Robbins’s office was cramped, an oversized desk and piles of boxes, and as he closed the door behind them, Kevin looked around without success for somewhere to sit. It was a room that couldn’t hold much more than Robbins, as if his large frame took up any remaining space and he wore the walls. He pointed to a stool in amongst all the mess in the corner under the only window. Kevin leaned forward, got hold of it, and sat down.
Lyndon Robbins was breathing heavily, the walk and the stairs had made him sweat, despite the January cold.
“Kevin Hutton, special agent in charge, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“How can I help you?”
He didn’t sound nervous. Nor did he seem to be trying to stay calm in order to hide the fact that he was.
Kevin could usually tell straightaway if there was something else, an unease, something that couldn’t be heard. That wasn’t the case here. Lyndon Robbins wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, he smiled, he sincerely meant what he said, that he wanted to help.
“Yes, you can perhaps help. With this.”
Kevin Hutton had a thin briefcase with him. He picked it up from the floor, opened it, and took out an envelope with a single sheet of paper in it.
“A death certificate. Just over six years old. An inmate who was named John Meyer Frey and who died in prison in Marcusville.”
Robbins searched around for his glasses and found them in the outer pocket of his jacket. He took the sheet that Kevin was holding out to him and read it.
“Yes. It’s a death certificate. Is that why we’re sitting here in the middle of the night?”
“Is that your signature?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s why we’re sitting here in the middle of the night.”
Robbins read over the page again and threw up his hands.
“I don’t understand. I was the head doctor at the corrections facility in Marcusville. If someone died, then I had to sign. What’s the problem?”
“The problem? The problem is that the person there, the one who is deceased, is right now sitting in a cell in a detention center in Stockholm.”
The large man looked at Kevin, at the paper he was still holding in his hand, then at Kevin again.
“Now I really don’t understand.”
“Well, he’s alive. John Meyer Frey is alive. Despite the fact that you signed his death certificate a number of years ago.”
“How do you mean, alive?”
“How do I mean? He’s alive, simple.”
Kevin Hutton took the paper that was starting to crease in Robbins’s clutch. He put it back in the file and the briefcase.
“I’m going to have to ask you some questions. And I want you to answer them. Every single one.”
Lyndon Robbins nodded.
“I’ll answer.”
Kevin made himself comfortable on the hard stool, studied Robbins’s confused face.
“That’s good.”
“By the way, Hutton, is this some kind of formal questioning?”
“Not yet. For the moment we can say it’s for information purposes.”
Robbins wiped his brow again.
“I know that he’s dead.”
His eyes were empty, he was looking at something, on the wall perhaps, looking without seeing.
“You see, I worked at the prison in Marcusville for six years. And only a couple of people died during that time. Even though many of them were quite old, and even though many of them had been there for a long time.
But no one else, I can assure you, died on Death Row. Which is why, Mr.
Hutton, I remember it so clearly. I remember him. John Meyer Frey. And I remember the day he died.”
HELENA SCHWARZ WAS LIKE A BIRD, THIN, FRAGILE, A BIG SWEATER AND pants that were so wide that her body lacked contours. But it was her face that made Ewert Grens think of birds. Her eyes that darted anxiously around the interview room, her jaw that she touched all the time, her mouth already formed into a warning cry, high-pitched desperation.
When she suddenly appeared at the door and looked tentatively in, John had bolted up, shouted something, and then run straight across the room. Ågestam had been about to stop him, but Ewert had stood in his way and together with Hermansson got him to sit back down—if husband and wife wanted to hug each other before all hell let loose, then they could.
They had stood just inside the door, foreheads touching, crying quietly, kissed each other’s cheeks, sought each other’s hands. Ågestam and Hermansson and Ewert and Sven had all tried to keep themselves busy, looked at the floor, or for some papers, or anything that had meant not staring curiously, to make room for private moments in here as well.
Grens had then approached them, asked John to return to his seat and Helena Schwarz to sit on a chair that had just been carried in and placed against the far wall.
It was stuffy, the air was heavy, a small room that was meant for two, maybe three people, and now there were six, so there wasn’t much oxygen to share.
“John.”
Ewert Grens leaned forward with his elbows on the bare table and turned toward the corner where John was sitting, red eyed, his focus on Helena.
“We made an agreement, didn’t we? We would make sure you got to see your wife, despite having full restrictions. And you, John, you would tell us what this is all about.”
John heard him and perhaps tried to talk, but he said nothing.
“Isn’t that right, John?”
Helena Schwarz wasn’t sitting down anymore, she was on her way across the open floor when Sven stopped her.
“I don’t understand! What is this? He’s kicked someone, I haven’t even grasped that yet, my John doesn’t kick—but this, locked up and I’m not allowed any contact and this room and now you want him to tell you something . . . God, what the hell are you up to?”
She hit Sven, a fist against his chest and one against his arm. She shouted, and Sven held her firmly until she calmed down, and then guided her back to her chair with determined steps.
Grens looked at John, then at Helena, his voice perhaps unnecessarily sharp.
“One more time. One more time and you’ll be taken home in a police car just as quickly as you were brought here. You are here because John asked for you to be here. Now, sit down and keep quiet. Understand?”
Helena Schwarz sat with her head bowed, a slight nod.
“Good.”
Ewert Grens turned to John again, small irritated movements, sufficient for the person who was supposed to be giving new information to notice.
“OK, let’s start again, John.”
The thin man with the pale face and great dark bags under his eyes swallowed nervously, licked his lips, breathed out through his nose.
“Helena.”
His eyes sought her out.
“Helena, I want you to look at me.”
She raised her head and squinted across the room.
“My love.”
He breathed out, and started.
“My sweet love, there is so much you don’t know. That no one knows.
And I should have said. I should at least have told you.”
Another deep breath, another long expiration.
“So this is it. Listen, Helena. Are you listening?”
He sighed.
“Helena . . . I am not John Schwarz. I . . . I wasn’t born in Halifax in Canada. And I didn’t come to Sweden because I’d met a woman and fallen in love.”
He looked at her, she was looking at him.
“I’m . . . actually . . . I’m actually John Meyer Frey. I was born in a small town called Marcusville in Ohio. I have never known anyone named Schwarz. I had no idea where Sweden was. I came here because the man who was prepared to sell his identity and past had permanent residency here and I was on the run as I’d been in prison, I’d been on Death Row for over ten years.”
Tears in his eyes, the harsh light reflected in them.
“Hel
ena, I was sentenced to death. Do you understand? I was waiting to be executed. And I escaped. I still don’t really know how; I have vague memories of a boat from Cleveland, a plane from Detroit to Moscow, another one to Stockholm.”
He cleared his throat several times.
“I was convicted of a murder I hadn’t committed. Listen to me, Helena! I was seventeen and convicted of a murder I had nothing to do with! I was going to die, Helena! A court had decided exactly when I was going to die.”
He got up, the ill-fitting prison-issue shirt to his face as he dried his falling tears.
“I didn’t die. I didn’t die! I’m sitting here, I’ve got you, I’ve got Oscar, and I didn’t die!”
Ewert Grens had seen it a few times before. He’d even been there himself.
How a person could suddenly become someone else. How a person’s entire life could be wiped out with only a few sentences. A shared past, what had been a shared life, was no more. Only a lie, nothing else, just a big fat lie.
Of course there was no fixed pattern. But Helena Schwarz reacted in much the same way as all the others.
Forlorn, fooled, frightened, and so totally trampled on.
Of course she cried, of course she shouted and they let her do it. They didn’t react quickly enough, though, when she suddenly leapt up and ran across the room again and started to hit him, hard slaps to his face with her open hand.
He didn’t try to move.
He didn’t hold up his hands for protection, he didn’t bend forward, he let her hit him.
She turned to Grens, shouted at him, well, say something, then!, he didn’t answer, didn’t move, she screamed again, and you believe this!, he shrugged, I don’t believe anything, she stared at him, turned back, and continued to hit the person she used to know, I don’t believe you!, her voice was hoarse, you’re lying, you bastard, I don’t believe you!
LYNDON ROBBINS’S BIG BODY SAT QUIETLY ON THE CHAIR IN THE CRAMPED office. He had tried to answer the FBI agent’s questions about a person who should be dead. He had explained that he’d been twenty-eight when he first went to Marcusville and was promoted to head doctor within three years. He didn’t think it was as striking as it sounded, as the posts were often vacant there—a doctor who chose to work in a prison certainly wasn’t doing it for status, because there wasn’t any; it was either a desire to help those who were weakest, who in terms of hierarchy were without doubt at the bottom of the social ladder, or quite simply it was somewhere to begin, where you could gain the experience required for more attractive positions in more attractive hospitals. In his case, it had probably been a bit of both. He had been young and newly qualified and grateful for his first job, but he had also harbored something that was sincere and that had later been eroded, a wish to give which had slowly withered when he so seldom got anything back.
Kevin Hutton listened, but gradually started to feel the lack of sleep, and he had to stifle a few yawns. He excused himself and left the room, found a couple of vending machines in the corridor, and came back with two cans of seltzer water and a plastic-wrapped Danish each.
Half a can, half a Danish, then he continued asking questions and Robbins continued giving answers.
“Cardiomyopathy?”
“That’s what it’s called.”
“Explain.”
“Enlargement of the heart muscle. His heart quite simply grew too big.
It’s not usual, but it does happen.”
Kevin Hutton broke a piece off the half of the Danish that was left, dunked the dry edges in what remained of the seltzer water.
“I’ve known John Meyer Frey for a long time. And I can’t recall anyone ever talking about him having something wrong with his heart.”
“That doesn’t mean to say that it wasn’t the case.”
“What I mean is—”
“Cardiomyopathy often occurs later in life. And very often it’s discovered too late. In Frey’s case, I seem to remember it was only three or four months before he died.”
Hutton took a notepad out of his briefcase, started to write down the medical knowledge that he lacked.
“How is it discovered? In Frey’s case, for example?”
“Several different symptoms. Frey was like many others. He felt out of sorts, tired, no energy. But he was young, so his heart wasn’t the first thing you’d think of.”
“Well?”
“So it was only when Greenwood and Burk had his heart X-rayed that we realized what it was. An X-ray was all that was needed.”
Hutton added the two names to his brief notes about the medical condition.
“Greenwood and Burk?”
“Lawrence Greenwood and Bridget Burk. The two were newly employed at the time, but good doctors who shared a post and otherwise worked at Doctors Hospital, which is here in Columbus.”
“Good, you say?”
“Better and with more experience than most of the doctors who work in prisons in this country.”
“So they couldn’t have been mistaken? With regard to the size of the heart?”
“I saw the X-rays myself. Indisputable.”
Hutton put the notepad to one side, reached for the phone that was a bit farther back on the desk.
“Can I use it? I need to make a call before we continue.”
Lyndon Robbins nodded, and for a moment leaned back and closed his eyes. He heard Kevin Hutton dial a number, and several rings that woke a colleague called Clark, and Hutton asking the drowsy Clark to search for two doctors called Greenwood and Burk on his computer.
Hutton put the receiver down and they looked at each other.
“The autopsy report.”
“Yes?”
“Do you have any idea where it is?”
Robbins shook his head.
“It should be there. In his file. With the other information.”
“It should. But it isn’t.”
Lyndon Robbins sighed loudly.
“Jesus, what the hell is this?”
Kevin Hutton picked up his notebook again, turned some pages and then started to write.
“What exactly do you know about the postmortem?”
“What do I know? Not much. No more than that I had two extremely competent doctors whom I trusted, probably more competent than I was, and that they saw to the dead man and together with one of the prison officers transported the body to the pathologist for the autopsy.”
Robbins had left his Danish to one side for a while now, he had said thank you but explained that he needed to watch his weight, that he was trying to eat properly and avoid things like that with icing.
Now he sighed again, wiped his brow with the handkerchief for the third time, and then picked up the soft Danish and in a single bite ate it.
“When I get stressed. Every time.”
Kevin Hutton shrugged.
“I bite my nails myself. When things get a little frantic, don’t even notice that I’m doing it, just do. But now I want to know everything you know about the results of the autopsy.”
A few crumbs around his mouth. He brushed them away before he answered.
“To be honest, Hutton, I know absolutely nothing. He was dead.
Wasn’t he? And I had so many other things to do in Marcusville, you see, you were always trying to catch up, chasing time. Frey was deceased, we knew why he’d died, and two of my doctors looked after the body. That’s all there was to it. So no, I in fact know nothing. I didn’t have any reason or the time to give more thought to someone who was already dead.”
“But maybe it was your responsibility. To know.”
“I would have made the same assessment today, if the situation arose.
And you would too.”
It was twenty to five on Wednesday morning. It was dark outside, a winter night with a late dawn. Kevin Hutton realized that they were done, that his first impressions had been correct, that Lyndon Robbins had no intention of telling him anything other than the truth and that he had had no idea that Jo
hn’s death might be anything other than what it seemed.
Kevin was about to thank Robbins for giving him the time, for his honest answers, when a telephone rang somewhere in his briefcase, five long rings before he found it.
It was Benjamin Clark.
He said that he couldn’t find them.
Lawrence Greenwood and Bridget Burk didn’t exist anymore.
EWERT GRENS AND LARS ÅGESTAM HAD AGREED TO STOP THE INFORMAL interview temporarily. Helena Schwarz had been allowed to hit her hands against her husband’s body until she was spent. He had stood there motionless and accepted the frustration that was also his own. She had shouted and they had both cried and Sven had encouraged Ewert, Ågestam, and Hermansson to follow him out into the corridor for a while, to leave them in peace for as long as they needed.
They had waited an hour, the clock struck twelve in Kungsholmen Church. They were all hungry, so had walked down to Hantverkargatan and the relatively expensive place with palm trees in the window. They had eaten in silence—not the sort that was uncomfortable, just a peaceful break, the kind you get when there is an unspoken agreement that everyone is allowed to have their own thoughts for a while. Then they got up and were about to leave when Sven Sundkvist went over to the register and paid for two salads of the day. He asked to have them in plastic containers with plastic cutlery to take away; he knew that they’d both need it, John and Helena Schwarz, something to eat, as their energy had run out a long time ago.
They were sitting in the middle of the floor.
John’s arms around her birdlike body, cheek to cheek, hands intertwined.
Sven looked at the woman when he walked in and wondered if she had truly understood, or if she was in fact maybe someone who knew how to forgive.
Lars Ågestam came in, leaned forward, and squatted down while he explained that they should eat their food, that they would need it, and that John, when he was ready, should make sure to go up for some fresh January air in the net-covered cage on the detention center roof; Ågestam had just arranged for him to have a few minutes extra.
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