A Darker Shade of Sweden

by John-Henri Holmberg (Editor)

  He had been shocked, not wanting to believe what she’d said. Then he had thought about it and discussed it with his closest friends. Wondered if he ought to report Schorsch to the police or what? After all, this was Sweden in the year 2012.

  After the interrogation, Jenny shook hands with Joakim and thanked him. She told him that he would be called as a witness at the trial.

  After he left she made a cup of strong coffee and felt grateful that she was no longer seventeen.

  Then thoughts of Daniel and the whore came back to her, and once again she hated everything.

  Ebba Green sat on a park bench, staring at nothing while she took quick, nervous drags on her cigarette.

  Old son of a bitch. Asshole.

  The trial had ended a week ago. She had been called to witness and told them everything she knew. So had Joakim.

  Then came that neighbor, the guy who said he’d seen the old bastard hit Lenya and throw her down.

  The bastard’s lawyer had tried to break the guy, but this time he was sure of himself.

  He had witnessed the fight and seen how Lenya’s father heaved her over the railing.

  This morning she had read online that the bastard had been convicted of murder and sentenced to life.

  Serves him fucking right.

  Slowly she pulled out the crumpled piece of paper she had been keeping in her jacket pocket for weeks.

  Lenya’s letter.

  It had arrived the day after Lenya died. Ebba had been more than surprised to see the neat handwriting on the envelope.

  Lenya’s handwriting.

  Usually they kept in touch only via texts, e-mails and chats, and in fact Ebba couldn’t recall ever having received a real letter, a paper letter, from any friend before. She read it for the thousandth time:

  Ebba, I love you! I love you and Jocke and Gusse and Anna and Mariana and Linnéa, but I can’t take it any longer!

  My old man is never going to change. There’s no hope for me, they’ll force me to go to Iraq and get married. Just can’t take it! I want Jocke and no one else.

  There’s no other way out than what I’m about to do. Not sure if I’ll cut myself or jump or what. But I’ll do it. Sending you this as snail mail since I know you’d try to stop me otherwise.

  Love you forever, give this to my darling Jocke afterward, I’ve written to him on the back.

  XOXO, Lenis

  She had let Joakim read the letter. He remained silent for a long time afterwards. Finally he said that they would have to take it to the police. Lenya had committed suicide after all, but now her father had been convicted of murder.

  Ebba tore the letter from his hand and ran away.

  She’d never let the bastard get away with it.

  She pulls out her lighter, watches the flame flutter in the wind, then catch hold of the paper, obliterate it.

  Ebba drops the letter on the ground, witnesses the flame devour Lenya’s handwritten lines. Tears come to her eyes and when only ashes remain she rubs them into the ground with the sole of her shoe.

  Jenny Lindh has taken some time off, is sitting in the silence of her apartment and looking out the window.

  The trial had been tumultuous at times and in the end the judge had to remove the Kurdish men who continued to protest loudly as the prosecution presented its case.

  She had listened to all the witnesses and been very surprised by the neighbor, Pettersson. He had appeared on the stand in a clean shirt and suit, was clean shaven and did not smell of liquor. Now there was no doubt in his mind about his testimony. He had seen a violent fight that ended with Schorsch Barzani lifting up his daughter and throwing her over the balcony railing.

  And when the verdict was handed down, she had observed Schorsch Barzani very closely. As if he had felt her gaze, he turned to face her.

  There was something in his eyes . . .

  Translated by: Angela Valenti and Sophia Mårtensson

  Dag Öhrlund, born in 1957, began writing professionally in 1972; for more than thirty years, he was a journalist and professional photographer. In 2007, he published his first crime novel, Mord.net (Murder.net), cowritten with Dan Buthler. The novel introduced Criminal Inspector Jacob Colt, who also appears in most of Öhrlund and Buthler’s later novels. However, the lasting success of the writing team was the criminal they introduced in their second novel, En nästan vanlig man (An Almost Ordinary Man, 2008), murderous psychopath Christopher Silfverbielke, a charming, attractive, and immensely rich stock broker who also enjoys degrading women and killing people regardless of sex. So far, he has appeared in five novels that have made their authors two of the most popular Swedish crime writers currently active. Apart from the Jacob Colt and Christopher Silfverbjelke novels, Buthler and Öhrlund have also written the first book in a projected series with mainly American protagonists, Jordens väktare (Guardians of the Earth, 2011). On his own, Dag Öhrlund wrote the hard-boiled thriller Till minne av Charlie K. (To the Memory of Charlie K., 2012).

  DAY AND NIGHT MY KEEPER BE

  MALIN PERSSON GIOLITO

  Malin Persson Giolito as far as I am aware is the only Swedish second-generation crime author: her father is noted criminologist and leading crime fiction novelist Leif G. W. Persson.

  The young Malin Persson did not plan a writing career. She studied law, graduating from Uppsala University, was employed by the Court of Justice of the European Union for two years, then was invited to join one of the most prestigious Swedish law firms, Mannheimer Swartling, where she worked from 1997 through 2007. Until 2001, she worked at the Brussels office, after which she transferred to the Stockholm office. She had also married Christophe Giolito, and in 2000 she had her first child, taking six months’ maternal leave; gradually she realized that she was given both less and less-challenging work at the law firm. After the birth of her second child, she was informed that she’d never make partner, and, before the birth of her third child in 2006, she was told that she would have no work to return to after her maternity leave.

  Her experiences at Manheimer Swartling inspired her to finally live up to her secret wish of also writing fiction. Her first novel, Dubbla slag (Two-front Battle), is about a young lawyer, Hanna, headhunted for a prestigious law firm, who after having children finds herself rejected and ridiculed at her place of work.

  Though her first novel was not crime fiction, her second was: Bara ett barn (Only a Child) was published in 2010, and her third followed in 2012, Bortom varje rimligt tvivel (Beyond All Reasonable Doubt). In both of these, the protagonist is lawyer Sophia Weber, who in representing her clients is also forced to become a legal detective. In these novels, Malin Persson Giolito shows herself to be not only an excellent storyteller, but also a writer deeply concerned with such important issues as the abuse of justice, the prejudging of accused persons in popular media, and the distortion of justice for political reasons. She is one of the clearly rising stars of contemporary Swedish crime fiction.

  In the following story, which is at heart about a moral problem, in typical fashion she presents different viewpoints as well as different possible interpretations. She speaks in a low voice, but it is more than worth the effort to listen hard.

  THERE WAS NO FRAGRANCE OF CINNAMON, OF SEALING WAX, OF BUBBLING toffee or grilled ham. Only of stressfulness and rancid calories. The wind brought sounds from a tombola booth and a shrill, electronic version of “Jingle Bells.” The cloud cover was sagging with repressed rain.

  The woman held her daughter’s bare hand in one of hers and a pen in the other. Her son sat in his stroller. At the entrance to the city amusement park, and at a couple of popular museums, they gave you little ribbons to fill out and fasten around the wrist of your child. They called them identification bracelets. But they had nothing like that at the Christmas market. Writing your phone number on the hand or arm of your child instead was a tip the woman had found in a parenting magazine.

  I shouldn’t be here, she thought. It was a mistake. But the kids had bee
n quarrelsome, teasing, snatching each other’s toys. One of them had pulled the other one’s hair, they had yelled in chorus and she had decided that they must do something, or they’d all go mad. Stroll for a while among happy families, buying cornets of homemade fudge and letting the kids gorge themselves on sweet buns. It could have been an excellent idea.

  Now she longed for home. Longed to get back to the apartment, lie down on the couch and nap while the kids watched the children’s channel.

  Instead they were here, and returning home without pushing the walker even once around the square would feel like failure. Besides, her baby boy would probably fall asleep on the bus and if she allowed him to sleep now she would never manage to get him into bed tonight. She tightened her grip on her daughter’s hand. It was hard to write on the girl’s thin skin and she had to press down pretty hard to get the ink to stay. When the child protested her mother yanked her arm.

  “Be still . . .” she muttered. But she couldn’t think of anything more to say. She went on writing. A muscle twitched under one of her eyes and she blinked.

  One turn. Just a single turn around the square, then she could go back home. With a bit of luck they’d fall asleep early. Then the evening would be all hers. A few hours of peace and quiet. She deserved that.

  When all ten digits of the phone number were done the mother drew her thumb over the ink. It was already dry. And as soon as she let go of her daughter’s hand, the child’s chapped thumb found its way into her half-open mouth. The girl hardly sucked, just let her thumb rest in the corner of her mouth. Her mother shook her head but said nothing.

  “Mommy,” the boy in the stroller complained. “Moommyyy!”

  The woman’s son was only a little over a year old. In a crowd like this, there was no way for her to let him rove on his own. But he hated his stroller, hated every second of sitting still. Now he twisted with all his strength, furiously trying to escape the harness that tied him down, bumping up and down in his seat. The stroller swayed. The girl stood by, thumb still in her mouth, while her mother pulled a couple of clasps tighter and tried to force the boy down on his seat. He kept trying to squirm free. His mother gave up, started walking and shook the stroller hard a couple of times to make her son slide back down.

  The girl’s boots were both too hot and too big. Her heels scraped the gravel when she walked. Her snowsuit zipper was pulled down and her collarbone showed. The pale, blue shadow of a vein fluttered with her heartbeat.

  “Walk properly,” her mother said. “Can’t you lift your feet?”

  “One turn around the square,” she repeated under her breath. “Just one turn.”

  If only the square hadn’t been so crowded. The rock candy stand was far away, the waffle stand looked closed. But on a two-foot-high platform maybe thirty feet away sat a middle-aged man with a flopping false beard and a bright red felt cap. Next to his easy chair stood a stuffed reindeer. The prop animal had black eyes of glass and a basket full of smoked sausages hung like a saddlebag across its back. A handwritten sign proclaimed that the sausages cost twenty kronor and that Santa wanted to know what all good children wanted for Christmas.

  With a vague sense of relief, the woman halted the stroller. Her daughter no longer believed in Santa Claus, and her son probably had no idea of who he was or what miracles he supposedly worked. But this was better than the alternative. She dug out a painkiller from her handbag and swallowed it dry. It stuck in her throat and she closed her eyes against the pain, putting her fist to her chest.

  This is when it happens. They stand in line. The woman tries calming her son with a cracker she’s found at the bottom of her handbag. But the boy refuses to be coaxed. Instead he snatches the cracker, sharp nails scratching his mother’s wrist, and throws it at the man standing in line before them. And when his mother has brushed crumbs from the stranger’s coat and apologized fervently, her daughter is gone.

  The woman turns around. Many times. Looks in all directions. Calls out, first in a low voice, then louder; the third time her throat hurts.

  Where is she, she thinks. She can’t be far; she was here a moment ago. Just a few seconds, can it even be a minute since she saw her last?

  At first she is irritated. Angry.

  “Be still!” she screams at her son. Her handbag keeps sliding off her shoulder, she claws at it. And she feels very tired. Exhausted. “Why,” she whispers to herself. Not frightened, just dejected. “Why, why, why?” It isn’t fair. What’s she supposed to do now?

  She asks the man in line next to her to take care of her stroller. Her son’s wide eyes watch the stranger while she squeezes through the crowd, calling and calling, jumping high to be able to see farther ahead.

  Which direction should she choose? She chooses them all, a dozen feet this way, a dozen that. But she finds nothing and then she has to return to her boy and already on the way back fear sneaks up on her, suddenly pushing everything else away, her angry thoughts, her tiredness and gloom. Fear hugs her close, envelops her with its poisoned smoke.

  Where is the girl? Where is her daughter? How can she just be gone? Why can’t she find her?

  And when she fumbles her phone out to be certain of hearing its signal when someone calls the number written on her daughter’s hand, she sees that the display is all black. The battery has run down. It’s dead.

  She presses a few buttons, shakes it, but it’s pointless. Her daughter is gone and the phone won’t ring and fear has to duck because now terror runs up her back, with sharp talons and pointed teeth.

  My daughter is gone, she thinks. Swallowed by the sluggish crowd of shoppers and by something totally unknown.

  Her son starts twisting in his stroller again. But less furiously. His mother’s terror is infectious. High above the clouds finally loosen their grip. The rain pours down. The crowd disperses as people hurry off, take cover by the stage and close to the canvas roofs over the stands. The mother remains in the open, looking into the gray curtain of water. But no girl is left in the rain. No child remains on the square. She is gone.

  Her name is Petra, the mother who has lost her child. She is dressed in jeans and a thin down jacket. Her hair is dyed. She is on parental leave from her office work. Actually she isn’t really a single parent, or at least wasn’t supposed to be, but her boyfriend has left her and she doesn’t know how to find him. He left almost four months ago, and when she phones his cell he never answers; all she gets are his parents or some friend, and once his brother. They all say the same thing: he needs to be left alone and that he’ll be in touch as soon as he can. What they mean is that they want nothing to do with her. She and her kids should leave them alone, all of them. She has had to pay her rent alone since he left and she hates him, hates his parents, his whole family and every one of his worthless slacker friends. She couldn’t call him. Not even if her phone worked.

  Where is the kid? How is it possible to disappear so quickly?

  Petra doesn’t know what to do. Where should she turn? Whom should she talk to? She needs help. But how to ask for it? Should she try to seem calm? Would anyone listen to her if she did? Will she have to scream or at least cry to make them understand that it’s serious? Before she has made her mind up she feels a hand on her shoulder. She probably looks frightened, for the man who stood in line in front of her offers to help search. He tells her to ask the Santa Claus for help.

  “Tell him what’s happened,” the man says. And he says, “It’ll be all right.” He must see that she needs to be calmed. “Don’t worry,” he says, “she’ll soon be back.”

  But there’s no need for her to worry; she does that without any conscious effort. The images appear faster than she can explain what has happened to the false-beard Santa. They trip over each other, those pitiless images. Her daughter is little, only four years and nine months; she still wears a diaper at night, still stubbornly sucks her thumb.

  Is there any deep water close by, Petra thinks while Santa Claus, whose real name is Magnus, pho
nes someone who will put out a call on the improvised speaker system in the square.

  “My daughter’s name is Emma,” she says.

  “Emma,” the loudspeakers crackle. “Your mother is waiting for you beside Santa Claus.”

  “She can’t swim,” Petra whispers. A lake, a canal, a river or just a creek? The water doesn’t even have to be deep. A child can drown in eight inches of water.

  But they’re in the middle of the city. Where could she drown here? The fountain is turned off during winter and she can’t get down to the harbor; it’s much too far, more than an hour’s walk. Of course Emma can’t walk that far on her own and, even if she could, someone would find her before she got that far.

  Still the images crowd Petra’s thoughts. There are no limits to the disasters possible, no end to the number of accidents that can happen. Falling down? Easy to see her daughter lose her balance, see her body fall headlong, perhaps from a height. An empty playground, a tree, a slippery swing, a wall, a rock, a jungle gym. Or down a manhole in a street, the darkness below swallowing the child, silencing her wordless cries. Squeezed to death, beaten to a pulp, bones crushed, chest caved in, suffocated in some cramped space. Death is always quick, even if dying can be painful, excruciating, drawn out. There is no merciful transition from living child to no longer breathing child, from growing child to decaying corpse.

  The rain has abated and the crowd is moving again. Another announcement rasps from the speakers. “Emma, who is four, is looking for her mother. Emma is dressed in a blue snowsuit and has blonde hair. Her mother is waiting by the main stage.”

  The man who has helped her search is back. He looks sad, but now his children are hungry and tired and he has to go home.

  “It will be all right,” he says again and leaves Petra. Her mind runs on, her thoughts wild.

  The square seems small. The crowd, the stands—it’s such a limited area. Why would her daughter want to stay here? Only a few feet away the wild city begins. The parking places, the streets, the cars, the badly lit thoroughfares. Has Emma walked there? It isn’t very far. In the throng it’s not easy to see if a child is alone.