Love and Other Lies

by Ben McPherson

  “You don’t regret any of it,” I said. “Do you?”

  Licia laughed. She actually laughed.

  “I used to think of all the lives you saved, Licia. All based on a footprint that you left on that fake police boat. We thought it had to be you who took the ammunition case. We thought you shortened the massacre. ‘Our Licia,’ we would say, ‘hero of Garden Island.’ Without that thought I think we would have gone under. Except that the Hero of Garden Island was a girl called Maria. You were never on the island.”

  She looked at me, and I saw that it was true.

  I tried to marshal my anger, spoke as quietly as I could. “Those men in court aren’t smart enough to execute a plan of this complexity. Not without help. But Bror’s smart. And Milla’s smart.”

  She took a breath. Held it. Released it. Took another breath.

  “Is that a breathing technique?” I said as gently as I could.

  She nodded.

  “Did he teach you that?”

  She exhaled, nodded again.

  Bror, with his breathing and his meditation and his warm reassuring manner. How easily he would have bypassed Licia’s defenses.

  “What else did he teach you?” I said.

  My daughter looked at me, and she saw that I understood. And in her eyes was something cold and complex and entirely without love.

  She took a deep breath in through her nose. She paused, holding the breath in her lungs. She exhaled through her mouth.

  “Bror planned the attacks,” I said. “Didn’t he?”

  She was on her feet. “I’d like to leave now.”

  I could feel my desire to tell her that all was forgiven—my absurd father’s desire to tell her we could still be a family—though I understood now what she had done and knew that it could never be forgiven.

  Forty-One

  Imagine a girl.

  Imagine that this girl has turned her back on her parents, on everything they have taught her, on everything they hold dear. This girl has found happiness elsewhere; with a man who has offered a clear path to salvation. This is a girl with purpose now; with a sense of duty to a “race” and to a “faith.”

  Imagine this girl, if you can, her head full of timings, expectant and excited, counting off the seconds until the bomb.

  Imagine that this girl is your daughter.

  The thought was unbearable. And so I carried on speaking. “That friend you met at the station: that was Maria Krikk, wasn’t it?”

  “Friend.” She made a little scoffing sound.

  “Did you meet her at the house church?”

  “Not a believer.”

  “I guess she didn’t have to be. You gave her your dress and your bangle because she looked like you. You let her think you were friends.”

  She sniffed hard. “I met her at an outreach group. For illegals.” She lengthened the word illegals for emphasis, as if it explained everything.

  “Did you give her your ticket to Garden Island?”

  “I gave her lots of stuff.”

  I could see that poor girl lying alone on her steel gurney under the white canvas of the tent, could see the two bullet wounds that had shattered her left clavicle; surprisingly neat; washed clean of blood by the water of the fjord.

  I said, “She didn’t know you were recruiting her, but that’s what you did, isn’t it? Licia?”

  “She was an illegal, Dad. A thief. She thought she was smarter than me.”

  How could she speak so casually about what she had done to this girl?

  I swallowed down my anger, spoke as calmly as I could: “You gave your phone to Bror so he could plant it on the island. You wanted us to believe you were there; you wanted us to believe that you had been killed. You let us carry on believing that.”

  Licia’s eyes clouded. Her posture became less certain. “You were meant to know I was safe,” she said. “They sent you proof.”

  “What they sent wasn’t proof.”

  “You were meant to know.”

  “At best it was a riddle. It was cruel, Licia. We never knew you were okay.”

  This threw her off balance. She stood, swaying slightly, weighing her thoughts.

  I held out my hand, which she took. For a moment I thought she might cry.

  “Sit with me,” I said.

  She began to sit.

  “Licia, love, you need to tell the police what you know.”

  At the mention of the police her resolve returned. It was instant. She was on her feet again, moving swiftly toward the stairs.

  I sprang after her.

  Striding toward us along the corridor was Tvist, his dark head glistening, his eyes alive, laughing as he spoke.

  “What a momentous day. I am so pleased for you, Cal, my friend. So very, very pleased. Lovely to meet you, Alicia.”

  “Licia,” I said, “this is Mr. Tvist. He’s the chief of police.”

  Licia stepped past him. The smile froze on his face.

  “I’ll explain,” I said. “We’re coming back. Licia!”

  She was at the stairs. I followed her down until we were out of sight of Tvist.

  I took her wrist, spun her around. “Tell me I’m wrong about the attacks. Licia, please.”

  “Why do you think you can make this okay? Dad, I have blood on my hands. I’m non-recuperable.”

  “Listen to yourself. Non-recuperable. That’s not your word. You’re following someone else’s script.”

  “You never believed I could be something better.” That look in her eye. Utter contempt. She pulled her hand free. She stood, eyes locked onto mine, as if amazed by her own strength. “You’ve always thought I was stupid.”

  “No, love. No.”

  She set off down the stairs, two at a time. I followed, but she was nimbler than me, her movements efficient and smooth, her left hand skimming the banister on each turn, releasing on the straight.

  We were in the main hall, abruptly, where on the weekdays people stood in line for passports. Licia’s leather soles skidded on the polished floor.

  Behind glass screens near the exit two uniformed officers smiled pleasantly.

  “Stop her!” I shouted. “Please.”

  The officers turned uselessly, but we were past them and out in the evening heat.

  I was gaining on her. In the park outside, the day was bright. People sunned themselves on benches. Children played in the monumental fountain.

  I caught up with her, took her by the wrist, spun her around.

  “Did you prepare the attacks?”

  “Get off!” she shouted.

  People began to turn.

  “Get him off me!”

  “You were in touch with them for months. The police presented us with evidence and we just didn’t think it could be you. You were too good. Too obedient. You weren’t a rebel. Do you know, at one point we actually started to wonder about Vee being radicalized—”

  “Let go.”

  “What happened, Licia?”

  She was struggling hard. The strength of her was terrifying.

  “I’m not your possession. You don’t control the truth.”

  “These people are destroying your mind. They’ve made a murderer of you.”

  Her scream echoed out across the square. “Let go of me!”

  A small crowd gathering around us, faces filled with concern.

  “Licia,” I said, keeping my voice as low as I could. “Licia, I need you to come back.”

  “What’s going on?” someone said. “Hva skjer?”

  She leaned very close to me. “There’s more . . .”

  A half smile.

  Then she was pulling violently away. “Attempted kidnap. Call the police!”

  I reached for her but she was gone. The crowd closed between us. Arms restrained me. I could not follow. And I realized with a shuddering lurch that my daughter had rehearsed precisely this moment, that her lines had been chosen with care.

  “Please,” she was saying, “protect me from that ma
n. I’m scared of what he might do.” Then the same words in Norwegian. And all the time she was slipping farther away, and all the time people were closing around me.

  “That’s my daughter,” I kept saying. “I’m Cal Curtis. She’s Licia Curtis. The hero of Garden Island. Don’t you recognize her? Don’t you know who we are?”

  But people simply stared at me as I stared after her.

  She had been here. I had held her. She was gone, lost in the Sunday crowds.

  Then Tvist was standing in front of me, dark eyes blazing. His voice rang out across the park. “Hva er nå dette?” What’s all this?

  From the crowd someone said, “Trakasseringssak.” Harassment.

  He turned to me. “Explain.”

  In my pocket my phone rang. I began to reach for it. Strong arms locked around my torso.

  “I need to answer my phone,” I said. “Please.”

  Tvist glared about him. “This crowd is to disperse. At once.”

  He turned slowly, locking eyes with each of the men at the front. Such authority he had. Such total command.

  The arms released me. I raised the phone to my ear.

  “I have not been entirely honest with you,” said the voice.

  “Bror,” I said, “what did you have her do?”

  “What did I have her do?” he repeated.

  I pressed loudspeaker on the phone. Laughter in Bror’s voice. “Alicia Curtis really is the most uniquely dutiful girl. She wanted so badly to be exceptional. She packed explosives and set fuses without regard to her own life. When the day came, she made the call that began the countdown that detonated the bomb that drew the police into town.” Even through the phone speaker his voice was full of honeyed warmth. I knew he was telling me the truth. “In time, perhaps you would have understood our position, but given recent developments . . . Tell your wife that your daughter Alicia is lost to you. We are severing ties.”

  And he was gone.

  I looked up into Tvist’s dark, dark eyes. “Will you arrest him?”

  “If only life were that simple.” Tvist put an arm on my shoulder. “We’re building a case. One step at a time. This brings us very close.”

  Voices murmured. Eyes watched us from all around.

  Tvist took his arm from my shoulder. He looked about him at the faces in the crowd. “Do I really have to point out to these people that they are”—he brought his head very close to the face of a young man with a plaited beard—“one hundred meters from police headquarters? This crowd will disperse.” The young man shrank back.

  I reached into my pocket. I found on my phone the picture I had taken.

  Tvist was turning a slow circle, making sure the crowd had understood.

  I passed the phone to Tvist. “I took this at Bror’s farmhouse three hours ago.”

  Tvist stared at the screen.

  “Eight uniforms,” I said. “In eight bags. And in each of those bags was one of these . . . It’s like a motivational film. With my daughter Licia in a starring role.” I handed him the memory card. “He’s supplying strategic and logistical support to these people. And he’s grooming Arno to step into his shoes.”

  “Three hours,” said Tvist quietly. “When this is actionable intelligence—”

  “I thought if I laid everything out in front of Licia, with you there, I stood a chance of not losing her a second time.”

  He looked at me appraisingly. “And now she’s gone,” he said quietly.

  “And now she’s gone.”

  I heard myself laugh. It was bitter and hollow.

  I said, “I underestimated her intelligence.”

  The Hunter

  Forty-Two

  At home Elsa’s eyes were cold and white, her fury measureless. She listened silently to what I told her, then got to her feet and walked toward the front door. “Don’t follow me,” were her only words.

  I stood on the lawn outside, watching her go. And when she was gone I stayed where I was, staring out into the evening. Despair ate at the edges of my thoughts. Licia had been here; we had held her; she was gone.

  Then Vee was at my side.

  “Where’s Licia?”

  I raised my hands. A gesture of surrender. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Dad,” said Vee. “Is everything fucked?”

  I could think of nothing to say.

  I stood with my head pressed hard against the slick tile, showered till long after the water ran cold, trying desperately to find clarity.

  Why had Licia come back? Had she thought she could pick up her life where she had left off? Was mass murder something she believed she could put behind her? Or had she hoped to draw us gently toward a new way of thinking?

  Two heroines, Bror had said once. Had they been setting their sights on Vee?

  “Why isn’t Mum back?”

  I sat up. A shaft of gray-white light across the bed. Vee’s shape in the doorway. Elsa not beside me.

  “Dad? Where is she?” Fear in her voice this time.

  “Not home yet, I guess.”

  Through the window the trees were black. There was color in the sky above the hills.

  I turned on the bedside light.

  “Vee,” I said. “Why are you up?”

  “Forget it,” she said.

  “No, it’s three in the morning. What’s bothering you?”

  “I heard something outside. Like maybe footsteps.”

  “It’s a footpath, Vee. People walk there.”

  But my brave little daughter stood there shivering in her nightgown, eyes filling with tears, so I got up, pulled on a T-shirt and underpants, fetched a heavy flashlight from the kitchen drawer, and headed outside.

  Someone had spray-painted the outer wall by Licia’s bedroom window. White paint on black brick:

  CHERISH

  I looked out across the parkland. Lights shone bright above the black tarmacked paths. Whoever had done this was gone.

  Vee stood staring at the word. “Is this a threat?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She must have seen something in my eyes. She began backing toward the door of the building.

  “Vee,” I said, “we’re calling the police now.”

  She nodded, turned, walked into the apartment. I found her in the kitchen, checking the door latches. She pulled at the blind cord. On the other side of the window the metal slats dropped into place.

  “How can they threaten Licia? She’s not even here.”

  “We don’t know for certain it’s a threat, Vee.”

  But she wasn’t listening. Not to my words. Her head was tilted to one side.

  “The bedrooms,” she said very quietly.

  “Vee,” I said, “listen to me . . .”

  “No, I heard something . . .”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  Again she tilted her head. “You really don’t hear that?”

  I listened. Nothing.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Franklin.”

  She threw open the passageway door. At the end the door into Franklin’s room was open, and the door beyond that from Franklin’s room into ours. You could see our bedroom window at the back of the building, and the stepped hills beyond.

  “Your window,” she said. “Was it open?”

  “Vee,” I said, “please . . .”

  “GET OUT!” She shouted the words at the top of her voice.

  “Vee, we are both very tense.”

  “GET OUT!” A scream this time.

  A movement in the shadows. Franklin’s room. Then a figure, black-clad, framed in the doorway, darting away.

  I ran at the figure.

  Franklin’s voice; a loud wail.

  I stopped level with his crib. Franklin was on his feet, hands locked around the bars, terror etched into his face.

  On the white wall above the crib a word painted in black paint, still wet:

  PROTECT

  “Vee,” I shouted. “Pick him up.”

  Th
e figure was at the bedroom window, pushing the lower edge of the frame outward.

  I launched myself into the room and across our bed, saw the right leg lift from the floor and disappear through the frame.

  The figure half turned. A moment of hesitancy.

  It was all I needed. I threw myself at the torso as the left leg landed on the terrace outside, held the figure by the neck, tried to drag him in through the window.

  Her.

  The figure turned. A woman.

  I stopped.

  She swung at me with her right hand.

  From behind me I heard Vee say, “No!”

  Something cold and hard connected with my cheek. A tooth bit through my lower lip. I tasted blood. I grabbed at her, saw a flash of silver-blond hair.

  The woman struck me a second time, from high up. The blow landed on the crown of my head. A metal surface, hard, textured.

  I stood stupefied. The woman tore herself free. She ran across the terrace, turned and lowered herself to the grass below, ran out of sight toward the parking lot.

  I turned to see Vee in the doorway, Franklin in her arms, a look of horror on her face.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s all right.”

  “It’s not,” said Vee. “Get away from the window.”

  I closed the window, lowered the blinds, turned the slats till they blocked out the light.

  “You see?” I said. “It’s okay.” But I was breathing hard, and she could hear it.

  I walked to the living room, checked the lock of the door to the terrace.

  I heard Vee’s feet padding behind me. “Dad, please.”

  I checked the window lock. I turned.

  Vee, standing there, furious. Because anger was easier than fear.

  “He has a gun,” she said.

  Of course. The texture of the metal. A pistol grip.

  “She,” I said dully. “It was a woman.”

  Vee, staring at me in horror.

  “Dad, you need to get back.”

  I reached toward the window, released the metal blind.

  “She’s gone, Vee. It’s okay.”

  Franklin was screaming. I reached out to take him and he shrank away. Vee put a protective arm around him.