A Darker Shade of Sweden (26 page)

Everything's happened so quickly. The house was sold. She left almost all the furniture in it behind; the mere thought of keeping anything that might remind her made her sick. With the help of friends, a van and IKEA she put together a new home in a few days.

The rest wasn't as easy.

The abortion.

It was mandatory that she speak with a psychologist first, and of course she broke down. A five-year relationship, promises of undying love, memories of adventure and intimacy—it all came together as she faced the decision of whether or not she really wanted to get rid of the child in her belly.

The child
.

When it was over she steeled herself, took only a couple of days' sick leave while the bleeding was at its worst.

Better to bury yourself in work than to stare at a wall wallowing in memories that aren't worth remembering anymore.

Daniel had made some awkward attempts to contact her. He had used words like
respect
and
adults
and said that they should at least try to talk to each other.

Jenny texted him saying that he a) could take his whore and go to hell, and b) should contact her lawyer if he wanted anything else.

Very mature, Jenny
, she thinks and bites her lip, as she stands in front of the mirror trying to put on her makeup. Her tears smear her mascara and she has to redo it.

It's high time she spent an evening drinking wine with Clara.

At work she downs cup after cup of strong coffee and winces at the burning sensation in her stomach.

Once again she carefully sifts through the material surrounding Lenya Barzani's death.

The CSI and computer forensics reports are coldly formal, just like the autopsy report from the pathologist and the evaluations from SKL, the state crime lab.

The technicians indicated that they found footprints from both Lenya and Schorsch Barzani in the snow on the balcony, and that there were numerous signs of a struggle. They found traces of Lenya's blood. After scraping her fingernails they detected evidence of her father's skin under them. Samples taken on the first day Schorsch was examined showed traces of Lenya's DNA in wounds on his cheeks. Jenny searches for the major points in the pathologist's long report. Lenya's neck was broken, her skull and brain sustained injuries. Her face was swollen where there had been bruising. Her left arm was broken. The pathologist was unable to determine whether all of these injuries happened simultaneously or in brief intervals. Theoretically she may have sustained some of her injuries before falling from the balcony. Her lungs indicated that she was a smoker, but apart from that the girl was healthy. Neither drugs nor alcohol were found in her blood or any traces of semen inside of her.

The computer forensics experts easily accessed Lenya's laptop and went through her files, e-mails, and Facebook account. Their report included an attachment of about a hundred pages of documented conversations between the girl and her friends, as well as a printout of something that looked like a diary.

Jenny spent hours absorbed in reading the printouts. The e-mail exchanges between Lenya and her friends revealed that Schorsch had been very strict with both Lenya and Lara. Granted—just as he had admitted—he had allowed them a certain amount of freedom in choosing their clothes and activities, but he made himself very clear when it came to the most important thing of all: their choice of boyfriends.

There was no mistaking that Lenya was in love with a boy named Joakim. The e-mail exchanges between him and Lenya were intense, and she gushed over him to her girlfriends.

Meanwhile, she expressed her deepening distress in her diary. Several years earlier, her father had explained that she was to marry Rawand, his cousin Naushad's son. The fact that her chosen husband lived with his father in Badinan, in northern Iraq, did not make things less complicated.

In a private Facebook exchange, Lenya had told her friend Ebba that her father had discovered her relationship with Joakim and gone ballistic. He had subjected Lenya to a long and rigorous interrogation. After that he grounded her and said she could not go anywhere at all without either her father or Azad as chaperone.

And not only that. Her diary also disclosed that Schorsch had ordered his wife, Runak, to bring Lanya to Haval, an Iraqi in Tensta who claimed to be a doctor. The purpose of this visit was to determine whether or not Lenya was still a virgin.

Lenya described the encounter as disgusting. Her appointment with Haval took place in an ordinary apartment, and Lenya got no impression that he was actually a trained doctor. Her mother had looked away as the man poked around her genitals with his fingers. Lenya described the experience as both painful and deeply humiliating. In her text messages, she told Ebba that she had never had sex with Joakim or anyone else, but that her hymen had broken a year or so ago during ballet practice.

When Schorsch received the “doctor's” report he had become even more furious and grounded Lenya indefinitely. This took place about a week before her fall from the balcony, and during that time, Lenya's brother had met her at school each day to walk her home.

Jenny put the papers down, drank some coffee and sighed deeply. Would she ever get used to these cultural differences?

Lenya's mother, Runak, and an interpreter are sitting across the table from Jenny.

Runak, weary from lack of sleep and worn out from crying, answers Jenny's questions only briefly. She knows Schorsch well after all these years. He loves his daughters and would never harm a hair on their heads. Runak wants to know when Schorsch can come home and cries hysterically when she gets no definite answer.

Two hours later, at Jenny's second interview with fourteen-year-old Lara, instead of an interpreter, a woman from social services in Tensta is present.

Jenny gets no clear answers to her questions. She leans across the table, and smiles at the girl.

“Are you afraid of something or someone, Lara? I promise that nothing is going to happen to you.”

The girl is silent for a moment. Then she shrugs her shoulders, looks Jenny in the eyes and says:

“How can you promise anything? You don't even understand what this is all about.”

You're right. How could I ever understand?

“Then tell me, Lara. Explain it to me so I can understand.”

The girl just stares down at the table, silent.

Her interrogations of Azad Barzani don't go much better. He replies laconically to some questions, and answers others with a shrug of his shoulders or not at all.

“But, Azad, do you think that Lenya was afraid of your dad?”

“Why would she be?”

“Is it true that recently Lenya wasn't allowed out by hersel
f
? That your father told you to meet her at school every day, to make it impossible for her to see Joakim?”

“Who's Joakim?”

“Lenya had a boyfriend named Joakim, didn't she?”

“She didn't have a boyfriend.”

“But we've already spoken to Joakim, and he said that he and Lenya were in a relationship.”

“He's lying.”

Not once during the questioning did Azad meet her gaze, and Jenny knows that he will never tell her anything.

Another world. A world of men with a concept of honor that differs from the Swedish one.
For a moment she considers letting some male colleague take over the interrogations.

But—no way in hell!

She is Detective Captain Jenny Lindh.

The next day, Jenny questions Lenya's best friend, Ebba Green. Ebba isn't afraid. She confirms much of what Jenny has already learned from the computer printouts.

Lenya was definitely afraid of Schorsch. Her father had a terrible temper and was constantly setting up new rules for Lenya. She was hardly allowed to use makeup, always had to wear pants instead of skirts and having a boyfriend was out of the question—she was set to marry the older man, Rawand, in Iraq. Ebba said that they had talked about this a million times and Lenya wanted nothing more than to get away from home. But how would she do that? She was seventeen, a high school student, with no other place to live and no job. And besides, even if she had escaped, Schorsch, his friends and his relatives would have found her and brought her back home.

According to Ebba, Schorsch was a family dictator, and both the Barzani sisters were afraid of him. Lenya had even said that she feared for her life, that her father would kill her if he discovered that she had a boyfriend. And her mother, Runak, would never dare to stand up to Schorsch.

After all, she was only a woman.

The interrogation transcripts were typed out and entered, along with all the other investigation reports, into the DurTvå ­system —a computerized log of pretrial investigation material.

Shortly before lunch the next day Jenny gets a call from the prosecutor who curtly tells her she should report to his office immediately with an update. Slightly annoyed, she drives to Solna again, hurries along the corridors to Magnus Stolt's office and takes a seat in his visitor's chair. The prosecutor pushes his glasses up on his forehead. “Did you get anything from the door-to-door?”

“Hardly. Nobody seems to have seen or heard anything. It was midmorning when it happened. I suppose most people were at work.”

He gives a short laugh. “Work? People in that area are hardly known for working themselves to death, are they? You know the type—the ones who are said to enrich our culture.”

His voice drips with sarcasm. Lindh has heard it before, in paddy wagons, in the corridors of police headquarters.
Cultural
Enrichers. Camel jockeys. Dune coons
.

If the police, with their special training, can't accept these people as citizens, then how can the rest of the population be expected to do so?

Jenny has seen on the news that populist, right-wing extremist parties have gained considerable support in recent years. Jackboots.

She shudders.

You can't hate people just because of their origin
.

Stolt shuffles through his piles of paper and pulls out some that are marked with a yellow Post-it note.

“You're saying that nobody has seen or heard anything. But here's a transcript from a witness named Pettersson who says that he heard shouting and arguing, and that he saw the father and daughter fighting on the balcony.”

“That's true. But for one thing, that man is obviously an alcoholic. He reeked of liquor when we spoke to him. And for another, he keeps changing his story around. You can see from the transcript that he's confused.”

“But it says here that he even saw the father throw his daughter from the balcony.”

Jenny takes a deep breath.

“But if you read on, it says later that he isn't sure about that. I suspect the defense would rip him to pieces pretty fast if you put him on the stand.”

Stolt looks irritated and puts the papers down.

“Do another door-to-door. Without any witnesses or supporting evidence I won't be able to charge him with murder.”

“But what if he didn't do it?”

The words slip out before she's had time to think.

Jenny notices a small muscle twitch near his eye. Stolt pulls his glasses back down over his eyes, leans over the desk on his elbows and fixes her with his stare.

“If he
didn't
do it? Get a grip, Lindh. Read the interview with her best friend. Lenya feared for her life. This is just one more honor killing and I'm gonna put Barzani away for life. Stone Age behavior is not acceptable in this country.”

Jenny Lindh stands up. As she leaves his office she hears him say quietly: “
Fucking Hajjis
.”

She turns around and looks at Stolt.

“Did you say something?”

He forces a smile.

“No, no. It was nothing.”

The next morning Jenny interrogates Schorsch Barzani again. As she is about to start, in comes the prosecutor, out of breath and with his face showing clear signs that he's under pressure. Both the morning papers and the tabloids are still headlining Lenya's death so maybe Stolt has been fielding phone calls from police headquarters as well as from politicians. Jenny's heard what can happen when a case becomes politically sensitive. The next election is closing in. The center/right-wing coalition government is under attack from the opposition and will resort to any tricks to stay in power. Statistically significant opinion polls show that support for the populist, anti-immigrant party has reached two-digit percentages. Not only does that mean that it will become more influential, but it will likely continue to hold the balance of power in parliament in the little country called Middle-of-the-Road.

A political disaster.

And now an immigrant girl is dead. Again.

Her father is suspected of murder. Just like so many fathers before him.

The result of this trial could have major political consequences.

Will the small, but democratic country allow immigrants from different cultures to murder their daughters in order to “protect their honor”?

It seems to Jenny that Schorsch has become smaller, hunched over. When she asks her questions about that particular day, the point at which Lenya died, he sticks to the same story as before.

He had been watching TV when she walked past. He followed her onto the balcony and yes, there was a fight when he tried to stop her from jumping.

As before, she asks why he didn't leave the apartment and run down to the courtyard after Lenya fell.

He shakes his head slowly.

“It was like . . . I paralyzed. No could move. I just sat, no could understand.”

Prosecutor Stolt squirms in his seat, gives Jenny an irritated look that says:
Get going damn it—c'mon, sink him!

But she asked her questions again and again and received the same answers. Asked about the family's escape to Sweden, about ­Lenya's childhood, about how Schorsch thought his daughters should conduct their lives. Asked what he was doing during the minutes and seconds before she fell. Asked why he was barefoot.