Buried Lies

by Kristina Ohlsson

  Stay away, I thought. For your own sakes.

  Boris answered on the second ring.

  ‘Martin,’ he said.

  It sounded like he was crying.

  I don’t know how I got out of the bar, but suddenly I was standing in the blazing sun on the scorching hot pavement.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Boris said down the phone. ‘Forgive me. I’ve failed. She’s gone, Martin. Belle’s missing.’

  42

  We think we know how we’d react when life takes us by surprise. We think we know how we’d behave if we suddenly won three million on the lottery, if we found out we only had a year to live, if someone we love were to die. But we don’t. There are some scenarios that are so unthinkable that any attempt to predict how we might react to them becomes absurd. Yet we still try, over and over again. We conjure up the worst things we can imagine, and then the most wonderful things, and we utter the most mendacious words any human being can say: ‘If that happened to me, I’d . . .’

  Standing on a pavement in Galveston I learned that a child I had come to think of as my own had been snatched away from me. I didn’t know why. I didn’t know if she was alive. All I knew with any degree of certainty was that I would die if anything were to happen to her. Part of me died there and then, on that pavement. Because we’re born with a belief that we and our nearest and dearest are immortal. The terrible things, as well as the most wonderful ones, always happen to someone else. That gives us a false sense of security. By generously signalling a willingness to forego the greatest of successes we believe that we’ve entered into a pact with both God and the devil. We will never see the greatest riches, but neither will we be afflicted by the greatest trials.

  Then something happens to prove that no such pact ever existed except in our imagination. And then everything collapses. The world changes in front of our eyes, becomes less predictable and thus more dangerous. What was once dark becomes pitch black. What was once as white as snow becomes dirty grey. The fear that squeezes our hearts when we look death in the eye never lets go.

  Lucy came running out from the hotel. She had returned to the bar and been told what the other guests had seen.

  His phone rang.

  He sank to his knees.

  He shouted.

  Then he disappeared.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  Her voice was shrill with fear. I couldn’t stop shaking. I stood there with a phone in each hand, not knowing how to make time start moving again.

  ‘They’ve taken her,’ I whispered. ‘Belle’s missing.’

  Words that could barely be spoken. Only when they had left my mouth did I fully understand that they were true. I had failed in my duty of care to Belle. I had failed as a parent. Utterly failed.

  Lucy put her arms round me and stroked my back as if I were a child. I told her what I knew. That Belle’s grandparents had been killed in their summerhouse along with two other adults I assumed must be Boris’s men.

  ‘How the hell did they manage it?’ I said. ‘How could they knock out Boris’s gorillas? Have you seen those guys? Built like fridges and armed to the teeth.’

  I could hear how I sounded, and what conclusions could be drawn from what I was saying. Either our adversary had infiltrated Boris’s team, which I was almost certain we could discount, or something infinitely worse: our adversary was so powerful that even a protector of Boris’s standing could be crushed with a swat of the hand.

  I don’t remember how we got back to our hotel. All I have left of the short walk are fleeting impressions of intense heat, blaring cars and the sound of laughter and yelling from the beach. It could have been idyllic. But for me and Lucy, Galveston had turned into something reminiscent of Dante’s inferno.

  ‘We have to go home,’ I said when we were back in our room. ‘Tonight.’

  ‘What about Denise?’ Lucy said tentatively.

  ‘Fuck her!’ I roared.

  Lucy got her laptop out and started looking for flights. I felt sick and went into the bathroom. I spent a long time kneeling in front of the toilet staring down at the white porcelain. Lucy came in and sat behind me. Her tears wet my shirt.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said. ‘How have we ended up in the middle of this?’

  I was wondering the same thing. The more I thought about it, the clearer it seemed to me that I wasn’t going to find Belle unless I found an answer to that particular question.

  Someone had come to my office with a plea. A young man wanted justice for his dead sister, and to find his missing nephew. I had reluctantly and then with growing enthusiasm embarked upon the job.

  Now I was up to my ears in shit. I didn’t know who the man who had come to my office was, and all I had to show for my weeks on the case was getting myself accused of two murders and losing my daughter.

  I leaned back against Lucy who went on holding me.

  One of her hands reached round to my chest. Maybe she thought I had no energy left, that I was on the point of giving up.

  ‘We’re not done yet,’ she said, and I felt her breath on my ear. ‘This isn’t over yet. We’ll never stop looking for Belle. Never. And we’re going to get her back. I promise.’

  How Lucy could make a promise like that was beyond me, but I let her empty words bring new life to my paralysed heart.

  I stroked her arm and pressed myself even closer to her warm body.

  ‘You never said anything to me,’ I said.

  ‘About what, darling?’

  ‘You never said you wanted a child. I didn’t realise until we were sitting in Bebe with Belle and I made that bad joke. I’m sorry.’

  She held her cheek against mine. Fresh tears wet my skin. Unless I was the one crying.

  ‘I think you probably knew,’ Lucy said. ‘But you chose not to say anything about it, because you also knew that the only man I’ve ever wanted to have a child with is you. And you don’t want any.’

  I turned my head so I could kiss her. The desire that overwhelmed me took nourishment from the grief and despair that were threatening to shatter my chest. I’m very good at pretending to be romantic, but I rarely genuinely feel anything. This time I felt everything. From the moment I took hold of Lucy’s head with one hand as the other felt for her breast.

  I felt everything and I heard everything. Lucy’s laboured breathing against my neck, my own eagerness to be released for a few brief moments from the nightmare that my life was evidently going to resemble from now on.

  Hands and fingers fumbling. Shirt buttons and zips. The knot in the scarf that Lucy used as a belt on her skirt. Finally the underwear that was the last barrier in our struggle for temporary respite. In the middle of the cold tiled floor of the bathroom.

  Was it comfortable?

  No.

  Was it good?

  God, yes. The best ever.

  And I promised myself that if we both made it out of the chaos in which we found ourselves, I would seriously consider fathering a child with Lucy.

  The sun went down just after half past seven. At five to eight we were standing at the rear of the hotel looking out across the illuminated car park. That was where the first murder victim had died.

  The second-hand on my watch ticked inexorably onward. We waited ten minutes. We waited another five.

  ‘She’s not coming,’ I said. ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘She could just have got held up on the way,’ Lucy said. ‘Give her a bit of time.’

  I clenched my fists in my pockets. The last few hours in the hotel room had been a fusillade of agitated phone calls. Belle’s father’s sister called, in tears. She believed her parents had died in an accident and I let her go on thinking that.

  ‘Where’s Belle?’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t understand why it should be so hard to find Belle.’

  Which was pretty much what Didrik said when he phoned.

  ‘Martin, we’ve searched every last bush on that island,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but she isn’t there.’

&
nbsp; ‘I already knew that,’ I said.

  But Didrik wasn’t listening.

  ‘We’re dragging the water round the island,’ he said. ‘We’re going to find her. At any cost. You have my word on that.’

  As if there wasn’t one hell of a difference between looking for Belle on land and at the bottom of the sea.

  ‘When are you coming home?’ he said.

  ‘We’ve checked the flights and we can’t get away from here until first thing tomorrow morning,’ I said.

  That was how we came to be in Galveston that evening. That was why we decided to go ahead with our meeting with Denise Barton, in spite of everything. I was a long way from being finished with my thoughts about everything that had happened, but I did know I wasn’t going to stop looking for Belle until I found her.

  Dead or alive.

  In order to do that successfully, I needed someone like Denise. Someone with the mark of evil branded on the back of her neck and her name inscribed in the register of Preston’s Riding School.

  While we waited for Denise to turn up, I received another phone call from Boris. I’d already spoken to him twice more since he confirmed what I had heard from Didrik. The Boris who had broken down in his shame at having failed, sobbing down the phone, was gone. This time I was speaking to a man who, like me, believed he had been dragged into a full-scale war.

  ‘I’m not giving up until I know who’s behind this,’ Boris said. ‘My informers will work day and night to dig out information about who we’re after. It might take a bit of time, but believe me, I’m not going to let this go as long as I live. Never.’

  ‘It’s to your honour that you want to do the right thing,’ I said. ‘But I want you to know that I don’t hold you responsible for anything, Boris. You did your best. What happened is my fault, and mine alone. I thought I understood what I was going up against. I didn’t.’

  My voice started to get hoarse as I concluded my speech.

  ‘I can only say how seriously fucking sorry I am for dragging you into this. I’ll do all I can to keep the police away from you.’

  I said that for my own benefit as well as Boris’s. Didrik was already wondering what I was involved in. It wouldn’t look good if it came out that I had links to the mafia on top of everything else.

  ‘We both know you can’t do this on your own,’ Boris said. ‘Martin, promise me that you won’t try to get out of this on your own. Because you’ll never manage it. We made the mistake of underestimating our opponent. We won’t do that again. Okay?’

  That was when I caught sight of her. She was standing in the shadow of some large bushes, out of reach of the lights in the car park. Denise was shuffling nervously on the spot, glancing at her watch.

  I nudged Lucy and nodded in Denise’s direction.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said into the phone. ‘Speak later.’

  ‘You’re not hanging up until you promise not to do anything stupid on your own,’ Boris said.

  I couldn’t promise that.

  ‘Look after yourself,’ I said, and switched my mobile off.

  We hurried towards Denise Barton. Boris was wrong. He couldn’t help me to get out of this. And nor could Didrik.

  I’ve never felt so alone.

  43

  ‘It isn’t a riding school,’ Denise Barton said. ‘Not only that, anyway. It’s mainly a brothel. Or rather the head office of the business.’

  We had moved away from the streetlights and were standing behind a large van that was parked beside a high wall. The sky was black and studded with stars. A beautiful backdrop to a life that otherwise resembled hell on earth.

  ‘I don’t know how they recruit other girls. They found me at the hotel.’

  ‘Who are “they”?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know. They seem to exist all over Texas.’

  ‘What do they do? Other than pimping?’

  ‘Drugs, mainly. But I don’t know anything about that side of it.’

  ‘Are they active in other countries?’

  ‘Mexico.’

  ‘Europe?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think someone in the network has links to Sweden. Well . . . I know they have.’

  ‘Sara Tell and Jenny Woods were from Sweden.’

  Denise looked away and felt for something in her pocket. She took out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and pulled one out, along with a lighter. Her hands were shaking as she tried to light it.

  ‘Did you know Sara and Jenny well?’ Lucy said.

  Denise nodded.

  ‘We were friends. Proper friends. But we didn’t see each other often. Only when Sara was in Galveston with her stuck-up family. I saw Jenny even less. She sometimes came to visit Sara.’

  ‘There were rumours that Sara worked as a prostitute here in Galveston,’ I said.

  ‘We all did. Not just in Galveston. We worked wherever we got gigs.’

  ‘So you no longer work for Lucifer’s network?’ I said.

  I noticed her flinch when I mentioned Lucifer’s name.

  She shook her head and took a deep drag on the cigarette.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Well . . . I’m not sure you can actually stop. Ever. But I’m taking a break.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’ Lucy said.

  Denise blew smoke over her shoulder.

  ‘I got pregnant and things got all fucked up when I got rid of the kid. Infections and stuff.’

  My stomach churned and I put my hand on the wall to help keep my balance.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be. Worse things have happened to others. Sara, for instance.’

  ‘Did you ever talk about how she came to start working for Lucifer?’ I said, trying to get back to the question of how a Swedish girl would have come into contact with a pimp and drug baron in Texas.

  Denise sucked greedily on her cigarette. It was a habit I’ve never understood. How some people can make themselves feel better by breathing in substances that damage their bodies for years afterwards.

  ‘Lucifer works with what you could call talent scouts,’ she said. ‘They do a lot of their work on the internet, but also out on the streets. If they find a girl who would fit in Lucifer’s stable they conduct an evaluation. If she fits the bill she gets offered a place. Most girls say yes. The ones who say no run for their lives. But you don’t know that until you have to do it. Mind you, it was different with Sara. She was recruited straight from the streets in Stockholm.’

  This was new. We hadn’t been aware that Sara had been involved in prostitution in Stockholm.

  ‘What’s the attraction?’ Lucy said. ‘Why would a girl want to be part of Lucifer’s network?’

  Denise looked up at the sky with a sigh.

  ‘No one tells you it’s Lucifer’s network. Not to start with. And they pay really well. Much better than other people. And . . . like I said, they make it clear that it’s possible to turn them down. But that anything might happen if you do. They’re not good with rejection.’

  Practical, I thought. Making sure there’s an element of fear right from the start.

  ‘So who pays to have sex with Lucifer’s girls?’ I said.

  ‘Rich guys who demand discretion.’

  ‘And the connection to the riding school?’

  ‘The riding school is like the mother ship. I don’t understand how the police missed it in their investigation. That’s where the whole operation is administered from. Sometimes you meet clients there, but usually somewhere else. Hotels and so on. It’s important that you don’t have to travel too far, because otherwise it would be impossible to combine it with another job.’

  ‘So the girls don’t see enough clients to make a living from prostitution?’ Lucy said.

  Ash tumbled from Denise’s cigarette, falling like grey rain to the tarmac.

  ‘Oh yes, they sure do. But you’re not allowed to do it if you haven’t got another job. It’s important that you’re not turning tricks the whole time. You need a co
ver story; that helps protect the organisation.’

  I was starting to feel properly sick now. I’ve paid for a lot of things with my money, but never a fuck.

  ‘Like we said, we paid a visit to the riding school,’ I said. ‘You and the other girls are registered to look after the horses. Why?’

  Denise shrugged.

  ‘Maybe to explain our connection to the riding school if the cops or anyone else ever asks?’

  I bought that explanation.

  ‘We’ve heard that Sara was involved with drugs,’ Lucy said.

  ‘That’s not true. Lucifer’s girls aren’t allowed to do stuff like that; they have to keep themselves clean.’

  A car drove past with its lights dipped. It parked a few spaces away from us. We stood in silence as the driver locked the car and walked off.

  ‘The tattoos you all have at the back of your necks,’ I said. ‘What do they mean?’

  Denise’s hand went automatically to her neck.

  ‘They’re our aliases,’ she said, and the shame she exuded as she touched her own skin was painful to witness. ‘I refused to let them do it, but in the end I realised I didn’t have a choice. The tattoos are also a signal to other people that we belong to Lucifer and should therefore be left alone if there’s ever any trouble.’

  ‘Dear God,’ Lucy said. ‘Just how big is this network?’

  Denise looked at her through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Haven’t you figured that out yet? It’s huge. You can’t escape it.’

  That was one thing I couldn’t buy. Evil international empires only exist in bad films and the fevered fantasies of sick minds. But I could accept that there was a large criminal network in Texas that was able to influence the police. But the notion that ‘you can’t escape it’ seemed a bit far-fetched. I wished Denise could be a bit more specific, but I was starting to understand that she was far too far down the food-chain to be able to give us any detailed information.

  And I could tell she was starting to get stressed. She’d have to go soon and we’d be left standing there with our unanswered questions.

  ‘Sara’s son,’ I said, in a sharper voice than I intended. ‘Did you know she got pregnant and had a son?’