Stockholm Delete

by Jens Lapidus

  Emelie could hear Cecilia’s and Lillan’s breathing behind her; she could hear Nikola’s cries. She hadn’t been lying to Teddy: the shot had grazed the edge of his shoulder. He would make it, that was clear.

  The door in front of her was unlocked. The handle looked dusty, but she could see someone had grabbed it.

  She heard quick steps in the stairwell on the other side.

  She was alone now. An even wider staircase this time. Downward. Teddy and Nikola: still upstairs. Lillan and Cecilia somewhere behind her.

  She had the gun raised in front of her, but it was almost impossible to run like that. It was much heavier than she’d expected—the first time she’d held a weapon. She didn’t even know if it was loaded, or how you took it off safety.

  Five steps at a time. She was breathing heavily.

  She lowered the gun: that made it easier to move.

  Floor after floor.

  She heard a door slam somewhere below her. The man had gone out; it should be the main door.

  She reached the bottom. Tore the door open, it was unlocked, too.

  Double doors. Bars. Concrete walls.

  She ran on. Saw doors slam shut in front of her. Saw the man with the scar from behind. Saw bright spots.

  Out in the yard. He was fifty feet ahead of her. It was dark. She’d dropped her headlamp, but she could see a light bobbing up and down—it had to be him. The gravel seemed to be a beige color, like it had rusted.

  “Stop,” she shouted.

  But he didn’t listen. Instead, he ran to the main guard room. She heard the sound of the doors opening. Saw the light disappear.

  She was close.

  Inside the building. More doors. Reinforced glass. Gloominess that would’ve been pitch darkness without the man’s flashlight beam. The smell of dust and dirty metal. Old surveillance cameras. A waiting room. The sound of footsteps up ahead.

  She made it out onto the other side. In front of the prison.

  Suddenly: blinded by a bright light. It took her a second to understand. He was shining a light straight in her eyes. She squinted, tried to see past the glare of the flashlight.

  It was the man with the scar. Ten feet away. And his weapon was pointed straight at her.

  Behind him, the Volvo was parked.

  He lowered the flashlight slightly. She could clearly make out the evil eye of the gun.

  The man sounded hoarse, but not out of breath. “I’m leaving now. You take another step, and I’ll blow your brains out.”

  He moved backward, toward the car. Emelie heard the driver’s door open. She clutched the barrel of her gun.

  A heartbeat: she should try to shoot him.

  She raised her arm. Aimed the pistol at him. Pulled the trigger.

  Then: a bang. A shot. Just like up in the hallway, but the sound was lower. Fainter.

  The bastard had made it first. He’d shot her. She was hit.

  She would drop to the ground, take her last breath alone in the darkness.

  It was all over.

  So many things had happened these past few days, but she’d still neglected so much. She hadn’t told her father she loved him, despite all the crap. She’d forgotten to thank Jossan for all her support. And Teddy—there was something she should have said to him. Something important.

  But she didn’t feel any pain. No palpitations, no panic.

  A jingling sound. A flashlight fell to the ground over by the car. Its beam of light shone straight up into the sky, toward the heavens. She could still see almost nothing. But she realized: she hadn’t been hit.

  She heard a gurgling sound.

  “Hello?”

  A hissing noise.

  “Hello?” she tried again.

  The sound of footsteps disappearing over the gravel.

  She slowly moved toward the car.

  Picked up the flashlight. Shone.

  The policeman was on the ground. His eyes had rolled upward.

  At first, she didn’t understand. He was completely motionless.

  Then she saw: his chest.

  A dark patch on his sweater. Blood pouring out.

  The sound of crunching steps was farther away now.

  The man with the scar had been shot. Someone else had gotten in there before either of them had time to shoot.

  Someone on their way into the darkness.

  PART V

  AUGUST

  72

  She took out the bottle of nail polish remover and soaked a cotton ball. A simple procedure: nail by nail. She cleaned. Liberated. She was in no hurry.

  Once all the old dirt and grease was gone, she took out the file. She brought it to the edge of each nail in a sweeping motion. In one direction only, never pulling it back and forth. Finger after finger. After that, she polished the surface of her nails with a buffer, that’s what Jossan had told her it was called. Slowly, carefully. This wasn’t Emelie’s area of expertise. Still, she kept going until they shone. She thought maybe she could skip the nail polish entirely; her nails looked good as they were. But she took the bottles from the bathroom cabinet anyway. Transparent base layer first. Then the nail polish, bright red, nothing strange, nothing extravagant today. It wasn’t a party she was going to. First coat. Second coat—there was a noticeable difference once it was done. Finally, she applied the top coat—Jossan had taught her about that, too—and her nails were suddenly strong and shiny, like she’d paid six hundred kronor for a professional manicure.

  Today was the day the main hearing in the murder case would begin—there was no more serious crime in the eyes of the law. It was also her second-ever trial. She really should have called it all off. Like Magnus Hassel and the office had expected. Plus, so much other crap had happened these past few days. The chaos out in Håga. The interviews afterward.

  The police had wanted to know everything, down to the very last detail. She complied as best she could—told them how they’d worked out which car had been used to take Teddy, how she and Nikola had torn the fence down, blown the entrance open. She told them everything that had happened in the hallway, other than that Nikola had been armed, and that she’d used the gun, too. She left that out. She told them how the man with the scar had threatened the women. How he’d dropped his weapon but managed to grab it again, shot at Nikola. How she’d chased him down the stairs, out into the yard, through the central guard area, and then seen him attacked by some unknown person in the darkness outside.

  “But why were they even keeping Teddy prisoner there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And Cecilia and Lillan Emanuelsson?”

  “We didn’t even know they were there.”

  “But you’re the private defense counsel for Cecilia’s son, Lillan’s brother. How does this all fit together?”

  “I don’t know for certain. Maybe they took them to try to influence the trial against Benjamin, influence what he’s going to say, something like that.”

  She and the others had agreed that they wouldn’t mention anything about the real background to it all. The man Loke had lured out of the building with the horn was gone, vanished. And they didn’t know what he would do if they started talking about a secret network desperate to get hold of a hard drive. They didn’t even know if he was a policeman.

  “I’ve got a question for you,” Emelie said. “Who was he, the man with the scar on his face? The one who got shot by the car right in front of me?”

  The man leading the interview looked down at his notes. “I can’t go into that right now, I’m afraid.”

  She could have cited some sort of obstacle. Given up the case. But no: this was who she was. This was what she wanted to do.

  She was ready now. She’d read the preliminary report forward and back, made her notes, refined them, refined them again. She’d prepared her cross-examinations, thought through all possible angles and evidence. She’d been out to the crime scene, would refer to her own findings there. She was as ready as she would ever be.
>
  It was seven in the morning.

  The shadow of the law courts fell over the café on the other side of the street. Emelie was sitting at one of the tables outside. She had a double espresso in front of her, the sugar she’d added resting in a little mound on the foam on the top. Good quality, she thought, when the sugar didn’t immediately sink. She hadn’t been hungry this morning—but she needed coffee, that much she knew.

  When the clock struck eight thirty, she went over to the court building and into reception. She could do this. Ten minutes later, she was sitting in the Pit, one of the remand cells beneath the court, with Benjamin.

  She thought back to the first time she met him. His hair had grown since then, his stubble had become a full beard—and his eyes were open.

  They’d met the day before to go through everything one last time. Jeanette Nicorescu had explained that Benjamin was almost completely back to normal now. He would need to rest more than he usually did, and he might become disoriented when he got stressed, but on the whole, he should be able to manage a trial.

  Emelie had tried to explain what happened in Håga.

  The main trial began on time at nine o’clock.

  The courtroom was grand. Much bigger and more old-fashioned than the one she’d defended Nikola in, over in Södertörn. The clerk and the members of the court were already in place up on the bench: but it was no ordinary presiding judge today. It was a senior judge, Sverker Järnblad—probably because of the gravity of the charges. He was wearing a black suit and tie: serious mood, even in his choice of clothes. The three lay judges looked sullen—maybe their way of marking how serious the case was. The clerk was young. She’d probably gone straight from high school to her legal studies, and then to working for the court here; it was the most sought-after placement in the country for law graduates.

  Emelie walked over to her seat at the right, below the bench. She had a proper desk chair with an adjustable back support and seat, but Benjamin’s chair was much simpler. He followed her in, two guards at his side. Cecilia had brought him a striped shirt a few days earlier. His handcuffs rattled.

  The prosecutor, Annika Rölén, was wearing a dark blue dress. During Benjamin’s remand hearings, she’d almost looked scruffy. Not today.

  Rölén heaped some papers onto the table in front of her. Emelie did the same. She glanced over to the public seats: Teddy, Cecilia, and Lillan. Teddy had a crutch leaning against his seat. There were two more men and three women at the back of the room. Maybe they were journalists. Maybe just curious members of the public. Maybe they were something else. Emelie saw one of the women, who seemed much too well-dressed to be a journalist, take out a small notepad every now and then. She seemed to be calmly making notes.

  The judge started to introduce the different parties. And then the door opened at the back of the room. Another member of the public came in and sat down. Suit, colorful tie. Slicked-back hair.

  It was Magnus Hassel.

  Emelie’s heart wanted to leap from her chest.

  The prosecutor read the charges. The hearing was scheduled to last three days. The morning was devoted to Rölén’s opening statements, and Benjamin’s interrogation would begin after lunch.

  The clerk tapped away at her computer. The lay judges were listening carefully—much more focused than those who’d been in court during Nikola’s trial. Once they had heard the prosecutor’s statement of the criminal act, the judge turned to Emelie.

  “And how does the defendant plead?”

  Emelie cleared her throat. Bent down toward the microphone so that it was right in front of her mouth.

  “Not guilty.”

  73

  Court 5, Stockholm County Court. Teddy had seen many courtrooms in his time: this was definitely the grandest. Tall wooden panels on the walls and an impressively high wooden ceiling: it was a grid, a symmetrical pattern that fit in with its surroundings in more ways than one. Stronghold of squareness.

  The judge and the lay judges, Benjamin and Emelie, the prosecutor: they were all sitting far away from him—the room was big and long. If it hadn’t been for the microphones and the speakers, the public wouldn’t have had a chance to hear what was being said.

  Magnus Hassel was sitting five seats away from him, listening. Teddy didn’t know if that was good or bad for Emelie. Maybe she’d told him about the case by now. Maybe he just wanted to see how she did.

  The clerk lowered two white sheets down the walls, one to her right and one to her left. The prosecutor had begun her statement of facts. She was showing PowerPoint images as she talked.

  The yard outside the house in Värmdö. The hole cut into the window. Dirt on the floor. A man’s body: his head a broken mess. Nothing new. The prosecutor’s statement of the criminal act was simple, but her account and presentation of the evidence was long-winded. Still, her claims were plain and clear. Benjamin had gone to the house in a car, broken in by cutting a hole in the window, and then shot a man in the living room, using expanding bullets. He’d had gunpowder residue on his hands and the victim’s blood on his clothes, that was why he’d taken off his bloody T-shirt and jeans and thrown them into the woods. There was no doubt in her mind: Benjamin was guilty.

  She went through the findings from the National Forensics Centre. Each point had a log number, date, inspection of process, legal opinion scales, etc. Analysis of the empty casings, the bullet used. The results of the search for DNA and fingerprints. The traces of gunpowder found on Benjamin. The tire tracks that showed his car had driven away from the house. The bloody T-shirt in the woods. The longer she continued, the more convincing the evidence became.

  “We also found DNA and fingerprints from someone other than Benjamin and the deceased,” Rölén said. “The house has probably been inhabited by others, though we haven’t managed to identify who.”

  The lunch break was depressing. Benjamin was taken back to his cell through the so-called Walk of Sighs. He would eat his lunch alone there. Teddy followed Emelie, Cecilia and Lillan to a restaurant over the road. He ordered a steak with fries, but he had no appetite. He glanced at the others: no one was touching their food.

  Emelie said: “It is what it is. I’ll do my best. But you heard what the prosecutor was saying: it’s not looking good.”

  Teddy wanted to talk to her once they were done, but she just waved an arm. “I don’t have time. Not right now. It’s all too much as it is.”

  He watched her stop to light a cigarette at the corner of the courthouse on Scheelegatan. Alone. He pushed more snus into his mouth, chewed more gum.

  He’d spent several hours in police interviews over the past few days, too. They wanted to know why he and the women had been kept prisoner in the abandoned prison, of course. What it was all about. Teddy told them as much as he could, without revealing any link to Mats Emanuelsson or a copy of a hard drive.

  All he wanted to know was who the man with the scar was—the man someone had shot under the cover of darkness, right in front of Emelie.

  It was time for Benjamin to take the stand.

  It started like normal—the judge asked him to go over everything in his own words. “And if you need to take a break, just speak up. I’m aware you’ve been bed bound.”

  Benjamin had his hands clasped in his lap, under the table. Despite that, it was obvious how tense he was, his eyes fixed on some invisible spot on the opposite wall. Emelie had told Teddy he was on strong tranquillizers, which was maybe just as well.

  “Okay, well…” Teddy wondered whether he would manage. “I don’t remember much from before the crash. It’s mostly black.”

  The judge said: “Just tell us what you remember.”

  “I went to the house to meet an acquaintance—I can’t say who,” Benjamin said in a monotone voice. He looked up at the senior judge. “And another acquaintance was there, too. His name is Sebastian, but he gets called Sebbe. Then something happened, and I’m sorry, but I can’t remember anything after that. I can just see
two things, like time stopped at two different moments. One is Sebbe lying on the floor with his face covered in blood, and I know he wasn’t breathing. The other is that I tried to turn on the road, but the car skidded and crashed. I’ve really tried to work out why I can’t remember what happened before and in between, but it’s a total blank. The doctors said I had a bad concussion and that it can affect your memory. All I know is I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t murder Sebbe. That’s all I can say.”

  Although his account was meager, Teddy practically felt his jaw drop—from what Emelie had said, Benjamin had never been able to tell them this much before. Sebbe was dead. The dark circles under Michaela’s eyes would get even darker. Maybe even Kum would be sad.

  Teddy could also understand why Benjamin didn’t want to mention having been in the house with his dad. He didn’t want to tell them that Mats was alive.

  The judge said: “Thank you. I’ll now hand over to the prosecutor.”

  This was where it started.

  Rölén straightened the papers she had in front of her.

  “With whom were you in the house?”

  Benjamin looked sad. “Sebbe and one more person I can’t talk about.”

  “Why can’t you talk about them?”

  “I just can’t.”

  The prosecutor continued.

  “How did you get to the house?”

  “When did you get to the house?”

  “Did you have any possessions in the house?”

  Benjamin couldn’t answer many of her questions; he couldn’t remember. On a few occasions, he replied that he didn’t want to answer. The minutes passed. The prosecutor continued along the same lines; she went through his brief statement again, in much more detail this time.

  “What were you wearing?”

  “What did you do with your clothes before you got in the car?”

  “Who is Sebbe?”

  Benjamin shook his head occasionally, mumbled, answered as it was: that he simply didn’t know or didn’t want to answer.