Evil’s name was Lucifer, and he lived in Texas. I had made a solemn vow to Lucifer’s associate that under no circumstances would I try to find out any more information about the big mafia boss. If I did, Belle was dead, and possibly also Lucy. The fact that I had now found out the colour of his skin was hardly the result of any conscious snooping. His skin was the same colour as mine. Dark. Or black, depending on your choice of words. The question was, what could I do with that particular nugget of information?
Lucy looked surprised when I told her what I’d found out.
‘I don’t know why it matters,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got a feeling that it does.’
I agreed with her. Not knowing who Lucifer was bothered me more than I could put into words. He was the man who had kidnapped my daughter. He had murdered her grandparents. He had threatened to kill me and was using me as a coerced agent in Stockholm. Sooner or later I would give in to the temptation to find out who he was, and see to it that he disappeared from my life permanently.
Lucy was studying me carefully.
‘Don’t even think of it, Martin,’ she said. ‘Just let it go.’
She was asking the impossible, and she knew it. But she was also asking the only sensible thing.
She changed the subject.
‘How was the service?’
‘Not a fucking clue, I didn’t even set foot inside the church.’
‘Wise.’
We were sitting in Lucy’s office. She was behind her desk, I was slumped like a teenager in one of the visitors’ chairs. At the start of the summer our office had resembled a youth club. We had been planning a trip to Nice, and Lucy was busy trying out different sun-creams. That all seemed such a long time ago now. Lucy was leafing through some papers she had in front of her. She seemed older, somehow, or more taut, than she had done just a few weeks earlier. I probably did too. We had stopped laughing. It couldn’t really get much worse than that.
‘We ought to do something fun,’ I heard myself say.
Lucy shifted her focus from her papers to me.
‘We ought to get our lives back first,’ she said.
And what if we can’t? I wanted to ask. What the fuck do we do then?
‘I’m going to go and see Madeleine now,’ I said.
Another change. I never used to tell Lucy who I was going to see and when.
‘Anything I can be doing in the meantime?’ Lucy said.
I stopped and considered.
‘The woman who’s called me two nights in a row now calls herself Susanne, and she says someone called Rakel Minnhagen abducted Mio from his preschool. That’s worth digging into. Check the preschool’s staff properly; I haven’t had time. I don’t know exactly what we’re looking for, so keep your eyes open.’
Lucy jotted down some notes and nodded. I looked on, feeling anguished. We were chasing lots of different threads at the same time, and whatever I did left me feeling inadequate. It was a horrible feeling. If I’d been obeying a senior officer, he would have yelled in my face: ‘One thing at a time, Benner! Hold this damn investigation together!’
But I had no commanding officer, and there was no way I could hold my investigation together.
‘Do they know us at the preschool?’ Lucy said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Why would they?’
‘You tell me, I was just checking. Anything else?’
‘Passport photographs,’ I said. ‘Don’t forget to dig out passport photographs of the people working at the school when Mio disappeared. We need to know what they look like.’
I’d barely finished speaking before Lucy and I were struck by the same thought.
‘Bloody hell,’ Lucy said.
We’d been stupid. Ridiculously stupid.
‘Mio,’ I said. ‘Check to see if he had a passport.’
There were at least ten smokers standing outside the bar where I was meeting Madeleine. She had chosen the location, not me. A backstreet I’d never heard of, near Gullmarsplan. Not far from the Blå Soldat bar where Susanne had wanted to meet. The taxi-driver had to use satnav to find it.
‘I appreciate the need for caution, but isn’t this taking things a bit far?’ I said once we were seated.
We were sitting at a small corner table. I avoided touching the walls. They were so filthy I’d have got stains on my clothes if I leaned against them.
‘Sometimes you have to think outside the box,’ Madeleine said.
She put a brown envelope on the table. A waiter took our order. I carried on where I’d left off at lunch. Another G&T. Madeleine ordered a beer. The waiter disappeared.
‘How did you get on?’ I said.
She’d already told me, admittedly, but I didn’t have time for small-talk. I was treading water in the Mariana Trench. It was exhausting, and very hard work.
‘Good and bad.’
She ran her hand over the envelope. With a mixture of fascination and horror, I realised that she was nervous. It was unusual to see Madeleine nervous.
‘You know I’m happy to help you, Martin. But not with absolutely anything. And not at any cost. I’ve got children. I can’t risk their safety for your sake.’
‘I haven’t asked you to,’ I said.
It was impossible to keep my voice steady. I lowered it as I went on: ‘What the hell’s happened?’
Madeleine shook her head briefly.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s just a feeling I got. There’s something that doesn’t make sense about this whole thing.’
Our drinks arrived. Madeleine took several deep mouthfuls of her beer. My G&T tasted terrible.
‘I don’t usually have any trouble getting information out of the police,’ Madeleine said. ‘This time it was different. It’s as if the preliminary investigation has been flagged with big red warning signs. I had to come up with all sorts of peculiar excuses that would normally have been completely unnecessary.’
‘But you did manage to get the information?’
‘Only half of it, like I said on the phone. I’ve got the name of the witness who saw Jenny Woods get run over. But no picture of Mio.’
A woman walked past our table. I got the impression that she slowed down as she went past. Madeleine and I sat in silence until she’d gone.
‘Isn’t that a bit bloody weird?’ I said in a low voice. ‘That there aren’t any pictures of the kid?’
‘I’m not saying that there aren’t any pictures,’ Madeleine said. ‘I’m saying that the person I spoke to couldn’t find any, not a single one.’
‘What, you think someone’s hidden them? Someone inside the police?’
She shrugged.
‘I don’t know what I think,’ she said. ‘All I know is that it’s just like you said: extremely unlikely that the police don’t have any pictures of the child. That’s one of the very first things they ask for whenever anyone disappears.’
I considered what I already knew. That Mio looked like me. That told me everything and nothing.
‘Who’s the witness?’ I said.
I don’t know why I thought it was so important.
‘A woman by the name of Diana Simonsson. Do you recognise the name?’
‘No. Should I?’
Madeleine pushed the brown envelope towards me.
‘Open it,’ she said.
I did as she said and pulled out a sheaf of papers. At the top was a black-and-white photograph of a young blonde woman.
‘What about now? Do you recognise her?’
I shook my head. She was a complete stranger to me.
I started to look through the documents. It was a district court judgement. I read the first page with bemusement. It was a rape case. What did this have to do with anything? Rape is the most heinous of all heinous crimes. For that reason I very rarely agree to defend anyone suspected of it. Because I have immense difficulty sympathising with what they’ve done. And because I never feel completely sure of what they haven’t done. But there are exceptions. And I had one of them in front of me.
My own name shone out as if it was written in burning letters. I had defended the suspect. And Diana Simonsson had been the plaintiff, or the victim, to put it more plainly.
All of a sudden I remembered her as clearly as if it was yesterday. She’d been completely hysterical when the verdict was announced. Later that day she turned up at my office and gave me a bollocking, screaming that I was the devil’s lackey, that she’d never forgive me for what I’d done. I told her that if she didn’t leave my office at once, I’d call the police. I also said I understood that she was disappointed, but that she couldn’t take that disappointment out on me. It was the court that convicted or cleared people. And everyone had the right to a defence. Even people suspected of sex-crimes. She left my office in a state of near meltdown. I waited until I heard the door close behind her. Then I called the police and filed a report against her. Something for which I was now very grateful.
‘Are you kidding?’ I said. ‘The police’s star witness, who swears she saw a Porsche 911 run down and kill Jenny Woods, is a woman who hates me because I managed to get the man she accused of raping her cleared at his trial?’
‘Pretty much,’ Madeleine said. ‘I was wondering why you weren’t being held in custody. I think we know why now.’
I didn’t believe that.
‘What are the chances that she of all people would be standing there at that particular moment?’
‘Big enough, apparently,’ Madeleine said.
‘No way,’ I said, pushing the file away from me. ‘The same sick mind that planned Bobby and Jenny’s deaths made sure there was a so-called witness to one of the murders.’
‘You don’t think she was there?’
‘Not a chance.’
‘Someone told her to make a false statement?’
‘Yes. Why else would she make do with only identifying the car? She ought to have recognised me as well.’
‘A false witness. Martin, how often does that actually happen in real life?’
‘That doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s happening this time.’
Madeleine drank some more beer. The noise-level in the bar was steadily increasing. Someone started playing darts. Sharp projectiles pierced a board on the wall. A smell of sweaty armpits drifted past, making me screw up my face.
‘Why did they need a witness?’ she said. ‘Wasn’t there any forensic evidence?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing to tie me and my car to the crime scenes. Well, there was something. The Porsche had – still has – a dent on the bonnet that I can’t explain. But I don’t know what that proves.’
‘So you think whoever was driving stopped the car and got out to examine his victims?’ Madeleine said. ‘And called in a witness to strengthen the evidence?’
‘Maybe. But it’s more likely that the witness was part of the plan all along. If there was some credible way of linking my car to the first victim, there wouldn’t be any problem tying it to the second one.’
More darts hit the board. Madeleine looked at the man as he took aim and threw them.
‘Who else has access to your car apart from Lucy?’ she said.
I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
‘Lucy?’ I said. ‘Sorry, you think Lucy is mixed up in this?’
My heart stood still even at the thought of it.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t say that she “has access” to my car. No one does, except me. Lucy hasn’t got her own key to the Porsche, and never will have.’
Madeleine wouldn’t look me in the eye.
‘It must have been someone who could get hold of your car, Martin. No one had better access than you. And Lucy, simply because she’s so close to you. She could have got the keys from you easily enough that evening at the hospital.’
I shook my head.
‘You’re talking as if it’s definite that it was my Porsche that was used that night. But, as I’ve already said, there’s no evidence to support that. Nothing.’
‘That depends how you look at it,’ Madeleine said. ‘You’re dismissing the witness. I’m less convinced. I checked the database of vehicle registrations. Guess how many Porsches of that model there are in Greater Stockholm? Three. The police have spoke to the other owners and written off both them and their cars. I’ve seen parts of the preliminary investigation. I took the opportunity to get hold of excerpts while I was sorting the other stuff out. There was no sign of a break-in on your garage door. Same thing with the car. You know as well as I do that you can’t break into or hotwire a car without there being some sort of evidence afterwards. And if it was your car, Martin, you’re going to have to accept that the crimes were committed by someone close to you.’
I went on protesting.
‘If it was even a Porsche that ran down and killed Bobby and Jenny. God knows how much that witness was paid to come up with her story.’
I could see the doubt in Madeleine’s face. How could I describe the extent of the madness with which I’d been confronted in recent weeks, which had left me believing that the impossible was actually possible? Normally I’d have agreed with Madeleine and said that obviously it was a Porsche that had hit Jenny and Bobby. And no, you certainly couldn’t get into a locked Porsche and start it without leaving some sort of evidence. But this was so far beyond normal that it was impossible to explain to the uninitiated. Nothing was the way it seemed.
‘I can’t thank you enough for your help,’ I said.
My conscience was making my blood run slowly. There was a name that I’d been trying my utmost not to think about since we left Police Headquarters. Fredrik Ohlander. The journalist who had died. Was that my fault as well? Quite possibly.
‘I hope I won’t regret it,’ Madeleine said.
She might as well have slapped me in the face. If anything happened to Madeleine, if she met the same fate as Fredrik, I’d be destroyed.
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Me too.’
And I realised, when our eyes finally met, that we meant very different things.
‘Madeleine, I didn’t do the things they’re saying. I didn’t hit those people.’
I couldn’t believe I was having to say that. It was hardly surprising she was accusing Lucy of everything that had happened. The alternative was evidently accusing me.
Madeleine swallowed hard.
‘You were the one who taught me that the truth is rarely anything but the most obvious solution,’ she said quietly.
‘I know. But that basic rule doesn’t apply this time. I swear, you have to believe me.’
She nodded her head slowly.
‘I’m trying,’ she said. ‘I’m trying.’