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.
That same feeling of freedom would often come over her when she sailed back and forth over the narrow strait between Sweden and Denmark. Today, all thoughts about the unfortunate judgement she would have to make disappeared from her mind.
I’m no longer even in the middle of my life, she thought. I’ve passed the point that one doesn’t even realise is being passed. There won’t be that many difficult decisions left for me to make. But I shall remain a judge until I retire. With luck I should be able to enjoy my grandchildren before it’s all over.
Her thoughts drifted to her husband, and her mood changed. Her marriage was beginning to shrivel and die. They were still good friends and could give each other the necessary feeling of security. But love, the sensual pleasure of being in each other’s vicinity, had completely vanished.
Four days from now it wouldbeawhole year since they had last caressed each other and made love before going to sleep. The closer that anniversary came, the more impotent she felt. And now it was almost upon her. Over and over again she had tried to speak to Staffan about how lonely she was. But he wasn’t prepared to talk, withdrew into his shell, tried to postpone the discussion he nevertheless knew was important. He insisted that he was not attracted to anybody else, they were just missing a particular feeling that would no doubt soon return. All they needed to do was be patient.
She regretted losing the feeling of togetherness she had shared with her husband, the imposing-looking chief conductor with the big hands and the propensity for blushing. But she had no intention of giving up. She didn’t yet want their relationship to be an intimate friendship and nothing more.
She went to the counter to refill her cup and moved to another, less sticky table. A group of young men who were already noticeably drunk despite the early hour were discussing whether it was Hamlet or Macbeth who had been imprisoned in Kronborg Castle, skulking on its cliff just outside Elsinore. She listened to the discussion with amused interest and felt tempted to join in.
A group of boys was sitting at another table. They couldn’t have been older than fourteen or fifteen and were probably playing hooky. And why not, when nobody seemed to care whether or not they showed up at school? She had absolutely no nostalgic feelings about the authoritarian school she had attended. But she recalled an incident from the previous year. Something that had driven her crazy about the state of Swedish justice and made her long more than ever for the advice of her mentor Judge Anker, who had now been dead for thirty years.
On a housing estate outside Helsingborg an old woman just short of her eightieth birthday had suffered an acute heart attack and collapsed on a public footpath. A couple of young boys, one of them aged thirteen, the other fourteen, had come by. Instead of helping the old woman, without a second thought they had first stolen her bag and then tried to rape her. If it hadn’t been for a man walking his dog, they would probably have succeeded in their attempt. The police traced and arrested the two boys, but as they were underage, they were allowed to go free.
Birgitta Roslin heard about the incident from a public prosecutor, who had in turn been informed by a police officer. She had been furious and tried to find out why the crime hadn’t been reported to social services. It then dawned on her that maybe a hundred or so underage children committed crimes in the Helsingborg area every year with absolutely no follow-up. Nobody told their parents, nobody informed social services. It was not merely the occasional case of petty pilfering but also robbery and grievous bodily harm, which could easily have ended up as murder.
She began to despair over the Swedish judicial system. Whose servant was she in fact? Was she a servant of the law, or of indifference? And what would the consequences be if more and more children were allowed to commit crimes without anybody bothering to react? How had things been allowed to lapse to such an extent that the very basis of democracy was being threatened by a lame judicial system?
She drank her coffee and contemplated the fact that she would probably need to work for another ten years. Would she have the strength? Was it possible to be a good and fair judge if you began to doubt the country’s legal structure?
In order to shake off questions she couldn’t answer, she went back over the strait one more time. When she disembarked on the Swedish side, it was nine o’clock. She crossed the wide main street that carved its way through the centre of Helsingborg. As she turned off, she happened to notice a billboard with headlines from one of the national evening newspapers: they were just being posted. The large letters in bold print caught her attention. She paused and read: MASS MURDER IN HÄLSINGLAND. HORRIFIC CRIME. NO LEADS FOR POLICE. NUMBER OF DEAD UNKNOWN. MASS MURDER.
She continued walking to her car. She seldom if ever bought the evening papers. She was put off, and sometimes offended, by the papers’ frequent attacks on the police. Even if she agreed with quite a lot of what was alleged, she had little sympathy with the sensationalising. What reporters wrote often harmed genuine criticism, even if the intentions were honourable.