I read what they publish of Eva’s letters to the prisoner. Her knowledge about the Palme murder came to her in a “mind wave,” she wrote: “One morning, I woke up and looked over at my husband, who was still asleep, and I swear, the thought came to me loud and clear.”
“I’m scared!” she added. “What I think that they could do is come into the house, gas me with some sort of sleeping gas, then they could deliberately give me an overdose of some drug or other and then, worst of all, they leave a note in what looks like my handwriting. Help! I know this sounds very far-fetched and completely paranoid but I swear to you these people are capable of anything.”
—
“This is not happening,” I said to Eric.
“It’s happening,” he responded. “It’s happening.”
—
A few days later, on September 5, 2012, Dagens Nyheter reported that Gunnar Wall had finally established contact with my brother. Hans had sent Wall a text dismissing Eva’s Palme story as “completely untrue.” It was, he wrote, a “conspiracy theory” with “no basis in reality.”
—
Despite my brother’s text, the newspaper speculation refused to die, and it wasn’t clear what the police were doing, if anything. I worried about the police silence, and how, in the absence of information, media speculation carried on. In the autumn of 2012, therefore, I contacted the Swedish police to tell them some of the context of Eva’s emails to Gunnar Wall and about her drug addiction. I thought that if the police understood the background to the accusation, they could at least make a decision one way or another about how to handle it.
The policeman listened as I talked. He was a good listener. He said that he had unsuccessfully tried to reach my brother to interview him, and then he tried to persuade me to make a formal statement instead. I initially resisted, but over the following months he argued that the tabloids wouldn’t stop until the police had a formal statement from a Rausing family member, which would then enable them to close this line of investigation. He presented it as a formality.
I finally agreed. On July 25, 2013, over a year after Eva’s body had been found, I emailed him to say that I would be in Stockholm the following month and could meet him then. We set a date and a time. Five days later, on July 30, the tabloid Expressen published the following front-page headline:
SIGRID RAUSING TO BE QUESTIONED ABOUT THE PALME MURDER
A friend in Sweden sent me a link.
Kerstin Skarp, deputy prosecutor general, issued her usual comment: “We don’t comment on what we do or don’t do. We don’t comment on individual cases.”
I emailed my contact in the police the same day: “That was quick, the leak. I suppose it came from your office. Considering that I have nothing to add to what I have already said it might be better if we don’t meet.”
On August 21, almost a month later, he finally wrote back. He was genuinely sorry about the leak, he said. He had no explanation for it. He reminded me, also, that Swedish whistle-blowing legislation meant that the police are not allowed to find out how the media gets its information. He was hoping we could talk more.
I did not reply.
—
The tabloids took a fact—I had volunteered to talk to the police—and twisted it: I was to be “questioned,” or “interrogated” (the word is the same in Swedish) by the police. It was as though I had become an accomplice, caught up in this surreal crime fiction. All the tabloids, and many publications I had never heard of, picked up the story.
—
SIGRID RAUSING TO BE QUESTIONED ABOUT THE PALME MURDER
Like the article on Facebook.
—
The pages have been shared and tweeted many times.
*
I think about my dream of walking into a Copenhagen café, the relief of anonymity and then seeing my name, on the menu blackboard: RAUSING PAID TOO MUCH. I woke up from that dream thinking about this book, about our family seclusion and fear of publicity; our conviction that the world was and is a hostile place. Many articles have been published over the years in Sweden about the Rausing family’s privacy, some of them making judgements about my grandfather in particular, including uninformed speculations about my uncle Sven’s condition having been caused by patriarchal oppression, or about how he was “hidden” from view. The idea that we are secretive, that we “hide”—ourselves and one another—is so entrenched.
This story has many parts, but much of it has to do with what is hidden and what is revealed; with privacy and with publicity. We were brought up to fear exposure and to shun publicity but the more we hid the more we seemed to have something to hide, our wish for privacy construed as secrecy.
—
I once inadvertently blurted out the Palme story at a Granta magazine editorial meeting. We were discussing a proposed piece on the murder. I knew, even as I spoke, that this was not a good idea, but once I began I couldn’t stop.
“I hope I don’t have to tell you that of course my father is innocent,” I finished lamely, to a slightly stunned silence, which ended only when one member of the group, not an editor, unexpectedly took charge by emphatically saying, “No, of course not,” and smiling sunnily.
He refused to inflict pain: an unexpected relief. It reminded me of the Milgram experiments. But why was I thinking about Milgram? His famous experiment, set up in the wake of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (1961), was designed to test how far ordinary people were willing to go, to inflict pain on others in obedience to authority. The “teachers”—the subjects of the experiment—were meant to teach word pairs to the “learners.” The “teachers” were informed that the experiment was about whether punishment was an effective learning aid. If the answer was wrong, they had to punish the “learners” by inflicting electric shocks of increasing voltage.
The experimenter had a sequence of four prompts for the “teachers,” who naturally tended to hesitate when they heard the “learners” screaming and begging them to stop after the shocks:
Please continue.
The experiment requires that you continue.
It is absolutely essential that you continue.
You have no other choice, you must go on.
Twenty-six out of forty “teachers” in the first experiment cooperated with the experimenter by inflicting a series of shocks which they believed to be painful or even dangerous to the “learners.” It is slightly unclear how many of the subjects in fact saw through the experiment and carried on anyway—some of them subsequently claimed that they thought it was simply funny. That may be true. But of course there is a significant cultural incentive in distancing yourself from association with Nazi officials, those cogs in the machinery whose confession to the crime (or virtue) of obedience, not moral responsibility, sickened the world. Whatever the case might be, the conclusion—that people are likely to obey authority figures, even if it means inflicting pain—was widely accepted.
—
But why was I thinking about it, then, in that Granta meeting? Perhaps because I felt that we, too, were unwittingly participating in a version of the Milgram experiment. There was an audience beyond us, a circle of journalists and editors and readers observing our family drama. Like Milgram’s subjects we were shamed, and judged.
In the private psychodrama of the courtroom, too, we had been accused of inflicting pain, of oppressing innocent victims, of taking action against two parents so clearly disabled by drugs, so obviously the underdogs in this sorry tale. We were the alpha dogs, the guilty ones.
And like the “teachers,” we dutifully carried on.
Please continue.
The experiment requires that you continue.
It is absolutely essential that you continue.
You have no other choice, you must go on.
—
“Guilt” in Swedish is skuld, which has a dual meaning: “guilt” and “debt.” The English word derives from the Middle English gilt and the Old English gylt. It is related to “go
ld,” to the German Geld (money) and the Gothic gild (tax): the word “guilt” throws a shadow of money, of debt, of owing. If you were guilty, you had to pay for what you had done. It seems right, etymologically, that the wealthy, the gilded ones, should be guilty.
I am reading Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight. One of the characters in that melancholy book, set in postbohemian 1930s Paris, is a Russian in exile, or perhaps he’s from Ukraine. “As things are now,” he says, “I wouldn’t wish to be rich or strong or powerful. I wouldn’t wish to be one of the guilty ones. I know I am not guilty, so I have the right to be just as happy as I can make myself.”
The line speaks to me.
—
I search the website of the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet for “Eva Rausing” and find a neat row of headlines, page after page of stories. You could tell the whole story from the headlines, going backwards in time:
TRAGEDY IN THE SWEDISH UPPER CLASS
HANS KRISTIAN RAUSING’S COSY TIMES WITH NEW WIFE
LIFE HAS TURNED FOR RAUSING
HANS KRISTIAN RAUSING REMARRIES
RAUSING LEAVES THE HOUSE WHERE WIFE DIED
CELEBRITIES’ PALME THEORIES
EVA RAUSING WANTED TO BE BURIED IN SWEDEN
RAUSING LOSES BROTHER TO DRUGS
STRONG STORY—DEATH, DRAMA AND ADDICTION
HE STILL KEEPS HIS EVA NEAREST HIS HEART
READY FOR A NEW LIFE—WITH LUXURY GYM
THE LIVES OF SWEDEN’S RICHEST FAMILIES
RAUSING FAMILY BREAKS THE SILENCE
EVA RAUSING’S HUSBAND: I SAW HER DIE
“I KNOW SHE STRUGGLED”
HANS KRISTIAN RAUSING ABOUT EVA’S ACCUSATIONS
HANS RAUSING: IT MIRRORS THE ILLNESS
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: NO, EVA RAUSING DOES NOT HAVE THE SOLUTION TO THE PALME MURDER
THE TIP IS IMPORTANT—HOWEVER RIDICULOUS IT MAY BE
“I AM AFRAID OF HIM”
EVA RAUSING’S LETTERS TO PALME EXPERT
LEIF GW PERSSON: “HE WAS THERE EARLIER”
EVA RAUSING’S EMAILS ABOUT PALME
EVA RAUSING BURIED BY AMERICAN FAMILY
RAUSING GETS FIVE STAR MEALS
MILD SENTENCE FOR RAUSING
RAUSING BACK IN COURT
RAUSING GOES SHOPPING
RAUSING VISITS EXCLUSIVE HAIRDRESSER
“RAUSING WAS COMPLETELY OUT OF IT”
FOUND UNDER A PILE OF CLOTHES
EVA RAUSING—BEFORE DRUGS
RAUSING PROSECUTED FOR PREVENTING BURIAL
TRANSFORMED THEIR LUXURY HOME TO DRUG DEN
EVA RAUSING WANTED TO BE BURIED IN HELSINGBORG
“FORBIDDEN ENTRY”
FAMILY PROTECTED—BY PRIVATE GUARDS
“I KNOCKED ON THE DOOR FOR A WEEK”
EVA’S DESPERATE EMAILS TO HER FATHER IN LAW
EVA RAUSING’S FRIENDSHIP WITH PRINCE CHARLES
HANS KRISTIAN RAUSING PROTECTED BY FAMILY
EVA RAUSING’S HEAVY DRUG ABUSE STARTED AT OBAMA SCHOOL
THE MOTHER: HOW MY DAUGHTER DIED
LAST PICTURES OF THE RAUSINGS TOGETHER
SUSPECTED OF MURDER OF WIFE
ELITE FORCE WERE GOING TO STOP EVA RAUSING FROM USING DRUGS
COULD TAKE DRUGS FREELY—GOT HIS MILLIONS ANYWAY
HE LIVED—WITH HIS DEAD WIFE
THE KING WAS HER FRIEND
THEY WERE DRIVEN TO A BITTER FEUD
POLICE HUNTING EVA’S DRUG DEALER
HOW THE RAUSINGS BUILT THEIR BILLIONAIRES’ IMPERIUM
EVA RAUSING, 49 [SIC], ABOUT HER STRUGGLE WITH DRUGS
EVA RAUSING COULD HAVE BEEN DEAD FOR A WEEK
“WE ALL THOUGHT IT WOULD HAPPEN”
THEIR DOWNFALL WAS DRUGS
ROYAL FAMILY MOURNS THEIR FRIEND
EVA RAUSING’S DEATH—A MYSTERY
HERE EVA RAUSING WAS FOUND
SOURCES: “EVA MAY HAVE BEEN DEAD FOR A WEEK”
RAUSING’S FAMILY: WE ARE DEEPLY SHOCKED
CREATED FORTUNE FROM MILK PACKAGING
EVA RAUSING FOUND DEAD
I DEEPLY REGRET IT
16
“I have decided to go to treatment!” Eva wrote in January 2012 to her pen pal in jail, adding:
Part of me is so pleased and happy to be taking steps at long last to start to free myself from this horrible, horrible prison that I am locked into.
She did go to treatment, but not until April.
—
She went to a rehab in California. Let’s call it Breeze. I look at the website. Addiction ends here, it says. There is a photograph of a beautiful mother hugging a daughter, a therapist looking on, smiling. The image changes to a yacht on a blue sea; then a garden with palm trees overlooking the sea; then a woman swimming in a pool; a night scene; a tennis scene; a check-in scene. Every face, every body, is beautiful. No one looks like an addict. It’s a fantasy of wealth: this is what money can do.
Perched over the Pacific Ocean our five magnificent estates elegantly stretch across ten acres of Malibu coastline, offering you the perfect setting to heal your body, mind, and spirit. For over ten years, Breeze has stood out as a shining example of non-12-Step, luxury addiction treatment.
Inside the magnificent grounds at Breeze, you’ll find the most comprehensive and sophisticated treatment programs in the world.
—
I read the website, compulsively. I read it cynically, knowing the limits of what money can do. I read it to see where Eva was that last week.
Why You Should Choose Breeze Drug and Alcohol Rehab Center.
We know this is an important decision. We encourage you to compare Breeze to any other center in the country. After comparing their fact sheet to ours we are 100% confident you will not find a better facility anywhere in the world.
JCAHO Accredited—only 6% of the nation’s rehab centers earn this honor
Forbes magazine’s “Most Luxurious Places to Dry Out” List
Rated “Number 1 Rehab in The World” by Healthcare Global
Non-12-Step, holistic approach to addiction recovery
55+ hours of one-on-one treatment per client, per month
16 hours of semi-private treatment per client, per month (3 on 1)
127 Staff members
4-to-1 Staff-to-client ratio (the highest in the country)
24 Hours a day/7 days a week of LVN (licensed vocational nurses) on site
22 different treatment therapy methods
10 therapists assigned to each client
10 acre campus on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean
5 luxury estates to choose from. All with ocean view accommodations
2 swimming pools and a jacuzzi
North/South Tennis court
Full gym with personal trainers
No chores or humiliating techniques meant to break you down
They break you down and build you up, in some places, or at least they used to. Addicts who had never worked in their lives scrubbed lavatories, sometimes with toothbrushes. Did it work? I don’t know. Studies of best practices are still fairly recent in the rehab field, and tend not to focus on the different types of therapy available. The 2009 summary of the UK Drug Treatment Outcome Research Study, for instance, makes only one treatment recommendation: that encouraging patient motivation should be a key factor. Why? Because the study showed that patients and practitioners believed it to be important.
So what is treatment, this term we use so casually? Open a centre and give it a name—Ocean, Hope, Bliss, Journeys, Voyages, Blessings, Transitions, Abundance, Aspire. Devise a program, passionate, uniquely tailored, individualized, exclusive, focused on family dynamics, treatment decisions, deeper examination, body and mind. Or, if you are the National Health Service, allocate the few rehab places you have in each local area; write the methadone prescriptions; contact the social workers. Be sure to call your patients “treatment-seekers,” to avoid offence and encourage motivation. But what works and what doesn�
��t work? I don’t know. I’m not sure anyone does. This is an industry driven more by desperation than by medical evidence.
I click to view the Ocean Therapy program. The video lasts for a minute. We see a yacht cleaving through the waves, a group of beautiful young people on board. A school of dolphins follows, the sun is setting, accompanied by inspirational music. The video stops several times to buffer up in sudden silent breaks. The breaks are curiously apt, like cracks in the façade.
I click on the main tour. It follows “Ben,” good-looking, slightly grizzled. He is shown his ocean-view room. I think of Eva, in the room she didn’t leave for a week. I look at the comfortable double bed, the TV, the balcony.
I imagine her lying on that bed, watching that TV.
Ben is having acupuncture. The image seizes up; he looks dead. My throat tenses; I feel tears. This man, however, who is in any case an actor, is not dead—he carries on through some of the fifteen modalities: the alternative treatments; the adventure therapy; the hypnotherapy; the life purpose counselling; the nutrition counselling; the ropes course therapy; the marriage and family therapy; the yoga therapy. There are many closures, one after the other.
Ben’s dad comes to see him. We know already that Ben suffers from “low self-esteem,” intimidated by his father’s success. In this scene he tells his father what the issue is; the father smiles and hugs him. Absurdly, I cry again. I think of my father leaning on my arm, his fine irony, his apartness. He could not have done that hug, that smile. He wouldn’t have understood or believed in that simple narrative.
My brother always longed for American suburbia. He longed, I think, to live in a world where those simple narratives could be true, where praise came easily and expectations were moderate. Where he would be valued, not judged.
Mayhem Page 14