Prime Time

by Liza Marklund

  ‘You can’t possibly believe that I …?’

  ‘If you want to talk about beliefs, go see a clergyman,’ the policeman replied. ‘Are there any more keys to the bus?’

  Dumbstruck, Gunnar merely shook his head.

  ‘So, what’s the explanation? How did they get inside a locked control room? And how did the killer lock up afterwards?’

  The Technical Operations Manager jammed his hands in his pockets, roughly and jerkily, fishing around for the familiar weight of the key chain in his left pocket without finding it and then remembering that the police had it.

  A split second later he knew exactly what had happened. He studied the policeman’s face, imagining that he saw arrogance and malice there.

  ‘Well, I guess you have something to think about, don’t you?’ he said and walked back out into the rain.

  Nearly all the other passengers got off at either Grinda, Boda or Puttisholmen. The rest were headed for Gällnö. Thomas thought he recognized two groups of people, but he avoided their gaze.

  By the time he could see Söderby Farm through the mists and the rain, he had started to feel like he was coming down with a cold. The scene unfolding behind the sheets of rain was so tremendously familiar. It had been almost a year since he’d been here, yet he was familiar with every tuft of grass along the shore, every slant to every house and every rusty roofing plate in sight. The barn on the left-hand side of the dock still needed a paint job, the rust on the boathouse to the right was worse than ever. The colour scheme was a greyish greeny-brown, the way it always was when it rained. The only contrast was the standard-issue blue road sign. He took a deep breath and was filled with expectancy and nostalgia.

  This trip was going to be fun after all.

  Thomas woke the children. They were cold and upset. He felt a stab of guilt – Annika always made sure the kids were warm and dry. He gathered the two of them in his arms and carried them down to the cafeteria, letting them wait indoors until he had taken their things ashore.

  By the time they finally started heading down the dirt road leading to the village, the rain had let up. The drops turned to droplets and remained suspended mid-air, shimmering and transparent. He had bribed the kids with ice cream, which meant that he would have to change every last item of clothing they had on, from head to toe, when they arrived. But he didn’t care. He was rapidly approaching the end of his tether. The relief he felt when his parents’ large red wooden house next door to the store came into view was enormous.

  ‘Thomas. Oh, Thomas, we’re so glad to see you. Why are you so late?’

  His mother hurried awkwardly down the steps, her sweater draped over her shoulders and fastened with the top button.

  ‘Now watch that hip of yours, be careful, don’t fall, Mother …’

  His mother clasped his face with both hands, kissing first one cheek and then the other.

  ‘You’re so cold.’

  Then she looked around.

  ‘Where’s Annika?’

  Thomas tried to compose himself, compressing his lips briefly before he answered her.

  ‘She had to go to work.’

  His mother’s dismay was genuine and monumental.

  ‘Work? Today? Well, I never …!’

  ‘I’m sorry we’re late, but we had to take the Norrskär, and I had so much stuff to lug along …’

  Suddenly, he felt wretchedly abandoned. Damn Annika.

  ‘Oh, dear! Have you dragged all that all this way? Come, let me give you a hand …’

  Ellen’s ice cream had melted. It fell on the garden path and the girl howled and reached for it.

  ‘I didn’t manage to bring the tent,’ Thomas said, ‘but I’ve got to change the kids. Is there anywhere we can stay?’

  ‘Now that you’re alone, you can stay in the house with us.’

  She smiled and patted his arm, a well-organized paragon of kindness and consideration.

  ‘Leave those things out here, Dad and Holger will bring them in. You don’t have to lug all that stuff. Come and have a nice hot cup of coffee and I’ll take care of the kids. Kalle, Ellen, come to Granny. My, you’re dirty, honey-bun, you need a bath.’

  Thomas took a long shower while his mother changed his kids’ clothes and treated them to Danish pastries with custard filling. The heat spread throughout his limbs, making him feel at ease. Everything would be all right, they would take care of him here. When the kids had gone to sleep he could knock back a few with his brother, maybe go fishing at dawn.

  Feeling confident, he went into the living room, wrapped in his father’s king-sized burgundy robe. The spirit of summer embraced him, the light from the sea filtered in through the large handmade glass windows and the smooth wooden floors caressed his bare feet.

  ‘Well, look who we have here. If it isn’t the handsome man from Stockholm,’ his aunt Märta exclaimed as she slowly and deliberately got up from the sofa to greet him.

  She too kissed him on the cheek and patted his arm.

  ‘Doris told us about your trip out here. I’m impressed that you made it. All by yourself, with the children and all. I do declare, modern men are fantastic. Taking care of their families and packing and all …’

  Slightly embarrassed, Thomas laughed and dried his ear with the towel.

  ‘Annika did the packing,’ he admitted. ‘I guess my brother’s already made it out here?’

  Aunt Märta’s smile expressed sympathy.

  ‘Poor Thomas,’ she said. ‘Your wife deserts her family in the middle of the holidays. Can’t you keep her in line?’

  Rage welled up inside him. His body went rigid and he jerked his arm away from her grip.

  ‘She’s on call this weekend, we knew this could happen.’

  As soon as he uttered the words, he knew it was the truth, that he had just blocked it out earlier.

  ‘Writing about violence and crime, is that really a suitable job for a woman?’ Aunt Märta demanded.

  He didn’t reply and started heading for the kitchen.

  ‘Märta, please,’ his mother said in a disapproving voice. ‘These days women can do anything a man can do.’

  She turned to Thomas and said:

  ‘Holger arrived this morning.’

  ‘Daddy,’ Ellen crowed while kicking her legs and reaching her arms out to him. ‘Da-da-daddy!’

  Thomas removed his daughter from his mother’s lap and swung her up to ride on his shoulders. Then he set off on a wild gallop around the whole floor while she gurgled with delight above him and Kalle clung to his robe and squealed: ‘Me too, Daddy, me too!’

  ‘Playtime’s over, kiddies!’ Holger informed them as he entered the house. ‘It’s time we had ourselves a pick-me-up!’

  Anne Snapphane sat bolt upright in bed, woken by a sound that she couldn’t quite recall. Her heart hammered away in her chest, her hair was glued to her temples and her bare feet were cold. For a few seconds she was suspended in a void. Then it all came crashing down on top of her again and she fell back against the pillows, groaning. The room had closed in on her even more. Under the down duvet it was hot and damp. Apart from socks and shoes, she was fully dressed and her clothes smelled.

  I don’t want to, she thought. No more …

  Her hangover had receded and had been replaced by another kind of malaise. Maybe it was shock or fear. She listened to the sounds of the old building – the faint creaking of the beams, the rain as it beat against plaster and tiling – and sensed the presence of the others nearby. Curling up on her side, she concentrated on directions and distances.

  Upstairs Gunnar Antonsson paced slowly back and forth. In the room on the right, Bambi Rosenberg never stopped crying. The sound rose and fell, and Anne Snapphane turned over to shut the noise out. In the room on her left she could hear the radio muffling Mariana’s murmured words. Anne understood what was going on – Mariana had turned on the clock radio to drown out the sound of cellphone calls. Pretty transparent.

  She kicked off
the sweaty covers, pushing them to the foot of the bed, then burrowed her feet into the damp mass while she stared at the ceiling. Restlessness churned inside her. This waiting was sheer torture.

  Anne closed her eyes and breathed shallowly, listening to the chirpy backdrop of sound on the other side of the thin wall: two radio-show hosts were squabbling good-naturedly. The music in the background faded and was replaced by jingles followed by the news.

  The flat tones of the woman in the news studio signalled how nervous she was about filling in on a holiday when most people had the day off. Anne heard about a terrorist attack on a bus in central Jerusalem without really listening and the spot gave way to a statement that the government was expected to finalize this autumn. The next item was Michelle’s death. Anne Snapphane concentrated on this, but the announcement was so short, matter-of-fact and without speculation that it almost seemed indifferent. Michelle Carlsson, the journalist, had been found dead in a control room after participating in a TV programme. The police suspected foul play. Investigations had not yet been concluded, and the police spokesman had declined to make further comments at this time.

  The newswoman paused for a split second before moving on to the story of two men who had been reported missing after their boat was found drifting keel up on Lake Vänern. Then came a report of a flood in Poland, and a weather forecast. The cold front would continue to move south and would be followed by new low-pressure zones coming in from the Atlantic. The province of Svealand could expect a steady downpour of rain and some local thunderstorms during the day. These would clear up, beginning in the northernmost regions, this evening.

  Suddenly, Mariana turned down the volume, and the weather conditions of Norrland disappeared somewhere halfway into the wall.

  Anne Snapphane felt the wallpaper close in on her, as though it was pressing up against her lungs. She struggled to get up, walked around the bed to reach the window and looked out over the bridge and the small canal. The room needed airing, so she opened the window, gasping when the wind and the rain threatened to tear the window frame out of her hand. Alarmed, she shut it again, latching it with trembling fingers. She rested for a minute or so, sitting on the desk with her back to the rain. Then she went over to the door, sure that it would be locked.

  It wasn’t. Opening it a crack, she heard the murmur of voices in the lounge. The hall was dark and empty, muffled sounds coming from all different directions. The light from her window fell on the door on the opposite side of the hallway, Karin Bellhorn’s room.

  It was a split-second decision. Without making a sound, Anne closed her door, tiptoed a couple of steps in the darkness over to Karin’s door and opened it.

  The producer was seated at the desk in her room, and she looked up in surprise, her eyes swollen and lips cracked, as Anne Snapphane entered the room and closed the door behind her.

  ‘What on––?’

  She got halfway out of her chair. Anne put her finger to her lips.

  ‘I’ve got to talk,’ she whispered, ‘or I’ll go nuts.’

  ‘We’re not allowed to talk,’ Karin whispered back to her. ‘Go back to your room.’

  Anne Snapphane’s lower lip began to tremble and so did her hands and arms.

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘I can’t take it any more.’

  The producer came up to her, studied her briefly, then took her hands.

  ‘You poor thing,’ she said softly. ‘Sit down for a while.’

  Anne sunk down on the bed, buried her face in her hands and cried. The tears felt softer now, not as sharp and piercing as in her lonely room.

  ‘Shit,’ Anne sobbed. ‘This is so fucking awful! How could it happen?’

  Karin Bellhorn sighed, a deep and ragged sound that bordered on a sob.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t make sense of it.’

  ‘Did you see her?’

  Anne looked up at the producer. Karin smoothed her grey hair and averted her gaze.

  ‘I saw enough.’

  ‘She was still warm, but it was hot inside the bus. Did you see the gun?’

  The older woman swallowed and nodded.

  ‘Nothing this awful has ever happened to me before,’ Anne Snapphane continued, the words tumbling like the waters of a brook in springtime. ‘I’ve never even seen a dead person before, and there she was, somebody I’ve worked with for nearly four years. A person who had been alive a few hours earlier … murdered. Shot! Did you see the grey stuff? Did you see the mess on the wall and on the monitors? That was her brain. Christ, that was her fucking brain coating the TV screens. It’s disgusting – her memories, her childhood, her feelings, everything she was – all that was left was a sticky, yucky, blown-away mess …’

  Anne bowed her head and cried some more, louder this time, the sobs almost like screams. Karin placed a warm, dry hand on the back of her neck.

  ‘Anne,’ she whispered urgently. ‘Please, Anne, you aren’t supposed to be here, the police would flip if they found you here, please pull yourself together.’

  With tears streaming down her cheeks, nose and chin, Anne Snapphane took a few deep breaths.

  ‘Shit,’ she whispered, ‘Karin, it’s so fucking awful …’

  ‘I know,’ the producer said and put her arms around her. ‘I know …’

  They remained like that for quite some time, the older woman holding the younger one.

  ‘I’m so ashamed,’ Anne whispered as soon as she had calmed down. Karin released her. ‘I was always so nasty to Michelle.’

  ‘No, that’s not true,’ Karin said. ‘You weren’t nasty.’

  ‘Yes, I was,’ Anne Snapphane said, wiping her nose with her sleeve. ‘I couldn’t stand her, all because she was prettier than me, and better.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ the producer protested. ‘You were always a much better journalist than Michelle was.’

  ‘I mean better on TV,’ Anne said. ‘She had more screen presence than I ever had. You do know that both of us were up for the The Women’s Sofa gig, don’t you? She got it. And I never forgave her for that.’

  ‘So she got rich and famous at your expense?’

  Anne hesitated and then nodded.

  ‘Something like that.’

  Karin Bellhorn smiled wryly.

  ‘Well, see how much good it did her.’

  Anne looked up at her with a shocked expression on her face. She met the producer’s gaze and began to giggle hysterically.

  ‘I certainly prefer being me today,’ she said.

  The two women sat in silence on the bed. Anne Snapphane felt a melancholy calm start to radiate throughout her chest.

  ‘That was some night,’ she said after a while.

  Karin Bellhorn sighed.

  ‘Not to mention the taping session; I’ve never seen such chaos and I’ve been around the track a few times. Those anarchists were just too much – who dug them up?’

  ‘Mariana, I think. And did you hear her talking to Bambi Rosenberg about nude pictures at two a.m. in the lounge? What a racket they made!’

  ‘Then Highlander showed up and had a fight with Michelle.’

  ‘The boss himself? What did they fight about?’ Anne Snapphane asked.

  ‘He fired her.’

  ‘You’re kidding me!’

  Karin put her finger to her lips.

  ‘Careful … I saw them, he went up to her as soon as we had wrapped. Michelle wasn’t receptive, you know how hyper she gets after a show, and particularly after a special like this.’

  ‘Highlander’s nuts,’ Anne Snapphane said.

  ‘He certainly knew exactly what he was going to say. But his timing wasn’t very appropriate.’

  ‘Well, what did he say?’

  ‘That she was too old.’

  ‘Too old? She just turned thirty-four last Monday.’

  Karin smiled with a trace of bitterness.

  ‘First it didn’t register: Michelle was still pretty buzzed after the show. Then I was afraid she
was going to pass out – her face went all white and she was chewing her tongue. And suddenly she went berserk, yelling that Highlander was a pathetic fool who made his way up by sucking dicks, cleaning toilets and making coffee for the big shots in London.’

  ‘There is something to that,’ Anne interjected.

  ‘And that she wouldn’t accept orders from a conceited, power-crazed moron who didn’t have brains or balls. And she went on and on like that.’

  Anne Snapphane giggled.

  ‘It was almost funny,’ the producer conceded.

  ‘Highlander felt that Michelle should be grateful that he had taken the trouble to talk to her in person. He wasn’t obligated to do anything beyond sending her written notice. Apparently, that’s in her contract. Naturally, she’d be paid for the duration of her contract, a little more than one and a half years, as long as she respected the terms of the quarantine clause.’

  ‘In other words, even though she had been fired, she wouldn’t be able to work for anyone else?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Karin Bellhorn replied. ‘If she hosted some other network’s shows, they could sue her for breach of contract. And that’s not all. After the showdown at the Stables, Michelle kicked out her manager. She called him a leech, a millstone, and a lot of other nice things.’

  ‘Did Follin get fired too?’ Anne asked.

  Karin Bellhorn lit a cigarette and fingered her lower lip.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Right now I don’t know one damn thing for certain.’

  Suddenly Anne felt like crying again.

  ‘What are we involved in?’ she whispered.

  They sat for a while in silence. Sounds seeped in through the walls: Sebastian Follin was running water in the sink upstairs. To the right, Highlander’s radio blared. To the left, Barbara Hanson coughed.

  ‘Listen,’ Anne Snapphane said. ‘Who do you think did it?’

  Karin gave this some thought, the tip of her tongue in the corner of her mouth.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Who do you think it was?’

  ‘Do you think it was one of us?’

  Anne’s whisper was barely audible.

  The producer’s gaze drifted off towards the window, her eyes glazed and vacant-looking.