The Lies We Tell

by Kristina Ohlsson

  ‘No.’

  ‘Rakel, then? You must be able to give me her surname.’

  ‘Minnhagen,’ Susanne said. ‘Her name is Rakel Minnhagen.’

  I wrote it down.

  ‘I’m going to have to call you again,’ I said. ‘Give me your number.’

  She refused.

  ‘Don’t think you can tell me what to do,’ she said. ‘I make the decisions.’

  9

  ‘So who am I supposed to have killed now?’

  My meeting with Didrik Stihl and his colleague really wasn’t the place for humour, but I didn’t have the energy to think tactically. I was pleased to see that Didrik’s colleague was clearly surprised. He hadn’t expected me to be aware of the reason I had been summoned to Police Headquarters again.

  As usual, Lucy was in complete control of her facial expression and didn’t move a muscle. Didrik ignored my remark.

  ‘What were you doing the night before last?’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just answer the question.’

  ‘I was at home.’

  ‘All night?’

  No, I was out trying to find a mysterious woman who says her name is Susanne.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who can vouch for that?’

  ‘Lucy.’

  Didrik leaned back with a sigh.

  ‘You realise you’re going to have to reallocate the roles in this little performance, don’t you? Lucy can’t be both your legal representative and the person giving you an alibi, Martin.’

  ‘No?’

  Didrik gestured in a way that reminded me of how I usually reacted when Belle was being particularly difficult. But he didn’t scare me. It was good to get confirmation of the fact that they didn’t have me under twenty-four-hour surveillance. If they had, he wouldn’t have had to ask where I was that night.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to get to the point?’ Lucy said. ‘If not, we’ve got plenty of things to be getting on with instead of just sitting here.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Didrik’s colleague said.

  His name was Staffan. If he had told me his surname was Stalledräng, like the old Christmas carol, I wouldn’t have been surprised. I thought it was a shame that police officers who try to make insinuations usually fail. Partly because they don’t understand what the word ‘insinuation’ means.

  ‘Let’s get going,’ Didrik said sharply, making me wonder if he was talking to me or to his colleague. ‘Martin, we’re going to have to impound your car again. Is it parked outside?’

  Was he joking?

  ‘You can’t be serious. Who’s been run down this time?’

  Didrik didn’t answer my question.

  ‘Is the Porsche parked outside?’ he repeated.

  ‘No. We walked here.’

  One of our more spontaneous decisions. Walking from the office instead of taking the car.

  ‘Do you have any firm suspicions you want to share with us, or can we go?’ Lucy said.

  I liked the fact that she was pushing them to move faster, even if I was terrified of ending up in a situation where I left Police Headquarters without knowing what had happened. Or who had died.

  ‘There’s been another death,’ Didrik said. ‘And a witness who says the victim was run down by a man driving a Porsche 911. It’s fairly obvious that Martin would spring to mind in circumstances like that.’

  The fact that we had once been friends seemed completely incomprehensible. I started to feel sick and wanted nothing more than to get out of there.

  ‘Elias Krom,’ he said.

  I did my best not to react. And succeeded reasonably well.

  ‘Anyone you know?’ Staffan asked me.

  This time he tried to look sly. And failed.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘No?’ Didrik said. ‘Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I don’t know Elias. But I have met him. He was the man who came to my office, pretending to be Bobby.’

  Didrik looked at me seriously.

  ‘So Elias Krom was the one who first got you involved in Sara Texas’s case?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought you said it was Bobby.’

  I sighed. Very deeply.

  ‘I thought it was. Then I realised that it couldn’t have been. But I’ve already told you that.’

  ‘Of course,’ Didrik said. ‘It’s just that you neglected to mention Elias. Why?’

  The correct answer was because Lucifer had told me to stop talking to the police. But of course I didn’t say that.

  I shrugged instead.

  ‘You never seem particularly interested in what I’ve got to say.’

  ‘You never have much to offer,’ Staffan retorted.

  I didn’t respond.

  First Jenny. Then Bobby. And now Elias. Everyone who had provided me with information was dying, one after the other. How was that possible? Who was keeping such a close eye on me that he or she could find someone like Elias? Someone who had been a total stranger to me until Boris gave me his contact details. I’d never even called Elias; I just went round to his home. And I was fairly confident I hadn’t been followed there. But only fairly confident. Lucifer’s associates had known I was staying at the Grand Hôtel that night. How they knew that was beyond me. The thought was unavoidable: had Lucifer ordered Elias’s death?

  I didn’t think so. It was far too clumsy.

  ‘Martin?’

  Lucy put her hand on my arm.

  ‘We’re done here,’ I said, and stood up.

  ‘You seem very calm, considering what you’ve just been told,’ Didrik said, getting to his feet.

  It was a statement of fact.

  ‘Exactly what have I been told? That a man I met on a few occasions has been murdered. That a witness saw him get run down by a car that resembles mine. All very unpleasant. But this time the whole thing seems pretty straightforward.’

  ‘How so?’

  I couldn’t tell if Didrik was amused or disconcerted.

  ‘Because this time, Didrik, you’re asking the wrong questions.’

  He folded his arms over his chest and waited for me to go on.

  ‘You asked where I was the night before last. But you forgot to ask where the Porsche was.’

  Talk about someone’s jaw dropping. The question is, why had Didrik been so convinced of my guilt? Why hadn’t they arrested me?

  ‘Tell me,’ he said curtly.

  ‘My car is in for repair,’ I said. ‘Belle dropped an orange on the floor. The orange rolled under the brake-pedal. Things got very messy when I had to stop the car suddenly. I dropped it in to be cleaned up two days ago, and I don’t yet know when I’ll be getting it back. To be honest, there’s no real rush. At night it’s locked up – indoors – at the garage. Call and check. There was no way I could have picked it up on the night of the murder. Nor could anyone else, for that matter.’

  I couldn’t help enjoying my moment of triumph. Finally something had gone my way.

  ‘Give us a call when you want to have a serious conversation about Martin’s Porsche and its involvement in these murders,’ Lucy said. ‘Because by now it must be obvious that what we said was right all along – that someone is trying to frame Martin for these crimes.’

  Didrik lowered his eyes and looked at his notebook.

  ‘It’s possible that we’ll come to the conclusion that Martin’s car wasn’t involved in the latest murder,’ he said.

  ‘Just like it wasn’t involved in the others,’ Lucy said.

  Didrik swallowed hard and didn’t respond. He was under as much pressure as I was. I liked that.

  ‘Your perpetrator is getting careless,’ I said. ‘The first killings, the double murder, was scrupulously carried out. That evidently wasn’t the case the night before last. Presumably he or she reasoned that it would be enough to use any old Porsche.’

  I sounded very confident, but I was actually terrified. Because there was a microscopic possi
bility that the latest murder had been committed using my Porsche. That the killer had somehow managed to get it out of the garage. The question was: how would that affect what the police thought about my involvement?

  ‘Like I said, call us,’ Lucy said.

  We left the room. Didrik walked to the main entrance with us.

  ‘One last thing,’ he said as we were standing by the revolving doors.

  I nodded.

  ‘Do you know someone called Boris Micanovic?’

  I don’t know where my self-control came from, but to my immense surprise I managed to appear unconcerned. I didn’t have time to notice how Lucy reacted.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  Didrik shook his head.

  ‘Forget it, it was just a thought.’

  I had two choices. I could drop the discussion and walk out. Or stand there arguing. I chose the latter. Because I wanted to know why Didrik was asking about the mafia boss I had been very close to in the recent past.

  ‘Okay, that’s more than enough of you throwing out questions at random,’ I said. ‘Who is this Boris, and why do you mention him?’

  Didrik seemed to hesitate, but not for very long.

  ‘His name cropped up in the investigation into the murder of Belle’s grandparents,’ he said.

  Ah. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. My fingers and hands went numb, and the pressure on my chest was like an elephant standing on it.

  ‘Who is he?’ Lucy asked.

  Good, she was on board as well. Rather cooler than me.

  ‘A mafia boss,’ Didrik said. ‘One of the big ones.’

  ‘And you think I know him?’ I said. ‘You don’t have a very high opinion of me these days, do you?’

  Didrik tilted his head to one side.

  ‘I’m not sure you deserve a high opinion, Martin,’ he said.

  That was more than I could bear.

  ‘Well, thanks very much for today,’ I said, and headed for the revolving door.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Didrik said.

  ‘Say hi to Rebecca.’

  I don’t know why I said that. Maybe to remind him that we had once known each other. I hadn’t seen Didrik’s wife for several years. Didrik wasn’t the sort of man who ever said much about his family. Apart from the time he and Rebecca adopted their only child. He talked so much then that he almost sent me to sleep with all the details.

  When Didrik didn’t answer I glanced over my shoulder. Didrik was standing frozen to the spot.

  I stopped and searched my memory. Had they got divorced? Or – even worse – had she died?

  ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to put my foot in it.’

  Didrik came back to life again.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell her.’

  He turned to go. Then he seemed to remember something he’d forgotten to ask or say.

  ‘By the way,’ he said. ‘Elias Krom.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He’s not dead.’

  Lucy and I looked first at each other, then at Didrik.

  ‘But you said . . .’

  ‘No, I didn’t. You did. I didn’t ask about Elias because he’d been run down, but because you mentioned his name on the phone yesterday.’

  Thoughts were flying through my head like missiles.

  ‘So who’s dead, then?’ Lucy said.

  Didrik pulled a face that was hard to read.

  ‘Fredrik Ohlander,’ he said. ‘A journalist. Apparently he was working on something seriously top secret.’

  I swear, it was like falling from a great height. Fredrik Ohlander was dead. The only person to whom I had entrusted the whole of my story, with the exception of Lucy and Boris.

  ‘You’re looking a bit pale,’ Didrik said. ‘How did you know him?’

  I didn’t have to lie about that, at least.

  ‘We were students together, back in the day.’

  ‘I didn’t know you studied journalism?’

  ‘I didn’t. He studied law. But only for a couple of terms.’

  Didrik nodded.

  ‘You don’t happen to know what this secret project was that he was working on?’

  ‘No.’

  My reply was blunt and pointed.

  ‘Oh, well,’ Didrik said. ‘We’ll just have to find out for ourselves.’

  Then he turned on his heels and walked away. This time he didn’t come back.

  PART 2

  ‘I killed a man.’

  TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN BENNER (MB).

  INTERVIEWER: KAREN VIKING (KV), freelance journalist, Stockholm.

  KV:

  Bloody hell. So you had no idea Fredrik was dead until then?

  MB:

  No. We’d agreed not to be in constant contact. Largely out of consideration for his safety. But clearly that wasn’t enough. He died just over a week after we last met.

  KV:

  You must have been extremely scared.

  MB:

  Scared, but mostly sad. I felt horribly guilty.

  KV:

  You couldn’t have known what was going to happen.

  MB:

  No, but after everything else that had happened I should have had some idea. Or at least done a decent risk assessment.

  KV:

  Those nightmares . . .

  MB:

  We’re getting to that.

  KV:

  And . . . what you said about . . . you killing someone.

  MB:

  I never said that.

  KV:

  You said that if you’d killed the woman on the pedestrian crossing, you’d have killed another person.

  MB:

  We’ll get to that as well.

  (Silence)

  KV:

  So Elias Krom was alive and well. That’s something.

  MB:

  Yes, although to be brutally crass, he was less important to me than Fredrik. Or rather – the two can’t be compared. Fredrik knew every last fucking detail of my story. No one else did. Apart from Lucy and Boris, of course. But neither of them knew I’d been talking to Fredrik.

  KV:

  Seriously? That’s what I don’t understand. How could the murderer have known you’d told Fredrik everything?

  MB:

  I had my own theories about that, and eventually got confirmation that they were correct. But we haven’t got to that part of the story yet.

  KV:

  Seems like you had a hell of a lot to do. Find Mio. Find out who was framing you for murder. Find out who killed Fredrik.

  MB:

  It was clear to me that the last two had to be connected. There was a pattern. Jenny and Bobby died because they provided me with information. I could only assume that Fredrik died for the same reason. He was a man who knew too much, and who had the potential to start talking. Especially if anything happened to me.

  KV:

  And something did happen . . .

  MB:

  A lot of things happened. And pretty quickly.

  KV:

  Unpleasantly quickly, I’d have said. But let’s do as you say. Take one thing at a time. What was the first thing that happened after you left Police Headquarters?

  MB:

  I had a drink. Then I went to a funeral.

  10

  I was starting to think of myself as a dangerous man. The sort of man you shouldn’t come anywhere near. Lucy and I left Police Headquarters hand in hand. Metaphors are useless, but just then it was fair to say that problems were gathering above our heads like storm-clouds. Fredrik Ohlander was dead. That was something I really hadn’t expected.

  ‘I need a drink,’ I said.

  ‘Now? It’s only just gone eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Then we’ll have an early lunch today. Lunch and something to drink.’

  We jumped in a taxi and drove to Riche. I prefer hanging out in Östermalm, even if I end up in other parts of the city like Kungsholmen or Vasastan s
urprisingly often. When we were picking the location for our office, Lucy was adamant that we should establish ourselves in Östermalm. I wasn’t convinced. I didn’t want it just round the corner. Kungsholmen felt like a smart choice. Close to Police Headquarters, and also on an island. Islands are good. You’re in no doubt about when you leave them. All you have to do is cross a bridge and you’ve left all the mess behind.

  The taxi taking us to Riche crossed Kungsbron. Lucy looked out over the water.

  ‘Who was he?’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man who died. The man you said you were at university with.’

  The man you said . . . I could hear the doubt in her voice, and it bothered me.

  ‘I was at university with him. But he switched subjects and became a journalist.’

  ‘Why haven’t I ever heard of him?’

  ‘Because I’ve never socialised with him.’

  ‘But you must have had some sort of contact with him, seeing as he was run down in a car that was apparently very similar to yours?’

  I saw the taxi-driver twitch in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Let’s talk about it later,’ I said.

  Lucy didn’t reply.

  We arrived and I paid the driver. Lucy went into the restaurant ahead of me. A waitress showed us to a table in the window.

  ‘Something to drink?’

  ‘A glass of white wine,’ Lucy said.

  ‘G&T,’ I said.

  The waitress disappeared.

  Lucy focused her gaze on me. It wasn’t warm, but jet-black. Furious.

  ‘After everything we’ve been through,’ she said. ‘And you’re still – still – keeping things secret from me.’

  If only you knew, I thought.

  The nightmares floated up to the surface again. I did what I usually did and pushed them back down again. They weren’t relevant; they’d only come to life because of our trip to Texas. While we were there they hadn’t been a problem at all. I’d had to focus on my own survival, on the mystery of Sara Texas. I’d managed to keep the past at bay, with one exception: my memories of my dad. His betrayal, our farewell, his death. But now I could feel the whole mess slipping out of my grasp. The past, and the lies, were breathing down my neck. It was only a matter of time before I’d have to get to grips with things.