Red Wolf

39

Thomas reached for the coffee-pot and found it was empty. He felt himself getting annoyed, his jaw clenching. He sighed quietly and glanced at his wife on the other side of the kitchen table. She was on her fourth mug, had drunk the whole pot, which he had made, before he had managed to get a single cup. She didn’t notice his frustration, was deeply immersed in an essay by a professor of Islamic studies on the question of exactly who could be regarded as an Iraqi. She had pulled her hair into a messy knot on top of her head, idly brushing aside a stray lock that had fallen in front of her eyes. Her dressing gown was loosely tied; he could see her smooth skin beneath the towelling.

He looked away and stood up.

‘Do you want more coffee?’ he said sarcastically.

‘No, not for me, thanks.’

She didn’t look up, paid him no attention.

I may as well be part of the furniture, he thought. A means of her living comfortably and writing whatever damn articles she feels like.

He composed himself and filled the little pan with more water. At home in Vaxholm they had always had an electric kettle, both at his parents’ and during his marriage to Eleonor, but Annika thought that was unnecessary.

‘Just another machine. We’ve got so little space as it is. Besides, it’s quicker to boil water on the gas stove than in a kettle.’

She was right about that, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that his space was shrinking. She took up so much bloody space. The more she took, the less there was left over for him.

Before the business with the Bomber he hadn’t seen it so clearly. Back then, everything happened slowly, his space was stolen a piece at a time without him noticing. The children arrived and she got the editor’s job and of course he did his bit, but then everything went back to normal while she was at home and could look after the apartment and the kids. And now he was suddenly expected to retreat to his little corner and hand over his life to her.

He looked at his wife as the pan of water began to bubble. Sharp and edgy, slight, with soft breasts. Vulnerable and fragile and hard as nails.

She must have felt him looking at her, because she looked up at him, confused. ‘What?’ she said.

He turned away. ‘Nothing.’

‘Right,’ she said, picking up the paper and leaving the kitchen.

‘Hang on,’ he called after her. ‘Mum rang and asked us to Sunday lunch. I said yes; hope that’s okay?’

Why am I asking? he thought. Why am I apologizing for accepting an invitation to visit my own parents?

‘What did you say?’

She walked sternly back into the kitchen, he turned and looked at her, standing there with the newspaper dragging on the floor.

‘Twelve o’clock,’ he said. ‘Lunch in Vaxholm.’

She shook her head, steaming with disbelief. ‘How can you say yes to something like that without even asking me?’

He turned back to the stove, pouring water into the cafetière.

‘You were on your mobile again; I didn’t want to disturb you.’

‘This is disturbing me more. I’m not going.’

He was seized by an overwhelming and unreasonable impulse to shake her until the knot of hair on the top of her head came loose and her teeth shook and the dressing gown slid from her shoulders.

Instead he closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing, addressing his reply to the ventilation unit. ‘I’m not going to end up with the same crap relationship with my parents that you’ve got with yours.’

He heard from the rustling of the newspaper that she’d left the kitchen.

‘Okay,’ she said expressionlessly from the hall. ‘Take the children, but I’m not going.’

‘Of course you’re coming,’ he said, still to the ventilation unit.

She came back into the kitchen. He looked at her over his shoulder; she was naked apart from her socks.

‘And if I don’t?’ she said. ‘Are you going to hit me over the head and drag me there by my hair?’

‘Sounds good,’ he said.

‘I’m going to have a shower,’ she said.

His eyes were drawn to her buttocks as she walked back down the hall. Sophia was much more curvy, and her skin was pink. Annika’s had a green tint; in the sun she quickly went a deep olive-colour.

She’s an alien, Thomas thought. A little green woman from another planet, scratchy and shapeless and unreasonable. Was it possible to live with an alien? He shook off the thought with a gulp. Why was he making everything so damned hard for himself? There was a way out. He had a choice. He could get back the life he missed, living with a soft and pink woman with humanity and apple hair who would welcome him into her attic apartment.

Good grief, he thought, what am I going to do?

The next second the phone rang.

No, he thought. It’s her. What’s she ringing here for? I said she could never call here.

A second ring.

‘Are you going to get that?’ Annika called from the shower.

A third.

He grabbed the phone with throbbing temples, trying to find some saliva in his mouth.

‘Thomas and Annika,’ he heard himself say with a dry mouth.

‘I have to talk to Annika.’ It was Anne Snapphane. She sounded like she was suffocating, and he felt such a huge sense of relief that he could feel it in his balls.

‘Of course,’ he said, breathing out. ‘I’ll get her.’

Annika climbed out of the bathtub, grabbed a towel and left a trail of wet footprints behind her as she walked to the phone. The sharp stone twisted and turned in her chest, the angels humming anxiously in the background. She avoided looking at Thomas as she passed him and picked up the phone, his coolness made her keep her distance from his back.

‘Have you read the paper this morning?’ Anne Snapphane said, her voice hoarse and tight.

‘Have you got a hangover?’ Annika said, pushing the cheese away to make a place on the kitchen table. Thomas sighed loudly and moved two millimetres to make space for her.

‘Like a bitch, but that doesn’t matter. Björnlund has shut down the channel.’

Annika pushed the bread away to make more room.

‘What are you talking about?’ she said.

‘The Minister of Culture has just made me redundant. Says so in the paper.’

Thomas demonstratively turned ninety degrees away from her, his shoulders screaming out that he was actively distancing himself.

‘What? I’ve just read it.’

‘Top of the front page.’

Annika leaned forward and took hold of the first part of the paper as Thomas was reading it to peer at the front page. He snatched it away in irritation.

‘Hang on,’ Annika said, ‘can I just take a quick look? Björnlund changes terms for digital broadcast rights. And?’

‘The board were told last night, they got the last plane from New York and landed half an hour ago. They’ve already announced that the launch is being postponed. There’s an official board meeting at two thirty, and all our planning’s going to be stopped and TV Scandinavia wound down. I’m going to end up as the arts reporter for Radio Sjuhärad.’

‘But we shouldn’t think the worst,’ Annika said, hitting Thomas on the knee to get more room. Why can’t you become a satellite channel, or a cable channel?’

Anne started crying and the seriousness of the situation hit Annika, as well as guilt.

‘Hang on, I’m going to change phones,’ she said.

She put the receiver down and accidentally knocked Thomas as she jumped down from the table.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said, crumpling the paper in his lap.

‘Just carry on, I’m moving,’ Annika said and skipped down the hall and into the bedroom with her towel round her, then dropped it on the floor. She crept under the covers and picked up the phone by the bed.

‘There’s got to be a solution somewhere,’ was the first thing she said. ‘What’s the problem?’

Anne pulled herself together. ‘I told you before,’ she said grouchily, and Annika interrupted her.

‘I know I haven’t been a good listener. To me it’s always seemed a bit technical, like if I started telling you about print timings and plate changes. Tell me again.’

She sat up among the pillows and Anne took a deep breath.

‘The whole point of TV Scandinavia is, or was, to reach the whole of Scandinavia. That’s twenty-five million potential viewers, roughly a tenth of the population of the USA. And to reach that many people you need to be available in every household in Sweden, and that means broadcasting from Teracom’s transmitters. Advertisers in the American market aren’t interested in target groups smaller than that.’

‘Teracom?’

‘The national broadcast network, it used to be part of the old nationalized Televerket but got turned into a profit-making public company instead, along with everything else.’

The angels were silent, completely beaten by Anne Snapphane’s despair.

‘And there are no other masts? You’re not allowed to put up your own?’

‘Are you joking? Teracom is heading for bankruptcy even though all the masts already exist.’

Annika relaxed and tried to think of a solution, happily grasping this distraction Anne had provided, and leaving Thomas and Sophia and the children and Vaxholm behind.

‘But hardly anyone can watch digital television,’ she said. ‘You have to have one of those boxes, don’t you? Is it really such a big deal?’

‘In a couple of years digital television is all we’ll have. The government proposition is the big deal. When the terrestrial digital network works with the same criteria as the rest of the business – the world of satellite and cable – then the market will explode.’

Ellen’s excited yell penetrated the bedroom door a couple of seconds before the girl herself ran in, Kalle only a metre or so behind, growling in a deep voice and making claws with his fingers.

‘Mummy, help! The tiger’s after me!’

‘No,’ Annika said, and tried to calm them down with her hand, which was pointless, the children tumbled over her on the bed, laughing hysterically. ‘But I don’t get it?’ she said into the phone. ‘How can the government proposal shut down the channel?’

‘Up to now the government has decided who would have access to the state’s television masts, both analogue and digital broadcasting. There are only three analogue channels, of course, and those are clearly the result of a purely political decision: channels one, two and four.’

‘Ellen,’ Annika said, ‘Kalle, go and get dressed. You’re going to go and see Grandma and Grandad.’

‘Digital transmissions take up much less frequency space,’ Anne said, ‘so when the three analogue channels stop broadcasting there’ll be enough space for twenty-five new digital channels. In this proposal the government is finally acknowledging that they shouldn’t be controlling who broadcasts what, so they’re delegating such decisions to the Radio and Television Authority.’

‘Do we have to, that’s no fun,’ Kalle said, acting as spokesman for them both. ‘We aren’t allowed to run indoors there.’

‘Come on,’ Annika said. ‘Brush your teeth and make sure you put on clean underwear.’

‘None of this is really new,’ Anne Snapphane went on. ‘The proposal spent over a year in committee and out for consultation. That’s why the Americans decided to make this investment, but today’s paper says there’s a new clause in the directive to the Radio and Television Authority that wasn’t there before.’

Annika sent the children out, screwed her eyes shut and tried to concentrate. ‘And?’

‘During the consultation there was a framework of ten points that television companies had to meet, according to paragraphs one, two and four of the third chapter of nineteen ninety-six Radio and Television Act. Now there are suddenly eleven points.’

Annika sank back into the pillows.

‘So Karina Björnlund has squeezed in an extra condition at the very last minute.’

‘Exactly, with only days to go. Point number eleven says: “Applicants with primarily foreign ownership broadcasting to more than one country in Scandinavia but not to other EU states do not have the right to broadcast via the terrestrial digital network.”’

‘And that means…?’

She could hear Thomas shouting something to the children out in the kitchen.

‘That everyone who meets those conditions can broadcast, but not us.’

‘A law specifically aimed at TV Scandinavia,’ Annika said. ‘She’ll never get that through parliament.’

‘Yes she will; the Greens are in favour.’

‘Why, for heaven’s sake?’

‘The government’s been retreating on road charging. But from next year there’ll be pollution limits on all the roads around Stockholm, just so that Karina Björnlund can put a stop to TV Scandinavia.’

Annika could hear the scepticism in her own voice as she said, ‘But that’s completely unreasonable. Why the hell would she do that?’

‘That,’ Anne Snapphane said, ‘is a bloody good question.’ Then she quietly started to cry.

Thomas yelled something out in the hall and Ellen started to howl. And as the children screamed and the echo of despair came down the line from Lidingö, the angels suddenly started up again, the words tumbling into each other, and she saw the entry in the minister’s correspondence register in front of her like a mirage.

Request for meeting to discuss a matter of urgency.

‘Have you drunk anything today?’ Annika asked, loudly enough to drown out her internal voices.

Anne collected herself for a moment before answering. ‘No,’ she sniffed. ‘But I’ve thought about it. I poured some gin, but flushed it down the toilet. Enough now, you know?’

Her despair seemed to have run its course, ebbing out into single sniffs, and the children stopped screaming out in the kitchen.

‘First Mehmet and then this. I can’t go on.’

‘Yes you can,’ Annika said. ‘Get some clothes on and come over here, leave the car.’

‘I don’t know if I can.’

‘Yes, you can. Thomas and the kids are going to Vaxholm, and I’ve got nothing to do all day. Promise you’ll come.’

‘I can’t stay out here, I can’t bear it-’ A new attack of sobbing bubbled up. ‘That miserable old bastard downstairs always snooping, and Miranda going to and fro between us, and all the snow to clear every winter…’

‘Come here and we’ll look for a new house online. It’s about time you moved into town like everyone with any sense.’

Anne fell silent, breathing down the line, first quickly, then slower. ‘I need to think things over first.’

‘You know where I am.’

40

Kalle came up to Annika at the front door, wearing his new green boots with the reflective patches. His cheeks were glowing from the heat inside his overalls, his eyes large and shiny.

‘Why is Daddy cross with us?’

Annika kneeled down next to him and stroked him on the cheek. ‘Daddy’s tired,’ she said. ‘He’s been working hard. It’ll be better soon.’ She smiled into his eyes, conveying calm and security that she didn’t feel.

‘I want to stay at home with you,’ Ellen said.

Annika turned to her daughter, who was sweating from having to wait.

‘Anne’s coming to see me, she’s a bit sad and I’m going to help her with something.’

‘Grown-ups can be sad too,’ Kalle said.

Annika had to look away to hold herself together, the sadness in her chest so painful she thought she might burst. My gorgeous children, my darlings.

‘See you soon,’ she said, getting up and adjusting the belt of her dressing gown.

Thomas came flying out into the hall with his hair in a mess and a little black cloud hanging over his head.

‘What are you looking for?’ Annika said, keeping her voice steady.

‘My mobile. Have you seen it?’

‘Do you have to take it with you?’

He looked at her as if she was an idiot.

‘Have you tried calling it?’ Annika said.

His expression changed from derision to surprise. She swallowed and floated over to the phone and dialled his mobile number. His coat pocket rang.

‘Drive carefully,’ she said as he nudged the children through the door ahead of him.

A dark, wounded look back over his shoulder.

The door closed and she stood there with ice-cold feet in the draught that crept in from the stairwell. She had no floor below her, she was in free fall, the sky rushed around her, the angelic choir thundering. She knew the seeds she had sown were sprouting and growing in the minds of the Federation’s managers.

Sophia Grenborg, she thought. Sophia Grenborg, you miserable bitch; and the angels started shrieking, with an intensity she had never suffered before; they screamed their indignation on an entirely indecent scale.

She clapped her hands over her ears, clenched her jaw and fled, away from the door, away from the draught, back into bed. She pulled the covers over her head, took deep breaths and concentrated on not hyperventilating and cramping.

Ragnwald, she thought. The ruler with divine power. The plane at F21. An explosion. A young man burning. Love for a young athlete, active in the working dogs’ club. Theology studies in Uppsala, awakening courtesy of Chairman Mao. Death as a profession. Benny Ekland, questionable star reporter. Linus Gustafsson, watchful boy with hair-gel. Kurt Sandström, farmer politician with a firm grip on life.

She threw off the duvet, reached for the phone and dialled Q’s direct line.

If he answers, it’s a sign, she thought, and forced the thought away at once, because what would happen if he didn’t answer, what demons would she have let loose then?

But he did answer, and he sounded tired. She sat up in bed and the angels withdrew immediately.

‘Has something happened?’ she asked nervously.

‘Are you thinking of anything in particular?’

She shut her eyes, relieved to hear his voice.

‘I don’t mean whether or not you’ve been fucked.’

‘Okay,’ Q said. ‘And what would you know about things like that?’

She tried to smile towards the phone.

‘Have you found our friend Ragnwald?’

He pretended to yawn.

‘Seriously,’ she said, yanking the phone lead. ‘You must have made some sort of progress. Kurt Sandström, what’s happened with him?’

‘He died. Definitely died.’

She leaned back hard against the pillows, feeling the pain settle down, and almost relaxed.

‘Göran Nilsson from Sattajärvi,’ she said. ‘How can someone vanish for thirty years without you or Interpol or the CIA or Mossad or anyone else getting hold of him? How is that possible?’

Q was silent for several long seconds. ‘We haven’t exactly been dragging our feet, whatever you might think.’

‘No?’ She looked up at the ceiling. ‘You knew he lived in France; how hard can it be? Surely it’s just a question of getting out the vacuum cleaner and pressing the on button?’

‘The French police have big vacuum cleaners that suck up almost every sort of particle. This one kept getting through the filter, for all those years.’

Reality clarified and her free fall stopped. She was floating weightless and secure, calm.

‘How could he do that? If he’s as dangerous as you think, if he really was an international killer who took on assassinations for loads of money, how could he possibly get away with it? Why didn’t anyone catch him?’

‘We don’t know how much money was involved, or if there was any money at all. Maybe he killed out of pure, unadulterated conviction.’

‘But how do you know it’s him?’

‘There are a number of cases where we’re convinced, and several more where we’re pretty sure, and a whole heap of bodies where we’ve got nothing but our suspicions.’

She was safe now, secure in her work.

‘But why Ragnwald? Did he leave fingerprints? Little napkins with lipstick kisses at the crime scenes?’

‘Undercover agents,’ Q said. ‘The security apparatus.’

‘Ah,’ Annika said. ‘You mean rumours and speculation.’

‘Now you’re just being silly.’

They were silent for a few moments, her chest felt warm, as did the stone.

‘But there’s something I don’t understand,’ Annika said when the silence had grown so large that she suddenly feared that she was alone on the line. ‘Someone must have had some way of communicating with him, because otherwise how would he contact his employers?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Someone must have hired him for all those messy jobs. How did they get hold of him?’

The commissioner was quiet for a moment.

‘Off the record,’ he said, and she swivelled her head, ‘through ETA. For years the Spanish police have suspected a doctor in Bilbao of being his go-between, but they’ve never had enough evidence to charge him. This is sensitive stuff in the Basque Country. If their colleagues start openly harassing and accusing decent members of the civilian population, the whole region could ignite. The doctor in question is an unimpeachable family man, a professional with his own practice specializing in internal medicine.’

‘Couldn’t you have hired Ragnwald for something yourselves?’ Annika asked. ‘Lured him into a trap?’

A moment of hesitation.

‘Attempts may have been made, but I know nothing about that.’

So that’s where the boundary of his openness was. She decided not to press him, and rubbed her feet together, feeling the circulation coming back again.

‘But if he wasn’t in France, where was he?’

‘He most likely spent a lot of time in France,’ Q said, back on solid ground again, ‘but he didn’t live there. We don’t think he settled anywhere.’

‘So he’s spent thirty years camping?’

A short, weary sigh. ‘We believe he pretended to be from north Africa,’ Q said, ‘as part of the group of illegal immigrants who drift around the countryside looking for seasonal work.’

‘A farm labourer?’ Annika said.

‘They move from place to place, from country to country, wherever the crops are ready to harvest.’

Annika nodded unconsciously. ‘And no one says anything about anyone else,’ she said.

‘Total loyalty,’ Q said. ‘No one cares if someone disappears for a few weeks, or a few months, or for ever.’

‘And aren’t surprised if you turn up again,’ Annika filled in.

‘No questions,’ Q said.

‘Cash in hand at the end of the day.’

‘No bank accounts,’ Q said.

‘No rent to pay, no family to provide for.’

‘A lot of the seasonal labourers have families,’ Q said. ‘Some of them provide for their extended family as well, but not our Ragnwald.’

‘He picks grapes and oranges and shoots politicians in his spare time.’

‘When he’s not working in the docks or mines or somewhere else where he can be invisible and, in practical terms, unpaid.’

They were silent for a while.

‘But why haven’t you got him if he’s back in Sweden now?’

Q gave a deep sigh. ‘It’s not as easy as you seem to think,’ he said. ‘Killers who kill with no apparent motive are the hardest to catch. Take the Laser Man, he shot ten randomly chosen people in Stockholm over the course of a year and a half before he was caught, and he lived in the middle of the city, had his own car, said hello to his neighbours on the stairs. In other words he was a rank amateur. The man we’re dealing with now has killed four people that we know of. There’s nothing to connect them apart from the boy witnessing the first murder. The methods are completely different, Ekland was run over, the boy’s throat was cut, Sandström was shot. No fingerprints, the fibres we found don’t match from one crime scene to the next.’

‘That could just mean he changed his clothes and wore gloves.’

‘Exactly,’ Q said.

‘No witnesses?’

‘The best witness, the boy, is dead. Nothing else had contributed anything significant at all.’

Annika listened back to these latest comments in her mind.

‘Four,’ she said. ‘You said four.’

Q was blank. ‘What?’

‘There’s been another murder,’ she said, sitting up in bed without thinking. ‘He’s done it again. Who?’

‘You must have misheard me. I said three.’

‘Rubbish,’ Annika said. ‘Someone’s been killed in the last couple of days and another Mao quote has been sent to the relatives. Either you tell me exactly what’s happened or I start ringing round.’

He laughed. ‘An empty threat. If someone’s been killed the media would already be circling like vultures over the story.’

She responded to his laughter with a snort. ‘That’s crap. Not if it’s a woman who’s been killed. Her husband has probably already been arrested, and it would surprise me if even the local paper gave it their standard couple of lines.’

‘Standard?’

‘Family quarrel ends in tragedy. Not nice, not interesting, and impossible to write about. Tell me what you know and we can come to an arrangement.’

The silence was thick with thought for several seconds.

‘I’ve said it before,’ he said eventually. ‘You’re slightly creepy. How the hell could you know that?’

Annika leaned back on the pillows again, a fleeting smile crossing her face.

‘And she’s got no connection to the other three?’

‘Nothing we’ve found yet. Margit Axelsson, a nursery teacher in Piteå, married, two adult daughters, strangled on the landing of her home. Her husband was working shifts and found her when he got home.’

‘And was immediately suspected of the murder?’

‘Wrong. The time of death was before midnight, and he was in the liaison office at F21 with his colleagues until he finished his shift at one thirty.’

Annika felt the adrenalin reach her brain and automatically stretch her legs out, forcing her to sit up straight.

‘F21? He works at F21? Then there is a connection: the explosion of the Draken.’

‘We’ve already checked. He did his national service at I19 in Boden, wasn’t attached to the airbase until nineteen seventy-four. The fact that a murder victim’s husband’s employer happens to coincide with a crime scene which may have a connection to Ragnwald isn’t enough to get my pulse racing; unlike yours, apparently.’

‘The quote,’ she said. ‘What does it say?’

‘Hang on a moment…’

He put down the phone, opened a drawer, looked through some papers, cleared his throat and came back on the line.

‘People of the world, unite and defeat the American aggressors and all their lackeys. People of the world, be courageous, and dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed.’

They thought in silence for a while, the swaying stopped.

‘“Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed,”’ Annika said. ‘Monsters. Of all kinds. Including nursery school teachers.’

‘She taught for the Workers’ Educational Association as well. Ran courses in napkin-folding and ceramics. We’re not paying too much attention to the quotation; I don’t think you should either. The woman putting the profile together thinks he uses them as messages, like your lipstick kisses.’

‘Have you got someone in from the FBI?’ Annika asked, swinging her legs off the side of the bed, warm feet against cold wood floor.

‘That was in the seventies,’ Q said. ‘We’ve been doing our own profiles of suspects for ten years.’

‘Sorry,’ Annika said. ‘What did the profiler come up with?’

‘You can pretty much guess. Male, older rather than younger, driven by hatred of a society that he has a partially warped view of, compensating for humiliations he’s suffered. Single, few friends, poor self-image, strong need for validation, restless, has difficulties holding down a job, fairly intelligent with good physical strength. More or less.’

Annika shut her eyes and tried to memorize the details, aware that he wasn’t telling her everything.

‘So why the quotes?’ she said. ‘Why that sort of scent-marking?’

‘On some level he wants us to know. He’s so incredibly superior to us that he can afford to leave these reminders of himself.’

‘Our Ragnwald,’ she said. ‘It feels almost like I know him. Imagine how it could have been – if that plane hadn’t blown up he might have been on his way to the Nobel dinner in the City Hall in three weeks’ time.’

She realized from the surprised silence that Q hadn’t followed her train of thought.

‘Karina Björnlund,’ she said. ‘Minister of Culture. She’s going to the Nobel dinner this year, or has at least been invited, and if Ragnwald hadn’t had to disappear they would have been married.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Q said.

‘Of course, there’s no way of knowing if the marriage would have lasted, but if it had…’

‘Listen,’ Q said. ‘Where the hell did you get that from?’

Annika twisted the phone cord.

‘The banns were published,’ she said. ‘They were due to have a civil wedding in Luleå City Hall at two o’clock on the Friday after the attack.’

‘Not a chance,’ Q said. ‘If that was true we’d know about it.’

‘Marriages had to be announced in those days, they had a note in the paper.’

‘And where was this note published?’

‘The Norrland News. I’ve got a bundle of cuttings from there about Karina Björnlund. Do you really mean to tell me you didn’t know they were together?’

‘A teenage fling,’ Q said. ‘Nothing more. Besides, she ended it.’

‘Retrospective adjustment,’ Annika said. ‘Karina Björnlund would do anything to save her own skin.’

‘I see,’ Q said. ‘Little Miss Amateur-Profiler has spoken.’

Annika was thinking about Herman Wennergren’s email, request for meeting to discuss a matter of urgency, and then the Minister of Culture’s last-minute amendment of the government proposal, so that the law on the deregulation of digital broadcasters would exclude TV Scandinavia, just like Herman Wennergren wanted, and the only outstanding question was what arguments her paper’s proprietors had applied to make her change her mind.

In her mind Annika could hear her own voice asking the Trade Minister’s press secretary to convey her request for a comment on the IB affair, and heard herself revealing the Social Democrats’ biggest secrets to Karina Björnlund. And just a few weeks later Björnlund was made a minister, in one of the most unforeseen promotions ever.

‘Trust me,’ Annika said. ‘I know more about her than you do.’

‘I’ve got to go,’ Q said, and she had nothing to add because the angels were gone now, they had withdrawn to their hiding place.

She put down the phone and hurried over to her laptop, switching it on and pulling on a pair of socks as the programs loaded. She typed in the new details from the conversation until the backs of her knees started to sweat and her ankles began to freeze.

41

The doorbell rang. Annika opened the front door cautiously, not sure what she would find out there. The angels started humming anxiously, but calmed down when she saw Anne Snapphane standing there breathless on the landing, lips white, eyes red.

‘Come in,’ Annika said, backing into the flat.

Anne Snapphane didn’t answer, just walked in, hunched and self-contained.

‘Are you dying?’ Annika asked, and Anne nodded, slumped onto the hall bench and pulled off her headband.

‘It feels like it,’ she said, ‘but you know what they say in Runaway Train.’

‘Anything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ Annika said, sitting down beside her.

As the central heating clicked, a toilet somewhere in the building flushed, and a bus pulled up and set off again down below, they sat there staring at the cupboard with the carved pineapples that Annika had bought from a flea-market.

‘There are always noises in the city,’ Anne eventually said.

Annika let some air out from her lungs in a dull sigh. ‘At least you’re never alone,’ she said, getting up. ‘Do you want anything? Coffee? Wine?’

Anne Snapphane didn’t move.

‘I’ve stopped drinking,’ she said.

‘Oh, it’s one of those days, is it?’ Annika said, standing and looking beyond the balcony at the courtyard below. Someone had forgotten to close the door to the room containing the waste-bins, it swung back and forth in the violent winds playing round the building.

‘It feels like I’ve been thrown in a bottomless pit and I’m just falling and falling,’ Anne said. ‘It started with Mehmet and his new fuck, then the talk about Miranda living with them; and now that my job has gone there’s nothing I can hold on to any more. Drinking on top of all that would be like pressing the fast-forward button.’

‘I see what you mean,’ Annika said, putting her hand on the door-handle to help her stay upright.

‘When I walk around town everything seems so strange. I don’t remember it ever looking like this. It’s hard to breathe, somehow. Everything’s so fucking grey. People look like ghosts; I get the idea that half of them are already dead. I don’t know if I’m alive. Can anyone live like that?’

Annika nodded and swallowed audibly, the door to the bin room crashed twice, bang, bang.

‘Welcome to the darkness,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry you’ve come to keep me company.’

It took a few moments for Anne to appreciate the seriousness of her words.

‘What’s happened?’ she said, getting up, taking off her coat and scarf and hanging them up. Then she joined Annika at the window, looking down at the bin room.

‘It’s a whole load of things,’ Annika said. ‘My position at work is pretty shaky; Schyman has forbidden me to write about terrorism. He thinks the Bomber made me a bit crazy.’

‘Huh,’ Anne said, folding her arms.

‘And Thomas is having an affair,’ she went on, almost in a whisper, the words rolling round the walls, growing larger and larger until they got caught on the ceiling.

Anne looked sceptically at her. ‘Whatever makes you think that?’

Annika’s throat contracted, the sticky little words wouldn’t come out. She looked down at her hands and cleared her throat, then looked up. ‘I saw them. Outside NK. He kissed her.’

Anne’s mouth had fallen half open, scepticism and disbelief dancing across her face.

‘Are you sure? You couldn’t be mistaken?’

Annika shook her head, looked down at her hands again.

‘Her name’s Sophia Grenborg, she works for the Federation of County Councils. She’s on the same working group as Thomas – you know, the one looking into threats to politicians…’

‘Shit,’ Anne said. ‘Shit. What a bastard. What’s he say? Does he deny it?’

Annika closed her eyes and put a hand to her forehead. ‘I haven’t said anything,’ she said. ‘I’m going to deal with this my own way.’

‘What?’ Anne said. ‘Rubbish. Of course you’ve got to talk to him.’

Annika looked up. ‘I know he’s thinking about leaving me and the children. He’s started lying to me as well. And he has been unfaithful before.’

Anne looked astonished. ‘Who with?’

Annika tried to laugh and felt the stone forcing tears into her eyes.

‘With me,’ she finally said.

Anne Snapphane sighed heavily and looked at her with eyes of black glass. ‘You’ve got to talk to him.’

‘And I hear angels,’ Annika said, taking a deep breath. ‘They sing to me, and sometimes they talk to me. As soon as I get stressed they start up.’

And she shut her eyes and hummed their melancholy song.

Anne Snapphane took hold of her shoulders and pulled her round to face her with a stern, dark expression on her face.

‘You’ve got to get help,’ she said. ‘Do you hear me, Annika? For God’s sake, you can’t go round with a load of fairies in your head.’ She took a step closer, shaking Annika until her teeth rattled. ‘You mustn’t let go, Anki, listen to me.’

Annika pulled free of her friend’s grasp.

‘It’s okay,’ she said quietly. ‘They go away when I have something to think about. When I’m working, doing things. Do you want coffee, then?’

‘Green tea,’ Anne said. ‘If you’ve got any.’

Annika went into the kitchen with a peculiar bounce in her step, feeling the angels’ astonishment right down to her stomach. She had called their bluff. They didn’t think she’d do that; they were sure they’d be able to sing and console her and terrorize her for ever without anyone ever finding out.

She poured water in the little copper pan, lit the stove with the lighter that only just managed to muster enough of a spark to ignite the blue flames.

The voices started up, weak, isolated…

She gasped for breath and slapped the side of her head with one hand to make them shut up.

Anne came into the kitchen in her stockinged feet; she had got some colour back in her face, an inquisitive look in her eyes.

Annika tried to smile.

‘I think they’re mostly trying to comfort me,’ she said. ‘They only sing nice things.’

She walked over to the pantry and felt in the half-darkness inside for the tea.

Anne Snapphane sat down at the kitchen table. Annika could feel her eyes on her back.

‘But it’s you doing it,’ Anne said. ‘Don’t you get it? You’re consoling yourself; you’re looking after the little child somewhere in there. Did anyone sing you songs like that when you were little?’

Annika blew away a mean comment about amateur psychology and actually managed to find some Japanese tea that she’d been given by someone at work.

‘Are you serious about moving?’ she said, returning to the now-boiling water. ‘I can recommend Kungsholmen. We islanders are a bit better than everyone else.’

Anne picked up a few stray crumbs from breakfast between her thumb and forefinger and thought for a moment before replying.

‘Somehow I suppose I thought Mehmet would move out to us, or that we’d just carry on like we were for ever, if that makes any sense? He sort of… belonged, and without him it’s… wrong. It’s miserable and a long way away and the old sod downstairs is always trying to sneak a look under my dressing gown when I go down to get the paper.’

‘So what’s most important?’ Annika said, pouring tea through the strainer into the cup.

‘Miranda,’ Anne said without thinking. ‘Although I realize I can’t be a martyr and give up everything important for her sake, but the house on Lidingö has never been that important to me. Of course I like modernism, but I can probably survive without the right sort of interior design.’

‘Maybe you could put up with a bit of art nouveau if you had to?’ Annika said, carrying the mugs over.

‘Even a bit of national romanticism. Cheers.’

Annika sat down facing Anne and watched her blow on the hot drink.

‘Östermalm, you mean?’

Anne nodded, grimacing as she burned her tongue.

‘As close as possible, so she can walk between us.’

‘How big?’

‘How expensive, you mean? I can’t add anything in cash.’

They drank their tea in silence, listening to the door of the bin room bang at irregular intervals down in the courtyard. The kitchen swayed gently in the weak winter light, the angels hummed uncertainly, the stone twisted and scratched.

‘Shall we have a look online?’ Annika said, and stood up, unable to sit there any longer.

Anne slurped her tea and followed her to the computer.

Annika sat down and concentrated on icons and keys.

‘Let’s start with the ultimate,’ she said. ‘Three rooms, balcony and open fire on Artillerigatan?’

Anne sighed.

There was one like that for sale, one hundred and fifteen square metres, three floors up, in excellent condition, new kitchen, fully tiled bathroom with bath and basin, viewing Sunday at 16.00.

‘Four million?’ Anne guessed, peering at the screen.

‘Three point eight,’ Annika said, ‘but it’ll probably go up when they start getting offers.’

‘That’s absurd,’ Anne Snapphane said. ‘I can’t afford that. What would the monthly payments on a four million mortgage be?’

Annika shut her eyes and did the maths in her head.

‘Twenty thousand, plus fees, but minus tax deductions.’

‘What about something smaller?’

They found a two-room flat on the ground floor on the wrong side of Valhallavägen for one and half million.

‘Unemployed,’ Anne said, sitting down heavily on the arm of Annika’s chair. ‘Abandoned by my daughter’s father, halfway to alcoholic and with a two-room flat on the ground floor. Can I sink any lower?’

‘Reporter for Radio Sjuhärad,’ Annika reminded her.

‘You know what I mean,’ Anne said, and stood up. ‘I’ll go and look at Artillerigatan, did they give the door-code?’

Annika printed out the details with the code and agent’s number.

‘Are you coming?’

Annika shook her head, and sat and listened as Anne went into the hall and pulled on her boots and coat, headband and scarf.

‘I’ll call and tell you all about it,’ she called from the front door, and the angels sang a little farewell song.

Annika quickly performed a new search and the voices faded away, as she looked at the newly built house on Vinterviksgatan in Djursholm, which was still for sale, for just six point nine million.

Oak flooring in every room, open-plan kitchen and dining room, Mediterranean-blue mosaic in both bathrooms, a level, child-friendly garden with newly planted fruit trees, for more pictures click here.

And she clicked and waited as the pictures loaded, pictures from someone else’s life, staring at a double bed in a cream-white bedroom with en-suite bathroom.

A family lives here, she thought, and they’ve decided to move. They got hold of an estate agent who did a valuation, took his digital camera and put together a stupid sales pitch, put it all on the net and now anyone can stare at their bedroom, judge their taste, study the way they’ve filled the space.

She got up quickly and went over to the phone, dialled directory inquiries with trembling fingers. When a woman answered, she asked for the number of Margit Axelsson in Piteå.

‘I’ve got a Thord and Margit Axelsson in Pitholm,’ the operator said slowly. ‘He’s listed as an engineer, and her as a nursery school teacher, could that be right?’

She asked to be put through and waited with bated breath as the phone rang. The angels kept quiet.

An old-fashioned answer machine took the call. Her head was filled with a woman’s cheery voice against the slightly distorted background noise of a tape that’s been played too many times.

‘Hello, you’ve reached the home of the Axelsson family.’

Of course, the home of, we live here.

‘Thord and Margit aren’t in at the moment and the girls are at university, so leave a message after the beep. Bye for now.’

Annika cleared her throat as the machine clicked and whirred.

‘Hello,’ she said weakly after the signal on a tape somewhere outside Piteå. ‘My name’s Annika Bengtzon and I’m a reporter on the Evening Post. I’d like to apologize for intruding at a time like this, but I’m phoning about something particular. I know about the Mao quotation.’

She hesitated for a moment, not sure if the woman’s relatives knew that there were three letters with similar content.

‘I’m trying to contact Thord,’ she said. ‘I know you didn’t do it.’

She fell silent again, listening to the gentle hiss of the tape, wondering how long she could stay quiet before the call was cut off.

‘Over the last few weeks I’ve been investigating the explosion of a Draken plane at F21 in November nineteen sixty-nine,’ she said. ‘I know about Ragnwald; I know that he was together with Karina Björnlund-’

The receiver was picked up at the other end, and the change in background noise made her jump.

‘The explosion?’ a rough male voice said. ‘What do you know about that?’

Annika gulped. ‘Is that Thord?’

‘What do you know about F21?’ The man’s voice was curt, subdued.

‘Quite a bit,’ Annika said, and waited.

‘You can’t put anything in the paper unless you know,’ the man said. ‘You can’t do that.’

‘I’m not going to,’ Annika said. ‘People of the world, unite and defeat the American aggressors and all their lackeys. People of the world, be courageous, and dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed. What does that mean?’

The man didn’t answer for a long time. If it wasn’t for the sound of a television in the background she would have thought he’d hung up.

‘Have any other journalists called?’ she asked eventually.

She heard the man swallow, an uneven sigh into the mouthpiece that made her move the receiver away from her ear.

‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Up here they know what they think.’ He paused, maybe he was crying. She waited in silence.

‘They wrote that I was taken in for questioning but released due to lack of evidence.’

Annika nodded mutely, no one calls a murderer.

‘But it wasn’t you,’ she said. ‘The police are certain about that.’

The man gave a deep sigh, his voice trembling when he spoke. ‘That doesn’t matter up here,’ he said. ‘The neighbours saw me being taken away in a police car. From now on I shall be known as Margit’s murderer to people round here.’

‘Not if they catch the culprit,’ Annika said, hearing the man start to sob. ‘Not if they get hold of Göran Nilsson.’

‘Göran Nilsson,’ he said, blowing his nose. ‘Who’s that?’

She paused, biting her tongue, not sure of how much the man knew.

‘He’s also known under his alias,’ she said. ‘Ragnwald.’

‘You mean… Ragnwald?’ the man said, spitting the name out. ‘The Yellow Dragon?’

Annika started. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’

‘I know of him,’ Thord Axelsson said warmly. ‘The mad Maoist who ran around Luleå as a revolutionary in the late sixties, I know he’s back. I know what he’s done.’

Annika grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper.

‘I’ve never heard the codename Yellow Dragon used for him before,’ she said. ‘Ragnwald was the name he used in the Maoist groups that used to meet in the basement of the library.’

‘Before the Beasts,’ Thord Axelsson said.

Annika stopped for a moment. ‘Before the Beasts,’ she repeated, making notes.

The line fell silent again.

‘Hello?’ Annika said

A deep sigh confirmed that the man was still there.

‘The girls are here,’ he said, his mouth close to the phone. ‘I can’t talk about this now.’

Annika thought quickly for a couple of seconds.

‘I’m coming up to Luleå on some other business tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Could I visit you at home so we can talk undisturbed?’

‘Margit’s dead,’ the man said, the sounds coming out broken and distorted. ‘There’s nothing for her to be afraid of any more. But I shan’t let her down, ever. You need to understand that.’

Annika kept making notes even though she didn’t understand him.

‘I just want to understand the context,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to hang Margit or anyone else out to dry.’

The man sighed again and thought for a moment.

‘Come at lunchtime. The girls have an appointment with the police, so we can be alone then.’

He gave her the address and directions, and told her to come around twelve o’clock.

Afterwards she let the receiver sit in its cradle for a long minute. The angels were quiet, but there was a sharp buzzing sound in her left ear. The shadows in the room were long and irregular, jumping jerkily over the walls as vehicles passed and the streetlamp swayed.

She had to find the right way of explaining this to her editors.

She phoned reception and she was in luck, Jansson was on duty.

‘How the hell are you?’ he asked, blowing smoke into the phone.

‘I’m on to something,’ she said. ‘A real human-interest story, a poor man in a nice suburb outside Piteå whose wife has been murdered and the whole town thinks he did it.’

‘But…?’ Jansson didn’t sound particularly interested.

‘Definitely didn’t do it,’ Annika said. ‘He was at work sixty kilometres away from the scene of the crime, with three colleagues, at the time of the murder. And the police think they know who was responsible, but that hasn’t made any difference for this man. His neighbours saw him being taken away in a police car early in the morning and they all think they know what happened. The local papers wrote that he was taken in for questioning, but was released due to lack of evidence. He’ll be known there as the man who killed his wife until the day he dies.’

‘Hmm,’ Jansson said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Just imagine what it would be like to be in this poor man’s situation,’ Annika said. ‘Not only has he lost the wife he loved, but he’s lost his reputation among the people he’s spent his life among. How on earth can he go on?’ She fell silent and bit her lip, maybe she was pushing it a bit far now.

‘And he’s prepared to talk about all this?’

She cleared her throat. ‘Tomorrow lunchtime. Can I go ahead and book a ticket?’

Jansson sighed audibly. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘After all, you are an independent reporter.’

‘And this isn’t about terrorism,’ Annika said.

The editor laughed slightly sheepishly. ‘I heard Schyman had put his foot down there,’ he said.

‘New day, new byline,’ Annika said and hung up.

Then she dialled the number of the paper’s twenty-four-hour travel office and booked herself onto the 09.40 flight to Kallax, and a hire-car, and not a small one either.

She had just ended the conversation when the front door opened and the children tumbled in, buzzing with surplus energy. She went quickly over to the computer and switched it off, then went out into the hall.

‘Mummy! Do you know what, we got sweets for being so good at Grandma and Grandad’s, because we didn’t run and Daddy bought a paper with naked ladies and Grandad’s heart hurts again and can we go to the park, pleeeeease?’

She hugged them both, laughed and rocked them slowly, warm and fragrant.

‘Of course we can,’ she said. ‘Are your gloves dry?’

‘Mine are horrid,’ Ellen said.

‘We’ll find another pair,’ Annika said and opened the pineapple cupboard.

Thomas walked past her without a glance.

‘I’m going to Luleå for the day tomorrow,’ she said as she pulled the gloves onto the girl’s spread-out fingers. ‘You’ll have to drop them off and pick them up.’

He stopped at the door of the pantry, his shoulders hunched right up to his ears. Looked like he was going to turn inside out and explode; she waited for a blast that didn’t come.

He carried on towards the bedroom with the evening papers and an issue of Café under his arm and shut the door behind him.

‘Can we go now, Mummy?’

‘Yep,’ Annika said, grabbing her jacket and opening the balcony door to get the sledge they kept out there. ‘Off we go.’