Then he saw her. She was a little farther on, walking down the raked gravel path. Pushing a wheelchair in front of her. Stig took a firmer grip on his mother’s forearm, guiding them in her direction. When they got closer, she looked up at him with a smile.
Katrin sat down on a bench, turning the wheelchair toward the view and her gaze toward Stig.
“Wouldn’t you like to rest for a minute?” she wondered.
He was used to this. The attention. They wanted him. It had always been that way, especially with the ones who knew he was a doctor. The younger ones were the most persistent. After lectures they stood around in clumps, asking questions they already knew the answer to. Laughing at everything he said. They came to his office, with their lips gently moistened and with expectations he didn’t have the energy to fulfill. But they were around in other contexts as well. On the train. At the corner store. When he went out to restaurants. The women were always nearby. With their warm skin and darting eyes, their nervous odors and forbidden desires.
Stig helped his mother onto the bench and sat down next to her. Close — he brushed against Katrin. She was startled and drew a hasty breath. But she didn’t move. She just sat a bit straighter.
* * *
—
Stig picked Katrin up at the bus stop. The bus was right behind him, but still she took off her jacket and got in his car. Just like the first time. This time she had put on lipstick. She rubbed her lips together, breathed with her mouth open, let her legs slip apart.
He took her home with him. Afterward he wouldn’t remember if he’d asked first — it was obvious what was about to happen. She took off her shoes in the hall. He kept his on and didn’t have to tell her where to go. She walked into his bedroom, stepped out of her pants, lay on her back, and helped him take off her panties. He left her shirt on but pulled it up along with her bra so he could get to her breasts. They flattened out, but she didn’t say much. She brought her groin up to meet him, pressed it hard against him. Toward the end she braced her heels against the mattress. He penetrated her deeply. Hard. She was tight. Her shirt was over her face when he came, when he ejaculated all over her flat stomach.
10
On Monday morning, when Sophia stepped into the office, Gustafsson & Weber’s secretary Anna-Maria Sandström was in her spot behind the wide, tall, half-moon-shaped reception desk.
Anna-Maria gave her a cheerful nod. Her hands were laced around a teacup the size of a goldfish bowl and her mouth was full of gummy candy. She’d wiggled her feet out of her flats and propped them up on a chair. She was seven months’ pregnant and would work for another four weeks. The sprout-, bean-, and soy-based diet she usually pretended to adhere to had gone out the window. Sophia suspected that her secretary had been chewing on a licorice whip even as she peed on the fateful stick. And that she had grilled up half a Belgian cow to celebrate the positive result. For the past twenty-seven weeks, Anna-Maria’s nutritional intake was based on refined white sugar and crispy bacon instead of locally grown ancient grains. But she still washed down all her food with tea that smelled like a manure pile. Hence the enormous cup.
“They caudd fum corth…” Anna-Maria chewed frantically, swallowed, and started over. “They called from court. That thing you had scheduled for eleven today has been canceled.”
Sophia shook her head. She’d blocked off her whole day for a pretrial hearing and had hoped the judge’s instructions would finally make it possible for them to leave this messy, drawn-out case behind them.
“Did they bother to give any sort of explanation?”
Anna-Maria shook her head. Her mouth was full again.
Sophia fetched her mail and went to her office. The rain was rushing through the gutters alongside the tilted skylight. She turned on the ceiling light and sat down in front of her computer. For one fluttery second, she felt the urge to get up and leave, to use this pocket of breathing room on something other than work.
But there was always something to do. If nothing else, the pile of unread legal magazines, judgments, and opinions waited at her door, everything she should keep up to date on but never had the energy to deal with.
She ignored the looming tower of paper and took her briefcase from the floor. She would work. What else could she do? Museums were closed on Mondays, and it seemed far-fetched that she would go to the movies.
Stig Ahlin’s papers were on top. They were the last thing she’d read the night before, and they would be the first thing she read today.
If I take this on, this is how it’ll be. Every free moment. I’ll spend all the time I don’t really have on him.
She inserted the first thumb drive into the computer.
The screen filled with a list of documents.
She was tired. She could admit that, at least. Of reading, of trying to understand, of trying to sense the real story behind the files. It would take weeks to read through it all. She couldn’t devote more time to it if she would only turn down the case in the end. There were shortcuts she could take, quicker and much simpler ways to come up with an excuse.
Sophia went back to the lobby. Anna-Maria had dozed off in her chair. She slowly opened her eyes, wiped her mouth, and looked at Sophia. She nodded a few times and rubbed her palms on the legs of her pants, as if to show she was ready for any assignment. Sugar glittered on her chin.
“Could you call Emla Prison?” Sophia said. “Ask them to see to it that Stig Ahlin calls me as soon as possible. You’ll have to give them my number and explain that I’m an attorney, calling at the request of Hans Segerstad. I’m going out for breakfast. Give them my cell.”
Katrin
1998
It was Monday morning at the institute, and Stig Ahlin was giving a lecture. The hall was half-full. The lecture had been delayed; the projector was hard to get working. One of the younger students had climbed up onstage, tinkering, pushing buttons, turning it off and on again until at last he brought up the correct image and could adjust the focus. The projector was always having issues; none of the instructors understood how it worked.
The hall was dark when they stepped in, the only light came from the screen and the students’ reading lamps. The custodian, a bowlegged woman wearing way too many clothes, jangled in with her keys and two men with wide stances, black leather jackets, and shoulder belts. They turned on the lights. Everyone in the hall could tell that they were police officers.
At first, Stig Ahlin was annoyed. He asked if they would consider waiting outside. When they didn’t respond, he explained that he was almost finished, that they could have a seat and wait.
They didn’t. They rocked from side to side, and one of them brought a hand to his hip. It looked as though he didn’t quite know what to do with his limbs.
“Stig Ahlin?” they asked. As though they didn’t already know.
Stig Ahlin nodded. But the lecture wasn’t scheduled to end for another ten minutes, and these students would be sitting for exams before the month was out. So he turned back around. He tried to finish up as fast as he could.
Then both men took a step forward. They could have touched Stig. But they didn’t.
“We have a warrant for your arrest. You may come with us.”
Stig Ahlin noticed this, how they said “may.” He wondered why. It seemed absurd, when it was clear he didn’t have a choice. But he was convinced he knew what was going on; this was Marianne’s fault.
His attorney — he already had one — agreed with Stig that it was crucial he keep his cool. Once Marianne calmed down, as soon as the investigation was complete, life would go back to normal.
Stig thought he understood what was going on. And still, he was surprised. I’ve already submitted to questioning, he thought. Four times in two weeks, without protest. I always arrived on time. My behavior has been impeccable. So what’s this? An arrest? Picked up by the police?
“There must be some mistake,” said Stig. The officers didn’t respond.
Stig remained where he was. With his sleeves rolled up and his lecture notes in hand. He thought the incomprehensible had already happened. But this, at least, had to be a mistake. There was no other option.
“What is this about?” he wondered. It came out automatically. It was probably what he was expected to say. But because he thought he already knew the answer, he cursed himself for asking. He didn’t want his students to know about his ex-wife’s accusations.
“You’ll have to ask our colleagues in the violent crimes unit,” said one officer. “All we know is that you need to come in for questioning.”
That’s all they said. The students heard. The violent crimes unit. Stig himself didn’t react very strongly. He still thought he knew what it was all about.
Stig Ahlin was not permitted to fetch his coat. They took him straight out to the car, one man in front of him and one behind, all through the building. Nor was he allowed to exit through the revolving door; the man at his back took his forearm and herded him out through the regular door, the one to the side that was used by people in wheelchairs.
The dim morning light still hung over the hospital campus. As Stig Ahlin got into the backseat of the patrol car, he looked up at the redbrick facades and the faint lights. Forensic Medicine was just a five-minute walk away.
Stig expected a crowd of curious onlookers. But there was almost no one there. Not even the custodian saw him vanish. Everything was oddly deserted, empty, dark and cold. As the engine started, the car doors locked. The officers asked Stig to fasten his seat belt. He wiped his hands on his pant legs and cleared his throat a few times in succession.
The trip took fifteen minutes. They didn’t speak during the journey. If Stig had had a cell phone, he might have taken it out to make a call. To his attorney. He would have liked to have something to do. But he didn’t have his phone; it was in his coat pocket.
They took Stig in the elevator straight from the parking garage to the jail, and once there he had to strip naked. He was forced to wait for a few minutes, his hands cupped over his crotch, before he was duly searched and instructed to put on the jail uniform. The waistband of the briefs was so stretched out that they slipped down and bared half his buttocks.
Stig asked for new briefs but his request was ignored. Then he was shown to his cell. Sixty-five square feet. Half an hour later, the door opened.
“You can ring the bell if you need to go to the john. Lunch is in a few hours. We’ll start tomorrow.”
Stig Ahlin didn’t know what would start. But he was still convinced this was about Marianne and Ida.
He didn’t know that his arrest had been planned since the previous Thursday, by an entirely different police division than the one that had investigated Marianne’s accusations. That the decision had been made by a district prosecutor and that the chief district prosecutor had signed off on two orders, one for the arrest and another for a search warrant. He had no idea that even as he stood there with his hands over his dick, freezing as he awaited his impending body search, two police officers were going through his office at work. Nor did he know that his car had been transported to the forensic technicians, and that four other officers, along with the investigation leader and chief inspector Bertil Lundberg, were searching every square inch of his four-room home on the island of Kungsholm in central Stockholm.
* * *
—
Chief Inspector Bertil Lundberg was not a fan of executing search warrants. There was this feeling. It typically showed up as he waited beside a locked door without knowing what he would find on the other side.
It wasn’t that he expected mutilated corpses. All it took was the usual odors: grime, clothes, leftover food, an unflushed toilet. Going through another person’s belongings: boxes, cabinets, the mail. It always made him feel vaguely seasick. Even when he was left to work in peace.
Everything had been carefully planned and prepared. The apartment was empty. His colleagues had picked up Stig Ahlin. But they rang the bell anyway, before allowing the locksmith to open the door. It took three minutes. Then they could begin.
The chance to work undisturbed was an important prerequisite for a successful search. And it was nice not to have to deal with the suspect. Not to have to show care, explain the legalities in a pedagogical manner, and look whoever answered in the eye, gaze into shrinking pupils. Not to have to deal with drunks, violent people, crazies. To avoid the rush of adrenaline, the sudden sweat, the fear that something would go wrong.
It would take some time to go through the four rooms. Bertil Lundberg was in charge of how to divide up the task.
They’d had their initial run-through the Friday before, but since they didn’t know how the apartment was furnished Bertil had decided to hold off on detailed instructions until they were on-site.
They wanted to find the clothes Stig Ahlin had been wearing when the crime was committed. Clean or dirty. Or some other item with traces of blood. They would also be looking for correspondence or photographs or another type of documentation that could link the victim to the suspect. Beyond this, their instructions were of a more general nature.
A general nature. But meticulously drawn up. This was a well-planned search. They were prepared. More than usual. Plus, they would be left in peace. They could take all day if they wanted to. And the next day too, if it proved necessary.
But Bertil knew. It was always difficult, every time you stood there. As you stood there with your unbiased instructions in front of an open cabinet or an open drawer, staring at the pill bottle full of sedatives, an economy pack of condoms, vacation pictures and unsorted bills, parking receipts and pub receipts and taxi receipts.
In fact, it was impossible to know what was relevant and what should be left behind to keep the preliminary investigation file from becoming unmanageably large. But it had to be done. And he was the one responsible for making sure it was done right.
* * *
—
The next morning, Stig Ahlin had to eat his breakfast in his cell. A cup of cold coffee and a plastic-wrapped cheese sandwich with margarine. They were out of everything else, the guard informed him.
Around the same time Stig was munching on his roll, a journalist from the TT news bureau was making the rounds of police headquarters to collect tips for stories. This was routine. The journalist ran into Chief Inspector Bertil Lundberg in the hall. Lundberg was on his way to the jail to interrogate Stig Ahlin. The journalist knew what types of cases Lundberg dealt with. So he asked a few questions.
Stig Ahlin was brought to the interview room at eight o’clock. He’d already been asked whom he would like as a defense attorney. He’d given the name of the lawyer who had handled his divorce.
They’d had trouble getting hold of him, said the officer who was transporting him. It would be some time until he arrived. There was no question it would be best to start anyway. They couldn’t just wait for the lawyer forever.
Then the officer left, and Stig was alone in the interview room. At 8:04, the first article was published on TT’s teleprinter network. Stig’s colleagues at Karolinska heard the first reports in the break room around nine.
“A doctor in his thirties has been apprehended as a suspect in the murder of fifteen-year-old Katrin Björk, who was found dead in early June of this year in her home in Enskede outside Stockholm. The man is also suspected of having sexually abused his four-year-old daughter and was arrested at his workplace in the Stockholm area.”
During the first interrogation, they didn’t talk about the murder. Instead they discussed the investigation about Ida. This was what Stig expected; he didn’t find it strange. What was their relationship like? How did Stig think the divorce had affected Ida? Did he think their relationship had become strained since he moved out? What did he have to say about the investigation?
They’d put Stig in a low easy chair. It reminded him of one of those psychotherapist couches from a Woody Allen film. Stig wondered if they thought it would help him relax, become talkative. Or if they just wanted to annoy him.
To keep from half reclining, Stig sat on the edge and leaned forward. The two officers were a yard or so away, in regular, upright chairs. Between them was a low, round table that held a carafe of water and three glasses. At some point, Stig picked up the wrong glass. Then he stopped drinking entirely.
Chief Inspector Bertil Lundberg wasn’t working alone. He conducted the interrogation along with a colleague. Stig answered all their questions and tried to make eye contact with them to ensure they understood what he was saying. As Stig spoke, Bertil’s colleague jostled his leg as though he had poor circulation or was trying to dislodge a forgotten pair of briefs from his pants leg.
Stig Ahlin despised the police. They were jumpy. Unintelligent, with all the character of room-temperature butter. Stig thought Bertil Lundberg seemed unfocused. He kept grabbing his own clean-shaven chin each time Stig answered a question. It felt like Bertil Lundberg only wanted to get the interrogation over with, as if he already knew everything he needed to know and had to be somewhere else.
Stig Ahlin looked at the two of them as he struggled to comprehend what was happening. Lundberg with his hand on his chin, and the other guy, with the epileptic leg. Were they conducting this interrogation according to some tactic they’d learned at an expensive seminar? Five hours later, Stig Ahlin was allowed to return to his cell. The interrogation would resume the next morning, when Stig’s lawyer would also be present.
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