From above. The order came from above. Do you understand? This will require even more energy. So let’s save it. Try to work together.”
She lowered her voice even more, she was whispering now.
“Otherwise . . . I think everything will just fall apart.”
VERNON ERIKSEN WAS SURPRISED AT HOW CALM HE FELT
.
I should run.
I should hide.
My heart should be confused, beating wildly. I’ve been carrying this lie around for so long, so many times I’ve thought that today, today it will erupt, it’s over,
I
am over now.
And yet I’m standing here. In the corridor between the cells on Death Row.
I can hear them sleeping, I walk up to Cell 8, which is empty, I do all this and yet I feel . . . calm.
It was half past one, U.S. time, on Wednesday morning in the correctional institution in Marcusville. Nearly twenty-four hours since he’d been called in to the warden, fruit and after-dinner mints in the big room that had a red carpet on the floor and a chandelier on the ceiling, nearly twenty-four hours since John had been taken into custody somewhere in northern Europe, therefore making a death in a cell in Ohio more than six years ago now very puzzling indeed—it demanded attention again.
You died here.
I helped you to die.
You carried on living.
I helped you to live.
Vernon stood, as he often did, a bit too long outside the abandoned cell. Their plan had worked. So much that could have gone wrong, but they had nothing to lose, not with John, not when the execution was only a few weeks away.
He hadn’t known a thing.
That was the main premise. That John didn’t know. For months he would feel sick and out of sorts because of the haloperidol and ipecacuanha, they wanted him to be as scared as he was when he found out about the cardiomyopathy; he would need treatment, and the doctors, two new doctors who shared a full-time position, would visit him regularly and provide medication for the nonexistent illness that had to exist if the rest of the plan was going to work.
Vernon smiled.
John had really died.
That morning, John had been worse than usual; it was that morning.
On Greenwood’s request, Vernon had as usual sprinkled haloperidol and ipecacuanha over John Meyer Frey’s food, but this time had also added a large dose of beta blockers, just as finely crushed and sprinkled, and John had felt dizzy, his blood pressure dropped and he had collapsed in his cell, just as intended, in the half hour when Greenwood and Burk were both on duty in East Block.
Vernon stepped forward and gripped two of the metal bars on the cell door with his hands, looking for traces inside, traces that were never left.
Each of the medicines had worked perfectly.
Bridget Burk had come to the cell first, she had knelt down on the floor beside John, who was sweating and clutching his stomach with both arms.
She had explained as loudly as she could that it was his heart, cardiomyopathy, that he had to be treated.
She had given him the first medicine. A benzodiazepine. He mustn’t remember. If he woke up suddenly, he mustn’t remember. She pulled down his orange overalls, diazepam enema up his rectum; she had explained before: for this to work he had to be drowsy.
Lawrence Greenwood had run down from another part of the building.
As he passed he had looked at Vernon, who was standing outside the cell with three other officers. He had glanced over and their eyes had locked for a split second; they had both known but shown nothing. Burk had informed Greenwood briefly about what he already knew she had done, what they had planned together several months ago, and in the meantime had taken out something that worked fast, that triggered amnesia, and that also affected the patient’s memory—pure morphine caused not only amnesia but also slowed the breathing.
John had lain there in a daze, his pants down. Syringe in one hand, Greenwood had grabbed hold of his penis with the other and he had injected intravenously into one of the veins on his organ. Pavulon, a preparation similar to curare, totally paralyzing. He had explained to Vernon at their last meeting a couple of days earlier that he could inject in the inner arm or the groin or the neck but that he preferred the penis, erectile tissue, he wanted to leave as few marks as possible.
John was now in hell.
He hadn’t known about anything, so the fear of death had engulfed him, he was the living dead.
Conscious and paralyzed.
His muscles totally flaccid, he couldn’t move at all, he couldn’t even breathe.
Vernon had remained outside for the minutes this took and looked on, but not really watched.
He couldn’t bear it.
The boy who was lying on the floor had right then been close to death, for real, and he had just stood and watched.
They were aware that it could end like this, they had discussed it at length, that this was a risk they had to take, they only had a few minutes, no more.
Burk had also taken out a small bottle of eyedrops.
Atropine to provoke dull, dilated pupils.
A dead person’s pupils.
Vernon remembered how it had felt to stand there and watch while the young man he had come to like so much, whom he knew was innocent, had in effect died in front of him. That was exactly how it looked. He hadn’t moved, seeing those awful eyes that just stared; it had been hard not to forget what they were doing, not to leap toward the door and rush in.
The pulse had been the only thing they couldn’t do anything about.
They couldn’t stop it in any medical way that was plausible. Greenwood had used a morphine derivative that had slowed his pulse dramatically, but for the rest they just had to cross their fingers. Both doctors had taken turns to cover up a reduced but still working pulse—it was a case of acting as convincingly as possible and continuing to do so.
They had a maximum of eight minutes.
They had to ventilate him every second minute, their own breath in John’s lungs.
It should work. But only if the process was started within eight minutes. Longer than that . . . his brain would be damaged, severely, perhaps forever.
Greenwood had stood up, turned toward Vernon and his three colleagues. He had spoken clearly to them, and to the prisoners who had followed the drama from their cells. Vernon could still recall at will, how Greenwood had almost screamed
he’s dead
.
A quarter to two, the night outside was alive, the wind howled as always. Vernon looked up at the rectangular window just under the ceiling—should get it fixed, the noise was annoying.
He left Cell 8, walked down the row of locked cells toward the door that led out to the office block.
It would be madness to risk anything. But suddenly he realized there wasn’t much time, that he should already have given warning, that it was his duty to do it. He went into one of the rooms in administration, one of the secretaries’ offices—it was unlikely that anyone had the time to tap a phone in here in the middle of the night.
He had learned their numbers by heart.
First he phoned Austria. He had no idea what time it was there, and it didn’t really matter, she would answer; if she saw this number, she would answer.
The conversation with Bridget Burk lasted no more than a minute.
He put down the receiver, then called Denver, Colorado. Lawrence Greenwood didn’t say much, listened, and thanked him.
They both had new identities, new CVs, new doctors’ licenses, new lives, six years ago now.
They existed, and yet they didn’t.
MARIANA HERMANSSON WAS STILL UNCERTAIN ABOUT WHAT TO MAKE
of the angry outburst her boss, Ewert Grens, had had just over an hour ago. It had seemed so . . . unnecessary. Of course she recognized the absurdity of a blackout, the probable disregard of ethical principles in the case of John Schwarz. But the rage he had unleashed, the aggression that he obviously carried around with him and let loose on anyone who happened to cross him, that frightened others and apparently had done so for many years, it bothered her, she was bewildered, almost sad.
She knew what aggression was. She had grown up with it.
But this, she didn’t understand.
She had a Swedish mother and a Romanian father and had spent her formative years with a mix of around a hundred nationalities in an area of Skåne called Rosengård, part of Malmö where the politicians seemed to have no influence; an immigrant community that many people disliked, others were ashamed of, but that had its own energy and life and a lot of aggression that ran around sparking fires.
But it was just that. Aggression. That flared up and died down just as fast.
But this sort, Ewert’s heavy anger that seemed to hang over him and cling to him and hurt, she found it harder to deal with, to accept, it was ugly and intrusive. She would talk to him about it later when there was time. She wanted to know where it came from, if he was aware of it himself, if it could ever be controlled.
She had worked in Stockholm for six months before her short-term contract was made permanent. Not very long, but she had already been in the detention center at Kronoberg several times. Sven Sundkvist was with her, he hadn’t said very much since they left Ewert’s room either. She realized that he was used to it and wondered whether he’d maybe given up. Or whether after ten years as a close working partner, it still bewildered him, if that was what he was thinking about, withdrawn from any conversation, barely there.
Schwarz was in the cell at the far end of the corridor. Or Frey, as he was apparently called. But here, he was still John Schwarz. She looked at the sign beside the cell door, his name and, underneath, the instruction,
full restrictions
.
She read it again, pointed at what was written and tried to bring Sven out of his stupor.
“What do you say to that?”
“Schwarz?”
“Full restrictions.”
Sundkvist shrugged.
“I know what you mean. But I’m not surprised.”
She was impatient, took hold of the sign and pulled it off.
“I don’t. Understand, that is. Why has Ågestam given Schwarz full restrictions? Schwarz can’t possibly influence the investigation in his condition. What difference would it make if he was to see his wife and son?”
“I hear what you’re saying. And I agree. But like I said, it doesn’t surprise me.” Hermansson put the sign back—it was crumpled and the tape wasn’t very sticky anymore.
“In principle, I promised him. When we questioned him.”
“You can try. If it would benefit the investigation, Ågestam might, I think, make concessions. Because that’s what it’s all about. Investigation strategy. Nothing else. Ågestam doesn’t think for a moment that full restrictions make any difference. He knows, like we do, that Schwarz hasn’t got much to give even if he wanted to. But he’s trying to force him to talk by imposing restrictions. They often do that, prosecutors. Make it difficult, make threats to get the questioning moving and force an admission. You’d never get anyone to admit to it, but that’s how it works.”
Hermansson stood in front of the locked door. She didn’t really know who he was, the man inside. But he had been imprisoned for aggravated assault, he had admitted to the actual circumstances and he was now not allowed to read newspapers, listen to the radio, watch TV, write letters, receive letters, wasn’t allowed to see anyone other than his lawyer, the prison priest, the detention officers, and a few others such as herself, investigators. She was convinced that it was unreasonable.
One of the officers had come up to them. He looked through the peephole in the middle of the door, was satisfied with what he saw, and unlocked the cell.
John Schwarz, who was John Meyer Frey, was pale.
He sat on the floor and looked at them with empty eyes.
“John.”
He didn’t answer.
“We want to talk to you, John.”
Hermansson went into the cell and stood in front of him, put a hand on his shoulder.
“We’ll wait while you put on your shoes and get ready.”
He stayed sitting where he was, shrugged.
“Why?”
“We’ve got a whole lot of new questions to ask you.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
They walked out of the cell and left the door open. They waited—he took his time, but he did come, and dragged his feet to the interview room that was a bit farther down the corridor, where Grens and Ågestam were sitting waiting.
He stopped by the door and looked around, as if he had counted them and then decided that four people were too many.
“Hello, John, come on in.”
He hesitated.
“Now, John. Come in and sit yourself down.”
Ewert Grens was irritated and didn’t try to hide it.
“This isn’t a formal interview. As we’re not going to talk about the assault on the Finnish ferry at all.”
John sat down on the only empty chair in the cold room. The others sat opposite him: three police officers and a prosecutor studying his face, his reactions.
“You have given and been living under a false identity. And we’re trying to understand why. So that we’re as clued in as we can be. So we need . . . let’s say we need some information from you. Now, John, a lawyer—would you like one to be present?”
A lonely window with bars on the far wall. Otherwise nothing.
“No.”
“No lawyer?”
John gave an exasperated shake of the head.
“How many times do I have to say no?”
“OK.”
Grens looked at the thin man in oversized clothes. A short pause, then he continued.
“First of all, I wonder . . . just a simple question. You do know, John, that you’re dead?”
It was as silent in the room as it had been before they’d all come in. John sat motionless on his chair. Ewert Grens wore a wide grin. Ågestam glared at the self-satisfied detective superintendent, Hermansson felt her discomfort grow and seep into every nook and cranny, and Sven Sundkvist looked down at the floor, didn’t want to see the man in front of him disappear into another time.
The young male doctor stands next to me.