The Lies We Tell

by Kristina Ohlsson

  ‘Of course you have. Come home. Hand yourself over to the police. It’ll take me less than a week to sort out the investigation, to get the police to see what Didrik’s done.’

  She probably believed what she was saying, and I can hardly blame her for that. But she was fundamentally wrong.

  ‘That won’t solve the problem of Lucifer,’ I said. ‘As long as he’s still out there, none of us will be safe.’

  ‘What are you going to do? Murder him as well?’

  That ‘as well’ was unnecessary. It stung like the crack of a whip across my back.

  ‘The first one wasn’t murder,’ I said. Or muttered, the way you do when you’re ashamed.

  ‘Anyway, how did you even manage to find Lucifer? You haven’t been gone more than a day yet.’

  Finally I was able to say something sensible.

  ‘I don’t honestly know if it is Lucifer. Not one hundred per cent. But ninety-eight. That’ll have to do. Remember this, Lucy: his name is Vincent Baker. He’s a police officer in Houston, the brother of Tony Baker, who was my partner that night when I shot a guy I thought was a drug-dealer.’

  ‘You mean he’s the brother of the man you shot?’

  ‘No, I mean exactly what I said. He’s the brother of my former partner.’

  The words of the third brother, Simon, were ringing in my head, still just as incomprehensible. No one in the family wanted anything to do with me. No one could forgive what I’d done. Not what had happened – what I’d done.

  I heard Lucy say something to Belle.

  ‘I have to go now,’ she said. ‘Belle’s tired and hungry.’

  It occurred to me that it was the middle of the night in Stockholm.

  ‘How long have you been driving?’ I said.

  ‘A long time,’ Lucy said. ‘Madeleine’s summerhouse isn’t exactly in the archipelago.’

  ‘Drive carefully,’ I said. ‘Look after Belle. I’ll be in touch.’

  I said those last words in a muted voice.

  ‘You’d better, Benner.’

  And with those words she ended the call. I was more alone than ever.

  44

  It was still light when I arrived. I’d stopped on the way and forced down a hamburger. Not as nutrition, just fuel. The closer I got, the slower I drove. And the harder it got to breathe. The pressure in my chest was immense as I first turned off from the motorway, and then the side-road. The road-signs looked exactly as they had done when I had driven the same route for an entirely different reason. To my surprise, the whole area looked unchanged. I drove the last ten kilometres, now as then, on a gravel track. The landscape around me was open, barren and uninhabited. The Yanks love building and settling and exploiting. Why had they forgotten about these square kilometres?

  Last time I had a heavy load in the trunk of the car. For that reason I had driven off the gravel track, straight across the desert to where the burial later took place. This time I pulled over at the side of the track and walked the last bit. What I was going to do when I came back a few hours later to meet the man who might be Lucifer seemed fairly self-evident: I would drive all the way.

  It was as hot as hell. The sun showed no mercy whatsoever, and was busy trying to fry me alive. I couldn’t believe where I was going. I couldn’t believe how the past had caught up with me in such a brutal way. Had I not lived a sufficiently good life? Had I not played my cards right? Like when my sister died and I took care of Belle. Or all the times I had helped clients deal with problems.

  Boris’s face drifted up to the surface of my memory. Perhaps I hadn’t done my best. Perhaps I had behaved questionably. Towards Lucy and my family and society in general. Lucy had called me the most egotistical man in the world on more than one occasion. She was probably right about that.

  Better a sinner who repents, as the saying goes. And I can say without the slightest hesitation that I repented as I walked my own path to Calvary from the car to the site of the grave. It wasn’t marked, but even so I knew exactly where it was. Just below a slight hummock.

  I stopped right by the grave. This was where we would be meeting in a few hours’ time to resolve things. I looked around. No one and nothing in sight. Just some derelict old barracks. The massive oil wells had all been removed.

  This is impossible, I thought. I’m not going to get out of here alive.

  Obviously that thought had occurred to me before, but it hadn’t really sunk in and taken root until I was actually there. I also suspected that there wasn’t merely a chance that I might die – it was a certainty. The only question that remained was: why?

  I crouched down to pick up a handful of sand, and let it run through my fingers. I thought about time, and how little I had left, and I thought about Belle. She was going to be left an orphan again. If Lucy was charged with conspiracy to commit the crimes I hadn’t committed, Belle would end up with foster parents. Without ever knowing why.

  If she was even allowed to live.

  Lucifer had threatened to kill Belle and Lucy before, and would no doubt do so again if he had to, or felt like it. I realised I wouldn’t be able to turn to the local police to ask for help. If I did, not only was I dead, but so were Belle and Lucy.

  I stood up quickly and wiped my hand on my trousers. I couldn’t let it end like that. No fucking way. I owed Belle – and Lucy – something other than that. Something better. I walked back to the car with long strides. Lucy had convinced me that she had things under control. She was smart; she’d be able to stay hidden for as long as it took. Both herself and Belle. What responsibility I had left concerned myself, not them. Vincent Baker, or Lucifer, could go fuck himself. There was nothing he could do to me that mattered, as long as Belle and Lucy were okay.

  He could burn my office down.

  Destroy my career and strip me of my fortune.

  Hell, he could even go after my mother, even if I dearly hoped he wouldn’t.

  He could do whatever he wanted – because I no longer had anything to lose.

  I took out my mobile and brought up his text. Naturally he had sent it from a concealed number. What a shame. He’d have no way of knowing that we were going to meet up somewhere else.

  The car had turned into an oven by the time I got back inside it. I revved the engine and drove down the gravel track to the road that would take me back to the motorway. My encounter with Simon was still lingering in my overheated head. I couldn’t shake off what he had said. Nor could I understand why he had looked so baffled when I started talking about the fatal shooting. If it wasn’t about that, what the hell could possibly be the cause of any conflict between me and those people?

  He’d said that Tony had felt bad. I had no memory of that. Or, to be more accurate: Tony was the sort of person who was always a bit low. Never on a high. Never full of energy. I had assumed it was part of his nature, being a bit subdued, and I liked the fact that he was the way he was. So many of our colleagues were driven by pure adrenalin. They marauded down the streets like gorillas on speed and I always had the uncomfortable feeling that if they hadn’t joined the police they would have become criminals themselves.

  We hadn’t had any contact after he requested a transfer. The only information I heard about him was through other people. When I moved away from Texas, the flow of information got even more sporadic. I was only in touch with a very small number of my former colleagues, and only for a few years. Long enough to hear that Tony had died. He had been shot while on duty and hadn’t been found by his fellow officers until a few hours later. I considered going to the funeral, but it didn’t happen. There was no compelling reason to go, and it would only have aroused a whole load of awkward questions.

  During the drive back to Houston a plan began to take shape. Well, calling it a plan would be a bit of an exaggeration. It was more a strategic thought. I knew too little, and that made me vulnerable. There wasn’t much time and I really didn’t have many good ideas. Seeing as I couldn’t contact Vincent Baker, I decided to
go on the offensive again. I was going to pay a visit to his brother Simon’s café. Because I didn’t have any other way in to the family, and because I had to get closer to them.

  I remembered what it had said on the name-badge he had been wearing: Simon Baker, Baker’s Café. It didn’t take me long to get hold of the address. It turned out to be a chain, with all of the branches located in Houston. The chain consisted of a total of five cafés. An excellent way to launder money, if need be. If Vincent Baker was indeed Lucifer, I suspected that there was probably quite a pressing need. And like the loyal brother he no doubt was, Simon would be only too happy to help.

  I didn’t know what I was looking for. That’s all too often the case. We don’t know what we’re looking for until we see it. All the cafés were in so-called good locations. Good in the sense that they weren’t in shady backstreets, but the more central parts of Houston. They were fairly small, not unlike Starbucks. I didn’t go into the first one I visited. I just stood outside looking in through the large windows. There were two Latino guys behind the counter, making coffee for a long queue of customers. They were wearing the same uniform that Simon had been wearing: white shirt, black trousers, red bowtie. There was nothing and no one there that caught my attention.

  Same thing at the next one. A few employees, a queue. The smell of coffee brought my caffeine addiction to life. I went back to the car and drove to the third café. This time I was going to go in. If I didn’t see anything interesting, at least I could get a coffee to take out. I parked ten metres from the door. That’s one of the best – and worst – things about the USA. That the car has such an unquestioned place in society. You never need to drive round looking for a free parking space. I pulled in and locked the car. Then I went into Baker’s Café.

  It was a bit bigger than the others I had seen. More staff, similarly long queue. Baker’s Café was clearly a popular brand. I looked out for Simon Baker. He had looked as if he actually worked in one of his own cafés. The question was, which one?

  I joined the queue. There were two men in suits in front of me. They were having a quiet conversation about a newly established oil company.

  ‘They’ll be gone in two years,’ one of them said. ‘They’ll never be able to cope with the competition.’

  That was all I took in of their conversation. Oil, money, desert and sand. I couldn’t have cared less.

  The queue shrank. I was closer to the till now. Then it was my turn.

  ‘What can I get you, sir?’

  The girl behind the counter smiled broadly at me.

  I pointed at the menu.

  ‘I’ll try that.’

  I barely knew what I was ordering. They called it ‘offer of the week’, and anything labelled as that tends not to be great.

  ‘Excellent choice! That’ll be four dollars and fifty cents.’

  As I was paying I caught sight of Simon. He was standing with his back to me, halfway through a door I assumed led to the kitchen or something similar. I took my coffee gratefully and moved in his direction. No grand gestures, no loud noises. Just discretion and the minuscule amount of sense that was left in my body. Soon I was close enough to hear what he was saying. He sounded upset. He was talking to someone I couldn’t see.

  ‘I’ve already told him we don’t want anything to do with him. Turning up out of the blue like that. Completely fucking unbelievable.’

  The voice that replied was considerably calmer.

  ‘I think you may have misunderstood why he came to see us. In fact, I’m absolutely certain of it.’

  ‘How come? He started going on about someone who’d been shot, but I interrupted and said I didn’t know what he was talking about. Do you?’

  ‘I don’t want to go into that now. But you’re right that the murder had nothing to do with anything. It’s good that you let it go.’

  ‘Who died, then?’

  ‘Some nobody. Just let it go.’

  ‘There’s a lot I’m supposed to just let go, Vincent.’

  Vincent.

  Then silence. Perhaps they realised they were discussing sensitive matters in public. Admittedly, I was the only person listening, but that was enough. I sat down at one of the few tables in the café. I huddled over my disposable mug of coffee and sipped the hot liquid. My ears rushed and the blood bubbled in my veins.

  Simon came out and stood behind the counter. With a smile that refused to reach his eyes, he welcomed the next customer. He was totally absorbed in his own thoughts and work. He wouldn’t have seen me even if I’d been standing right in front of him. Discreetly I tried to look through the doorway. Vincent was back there somewhere. It would be worth a fortune to know what he looked like.

  And once again my wish was granted. The man who had to be Vincent Baker slipped out into the café. At first I only saw him from the side, with his face lowered, fully occupied with the phone in his hand. Trying to control your own impulses is very interesting. I tried to make myself as nondescript as possible as I sat there. As if I hung out there every day. As if I wasn’t simultaneously both the quarry and the hunter.

  I think I managed it for a little while. Long enough, at least, to stifle the exclamation that bubbled up in my throat when he finally took his eyes off his phone, straightened up and glanced momentarily in my direction. One second. That’s all it took for all the pieces of the puzzle – the pieces I had been searching for so desperately – to fall into place. It was as if they’d fallen from the sky. Just crashed down to where I was sitting and landed on the table beside my mug of coffee. And formed the clearest of pictures.

  How had I not realised?

  Vincent’s face. I’d seen it before. I’d punched it. The only face I had ever tried to harm with my bare hands. Now on someone else. Someone younger.

  Josh Taylor had said that Tony had three brothers. One who was in the police, one who ran a café, and one who took off. How had I not realised before now?

  I was the third brother.

  45

  Families are terrible things. I even hate the word. Family members are the only people we don’t choose for ourselves. And they’re the only people we are expected to love, and – on top of all the other crap – actually spend time with. Even if we don’t have anything in common. Even if we don’t like each other.

  I’ve never felt so alienated from the whole concept of family as that day when I sat drinking coffee in a café in Houston – and, completely out of the blue, saw my brother standing less than four metres away. I knew that was who he was. Because he was a carbon copy of the father we shared. I couldn’t stop my eyes from roaming. They settled on Simon, who was absorbed in his work behind the counter. He didn’t look anything like the man who had been my father. Nor had Tony. They must have taken after their mother. I drank my coffee. Looked up again. And found myself gazing straight into Vincent’s dark eyes.

  The charade was over. Neither of us said anything. But my senses have never been more receptive to impressions than they were at that moment. There wasn’t a single change in colour, a single detail, a single sound or a single smell that I didn’t register. I soaked it all up, and I can remember all of it. From the corner of my eye I saw that Simon’s pattern of movement had changed. He’d stopped when he caught sight of me and his brother.

  ‘Vincent?’ he said.

  No one seemed to react. The customers went on placing their orders, the staff went on serving them. But not Simon. And not Vincent. And not me.

  ‘Vincent?’ Simon repeated.

  He was the younger brother, that was all too obvious. The one who didn’t know how to deal with problems he was faced with. The one who always turned to his older brother for advice.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Vincent said. ‘I’ll deal with this.’

  He didn’t take his eyes off me for a second.

  ‘Okay,’ Simon said, still unsure of what he was expected to do.

  ‘But not here,’ Vincent said, and now he was talking to me.

  I di
dn’t move from my chair, with my elbows on the table and the mug of coffee in my hand. I should have been scared, but that and every other emotion was consumed by the overwhelming sense of surprise. At once, every word that Simon had uttered made sense.

  Their family didn’t want anything to do with me.

  It was no more complicated than that. And it needn’t have become any more complicated, because I didn’t want anything to do with them either. Was I going to have to die for such a simple reason? I couldn’t understand how that could be the case.

  During the time I lived in Texas I had met my father a handful of times. He never invited me home. I had dug out his address for myself and seen where he lived. I slid past his house countless times, and knew I’d seen family members come and go. An angry woman and young men of my own age. He’d worked hard, my dad. Had four sons with two different women in the space of five years. His new family had been a fact even by the time my mother left the USA. But we didn’t realise that until much later. During our few meetings he led me to understand that his new woman had known about me and Marianne all along. The reason why she still decided to make a go of their relationship was that Dad had promised that we – my mother and I – would soon be out of his life. Which of course turned out to be true.

  ‘I didn’t know who you were,’ I said to Vincent. ‘I didn’t know Tony was my brother.’

  I still didn’t understand the ramifications of that. What did they hold me responsible for? What did they think I had done to my brother that was so unforgivable? After all, it was Vincent and his brothers and mother who had drawn the winning ticket. They’d had a father who was present in their family as a father and husband.

  ‘Not here, I said,’ Vincent said. ‘We were supposed to meet later. Couldn’t you wait?’

  I chose not to answer his question. I assumed he was armed, but that didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to shoot me in the head in front of all the customers, that much was certain.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said.