Buried Lies

by Kristina Ohlsson

  ‘I’m going to find her,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to find her.’

  We didn’t get much further than that. When I put my mobile down I was in tears as well. What would happen to my mum if anything happened to Belle? I was hardly a source of joy to her, and her only daughter was already dead.

  Frustrated, I wiped the tears from my cheeks. Real fighters don’t cry. They arm themselves.

  We slipped into Police Headquarters after stopping off at the flat to dump our bags and change clothes. Didrik himself came down to fetch us. The grief in his voice was genuine when he said how sorry he was about what had happened to Belle. But I didn’t want his sympathy. I wanted an apology, and I wanted my daughter back.

  Once again we sat in one of the interview rooms rather than Didrik’s office. But a number of things were different this time. One of Didrik’s colleagues was present, but remained almost ridiculously passive during the meeting. We were offered coffee and sandwiches, and said yes to both. A weak man is a weak man. And everyone needs to eat.

  Didrik gave a brief summary of what they had found out about the fire. If it weren’t for the fact that Belle was missing they’d probably have written it off as an accident. Now they were leaning more towards arson.

  ‘Have you done any toxicology analysis of the bodies?’ I said.

  The sandwich was surprisingly good. There was no way it had been made in Police Headquarters. Everything prepared there tastes of rubber.

  There was something wary about Didrik’s expression that I would have reacted to under different circumstances. But the warning sign passed me by.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ he said.

  ‘Because I think it’s odd that four people should be sleeping so soundly in the same house that none of them managed to escape the fire. I’ve been in that house. They can’t all have been sleeping upstairs. The ones sleeping downstairs ought to have had time to get out.’

  Didrik folded his hands behind his head. It was a gesture I associated with my grandfather, usually when he was about to say something patronising to my mother.

  ‘So what you’re trying to say is that you think one or more of the victims was sedated or given tranquillisers so that they couldn’t get out of the house?’

  I took another bite of the sandwich.

  ‘Either that or they were knocked unconscious before the fire was started,’ I said when I had swallowed my mouthful.

  ‘Interesting,’ Didrik said. ‘Very interesting.’

  ‘How so?’ Lucy said.

  Didrik lowered his hands.

  ‘Because that’s quite correct. The two men who were found on the ground floor both had injuries to their skulls which indicate that they were already unconscious when the fire broke out.’

  He fell silent and looked at me.

  I let go of the sandwich and it fell onto the plate it had been served on.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ I said, doing my best not to raise my voice. ‘You’re seriously sitting there implying that there’s something suspicious about me questioning the fact that none of the adults got out of the house?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Didrik said calmly. ‘You’re a smart man. That sort of thing is easy to work out. No, what surprises me is that you haven’t shown the slightest interest in who the men are, or what they were doing in Belle’s grandparents’ home.’

  Damn.

  As I struggled not to look like I’d been rumbled, Didrik went on.

  ‘But perhaps there were four adults in the summerhouse when you dropped Belle off?’

  He answered his own question.

  ‘It’s probably hard for you to know. Bearing in mind that you handed Belle over to her grandfather at the quayside.’

  I thought about coming up with a lie. Something that could explain why I hadn’t been curious about the number of adults in the little summerhouse. I could have said I’d spoken to Belle over the phone and that she had said that Grandma and Granddad had guests. But I knew that wouldn’t sound believable.

  ‘Come on, Martin,’ Didrik said. ‘I don’t hold you responsible for the arson attack. So tell me. Who were the guys we found on the ground floor?’

  I took my eyes off Didrik and looked out of the window. Where were all the clouds coming from? And all the damn rain? It was as if the weather gods had decided not to give up until they had drowned the whole city.

  I had no idea how easy or difficult it would be for the police to identify the bodies. And I had no idea if the police might then be able to link the men to Boris. But I realised it would hardly help my case if it came out that I’d had dealings with the Russian mafia. So I needed to distract Didrik’s attention, and regain the initiative in the conversation.

  ‘What were Jenny and Bobby doing out in the middle of the night? As late as, what, two o’clock, half past two?’

  Didrik’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘We have our theories.’

  ‘They were lured outside?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What do you mean maybe? It’s perfectly obvious that it wasn’t a coincidence that—’

  ‘I can’t discuss this with you. You have to understand that.’

  Of course I did. I realised that the police had no more than theories, and that they couldn’t prove anything. I welcomed every gap of that sort in the investigation. Every gap was a point of weakness. Every weakness hindered them from remanding me in custody. My fingers drummed silently on the armrest of my chair.

  ‘Do you know what Lucy and I were doing in Texas?’ I said.

  Didrik threw his hands out.

  ‘We visited a magnificent riding school.’

  Didrik looked at me suspiciously.

  ‘A riding school?’

  ‘Yep. We made a little detour on the way down to Galveston.’

  ‘I see. And what did you find there?’

  ‘A place where you can be struck by a very particular form of the blues.’

  46

  Why was I still a free man?

  That question was tormenting me as I left Police Headquarters. I kept comparing my situation to the one Sara had found herself in. Whoever it was who had framed Sara for five murders had done a thorough job of it. In the end she had even been forced to join in by delivering a number of bizarre confessions. No similar demands had been made of me. But my daughter was missing and no one had been in touch with either an explanation or any demands of what I had to do in order to get her back. Whoever had decided to blast my life and my honour into little pieces was taking a break. The question was: what were they waiting for?

  I hated the feeling that my future was in someone else’s hands. I had been turned into a puppet. Of all the roles I had played in my life, this was by far the one I loathed most.

  My Porsche was waiting for us outside the main entrance. Didrik handed me the keys.

  ‘Drive carefully,’ he said.

  I drove the Porsche and Lucy the hire car. Once we had dropped it off at the rental firm she jumped in and sat beside me.

  ‘What now?’ she said.

  I was itching all over. The car felt dirty after having been with the police. Obviously they must have bugged it. Otherwise they would almost certainly have kept it. Even though Didrik hadn’t mentioned a word about it, I knew they had been in my home and conducted an invisible search of the property. Nothing illegal about that, and it’s obviously nicer if they can do it in such a way that isn’t visible. I’d been struck by a number of odd things the moment we opened the door when we got back from the airport. The very thought of Didrik’s goons creeping about playing cops and robbers in my home made me feel sick.

  ‘I’ll tell you in a bit,’ I said in response to Lucy’s question.

  We drove through Stockholm in silence. The countless dull buildings stretched up to the sky. Stockholm is so predictable, so simple. Beautiful but feeble. Like a woman in some chivalrous tale from the 1300s.

  We lack substance, I thought. Sweden hasn’t become impoverished,
the way people keep saying. It’s become insubstantial, and that’s worse.

  I pulled up outside the front door. When we were in the stairwell I stopped.

  ‘There’s a good chance we’re being both bugged and followed,’ I said. ‘So I don’t want us to stay in the flat. Let’s grab a few clothes and get a taxi to a hotel. Or walk, that almost makes it easier to shake anyone following us. We pay for the hotel in cash. We don’t speak more than necessary in the flat. Okay?’

  Lucy nodded.

  ‘Okay.’

  But I could see hesitation in her face. She was saying that everything was okay, but it wasn’t, and it hadn’t been for several days. Lucy was losing her enthusiasm at an accelerating rate, and I didn’t know how to handle that. I barely had enough energy to keep myself going.

  I held her tight in the lift.

  ‘This will be over soon,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

  It would be difficult to find a more empty promise, but just then I had nothing but meaningless words to offer. It worked. Lucy found the strength to repack the case she had taken to the States, and soon we were on our way back out.

  ‘I didn’t like the fact that Didrik asked about the men who died out at Belle’s grandparents’ house,’ Lucy said when we thought we had probably shaken anyone following us.

  ‘Believe me,’ I said. ‘Neither did I.’

  We were half-running along the pavement. It had stopped raining, but there was thunder rumbling rather too close for comfort. We must have been walking for at least ten minutes before I noticed that Lucy was crying.

  ‘Baby, what is it?’

  She kept walking and I followed her.

  ‘I’m so fucking knackered. And terrified. How are we going to find Belle? How, Martin?’

  I swallowed hard. I was in a pretty manic state. The only thing – the only thing – that was stopping me from falling apart was the thought that to do so would be as good as signing Belle’s death warrant. And that was an impossible thought. I had already let Belle down in so many ways. It couldn’t end with me killing her by giving up.

  We turned another corner. Soon we reached Blasieholmen, heading for the Grand Hôtel.

  ‘We’ll be seeing Boris later this evening,’ I said.

  Lucy stopped dead.

  ‘Boris? Come off it, we can hardly trust him again?’

  I stopped too.

  ‘Look, it’s not his fault Belle is missing.’

  ‘No, and it’s not his fault we didn’t manage to get hold of Lucifer, even though we followed his excellent advice. “Don’t look for Lucifer. Let him look for you instead.” What a fucking joke.’

  Angrily she started to walk again.

  ‘We’re not seeing Boris because he’s got some incredible master plan to share with us,’ I said.

  ‘Really? So what’s the point of seeing him, then?’ Lucy said.

  Sarcasm seemed to have become a permanent feature of her voice.

  ‘You’ll see,’ I said curtly. ‘He’s managed to find some interesting material that he wants to show us.’

  ‘What?’

  We had reached Stallgatan. The Grand Hôtel was less than two hundred metres away.

  ‘He’s not entirely unlike Lucifer,’ I said. ‘He’s got contacts in the police as well. It looks like he’s managed to get hold of a list of people who were in the same gang as Sara here in Stockholm. You know, the one she belonged to before she left for the States.’

  Lucy clutched the shoulder-strap of her handbag.

  ‘And what do we want that for?’ Lucy said.

  ‘We need more names, Lucy,’ I said. ‘Names and faces. I’m not saying Boris can give us all the answers, but we need to start looking somewhere. Because we have to find the link to Lucifer’s network in Texas. And we desperately need to find the guy who came to the office and dragged me into this whole circus.’

  Obviously it was a gamble. Maybe bad, maybe good. The only person who had mentioned the terrible company Sara used to keep was her sister Marion. There wasn’t a word about it in the file from the preliminary investigation, which was odd. It would have been an advantage for the prosecutor if he could have pointed to a history of violence. Didrik had said they had chosen not to include that information because it couldn’t be proven. So there was information, but it had ended up in what was known as the dump. Surplus material from preliminary investigations that couldn’t be included in the final files. Material I had requested but hadn’t had time to read.

  I was thinking that there might be someone in Sara’s network of thugs who stuck out from the crowd. Someone who could explain how she managed to find out about Lucifer’s network in Texas and what it could offer her while she was still in Stockholm. It was a big step to go from beating people up on the streets to selling her own body, so what had persuaded Sara to take that decision?

  I reminded myself that Sara could hardly be counted as one of the more rational people I had ever come across. She was damaged. Her own father had sold her to his friends. Perhaps Sara saw the journey to Texas as a chance to get revenge. She could sell herself on her own terms, and make a lot of money at the same time. In her naivety she probably hadn’t counted on getting beaten up.

  Lotus blues.

  Bloody hell.

  Lucy refused to meet Boris so I went on my own.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ I said to her back.

  She was standing looking out of the window with her arms folded. Her hair was loose and hung like a cloak down her back. She didn’t turn round.

  I left Lucy in the hotel room and walked quickly through the long corridors of the Grand. It’s a strange feeling, staying in a hotel in your home town. You become a visitor to your own reality and everyday life. I wasn’t at all sure I was happy with the experience, not that it really mattered. We weren’t going to be staying at the Grand Hôtel for the rest of our lives. Just until everything calmed down. Until we had got Belle back.

  It was pouring with rain when I left the hotel. I opened a large umbrella and set off towards Skeppsholmen, where I had arranged to meet Boris. But my ordinary mobile was switched off. If the police wanted to find me now they would have a hard time. That was also the point. I wanted to avoid being taken by surprise by them while I was with Boris. Partly for his sake, but mostly for my own.

  We met at the back of the Måsen restaurant. He was standing beneath a raised veranda sheltering from the rain. I closed the umbrella and went and stood beside him.

  ‘I know I’ve already said this, but I really am so damn sorry about what happened,’ he said.

  I knew he was. I would have been too if I were him.

  ‘My mistake was far worse than yours,’ I said. ‘I should have known better than to leave her behind.’

  ‘I could never have imagined . . .’

  ‘None of us could.’

  I had no defence against the pain. The violent force of the anxiety I felt genuinely surprised me. Without Belle, the rest of my life looked like a pitch-black road stretching ahead of me, and there was no way I’d be able to handle that.

  ‘The police say the men who were found on the ground floor of the house had head injuries which suggest they’d been knocked unconscious before the fire started. Or before they managed to get out of the building, anyway,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I heard that from one of my sources,’ Boris said. ‘My lads must have gone into the house for some reason. After all, they were watching Belle from outside, not inside. Close enough to have a good overview, but far enough away not to be seen.’

  I had trouble finding words.

  ‘Perhaps the fire wasn’t part of the original plan,’ I said. ‘Perhaps your guys saw someone break into the house to snatch Belle and decided to catch them unawares. And then it all went wrong. God knows how, but they ended up unconscious.’

  ‘Looks that way,’ Boris said. ‘Once my lads were knocked out, torching the whole house probably looked like the best option. That’s what I’d have done. Fire is a good
way of destroying unnecessary evidence.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I said sharply. ‘You’d have set fire to two innocent elderly people like Belle’s grandparents just to get rid of evidence?’

  Boris started to wave his hands.

  ‘Stop it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t phrase that very well. I . . . I don’t actually know what I would have done.’

  Neither of us felt like continuing that particular debate. He pulled out a folded envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. In spite of his shaved head and bushy eyebrows, he had one of the kindest faces I have ever seen on a man.

  ‘This is what I’ve got for you,’ he said, handing me the envelope.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, and took it.

  ‘Take care of the contents. It cost quite a bit to get hold of.’

  ‘Forgive me, but I’d rather not know how you got hold of this information,’ I said.

  It was best if I didn’t even hear that Boris had bribed individual police officers in order to help me, even though I realised that was what must have happened.

  ‘Your contact,’ I said. ‘Was he or she absolutely certain that the names mentioned in this envelope are the people Sara Tell used to hang around the city with?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ Boris said. ‘Everything fits. The time when they were active, their ages, and how many of them there were. Sara’s name is mentioned in one memo, where an anonymous source identifies her as a gang member, but because the police didn’t have anything else on her they left her alone when they went for the rest of the group. They probably thought she’d sort herself out if the gang was broken up.’

  Maybe it was a sensible supposition. The police could hardly have known that the unthinkable would happen. That Sara would use her contacts to get herself into an even worse situation.

  I clutched the envelope tightly in my hand.

  ‘Did you manage to get pictures too?’ I said.

  ‘No problem. Passport photographs of all of them. Some of them are probably a few years old now, but with a bit of luck they’ll do, well enough.’

  I was inclined to agree. As I’d said to Lucy, I didn’t know what to expect. I just knew I had to start somewhere. And I was hoping I might recognise one of the members of Sara’s gang. Someone who could explain a few of the many things I couldn’t get my head round.