The Lies We Tell

by Kristina Ohlsson

‘You said twenty minutes.’

  ‘Maximum thirty.’

  ‘Marie isn’t a patient woman. She won’t wait a second longer.’

  ‘I’ll hurry. Thanks for your help.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  He hung up.

  ‘What’s happening now?’ Lucy said.

  Was there ever going to be any time for rest and reflection? For just lazing about? For all the things I used to care about in my old life?

  ‘I need to go out,’ I said. ‘Apparently they found something in Rakel’s house.’

  Trust is something that builds up over time. Or more quickly under very specific circumstances. A group of people who get trapped in the same lift together, for instance, start to trust each other relatively quickly if it turns out they’re going to be stuck together for a while.

  With Boris it was a bit like being trapped in a lift. A lift that I admittedly got stuck in of my own volition. I did have a choice, after all. I could have turned him away when he came to my office, but I chose to let him in. I could have thrown him out when I realised what he needed help with. But I let him stay. Thereby creating a bond between us that I was unable to break later. A bond that came to involve a degree of accumulated trust. So when Boris sent me off to an obscure bar in Solna, I just got in my car and went there. Brum, brum – nothing odd about that at all.

  ‘Take care,’ Lucy said.

  I was tired of that phrase. After all, it didn’t make any difference what I did. I was under constant threat of something bad happening.

  The car rolled smoothly through the city. I played music far too loud. First Bruce Springsteen, then Iggy Pop. Music is the balm every soul needs to stay in shape. I’m trying to teach Belle things like that. Music’s important, books too. Anything that takes people to an alternative reality the way books and music do has to be a good thing.

  I parked the car a few blocks from the bar where I was going to meet Boris’s friend Marie. I didn’t know what she looked like, but assumed it didn’t matter – she probably had a very good idea of who I was.

  That turned out to be a correct assumption. The moment I walked into the bar, two things happened. Firstly a young woman sitting in a corner raised one hand discreetly. The second was that the bartender called out to me: ‘I’ve already taken last orders. We’re only open another half hour.’

  ‘Thanks, I know,’ I said.

  Anyone who doesn’t want to be remembered shouldn’t stand out. Not wear ostentatious clothes, not be too noisy. Everything in that bar out in Solna was wrong. I was the only person wearing a shirt. No one else looked well-groomed. But it was too late to do anything about that by the time I’d opened the door and walked in.

  The woman stood up as I approached.

  ‘Marie,’ she said, holding out her hand.

  ‘Martin,’ I said.

  We sat down.

  ‘If you weren’t as important to Boris as you evidently are, I don’t think you’d be alive now,’ she said.

  Matter-of-factly, as if she were commenting on the weather.

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘Shitty jobs like the one I did this evening are the sort of thing you do yourself or not at all. You need to be very clear about that.’

  What the hell was she talking about?

  ‘I presume you knew what I was going to find when I got inside?’ she said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘That was the whole point,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know what was inside the house. That’s why I wanted someone to get in and look around. I wanted to know if there was any sign that a child had been there.’

  ‘Any sign that a child had been there,’ she repeated, jerking her head.

  She had long hair, pulled up into a tight ponytail. Her face was free of makeup. Her eyelashes were so pale they were almost transparent. Her nose covered in freckles. Eyes ice-blue. Intrigued, I tried to find some explanation for the fact that she had become part of Boris’s team. She didn’t look like anyone else I had seen around him. She wasn’t as rough round the edges, wasn’t as tough. But, on the other hand, my knowledge of Boris’s network was very limited.

  ‘Okay, let’s start there,’ she said. ‘With any sign of children.’

  She took a mobile out of her handbag. She focused hard on the screen and tapped it several times.

  ‘Here,’ she said, handing me the phone. ‘This is one of two indications that a child has been there.’

  I looked at the screen. It showed a photograph of a packet of medication. Stesolid – rectal solution for the treatment of various types of cramp.

  ‘What’s that got to do with children?’ I said.

  ‘Enlarge the image,’ she said curtly.

  I did as she said. The picture grew larger and no longer fitted the small screen. I moved my finger around, looking at the image of the packet. Then I saw it. I read silently to myself:

  Instructions:

  Children 5–12kg (approx. 3 mths–2 yrs): 5mg.

  Children over 12kg (approx. 2 yrs and over): 10mg.

  Adults: 10mg.

  The penultimate line had been underlined.

  ‘Did the child in question have epilepsy or some other illness that causes cramping?’ Marie said.

  ‘No idea,’ I said.

  But it was something I would try to find out as quickly as possible. Mio had been four years old when he went missing. It didn’t necessarily have to be epilepsy; it could have been febrile convulsions. Belle had that once when she was two. I thought she was going to die in front of my eyes. The memory of the panic I felt at the time made me hand the mobile back quickly.

  ‘There was no name on the pack?’ I said.

  ‘I’m afraid not. It had been torn off.’

  ‘And the name of the doctor who wrote the prescription?’

  ‘On the same label as the name, so that’s gone as well. There were only two doses left in the box. It was on its own in the bathroom cabinet.’

  ‘What else did you find?’ I said, trying to hide the impatience in my voice. ‘You said there were two things to suggest that a child had been in the house?’

  She touched her phone again.

  ‘These,’ she said, showing me another picture.

  It was a pair of yellow wellington boots.

  I immediately remembered what the woman calling herself Susanne, the one who worked at Mio’s preschool, had said. She had stood in the window and watched him being led away. The yard had been poorly lit. But in the light of the streetlamps she had recognised his yellow wellington boots.

  My heart began to beat faster. For the first time I was beyond vague theories and dubious witness statements. This was firm evidence that reinforced what I had been told by a witness who hadn’t even wanted to give me her real name.

  ‘Size?’ I said.

  ‘Twenty-six. I found them right at the back of a wardrobe.’

  One size bigger than Belle.

  ‘What was the rest of the house like? Did it look like anyone lived there?’

  Marie nodded.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘There was dirty laundry in the basket, rubbish under the sink. It didn’t smell, so it can’t have been there for long.’

  Even so, the house had been deserted when I was there at lunchtime. And at the time of the break-in.

  ‘Were there both men’s and women’s clothes in the house?’

  ‘All the clothes I saw were marked in women’s sizes. There were several pairs of high-heels in the wardrobe.’

  ‘No children’s clothes?’

  ‘Not a thing. Unless you count the boots.’

  I glanced discreetly at the time. I was keen not to stay too long.

  ‘You’ve got no idea what a huge help you’ve been,’ I said. ‘I’ll let Boris know that you’re to be properly recompensed for your work. I . . .’

  ‘We’re not finished yet.’

  She said it very quietly, but also very clearly.

  ‘Do you remember what I said whe
n you first arrived?’

  Of course I did, even if I’d chosen to ignore it.

  ‘You mentioned something about shitty jobs,’ I said.

  And that I should have been dead, but I didn’t repeat that.

  ‘Did anyone know you were planning to break into the house?’ Marie said. ‘Be honest.’

  For a moment I wondered if she was armed, but she had both hands on the table. Her nails were cut short, no varnish.

  ‘No one at all,’ I said. ‘Only Boris.’

  Not even Lucy, I thought to myself.

  ‘It’s impossible to break into a house without leaving some form of evidence,’ Marie said. ‘So I chose to do a pretty clumsy break-in. The damage was pretty severe, I wanted it to look amateurish.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, mostly for the sake of saying something.

  I wouldn’t have thought of that, which was stupid, I realised. It was much better if the break-in looked like it had been committed by a junkie.

  ‘Whereas for obvious reasons I didn’t want to leave any evidence that could be traced back to me,’ Marie said. ‘The police will probably react to that. The fact that someone made such a clumsy break-in but was then smart enough not to leave any fingerprints, strands of hair or anything else stupid.

  She shrugged her shoulders and I nodded silently to show I was following what she said.

  ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘I did my best and it went pretty well. If you don’t count the fucking unpleasant surprise that was waiting for me in the living room.’

  I stared to squirm involuntarily on my chair.

  ‘Okay.’

  She leaned forward. I swear, I could have counted every last damn freckle on her nose.

  ‘No, Martin. Not okay.’

  I threw my arms out in an unnecessarily expansive gesture.

  ‘Just tell me what went wrong, for fuck’s sake!’

  Marie picked her mobile up one last time. She held it close to my face.

  ‘Anyone you recognise?’

  Instinctively I threw myself backwards away from the mobile. Because on the screen was a picture of Elias Krom’s pale face. A long incision ran across his throat, gaping red towards the camera.

  Elias was dead.

  All of a sudden I felt horribly alone.

  And inside my head a new thought took shape: if everyone I’d met and collaborated with had died because they knew too much, why was I still alive?

  What was it that I still hadn’t understood?

  PART 4

  ‘Not hair.’

  TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN BENNER (MB).

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

  KV:

  Another man dead.

  MB:

  Yes.

  KV:

  Bloody hell. How many more were there?

  MB:

  That depends on how you count.

  KV:

  So, Elias lying dead in Rakel’s house. What conclusions did you draw from that?

  MB:

  I didn’t actually know what conclusions I could or should draw beyond the obvious one: that Rakel was a key figure in everything that was going on. I felt completely outmanoeuvred. Elias had known Rakel a long time ago. Could he have looked her up in the hope of getting some sort of protection, but instead stumbled right into a hornets’ nest? I didn’t know.

  (Silence)

  KV:

  That conversation with your old boss in Texas.

  MB:

  Yes?

  KV:

  Did it leave you any the wiser? What did you do after that?

  MB:

  A hell of a lot of things were happening all at once. I had to try to deal with them one at a time.

  KV:

  What did you decide to prioritise?

  MB:

  I had been told over and over again that everything was ultimately about Mio. That if I could just find him, everything else would fall into place. But I was getting more and more dubious. Fall into place for whom, exactly? Hardly for Mio. Wherever he was.

  KV:

  With Rakel?

  MB:

  Possibly, but if so, where? I thought it extremely unlikely that she alone could be behind everything that had happened. After I’d had her house searched I was convinced that Mio was actually somewhere else.

  KV:

  Together with Rakel?

  MB:

  Together with whoever was involved in everything that had been going on.

  (Silence)

  KV:

  Let’s go back to Elias, lying there with his throat cut.

  MB:

  An extremely interesting part of the story.

  KV:

  Because . . .?

  MB:

  Because he went missing.

  KV:

  Missing? He was already missing.

  MB:

  And you know what? He went missing again.

  23

  THURSDAY

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Lucy asked when I told her about Elias.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Not call the police?’

  ‘And say what? That a burglar I hired has found a body?’

  She fell silent. We drank some more wine and then went to bed.

  ‘What was he doing in Rakel’s house?’ Lucy said once the lights were out.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘They knew each other from before.’

  ‘Mmm. But that was a very long time ago.’

  ‘Do you think she killed him?’

  ‘I ought to be shouting “Absolutely!”, but it doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘I can understand that. It must be difficult, knowing you’ve slept with someone who’s capable of murder.’

  I let Lucy have the last word that night. She deserved it. I went out like a light and slept like Sleeping Beauty. I can’t explain why. Maybe it was sheer exhaustion. Or shock. Or the relief that came from finally telling someone – Lucy – what happened in Texas. Only God (and possibly the Devil) knows how much I wanted to keep digging into what Bobby’s girlfriend had told me. But that was impossible. Unless I wanted to risk Belle and Lucy’s lives, and quite possibly my own. Besides, I had another reality that demanded all of my attention. A reality in which people I’d met turned up in empty houses with their throats cut.

  I slept so soundly I didn’t even hear when Belle woke up in the middle of the night, upset. Lucy told me about it in the morning.

  ‘But it was okay,’ she said. ‘She went back to sleep.’

  How would I have coped without Lucy? I thought about what I’d realised when we were in Texas. That Lucy wanted children. There was no space in my life just then for that thought. I had my hands full trying to keep the child I’d inherited alive.

  As we ate breakfast I looked through the newspapers on my laptop. Not a word about a man being found with his throat cut in Solna. Lucy was reading over my shoulder.

  ‘Maybe she hasn’t got home and found him yet,’ she muttered in my ear.

  As if we could take it for granted that Rakel wasn’t involved in the murder.

  We glanced at Belle. She was busy trying to feed porridge to her doll and wasn’t listening to us.

  I shook my head.

  We had to stop being stupid. Clearly it wasn’t a coincidence that Elias was in her house. It was a horribly uncomfortable thought, but no less true because of that.

  Lucy drove Belle to preschool. I rode my bike to the office. I scoured the online papers once more. There still wasn’t anything. The anxiety was making me feel restless. It was only a matter of time before the body was found. And then the police would start looking for potential perpetrators.

  Do you realise you slept with a murderer? a ghostly voice whispered in my head.

  The big question was whether I was going to be blamed for what had happened. Again.

  Frustrated, I called Elias’s girlfriend.

  ‘How was last
night?’ I said. ‘Have you heard from Elias?’

  Terrible but necessary questions.

  ‘Not a word,’ Elias’s girlfriend said. ‘I’m going crazy with worry.’

  So was I, not because Elias was missing, but because I knew he was dead.

  I tried to figure out how Marie had been able to find Elias, in full view, in an apparently empty house. Who had left him there? People hide bodies – they don’t leave them splayed out in the living room. All I felt like doing was going out to Solna to take another look at the house. But I knew that was impossible. I had already been seen in the neighbourhood, and that was bad enough. Going back again and stomping about the garden would be as good as going to the police and confessing to the murder. No one would believe I was innocent once Elias was found.

  If he’s actually still in the house.

  I couldn’t bear it. In desperation, I called Boris to ask him to send Marie or someone else to Solna. He didn’t answer. I drummed impatiently on the shiny desktop with my fingers. I was being driven mad.

  Then I remembered Lucy’s material about the preschool staff. I dug the envelope out of my briefcase. I’d put it in there when I left the office the previous day. My fingers felt clumsy as I opened it and pulled out the bundle of papers. Lucy had been ambitious. Using the material from the police she had managed to identify all the members of staff and had found out where they were today. No one had moved away from the area, but a number had left the preschool and were now employed elsewhere. I worked my way diligently through the pile of passport photographs. There was no picture of Mio. Of course. Sara must have taken a conscious decision not to apply for a passport for her son. To stop him being taken out of the country.

  I tried to guess who the mysterious Susanne might be, but it was impossible. She could have been any one of the women staring blankly back at me from the photocopies.

  The only one I recognised was Rakel Minnhagen.

  ‘Veronica,’ I said quietly. ‘What the hell do you want with me?’