Love and Other Lies

by Ben McPherson

  Dedication

  For Francis

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Imagine a girl

  Prologue

  The Foreigner One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  The Skeptic Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  The Spectator Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  The Assassin Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  The Hunter Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Imagine a girl

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Ben McPherson

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Imagine a girl

  Imagine a girl.

  Imagine her sleeping alone on a grassy bank at the side of a glistening fjord.

  If you were here beside her you might wonder if the girl is breathing, she’s lying so very still. When at last you see the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest you feel foolish for doubting the everyday miracle of breath.

  Her kingfisher dress glints like the sun on the water. Seventeen, you might guess, though in truth the girl is fifteen and wishes she were older. A peaceful face, strong-jawed and determined. But something about her makes you want to protect her as she sleeps. All that life ahead of her: all those people not yet met, all those choices not yet made.

  And now she’s here, on this island, sleeping in the dappled light beneath this tree, because the thought of all those people—of all those possible lives—has left her nervous and exhausted. And so she sleeps away her fears, and in her dreams she is limitless.

  In the city at the top of the fjord there is a flash. Then a silence. Then a roar like a world ending. Glass drops in sheets from the fronts of buildings, becomes sand under the feet of the people as they flee. Songbirds grow silent, then take to the wing. Even crows.

  Seconds pass.

  In the suburbs people murmur Thunder, though the sky is clear and the air pressure low. Dogs do not bark. Cats cower by fences, looking up.

  Again, seconds pass.

  On her bank by the water the girl hears nothing. For a moment the air tightens. The surface of the water grows opaque. Boats rise, then fall. Hawsers thrum against masts; hulls strain against ropes.

  Bare-legged in her sundress of kingfisher-blue, the girl does not stir.

  The shock wave from the bomb has passed.

  Prologue

  Midsummer’s Eve

  June 23

  She blinked hard, twice.

  Some change in the sound of the day had woken her. The pattern of waves against the wooden dock. A boat engine idling.

  The engine was thrown into reverse. It whined, then cut.

  She sat up, turned to face the water.

  A policeman was swinging his foot from boat to shore. A look, she thought, as he glanced down at her. Steely. His uniform was neatly pressed, his belt a little tight. Everything about him was sleek: his flashlight, his nightstick, both shiny and new.

  She rearranged herself on the grass, raised herself up on an elbow.

  Light danced on the fjord; the mainland hazy now and far away. In the policeman’s hand the nylon of the rope shone blistering white. Unused, she thought. Strange. The politi decal on the boat was fresh, the aluminum of the hull unscuffed.

  The policeman knelt, tied off the boat at the bow. A second officer leaned out from behind the wheel and dropped a figure-eight loop around a pillar. He cut the engine, pinched sweat from his eyes.

  Beside her the phone vibrated against the warm earth. She turned it over.

  Ropes tightened. Two battered travel bags landed on the dock. The second policeman stepped from the boat, knelt by the first bag, unzipped it, and examined something inside. He stood and handed it to the first policeman.

  Cracked leather, water-stained and scuffed. Also wrong, she thought lazily.

  The two men were nodding at each other. Small eyes, high cheekbones, prominent teeth. Small mouths too. They could almost be brothers.

  “Nothing to worry about,” said the first. He had noticed her staring. He had spoken in English.

  He flashed her a smile that was anything but a smile.

  She smoothed out her sundress. Why would she be worried?

  The same non-smile from the second policeman. “Gather your friends.” They began to head up the rise.

  Her phone began to ring. She rejected the call with a text.

  Somewhere out of sight an invisible hand was tapping a microphone. Voices reflected back at her from across the fjord, over-amplified, heavily distorted.

  On the rise, the officers were facing each other. They were checking each other’s equipment, tapping each other down.

  She found herself thinking of her father, though she did not know why. She pushed the thought from her mind.

  She looked at the boat straining at the dock. Farther up the coast people were swimming, but here on the island, down by the water, there was no one about. From here you could see only the path that led from the boat dock up toward the camp. She looked up again toward the rise. She could not see the men.

  Her phone vibrated. A text from Leela:

  You coming?

  It had been a mistake to take the ferry on her own. The people on the way over had seemed sophisticated, long and cool in their shades and their sun hats, though many were younger than she was. She had hung back, embarrassed, let them pass up the rise ahead of her, wishing Leela was there with her. It was getting harder and harder to imagine herself among the thronging crowds. More and more tempting to turn and head for home.

  She could hear the applause now. Stirring music played.

  She texted a reply:

  Soon.

  The boat key was in the ignition. Strange, she thought. Tempting fate. She looked at the outboard motor. Evinrude 225 E-TEC. Barely used, its white surface completely unscuffed. She looked about her.

  No one was watching as she stepped aboard at the bow onto the aluminum tread-plate deck. The boat barely tipped. She sat cautiously at the wheel. She was breaking some law, she was certain of that. But she was fifteen, and she was alone. If anyone stopped her she would speak English. She would be naturally nervous and hesitant, and that would work in her favor. They would let her off with a warning.

  Sorry, Officer.

  She clicked the key into the first position. Lights on the console. A loud chime. She swung the wheel to the left, felt the gentle tamping as behind her the engine turned in its mount. Everything was expensive. Everything was new. She turned, guiltily—a sudden sense of being watched—looked up toward the rise. No sign of the officers. No sign of anyone.

  She slid the key around to position two. The engine thrummed quietly into life.

  Where ARE you?<
br />
  She texted back:

  Come down to the dock.

  Of course she wasn’t going to, but something about the idea of taking the boat appealed to her. It wasn’t even tied right. And there was no one here to tell her she couldn’t . . .

  She stood up, leaving the boat in idle. Everything was showroom-fresh. No oil spills, no salt stains. But the decal on the starboard side was cracked, as if a hand had slipped. Sloppy, she thought, on a police boat. And the hatches . . . why were there no padlocks on the hatches?

  On the bench seat at the stern was a blue metal box, rusted at the corners, held shut with a combination lock. She looked at the box. It seemed out of place, like the travel bags.

  Her phone vibrated.

  Police want to talk to us. You need to get up here.

  She texted back:

  Sigh . . .

  She heard the police boat strain against the jetty, leaned out and looked down. The rubber cladding on the dock was marking the hull. Had they forgotten their fenders? A little random.

  The port locker was empty. In the starboard locker there was an anchor, a chain, and a rope. The rope was not tied to the chain, and the chain was not tied to the anchor.

  Also random.

  What police boat would be so unready? Where was the radio? The life vests? The fenders? She dialed Leela, raised the phone to her ear.

  Ringing on the line. Leela’s voice. “Finally. Where are you?”

  “You know that feeling where you kind of know you’re asleep? Which probably means you’re only dozing?”

  “You were asleep?”

  “On the grass, by the water. It was nice.”

  Leela didn’t sigh, but she could feel the edge in her friend’s voice. “You need to be up here.”

  She put the phone on speaker, laid it on the deck before the aft locker.

  “I know,” she said. “But someone left a brand-new boat down here with the key in the ignition.”

  “Now,” said Leela. “You need to be here.”

  “We actually could take it out. For, I don’t know, twenty minutes or something.”

  “Or did you somehow not hear what happened in Oslo today?”

  “Literally no one would know. Why? What happened?”

  “There was this huge explosion. The town hall.”

  She could feel her mind as it refocused. “Sounds bad.”

  “It’s most probably a bomb,” said Leela.

  “A bomb,” she echoed.

  She felt bad. She should call her father, tell him she was okay. But what if her father begged her to come home?

  Of course she would never take the boat. She was processing, or something. An explosion in town. Police here to talk to them. She really should call her father.

  So far from home.

  She picked up the metal box. It was heavy. She shook it, but whatever was inside it was carefully held in place.

  “So,” said Leela. “So, the police have information they need to give us. And the marshals are taking a roll call. I already told them you were here. Don’t make a liar of me.”

  “Did I ask you to lie?”

  Leela sighed theatrically. “Give me a break . . .”

  The metal box looked important, but also somehow wrong, like an object kept outside in the rain.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be three minutes.”

  “Maybe we could go for a ride later?”

  “No,” she said. “No, this was pretty much our only chance.”

  What was it that made her take the key from the ignition? What made her pick up the metal box and stow it in her backpack? Some instinct that she couldn’t yet name, some growing feeling. She slid the key and her phone into the side pocket. She jumped ashore. When she looked back she saw a gray half footprint on the deck by the aft locker. She frowned. The earth on the island was dry and brown.

  She slung the pack across her shoulder, headed up the hill. She would find the policemen; she would give them the key and the metal box.

  She tightened the straps as she walked. The edges of the metal box chafed at her skin through the backpack. She felt sweat gathering where the pack met her dress, felt it pooling in the small of her back. Hard to believe it could be so hot.

  At the top of the rise she paused. From here she looked down into a clearing a hundred meters across. There were pinewoods on every side, thick with the heat of the afternoon. Vast faces hung from the trees. Posters. Girls of her own age holding stuff: kayak paddles, stethoscopes, ice axes, phones. All in close-up. All with an eye to the camera, one thumb raised. At the bottom of every poster the letters iff, white on red, and the thumbs-up logo. Near the middle of the clearing, to the left, was a large red-painted stage. To the left of the stage, banks of seats rose vertiginously towards the pine trees.

  Red banners cascaded from the lighting rig:

  International Future Female: Empowering Everyone, Starting With Girls

  To her right she could see the back of the main house. Here too there was a giant banner: two girls, one light-skinned, one dark, right hands crossed at the wrists, thumbs up, left hands across each other’s shoulder. All those eyes, gazing down on you.

  Don’t be racist!

  Take no drugs!

  Recycle, recycle, recycle!

  “Bring condoms and whisky,” Leela had said, laughing. Had she meant it? Hard to be sure. She had brought both, in case Leela wasn’t joking, though she wasn’t expecting to use either.

  At the far end of the clearing were the first of the dormitory cabins. People were trailing from the cabins to the stage; others were already sitting on the banked seats, talking without animation, looking nervously down at the two policemen who stood before them in the middle of the stage.

  The policemen were smoking, letting the ash fall from their cigarettes. Behind them at the edge of the clearing was a vast poster of a girl looking down, crushing a cigarette in her left hand, her right thumb up.

  She knew she should walk across the clearing to the policemen, hand them the key. But that would draw their attention, and she wasn’t sure she wanted their attention. Something about that look they had given her down at the dock, a sense of something out of place.

  There were way too many eyes; there would be too much staring. She would wait until the policemen had finished speaking; she would approach them as people were drifting away. There were a lot of people here. Overwhelming numbers. There were boys dotted around too, in among the girls, talking earnestly, nodding a lot, demonstrating they were listening. Boys got extra points for listening to girls.

  One of the policemen, she noticed, had his hand on his service weapon. Which was weird, she thought. He hadn’t been wearing a pistol as he stepped from the boat. She was certain of that.

  She walked forward past the main house and along the rear of the stage until she was standing directly behind the men. Both wore pistols, she could see now, in holsters by their right hips. The shorter of the two was fidgeting the knuckle of his hand against the grip. At his feet were the two cracked leather travel bags.

  Random. Something about this was definitely random. She took out her phone, dialed Leela.

  “Hey,” said Leela.

  “Leela, who brings a pistol to speak to a bunch of girls? Like, really, what’s the threat?”

  “I mean, a bomb went off,” said Leela. “Where are you?”

  “Yes, but here?” she said. “What’s the threat here?”

  “I guess sisterhood is powerful.”

  A loud click on the PA system. The taller policeman cleared his throat. “Hello. I would like to ask everyone, whatever their role, to gather in the meeting room of the main house. I have important information to share about the bomb in town. I’m sure you have many questions.”

  Leela laughed. “Seriously, where are you? I don’t see you.”

  “Leela,” she said, “wait.”

  “Wait, why?”

  “We could . . . not go . . .”

  The police
man was repeating his words in Norwegian. People began to flow from the seating bank around the sides of the stage and toward the main house.

  “How come stealing a boat is not a problem for you, but meeting people is?”

  “I mean, it’s probably nothing, but I’m getting a vibe . . .”

  “You’re getting a vibe?”

  “It’s all a bit too random. Where’s the cabin? I want to go find it.” The words came out wrong. She sounded as if she were pleading.

  “Seriously? No.”

  “Then tell me what they say. See you later.”

  She began walking against the stream of people and across the clearing toward the trees.

  “Number forty-seven,” said Leela. “Past the first bunch of cabins, down the path toward the generator block. I put my towel and my elephant wash bag on your bunk. You utter rando.”

  She stopped at the first line of cabins. This feeling—it was more than nerves. More than paranoia. She was sure of it. She sat cross-legged on the grass, slid the metal box out of her backpack. Weird that it would be so rusty, so old-looking, when everything else about the policemen was so new. Like it had been stored in a barn or something.

  The combination lock had three digits. She tried the easy combinations: all the 1s, all the 2s . . . People were still streaming up the hill and into the clearing. The metal of the box felt cool against her lap; the edges dug into her thighs. On 555 the latch flicked up. The inside was lined on both sides with dense gray foam, custom-cut. In the lid was a row of flattened gray metal boxes. She turned one on its end, saw the bullet readied at the top, the brass casing and the jacketed tip. Pistol magazine, she guessed. In the bottom of the case the magazines were larger, wider, and longer, recently painted green.

  Her thoughts stopped her in her tracks. Because the boat, the uniforms, the guns, the travel bags . . . She snapped the box shut, slid it into her backpack, left the pack standing at the side of the path, turned toward the main building. So much here that wasn’t right . . . Those were not police uniforms; that was not a police boat: She was sure. She could not believe she had not realized sooner.