was taken before she was born. He kept reappearing in her dreams. Now he was smiling at her, just as he did in the photograph, but then he vanished as if swallowed up by fog.

  She woke with a start. She realised immediately that she had slept for far too long. The keyring trick hadn’t worked. She had dropped it without noticing. She sat up and checked the clock: it was already six. She had slept for more than five hours. I’m shattered, she thought. Like most other people, I don’t get enough sleep. There’s too much going on in my life that worries me.

  She called her husband, who had begun to wonder where she was. It was not unusual for her to spend the night on the sofa in her office after they’d quarreled, but this was not the case now.

  Staffan Roslin had been a year ahead of her at Lund, where they both studied law. Their first meeting was at a party given by mutual friends. Immediately Birgitta knew he was the man for her, swept off her feet by his eyes, his height, his large hands and his inability to stop blushing.

  But, after completing his studies, Staffan did not take to the law. He decided to retrain as a railway conductor, and one morning he appeared in the living room dressed in a blue-and-red uniform and announced that at 12.19, he would be responsible for departure 212 from Malmö to Alvesta, and then on to Växjö and Kalmar.

  He became a much happier person. By the time he chose to abandon his legal career, they already had four children: first a son, then a daughter and finally t
wins, both girls. The children had arrived in rapid succession, and she was amazed when she thought back to those days. How had they managed it? Four children within six years. They had left Malmö and moved to Helsingborg, where she was appointed a district judge.

  The children were grown up now. The twins had flown the nest the previous year, to Lund where they shared a flat. But she was pleased that they were not studying the same subject and that neither of them had ambitions to become a lawyer. Siv, who was nineteen minutes older than her sister Louise, had eventually decided, after much hesitation, to become a vet. Louise, who had a more impetuous temperament than her twin sister, had tried her hand at several things, sold clothes in a men’s shop, and in the end decided to study political science and religious studies at university. Birgitta had often tried to coax out of her what she wanted to do with her life, but she was the most withdrawn of the four children and rarely said anything about her innermost thoughts. Birgitta suspected that Louise was the daughter most like herself. Her son, David, who worked for a big pharmaceutical company, was like his father in almost every way. The eldest daughter, Anna, had astonished her parents by embarking on long journeys in Asia, about which they knew very little.

  My family, Birgitta thought. Big worries but a lot of pleasure. Without it, most of my life would have been wasted.

  There was a large mirror in the corridor outside her office. She examined her face and her body. Her close-cropped dark hair had started to grow grey at the temples. Her habit of pursing her lips tended to give her face a negative expression. But what really worried her was the fact that she had put on weight over the last few years. Three, four kilos, no more. But enough to be noticeable.

  She didn’t like what she saw. She knew she was basically an attractive woman. But she was beginning to lose her charm. And she was not making any attempt to resist.

  She left a note on her secretary’s desk, saying that she would be in later in the day. It had become a little warmer, and the snow had already started to melt. She started walking to her car, which was parked on a side street.

  But then she changed her mind. What she really needed above all else was not sleep. It was more important to give her mind a rest and think about something else. She turned and headed for the harbour. There was not a breath of wind. The overcast sky from the previous day had begun to open up. She went to the quay where the ferries departed for Elsinore. The crossing took only a few minutes. But she liked to sit on board with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, watching her fellow passengers going through the bags of cheap spirits they had bought in Denmark. She sat down at a corner table that was very sticky. Annoyance flared up inside her, and she shouted to the girl who was clearing the tables.

  ‘I really have to complain,’ she said. ‘This table has been cleared, but it hasn’t been wiped. It’s very sticky.’

  The girl shrugged and wiped it clean. Birgitta Roslin gazed in disgust at the filthy rag the girl had used, but she didn’t say anything. Somehow the girl reminded her of the young woman who had been raped. She didn’t know why. Perhaps it was her lack of enthusiasm for her work? Or maybe it was a kind of helplessness she couldn’t put a finger on?

  The ferry started to vibrate. It gave her a feeling of well-being. She remembered the first time she had gone abroad. She had been nineteen. She had travelled to England with a friend to take a language course. The trip had started on a ferry, from Gothenburg to London. Birgitta Roslin would never forget the feeling of standing on deck, knowing she was on her way to somewhere liberating and unknown.

  That same feeling of freedom would often come over her when she sailed back and forth over the narrow strait between Sweden and Denmark. Today, all thoughts about the unfortunate judgement she would have to make disappeared from her mind.

  I’m no longer even in the middle of my life, she thought. I’ve passed the point that one doesn’t even realise is being passed. There won’t be that many difficult decisions left for me to make. But I shall remain a judge until I retire. With luck I should be able to enjoy my grandchildren before it’s all over.

  Her thoughts drifted to her husband, and her mood changed. Her marriage was beginning to shrivel and die. They were still good friends and could give each other the necessary feeling of security. But love, the sensual pleasure of being in each other’s vicinity, had completely vanished.

  Four days from now it wouldbeawhole year since they had last caressed each other and made love before going to sleep. The closer that anniversary came, the more impotent she felt. And now it was almost upon her. Over and over again she had tried to speak to Staffan about how lonely she was. But he wasn’t prepared to talk, withdrew into his shell, tried to postpone the discussion he nevertheless knew was important. He insisted that he was not attracted to anybody else, they were just missing a particular feeling that would no doubt soon return. All they needed to do was be patient.

  She regretted losing the feeling of togetherness she had shared with her husband, the imposing-looking chief conductor with the big hands and the propensity for blushing. But she had no intention of giving up. She didn’t yet want their relationship to be an intimate friendship and nothing more.

  She went to the counter to refill her cup and moved to another, less sticky table. A group of young men who were already noticeably drunk despite the early hour were discussing whether it was Hamlet or Macbeth who had been imprisoned in Kronborg Castle, skulking on its cliff just outside Elsinore. She listened to the discussion with amused interest and felt tempted to join in.

  A group of boys was sitting at another table. They couldn’t have been older than fourteen or fifteen and were probably playing hooky. And why not, when nobody seemed to care whether or not they showed up at school? She had absolutely no nostalgic feelings about the authoritarian school she had attended. But she recalled an incident from the previous year. Something that had driven her crazy about the state of Swedish justice and made her long more than ever for the advice of her mentor Judge Anker, who had now been dead for thirty years.

  On a housing estate outside Helsingborg an old woman just short of her eightieth birthday had suffered an acute heart attack and collapsed on a public footpath. A couple of young boys, one of them aged thirteen, the other fourteen, had come by. Instead of helping the old woman, without a second thought they had first stolen her bag and then tried to rape her. If it hadn’t been for a man walking his dog, they would probably have succeeded in their attempt. The police traced and arrested the two boys, but as they were underage, they were allowed to go free.

  Birgitta Roslin heard about the incident from a public prosecutor, who had in turn been informed by a police officer. She had been furious and tried to find out why the crime hadn’t been reported to social services. It then dawned on her that maybe a hundred or so underage children committed crimes in the Helsingborg area every year with absolutely no follow-up. Nobody told their parents, nobody informed social services. It was not merely the occasional case of petty pilfering but also robbery and grievous bodily harm, which could easily have ended up as murder.

  She began to despair over the Swedish judicial system. Whose servant was she in fact? Was she a servant of the law, or of indifference? And what would the consequences be if more and more children were allowed to commit crimes without anybody bothering to react? How had things been allowed to lapse to such an extent that the very basis of democracy was being threatened by a lame judicial system?

  She drank her coffee and contemplated the fact that she would probably need to work for another ten years. Would she have the strength? Was it possible to be a good and fair judge if you began to doubt the country’s legal structure?

  In order to shake off questions she couldn’t answer, she went back over the strait one more time. When she disembarked on the Swedish side, it was nine o’clock. She crossed the wide main street that carved its way through the centre of Helsingborg. As she turned off, she happened to notice a billboard with headlines from one of the
national evening newspapers: they were just being posted. The large letters in bold print caught her attention. She paused and read: MASS MURDER IN HÄLSINGLAND. HORRIFIC CRIME. NO LEADS FOR POLICE. NUMBER OF DEAD UNKNOWN. MASS MURDER.

  She continued walking to her car. She seldom if ever bought the evening papers. She was put off, and sometimes offended, by the papers’ frequent attacks on the police. Even if she agreed with quite a lot of what was alleged, she had little sympathy with the sensationalising. What reporters wrote often harmed genuine criticism, even if the intentions were honourable.

  Birgitta Roslin lived in Kjellstorp, an upmarket residential area on the northern edge of Helsingborg. On the way home she stopped at a little shop. It was owned by a Pakistani immigrant who always greeted her with a broad smile. He knew she was a district judge and was very respectful towards her. She wondered if there were any female judges in Pakistan, but had never got around to asking him.

  When she arrived home she had a bath before going to bed. She woke up at one o’clock and at last felt fully rested. After a couple of sandwiches and a cup of coffee, she returned to her work. A few hours later she printed out her judgement that acquitted the guilty man, drove back to court and left it on her secretary’s desk. Her secretary was evidently attending some kind of in-service training course: Birgitta Roslin hadn’t been informed or, more likely, had forgotten all about it. When she arrived back home she heated up some leftover chicken stew from yesterday’s dinner and left the rest in the fridge for Staffan.

  She settled down on the sofa with a cup of coffee and switched on teletext. She was reminded of the headlines she had seen earlier in the day. The police had no clues to follow up and declined to reveal how many people had been killed or their names, since the next of kin had not yet been contacted.

  A madman, she concluded, who either had a persecution complex or considered himself to have been badly treated by the world.