The Lies We Tell

by Kristina Ohlsson

  Of course he was alive.

  ‘Did it cause him much trouble? Did he often have fits?’

  ‘No, thank goodness. It only happened once here at preschool, I think.’

  I nodded to myself. I was wondering why whoever had removed Mio from Rakel’s house had left his medication behind. Stesolid isn’t the sort of thing you can just pick up from the chemist. You need a prescription, and a prescription requires a doctor. The sort of thing you’d prefer to avoid with an abducted child. A surge of anxiety was making me breathe harder. Surely the reason why we’d found the medicine couldn’t be that Mio was dead? Because dead children don’t have fits?

  I shook my head to clear my thoughts.

  ‘Does the name Herman Nilson mean anything to you?’

  ‘No.’

  I took my phone out and Googled a picture of him. There was one on his employer’s website.

  ‘Sure?’

  She looked at the screen.

  ‘Oh, him!’

  Bloody hell.

  ‘So you do know who he is. How come?’

  ‘He came here to pick up his godson a few times. Extremely arrogant. All the staff used to talk about him. Handsome and horrible. It was so damn obvious that he wanted everyone to know he wasn’t the sort of person who lived in Flemingsberg.’

  Sad words. Did I give the same impression? I hoped not, then realised that was something I was going to have to work at.

  ‘Did he have a relationship with Rakel?’

  Nadja looked surprised.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. He’d never have been interested in anyone who worked here. Nor us in him, to be fair.’

  ‘Whose godfather was he?’

  ‘I think the boy was called Sebbe.’

  ‘Sebbe. Sebastian? Surname?’

  ‘No idea. He wasn’t in my room.’

  Sebbe. Sebastian. The same nagging feeling I’d had with the address in Årsta havsbad. I knew someone called Sebastian. A child. One of Belle’s friends? An image of a red-haired boy at her preschool flashed through my mind. An unnecessary thought, seeing as that Sebastian could never have set foot in Mio’s preschool.

  ‘Actually, he had some . . . problems too,’ Susanne said.

  I perked up.

  ‘Sebastian?’

  ‘He wasn’t here long. There was some talk about why his parents had changed preschool, and how he ended up with us in Flemingsberg. He was always so tired, always seemed to have hurt himself somewhere or other. Mostly his head. He had bruises as well. I think his former preschool reported his parents. We were all convinced they used to beat him.’

  When your mind doesn’t have a clear thread to follow, everything becomes equally important. Or equally unimportant. Was what I’d just heard relevant? I didn’t think so. Even so, I said: ‘What about the staff here? What happened with the report? You must have reacted as well?’

  ‘Oh yes, we did. But I wasn’t involved. Anyway, the family moved away from the city early last autumn. By then Sebbe was in a bad way.’

  ‘Strange,’ I said.

  ‘What’s so strange about that? They must have been so ashamed.’

  ‘Where did they move to?’ I said.

  ‘Abroad, I don’t know where. It all happened very quickly. We weren’t really told anything about the move. Presumably they wanted to get away from the Swedish authorities so they could go on abusing their child.’

  I felt a pang in my stomach to hear her talk like that. Belle has made me soppy; I can’t stand people who hit their children. Not that I used to think it was okay either – it’s more that my dislike of it has been enhanced. Dramatically.

  Nadja straightened up.

  ‘I have to go back inside. The others will be wondering where I’ve got to.’

  ‘How can I get hold of you in future? If you don’t want to see me here again, I suggest you give me a telephone number.’

  She grimaced.

  ‘Isn’t that blackmail?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But if you want to check, you can always ask the police when you go and tell them who took Mio.’

  She turned as white as a sheet.

  ‘Never,’ she whispered.

  I decided not to press the point. Enough people had died. No sooner had the thought occurred to me than I started looking round. If I was being followed, then I had just signed Nadja’s death warrant. Which got me wondering why she was still alive. Elias had been found dead in Rakel’s house. But Nadja had been left alive. I couldn’t help wondering: for how long? If Rakel was the murderer, her choice of victims was inconsistent.

  It isn’t her, I thought. There’s someone else behind her, making the decisions. And that’s when it all ends in blood and death.

  ‘Give me your phone number and you won’t see me again,’ I said.

  She rattled off her number and then headed back towards the school.

  I hesitated, but only for a moment.

  ‘Hang on,’ I said.

  She turned round.

  ‘Have you got a friend or relative outside the city you could go and stay with for a few days?’

  She was just as pale as before.

  ‘I could sign myself off sick,’ she said. ‘And go and visit my grandmother.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Do that,’ I said.

  ‘How long for?’

  How could I answer that?

  ‘At least a week.’

  She disappeared, and I walked back to the car. The road was quiet, no traffic at all. That would make it easier for me to see if I was being tailed.

  I’d just closed the car door when Lucy called.

  ‘Martin, you need to take the Porsche back to the garage again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It still smells terrible. A different sort of terrible, but still. I went down to get something from the glove compartment and . . .’

  ‘You didn’t drive it, did you?’ I almost yelled.

  ‘No, I just told you. I went to get something from the glove compartment. Either way – the car stinks. Take it back.’

  ‘Later,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d go and collect Belle from preschool.’

  ‘So early?’

  ‘Mm. I might take her to the office. Or go and get an ice-cream.’

  As I was driving back into the city I thought about what Lucy had said. I’d driven the Porsche back from the garage myself. It hadn’t smelled then. Or had it?

  Lucy’s voice echoed in my head.

  It still smells terrible A different sort of terrible . . .

  My mouth went completely dry. My hands clenched the wheel.

  A different sort of terrible. Naturally, anything at all could be making the smell. But not in my car. Not in my garage. Not that day, that week.

  I called Lucy.

  ‘Meet me in the garage in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Why . . .?’

  ‘Just do as I say.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  I swallowed, then swallowed again, and chose my words carefully.

  ‘I think we might have found Elias.’

  26

  A lot of smells are very similar, and therefore can’t be told apart. The stench of a corpse is not one of those. Corpses smell like nothing else. Lucy had never smelled a dead body before. So she was unable to identify it. But I could.

  The moment I stepped into the garage I knew my guess had been correct. The stench filled the confined space. Ten parking spaces, that was all the garage contained.

  ‘Christ,’ Lucy said. ‘It’s even worse than before.’

  She was walking behind me as I slowly approached the car. Now I knew for certain that I never wanted to drive it again. It was as if it had a life of its own. With people who wished me anything but well.

  I stopped in front of it. Jocke at the garage had given the car a polish before handing it back. Since then I hadn’t touched any part of the exterior except the driver’s door. If whoever dumped the body hadn’t been careful enough, his
or her fingerprints might still be on the bodywork. It would be stupid to give them any competition from mine. I didn’t think the fact that Lucy had touched the car would matter. She wasn’t suspected of committing a crime. I went up to the flat and fetched a pair of gloves before getting to grips with the luggage compartment. You had to open it from the driver’s seat.

  ‘Lucy, help me get it open.’

  Without a word she walked past me and opened the driver’s door. The lid of the trunk rose when she pressed the button. And then the stench hit us.

  ‘Fuck,’ I said, backing away quickly.

  Lucy rushed out of the car and went and stood some distance away.

  ‘Martin, we have to call the police.’

  ‘We’re going to; we just need to see who it is first.’

  How had my life come to this? How had I gone from living a very comfortable life as a lawyer with the odd bit of childcare thrown in, to standing in my garage and finding a dead body in my own car?

  I walked over to the Porsche again and aggressively pushed open the lid of the luggage compartment. And there lay Elias with his throat cut. In spite of the stench I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He looked so damn pathetic. Lonely and frightened.

  Then I shut the lid again.

  ‘Now we can call the police,’ I said.

  They arrived ten minutes later. First a patrol car, then Didrik and one of his colleagues, Staffan, whom Elias had spoken to when he called the police to ask for help. Didrik’s face showed no emotion when he saw Elias lying dead in my car.

  I told them the story as we stood in the stinking garage. I told them, again, about the incident with the orange and how the car ended up having to be cleaned up. I told them how I had picked it up and driven straight home.

  ‘Feel free to take the satnav away with you,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll be taking the whole car,’ Didrik said grimly.

  ‘You’re welcome to it,’ I said, trying not to sound generous. ‘I don’t want the bloody thing.’

  ‘Really?’ Staffan said.

  Sticking with the cynicism.

  ‘You’ll have to come with us to headquarters,’ he said.

  ‘What for?’ I said.

  ‘We need to take a witness statement,’ Didrik said. ‘Isn’t that obvious?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, sounding like a teenager.

  ‘Maybe,’ Didrik repeated. ‘Alright, we’ll talk more about this once we’re there. Until then you can figure out how you’re going to convince us that you weren’t the one who put the body in the boot.’

  ‘Easy,’ I said. ‘I’ve got an alibi.’

  ‘For when?’

  ‘The body must have been put in the car when it was parked here in the garage. I haven’t been back since I left the Porsche here after I collected it.’

  ‘Even if you could prove that, what does that tell us?’ Staffan said. ‘You could have left the body here in the garage and just waited until the Porsche was back.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘You don’t think anyone would have raised the alarm about the smell if I’d done that? People come and go here all the time.’

  ‘Like I said, we can talk about that back at headquarters,’ Didrik said.

  He began to walk towards the exit, gesturing to me to follow him.

  ‘Lucy and I will go in our own car,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a rental.’

  ‘You’re welcome to come with us,’ Didrik said, his tone of voice indicating that it was more an order than a suggestion.

  But I called him out on it.

  ‘Then you’ll have to arrest me,’ I said. ‘Because I want to drive myself.’

  ‘Okay,’ Staffan said. ‘Let’s do . . .’

  Didrik interrupted him.

  ‘See you at headquarters,’ he said.

  His colleague glared at Didrik in surprise as he walked away. Then he seemed to realise that he too should be moving his feet. I heard him raise his voice as they left the garage.

  ‘Why the hell aren’t we taking him in?’

  Perhaps because I hadn’t done anything but cooperate fully with the police. Perhaps because I had called them to the garage myself. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. All I did know was that I didn’t trust Staffan, and very possibly not Didrik either. For that reason I didn’t want to rely on them to obtain the security-camera footage. The video would clear me, and I had to make sure that it really was secured. That no one would discover that the camera was, oh-so-unfortunately, broken. The police’s forensics team would find it in a matter of seconds, so I had to be quick. I practically ran out of the garage with Lucy beside me.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she said as I pressed the button for the lift. ‘It’s important that we go to Police Headquarters like we promised.’

  ‘We will,’ I said. ‘We’re just going to pay a quick home visit to someone first.’

  There’s one in every housing cooperative. Often the chair of the residents’ committee. An angry older man who has lived in the same flat for far too long and regards the building as his own private property and the residents as his tenants. In my building that man’s name is Wolfgang. He’s lived at the same address for more than twenty-five years, and has been a widower for the same length of time.

  Lucy looked baffled as we got out of the lift on Wolfgang’s floor.

  ‘There’s a security camera in the garage,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you notice?’

  She shook her head.

  I put my finger to the bell outside Wolfgang’s door. The shrill noise echoed out into the stairwell. I didn’t remove my finger until I heard the lock turn.

  ‘What the hell are you doing? Is there a fire?’

  Wolfgang’s grey hair was sticking out in all directions and the look in his eyes was angrier than ever. Angry but also tired. Then somewhat gentler. Wolfgang has had a soft spot for me ever since I backed him up in a committee vote and helped stop the sale of our attic space to developers.

  ‘I really am extremely sorry to disturb you like this, without any warning,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid I need your help.’

  Wolfgang scratched his chin. His stubble was several days old.

  ‘Regarding what?’

  ‘Can we come in?’

  He backed away dutifully and let us over the threshold. I closed the door behind me. Neither I nor Lucy had been in Wolfgang’s flat before. I had expected a proper nest, full of old newspapers and cooking smells. But it wasn’t like that at all. From what I could see from the hall, the flat was tidy and light and well maintained.

  ‘I found a security camera in the garage,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Wolfgang said. ‘I installed it after that business with your car. And don’t imagine I haven’t checked into the legality of it. The camera is perfectly legal.’

  I tried to look as if I had the greatest respect for his legal competence.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I wonder, could I possibly have a copy of today’s footage?’

  Wolfgang peered at me.

  ‘What for?’

  I took a deep breath. The police would find him within the next hour. And it was only a matter of time before journalists got wind of what had happened. He was going to find out anyway.

  ‘Someone placed a body in the boot of my car, and I’d dearly like to know who it was.’

  Wolfgang opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t get a word out.

  Then he opened the door to the hall-cupboard. There was a computer on one of the shelves.

  ‘There,’ he said flatly. ‘There’s your footage.’

  27

  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky as we drove from the flat to Police Headquarters on Kungsholmen. Lucy was driving while I sat and looked at the images from the security camera. Wolfgang had burned them onto no fewer than three CDs. So that there was no chance of them vanishing, as he put it. He had also promised not to mention the copies to the police unless he was asked a direct question about them.

  The images weren
’t in perfect focus, which worried me at first. I hadn’t had time to look through them in Wolfgang’s flat, and had merely given him the times I was interested in. Barely three hours had passed since I parked the car in the garage. Impatiently I fast-forwarded through the jerky footage. One neighbour drove out of the garage, another one drove in. Then nothing happened for a long time. Until the garage door opened once more and a car I didn’t recognise drove in.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I whispered, leaning over the laptop.

  The car was a Toyota, a model I didn’t recognise. It stopped in the middle of the garage between the two rows of parking spaces. Two people leapt out of the Toyota and ran round it. Everything happened so quickly I was sure I’d miss something if I blinked. In less than a minute they’d opened the boot of their car, helped each other to lift out a limp body, and dumped it in my Porsche. I watched with astonishment as they opened the boot. It opened easily.

  ‘How’s that possible?’ I said out loud to myself.

  Before they closed it, I saw the taller of the two figures do something, close to the lock on the boot of the Porsche. Then they slammed it down, got into their own car and drove off.

  I shook my head and rewound the recording.

  ‘Do you recognise anyone?’ Lucy said impatiently.

  I didn’t. But I was pretty sure that one of them was male and the other female. The woman had short hair, whereas the man’s was a bit longer. Lucy braked at a red light and looked at the screen of the laptop.

  ‘Wigs,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re wearing wigs. Can’t you see, his is crooked.’

  It really was, although I hadn’t noticed. But what I had spotted – to my great relief – was that you could see, despite the relatively poor quality of the recording, that the man wasn’t dark-skinned like me. In spite of his stupid wig and large glasses, you could see his skin was as fair as Lucy’s.

  ‘He doesn’t look like me,’ I said.

  ‘No, definitely not.’

  I glanced at Lucy, then at the woman in the film. There were several similarities between them. My stomach clenched once more. I wasn’t looking because I seriously believed that Lucy was involved, I told myself. I was just looking to reassure myself that no one else could think that.