Lifetime

by Liza Marklund

  She checked the time again, and went into hotmail. com.

  Fingers trembling, she created an entirely new email account.

  deep-throat-rosenbad@hotmail.com

  It took all of three minutes.

  Then she forwarded Thomas’s email to the new address, waiting nervously until it appeared in the Hotmail inbox. She deleted all the details that identified the writer of the memo and where it had come from, then sent it off again, this time to the email address used by the Evening Post for members of the public to give them tipoffs.

  It ought to pop into the inbox at the paper more or less straight away.

  The reporter checking the email account would discover a new sender, Deep Throat Rosenbad, named after the confidential source used by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein when they had uncovered the Watergate Affair. They’d open the email and read her short message:

  What I am sending you here is an internal and highly confidential memo from the Ministry of Justice. The contents will have serious consequences for the future programme of the government. Under-secretary of State Halenius is aware of its contents.

  No more than that. That was enough. All the key words were there, the ones that got tabloid reporters going: internal, confidential, government, Ministry of Justice, serious consequences, under-secretary of state, aware …

  Finally she deleted all the Hotmail files from Microsoft Explorer’s browsing history, went back into Outlook, deleted the forwarded email from the list of sent mail, and shut down the computer.

  In the silence that followed she heard the lift machinery whirring into action out in the stairwell.

  She switched off the light in the office and ran quietly through the studio, landing on the black-leather sofa just as the front door opened. She got up at once, went out into the hall and did her best to look tired and uptight.

  ‘How did you get on?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. Without looking at either of them, she picked up her bag and coat and disappeared through the door.

  Friday, 3 December

  28

  Annika went into the Seven Eleven on Klarabergsgatan and bought a breakfast roll and both evening papers. Her hands were trembling slightly as she put the money on the counter, slightly uneasy about what the paper would have done with the confidential memo.

  What if it leads to a government crisis?

  What if they didn’t understand what it meant and just ignored it?

  She wasn’t sure which would be worse.

  She inspected the cover of the Evening Post. It was dominated by a photograph of a smiling Julia with a garland of flowers in her hair and the headline: Life. Then: Exclusive – Police wife Julia Lindholm speaks out about the murder of her husband David, her son’s disappearance and her future in prison.

  That didn’t match what she’d written, but she didn’t have the energy to get upset.

  There was nothing about the memo on the front page.

  She leafed through the paper, then noticed she was standing in the way of other customers and moved to the back of the shop, spreading the paper out on top of the ice-cream freezer. She took a large bite of the roll, getting mustard on her bandage. Damn!

  Her interview with Julia Lindholm was on pages six and seven. Eight and nine carried analysis of the life sentence, but on page ten, Ah, there it is, she found the article about the Ministry of Justice’s confidential memo.

  Emil Oscarsson had written the piece. He had grasped the potential of the story and had called and woken the under-secretary of state and the minister’s press secretary, as well as the leader of one of the opposition parties. The angle was that the inquiry was heading for disaster and the Ministry of Justice had been forced into emergency measures to stop the costs of the prison service careering out of control.

  Annika swallowed hard.

  What have I done?

  She wondered if the main radio news broadcasts had picked it up and were running with it in their morning bulletins, but she had no radio so no way of knowing.

  What are the consequences of this? For Thomas, and for the government?

  Her mobile rang and she dropped the roll as she grabbed for her bag to dig it out.

  It was Nina.

  ‘Julia’s still in the medical wing. She’s not allowed any visitors.’

  Fuck.

  ‘Give me two minutes.’

  She pushed the roll and both papers into the bin, then ran off towards Bergsgatan.

  Nina Hoffman was in her police uniform. She looked as if she hadn’t slept a wink.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ she said tersely. ‘At half past four we found a man’s body in a flat near Hornstull. Took a while.’

  ‘Do the papers know about it?’ Annika asked breathlessly.

  ‘It looked like an overdose. I doubt they’d be interested. But we still have to investigate it, of course. What have you done to your finger?’

  They were standing outside the entrance to Police Headquarters on Kungsholmen. Annika pulled her sleeve down over her left hand. ‘I cut myself cooking,’ she said, looking off towards Scheelegatan, feeling Nina’s stern gaze on her.

  ‘That’s a pretty serious bandage,’ the police officer said.

  Annika looked at the ground, at the leaves stuck to the pavement, at her own shoes and Nina’s heavy boots.

  ‘Do we trust each other or not?’ the police officer said, pulling her to one side to let a woman with a pram get past on the pavement.

  ‘There were two of them,’ Annika said, once the woman had gone. ‘Two men. They pulled me into an alley when I was on my way home from yours the other evening, close to where I live in Gamla stan. They cut my finger, told me to say I’d hurt myself cooking. And if I told anyone about them, they’d cut … my children next time …’

  She was having trouble breathing.

  Nina took her hand and studied the bandage. ‘What’s this you’ve spilled on it?’

  ‘Mustard. The strong sort.’

  ‘I suppose you had to have stitches.’

  ‘Eight. They cut a ligament. I bit one of them, and he hit me over the head to make me let go.’

  ‘I told you – you have to be careful. You can’t mess with these people.’ Nina looked off down Bergsgatan. ‘I think you should drop this,’ she said. ‘Think of your children.’

  ‘Have you got the pictures?’

  Nina hesitated, then nodded.

  ‘Come on,’ Annika said. ‘The café over on Hantverkargatan will be open now.’

  A few minutes later they were sitting at a cramped little table by the window.

  Annika had some coffee, but Nina didn’t want anything. She took off her cap and leaned her head against the wall. ‘This is verging on professional misconduct,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m not supposed to go anywhere near this case.’ She felt in her pocket and pulled out an envelope.

  Annika opened it carefully and looked through the pictures. ‘Which one’s Yvonne Nordin?’

  ‘Which one do you think?’ Nina said dully.

  Annika spread out the Polaroid pictures from the National Police Register on the little table in front of them, picking them up in turn and looking at them carefully. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t guess.’

  Nina turned one of the pictures over and pointed at the back, where the woman’s name and ID number were written.

  Yvonne Nordin had mousy blonde hair and unremarkable features, and looked to be in early middle age. She wore a serious expression, and was slightly overweight.

  Annika picked up the photograph and inspected it. ‘Do you think she’s got money?’

  Nina snorted. ‘That’s a completely speculative question.’

  Annika was looking intently at the photograph. ‘If she was responsible for the murders on Sankt Paulsgatan, then she must also have been involved in Filip Andersson’s shady affairs, which means she’s got secret bank accounts hidden away on various tropical islands. I tried to look her up last night. She’s registered at
a covering address in Skärholmen, but I don’t think she lives there.’

  ‘Why not?’ Nina asked.

  ‘If she really did shoot David and kidnap Alexander, then there’s a reason why. I think she’s still got Alexander, and he mustn’t be seen by anyone, not for a long while, anyway. Which rules out Skärholmen. But …’ She pulled her notepad out of her bag and showed the police officer some uneven lines on one of the pages. ‘… she bought a small house in the middle of the forest exactly a year ago, north-west of Örebro. Just outside Garphyttan – here.’ She pointed with her pen at a cross on the page.

  Nina stifled a yawn.

  ‘Julia mentioned that a couple of different women, unless they were the same one, got in touch with David and demanded that he leave her. One of them had had an abortion. Do you think that could be important?’

  ‘Maybe I will have a cup of coffee after all,’ Nina muttered, and Annika got up quickly and fetched her one.

  ‘Do you think the abortion is important?’ Annika repeated, as she put the cup down in front of the other woman.

  ‘It can be a very traumatic experience,’ Nina said, blowing on her drink. ‘Some women never get over it.’

  ‘Well,’ Annika said, sitting down at the other side of the table, ‘we shouldn’t over-dramatize it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that traumatic. I had an abortion when Ellen was six months old, and I’m glad I did.’

  Nina took a sip of coffee. ‘You didn’t see it as a problem at all?’

  Annika stuffed her notepad back into her bag. ‘Well, getting them to answer the phone was a nightmare. I spent ages ringing round trying to book an appointment anywhere in Stockholm, but all the clinics that could be bothered to pick up the phone couldn’t fit me in for several weeks. In the end I gave up and had the abortion in Eskilstuna. I can still remember how relieved I felt when I got back to the car park afterwards. What is it? You look like you don’t believe me.’

  ‘Not everyone reacts like that. It can be a great sorrow, an act of betrayal …’

  Annika shifted on her chair in irritation. ‘That’s what everyone’s expected to say. It’s like it’s unacceptable to be glad you had an abortion, but I really was. I didn’t want to have another child at that time.’

  She could see Nina’s disapproval. ‘What? You think I’m a bad woman because I’m glad I had an abortion? Have I forfeited my right to be a mother?’

  ‘No,’ Nina said. ‘But I really do have to go now.’

  She got up, and Annika saw the woman behind the counter glance furtively in their direction. The police uniform had a way of making people feel guilty, even if they hadn’t done anything wrong.

  ‘I’ll hold on to these pictures,’ Annika said, putting them back in the envelope.

  Nina stopped. She seemed to be hesitating. Then she leaned towards her and lowered her voice. ‘Be careful,’ she said. ‘The people who cut you mean business.’

  Then she put her cap back on and disappeared through the door, heading towards Scheelegatan.

  Annika pulled out the pictures again and stared at them, one by one.

  The women were dark and fair, young and old, some wearing a lot of make-up, others scruffy. She stopped at Yvonne Nordin, with her rather sad eyes and thin hair.

  Are you a mass-murderer? How on earth am I going to show your picture to Julia?

  She bit on her coffee spoon a couple of times, then took her pen and a sheet of paper out of her bag and wrote a short note to Kronoberg Prison: ‘These pictures are to be given to Julia Lindholm. Best wishes, Annika Bengtzon.’

  She got up and hurried towards Bergsgatan, where she handed the envelope in at the reception desk. Then she ran back to the bus stop outside number thirty-two Hantverkargatan, her old address, her home in Stockholm until the disaster at their new house. She refused even to look at the door and got on to the bus. The weather was uniformly grey and heavy. The sun had probably risen somewhere, but she wasn’t sure it would ever again show its face here. The bus was full and she had to stand, swaying this way and that as the bus swung round corners. The air was fusty with damp clothes and bad breath. She got off at Gjörwellsgatan, breathing out deeply.

  The newsroom was almost empty. Anders Schyman was sitting in his little glass room with his feet on the desk and that day’s Evening Post open in front of him.

  ‘Damn good piece about the cop-killer speaking out,’ the editor-in-chief said, when she walked into the room without knocking. ‘But have you seen the article on page ten? We’ve got hold of a confidential memo from the Ministry of Justice which proves that life sentences can’t be abolished because it would be too expensive.’

  ‘I saw that,’ she said, sinking on to the visitor’s chair. ‘I’m working on something really big. Julia Lindholm says she’s innocent – she’s been saying that all along. There might be a way to prove it.’

  ‘It came in as a tipoff last night,’ Schyman said. ‘From a “Deep Throat Rosenbad”. What does that say to you?’

  Annika ignored his question. ‘I think she’s telling the truth. I don’t think she did it. Alexander’s still alive.’

  The editor-in-chief lowered the paper. ‘I presume you have some sort of concrete evidence to back that up.’

  She went over the triple murder in Sankt Paulsgatan four and a half years before, the way the victims had been hit over the head with an axe, then each had had one hand cut off, and how the financier Filip Andersson had been found guilty by both the City Court and the Court of Appeal, even though he had maintained he was innocent.

  She outlined the parallels with David Lindholm’s murder, first the shot to the head, then the mutilation of the body, and how Julia had claimed she didn’t do it.

  She explained about David’s business interests, and how he had sat on the same board as a woman called Yvonne Nordin, who was also involved in a different company with Filip Andersson (‘Do you see the connection?’), and that he had told Julia about a crazy woman who was stalking him and threatening to harm him, ‘But we think she was the one who had an abortion …’

  There was complete silence when she had finished.

  Anders Schyman was looking at her sternly. ‘The abortion?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t know how important that is.’

  ‘What about Alexander’s clothes and teddy bear? How did they end up in the marsh next to Julia’s cottage, then?’

  ‘She put them there.’

  ‘Who? This Yvonne? And she was the one who had the abortion? The one who’s supposed to be holding Alexander, in other words?’

  Annika pulled out the rough sketch-map from her bag and put it on the editor-in-chief’s desk. He picked it up and studied it dubiously.

  ‘There,’ Annika said, pointing to the cross representing number 2:17 Lybacka in the parish of Tysslinge in Örebro County.

  ‘And Filip Andersson is innocent, and Julia Lindholm is innocent?’

  ‘Filip Andersson is doubtless guilty of an awful lot of things, but not the murders on Sankt Paulsgatan.’

  ‘And Alexander isn’t dead?’

  ‘It was an attack on the whole family: kill the man, frame his wife and kidnap the child. He’s alive.’

  Anders Schyman put the sheet of paper down on his desk. ‘Did they ever find out who set fire to your house?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ she asked.

  The editor-in-chief looked genuinely concerned. ‘How are you really, Annika?’

  She flew into a rage. ‘So that’s your conclusion!’ she said. ‘That I’m trying to clear my own name by proxy!’

  ‘Don’t start harassing innocent people, Annika. Think before you do anything.’

  She got up, knocking the map to the floor, and Schyman bent down to pick it up. ‘Do you know what this reminds me of?’ he said, handing it back to her.

  She looked at the crooked lines and abbreviated road names. ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ she said quietly.

  ‘A what?’
r />   She swallowed hard.

  ‘Do you need help?’ he asked.

  She shook herself in annoyance. ‘I’ve been a bit off-form, that’s all,’ she said, ‘with the divorce and everything.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, sitting on the desk and folding his arms. ‘How’s that going?’

  ‘It’ll be in court soon, this month,’ she said. ‘Then everything’s over.’

  ‘Everything?’

  She brushed the hair from her face. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not everything, of course, just the rough stuff. After that it’ll get better.’

  ‘Are you still living in that old office? When are you going to get a decent place?’

  ‘When the police investigation’s over and I can get hold of the insurance money.’

  ‘And your husband?’

  ‘He’s living with his mistress.’

  ‘If the divorce is almost legal, she’s his partner, isn’t she?’

  She picked up her bag and put the map back in it.

  ‘Is he still at the Ministry of Justice?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘What was he doing there? The inquiry into the abolition of life sentences, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Can I have a car for the day? I’ll be back this evening.’

  ‘What are you thinking of doing?’

  ‘Meeting a source.’

  Anders Schyman sighed. ‘Okay,’ he said, reaching for a requisition request. ‘But I don’t want you doing anything stupid.’

  She left without looking back.

  The car was an anonymous Volvo, an old model, dark blue and pretty dirty. She drove out of the garage and swung up on to the Essinge motorway.

  There were two ways of getting to Örebro, north or south of Lake Mälaren. Without thinking, she headed south, towards Södertälje, then Strängnäs and Eskilstuna. She chose that way instinctively because she was used to it.

  That’s what we’re like. We’d rather stick to what we know, even if it’s no good, than change to something better but new.

  There wasn’t much traffic and the road was reasonably dry, so she could have driven faster if she’d wanted to. Once she’d got past Södertälje and turned off on to the E20, she set the cruise control for 135 kilometres an hour, just below the point at which she’d lose her licence if she was caught. Anne had taught her you could drive ‘with VAT’. On roads with 30 and 50 k.p.h. limits you could drive 20 k.p.h. too fast, and in limits of 70, 90 and 110 k.p.h., the VAT increased to 30 k.p.h. Of course you were breaking the law if you drove with VAT, but it only cost you a fine. ‘Look upon it as a congestion charge,’ Anne had said.