We were standing in the shadow of a huge cork oak. Lucy discreetly lifted the hair that was making her back hot. A pattern of sweat was visible on the fabric of her blouse.
‘You can trust us,’ I said, and realised that I meant it. ‘We won’t mention it to anyone else.’
Stiller seemed to weigh things up for a while. In the end he said, ‘Okay. I might regret this, but right now I believe you need to know how I can be so certain that Sara committed the murder here in Houston.’
We waited. A dog was barking in one of the gardens and a man drove past in a big jeep. I could have been a child here. God knows what would have become of me then.
‘There was a witness,’ Stiller said in a low voice.
‘A witness?’ I repeated.
He nodded.
‘A witness to what?’
My heart was racing as I waited for him to reply.
‘To the murder of the taxi driver.’
31
I let out a laugh.
‘A witness,’ I said. ‘Who doesn’t appear anywhere in the file covering the preliminary investigation. A very mysterious witness.’
‘Not mysterious, but deserving of protection,’ Stiller said with a pointed look.
I frowned. I hoped I had misunderstood him.
‘I can see you’ve made the connection,’ Stiller said. ‘At first we only had the photograph someone took of Sara when she was getting out of the taxi. After we released it to the press we got hold of an individual who had seen something. Someone who had been there, and who hid in terror behind a rubbish bin as a woman beat the taxi driver to death with a golf club. The most perfect, useless witness I’ve ever come across in my whole life. Because the person in question had been a witness in a high-profile drug trial in California two years earlier, and had then been given witness protection – a new identity, in other words – by the FBI.’
‘So you couldn’t use the information you’d been given?’ I said.
‘No, not in writing, and not verbally either. Inside the police only I and a handful of others knew about it. The FBI gave us an oral presentation of what the witness had said.’
A number of objections were fighting for space in my throat.
‘So you never met the witness?’
‘No.’
The silence that followed was as oppressive as the heat.
‘Bloody hell,’ I whispered.
Stiller sighed and put his hands in his trouser pockets.
‘The funny thing is that we didn’t know who Sara was,’ he said. ‘If we had, we would have brought her in at once. Instead it took us several years to get hold of her. Via the FBI we showed the witness another picture of her. And were told once again that she was the murderer.’
I ran my hands over my face.
‘I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘She was seen getting out of the taxi and going into a nightclub. So how did she find the taxi driver later?’
‘Sara was on her own in the nightclub that evening,’ Stiller said. ‘Our theory was that she went to sell either drugs or herself, seeing as both activities went on in the basement of the club. There were witnesses who saw her leave the club just an hour later. We believe she managed to get picked up by the same driver. Maybe he tried to pay her for sex, we don’t know. But for some reason he drove her into a dark alleyway and got out of the car.’
‘Maybe he tried to rape her?’ Lucy murmured.
‘Maybe,’ Stiller said. ‘Either way, I regard the witness’s identification of her as one hundred per cent reliable. So this talk of her being innocent – you might as well drop that.’
When he saw the look on my face he hurried to add, ‘Obviously I can’t say anything about the murders in Sweden. To be honest, I was extremely surprised when I found out she was a serial killer.’
I folded my arms across my chest. In spite of the wretched heat I was shivering.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why was that surprising if none of the rest of it was?’
Stiller peered at me, then stared at a cat as it ran across the road.
‘The murders in Galveston and Houston both showed signs of rage, an impulsiveness that suggested that they weren’t premeditated. In both instances we concluded that they were a consequence of rapidly escalating conflicts. The fact that Sara used drugs probably played its part. Of course it’s well known that drug-users often get irrational and paranoid. But from the little I know about the murders in Stockholm, they were different. Better planned, less violent. If you can ever say that a murder is more or less violent.’
That made sense. It all did, really. Because Sara wasn’t an addict in her later years. She’d been clean. Having a son must have persuaded her to pull herself together. She looked after things, took care of her son as well as herself. So it was possible that her changed circumstances would have affected how she carried out the murders.
If that was what she had actually done.
In spite of the evidence I was being told, I couldn’t get things to fit together. The decision to come to Texas suddenly seemed overwhelmingly the right thing to have done. This was where something had gone wrong, this was where Sara’s chances of having a normal future had been wrecked, once and for all.
As Stiller himself pointed out, there was a very clear dividing line between the murders in Stockholm and those in Texas. The decision to focus on the American murders had been the right one. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t faced with reluctantly having to admit that it looked like Sara had in fact committed one of the murders. The one in Houston. The one that was usually called ‘her second murder’, but which was probably her only one.
But how could all of this have happened?
And how had I, of all people, been dragged into the aftershocks of this drama?
‘I’m not giving up,’ I said, and felt Lucy look at me with a mixture of sympathy and exhaustion. ‘Sara wasn’t in Galveston the night the woman was murdered at the hotel. She was in San Antonio with Jenny Woods. And Jenny was run down and killed after telling me what she knew.’
Another car drove past. A huge Chrysler. Where would the Americans be without their massive cars? Was there anyone who ever took the bus from time to time?
‘I don’t think we’re going to get any further,’ Stiller said. ‘You think one thing, I think another. So Jenny said Sara wasn’t in Galveston? Interesting. Because I’ve got a colleague, Larry Benson, who’s certain he interviewed her in Galveston after the murder because she’d been staying at the hotel where the murder took place.’
‘I presume you know that Larry Benson made repeated attempts to get Sara into bed during her stay in Galveston?’ I said. ‘And that Sara was so unimpressed that she ended up throwing hot coffee in his face?’
For the first time I thought I was about to see Stiller laugh.
‘For Pete’s sake,’ he said. ‘You think he tried to frame Sara for murder because she spurned his advances?’
He shook his head and left the protective shade of the oak tree.
‘So you know about that?’ I repeated.
‘No,’ Stiller said. ‘I’m actually pretty shocked that you believe something like that. And I don’t mean the bit about Larry trying to hit on Sara, because that could well be true. But the fact that he might have lost it completely because she threw coffee at him . . .’
‘Never mind the coffee,’ I said. ‘What I’m trying to say is that he made up the bit about her staying at the hotel because he didn’t want to explain what had really happened, and how he happened to recognise an addict he hadn’t seen for several years.’
Stiller became serious again.
‘You never saw a transcript of the interview, did you?’ I said.
‘No, but she was on the list of witnesses who’d been questioned.’
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘Call the hotel,’ I said. ‘Ask them to check their records. I swear, she wasn’t there that weekend.’
But Stiller just shook his head.
He suddenly stopped in front of one of the houses.
‘Do you know who lives here?’ he said.
Lucy and I stared stupidly at the house.
‘No.’
‘Sara’s au pair family. If you want to get hold of them, this is where they live.’
Esteban Stiller slowly turned towards us and gave a short bow.
‘And this marks the end of the tour,’ he said. ‘I’m going back to the café to get my car. I can’t spare you any more time. But it was a pleasure to meet you. It’s always nice to meet Scandinavian idealists who refuse to see the world for the wretched place it is.’
He shook hands with Lucy, then me.
‘Don’t call me again,’ he said, and I knew I wasn’t going to defy him unless my life depended on it.
I swallowed hard. I still wasn’t happy.
‘Lucifer,’ I said. ‘I want to know more about Lucifer.’
Stiller’s grip of my hand grew harder and he pulled me so close that I could smell the tobacco on his breath.
‘Listen very fucking carefully to me, now. I’m giving you a final warning, and I’m doing that because I like you. Stay away from that man. You won’t survive a confrontation with him. And for the last time: Sara had nothing to do with him.’
I held my ground. Stubborn and desperate for new leads.
‘You have to admit it’s odd that he appears in Sara’s diary,’ I said, pulling free.
‘If she was referring to the same Lucifer, then yes. It’s odd. But not unthinkable. Sara was involved in drugs and prostitution. Who knows, maybe she was on the periphery of his network? We may have missed her when we investigated him. It goes without saying that it’s hard to find everyone involved in a network of that size.’
I shook my head.
‘The diary gives the impression that she knew him personally.’
Stiller burst out laughing.
‘Out of the question,’ he said. ‘A piece of advice: drop any leads that point towards Lucifer. You don’t want anything to do with him.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of getting in touch with him in prison,’ I said. ‘I’d just like to talk to one of the detectives who was involved in mapping his network and activities.’
Stiller’s face darkened.
‘Lucifer isn’t in prison,’ he said.
‘But you said . . .’
‘I said we cracked his network. But we didn’t manage to get Lucifer convicted of anything more than assault. He spent less than a year inside. Again – stop poking about in this shit. Stay away from Lucifer, and stay away from my colleagues. Because you won’t find anyone who’s willing to talk about him. No one at all.’
With that Stiller turned and set off down the road.
We watched him until he turned off towards the café.
It was as if he had vanished into thin air.
32
The wine in the hotel bar tasted like soap.
‘Disgusting,’ Lucy said, pushing the glass away.
‘Who cares?’ I said, gulping down the bitter liquid.
If I could have taken alcohol intravenously I’d have accepted gratefully.
‘She murdered the taxi driver,’ I said.
‘I know,’ Lucy said.
‘But she wasn’t in Galveston that night.’
Lucy said nothing.
I nudged her with my elbow.
‘Lucy, look at me. She wasn’t. Jenny was trustworthy. And she had the ticket.’
Lucy still said nothing.
‘I know you think the ticket could have belonged to anyone, but I know it was Sara’s.’
Only then did I notice that Lucy was on the brink of tears.
‘What is it, baby?’
Pink patches appeared in her cheeks.
‘What is it?’
She was almost shouting, and several people in the bar turned round.
I tried to get her to talk quieter but it was impossible.
‘Martin, we left Stockholm in the middle of an on-going police investigation in which you’re suspected of a double murder. The only witness we had who could make Sara look innocent has been killed. No matter which way we look at it, we haven’t made any progress. You’re still a murder suspect, we still don’t know who came to the office pretending to be Bobby, and darling, we still don’t have any serious evidence which proves that Sara was innocent. Quite the reverse, in fact.’
She lowered her voice.
‘How can you be so certain that Jenny Woods was telling the truth? How do you know she didn’t take drugs and wasn’t involved in prostitution too? You’ve got to face the facts. Sara Tell came from a bad place, and she took bad decisions.’
I let her words hang in the air between us for a while. Our dilemma was obvious. We didn’t know which of us was right. And – even worse – we didn’t know how we could find out either.
‘Don’t you even agree that the American murders are different to the Swedish ones?’ I eventually said.
Lucy toyed with her wine-glass.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I’m not sure that matters. Maybe the first two murders taught her something. That she had to be less impulsive, less careless.’
I didn’t have the energy to argue. I didn’t have the energy to come up with a counter-argument.
‘Sod this. Let’s go to bed,’ I said.
Lucy took my hand as we left the bar.
‘You do know I’m on your side, don’t you?’
I nodded.
I did know. That was one of the few things in life I could be properly sure of.
Inside my exhausted head a plan was starting to take shape. First I wanted to meet Sara’s au pair family. Not because I thought they had any vital information, but to get a better picture of Sara’s time in the USA.
And then there was the guy who was known as Lucifer. I wanted to contact one of the detectives who knew about him and his network. Sheriff Stiller had said Sara had nothing to do with him, but her diary said otherwise. And if it was true that Sara was involved in drugs and prostitution, it seemed unlikely that the Lucifer mentioned in the diary could be anyone other than the drugs baron that the Texas police had caught.
But most of all I wanted to meet Larry, the policeman who had identified Sara from a photograph and who claimed to have met her in Galveston on the night of the murder there. He was the last person I thought about before I fell asleep. To my mind he was one of the key characters. He was the only person linking Sara to the scene of the murder in Galveston. If I could persuade him to change his story, Sara’s alibi would look viable.
But that didn’t change what Esteban Stiller had told Lucy and me, which had shaken me more than I cared to admit: that there was strong evidence indicating that Sara had murdered the taxi driver in Houston.
It must have been self-defence, I thought. It must have been a mistake.
When the sun rose the following morning I was lying awake, peering at the window. We had forgotten to close the curtains and now the room was bathed in sunlight. Jetlag’s a bastard. If you fly west you slip into the sleep pattern of a baby, fall asleep early and wake up even earlier. If you fly east you’re fucked. You never catch up. When we flew to Texas we’d been moving west. I had no idea if I was rested when I woke up at five o’clock in the morning. I just wanted the day to start so that we could get going.
I knew I was starting to lose my internal compass. I no longer knew who or what I was chasing. The truth, I had thought. But the more I found out, the more uncomfortable it was getting. Because again and again I was being confronted by details I couldn’t ignore.
Such as the fact that Sara Texas’s own sister believed that Sara was capable of committing five murders because she had once amused herself by beating up people on the streets of Stockholm.
And the fact that there was a witness who claimed to have seen Sara kill the taxi driver with a golf club.
And the fact that the things that had been troubling me in her account of the murders could easily b
e explained by her having committed at least two of the murders under the influence of serious drugs.
It wasn’t looking good. Not for Sara, and not for me. It was the thought that brought me back down to earth again. Because this was no longer just about Sara Texas. Not for Lucy and me. It was also about me and why I had been dragged into this mess of bizarre events.
Lucy woke up a quarter of an hour after me.
‘How early can we visit the au pair family without scaring them?’ I said.
Lucy stretched.
‘If we want to catch them before they go to work, we should probably be there by seven o’clock. But on the other hand that does seem like a weird time to go and see people we don’t know. Shouldn’t we wait until this evening?’
I didn’t think so. The au pair family were too important for me to want to postpone meeting them. At twenty to seven we drove away from the Hilton to the house that Sheriff Stiller had shown us in the Heights the previous evening.
Lucy had been right. Seven o’clock was almost too late.
We found the Browns on their driveway, about to get into their respective cars. The husband drove a gigantic Hummer, the wife a slightly smaller vehicle. A Ford, a model I wasn’t familiar with. There are loads of things women need to stop doing. Driving smaller cars than their husbands is one of them. Never mind the environment – this is about money and power.
They looked at us in surprise as I pulled up in front of their house and we both leapt out of the car the moment it stopped. We hadn’t called to warn them that we wanted to see them – fear of rejection had been too great.
The Browns’ surprise didn’t exactly diminish when we introduced ourselves and explained why we were there.
‘You’re journalists?’ the woman who had been Sara’s au pair mother said.
‘Lawyers,’ I said.
I didn’t give them the whole background story. Partly because it would have taken too long, and partly because it wouldn’t increase the likelihood of their trusting us. They were in a hurry, and evidently not interested in talking about Sara.
Buried Lies Page 21