CELL 8

by Anders Roslund; Börge Hellström

  “I’ll give you some news, all right. I only have one condition. That it’s printed no later than tomorrow.”

  Hines laughed, a hint of derision in his voice.

  “I’ ll be the judge of that.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight before we start. I’ ll be the judge of the newsworthiness. If your story’s good enough, I write it. If it’s not, well, then we’ve just had a beer together.”

  “It’s good enough.”

  The buzz of the background music was irritating. Vernon excused himself, went over to the waitress and asked her to turn down the volume, then sat down again at the compact pine table with four red plastic place mats.

  “So now we can hear each other.”

  He looked at Hines and started to talk.

  “I’ve worked at Marcusville prison all my adult life. I guess I’ve almost lived there, with the inmates, for over thirty years. I’ve seen all there is to see of criminality. All sorts of criminals, the consequences of all sorts of crimes. I believe in punishment. A society that penalizes is a society with norms.”

  A truck braked outside the window. A quick glance, they both saw the big man with a pigtail get out and head for the entrance.

  “With one exception. The death penalty. A society with norms cannot have a state that takes life. It took me some years on Death Row to understand that. You see, every prison holds someone who is innocent or who has been convicted wrongly. I know that, anyone who works in a prison knows that. I’m sure that a couple of those I was responsible for fell into that category.”

  The truck driver sat down at a table at the opposite end of the café, Vernon had lowered his voice when he came in, but now raised it again.

  “All it takes is for one innocent person to be executed. Just one, and the system fails! If it’s discovered, afterward, it can never be undone. Can it?

  No amount of damages can bring back life.”

  He had been preparing what he was going to say for eighteen years.

  Now . . . it was suddenly hard to find the words.

  “The victim’s retribution . . . Hines, that’s nothing more than revenge.

  All that stuff about justice. Rehabilitation. Do you believe it? It’s not about that anymore. If it ever was. I see it every day. Revenge . . . that’s the state’s real driving force.”

  He finished his beer, glanced at Hines, who still looked interested.

  “And sometimes . . . sometimes you have to take a life to save other lives. Did you know that, Hines? I chose Edward Finnigan. That’s what I did, I chose. Finnigan is the sort of person people listen to. An outspoken proponent of the death penalty with considerable power in the state. Perfect. He had a daughter who he would mourn. The daughter had a boyfriend who was a troublemaker, so it would be easy to get him convicted. Two lives. That was all, Hines. I’ve sacrificed two lives so that a nation can understand how wrong the death penalty is. If those two lives get us to question a system that could take many more lives, then it was worth it.”

  Richard Hines sat completely still. He had stopped taking notes, unsure that he’d really understood what he’d just heard.

  “I took Elizabeth Finnigan’s life. I knew that John Meyer Frey would be sentenced to death because she was a minor. When he had been executed, then I would do this, what I’m doing now, stand up and say what actually happened.”

  Hines writhed in discomfort. A senior corrections officer was sitting opposite him and had just claimed that he was responsible for one of the state’s most sensational murders in recent times.

  He was human and wanted to run away and report the madman. But he was also a journalist and wanted to know more.

  “Frey escaped. What you’re saying . . . there’s something that’s not quite right.”

  “Something happened. Suddenly . . . I couldn’t go through with what I’d planned so carefully. I . . . started to care about the boy. John was smart, vulnerable . . . I’d never gotten close to anyone like that before. The others, I don’t know, every time one of the people I was responsible for in there died, it was like a family member had stopped breathing. And John—like a son, I can’t explain it any better than that. I didn’t have the courage to let him die. Do you understand?”

  “No. I don’t understand.”

  “For many years I’ve been involved with various networks that oppose the death penalty. I started to work with the group that was campaigning for John. And I started to plan his escape with a handful of key people.”

  He shrugged.

  “And then . . . one mistake after six years of freedom! I knew immediately that everything would happen fast. It was a matter of prestige.

  Finnigan’s position. So I’m doing it now instead. Completing what I started a long time ago.”

  The last drops of beer had been warm for some time but he was thirsty and drank what he could of the foam at the bottom of the glass. He rummaged in his trouser pockets, found four one-dollar bills and left them beside the empty glass.

  “Hines, I was the one who killed her. And John Meyer Frey was executed. A system based on the death penalty will never work. I know that you’re going to write about this. Before tomorrow even. It’s too good for you or anyone else not to. And when it becomes general knowledge, when people know . . . the system is done for.”

  Vernon had stood up, buttoned his coat, he was already on his way out of the deserted café.

  “Sit down.”

  “I don’t have time.”

  “We’re not done yet. Assuming that you still want it to be printed?”

  Vernon looked at his watch. Fifty-five minutes left. He sat down.

  “This is all a bit too simple. It’s a good story. But I need more. Things to prove that what you’re saying is true.”

  “On your desk. When you get back. You’ll find a package.”

  “A package?”

  “The sort of thing that the person who killed Elizabeth Finnigan might have. Her bracelet, for example. The one she always had on. I haven’t seen it mentioned in the investigation. Her parents will confirm that it’s hers.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The sort of thing that only someone who was responsible for John’s escape would know. You’ve got an eight-page document which describes in detail how it was done. When you read it and compare it with the records about his . . . death, you’ll understand.”

  “Or so you say.”

  “Pictures. You’ll have pictures that only someone who was there could have taken. Of her body lying on the floor. Of John’s body in the morgue, in the body bag and boarding a plane in Toronto.”

  Richard Hines turned his gaze to the window, wanted to get away, down the road that was behind the big truck.

  “I’ve never heard anything like it. If you ask me . . . you’re fucking sick.”

  “Sick? No. Anyone who thinks that a state can take life, that’s sick. Trying to do away with the death penalty, what can be healthier than that?”

  Hines shook his head.

  “Thankfully, I don’t need to be the judge of that. You’ll be charged for this. You’ll be convicted.”

  Vernon Eriksen smiled for the first time since they’d met, it was as if the nervousness slipped away, he was almost done and he had plenty of time.

  “You know that I won’t be. That would be as good as declaring the system was useless. The state of Ohio would never, never, admit to executing the wrong person. No prosecutor would take up the case again.”

  Vernon got up to leave for the second time. He didn’t shake Hines’s hand, just gave a friendly nod to the reporter who would immediately jump in his car and drive back to Cincinnati and write the most extraordinary article he had ever written.

  “Thank you for coming. I’m going to go and see Edward Finnigan now. And I’m sure that he’ll listen to me too.”

  HE LOOKED AT HIS WATCH. FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LEFT.

  He’d manage it.

  It w
as still cold, he did up the top button on his coat and pulled on his gloves. He walked toward Mern Riffe Drive, slowed down as he passed the Finnigans’ big, silent house, if anyone had happened to look out the window they would later say that Vernon Eriksen had been there around that time.

  He kept on walking for another half mile or so, along the path through the woods that started where Mern Riffe Drive ended. His regular walk, several times a week he breathed in the air that was trees and moss, and at the end of the path, a small lake. As a child he had cycled here in summer, the water was cold but clean, the bottom covered in sludge and sharp stones, but as long as you didn’t put your feet down, the lake was a good place to swim, the only one in Marcusville.

  Vernon stood still, looked at the mirrorlike surface of the water, at the trees that meant that no one could see, at the sky that was ice blue.

  It was such a beautiful day.

  He went over to the tree, the one that was biggest, about fifteen to twenty yards from the water. The rooks loved it. There were no leaves, just bare branches and bare twigs, but you couldn’t see that, as hundreds of rooks sat there, made it darker, alive, as if they were replacing the great greenness.

  He had Finnigan’s gun in the paper bag. The ammunition, two bullets only, lay loose beside it. He loaded it and aimed in the air above the tree.

  The birds lifted as they normally did when he fired, cawing and squawking in confusion. But not for long. They circled up, then descended cautiously, and were back sitting on the tree within minutes.

  Vernon felt nothing, realized that he had never been so empty before.

  It had taken nearly twenty years and now he was here, only a couple of minutes to go, no more. It’s not God who decides over life and death. It was this last bit that meant most. I do. He had always been convinced that two young people dying would be enough to get a state, perhaps even a whole nation, that championed the death penalty, to think again. That process would start tomorrow morning when the Cincinnati Post carried an account of what actually happened. But this, this would take the question even further into people’s homes, the discussions around the kitchen table would take on another dimension when the champion of the death penalty in Ohio, the father of the murdered girl himself, who had for all these years spoken about the victim’s right to retribution and said that it was obvious that any society with morals had to offer an eye for an eye . . . when he was the one who was in the dock.

  A couple of birds in the tree cackling, a light wind that rustled the reeds, otherwise silence.

  He took out what was left in the bag. A thin hemp string. A small lump of tallow that had a powerful odor. A few steps toward the stony beach, he ripped the paper bag to pieces and threw them into the water before turning back.

  He stopped beneath one of the tree’s solid lower branches. He hunkered down and rubbed the smelly lump of tallow onto the hemp string, from one end to the other until it shone like silver. The rooks would see it. The rooks would smell it. He had tried it before and knew that it worked.

  He would use his left hand. When he then fell, his left arm would end up in such a twisted position that it would be impossible for anyone to imagine it was suicide.

  Every movement as he’d rehearsed it.

  He tied one end of the sticky twine loosely around his left wrist, threw the rest over the branch and made sure that it would hang down near his head. He switched the gun from his right-hand coat pocket to his left hand, then, in the same hand, caught the end of the string that was hanging loose.

  He had murdered Edward Finnigan’s only child.

  He had now made sure that a reporter knew that he was going to tell Edward Finnigan the truth today.

  There was a motive.

  A forensic investigation would later find traces of him in Edward Finnigan’s house, confirm that the weapon that had been fired was registered to Edward Finnigan, and had his fingerprints on it, confirm that the traces of blood and skin found on him were those of Edward Finnigan.

  It was hard to aim at his right temple with his left hand loosely tied in the string, but if he didn’t blink, and if he turned his cheek just slightly closer, then he was sure he’d succeed.

  The shot scared the hundred or so crows that were sitting in the tree above the person who fell to the ground. They lifted, circled, cawed in agitation, then returned after a couple of minutes. Whatever it was that was gleaming down there, and that smelled of tallow, had shortly after enticed all of them down to the ground. It took about half an hour, and when they had eaten the short, thin hemp string, they went back and sat on the leafless branches.

  They weren’t particularly bothered by the person who was lying there dead, shot in the head with a pistol that would later be found a few yards from his body.

  some months later

  IT WAS SUMMER OUT THERE, BUT IT COULDN’T BE SEEN FROM THE LONG corridor of cells on Death Row in Marcusville prison; the only visible sign was a strip of bright sunlight that found its way in through the narrow window up by the ceiling. Michael Oken had worked there for only nine weeks and had already gotten into the habit of walking down the hard concrete twice a day and looking carefully into each cell, to get to know who was where and to demonstrate that the change in senior corrections officer meant continued discipline, maintaining control.

  He often stopped for a while in front of one of them, a cell that had once been empty for a long time, about halfway down. The prisoner on the bunk in the confined space was the only one he had never heard say a word; he was always lying down, always staring at the ceiling, and it was hard to tell whether he was awake or unconscious.

  And today, just like any other. The large body on its back, face to the ceiling and slightly turned from the corridor. The orange coveralls with DR on the leg. Michael Oken looked at him for a while, wished that he would turn around and start to talk, there was so much that he wanted to know.

  A deranged man who had killed Oken’s predecessor, execution style, one bullet in the temple, who had also been the governor’s closest adviser.

  Michael Oken sighed, they all had their stories, but that one, he would love to hear that one.

  FROM THE AUTHORS

  CELL 8 IS A NOVEL.

  The characters in the book are therefore fictitious.

  Not even Ewert Grens, whom we like so much, is one of us. So how could any of the others be?

  Marcusville doesn’t exist either.

  And we knowingly took certain liberties with the historical timeline and other facts in the service of the story. For instance, the state of Ohio is not responsible for two of the executions described in this book—one by electric chair and one by lethal injection—as neither John Meyer Frey nor his neighbor, Marv Williams, ever existed. Indeed, the last execution by electrocution in Ohio took place in 1963, decades before Marv was executed.

  And all the stuff about retribution—the fact that Swedish and American, as well as other international politicians, might seek to limit the pursuit of a solution to increasingly serious crimes and clothe it with simple rhetoric about the victims’ right to retribution—is possibly also just a figment of the authors’ imagination.

  A big thank-you to Johnnie, Tim, Cynth, Andy, and Ron for your indispensable help.

  Black Bob, because you fooled them all.

  Lasse Lagergren for your medical knowledge, Jan Stålhamre for your knowledge about police work, and Lars-Åke Pettersson for your knowledge about Kronoberg detention facility.

  Fia Svensson for your countless hours on the first reading, proofreading, and all the other sorts of reading that we didn’t know existed.

  Niclas Breimar, Ewa Eiman, Mikael Nyman, and Vanja Svensson for particularly wise observations.

  Our literary agent, Niclas Salomonsson, and his crew at Salomonsson Agency for always giving us energy.

  And of course our UK editorial team, Georgina Difford, Liz Hatherell, Richard Arcus, Judith Colleran, and the rest of the Quercus family.

  And a
special thanks to Jon Riley, our publisher.

  Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström

  STOCKHOLM, 2011