Someone who clearly had the same difficulty as Lucy in dealing with the consequences of his life-choices was the young man I was meeting for the second time inside Kronoberg Prison. It was abundantly clear that he wasn’t doing well. Like most people who have extra restrictions placed on them while they’re in custody. Swedish custodial legislation is vicious, beyond anything found in any of the world’s other democracies. All lawyers know that, as do all police officers. Unfortunately the country’s politicians also know it but choose not to do anything about it. I find that utterly incomprehensible.
The guy looked wretched. I wondered what he’d been doing. Had he been rubbing his clothes against the walls of his cell?
‘Are you eating properly?’ I said.
He’d lost weight and had deep shadows under his eyes.
‘Yeah,’ he said.
Christ, people who don’t know how to lie really shouldn’t try.
‘I don’t want you to eat for my sake, but yours,’ I said.
I slung my briefcase up onto the table, opened it and took out the papers I’d brought with me.
‘I’d like us to go through what happened one more time,’ I said. ‘Because your story really doesn’t make sense, you know.’
Once again he reacted by getting cocky, which looked ridiculous when he had so little energy to try to act cocky with.
‘I told you what happened. You’re just going to have to fucking believe me. You’re my lawyer.’
I stifled a sigh.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know I am. That’s pretty much the only reason I’m here. And I’m really trying to do a good job. But it would be a lot easier if you helped me to do it even better.’
The young man lowered his eyes and scratched his arm with intense concentration. He was his usual self again now. Scared and fragile. It gave me an obvious way-in.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘I’ve read the witness statements your friends gave. The ones who say they don’t remember anything. They’re obviously talking shit. Neither of them had drunk enough for that whole memory loss thing to be believable. Your parents have also expressed their surprise. They can’t understand why your best friends aren’t standing up for you and saying what really happened. That you never hit that guy.’
I saw that he was listening, but he was still refusing to look at me.
‘I get the impression that they’re scared,’ I said in a calm voice. ‘Just like you.’
His frenetic scratching stopped, but he remained silent.
‘You’ll go to prison for this,’ I said. ‘Do you understand what that means? Do you know what it does to a person, being locked up? Not being allowed to come and go as you like, do what you like?’
Now he looked at me, and tears welled up in his eyes.
I shook my head.
‘Don’t do that to yourself. Not if you can avoid it.’
Then, at last, he started to talk.
‘I can’t,’ he said.
‘You can’t what?’
He sobbed quietly with his head lowered.
‘I can’t tell you what happened.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because that would make everything much worse.’
‘Sorry, but what? It could get worse? Worse than ending up in prison? Worse than losing your apprenticeship?’
My client nodded as tears ran down his thin cheeks.
‘So tell me about it,’ I said. ‘Tell me what could be worse than all that.’
I sat patiently, waiting for the young man on the other side of the table.
‘Maja,’ he whispered eventually.
‘Who?’
‘Maja. My sister. She’s fifteen, she’s got Down’s Syndrome.’
I did my best to understand. Was he going to tell me that it was his sister with learning difficulties who hit the other guy?
‘Okay, Maja. Was she in the bar with you?’
He shook his head.
‘No, it’s not that.’
He flashed me a look that was burning with fear.
‘He’ll sell her.’
I felt myself stiffen.
‘Who’ll sell her?’
‘Rasmus. He’ll sell her to his mates if I don’t say it was me. Do you get it now? Do you see why I have to say it was me?’
I got it. Rasmus was the only witness who thought he remembered the evening when the assault took place.
My heart was turning somersaults in my chest.
I understood so much more than he could imagine.
My client looked at me as I lost myself in my own thoughts.
‘You mustn’t tell anyone,’ he said, as if to get my attention. ‘Not unless you can save Maja as well.’
I blinked and forced myself back to the present.
‘It’ll work out somehow,’ I said, hoping I didn’t sound too distracted.
Unfortunately I did.
‘I knew I shouldn’t have said anything,’ my client said, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Fucking hell, how could I be so fucking stupid?’
His rage and anxiety made me pull myself together.
‘Stop that,’ I said sternly. ‘I promise I’ll help you find the best possible solution to this. Believe me, once your friend ends up in here, he won’t be able to hurt your sister.’
My client shook his head hard.
‘He’ll get out again,’ he said. ‘Twice as bad as before. Then he’ll get me and Maja. Anyway, he’s got friends. Loads of friends who’d do anything he wanted them to while he’s inside.’
I sighed.
‘Come on. Believe me, there are very few people who actually go along with that sort of mafia behaviour when it comes down to it. Do you seriously believe that he’s got “loads of friends” who would be prepared to kidnap a fifteen-year-old girl with learning difficulties and sell her to dirty old men? Forget it.’
I could see I was getting through to him. My client calmed down, but looked just as frightened as he had before.
‘Okay, this is what we do,’ I said. ‘I’ll go to the police with this information, and they’ll sort this all out. Do you think those friends of yours who couldn’t remember anything when they were questioned might remember your version if we ask them? Or does your so-called friend Rasmus have a hold over them as well?’
‘I don’t know,’ my client said.
I didn’t believe he did. If that were the case, they’d already have given a false testimony, just as the perpetrator himself had.
‘You won’t forget Maja, will you?’ my client said. ‘She’s the person this is all about. You do get that, don’t you?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said.
I got ready to leave. All’s well that ends well. I couldn’t imagine that the police would fail to offer his sister protection. It was both their job and their duty. But I didn’t actually agree with him. This wasn’t about his sister Maja at all. It was about a young man who had been beaten up for God knew what reason, and whose injuries had left him with epilepsy.
My client remained seated with his head bowed as I stood up. He was a bit like Bobby. The same gangly body, the same battered appearance.
Yet still very unlike him. This guy had every chance of having a good life. And, being brutally honest, that didn’t seem to be the case for Bobby.
I patted my client on the shoulder.
‘This will all get sorted out before too much longer,’ I said. ‘Try to eat something, and get some sleep, and I’ll be in touch again soon.’
He watched me in silence as I left the room. I felt something resembling relief. Now that I had this case behind me I could devote more of my time to Sara Texas.
My client had actually helped me understand something I’d been thinking about a lot in the previous week. Why certain people in certain situations confessed to crimes they hadn’t committed.
They did so to help someone else, or because they were being threatened.
And sometimes they did so for both reasons at the same time.
Anyone hoping to ride to Sara Texas’s defence didn’t need to find an alternative murderer. It would be more than enough, as I’d said from the outset, to find a plausible explanation for why she had confessed to murders she hadn’t committed. For instance, that she was being threatened. Or that she was protecting someone else whom she didn’t want to see punished.
If this second explanation was why she acted the way she did, I had to admit that I was worried. Because I’d never met anyone I liked so much that I’d be prepared to help them if they’d killed a handful of people. Still less shoulder responsibility for their crimes.
Getting my client to start talking had been relatively easy. But Sara Texas was dead; I wasn’t going to get a peep out of her. So I had to ask myself: if my client hadn’t decided to tell me about the threat to his sister Maja, how could I have found out about it?