CELL 8 (3 page)

He could hear clearly that there were visitors.

It was easy to differentiate between the voices of people who were free and those who had been sentenced to death. It was easy to recognize the tone that you hear only in the voice of someone who doesn’t know
precisely
when they’re going to die, the uncertainty that allows them not to count.

John looked down toward central security. He counted fifteen people as they passed.

They were early—still three hours to go until the execution—and they filed slowly past, peering down the corridor with curious eyes. At the front, the prison warden, a man whom John had seen only once before. The witnesses followed him. John assumed that it was the usual: a few members of the victim’s family, a friend of the person to be executed, some representatives of the press. They were all wearing overcoats and the snow still lay on their shoulders; their cheeks were red, due to the cold or in anticipation of watching someone die.

He spat in their direction through the bars. He was just about to turn around when he suddenly heard central security opening the door and letting someone into the corridor of East Block.

It was a short, stocky man with a mustache and dark, slicked-back hair. He was wearing a fur coat over his gray suit; the snow had melted and the fur was wet. He marched down the middle of the corridor, the black rubbers over his dress shoes slapping on the stone floor. There was no hesitation; he knew where he was going, to which cell he was headed.

John brushed his hair down with a nervous hand and tucked it behind his ears, as he always did, his ponytail hanging down his back. He’d had short hair when he came here but had let it grow ever since, every month another half inch, in case he ever lost the clock that ticked inside him.

He could see the visitor clearly now, as he had stopped squarely in front of his cell; the face that he fled from in the dreams that perpetually haunted him, a face that had once been full of acne and now carried the scars that time and good living had not erased. Edward Finnigan was standing outside in the corridor, his color leached by winter, his eyes tired.

“Murderer.”

His lips were tight. He swallowed, raised his voice.

“Murderer!”

A fleeting glance over his shoulder to central security; he realized that he should keep his voice down if he wanted to stay.

“You took my daughter from me.”

“Finnigan . . .”

“Seven months, one week, four days, and three hours.
Exactly
. You can appeal as much as you like. I’ll make sure that your appeals are turned down. In exactly the same way that I’m able to stand in front of you now. You know it, Frey.”

“Go away.”

The man who was trying unsuccessfully to talk quietly raised his hand to his mouth, a finger to his lips.

“Shhh, don’t interrupt. I don’t like it when murderers interrupt me.”

He moved his finger away. The forcefulness returned to his voice, a force that only hate can provoke.

“Today, Frey, I’m going to watch Williams die, courtesy of the governor. And in October, I’ll be watching you. Do you understand? You only have one spring, only one summer left.”

The man in the fur coat and rubbers was finding it hard to stand still. He hopped from one foot to the other, moved his arms in circles; the hate that he had stored in his belly was being released into his body, forcing his joints and muscles to jump forward. John stood silent, as he had when they met during the trial. The words were to much the same effect; at first he had tried to answer but had then given up. The man in front of him didn’t want any answers, any explanations; he wasn’t ready for that, never would be.

“Go away. You’ve nothing to say to me.”

Edward Finnigan dug his hand into one of his coat pockets and took out something that looked like a book—red cover, gilded pages.

“You listen to this, Frey.”

He leafed through the pages for a few seconds, looking for a bookmark, found it.

“Exodus, chapter twenty-one . . .”

“Leave me alone, Finnigan.”

“. . . twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth verses.”

He looked over toward central security again, tensed his jaw, gripped the Bible with white fingers.

“
But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth
. . .”

Edward Finnigan read the text as if it were a sermon.

“. . .
hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise
.”

He smiled as he slammed the book shut. John turned around, lay down with his back to the bars and corridor, fixed his gaze on the dirty wall. He lay like this until the steps receded down the corridor and the door at the end was opened and then closed again.

Fifteen minutes to go.

John didn’t need a clock.

He always knew exactly how long he’d been lying down.

He looked at the fluorescent tube on the ceiling, the glass covered with small black marks. Flies that had been attracted to the light that was always on, they had come too close and been fried by the heat. The first few nights he had to hold his hands over his eyes, fighting not only the fear and all the new noises, but also a light that would never be switched off; it had been hard to relax with a glare that constantly held the dark at bay.

He was going to look at it now, until it was over.

Sometimes he hoped there was something after.

Anything more than just a brief inglorious sense of death; more than just the knowledge that
right now I’m dying
, and then the next moment for it to be over.

The feeling was strongest at times like this, when someone else was about to die, someone who no longer needed to count.

John would lie down and bite the arm of his coveralls and feel his heart pounding; it was hard to breathe, hard to breathe, and then the shakes would rack his body until he spewed all over the floor.

As if he were dying, every time.

John gripped the sides of the bunk when the light seemed to briefly go out. Or had he just imagined it? It flickered again, vanished. While Marv Williams’s body was cramped by electric shocks of between two thousand volts and twenty-five hundred volts, the lights in East Block and West Wing and all the other units in the prison flickered on and off. He had probably vomited after the first shock and then a little bit more with each subsequent shock, until he was completely empty.

It was as if the light came back on and John knew that his ravaged body had for a few seconds slumped forward in a heap on the chair, still alive. He bit the arm of his coverall and wondered what Marv was thinking, if thoughts were louder than pain.

The second shock always lasted for seven seconds, a thousand volts, and the saline water in the copper electrodes that were attached to the head and the right leg started to hiss.

John didn’t bite the orange material anymore. He undid the two buttons closest to the collar and gripped the silver chain and cross that hung there. While he squeezed it, he was sure that the lights went on and off several times, the third and final shock.

Marv’s eyeballs had burst out of the sockets now.

Urine and excrement everywhere.

His swollen body, blackened by third-degree burns where the electrodes had been secured, would be too hot to touch for some time.

He himself hated everything that religion stood for, but did what Marv would have done—he held the crucifix in one hand and with the other made the sign of the cross in the air in front of him.

now

THERE WAS ONLY AN HOUR LEFT, SO HE SHOULD JUST LOOK THE OTHER
way. They had already turned at Åbo and were on their way home: just a couple more songs, upbeat numbers that got the drunkest people off the floor and then a slow song for those who didn’t want the night to end, that was all; then a few hours in the cabin and Stockholm again.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t look the other way, not again—the man who was stealing from the women on the dance floor, and who had done it before, had now thrust his crotch against her hip for the second time and she had been just as oblivious to it.

John had been watching her all night.

The dark hair, the delight in being able to dance herself into a sweat; she was beautiful. She was both Elizabeth and Helena at the same time.

His woman.

“What the hell are you doing?”

He had suddenly stopped singing, was hardly aware of it himself. Anger could not read music and the others behind him had continued for a few bars, then lowered their instruments, waited in silence.

He should look the other way.

He spoke from the stage again, looking at the man who was still standing too close to her.

“You leave her alone. Now.”

The clink of glasses from somewhere over by the door. The strong wind was buffeting the large windows. Otherwise silence. The silence that is created by a sudden pause in the music, when the singer breaks off the chorus.

Thirteen couples froze on the dance floor.

They were all suspended midstep, dancing to something that they recognized as an eighties potpourri. They were still out of breath as it slowly dawned on them what was going on. They turned one by one in the direction John was pointing, toward the tall, fair man standing in their midst on the dance floor.

The microphone crackled when John spoke too loudly.

“Do you not understand? When you’ve gone, we’ll go on playing.”

The man took a step back, swayed a bit, his crotch no longer pushing against the woman’s hip. He found his balance again, turned around to face the stage and John, his middle finger in the air. He just stood there, said nothing, didn’t move.

Some people left the dance floor.

Others leaned toward their partners, whispered something in their ears.

Someone threw up his arms impatiently: “Come on, play! We’re dancing.”

The man still had his finger in the air as he pushed his way through the stationary couples, heading for the stage, for John.

Lenny’s voice somewhere behind him:
Forget it, John, just leave it until security gets here, and Gina sighing: That’s enough, just let the pisshead swear a bit;
even the bassist who hadn’t said anything until now:
There’s no point, there’ ll be another one here tomorrow.

He heard them.

He didn’t hear them.

The drunk man stood below him, laughing and sneering, his stinking breath and face roughly level with John’s waist. His finger was still in the air, but now he lowered it, and formed a circle with his index finger and thumb on the other hand, looked John straight in the eye and then thrust the lowered finger into the circle, two times, three times.

“I’ll dance with whoever I want.”

Someone dropped a fork.

Maybe a loudspeaker snapped.

John noticed nothing. There was nothing that he could later explain. He was concentrating on counting out time. If anyone could, he could.
If I just keep counting, this fucking feeling will go, I’ ll calm down again.

He’d learned how to do this.

To not hit.

Never to hit again.

He looked down at the man who was sneering at him and violating the air with his hand; he ran his own hands through the long hair that he no longer had, tried to tuck it behind his ears as he had always done when agitation and fear pushed aside what should have been control. He saw Elizabeth’s sixteen-year-old face and he saw Helena’s thirty-seven-year-old face, and he looked at the woman who had just been dancing herself dizzy and who was now standing stock-still some way off, and then at the drunken hands that had pushed against her and suddenly everything just exploded: all the fucking years of counting and all the fucking years of repressed anger that pushed against his chest from inside when he tried to sleep. And without being aware of it he pulled back his leg and kicked with all the might that only time can muster; he hit him somewhere in the middle of his laughing face and then heard nothing of the confusion and commotion as the people around surged toward him.

PART I

monday

IT WAS A RATHER BEAUTIFUL MORNING; STOCKHOLM IN THE MIST IN THE
distance, the encroaching sun, vapors dancing on the water. Half an hour more, then dock, town, home.

John looked out of the plastic porthole. The enormous ferry glided slowly down the channel, at no more than a few knots—the waves formed by the metal prow as soft as from any small boat.

It had been a long night. He was tired, had gone to bed sometime after four, but hadn’t been able to sleep. That’s the way it was sometimes, when what was happening now became confused with what had happened back then. His eyes were aching, his head was aching, his whole damn body was aching. He was frightened. It was a long time since he’d been frightened; he’d found an everyday routine and settled down—Helena sleeping beside him and Oscar fast asleep in his bed next door. They had a life together. The apartment was small but it was theirs; sometimes it felt like there had never been anything else, as if he could forget everything else.

There was a draft from the porthole. The cabin was cold, as always in January. Two evenings onboard, a good wage, his own cabin and free food—that was enough and he could deal with it. Dance-band music and drunk conference delegates were something that he had gradually learned to cope with. After all, he was a father now, and a regular income almost compensated for the feeling that sometimes gripped him in the middle of a song, onstage with the others. A feeling of loneliness, despite all the sweaty, laughing couples on the dance floor, of not being able to talk to anyone, not being able to move.

He had kicked him in the middle of the face.

John closed his eyes, squeezed his eyelids shut until it hurt, and then he looked out again. Stockholm was getting closer; the skyline of Södermalm looked as if it was falling down into Stadsgård dock.

It shouldn’t have happened.

He was never going to hit anyone again.

But that bastard had had his hand up her skirt, he had thrust himself against her, and she had tried to get away, his hand on her behind. John had warned him, and people had stopped dancing, and when the man took his hand away and laughed at him, stood there right in front of him, it had felt like it was someone else, as if John was an onlooker, the raw energy, it wasn’t his.