That was the thought which I couldn’t allow to exist – that it wasn’t a coincidence that I’d been dragged into the story of Sara Texas and her son. That I had my own role to play, whether I was aware of it or not. A role that was somehow connected with my very dirtiest little secret. Those bloody nightmares. In which I was always buried alive, standing upright. They collided with what I’d just heard from Malin. Well, perhaps they didn’t collide – they created a potential bridge between past and present. A bridge that frightened the life out of me.
Once Malin had gone I felt so drained I could have fallen asleep. But I didn’t. Instead I just sat at my desk for a long time. Memories from the time when I had extinguished another human being’s life had set fire to my brain. There had been three of us. It had been hot. And dark. So terribly fucking dark.
I tried to organise my thoughts and made a decision.
Then I stood up and went to see Lucy.
‘There’s something we need to talk about,’ I said.
Lucy sat perfectly still on her desk-chair while I recounted what I’d been told. I held the finale back. I knew it would change everything, forever.
‘Baby, he knew who I was way before I got dragged into this mess.’
It had been a long time since I’d called her baby. Life had become so serious that only our proper first names worked.
Lucy ran her fingers through her hair.
‘We mustn’t lose our grip now, Martin,’ she said.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I think I almost agree with Sara’s lawyer. We can’t suddenly start thinking that everything Sara ever said was true. If – and I mean if – it turns out that she really was referring to Lucifer, and if you really do know him, we still have no reason to start saying incomprehensible things are suddenly comprehensible. You used to be a police officer. You worked in Texas. Almost twenty years ago, maybe, but you could have come across him in some situation that seemed inconsequential to you but was crucially important to him. If it’s actually true at all.’
I undid the top buttons of my shirt and felt the sweat on my chest and back. Our trip to Texas had opened the gates to a madness I had done everything I could to forget. Now the past had caught up with me. The way in which it was blurring with what was happening now was close to magnificent.
Lucy saw the change in me.
‘Martin, what’s happened?’
I twisted my head so I could see out of the window. Stockholm was bathed in sunlight. The city never looks more beautiful than it does then. Blue water, blue sky, blue blood in the royal palace.
‘Blue is for other people,’ my mum used to say when I was growing up.
And dressed me in a green sweater with patches on the sleeves.
I took a deep breath. I had to find the words to say something I had never spoken about. And I had no idea what the consequences might be.
‘Something happened when I lived in Texas. I’ve never talked about it. To anyone. Yet Malin mentioned it a little while ago.’
A different sort of surprise appeared in Lucy’s face. There was still a limit to my ability to confide in her.
I killed another person.
There’s no other way to describe it.
I, Martin Benner, killed another man. By mistake.
‘Benner, we’re going to bury this problem,’ my boss told me that evening.
And that’s what we did.
I hated remembering the minutes after the shot went off. When I was standing in the rain, shaking with shock as I called my boss. He said: ‘Stay where you are.’
Two hours later we were standing far from Houston in an abandoned oilfield. I can still feel my boss’s heavy hand on my shoulder.
Benner, we’re going to bury this problem.
It was so easy at the time. Rendering what had been done undone. Very few people knew what had happened, and they all kept the secret. The camaraderie of the police force is unique; it doesn’t exist within any other group of people.
‘I killed a man. By mistake.’
I said.
To Lucy.
And saw her image of me change irrevocably.
Because there are things we think we will never hear. Lucy had definitely never expected me to tell her I had killed another human being. Her face was completely white as she listened to the story I thought I had buried forever in the sand.
‘It was dark,’ I said. ‘The middle of the night. I was a police officer, had been for a little less than a year. My partner and I were sitting in our patrol car, talking. A call came over the radio. A wanted drug-dealer had been seen a few blocks from where we were. We were eager for some action. I responded to the call as fast as I could. ‘We’ve got it,’ I said. And off we went. Foot to the floor, flashing lights, the whole circus. Ridiculously amateurish. We saw the guy from a distance of a hundred metres or so. He was running along the pavement, terrified. It was raining and he lost his footing. We caught up with him in three seconds and leapt out of the car. By then he was back on his feet and running like a lunatic, straight into a dead-end lined by long-abandoned workshops. There wasn’t a single light in any of the windows. Neither my partner nor I had a torch on us. We ran, and we shouted. ‘Stop! For fuck’s sake, stop!’ In the end he did. When he turned round he had one hand inside his jacket.’
Lucy ran the tip of her tongue over her lips.
‘So you shot him?’
‘My partner fired a warning shot, straight up in the air. We yelled at him to show his hands, and stick them up. At once. But he didn’t. Instead he grinned and went on feeling inside his jacket. When he eventually pulled his hand out . . . It was raining, hitting me right in the face. I couldn’t see properly, but I was as good as certain he was holding something in his hand. That and the grin were all it took. I fired one shot. I was aiming for his leg but hit him in the torso. He died within minutes.’
Lucy didn’t say a thing. She looked like she was about to ask if I was mad, but thought better of it. In the meantime I carried on talking. I told her what my boss had said, and what we did with the body. And how I left Texas, and how my partner had later died.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said. ‘I really don’t.’
I took several deep breaths.
‘It wasn’t murder,’ I said.
‘Okay.’
‘What do you mean, okay? It wasn’t.’
‘Okay.’
‘Lucy . . .’
‘I need to get some fresh air. Sorry, but this . . . I don’t know what to say.’
Lucy stood up.
‘No, so you said. Several times.’
‘Have you any idea how you sound? Do you realise what you just told me?’
Probably not. Because I had just put into words something I had never spoken about. There had actually been long periods of my life when I had managed to forget what had happened. At least in the sense that I stopped thinking about it. Stopped thinking about the fact that I had once stood with a shovel in my hand digging a grave for a man I had shot. Even when we were in Texas I’d managed not to think about it. But I’d had Sara Texas to concentrate on. My own future. And my dad.
‘How the hell did your boss come up with the idea that you should conceal what had happened to the guy? Why not go the usual route and claim self-defence? You thought he was armed. People get away with that all the time. Especially in Texas.’
‘He was unarmed,’ I said. ‘We searched him and found nothing. Nothing at all. No gun, no drugs, nothing. But I did find his wallet and ID. I’d shot the wrong guy. We looked him up in our records, and the police didn’t have a thing on him. Or at least nothing big, I should say. He belonged to a gang of young troublemakers the police had been keeping an eye on.’
Lucy picked her handbag up from the floor and put it over her shoulder. She really was going to leave.
‘So he was just a bit of a nuisance?’
‘Yes.’
‘How old?’
‘Seventeen.’
Lucy reacted as if I’d hit her in the face.
‘Bloody hell,’ she whispered. I jumped up.
‘Lucy, don’t get this out of proportion. I—’
‘Out of proportion? Out of proportion? Martin, you shot a child! And buried him in an oilfield!’
She started to cry as she strode towards the door. I caught her and tried to hold on to her. She pulled free.
‘Don’t touch me, I need to be alone.’
‘I wasn’t that old either!’
That was my only defence. The only thing that helped me sleep at night. That I had been so young, and should never have been allowed to end up in that situation.
Lucy stopped a short distance away from me.
‘I understand that,’ she said. ‘But why haven’t you told me about this before now? Given everything that’s happened in the past few weeks?’
‘Even in my wildest fucking imagination I had no idea that it had anything whatsoever to do with Sara Texas.’
I had raised my voice, and it felt good. Because nothing I had told Lucy had been a lie. I had simply chosen not to tell her the whole truth about why I stopped being a police officer in Texas. And – hand on heart – I hadn’t had the slightest idea that that terrible night had anything to do with Sara’s tragic fate.
I shook my head, my whole body trembling.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand what conclusion I’m supposed to come to now. Lucifer knows me, hates me, even. Because of what happened in Texas? Or something else?’
Lucy quietly brushed the tears from her cheeks.
I was clutching at straws. They snapped the moment I touched them. But I went on trying.
‘Maybe it’s a misunderstanding,’ I said. ‘Sara can’t have meant Lucifer when she talked about Satan.’
Lucy shook her head and walked out of the room. I followed her to the door.
‘When will you be back?’
The level of self-control it took not to physically hold her in the room was new to me.
‘When I’ve finished thinking,’ she said. ‘You’re just going to have to wait, Martin.’