Ruben Frey declined the offer of coffee, mineral water perhaps, and Ewert Grens had pressed a can for each of them out of the machine in the corridor that swallowed ten-kronor coins and always had a note taped to the front, in scrawled handwriting by whoever it was who was sick of a machine eating their money without giving anything in return and now demanded their money back, always with a telephone extension at the bottom. Ewert Grens often wondered why they bothered, or if any of them had ever been contacted by the machine owner and had, with an apology, been able to hold the swallowed ten-kronor coin in their hand again.
Frey drank directly from the can, a couple of mouthfuls and then it was empty.
“Do you have children?”
He was serious when he asked the question and Grens suddenly looked down at the desk.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“With all due respect, that’s none of your business.”
Ruben rubbed a hand against his smooth, round cheeks and Ewert mused that it wasn’t fair that some people didn’t get wrinkles.
“OK. I’ll put it differently. Can you understand how it feels to be about to lose your only child?”
Ewert Grens thought about another father, the father of the five-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted and murdered two years ago. He remembered how terrible his face had been, the pain that was impossible to avoid.
“No. As I don’t have any. But I’ve been faced with parents’ grief, I’ve seen it and I could certainly feel the grief eating them up inside.”
“Can you then understand how far a parent is prepared to go to avoid that?”
The mourning father had in that case sought out and shot to death the man who had taken his daughter’s life, and Ewert had discovered in the course of the investigation that he didn’t think that was entirely wrong.
“Yes. I think I can.”
Ruben Frey rummaged for something in one of his trouser pockets. A pack of cigarettes. A red pack, a brand you couldn’t buy in Sweden.
“Is it OK if I smoke?”
“Not in this fucking building. But I have no intention of arresting you if you do.”
Frey smiled and lit up a cigarette. He leaned back, tried to relax, took a couple of drags and blew the smoke out in front of him in small grayish white puffs.
“I believe in the death penalty. I’ve voted for every governor who’s campaigned for it. If my son, if John had been guilty, he would have deserved to die. I believe in an eye for an eye. But you see . . . John is not a murderer. A fucking troublemaker, true. Low impulse control is what the psychologists called it. A couple of them tried to link it to the loss of his mother, who died early, that his grief for Antonia triggered it. I don’t believe that for a moment, all these quasi-hypotheses that in some way absolve the individual of responsibility. He was difficult, Superintendent Grens, but he was not a murderer.”
From then on, for about half an hour, Grens did not need to ask a single question. Ruben Frey smoked and talked without interruption. He described the bitter atmosphere that was whipped up when the Finnigan girl was found dead. The sort of murder that the press decides to serialize and turn into a matter of principle, and Elizabeth Finnigan obviously sold well in the greater part of the state of Ohio. The public’s demands to find a culprit and then have that person punished with the strictest possible penalty grew louder as the days passed, with each article that was published. The murder became public property and ignited public grief, and above all, politics. No bastard in Ohio was going to be able to take the life of a beautiful young woman with everything before her and get away with it. Ruben Frey was quite calm, collected, as he told the story chronologically; calm and collected when he spoke of the day that John was arrested and the hate they were confronted with from then until the jury announced their fucking verdict in the courtroom.
He told a story he had perhaps never told before. His cheeks were flushed, his brow shiny, he hadn’t changed clothes since leaving home in Marcusville and he was starting to smell—sweat and something else—not that it bothered Grens but he noticed it and he asked Frey if he’d like to wash away his journey in one of the City Police showers once they had finished talking. Frey thanked him and apologized for the fact that he wasn’t as clean as he might be, it had been a long day.
The strong wind continued to pound against the window with even greater force. The snow swirled outside, whirling up as much as falling down, old loose snow being harried to life again. Ewert Grens went over to the window and looked out at the whiteness. He waited. Frey was clearly tired but there was more.
“And his escape?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you know about that?”
Ruben Frey had known that the question would come. He looked for yet another cigarette in the pack that was empty.
“Is this conversation strictly between you and me?”
“I don’t see anyone else here.”
“Do I have your word when I ask that it stays between us?”
“Yes. You have my word. I don’t report to anyone.”
Frey scrunched up the cigarette pack with the red symbol on it, took aim at the wastepaper basket under Grens’s desk—he wasn’t even close. He bent his bulky body forward and got hold of the crumpled cardboard, threw it again. Even farther away.
He shrugged, left it lying on the floor.
“Everything.”
“Everything?”
“I knew everything. I was there, all the way. Until the airplane took off in Toronto and disappeared in the clouds heading for Moscow. A detour, but people we trusted often used that route. It was my money that financed every stage of the escape.”
He sighed.
“That was six years ago. I haven’t seen him since then, and I don’t know if you understand, but each day that has passed without me hearing anything, each silent day, has been a good day.”
By the time that Ruben Frey undressed and stepped into a shower at City Police, he had explained in detail the escape that his son had already described parts of. There had been several gaps in John’s story, but everything he’d told of what he remembered was confirmed by his father in a closed room. Ewert Grens decided to believe what he had heard; Ruben Frey, a prison officer called Vernon Eriksen, and two doctors who had subsequently changed their identities and lives had together planned and implemented the escape of a person they believed was innocent.
The blue shirt with white stripes was now a white shirt with blue stripes and the black leather vest had changed to mocha brown. His hair was wet and you could smell the aftershave as soon as the door opened. Ruben looked clean, his eyes less tired. He put down his large travel bag where it had previously stood and asked where he could get something to eat. Grens pointed out into the corridor and Frey took a few steps before he turned around.
“I have one more question.”
“I don’t have much time. But ask away and I’ll see if I can answer.”
Ruben Frey put a hand to his wet hair, he straightened his pants and the waistband that had somehow got caught under his large belly.
It was still windy out there, they could both hear it.
“Six years. I’ve thought about him every day, every waking hour. I would dearly love to see him. Could you arrange that?”
Twenty minutes later, Ewert Grens walked beside him down one of the detention center corridors. There were restrictions, but there was also a way around restrictions. Grens accompanied the unauthorized visitor into the cell and then stood in front of the window from where they could be observed, without taking up room. They cried as they embraced each other, not sobbing, but quiet, almost mindful, the tears people cry after many years of loss.
EWERT GRENS DROVE AT GREAT SPEED AND ON AT LEAST TWO OCCASIONS against the traffic down a one-way street. He was late and had no intention of being even later.
It had been hard to get Ruben Frey to let go of his son.
It hadn’t been easy to ha
ve to say that the informal visit was over, that they had to leave, John’s drawn face and Ruben’s round cheeks pressed together as they stood there, close, so close, and talked quietly about something that Grens neither could hear nor wanted to hear. He had arranged for Ruben Frey to be driven to Hotel Continental on Vasagatan and had given him a business card with all his work numbers on it, and his home number scrawled by hand on the back.
He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Two minutes past eleven. The boat left from Gåshaga dock at seventeen minutes past. He could still make it.
It was only three days since he’d stood beside her at the window and she had raised her hand and waved.
He had seen it.
He was convinced that that was what she’d done when the white boat blew its horn down on the water, on Höggarnsfjärden. And then the staff had explained to him that it was neurologically impossible. What did that mean? A wave was a wave and he had seen what he’d seen. He didn’t care if it was impossible or not.
Three days, no more, and yet it felt like an age ago. He should have thought about her more. Anni had always lain like a film over everything he did, everything he breathed, she had been with him every step he’d taken and he’d come to appreciate it, he was totally dependent on it.
But it was as if he hadn’t had time in the past few days. He had tried several times when he suddenly realized that he’d lost her for a while: he started to think about her face again and her room and that he missed her, but it had been hard—forced thoughts that demanded an energy that for the first time wasn’t there.
Grens crossed Lidingö Bridge, over the speed limit as always, then another three or four miles to the east of the large island, where property prices were so high that all you could do was laugh. He had never understood why it was so fucking fantastic to live there. He had thought at the time it was a good environment for Anni—the peace, the water, plus it was easy for him to visit—but good God, that was twenty-five years ago now, when house prices had been very different.
He looked at the clock again, four minutes left when he parked the car and got out. Some people were waiting, and farther down the dock, a cab closed its doors and drove off. He went down the slope, into the cold wind that rasped against his face.
It was a simple dock, from this distance it basically looked like a large lump of concrete that someone had poured into the water. The ice lay thick and hard around it, as if everything had been welded together; it was hard to tell under the layer of snow where the dock ended and the ice began. A channel of open water led up to the dock, it wasn’t very wide and he wondered that there was enough room for a boat that size.
She was sitting in her wheelchair, a great white hat on her head and a thick coat with a brown fur collar that he’d given her two Christmases ago around her thin body. He got that feeling in his stomach, the same as always. The tenderness when he saw her, for a while he was at peace, didn’t need to hurry anywhere. He said nothing to her when he got there, just stroked her cheek, it was red and chilly, and she leaned in toward his hand.
She had seen it.
In the distance, and slightly late, the white ferry sailing toward Gåshaga.
According to the timetable, it should be alongside the dock at seventeen minutes past eleven, champing at the bit for the time it took for the new passengers to board.
Anni had seen it and her eyes didn’t leave it. Ewert Grens kept on stroking her cheek, he was sure she was as happy as she looked.
He said hello to Susann, the medical student who worked extra shifts at the nursing home and whom he’d asked to go with them—he was paying her for the day from his own money. She was about Hermansson’s age, slightly taller, more solid, blond rather than dark, they weren’t at all like each other and yet they were similar, the way they talked, their selfconfidence and authority. He wondered if all young women were like that and he just hadn’t noticed.
An older couple standing over by the edge of the dock, a man in a black leather jacket and sneakers sitting on his own on a bench covered in snow, two girls standing a few feet away, giggling hysterically, glancing over at them when they thought no one would see. They were all waiting, checked their watches now and then, stamped their feet in the snow to keep warm.
The boat was getting closer, a dot that quickly grew bigger as it approached. When it was still some way off, the horn blew twice, Anni jumped and then made her sound, the one that he always heard as laughter, a gurgling, wheezing sound that came from somewhere at the base of her throat.
MS Söderarm. The boat she had waved to.
And now she was going to sail with her, she wanted to—she had shown him, after all.
The boat was bigger than he’d thought. One hundred thirty feet, two stories, shining white with a blue and yellow funnel, a long wire tied from stem to stern with colorful flags that fluttered in the gusty wind and every now and then made a loud slapping noise. He pushed her wheelchair in front of him. The small wheels got caught on the gangway and he had to struggle to get her free and then onboard. They went into the lower lounge, which was warm, where there were some empty wooden benches and a strong smell of coffee from the kiosk at the back.
Susann took off Anni’s hat and unbuttoned her winter coat. Her hair was tousled and Ewert looked for his comb, a steel comb with wide gaps between the teeth, and he pulled it through the knots with great care until her hair hung straight again.
“Coffee?”
Ewert looked at Susann, who was straightening up the wheelchair. She pushed it back and forth with vigor until she found a position at the short end of the table that was good.
“No, thanks.”
“I’ll pay.”
“I don’t want one.”
“I insist. It’s important for me that you’re here today.”
She still didn’t look up; she was bending down to lock the wheels.
“If you insist.”
Grens walked down the narrow aisle, countering the boat’s tendency to roll. MS Söderarm. He liked the name. One that he’d heard for years mumbled in a monotone on the shipping forecast on Sveriges Radio: Söderarm, southwesterly, twenty-six feet per second, visibility good. He had also been there a few times, at the far end of the archipelago, when as a boy he sailed there with his father. He couldn’t remember that they’d done much together, but those sailing trips, he remembered them, Tjärven lighthouse that flashed and swooped and the sea and the sky that blended together in the same color blue . . . it had been deserted out there, nature was naked, not much life, barren rocks and endless sea.
“She’s called Söderarm, the boat.”
The boy, because he was just a kid, who was standing behind the brown wooden counter pouring three cups of coffee, looked at him in surprise.
“Yes. Would you like anything else?”
“Why’s she called that?”
The spotty face and stressed eyes tried to avoid his odd questions.
“I don’t know. I’m new. Can I get you anything else?”
“Three Danishes, with cheese.”
They drank the coffee and ate the Danishes and looked out of the window as the boat cut through the water that still came in waves, despite the fact that there was only a narrow channel through the ice. The boat journey would take forty minutes. At eleven fifty-seven they would disembark at Vaxholm and have a seafood lunch at Vaxholm Hotel—Ewert had reserved a table for three by the window with a view of the sea.
He wound down. He felt calm. But all the same, fucking Schwarz forced his way in. Despite all the water out there, the ice, the archipelago.
He just needed a few hours of peace! He would have the strength to face this story and get to the bottom of it if he could only have these measly few hours to forget it! Grens closed his eyes and forced himself to think of something other than Schwarz. For a few minutes, maybe a couple, then Ruben Frey was there again, asking how far Ewert would be prepared to go to save his children.
I don’t have any damn
children. We never had damn children. We didn’t get the time. Anni, we didn’t get the time.
But if we had. For example, Hermansson. If we’d had a daughter like Hermansson.
But we don’t. But if we had had, Anni, you know that I would go to any lengths to protect her.
Ewert leaned forward over the table and wiped the crumbs away from her chin with a red Christmas napkin. Then he asked if they wanted to go out. He thought that Anni would maybe like to feel the wind, the sea, the long days cooped up in her room and the hours spent looking out of the window at a world that she couldn’t be part of, she had to take the opportunity, she had waved.
They weren’t going particularly fast. He didn’t know much about speeds at sea, but the pimply boy in the kiosk knew that the maximum speed was twelve knots and that certainly didn’t sound far wrong. He carried Anni up the stairs, held her in his arms and rolled up the stairs as his limp compensated for the sea, Susann a few steps behind him with the wheelchair that she had folded up for the moment to get it through the door onto the deck.
The wind was even stronger out here. It was hard to stand still, and they both helped to hold Anni’s wheelchair. The odd drop of saltwater on their cheeks when the waves were big, but it felt good, like the shiver of a slightly too cold shower in the morning. He looked at Anni, who was sitting by the railing, her chin just reaching over it, so she could be part of something that lived its own life. The happiness that she sometimes gave him washed over him again, simply by showing herself that she was happy.
“I know what you’re hoping for. And I think it’s good what you’re doing, what you’re giving her, but I don’t want you to hope for too much.”
“Call me Ewert.”
“I mean, because then it could really hurt when it doesn’t happen.”
“She waved.”
The medical student called Susann had one hand on Anni’s shoulder, the other still around the handle of the wheelchair. She didn’t look at him when she said all this, her eyes fixed on Vaxholm, which was expanding on the port side of the boat.
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