Prime Time

by Liza Marklund

  ‘I guess this kind of stuff happens all the time in Stockholm,’ she said.

  ‘Actually, the most brutal murders tend to be committed in rural areas, in small towns and communities,’ Annika countered coolly.

  Her statement had the desired effect. Pia suddenly looked shocked and worried.

  ‘Do you think they’ll catch the killer soon?’

  ‘Hard to say,’ Annika replied. ‘Twelve people are being interviewed up at the castle as we speak.’

  Pia Lakkinen’s eyes opened wide.

  ‘Really?’

  Despite the pouring rain, Annika stood up straighter: she was the one in the know. And KK wouldn’t hit the shelves until Monday, so she could afford to be generous.

  ‘Nearly all of them belong to the TV team involved with the show,’ she continued. ‘A few are guests or reporters on the job. I know who all of them are but one.’

  The small-town reporter looked defeated.

  ‘It’s hard to get information when you don’t know the police officers,’ Pia said. ‘I don’t know what the Crime Squad from Stockholm is doing here.’

  ‘It’s an old tradition that Stockholm is prepared to assist police forces all over the country,’ Annika explained. ‘But these guys are from the Homicide Division. They’re pros.’

  Pia Lakkinen glanced over at the castle.

  ‘As far as I can see, they just seem to be milling around.’

  ‘They always start by searching the grounds,’ Annika said, ‘for shoeprints and stuff like that. They work from the outside in, you could say. Do you know what time the police were called in?’

  The reporter shook her head.

  ‘The news flash was sent at 9:41 a.m.’

  ‘Yeah, but someone was already on the scene by then, probably regular beat cops from Katrineholm or Eskilstuna. They established the fact that there was a dead body in an OB bus parked behind the New Wing. By the time the news flash was dispatched they probably had sealed off the crime scene and isolated the witnesses already. I don’t think Forensics or any detectives had made it here by then, but they were on their way.’

  Pia Lakkinen looked impressed.

  ‘Is she still in there?’

  ‘Probably. They were working inside the bus a little while ago when I was over there. I don’t think they’ll move her before the rain eases up. It would destroy too much evidence.’

  ‘Have you been inside the bus?’

  Her ex-colleague sounded sceptical.

  Annika could hear the critical edge to her voice when she continued: ‘A struggle would complicate matters. They have to investigate the bus and the body. They examine her clothing and see if the body has been moved to the bus or if the crime was committed there. When they’re done and it’s stopped raining, they’ll move her.’

  ‘Move her? Where to?’

  ‘Someplace where there’s a medical examiner. My guess is Karolinska: it’s the closest hospital with facilities like that. A forensics team and a pathologist will remove her clothing. You know, to check for matter under her nails and stuff like that …’

  ‘Yuck,’ Pia said with a shudder, followed by an attempt at a laugh. ‘Well, how’s life treating you?’

  Annika took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m just fine. It’s nice to be back on the beat. I’ve been away on maternity leave twice, so I’m getting back into the swing of things.’

  ‘So, I guess the kids are spending Midsummer with their daddy.’

  Annika smiled.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How are the kids taking it?’

  Pia Lakkinen looked sympathetic, Annika kept smiling.

  ‘They’re fine. They’re out at Gällnö Island visiting their grandparents. We were supposed to stay in a tent, but in this weather I hope they won’t have to.’

  The reporter regarded Annika searchingly for a few seconds.

  ‘We? Were you supposed to be there too?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Annika said, laughing briefly. ‘But since it’s pouring down, it doesn’t bother me to be here.’

  Pia’s face reflected disappointment and distrust.

  ‘Then you haven’t split up?’

  Annika’s smile faded.

  ‘Split up? Me and Thomas?’

  Pia laughed.

  ‘Well, you hear a lot of stuff, you know. Somebody said you’d split up, that he’d left you and the kids.’

  Annika turned pale.

  ‘Who said that?’

  Pia Lakkinen backed away, an embarrassed smile on her face. Annika interpreted her expression as derision and maliciousness.

  ‘You know how people talk in a small town like Katrineholm – I think it was a checker at the supermarket. But I have to run now and join my photographer, we’re supposed to write about the Midsummer celebrations in Bie and then interview the prime minister out at Harpsund too, so you take care now and give my love––’

  Annika turned away, the weight on her chest rotating a full 360 degrees. Her sense of loss returned and it mingled with the degradation she felt.

  In her home town no one was impressed by her work, her career and ambitions. They felt sorry for her.

  Gunnar Antonsson crawled out of bed in his stuffy room in the South Wing and glanced at his watch. No wonder he was hungry. He got his little French press coffee-maker, went over to the sink and rinsed out the old grounds. Then he filled it with fresh water that he then poured into the electric kettle. He dumped four scoops of coffee into the press. While the water hummed and whistled in the kettle, he looked out the window at the lacy crowns of the trees, the impenetrable greyness of the sky behind its cloak of rain.

  When the kettle had boiled, he poured the hot water into the press, pushed down the filter and poured some of the resulting beverage into his tooth glass. He looked at himself in the mirror above the washbasin while he took a sip. The coffee was scalding so he put down the glass, causing it to clink against the porcelain. Rubbing his chin he felt the rough stubble there. He could use a shave.

  Antonsson should have been on his way to Dalarna in the bus. They were supposed to broadcast a Midsummer special from the abandoned chalk mine, a huge opera concert including works by Wagner, Alfén and Beethoven. The Royal Philharmonic, directed by Uno Kamprad and featuring Scandinavian soloists.

  He had looked forward to the concert, and not only because it would generate incredibly welcome revenue for his company. He was also a Wagner fan.

  Michelle Carlsson liked opera music, he suddenly recalled. She would have enjoyed coming along to see the concert live.

  The thought was strangely arousing. Unseeingly, Gunnar Antonsson looked again at his own reflection in the mirror. In his mind’s eye he saw the white legs, the well-tended bush between Michelle’s legs, the moisture that still glistened on the inside of her thighs. He felt aroused and then ashamed. What was wrong with him?

  He hadn’t slept a wink after 6:12 this morning. That was when he had put the key in the lock of Outside Broadcast Bus No. Five, opened the door and encountered that odd smell. He’d never smelled anything quite like it before in his whole life. Sweet, sour and faecal at the same time. The absurdity of the situation struck him only after he had opened the door and the unbearable smell had enveloped him.

  ‘Why are you guys here?’ he had asked the crowd behind him, their faces displaying various degrees of inebriation and haggardness.

  ‘We’ve got to talk to Michelle,’ the scrawny one had said, the manager guy. He had tried to push past him, but Gunnar had blocked the way.

  ‘The sets have been struck and the equipment has been stowed. No one has any business being here.’

  ‘But Michelle’s in there,’ Anne Snapphane had said, and when Anne Snapphane spoke, he listened.

  ‘She can’t be. I just unlocked the door.’

  Dazed and half-asleep, Gunnar had stood there in his slacks, unbuttoned shirt and shoes with no socks and realized that the others hadn’t even been to bed. They’d woken him
up so that he would unlock the bus. That was when he’d got angry.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he had demanded. ‘What kind of monkey business is this?’

  He had put his keys back in the left-hand pocket of his slacks and felt the familiar weight near his groin, sensing the jagged points of metal through the lining. Then he had stepped into the control room, blinking in the dim light. A few monitors faintly lit the narrow path leading to the production room, the rack on the right, the electrical control unit; he had popped in and checked out the CCDs, opened the door to ‘Technology Row’, looked into the video room and gazed at the tape recorders, beta, digital, and VHS, and all the profilers. Everything was packed and secured.

  He had stepped out into the hallway again, and Anne Snapphane had been in the doorway, the others crowding behind her.

  ‘Please, Gunnar darling, it’s raining cats and dogs,’ she had said, and he always had a hard time resisting Anne.

  He had muttered something that she interpreted as an invitation, so she had walked in, the crowd following in her wake.

  The lighting inside the production area was patchy and weak and emanated from the tiny lights on the monitors and controls. The smell was pungent and the soft grey shades of the walls swallowed up the shadows. Gunnar blinked a few times before he caught sight of Michelle Carlsson.

  She had been lying in the narrow space between the front and rear production consoles, right in front of the seat used by the technical director. The first thing he had noticed was that she was nude from the waist down. The second thing was that her bare legs were bent at an inexplicably unnatural angle. The third thing was that she was way too still. Then it had hit him. Even before he saw what was left of her head, he had known. Gunnar went hunting, so he knew what death looked like. Even so, this wasn’t the same – it was an utterly foreign sensation, the smell so overwhelmingly different. A wave of sorrow and tenderness had crashed over him. He had heard himself gasp and he had fallen to his knees.

  Coming up behind Gunnar so that he hadn’t been able to stop her, Anne Snapphane had asked: ‘What is it?’ Then she had turned on the overhead lamps, bathing the entire place in light. White and bloodless, Michelle’s legs had stood out sharply against the dark blue carpeting. The revolver by her foot was large and clumsy-looking. A scream echoed in his mind.

  Gunnar Antonsson shut his eyes, not wanting to remember anything more. Quickly turning away from the mirror, he shook off the memory of the smell and walked over to the window. The rain kept coming down just as hard, pattering loudly against the windowsill and making a sound like an engine running. He looked out the window and saw two policemen walking around the bus in a seemingly aimless and irrational manner.

  Suddenly he was fed up.

  He had put on his poplin jacket, retied his shoes, smoothed his hair and left the room.

  The policeman looked up in surprise when he approached them, standing around as if the bus was theirs, not his.

  ‘How long is this going to go on?’ Gunnar asked.

  ‘What?’ a young man in uniform and with peach fuzz on his cheeks replied.

  ‘When do I get my bus back?’

  ‘I’ll go get the lieutenant,’ the fuzzy one said.

  The other officer stood a short distance away, a watchful expression on his face.

  ‘I was supposed to have left at eight this morning,’ Gunnar Antonsson said through the rain.

  The policeman turned away.

  Then the first officer returned with a man dressed in street clothes.

  ‘Let’s go inside the bus,’ the new arrival said. He was dressed in a leather jacket and a colourful shirt and shook Gunnar’s hand like a regular guy. The words left Gunnar speechless and teary-eyed. Feeling grateful and relieved, he mounted the five metal steps and walked in through the door, out of the rain, only to stop short. The passage leading into the production area was starkly lit and packed with people. At least, that was how it seemed to him at first.

  ‘As you can tell, we’re going over the place with a fine-tooth comb, looking for evidence,’ the man in the colourful clothes explained.

  Gunnar nodded curtly and asked in an unsteady voice:

  ‘Is she still in there?’

  Mr Colourful pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the breast pocket of his shirt, fingered it and looked at Gunnar.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘She’s still there. Exactly as you found her.’

  Gunnar Antonsson fixed his gaze on the floor.

  ‘It must have been awful,’ the policeman said. ‘And in your bus and everything.’

  ‘It’s not my bus,’ Gunnar said, suddenly belligerent. ‘It belongs to the company. And I liked her. I was one of the few people here who did.’

  The policeman started to pull out a cigarette, then stopped and put the whole pack back into his pocket.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Hearing his voice starting to shake, Gunnar Antonsson replied: ‘She was nice. She always had something nice to say. The others were just jealous.’

  Then he could no longer stop himself and tears began to roll down his cheeks. Embarrassed, he swiped them away with the back of his left hand.

  ‘What’s your occupation?’ the officer asked.

  Gunnar took a deep breath and tried to pull himself together.

  ‘I’m a TOM, a Technical Operations Manager, and this is Outside Broadcast Bus No. Five. I was in charge of the technical operations, and the OB vehicle, while all the TV Plus summer specials were taped.’

  ‘This is a marvel on wheels,’ Mr Colourful said.

  Gunnar Antonsson cleared his throat.

  ‘A vehicle this size can be used in lots of different ways, from larger sports events like World Cup soccer or hockey, to spectacular performances and entertainment programmes. Last year, we taped the Eurovision Song Contest and the MTV Music Awards in the Globe Arena in this bus.’

  The lieutenant whistled.

  ‘This was the last thing you needed,’ he said. ‘And you were the person who unlocked the door?’

  Gunnar nodded.

  ‘They woke me up not long after six a.m.’

  ‘Who did?’

  He thought for a while.

  ‘A crowd of people,’ he said. ‘Anne Snapphane, the manager guy, Karin, the producer and a few others, I think. Is it important?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ the policeman said. ‘But it can wait until we can conduct a real interview up at the house. For now, just give me a brief account of what happened.’

  Gunnar Antonsson took a deep breath.

  ‘I unlocked the door, and there she was. Everybody reacted in a different way: the manager howled, he screamed like an old lady. Karin just walked out, Annika Snapphane bent down and touched Michelle’s legs and then sat there staring, I had to drag her away. Mariana and that other girl couldn’t have seen much, I got them out of there right away.’

  ‘So you took care of things?’

  Gunnar stared at the carpet.

  ‘I went in and called Emergency Services at 6:22, told them a death had occurred in the broadcast bus.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell them it was a murder?’

  ‘I didn’t want to interfere, that would be up to the police to determine.’

  One of the policemen in the bus excused himself, pushed past them, walked out in the rain and went down the steps. Gunnar Antonsson noticed that he was carrying small plastic bags containing some indeterminate matter.

  ‘What did you do after that?’ Mr Colourful asked.

  ‘I made myself a cup of coffee in my room, using the French press I brought with me. Then I sat and waited for the police. It took a while, I waited until 8:16.’

  ‘The police on duty were out in Vingåker, investigating a rape case,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Since no one knew that a murder had been committed, this case wasn’t high on the list of priorities.’

  Gunnar said nothing.

  ‘What did the others do?’ the policeman asked.

&nbs
p; Gunnar swallowed and hesitated.

  ‘I mind my own business.’

  ‘So you have no idea?’

  The forensics team pushed past then, empty-handed this time. Gunnar Antonsson was fed up with the conversation and with the entire situation.

  ‘They sat in the lounge and talked. Some of them cried. How long is this going to take? I was supposed to be on my way hours ago.’

  ‘I’m afraid this will take a while.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A few weeks.’

  Gunnar did a double take.

  ‘A few weeks? Are you out of your minds?’

  The lieutenant was calm and collected.

  ‘We will be impounding the bus,’ he said, pulling out his cigarettes again. ‘I’d say that it will be in our garage, on standby, for at least a fortnight.’

  Indignation made Gunnar Antonsson’s ears grow hot and red.

  ‘The whole financial future of the company is riding on this unit,’ he said in a somewhat strangled voice. ‘Do you realize how much it costs us every single hour it’s not on the road? We’ve got to be in Denmark on Monday – we’re involved in a big trade fair. How are we supposed to cover it now?’

  The brightly dressed man sighed sympathetically and put a cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘talk to the DA. She’s the person in charge of impounds.’

  Gunnar Antonsson shot one last glance over his shoulder in the direction of the production area, but all he could see were the backs of officers in there. Snidely, he remarked:

  ‘How can you find any evidence with all these people all over the place?’

  ‘That wouldn’t have been a problem,’ the lieutenant shot back, ‘if people hadn’t been running in and out of here all night.’

  He wasn’t the kind to back down, this officer.

  ‘Nobody’s been running around in this bus,’ Gunnar Antonsson stated with absolute conviction. ‘I struck the sets myself, I kept watch while they loaded the stuff in and secured it, and I locked up when we were done.’

  Nodding, the lieutenant mulled this over.

  ‘Then there’s only one thing that bothers me,’ he said. ‘How did Michelle get in? Not to mention the killer.’

  Gunnar Antonsson stared, the shock of awareness causing his blood to drain instantly into his feet.