Buried Lies

by Kristina Ohlsson

  ‘Come with us and you’ll find out.’

  So I went with them, whilst making it very clear that I wasn’t going to say a word until my lawyer was present.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Lucy said, heading towards the bedroom.

  ‘Great idea,’ I said. ‘We can just leave Belle here on her own.’

  Lucy stopped.

  ‘I’ll call your mother,’ she said. ‘I’ll come to the station as soon as she gets here.’

  You always think there are some experiences you’ll be spared. Or those at the very least which are highly unlikely ever to happen. But this was happening to me. The police had come to my home to get me so that they could question me about a murder I hadn’t committed. I got dressed and then glanced into Belle’s room. She was sleeping on her back with her plastered arm across her stomach.

  For a moment I was seized by an inexplicable panic. What would happen to Belle if I didn’t come back? After all, stranger things had happened than people being convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. Sara Tell had succeeded in getting herself charged with no fewer than five murders she hadn’t committed.

  Lucy’s warm hand on my shoulder prompted me to let go of the door-frame and go with the police.

  ‘It’s just a misunderstanding,’ she said. ‘Go with them and get it sorted out. We’ll have breakfast when you get back.’

  I didn’t say a word as we were driving to the police station.

  When we were almost there my mobile rang.

  It was Didrik.

  ‘Hi, Martin, I’m sorry to call so early. Where are you?’

  If it was a joke, it wasn’t funny.

  ‘I’m sitting in a car having a little ride with two of your colleagues. Nice lads, they were very keen to give me a lift to Police Headquarters.’

  I heard Didrik groan down the phone.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry about this. One of my colleagues took the decision, and I don’t agree with it. Listen, I’m sure we can sort this out in no time. It’s just that . . .’ – he lowered his voice – ‘your name has cropped up in a new murder investigation and we’re curious to find out why. Even if I suspect I have a pretty good idea already.’

  I don’t even want to think about how many rules Didrik was breaking when he made that call. But I have to admit that I was and still am very grateful that he did. Because after that I was able to relax slightly and contemplate what was happening to me more generally. Perhaps it might even be beneficial to be suspected of involvement in a crime, to see the process from the other side, so to speak.

  If only it had happened some other day.

  It annoyed me immensely that they had decided to invade my home on a morning when I really needed to be with Belle. On the other hand, I presumed that taking things like that into account was out of the question in a murder investigation. And once I had got that far with my thoughts, it occurred to me that I still didn’t know who had died.

  ‘Jenny Woods,’ Didrik said. ‘Do you know anyone of that name?’

  As soon as he said her name I felt the last of my anxiety dissipate. Dissipate and be replaced by plenty of other feelings, foremost among them surprise.

  So it was Sara’s friend Jenny who had died. On the night between Friday and Saturday, when I was in hospital with Belle, I was told.

  Excellent timing, seeing as I had a verifiable alibi for my whereabouts at the time of the murder. But simultaneously bad. Partly because I had liked her when we met, and partly because her death meant – to be horribly blunt – that I was going to be left with a whole load of unanswered questions.

  I explained all that I could to Didrik and the other officer who was sitting in on the interview or whatever it was. It didn’t take long.

  Jenny had turned up at my office, just as Bobby had done a week or so before.

  She had also come about the same case.

  She had mentioned speaking to Eivor.

  We went out for coffee and she confirmed what I had suspected all along – that Sara Tell was innocent of at least one of the murders in Texas.

  ‘Then I received a call from Belle’s preschool saying that she’d been hurt,’ I concluded. ‘So I left at once and we ended up staying in hospital overnight. We were at home all day yesterday. All night too, for that matter.’

  Didrik’s expression didn’t change until I said that Belle had been in hospital. Then his police mask slipped for a moment.

  ‘How is she now?’ he asked.

  ‘Hard to know when I’m sitting here,’ I said.

  A silence followed.

  ‘Now it’s your turn to talk,’ I said. ‘What happened?’

  Didrik rubbed his forehead. He had clearly also been woken too early, even if I suspected that he hadn’t spent the night sleeping at his desk, unlike me.

  ‘Well, Jenny Woods died shortly after 1:30, two blocks from her hotel. She was killed in a hit and run on a pedestrian crossing. There are witnesses who say that the car – a Porsche 911, by the way, like yours – was driving fast, and sped up when she stepped into the street. She didn’t stand a chance. After she was hit the car carried on without stopping.’

  I didn’t know in what order to react to what I had just heard.

  ‘You say she died at half past one,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t completely dark, but it wasn’t exactly light either. There’s no reason to think that whoever was driving mistook her for someone else?’

  Didrik threw his hands out.

  ‘Who knows?’ he said.

  ‘I mean, Jenny Woods left Sweden in 2007. Who knew she was in Stockholm?’

  ‘You mean apart from you?’ Didrik’s colleague snapped.

  He was clearly convinced that I was the murderer.

  Didrik flashed him a stern glance.

  ‘I can’t answer that right now,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to see what the investigation throws up.’

  He slid down his chair so that he was half-lying behind his desk. We were sitting in his office rather than one of the interview rooms. We wouldn’t have been doing that if their suspicions against me had been anything but shaky.

  ‘Where’s your car at the moment?’ he said.

  ‘Locked away in the garage,’ I said. ‘At least I hope it is. I took a taxi to and from the hospital.’

  ‘We’ll have to check that,’ Didrik said.

  The thought that my car might have been stolen was enough to make me feel stressed. Not so much because I loved my car, but because it was a deeply unsettling thought that someone had gone to the effort of making it look like I drove around at night running people down.

  ‘Was the car the reason I was brought in for this delightful morning meeting?’

  Didrik laughed.

  ‘Come off it, cowboy,’ he said. ‘Of course it wasn’t.’

  ‘My mobile,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly. You did call her a number of times.’

  ‘After she’d died,’ I pointed out.

  Didrik got to his feet.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said, making it sound like I’d come voluntarily. He held out his hand. ‘Well, we can’t spare you any more time right now. We’ve got a murder investigation to be getting on with.’

  I stood up as well.

  ‘You’ve got several murder investigations waiting for you,’ I said, without trying to hide the irritation in my voice.

  Didrik stiffened.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that it’s laughable that you haven’t said a word about the fact that I just told you Sara had an alibi for the murder in Galveston. She didn’t commit a single one of those five murders. When are you going to realise that and do your duty, and actually find the real killer?’

  Didrik’s hand was dry and warm when I shook it.

  ‘Be careful what conclusions you come to,’ he said. ‘It’s easy to come along six months behind everyone else and tell them they’re wrong.’

  ‘It’s my sworn duty to point out th
at you’re wrong,’ I said. ‘And if you’re going to carry on working with blinkers on, you won’t find the person who killed Jenny Woods either.’

  Didrik’s face turned red with suppressed rage.

  ‘Well, I think you should go home now and check that your car’s in the garage,’ he said.

  Without further conversation I left Didrik’s office and marched out of the police station. I ran straight into Lucy.

  ‘Are you finished already?’ she said. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Let’s get in the car and I’ll tell you on the way home,’ I said. ‘Or did you take a taxi?’

  ‘No, I used the Porsche. Hope you don’t mind.’

  Relief can take so many forms.

  ‘Definitely not,’ I said, taking my mobile out and calling Didrik.

  He answered immediately.

  ‘Okay, you obstinate sod, come down and take a look at the Porsche straight away. Lucy’s driven it here.’

  ‘God, it’ll be good to get away to Nice,’ Lucy said as we waited on the pavement.

  I looked from Lucy to the Porsche.

  ‘We’re not going to Nice,’ I said. ‘At least, I’m not.’

  Lucy swallowed.

  ‘You’d rather stay at home with Belle?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  A far too chilly summer breeze blew past, making Lucy’s hair dance.

  ‘So where do you want to go, then?’ she said.

  I was just about to reply when I noticed it. The dent in the car. On the bonnet.

  Slowly I walked over to the car. If you imagined that the dent had been caused by someone being run down, it could only be described as modest.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Lucy said. ‘Martin, I swear, I didn’t do that. It must have been there when I got the car out to come here.’

  ‘You can be quite sure it was,’ I said, without taking my eyes off the dent.

  The door of the police station opened and Didrik and one of his gorillas came out.

  ‘Ready and waiting, I see,’ Didrik said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

  He fell silent when he saw the bonnet of the Porsche.

  Without a word I gave him the car-keys.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to Lucy. ‘We’ll have to get a taxi home.’

  We walked away, hand in hand. The dent was the police’s problem. I had an alibi for the time of the murder, and that was all that mattered.

  ‘Are you going to explain what’s going on?’ she said when we were a short distance away.

  I was, absolutely. The problem was that at that moment I didn’t actually know what sort of game I had been dragged into. And – most importantly of all – I hadn’t realised that I wasn’t one of the players.

  I was just one of many pieces on the board.

  22

  ‘You need to get yourself out of this, Martin. Can’t you see that?’

  Lucy’s eyes flashed with anxiety.

  We were sitting in the bar of the Hotel Amaranten drinking coffee. I hate the Amaranten. The bedrooms are the size of shoeboxes and the lobby reeks of cigarette smoke. But it was close to Police Headquarters and we needed coffee.

  I was livid. And worried. I can’t pretend otherwise. Someone was trying to frame me for premeditated murder. It was impossible to take it in, on any level.

  Lucy grabbed my arm hard.

  ‘It’s sheer luck that you happen to have such a good alibi, Martin,’ she said. ‘It’s rotten for Belle, but bloody lucky for you. Take this as a warning. Pack up and get out while you can.’

  ‘Pack up and get out? What exactly are you suggesting? That I flee the country? Ask Mafia-Boris for a new passport and take off for Costa Rica?’

  Lucy sighed and let go of me.

  ‘I didn’t mean literally,’ she said quietly. ‘But that bit about calling Boris . . . maybe that isn’t such a bad idea.’

  I could see how scared she was. So scared that she was advising me to get in touch with a mafia boss who owed me. As for me, I just felt pretty numb after everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours: Belle’s accident and my encounter with Jenny and now this.

  Jenny’s murder confirmed what I’d always suspected. That there was another murderer on the loose, free as a bird. As long as detectives like Didrik insisted that Sara Texas had committed all those murders, the real perpetrator could feel perfectly safe.

  The fact that Jenny had to be got rid of was, in a bizarre way, logical.

  What about me? What did I have to do with all this?

  It also felt odd that I would be got rid of by being sent to prison for a crime I hadn’t committed. That sort of thing was hardly going to make me shut up. The logical option would have been to murder me as well.

  I slid restlessly down from my barstool.

  ‘Baby, I need to get home and shower, and think through all this,’ I said. ‘Can we talk later?’

  Lucy looked at me as if I’d gone mad.

  ‘Sorry? You’re just going to go now?’

  ‘What’s the alternative? Sit here and hang out until the sun goes down?’

  She put her coffee cup down hard.

  ‘You’re a fucking useless team player, Martin. We’re a team, you and me. This isn’t just about you. It involves me too. And Belle.’

  I had plenty of objections.

  Sara Texas’s case was mine, not Lucy’s.

  Belle was my daughter, not hers.

  I was the one who was the subject of a conspiracy, not her.

  But I didn’t manage to get a single word out. I was far too tired to argue. Without saying a thing I reached out one arm and drew Lucy to me. I felt her breath against my chest and held her even tighter.

  ‘I didn’t know we were a team in this particular case,’ I said with my face in her hair. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You need to be careful,’ she whispered. ‘Promise you will be.’

  I promised. With the same degree of conviction as when I promised my mother that I wouldn’t jump off the balcony with an umbrella (I did, of course, and broke my leg), and in the same firm voice as I once promised Lucy I wouldn’t lie to her (which I never actually did – I answered honestly the very first time she asked me if I was sleeping with other women).

  ‘There’s something going on,’ I said. ‘I can’t just let it go. If I do, I’ll be the one who gets hit next time I try to cross the road.’

  It wasn’t before the words left my mouth that I realised that they could very well be true. The question was: what was the best way of securing my long-term survival? Was it by uncovering the tangle of events that had led to Sara’s ludicrous confession? Or was it by doing as Lucy said – to regard the attempt to frame me as a warning and back away from the whole mess?

  Someone was evidently watching me, from an uncomfortably close range. Someone who thought I had already found out too much. But what information did I have that could be regarded as sensitive? None. Not until I met Jenny Woods, anyway. My pulse sped up. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that what she had told me had been correct.

  My mind was still racing.

  ‘I need to get out of here,’ I said.

  Lucy picked up her handbag and left with me. The cool morning air blended with exhaust fumes. Summer Stockholm in its essence.

  We walked down Kungsholmsgatan towards the city centre. As we passed Oscar’s Theatre I hailed a taxi.

  ‘Lucy, I really am extremely grateful for all your help, yesterday and today,’ I began.

  She shut me up by putting her index finger to my lips.

  ‘Don’t you dare try to get rid of me,’ she said. ‘I’m coming home with you.’

  She opened one of the back doors and got in.

  ‘Come on, now,’ she told me.

  With a sigh I did as she said. I evidently wasn’t going to get shot of her.

  The taxi rolled off towards Östermalm. I stared hard through the windscreen. Of all the questions churning in my head, two felt like they needed answers more urgently than th
e others: who had known Jenny was in Stockholm and that she was planning to see me? And how did that person know what she had to tell me?

  In books and films, lawyers solve puzzles. They uncover great conspiracies and they fight day and night for their clients. In real life none of that is true. The jigsaw has already been solved, and we’re rarely missing any important pieces. Unfortunately. It would be much more exciting if that weren’t the case, but it is.

  I realised that I wouldn’t have been much good as Sara Texas’s defence lawyer. Not if she wanted, and needed, to be found guilty of the crimes to which she had confessed. I’d have got frustrated. Massively fucking frustrated. I would have questioned her strategy, called her an idiot. And sooner or later I would have started to do what I was doing now: follow up the loose ends that had been neglected by the police.

  If everything fitted together the way I suspected, that would have been the point where Sara would have fired me. When she realised that I was going to do a better job than Didrik and his colleagues. Because there was no doubt that Sara had wanted to be believed when she confessed. If I hadn’t been convinced of my own theory before, I was now. Sara had been threatened. And the threat had been so terrifying that decades locked away in prison seemed a more enticing prospect than denying the charges and keeping her freedom.

  Unless she had known all along that she wouldn’t end up in prison because she was going to die before that? Had she been happy knowing that she wouldn’t have to rot in a cell? We would never know. The only thing that was clear was that she couldn’t have foreseen that her father would end up at death’s door, thus providing her with a possibility of an escorted excursion from custody.

  Coincidences and apparently random events came together to form a picture that I couldn’t quite make sense of. I shuffled restlessly in the back seat of the taxi. The threat that had made Sara Texas confess to five murders appeared to be heading in a different direction now.

  Towards me.

  Like hell was I going to give in without a fight!

  As if I’d just woken from a long trance, I turned to look at Lucy. She looked back at me with a sombre expression.

  ‘I’ve got to get hold of Bobby. He must have talked to someone. He’s the one who set all this crap in motion, and he’s the one who’s going to have to put a stop to it.’