The Finnigans were both waiting to find out why he’d actually come.
It had taken four months to find Schwarz.
He looked at their faces again.
A person who was roughly the same age as John, with permanent residency in two countries and who was willing to hand over his passport, his history, his life, for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
He couldn’t draw it out any longer, couldn’t worry about how to say it and how they would react.
He put down his cup and waited until they had done the same.
“John Meyer Frey.”
He looked at them, first one then the other, and then revealed a truth that was more than six years old.
“John Meyer Frey is alive. Right now he’s sitting in a cell awaiting trial in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. He’s been in custody for a few days now under a false identity.”
They waited for him to continue.
“And it’s been confirmed. It
is
him.”
He then explained what little was known. Frey had died, Frey had been buried, and even so, earlier that week he had been arrested and detained following an aggravated assault on a ferry crossing from Finland to Sweden. It had taken a few days to determine his identity with the help of Interpol and the FBI. A dead man. Who was alive. Vernon saw their distressed faces and then fielded all the questions he couldn’t answer, about how and when and why, that was all they knew right now, that John Meyer Frey was alive.
It’s strange how ugly people can become. Vernon had seen it before in connection with executions, how the victim’s family seemed to relish the fact that yet another person was going to die, that they would get their revenge and that the death would be settled—one all. He had seen it and reflected on the fact that their bodies, the way they moved, that everything that was part of them could change and quite simply become ugly.
Edward Finnigan sitting to his left, apple pie on his chin, had after a while understood what it was that Vernon was trying to tell them. The inconceivable had gradually become conceivable and now he stood up, ran toward the living room and a glass cabinet there, a bottle of cognac in one hand and three glasses in the other. Such light steps, bubbling from his chest the kind of joy that only someone who is about to kill can feel.
“That bastard, so he’s alive!”
He put the glasses down on the table, one behind each teacup, and filled them.
“So I’m going to be able to watch him die!”
Vernon lifted a hand, he didn’t want any. Alice glanced at him and did the same. Edward Finnigan shook his head and mumbled something that Vernon thought sounded like
pussies
, he wasn’t quite sure, but Finnigan immediately emptied his own glass, took another one, and then slammed his hand down on the table.
“Eighteen years! I’ve waited eighteen years for that miserable creep to die while I watch! My retribution! Now, you see, it’s time now!”
He spun around with his arms raised, that gurgling sound again. He took the bottle and poured another glass, drank, drank and continued to spin.
Vernon watched Alice, who sat with her head down, looking at the table, at the pie crumbs that had hardened on the porcelain plate. He wondered whether she was thinking about retribution, words like the ones that Edward Finnigan used instead of revenge. In her eyes were tears, and it felt like they’d spoken about this many times before.
“I’m going upstairs to lie down. I don’t want to sit here anymore.”
She looked at her husband.
“Are you satisfied now, Edward? Will it stop now? Edward, will it stop?”
She rushed toward the stairs and the second floor. Eighteen years of grief permeating every word, every thought.
Vernon remained seated, cleared his throat.
A bad taste.
He tried to swallow it, but it lay there, obstructive, choking.
EWERT GRENS SHUT THE DOOR TO HIS OFFICE AND SAT DOWN AT HIS DESK
. He closed his eyes, listened to her voice—they were alone for a while, Siw and him, the past that found its way through the investigation files. With each verse he went back a few years, to a time when he and Anni were two young police officers who had started to discover each other, his first nervous, mumbled sentences, the very first time he held her hand, so new and so long ago, a whole adult lifetime ago.
He turned to the very large cassette player, increased the volume until it couldn’t get any louder.
Tweedlee dee tweedlee dee—give it up give it up, give your love to me Tweedlee do tweedlee dot—gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme all the love you got
Her voice, her version of “Tweedlee Dee,” recorded 1955, was so fresh, so young, maybe the first song she ever recorded, he wasn’t sure but nodded in rhythm, Anni’s hand in his, everything that was about to start, everything that never had the time to get started.
He listened, two minutes and forty-five seconds, he knew exactly how long it was, then turned around again and lowered the volume a touch. Back. But to only thirty minutes earlier. He thought about Schwarz, so close to falling to pieces when he looked at his wife, who had known nothing, as if they would both burst. Grens had doubted the wife’s claimed ignorance to begin with, it had seemed incredible that she didn’t know, how could someone live so intimately with another person without knowing such a dark secret? He didn’t doubt it anymore. She
hadn’t
known. That thin bastard, who had managed to hide an entire life from her, must have done a lot of acting and suppressed the rest; Ewert Grens, if anyone, knew that it was possible.
He snorted loudly into the room.
After over thirty years in the police force, he’d thought he’d heard it all. But even he couldn’t have made this story up, and it seemed to get better by the day. Grens knew now that it was true, every word was true; Schwarz really had done what no one else had come close to before. He had escaped from his own execution, locked up on Death Row in one of the most heavily guarded prisons in the United States. Damn, that wasn’t half bad!
The little bugger had managed to fool them all! Grens was positively amused—to stick your tongue out at a system that was building itself into the ground with all its new prisons and that was totally convinced that long sentences were the primary solution to escalating violence, that was good, that was really fucking good.
He heard the knock on the door.
“Am I disturbing you?”
“Not if you let me finish listening.”
They all sounded the same, all Grens’s lala songs. But it was quite sweet really, when he sat there with his eyes closed, his big body moving to the beat. Hermansson waited, as she had learned to do.
“Did you want something?”
The music had finished and Grens was back in the present.
“Yes, I thought that maybe you and I could go dancing.”
Grens was taken aback.
“You did, did you?”
He remembered her question the day before, about how long it had been, about why. He remembered his answer.
You can see how I look. With a limp and a neck that won’t move.
“What do you want?”
She looked toward the door.
“Helena Schwarz. She’ll be here soon. I asked her to come.”
“Right?”
“We have to talk to her. You saw for yourself that she’s about to fall to pieces. It’s our responsibility to keep her together as far as we can.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“But he’ll talk more then. If she’s there. I’m convinced that that’s needed if we want him to continue.”
Grens stroked his thinning hair over his pate, picking up his eyebrows on the way. She was right, of course she was right.
“You did well, just now. In the interview room. You got him to calm down, to trust you. And someone who trusts you will also let you know what you want to know.”
“Thank you.”
“No flattery intended. Just an honest description of what happened.”
“Shall we dance?”
She made him feel uncertain. Almost shy. He raised his voice, as he always did, to mask it.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Twenty-five years, Ewert. You said that you hadn’t danced for twentyfive years. That’s my whole life! And you’re always sitting here, listening, marking the beat. You want to dance, that’s not hard to see.”
“Hermansson.”
“I’m asking you out. Tonight. A place where they play your kind of music. I’ll decide where, all you need to do is come.”
He was still embarrassed.
“Hermansson, it’s not possible. I can’t dance anymore. And what’s more, even
if
I could, even
if
I wanted to—I’m your boss.”
“And?”
“It’s not appropriate.”
“If
you
were to ask me out. But it’s
me
asking you. As a friend, not as an employee. I think we can keep the two things separate.”
Grens put his hand to his head again.
“It’s not just that. Hermansson, for Christ’s sake, are you putting me on? You’re a young, beautiful woman and I’m an ugly old man. Even if we were to go out as friends, I would still feel . . . I’ve always despised older men who run around pawing young women.”
She got up from the visitor’s chair, held out her hands.
“I promise, I feel perfectly OK about this. You’re not exactly the sort who paws. It would just be fun. I want to see what you look like when you laugh.”
Grens was just about to answer when Sven appeared in the doorway with Helena Schwarz by his side.
“I promised to bring her here.”
Ewert nodded to him.
“Can you stay? I’d like you to listen.”
Helena Schwarz hesitated before entering the room, her eyes anxiously scanning the walls. She was still a bird. The big, knitted sweater with overly long arms and a thick polo neck that swallowed up her throat, baggy jeans that looked like they’d been bought for someone considerably bigger, clumps of cropped hair that stood straight out. She was on her guard, ready to fly away; if she could have walked to the window and flown out, she would have.
“You can sit down there.”
Grens pointed to the chair beside Hermansson. Helena Schwarz crept over, sat down without saying anything, staring straight ahead.
“Why doesn’t he have a lawyer?”
She tried to look at him, her anxious eyes every which way.
“A public defense counselor, Kristina Björnsson, has been appointed, but he didn’t want a lawyer present for the interview.”
“Why not?”
“How the hell do I know? You’ll have to ask him yourself.”
Ewert Grens made a sweep with his arm toward the detention corridor.
“I understand that you’re distressed. I’ve never heard anything like it either. But I believe him. Unfortunately. I believe that he’s telling the truth, that he was sentenced to death for the murder of a girl his own age.”
Helena Schwarz winced, as if he’d hit her.
“But you should know that there’s more. And for you, some of it might be positive.”
Her voice was as weak as it had been earlier in the interview room, but those sitting around her heard the slight shift, a nuance that hadn’t been there before.
“Positive? Jesus Christ.”
Ewert Grens pretended not to hear her sarcasm.
“First of all: Ylikoski woke up a while ago. He’s now fully conscious and according to his neurologist doesn’t appear to have sustained any chronic injuries from John’s kick to his head.”
She didn’t react—at least, she didn’t show anything. Grens wondered if she understood just how important what he had just said was. She probably didn’t, not right now.
He continued.
“Second, there is someone John didn’t mention in there. Someone I am sure he’s protecting.”
“I see.”
“You perhaps recall that we asked him who else was in the getaway car?
And that he refused to answer.”
She pulled at her sweater, the green knitted arms got even longer.
“Don’t ask me. You may have noticed there’s an awful lot I don’t seem to know.”
“I’m not asking. I think I know who it is.”
He looked at her.
“His name is Ruben Frey. And right now he’s being questioned in the FBI’s local office in Cincinnati. I think that’s who John hoped he could avoid talking about.”
“Frey?”
“John’s father.”
Helena Schwarz groaned, not long, and not particularly loud, but enough for the sound to rumble uncomfortably around the closed room.
“I don’t understand.”
“Ruben Frey is John’s dad. Your father-in-law.”
“He’s dead.”
“Hardly.”
“John said his parents were dead.”
“His mother died when he was young, if I’ve understood correctly. But his father is still just as alive as you and I.”
Hermansson put her arm around Helena Schwarz’s narrow shoulders. Sven left the room briefly, came back with a glass of water and gave it to her. She drank, all of it, five large gulps before she leaned forward.
“Ruben Frey?”
“Ruben Meyer Frey.”
She swallowed, paused, swallowed again, as if she had decided not to cry anymore.
“So I have a father-in-law?”
Her face had got some color for the first time since she came into the room, something more than the previous near-white paleness.
“I have to meet him.”
Her cheeks got even redder, her eyes more alert, before she continued.
“And my son, Oscar.
He
has to meet him. After all, I mean, he would be . . . his grandfather.”
EDWARD FINNIGAN HAD SAT ON HIS OWN IN THE KITCHEN ONCE VERNON
Eriksen said that he needed to go home and sleep after a long night at the prison. A couple more glasses of cognac and Finnigan stretched himself. He found it hard to sit still with the bubbling in his chest, he didn’t know what to do with all the unfamiliar energy. He wanted to run, jump, even make love, it was years now since he and Alice had even embraced, he hadn’t been able to touch her, he hadn’t wanted her, and suddenly he felt desire, he was hard, he longed for her breasts, her bottom, her sex, he wanted to sink into her and have her all around him; this was a morning like no other.
He undressed by the kitchen table, walked naked through the hall, up the stairs, and over to the guest room door she had closed half an hour earlier.