The Lies We Tell

by Kristina Ohlsson

  Hate. That burning, red-hot hatred. I had to know what that was all about. Before it was all over, before I was dead.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  The word emerged as I was breathing out, and turned into a whisper. My left shoulder was beginning to ache. I tried rolling it back and forth. It didn’t help.

  ‘Because of your betrayal!’

  His bellow hit me like a punch in the face. I couldn’t help staggering back.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, what betrayal? Do you mean Tony? I had no fucking idea he was even my brother.’

  ‘Do you expect me to believe that? Do you expect me to believe it was a coincidence that you came back to Texas, trained to become a cop, and then ended up as your own brother’s partner?’

  His voice was a roar that risked deafening me. I tried to fend him off by wrapping my arms round my head, but quickly lowered them again. The pain in my shoulder was now shooting straight down my left arm.

  ‘Of course it wasn’t a fucking coincidence. I came here because I wanted to meet my father. Get to know him. You too, maybe. I knew you existed. I knew we were the same age. But you know what? He refused. He didn’t want me to meet you. He didn’t ask me back to your home one single fucking time. I had to find out where you lived for myself. So how the hell can you believe that I knew Tony was my brother? He didn’t even have his father’s surname – just like you don’t.’

  I was exhausted by my speech, and had to stand still and catch my breath.

  ‘No, we’ve got our mum’s name.’

  ‘You’ve certainly chosen a brilliant way of honouring your father,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘By becoming a fucking mafia boss who trades in women and drugs, and goes around murdering people the whole time. Do you think he’d have been proud of that?’

  I don’t know where I got the strength to raise my voice. My eyes were flickering and I sank to my knees just in time to connect with Vincent’s kick to my head. I collapsed on the sand and stayed there. Vincent loomed over me, feet planted far apart.

  ‘You don’t get to tell me about making Dad proud,’ he said. ‘If it hadn’t been for me, Mum and Simon would never have coped after Dad died. Did you know he killed himself?’

  I didn’t know that. I was just told that he had died, and that was that.

  ‘Dad was weak,’ Vincent said. ‘Just like Tony. Don’t imagine they could help it, because they couldn’t. But the rest of us did what we could. And that’s what you should have done too. We knew who you were all along. And we know that you knew who we were.’

  I slowly moved my head in the sand. I was on my way now, I could feel it.

  ‘That’s not true,’ I whispered. ‘Tony was a year younger than me. It never crossed my mind that . . .’

  ‘Don’t lie!’

  Vincent’s next kick hit me in the crotch.

  ‘Don’t lie! Dad said he’d told you about us! Tony liked you. He told the rest of us that if we just gave you time, you’d come clean about who you were. But you never did. Not even after Tony backed you up that fucking night when you shot a teenager. How fucking cruel can anyone be?’

  I thought I was about to be kicked again and curled up. But nothing came, no kicks or punches.

  ‘Tony couldn’t bear to go on working with you after that. He requested a transfer, but believe me, he never stopped hoping. And then you did the most incomprehensible thing of all. You just left. You resigned and went home. You fucking coward! After that, Dad started drinking. Then Tony died, and after that everything was finished. Dad never got over it. Don’t you realise that you destroyed our family?’

  I understood what he was saying, but I couldn’t take it in. Because I had no reason to believe he was lying. No doubt my dad had said all those things, pretending everything was my fault when his life fell apart. But I – and my mum – knew the truth.

  ‘It was your dad who destroyed my family,’ I said. ‘Not the other way round, Vincent.’

  ‘Our dad!’ Vincent roared. ‘Ours! Not mine!’

  I felt like screaming. Partly from the pain in my arm, and partly in protest. I had no father that I cared to acknowledge. Far from it. And I wasn’t going to let any other bastard force one down my throat. But I didn’t manage to get a single word out.

  ‘I was the one who had to sort everything out when Dad was gone. For Mum and Simon . . . Simon’s a great guy. But he’s not very smart. He’s got his cafés, but that’s as far as it goes. He never knew what happened out here, for instance. He would have talked. Not out of malice, but because he couldn’t handle it. You can despise what I’ve become all you like, but I’ve still managed something that you’ll never get anywhere close to: I’ve made myself immune to any more fucking accidents. I govern the piece of the world that belongs to me just as I like. Do you get it? Do you get it? You can’t touch me or the people I care for.’

  But he had lost Mio. His own son. If only Sara had known what forces she was setting herself up against. There’s no one more dangerous than people who are driven by private – and sick – motives. Because they’re not open to compromise. That was why I was now lying in the sand with death just a few metres from my face. The only question was what variety of death was going to get me first. My left arm had gone numb. I was quite certain I was having a heart attack. Yet another weak brother in the family. But not one to whom Vincent would show any mercy, that much was obvious.

  Without any elaborate gestures, he pulled a large revolver from a holster concealed beneath his jacket. I had left my own jacket in the hotel. I’m happiest in just my shirt-sleeves.

  ‘Do you know how Tony died?’

  I didn’t answer.

  According to Josh Taylor, he’d been shot while on duty.

  ‘They wrote in the report that he’d been shot, that he walked into an ambush. They never found the man who did it. Do you know why?’

  I tried to shake my head.

  ‘No,’ I whispered.

  ‘Because I took care of the bastard. Simon didn’t want to know, nor did Mum. I put everything right. But before I shot him, guess what he told me?’

  My brain had turned to mush. Making wild guesses was the last thing I had energy for. Vincent came so close that I could see the thin lines around his eyes.

  ‘That he was the brother of the guy you shot and then buried out here.’

  I blinked. Impossible. That was completely impossible.

  ‘I see you’re surprised,’ Vincent said. ‘So was I. Because of course Tony had told me about your fucked-up shooting, and how you’d made sure no one had seen what happened. It’s a shame you did such a fucking useless job. The brother of the guy you shot was sitting inside one of the abandoned old workshops, and he saw everything. Fourteen years old. You can imagine what that would do to a person.’

  My neck felt tight and my vision was blurring. That couldn’t be right. There was no way that could be right.

  ‘By the time the kid was old enough to take revenge you’d already run away,’ Vincent said, breathing hard. ‘Leaving no one but Tony behind, so he had to pay the whole bill himself. Do you understand now, Martin? Making your brother miserable wasn’t enough for you – you killed him as well!’

  So that was why I had to die. That was why I had to be crushed. Like some Old Testament drama: the finale to a dispute between two brothers.

  The sky was still dark blue. A crescent moon shone yellow against all the blue. I wondered how Lucy and Belle were. If they’d be allowed to live. I thought they would. I had to believe they would.

  ‘Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘But it wasn’t my fault.’

  The words came out in fits and starts. The pain in my chest was so immense that I could hardly think of anything else. I was struck by one last thought about the irony of the fate I was now facing: I was going to die without knowing what had happened to Mio. Mio, the ghost no one could catch.

  ‘It’s all your fault,’ Vincent said, and pressed the narrow barrel of the revolver to my forehead.

/>   ‘Not Belle and Lucy,’ I whispered.

  ‘Of course not. This is enough.’

  And then a shot rang out. And another one. And then more than I could count. I heard agitated voices and screaming, felt everyone around me spring into motion. In the distance I heard a great number of sirens, and somewhere in the distance a helicopter was approaching. By the time it landed I was already gone.

  47

  AFTERWARDS

  The first shot was fired from a revolver in Sheriff Esteban Stiller’s hand. It hit Lucifer in the back of the head, killing him instantly. Who died after that, I don’t know. But a wild fire-fight broke out between Lucifer’s men and the army of police who in some unfathomable way had managed to conceal themselves nearby. They had followed me the first time I drove out there. And apparently they hadn’t driven away again.

  ‘Gut instinct,’ Stiller said later when we talked about it. ‘I thought you went out there to do some reconnaissance and I was right.’

  Stiller’s instinct had got him a long way. He’d had his eye on Vincent for years, convinced that he was in the pay of Lucifer’s network. He didn’t know we were brothers. He didn’t know that Vincent was Lucifer. But he didn’t need to know any of that once he was there.

  ‘When I realised he was about to blow your head off, it was time to act,’ he said.

  But he neglected to tell me that the real hero was Josh Taylor. He had called to tell Stiller that he should be keeping a very close eye on me. Because if he got lucky, I might be able to lead him to Lucifer himself. Stiller had already been informed that I had entered the country, but hadn’t done anything much about it. Not until Taylor contacted him. At the same time as he contacted me to let me know I had half the police in Texas after me.

  ‘So you didn’t do anything stupid and end up acting like the criminal Stiller thought you were all along,’ he explained.

  The doctors said I was dead for twelve minutes. Then I spent three weeks in a coma. Three weeks was also how long it took Lucy to persuade the Swedish and American police that I was a victim of crime, and not actually involved in any criminal activity in either Sweden or the USA. The Americans managed to sort out the footage from Wolfgang’s security camera and improved the focus to the point where it was possible to see that it was Didrik who was moving Elias’s body into my car. The woman, however, remained unidentified, which didn’t really bother me too much. She obviously wasn’t me, and that was the important thing. Lucy also managed to prove that the witness who claimed she’d seen a Porsche run down and kill Jenny had been bribed by Didrik. After that, things looked considerably brighter for me.

  The last text message I sent Lucy proved conclusive for the police.

  ‘Lucifer is my own brother.’

  That’s exactly what I wrote. No more, no less. It was enough to blow the story open. Unfortunately that now happened in full view of the public. Until then there had been forces holding the media back, plugging any leaks. But now those forces had gone. When Vincent died, his network imploded. Some of its members chose to run, others handed themselves in, and negotiated shorter sentences by informing on their friends. The media in more countries than I care to list wrote hundreds, thousands of articles during the three weeks I was gone. The only detail that Stiller did manage to keep quiet, with vague references to a serious threat against me, was my name. So I came to be known as Coma Man in the media. And the day I woke up, Islamic terrorists blew up the American Embassy in Jordan. Coma Man’s reawakening was overshadowed by this new atrocity and I didn’t end up the global celebrity Lucy was sure I was going to become.

  Coma Man. A name that made Lucy cry at first, then laugh, once I’d woken up and demonstrated that I wasn’t a cabbage. The doctors hadn’t been particularly optimistic. I’d been gone a long time and my brain could have been severely damaged.

  ‘In that case, you need to let him die,’ Lucy said seriously.

  ‘Never,’ the doctor said. ‘In this country we let the living live. Even if they’re broken. If he wants to die, he’ll have to commit suicide.’

  I’m not even going to try to describe what it was like, waking up after being unconscious for so long. It would be hopeless. I’ll just say that it’s the worst thing I’ve ever been through. Doctors are very fond of using the word ‘discomfort’ to describe things that are absolutely terrifying. I prefer to call a spade a spade. Appalling is a good word. Fucking shite would also do.

  It wasn’t like I could just get up and go home. I could hardly move at all. And things weren’t quite sorted out with the police, either. Lucy had done a hell of a good job, but I had to sort out the remaining problems myself. My memory got better day by day, at roughly the same rate as I became capable of movement again. Lying in hospital is a never-ending humiliation. And having your credibility questioned by the police is pretty much the same.

  ‘Why did you meet up at that particular abandoned oilfield?’ Sheriff Stiller wanted to know.

  I said I didn’t know. Josh Taylor was present at that interview. He lowered his gaze when the oilfield was mentioned.

  Lucy was there for me the whole time. Belle too. Lucy had travelled to Houston together with my daughter and Signe, the au pair. Belle was her usual bubbly self, and charmed everyone who crossed her path. One of the doctors at the hospital removed her plaster-cast. That was the first thing she showed me when I came round.

  ‘Look! Just a normal arm!’ Lucy was talking to the doctor, organising my care.

  She’s good at sorting things out, Lucy.

  We landed back at Arlanda on a Tuesday. By then it was September, pouring with rain, and I tried not to think what my stay in hospital must have cost my insurance company. Autumn lay ahead of me like an endless stretch of straight road. The doctors had recommended at least eight weeks’ sick-leave. I promised to follow their advice. I’m not so stupid that I don’t know when to listen to other people. If you have your first heart attack – and such a bad one – before the age of forty-five, you need to be careful.

  ‘I’m going to start exercising,’ I told Lucy in the taxi on the way from the airport. ‘Eat better, maybe go to one of those nutritional experts.’

  The three of us were all sitting in the back-seat, Belle in the middle. She’d fallen asleep with her head on my arm. Lucy was very quiet, looking out through the rain-streaked window. I reached out my hand and touched her cheek. Belle fell onto my chest when I moved my arm.

  ‘Are you okay, baby?’

  And she replied in the only reasonable way. The only way I expected her to.

  ‘No.’

  Then she went on: ‘It’s over now. Okay? It’s over, Martin.’

  How can I begin to describe the shockwaves that ran through me? They terrified me, left me more frightened than I had been when I woke from the coma. Not that I had forgotten our earlier arguments. But I thought those weeks in Texas had changed everything. That we had grown closer. It felt like that, anyway. All the way through my aching body.

  ‘You came to Texas. You . . .’

  She silenced me by gently putting a finger to my lips.

  ‘I love you.’ She started to cry. ‘Okay? I love you. More than anyone. But that’s not enough, Martin. What we’ve got, it isn’t a proper relationship. And, to be fair, you never promised me that. But you know – this isn’t what I want. Don’t tell me you can change, because you can’t. And you won’t. Okay? I love you. But that’s not enough. Because you don’t love me the same way.’

  I started to panic. Much worse than when I thought I was going to be shot. I tried to find the words to tell her how much I loved her, how much I needed her. I wanted to say I wasn’t complete without her by my side, that I had no better friend than her.

  But I didn’t say a word. Because I was thinking about everything I knew she wanted beyond that.

  A faithful lover.

  A shared home.

  Shared children too, maybe.

  And then the tears came, because of course Lucy was r
ight. Just like she always was. I couldn’t give her any of those things. Well, maybe I could, there and then. Being ill and then getting better makes you very humble. There had been moments of weakness during the summer when I had thought the thought. That I could be the man she wanted, give her what she desired. Because she was so fucking worth it. But I’m far too egotistical to make life-choices like that. I’m all too well aware of that. I can’t change in the way that I’d have to in order to become hers for real. And maybe there’s something healthy about that sort of self-awareness.

  We are who we are.

  TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN BENNER (MB).

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

  KV:

  I don’t know what to say. You broke up? Just like that?

  MB:

  Yes.

  KV:

  So what now?

  MB:

  Right now we’re taking a break. We’ve shut the office; we’re leaving it empty for a while. Helmer’s on leave, with full pay. I’m busy with my rehabilitation and Lucy has taken a temporary position elsewhere.

  KV:

  But you still see each other?

  MB:

  Absolutely. Belle would be distraught if we didn’t.

  KV:

  Do you think you’ll ever get back together?

  (Silence)

  MB:

  Is that relevant, after everything I’ve told you?

  KV:

  Not to the story itself. But on a purely human level, I’m very curious.

  MB:

  Don’t be. Your predecessor, Fredrik, never was.

  KV:

  Sorry. What happened after you got home? I mean, with the murders you were suspected of committing?

  MB:

  We managed to resolve that at least in part from the USA. After all, the Swedish and American police were forced to work together. But sure, there were still things to sort out when we got back.