Without my help, he said. That didn’t sound good.
‘A beer,’ I said.
‘Sorry?’
‘Let me get you a beer. And you can tell me honestly what you remember and answer a few questions. After that I’ll manage on my own.’
Didrik muttered something I couldn’t hear.
‘What do you say?’ I said.
‘I say you’re an idiot,’ Didrik said, louder. ‘But sure, I’ll let you get me a beer.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Thanks very much indeed. This evening, at the Press Club? Six o’clock?’
The only reason I picked the Press Club was that they had a ridiculously wide range of beers.
‘The Press Club, six o’clock sounds good. See you then.’
I put the phone down and tried to settle down to work. I had important business to attend to. Above all, I had to pay another visit to the prison to see the guy who looked like he was going down for assault. This time I had to get him to talk. Properly.
Before I did anything I called Signe and made sure it would be okay if I got home a bit late. I remembered a time when I used to be free. A time when I came and went as I pleased in my own home, when I had complete control over my time. Children change all of that. I realise that I’ve bought myself a degree of freedom by having an au pair, but in truth – the reality I live in now is considerably different to the one I had just a few years ago.
As usual, Signe was cooperative. She didn’t have a problem staying two extra hours. If she’d said no it wouldn’t have been a problem either. Belle could have come to the Press Club with me.
The piles of papers on my desk weren’t large. Much the same as usual for the time of year. Nice and calm. I pulled out the file of the guy in custody. To my own surprise I realised that it irritated me. I didn’t have time for that sort of nonsense. I’d rather have devoted my energy to Sara Texas’s case.
There was a knock on my door and Lucy walked in. Anything that seems too good to be true is usually just that: too good to be true. At first I thought she was carrying five small bottles of drink. Then I saw that it was sun-cream. She dropped them on my desk and sat down on the edge of it.
‘What I want to know is, are you aware of how strong the sun is in Nice in the summer?’
I stared at the sun-cream.
‘How am I supposed to know that?’ I said.
Lucy rifled among the bottles of lotion. Her skin shone white under the thick watchstrap that adorned her left wrist. That was one of the things I loved about Lucy. That her pale, freckly skin and red hair complemented my dark colouring so perfectly.
‘You do want to go, don’t you?’ she said.
She didn’t sound worried, but asked in a neutral voice.
‘Of course I do,’ I said.
‘You seem very distracted.’
She stroked my cheek and ran her hand down my chest. She kissed me very gently.
‘Are you worrying about something?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, nothing at all.’
She pulled away but put her hand on my arm.
‘You’re not letting this Sara Texas business get out of proportion, are you?’
She meant well, but I still felt annoyed. I already had one mother; I didn’t need another one.
‘Of course I’m not,’ I said curtly, and stood up. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, but I’ve got to get to the prison. We can talk about sun-cream later.’
Lucy stayed on my desk while I put my papers in the briefcase I always had with me.
‘Will I see you tonight?’ she said.
‘I’m having a beer with an old friend in the police.’
‘About Sara Texas?’
‘It’s just a beer.’
She stood up as I began to walk towards the door.
‘It’s been several days since we last met up.’
‘We met up yesterday.’
‘You know what I mean, Martin.’
I’d reached the front door now.
‘You mean it’s been a while since we had sex.’
She was smiling when I turned to look at her.
‘Something like that.’
I gave her a crooked grin.
‘That’s because I’m saving up for Nice. See you later.’
‘See you.’
I closed the door unnecessarily hard behind me. Agitation turned into frustration. Lucy had made her choice, and now she had to live with it. She’d said we shouldn’t be a couple, that she couldn’t be in a relationship with someone who was as unreliable as me.
You make your choice, I thought. And then you live with the consequences.
12
Someone who clearly had the same difficulty as Lucy in dealing with the consequences of his life-choices was the young man I was meeting for the second time inside Kronoberg Prison. It was abundantly clear that he wasn’t doing well. Like most people who have extra restrictions placed on them while they’re in custody. Swedish custodial legislation is vicious, beyond anything found in any of the world’s other democracies. All lawyers know that, as do all police officers. Unfortunately the country’s politicians also know it but choose not to do anything about it. I find that utterly incomprehensible.
The guy looked wretched. I wondered what he’d been doing. Had he been rubbing his clothes against the walls of his cell?
‘Are you eating properly?’ I said.
He’d lost weight and had deep shadows under his eyes.
‘Yeah,’ he said.
Christ, people who don’t know how to lie really shouldn’t try.
‘I don’t want you to eat for my sake, but yours,’ I said.
I slung my briefcase up onto the table, opened it and took out the papers I’d brought with me.
‘I’d like us to go through what happened one more time,’ I said. ‘Because your story really doesn’t make sense, you know.’
Once again he reacted by getting cocky, which looked ridiculous when he had so little energy to try to act cocky with.
‘I told you what happened. You’re just going to have to fucking believe me. You’re my lawyer.’
I stifled a sigh.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know I am. That’s pretty much the only reason I’m here. And I’m really trying to do a good job. But it would be a lot easier if you helped me to do it even better.’
The young man lowered his eyes and scratched his arm with intense concentration. He was his usual self again now. Scared and fragile. It gave me an obvious way-in.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘I’ve read the witness statements your friends gave. The ones who say they don’t remember anything. They’re obviously talking shit. Neither of them had drunk enough for that whole memory loss thing to be believable. Your parents have also expressed their surprise. They can’t understand why your best friends aren’t standing up for you and saying what really happened. That you never hit that guy.’
I saw that he was listening, but he was still refusing to look at me.
‘I get the impression that they’re scared,’ I said in a calm voice. ‘Just like you.’
His frenetic scratching stopped, but he remained silent.
‘You’ll go to prison for this,’ I said. ‘Do you understand what that means? Do you know what it does to a person, being locked up? Not being allowed to come and go as you like, do what you like?’
Now he looked at me, and tears welled up in his eyes.
I shook my head.
‘Don’t do that to yourself. Not if you can avoid it.’
Then, at last, he started to talk.
‘I can’t,’ he said.
‘You can’t what?’
He sobbed quietly with his head lowered.
‘I can’t tell you what happened.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because that would make everything much worse.’
‘Sorry, but what? It could get worse? Worse than ending up in prison? Worse than losing your apprenticeship?’
My client n
odded as tears ran down his thin cheeks.
‘So tell me about it,’ I said. ‘Tell me what could be worse than all that.’
I sat patiently, waiting for the young man on the other side of the table.
‘Maja,’ he whispered eventually.
‘Who?’
‘Maja. My sister. She’s fifteen, she’s got Down’s Syndrome.’
I did my best to understand. Was he going to tell me that it was his sister with learning difficulties who hit the other guy?
‘Okay, Maja. Was she in the bar with you?’
He shook his head.
‘No, it’s not that.’
He flashed me a look that was burning with fear.
‘He’ll sell her.’
I felt myself stiffen.
‘Who’ll sell her?’
‘Rasmus. He’ll sell her to his mates if I don’t say it was me. Do you get it now? Do you see why I have to say it was me?’
I got it. Rasmus was the only witness who thought he remembered the evening when the assault took place.
My heart was turning somersaults in my chest.
I understood so much more than he could imagine.
My client looked at me as I lost myself in my own thoughts.
‘You mustn’t tell anyone,’ he said, as if to get my attention. ‘Not unless you can save Maja as well.’
I blinked and forced myself back to the present.
‘It’ll work out somehow,’ I said, hoping I didn’t sound too distracted.
Unfortunately I did.
‘I knew I shouldn’t have said anything,’ my client said, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Fucking hell, how could I be so fucking stupid?’
His rage and anxiety made me pull myself together.
‘Stop that,’ I said sternly. ‘I promise I’ll help you find the best possible solution to this. Believe me, once your friend ends up in here, he won’t be able to hurt your sister.’
My client shook his head hard.
‘He’ll get out again,’ he said. ‘Twice as bad as before. Then he’ll get me and Maja. Anyway, he’s got friends. Loads of friends who’d do anything he wanted them to while he’s inside.’
I sighed.
‘Come on. Believe me, there are very few people who actually go along with that sort of mafia behaviour when it comes down to it. Do you seriously believe that he’s got “loads of friends” who would be prepared to kidnap a fifteen-year-old girl with learning difficulties and sell her to dirty old men? Forget it.’
I could see I was getting through to him. My client calmed down, but looked just as frightened as he had before.
‘Okay, this is what we do,’ I said. ‘I’ll go to the police with this information, and they’ll sort this all out. Do you think those friends of yours who couldn’t remember anything when they were questioned might remember your version if we ask them? Or does your so-called friend Rasmus have a hold over them as well?’
‘I don’t know,’ my client said.
I didn’t believe he did. If that were the case, they’d already have given a false testimony, just as the perpetrator himself had.
‘You won’t forget Maja, will you?’ my client said. ‘She’s the person this is all about. You do get that, don’t you?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said.
I got ready to leave. All’s well that ends well. I couldn’t imagine that the police would fail to offer his sister protection. It was both their job and their duty. But I didn’t actually agree with him. This wasn’t about his sister Maja at all. It was about a young man who had been beaten up for God knew what reason, and whose injuries had left him with epilepsy.
My client remained seated with his head bowed as I stood up. He was a bit like Bobby. The same gangly body, the same battered appearance.
Yet still very unlike him. This guy had every chance of having a good life. And, being brutally honest, that didn’t seem to be the case for Bobby.
I patted my client on the shoulder.
‘This will all get sorted out before too much longer,’ I said. ‘Try to eat something, and get some sleep, and I’ll be in touch again soon.’
He watched me in silence as I left the room. I felt something resembling relief. Now that I had this case behind me I could devote more of my time to Sara Texas.
My client had actually helped me understand something I’d been thinking about a lot in the previous week. Why certain people in certain situations confessed to crimes they hadn’t committed.
They did so to help someone else, or because they were being threatened.
And sometimes they did so for both reasons at the same time.
Anyone hoping to ride to Sara Texas’s defence didn’t need to find an alternative murderer. It would be more than enough, as I’d said from the outset, to find a plausible explanation for why she had confessed to murders she hadn’t committed. For instance, that she was being threatened. Or that she was protecting someone else whom she didn’t want to see punished.
If this second explanation was why she acted the way she did, I had to admit that I was worried. Because I’d never met anyone I liked so much that I’d be prepared to help them if they’d killed a handful of people. Still less shoulder responsibility for their crimes.
Getting my client to start talking had been relatively easy. But Sara Texas was dead; I wasn’t going to get a peep out of her. So I had to ask myself: if my client hadn’t decided to tell me about the threat to his sister Maja, how could I have found out about it?
13
The Press Club isn’t half as intellectual as the name implies. Like I said, I only go there because of their fantastic range of beers. Why a police officer like Didrik goes there, I have no idea. I suppose he must like the beer as well.
‘Either you haven’t got enough work on, or something else has made you take on such an idiotic commission,’ Didrik said.
‘I don’t know if I’d call it a commission,’ I said, drinking straight from the bottle.
‘That only makes it worse.’
Didrik looked like he’d been born with a brown beer bottle in his hand. The perfect accessory to his expensive jeans and bespoke jacket.
‘Do you still buy all your clothes in Italy?’ I asked wearily.
Wearily because I was envious.
‘Of course,’ Didrik said. ‘Where else am I going to shop? Dressmann?’
We burst out laughing at the same time.
A young woman sitting over in one corner with what looked like a really boring guy was looking at me. I looked back, and raised my bottle in a discreet greeting. She nodded and smiled shyly.
‘You sod, nice to see you haven’t changed,’ Didrik said, following my eyes.
‘I’m just looking,’ I said.
‘Right. How’s Lucy?’
‘Fine, thanks. We’re off to Nice in a couple of weeks.’
‘Just the two of you?’
‘Yep.’
‘And Belle?’
‘She’s going to stay with her grandparents.’
Didrik shook his head.
‘It’s a bit silly, trying to pretend that you and Lucy aren’t a couple, don’t you think?’
I shrugged and tried to get eye contact with the girl I’d raised my drink to. She looked back unflinchingly. The hunter in me woke up in less than two seconds. She was prey, and I didn’t even have to catch her. She was already lying there waiting for me, if I could just be bothered to pull my bow.
Didrik grinned.
‘You’re being childish, Martin. You’re going to have sex with that girl just to prove that you aren’t together with Lucy.’
I cleared my throat and put my bottle down. It was time to shift the focus of the conversation, even if he was basically right. Of course I’d end up having sex with the girl I’d spotted. But that had nothing to do with Lucy. No, I fucked because I was horny. If there were other underlying reasons, I wasn’t remotely interested in analysing them. Life’s complicated enough as it is
.
‘Sara Texas,’ I said.
‘I’d rather talk about your sex life,’ Didrik said. ‘You’re such an inspiration.’
‘It never occurred to you that she might actually have been innocent?’
Didrik became serious.
‘Come off it,’ he said. ‘A little part of me honestly thought we were going to meet up for a beer because you were bored.’
I raised one eyebrow and he relented.
‘Okay, fine, we’ll do it your way. No, I never thought she was innocent. Because, as you’ve doubtless realised, she was extremely cooperative.’
‘Precisely,’ I said. ‘And since when do murderers behave like that?’
For some reason my keenness annoyed Didrik.
‘Okay, you need to calm down,’ he said sharply. ‘You’re talking rubbish, Martin. You’ve been badly informed, and it doesn’t suit you. It wasn’t the case – let me emphasise that, it wasn’t the case – that sweet little Sara started talking the moment we brought her in for her first interview.’
I stopped myself and waited for him to go on.
‘It all started when the police in Texas got in touch with a request for help. Obviously there was never any question of extraditing someone who might end up on death row, but we were more than prepared to bring her in to question her ourselves. The Yanks sent us what they had, and the prosecutor agreed to set up a preliminary investigation. We found her pretty much immediately, I seem to recall. And got nowhere. The cops in Texas had done a good job of linking her to the murders in Galveston and Houston, but it wasn’t enough. There was no forensic evidence.’
A waitress appeared and asked if we wanted any food to go with our beers. I ordered a bowl of nuts.
‘Please, go on,’ I said to Didrik. ‘You were saying that there was no forensic evidence?’
He ignored my unmistakably ironic tone.
‘So we brought her in for questioning. Have you seen pictures of her? She didn’t look older than fifteen or so. So damn . . . innocent. None of us believed she was guilty. I felt like starting by apologising for bothering her and calling a halt to the whole stupid thing there and then. But obviously I couldn’t do that, so we went ahead as planned. And do you know what she did then?’
‘No.’
‘She became defensive. Wouldn’t admit a thing.’
Buried Lies Page 8