Buried Lies

by Kristina Ohlsson

  ‘Thanks, Boris,’ I said.

  He shook his head, his mouth tense.

  ‘You don’t have to thank me,’ he said. ‘Not for anything.’

  I didn’t have the energy to offer him any comfort. It was as simple as that. I’d already said he shouldn’t blame himself for what had happened, and that was all I could do for him. If that wasn’t enough he’d have to turn to someone else for help to come to terms with his own shortcomings.

  ‘You’ll be in touch if you want help talking to any of those jokers?’

  He nodded towards the envelope.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, hoping that wouldn’t be necessary.

  Boris glanced at an abandoned wheelbarrow a short distance from us. It was full of rotten apples. The sight of the sodden windfalls made me feel even more miserable.

  ‘So what’s your plan now, Martin?’ Boris said.

  ‘I need to understand how Sara ended up in Lucifer’s stable. And I want to find the man who came to my office and figure out who sent him. Because I still haven’t worked out why I was asked to do what I was, nor who was indirectly responsible for the commission.’

  Boris coughed into the crook of his arm.

  ‘You haven’t?’ he said slowly.

  I looked at him warily.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I haven’t.’

  Boris hesitated. A bird landed on the pile of apples and started pecking at the dark flesh.

  ‘Can I hazard a guess, or have you had enough of those?’

  I held back a sigh.

  ‘It didn’t turn out too well when you tipped me off about how to make contact with Lucifer,’ I said, remembering the way Lucy and I had sat in a hotel room in Houston calling police officers whose names we had found in various newspaper articles.

  Boris twisted his head and looked me in the eye.

  ‘How do you know it didn’t?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It would be a shame to declare that project dead,’ Boris said. ‘How long did you stay in Texas after making those calls? One day? Two?’

  When I opened my mouth to protest he went on.

  ‘How do you know you haven’t already met him, Martin? It sounds like you met a whole load of weird people you didn’t know over the past few days, so you wouldn’t actually be able to tell. And besides, your daughter’s gone missing. I hope and pray that she’s been kidnapped, but we obviously can’t be entirely sure of that.’

  I needed to digest what he had said before I replied.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Go ahead, Boris. Let’s hear your guess as to what this is all about. Because I haven’t got a fucking clue.’

  Boris laughed.

  ‘You’re underestimating yourself, and it doesn’t suit you. If you give it a bit of thought, you can probably figure out what this is about.’

  His mobile buzzed discreetly and he pulled it out of his jacket pocket.

  ‘You’re wondering why someone came to your office and asked you to help a dead woman and find her missing son. So my question is: who in the whole world would care about a serial killer’s kid? Answer: the kid’s father. Or someone else with a strong connection to the child.’

  I’d got that far myself.

  ‘Lucifer was the child’s father,’ I said.

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘Nope. At least not if we’re to believe what Sara told her friend in Galveston.’

  ‘Fucking hell. Well, then. What else are you wondering about?’

  I jabbed the point of the umbrella at the ground.

  ‘I made it very clear to the guy who came to my office that I wasn’t going to look for the kid. He replied that everything was connected, and that I wouldn’t be able to prove Sara’s innocence unless I understood the child’s role in the story. But I stuck to my guns. I also said I had no intention of going to Texas. Despite that, I still got the job. He didn’t take it to someone else.’

  ‘Which makes you think that there was another purpose, beyond exonerating Sara and finding Mio, because they picked you specifically? A hidden purpose that you’re only now understanding the consequences of?’

  ‘Exactly. Because if the real purpose was just for me to find the child, why frame me for two murders I didn’t commit before I’d even started looking?’

  ‘Maybe because the person who asked you to look for the boy isn’t the same one who has put such effort into ruining you?’

  I opened my mouth, then shut it again. What Boris was describing was a double nightmare. One that couldn’t be true.

  Boris shook his head.

  ‘Now you’re thinking all wrong again,’ he said. ‘You’re assuming both of these forces have sought your attention out of sheer malice alone. But that isn’t necessarily the case. The one who came to see you first, the one who said he was Bobby, might well have been genuine. He wanted nothing more than for you to clear Sara’s name and find her son, if he’s still alive. But the other one, the one who’s trying to wreck your life. Maybe you’d never have crossed his path if it hadn’t been for the fake Bobby.’

  ‘So who is this second person, then? Who doesn’t want me to get justice for Sara and find Mio?’

  More rain had started to fall, harder this time.

  I already knew the answer before Boris said it.

  ‘The real murderer, Martin. Remember, Sara was never actually convicted of any crimes. Her case never even made it to court. Most of the evidence suggests she was forced to confess, for reasons we still don’t know. So who would get seriously fucked off when you start pulling at loose ends and poking about in the shit? The person who’s been feeling nice and safe since Sara’s death, seeing as he’s been able to hide in the shadow of her pathetic confessions.’

  A cold wind gusted off the water. In the distance I could hear a man talking German very loudly.

  I pondered what Boris had just said. It wasn’t remotely implausible. Far from it.

  ‘And Belle?’ I said.

  ‘You get her back once you’ve given the murderer the guarantees he needs to feel safe long-term.’

  Upset, I started to pace up and down, like a badly drawn cartoon.

  ‘But I hardly know anything,’ I said. ‘And what I do know, I’ve already told the police.’

  ‘You’re a right idiot, aren’t you?’ Boris said with a deep sigh. ‘You’ve got to stop that at once. No more contact with the police. Got that? No more contact.’

  ‘That’s not so easy when you’re being investigated about two murders.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn. It’s one thing if the police pick you up. Then it’s obvious that it isn’t voluntary. But you need to break off all other contact. Otherwise you’ll never get Belle back. Do you understand?’

  I understood. But not everything.

  ‘Mio,’ I said.

  ‘You want to talk some more about him?’ Boris said drily.

  ‘There aren’t any pictures of him.’

  ‘What do you mean, no pictures?’

  ‘Nothing in the papers, nothing with the police. Doesn’t that seem weird?’

  Boris shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Not necessarily. Maybe you could tell who his father was by looking at him. In which case his mother probably didn’t want there to be any pictures of him.’

  ‘But Lucifer already knew. That’s why he was pursuing her, and committed murders that he then pinned on her.’

  I had no better explanation, but I knew there was one important detail that was missing.

  ‘Go back to your hotel,’ Boris said, putting his hand on my shoulder. ‘Don’t keep yourself so isolated that you become difficult to trace. Be a bit more patient this time. You can be certain of being contacted in the near future. Even the most hardened bastards would be reluctant to kill a four-year-old girl.’

  I gave him a long glance.

  Was it enough that they were reluctant to kill her? Being reluctant to do something wasn’t the same as refusing or ruling it out.

  Even so, Bor
is’s final sentence gave me the strength to leave him on Skeppsholmen and walk back to the hotel. The envelope Boris had given me contained the promise of fresh leads to follow, and I was no longer oppressed by the crushing conviction that Belle was gone for good.

  But all the renewed energy drained away from me when I opened the door to the hotel room and discovered that it was empty. Lucy was gone. She had left a message for me on my pillow.

  Martin, forgive me, but I can’t do any more of this right now.

  I’m not abandoning you. I just need to be on my own this evening.

  I’ll call tomorrow.

  Love you,

  Lucy

  47

  As the summer night closed around Stockholm I sat awake in my hotel room. Loneliness has so many different dimensions. Most of them I only know because I’ve had them described to me by other people. From a personal point of view, I barely know what loneliness is. I don’t like it, and I avoid it whenever I can.

  But that particular evening I had nowhere to go. Lucy had left, and I didn’t want to pester her. Nothing must be allowed to increase the distance between us. It was bad enough as it was. If I gave her a chance to catch her breath she’d get in touch the following day, just as she’d promised.

  And Belle was gone. I hardly dared to think about her. Panic threatened to consume me entirely. I knew Boris was right. Belle was worth nothing to her kidnapper if she was dead. And even bastards didn’t want a child’s blood on their hands. That was scant solace, the notion that the only thing that could save Belle was if the perpetrator had a functioning conscience and a scrap of morality.

  I opened the envelope Boris had given me. I remembered what I had said to fake Bobby the first time he came to see me.

  ‘Look around you. This isn’t a film studio, this is real.’

  I almost burst out laughing. Loud, nervous laughter. Because the sense of unreality that was eating me up was so overwhelming that nothing felt real any more. My hands were shaking. I daren’t allow myself to have any expectations about the contents of the envelope. Just hopes. And vague ones at that. I couldn’t handle any more disappointments.

  The envelope contained two documents and a number of photographs. One of the documents was an account given to the police by a so-called protected source. That was the one which mentioned Sara Tell’s name. The informant had no first-hand information, but rumour had it that Sara was a member of a violent gang that was going round the centre of Stockholm beating people up.

  The other document was a brief summary of the members of the group the police had chosen to focus on. Four names: three guys and one girl, the same age as Sara. There was no mention of Sara. The only name I recognised was Edvard Svensson, Sara’s ex-boyfriend. His photograph was also at the top of the pile. I recognised him from the picture Sara’s mother had shown me. A shiver ran through me as I recalled my meeting with Sara’s mother. It felt so long ago. As if it had taken place in another age.

  With clumsy fingers I went through the pile of photographs. The next picture was a girl. She had three rings through her nose and a horrible amount of make-up on her face. I had never seen her before.

  The third picture was of a young man I didn’t recognise either. I looked at his face for a long time to see if I could see anything familiar about it, but I couldn’t. I was feeling frustrated. I just wanted to make some progress, to get closer to Belle.

  And in the end that was what happened. With a sense of having closed the circle and come nearer to a solution. Because the last photograph was of the guy who had come to my office claiming to be Bobby Tell.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off his face. It was him, yet it wasn’t. The young man staring out of the photograph had laser-like eyes and features that exuded force and decisiveness. That was hardly the impression he had made when he was pretending to be Bobby. My hand trembled slightly as I held the picture up in front of me.

  Finally, a fucking breakthrough. A far better one than I had dared to hope for.

  At last.

  My first instinct was to call Didrik. Now I had something to show him. A picture of the fake Bobby. But how would I explain where I got it? Didrik could never force me to answer that question, but the fact that I didn’t actually have an answer was a problem. After further consideration I decided not to involve the police. I would try to find the guy on my own.

  His name was written on the back of the photograph. Elias Krom. I picked up the list of gang members, which also gave their official addresses and last-known telephone numbers. Elias lived on Södermalm, close to Tantolunden Park. I sat for a long while with the sheet of paper in my hand. Everything would have felt much easier if I’d had someone to discuss it with. I actually got as far as reaching for my phone to call Lucy. But in the end I put it down again. She had asked to be left in peace that night. I risked losing more than I could imagine if I didn’t respect her wishes.

  I must have run through my options a hundred times before I reached a decision. I didn’t have that many choices, but the factors affecting them were practically infinite. Time had dissolved and lost its normally solid structure. The darkness told me it was night, but my brain felt ready for action.

  In the end I left the hotel room. Armed with nothing but my intellect and battered judgement, I headed out into the streets to find a man who, in spite of his stated intentions, had helped to ruin my life.

  That sort of thing couldn’t go unpunished.

  Fate solves a lot of things for us. Elias Krom wasn’t home when I got there. But his girlfriend was. It was after one o’clock at night when I rang the doorbell. Answering the door at that time ought to have been an unusual occurrence. But she still did so.

  I had evidently woken her up. And it was just as evident that she wasn’t expecting anyone.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said.

  I couldn’t help thinking that society hadn’t yet become utterly racist. There were still women who would open the door in the middle of the night to an unknown black man who looked like shit.

  ‘I’m looking for Elias.’

  ‘He’s not home.’

  ‘I’m a lawyer, I need to see him as a matter of urgency. When are you expecting him back?’

  ‘What do you want?’ she repeated.

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve seen the news in the past few days, but four people were killed recently in a fire in the archipelago. That’s one of the things I want to talk to him about.’

  The girlfriend fell silent. Ordinarily I ask myself if I want to sleep with women I meet as a matter of course. Not because it’s important, but because it’s an entertaining diversion. But I couldn’t say what Elias’s girlfriend looked like, even at gunpoint.

  ‘Elias drives a taxi. He ought to be home in an hour or so. He should have been home by midnight but his shift got extended.’

  I had spotted an all-night café on the other side of the street. I could sit and wait there until he got home.

  ‘Tell Elias I’m in the café over the road,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  The café smelled of cigarette smoke. Maybe the owner smoked in the kitchen in spite of the ban. I certainly didn’t see any lit cigarettes among the few customers sitting there.

  I took a seat by the window and ordered a black coffee, then was left alone. My life was no longer my own. It had been torn apart by forces I couldn’t even name. Now I was trying to put the pieces back together in a squalid little café on Södermalm, a part of the city that I otherwise try to avoid as much as possible.

  I hadn’t dared leave any of the material at the hotel, so was carrying everything with me in a shoulder-bag. The coffee was steaming in its cup. It looked more like tar when I took a closer look. Whether or not it was drinkable was unclear.

  The zip on the bag made a noise as I opened it. I put the pile of papers on the table and started to look through them. They included the notes from our trip to Texas, as well as ‘Sara’s’ diary and the wretched train ticket from Houston to San
Antonio. And the envelope Boris had given me.

  At the bottom of the pile was the brochure we had been given at Preston’s Riding School. I hadn’t known that Lucy had been a horsey girl before. I hated knowing that there were things in her past that I would never know about. Either you’ve lived your whole lives together or you haven’t. If you meet later in life you can spend thousands of hours talking about yourself and still not manage to cover everything.

  I glanced through the brochure while I kept an eye on the door to Elias Krom’s building. I assumed his girlfriend would phone and warn him that I’d been. It didn’t matter. Elias could run away to the moon if he liked, I would still find him. If he had any sense at all he’d realise that.

  Preston’s Riding School. It was easy to understand that someone from Sara’s background had been drawn to that sort of environment. Denise Barton in Galveston hadn’t said much about the conditions. How much did the girls earn? Did they earn more if they got beaten up? I felt my frustration mounting inside me, and I felt like throwing the cup of coffee at the wall.

  I forced myself to focus my energy on the material I had in front of me rather than on all the gaps in my knowledge. I had tipped off Sheriff Stiller about the riding school. It was laughable to think that he’d care. He hadn’t cared so far, and he wasn’t likely to care in the future either. It was one of the things I had reacted to most strongly. That no one we had met had been willing to admit that they could have linked Sara Tell to Lucifer’s activities.

  I leafed quickly through the brochure from the riding school. Glossy pictures of horses and smart buildings interspersed with tedious, boastful information about the facilities on offer. It wasn’t until I reached the back of the brochure that something caught my eye. A brief historical summary. The riding school was ten years old. To mark its fifth anniversary a former American President who was mad about horses had joined in the celebrations. One of the President’s nephews had also sat on the school’s inaugural committee. Impressive. I had to admit that as a front for prostitution and drug dealing, the school was convincing. From a distance there was no reason to suspect anything. Not if a relative of a former president had been on the committee. It seemed obvious to me that anyone with that sort of public profile would be unaware of the true purpose of the organisation. It was important to show that they had nothing to hide. In that respect they had succeeded admirably. The riding school had remained unscathed when Lucifer’s network was broken up a few years ago.