BooksBarbecue
Back Love and Other Lies Save as PDF
Chapters (61)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Imagine a girl
  4. Prologue
  5. The Foreigner
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. The Skeptic
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. The Spectator
  31. Twenty-Four
  32. Twenty-Five
  33. Twenty-Six
  34. Twenty-Seven
  35. Twenty-Eight
  36. Twenty-Nine
  37. The Assassin
  38. Thirty
  39. Thirty-One
  40. Thirty-Two
  41. Thirty-Three
  42. Thirty-Four
  43. Thirty-Five
  44. Thirty-Six
  45. Thirty-Seven
  46. Thirty-Eight
  47. Thirty-Nine
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-One
  50. The Hunter
  51. Forty-Two
  52. Forty-Three
  53. Forty-Four
  54. Forty-Five
  55. Forty-Six
  56. Forty-Seven
  57. Imagine a girl
  58. Acknowledgments
  59. About the Author
  60. Also by Ben McPherson
  61. About the Publisher

I wanted to tell Nina that the foundation of my marriage was honesty, and that something had begun to erode that. But even the thought felt like a betrayal.

At one I went home to my wife. My troubling wife, who met men I did not know in coffee shops in malls.

I lay down beside her. “Elsa,” I said. “I want to know the truth about that man.”

She muttered something I did not hear, turned on her side.

I lay staring at her back, angry at myself for wanting to hurt her.

When I was certain she was asleep I got up from the bed. I sat at the computer, typed the license plate into the register:

Pavel Lisowski

Thor’s Gate 41

Pavel, mate. What’s your interest in my wife?

What’s my wife’s interest in you?

Twenty-Two

The cafeteria at the hospital was almost empty of people. The walls were white-painted, the furniture ash. I hung by the door as Pavel Lisowski ordered coffee. He was wearing a gray-black coverall, carrying a leather satchel in his left hand and a tray in his right.

When he sat down I bought a machine cappuccino for myself, then approached his table.

I put my coffee on the table opposite him.

He studied my face. “Please sit.”

He was not surprised to see me, then.

I said, “Why did you contact my wife?”

“Your beautiful Elsa. Please. You have nothing to fear.” His smile was weary; there was a wounded sadness to it. I sat down.

He was staring at me again. “Elsa told you that she has met me?”

“She did not tell me that.”

“So perhaps you follow your wife around? Like a policeman, only jealous?” He laughed a mirthless laugh. “I apologize for joking. This is your job, no?”

“Joke away,” I said. “If that’s what it takes.”

He sniffed hard. “And now you google me and you follow me to my place of work. And here am I, working hard flying my air ambulance—I’m joking again, of course, because I am grounded pending psychological assessment. Which is routine, but also sounds serious, no? The helicopter pilot who must not fly?”

I said nothing.

“Hm. So I came to see your Elsa because your daughter came to see me. This I thought was not good, because I knew who she was. Everybody googles everybody now, yes? And she knew who I was, and that I also fly for television stations, and she knew I was flying for TVZ on the day of the killings.”

He looked to check that I had caught his point.

“I imagine you saw some very bad things,” I said.