She turned pale at my question.
‘What do you mean, “got pregnant”? She was already pregnant when she left the US.’
I held my breath and glanced at Lucy. Had we realised Sara was already expecting Mio when she returned to Sweden? Lucy looked as surprised as me. I did some quick calculations.
‘She can’t have been very far into the pregnancy when she left Texas,’ I said.
‘Six weeks, maybe,’ Denise said.
‘Did she get pregnant because she was working as a prostitute?’
Denise took a deep breath.
‘Sorry, but I daren’t talk about this. Sorry.’
She put the packet of cigarettes back in her pocket and started to walk away. But that was more than I could deal with just then.
Furious, I stepped in front of her and forced her into the corner between the van and the wall.
‘Let me go, for fuck’s sake!’
‘Not until you tell us what you know,’ I said.
Lucy was standing behind me, watching out anxiously in case anyone could see what was going on. I was horrified by my own anger. If the van had been alarmed it would have been blaring out across the car park, because it rocked as Denise banged into it.
‘Those bastards have taken my daughter,’ I said with my face so close to hers that she could have bitten me if she wanted to. ‘I’ve got very little left to lose.’
I waited until what I’d said had sunk in and I felt her relax in my grip.
‘I’ve got no fucking idea why I’ve been dragged into this, but now my little girl’s missing and I’ve got to find her. Get it?’
I was talking like a self-obsessed bastard. Just because I didn’t have anything left to lose didn’t mean that Denise didn’t.
She began to cry softly.
‘You’ll never find her,’ she said.
‘How the hell can that be possible? She disappeared in Sweden. Don’t try to tell me some bullshit about Lucifer being everywhere, because no one’s capable of that.’
Denise just shook her head and I let go of her arms. She stood motionless beside the van with her arms folded over her chest and her head bowed. I decided not to mention Sara’s pregnancy again until she had calmed down.
I stroked her arm gently.
‘I can see you’re scared. Do bad things happen to the girls?’
She nodded in silence.
‘You obviously know that Sara was accused of two murders here in Texas. Do you know if she committed either of them?’
Denise stiffened once more.
‘That’s one hell of a direct question.’
‘I’m a man with one hell of a big problem.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes, she did commit one of the murders. The one in Houston.’
I have to admit that it stung to hear her say that. I was shocked too, even though her reply wasn’t unexpected.
‘Did she talk about it?’
‘Yes. The taxi driver was behaving like a real pig. She got pissed and yelled at him when she got out of the car. I think she was going to some nightclub in Houston. Completely the wrong place for her. One of Lucifer’s competitors ran his own operation in the basement. Drugs and women. Sara figured out she needed to get out of there at once. And she ended up back in the same taxi. He recognised her, of course. He drove her into a dark, rundown alleyway and told her to get out of the car. At first she didn’t realise he’d opened the trunk and taken out a golf club. He started waving it around and said he was going to fuck her with it.’
Denise stopped talking.
‘And then she managed to take the club off him and hit him with it?’
‘She didn’t mean to kill him.’
I didn’t know what to say. I was standing under a starlit night sky in Texas, listening to the saddest story I’d ever heard.
‘And the murder in the hotel here in Galveston?’
‘That wasn’t Sara. She was here that night, and she was staying in the hotel where the girl died. But she didn’t kill her. It was one of Lucifer’s guys.’
‘Jenny went to great lengths to give Sara an alibi for the murder here in Galveston,’ Lucy said.
‘I know,’ Denise said. ‘She contacted me as well, wanted me to help. Apparently she had been in San Antonio with a friend that weekend, and she still had the tickets. She thought they could help Sara. But I refused to get involved.’
‘Because you were still caught up in Lucifer’s network?’
‘Because you can never escape. Jenny knew that. I mean, she’d tried to move on, she got married and everything. But she was just as scared as the rest of us that her past would come back and haunt her. I never really figured out how, but when Sara got into trouble with the police Jenny saw a chance to get Lucifer. The police would never had made the connection to him on their own, so she thought she’d help them along. But doesn’t seem to have turned out so well . . .’
No, you could certainly say that. For the first time I thought I had a better understanding of Jenny’s motives. Her struggle to help Sara had been just as much about herself. If I compared Sara, Denise and Jenny, then Jenny was without any doubt the one who had done best for herself. Until she got killed. Denise said you could never escape. Jenny must have woken up with her stomach knotted with anxiety every morning, always aware that the life she had constructed with her husband and her job could be snatched away from her.
Husband, job . . . and child.
‘Jenny said she met her husband in San Antonio,’ Lucy said.
I couldn’t help feeling annoyed. Who cared where she’d met her husband?
‘Did she, now?’ Denise said. ‘Maybe that’s not so strange. I suppose she had to say something.’
Reluctantly I pricked up my ears.
‘About what?’
‘About how she met her husband. They’ve probably got several versions. But the truth is that he was one of her clients.’
‘Oh, fucking hell,’ Lucy said before she could stop herself.
As for me, I was on autopilot. I made no value judgement about how Jenny had met her husband. I didn’t have the time or energy for that. Obviously her husband had lied to our faces. He had said they met at work. But in truth – what was he supposed to say to two strangers?
‘The girl who died here at the hotel,’ I said. ‘Was she one of Lucifer’s girls?’
Denise nodded wearily.
‘Yep. One who wanted to get away.’
And that was that. Now I knew the truth about the two American murders. The mystery I had set out to solve was solved. Sara Texas was no monstrous serial killer, just as I had suspected all along. The man who had come to my office and said he was Bobby could be happy.
The job was finished, I had plenty of evidence to sow doubts about the matter of Sara’s guilt.
But doubts were as far as it went. Because I still didn’t know who had framed her. And me.
‘I can’t leave Texas without knowing who Mio’s father is,’ I said. ‘Please, help us with that bit as well. Who is he?’
Denise was as pale as my grandmother’s finest antique china. What would I do if she refused? Assault her? Hardly. She could go. And Lucy and I would be lost.
But Denise started to talk. Her voice was so quiet that it was almost impossible to hear what she said.
‘Sara fell in love,’ she said. ‘Properly in love. By the time she realised who he was it was too late. It didn’t matter that she fell out of love overnight. She was trapped. Jenny and I were the only people she told. We had no advice to offer. All three of us were just as horrified.’
‘Who was he?’ I said.
She pursed her lips and looked at me with blank eyes.
‘Who do you think?’
‘Can’t even guess. We heard she had a guy in San Antonio, but . . .’
‘Forget it. Sara never had anyone in San Antonio. How would she have had time for something like that?’
‘Fine, but she evid
ently had a boyfriend of some sort,’ I said impatiently. ‘Tell us. I can see you know.’
Then I heard the answer I had least expected to hear: ‘Lucifer.’
Time stood still. All sound vanished. If the stars had come loose from the skies and fallen to the ground, I wouldn’t have reacted.
I heard Lucy gasp for breath beside me, but couldn’t bring myself to look at her. This was worse than we could ever have imagined.
‘Sara had certain privileges right from the start. She worked much less, saw fewer clients. None of us could figure out why until she told us who her boyfriend was. She was the only one of us who knew who Lucifer really was. She wouldn’t reveal so much as a syllable of his name, no matter how much we nagged her. She was that scared. Or ended up that scared, anyway. And then she found out that she was pregnant as well. That was the final straw, coming on top of the fight with the taxi driver that had gone so horribly wrong. She left the USA as fast as she could.’
‘Did Lucifer know?’
‘Not at first. Once the police operation against him kicked off she got a bit more time and was able to go home. After Sara left we didn’t really stay in touch. But I understood that her problems continued when she was back in Sweden. When he heard about the pregnancy – obviously he found out – and realised that she’d indirectly stolen his child from him, he went crazy. He . . . he made her life hell.’
‘How? I mean, there was a whole ocean between them.’
Denise kicked the van.
‘Just how stupid are you? Don’t you get it, Lucifer is just like you.’
I started.
‘Like me?’
‘Almost, anyway. You asked if Lucifer’s network extended outside the borders of the USA and I said it was in Mexico. And in Sweden. Don’t ask me what the connection is. Sara said he could even speak a bit of Swedish.’
My head was spinning.
‘Hang on a minute. Sara went home at the same time that Lucifer ended up in prison. How . . .’
Another kick at the van’s tyre.
‘He was never in prison!’
I was momentarily lost for words.
‘Yes he was.’
‘No. No! Definitely not. That was the whole point. The guy who was identified as Lucifer was a total fucking nobody. Lucas Lorenzo, the man they wrote about in the papers, isn’t Lucifer. The police knew, and Lucifer knew. Maybe they all managed to fool the FBI, but the rest of us knew that the real Lucifer had escaped unscathed. So he had no problem heading to Sweden to cause trouble for Sara. Over and over again.’
Over and over again. There we had the true culprit who had extinguished lives around Sara and then pinned the blame on her. All because she had left the network. Because she had taken the big mafia boss’s son from him.
Denise lowered her eyes.
‘She was so scared,’ she said. ‘So fucking scared.’
I heard Lucy sigh with frustration. She hated loose ends, not being able to see the whole picture.
‘So Sara was the only one of you girls who knew who Lucifer was?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Jenny didn’t know?’
A very good question, and one that I had forgotten to ask. If you read Jenny’s diary properly, it was apparent that she had been in direct contact with Lucifer several times.
‘I’m not sure, but I think he started to go after her when he started to have problems with Sara. He probably needed another way to get at her, so went for her friend.’
A way to get at her, or information. Something else that could help explain Jenny’s desperate behaviour. Unlike the others who shared her background, she possessed the most top-secret piece of information: who Lucifer really was. The more I thought about it, the more unfathomable it seemed that Jenny had managed to break away. She must have been strong. And horribly lonely.
A fresh silence descended. An impotent silence. Because although I now knew much more, I still didn’t know what my own role in the story was. Was it simply that the real murderer had feared I would do a good job and get too close to the truth? Was that why I had to be silenced? Anxiety and anger were tying my stomach in knots. Because Lucifer was still protected. I didn’t have the faintest idea who he was. So why was he so worried?
I realised that Denise couldn’t help me to understand that.
‘Just one last thing,’ Lucy said. ‘Do you believe Sara killed her son? Or is he still alive?’
The question provoked an unexpected reaction. Denise stopped as if frozen to the spot.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’
‘We’ve been wondering if Jenny might have been looking after him,’ Lucy said.
But Denise merely shook her head.
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘But you know that Jenny adopted a child at roughly the time Sara died?’
‘No, I had no idea.’
She was lying.
She was lying, lying, lying.
But we still had to let her go. Because, as I reminded myself, Mio’s fate wasn’t our priority. Yet there was something about the boy that nagged at my ravaged brain. Something I should have reacted to, but hadn’t yet done so.
Lucy saw me frowning.
‘What is it?’ she said in Swedish.
I didn’t answer, just let my thoughts run free. The ghostly boy, Mio, what was it about him that I had missed? A thought that had struck me while we were in the car heading out of Houston.
Then it hit me.
‘Why haven’t we seen any pictures of Mio?’ I said.
Lucy shook her head as if to sort her thoughts.
‘We have, haven’t we?’
‘When? Not in the papers. Not even when he disappeared from preschool. And not in the material from the preliminary investigation. How can that be?’
I recalled the photograph of Jenny’s son that I’d seen in her husband’s office. And my own inability to say whether or not he resembled Sara’s boy.
The fake Bobby’s words came back to me: You’ll see. It’s all part of the same story. But I wasn’t yet seeing what there was to see. Not in its entirety.
Denise had no interest in standing there listening while we had a conversation in Swedish. She was done with us, and wanted to go.
‘If there’s anything we can do for you . . .’ I began.
She interrupted me with a sad smile.
‘Forget it. You’ve got your hands full trying to save yourself. Don’t worry about me, I’m always okay.’
‘I feel sick just thinking about what could happen to you.’
She shrugged.
‘Getting beaten up isn’t the worst that can happen.’
She turned and started to walk away. Then she stopped and looked at us one last time.
‘You know, we call it the blues.’
‘What?’ Lucy said.
‘When we get beaten up by a client or one of Lucifer’s guys. Blues, like when you’re depressed. Your mood’s in the gutter, then you pick yourself up. And we say that the blues have blown away.’
A surprisingly fresh evening breeze blew across the car park. Denise turned her face instinctively towards the cool air.
‘One time I heard Sara scream when she was with a client. I was in the next room with one of Lucifer’s men. You know what he said?’
I shook my head stiffly. I didn’t know if I could bear to hear what she had to say.
‘He grinned and said: “Do you hear that, Denise? That’s this evening’s blues. That’s Lotus blues.”’
PART VI
‘I’m not a barbarian’
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN BENNER (MB).
INTERVIEWER: FREDRIK OHLANDER (FO), freelance journalist.
LOCATION:
Room 714, Grand Hôtel, Stockholm.
FO: I don’t know what to say.
(Silence)
FO: So Belle disappeared and her grandparents died. And you and Lucy were drifting abo
ut in Galveston. And heard about Lotus blues. Christ, that’s disgusting.
MB: Disgusting is a good word, but I’m afraid it’s not strong enough in this context. It was worse than that. It was . . . indescribable.
FO: Yet we still haven’t got to the end.
MB: The end? No, and we may not get there either. I’m still stuck in the middle of this story. Living it every damn day.
FO: I’m not sure I understand, but never mind. Perhaps you’d like to explain why you wanted to meet in this particular room?
MB: We’re getting to that.
FO: So everything has an explanation?
(Silence)
MB: I hope so. I really do.
(Silence)
FO: So you don’t know how this story is going to end?
MB: No one does.
FO: But I thought . . .
MB: Don’t bother. It doesn’t help.
FO: But Belle is okay? I mean, you found her?
(Silence)
44
There’s an amusement park in Galveston. It’s called the Pleasure Pier and, as the name implies, it’s located on a pier. Lucy and I were walking along the beachfront watching the big wheel go round and round.
‘We know almost all of it now,’ Lucy said. ‘Except what happened to Mio. And who it was who dragged you into all this.’
The wind from the Gulf made her hair billow. Her long, red curls looked almost like flames.
I stopped and looked out to sea. It could have been a perfect evening. But I had never been more unhappy. My brain had been transformed into an open-plan office staffed by ten thousand co-workers. I no longer had control of all the thoughts going round inside my head. One single word kept coming up again and again, with never-diminishing force.
Belle.
Belle.
Belle.
‘Do we really not know what happened to Mio?’ I said.
‘You think Jenny took him? Because Sara asked her to?’
‘I can’t make sense of it otherwise,’ I said. ‘Why else would she have travelled to Sweden just before the trial?’
Lucy tried to catch her hair and hold it away from her face.
‘You’ve seen what Lucifer is capable of,’ she said. ‘How can you even think Jenny could have managed to take his child without him finding out? Not just take him, but carry on with life as though nothing had happened. In Houston.’
Buried Lies Page 29