TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN BENNER (MB).

INTERVIEWER: KAREN VIKING (KV), freelance journalist, Stockholm.

KV:	You shot a seventeen-year-old boy?
MB:	Yes. My only defence is that I was very young. I should never have been put in that situation. That defence works for me. But I can’t answer for how other people feel about it.
(Silence)
KV:	I don’t think I quite understand. You called your boss and told him you’d shot a guy. What exactly did he say after that?
MB:	That we should stay at the scene until he arrived.
KV:	You weren’t to call for an ambulance?
MB:	The guy was already dead.
KV:	But you just went and buried him. His family . . .
MB:	I know. I know. It had been a turbulent time for the police district I was working in. Several of my colleagues had been accused of using excessive force in a number of different situations. The gorillas in Internal Investigations were starting to get seriously pissed off with all the incidents. My boss was terrified that my fatal shooting would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. He probably envisaged his career coming to an abrupt end that night. If I was convicted of manslaughter or anything like that, some of the guilt would rub off on him. He’d have been fired and would have lost his pension. The whole lot. The Americans are ruthless when it comes to questions of personal responsibility.
KV:	You never questioned the extreme immorality of what you did?
MB:	Of course I bloody did. Many, many times.
KV:	Did you talk about it? You and your partner?
MB:	We never worked together again after that night. He requested a transfer to another district, and we lost contact. Some time later he got shot on duty.
KV:	And by then you’d already moved back to Sweden?
MB:	Yes. I left what happened behind. The circumstances surrounding my life at that time really were pretty exceptional. It was like waking up from a nightmare. I left all the crap in the States – the shooting, my disappointment in my dad – and returned home a different person. Something like that.
KV:	Your dad, yes. You had no contact with him after that?
MB:	I did actually return to the States some years later and looked him up again. But he still didn’t want anything to do with me.
KV:	I don’t really remember, although I know I read something about it in Fredrik’s notes. Your parents met in the USA?
MB:	They met in Sweden, but moved to the USA so that I would be born there and have American citizenship. They planned to move back to Sweden a year or so later. Marianne, my mum, moved first with me and all our stuff. My dad never followed. He abandoned us.
KV:	Abandoned is a strong word.
MB:	Think of a better one if you can.
KV:	Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.
(Silence)
KV:	Actually, about the fatal shooting in Texas . . .
MB:	Yes?
KV:	There’s no mention of it in what Fredrik wrote.
MB:	I know. There was no reason to tell Fredrik about it. I couldn’t see how it was relevant, on any conceivable level. And besides . . .
KV:	What?
MB:	I barely thought about it when I was in Texas with Lucy. I was completely absorbed in other things. My dad, for instance. So I never mentioned it to Fredrik. Which is why there’s nothing about it in Buried Lies.
(Silence)
KV:	So what was the next step? What did you do after that?
MB:	I looked at the pictures of the preschool staff that Lucy had got hold of. And went on waiting, just like before.
KV:	Waiting?
MB:	For even more people to die.
KV:	And did they?
MB:	Yes. God, yes.