Love and Other Lies

by Ben McPherson

  More cameras were turning. The girl couldn’t be more than sixteen.

  I looked toward the men, foolish and ashamed in their black shirts and their bully boots. The girl had punctured their moment, destroyed the drama of their performance, left them standing half-cocked and pathetic.

  Laughable.

  I put on my headset. I heard the translator’s words in my ears. “Defendant Andersen, J., will stand.” The judge began to address the first defendant. I could hear her voice through the foam padding of the headphones.

  The tall man nodded at his brother, then stood facing the judge.

  The translator continued. “Defendant Andersen, J., do you understand the charges made against you?”

  The man nodded.

  “Respond.”

  The man nodded again; he spoke, a single syllable.

  The translator’s voice, flattening out the dialogue, rendering both sides. “Yes.” A pause. “How do you plead?”

  There was another, longer pause. The man looked about him. Checking he has the attention of the court, I thought.

  Bastard.

  The man began to speak. After a moment the translator picked up his words, without inflection.

  “As a . . . Knight of the Temple of Solomon . . . I decline to recognize the authority of this court. I refuse to plead.”

  I looked around at the girl behind us. She was not laughing.

  I lifted the headphone off my right ear. Absolute silence in the courtroom. Beside me, Elsa was quietly shaking her head. The chief judge sat stock-still, staring at the man. The defendant looked around to his brother, nodded, then turned toward the back of the courtroom, stared defiantly out at the survivors, at the families of the dead. No one spoke. There were no camera shutters. I turned to look at my daughter, but Vee would not meet my eye. She was staring back at John Andersen.

  The judge leaned across and consulted with a colleague, her hand across her microphone. She turned, sat watching the man for a few seconds. She took her hand from her microphone.

  “Defendant Andersen, J., a refusal to enter a plea will be recorded as a plea of not guilty.”

  “I understand.”

  “Then your plea will be entered as not guilty.”

  “I do not recognize the authority of this court.”

  He looked across at his brother, who nodded, then leaned forward and spat a gobbet of chewing tobacco into his water glass.

  The judge remained composed, but you could feel her anger. She spoke two words.

  “Noted,” came the voice in the headphones. “Sit.”

  Elsa leaned toward me. I raised an earphone.

  “Look at them with their little uniforms, their little salutes, their little speeches.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Look at the fact that they rehearsed the whole thing. Like, We are the Knights of the Round Table. That’s funny, isn’t it? It’s like fucking Monty Python.”

  From the bench the chief judge was staring at Elsa.

  “Elsa,” I said. I nodded toward the judge.

  “Yeah,” she said quietly. “Okay.”

  Now the prosecutor stood looking out across the faces of the public. An accomplished woman, blond-haired, eyes of granite. Elsa and I sat up and faced the front.

  The prosecutor spoke slowly, left long pauses between sentences, gave the translator time to catch up. She turned to address the judges. In the headphones the translator was affectless and calm, her words seconds behind the prosecutor’s. “In the time between the parking of the van and the explosion, a witness called the police to say she had seen two men in navy overalls as they walked toward a small white car. Something in the men’s demeanor caught in her mind: their behavior was hurried, feverish even.

  “The eyewitness gave the police an accurate physical description of the men you see before you: the high foreheads, the wide-set eyes, the West Oslo accents. Both men were blond, she reported, though the eyewitness wondered if the shorter of the men you see before you, Paul Andersen, had dyed his hair; there was something about the eyebrows that did not match. The eyewitness had the presence of mind to note the license number: XR310701. This was indeed the license number of the car that the men drove to Garden Island.”

  Ahead, Tvist turned to a colleague. None of this was new to him.

  I felt a movement beside me. Elsa’s face was clouding with anger. Around us people were exchanging looks, shaking heads. I turned around. Vee’s eyes met mine from the back of the courtroom, full of fury.

  The translator’s voice in my ear. “In other words, the police had the information needed in order to apprehend the suspects with no loss of life.”

  You could hear the translator sipping water while the prosecutor continued to speak. I caught Tvist’s eye and he smiled; a careful smile, studiedly neutral.

  “In fact,” the translator began again, “at one point a police cruiser was directly behind the suspects’ car. We know this from camera footage taken from the police cruiser.”

  The anger in the courtroom was intensifying. Elsa was gripping my arm tightly. I could sense the mounting outrage, could feel it rising in me too.

  The Post-it note.

  The white car.

  The police cruiser.

  Licia missing, presumed drowned.

  The prosecutor finished speaking; she stood looking out across the court; she walked to her desk; she sat down. The translator’s voice continued, catching up with the prosecutor’s words.

  “No one at police headquarters thought to pick up and read the note until seven fifty-seven, by which time both suspects had been in police custody for six minutes. And on the island ninety-one people, eighty-seven of them teenagers between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, lay dead. The police, of course, are not on trial here, but . . .”

  I saw the look on Elsa’s face. They should be.

  I took off my headphones. Elsa leaned in. “I’m okay,” she said.

  “Tvist lied to me,” I said. “About the Post-it note. Or it wasn’t exactly a lie . . .”

  At the back of the courtroom something clattered to the floor. I looked around. Vee was on her feet; she pushed past her friends and out into the aisle. Her eyes met mine. Her face was streaked and blotched.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Elsa, my voice a low whisper.

  “You stay, Cal,” said Elsa. She got to her feet.

  Vee was at the door of the courtroom.

  “You sure?” I said.

  Elsa leaned in, spoke very quietly. “One of us needs to witness this.”

  In the rows nearby people were staring at us. A woman, a court official in a dark skirt, was making her way toward Vee. Elsa reached the aisle, headed toward the rear exit, exchanged words with the official. The official opened the door and held it. Elsa put her hand on Vee’s back, guided her through it.

  The accused men watched as my wife and daughter walked away down the corridor. John Andersen said something to Paul. Paul smirked.

  They had noticed our daughter’s distress. They liked it.

  Twenty-Five

  Tvist caught up with me on the way out of the courtroom. “Cal.”

  I could think of nothing to say to him, so I half smiled and turned away. I carried on down the stairs and out through the lobby, eyes fixed ahead of me. I could feel him at my side, matching me step for step, could hear the heavy leather of his soles as we crossed the polished marble floor.

  We stood on the steps of the court, blinking in the harsh summer light. Before us the temporary studios, each a twelve-foot cube, raised from the road on stilts, walled by translucent white tarpaulin. The sides of the studios were rolled up. Journalists on high office chairs were joking with colleagues on other continents, checking their hair in the screens of their phones.

  Tvist gestured toward the studios. “This is nice.”

  I half turned toward him. “Is it?”

  He smiled a neutral smile. “Practical and elegant and egalitarian . . .”

  Another voice cut across T
vist’s: “The very best of our Scandinavian values.” I turned to see Bror, his arms thrown wide as if I were his long-lost brother. I hesitated for a moment, uneasy at the intimacy, then stepped forward and felt the warmth of his embrace.

  “Cal Curtis,” he said. “I feel you are close to a breakthrough.” He turned toward Tvist, his arm still on the small of my back. “And Mr. Police Chief. What a trying morning this has been for you. You have my sympathy.”

  “Bror,” said Tvist. “Cal.” He nodded to me, then walked down the steps and away.

  “Well, now,” said Bror, watching him go. “This man Tvist is highly intelligent.” He turned to me, the most radiant smile on his face. “Is he not?”

  I found myself smiling too, relieved to be in his presence. “I mean . . .”

  “He must protect his carefully constructed lies. You must not underestimate the lengths to which he will go.” He took a half step backward, his hands loosely holding my forearms. Healing hands, I thought, radiating warmth. Kind eyes, searching mine. “You tried to break the story about the police delay, no?”

  So Bror had known about the Post-it.

  I looked about me. “I guess I should file my piece.”

  He reached out, took my hands in his. “Expect another of Milla’s little gifts.”

  Then he was walking away.

  “That was you?” I said.

  “I don’t know.” He turned, gave a self-conscious shrug. “Was it?”

  “Who is the source?”

  He smiled, shook his head. “A priest has a duty of silence to his flock.”

  “I can respect that.”

  “With that in mind, if ever there were any particularly difficult thought you couldn’t share with Elsa . . .”

  “We’re getting by,” I said, because I trusted this man, but only so far.

  He smiled. “Keep building your case.” And he was gone.

  At just before one I rolled down the sides of a studio at the far end. One hundred and fifteen seconds on the clock.

  “Cal, we’re seeing outrage at the behavior of the defendants in the Garden Island trial in Oslo, Norway.”

  “Some. When defendants John and Paul Andersen were brought into court, their first move, once the handcuffs were removed, was to make what I can only describe as a white power salute, right arms out, fists clenched. A gesture intended to shock, but which was met with derision. Far more serious were details that emerged about the Oslo police, who failed to act on an eyewitness description of the suspects, along with the license plate of the vehicle they drove to Garden Island. That number was on a handwritten note that sat on the desk of Police Chief Tvist himself. Yet no one thought to look at the note. Not until after the massacre was over and the men were in custody.

  “Meanwhile, we await clarification on two major points: The police are stating that the organization to which the men claim to belong, the Tactical Brigades of the Knights Templar, is simply a dog whistle to other white extremists, and does not exist beyond the imaginations of John and Paul Andersen. Given the demonstrable incompetence of the police, how far can we trust such a claim? And point two: These men tested and perfected a powerful fertilizer bomb. So where is the laboratory where the men produced that bomb? No mention of this rather significant hole in the investigation. You have to ask: Are the police even looking?”

  I looked up, saw the clock tick down to zero.

  “Thank you, Cal.” A click on the line and Carly’s voice became distant. “A brave man bearing witness at the trial of the presumed murderers of his daughter.”

  I stepped out from the white tarpaulin walls of the studio. I joined the line for the scanners; I put my press accreditation around my neck, took off my belt and my shoes, put my laptop and phone in a gray plastic tray.

  Tvist turned in his seat as I entered the courtroom. I smiled and nodded. Tvist smiled carefully in response, but I saw the scowl he tried to suppress. He had heard my radio piece, I guessed.

  Elsa’s seat was empty. On it was a small envelope, with Cal Curtis written in fine cursive script. I looked about me. Tvist had turned away, but I felt eyes on me.

  I looked up. The judges were entering.

  I looked down at the envelope in my hands.

  I looked up. Paul Andersen now, fitting a lump of chewing tobacco between his upper lip and his gum, all the while trying to lock his eyes onto mine.

  I turned to the woman on my left. “Excuse me,” I said as I got up to leave.

  The image in the envelope was a simple one. A red rubber dinghy, photographed from above. There were figures in the boat, heavily foreshortened, wearing some kind of uniform. Two had rifles slung across their chests. The rubber of the boat bulged around the figures of each of the men, as if it could not contain them.

  A still from a video. I turned the picture over. In the same cursive script a hand had written, The real story.

  Twenty-Six

  I sat on the terrace drinking whisky. There was a psychotic intensity to the evening light. The fjord glowed gold and green; there were purples and indigos in the trunks of the trees: a parallel spectrum, some great supernatural darklight.

  Did I imagine hearing the front door slide shut? It was quiet, but there was a distinctive click.

  I went through to the bathroom. There was Elsa in the shower. She turned off the water, opened the cabinet, her body slick.

  “Strange,” I said. “I thought . . .”

  “You thought?”

  “. . . that you’d slipped out.”

  “And yet, here I am.” Water beading on her breasts, on her belly, making gentle tracks down her thighs. A smile that was more than a smile. “Perhaps you want to join me in the shower?”

  An invitation that was not an invitation. A challenge, almost, her wolf eyes searching mine.

  Water drops marking tracks on her thighs, on her breasts.

  “I love you. It’s just . . .”

  I saw the desire in her eyes, saw it curdling with disappointment. She nodded sadly. “It’s just you don’t want me anymore.”

  “Vee went out.”

  “Which should give us the perfect opportunity. But I get it.”

  “I’m going to go after her,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  As she turned away, water ran in rivulets down her back.

  In trees to the side of the path crows had gathered. They watched silently, eyes flicking white as they caught the lights from the apartment buildings.

  Ahead, small and determined, Vee was striding toward the station. Lights on short poles at the side of the path threw her shadow crazily onto trees.

  As she passed by the Viking ruin, I slowed. This place disturbed the rational geometry of the parkland, of its neat green lawns and its blue-black tarmac paths. The site was overgrown by gorse, guarded by barbed wire. Vee huddled into herself, though the evening was warm. She hurried on. Here too the crows gathered, blinking silently down. Something older lurked behind the wire, wilder than any of us. Burials, people said. Dismemberments and blood rituals.

  Vee came to a stop on the platform, stood blinking under the lights, while I watched her from the bridge above. My little girl in a black dress she must have taken from Elsa’s wardrobe, starkly lit, alone on the heavy gray platform. I watched as she bought a ticket from the machine. I bought a ticket on my phone.

  I stepped on at the rear of the train, watching my daughter as she chose a seat near the front. I pulled out my phone, sent her a text message.

  Where are you?

  Ahead of me, at the far end of the carriageless train, in a dress a size too large, Vee bent forward. A pause, then my phone vibrated in my hand.

  Julie’s.

  I watched Vee for a while. Had it come easily, to lie to me?

  When the train pulled into Majorstuen, I waited until I was certain Vee was off before stepping onto the platform and heading for the main road.

  People from the bars were spilling onto the street. Vee was walking swiftl
y now. I followed from the other side of the road. People hung about on the sidewalks in twos and threes, called out to each other across the traffic. A man leaned on the hood of an idling car, stood swaying, then bent over and vomited into the gutter. Vee clasped her hands tightly around herself as she passed him.

  A bus crossed between us, then another, and when they cleared I thought I had lost her, that she had slipped down a side street, but she was there, her face lit up by the windows of the Broker winebar. Men in suits watched her as she walked, swiftly, arms folded across her chest. There was something in the air, something heavy and salacious and adult in the way they looked at her, then looked at each other.

  She’s fifteen, you fucks.

  From a doorway someone spoke to her. Vee hovered, uncertain. I should intervene, but I wanted to know where she was going, why she had lied. I stood, sinews tensed, planning my route through the traffic, but Vee walked on, and the man did not follow.

  Twice more Vee turned to look about her. I hung back, let her pass out of sight. The sidewalks down here were emptier; she would see me if I followed too close. I took out my phone. There she was, a white dot passing down the right-hand sidewalk, gliding into Magnussons vei, coming to rest outside number four. I enlarged the map, clicked on the wineglass icon next to Vee’s. A bar. Mikrokosmos. And as I watched, Vee’s white dot seemed to enter the bar.

  The air smelled of spilled beer. Pine-Sol soap too, and the tang of old men’s kidneys.

  “What can I get you?” asked a barwoman, smiling.

  I picked up the beer card, pretended to look at it. The barwoman moved away.

  The bar had three sides, with lines of beer taps all the way along. It was late. Men swayed in their seats in front of rows of empty glasses, or stared furtively at women, who stared candidly back. From the far corner came the thock-thock-thock of darts.

  There was Vee, in a dark booth directly opposite me. And there, opposite Vee, was the helicopter pilot Pavel Lisowski. I texted her: