The Lies We Tell

by Kristina Ohlsson

It was him. The man who had once come to my rescue when I needed it most – and, to be honest, deserved it least.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ I said.

  He was silent for a moment.

  ‘I’m not too sure I’m happy to hear from you,’ he said.

  ‘Believe me, I didn’t want to call.’

  The terrace suddenly felt like a spaceship, separated from the rest of the world.

  ‘Can you talk?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. But not for long.’

  ‘I’ve really only got one question,’ I said. ‘How many people know about Pastor Parson’s funeral?’

  He breathed heavily down the line.

  ‘That’s a delicate question,’ he said. ‘I can only answer for myself. I’ve never breathed a word to anyone.’

  My hand was slippery with sweat as I clutched the phone.

  ‘Yet it seems as if more people than us are aware of what happened,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  21

  It really didn’t matter if Josh Taylor was part of Lucifer’s network, I reasoned. For the first time since I met Fredrik Ohlander, the journalist, I told an outsider what I’d been through. Josh had said he couldn’t spare me very much of his time. But he was still listening when I’d been talking for twenty minutes. That’s what happens when you’ve committed such a serious offence together. It’s not about friendship, or even friendliness: you listen for your own sake. So you can go on saving your own skin.

  ‘They’re dying now. One by one: Bobby, Jenny, Fredrik. And no doubt Elias too.’

  ‘To stop Lucifer from being unmasked?’ Taylor said. ‘I don’t think so.’

  I shook my head frantically. I didn’t believe the victims had died for Lucifer’s sake either. Not for that reason alone, anyway, and certainly not in the way I suspected that Josh Taylor imagined. Taylor had left violent crime behind and was currently involved in investigating financial offences. But that didn’t change the obvious fact that he, like everyone else in Texas, had heard about Lucifer and had followed his colleagues’ assiduous efforts to put a stop to his activities.

  ‘We caught Lucifer,’ Taylor said. ‘Admittedly, we only got him for one minor offence, but he was identified.’

  I shook my head again. He was wrong there, and he needed to know it.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You never caught Lucifer. But that doesn’t matter. Because this isn’t about Lucifer. Not primarily, anyway. It’s about Mio.’

  ‘Says who? You or Lucifer?’

  ‘Says me,’ I said, then added rather more quietly, ‘and Lucifer.’

  I heard Josh Taylor laugh almost silently down the phone. It was a peculiar laugh, devoid of all joy.

  ‘For God’s sake, Martin. You can do better than this. Surely you appreciate that you can’t believe a word Lucifer says? If it is even him you’ve been in contact with. Permit me to have my doubts on that point.’

  Josh Taylor went on: ‘Either way – you must be being followed by someone incredibly skilful. Under the circumstances, murdering Jenny and Bobby seems pretty straightforward, but how did your nemesis find the others you mentioned – Fredrik, and this new guy who might be dead, Elias?’

  ‘I haven’t got a good answer to that,’ I said. ‘Elias got very frightened after Bobby died. And Fredrik Ohlander . . . I have a feeling he didn’t believe everything I’d told him, and was trying to get the story confirmed.’

  ‘And those efforts tipped the wrong person off that he knew too much?’

  ‘Something along those lines. It’s only an idea. I don’t know for certain. But it didn’t take long. Before he was killed, I mean.’

  Josh Taylor murmured down the phone. I could see him in front of me. People’s physical movements don’t change over time, not once we’re grown up. I imagined him sitting down, one leg resting on the other, in trousers that were a little too short. One hand rubbing his bearded chin repeatedly. Assuming he still had the beard. Body hair is different to movements – that does change.

  ‘There’s something else that’s been bothering me,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t say?’

  ‘That several of the leads I’ve got can be traced back to the police.’

  ‘I thought that when you were telling your story. To my mind, the most likely answer is that your adversary, Lucifer, is more involved than you think, and that – God knows how – he has managed to get himself some allies inside the Swedish police force.’

  ‘According to Sara Texas, Lucifer had connections to Sweden. Personal connections.’

  ‘I’d take that sort of information with a pinch of salt.’

  I fell silent. I lacked Josh Taylor’s police experience, and felt very small in the face of his warnings and corrections.

  ‘You say Lucifer isn’t the man we got convicted as a result of the raid on his network?’ he said. ‘Have you got any idea who he might be, then?’

  That was a question I really didn’t want to answer. It was also one of the details I had chosen to omit from my story. That I had found information which suggested that Lucifer could be Esteban Stiller, Houston’s very own sheriff. But that had been contradicted when I finally got to see a photograph of little Mio: the boy was black. His mother was white. So his father must be dark-skinned. His father was Lucifer. And Esteban Stiller was white.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve got nothing to go on.’

  Josh Taylor cleared his throat.

  ‘I might be going senile, but exactly why did you call to tell me this story?’

  ‘I never got to that,’ I said. ‘We started talking about other things. Do you remember me saying that Bobby told me he came to see me because he heard me talking about Sara Texas on the radio?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That was a lie, according to his girlfriend. He came to see me because I would be able to get at Lucifer himself. Sara claimed that Lucifer and I knew each other.’

  Silences that aren’t awkward – but just liberating – they’re very rare. But there were plenty of them when I was talking to Josh Taylor. I got the feeling that they were not only liberating but also helpful. Perhaps even productive.

  ‘She said you’d be able to scare Satan himself?’ Josh asked.

  ‘No, not directly. She said . . .’

  ‘That you’d be able to get at him. Because he hates you. And he called you a murderer. I heard that bit. Yet it’s still you that’s scared. So scared that you’ve called me. What Bobby’s girlfriend said suggests that it’s you rather than Lucifer who’s got the upper hand. So what are you thinking, then, Benner? That you’ve been dragged into this shit because of Pastor Parson’s funeral?’

  A small part of me hated the fact that we were still saying Pastor Parson’s funeral. The man who’d died had a name. He deserved to be called by it, and nothing else. But that was a luxury we couldn’t afford. Not if either of us was being bugged. Not if we could land ourselves in the shit by mentioning his name.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Not sure about anything, really. Maybe I’m just being paranoid. But when Bobby’s girlfriend said that . . . it got me thinking. Very dark thoughts. I no longer believe in coincidence.’

  Car horns blared down in the street. Several times. The Stockholm night was refusing to quieten down. I liked that.

  ‘You said yourself that there were no witnesses to the accident,’ Josh said. ‘And for my part I know I decided that only the three of us should take part in the actual interment.’

  The accident. I’d never been able to use that word to describe my mistake.

  ‘And you, like me, have never talked about it to anyone,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Josh said.

  ‘Which leaves us trying to figure out if Tony talked to anyone.’

  ‘Which will be tough, seeing as he’s dead.’

  Tony had been my partner. He was there the night the shot was fired. And, as I’d told Lucy, he later died.

  ‘I didn’t know him particularly well,’
I said. ‘But I got the impression that he was both a good man and a good police officer. Not the sort to gossip.’

  ‘I had the same impression.’

  Tony had been as shaken up as Josh and me. His face had been hard and expressionless as he stood with a spade in his hand in an abandoned oilfield and helped to bury a horribly dirty secret. I had no idea how I looked at the time. But I should have looked scared and pathetic. Because that’s how I felt.

  ‘But,’ Josh said, ‘some forms of talking could perhaps be categorised as something other than gossiping. Even if that might be the indirect result.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘Have you seriously – hand on heart – not told a single person about what happened, Martin?’

  I straightened my back.

  ‘Hand on heart, Josh. Up until this morning, no one but me knew anything about what happened that night.’

  ‘Up until this morning?’

  ‘When I told Lucy.’

  ‘So you held out for twenty years. Impressive. Not everyone’s as tough as you.’

  I was distracted by more traffic noises. This time in an annoying way. A horrible cacophony of car horns and whistles. Probably some football nonsense that had passed me by.

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ I said. ‘Who have you told about it?’

  ‘My wife.’

  His reply came so quickly that I was taken by surprise. As if it was the most natural thing in the world to share everything with your beloved. Perhaps it was. Perhaps I was the one there was something wrong with.

  ‘I see. And who has she told?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Of course. You told her because you were shocked. She in turn was shocked, and might well have felt the need to tell someone else. I thought you said you hadn’t told a soul about what happened?’

  ‘Obviously once I’d told her what happened, there were two of us who knew. We could support each other. Trust me, she hasn’t told anyone else.’

  I blinked up at the dark-blue night sky.

  ‘Tony didn’t have a wife,’ I said. ‘If you were thinking that might be how the story could have got out.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. But he did have three brothers.’

  ‘Three brothers,’ I repeated. ‘And they heard what happened?’

  ‘I’m only speculating now, but if you’re thinking someone apart from the three of us might know about Pastor Parson’s funeral, that’s the direction I’d be looking in if I was trying to find a leak. But I don’t think you’ll get anywhere. At least one of the brothers is also a police officer here in Houston. If he ever heard anything about Pastor Parson’s funeral, he should have realised the importance of keeping quiet.’

  Another police officer in Houston. Another possible link to Lucifer.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘The brother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you want that information for?’

  ‘I might know him.’

  ‘Are you kidding? You haven’t lived in the USA for twenty years.’

  ‘He could have been in the police at the same time as me.’

  ‘No, he didn’t join up until later on. Besides, he hasn’t only worked in Houston. I have a feeling he started his career in Dallas.’

  ‘Give me his name,’ I said. ‘He could have had something to do with Sara.’

  ‘You’ve already told me that story. With names and everything. Believe me, if you’d mentioned Tony’s brother I’d have told you who he was. But I’m not going to, because you don’t need to know.’

  I didn’t agree. Not by a long shot. Josh was wrong, and he knew it. I hadn’t told him the names of everyone with a connection to Sara Texas. I specifically hadn’t wanted to name the police officers I’d come across, seeing as they were colleagues of Josh.

  ‘The other brothers, then,’ I said. ‘Are they police officers too?’

  ‘No. Well, to be honest, I don’t know what they are. I think one of them runs his own café. But I’ve no idea about the other one. If I remember what little Tony said correctly, I don’t think he got on well with the rest of the family.’

  ‘Yet you still suggested that Tony might have confided in him? That sounds pretty unlikely.’

  ‘I didn’t express myself very well. Tony had three brothers, but he was only close to two of them. The third one had let them all down. Tony’s brother mentioned it when we met after Tony died. The way he put it, the third brother let the whole family down in a big way. He didn’t attend the funeral, for instance.’

  ‘How did the brother in the police take Tony’s death?’

  ‘Badly. Very badly.’

  I tried to gather my thoughts. It wasn’t easy. Not remotely.

  ‘The black sheep brother. Could he have heard something before they all fell out?’

  ‘What difference does that make, Martin? You need to let go of this.’

  How do you explain the hunches you get and just have to follow? How do you explain things that aren’t strictly rational?

  ‘Tell me his name.’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t help you there. Because I don’t actually know his name.’

  ‘The other one, then. The one in the police.’

  ‘You asked me that a minute ago. The answer is still no. Well, you’re going to have to excuse me, but I’ve got to go. I’m due at a meeting.’

  I sank onto one of the chairs.

  ‘I’m very grateful to you for taking the time to talk,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t mention it, us police officers stick together. It’s as simple as that. But I’d prefer it if you didn’t call again. This isn’t something I want to get involved in.’

  Was there a hidden criticism in those short sentences? I’d left the force, after all, abandoned my colleagues. But that betrayal was probably overshadowed by the all-pervading principle of ‘once a cop, always a cop’.

  I nodded to myself.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  I was about to end the call when I heard Josh’s voice again.

  ‘It’s interesting that you haven’t even considered that there could have been witnesses,’ he said.

  I froze.

  ‘Witnesses to what?’

  ‘To your mistake. The accident.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘We’ve already been through that,’ I said. ‘There were no witnesses. We were alone in the alley that night.’

  ‘How do you know that? I’m not saying there is a witness. Only that there could be.’

  My throat went dry.

  ‘I don’t see what you’re getting at,’ I said. ‘Decades have passed. If there were any witnesses, we’d have known about it by now.’

  ‘Would we?’

  I swallowed hard.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said once more. ‘Thanks for all your help.’

  We ended the call. I didn’t move from the terrace. There was no sign of Lucy. It was a mild evening, and if things had been different I’d have gone in to fetch her and a bottle of wine. But not this time. This time I did something completely different.

  It was worth a try. Just one try, but no more than that.

  I called the Houston Police again. Introduced myself with another fictitious name and explained why I was calling.

  ‘I used to know an officer who was shot and killed in the line of duty some years back. His name was Tony Baker. Now that the anniversary is coming round again, I’d like to send flowers to his family. I understand that he had a brother in the force. I was wondering if I could have his name, to make sure that the flowers go to the right place?’

  22

  His name was Vincent Baker, and he worked in a police station in one of Houston’s main districts. As far as I could recall, I hadn’t come across anyone by the name of Baker there. My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the terrace-door. Lucy was standing inside the flat trying to get my attention. I responded by waving her out. Energetically, to make her realise I wanted
her close.

  ‘Are you coming in soon?’

  She padded out onto the terrace with bare feet. Lucy has the prettiest feet I’ve ever seen on a woman, no question.

  ‘In a moment,’ I said.

  ‘Did you find out anything useful?’

  I replied truthfully: ‘Maybe.’

  Witnesses. There couldn’t have been any witnesses, could there? We searched every corner of that alley. There hadn’t been anyone there. End of story.

  Lucy shivered in the cool summer night.

  ‘I’m going to go as far away from here as I can when this is all over,’ she said.

  ‘Can I come too?’

  She didn’t answer.

  One of my phones rang. A different ringtone, a different phone. Boris’s phone.

  ‘Baby, I need to take this.’

  She stayed where she was as I answered.

  ‘Martin.’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Haven’t you gone yet?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything? You can actually make a fucking phone call from different places.’

  ‘You’re a wise man.’

  Boris let out a deep sigh. He thought I was an idiot, and I didn’t try to correct him. No one has the strength to be the best all the time.

  ‘You asked me for a favour last time we spoke,’ he said.

  A favour. A break-in that I didn’t have the nerve to carry out myself.

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘How soon can you be at Tyson’s Bar? It’s in Solna.’

  I hesitated. I wasn’t comfortable going to the same part of the city as the crime scene.

  ‘Twenty minutes, maybe,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Marie’s waiting for you there.’

  ‘Marie?’

  ‘She was the one who carried out the aforementioned favour. And she’ll be happy to tell you what she found.’

  I broke out in a cold sweat. For some reason I’d imagined that the briefing would happen some other way.

  ‘So she did find something?’

  ‘We won’t know for sure until you hear what she found and decide if it’s of any use or not. But yes – I think she’s found something.’

  I stood up.

  ‘Okay, I’ll be there in thirty minutes at most.’