We Know You Remember (32)

“Now I’m never going to think about it again.”





Chapter 16





The court transcripts were waiting for her, unread, in a thick envelope. Eira had left the station early in order to drive over to H?rn?sand to collect them. Cases from the eighties hadn’t been digitized yet, and Pite? District Court had long since closed down. It had taken the woman at the National Archive quite some time to find them.

Then dinner got in the way.

“You were supposed to leave,” Kerstin muttered. She had paused with the cheese slicer in her hand as they cleared the table.

“What do you mean?”

“You were supposed to make something of yourself. Yet here you are, treading water.”

“Maybe I like my job,” said Eira. “It’s practical for me to stay here.”

“But you’re so talented.”

“I’ll take that,” Eira told her, putting the cheese slicer into the dishwasher. People had been telling her these things for as long as she could remember, talking about all the possibilities that lay open to her thanks to those who had come before, telling her she could be whatever she wanted to be.

A sense that her life had begun long before she was even born.

Like the trees, the undergrowth.

Being a police officer was a disappointment, verging on a betrayal. For much of the older generation, uniforms still brought back memories of the military, of 1931.

When she could study humanities, the natural sciences, become anything; when those who had come before had built this society for her, one in which the children and grandchildren of sawmill workers had the opportunity to study. To devote themselves to the literature at the top of the food chain, from the trees that had been sawed and cultivated, all the way up. And yet Eira had wanted to do something concrete, something physical and definite. To escape the books, the pompous texts. To be on the right side, so as not to slip over to the wrong one.

“Just be happy I’m not on drugs!” Eira had once shouted when her choice of career came crashing down like a bomb in the family. Shattering, dividing.

She chose a random episode of Shetland on SVT Play and set down a cup of tea in front of her mother. She doubted Kerstin could really follow what was happening on-screen, but at least she enjoyed watching the handsome policeman, so melancholy yet pleasant.

The smell of smoke drifted in from the northwest, across the river. The local radio bulletin reported that the lightning had caused fires in Marieberg and up by Saltsj?n. The ground was dry, stoking everyone’s fears again. They all remembered the fires the previous summer; they had destroyed large swathes of forest, forcing people to flee their homes.

Eira sat down at the kitchen table with the verdict from Pite? District Court.

It was thick, unusually exhaustive. The archivist in H?rn?sand had remarked on just how comprehensive it was, claimed never to have seen anything like it.

“It’s incredibly detailed,” she had said, repeating herself so many times that Eira realized she must have been shocked by what she had read.

The trial took place in November 1981.

Seven young men faced charges. Adam Vide was the first to have assaulted the complainant, Anette Lidman. According to some of the others, he had instigated the entire thing, undressing her in his tent.

Off with her knickers, up with her dress.

As far as Adam Vide could recall, she had taken off her clothes herself, entirely voluntarily. He thought she was into it; she was already wet when he felt her up in the car, and she followed him to his tent. Surely that was proof that she wanted it?

What else was he supposed to think?

Others testified that Anette was inebriated to the point of blackout when they reached the campsite, that she couldn’t even walk unaided.

In the early eighties, DNA technology had not yet become a key part of criminal investigations. As a result, though a substantial amount of semen was found when Anette Lidman was examined, it was impossible to say exactly who had ejaculated into her.

Adam Vide had been too drunk, he claimed. Couldn’t get an erection, so he just climbed on top and rubbed against her, trying to make it work. Then he had left her there, needed to throw up, had to get out.

Outside the tent, he bumped into a guy he didn’t know. He didn’t know why, but he had told him there was a horny girl in his tent, that the bloke should get acquainted with her.

Or maybe he had said, “You should fuck her.”

This was where the various testimonies diverged.

Adam Vide went off to get even more intoxicated elsewhere, but the young man had taken his advice and crawled into the tent, as had a number of his friends. No one had protested or told them to stop. In fact, they took it in turns, cheering their friends on—even patting one of them on the backside while he was humping her.

One after another. Page after page detailing each of the rapes. How was it possible that not a single one of them had reacted and said stop, prevented it from going on? Maybe they had wanted to, but kept quiet anyway.

One said she had thrust back, another that she was unconscious. It remained unclear who had ripped off her dress. The last of them, the sixteen-year-old, the youngest of the bunch, was told to use his fingers when he failed to get an erection. And so he did, until he realized his hand was bloody.

Adam Vide had first returned to his tent the next morning, finding Anette Lidman lying naked inside. She didn’t reply when he asked how she was, so he left.