“But he’s my nephew.”
“It will be fine,” said the policeman. “Visiting day is Wednesday, and then you are welcome. We can’t make any exceptions.”
Anders Brant was astonished. He had encountered the Brazilian bureaucracy on many different levels and contexts, and was surprised by the policeman’s directness and efficiency.
They left the lunchroom and continued a dozen meters to a staircase with some fifteen steps leading down below ground. The smell of human excretions was tangible.
The policeman stopped and looked at Brant with a serious expression.
“This won’t be a pleasant sight,” he said. “The jail is meant for thirty-five prisoners but right now we have ninety-six.”
“I understand,” said Brant. “But I’m not here to describe your jail.”
“I didn’t think so for a moment either,” said the policeman, offering for the first time what Brant with a little good will might characterize as a smile.
They went down the stairs. The smell got stronger. The voices of the prisoners, echoing between the concrete walls, made it hard for Brant to hear what the man was saying, but he understood that there were three sections: one for murderers, one for drug dealers, and one mixed, with everything from petty thieves to assailants. This was where Vincente Assis was being held.
At the bottom of the steps there was a small room. That was where visits normally took place, the policeman explained. Five prisoners at a time were taken there and they had fifteen minutes to talk with their relatives. Brant wondered whether the visitors could bring things to the prisoners.
“Clothes, sanitary articles, and cookies,” said the policeman.
“No food?”
The man shook his head, but did not explain why cookies were allowed.
He unlocked a barred iron grate, gestured for Brant to wait and went to the left in a narrow circular passageway. In the middle of the building was an exercise area, from which shouts and yelling were heard. Cells ran along the passages in both directions. Brant saw hands squeezing the bars.
The policeman stopped at a cell five or six meters away, silenced the prisoners by holding up both hands and saying something that Brant did not understand.
“We have a visitor,” said the policeman. “He’s only going to look. I want you all to line up. No one says anything. Anyone who says a single word will have me to deal with.”
He waved to Brant, who kept as close to the wall as possible to avoid the hands reaching out through the bars. All of them were young and black, dressed only in dirty shorts and barefoot.
“I’m innocent,” whispered a man in the first cell. “My family doesn’t know I’m here.”
When Brant came up to the third cell everyone’s eyes were turned toward him. Their gazes were mournful and soulless, young boys and men without hope.
Brant counted ten persons. Vincente Assis was the third man from the left, in a cell that was perhaps meant for four.
He raised his hand and pointed without meeting Vincente’s eyes, and then quickly went back to the gate and slipped out to the visitor’s room.
Immediately the taunts came thick and fast after him.
They returned to the lunchroom where Ivaldo Assis was waiting, standing by the window. He immediately turned around. Anders Brant lowered his eyes.
“Well, was that the man who shoved his cousin over the wall?”
The policeman’s immediate, direct question caught Brant by surprise. He took a deep breath, felt the sweat running down his back, his nostrils still filled with the stench from ninety-six people crowded together, and he realized that the hopelessness he had seen in the young men’s eyes would stay with him a long time.
He gave Ivaldo a quick glance and then answered with as firm a voice as he could.
“No, the man I saw down there was standing at least five meters from the wall when Arlindo Assis fell.”
The policeman’s eyebrows arched a few millimeters, but he was otherwise able to maintain his poker face. Ivaldo Assis on the other hand gasped. Brant did not dare look in his direction.
“You’re certain?”
“Completely. I was standing by my window, maybe five or six meters from the wall, I saw what happened plainly and clearly. No one, neither Vincente nor anyone else, shoved Arlindo.”
“Do you understand what this means?”
Brant nodded.
“You also know that we have a witness who maintains the opposite?”
Brant nodded again.
“And you’re still certain?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Are you being paid? Do you know the Assis family from before?”
“Payment? That’s an insult,” said Brant. “You’re just saying that to provoke me. And I have never seen the Assis family before.”
That was yet another lie. He had seen them the year before when he lived at the pension, but that time he had not taken specific notice of them, they were one family among others. Then their whole building also had a roof and was not the half-open stage it later became.
“Are you prepared to testify?”
“Yes. No innocent person should be convicted.”
The policeman let out a snort. Ivaldo Assis was crying by the window.
“Who shoved him?”
“No one,” said Brant.
“You mean he jumped head first over the wall himself?”
“He fell. Maybe he was drunk. I saw how he was leaning over the edge and then lost his footing. Maybe he wanted to see what was on the ground down in the alley. The day before they had thrown out a lot of things. Maybe they quarreled.”
“Lots of ‘maybes,’” said the policeman.
Brant nodded.
“How did you find out that Vincente Assis was in jail?”
“I saw Ivaldo on the street yesterday and expressed my sympathy.”
“You said you didn’t know the family.”
“I saw everything from my window, including how Ivaldo embraced Arlindo and closed his eyes. I realized they were related. Ivaldo told me that the police accused Vincente of the murder of his cousin.”
“Arlindo was a criminal, a murderer who dealt drugs besides. Maybe you think it’s good that he died?”
He looked at Ivaldo, as if he expected a protest from him, but he said nothing about the description of his son.
That man is dangerous, thought Brant, but was able to adopt an expression of surprise, and shake his head, as if he thought the policeman’s question was unreasonable.
“What do you think about his death?” Brant asked instead.
The policeman observed him silently. Brant realized that the decision would be made at that moment. He opened the bag and took out mineral water, unscrewed the lid, and greedily took a few gulps.
“You’ll have to meet with one of our investigators, the one who’s taking care of the case. You’ll have to sign a statement.”
“And then?”
The policeman made a movement with his head as if to say: Who knows, or maybe, who cares?
Thirty-two
“Magdalena Davidsson,” said Lindell, after recording the mandatory interview information, and then waited in silence for ten seconds-a pause that she used to read from her notes what she already knew-before continuing.
In the meantime the attorney, Petter Oswaldsson, a forty-something well-coifed sort, as Fredriksson characterized him, and a friend of the Davidsson family, was staring at her, which she noted in the corner of her eye.
She then raised her eyes and gave the attorney a blank look. She sensed that the struggle would be between the two of them, in any event if he had his way.
“I have a son, Erik, who’s going to start school this fall. A spirited kid”-she used an expression she had not heard since her father used it a very long time ago-“who, like your son, is just starting out in life.”
Magdalena Davidsson took a deep breath.
“We have a great responsibility, as mothers,” Lindell continued.