Red Wolf

27

The news boards shrieked out their bright yellow messages about serial killers and police hunts all the way along Fleminggatan, standing out like sunflowers against an iron-grey lawn in the morning light. Annika saw them flash past from the window of the bus and felt the same strange effect as usual – a fascination at having put something into the world that goes on and lives its own life. Her articles could reach hundreds of thousands of people whom she would never meet, her words could generate emotions and reactions that she would never know about.

The journey to work passed quickly, accompanied by the screaming sunflowers.

In the newspaper’s lobby, a whole wall was papered each morning with that day’s newsbills, forming an entire enthusiastic choir.

Up in the newsroom she noted a change in temperature as she sailed out. Her lowered head was met with reassuringly warm glances where she usually encountered blocks of ice. She was back on track, dominating that day’s paper, someone to be reckoned with. All the old stuff was forgotten because things were happening again, nineteen hours to deadline and she had the picture byline on page six.

She turned her back on her colleagues’ ingratiating glances and pushed the glass door of her office shut behind her with a bang.

Göran Nilsson, she thought, throwing off her outdoor clothes, frowning with tiredness. Born 1948 in Sattajärvi, emigrated, professional killer since 1969. No point looking him up on national databases. He would have been erased from the National Population Address Register decades ago.

She drummed her fingers in irritation as her computer slowly started up, then Googled ‘göran nilsson’ and got several hundred results.

There were so many Göran Nilssons in the world. She searched through the results and then turned instead to the Yellow Pages website to see how common the name really was, trying different districts at random. There were 73 in Blekinge alone, 55 in Borås, 205 in Stockholm and 46 in Norrbotten. Several thousand in the whole country, in other words.

She had to narrow the search somehow, add another word to the terms.

‘göran nilsson sattajärvi’. No results.

The letters, she thought. Maoism or left-wing groups.

Bingo. Masses of hits, like Kristina Nilsson, Mao Zedong, Göran Andersson, all in the same result.

Then she tried to find pictures instead, ‘göran nilsson mao’.

Four results, small squares on the screen that she squinted at, leaning right forward. Two were logos for something she didn’t investigate further, one cultural revolutionary portrait of the Master himself on someone’s homepage, and finally a black-and-white picture of some young people in dated outfits. She looked closer, reading the description, clicked on the link and reached a homepage that someone had set up about their youth in Uppsala. There was a caption that put the picture in context.

After the establishment of the fundamental 9 April Declaration, Mats Andersson, Fredrik Svensson, Hans Larsson and Göran Nilsson were prepared to bravely mobilize the masses in the name of the Master.

She read the text twice, surprised at the slightly ridiculous religiosity it suggested. Then she stared at the young man on the far right, his shoulder hidden behind the man next to him, short hair, nondescript features, evidently not that tall. Dark eyes that were staring at a point to the left of the photographer.

She clicked back to the front page of the site and discovered that there were more photographs from Uppsala on the server, several from various demonstrations, but mostly from parties of one sort or another. She looked through all of them, but the dark young man named Göran Nilsson didn’t appear on any of the others.

Could it be him? Could he really have been an identifiable activist in the sixties, in which case he might well appear in various media from those days?

Archives like that were never available digitally; it was all envelopes of pictures and cuttings.

Her newspaper had the largest archive in the country. She grabbed the phone and asked the archivists to check if they had anything on a Göran Nilsson in Maoist groups at the end of the sixties. The woman who took her call showed little enthusiasm.

‘When do you need it?’

‘Yesterday,’ Annika said. ‘It’s urgent.’

‘When isn’t it?’

‘I’m sitting here waiting and can’t do anything until I hear from you.’

An almost inaudible sigh on the line. ‘I’ll do a quick check and see if I can find him in his own right. Reading through everything that was published on Maoism would take several weeks.’

Annika stood and looked out over the newsroom until she got an answer.

‘Sorry. No Göran Nilsson described as a Maoist. We’ve got a couple of hundred others though.’

‘Thanks for checking so quickly,’ Annika said.

What other archives were there from that period, in the places where Maoists were active? The university cities, she thought. The Competitor existed then, but there was no point in calling them. Upsala Nya Tidning? She had no contact there. Was there a newspaper in Lund?

She scratched her head in irritation.

What about Luleå?

She had picked up the phone and dialled the Norrland News reception before even realizing she was doing it.

‘Hans Blomberg was off sick yesterday, I don’t know if he’ll be in today,’ the receptionist said, ready to disconnect her.

Annika suddenly felt an immediate and inexplicable fear. Good God, surely nothing could have happened to him?

‘Why? Is it serious?’

The receptionist sighed, as if she were dealing with someone who was a bit slow. ‘Burned out, like everyone else. Personally I think they’re just lazy.’

Annika started. ‘You’re not serious?’ she said

‘Have you thought that all these people started getting burned out when we joined the EU? All the shit coming over our borders comes from the EU, people, toxins, burn-out. And to think I voted yes. Fooled, that’s what we were.’

‘Is Hans Blomberg often ill?’

‘He only works part time now, got a disability pension a while back. Often he’s not even here on the days he’s meant to be.’

Annika bit her lip. She had to get into the Norrland News archive as soon as possible.

‘Can you ask him to call me when he comes in?’ She left her name and number.

‘If he comes in,’ the receptionist said.

Göran Nilsson, she thought as she hung up and stared at the young man on her computer screen. Is that you, Göran?

The coffee machine had been repaired and the drinks were hotter than ever. She took her two cups into her room, letting the caffeine warm her brain.

Her eyes were stinging from lack of sleep. She had lain in bed with her eyes closed for hours while Thomas twisted and turned, moaning and scratching. The death of the local councillor had really shaken him.

She shook off her tiredness and carried on searching, typing in ‘Sattajärvi’, and reached a site about a building project at the end of the nineties.

There was a map. She leaned towards the screen to find the village and could just make out the tiny letters spelling out the names in the surrounding area: Roukuvaara, Ohtanajärvi, Kompeluslehto.

Not just another language, she thought. Another country, frozen solid, stretching up across the tundra above the Arctic Circle.

She leaned back.

What was it like growing up north of the Arctic Circle in the fifties, in a family where the father was a religious leader in a strict and weird belief system?

Annika knew the Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller had found that a striking number of West German terrorists were the children of Protestant ministers. Miller saw a connection: the terrorist’s violence was a rebellion against a strict religious upbringing. The same could easily be true of Sweden and Læstadianism, the religious movement of Northern Sweden.

Annika rubbed her eyes. At that moment she caught sight of Berit hurrying past. She forced her mind to clear and pulled herself up out of her chair.

‘Have you got a minute?’ she called from her door.

Berit took off her hat and gloves and folded her scarf. ‘I’m thinking of going to lunch early today. Do you want to come?’

Annika logged out of the system, fished her purse out of her bag, and discovered she was out of lunch vouchers.

‘Do we have to go down to the canteen?’ she said, looking round, suspicious of the newfound warmth.

Berit hung up her coat on a hanger, brushing the garment’s shoulders with her hand.

‘We could go out if you like, but I did go past the Seven Rats, and it looked pretty empty. They’ve got stir-fried chicken with cashew nuts downstairs.’

Annika bit the nail of her left index finger, considering the offer, then nodded.

‘What have you been out doing?’ she asked as they went down the stairs.

‘Rumours about a government reshuffle,’ Berit said, puffing her hair where it had been squashed by her hat. ‘The Prime Minister hasn’t got long before the EU elections, and if he’s going to rearrange his ministers he has to do it now.’

‘And? Who’s likely to go this time?’ Annika said, picking up an orange plastic tray in the canteen.

‘Well, Björnlund, for a start,’ Berit said. ‘She’s the worst Culture Minister we’ve ever had. She hasn’t come up with a single proposal in nine years. There are rumours that Christer Lundgren is on his way back from exile at Swedish Steel in Luleå.’ Berit opened a bottle of low-alcohol beer.

‘Really?’

‘Well, he never left the management committee, so a ministerial post was probably always in the pipeline.’

Annika nodded. Several years ago she had told Berit her thoughts about Christer Lundgren’s resignation, showing her the documents and travel receipts that proved that the Trade Minister hadn’t even been in Stockholm the night Josefin Liljeberg was killed. He had been meeting someone in Tallinn in Estonia, a meeting that was so controversial that he would rather accept a murder charge than reveal who he had met. There was only one explanation, Annika and Berit had agreed: Christer Lundgren was sacrificing himself for his party. Who he met in Tallinn and what they discussed could never be revealed. And she had told Karina Björnlund.

She had made the mistake of trying to get a comment from Christer Lundgren by telling the whole story to his press secretary. She never got a reply. Instead, Karina Björnlund had suddenly become a cabinet minister.

‘My stupid question paved the way for our Minister of Culture,’ Annika said.

‘Probably,’ Berit said.

‘Which means that it’s really my fault that Sweden’s got such useless cultural policies, doesn’t it?’

‘Quite right,’ Berit said. ‘What did you really want to see me about?’ Berit leaned back in her seat.

‘I’m after your past,’ Annika said. ‘What was the 9 April Declaration?’

Berit chewed a mouthful of food, a thoughtful look in her eyes, then shook her head. ‘Nope, no idea. Why do you ask?’

Annika drank the last of her water.

‘I saw it in the caption to a picture on the net, some lads in the sixties who were going to mobilize the masses in the name of Chairman Mao.’

Berit stopped chewing and stared at her. ‘Sounds like the Uppsala Rebels.’ She put down her knife and fork, ran her tongue over her teeth, and nodded to herself. ‘Yes, that fits,’ she said. ‘They made some sort of declaration in the spring of sixty-eight. I can’t swear that it was April ninth, but they were certainly extremely active that spring.’

She laughed and shook her head, then picked up her knife and fork again and went on eating.

‘What?’ Annika said. ‘Tell me!’

Berit sighed and smiled. ‘I told you how they would phone and make threats to us at the Vietnam Bulletin?’ she said. ‘The Uppsala Rebels were proper little idiots. Every day they held marathon meetings, in various locations. They would start at one in the afternoon and carry on till long after midnight. A friend of mine went along once, said there was very little politics involved – he described it as more of a hallelujah orgy.’

‘A revivalist meeting?’

Berit took another mouthful, some water, and swallowed.

‘That’s what they reminded some people of, yes. Everyone who attended was a committed Maoist. They stood up one by one and bore witness to the way Mao’s thoughts had been like a spiritual atom bomb for them. After every speaker there was wild applause. Every now and then there’d be a break, and they’d have sandwiches and beer, then they’d carry on with a new round of personal statements.’

‘Like what?’ Annika said. ‘What did they say?’

‘They quoted the Master. Anyone trying to formulate their own phrases was immediately accused of bourgeois use of language. The only exception was “Death to the fascists in the Communist Association of Marxist-Leninists”.’

Annika leaned back in her chair, picking out a cashew nut from under a lettuce leaf and popping it in her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully. ‘But surely they were communists as well?’

‘Oh yes,’ Berit said, wiping her chin with the napkin. ‘But nothing upset the rebels more than those who almost thought like them. Torbjörn Säfve, who wrote a brilliant book about the rebel movement, called it “paranoid discontent”. The sort of posters people put up on their walls was a big deal for them. If anyone had a poster of Lenin that was bigger than the picture of Mao, that was regarded as counterrevolutionary. If the top edge of a picture of Mao was lower than the top edge of a picture of Lenin or Marx, that was enough for someone to be accused of a lack of conviction.’

‘I don’t suppose you knew an active rebel by the name of Göran Nilsson?’ Annika asked, looking expectantly at Berit.

Her colleague reached for a toothpick and pulled off the plastic. ‘Not that I can recall. Should I?’

Annika sighed and shook her head.

‘Have you tried the archive?’ Berit asked.

‘Nothing.’

Berit frowned in concentration.

‘The first of May that year, the rebels marched through Uppsala in a big, organized demonstration. As far as I remember, all the big papers covered it. Maybe he was involved?’

Annika got up, her tray in one hand and her purse in the other.

‘I’ll check right now,’ she said. ‘Are you coming?’

‘Why not?’ Berit said.

They went out of the canteen’s back door and took the emergency staircase to the second floor, then went through a narrow corridor to the huge text and picture archive. Everything ever printed in the Evening Post and Fine Morning News in the past hundred and fifty years was stored here.

‘The files are at the back on the left,’ Berit said.

They found the morning papers from May 1968 after a minute or so. Annika pulled down the bound bundle from the top shelf, covering herself in dust and dirt. She coughed and pulled a face.

2 May 1968: the front page was full of the rebels’ demonstration through Uppsala the day before. Annika frowned and looked more closely.

‘Are these your revolutionary rebels?’ she said in disbelief. ‘They look like any other middle-class kids, the whole lot of them.’

Berit ran her hand over the yellowing newspaper, a rustling sound beneath her dry fingertip, her middle finger stopping on the cropped head of the leader of the march.

‘That was a conscious decision,’ she said, her voice distant. ‘They were supposed to look like ordinary people as much as possible. They tried to agree on a prototype for the highly industrialized worker, but I don’t think that ever happened. But they did agree on a smart jacket and white shirt. They were really weird in Uppsala.’

She leaned back against the bookcase, folded her arms and looked blankly up at the ceiling.

‘A general strike broke out all over France in the first week of May, nineteen sixty-eight,’ Berit said. ‘One million demonstrated in Paris against the capitalist state. The rebels wanted to show solidarity with their French comrades and organized a revolutionary meeting on the Castle Hill in Uppsala one Friday evening. A gang of us from the Bulletin went along, it was really awful.’

She shook her head and looked down at the floor. ‘There were a lot of people there, at least three hundred, and the rebels made the mistake of carrying on like they usually did at their own séances, with readings from their holy scriptures. Most of the audience were just ordinary people, and they reacted as you’d imagine, started booing and laughing.’

Annika was absorbed in the story and took a step closer. ‘What scriptures?’

Berit looked up. ‘Readings from Mao, of course,’ she said, ‘Lin Biao’s pamphlet, Long Live the Victory of the People’s War!, the Chinese Communist Party’s Sixteen Points for cultural revolution… The rebels lost all their inhibitions at that meeting, and when the masses failed to support them they fell back on their usual tactics – savage, rabid diatribes.’ She shook her head at the memory.

‘One direct consequence of that meeting was that ordinary left-wing organizations were no longer allowed to sell The Spark and the Vietnam Bulletin in workplaces. Can you see your Göran?’

‘I’m going to stay and read for a while,’ Annika said, pulling over a rickety chair.

‘Well, you know where I am if you need me,’ Berit said, and left her among the paper and dust.

28

The telephone rang, making Anne start. She quickly pushed the bottle back in the drawer and locked it before she picked up the receiver.

‘What did you do to Sylvia yesterday?’ Mehmet’s voice was treacherously smooth, but Anne knew him, knew there was lava and sulphur bubbling beneath the calm surface.

‘Surely the real question is, what the hell was she doing at my daughter’s nursery?’ Anne said, as the world shattered into tiny pieces. Anger and despair turned the sky outside black.

‘Can’t we at least behave like adults?’ Mehmet said, the temperature of his voice rising.

‘And which particular adult plan had you worked out yesterday? That I’d get to the nursery and find that Miranda had disappeared? What was I supposed to think? That Miranda had left me because she’d rather be with Sylvia? That she’d been kidnapped?’

‘Now you’re just being ridiculous.’ He was no longer able to conceal his anger.

‘Ridiculous?’ Anne screamed down the phone, standing up. ‘Ridiculous? What the hell are you up to with your cosy fucking nuclear family? First you come round and say you and your new fuck want custody of my daughter, then she tries to steal her from nursery, what the hell are you up to? Are you trying to terrorize me?’

‘Calm down,’ Mehmet said, and the phone went ice-cold, the heated anger exchanged for hatred, the chill striking her ear, making her stiffen.

‘Go to hell,’ she said, and hung up.

She stood there, staring at the phone. He called her straight back.

‘So now Miranda’s yours alone? What happened to all your fine ideals about mutual responsibility? Your high-flown theories about shared parenting, that the child should belong to the collective and not the individual?’

Anne Snapphane sank onto her chair again. She had never imagined she could be sucked into such a stinking swamp of bitterness and ill-will and envy, the place where below-the-belt blows come from. And she couldn’t help it, she was there already, the quicksand had her, and if she struggled she would only sink to the bottom even faster.

‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘Who betrayed who? Who left who? Who’s trying to mess things up? It bloody well isn’t me.’

‘Sylvia spent the whole evening crying. She was inconsolable,’ Mehmet said, his voice sounding thick and tearful in a way that made Anne furious.

‘Good grief,’ she shouted. ‘It’s hardly my fault she’s got bad nerves!’

Mehmet paused for breath, gathering his larynx for a full-frontal assault.

‘Sylvia said that you had destroyed her, and there’s something you need to know, Anne: if you ruin things for my family, I won’t be responsible for my actions.’

Anne felt the air being squeezed out of her lungs, all the oxygen disappearing from her brain.

‘Are you threatening me?’ she said. ‘Are you mad? Have you really sunk that low?’

The distance on the line grew, rolling round and round the swamp, and when he came back on the line he was light-years away.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘if that’s how you want it.’

And then it was silent, gone, the dialogue broken, and all around her everything was bubbling and frothing, and Anne leaned over her desk and wept.

Annika was getting more and more restless as she climbed the stairs back to the newsroom. Her search through the old editions had given her nothing but dirty hands and dusty jeans. The political climate of the time had not been consciously addressed in the contemporary media. Every day was just a new headline, then as now, with adverts to sell and stories to write and police reports to check.

The layout and print quality of newspapers in the sixties was terrible, scratchy fonts and badly reproduced pictures. She was glad she hadn’t been working then.

But every age has its own ideals, she thought as she headed towards her glass room. You live in an age just as much as you do in a place, and the sixties wouldn’t have suited her.

Did the twenty-first century, though?

She heard the phone start to ring and lengthened her strides.

‘I heard you were trying to get hold of me,’ said Hans Blomberg, the archivist of the Norrland News.

‘Oh, I’m glad you called,’ Annika said, pulling the door shut behind her. ‘How are you?’

A brief moment of surprise. ‘Why do you ask?’

She sat down on her chair, surprised in turn that he sounded so nonplussed.

‘The receptionist said you were ill, I was worried.’

‘Ah, yes, the tenderness of women,’ Hans Blomberg said, sounding as Annika remembered him, and she had to smile, picturing him sitting there in his cardigan next to his battered desk with the noticeboard above it, the child’s drawing, the sign telling him to hold out until retirement.

‘Nothing serious, I hope?’ Annika stretched back in her chair.

‘No, no,’ the archivist said, ‘just the usual. I’m past my sell-by date, but I’m probably okay in the fridge for a few more days before they throw me out.’

Her smile faded as he spoke. The tone was cheerful but his frustration was obvious.

‘Ha,’ Annika said brightly, choosing to ignore the bitterness. ‘To me you’re like a vintage wine.’

‘Oh, it takes a Stockholm girl to appreciate a real man. What can I help you with, young lady?’

‘A general question of an even older vintage,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to find information about a young man from Sattajärvi who lived in Luleå at the end of the sixties, probably worked for the Church. His name’s Göran Nilsson.’

‘Is he dead?’ Hans Blomberg said, his pen scratching in the background.

‘I don’t think so,’ Annika said.

‘So we’ll leave the dear departed alone, then. What do you want to know?’

‘Anything. If he won a jitterbug competition, demonstrated against imperialism, robbed a bank, got married.’

‘Göran Nilsson? You couldn’t have picked a more common name, then?’

‘I’ve looked everywhere but haven’t come up with a thing,’ Annika said.

The archivist groaned loudly. Annika could see him gripping the desk and heaving himself out of his chair.

‘This might take a few minutes,’ he said, and that was the understatement of the day.

Annika had time to look through a few websites, read about all the detached houses for sale in the Stockholm region, and fall in love with a beautiful, newly built house on Vinterviksvägen in Djursholm for a measly 6.9 million. She went to get some coffee and spoke to Berit, then tried to ring Thomas’s mobile and left a message for Anne Snapphane before there was a noise on the line again.

‘Well, I’ve looked for easier things,’ he said with a deep sigh. ‘Have you any idea how many Göran Nilssons there are in the archive?’

‘Seventy-two and a half,’ Annika said.

‘Exactly right,’ Hans Blomberg said. ‘And the only one from Sattajärvi I could find was in the wedding announcements.’

Annika raised her eyebrows, feeling her mood slump.

‘The wedding announcements? What, the kind of thing ministers did in church when people got married back in the eighteen hundreds?’

‘Well,’ Hans Blomberg said, ‘it was actually obligatory until nineteen seventy-three, but you’re right about the church connection. The banns had to be read in church for three Sundays in a row before a wedding, to keep everyone happy.’

‘So why did they put it in the paper?’

Hans Blomberg thought for a moment. ‘That’s just how it was in those days, there was a special column. The cutting is from the twenty-ninth of September nineteen sixty-nine; do you want me to read it out?’

‘Yes, please,’ Annika said.

‘Parish assistant Göran Nilsson, born in Sattajärvi, now of Luleå, and student Karina Björnlund, born and living in Karlsvik. The wedding will take place in Luleå City Hall, Friday twenty November at two p.m.’

Her pen raced across the notepad as she tried to keep up with him, feeling the goosebumps prickle. She had difficulty breathing. Good God. Bloody hell, this is impossible!

She forced herself not to get too excited, not yet; she couldn’t be sure until she checked.

‘Well, goodness,’ Annika said hoarsely. ‘Thanks, thanks a lot. You’re a vintage champagne.’

‘Whenever, my dear, just give me a call.’

They hung up and Annika had to stand up. Yes! Her mind was racing, the rush of blood pumping in her ears. She ran out into the newsroom with her heart pounding, but somewhere near the sports desk she gathered her senses and realized that she actually didn’t have anything yet. She got a cup of coffee from the machine and hurried over to Berit.

‘Where’s the Minister of Culture from?’ she asked.

Berit looked up from her screen, glasses on the tip of her nose. ‘Norrbotten,’ she said. ‘Luleå, I think.’

‘Not from somewhere called Karlsvik?’

Berit took off her glasses and lowered her hands to her lap.

‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘Where does she live now?’

‘A suburb, north of the city somewhere.’

‘Married?’

‘Living with someone,’ Berit said, ‘no children. What are you after?’

Annika rocked back and forth on her heels, shaking the noise from her head.

‘Just information,’ she said, ‘an old wedding announcement I need to check.’

‘A wedding announcement?’ Berit echoed as Annika walked off without explaining.

Back in her office Annika sat down at her screen and waited for her pulse to slow down. Then she raised her hands and let them slowly uncover the truth.

She started with the government site, and downloaded a PDF file about the head of the Ministry of Culture. It had a picture of Karina Björnlund giving a crooked smile, and information about her areas of responsibility: cultural heritage, art, the printed word, radio and television, faith communities.

In the personal section of the file it said that she was born in 1951 and raised in Luleå, and now lived in Knivsta with her partner.

Nothing about Karlsvik, Annika thought, and clicked on to an information website.

She looked up Karina Björnlund Knivsta on the census and found one match, a woman born in 1951. She clicked on background information and got the name of the parish she was born in.

Lower Luleå.

She bit the inside of her cheek, her palms were itching, she needed to look deeper. She went onto Google again, and did a general search for ‘karlsvik and lower luleå’: nineteen results. The top one was the history of a saw-fitter, an Olof Falck from Hälleström (1758-1830) in what was now the parish of Norrfjärden in Piteå council district. Annika did a search within that page and discovered that one of the saw-fitter’s descendants, a Beda Markström, born 1885, had settled in Karlsvik in the parish of Lower Luleå.

She searched for a map and found it.

Karlsvik was a small community just outside Luleå, on the other side of the river.

She leaned back, letting the information sink in. It was making her scalp itch, her mouth dry, her fingers twitch. She jotted the main points in her notebook, then dialled the editor-in-chief’s internal number.

‘Have you got a few minutes?’

29

The air in the conference room on the seventh floor of the Federation of County Councils was sour with stale oxygen. Coffee fumes and old nicotine breath mixed with the sweat of middle-aged men in wool jackets. Thomas wiped his brow. Unconsciously he slid a finger under the knot of his tie and pulled it open to let in more air.

This was the conference group’s first official meeting, which meant that the hierarchies and structures had not settled in yet. The mood of back-slapping had slid into territorial scent-marking the longer the meeting went on. It would take at least one more marathon meeting before they could get anything sensible done.

The congress of the Federation of County Councils and the Association of Local Councils at Norrköping in June was due to consider one very large and very serious question. The two groups would each hold their own individual conference but with several common sessions. The main question was whether they should merge. The common and overriding theme of the congress was ‘the citizen and the future’.

Thomas opened his eyes wide, staring at the congress timetable.

He couldn’t escape. Sophia was with him everywhere. Now she was there between the lines of the committee’s proposals for long-term programmes, her heels clicking through the documentation about collaboration and the congressional information sent out to members of the Federation of County Councils.

Thomas leaned back, listening to the director of communication give a long list of directives, and let his eyes roam across the participants.

Sophia in a pin-striped suit and silk blouse with sparkling teeth and apple hair over by the window. Sophia in her lacy bra and parted lips leaning against the flip-chart. Sophia with no underwear on riding the overhead projector.

He cleared his throat and shook his head, forcing his brain back to reality.

At the far end of the table sat the information director, who was also chair of the project group, and one of those responsible for factual content. The pair responsible for organization and administration poured more coffee and picked at the rapidly hardening pastries. The other participants had gathered near the window, where they sat with their jackets pressed hard into the backs of their chairs, trying to look as though they weren’t about to yawn.

His reality. Sophia’s reality.

What was Annika doing right now? What did he know about her reality?

Without him understanding how it happened, or what had been said, the meeting broke up to the scrape of chairs and relieved voices. He pulled himself together, and, without looking up, gathered his documents together.

‘Samuelsson,’ said a voice above him, and he looked up quickly. ‘How’s the collaboration with the Federation of County Councils going?’

Thomas stood up and shook the information director by the hand, feeling his brain solidify and his words dry up. What the hell was he supposed to say to that?

‘Oh,’ he said, gulping audibly, ‘it’s going pretty well.’

‘No real areas of conflict?’

He pulled his hand away to hide the fact that he was breaking into a sweat.

‘As long as we’re working towards the same goal, and have a good number of independent players in the project, it’s working fairly well,’ he said, wondering exactly what he meant by that.

‘That Sophia Grenborg, what’s she like?’

The question forced the last oxygen from his lungs; he opened his mouth but was unable to breathe.

‘Oh, you know, fine,’ he heard himself say. ‘A bit dull. Upper-class, has never had any real setbacks in life…’

The information director looked at him in surprise. ‘I meant what’s she like to work with. Is she pressing the Federation’s interests at our expense?’

To his embarrassment, Thomas could feel himself blushing, what a stupid mistake.

‘It’s okay as long as we don’t let our guard down,’ he said. ‘We can’t let them get the upper hand, so there’s a certain amount of positioning going on in advance of the congress, if I can put it like that…’

The information director nodded in concentration. ‘I understand. Listen, could you summarize your experiences, partly within your current area of focus, but particularly with regard to the regional issue, as soon as possible?’

‘Of course,’ Thomas said, straightening his tie. ‘Just tell me what you want and I’ll get down to it.’

The information director boxed Thomas lightly on his left shoulder. ‘That’s what I like to hear,’ he said, and glided out of the room.

The room emptied of people, leaving Thomas closing his briefcase. How was the collaboration with the Federation of County Councils going? Sophia Grenborg, what was she really like?

Thomas turned his back on the thought, picked up his briefcase and headed sternly towards the lifts.

The corridor outside his room was silent and gloomy; the structural pattern of the walls emphasized and warped by the lamps spreading light in fountain-shaped shadows. He hurried into his office, shut the door and sank down at the desk.

He couldn’t carry on like this. Why had he let things get this far? Everything he had struggled for for years was at risk; the relationships he had built up with his family and his employers would be worthless if he was discovered to be sharing a bed with the Federation of County Councils. His eyes fixed on the picture of Annika and the children that he had put in a silver frame on the desk, a photograph he had taken last summer at his aunt’s seventieth birthday party. The picture didn’t do them justice. The children were dressed up and slightly stiff, Annika was in a knee-length dress that flowed and softened her sharp-edged body. She had plaited her hair so that it hung quiet and controlled, like a whip, down her back.

‘That says a lot about how you’d like other people to see us,’ Annika had said when she saw which picture he had chosen to frame.

He hadn’t responded, had actively chosen not to engage in yet another discussion that would never lead anywhere. It was important to him how he was perceived by other people; that was true. Ignoring the impression you made was both irresponsible and stupid. Annika thought the exact opposite.

‘You can’t be loved by everyone,’ she would say. ‘It’s better to take a stand for what you believe than to try to please everyone.’

He ran a finger over the hard, dull metal frame, his nail lingering over Annika’s curved breasts.

An insistent internal call made him jump.

‘You have a visitor in reception, Sophia Grenborg from the Federation of County Councils. Do you want to come down and fetch her?’

He felt the sweat break out on his brow and under his arms.

‘No,’ he said. ‘She knows the way. You can let her come up.’

He put down the receiver, got up from his chair and crossed the floor, opening the door slightly and looking around the room as if he had never seen it before. He decided to lean against the desk, and crossed his arms and legs as his listened hard for noises out on the stairs. He could only hear his own heart thumping, and struggled to identify his feelings, but found only bottomless confusion.

He didn’t know. He was expectant, but he was ashamed. He felt longing, and he felt hatred.

He heard footsteps making the sound that only hers made, the steps echoed through the silence of the corridor, light and happy.

She pushed the door open and stepped into his room, and her eyes were shining with a shyness and hesitancy that couldn’t be hidden by the great wave of goodwill pouring out of them.

He walked towards her, turned off the main light and pulled her to him as he pushed the door shut. He kissed her hard and senselessly, her mouth was bitter and warm, he took her breasts in his hands, as her hands reached inside the back of his trousers.

They panted into each other’s mouths and pulled off their clothes and lay down on the desk, the mug of pens hit him in the back and he swept it aside along with everything else behind him, she climbed on top of him, her eyes capturing his, her lips swollen and trembling. He slid inside her as if she was warm butter, and leaned his head back and shut his eyes as she slowly began to ride him. The slow waves made his body take flight. As his orgasm approached he opened his eyes wide and happened to stare straight into Annika’s, as she tried to hide her resigned tolerance of the family party she had not been able to avoid.

He couldn’t help the cry he let out as he came.

In the silence afterwards he could hear the monotonous whirr of the air conditioning, the singing of the wires in the lift-shaft, an abandoned phone on another floor that rang and rang and rang.

‘We’re mad,’ Sophia Grenborg whispered in his ear, and he couldn’t help laughing. Yes, they really were mad, and as he kissed her and stood up, she tumbled off him and fluid ran out of her and down onto one of the project papers.

They hastily put their clothes back on, giggling and fumbling. Then stood close together, their arms around each other’s waist, smiling into each other’s eyes.

‘Thanks for today,’ Sophia said, and kissed him on the chin.

He caught her mouth, biting her tongue.

‘Thank you,’ he breathed.

She pulled on her coat, picked up her briefcase and was about to leave when she suddenly stopped.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I almost forgot what I came for.’

He was sitting on his chair, leaning back, feeling the sleepiness that always followed sex. Sophia put her briefcase on his desk, opened and took out a folder of papers bearing the logo of the Ministry of Justice.

‘I spent some time with Cramne this afternoon; we went through the outline for the action plan.’ She smiled at him with an almost bovine look on her face.

He felt his face close up, the need for sleep vanish.

‘What?’ he said. ‘I thought I was supposed to do that?’

‘Cramne called me. He couldn’t get hold of you because you were in a meeting. You can read it through this evening and call me early tomorrow morning, can’t you?’

He looked at his watch.

‘I have to pick up the kids,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I’ll have time tonight.’

Sophia blinked, something pale falling across her nose. ‘Okay.’ Her voice was suddenly smaller and sharper. ‘Call me when you can.’

And she turned and left the room, shutting the door behind her. Thomas stayed in his chair, suddenly aware of the stickiness around his groin.

How was the collaboration with the Federation of County Councils going? Sophia Grenborg, what was she really like?

He lunged forward, crumpled up the project document and threw it in the bin, left Sophia Grenborg’s discussions with the department next to the mug of pens and hurried off to the nursery.

Annika’s legs had almost gone to sleep on the uncomfortable chairs outside Anders Schyman’s room when the editor-in-chief finally opened the door and let her in.

‘I’ve got ten minutes,’ he said, turning his back on her before she had chance to reply.

She stood up, trying to shake some life into her legs, and feeling strangely ill at ease. She followed Schyman’s broad back into the room, taking nervous steps on the swaying floor. She was unnerved by his attempt to hurry her along, and sank into one of his visitor’s chairs, putting her notes on top of some sort of diagram on his desk.

The editor-in-chief walked slowly back behind his desk and sank into his creaking chair. He leaned back.

‘You’re not letting go of this terrorist angle, then,’ he stated, clasping his hands together over his gut.

‘I’ve uncovered information that’s extremely controversial,’ Annika said, staring down at her notebook, realizing it was open on the wrong page. She quickly pulled the notes over to her and searched feverishly for the summary she had put together. Schyman sighed.

‘Just tell me instead,’ he said, and Annika put the book down in her lap. She was fighting against a stubborn sense of falling, which was making the floor sway like mad.

‘The terrorist’s name is Göran Nilsson,’ she said. ‘Born in Sattajärvi in the Torne Valley in nineteen forty-eight, the son of a Læstadian preacher.’

She picked up her notes and leafed through them.

‘He moved to Uppsala to study theology at the age of nineteen, joined the Rebel movement in the spring of nineteen sixty-eight and became a Maoist. Abandoned his studies and moved back to Norrbotten where he worked for the Church. He joined Maoist groups in Luleå under the codename Ragnwald, and seems to have lost his faith, because he arranged a civil marriage ceremony. One way or another he was involved in the attack on F21, even if the police don’t believe that he actually carried it out. He disappeared from Sweden on the eighteenth of November nineteen sixty-nine and hasn’t been seen since then. The wedding, which was supposed to take place on the twentieth of November in Luleå City Hall, just two days after the attack, was cancelled.’

Schyman nodded slowly. ‘Then he went to Spain and became a professional killer for ETA,’ he filled in, glancing at the newspaper spread out on one of the side tables.

Annika raised her hand, putting her feet down hard to find solid ground.

‘It’s F21 that’s the interesting bit,’ she said.

‘I thought you said the police had discounted him, that he didn’t carry out the attack?’

She swallowed silently, nodded.

‘So who blew up the plane?’ Anders Schyman said in a neutral tone of voice, his hands still.

She was silent for a few moments before she replied.

‘Karina Björnlund,’ she said. ‘The Minister for Culture.’

The editor-in-chief didn’t move a muscle. His hands remained clasped above his shirt buttons, his back stayed at the same angle, his eyes didn’t move, but the air in the room had suddenly turned grey, difficult to breathe in.

‘I presume,’ Schyman said after a silence of indeterminate length, ‘that you have bloody good back-up for this accusation.’

Annika tried to laugh, but the noise came out as a dry snigger.

‘Not really,’ she said, ‘but the minister really is the most likely culprit.’

Schyman leaned forward quickly, heaving himself out of the chair with the help of the desk and walked across the floor, not looking at Annika.

‘I don’t know that I want to listen to this,’ he said.

Annika was halfway out of her chair to follow him, but felt the whole room lurch. She sank back and picked up her notes.

‘The footprints found at the scene were size thirty-six,’ she said. ‘They must have been made by either a child or a small woman, and of those two alternatives an adult woman with small feet is most likely. Women hardly ever turn to terrorism unless it’s together with their men. Ragnwald planned the attack, his fiancée carried it out.’

Schyman interrupted his restless wandering across the floor and turned to face her, hands by his sides.

‘Fiancée?’

‘They were due to get married, parish assistant Göran Nilsson from Sattajärvi and Karina Björnlund from Karlsvik in the parish of Lower Luleå. I’ve checked all the Göran Nilssons and Karina Björnlunds with their backgrounds against the historical information in the National Population Address Register, and they’re the only two.’

‘The terrorist and the culture minister?’

‘The terrorist and the culture minister.’

‘They were getting married two days after the attack?’

Annika nodded, watching her boss’s unfeigned astonishment, and felt the ground slowly solidify beneath her again.

‘How do you know that?’

‘A wedding announcement in the Norrland News published less than four weeks before the attack.’

Anders Schyman folded his arms, rocked back on his heels and looked out of the large, dark window towards the Russian embassy.

‘You’re quite sure that Karina Björnlund, in the autumn of nineteen sixty-nine, was planning to marry a man who ended up becoming a professional killer?’

She cleared her throat and nodded, and Schyman continued his reasoning. ‘And our Minister of Culture would have destroyed the property of the state, murdered one conscript and wounded another, all for love?’

‘I don’t know that, but it seems logical,’ Annika said.

The editor-in-chief went back to his chair and sat down carefully.

‘How old was she?’

‘Nineteen.’

‘Was she living with this bloke?’

‘She was still registered at her parents’ address in Karlsvik.’

‘What was her job?’

‘In the wedding announcement it said she was a student.’

Anders Schyman picked up a pen and wrote something on the corner of a diagram.

‘Do you know,’ he said, looking up at Annika, ‘this is the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard.’

He let the pen fall, the small sound of plastic on paper grew and echoed in the silence, the floor opened up beneath her and she was falling.

‘I’m glad that you came to me with this information,’ he went on. ‘I hope you haven’t mentioned this nonsense to anyone else?’

Annika felt the heat rising in her face, and her head was starting to spin.

‘No,’ she whispered.

‘Not to Berit? Not Jansson?’

He studied her close-up for a few seconds, then straightened his back.

‘Good.’ He turned away. ‘From now on you won’t be covering terrorism at all. You will not spend a minute more on Karina Björnlund or this bloody Ragnwald or any explosions in Luleå or anywhere else. Is that understood?’

She jerked back against her chair, away from his breath, which had come extremely close again.

‘But isn’t it at least worth carrying on and checking?’ she said.

Anders Schyman looked at her with such incredulous astonishment that she felt her throat burning.

‘That Sweden’s most sought-after terrorist for more than three decades happens to be a teenage schoolgirl from a village in Norrbotten who lived with her mum and went on to become a minister in a Social Democratic government?’

Annika was breathing fast through her mouth.

‘I haven’t even spoken to the police-’

‘So much the fucking better.’

‘They must have questioned her, maybe there’s an entirely innocent explanation-’

An angry signal from the intercom silenced her.

‘Herman Wennergren is here now,’ Schyman’s secretary said over the crackling speaker.

The editor-in-chief took three long strides to the intercom and pressed the button.

‘Ask him to come in.’

He released the button and glanced over at Annika with a look that condemned her to the underworld.

‘I don’t want to hear another word about this,’ he said. ‘Get out.’

Annika stood up, surprised that she hadn’t collapsed completely. She grabbed her notebook with hands that didn’t feel like they were her own, and aiming for the door at the end of a long tunnel, fumbled her way out.

30

Anders Schyman watched the door close behind Annika Bengtzon, disappointment burning in his gut. So incredibly sad. Annika was so thorough, so ambitious. Now she had evidently lost her grip completely. Lost touch with reality and fled into some sort of fantasy world with terrorists in government and professional killers involved with local politicians in Östhammar.

He had to sit down, and turned his chair so that he ended up looking at his own reflection in the dark glass, trying to make out the contours of the concrete buildings spread out below the Russian flag.

What were his responsibilities as her boss in a position like this? Should he tell human resources? Was Annika Bengtzon a danger to herself or anyone else?

He saw himself gulp as he sat there in his office chair.

He hadn’t noticed any suicidal tendencies or signs of violence. The only thing he knew for sure was that her articles were no longer reliable, and that was something he was paid to deal with. Bengtzon needed to be managed much more strictly, both by him and by the other editors.

Sad, he thought again. There had been a time when she was very good at digging up stories.

The door flew open and Herman Wennergren strode into his room without knocking, as usual.

‘It’s a good idea to pick wars you can win,’ the chairman of the board said through clenched teeth, dropping his briefcase on the sofa. ‘Can I have some coffee?’

Anders Schyman leaned forward, pressed the button on the intercom and asked his secretary to bring two cups. Then he got up and walked slowly, back straight, towards the sofas where Wennergren had sat down, still wearing his coat, unsure what this unannounced visit meant.

‘A bad day on the battlefield?’ he said, settling down on the other side of the table.

The chairman of the board fingered the lock of his briefcase, his nails clicking against the metal in an unconscious and irritating way.

‘You win some, you lose some,’ he said. ‘I can give you good news that I appear to be winning on your behalf. I’ve just come from a meeting of the Newspaper Publishers’ Association, where I proposed you as new chair after the New Year. The last chap hasn’t worked out at all, so we all agreed we need a change, and my suggestion met surprisingly little resistance. No one had any objections, neither publishers nor directors.’

Wennergren seemed genuinely surprised.

‘Maybe they were just shocked,’ Schyman said, as his secretary brought in a coffee-tray full of cups and biscuits.

‘I don’t think so,’ the chairman said, grabbing a ginger biscuit before the tray had reached the table. ‘The managing director called you a collective capitalist. What do you think he meant by that?’

‘Depends if the tone was positive or negative, and what values you attach to the description,’ Schyman said, avoiding the question.

Herman Wennergren took a careful sip from the china cup with pouting lips and his little finger sticking out. He swallowed a small mouthful, then said, ‘It’s possible that the other groups are gathering their forces. We shouldn’t crack open the champagne just yet, but I think I can get you through as chair. And once you’re there, at the board’s first meeting, I want you to raise a particular question that’s of the utmost importance to our proprietors.’

Anders Schyman leaned back in his chair and concentrated on keeping his expression completely neutral, as the true nature of his elevation dawned on him: he was expected to be the proprietors’ weapon on the ostensibly unbiased and apolitical forum that the Newspaper Publishers’ Association purported to be.

‘I see,’ Schyman said blankly. ‘What question would that be?’

Wennergren was chewing a caramel slice. ‘TV Scandinavia,’ he said, brushing some crumbs from the corners of his mouth. ‘Are we really going to allow American capital onto our airwaves without any real debate?’

The second front, Schyman thought; the one being lost. The old boy really is worried.

‘I thought it was being debated everywhere,’ he said, not sure if he should be annoyed at the attempt to direct him as a lobbyist, or if he should pretend it was bad news.

‘Of course,’ Herman Wennergren said, wiping his fingers on a napkin. ‘How many articles have we had about it in the Evening Post?’

Anders Schyman stood up rather than raise his voice, and went over to sit at his desk.

Never before had the family that owned the paper exerted any pressure on him to write on issues where they had economic interests. He understood immediately what a large and sensitive issue the launch of the American channel must be for them.

‘A precondition of me enjoying any sort of respect in the publishing community is that I maintain a critical and independent line towards our proprietors in all circumstances,’ he said, picking up a pen without using it.

‘Naturally,’ Herman Wennergren said, getting to his feet. He picked up his briefcase and buttoned his coat. ‘An independent line, of course, to anyone looking on. But you’re not stupid, Schyman. You know who you work for, don’t you?’

‘Journalism,’ Anders Schyman said, feeling his temper fraying. ‘Truth and democracy.’

Herman Wennergren gave a tired sigh. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘But you also appreciate what’s at stake. How the hell are we going to get shot of TV Scandinavia?’

‘Make sure they don’t get a broadcasting licence,’ Schyman said at once.

Wennergren sighed louder. ‘Obviously,’ he said. ‘But how? We’ve tried everything. The government is completely unshakeable. This American consortium fulfils all the criteria for access to the digital broadcast network. The proposal is up in parliament next Tuesday, and the Ministry of Culture isn’t going to change its conditions just because we want it to.’

‘As soon as that?’ Schyman said. ‘So it must be done and dusted then?’

‘All the committee stages and consultation were finished long ago, but you know what Minister Björnlund is like. She has trouble getting anything done, let alone on time. We’ve checked with the parliamentary print office, and they haven’t received the text yet.’

Schyman looked down at his desk, and in one corner of the latest balance sheet were the words he had scribbled down as he had considered how hard he should be on Annika Bengtzon.

Karina Björnlund engaged terrorist Ragnwald, blew up plane F21????

He stared at the words, feeling the pressure rise.

What did he want the media landscape in Sweden to look like in the future? Did he want the Swedish media to continue its long tradition of pursuing issues like democracy and freedom of expression? Or could he let them be stifled by a global, dollar-rich entertainment giant? Could he deliberately put the Evening Post, the Morning News, the publishing companies, radio and television channels at risk, purely because he insisted on maintaining his form of mute and stereotypical ethics? Ethics that no one would ever know that he followed, nor at what cost?

And ultimately: was he prepared to sacrifice his own career?

Anders Schyman picked up the balance sheet containing the notes and looked at the chairman of the board.

‘There is something,’ he said. ‘Something that Karina Björnlund really doesn’t want made public.’

Herman Wennergren raised his eyebrows, intrigued.

The winter sleet hit Annika in the face, making her gasp for breath. The doors slid shut behind her, the sucking sound mixed with the crunch of ice caught in the mechanism. She put her hand over her eyes to block the light of the paper’s illuminated logo above her head. In front of her the street and the world stretched out, vast and impassable. Her centre of gravity sank, through her stomach, past her knees. How could she possibly take another step? How was she going to get home?

This is the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard… I hope you haven’t mentioned this nonsense to anyone else?

At the back of her head the angels were tuning up their mournful voices, no words, just notes, reaching her through eternities of emptiness.

From now on you won’t be covering terrorism at all. You will not spend a minute more on Karina Björnlund or that bloody Ragnwald.

How could she have been so wrong? Was she really going mad? What had happened to her head? Was it because of her experience in the tunnel? Was something up there broken beyond repair?

She put her hands over her ears, closing her eyes to shut out the angels, but instead she kept them in. They overwhelmed her.

No. I don’t want this.

Her mobile started buzzing from the bottom of her bag. She shut her eyes tighter and felt the vibrations filter through her notebook, chewing-gum, the bag of sanitary towels, the padding of her coat, hitting her in the waist. She stood and waited until it had stopped.

I don’t want to hear another word about this.

Stockholm seemed to come to a standstill around her, the noise of traffic on the motorway disappeared, damp ghosts gathered around streetlamps and neon signs, her feet floated free of the ground, she took off and slowly floated above the pavement outside the entrance, down towards the garage, over the frozen grass lawn, past the concrete traffic island.

‘Annika!’

She fell to the ground with a bump, gasping for breath, and found herself standing right outside the crunching, sliding doors, the wind tugging at her hair again, spitting and snarling.

‘Hurry up, you’re getting soaked.’

Thomas’s old green Toyota had pulled up alongside the entrance to the garage. She looked at it in surprise. What was it doing here?

Then she saw him wave from the open driver’s door, his blond hair wet and sticking to his forehead, his coat stained with sleet. She ran towards him, right into his smiling eyes, flying over the tarmac and patches of ice, drowning in his endless embrace.

‘Good thing you got my message,’ he said, leading her round to the passenger side, carrying on talking as he opened the door and helped her in. ‘I tried to call your mobile but there was no answer so I told the caretaker that I’d come past and pick you up, I had to move the car anyway so it’s no trouble, I’ve picked up some goodies and I thought we could maybe…’

Annika was panting slightly through her half-open mouth.

‘I think I’m coming down with something,’ she whispered.

‘Right, let’s get you home and tucked up properly in bed; isn’t that right, kids?’

She turned round and saw the children sitting on their booster seats in the back seat. She smiled weakly.

‘Hello, darlings. I love you.’