I’d have been happy for things to go on like that. Nothing but tranquillity, sun and a child playing. But there was one little detail that had completely passed me by: the fact that some people were a hell of a lot more persistent than me. Not only more persistent, but also more stubborn.
Friday afternoon came, and I was sitting in my office writing an email. I’d met up with Veronica the previous evening, and I’d made plans for the weekend. It was, by and large, a very good day. Then the doorbell rang, and I remember thinking: ‘What now?’ We weren’t expecting any deliveries, and Lucy had finished for the day. It crossed my mind that it might be Bobby. I swore to myself, I needed to phone him and tell him I’d abandoned the case.
But when the door opened it wasn’t Bobby. It was a woman.
‘Are you Martin Benner?’ she said.
There isn’t much to say about her appearance. She looked ordinary. Not pretty, not ugly, just ordinary. I like that. I like people who don’t try too hard.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m Martin. Can I help you with something?’
She stepped hesitantly into the hallway.
‘I think so,’ she said. ‘At least, this is where Eivor sent me.’
Eivor. I’d almost forgotten about her. I needed to return the box of treasure from her attic. Because I had no use for it any more. Obviously it was kind of her to refer new clients to me now that Gustavsson was no longer active. The thought made me stand slightly taller. Gustavsson was a legend, and now people were coming to me instead. Not a bad development at all.
Unfortunately it turned out that the woman standing in front of me wasn’t a new client at all.
She held out her hand and I shook it.
‘Jenny Woods,’ she said. ‘I was friends with Sara Tell in Houston. I contacted Eivor a couple of days ago about a few things I sent over before the trial. I understand that you’re taking another look at her case?’
There are hundreds of ways to get rid of someone, but I only know two. The nice one and the nasty one. All the ones in between – like the kind one, the diplomatic one, the violent one – are beyond me.
With Jenny I started off with the nice one.
Without asking her into the office, I gave it to her straight out in the hall. No, I wasn’t taking another look at Sara Tell’s case. I conceded that Eivor may have had reason to believe that, but on close inspection I had come to the conclusion that it was unnecessary.
Jenny brushed the hair from her face and tucked it behind her ears. She looked nothing like I’d imagined. I’d seen pictures of Sara, of course, and assumed that Jenny would have roughly the same style. Judging by the photographs it looked like Sara pretty much lived in jeans and chequered shirts, and that she preferred trainers to anything else. Apart from when she was in court during the custody proceedings, when she had worn a jacket and skirt.
If Sara was the girl who went around in big shirts and jeans, Jenny was the girl in knee-length office skirts and pearl necklaces. An unusual style for someone who wasn’t yet thirty.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Are you working on Sara’s case or not?’
What was so unclear about it?
‘Not,’ I said, now in a harder tone of voice.
‘But you were?’
‘No. What I did do was take a look at it. There was no need to do more than that.’
Jenny looked at me.
‘Can I ask how you reached that conclusion so quickly? If I understood Eivor correctly, it’s only been a week or so since you went to see her, and at that time you’d only just started your work.’
I took a deep breath and did my best not to sound as irritated as I was. Besides, I was reluctantly beginning to feel curious. Had Jenny flown back from the USA after talking to Eivor?
‘I checked a number of issues that I thought the police might have missed,’ I said. ‘When it turned out that those issues didn’t affect the case, I decided not to pursue the matter, seeing as I had nothing more to go on.’
Jenny nodded slowly.
‘Okay, now I get it,’ she said. ‘Eivor told me you had the train ticket I sent Bobby, along with the diary. Are you counting that as one of – how did you put it? – the issues that you looked into?’
Her way of expressing herself suggested that she came from a different background to Sara who had a brother by the name of Bobby.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And when I realised it was irrelevant I decided not to expend any more energy on it.’
I looked pointedly at the time.
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. Regardless of what Eivor might have said. So if there wasn’t anything else, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
Jenny laughed.
‘It’s not me you need to help. It’s Sara.’
Not another one. I almost joined in with her laughter.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘It’s like this: Sara’s dead. It was stupid of me to start poking about in this mess, and even more stupid that I didn’t say as much the first time I met Bobby. If you want to grant Sara peace, you should turn to a priest instead. Because I’m afraid I can’t help you.’
Jenny became serious.
‘Just tell me how you came to the conclusion that the train ticket had no value as evidence.’
I was more than happy to do that. In a few short sentences I explained what Lucy and I had figured out.
‘Sara was staying in the hotel in Galveston the night the first victim died. Which makes it impossible for her to have been on a train from Houston to San Antonio at the same time,’ I summarised.
‘And you took the claim that Sara was staying in that hotel on that particular night from the detective’s account of how he recognised her during the investigation into the Houston murder?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But you probably haven’t seen any transcript of an interview in Galveston?’
I grew uncertain. No, I couldn’t say that I had.
Jenny interpreted my silence to mean that I wasn’t contradicting her.
‘You haven’t seen a transcript of an interview in Galveston because there isn’t one,’ she said.
I folded my arms in front of my chest.
‘So how did the detective recognise her?’
‘Because he tried to pick her up in a bar in Galveston when she was there with her au pair family on another occasion. And Sara gave him the brush-off. But he could hardly say that to his colleagues, could he?’
How many times in our lives are there moments when we make genuinely fateful decisions? Not many. And we rarely realise just how important those moments are until much later.
‘I’m not lying,’ Jenny said. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d be happy to prove it.’
I stood there in silence, just looking at Jenny.
She wasn’t like Bobby. She wasn’t the sort of person who screamed trouble. Which made her more credible. But all the same – I’d dropped the case. Was I about to pick it up again?
I thought about the boxes containing the material covering the investigation. They hadn’t got as far as the tip yet. The distance to the starting line wouldn’t be far at all if I wanted to give my private investigation another go.
I don’t know if I was driven by curiosity or boredom.
But eventually I said: ‘I’d be happy to hear what you have to say. Shall we go out and get a coffee?’
19
There’s a café at Sankt Eriksplan called Xoko. It was Lucy who first took me. Now I was there with Jenny Woods who had been friends with Sara in Houston. I was feeling pretty sceptical as we sat down at one of the window tables. The café appeared to have been invaded by women with pushchairs. I hate this whole baby culture that’s developed in Sweden. I certainly never took part in it. I sent Belle to preschool when she was ten months old and – as far as I can tell – it hasn’t done her any harm. Why would it? She got everything she needed, and more besides.
I ordered two coffees which were brought to our table.
‘Ten minutes will do,’ Jenny said.
She was calm and composed. I saw her looking at the pushchairs but couldn’t read what she was thinking.
‘Do you have children?’ I said.
I had a vague memory that Eivor had said she did, but it didn’t hurt to try to be nice.
‘Are we really going to waste time talking about me when you’re in such a hurry?’ Jenny said drily.
I retreated instantly. Obviously I didn’t give a damn whether or not she had a family.
‘You’re right, that was silly of me. So, tell me,’ I said.
‘Where do you want me to start?’
‘Pick up where we were when we left the office.’
‘You just want to talk about the train ticket?’
‘If you’ve got anything else to say, go ahead. But yes, the train ticket is of particular interest.’
Jenny didn’t touch her coffee. She just sat there staring down into the cup as if she didn’t understand what was in it.
Then she turned her attention to me.
‘Sara and I got to know each other in Houston in January 2007. We’d both just started work as au pairs with families living in the same neighbourhood in the Heights. That’s a residential area about seven kilometres from downtown Houston. I don’t really know what we were expecting. Houston’s a huge but pretty soulless city.’
‘I know it,’ I said neutrally.
‘You’ve been there?’
I’d lived there. In an earlier life. But I didn’t tell her that.
‘A few years ago,’ I said.
‘Then you know what it’s like,’ she said. ‘The city is kept afloat by oil, and the people who live there are either surfing on it or drowning in it. Neither Sara nor I were particularly happy to start with. But then we found each other and started spending time together. We were very different, but we still managed to have a surprisingly good time together. I could see that Sara was damaged, that she’d had a hard time growing up. Life in Houston seemed to suit her. She could be anonymous there. She liked that.’
I was making an effort not to show how restless I was.
The train ticket, I thought. Tell me about the damn train ticket!
‘Her au pair family was better than mine. They travelled quite a lot and she always got to go with them. Plenty of people in Houston like to get out of the city at weekends and during holidays. Galveston’s about an hour’s drive south, and Sara’s family went there whenever they could. They always stayed at the same hotel. The Carlton. It’s right on the seafront. Sara loved being there. She was obsessed with the sea, did you know that?’
I shook my head. No, I hadn’t known.
Jenny’s face broke into a smile and I found myself thinking about something my mum used to say to me and my sister when we were growing up. That people are always more attractive when they look happy. It was true. Especially with someone like Jenny who looked pretty plain otherwise. But not when she smiled.
‘The au pair family didn’t need Sara much when they were travelling,’ she went on. ‘She had a room to herself and could do her own thing. If I was free I’d take the car and drive down to hang out with her. I used to stay in her room without telling anyone. In the evenings and at night we used to go out clubbing or drinking. That was how she met Larry.’
Larry? I perked up instantly and raised my eyebrow questioningly.
‘Larry was the policeman who later moved to Houston and got it into his head that Sara was a double murderer.’
‘Ah.’
‘He was out with some friends and came over and hit on Sara. Several times. It was late summer, before the first murder took place in Galveston. Three weeks before the killing Sara was there with her family to look after the children while the parents went to a wedding. The next day she went out to get coffee. And he came up to her again, this time in uniform.’
‘So he hit on her while he was on duty?’
‘Yep. Probably wanted to impress his partner, something like that. Sara was very attractive, after all.’
From what I’d seen in pictures of her, I could only agree.
‘So he was persistent, this Larry?’
‘God, yes. But Sara kept saying no. That time with the coffee she said no rather more clearly. She threw it right in his face.’
I started to laugh.
‘Seriously? She threw coffee in the face of a uniformed police officer?’
‘As you can probably imagine, he got very upset. But after that she didn’t have any more trouble from him. Not until last year, when he got a new job in Houston and tried to breathe new life into the case of the taxi driver’s murder.’
I became serious. We’d reached a more complicated part of her story, and it was important that I follow her reasoning.
‘If I understand you right,’ I said, ‘then this detective, Larry, simply made up the claim that he had interviewed Sara in Galveston about the first murder?’
‘Exactly,’ Jenny said. ‘I suppose he was just sitting there in Houston, new at his job, keen to look good. Then suddenly up pops Sara, who had left such a memorable impression, in the middle of a murder investigation. He recognised her in that picture someone took and gave to the police later. The one of her getting out the taxi and swearing at the driver who was later found dead.’
‘I’ve seen it,’ I said. ‘It was published in the papers, too, wasn’t it?’
‘Of course,’ Jenny said. ‘I remember seeing it because there was so much coverage of the taxi driver’s murder. The police wanted to contact the woman in the picture, but Sara never got in touch. She’d had bad experiences with the police when she was younger.’
‘So the two of you talked about it? You knew it was her in the picture?’
Jenny shook her head.
‘Not until afterwards. I didn’t recognise her when the picture was published in the papers. You know what pictures like that look like, taken in the dark while people are moving. A bit fuzzy, not very focused. It wasn’t until the autumn, when Sara called me after the first police interview, that I took a closer look and saw it was her.’
Up till then I hadn’t had terribly high expectations of my conversation with Jenny. But now I straightened up, pushed my empty coffee cup away and listened attentively.
Jenny lowered her voice, as if she were afraid that one of all those pushchair-wielding mothers was listening.
‘To give Larry the policeman the benefit of the doubt, his thinking wasn’t entirely unreasonable,’ she said. ‘He recognised Sara in the photograph, and realised that she hadn’t got in touch with the police. And he knew she usually stayed in the hotel in Galveston where another murder had been committed. So he went to his boss in Houston and said he recognised Sara from an exploratory interview in Galveston, seeing as she had been staying in the hotel the night the murder happened. But that was just something he made up because he was too embarrassed to admit where he really knew her from. And no one seems to have bothered to check it. Because he said he was the one who had questioned her, presumably they didn’t feel any need to dig out a transcript of the interview. Anyway, according to Larry she hadn’t said anything of interest to the police.’
But that wasn’t enough for me.
‘You’re saying he invented an occasion when they had met, which just happened to make her a double murderer?’ I said. ‘That sounds crazy. And he was taking a hell of risk. If the case had gone to trial in the US, or even if charges had been pressed, he’d have had to come up with documentary evidence to back up his story, even if Sara had confessed. Same thing if the case had actually gone to trial in Sweden.’
I stopped myself. I couldn’t remember seeing any mention of this in the preliminary investigation. Had that line of inquiry been dropped once they’d found the murder weapon, the knife, in Sara’s attic?
‘If I’ve got this right,’ Jenny said, ‘Larry said he’d conducted such a
large number of interviews the night the woman died in Galveston. And, to his own embarrassment, he hadn’t documented them all. But he was able to produce a list of people who had been staying in the hotel that night, and Sara’s name was on it. It doesn’t seem to have been a very difficult thing to manipulate.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Let’s just say I have my contacts.’
‘In the police?’
‘Yes.’
I was having trouble buying what she was telling me. It was way too much of a coincidence. Would a Houston police officer really link Sara to a crime scene just for the hell of it, so he could claim to recognise her and paint her in an unfavourable light? That would be a pretty screwed-up strategy.
‘What about Sara’s au pair family?’ I said. ‘Were they on that list too?’
‘No, he couldn’t stretch his lie that far, and that was part of the problem for Sara,’ Jenny said. ‘Because Sara had the weekend off when the Galveston murder took place, and went to San Antonio to meet up with a guy she’d just started seeing. But she didn’t want to tell anyone that, so she lied. If anyone had asked the au pair family where Sara was that weekend, they’d have said Galveston, because that’s where Sara said she was going, but that she was going to stay at a different hotel, seeing as the Carlton was way too expensive when she was travelling on her own.’
‘Fuck,’ I said.
‘You see how it all fits together?’ Jenny said. ‘The train ticket you’ve got is genuine. It really was Sara’s, and I could have testified to that in court, if I’d been given the chance. Because I was with her in San Antonio. That’s why I had the tickets. I kept them afterwards, as a souvenir. It was on that trip that I met my husband. Sara wasn’t as careful about holding on to things as me, and she could be a bit careless. That’s why I had her ticket while we were there – so she wouldn’t lose it – and that’s why she didn’t want it afterwards.’
She fell silent.
‘Do you believe me now?’ she said.
Buried Lies Page 12