Buried Lies

by Kristina Ohlsson

  I left out the story about Jenny Woods being killed in a hit and run. That would have been too much for anyone to hear.

  Jeanette coughed again. Mucus moved up and down her throat.

  ‘You say Bobby came to see you and begged on Sara’s behalf?’

  I nodded. Jeanette was the second person in a short time who had questioned that particular part of my story. Jenny had done the same thing.

  ‘Very, very strange,’ she said. ‘Because Bobby doesn’t actually live in Sweden these days.’

  I looked up in surprise.

  ‘Where does he live, then?’

  ‘Switzerland. He’s probably the only Swede to emigrate there and become a lorry driver.’

  I tilted my head.

  ‘Maybe he’s on holiday,’ I said. ‘Why would it be so unlikely for him to be in Sweden? Switzerland isn’t that far away, after all.’

  Jeanette quietly put her cigarette down.

  ‘Bobby isn’t like his sister,’ she said. ‘Even though we don’t see each other he gets in touch every so often. And when he hasn’t got time, his girlfriend contacts me. Believe me – he hasn’t spent a single day outside Switzerland in the past few weeks.’

  She looked at me through narrow eyes.

  ‘It looks like someone’s messing with you. Because you certainly haven’t met my Bobby, I can assure you of that.’

  When I didn’t respond she went out into the hall.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said.

  We stopped in front of a photograph on top of a chest.

  ‘This is Bobby,’ Jeanette said. ‘Was this the man who came to your office?’

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture.

  Because the man gazing out from the photograph bore no resemblance to the man who had appeared in my office and introduced himself as Bobby Tell.

  24

  If I could, I would obviously have dropped the job the moment I saw the picture of Bobby. But I was already caught up in it. My own liberty and future were in the balance. So I had to figure out what sort of crap I’d got mixed up in.

  It was pouring with rain as I got ready to drive back into the city. The hire car smelled of plastic and I was starting to smell of sweat. Sweat and cigarette smoke. The last thing I got out of Jeanette was how to contact Sara’s hitherto anonymous big sister. Marion. I called her from the car.

  ‘Mum’s already phoned to warn me that you’d be getting in touch,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t think I can help you.’

  ‘I’d still very much like to see you,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry,’ the sister said. ‘I don’t want to get involved.’

  There was a click, and she was gone.

  I wasn’t going to let her get away that easily. I took me less than two minutes to find her address. To my surprise, she lived in a flat on Kungsholmen, two hundred metres from the City Hall.

  Her mother had sounded rather cryptic when she gave me her daughter’s telephone number.

  ‘She’s too grand for the rest of us,’ she had said. ‘But she’ll probably like you.’

  So her name was Marion. You had to give Jeanette a bit of credit for giving her children imaginative names, at least by Swedish standards. Bobby and Marion. Only Sara had ended up with a normal name.

  It was half past three when I pulled up outside the block where Marion lived. I left the car immediately beneath a ‘No Parking’ sign and ran over to the entry phone. There was no answer when I rang her flat.

  I still wasn’t going to give up. I was a man with a lot of questions, and I was damn well going to get answers. Heaven help the poor fool who tried to get in my way.

  I rang one of Marion’s neighbours instead. I had more luck there. In a matter of seconds I was standing in the stairwell. Being able to say that you’re a lawyer on urgent business is as effective a way of introducing yourself as being a police officer with a drawn gun. People never hold out for long; they soon give in.

  The stairwell was being renovated. Plastic and paper and tubs of paint stood along the walls. Painters don’t work on Sundays. Spurning the lift, I jogged up to the third floor where Marion lived. ‘M. Tell’, it said on her door. I don’t remember how many times I rang the bell. Three or four, maybe. Not a sound from the flat. Eventually a neighbour opened his door and peered out. An elderly man who looked cross.

  ‘She’s not home,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you grasped that?’

  It wasn’t the person who had let me in through the front door.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you. You don’t happen to know where she is? It’s urgent.’

  The old man squinted at me through smeared glasses.

  ‘What do you want with her?’ he said.

  For various reasons I wasn’t at all sure this man was going to be as easily impressed by my status as a lawyer. But I tried anyway.

  ‘I’m a lawyer,’ I said. ‘I’m working for Marion’s family. It’s extremely important that I get hold of her.’

  The elderly man laughed.

  ‘Marion’s family are employing a lawyer? Splendid. You’ll have to tell them that Marion still doesn’t want anything to do with them. Please, just leave her alone.’

  If I hadn’t understood before, I did now: the old man knew Marion. Well enough to be aware of her background and her shaky relationship with her family. I decided to change both the subject and my own attitude.

  I took a cautious step towards him.

  ‘I can see how this must look,’ I said in a subdued voice. ‘But you have to believe me when I say that it’s in Marion’s best interests to talk to me.’

  The man frowned.

  ‘She’s not in any trouble?’ he said.

  I hurried to shake my head. Even the suggestion that it would be in Marion’s best interests to see me was stretching the truth.

  ‘Not as far as I’m aware,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’

  But, I thought to myself, there’s a storm brewing among the dead of her family. And if a total stranger like myself could get caught up in the mess there was no guarantee that a woman who was Sara’s sister would remain untouched by it.

  ‘Where is she?’ I said.

  It’s horrible watching people make mistakes. Considering how much the old man knew about Marion’s past, he ought to have appreciated that she might be sought by people who wished her harm. How was he to know who I was? A tall man in scruffy but expensive clothes, mounting a concerted offensive against the door of her flat. Obviously the old man shouldn’t have trusted me. Obviously he shouldn’t have given me any information about Marion’s whereabouts. But he did. Because that’s how we work. We’re so keen to do the right thing that we don’t even notice when we get it wrong.

  ‘She’s gone to the country,’ the old man said. ‘She gives me a spare key to her flat when she’s away. That’s how I know where she is.’

  ‘When are you expecting her back?’

  ‘Later this evening.’

  I held my hand out. The old man took it, hesitantly.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Thank you. You’ve been a great help.’

  He snatched his hand back. His face bore clear signs of sadness. Probably lived alone, which would explain why he cared so much about his young neighbour’s welfare.

  ‘She’s been through some rough times, Marion,’ he said. ‘Really rough. But she’s a decent person. Please, don’t ruin things for her.’

  I promised not to. If I had been asked there and then to explain why it was important for me to see Marion, I wouldn’t have been able to give a sensible answer. All I knew was that I had to meet the few people who had been close to Sara Texas whose names I knew. Because one of them surely had to be able to give me some explanation or clue regarding the question that was now troubling me more than any of the others: who was the man who had come to my office claiming to be Bobby?

  I had asked to see pictures of Sara’s ex-boyfriend Ed, so I now knew it wasn’t him. A shame, because otherwise he would ha
ve been my first guess.

  The situation confronting me now made me feel even more shaky. Someone had assumed a false identity to involve me in the hunt for the truth about Sara Texas, while someone else was trying to frame me for a murder I hadn’t committed. Were they one and the same person?

  The thought made me feel giddy. At the very least, I had considerably bigger problems than I had realised at first.

  My legs felt weak as I left Marion’s building. I’d have to return later. If I felt up to it. Otherwise I’d try again the next day.

  The hire car was waiting where I had left it. There was no sign of a parking ticket. One reason to be cheerful, anyway.

  Lucy called my mobile as I was heading along Hantverkargatan.

  ‘When are you thinking of coming home?’ she said in a worried voice.

  I looked out across the water of Riddarfjärden as I passed the City Hall. The rain had stopped, but Stockholm was being slowly asphyxiated under heavy clouds. The air in the car seemed to run out and I opened the window.

  ‘I’ll be home soon. Very soon.’

  People say that the big changes in life happen very quickly. Life changes direction overnight, in the blink of an eye. Like the way Belle was left without parents because of a plane crash. That wasn’t something the rest of us had ever imagined. Not even in our worst nightmares had we conjured up a scenario like that.

  But it wasn’t like that with Sara Tell’s case. In hindsight, I can’t really draw a clear dividing line between Before and After. Maybe it’s actually very simple: my life changed the moment I let the man calling himself Bobby into my office.

  ‘What I don’t understand at all is how I fit into this whole thing.’

  Lucy and I were sitting on my roof terrace. Half of it is covered. It’s fairly spacious, I suppose you could say. And I’ve got a nice view as well.

  ‘Can you see all the way to Mariannelund?’ Belle asked when she had a big thing about the extremely tedious Emil from Lönneberga in the book by Astrid Lindgren.

  ‘Better than that,’ I said. ‘You can see the whole of Stureplan.’

  Not that Stureplan was actually much to look at. Decadent trust-fund idiots who were probably going to die young from syphilis. But the location was perfect. I like living in the centre of the city. And Stureplan is very central.

  ‘I don’t understand how you fit in either,’ Lucy said. ‘I think this is seriously bloody unsettling, Martin.’

  It wasn’t that I disagreed with her. I just didn’t have anything to say. I looked out through the rain, past Stureplan and over towards the two towers on Kungsgatan.

  ‘You have to talk to the police. Have you done that yet?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Not yet. I’ve only just got home, after all.’

  Belle was asleep. She didn’t usually have a nap this late in the afternoon, but the accident seemed have left her more tired than normal. Nothing funny about that. On the contrary, I was happy to get some time on my own with Lucy.

  I’d tried calling the fake Bobby several more times. No answer. Maybe it was stupid to go on chasing him, but I had too many questions to be able to stop myself.

  ‘He came to our office,’ I said quietly. ‘That’s pretty cocky, you have to admit. He could have called or emailed, but he chose to come in person. What would he have done if I’d seen through him? How could he be so confident that I didn’t know what Bobby looked like?’

  Lucy brushed some hair from her face.

  ‘Because Bobby never really appeared in any of the papers. You weren’t involved in the police investigation and you weren’t Sara’s lawyer. So there was no way you’d have known what Bobby looked like.’

  I considered what Lucy had said. She’d just put her finger on something very important that neither of us had thought of.

  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t Bobby appear in any of the papers? If he was so keen to clear his sister’s name? Not once did he turn to the press. He could easily have sold the story of how his sister’s case hadn’t been properly investigated by the police.’

  ‘I’d say that’s just one of a whole load of weird things,’ she said. ‘Another one is how the man who came to see you could have got hold of that ticket.’

  That hadn’t occurred to me before.

  ‘Could he have got it from Bobby?’

  ‘You mean that he’s acting as some sort of front? Bobby daren’t visit you himself so he sends someone else? Maybe.’

  She shivered.

  ‘You ought to have some blankets out here,’ she said. ‘The wind’s really cold when you’re so high up.’

  She was talking as if I lived at the top of a skyscraper.

  ‘You can sit on my lap,’ I said, holding out my arms.

  ‘Dream on,’ Lucy said. ‘I’m not going to sit on your lap, and not on your face either.’

  I started to laugh, wearily and without much enthusiasm.

  ‘Harsh,’ I said.

  ‘I’m just being honest,’ Lucy said. ‘You should try it.’

  I threw my hands out.

  ‘I’m honesty personified,’ I said humbly. ‘Ask me a question and I’ll give you an honest answer.’

  Lucy smiled.

  ‘Who’s Veronica?’

  I wondered the same thing. It took me almost half a minute before I remembered the woman I had slept with from the Press Club. Fuck. Had she managed to get hold of my home number? Because she hadn’t called me on my mobile.

  ‘She called when Belle and I were making lunch,’ Lucy said in response to my unspoken question.

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘So who is she?’

  I sighed. How many games is it possible to play at the same time? Not many. Not if one of the games involved people you’ve met starting to die.

  ‘We fucked. Once. No, sorry, twice. I’m not planning to see her again.’

  Lucy fell silent.

  Far too silent.

  ‘Are you okay, baby?’ I said.

  She didn’t look at me when she replied. Her eyes were fixed on a point that appeared to be just to the south of Stureplan.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I always am.’

  25

  There was a time when I thought you had to love your family. Now I know that that isn’t the case. I choose to see that as both a blessing and a potential threat. A blessing because it means that I don’t have to see my mother more than is necessary. And a threat because it could mean that Belle will leave me as soon as she gets the chance. In spite of my limited parenting skills, the fact remains: I have no fucking idea what would be left of me if anyone or anything took Belle away from me.

  I went back to see Marion Tell a few hours later. She was home, just as the old neighbour had said. Marion didn’t look like anyone else in her family. With her dazzling white teeth and perfect bob, she looked like the complete antithesis of everything her mother’s appearance suggested. Jeanette had said that her daughter was too grand to want to see her and Bobby. I’d say she was too smart. Few things create deeper divisions than an uneven distribution of intelligence and talent.

  It was obvious that the neighbour had talked to her. She didn’t look happy when I rang the bell and she opened the door.

  ‘I thought I made it clear to you that I didn’t want to answer any questions,’ she said.

  She was attractive, in that way that only women who work in the arts are. Cool and slender. For some reason I found myself getting annoyed by her arrogance. The fact that I was so ridiculously tired probably helped. My short but memorable discussion with Lucy on the terrace hadn’t improved matters. It irritated me that she knew about Veronica. Even though we had both agreed on the rules of the game, I had a feeling that they only applied with certain reservations. We were allowed to have sex with other people, but only if the other person never found out. Because we still had expectations of each other, regardless. I of Lucy, and she of me. And in my current situation I couldn’t afford to lose her.
<
br />   I took a step closer to Marion.

  ‘I think you should listen very carefully to what I’ve got to say,’ I said. ‘A couple of weeks ago a man came to my office. He said his name was Bobby, and he said he was Sara Tell’s brother. He had with him a train ticket that he said proved his sister had an alibi for at least one of the five murders she confessed to. On Friday someone else came to see me. Sara’s friend Jenny. She told me the story behind the train ticket, thereby confirming her sister’s alibi.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Marion said.

  ‘Shut up, I’m not finished,’ I said. ‘The night before last Jenny was murdered. She was run down outside her hotel. By my car.’

  If I hadn’t had Marion’s attention before that, I did now.

  She looked at me without saying anything.

  ‘The problem for the person who stole – or perhaps I should say borrowed – my car was that I spent the entire night in hospital. It would be hard to find a better alibi, don’t you think? Well, I’m afraid that’s not enough for me. Someone is so upset by my investigation into your sister’s case that the person in question is trying to frame me for a murder I didn’t commit. It’s only a matter of time before they realise that I’m not going to be locked up or charged with that crime.’

  ‘And you think the murderer will make another attempt to get at you?’ Marion said slowly.

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ I said. ‘All I know is that someone is going to a lot of fucking effort to cover up whatever it was that made your sister confess to five murders she hadn’t committed. Even if you’ve distanced yourself from your family, and even if Sara is dead, I think you have a duty to do whatever you can to see that she gets justice.’

  Everything I was saying was obvious. At least to my mind. Rhetoric is best when you keep it simple.

  Marion reacted furiously.

  ‘Who are you to come to my home and lecture me about my family?’ she said, her eyes flaring with anger and something that looked like grief. ‘I was sixteen years old when I left home. Otherwise I’d have died there. Do you get that? Died! Sara and Bobby chose to stay. The weak, pathetic idiots.’