They say persistence is a virtue, but I’ve always doubted that. The world is full of good characteristics for a person to have, but persistence? No, I don’t think so. Most people around me know that about me, and respect it. Not Belle, though. With the straightforwardness of a four-year-old she keeps trying to get my attention, and doesn’t realise that she’s playing with fire when she asks the same question over and over again, or breaks the same rule time and time again. That was one of the things I had to work hardest at when she first came to live with me. Not to give in to the urge to open the window and chuck her out when she became too much of a nuisance.
After we discovered that the train ticket wasn’t the exciting piece of the puzzle that I’d been trying to turn it into, we didn’t talk much about Sara Texas. Someone more zealous than me would probably have rowed to shore seeing as he was already sitting in the boat, but that’s not my style. Nothing is more important to success than choosing your battles.
In fact, everything returned to normal as early as the following day. Lucy and I resumed our aimless wait for our holiday, and could barely summon up the enthusiasm to answer the phone. Lucy went on talking about which sun-cream she was going to take to Nice, with me only half-listening. Later I called Veronica, the woman I’d met at the Press Club.
‘Would you like to meet up again? I could come round to yours with a bottle of wine and some different cheeses?’ I said.
‘That would be great. I’d love to see you again!’ she said.
Just a little too enthusiastic. What I lack in patience I compensate for by being a mean strategist. After decades as an addict of the sort of kick that only really good sex can give you, I’d developed my dating technique to perfection. It’s all about fucking with style. A lot of women can envisage having no-strings sex with a guy – more than once, even – but not if he treats them like shit. That ought to be obvious, really, but a lot of guys make the mistake of thinking that if they show respect for the woman they want, she’ll think the relationship is serious and get upset – and become a problem – when she realises that this isn’t the case. But that rarely happens to me now. I was extremely confident that it wasn’t going to happen with Veronica.
Veronica wanted to see me on Friday, but obviously that was impossible because Belle and I always have our cosy evening together then.
‘How about Saturday?’
‘Thursday,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow.’
Partly because I didn’t want to have to wait, and partly because she wasn’t worth a Saturday evening. Lucy might want to do something then.
I barely had time to put the phone down before the door of my office was thrown open. Lucy was standing in the doorway dressed in just her bikini.
‘If you can’t be bothered to care about my sun-cream, maybe you’d care to think about what I should wear?’
How many times can a man get turned on by the same woman? It’s questions like that that keep me awake at night.
‘Nothing,’ I said hoarsely.
‘Oh, Martin,’ she said.
Yep, everything was back to normal. Lucy and I played silly games and made paper aeroplanes out of old case notes. I carefully put the material from the preliminary investigation into Sara Texas’s case back in its boxes and carried them down into the basement. I’d drive the whole lot to the tip another day, but at that moment, with the disappointment still fresh, I just wanted it out of the flat.
I managed to do just one sensible thing during the days that followed, and that was to reassure myself that things were going okay for my client, the one in prison who was worried about his sister Maja. His so-called friend was taken into custody both for the assault and for making unlawful threats, and my client was allowed to go home. Without anyone asking me, or expecting me to be there, I sat in on the meetings my client had with the police about the future protection of his family. The police conducted a thorough investigation of the friend’s network, and concluded that the level of threat faced by my client and his sister could only be regarded as low.
‘Only as long as he’s locked up,’ my client said.
The police had a plan for that too. Supplementary measures would be put in place when the piece of shit got out. For my part, I felt relieved. As did my client, eventually.
Everything was nice and peaceful. Sometimes we even got a hint of sun between the showers. We had so little to do in the office that I let Belle stay and play there two afternoons in a row when she should really have been at preschool.
I’d have been happy for things to go on like that. Nothing but tranquillity, sun and a child playing. But there was one little detail that had completely passed me by: the fact that some people were a hell of a lot more persistent than me. Not only more persistent, but also more stubborn.
Friday afternoon came, and I was sitting in my office writing an email. I’d met up with Veronica the previous evening, and I’d made plans for the weekend. It was, by and large, a very good day. Then the doorbell rang, and I remember thinking: ‘What now?’ We weren’t expecting any deliveries, and Lucy had finished for the day. It crossed my mind that it might be Bobby. I swore to myself, I needed to phone him and tell him I’d abandoned the case.
But when the door opened it wasn’t Bobby. It was a woman.
‘Are you Martin Benner?’ she said.
There isn’t much to say about her appearance. She looked ordinary. Not pretty, not ugly, just ordinary. I like that. I like people who don’t try too hard.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m Martin. Can I help you with something?’
She stepped hesitantly into the hallway.
‘I think so,’ she said. ‘At least, this is where Eivor sent me.’
Eivor. I’d almost forgotten about her. I needed to return the box of treasure from her attic. Because I had no use for it any more. Obviously it was kind of her to refer new clients to me now that Gustavsson was no longer active. The thought made me stand slightly taller. Gustavsson was a legend, and now people were coming to me instead. Not a bad development at all.
Unfortunately it turned out that the woman standing in front of me wasn’t a new client at all.
She held out her hand and I shook it.
‘Jenny Woods,’ she said. ‘I was friends with Sara Tell in Houston. I contacted Eivor a couple of days ago about a few things I sent over before the trial. I understand that you’re taking another look at her case?’
There are hundreds of ways to get rid of someone, but I only know two. The nice one and the nasty one. All the ones in between – like the kind one, the diplomatic one, the violent one – are beyond me.
With Jenny I started off with the nice one.
Without asking her into the office, I gave it to her straight out in the hall. No, I wasn’t taking another look at Sara Tell’s case. I conceded that Eivor may have had reason to believe that, but on close inspection I had come to the conclusion that it was unnecessary.
Jenny brushed the hair from her face and tucked it behind her ears. She looked nothing like I’d imagined. I’d seen pictures of Sara, of course, and assumed that Jenny would have roughly the same style. Judging by the photographs it looked like Sara pretty much lived in jeans and chequered shirts, and that she preferred trainers to anything else. Apart from when she was in court during the custody proceedings, when she had worn a jacket and skirt.
If Sara was the girl who went around in big shirts and jeans, Jenny was the girl in knee-length office skirts and pearl necklaces. An unusual style for someone who wasn’t yet thirty.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Are you working on Sara’s case or not?’
What was so unclear about it?
‘Not,’ I said, now in a harder tone of voice.
‘But you were?’
‘No. What I did do was take a look at it. There was no need to do more than that.’
Jenny looked at me.
‘Can I ask how you reached that conclusion so quickly? If I understood Eivor correctly, it’s only been a week or so since you went to see her, and at that time you’d only just started your work.’
I took a deep breath and did my best not to sound as irritated as I was. Besides, I was reluctantly beginning to feel curious. Had Jenny flown back from the USA after talking to Eivor?
‘I checked a number of issues that I thought the police might have missed,’ I said. ‘When it turned out that those issues didn’t affect the case, I decided not to pursue the matter, seeing as I had nothing more to go on.’
Jenny nodded slowly.
‘Okay, now I get it,’ she said. ‘Eivor told me you had the train ticket I sent Bobby, along with the diary. Are you counting that as one of – how did you put it? – the issues that you looked into?’
Her way of expressing herself suggested that she came from a different background to Sara who had a brother by the name of Bobby.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And when I realised it was irrelevant I decided not to expend any more energy on it.’
I looked pointedly at the time.
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. Regardless of what Eivor might have said. So if there wasn’t anything else, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
Jenny laughed.
‘It’s not me you need to help. It’s Sara.’
Not another one. I almost joined in with her laughter.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘It’s like this: Sara’s dead. It was stupid of me to start poking about in this mess, and even more stupid that I didn’t say as much the first time I met Bobby. If you want to grant Sara peace, you should turn to a priest instead. Because I’m afraid I can’t help you.’
Jenny became serious.
‘Just tell me how you came to the conclusion that the train ticket had no value as evidence.’
I was more than happy to do that. In a few short sentences I explained what Lucy and I had figured out.
‘Sara was staying in the hotel in Galveston the night the first victim died. Which makes it impossible for her to have been on a train from Houston to San Antonio at the same time,’ I summarised.
‘And you took the claim that Sara was staying in that hotel on that particular night from the detective’s account of how he recognised her during the investigation into the Houston murder?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But you probably haven’t seen any transcript of an interview in Galveston?’
I grew uncertain. No, I couldn’t say that I had.
Jenny interpreted my silence to mean that I wasn’t contradicting her.
‘You haven’t seen a transcript of an interview in Galveston because there isn’t one,’ she said.
I folded my arms in front of my chest.
‘So how did the detective recognise her?’
‘Because he tried to pick her up in a bar in Galveston when she was there with her au pair family on another occasion. And Sara gave him the brush-off. But he could hardly say that to his colleagues, could he?’
How many times in our lives are there moments when we make genuinely fateful decisions? Not many. And we rarely realise just how important those moments are until much later.
‘I’m not lying,’ Jenny said. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d be happy to prove it.’
I stood there in silence, just looking at Jenny.
She wasn’t like Bobby. She wasn’t the sort of person who screamed trouble. Which made her more credible. But all the same – I’d dropped the case. Was I about to pick it up again?
I thought about the boxes containing the material covering the investigation. They hadn’t got as far as the tip yet. The distance to the starting line wouldn’t be far at all if I wanted to give my private investigation another go.
I don’t know if I was driven by curiosity or boredom.
But eventually I said: ‘I’d be happy to hear what you have to say. Shall we go out and get a coffee?’