The Lies We Tell

by Kristina Ohlsson

He nodded to get me to stand up. I did so slowly, leaving the coffee on the table.

  ‘Where?’ I said.

  ‘Outside,’ he said.

  He indicated that I should walk out of the café ahead of him. The pavement was now in the shade, and that was the only good thing about the situation I found myself in.

  We stopped a short distance apart. Not far, but not close enough to be able to touch each other. If I stretched out my hand I wouldn’t quite have reached him.

  ‘It’s seven o’clock now,’ Vincent said. ‘I suggest you go and have a nice meal, then we’ll meet as planned at nine o’clock.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  I didn’t like the way he said I should ‘go and have a nice meal’. As if he was offering me a last meal.

  Vincent’s eyes flashed.

  ‘Are you so fucking stupid that you still think you have a choice?’

  There were more answers to that question than he could possibly count.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid I probably am,’ I said.

  Vincent snorted with derision.

  ‘You must have had a really shit mother. So little love and respect you feel for your own family.’

  He crossed a boundary there. The fact that I think Marianne was a fucking useless mother was one thing. Other people thinking it is another matter altogether. If it weren’t for the anxiety his second sentence prompted, I’d probably have gone on the attack. But I managed to stay calm enough to respond rationally. What did he mean by ‘my own family’? He could hardly mean himself and Simon. So presumably he meant Belle and Lucy.

  Was he threatening them?

  It sounded like it.

  ‘There’s not much you can teach me about love and respect,’ I said.

  ‘We can discuss that later. Nine o’clock. Where Pastor Parson was buried. Exactly as planned.’

  ‘I said no,’ I said.

  ‘Then Lucy and Belle will die. Your choice.’

  And with that I knew for sure. Any last fragile doubts that Vincent might not be Lucifer but one of his agents vanished. Vincent was Lucifer. An ordinary middle-class American who had done reasonably well for himself in the police force, someone who didn’t stand out in any way. But, more than anything, Lucifer was my own brother.

  ‘You’re thinking of killing your own niece,’ I said. ‘You fucking bastard, who the hell are you to lecture me about family love?’

  ‘Unless I’ve been wrongly informed, Belle isn’t my niece. She’s yours. And I’m not related to your sister at all. Or am I wrong?’

  ‘That depends how you define parenthood,’ I said, feeling my courage waver. ‘Belle has been my daughter since she was a baby. She has no parents apart from me.’

  Vincent laughed.

  ‘Poor kid,’ he said.

  Then he became serious again.

  ‘We’ll meet at nine o’clock,’ he said. ‘Don’t be late.’

  He turned to go.

  ‘I said no,’ I said in a raised voice.

  My words made a few other people on the pavement react. As did Vincent. He froze mid-stride. He turned round slowly.

  ‘You wouldn’t dare behave like that unless you thought Lucy and Belle were okay,’ he said. ‘So let me simplify things for you: I know exactly where they are. And I can kill them both in less than – let’s say – ten minutes.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ I said.

  ‘It’s the truth,’ he said.

  Then he took out his mobile and called someone who answered remarkably quickly.

  ‘Where are you?’ I heard him say.

  My stomach contracted with fear.

  ‘You just got there? I see, that’s useful. And you’re . . .? What was her name? I see, excellent. Madeleine Rossander’s house. Belle is wearing her pink jacket and is asleep. Lucy is carrying her from the car.’

  The ground opened up beneath my feet and I fell.

  Vincent watched me with intense interest. He put the phone back in his trouser pocket again.

  ‘You know what? Why not call and warn your loved ones?’ he said. ‘It’s great when people try to escape into the darkness.’

  I didn’t answer. It was night in Sweden. Lucy, probably exhausted, was carrying Belle from the car, fumbling with the keys and going to ground in Madeleine Rossander’s summer cottage. With the enemy right outside.

  This was way beyond fucked up.

  Vincent tilted his head to one side.

  ‘So we’ll meet at nine o’clock, as arranged?’

  I nodded. Beaten and defeated, beyond salvation.

  I said: ‘And then you’ll leave Lucy and Belle alone? If you get me instead?’

  He said: ‘Of course.’

  That did it. I was going to die, and Belle and Lucy would be allowed to live. The realisation left me feeling numb.

  Of course.

  Vincent sounded genuinely surprised when he answered my question. As if he couldn’t understand how I could think he was going to deceive me about a thing like that. What they say is true. There’s a gentleman hidden inside every bastard.

  He turned round one last time before we went our separate ways.

  ‘By the way, don’t even think about calling your friend Didrik, or anyone else.’

  He didn’t have to worry about that.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said.

  ‘Especially not Didrik. Because you won’t get any joy from him.’

  I’d realised that.

  ‘Thanks, I already know that,’ I said.

  His eyes darkened.

  ‘So you already know?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That he’s dead.’

  I didn’t know where to turn. Death was everywhere. I managed to think that I must have been followed when I drove from Stockholm to Malmö. That Vincent had found out that Didrik and I were plotting against him.

  Vincent was Lucifer.

  Lucifer was my own brother.

  ‘He died in a car crash.’

  ‘Really?’

  I didn’t know what to say. There are an infinite number of ways you can kill a person.

  But then Vincent said: ‘It pained me to hear that. He deserved a better fate.’

  ‘So you didn’t kill him?’

  The words came out by themselves, I couldn’t stop them, still less take them back.

  ‘No, certainly not. I had other plans for him. He and Rebecca died instantly. A tragedy for all concerned. And evidently you still trusted him, in spite of everything he’d done to you?’

  That last sentence made me blink.

  ‘I don’t know that I’d call it trust,’ I said. ‘I—’

  ‘You thought you had a deal. Sadly Didrik couldn’t handle the pressure. He realised, of course, that I’d find out sooner or later, so he called and told me everything. That you’d showed up and had found Mio. Sad, isn’t it?’

  Sad was the word.

  He put on a pair of sunglasses and brushed something from the sleeve of his jacket. He was evidently about to go. I had one more question I wanted an answer to.

  ‘What about Mio?’ I said. ‘What happened to him?’

  Vincent fixed his gaze on something far behind me.

  ‘That seems to be the eternal question, doesn’t it? What happened to Mio?’

  Then he turned and walked away.

  46

  Dusk was falling when I got in the car and set off towards the old oilfield one last time. After my encounter with Vincent I had spent barely half an hour in my hotel room, lying on my back on the bed. There was no one I could call, no one I could ask for help. Josh Taylor’s name flickered past as a possibility, but I daren’t defy the order I had been given. If I did, Lucy and Belle would be gone forever. And I would have to live my last hours in the knowledge that I had killed them.

  I thought about calling Lucy. Just to say goodbye, and to thank her for everything. I wanted to hear her voice before I died. That was all. And surely every man or woman under sentence of death had the right to one las
t wish? I concluded that it was an impossible wish. There was absolutely zero chance of me being able to tell Lucy that I was on my way to my own execution without her reacting in a way that would cost her her life.

  Anguish is one of the worst things in the world. Most people use the word wrongly. Anguish is a force as strong as the torrent of water from a burst dam. It’s unstoppable, uncontrollable. No sane person who knows they’re going to die can face their last hours of life with any degree of calmness. I’ve always known that I love being alive. Even when everything was terrible – like the first year after my sister’s death, when I rapidly and reluctantly found myself a father – my lust for life was undiminished. It has always, always been there. Not once have I ever considered death as the solution to any problem I have faced. So the anguish that took over my body and mind during the hours after Vincent and I parted was unlike anything I had ever encountered before. Up to the moment where we were standing eye to eye, I had somehow imagined that I would be able to negotiate my way out of the situation. That there would be something I could say or do to put everything right. But that wasn’t the case, and I knew that now.

  There was no way back.

  And there was no way forward.

  When I got in the car, it felt like I was shivering with fever. It took me several minutes before I was able to pull myself together enough to dare to start it and drive off. I know I was crying, and I remember thinking that it didn’t matter. People who know they’re going to die can do what the hell they like.

  When I had been driving for half an hour one of my mobiles rang. The oldest one. I glanced at the screen, convinced that if I looked away from the road for as much as a second, the last thing I did would be to run down and kill someone.

  It was Marianne. The woman who had once given birth to me, and who I refused to call Mum. Of all the people who could have called just then, she was the last one I wanted to talk to. Not because I had nothing to say to her, but quite the opposite. We had far too many unresolved issues for a final conversation to serve any useful purpose. What could we discuss in a few short minutes – all I was prepared to give her – that could sort out all the shit that lay there festering between us, just in time for me to die?

  I rejected the call. And if I had to identify the one thing I’ve done that I regret most, that would be it. The fact that when I was sitting in a car and driving to what I knew was my own execution, I didn’t answer the phone when my mum called.

  There aren’t many people who know in advance when they are going to die. And not many people who ever know why. I dearly wanted to be the exception to that rule. I wanted to know why I didn’t deserve to live.

  For the second time in one day, I turned off the motorway and carried on along the deserted side-road, then onto the even more desolate gravel track. The gravel track was, or rather is, absolutely straight except for a bend just before it reaches the abandoned oilfield. It wasn’t until I got past it that I saw my welcoming committee. I counted six of them: five men and one woman. There were two cars parked up behind the little group of people. Their headlights lit up the whole of the meeting place. Vincent, my newfound brother, was sitting on the bonnet of one of the cars. He exuded all the arrogance I expected from a man in his bizarre position.

  One of the other men gestured to me to park a short distance away. I followed his instructions and got out of the car. Well, I didn’t, actually. First I had to sit in the car with the engine switched off for a minute or so before I opened the door and got out. I also sent Lucy a text. The shortest ever, and the most important.

  How I wish I could have met my death with dignity. That I could have been as cool as people in films when they’re about to die. Straight-backed, smiling, with some razor-sharp quip at the ready. And with at least seven automatic weapons hidden inside my jacket.

  I’d thought about getting hold of a gun to take with me, before realising that was a bad idea. I’m a crap shot, and I hadn’t fired a gun since I hit another man by mistake. There was no way I’d ever be able to shoot my way out of the situation I found myself in. In which case it was best to come the way I’d been instructed: unarmed, defenceless, and alone.

  Sweat was running down my back as I walked the last steps towards the gang; the only member I recognised was Vincent. He nodded in greeting and slid off the car’s bonnet. To my left someone had dug a deep hole in the hard ground. The shovel lay alongside it.

  ‘Good that we can meet like this, without too many preliminaries,’ Vincent said, sounding genuinely grateful.

  I thought about the last time I’d been in Texas. Lucy and I had met Sara Texas’s friend in Galveston, and found out that Lucifer had a connection to Sweden. I’d spent a lot of time thinking about that connection. Now I knew. He had a Swedish brother. Who he hated so much he wanted to see him dead.

  I wasn’t interested in a load of theatrical nonsense. I was angry and terrified, and I wanted to understand what this was all about.

  ‘You asked me to find Mio,’ I said. ‘Even though you knew that Didrik had him.’

  Vincent came a few steps closer.

  ‘I don’t remember ever asking you to do anything,’ he said.

  ‘Not in person. You told me via one of your messengers.’

  ‘We all communicate in different ways.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit how you communicate. I’m just wondering what was the point of me floundering about looking for a child who was never missing. To keep the police interested in me?’

  ‘Exactly. After I had Belle abducted, and everything that happened in conjunction with that, I was worried the police would fall for your nonsense about being the victim of a conspiracy. Didrik wouldn’t have been able to influence his colleagues if that happened. So I gave you a task that meant you’d carry on contacting a whole load of people I guessed that dear Didrik was already watching and would be stressed out by it.’

  ‘So that more people would have to die and I’d be accused of even more murders?’

  I could feel that I was breathing far too heavily. My vision was also affected. Everything looked a bit fuzzy round the edges, and I was distracted by little flashes of lightning that kept crossing my eyes. My head ached and my mouth felt swollen.

  ‘You need to appreciate what I got from the deal,’ Vincent said. ‘To be brutally honest, those people needed to die sooner or later. And the lengths Didrik was prepared to go to in order to protect his family were pretty damn impressive. I mean, really, I take my hat off to him. Rebecca wasn’t bad either, but Didrik is obviously the hero. Which in itself was a bonus. I had any number of things I could use to put pressure on him. Not that I needed that many, but I had to have something in reserve for when I took Mio away from him.’

  Didrik, Didrik, Didrik. What would Lucifer have done without Didrik’s drive and desperation?

  ‘So you were never thinking of letting him keep Mio?’

  ‘Are you mad? Not a fucking chance. But Didrik was like you. He didn’t understand the whole family thing.’

  ‘You just praised him for the strength of his love for his own family.’

  ‘His own, yes. But he totally misjudged how I feel about my son. My only son, at that. God help anyone who tries to take him from me.’

  I had a thousand remarks on the tip of my tongue, but swallowed them all. If Vincent had felt an ounce of love for his son, he should have started by never separating him from his mother.

  Vincent took a deep breath and his eyes flickered uncertainly as he looked round. One of his men spat in the sand, and another reached for the spade that lay on the ground.

  ‘I made up my mind many years ago that I was going to force you to take some responsibility,’ Vincent said. ‘To give you the punishment you deserve. Even in my wildest dreams I could never have imagined that Sara would provide me with the opportunity. That she would drag you into this – after her own death, no less – and provide me with such a fantastic opportunity to put everything right. If I’m honest, that s
till bothers me. The fact that it’s taken so little effort. All the shit you’ve been wading through in the past few weeks is the result of an operation I originally set up to punish Sara, not you. It had all been abandoned, it had served its purpose. But then you of all people popped up. I’d have liked to see you cost me more effort. But on the other hand . . . Let’s not forget that it’s thanks to Sara and Didrik that I was able to turn your life into such a nightmare. If it hadn’t been for them, my revenge on you would have looked very different.’

  He shook his head.

  I blinked a few times. My vision really wasn’t working the way it should, and I was starting to have trouble absorbing all the words that were reaching me. All the nuances vanished, leaving just the core message: nothing I had suffered during the past few weeks originally had anything to do with me. I just happened to get dragged into it. And that suited Lucifer just fine. Absolutely fucking fine.

  ‘Why was I told to find the person who was trying to frame me for two murders? I get the bit about finding Mio, but the other bit is . . . harder to understand.’

  Vincent tilted his head.

  ‘What do you see when you think of Didrik?’ he said.

  I didn’t feel up to replying, so he did so himself.

  ‘You see one hell of an honourable man. The sort who never does the wrong thing, always does what’s right. I could hardly believe it when he took responsibility for Bobby and Jenny’s deaths. There was a risk that everything had grown more complex than I was able to easily understand from here in Texas. So I wanted to be sure. But that doesn’t feel terribly important any more. You’re here, and you’re going to get your punishment. That’s all that matters.’

  All that matters. More, even, than the fact that Mio was missing?

  I tried to gain some time.

  ‘Did Sara know that you and I had the same dad?’

  I could have framed the question differently. I could have asked if Sara knew we were brothers. But that was too strong a word.

  ‘She knew I had a connection to Sweden. And she knew that I really, really didn’t like you. It was stupid of me to volunteer that little detail, but I’m only human. If you hate someone as much as I hate you, there’s always a risk that it will show.’