Buried Lies Read online

  PART I

  ‘It’s about my sister’

  TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN BENNER (MB).

  INTERVIEWER: FREDRIK OHLANDER (FO), freelance journalist.

  LOCATION:

  Room 714, Grand Hôtel, Stockholm.

  MB: This story I’m about to tell you, I can promise you now: you’re not going to believe me. Okay? But do you know what? I don’t care. Because I have to explain what happened to me. From start to finish. I need to get it out.

  FO: Okay, I’ll listen. That’s what I get paid to do. I’m not a police officer, and I’m not a judge. I’ll just keep quiet and listen.

  MB: I hope so. It’s important that you listen, and even more important that you write it down. So that my story is recorded, saved for posterity. Otherwise this conversation is a waste of time. Got that?

  FO: Of course. That’s why I’m here. To hear your version of events.

  MB: You’re not going to be hearing my version.

  FO: Sorry?

  MB: You said you were here to listen to my version of events. That implies that there are other versions. Mine, and at least one other person’s. And that’s not the case.

  FO: Okay.

  MB: I can see what you’re thinking. That I’m either stupid, or batshit crazy. But I can tell you, I’m not.

  FO: Maybe we should take it from the beginning and not bother discussing what I think or don’t think. So, you claim that you’re the victim of a conspiracy? That you’ve been accused of committing crimes of which you’re innocent?

  MB: You’re going too fast.

  FO: Am I?

  MB: You said we should start at the beginning. But you didn’t. Because when this story started, I wasn’t the one sitting in the dock.

  FO: Sorry, you’re right, of course. So, why don’t you tell me? So this conversation goes the way you imagined.

  MB: You’ll have to forgive me for being pedantic about the details. But what you write after we’ve finished this conversation is the most important thing you’ll write in your whole life.

  FO: I don’t doubt it.

  (Silence)

  MB: There’s one more thing you need to know before we get down to it.

  FO: Oh?

  MB: This is the most clichéd fucking story you’re ever going to hear.

  FO: Really?

  MB: Definitely. It’s got all the stereotypical elements. Unsolved murders. A big drugs baron. A successful lawyer who’s addicted to sex. And – drum roll – a sweet little child. A perfect film script, in other words. If it wasn’t for one important detail.

  FO: Which is?

  MB: That it isn’t a film. That it really happened. Here and now. Right under the noses of all the ordinary people who were too stupid to notice. And nothing – nothing at all – turned out to be the way it looked at the start.

  1

  Bobby brought the stormy weather with him. Rain isn’t exactly unusual in Stockholm. But I clearly remember that before Bobby came into my life, we used to have sunshine.

  Whatever the case, it was raining now. I didn’t have much to do, and I didn’t want much to do either. It was summer, and I was about to shut up shop for the holidays. Lucy and I were going to be heading for Nice, to swim and sunbathe. Drink cocktails and smear each other in suntan oil. Belle was going to stay with her grandparents. And sure as hell, that wasn’t the best time for someone to ring the doorbell. But they did. Helmer, our assistant, let him in and showed him to my room. He stopped in the doorway.

  I know a problem case when I see one. The moment I set eyes on Bobby for the first time, I had a bad feeling. It wasn’t the way he was dressed. Nor the fact that he smelled like an old cigarette factory. No, it was the look in his eyes that gave him away. His eyes were like two pieces of old lead shot. Pitch black.

  ‘What’s this about?’ I said, without bothering to take my feet off the desk. ‘I’m about to finish for the day.’

  ‘Not until you’ve spoken to me,’ the man said, and walked into the room.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘I didn’t hear myself say “Come in”,’ I said.

  ‘That’s funny,’ the man said. ‘I did.’

  So I took my feet off my desk and sat up properly.

  The man held out a hand across the desk.

  ‘Bobby T.,’ he said.

  I laughed in his face. It wasn’t a nice laugh.

  ‘Bobby T.?’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘How interesting.’

  How fucking ridiculous, was what I actually wanted to say. Who the hell calls himself Bobby T. in Stockholm? It sounded like a corny name for a corny gangster in a corny American film.

  ‘There were two Bobbies in my class when I was little,’ the man said. ‘So they called us Bobby L. and Bobby T.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘Two Bobbies? Unusual.’

  Probably not just unusual but unique. I tried to stifle my laughter.

  Bobby stood in silence in front of my desk. I looked him up and down.

  ‘Well, there were,’ he said. ‘But if you don’t want to call me Bobby T., you don’t have to. Bobby works, too.’

  My mind was drawn to the world of American cinema again. There, Bobby would have been a big, black man with a mama with curlers in her hair and a dad who was a bank-robber. And Bobby T. would be the eldest of fourteen kids, and would try to pull girls by telling them how he walked his little brothers and sisters to school while his mother got drunk. Why do women always fall for that crap? Men they feel sorry for.

  But back to the real Bobby. He was fair-skinned. Skinny and unkempt. His hair was curly with grease and his skin shiny. What did he want?

  ‘You’d better get to the point,’ I said, already starting to tire of my visitor. ‘You see, I wasn’t lying when I said I was about to finish for the day. I’ve got a hot date this evening and I want time to shower and change clothes before I meet her. I’m sure you understand.’

  I don’t think he understood at all. Lucy and I sometimes play a game, trying to guess when people had last had sex. Bobby looked like he hadn’t had any for years. I wasn’t even sure if he used to wank regularly. Lucy’s much better at that sort of thing than me. She says you can tell if men wank a lot by looking at the lower part of their palms.

  ‘I’m not here on my own behalf,’ Bobby said.

  ‘No?’ I sighed. ‘Who are you here about, then? Your dad? Your mum?’

  Or a mate who didn’t mean to hit the woman he mugged last week?

  Not that I said that.

  I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut when I have to.

  ‘It’s about my sister,’ Bobby said.

  He squirmed and the look in his eyes softened for the first time. I clasped my hands on the desk and waited, trying to look patient.

  ‘I’ll give you ten minutes, Bobby T.,’ I said.

  To stop him thinking I had all the time in the world.

  Bobby nodded several times. Then he sat down, uninvited, on one of the visitor’s chairs.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, as if I’d expressed interest in his story. ‘I want you to help her. My sister, I mean. I want to get her off.’

  How many times have I heard that before as a defence lawyer? People get themselves into all sorts of dodgy situations, then want help to get out of them. That’s not how it works. My role as a lawyer isn’t to help people get to heaven instead of hell. My task is to make sure the people making the decision do a decent job. And usually they do.

  ‘You’re saying she’s been accused of committing a crime?’ I said.

  ‘Not one. Several.’

  ‘Okay, she’s been accused of committing several crimes. Hasn’t she already got a defence lawyer?’

  ‘She had one. But he didn’t do his job.’


  I rubbed my chin.

  ‘So now she wants a new lawyer?’

  Bobby shook his head.

  ‘She doesn’t,’ he said. ‘I do.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t follow. You want a lawyer for yourself? Or you think she ought to have a new one?’

  ‘The latter.’

  ‘Why do you want that if your sister disagrees?’ I said. ‘You should be careful about telling people what they want. Most of them can look after themselves.’

  Bobby swallowed and the look in his eyes hardened again.

  ‘Not my sister,’ he said. ‘She could never look after herself. I was always the one who did that.’

  So he was the responsible brother. How lovely. There are far too few of them in the world. Or not.

  ‘Okay, listen. Unless your sister is a minor, you have no authority to wade in and make decisions about her defence. You’re actually doing her a disservice. It’s better for her to make those decisions for herself.’

  Bobby leaned forward and rested his elbows on my desk. I couldn’t bear his breath and pulled back.

  ‘You’re not listening to what I’m saying,’ he said. ‘I said my sister could never take care of herself. Past tense.’

  I waited, unsure of what was coming next.

  ‘She’s dead,’ Bobby T. said. ‘She died six months ago.’

  I’m very rarely, if ever, taken by surprise. But on this occasion I was. Because I couldn’t dismiss Bobby T. as either drunk or high.

  ‘Your sister’s dead?’ I said slowly.

  Bobby T. nodded, evidently pleased that I’d finally understood.

  ‘Then you’d better explain what you’re doing here,’ I said. ‘Because dead people don’t need defence lawyers.’

  ‘My sister does,’ Bobby said, his voice trembling. ‘Because some bastard ruined her life with false accusations, and I want your help to prove it.’

  It was my turn to shake my head.

  I chose my words carefully.

  ‘Bobby, you need to go to the police. I’m a lawyer, I don’t do criminal investigations. I . . .’

  Bobby banged his fist on the desk and I jumped involuntarily.

  ‘I don’t give a shit what you do,’ he said. ‘Because right now you’re going to listen to me. I know you’re going to want to help my sister. That’s why I’m here. Because I heard you say so. On the radio.’

  I was taken aback.

  ‘You heard me say on the radio that I wanted to help your sister?’

  ‘That’s exactly what you said. That it was every lawyer’s dream to defend someone like her.’

  It slowly dawned on me what he was talking about. And who his sister was.

  ‘You’re Sara Texas’s brother,’ I said.

  ‘Tell! Her name was Tell!’

  The anger in his voice made me flinch. He quickly changed his tone.

  ‘You said you wanted to help her,’ he repeated. ‘You said so, on the radio. So you must have meant it.’

  Oh fuck.

  ‘That was an interview about current cases,’ I said, now making an effort to sound friendly. ‘I didn’t express myself very clearly. That was foolish of me. Your sister’s case was extremely unusual. That’s why I said she was a lawyer’s dream client.’

  I could hardly believe it was true.

  In front of me sat the brother of a woman who had confessed to no fewer than five murders before she escaped from a supervised outing and killed herself the day before her trial was due to start.

  ‘I know what you said,’ Bobby said. ‘I’ve listened to the interview over and over again. It’s available online. And I’ve done my research about you. You’re smart.’

  Flattery can get you a long way.

  He said I was smart.

  And obviously I thought he was right.

  But I wasn’t so smart that I could bring the dead back to life.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept the facts,’ I said. ‘Your sister was accused of some very serious crimes. And she confessed, Bobby. She looked the lead interviewer and the prosecutor right in the eye and said that she’d murdered all those people. First she murdered two people in the US when she was an au pair in Texas. Then she murdered another three here in Stockholm. The weight of evidence was – and is – compelling. There’s nothing you can do for her now.’

  He sat in complete silence for a while, just looking at me, before he finally spoke.

  ‘She was lying. She didn’t kill them. And I can prove it.’

  I threw my hands up in resignation. Then I came up with what I should have said right at the start: ‘If you’ve got information which suggests that your sister was innocent, then you need to go to the police. Immediately. Because that means someone else is the murderer, and that person needs to be apprehended.’

  When I get angry or wound up, my nostrils flare. Like a horse. That was one of the first things Lucy told me when we first met, and if she could have seen me now she would have laughed.

  ‘Do you understand what I’m saying, Bobby? You have to go to the police.’

  The wretched rain was hammering at the window behind me with such frenzy that I thought the glass would break.

  Bobby looked wound up as well.

  ‘I’ve already been. They wouldn’t listen to me. Not when Sara was still alive, and not afterwards either.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to go again.’

  ‘They won’t care.’

  ‘It might look that way, but believe me, they’ll listen. If they choose not to take what you tell them any further, it’s because they regard it as being of no interest. And you’d have to accept that.’

  Bobby got up so abruptly that his chair fell over. His previously pale face was now bright red.

  ‘I’ll never accept what they did to Sara. Never!’

  I stood up too.

  ‘In that case, I don’t honestly know what you should do,’ I said. ‘Because I can’t help you.’

  For a moment I thought he was going to punch me, but then he seemed to swallow the worst of his anger. Instead he opened his jacket and took a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket.

  ‘Here,’ he said, holding it out towards me.

  I took it, somewhat reluctantly, and unfolded it.

  ‘So?’ I said when I’d read what it said.

  ‘Proof,’ Bobby said. ‘Proof that she was innocent.’

  I read it again.

  It looked like a bus or train ticket. The writing was in English.

  Houston to San Antonio

  5:30 p.m.

  Friday 8 October, 2007

  I had to make a real effort not to get annoyed. I didn’t have time for this sort of nonsense.

  ‘A bus ticket someone bought to travel from Houston to San Antonio at half past five on the afternoon of Friday 8 October, 2007. Is this your proof that your sister was innocent?’

  ‘It’s a train ticket, not a bus ticket,’ Bobby said angrily, like there was a big difference between the two. ‘You don’t know my sister’s case yet, I can tell. On Friday 8 October, 2007, the first murder that Sara was accused of was committed. The victim died at eight o’clock that evening. In a city called Galveston in Texas. But my sister can’t have been the murderer, because at the time she was on a train heading for San Antonio. That’s her ticket you’re holding.’

  I didn’t know where to start. A ticket proved nothing, of course. She could just as easily not have caught the train. Always assuming that the ticket was hers to start with.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ I said, waving the sheet of paper.

  ‘From Sara’s friend, Jenny. She was an au pair as well. In the same city as Sara. She took the ticket to the Texas police but they didn’t want it. She ended up sending it to me by courier, and I took it to my sister’s useless lawyer.’

  What could I say?

  It was true, I didn’t know the details of Sara Tell’s case, but I’d read enough to have a broad idea. The evidence against her was soli
d. The prosecutor had plenty of material. The ticket didn’t prove a damn thing.

  But I realised Bobby wasn’t going to leave my office unless I gave him something to take away with him. Hope. That’s what everyone who walks through my door wants.

  So I did what I usually do when there are no other options.

  I lied.

  ‘Okay, Bobby,’ I said. ‘How about this? You leave the ticket and a phone number with me, and I promise I’ll look into it. I’ll call you at the end of the week, let’s say Sunday, to tell you if I want to carry on working on your sister’s case. And if I decide I don’t want to, you need to accept that. Agreed?’

  I held out my hand.

  He hesitated for several long moments before shaking it.

  His hand was cool and dry.

  ‘Agreed.’

  He wrote his phone number down on a scrap of paper. Then he disappeared from my office at last. Leaving me sitting there with an old train ticket in my hand. Like hell was Sara Texas innocent. But it didn’t matter if she was, seeing as she was already dead and buried.

  I opened the top drawer of my desk and dropped the ticket in it.

  In an hour’s time I was going to be seeing Lucy, and there was no way she was going to have sex with me unless I had showered first. I had to get home.

  Then I heard the door to the office open again, and Bobby was soon back inside my room.

  ‘Two more things,’ he said. ‘One: like I said, Sara had a lawyer. But he didn’t do his job. You’ll realise that when you look at the case. That he let her down.’

  ‘And what makes you think he let her down?’

  ‘He knew things, but he never said anything to anyone. He knew about the ticket I just gave you. And, like I say, other things.’

  I hate people who speak in riddles. I hate games. The only person I play games with is Belle. She’s four years old, and still believes in Father Christmas.

  ‘What do you think he knew?’

  ‘Talk to him. Then you’ll understand. I’m not saying more than that.’

  His rhetorical posturing irritated me, but I couldn’t be bothered to carry on the discussion.

  ‘And the second point? You said there were two more things?’

  Bobby swallowed.