CELL 8 (21 page)

“To be honest, Hutton, I know absolutely nothing. He was dead.

Wasn’t he? And I had so many other things to do in Marcusville, you see, you were always trying to catch up, chasing time. Frey was deceased, we knew why he’d died, and two of my doctors looked after the body. That’s all there was to it. So no, I in fact know nothing. I didn’t have any reason or the time to give more thought to someone who was already dead.”

“But maybe it was your responsibility. To know.”

“I would have made the same assessment today, if the situation arose.

And you would too.”

It was twenty to five on Wednesday morning. It was dark outside, a winter night with a late dawn. Kevin Hutton realized that they were done, that his first impressions had been correct, that Lyndon Robbins had no intention of telling him anything other than the truth and that he had had no idea that John’s death might be anything other than what it seemed.

Kevin was about to thank Robbins for giving him the time, for his honest answers, when a telephone rang somewhere in his briefcase, five long rings before he found it.

It was Benjamin Clark.

He said that he couldn’t find them.

Lawrence Greenwood and Bridget Burk didn’t exist anymore.

EWERT GRENS AND LARS ÅGESTAM HAD AGREED TO STOP THE INFORMAL
interview temporarily. Helena Schwarz had been allowed to hit her hands against her husband’s body until she was spent. He had stood there motionless and accepted the frustration that was also his own. She had shouted and they had both cried and Sven had encouraged Ewert, Ågestam, and Hermansson to follow him out into the corridor for a while, to leave them in peace for as long as they needed.

They had waited an hour, the clock struck twelve in Kungsholmen Church. They were all hungry, so had walked down to Hantverkargatan and the relatively expensive place with palm trees in the window. They had eaten in silence—not the sort that was uncomfortable, just a peaceful break, the kind you get when there is an unspoken agreement that everyone is allowed to have their own thoughts for a while. Then they got up and were about to leave when Sven Sundkvist went over to the register and paid for two salads of the day. He asked to have them in plastic containers with plastic cutlery to take away; he knew that they’d both need it, John and Helena Schwarz, something to eat, as their energy had run out a long time ago.

They were sitting in the middle of the floor.

John’s arms around her birdlike body, cheek to cheek, hands intertwined.

Sven looked at the woman when he walked in and wondered if she had truly understood, or if she was in fact maybe someone who knew how to forgive.

Lars Ågestam came in, leaned forward, and squatted down while he explained that they should eat their food, that they would need it, and that John, when he was ready, should make sure to go up for some fresh January air in the net-covered cage on the detention center roof; Ågestam had just arranged for him to have a few minutes extra.

Helena Schwarz sat on a chair in the corridor of the jail and waited while John was escorted by an officer to the cage on the roof. She had asked if she could smoke, Ewert Grens, who was standing closest, had shrugged, which she took for a yes, and so rummaged around in her coat pocket for some menthol cigarettes.

“I haven’t smoked for five years.”

She lit up, inhaled greedily as if she was in a rush.

“What do you think?”

She was shaking a bit when she said it. Ewert didn’t want to, but answered all the same.

“I don’t think anything. I said that before.”

“Is he telling the truth?”

“I don’t know. You know him better than we do.”

“Obviously not.”

Two guards were on the move at the far end of the corridor, a cleaner scrubbing the floor nearby.

“Has he been in prison?”

“According to the American authorities, he has.”

“For ten years?”

“Yes.”

“Sentenced to death?”

“Yes.”

She was crying, quietly.

“So he’s taken someone’s life.”

“We don’t know that.”

“He’s been convicted of murder.”

“Yes. And he’s probably guilty as hell. But at the same time, all the rest, what he said about his name, the sentence, the escape, that’s true. So who knows, he
could
be telling the truth as well when he says that he’s innocent.”

He handed her a handkerchief that he always kept in a trouser pocket. She took it, dried her eyes, nose, and looked at him again.

“Does that happen?”

“That innocent people are convicted?”

“Yes.”

“Not so often that it’s a problem.”

He had damp hair when he came back; his pale cheeks were red. It was cold outside and it was snowing, the winter hell continued.

The others were waiting when he came in.

The three police officers, the prosecutor, Helena.

They all looked at him, followed each step he took toward the chair where he would continue to talk.

“It’s great when it’s cold. I like it when it’s windy, when you’re freezing, when you come in again and get warm.”

He met their eyes.

“That’s how it was. That’s how it felt. Where I grew up in Ohio.”

Hermansson had for a long time sat quietly. She had known that her turn would come. It was her turn now.

“John, we’re listening. And your wife—Helena—is listening.”

It was she who had started the dialogue with him some days earlier, it was she who would finish it.

“But, John, we’re all thinking, all of us, what do we believe? Is he telling the truth? And if so, why, why is he doing it
now
?”

John nodded.

“You can believe what you like. What I’m telling you
now
, is what I
know
.”

Hermansson waited, then with her arm indicated,
on you go
.

A clock on the wall behind him, irritating, clocks—he still hated them.

“
I know
that I was a bastard. Out of order, volatile, I lashed out at everything and everyone. Twice I was sent to a reform school, and I deserved it, I deserved every single minute.”

He turned and looked at the clock, a red plastic one.

“Can I take that down?”

Hermansson weathered his tense look.

“Of course. Take it down.”

John got up, lifted down both the clock and the hook that it hung on, walked toward the door, opened it and put the clock down outside, then closed it again.

“
I know
that when I was sixteen I met the only woman, apart from you, Helena, who I’ve ever loved.”

He looked at her, for a long time, then down at the floor, which was plastic, a green color.

“
I know
that one afternoon she was found dead on the floor of her parents’ bedroom. Finnigan. That’s what they were named.
I know
that she had my sperm inside her, my fingerprints all over her body and all over the house. We’d been dating for more than a year, for Christ’s sake!
I know
that

the trial was one long circus, journalists and politicians jostling outside the courtroom—she was a minor, she was beautiful, she was the daughter of a man who worked in the governor’s office.
I know
that they wanted someone they could hate, someone who would die, like she had died.
I know
that I was convicted of murder.
I know
that I was seventeen years old and utterly terrified when I was led to a cell on Death Row in Marcusville.
I know
that I sat there and waited for ten years. And
I know
that one day I suddenly woke up in a big car on the road between Columbus and Cleveland.”

He brought his hands up to his chest, hit it lightly.

“That’s all. That’s all I know.”

Hermansson stood up, looked at the people sitting in the room, and then pointed to the door.

“It’s really stuffy in here. Does anyone want anything to drink? I certainly need something. And you, John, you sound like you need something as well.”

She came back with six cups of coffee, each one different, with milk and without milk, and with sugar, and with sugar and milk, and . . . She balanced their orders in a cardboard box for photocopy paper. They all drank in silence for a while, waiting for John to continue.

“The other part . . . how I got away . . . I don’t know. I
don’t
know.”

He shook his head.

“It was mostly just noises. Some smells. Grainy images. Dark sometimes. Light. And then dark again.”

Hermansson drank her coffee, the one with milk and a little sugar.

“Try. There’s more. We want to know, we
have
to know, what more there is.”

He was sweating in the stuffy room that lacked ventilation, told them about a heart that was no longer healthy, about how he had felt out of sorts for some months and that that day he’d been worse than before.

“Then one of the guards, I think it was the senior officer himself, Vernon he was named, suddenly opened the cell and walked in. Some other officers behind him. I was to be handcuffed. It was always like that. If someone came into your cell, or if you were going to be taken anywhere, handcuffs on and several guards behind.”

“Do you want more?”

Hermansson lifted a hand toward his empty coffee cup.

“Thank you. In a while.”

“Just let me know when.”

Most of the time, John looked at the floor. He glanced up every so often, looked at his wife, at her eyes, no doubt wondering if she was taking in what he was saying.

“A doctor came in. She asked me to take off my pants. A pipette. I think that’s what they’re called. She had one in her hand and then she pushed it up here, and injected something in.”

He pointed to his behind.

“The tiredness . . . but even worse somehow . . . I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so . . . drowsy. And I think that another doctor came in. I’m not sure, maybe I was dreaming, but I think it was a man, younger than the woman, he had some tablets with him, I know that I swallowed something.”

Ewert Grens fidgeted on his chair, it was uncomfortable and his damn back was sore as well. He glanced over at Sundkvist and Ågestam and Hermansson, who were sitting alongside, tried to change position without disturbing the bizarre story that was being unfolded before them.

“I lay on the floor, I don’t really know why, I just lay there and . . .

couldn’t face getting up. Then . . . I felt something prick, exactly here. Do you understand? I was given an injection, I’m almost certain of it, one of them injected something into my penis.”

He put his hand to his forehead and kept it there. He started to cry. Not loudly, not desperately, but tears that have to come out, bit by bit.

“I could count time. Every second ticked inside me. That was what we did. Counted down. But then . . . after the injection . . . I don’t understand. If it was immediately, or much later. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t blink, couldn’t feel my heart, paralyzed—conscious but completely paralyzed!”

Hermansson took his empty cup and disappeared out into the corridor.

John wasn’t crying anymore when she got back. He took the coffee, drank half of it, leaned forward again.

“I died. I was absolutely sure of it. I died! Someone lifted my eyelids and put some drops in my eyes. I wanted to ask why, but I couldn’t move . . .

like I didn’t exist. Do you understand? Do you understand! What you feel, when you’re going to die, that fucking power that turns you inside out.

Someone shouted it.
He’s dying!
And I think . . . I think I was given another injection. In the heart. And something in my throat, someone who breathed for me. I must have fallen asleep. Or disappeared. Sometimes I think that I died for a while, and someone shouted that as well,
he’s dead!
I was conscious, I was lying on the cell floor, and heard them pronounce me dead! The exact time, my name, I heard it. Do you understand? I heard it!”

His last words hurtled around the interview room, bouncing between them until he took them back.

“I was dead. I was sure of it. When I woke . . . when I saw . . . I knew it, that I wasn’t alive. It was so cold. I was lying in a room that felt like a fridge and with someone else beside me, completely white, he was lying like me on a stretcher with his face to the ceiling. I couldn’t understand it. How could I see, how could I be cold, when I was dead?”

He had another drink, finished the cup.

“I disappeared. Just disappeared. And after . . . I’m sure I lay in a sack afterward. Plastic. Plastic rustles. You know . . . you know that when you try to fight yourself free with handcuffs on, it doesn’t work. You can’t get your hands any farther than half a foot apart. And when you try to hit . . . it kind of comes to nothing.”

Ågestam and Hermansson looked at each other, they were in agreement. They would stop now. He couldn’t take any more. They would continue later, when the afternoon was older, when he’d had a chance to lie down in his cell for a while.

“Just one question before we take a break.”

Ågestam had turned toward John.

“I just wondered, you said earlier that you
know
that you woke up in a car on the road somewhere between Columbus and Cleveland?”

“Yes, I
know
that.”

“Well, John, then I want you to tell us who was driving the car. And if there was anyone else there, in the seat beside you.”

John shook his head.

“No. Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“I won’t talk about that now.”

The two guards who were waiting outside escorted John back to his cell. He turned around several times, Helena Schwarz was still standing by the door—their eyes met. Ågestam and Hermansson beside her, they were talking about something, gesticulating a lot.

Ewert Grens looked at them, Frey, who had been sentenced to death, and his wife, who had had no idea, Hermansson, who conducted the interview with such calm, Ågestam, who for a moment seemed almost wise.

What he had recognized early on as a diplomatic bombshell was no less complicated now. Not for the bureaucrats who would try to assert the EU extradition agreement when John Meyer Frey’s home country came and demanded him back.