A Darker Shade of Sweden (25 page)

No reaction. She tried again.

The man slowly raised his head. His face was red, swollen from crying. His eyes were wet, his gaze both empty and despairing.

“Schorsch, you'll have to come with us to police headquarters. I want to have a little chat with you there. Do you understand me?”

He made a resigned gesture.

“Why no talk here?”

“For practical reasons.”

“You cannot think . . . ?”

“I don't think anything, but I need to talk to you where we won't be disturbed.”

She went on.

“Where's the rest of your family?”

Again the resigned gesture. “Azad is at a friend's . . .”

“Who is Azad?”

“My son.”

“And your wife?”

“She and Lara are with my cousin Naushad.”

“Who is Lara?”

“My daughter.”

“How old is she?”

“Fourteen.”

Something in his eyes when he mentions her name.

“Okay, I understand. Now, would you please come with us . . .”

The police building at Kronoberg is colossal. Covers a whole block. Gray and ugly. It holds more departments, corridors and officials than most people could ever imagine. In one of the interrogation rooms, somewhere near the middle of the building, Jenny Lindh is sitting at a table opposite a sixty-two-year-old Kurdish man.

The man looks weary and worried. He twists his hands. He stopped looking around a long time ago; his empty stare is fixed in front of him.

Jenny Lindh has activated the recorder, has pointed the microphone at Schorsch Barzani.

She intends to conduct a short routine interrogation in accordance with paragraph 24, section 8 of the penal code, then ask the prosecutor to arrest Schorsch.

But their conversation drags on, and it makes Jenny feel ill at ease. Neither an interpreter nor a defense attorney is present. She would have felt better if there were.

Schorsch doesn't want to stop. They talk for almost an hour. About Lenya. Schorsch. The whole family. About their escape from Hawraman in northern Iraq. About their request for political asylum, and how they were allowed to stay, many years ago. About their life since then.

Lindh is still suffering from a dull headache. She tries to push her personal problems aside, tries to understand what Schorsch is telling her.

It's bullshit, of course. The same old nonsense. Of course he was the one who threw his daughter from the balcony, like other Muslim men have done to their daughters or sisters. Because the girls became real Swedes after they came here—no longer wanting to live by Muslim rules, they went to dances, lit cigarettes, fell in love with boys.
Broke all the rules.

That's obviously what happened. Schorsch Barzani murdered his daughter because she broke his rules. Shamed her family.

The police have seen it before. A hundred times. Famous cases have been debated in the papers. Fadime Sahindal, a twenty-six-year-old Kurdish woman from Turkey, had been threatened and beaten by her father, who finally killed her with two shots. Being in a relationship wasn't her only crime: she had also let the public know how Kurdish men treated their women.

Pela Atroshi, a nineteen-year-old Kurdish woman living in Sweden, had been murdered on a visit to her family's home in Iraq, for besmirching the family honor. Her father's brothers got a life sentence, but years later her father confessed that he was the one who killed her.

Jenny Lindh makes a face. She hates the concept of
honor killing
, and cannot for the life of her understand why both politicians and feminists use it. To her, the word
honor
has a positive connotation, and she thinks it should be called culture killing, or even ignominy killing.

There is no honor in killing someone. Least of all in killing your own daughter.

It's unacceptable in a modern, Western society. Maybe
they
put religion and respect first, but
we
put the law above all.

Jenny Lindh realizes that after all her years of police work, she is full of prejudice, based on what she has seen and experienced. It's what they do to their women, those Muslims. Force them to obey and to veil themselves. Forbid them from showing their faces and loving whomever they choose.

She looks back at Schorsch, who has fallen silent after a long story about himself, Lenya and the rest of the family.

He keeps repeating that he loves her. That he has loved her since she was born. That she can't be dead.

That he did everything he could to stop her.

Jenny lets his words sink in. On her recommendation, the prosecutor has already decided to arrest Schorsch. She studies him for a few seconds before calmly saying:

“Schorsch, you'll have to stay here for a while. Right now, you're suspected of murder.”

Barzani meets her eyes, in surprise and despair.

Then his expression changes.

And there is something in his eyes that she doesn't understand.

A few hours later she learns that Magnus Stolt has been assigned to lead the investigation, and with a grimace she drives to Solna to find him at the west Stockholm prosecutor's office.

Stolt barely even looks up when she enters his office and greets him.

Asshole
.

He's well-known among the police, and most of them think that Dick would be a more suitable last name. Magnus Stolt is the man who gave bitterness a face and nurtures his preconceptions as if they were vulnerable hothouse flowers. He is generally disliked, not particularly successful in court, and Jenny Lindh wonders why he gets to stay, when there are so many good public prosecutors.

“Hi.”

“Hello. Take a seat.”

He shuffles through plastic folders and papers. As if to show her how busy he is. Finally he takes the top folder from the pile, pushes his glasses onto his forehead and looks at her.

“It's Tensta, right?” He glances at the printed-out interrogation protocols. “Scho . . . well, Barzani, right?”

Lindh nods without speaking.

Stolt gives her a crooked smile.

“I see that he's denying all charges. And, as we know, they always do. But—I'll have him put in custody and then you can keep working at your leisure.”

His voice is nasal and his tone is superior. She can understand that he rubs people the wrong way.

Stolt stands up, closes the office door and sits back down. Twirls the arms of his glasses between his fingers.

“Conduct a formal interrogation at once. But make sure his lawyer and an interpreter are present, or the defense will be screaming their heads off later. What more have you done?”

“The technicians are working hard out there. We've impounded the girl's laptop and given it to forensics. Operation door-to-door is in full swing, and we're waiting for the rest of the family to come home so we can do preliminary interviews with them.”

“I see. And how many are they?”

“The wife and Lenya's sister and brother.”

Stolt raises an eyebrow. “That's all? There's usually at least seven or eight of those people.”

Those people
.

“I think . . .” Jenny pauses midsentence.

“Yes?”

She thinks Stolt looks annoyed. That bothers her. Right now she would like to have his support.

“. . . he's innocent.”

“Why?”

Jenny shrugs. “A gut feeling.”

His glasses fall back onto his nose as he keeps shuffling through his papers. “Tell your gut to calm down until we have the autopsy report and the results from forensics.”

Jenny Lindh stands up and leaves the prosecutor's office.

In a fourteen-by-eight-foot holding cell, Schorsch Barazani pounds his fists against the wall until they start bleeding, and howls in pain and despair.

That night, Jenny Lindh drinks too much again. She wanders slowly through her house,
their
house.

This was where the love of her life should have flourished.

This was where their child should have grown up.

The drunker she gets, the more aggressively she declutters. Furious, she tears his clothes from the closets and throws them on the floor, rips pages from photo albums, dumps framed photographs and small mementos into a cardboard box.

Deep in a closet drawer, she finds the dildo they shyly purchased from a sex shop a long time ago. In disgust she flings it in the garbage without removing the batteries.

She feels sick, throws up in the toilet and drinks more wine before she continues getting rid of everything that was her, their, life for five years.

Everything has to go.

Him. The child. The house.

Jenny Lindh has no idea what will happen next.

The next morning, she has an impulse. She returns to the apartment, which has been sealed off. The family had to spend the night somewhere else.

Where do you stay when you've been thrown out of your home? With friends? A homeless shelter?

Jenny takes a deep breath. She's got a long day of interrogations ahead of her.

The crime scene technicians have combed the apartment, and Jenny doesn't actually know what she's doing here. She won't find anything they missed.

She just wants to look. Feel. Try to understand.

At ten o'clock, she conducts a long, investigative interrogation of Schorsch. He's been saying all along that he doesn't need a defense attorney, because he is innocent, but they appointed one anyway. He also declined help from an interpreter, but nevertheless one is sitting beside him.

Magnus Stolt enters the room just before they begin.

Jenny drinks cold water from a plastic cup to ease her sick feeling. She starts the interrogation coolly and calmly, as usual. As time passes, she notices more and more signs of the prosecutor's annoyance. He sighs deeply, occasionally tapping a pencil against the table. Schorsch Barzani is distraught and worn out. His eyes are red and what little gray hair he has left is standing on end. He sticks to his story.

All he did was try to stop Lenya from jumping.

As he utters the words, Stolt makes a sound like a snort, and the defense attorney looks at the prosecutor in surprise.

Barzani answers every question and the interpreter never needs to intervene. Yes, of course Schorsch has kept his daughters on a tight rein. Forbade them to get piercings or tattoos, told them to be proud of their origins and to live by the
Book
. He has tried to restrain himself, allowing them to dress as they liked, listen to pop music and even go to dances. But he has used his right to choose whom they will marry.

“What
right
?” Stolt suddenly asks.

Barzani looks surprised, spreads his hands and explains the duties of a father. The prosecutor sinks down in his chair, drags a tired hand across his face and fixes his gaze on a point far away.

Jenny continues asking questions in a calm voice. No, Schorsch really has no idea why Lenya was so upset. When she was on her way to the balcony he had asked her why, and she had said that it was none of his business. She had opened the balcony door in her stocking feet, letting in the cold, and he had followed her. Lenya had grabbed the railing and begun heaving herself up. Schorsch had grabbed hold of her and pulled her down. She had clawed his face, hit him and kicked wildly so that the flowerpots broke. In vain, he tried to hold her, but she had been stronger.

She'd heaved herself up—thrown herself over.

Schorsch bursts into tears again, and Jenny lets the next few questions wait. She throws a quick glance at the prosecutor, who rolls his eyes before leaning across the table and making a half-hearted attempt to hide the irritation in his voice.

“Wouldn't it be better just to confess, Barzani? This doesn't look good, and it's such a relief to just come clean.”

The interpreter translates and Schorsch Barzani shakes his head, burying his face in his hands.

“I . . . I loved her,” he sobs. “I would never . . .”

The interrogation ends at 11:42.

Early the next morning the lobby guard from the police station calls Jenny Lindh to tell her that a group of men want to talk to her.

“It's about Schorsch Barzani.”

She asks what they want, but the guard doesn't know. According to him she has two choices. She can either come down and try to calm this perturbed bunch or he'll have to request some uniformed officers.

Jenny sighs and takes the elevator down.

The guard was right. The men, five Iraqi Kurds who are friends of Schorsch Barzani, are very upset. They can all swear that Schorsch had indeed done everything to defend the Barzani family honor, but he was certainly no murderer and should be released immediately.

Patiently, Jenny tries to explain to them how the Swedish justice system works.

She gets no response. The men tell her that they want to talk to the
man
in charge of the investigation.

Jenny tells them that she is in charge and is greeted by incredulous stares. The men confer quietly for a moment in their own language and then demand to speak with the
man
who is her superior officer.

Jenny tells them that her superior officer is Lena Ekholm—a woman.

This doesn't diminish their agitation. Once again they call for the immediate release of Barzani. When Jenny firmly explains that they will be moving forward with the investigation, the group becomes more strident and starts shouting in a mixture of Swedish and their own language and Jenny can no longer subdue them. Some uniformed officers enter the building and there is a bit of a scuffle as the Kurdish men are forced outside. One of them resists so violently that he is arrested.

She slowly shakes her head.

Why does it have to be this way?

Three weeks later Jenny Lindh is sitting in a one-bedroom apartment in a new suburb, thinking about life.