“Stella Sandell got to know Christopher Olsen in June of this year. They met at the restaurant Tegnérs, where they initiated a conversation. After a relatively short time, they began a sexual relationship.”
Stella looks vacant. She is staring straight ahead at Jansdotter, and it’s impossible to spot even a flicker of protest against the prosecutor’s version of events.
“Eventually, Stella’s friend Amina Be?i?, whom we will hear from today, began to see Christopher Olsen behind Stella’s back. Amina, too, had a sexual relationship with Christopher, which Stella soon discovered.”
I think I see a nearly invisible nod from Presiding Judge G?ran Leijon. Beside him, the lay judges are following the prosecutor’s story with intense interest. Thus far, there is no other narrative. Thus far, what she is presenting is the truth.
“Christopher Olsen chose to end his relationship with Stella Sandell and for one week they had no contact. But on the night of August the thirty-first, just hours before the time of the murder, Stella tried to call and text him again, and she went to his residence on Pilegatan. At eleven thirty, witness My Sennevall, a neighbor of Olsen’s, saw Stella arrive at the residence by bicycle and run up to Christopher Olsen’s apartment. Thirty minutes later, My Sennevall saw Stella once more. This time, she was standing on the sidewalk across from Olsen’s residence, apparently waiting for something.”
The structure of these proceedings gives the prosecutor an undeniable advantage. There is a psychological benefit to being the first to present a series of events. The narrative one is first given simply appears to be the truth; any subsequent versions must meet a much higher threshold of believability to change one’s original understanding of said chain of events. And unfortunately, both judges and lay judges are only human, no matter how much they strive to rise above and ignore prejudices and all the other psychological mechanisms that affect and guide us.
People are typing away at keyboards in the gallery. Some are taking notes by hand. Journalists and reporters, who naturally have their own neatly prepackaged ideas about what happened, ready to be shared with every soul who has access to a TV antenna or an internet connection. I extend my hand toward a bearded guy in the seat next to mine. There is another truth; you haven’t heard everything yet. Both sides must have the chance to speak. The bearded man looks at me in surprise between his strikes of the keyboard, raising his eyebrows as if to ask if I want something from him. I retreat back into my tunnel. I can smell the odor of my own sweat rising.
“Sometime between midnight and one o’clock on September the first, Christopher Olsen arrives at his residence,” the prosecutor says. “Stella has been waiting on the street outside, and he lets her in. An argument breaks out in the apartment, in all likelihood linked to Olsen’s relationship with Amina Be?i?. During the argument, Stella takes a knife from the wall of Christopher Olsen’s kitchen. Olsen flees his residence and goes out to the street. He runs to the playground at the corner of Pilegatan and R?dmansgatan. As he reaches the playground, Stella Sandell catches up with him and brutally attacks him, stabbing the defenseless Christopher Olsen with the knife. He is struck in the chest, stomach, and neck, but none of the wounds are immediately fatal and Christopher does not die right away. Stella Sandell leaves him to bleed to death.”
It all plays out like a movie in my mind. I see the knife in Stella’s hand as she raises it back over her shoulder and stabs.
I have to stand up. People stare at me; everyone knows who I am, of course. The journalists have long since identified me. One last shred of professional honor and respect for others is the only thing that stops them from assailing me with questions and blame. I look around and take a few steps to the right, then a few steps to the left—and then I duck back down onto my chair. Everything is spinning.
“Are you okay?” the bearded man asks.
I shake my head. I am far from okay. I press my hands to my belly and breathe, my lips trembling.
I know Adam is sitting right outside the door, but even so I feel thoroughly, deeply abandoned. I don’t understand. Usually, when people talk about the fact that humans are social animals, part of a mainland and never an island, I have trouble relating. For my entire life I have felt cut off from the rest of humanity. This has never been a great cause of sorrow for me, possibly because it’s impossible to miss what you never had, but the strong bonds that united other people, whether or not they were symbolized by rings or blood or something else, have always appeared to be looser, thinner, less meaningful for me than they are for others.