by Jens Lapidus
“Okay, it was just over ten years ago. I was thirteen and I was difficult, I had all kinds of problems, was taken into care and put in a home. Then, through…someone who I…who I…trusted, I was put in touch with a man who made a suggestion. We would meet, and I would be given money.”
Katja had paused. It looked like Adam was squeezing her hand.
She went on: “The man was friendly and pretty gentle when we met, but he was allowed to do whatever he wanted. He gave me five hundred kronor afterward. That was a lot of money to me at the time, and I didn’t really think about what had just happened—some of the other girls at the home did similar stuff and they talked about it all the time, almost like they were boasting. The man got in touch again after a few weeks, and we met for a second time. I saw him several times after that, and on one occasion he asked if it would be okay if one of his friends came along. I agreed to it because I thought I’d get paid more.”
Katja had trailed off and glanced at Adam. “I was so young, but no one understood. It’s hard to explain.”
“You don’t need to explain,” Emelie told her.
“It was like they took my sense of self away. And I’ve never found it again.”
Katja’s eyes were fixed on the window behind Emelie.
Adam said: “Keep going, now. I’m sure the lawyer doesn’t have all day.”
She had taken a deep breath. “After that, I said I didn’t want to do it anymore, that they’d gone too far, but then he said he would tell my mom, the staff at the home, my dad. I didn’t care about the staff, and I might not even have cared about my mom, plus my dad was dead. But I really didn’t want my grandma and grandad, who were still alive at the time, to find out. I knew I couldn’t cope with that—so I kept quiet. Didn’t say a word to anyone. I met the man and his friends again and again that year. I can’t tell you what they did to me, because I don’t have the words for that. It was like I was living in a fog, I started smoking hash and heroin, I tried to kill myself, ran away from the home four times. But it kept happening.
“By the end of that year, I had a breakdown, I just remember crying on the bathroom floor. The man seemed worried that I’d tell someone, that I wouldn’t manage to keep quiet about what they’d done to me. He told me that they had filmed me several times, and then he showed me a clip of myself. He said: ‘If you don’t stop screaming, we’ll upload this to the Internet so everyone can see what a little slut you are.’
“Eventually, I was moved to another home, up in Norrland this time. It was probably a sheer coincidence, or maybe the staff could see that Stockholm was no good for me. Anyway, it was a real stroke of luck. I say luck, but maybe it would’ve been better if I’d ended my life then.”
Katja had met Emelie’s gaze for the first time. Her eyes looked almost transparent. “Someone handed in a hard drive full of the films they made to the police. The police tried to work out who was in those awful videos, and somehow they managed to identify me, even though I was only thirteen at the time. Now they want me to go in and talk about all this, but all I’ve done these past ten years is try to forget.”
Emelie had felt herself shiver, and she hoped that neither Katja nor Adam nor Marcus had noticed. A hard drive full of abuse. It sounded all too familiar. The hard drive had first come to light during the Benjamin Emanuelsson case and had eventually been handed over to the police by Benjamin’s father, Mats. She and Teddy had dug as deep into that horror as they could, but they had never managed to find out exactly who was behind it, had never managed to come up with any names. They had never managed to work out who was involved in the group of men who had abused girls and forced Mats Emanuelsson into a life on the run. But now the police had clearly had a breakthrough.
That had made her think about the fact that she hadn’t heard from Teddy in more than a year. After everything that had happened, the two of them had actually tried dating. They had just finished a meal in a restaurant and were probably about to head back to her place when she had asked the question that was still whirling around her mind: “Teddy, are you going to get a normal job now, after Leijon?”
“I don’t know.”
But she kept pressing him. “Are you going to change now?”
He had wiped his mouth with his napkin. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible, but the content of what he said was clear. “Tell me what you mean.”
“I mean, are you going to be civilized?”
“Believe me, Emelie. Ever since I got out, I’ve been trying to make it in society. But no, I’m never going to change who I am.”
Emelie had wiped her mouth, too. Then she had asked for the bill. It was the last time they had seen one another.
Back in the office, she had turned to Katja. “I actually know quite a bit about this case.”
“I know.”
“Why did you call me, of all people?”
Katja had made a pained groan. “Because when I told the police I didn’t want to go in and talk to them, they said I could have a lawyer to help me, a counsel for the injured party. And you’re the person they recommended.”
Emelie had tried to smile. “Well, that explains it. The police know that I’m already relatively up to speed on this. And I know it’s difficult to bring up all these old memories, Katja, but it might actually do you good to talk to the police, to help them find the people responsible for hurting you so badly, those pigs.”
Emelie immediately regretted using those last words—she had never been good at expressing herself.
Adam had cleared his throat. “No, we don’t think Katja should testify. She’s already suffered enough from what they did to her.”
Emelie had leaned forward. “As it happens, there’s an obligation to give evidence in Sweden, so the decision isn’t entirely yours. But I do completely understand your situation, Katja. Let’s look into it, and see whether there’s any way to make things easier for you.”
She had glanced at Marcus, who nodded.
Adam got to his feet. Katja followed him.
“I think it’s best if we leave now, so the lawyers can work in peace. The police want to talk to Katja soon, possibly even on Monday, so there’s a bit of a rush to work out how she should handle this, if I can put it like that.” Adam had bent down and placed a business card on the desk.
They shook hands. The whole thing felt so abrupt. Emelie didn’t even have time to follow them out.
She had turned to Marcus, who handed her Adam’s business card. She studied it.
Adam Tagrin
K Tagrin Import AB
0733-56 89 00
- Making pleasure easy -
Before Emelie had time to do anything, Marcus had held up his phone.
The crack was like a shadow over the text, but she could still clearly read what was on the home page Marcus had found.
K Tagrin Import AB
Adult films and erotic events
“Porn,” said Marcus. “That bastard owns a company that deals in porn.”
And it was then that Emelie heard a name echo through her mind. The name of someone she needed to talk to now.
Teddy.
8
After dinner, Roksana helped to clear the table. Caspar was back in front of the TV. Dad was still sitting at the table, not helping. If he was feeling like Mom said he was, then he was excused. Her mother brought out the bowl of fruit that was always carefully organized: oranges at the bottom, then apples, and grapes on top.
“Is that organic fruit?”
“I don’t know, but they’re Kishmish grapes, from Iran.”
“I think you should have a better idea of what you’re buying.”
Her father cleared his throat. “So what is the course you’re taking now called?”
Roksana didn’t have the energy for another round of this, but she told him the tru
th. “It’s called Gender, Power, and Ethnicity.”
“Aha, and what kind of job can you get after that course?”
Roksana didn’t reply. She couldn’t argue with him. He was fifty-eight. That was too young to have stopped working, too young to spend all day at home, doing nothing. Dedication to his job with the council had been his pride and joy, ever since Mom and Dad arrived in Sweden in 1985, Roksana knew that. Work first. Always.
“I could have become an engineer here,” he said, as though he wanted to move on to a new topic. “It would’ve been better for my back.”
Roksana knew that, too. Baba had been studying to become a civil engineer at university in Tehran, but he’d had to pause his studies when they fled. When the shah fell, they had believed in a better society. But the fundamentalists had won, and Dad never graduated.
Roksana went over to the kitchen counter and started looking through his cassette tapes. The labels were faded, but she knew what was on them all the same: Googoosh, Dariush, Vigen. All old men and women, but Roksana still liked them. “You know all this is on Spotify now? We can throw away these tapes.”
Her father glared at her. He got up and grabbed one of the tapes: the BASF logo on the side wasn’t even visible any longer, they were so well used. “Are you crazy? These are sacred. You don’t touch my cassettes.”
They filled the dishwasher. Mom served more tea. Roksana placed a bowl of pistachios in front of Caspar.
“Roksy, they’re right.”
“Huh?”
“You would get into the psychology course if you made an effort.”
She sat down next to him without replying. Her thoughts were drifting again, back to a few days earlier.
Thirty milligrams, maybe, no more than that. Z had spent ten minutes searching online forums before he worked out the right amount. They had each helped themselves to a hit and then snorted it—like some kind of super potent coke. That was how you did it, according to the Internet, if you didn’t want to take it orally or intravenously. Roksana had tried E and speed a few times before; they both made her jittery and gave her a creative feeling, but there were things she would rather take. It was four thirty in the morning.
The first effects had appeared only a few minutes later.
At first, it had felt just like E, only a little softer and cozier: Roksana’s body faded away and the sofa started to feel endlessly soft, like she was sinking and sinking into the cushions, and both Billie and Z immediately seemed to be a few yards away from her, then tens of yards, then the room stretched out and her body felt like jelly, like soft, warm slime, and for a brief moment she was worried she would panic, but then she didn’t know whether her eyes were open or closed, and everything felt flexible, the wall, the door into the kitchen, and the balcony doors floated together to become one great big swirling, twinkling light that blinked in time with her heart in rhythm with her entire being and with Billie and Z and the cosmos like a light, which grew stronger and stronger and eventually filled her entire field of vision and she couldn’t see anything but its white glow and she wanted to go over there, she wanted to swim in the air through the tunnel of light and she was on her way through the end of life and maybe she was about to die but at the same time she knew she was going with the flow and then she saw Billie again upside down in negative in black-and-white and then she was no longer in the apartment, she was upside down below the balcony on the frozen grass but there was nothing wrong with that because the chill was cozy and warm and she melted into the ground and became part of the earth and the roots and Z started to laugh and said that Roksana looked like an elk though he himself looked like an apple, a green and glossy apple, and she just laughed and Z laughed and Billie laughed and it felt so good that they were all just laughing without feeling like she needed to fit in and without all the rules to follow and Roksana rolled around on the sofa and said “can we draw something?” and Billie suggested they draw robots because they were robots and then Roksana realized why Baba never threw her up in the air the way she had seen other dads do when she was a child, and then the peak was over and Roksana had sat up on the sofa and everyone had laughed, she had tried to get up but was so unsteady that she sat down again.
Ten minutes later, they had been back to normal. Z was sitting with his phone in his hand, Googling, searching. “I just had the trip of the year,” he said.
Billie got to her feet. She hadn’t been unsteady at all. “That was the best thing I’ve felt. Ever.”
* * *
—
When Roksana got back from her parents’ house, Z was watching a documentary about Lance Armstrong’s rise and fall on his computer. Z was like that—he liked learning, possessing a surprising amount of knowledge about a narrow subject. People saw it as a good thing. Ironic nerdery.
“Have you eaten? I’ve got some food from Mom and Dad’s if you want it.”
“You’re kidding, that’s great. Is it lamb stew or vegetarian?”
“Ghormeh sabzi, Mom’s original, not my vegetarian one.”
“Best food on earth. I’d love some.”
Roksana sat down next to him on the sofa. She thought back to their recent find. They had rebuilt the fake wall in the closet and hidden the bags of ketamine behind it—though they deliberately hadn’t driven in the nails very far.
After a while, she and Z switched to a different documentary, which was essentially just a long interview with Susan Sontag. “What pornography is really about, ultimately, isn’t sex but death,” Sontag said. Though she was Jewish, she actually looked very Persian.
“I feel like going to Dusky,” said Z.
Roksana knew of the illegal club: it was huge and had taken place several times now, out in the Ulvsunda industrial estate. “Atmospheric and always innovative,” Billie had said. They often had sweet headline DJs. Exclusive guest lists—it was the Ora Flesh collective behind the event. Ora Flesh: the twenty-two-year-old model who was married to the photographer with the full beard and ADHD, who had praised the Bagarmossen area in his latest art project—which was as right as it could be.
“Yeah, me too,” said Roksana. “But I wasn’t invited.”
“Me neither. Maybe Billie can help? Could you give her a call? Tell her we’ll bring some of the fun powder for her to try again.”
“The really important thing is not to reject anything,” Susan Sontag said on-screen.
Roksana pulled out her phone. She had to think about what she was going to say to Billie. How she could make the degradation of begging seem like something completely different.
9
Evening now, on the way home from a job with Dejan. Teddy was in his own car.
“Yeah, hello?” he answered, his voice deliberately expectant. This was probably the twentieth time Emelie had called him today. This time, he didn’t reject her call—he had to satisfy his curiosity, even if he was disappointed in her.
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Yeah, I can see and hear that. Oddly enough I still have your number saved. Why are you bothering me?”
He stepped on the accelerator. Though he had recently used the wipers to wash it, the windshield was dirty. For some reason, it was constantly being flecked with dirty drops of liquid, even though it wasn’t raining and the closest car was at least fifty yards ahead. It was a mystery, as though the dirty water on the road were trying to get to him but was thwarted by the glass on its way.
“Teddy, something’s happened.”
He lifted his foot from the accelerator. He didn’t want to lose the driving license he had only recently regained—he had been without one for ten years and was happy that Dejan had been willing to step up as his instructor.
“What’s going on?”
Emelie said: “We need to meet.”
He was close to stamping on the brakes now. “Why?”
“I do
n’t want to get into it over the phone. Can we meet? It could be about our old case.”
Teddy had made up his mind to avoid digging any deeper in anything to do with the Emanuelsson family. He and Emelie had done what they could and then some. Everyone had thought that Mats—the man Teddy and Dejan had kidnapped ten years earlier—had killed himself, but when a mutilated body was found out in the Värmdö woods eighteen months earlier, Mats Emanuelsson’s son, Benjamin, had found himself suspected of murder. Teddy and Emelie had eventually found out that Mats was actually alive but that he had been forced into hiding because of what he knew about a child abuse ring. They had even established that certain police officers had been involved in preventing the truth from coming out. Eventually, Mats had had no choice but to show his face in order to stop his son from being convicted, and that was when he had handed the hard drive of abuse over to the police. In the end, Teddy and Emelie had failed to track down any of those responsible. The trail had gone cold with a man who called himself Peder Hult. The men were still out there somewhere. They might still be doing it.
Despite that, Teddy had come up with a principle around the whole case: everything has its time—and he wasn’t going to look back. Enough was enough.
And yet he also heard his own voice replying to Emelie now, as though it were coming from someone else: “I’m on my way. Now.”
* * *
—
Half an hour later, he was standing outside a wooden door on the second floor of an old building on Hantverkargatan. There were four nameplates: Martin Koor Law Firm, Kjell Ahlblom Legal Services, Sami Gutierrez Law Firm, and, finally, Emelie Jansson Legal Services. Teddy wondered why they didn’t have a joint name, like one single company.
Emelie opened the door the minute he buzzed, as though she had been waiting for him on the other side. Her office was almost completely dark, but he couldn’t help but notice how attractively she moved. The way she pushed her hair behind her ears with her middle and ring fingers. How she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, making it look like she was rocking to some internal rhythm.
