A Nearly Normal Family(115)

“You didn’t say anything to your best friend?”

A moment passes before Amina can bring herself to respond.

“I had betrayed Stella. Obviously I wanted nothing more than to talk to her, but I couldn’t. It was impossible. I would have to tell her that I betrayed her trust and went behind her back and I just couldn’t stomach it.”

“So you had no contact whatsoever with Stella, on the evening and night Christopher Olsen was murdered?”

“Stella texted me and called several times, but I didn’t answer.”

As Jansdotter confers with her assistant, I once again dare to sit up tall. A quick glance at Adam and I suspect, from how he’s looking at me, that he’s come to a certain understanding.

“Stella herself said that she biked to Christopher Olsen’s residence that evening,” the prosecutor says. “She rang the doorbell and banged on the door. Did you see Stella there, at Olsen’s residence?”

“No.”

“Did you see Stella at any point during that evening or night?”

“No.”

Jansdotter sighs. The assistant points at something in her documents.

“Did Christopher Olsen bring a knife to your picnic?”

Amina answers quickly, with no hesitation.

“Yes, there was a knife in the picnic basket.”

Jansdotter asks her to describe the knife.

“How long was it?”

Amina holds her hands ten to twenty centimeters apart.

“Where did this knife end up afterwards? As you were driving back to the city?”

“It must have stayed in the basket.”

“But it didn’t. The police have not found a knife like that.”

Amina hesitates for a moment. All three lay judges are on tenterhooks.

“I don’t know what happened to the knife.”

I find myself nodding. I don’t mean to.

Both Stella and Amina were there when Christopher Olsen died, and each has a motive. But there is no murder weapon.

They will never find the knife.

“Were you the one who killed Christopher Olsen?” Jenny Jansdotter asks.

Adam makes a sound of surprise. Amina looks straight at the prosecutor.

“I didn’t kill him,” she says. “I sprayed him with pepper spray and ran for my life. I don’t know what happened after that.”

The prosecutor looks at her assistant. Adam looks at me, and I take his hand.

“I would never be able to kill someone,” Amina says.





107


I hardly hear what is said during the closing arguments. The voices turn to vacant, tinny echoes in the distance. Foreign languages I don’t understand.

One moment I’m convinced that everything will be okay. The next I fear that we have made a terrible mistake. Stella will be locked up, forever stamped as a killer, and Amina will be sentenced by the court of public opinion; her career as a doctor will be over before it can even begin.

Prosecutor Jansdotter is having a hard time keeping her voice steady. She loses her place a number of times and glances down at her notes or discusses something with her assistant. But in any case, she claims that she has proven Stella was there when Christopher Olsen was robbed of his life. She also considers it clear that Stella had a motive to kill Olsen. Stella was jealous and out for revenge because Olsen had initiated a relationship with Amina. According to the prosecutor, Stella had plenty of time to think through a plan. She went to Olsen’s apartment with the intent to kill him. Jansdotter therefore maintains that Stella must be convicted of murder. She says there is far too much doubt surrounding the information given by Adam and Amina. There are, according to Jansdotter, solid reasons to question Amina’s entire story of rape, not least because she had neglected to inform anyone about the incident earlier, during the investigation. Thus the court ought to find Stella guilty of murder; the prosecutor calls for a sentence of fourteen years in prison.

My mind is spinning. In fourteen years, Stella will be thirty-two. I think of all the things she would miss out on. One can experience so much of the world in fourteen years! When I was thirty-two, I was midstride in life. Stella might never have the opportunity to become a mother, create a family, or have a career.

Fourteen years is a long time. Fourteen years in prison is an immensely long time. A goddamn eternity.

I look at Stella and am struck by how small she looks. She is still twelve years old with blue eyes full of longing, the same snot-nosed seven-year-old whose bad dreams woke her up, sneaking in to sleep between Mom and Dad. Maybe I’ll always see her that way. In my eyes, she remains a child. My child.

My guilt is eating deeper and deeper into me. What have I done? Why didn’t I put Amina in the car and drive her to the police station?

On several occasions I have felt that this is my way of repaying my debts for neglecting my family, but what if, in fact, I have sacrificed my own daughter to save Amina? I don’t know if I can live with that.

Michael adjusts the knot of his tie before beginning his closing arguments. He is quick and to the point as he breaks down the prosecutor’s evidence point by point until nothing is left.

“The only thing the prosecutor has succeeded in proving is that my client was in the vicinity of Christopher Olsen’s residence on the night he was attacked. Meanwhile, during today’s proceedings, we heard that Amina Be?i? was there as well, at that point in time.”