Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

In many respects the accused was her opposite. He worked as an estate agent, specialising in business premises. Everyone gave him good references. He was unmarried and earned a high salary. He did not appear in police records, but Birgitta Roslin felt that she could see through him as he sat before her in his expensive and well-pressed suit. She had no doubt that he had raped the woman as she lay asleep on the sofa. DNA tests had established beyond doubt that intercourse had taken place, but he denied rape. She had been a willing partner, he maintained, as did his counsel, a lawyer from Malmö whom Roslin had come across before. It was one person’s word against another’s, an irreproachable property broker versus a drunken checkout girl who had invited him into her flat in the middle of the night.

Roslin was upset about not being able to convict him. She couldn’t shake the feeling that on this occasion a guilty man would go free. There was nothing to be done.

What would that wise old bird Anker have done? What advice would he have given her? He would certainly have shared my concern, Roslin thought. A guilty man is going to be set free. Old Anker would have been just as upset as I am. And he would have had as little to say as I do. There’s the rub as far as judges are concerned: we have to obey the law in the knowledge that we are releasing a criminal without punishment. The woman may not have been an angel, but she would have to live with that outrageous injustice for the rest of her life.

She left her desk chair and went to lie down on the sofa. She had paid for it herself and put it in her office instead of the uncomfortable armchair provided by the National Courts Administration. She had learned from Anker to hold a bunch of keys in her hand and close her eyes. When she dropped the keys, it was time to get up. But she needed a short rest. Then she would finish writing her judgement, go home to bed and produce a clean copy the next day. She had worked through everything there was to work through and confirmed that there was no question of a guilty verdict.

She dozed off and dreamed about her father, of whom she had no personal memories. He had been a ship’s engineeer. During a severe storm in the middle of January 1949 the steamship Runskär had sunk in the Gävlebukten, with all hands on board. His body had never been found. Birgitta Roslin had been four months old at the time. The image she had of her father came from the photographs in her home. The picture she remembered best was of him standing by the rail of a ship, smiling, his hair ruffled and his shirtsleeves rolled up. Her mother had told her it was a ship’s mate holding the camera, but Birgitta Roslin had always imagined that he was actually smiling at her, despite the fact that the photograph was taken before she was born. He kept reappearing in her dreams. Now he was smiling at her, just as he did in the photograph, but then he vanished as if swallowed up by fog.

She woke with a start. She realised immediately that she had slept for far too long. The keyring trick hadn’t worked. She had dropped it without noticing. She sat up and checked the clock: it was already six. She had slept for more than five hours. I’m shattered, she thought. Like most other people, I don’t get enough sleep. There’s too much going on in my life that worries me.

She called her husband, who had begun to wonder where she was. It was not unusual for her to spend the night on the sofa in her office after they’d quarreled, but this was not the case now.

Staffan Roslin had been a year ahead of her at Lund, where they both studied law. Their first meeting was at a party given by mutual friends. Immediately Birgitta knew he was the man for her, swept off her feet by his eyes, his height, his large hands and his inability to stop blushing.

But, after completing his studies, Staffan did not take to the law. He decided to retrain as a railway conductor, and one morning he appeared in the living room dressed in a blue-and-red uniform and announced that at 12.19, he would be responsible for departure 212 from Malmö to Alvesta, and then on to Växjö and Kalmar.

He became a much happier person. By the time he chose to abandon his legal career, they already had four children: first a son, then a daughter and finally twins, both girls. The children had arrived in rapid succession, and she was amazed when she thought back to those days. How had they managed it? Four children within six years. They had left Malmö and moved to Helsingborg, where she was appointed a district judge.

The children were grown up now. The twins had flown the nest the previous year, to Lund where they shared a flat. But she was pleased that they were not studying the same subject and that neither of them had ambitions to become a lawyer. Siv, who was nineteen minutes older than her sister Louise, had eventually decided, after much hesitation, to become a vet. Louise, who had a more impetuous temperament than her twin sister, had tried her hand at several things, sold clothes in a men’s shop, and in the end decided to study political science and religious studies at university. Birgitta had often tried to coax out of her what she wanted to do with her life, but she was the most withdrawn of the four children and rarely said anything about her innermost thoughts. Birgitta suspected that Louise was the daughter most like herself. Her son, David, who worked for a big pharmaceutical company, was like his father in almost every way. The eldest daughter, Anna, had astonished her parents by embarking on long journeys in Asia, about which they knew very little.

My family, Birgitta thought. Big worries but a lot of pleasure. Without it, most of my life would have been wasted.

There was a large mirror in the corridor outside her office. She examined her face and her body. Her close-cropped dark hair had started to grow grey at the temples. Her habit of pursing her lips tended to give her face a negative expression. But what really worried her was the fact that she had put on weight over the last few years. Three, four kilos, no more. But enough to be noticeable.

She didn’t like what she saw. She knew she was basically an attractive woman. But she was beginning to lose her charm. And she was not making any attempt to resist.

She left a note on her secretary’s desk, saying that she would be in later in the day. It had become a little warmer, and the snow had already started to melt. She started walking to her car, which was parked on a side street.

But then she changed her mind. What she really needed above all else was not sleep. It was more important to give her mind a rest and think about something else. She turned and headed for the harbour. There was not a breath of wind. The overcast sky from the previous day had begun to open up. She went to the quay where the ferries departed for Elsinore. The crossing took only a few minutes. But she liked to sit on board with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, watching her fellow passengers going through the bags of cheap spirits they had bought in Denmark. She sat down at a corner table that was very sticky. Annoyance flared up inside her, and she shouted to the girl who was clearing the tables.

‘I really have to complain,’ she said. ‘This table has been cleared, but it hasn’t been wiped. It’s very sticky.’

The girl shrugged and wiped it clean. Birgitta Roslin gazed in disgust at the filthy rag the girl had used, but she didn’t say anything. Somehow the girl reminded her of the young woman who had been raped. She didn’t know why. Perhaps it was her lack of enthusiasm for her work? Or maybe it was a kind of helplessness she couldn’t put a finger on?

The ferry started to vibrate. It gave her a feeling of well-being. She remembered the first time she had gone abroad. She had been nineteen. She had travelled to England with a friend to take a language course. The trip had started on a ferry, from Gothenburg to London. Birgitta Roslin would never forget the feeling of standing on deck, knowing she was on her way to somewhere liberating and unknown.