CELL 8

by Anders Roslund; Börge Hellström

“No.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He lives in a different country. The United States, you know. There are lots of people there who think that he killed another person. And there . . .

  they kill people who kill people.”

  Jonas sat down on the chair again. He drank what was left of his sweet, orange soda. He looked at his father, as children do when they’re far from satisfied.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “I don’t understand who kills someone.”

  Sven Sundkvist was proud of the questions he asked, to have a child who had learned to think for himself, but he was desperate for want of a reasonable answer.

  “The state. The country. I can’t explain it any better.”

  “Who decides that he’s going to be killed? There must be someone who decides, isn’t there?”

  “A jury. And a judge. You know, in court, like you’ve seen on TV.”

  “A jury?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a judge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they people?”

  “Yes, they’re people. Ordinary people.”

  “Who’s going to kill them, then?”

  “They’re not going to die.”

  “But if they decide that someone’s going to die, then they’re killing them. And then they have to die too. And who’s going to do that, Dad? I don’t understand.”

  Ewert Grens had gone straight from Bromma Airport to the police headquarters at Kronoberg, with Hermansson sitting beside him in the backseat of the waiting police van. He had had no idea what he was going to do there. He had eaten a vending machine lunch in his office, two Danishes and a square carton of orange juice, from one of the machines in one of the corridors that he passed on his way up. He had phoned the nursing home and spoken to a woman in reception who said that Anni was sleeping, that she had been tired after lunch and fallen asleep in her wheelchair. There was nothing wrong with her, she was well and looked peaceful with her head on her shoulder, gentle snores that could be heard through the door. He had then sat down behind a pile of ongoing investigations that had been pushed to one side for the past week, leafed through a couple of them: aggravated assault of a driver who had made an offensive hand gesture at another driver on Hamngatan in the middle of rush hour and then driven off; a murder in Vårberg with a Colombian necktie, witnesses who hadn’t seen anything and a series of interviews using interpreters who hardly dared to translate. Cases that had been left too long and now smelled as bad as their chances of actually catching the perpetrator.

  He should go home. There was only a gnawing unrest here. He did a circuit of the room, listened to his music. He wasn’t going to go back.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “I thought I sent you home.”

  Hermansson smiled at his angry voice, asked if she could come in and then did, without waiting for an answer.

  “Yes, but there wasn’t any point. I can’t go home after all this. How would I deal with it at home? You can’t just dump something like this in a tiny rented apartment.”

  She sat down where she normally sat, in the middle of his big but worn sofa. She looked tired, her young eyes had aged since the morning.

  “What is it?”

  She swallowed, looked at the floor, then up at her boss.

  “You remember Ågestam’s theory that two percent of everyone in prison is innocent or has been wrongly convicted?”

  The young prat of a prosecutor. He was glad he hadn’t had to deal with him today.

  “Old truths.”

  “I checked with something called the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Just there, in the state of Ohio alone, there are one hundred and fifty-five people sitting on Death Row, awaiting execution. One hundred and fifty-four men and one woman. If the two percent theory applies there too, and why shouldn’t it, that means that three of them will be executed without even being guilty. Ewert, look at me, do you realize what I’m saying? If it should ever be proven that someone who is innocent has been executed, then nothing can be done to right that wrong. Don’t you understand?”

  Grens looked at her, as she had asked him to do. She was upset, more sad than angry, a young person who had just started out, who still had so much crap to see and wade through. He was holding a newspaper in his hand, waved it at her.

  “Do you want to go out for something to eat this evening? There’s a show at Hamburger Börs. Siw Malmkvist. She sings while you eat. I haven’t seen her live for thirty years.”

  “Ewert, what are you saying? I’m talking about people who are going to be executed.”

  He stopped waving the paper around and sat down, suddenly deflated; it was hard to look her in the eye.

  “And I’m talking about the fact that you forced me to go out the other day when I wasn’t aware that I needed it. Now I’m going to force you. I want you to think about something else.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Again. He was going to bring himself to say it again, and look at her while she listened.

  “I haven’t asked a woman out . . . I don’t know . . . it’s so long ago. And I don’t want you to think this is . . . well, you know . . . it would just be nice to return the invitation. No more than that.”

  The smell of grilled meat, flowery perfume, and sweat hit you as soon as you went in; the cloakroom was in the foyer and it cost twenty kronor to hang up your coat. Ewert Grens was wearing the same gray suit as a couple of nights ago. He smiled and tried to feel light, almost happy, a bubbling up from his belly through his body and out through his eyes that should shine. For a few hours he would force all the crap down where it couldn’t be seen, he would forget the madmen and the humiliation, with a smart young woman by his side and Siw Malmkvist on the stage, good things in a crappy life that never ceased to amaze him.

  Hermansson was wearing a beige dress with a sparkly top. She was beautiful and he bashfully told her so. She thanked him, put her arm through his and he felt proud as they walked side by side into the large venue with white tablecloths and shiny porcelain. He estimated there were about four hundred people, perhaps a few more, all there to eat and drink and chat and then drink a couple of glasses more while they waited for Siw.

  He liked her a lot. The daughter he’d never had. She made him feel happy, needed, alive. He let it show and she registered it and he hoped that it didn’t frighten her.

  People everywhere were laughing loudly and ordering more wine, the background music was some smooth American sixties number, even the elderly man to Hermansson’s right was excited and put down his cane and flirted wildly with her. She tried to laugh, he was sweet, probably in his eighties, but it didn’t work after a while.

  They were there to forget. That’s what they had to do this evening.

  “Do you know when Sweden abolished the death penalty?”

  Hermansson had moved her plate and leaned over the table. Grens wasn’t sure whether he’d heard her right.

  “I’m sorry, Ewert. I can’t do it. It won’t go away. And you’ve got all dressed up and the food is good and Siw is about to sing. It doesn’t help. I can’t get away from this morning and Sheremetyevo.”

  Sometimes you can’t push the crap down as far as you’d like.

  The old man to her right tapped her on the shoulder, whispered something to her and expected her to laugh. She didn’t.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m talking to my companion here.”

  She turned back to Grens.

  “Do you know, Ewert?”

  “Hermansson.”

  “When Sweden abolished the death penalty?”

  He sighed, emptied his glass of full-bodied red wine.

  “No. I’m here for different reasons.”

  “Nineteen seventy-four.”

  He had decided not to listen but looked as astonished as he was.

  “What did you just say?”

  “The nineteen s
eventy-four amendment. Until then, we still had the death penalty. Even though the last execution was long before that.”

  A waiter hurried past behind him with some bottles on a silver tray.

  Grens called over and asked him to fill their empty glasses.

  “Three years later, the first execution was carried out in the United States following the reintroduction of the death penalty. A firing squad in Salt Lake City that caused an international outcry in the media. The state of Utah shot the person, up and down, several times. And they’re still doing it. The last one was only a year or so ago.”

  Grens lifted his glass and took a drink without tasting it.

  “You’ve been reading up.”

  “When we got back from Bromma. I couldn’t concentrate on anything useful.”

  When Siw Malmkvist came onto the stage ten rather quiet minutes later, only a few yards away from him, Grens felt how life can sometimes stop, a frozen moment, no yesterday, no tomorrow, just now, Siw in front of him and every lyric that was stored in his heart now made him fizz over as he sang along as loud as he dared to.

  He remembered the first times he’d seen her onstage. Folkets Park in Kristianstad, he had even been able to get up close and take some black-and-white photos that he still sometimes took out and looked at. She had been so bold, so powerful, and he had fallen in love with the singer from a distance, despite Anni. He still felt the same. She was up there burning brightly, she wasn’t young anymore, moved more slowly and had a deeper voice, but she was there for him and he was just as infatuated with her as back then.

  It was in the middle of the chorus of the fifth song that his mobile phone interrupted the music with a shrill electric ring. “California, Here I Come,” he remembered the cover, Siw’s EP from Metronome, with the bright red scarf on her head and the same shade of lipstick, as she smiled at whoever was buying the record.

  It rang three times before he managed to get it out of his trouser pocket, and a good many people turned around in irritation to see where the noise was coming from.

  Helena Schwarz.

  He couldn’t hear what she was saying, as her voice was so high.

  He was trying to get her to calm down when the music suddenly stopped at the end of the third verse. One of Stockholm’s largest venues held its breath, four hundred stunned people, first looking up at the stage and the female artist who was standing there holding a microphone without making a sound, then at the large man in his fifties who was sitting at one of the front tables with a phone to his mouth whispering slightly too loud.

  “Am I disturbing you?”

  Siw Malmkvist had turned toward the table where they were sitting, toward him, her voice was friendly but the message clear.

  “Please, don’t mind me. Of course I’ll wait. Until you’ve finished talking, that is.”

  The audience laughed. Jolly from the wine and full of good food, they admired the legend who tackled the embarrassing situation so well. Hermansson kept her eyes on the table while Ewert Grens stood up and mumbled something inaudible about being a policeman, then hurried out through the same door he had come in two hours earlier.

  Helena Schwarz continued to speak too loudly until he was well out of the room and could therefore, in an equally loud voice, ask her to take a deep breath and calm down, to tell him what had happened in a normal voice.

  She cried as she spoke.

  She had just found out that a judge in Ohio had set the date for John Meyer Frey’s execution.

  Schwarz had barely left Sheremetyevo International Airport and Moscow when the process of setting an execution date, which was normally very protracted, was already complete.

  Schwarz had not even landed in the country to which he was being transported by the time the court had processed his case and set the exact time of his death.

  Ewert Grens listened to the wife’s incoherent monologue for a few minutes and then asked her to hang up, he would call her back later, but he had a couple of things he needed to do first.

  He then made a quick call to the duty security manager at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and got the answer he wanted. When he opened the door back into the venue, Siw was singing her version of “Lucky Lips” and he stood swaying and smiling through half the old hit before once again walking through the room while the show was going on and drawing looks that quickly changed from enjoyment to irritation—a woman of around his age with fiery red hair set in a bun even shook her fist at him as he passed.

  He stopped behind Hermansson, who pretended not to notice, bent forward and whispered in her ear that he had to leave, that she could of course stay if she wanted to, and if not he would pay for her taxi home.

  She followed him out, trying to hide behind his broad back to avoid the contempt.

  Her light-colored coat that looked new and his dark overcoat that once had been; the boy in the cloakroom put back the empty coat hangers with a look of surprise on his face as the whole house sang along.

  “Ewert, what’s going on?”

  It was cold outside, just as it had been early in the morning, this day seemed like it would never fucking end.

  “I’m going to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I have to talk to the people in charge. A person who called me at home in the middle of the night, less than twenty-four hours ago.”

  “I can tell that you’re furious.”

  “That was Helena Schwarz on the phone. The date for the execution has already been set.”

  Grens had never seen Hermansson get really angry. Control, that was the word that popped up when he thought about how to describe her response to emotions. Now she turned her face up to the dark sky and struggled not to scream, not to cry.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “I’m going to do this alone.”

  “Ewert—”

  “It’s not up for discussion. I’ll get you a taxi.”

  “You are not going to pay for me to get home.”

  Someone came out into the foyer behind them and they heard the applause that rushed out through the doors and windows. The audience was having a good time.

  “Then I won’t. But I do want you to take a car home. If nothing else, for the sake of an old-fashioned S.O.B.”

  Grens dialed the number for the police command post despite her protests and ordered a radio car to pick Detective Sergeant Hermansson up from Jakobs Torg and drive her home to Kungsholmen. Then he started to walk. The clock on Jakob’s Church struck twice and he looked up at the illuminated face: half past ten. It wasn’t more than a couple of hundred yards to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the man with a limp, dressed in a smart suit, didn’t meet anyone on his way there, so his face, flushed red with fury, did not draw any attention.

  PART IV

  two months later

  tuesday evening, 2100 hours

  twenty-four hours left

  HE HAD LAIN ON THE BUNK FOR THE FIRST FOUR WEEKS. AS IF HE HAD already died. The green ceiling had been repainted, a shade of light blue. The smell had been the same. A single breath and the six years of freedom had never happened. He had tried not to gag but then had to throw up until he was empty and could smell that smell again and had to spew again. He had lain staring up at the light that was always on, didn’t blink even though his eyes ached—it had been hard to see anything after a couple of days. He had not said a word. Not to the Mexican in the next cell, not to the guy with the German name on the other side. Not even to the senior corrections officer whom he knew so well; Vernon Eriksen had stood outside the cell and asked all sorts of friendly questions, but John hadn’t even been able to get up, turn around, open his mouth.

  The cold seeped in from the rectangular windows up under the ceiling in East Block. There was still some snow, as was usual in March, the last remnants before spring took over.

  Ewert Grens had fallen asleep around midnight. He had curled up on the too-short sofa in his office at the City Police headquarters until his dreams had stopped hounding him
. He sat up now, wide awake, his back aching, his neck stiffer than ever.

  The investigation was closed and he had gone back to work. It was still unclear what exactly had happened two months earlier when he’d walked from a show in a restaurant, dressed in a suit, his breath smelling of alcohol, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, got past security, and forced his way into the state secretary’s room. There were witness statements that spoke of arguments and someone who passed the office also thought they heard the detective superintendent shouting words that Thorulf Winge later claimed were unlawful threats when he reported the incident, statements that could not be proved.

  Grens looked at the alarm clock that stood on his desk. Just after three, night in Stockholm, evening in Ohio.

  Suddenly he realized why he’d woken up.

  Exactly twenty-four hours until the execution.

  He got up and left the room, wandered down one of the many dark corridors of the police headquarters. A coffee from the machine, a stale bun from a basket on a table in a staffroom, someone had obviously been celebrating and brought in coffee and cake and left what hadn’t been eaten for others.

  He had never been prevented from working before. A month without being allowed to come here. The investigation and suspension had transformed daily life into living hell, nowhere to go, nothing to do to while away the time. If it hadn’t been clear before, it certainly was now, crystal clear, that there was nothing else.

  The corridors echoed as he limped through the dark. He was at home here, sad or not, that was the truth and he hadn’t thought of apologizing.

  Twenty-four hours left. A person was going to be executed, a process that Grens himself had unwittingly started was now coming to a close; a person, maybe even an innocent person, was going to die in a nation-state’s name.

  Grens would continue to pursue people who abused others forever and laugh every time they spat at him from behind bars. But death? If he had ever wondered what he really thought of the death sentence, he now knew.

  Another bun from the basket on his way back to the office again, where he sat down at the desk.