What are you doing, Amina?
“She was only fifteen.”
A buzz goes through the room. I slouch down in my seat. I just want to keep sinking.
“Her parents didn’t report it,” Amina says.
All eyes are on Adam and me. I feel myself crumbling to pieces.
“Stella’s mom is a lawyer. She knew what a trial would involve. A rape trial.”
Please, Amina. Stop!
I shrink into myself, trying to disappear. Adam is staring at nothing. His eyes look like they’re made of porcelain.
“I wouldn’t be able to deal with that kind of trial either,” Amina says. “I realized that right away. Having everything questioned, being blamed, and then having to watch Chris go free or at most get a few months in prison. I saw how Stella felt when it happened to her, and I saw how destroyed Linda Lokind was.”
I know what Amina is up to. She’s smart. She’s sacrificing my reputation for Stella’s sake. She knew I would never go along with this, so she didn’t say anything. As I peer over at G?ran Leijon and the upset lay judges, I realize it’s working.
“When did you tell Stella?” Jansdotter asks.
Amina’s shoulders rise slightly.
“I didn’t. I just couldn’t.”
I can see how Stella is looking at her. She’s trying to summon up a rage that is completely overshadowed by sadness.
“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.