Red Wolf

6

Anders Schyman pulled on his jacket and drank the dregs of his coffee. The lingering darkness made the windows look like mirrors. He adjusted his collar against the image of the Russian embassy, stopping to stare at the holes where his eyes ought to be.

Finally, he thought. Not just a useful idiot, but the driving force. At the board meeting that would begin in quarter of an hour he would not only be accepted, but respected. So where was the euphoria? The twitchy happiness he felt when he looked over the graphs and diagrams?

His eyes didn’t answer.

‘Anders…’ His secretary sounded nervous over the intercom. ‘Herman Wennergren is on his way up.’

He didn’t move. Daylight crept closer as he waited for the chairman of the board of the newspaper.

‘I’m impressed,’ Wennergren said in his characteristically deep voice as he sauntered in and grasped Schyman’s hand in both of his. ‘Have you found a magic wand?’

Over the years the chairman had rarely commented on the paper’s journalism. But when the quarterly report was fourteen per cent over budget, official circulation figures showed steady growth and the gap between them and their competition was shrinking, he assumed it had to be magic.

Anders Schyman smiled, offering Wennergren one of the chairs and sitting down opposite him.

‘The structural changes have settled down and are now working,’ Schyman said simply, careful not to mention Torstensson, his predecessor and a close friend of Wennergren. ‘Coffee? Some breakfast, perhaps?’

The chairman waved the offer away. ‘Today’s meeting will be short because I have other business to attend to afterwards,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘But I’ve got a plan I wanted to discuss with you first, and it feels rather urgent.’

Schyman sat up, checking that the cushion was supporting the small of his back, and fixed a neutral expression on his face.

‘How active have you been in the Newspaper Publishers’ Association?’ Wennergren asked, looking at his fingernails.

Schyman was taken aback. He had never really had anything to do with it. ‘I’m a deputy member of the committee, but no more than that.’

‘But you know how it works? Gauging the mood in the corridors, that sort of thing? How the different interest groups fit together?’ Wennergren rubbed his fingernails on the right leg of his trousers, looking at Schyman under his bushy eyebrows.

‘I’ve no practical experience of it,’ Anders Schyman replied, sensing that he was walking on eggshells. ‘My impression is that the organization is a little… complicated.’

Herman Wennergren nodded slowly, picking at one nail after the other. ‘A correct evaluation,’ he said. ‘The A-Press, the Bonnier group, Schibsted, the bigger regional papers, like Hjörnes in Gothenburg, Nerikes Allehanda, the Jönköping group, and us, of course – there’s a lot of different priorities to try to unite.’

‘But it sometimes works. Take the demand that the government abolish tax on advertising,’ Schyman said.

‘Yes,’ Wennergren said, ‘that’s one example. There’s a working group up in the Press House that’s still dealing with that, but the person responsible for pushing it through is the chairman of the committee.’

Anders Schyman sat quite still, feeling the hair on the back of his neck slowly prickle.

‘As you probably know, I’m chair of the Publishers’ Association election committee,’ Wennergren said, finally letting his fingers fall to the seat of the chair. ‘In the middle of December the committee has to present its proposals for the new board, and I’m thinking of proposing you as the chair. What do you think?’

Thoughts were buzzing around Schyman’s head like angry wasps, crashing against his temples and brain.

‘Doesn’t one of the directors usually occupy that post?’

‘Not always. We’ve had editors before. I don’t mean that you would forget about the paper and just be chair of the association, which we’ve seen happen before, but I think you’re the right man for the job.’

An alarm bell started to ring among the wasps.

‘Why?’ Schyman asked. ‘Do you think I’m easily led? That I can be managed?’

Herman Wennergren sighed audibly. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, ready to stand up.

‘Schyman,’ he said, ‘if I was thinking of installing a patsy as chair of the Publishers’ Association, I wouldn’t start with you.’ He got to his feet, visibly annoyed. ‘Can’t you see that it’s the exact opposite?’ he said. ‘If I get you that post, which I may not be able to do, our group will have a publicity-minded brick wall at the top of the Publishers’ Association. That’s how I see you, Schyman.’

He turned towards the door.

‘We mustn’t delay the meeting,’ he said with his back to the editor.

Annika drove past the exit for Luleå airport and carried on towards Kallaxby. The landscape was completely devoid of colour; the pine trees dark ghosts, the ground black and white, the sky lead-grey. White veils of snow danced across the dark-grey asphalt, to the beat of the central road-markings. The hire-car’s thermometer was showing eleven degrees inside the car, minus four outside. She passed a topsoil pit and about three million pine trees before reaching the turning to Norrbotten Airbase.

The straight road leading to the base was endless, monotonous, the ground on both sides flat and with no sign of vegetation, the pines squat and feeble. After a gentle right-hand curve, gates and barriers suddenly came into view, with a large security block, and behind a tall fence she could make out buildings and car parks. She was suddenly struck by the feeling that she was seeing something she shouldn’t, that she was a spy, up to no good. Two military aircraft stood just inside the gate. She thought one of them was a Draken.

The road wound its way along the fence, and she leaned forward to see through the windscreen better. She slowly passed the conscripts’ car park and reached an enormous shooting range. Ten men in green camouflage, with pine-twigs on their helmets, were running across the range, automatic weapons in their hands, the carbines bouncing against the recruits’ chests. A signpost indicated that the road continued towards Lulnäsudden, but a no-entry sign some hundred metres further on made her stop and turn the car round. The green men were no longer visible.

She stopped by the security block, hesitating for a moment before switching off the engine and getting out of the car. She walked alongside the plain-panelled building with its reflective windows, unable to see any doors, people, or even a bell. Just herself. Suddenly a loudspeaker somewhere up to her left addressed her.

‘What do you want?’

Taken aback, she looked up to where the voice had come from, saw nothing but panelling and chrome.

‘I’m here to see, um, Pettersson,’ she said to her reflection. ‘The Press Officer.’

‘Captain Pettersson, just a moment,’ said the voice, that of a young conscript.

She turned her back on the building and looked through the gates. The trees carried on inside, but between the trunks she could make out grey-green hangars and rows of military vehicles. It was hard to estimate how large the base was from the outside.

‘Go through the gate and into the first door on the right,’ the disembodied voice said.

Annika did as she was told, like a good citizen and spy.

The officer who met her was the archetype of the successful military man, stiff-backed, grey-haired and in good shape.

‘I’m Annika Bengtzon,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘We spoke on the phone last week. The anniversary of the attack…’

The man held her hand for a second too long. She evaded his open gaze and friendly smile.

‘As I said on the phone, there isn’t much we can say that hasn’t been made public before. What we can provide are summaries of the situation as it was then, the conclusions we have previously presented, and a tour of the museum. Gustaf, who’s in charge of that, is off sick today, I’m afraid, but he’ll probably be up on his feet again tomorrow, if you want to come back.’

‘There’s no chance of taking a look at the site of the attack?’

His smile grew even broader. ‘I thought we cleared that up on the phone. We’ve never made that public.’

She smiled back tentatively. ‘Did you see the article by Benny Ekland in the Norrland News last week?’

The officer invited her to sit down at a table. She took off her coat and fished her notebook out of her bag.

‘I’ve got a copy of the text here, if you’d like to-’

‘I know the article you mean,’ he said, looking up at the conscript who had entered the room holding a clipboard. ‘If you could just sign the register?’

Annika signed herself in as a visitor to the base with an illegible scrawl.

‘Is there any truth in it?’ she asked, declining the offer of coffee.

The press officer poured a huge cup for himself, in a Bruce Springsteen mug.

‘Not much,’ he said, and Annika’s heart sank.

‘There were quite a few details that were new,’ she said, ‘at least for me. Could we go through the text, statement by statement, so that I can get an idea of which bits are accurate?’

She pulled the copy of the article out of her bag.

Captain Pettersson blew on his coffee and took a cautious sip.

‘The Lansen was gradually replaced by the J35 Draken in the late sixties,’ he said. ‘That much is true. The surveillance version came in sixty-seven, the fighter in the summer of sixty-nine.’

Annika was reading the article closely.

‘Is it true that there were sabotage attempts on the planes, with matches being stuck into various tubes?’

‘Left-wing groups ran around in here a fair bit back then,’ the press officer said. ‘The fence around the base is mostly symbolic; it’s fairly easy for anyone who really wants to to get over or through it. The match boys presumably thought they could damage the planes by inserting matches in the pitot tubes, but I have no evidence that they were in any way responsible for the attack in sixty-nine.’

Annika was taking notes.

‘And the leftover fuel? Is the information about buckets being used to collect it accurate?’

‘Well, yes,’ Pettersson said, ‘I suppose it is, but you can’t set light to aviation fuel with a match. It’s far too low octane. To set light to it, it has to be seriously warmed up, so that’s incorrect. At least, that wouldn’t work in Luleå in November.’

He smiled nonchalantly.

‘But there had been a big exercise that evening? And all the planes were outside?’

‘It was a Tuesday night,’ the officer said. ‘We always fly on Tuesdays; all the bases in the country do, and have done for decades. Three sorties, the last one landing at twenty-two hundred hours. After that the planes stand on the tarmac for an hour or so before they’re towed into the hangars. The attack took place at one thirty-five, so by then they were all indoors.’

Annika swallowed, lowering the article to her lap.

‘I thought we might finally be getting to the bottom of this whole business,’ she said, trying to smile at the press officer.

He smiled back with intense blue eyes, and she leaned forward.

‘It’s more than thirty years ago, now, though. Can’t you at least say what caused the explosion?’

Silence spread, but she had nothing against that: the pressure was on him, not her. Unfortunately Captain Pettersson seemed completely unconcerned that she had travelled a thousand kilometres for nothing. She was obliged to drop the subject.

‘Why did you come to the conclusion that the Russians were behind it?’

‘A process of elimination,’ he said, leaning back in his chair and tapping his pen against the mug. ‘The local groups were soon written off, and the security police know that there were no external activists here at the time, neither right nor left wing.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

For the first time the officer was completely serious, his pen silent.

‘Local groups were put under immense pressure after the attack. A whole lot of information came out: we know, for instance, exactly who was running around with those matches, but no one said a word about the attack. We concluded that no one knew anything. If they had, we would have found out.’

‘Did you or the police conduct the interviews?’

He was smiling faintly again.

‘Let’s just say that we helped each other.’

Annika turned the facts over in her mind, staring at her notes without seeing them.

‘But,’ she said, ‘the degree of silence in any group is dependent on how fundamentalist they are, isn’t it? How can you be sure that there wasn’t a cast-iron core of fully-fledged terrorists that you never caught sight of, because they simply didn’t want to be seen?’

The man was silent for slightly too long, then he laughed. ‘Where?’ he said, standing up. ‘Here in Luleå? In the middle of nowhere? It was the Russians, it must have been.’

‘So why content themselves with one Draken?’ Annika asked, gathering her things. ‘Why not blow up the whole base?’

Captain Pettersson shook his head and sighed. ‘To show us that they could, probably; to knock us off balance. We all wish we had the ability to see into their minds, to understand their reasoning. Why did they send Polish art dealers to visit all our officers? Why beach that submarine, U137, on the rocks outside Karlskrona? I’m sorry, but I have to give a presentation in a few minutes.’

Annika zipped up her bag and stood up, pulling on her coat.

‘Well, thank you,’ she said. ‘And thanks for the offer of the museum tour, but I’m not sure I’ll have time tomorrow. I’ve still got a few things to do and I’m flying home after lunch.’

‘Try to find the time,’ the press officer said, shaking her hand. ‘Gustaf’s got it in pretty good shape.’

She looked down at the floor, muttering under her breath.

That was completely bloody useless, she thought as she drove back to the main road. I can’t go back to the paper and say the whole trip was a waste of time.

In restless disappointment she put her foot down on the accelerator. The car started to skid and she eased up, horrified.

At that moment her mobile rang, number withheld. She knew it was Spike before she even answered it.

‘Have you caught the men behind the attack then?’ he asked smoothly.

She braked cautiously and indicated right, adjusting the earpiece better.

‘The journalist I was supposed to meet is dead,’ she said. ‘Run down the day before yesterday in a hit-and-run.’

‘Ouch,’ Spike said. ‘There was a thing on one of the agencies about something like that this morning, credited to some rag up there. Was that him?’

She waited for a timber-truck to pass, making her Ford shake as it sped by. Her grip on the wheel stiffened.

‘Might have been,’ she said. ‘The staff on his paper were told yesterday, so it would be odd if it didn’t make their own paper.’

Cautiously she pulled out onto the main road.

‘Have they found the driver?’

‘Not as far as I know,’ she said, then heard herself say: ‘I was thinking of looking into his death a bit today.’

‘Why?’ Spike said. ‘He was probably just driving home drunk.’

‘Maybe,’ Annika said. ‘But he was in the middle of a big story, had some seriously controversial stuff in the paper on Friday.’ Which I know isn’t true, she thought, biting her lip.

Spike sighed loudly. ‘Well, make sure it checks out, that’s all,’ he said, and hung up.

Annika parked outside the entrance to the hotel, went up to her room and sank onto the bed. The maid had been in and made the bed, eradicating the traces of her awful night. She had slept badly, woken up in a cold sweat and with a headache. The angels had been singing to her in a chorus of rising and falling notes almost all night long: they were much more persistent when she was away from home.

She plumped up the pillow behind her head, reached for the telephone on the bedside table and put it on her stomach, then she called her husband on his direct line at the Association of Local Authorities.

‘Thomas is at lunch,’ his secretary said sullenly.

She crept under the covers and closed her eyes as the angels’ song filled her head.

She let herself be swept away by the words. Can’t fight any more, she thought.

7

She woke with a start, unsure where she was for a moment. Putting her hand to her chin she discovered that it was wet, as was her neck, and realized with disgust that it was her own saliva. Her clothes were sticking unpleasantly to her body, and there was a nasty whistling sound in her left ear. She got unsteadily to her feet and went to the bathroom.

When she came back into the room she realized that it was almost completely dark. In a panic, she stared at her watch, but it was only quarter past three. She wiped her neck with a towel, checked that she had what she needed in her bag and left the room.

She picked up a map of Luleå from reception, only to find that Svartöstaden wasn’t on there, but the receptionist enthusiastically added the route that would take her there.

‘So you’re working on a story,’ the young woman said excitedly.

Annika, already on her way to the door, stopped and looked at her, confused.

‘Ah,’ the receptionist explained with a blush, ‘I saw that the invoice was going to the Evening Post.’

Annika took a few steps backwards, hitting her heel against the door. A moment later she was out in the wind. No parking ticket. She got into the freezing car and pulled out onto Södra Varvsleden. The steering wheel was ice-cold, and as she fumbled for her gloves in the bag she came close to hitting a fat woman pushing a pram. Turning the noisy ventilator on full, her heart thumping, she drove towards Malmudden.

At a red light on a viaduct over some railway tracks she checked the map again: she was already at the bottom-right corner. A couple of minutes later she was at the roundabout and from now on she would have to rely on road-signs. She glanced up: Skurholmen left, Hertsön straight on, Svartöstaden right. She caught sight of another sign – Frasse’s Hamburgers – and felt her blood-sugar plummet. When the lights turned green she swung off the road, parked by the petrol station and went in. She bought a cheeseburger with onions and ate it ravenously, taking in her surroundings: the smell of frying, the painted fibreglass walls, the plastic rubber plant in the corner, the Star Wars pinball machine, the shabby wood and chrome furniture.

This is the real Sweden, she thought. Central Stockholm is a little nature reserve. We have no idea what goes on out here in the wilderness.

Feeling slightly queasy from the melted cheese and raw onion, she drove on. Powdery snow swirled in front of the headlights, making it hard to see, even though she was alone on the road. She drove a few kilometres, and then suddenly, out of the haze of snow, the ironworks appeared right above her. Illuminated jet-black steel skeletons that let off steam and looked almost alive. She let out a small yelp of surprise. It was beautiful! So weirdly… alive.

A viaduct took her across a goods yard, twenty or so rail tracks criss-crossing each other.

The final stop of Malmbanan, ‘the ore railway’, of course. The contents of the trashed mountains in the iron-field were rolled down here to the coast by those endless ore-trains she’d seen on television.

Astonished, she drove on until she reached an illuminated sign by the main entrance, and parked by what turned out to be the West Checkpoint.

The immense monster above her was blast-furnace number two – a growling, rumbling giant turning ore into steel. Further away were the rolling-mill, the steelworks, the coke ovens, the power station. The whole site was enveloped in a rolling, rumbling sound that rose and fell, humming and singing.

What a place, she thought, feeling the cold. The angels kept quiet. It was now completely dark.

Anne Snapphane left the press conference with her knees trembling and her palms sweating. She wanted to cry, or scream. The rumbling headache only increased her anger at the MD who had taken off for the US and left the whole presentation to her. She wasn’t employed to take the flak for the whole of TV Scandinavia, just the programming.

She made it to her room, dialled Annika’s number and looked around desperately for a glass of wine.

‘I’m standing by the ironworks in Svartöstaden,’ Annika yelled from Anne’s home territory. ‘It’s a real monster, absolutely amazing. How did the press conference go?’

‘Crap,’ Anne Snapphane said in a dull voice, feeling her hands shake. ‘They tore me to shreds, and the boys from your lot were worst.’

‘Hang on,’ Annika said, ‘I have to move the car, I’m in the way of a truck… Yes! I know! I’m moving!’

The sound of a car engine; Anne looked for her headache pills in the desk drawer, but the box was empty.

‘Right, tell me what happened,’ Annika said to her friend.

Anne forced her hands to be still, then put her right hand to her forehead.

‘They want me to personify every super-capitalist, war-mongering, American, multinational blood-sucking corporation rolled into one,’ she said.

‘The first rule of dramaturgy,’ Annika said. ‘You have to give the villain a face. Yours just happens to fit the bill. Although I think it’s strange that they’re so angry.’

Anne carefully shut the desk drawer and put the phone down on the floor, then lay down next to it.

‘Not really,’ she said, staring at the lights in the ceiling, breathing out and feeling the room sway. ‘We’re challenging the established channels on the only advertising market they’ve not yet conquered, the global brand market. But that’s not all. We’re not only taking their money, we’re going to take their viewers with our thoroughly commercialized shitty programmes that we buy in for peanuts.’

‘And the Evening Post’s proprietors will be hit hardest of all, is that right?’ Annika asked.

‘Because we’ll be using the terrestrial digital network, yes,’ Anne said.

‘How’s your headache?’

Anne closed her eyes, seeing the strip lighting in the ceiling as blue stripes through her eyelids.

‘Same as before,’ she said. ‘I’ve started getting pretty wobbly as well.’

‘Do you really think it’s just stress? Couldn’t you take things a bit easier?’ Annika sounded genuinely worried.

‘I’m trying,’ Anne mumbled, letting out a deep breath.

‘Have you got Miranda this weekend?’

She shook her head, a hand over her eyes. ‘She’s with Mehmet.’

‘Is that good or bad?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know if I can do this any more.’

‘Course you can,’ Annika said. ‘Come round to mine tomorrow. Thomas is playing tennis, I’ll get some macaroons.’

Anne Snapphane let out a snort of laughter and dried her eyes.

When they had hung up Annika drove on with a nagging anxiety in her gut. For the first time she was starting to think that there was something physically wrong with Anne. Over the years her hypochondriac friend had been to Dr Olsson with every symptom known to modern medicine, and up to now she had only ever needed antibiotics twice. Once she got some cough syrup as well, and when she found out it contained morphine she had phoned Annika in horror, imagining that she had become an addict. Annika couldn’t help smiling at the memory.

Slowly she swung off the road and in among the residential area of Svartöstaden. This really was another country, or at least another town. Not Luleå, and not really Sweden. Annika let the car drift through the shanty town, astonished by its atmosphere.

The Estonian countryside, she thought. Polish suburbs.

The headlights played across shabby wooden façades of yards and outhouses and sheds, leaning roofs and ramshackle fences. The buildings were small and misshapen, could have been built out of orange boxes. The paint was peeling off most of them, the uneven hand-blown glass in the windows twinkled. She passed a charity shop selling clothes in aid of the struggle for freedom, although whose freedom was unclear.

She pulled up behind a recycling site on Bältesgatan, left her bag in the car and got out. The noise from the ironworks was a faint song in the distance. She took a few slow steps, looking over the fences into the yards.

‘Are you looking for someone?’

A man in a woolly hat and work-boots was coming towards her from one of the gingerbread houses, glancing at her hire-car.

Annika smiled. ‘I was just passing and had to stop,’ she said with her hands in her coat pockets. ‘What an amazing place.’

The man stopped, straightening up.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is a bit unusual. An old workers’ district from the turn of the last century. Strong sense of cohesion. There’s real community spirit here. People often don’t want to leave.’

Annika nodded politely. ‘I can understand why people end up staying.’

The man pulled a cigarette from an inside pocket, lit it, then took the conversational bait and started talking.

‘We’ve got a nursery nowadays,’ he said, ‘with three classes. We had to fight for years before the council gave in. The school takes kids up to thirteen, and there’s a youth club with broadband. We’re going to have to fight to keep the old ironwork manager’s house; we never seem to get out of this obsession with pulling things down.’

He exhaled a hard plume of smoke, looking at her from under the rim of his hat.

‘So what are you doing here?’

‘I was supposed to be meeting Benny Ekland, but when I got here I found out he’d been run over.’

The man shook his head, stamping his feet. ‘Bloody awful business,’ he said. ‘On his way home, and he gets run down like that. Everyone thinks it’s terrible.’

‘Everyone here knows everyone else?’ she asked, trying hard not to sound too inquisitive.

‘For good and ill,’ he said, ‘but mostly good. We take responsibility for each other, there’s too little of that in the world today…’

‘Do you know where it happened?’

‘Down on Skeppargatan, on the way to the main road,’ he said, pointing. ‘Quite close to Blackis, that’s the big building at the edge of the forest. The kids went up there with flowers a bit earlier. Well, I really ought to…’ The man headed off towards the water.

Annika stood and watched him go.

I’d like a life like that, she thought. To belong somewhere.

8

The place where Benny Ekland was run down was just a couple of hundred metres from the West Checkpoint, but not visible from there. In fact, it wasn’t overlooked from anywhere, apart from a run-down housing block and small shop a hundred metres or so away. A thin row of yellow streetlamps, some of them broken, spread a dusty light over the cordons, snow and mud. To the left was an area of ragged scrub, on the right an embankment topped by a fence.

Malmvallen, she thought. The famous football pitch.

She switched off the engine and sat in the dark, listening.

Benny Ekland had just written a series of articles about terrorism. The last thing he published was about the attack on F21. After that he was run down, here, in the most desolate place in Luleå.

She didn’t like coincidences.

After a few minutes a teenage boy came out of one of the blocks nearby and walked slowly up to the fluttering plastic cordon around the crime scene, hands in his pockets. His hair was stiff with gel, making Annika smile. Her son Kalle had just discovered the joys of hair-gel.

The boy stopped just a couple of metres from her car, staring blankly at a small heap of flowers and candles inside the cordon.

Her smile faded as it dawned on her how Benny Ekland’s death had affected the people living here. They were all mourning his loss. Would any of her neighbours mourn her?

Hardly.

She started the car, intending to drive down to Malmhamnen. The moment she turned the key the boy started as though he’d been hit, and his reaction made her jump. With a cry that penetrated the car the lad rushed back to his block. She waited until he had disappeared behind the fence, then rolled off towards the harbour where the stolen car had been found.

The road was pitch-black and treacherous, leading to a dead end and a large gate. She decided to drive back up to the site of the accident, creeping along at a snail’s pace. As she passed the shop she looked into the block of flats next to it and saw the boy’s spiked hair silhouetted in the bottom-left window.

‘I didn’t mean to scare you,’ she said to herself. ‘What made you so frightened?’

She stopped the car by the cordon and got out, taking her bag. She looked up at furnace number two, still impressed, then turned and looked the other way, into the wind. This road was one of the routes into the residential district.

Annika pulled her torch out of the bag and shone it behind the police cordon. The snow of recent days had covered all traces that might have been visible to the average person. The ice on the tarmac showed no signs of emergency braking, but any that had been there would have been obliterated by now.

She shone the beam on the fence some ten metres away. That was where he had been found. Inspector Suup was right; Benny Ekland’s last movements had been a flight through the air.

She stood with the torch in her hand, listening to the distant noise of the steelworks. Turning around, she saw the boy’s head again, this time in the right-hand window.

She might as well go and knock, seeing as she was here.

The yard was dark, and she had to use her torch to find her way. It looked like a scrap yard, and the house was ramshackle. The panels on the roof were rusty, the paint peeling. She switched off the torch, put it in her bag and went up to the plain front door. It led into a pitch-black hallway.

‘What are you doing here?’

She leaped back, fumbling for the torch once more. The voice had come from the right, a boy whose voice was breaking.

‘Hello?’ she said.

There was a click and the hall lit up. She blinked, momentarily confused. She was surrounded by dark-brown panelled walls that seemed to loom over her. It felt like the ceiling was pressing down on her. She put her hands above her head and screamed.

‘What on earth’s the matter? Take it easy.’

The boy was gangly and skinny, and was wearing thick socks. He was pressed against a door bearing the name Gustafsson, his eyes dark, watchful.

‘Jesus,’ Annika said. ‘You scared me.’

‘I’m not the son of God,’ the boy said.

‘What?’ And the angels suddenly started singing. ‘Oh, just shut up!’ she yelled.

‘Are you nuts?’ the boy said.

She gathered her thoughts and met his gaze. It was inquisitive, and slightly scared. The voices fell silent, the ceiling slid away, the walls stopped throbbing.

‘I just get a bit dizzy sometimes,’ she said.

‘What are you doing creeping around here?’

She pulled a crumpled paper handkerchief out of the bag and wiped her nose.

‘My name’s Annika Bengtzon; I’m a journalist,’ she said. ‘I came to see the place where my colleague died.’

She held out her hand, the boy hesitated, then shook it half-heartedly.

‘Did you know Benny?’ he asked, pulling his slender fingers away.

Annika shook her head. ‘But we wrote about the same things,’ she said. ‘I was supposed to meet him yesterday.’

The hall went dark again.

‘So you’re not with the police?’ the boy said.

‘Can you turn the lights on again, please?’ Annika said, hearing the note of panic in her voice.

‘You are a bit nuts,’ the boy said, sterner now. ‘Unless you’re just scared of the dark?’

‘Nuts,’ Annika said. ‘Turn the lights on!’

The boy pressed the switch and the bulb lit up for another minute or so.

‘Look,’ Annika said, ‘could I use your toilet?’

The boy hesitated. ‘I can’t let crazy women into my flat,’ he said. ‘You can understand that, can’t you?’

Annika couldn’t help spluttering with laughter. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll just pee in the hall instead.’

He raised his eyebrows, opened the door with the hand that had been resting on the handle.

‘But don’t tell Mum,’ he said.

‘Promise,’ Annika said.

The bathroom had vinyl wallpaper from the seventies, decorated with stylized sunflowers. She splashed her face, washed her hands, ran her fingers through her hair.

‘Did you know Benny?’ she asked when she emerged.

The boy nodded.

‘What’s your name, by the way?’ Annika said.

He looked at the floor. ‘Linus,’ he said, his voice managing to perform somersaults within the space of just five letters.

‘Linus,’ Annika said, ‘do you know if anyone in the building saw what happened to Benny?’

The boy’s eyes opened wide, he took two steps back.

‘So you are police?’

‘Is there something wrong with your hearing?’ Annika said. ‘I’m a hack, like Benny. We wrote about the same stuff. The police say that someone ran into him and scarpered. I don’t know if that’s true. Do you know if anyone heard anything that night?’

‘The police have already been here, they asked the same thing.’

‘So what did you tell them, Linus?’

His voice went into falsetto when he replied. ‘That I hadn’t seen anything, of course. I came home when I was supposed to. I don’t know anything. You should go now.’

He took a step towards her, raising his arms as though he was thinking of pushing her out of the door. Annika didn’t move.

‘There’s a difference between talking to the press and talking to the police,’ she said slowly.

‘I know,’ Linus said. ‘When you talk to the press you end up on the front page.’

‘Anyone who tells us anything can stay anonymous if they want. None of the authorities can ask who we’ve spoken to, that’s against the law. Freedom of expression – did Benny ever talk about that?’

The boy stood in silence, eyes wide, deeply sceptical.

‘If you saw anything, Linus, or know someone who did, that person can tell me, and no one would find out that it was them who said anything.’

‘Would you believe them, then?’

‘I don’t know. That depends on what they say, of course.’

‘But you’d write about it in the paper?’

‘Only the information; not who said it, if they didn’t want me to.’

She looked at the boy, knowing that her intuition was right.

‘You didn’t come home when you were supposed to, did you, Linus?’

The boy shifted his weight from one skinny leg to the other, and gulped, making his Adam’s apple jerk up and down.

‘When should you have come home?’

‘On the last bus, the number one stops at twenty-one thirty-six.’

‘So what did you do instead?’

‘There’s a night bus as well, the fifty-one, that goes as far as Mefos. It’s for the blokes who work shifts at the steelworks… I get it sometimes when I’m out late.’

‘And then you have to walk?’

‘Not far, just across the footbridge over the railway and down Skeppargatan…’

He looked away and padded through the hall to his bedroom. Annika followed, and found him sitting on the bed, neatly made with a bedspread and some scatter-cushions. A few schoolbooks were open on the desk, an ancient computer, but everything else in the room was arranged on shelves or stacked in boxes.

‘Where had you been?’

He pulled his feet up beneath him, and sat there cross-legged, looking down at his hands.

‘Alex has got broadband, we were playing Teslatron.’

‘Where are your parents?’

‘Mum.’ He looked up at her angrily. ‘I just live with Mum.’ He looked down again. ‘She works nights. I promised not to be out so late. The neighbours keep an eye out, so I have to sneak in if it’s late.’

Annika looked at the big little boy on the bed, filled for a moment with an intense longing for her own children. Tears came to her eyes, and she took several deep breaths through her mouth, forcing the tears back down.

That’s what Kalle will be like in a few years, she thought. Sensitive, smart, cool, puppyish.

‘So you took the other bus, the night bus?’ she said, her voice trembling slightly.

‘The half twelve from the bus station. Benny was on it as well. He knows my mum. Everyone knows everyone in Svartöstaden, so I hid right at the back.’

‘He didn’t see you?’

The boy looked at her like she was mad. ‘He was pissed out of his head, wasn’t he? Otherwise he’d have driven, wouldn’t he?’

Of course, she thought, waiting silently for him to go on.

‘He fell asleep on the bus,’ the boy said. ‘The driver had to wake him up at Mefos. I sneaked out of the back door while they were busy.’

‘Where did Benny live?’

‘Over on Laxgatan.’

He gestured vaguely in a direction that Annika couldn’t make out.

‘And you saw him walking home from the bus-stop?’

‘Yeah, but he didn’t see me. I made sure I stayed behind him, and it was snowing really hard.’

He fell silent. Annika was starting to feel hot in her padded jacket. Without saying anything she let it slide off her arms, picked it up and put it on the chair by the boy’s desk.

‘What did you see, Linus?’

The boy lowered his head even further, twisting his fingers together.

‘There was a car,’ he said.

Annika waited.

‘A car?’

He nodded frenetically. ‘A Volvo V70, but I didn’t know that then.’

‘When did you find out?’

He sniffed. ‘It had reversed back onto the football pitch, you could only see the front half. The front was sticking out from behind a tree.’

‘So you did notice it, then?’

He didn’t answer, knotting his fingers.

‘How come you noticed it?’

The boy looked up, his jaw trembling.

‘Someone was sitting in the car. There’s a yellow streetlamp at the crossing and the light was sort of shining on the car. You could see his hand on the wheel, kind of holding it, like this.’

The boy held one hand up in front of him, letting it hang in the air above an imaginary steering wheel, his eyes open wide.

‘So what did you do?’

‘Waited. I didn’t know who it was, did I?’

‘But you could see it was a V70?’

He shook his head hard. ‘Not to start with. Only once it had driven out. Then I could see the lights on the back.’

‘What about the lights on the back?’

‘They went all the way up to the roof. I liked the way it looked. I’m pretty sure it was a V70, gold…’

‘And the man in the car started the engine and drove off?’

Linus nodded, shaking himself to gather his thoughts. ‘He started the car and slowly pulled out, then he hit the accelerator.’

Annika waited.

‘Benny was drunk,’ the boy said, ‘but he still heard the car and sort of moved aside, but the car followed him, so Benny jumped the other way but the car followed him again, and then he was sort of in the middle of the road when the car…’

He took a deep breath.

‘What happened?’

‘There were two thumps, then he flew through the air.’

‘Two thumps, then Benny was thrown into the air? And landed by the fence up by the football pitch?’

The boy sat in silence for a few seconds, then lowered his head. Annika had to suppress the urge to put her arms round him.

‘He didn’t land by the football pitch?’

Linus shook his head, wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

‘In the middle of the road,’ he said almost inaudibly. ‘And the car braked so that all the lights on the back went on, that’s when I saw what make of Volvo it was. And he reversed slowly, and Benny was lying there, and he drove over him again, and then he sort of aimed for… for his head, and then he drove over his face…’

Annika felt her stomach turn, and opened her mouth to breathe.

‘You’re sure?’ she whispered.

The boy nodded. She stared at the white of his scalp between the tufts of gelled hair.

‘Then he got out, and dragged Benny by the feet up towards Malmvallen… sort of brushed him off… then got back in his car and turned off into Sjöfartsgatan, down towards the harbour…’

Annika looked at the boy with fresh eyes, through a mixture of suspicion, revulsion and sympathy. If it was true, that was disgusting! And, poor boy.

‘What did you do after that?’

The boy started to shake, first his hands, then his legs.

‘I went… went over to Benny, he was lying up there by the fence… dead.’

He wrapped his skinny arms round his body, gently rocking.

‘Part of his head and face were like gone, the ground was wet, his whole back was bent, the wrong way, sort of… so I knew that… and I just went home, but I couldn’t really sleep.’

‘And you haven’t told any of this to the police?’

He shook his head again, wiped away the tears with a trembling hand.

‘I told Mum I’d be home by quarter to ten.’

Annika leaned forward, putting her hand awkwardly on his knee.

‘Linus,’ she said, ‘what you’ve just told me is terrible. It must have been horrific. I really think you should tell another adult, because it’s not good for you to go around with this sort of secret.’

He pulled away from her hand, backing up against the wall.

‘You promised!’ he said. ‘You said I was anonymous.’

Annika raised her hands helplessly. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I’m not going to say anything. I’m just worried about you. This is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard.’

She let her hands fall and stood up.

‘It’s really important that the police hear what you saw, but you know that. You’re a smart boy. Benny’s death was no accident, and you’re the only one who saw it happen. Do you think the murderer should get away with it?’

The boy was staring stubbornly at his lap again. A thought suddenly occurred to Annika.

‘Did you…? You recognized the man in the car, didn’t you?’

The boy hesitated, twisting his fingers. ‘Maybe,’ he said quietly, then suddenly looked at her and said: ‘What time is it?’

‘Five to six,’ Annika said.

‘Shit,’ he said, leaping up.

‘What is it?’ Annika said as he flew past her and into the kitchen. ‘Do you mean that you might have recognized-’

‘It’s my turn to cook and I haven’t even started.’

Then he appeared in the doorway again.

‘Mum’ll be here any minute,’ he said anxiously. ‘You’ve got to go. Now!’

She pulled on her jacket, took a step towards him.

‘Think about what I said,’ she said, trying to smile.

Feeling utterly helpless, she left the boy alone.

9

Thomas could feel himself getting more and more irritated as he tried one code after another on the door of the nursery. The same thing had happened only yesterday, leaving him standing there like an idiot, unable to get in.

‘Do you know the code?’ he asked his son.

The boy shook his head. ‘Mum always does the code.’

A moment later the door was unlocked from inside. A woman in her forties with two snotty toddlers stepped onto the pavement. He muttered his thanks, held the door open for Kalle and went into the hall.

‘It was fun going to nursery,’ the boy said.

Thomas nodded absent-mindedly, gathering his thoughts. Every time he walked into the nursery he felt like an alien, his wax jacket and briefcase and tie seemed somehow to clash with the sensible shoes and cosy sweaters of the staff. Among the tiny boots and miniature furniture he was a clumsy giant, sweaty and out of place. But most of all it was communication that shut him out; he had never managed to have the same sort of relationship the staff had with his children. He couldn’t handle sitting and talking about the same drawing for ten minutes, the wire in his veins started tugging and itching after just a few seconds… yes, that’s lovely, Ellen, is it a cat? After that he was on to his next thought, the next action.

She was doing some cutting-out when he arrived, and enthusiastically showed him the fish and plants she had made for her little sea.

‘Shall I help you with your overall?’ he offered.

She looked at him in surprise.

‘I can do that on my own,’ she said, putting away the scissors and paper and going off to the cloakroom, a stern little figure with narrow legs and swinging arms.

They took the bus from Fleminggatan, but before they had even got on Thomas realized it was a mistake.

‘I want to start playing hockey,’ Kalle said, as Thomas tried to stop a pensioner with a walking frame from running over Ellen. The mere thought of driving his son through the centre of the city several times a week made him shudder.

‘Don’t you think that might be a bit too soon?’ he said, hoping to put him off.

‘William’s started going to Djurgården. They said he was almost too old.’

Good grief, Thomas thought.

‘Right, Ellen,’ he said, ‘up on the seat with you. We’re almost there.’

‘I’m swelting,’ the little girl said.

‘It’s sweating,’ the boy said disdainfully. ‘You’re so stupid.’

‘Now, now,’ Thomas said.

The half kilometre to their home on Hantverkargatan took fifteen minutes. Kalle fell over twice when the driver braked sharply to get over the congested junctions on Scheelegatan.

As the sweat ran down his back and the air grew thicker with carbon monoxide and coughed-up virus particles, Thomas swore that from now on he would ignore party politics and only vote for the party that promised a solution to the traffic in Stockholm.

‘Is Mummy home?’ his daughter asked once they’d finally got to the second floor of number 32.

‘She’s in Norrland,’ Kalle said. ‘She said so yesterday.’

‘Is Mummy home?’ she asked again in the same hopeful tone, this time turning to Thomas.

He saw her eyes, so completely trusting, the chubby little cheeks, the rucksack. For a moment the world spun: what have we done? What sort of responsibility is this? How on earth are we going to manage? How are the kids going to survive in this bloody world?

He swallowed hard, leaned over the child, sweeping off her damp woolly hat.

‘No, darling; Mummy’s working. She’ll be home tomorrow. Here, hold your hat while I unlock the door.’

‘What are we having for tea?’ his son asked.

‘Baked meatballs with garlic and veg.’

‘Mmm,’ Ellen said.

‘Yummy,’ said Kalle.

The air in the flat was stale and slightly pungent. The streetlights below threw quivering blue shadows over the ceiling mouldings.

‘Can you get the lights, Kalle?’

The children started to take off their outdoor clothes as he went into the kitchen and turned on the lamps and the oven. Annika had prepared frozen meals in plastic tubs so they could heat them in the microwave, but he preferred to do it the old-fashioned way.

‘Can we play on the computer, Daddy?’

‘If you can sort it out yourselves.’

‘Hooray!’ Kalle said, running off into the library.

He settled down with the various sections of the morning paper he hadn’t had time to read earlier; new terrorist attack in the Middle East, stock market falls, profit warning in the pharmaceutical industry. Suddenly he noticed that the unpleasant smell was much stronger now.

He put the paper down, got up and looked around the kitchen. When he opened the cupboard under the sink the smell practically floored him.

Fish scraps.

He instantly remembered that Annika had reminded him to put the rubbish out before she left yesterday morning. He was bent double, ready to throw up, when his mobile rang out in the hallway. He quickly shut the cupboard door, pushing it hard to make sure, then went to take the call.

It was a colleague of his from the Association of Local Authorities.

‘I’ve got the brochures from the printers,’ Sophia Grenborg said. ‘I know you’ve gone home, but I’m guessing you want to see them straight away.’

It was like champagne corks going off in his brain.

‘God, thanks so much for calling,’ Thomas said. ‘I’d love to see them. Can you courier a few home to me, Hantverkargatan?’

He went back to the kitchen and opened the window to air the room and get rid of the smell of fish.

‘Aha,’ Sophia said distractedly, as though she was writing something down. ‘On Kungsholmen, isn’t it?’

He told her the door-code so the courier could get in.

‘They just rang from the department,’ she went on, ‘Cramne’s wondering if we can bring forward the evening meeting and do it tomorrow instead.’

Thomas stopped, looking down into the back yard. He’d miss his tennis.

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘My wife’s away, back tomorrow afternoon. Next Monday would be much better.’

‘He was pretty insistent that Monday didn’t work for him,’ Sophia said. ‘Do you want us to go ahead without you?’

The thought of being left out made him speechless at first, then offended.

‘No,’ he said quickly, ‘no, that’s all right. Annika should be back soon after five, so seven o’clock will be fine…’

‘Okay, I’ll pass that on. See you tomorrow evening…’

He sat down, still clutching the mobile, the humming sound of the ventilator in the back yard filtering gently through the gap in the window.

The department, again. This new project was a real stroke of luck. After the investigation into the question of regional representation, which had been a huge success, he had pretty much been able to take his pick among the new jobs at the Association. It had been Annika who had suggested he look into threats to politicians. There had been other, more prestigious areas that he could have taken over, but she had seen the bigger picture.

‘You want to move on,’ she had said in her usual unsentimental way. ‘Why piss about with some pretentious project at the Association if you’ve got a chance to make a load of good contacts in the wider world?’

So he had opted for social openness and access to politicians, and the threat inherent in this.

There was a cold draught around his feet. He got up and closed the window.

The reason behind the project was a survey that had shown one in four local authority heads and one in five committee chairs had suffered either violence or the threat of violence in the course of their political activity. The threats were mostly made by individuals, but threats from racist or xenophobic groups were also relatively common. The results of the survey led to the formation of a high-powered group to investigate threats and violence aimed at politicians.

He sat down heavily on his chair, thought about picking up the paper again but decided against it.

The project had no great status within the Association, and several eyebrows had been raised when he’d chosen that one. The task of the group was to promote an open and democratic society and to come up with suggestions for how elected representatives should behave in threatening situations. Amongst other things, they were supposed to develop a training course, and hold regional conferences in association with the Office for Integration and the Committee for Living History.

He and Sophia from the Federation of County Councils were the convenors, and even though the project had only been running for a couple of months he knew he had made the right choice. The support they had received from the Justice Ministry so far had been fantastic. His dream of getting a government job before he was forty no longer seemed impossible.

Suddenly his mobile started to vibrate in his hand again. He answered before it had time to ring.

‘You ought to be here,’ Annika said. ‘I’m driving past the West Checkpoint of the steelworks in Svartöstaden outside Luleå, and it’s so beautiful. I’m opening the window now, can you hear the noise?’

Thomas leaned back and closed his eyes, hearing nothing but the noise of a bad line established by a Swedish-American capitalist.

‘The steelworks?’ he said. ‘I thought you were going to the airbase?’

‘Yep, I’ve been there, but I met a young lad who-’

‘But you’ll make it okay?’

‘Make what?’

He had no answer. In the gap between them he really could hear the noise in the background, some sort of low rumbling. He felt the distance between them like a dead weight.

‘I miss you,’ he said quietly.

‘What did you say?’ she yelled above the noise.

He took a quick, silent breath.

‘How are you, Annika?’ he asked.

‘Really good,’ she replied, too quickly and too firmly. ‘Have you eaten?’

‘It’s in the oven.’

‘Why don’t you do it in the microwave? I put them-’

‘I know,’ he interrupted. ‘Can I call you later? I’m in the middle of things here right now…’

Then he was sitting there again holding his mobile, feeling an irrational anxiety that threatened to turn into anger.

He didn’t like Annika going away, it was as simple as that. She didn’t deal with it well. But when he raised the subject with her she became cold and dismissive. He wanted her here beside him so he could make sure everything was all right, that she was safe and happy.

After that terrible Christmas, once the worst of the attention had died down, everything had seemed pretty good. Annika had been quiet and pale, but okay. She’d spent a lot of time playing with the children, singing and dancing with them, cutting and gluing. She’d spent a lot of time on the new residents’ association, and on a small extension to the kitchen that they could have done now that they’d bought the freehold on the flat. The thought of the bargain they had got, buying the flat for less than half the market price, made her childishly excited, but then she had always been broke. He had tried to regard the purchase more soberly, aware that money came and went. Annika never let him forget that he’d lost his last savings on shares.

He glanced at the oven, wondering if the food was hot yet, but made no move to take it out.

When Annika started work again she seemed to slip out of reach more and more, becoming distant, unknown. She would stop in the middle of a conversation, her mouth open, eyes staring in horror. If he asked what was wrong she would look at him like she’d never seen him before. It gave him goosebumps.

‘Daddy, I can’t get the computer to work.’

‘Try turning it off and on again, then I’ll come and look.’

Suddenly he felt quite powerless. He glanced one last time at the paper, realizing that another day of journalistic effort was about to go straight in the recycling. With limbs heavy as lead he lay the table, threw the children’s dirty overalls in the washing machine, made a salad and showed Kalle how to restart the computer.

Just as they were sitting down to eat, the courier arrived with the brochures they were going to discuss and evaluate the following evening.

While the children chattered and made a mess he read through the advice on how threatened politicians should behave. All the way through, and then once more.

Then he thought about Sophia.

10

Annika switched off the car engine outside the darkened door of the Norrland News. The yellow streetlamps threw an oblique light on the dashboard.

The time she had spent at home had given Thomas space which he had soon made his own. In three months he had got used to total service from her, with the children as accessories; his evenings free for tennis and work meetings, weekends for hunting and hockey trips. Since she had started work again, she was still doing most of the work at home. He criticized her for working, under the pretext that she needed to rest.

In fact, he just wanted to avoid heating up the meals she had prepared, she thought, surprised at how angry the idea made her.

She threw open the car door, picked up her bag and laptop and stepped onto the snowy street.

‘Pekkari?’ she said over the intercom. ‘It’s Bengtzon. There’s something I have to talk to you about.’

She was let in, and felt her way through the dark entrance hall. The night editor met her at the top of the stairs.

‘What’s this about?’

She recoiled from the smell of stale alcohol on his breath, but stood as close as she could and said quietly, ‘Benny may have come across something he shouldn’t have.’

The man’s eyes opened wide, the broken veins evidence of genuine sorrow.

‘F21?’

She shrugged. ‘Not sure yet. I need to check with Suup.’

‘He always goes home at five sharp.’

‘He isn’t dead as well, is he?’ Annika said.

She was shown to the letters-page editor’s room, where she cleared away the neat piles of angry handwritten correspondence on the desk and unpacked her laptop. She switched it on as she called the police station; Inspector Suup had indeed left at precisely 17.00.

‘What’s his first name?’ Annika asked.

The duty officer sounded surprised by his own reply: ‘I don’t actually know.’

She heard him call, ‘Hey, what’s Suup’s name, apart from Suup?’ Muttering, the scraping of chairs.

‘He’s down as L.G. on the files.’

She called directory inquiries from the phone on the desk, only to find that the number was blocked. It had been the same on the Katrineholm Post, too, a subscription to a number service had been too expensive. She pulled the plug out of the back of the phone and connected her laptop instead, changing the settings to get a connection, then went in on the Evening Post’s server.

On Telia’s website she discovered there was no Suup with the initials L.G. in the phonebook for Luleå, Piteå, Boden, Kalix or Älvsbyn. He could hardly commute further than that each day, she reasoned. Instead she went into the national census results, which, thank God, were now online. There was a Suup, Lars-Gunnar, born 1941, on Kronvägen in Luleå. Back to Telia again, Kronvägen in the address box, and voilà! A Suup had two lines at number 19. She signed out, unplugged the lead and put it back in the phone.

No sooner had she done that than her mobile rang, and she put a hand to her forehead.

‘I’m so fucked up,’ she said to Anne Snapphane. ‘Why on earth don’t I call from this phone instead?’

‘Que?’ Anne said.

The noises behind her suggested alcohol and minimalist décor.

‘Where are you?’ Annika asked.

The line crackled and hissed.

‘What?’ Anne said. ‘Hello? Are you in the middle of something?’

Annika spoke slowly and clearly. ‘I’ve uncovered the murder of a reporter. Call me at midnight if you’re still awake.’

She hung up and called the first of Suup’s numbers, but reached a fax machine. She called the second and heard the theme-music of the evening news.

‘So you’re the sort of person who disturbs people at home?’ Inspector Suup said, not sounding particularly upset.

Like Benny Ekland, Annika thought, shutting her eyes as she asked: ‘That Volvo you found in Malmhamnen, was it a V70? Gold?’

The newsreader’s reliable tones filled the line for a few seconds, then the volume of the television was abruptly turned down.

‘Okay, you’ve got me really curious now,’ the inspector said.

‘There’s no leak,’ Annika said. ‘I spoke to a potential witness. Is the information correct?’

‘I can’t comment on that.’

‘Off the record?’

‘Can I switch phones?’

He hung up. Annika waited for an eternity before he picked up again, this time with no television in the back-ground.

‘You might have got the duty officer to read out the details of cars stolen from Bergnäset on Saturday night,’ he said.

‘So it’s correct, then?’

His silence was all the confirmation she needed.

‘Now I’d like you to tell me something,’ he said.

She hesitated, but only for the sake of it. Without the inspector she didn’t have a story.

‘I spoke to someone,’ she said, ‘who says they saw Benny Ekland get run down on Skeppargatan in Svartöstaden. There was a gold-coloured Volvo V70 parked in the entrance to the football pitch, the front facing the road, with a man at the wheel. When Benny Ekland stumbled past the engine started, the car pulled out and drove at Ekland at full speed. My witness says Ekland tried to get out of the way, running from one side of the road to the other, but the car followed him. The collision happened more or less in the middle of the road.’

‘Bloody hell,’ the inspector muttered.

‘It gets worse,’ Annika said. ‘Ekland hit the car twice, and was thrown into the air, landing in the middle of the road. The car stopped, reversed and drove over him again, and then over his head. After driving over his skull the driver stopped – definitely a man – got out of the car and dragged the body up the slope towards the football pitch. There he wiped down the body somehow, then drove off towards – what’s it called? – Sjöfartsgatan, down towards LKAB’s ore terminal. What was the damage to the car?’

‘Front and windscreen,’ Inspector Suup said without hesitation.

‘You must have worked out that this was no ordinary accident. The skull was crushed and his back was broken, all the internal organs mashed up.’

‘Quite right, the results of the post mortem came through this afternoon. So someone saw the whole thing?’

‘The witness wants to stay completely anonymous.’

‘You can’t persuade the person in question to contact us?’

‘I’ve already done what I can, but I’m happy to try again. What do you think?’

‘If the witness information is correct, which it may well be, then we’ll have a premeditated murder on our hands.’

Annika typed the quote directly onto her laptop.

‘Can you think of anything off the top of your head that Benny Ekland wrote that could explain why someone wanted him dead?’

‘Ekland wasn’t afraid of controversy and unpleasantness, so it’s not impossible. But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I speculated like that at this point. If the witness information is correct, and I mean if, then obviously we’d be open to any possible motive.’

‘Are you in charge of the investigation?’

‘No, I’m only the PR guy these days, but I’m the one you need to talk to. The preliminary investigation was allocated to Andersson, in the prosecutor’s office, I think, but she’s been in court all day so I don’t imagine she knows anything about this yet.’

When they had hung up Annika found her way to the newsroom. In a narrow room full of long tables and static electricity she found a group of lethargic editors, all white faces and evasive eyes.

‘We have to talk,’ she told the night editor.

With surprising ease the fat man got up and walked ahead of her through the room, past the sports desk, and opened the door to a small space that functioned as the smoking area.

Annika stopped in the doorway; the stench was awful. The man lit a cigarette and coughed violently.

‘I gave up nine years ago,’ he said, ‘but yesterday morning I started again.’

She took a step forward, leaving the door ajar. The walls closed in around her. She was having difficulty breathing.

‘What’s this about?’ Pekkari said, blowing a sad little plume of smoke towards the ventilation unit.

‘Benny was murdered,’ Annika said, her heart racing. ‘I have a witness who saw how he died. The police have confirmed that the witness’s story matches what they know so far. Do we have to stay in here?’

The editor stared at her like he’d seen a ghost, holding his cigarette motionless, halfway to his mouth.

‘Please?’ Annika said, unable to wait, as she pushed the door open and staggered through it.

She went over to the other corner of the almost empty sports section; one lone reporter looked up anxiously from his large computer screen.

‘Hi,’ Annika said.

‘Hi,’ the man replied, then looked down again.

‘Murdered?’ Pekkari whispered in her ear. ‘You’re kidding?’

‘Not at all. I’ll write the article, and you can publish it in its entirety, but you don’t get to release it to the agencies. We get to do that.’

‘Why would you give away something like that?’

‘Call it solidarity,’ Annika said, concentrating on getting her pulse rate down. ‘Besides, we don’t exactly share the same readers. We’re not competitors, we complement each other.’

‘I’ll get our guy onto it,’ the editor said.

‘No,’ Annika said. ‘My byline. This is my story, but you can publish it.’

He looked at her in astonishment.

‘That’s one I owe you,’ he said.

‘I know,’ Annika said, and went back to her laptop.