Red Wolf

15

The train rumbled hypnotically through the night, rattling monotonously. The man lay in his first-class compartment staring out of the window, trying to make out the line of treetops against the dark starry sky. The pain was pushing through the morphine, making him gasp.

With an effort he took out another tablet from the case under the pillow and swallowed it without water. He felt its effects before it had even hit his stomach, soothing him to peace at last.

As he relaxed, he found himself at one of the vast meetings of his youth, in a huge campsite outside Pajala. Thousands of people on hard wooden benches, the smell of damp wool and sawdust. The men up on the platform made speeches, first one in Finnish, then the other translating into Swedish, the endlessness of their voices, rolling, rising, falling.

With a jerk the train pulled in to a station. He looked out along the platform. Långsele.

Långsele?

Panic hit him hard. Good grief, he was going in the wrong direction! His arms flew up, his head rising from the synthetic pillow, breathless.

Dans quelle direction est Långsele?

South, he thought. It’s south, just above Ånge.

He sank back onto the pillow, trying to ignore his own smell, checking that the duffel bag was still at the end of the bed. He coughed weakly. He heard a door slam, felt a jolt as the train got ready to leave. He looked at his watch: 05.16.

There was no reason to worry. Everything was going as planned. He was on his way, invisible, untouchable, like a flickering shadow. Free to travel in his own thoughts in an unfree world, free to return or disappear.

And he chose to return to the meeting at the campsite, to conjure up images that had lain dusty and rusty, faded with age, but still clear.

One pair of speakers followed the other, the strictly arranged presentation which always began with a reading from the Bible, half in Finnish, half Swedish, then the interpretations, variations, analysis and occasionally the personal confession: I was in trouble, searching throughout my youth, something was lacking in my life and I found my way to Sin, and I found women and drink and stole a watch from a friend, but then I met a fellow believer during my national service and Jesus Christ brought light into my life, because my brother sowed a seed in my heart.

Lying in his compartment, he smiled, listening to the stories, full of pain and angst, jubilant and grateful.

But they never really took off, he interrupted himself. There was never any shouting, never any raised voices. Never any ecstasy.

He recalled the boredom of youth.

Often he had let the voices fade away and drift out of the tent together with the thoughts, hopes and restlessness. The city of tents and caravans on the meadow outside was more appealing, an ocean of possibilities concealed behind horse-carts and Volvos. His sideways glances at unknown girls on the bench in front, in their headscarves and long skirts, his awareness of their warmth and shiny hair.

The awareness that his thoughts and hard penis were sinful.

He was rocked to sleep with the smell of horse manure in his nostrils.

16

Annika was walking through Kronoberg Park breathlessly, her steps crunching in the frost. It was cold, high pressure threatening to bring arctic weather. The tarmac was slippery with ice, the trees smothered in blankets of frost. The grass, yesterday damp and green, was now frozen stiff and swept in silver.

This was as light as it was going to get. The daylight was thin and shadowless. She lifted her head and squinted up at the porcelain-like sky – shades of blue fading to grey, white, pink clouds driven by the north wind high above.

She hurried along, the blades of grass crackling as they were crushed beneath her feet. She approached the Jewish cemetery from the back, near the place where Josefin had famously been found. She stopped by the black iron railing, her glove stroking its curves and stars, frost dusting her shoes like icing sugar.

The cemetery had been renovated a couple of years ago. Fallen, eroded lumps of sandstone had been replaced, the wild shrubbery had been cut back, the trees trimmed. And somehow the magic had vanished, the sense of experiencing a period in time that Annika had always felt there, the sounds of the city encroached in a way that they never did before, the spirits that had owned the place had gone.

Only Josefin’s was left.

She sank to her knees and looked through the railing just as she had done that time so many summers before, that hot summer when the number of wasps broke all records and the election campaign just went on and on. Josefin had been lying there, mouth open in a soundless scream, eyes dull and matt, the young girl with all her dead dreams. There was a rustle in a frozen branch, a siren bounced off the buildings on Hantverkargatan.

He got his comeuppance in the end, Annika thought. Not for what he did to you, but at least he didn’t get away with it.

And Karina Björnlund had gathered enough ammunition to get a ministerial post.

She stretched her legs, looked at the time, then left Josefin with a gentle stroke of the railing. She hurried across Fridhemsplan, the wind hitting her face in Rålambshov Park so that she was fiery-cheeked by the time she reached the entrance of the Evening Post office.

She made it to her aquarium of an office without triggering any tripwires and threw her outdoor clothing in a heap on the couch.

Ragnwald, she thought as her computer whirred into life, forcing herself to concentrate on the present. What does it mean? Who are you?

Once Explorer had started up she Googled the name, only getting a limited number of results. A summary of details about a Folke Ragnwald, died 1963; a genealogical site based in Malta; a Christian Democrat candidate, no indication for which constituency. She read quickly, checked a few more results. A French genealogical site, a German site about royalty, a newsletter about a Danish pop star. She shut down the browser and rang Suup in Luleå instead.

‘We’re a bit tied up at the moment,’ the inspector said. He sounded upset.

‘What’s happened?’

Annika picked up a pen out of reflex, immediately feeling guilty about whatever it was.

‘We don’t know yet,’ the policeman said. ‘Can you call back after lunch, we should know more then?’

Something about his voice struck a chord inside Annika, making her clench all the muscles in her face.

‘It’s Ragnwald,’ she said. ‘It’s something to do with the terrorist.’

‘Not at all. Call back after two. You’ll get nothing out of me now.’ He sounded so surprised by the idea that she didn’t think to challenge his denial.

She looked at her watch; there was no point in pressing him right now, eighteen hours before her deadline. She thanked him and hung up, and laid her notes from their last meeting on the desk in front of her. She needed another cup of coffee before she got going.

She walked along the corridors with her head down, evading people’s gaze, and got two coffees from the machine behind the sports desk. Back at her keyboard, she arranged her material, trying to piece together an image of her terrorist.

The young man from the Torne Valley who travelled south, but eventually came back to Luleå.

She let her hands fall, drank some coffee.

Why would a young man travel south in the sixties?

Work or college, she thought.

Why would he come back?

Because whatever he had done was over and done with.

Why Luleå?

If the place you come from feels too restrictive, but you still want to go home, you’d pick one of the larger towns in the area.

But why the biggest?

He must have lived in a big city. Maybe one with a university. Stockholm, Uppsala, Gothenburg or Lund.

She typed the cities into her computer, then realized her mistake.

The young man need not have stayed in Sweden, he could have worked or studied anywhere.

Although this was long before the EU, she reminded herself.

She let that thread fall, and picked up the next.

Where did he go after that?

ETA? Spain? Why?

Political conviction, she thought, but there was a filter of doubt in front of her computer screen.

The Basque separatists were, of course, one of the few terrorist groups that had actually achieved some of their goals, including democracy and extensive political autonomy for the Basque Country. If ETA hadn’t blown up Franco’s successor in December 1973, Spain’s transition to democracy would have been more difficult; and, as far as she knew, the Basque Country today had its own police and its own tax system, and was well on its way to becoming a tax haven for international business.

But ETA had also, perhaps more than any other group, been afflicted with the self-perpetuating nature of terrorism. After the free elections of 1977 there was a whole generation of middle-aged Basques who had done nothing throughout their adult lives but conduct terrorist activities against the Spanish state. Peaceful daily life became too dull, so they decided the democratic state was as bad as the dictatorship and set about killing again. And the Spanish state took its revenge by creating GAL, the anti-terrorist liberation group…

She needed to read more about ETA, but she knew they were among the least approachable terrorist groups in the world, killers for the sake of killing. As self-appointed representatives for a homeland that had never existed they demanded compensation for injustices that had never been committed.

She wrote ‘read more Björn Kumm’ as a reminder, then went on.

Why Ragnwald? Did the codename have a deeper meaning? Did it symbolize something she ought to know?

She looked the name up in the National Encyclopaedia and found out that it was a combination of Old Icelandic ragn, divine power, and vald, ruler. The ruler with divine power – not a bad alias. Did it actually mean anything, other than delusions of grandeur?

But then what was terrorism, if not that?

She sighed, fighting a wave of tiredness sweeping her eyes. The coffee was cold and tasted disgusting. She went out and poured the contents of the almost full cups down the toilet, stretched her back, blinded by the neon lights.

She looked over at Berit’s desk, but she hadn’t arrived yet.

She shut the door of her aquarium carefully behind her and went back to work.

What about the shoes? The footprints had been common knowledge for years, one of the few pieces of evidence the perpetrators had left, but their size had never been made public. Thirty-six. That couldn’t be anyone but a small woman, or a very young man, actually a boy. But what was most likely? That a twelve-year-old blew up a plane, or that an adult woman did it?

So he probably had a woman with him, she noted.

But who would want to do something like that? Suup hadn’t said anything about a woman. She wrote the question on her notes, but if she had to speculate? Historically, which women had become terrorists? Gudrun Ensslin had been Andreas Baader’s partner. Ulrika Meinhof became world-famous when she freed Baader. Francesca Mambro was convicted of blowing up the railway station in Bologna together with her boyfriend Valerio Fioravanti.

‘Ragnwald’s girlfriend’, she wrote, and summarized: ‘The young man from the Torne Valley went away and worked or studied in a large town down south, then came back to Norrbotten, joined a left-wing group under the name Ragnwald, the ruler with divine power, which suggests a certain megalomania. He got a girlfriend and persuaded her to blow up a fighter-jet. Then he fled the country and carried on as a killer with ETA.’

She sighed as she read through her notes.

If she was going to get any of this in the paper it had to be considerably more articulate and factual. She looked at her watch. It would soon be time to call Suup again.

Miranda rang the doorbell with her usual insistence. Anne Snapphane hurried down the stairs so that the old bastard downstairs wouldn’t go mad, one hand clutching the towel around her, the other holding a towel round her hair.

The door jammed. It always did when it was below freezing.

Her daughter ran to her without a word, and she leaned over and held her tight. From the corner of her eye she saw Mehmet approach from the car with the little girl’s bag, neutral but contained.

‘There are muffins in the kitchen,’ Anne whispered in the girl’s ear, and the child let out a little cry and ran upstairs.

In a moment of defiance and pride she stood up without wrapping the towel around her, not caring if the neighbours saw her. Completely naked, apart from the towel round her hair, she looked Mehmet in the eye and took the little bag. He lowered his gaze.

‘Anne,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to-’

‘You wanted to talk to me,’ she said, forcing her voice to sound calm. ‘I presume it’s about Miranda.’

She turned her back on him, her buttocks dancing in front of his face as she went up the stairs. She went into the bathroom and pulled on a dressing gown, stopping in front of the mirror, trying to see herself through his eyes.

‘Do you want coffee?’ she called, staring into her own eyes.

‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I’m fine. I have to get to work.’

She swallowed, realizing that this was going to be unpleasant. He wanted a quick line of retreat, not a scalding mug of coffee to empty in hurried embarrassment. He was standing at the living-room window, looking down at the neighbour’s garden.

‘What is it?’ she said, as she sat on the sofa.

Mehmet turned round. ‘We’re getting married.’

She felt the arrow hit her without trying to stop it.

‘That has nothing to do with me or Miranda,’ she said, blowing on her coffee.

He sat down opposite her, legs wide apart, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

‘We’re expecting a child,’ he said. ‘Miranda’s going to have a little brother or sister.’

Her head started to spin, and against her instinct she looked down at the floor.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘Congratulations.’

He sighed. ‘Anne, I know how hard this must be for you…’

She looked up, took a deep breath. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want your sympathy. What will it mean, in purely practical terms, for Miranda?’

Mehmet pressed his lips together in that way she knew so well, and she was overcome by a hot, intense longing for the man before her; her heart and groin ached. To her own irritation she let out a little sob.

He reached out a hand to her cheek; she closed her eyes and let him stroke her.

‘I’d like her to live with us,’ Mehmet said, ‘full time. But I won’t fight for it if you don’t want that.’

She forced herself to laugh. ‘You can take most things from me,’ she said, ‘but not my child. Get out.’

‘Anne-’

‘Get out!’ Her voice was cracking with rage.

Their daughter appeared in the doorway, looking from one to the other in surprise. ‘Are you angry?’ she said, a half-eaten muffin in her hand.

Mehmet stood up, strong and lithe as a hunter. He went over to the child and kissed her hair.

‘See you next Friday, darling.’

‘Why is Mummy sad? Have you been horrid to her?’

Anne shut her eyes and heard his steps disappear down the stairs. She waited until the front door had closed before running to the window to watch him go. He walked to the car without looking up, taking out his mobile from his inside pocket and dialling a number. To her, Anne knew. He was calling his fiancée to tell her what had happened, that it was done, that it had been unpleasant, that she had got upset and aggressive. I don’t think she’ll let Miranda go without a fight.

17

Berit Hamrin knocked on her glass door, opening it a crack and sticking her head in.

‘Hungry?’

Annika let her hands drop from the keyboard, and thought for a moment out of duty.

‘Not really.’

Berit opened the door wider and came into the room.

‘You need to eat,’ she said firmly. ‘God, the state in here – how can you work in this mess? You do have somewhere to hang your things, you know.’ Berit hung up Annika’s outdoor clothes. ‘It’s lasagne in the cafeteria today, I’ve already asked for two portions.’

Annika logged out of the system so that no one got the idea of reading her notes or sending false emails from her account.

‘What are you up to today?’ she asked, attempting to distract her colleague from the chaos she had surrounded herself with.

Berit was on temporary secondment from the crime section to the political team ahead of the impending EU elections.

‘Oh, writing up the latest pissing contest,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Nothing’s happening, but people are taking up positions, talking across party boundaries, looking for differences of opinion where there aren’t any.’

Annika laughed, following Berit out into the main office.

‘I can see the headline: The secret EU game, and a low-resolution shot of lights in the window of a government building.’

‘You’ve been working here too long,’ Berit said.

Annika shut the door behind her and headed off towards the canteen. As she followed Berit, the world seemed manageable, safe, the floor stable, no need for any doubts.

The cafeteria was half-empty, the lighting subdued. Most of the light came from the row of windows at the far end of the room. No faces were visible, just dark silhouettes.

They sat at a table overlooking the car park with their steaming plates of microwaved lasagne.

‘What are you working on?’ Berit said, once she’d got to the bottom of the plastic dish.

Annika sliced suspiciously at the layers of pasta.

‘That journalist’s murder,’ she said, ‘and the attack on a plane at F21. The police have a suspect, have had for years.’

Berit raised her eyebrows, catching a piece of meat that was trying to escape from the corner of her mouth, and waved her fork in the air encouragingly.

‘His name’s Ragnwald, someone who fled the Torne Valley for the south, came back and became a terrorist, then went to Spain and joined ETA.’

Berit looked sceptical. ‘And when is this supposed to have happened?’

Annika leaned back and folded her arms. ‘End of the sixties, early seventies.’

‘Hmm,’ Berit said. ‘The delightful age of revolution. There were a lot of people who thought they could liberate the masses through terrorism, and not just in our circle.’

‘Which one was your circle?’

‘The Vietnam Bulletin,’ Berit said, scraping at the oil at the bottom of the dish. ‘That’s how I got started as a journalist; I must have told you?’

Annika checked quickly in her failing memory.

‘Which circles wanted terrorism, then?’

Berit was staring at Annika’s half-eaten dish. ‘Are you done with that?’

Annika nodded. Berit sighed, put down her knife and fork.

‘I’ll get coffee,’ she said, and stood up.

Annika stayed where she was, watching her colleague queue up, her short hair sticking out at the back, radiating patience. She smiled as Berit came gliding back with two cups of coffee and some biscuits.

‘Now you’re spoiling me,’ Annika said.

‘Tell me about your terrorist,’ Berit said.

‘Tell me about the sixties,’ Annika countered.

Berit put the cups carefully on the table and looked sharply at Annika.

‘Okay,’ she said as she sat down and stirred two lumps of sugar into her coffee. ‘It was like this. In nineteen sixty-three there was the official break between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party. The split affected every communist movement around the world, including ours. The Swedish Communist Party split into three groups.’

She waved her left index finger.

‘The right-wing group,’ she said, ‘led by C-H Hermansson. They distanced themselves from both the Stalinists and the Maoists, and ended up with a sort of old-fashioned revisionism that we may as well call Social Democracy. They’re today’s Left Party, with almost ten per cent of our parliamentary seats.’

Berit took a sip of coffee, then raised her middle finger.

‘Then there was the centre,’ she said, ‘led by the chief editor of Northern Lights, Alf Löwenborg, who lined up on the Soviet side.’

She changed fingers.

‘And then there was the left-wing group, led by Nils Holberg, which favoured China.’

‘When did all this happen?’ Annika asked.

‘The Swedish Communist Party broke up after its twenty-first party congress, in May nineteen sixty-seven,’ Berit said. ‘The party changed its name to the Left Party Communists, and the left-wing group broke away to form the Communist Association of Marxist-Leninists. After that things developed quickly. The Vietnam movement, Clarté, the Rs – the revolutionaries – all popped up. In the spring of sixty-eight it culminated with the occupation of the student union and the rebel movement in Uppsala. They were actually the worst of all, the Uppsala rebels. They spent the whole of that spring making threats against us.’

She held her right hand up to her ear like a phone. ‘“If you don’t attend the revolutionary mass-meeting to listen to the grievances of the masses, some comrades will come and fetch you.”’

‘Sounds nice,’ Annika said. ‘And they were Maoists?’

‘Well, the real Maoists were no problem. They always asked: what would the Master do? Would he personally have committed these acts in the name of the revolution? If the answer was no, they didn’t do it. It was the hangers-on who were worst, the ones out for kicks, with their mass psychosis and sect behaviour.’

She looked at her watch. ‘I have to go. The Green Party have promised a statement about Baltic fishing quotas at one o’clock.’

Annika gave a theatrical yawn.

‘Ha ha,’ Berit said, standing up and picking up the sticky plastic tray to take over to the bin. ‘It’s all right for you, writing about your dead journalists. Over in my corner we’re dealing with the really important stuff, like all those murdered cod…’

Annika laughed, then silence fell coldly around her. A whiff of old lasagne wafted up at her, sticky and fatty, and she pushed it away. She became conscious of the colleagues around her, some of them talking quietly, but most of them on their own, bent over newspapers as they clutched their plastic cutlery. Somewhere behind the counter a microwave pinged, and two men from sport were buying eight pastries.

She drank her coffee slowly, one of the many dark silhouettes outlined against the cold light, one of the workers at the newspaper factory.

A function. Not an individual.

Thomas never really liked meetings in the offices of the Federation of County Councils. Even if he was broadly in favour of looking into how far the two associations should be merged, he always felt slightly at a disadvantage when they met on Sophia Grenborg’s home turf. It was mostly small things, like not knowing his way around, using the wrong lift, forgetting the names of the other staff.

Mind you, he didn’t know their names at the Association of Local Councils either, he realized.

He took a deep breath and pushed open the door out onto Hornsgatan, feeling the cold bite at his ears immediately. Entering the Federation of County Councils, he found his way through the labyrinth on the fifth floor, feeling slightly stressed. Sophia came towards him, her blond bob swaying, shiny and straight, as she walked, her jacket unbuttoned, her heels clicking on the wooden floor.

‘Welcome,’ she said, taking his hand in hers, small and soft, warm and dry. ‘The others are already here.’

He started to shrug off his coat, immediately anxious that they had been waiting for him.

She took a step closer, and he noticed her perfume. Light, fresh, sporty.

‘You’re not late,’ she whispered. ‘They’re drinking coffee in the conference room.’

He breathed out, smiled, surprised that she had known what he was thinking.

‘Good,’ he whispered back, looking into her eyes. They were a strikingly bright blue.

‘How do you feel today?’ she whispered back. ‘A bit hungover?’

He grinned. ‘One thing’s for sure,’ he said quietly. ‘You can’t be hungover. You look absolutely great.’

She lowered her eyes, he could have sworn she was blushing, then he heard his own words as an echo, realized their meaning, and started to blush himself.

‘I mean…’ he said, stepping back.

She looked up, took a step forward to keep pace with him, and put her arm on his coat.

‘It’s fine, Thomas,’ she whispered, so close that he could feel her breath.

He looked into her eyes for a few seconds, then turned away, pulling off his scarf and putting his briefcase on a bench, opening it and putting the scarf inside. Wondered if his ears were still bright red.

‘I’ve handed out the brochures,’ she said. ‘I hope that was okay.’

He stiffened slightly, looking down at the pack of brochures he had planned to hand out. Now the whole initiative, which was partly his responsibility, looked like it had come from Sophia and the Federation of County Councils.

He shut his briefcase.

‘Of course,’ he said shortly, feeling his smile stiffen. ‘You can tell your webmaster to get in touch with ours, because we’ve got the content online, and it would make sense if you did too.’

She twisted her fingers nervously and showed him to the conference room.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know.’

Per Cramne, the representative from the Ministry of Justice, stood up as he entered the room, and hurried over to greet him.

‘I really must apologize about yesterday,’ he said. ‘It’s these damn EU elections…’

Thomas put his briefcase on the table and raised both hands. ‘No problem. We had other things to discuss anyway. The Association of Local Councils and the Federation of County Councils have a congress in the spring, we’re discussing a possible merger, and I’m in the planning group, so…’

He realized his mistake too late. Cramne had already glazed over, couldn’t care less about any merger.

‘Is everyone here?’ Cramne said, turning away. ‘Let’s get going then. It is Friday, after all.’

Thomas took out his documents, refusing to look round to see if anyone had witnessed the embarrassing incident.

Cramne began, of course; the Ministry of Justice was always top of the hierarchy. Then Thomas stood up and presented the information they’d put together, specifying the arguments why unknown threats against politicians were a real danger to democracy, outlining the proposed changes.

‘I believe we need to investigate public opinion,’ he concluded. ‘This is a problem that concerns everyone. Not just every politician, but every citizen. We have to make it clear that this is a broader issue. How does society regard such violence and threats of violence against our politicians? What values do we apply to attempts to silence them? And can we change those values with a public information campaign?’

He turned over a sheet of paper, aware that he had the complete attention of the group.

‘I think we should try to instigate a debate in the press,’ he said, ‘try to influence public opinion the old-fashioned way. Articles that show local politicians as heroes for our time, examples of people battling right-wing extremists and anarchists in small towns, but without exaggerating the threat and scaring off people just starting out in politics…’

The decision to set up a research group to look into this, under Thomas’s leadership, was swiftly taken.

Thomas concluded the meeting with an anecdote about a councillor from Jämtland that always got a laugh, then they packed up, the meeting was dissolved, and within minutes the others had all vanished.

It was Friday afternoon, after all.

He was left standing with his papers, sorting his notes as Sophia collected the material the delegates had left behind. He wasn’t sure how to handle the fact that he had ignored her and taken the credit for the whole initiative. The folder was just as much her work as his, as was the discussion of a survey.

‘Well, I have to say,’ Sophia Grenborg said, standing next to him, ‘you were really fantastic today.’

He looked up in surprise, aware that beads of sweat were breaking out on his forehead.

She didn’t seem annoyed, in fact quite the reverse. Her eyes were beaming.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘You really know how to present things and get the right decisions taken,’ she said, taking another step towards him. ‘You got everyone to go along with it, even Justice.’

He looked down in embarrassment.

‘It’s an important project.’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘and it shows that you think so. You really believe in what you’re doing, and it feels so right to work with you on this…’

He took a deep breath, giddy with her perfume.

‘Have a good weekend,’ he said, picking up his briefcase and heading for the door.

18

Annika dialled Inspector Suup’s direct line, after nagging the receptionist to let her have the number, with a sense of foreboding in her stomach. The more she thought about it, the stranger he had seemed during their conversation that morning. Was he regretting letting her have the information about Ragnwald? Had he thought it would be in the next day’s paper? Was he disappointed?

Her hands were damp with sweat as she listened to the phone ring.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked him when he had picked up.

‘Something really bad,’ he said. ‘Linus Gustafsson is dead.’

Her first reaction was relief: the name meant nothing to her. ‘Who?’

‘The witness,’ Suup said, and the shutters went up in her brain, a blinding white light filled her head, guilt consuming all of her other turbulent thoughts. She heard herself gasp.

‘How?’

‘His throat was cut, at home in his bedroom. His mum found him in a pool of blood when she got home this morning.’

She was shaking her head violently. ‘No, it can’t be true,’ she whispered.

‘We believe that the killings are somehow connected, but we don’t know how yet. The only common denominator so far is that the boy was a witness to the first murder. The methods are completely different.’

Annika sat, her right hand over her eyes, feeling the dead weight in her chest pounding, making it hard to breathe.

‘Is this my fault?’ she managed to say.

‘What did you say?’

She cleared her throat. ‘Linus told me that he thought he recognized the killer,’ she said. ‘Did he tell you who he thought it was?’

The inspector was no good at pretending. His surprise was genuine, and extreme. ‘That’s news to me,’ he said. ‘Are you sure?’

She forced herself to think logically and take her responsibility as a journalist.

‘I promised him complete anonymity,’ she mused out loud. ‘Does that apply now that he’s dead?’

‘It doesn’t matter any more. He came to us of his own accord, which releases you from your responsibility,’ the police officer said, and Annika knew he was right. She breathed out.

‘When I spoke to him he said that he might have recognized the murderer, but I didn’t put it in my article. I didn’t think it made sense to highlight that.’

‘You were right not to,’ the policeman said. ‘It’s a shame it wasn’t enough.’

‘Do you think he could have told anyone else?’

‘We haven’t asked, but I’ll get on to it.’

The silence was oppressive; Annika felt the weight of her own conscience blocking their communication.

‘I feel responsible,’ she said.

‘I can understand that,’ the inspector said, ‘but you shouldn’t. Someone else is responsible for this, and we’re going to get him. You can be sure of that.’

She rubbed her eyes, thinking hard.

‘So what are you doing? Going door to door? Looking for fingerprints? Checking for footprints, cars, mopeds?’

‘All that, and a whole lot more.’

‘Talking to friends, teachers, neighbours?’

‘To start with.’

Annika made some notes. Her body was shaking.

‘Have you found anything?’

‘We’re going to be very careful with any information we get.’

Silence again.

‘A leak,’ Annika said. ‘You think you’ve got a leak that revealed the boy’s identity.’

A deep sigh at the other end of the line. ‘There are a few people who might have said something, including the boy himself. He never spoke to the mass media, but at least two of his friends knew he was the witness. His mum told her boss at work. Or what about you?’

‘I haven’t told anyone,’ she said. ‘I’m absolutely certain of that.’

There was silence again. She was an outsider, he didn’t know much about her, what she was all about, a big city journalist who he may never meet again. Could she be responsible?

‘You can trust me,’ she said quietly. ‘Just so you know. How much of this can I write about?’

‘Don’t mention the cause of death, we haven’t released that. You can quote me saying that the murder was extremely violent and that the Luleå police are shocked at its brutality.’

‘Can I mention his mother? The fact that she found him?’

‘Well, that’s logical, so you can say that, but don’t try to contact her. She probably isn’t home anyway; I think my team took her off to the hospital suffering from shock. She had no one apart from the boy. The dad seems to have been a tragic case, one of the gang that sit and drink outside the shopping centre and terrorize the shopkeepers along the main street.’

‘It couldn’t have been him?’

‘He was in a cell, drunk, from five o’clock yesterday afternoon. Taken off to dry out in Boden at seven this morning.’

‘That’s what I call an alibi,’ Annika said. ‘Is there any way I can help? Are you looking for anything in particular that we could draw people’s attention to in the paper?’

‘The last witness with a definite sighting of the boy was the driver of the last bus out to Svartöstaden last night, and that reached the last stop just after ten. The preliminary report says the boy died shortly after that, so if anyone saw him around that time we’d like to hear from them.’

‘You’ve checked out the bus-driver?’

Suup gave a deep sigh. ‘And all the passengers,’ he said. ‘We’re going to get this bastard.’

A thought occurred to her from out of nowhere. ‘In his bedroom, you said? How did the killer get into the flat?’

‘No signs of a break-in.’

Annika thought, forcing herself to outpace the guilt until the burden was out of reach, gone for ever, and she knew she was running needlessly. She was well aware of what little effect adrenalin and will-power have on a guilty conscience.

‘So he might have let him in himself,’ she said. ‘It could have been someone he knew.’

‘Or else the killer went in without knocking, or was waiting for him in the dark. The lock on the flat was pretty hopeless, one good pull and it comes open.’

She made herself think clearly and sensibly, getting lost in the familiarity of the inspector’s tone.

‘What can I write?’ she asked once more. ‘Can I mention this?’

The policeman suddenly sounded very tired. ‘Write whatever you want,’ he said, and hung up.

And Annika was left holding the phone, staring at the list of questions she had written about Ragnwald in her notebook.

She had hardly replaced the receiver in its cradle before it rang again, an internal call that made her jump.

‘Can you come and see me?’ Anders Schyman asked.

She didn’t move, paralysed, and tried to get a grip on reality again. She let her eyes roam over the mess on her desk, the pens and notepads and newspapers and printouts and a mass of other stuff. She took hold of the edge of the desk and squeezed it hard.

It was her fault; oh God, she had persuaded the boy to talk.

She was at least partially responsible for this; her ambition had been decisive in determining the boy’s fate.

I’m so sorry, she thought. Please, forgive me.

And gradually it eased, the pressure on her lungs grew lighter, the cramp in her hands stopped, she could feel her fingers aching.

I have to talk to his mum. Not now, but later.

There was a future, tomorrow was a new day, and there would be others after that, if only she allowed there to be.

If you sit by the river long enough, you will see the bodies of your enemies float by.

She let out a sob, smiling at the Chinese proverb Anne Snapphane often quoted.

You’re not dying, she thought. It just feels like it.

The editor-in-chief was standing by the window with a printout in his hand, staring down at the Russian embassy. Annika glanced at the conference table – at least he had rolled up his sales graphs and diagrams today.

‘Sit down,’ he said, looking back at the room and indicating a chair.

She sat down, feeling extremely uncomfortable.

‘I’ve read your outline about Ragnwald,’ Anders Schyman said. ‘I see what you meant when you said it wasn’t an article, just an idea.’

Annika crossed her arms and legs. Then, realizing she was adopting an extremely defensive position, she tried to relax, straightening her arms and legs instead.

‘And I’m not convinced by the article you wrote about Benny Ekland. It was speculative to an extent that felt rather unfortunate.’

She could no longer resist the temptation to fold her arms.

‘How do you mean?’

Schyman leaned back, his shirt coming loose above his navel.

‘I think you’re applying the term terrorism with pretty broad strokes these days,’ he said. ‘Not all criminals are terrorists, and not all violence is terrorism. We have to keep a bit of distance and relevance in our journalism, not give in to sensationalism and always use the most powerful words. We’ll have to use those words for real events, probably sooner than we imagine…’

She heard herself let out a deep sigh, and threw her arms out. ‘Oh, please,’ she said. ‘Don’t preach to me about press ethics.’

He clenched his jaw so hard that a vein started to throb in his neck.

‘I’m not preaching, I just want to point out-’

‘I thought you supported me in my role as an independent reporter,’ Annika said, leaning forward, feeling the blood rush to her head. ‘That you trusted my judgement about what’s important.’

‘Annika, believe me, I do, but-’

‘There’s something here, I can feel it. This guy had stumbled across something he shouldn’t have.’

‘If you’ll just let me finish, I’d like to stress that I support you completely in your role, but in spite of that I am also legally responsible for what gets published, so I take the decisions about whether or not we should identify people as terrorists. That’s why I’m explaining my position to you, to save you making a load of trips and doing masses of work for nothing.’

Annika had stopped in the middle of a gesture, almost standing, leaning across the editor-in-chief’s desk, mouth open, her face livid. In the silence left by his words the thoughts were racing through her head, trying to find solutions and explanations.

‘It’s Spike,’ she said. ‘Has Spike said something about my trips?’

Schyman sighed and stood up. ‘Not at all. I’m just pointing out that this business with terrorism and terrorists has started to take up a great deal of your time.’

‘Well, perhaps they’ve been fairly important subjects in recent years.’

Annika sat down, and Schyman walked around her chair and over to the conference table.

‘I’d just like you to consider whether there might be some other reason why you should be particularly interested in these things.’

‘What do you mean?’

Schyman sighed again, running his fingers over the tubes containing the graphs.

‘That I’m identifying myself with the terrorists, is that what you mean? That I’ve killed someone myself, and that makes my brain conjure up compulsive killers where there aren’t any? Or do you mean the tunnel, the dynamite the Bomber tied me up to? Has that made me so crazy that I’m seeing Bombers behind every bush?’

Anders Schyman raised both hands in a placatory, soothing way. ‘Annika,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. All I can say is that this story is really peculiar. I can’t run a story about a Ragnwald who might be dead and buried, or a gardener in Moscow, or a diver for the coastguards, or whatever the hell he might be, because this is serious stuff, serious allegations.’

‘Ragnwald is his codename, he isn’t identified anywhere.’

‘Maybe he’s better known as Ragnwald than his real name. We just don’t know, do we?’

She didn’t answer, feeling her teeth grind as she stared into the curtains that hid the embassy compound.

‘Besides,’ he said, ‘common sense suggests that the idea behind your article isn’t very sensible. The Swedish countryside isn’t exactly famous for producing fullblown terrorists, is it?’

She looked at him in astonishment. ‘Are you kidding? Or are you just ignorant? The letter bomb was invented by a man from Toreboda, and the first one blew up in the hands of director Lundin on Hamngatan in August nineteen hundred and four.’

‘Look,’ he said, his tone suggesting that he wanted to placate her. ‘Things are going really well for the paper right now. We can’t put ourselves in a position where we risk the credibility we’ve built up with our readers with some vague accusations of terrorism.’

She leaped up, adrenalin pumping. ‘Credibility? You mean you think people buy the paper for our serious and cutting-edge journalism?’

She let out a short burst of laughter.

‘Anne Nicole Smith on the front page three days in a row last week,’ she said. ‘A boy who masturbated on a reality show on Saturday. The Crown Princess kissing her boyfriend on Sunday. What is this? Can’t you see what you’ve done to this paper? Or are you kidding yourself as well?’

She could see he wanted to explode but was choosing not to.

‘I thought you were happy about the progress the paper’s been making,’ he said, his voice slightly strained.

‘Working with sale signals on the front cover and billboards, isn’t that what you call it? Do you know what I call it? Focusing on crap and shit.’

‘We’re a second paper. We have to push tabloid stories harder than a first paper. Or don’t you want us to get ahead?’

‘Not at any cost. I think it’s a tragedy that you’ve dropped all quality control on this paper.’

‘That’s not true,’ he said in a very controlled tone of voice. She was surprised at how angry he seemed. ‘We are still running bloody serious investigative journalism inside the paper, you know that perfectly well. Be fair.’

‘That doesn’t stop me from regretting the way journalism is going. Along with the other tabloids we’re writing about reality television as if it was the most important and relevant thing going on right now. Now that can’t be right, can it?’

‘You’re forgetting Cain and Abel,’ Schyman said, trying to smile.

‘What about them?’

Annika folded her arms on her chest, waiting.

‘Being seen, the most important thing for human beings, didn’t you once say that? About television, actually? Being in a reality show that’s being filmed and shown on the internet twenty-four hours a day is like being seen by God, all the time.’

‘So who’s God?’ Annika said. ‘The camera lens?’

‘Nope,’ Schyman said. ‘The viewing public. When did any of us last have the chance to be God?’

‘You get to be God every day, at least on the paper,’ Annika said. ‘Just as omnipotent, unjust and full of poor judgements as the real God was with Cain and Abel.’

Now it was Schyman’s turn to be speechless. Annika could hear her accusations echo in the silence, and wished she’d bitten her tongue.

‘I’m just extremely bloody upset that my story about Benny Ekland’s murder was thrown off the front page,’ she said, in an effort to excuse her remarks.

He snorted, shook his head, and walked over to the window.

‘Benny Ekland wasn’t a name,’ Anders Schyman said, towards the glass of the window. ‘And besides, the link to terrorism was extremely vague.’

‘And how much of a name is Paula from Pop Factory?’

‘Paula came second in the competition last spring and released a single that got to number seven in the charts. She’s reported the incident to the police and is prepared to have her name and picture published, even in tears,’ Anders Schyman said, without sounding the slightest bit ashamed.

Annika took two steps towards his back.

‘And why does she do that? Because she’s fallen out of the charts. Surely we ought to think for a moment before we start doing the bidding of two-bit celebrities like her?’

‘Do you know, Annika,’ he said, ‘I can’t be bothered to argue with you about this. I don’t need to justify to you the priorities that are actually responsible for saving this paper from closure.’

‘So why are you doing it, then?’

‘What?’

She gathered her papers, tears bubbling under the surface.

‘I’m going to carry on,’ she said, ‘if you’ve no objection. But I know that you have to prioritize. If Ozzy Osbourne throws another T-bone steak into his neighbour’s garden, I realize that I’m fucked.’

She walked out before he could see her tears of rage.

19

They were sitting in front of the television, two glasses of wine in front of them. Annika was staring at the flickering picture without registering it. The children were asleep, the dishwasher was rattling away in the kitchen, the vacuum cleaner was waiting for her out in the hall. She felt completely paralysed, staring at a man walking to and fro in the foyer of a hotel, as the day, the week, hammered against the inside of her skull, heavy pressure weighing on her chest.

Her mind drifted to that boy, Linus, who had been so sweet with his spiky hair, so sensitive and hesitant… She closed her eyes and saw his eyes, intelligent, watchful. Schyman’s dry voice echoed through her head, Benny Ekland wasn’t a name… I don’t need to justify myself to you.

Thomas suddenly laughed out loud, making Annika jump.

‘What is it?’

‘He’s so fucking brilliant.’

‘Who?’

Her husband stared at her as though she was a bit slow.

‘John Cleese, of course,’ he said, waving his hand towards the television. ‘Fawlty Towers.’

He looked away from her, concentrating on the television again, leaning forward and taking a sip of wine, smacking his lips appreciatively.

‘By the way,’ he said, ‘did you drink up my Villa Puccini?’

She shut her eyes for a moment, then glanced at him.

‘What do you mean, your?’

He looked at her in surprise.

‘What’s up with you? I just asked if you’d drunk my wine, I was thinking of opening it tomorrow.’

She got up.

‘I’m going to bed.’

‘What is it now?’

He threw out his arms as he sat in the sofa, she turned her back on him and sailed out towards the hall.

‘Anki, for God’s sake. Come here. I love you. Come and sit with me.’

She stopped in the doorway. He got up, walked over to her, wrapped his arms round her shoulders. She felt his heavy arms on her and around her, one hand on each breast.

‘Annika,’ he whispered, ‘come on. You haven’t touched your wine.’

She couldn’t help letting out a tearful sob.

‘Do you want to know what I did at work today?’ he said enthusiastically, pulling her back to the sofa again, pressing her down and sitting beside her, holding her to him. She ended up with her nose in his armpit, it smelled of deodorant and washing powder.

‘What?’ she muttered into his ribs.

‘I gave a bloody good presentation of the project for the whole working group.’

She sat still, waiting, expecting him to go on.

‘What about you?’ he said eventually.

‘Nothing special,’ she whispered.