More laughter.
‘You can laugh all you want,’ Karin Bellhorn said, her voice coloured with contempt and pain. ‘Steven loved me. They only want to fuck you.’
After this, there was nothing but silence and Annika thought the tape had run out. She locked stares with Bambi Rosenberg. The other woman’s eyes were red, smeary with make-up and full of shocked despair. Malice hovered over the room like a dark cloud and Michelle had apparently been rendered speechless. When the voices came back on, Karin was the one to speak.
‘I can do your job any day, but you couldn’t do mine.’
A snort of contempt billowed throughout the room.
‘There’s one thing you ought to know,’ Michelle said. ‘You have me to thank for your job on this show. Highlander wanted to use someone else, only I insisted on having you, but that was a big mistake. You don’t have what it takes any more. You make shows for the senior-citizen set. You go around thinking that you make things work, but everyone else has to cover for your mistakes.’
Something in the TV star’s voice made the crowd hush. A new note of hardness, ruthlessness, a steely intent to inflict pain and crush her foe. The vulnerable whine in Karin Bellhorn’s voice on the tape proved that she had perceived it too.
‘That’s nonsense,’ she whimpered.
‘Please, are you telling me you don’t even realize it? You’re nothing but a goddam has-been who doesn’t have the sense to bow out.’
‘I’m not going to listen to this.’
‘You park your fat arse in the newsroom and lord it over everyone, so sure you have all the answers. You even think you’re good enough to be on screen.’
‘You’d better be quiet, Michelle!’
‘Why do you think I show up on the set even when I’m running one hell of a temperature? I do it because otherwise you’d sit in.’
Gales of hysterical, drunken laughter.
‘Can’t you see how pathetic you are?’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You try to be young and with it, but you’re so totally wrong, and you take out your bitterness on people like me, the successful ones …’
‘You watch your mouth!’
‘Did you know that Steven goes around telling people about those sponges you used instead of tampons? And how disgusting he thought it was? Everybody knows about it, you’re a laughing stock …’
‘You’d better watch it, you little—’
‘John told me you came on to him. I saw it, too – everyone did.’
‘Shut up!’
‘You tried to get him into bed, and all he could think about was how you rinsed out those bloody sponges …’
The shot rang out without warning. The ear-popping sound roared like thunder through the loudspeakers, making the audience jump.
Gunnar Antonsson was still in the doorway. His gaze darted around the room in dismay. Karin Bellhorn had turned around and was staring at the fuzzy TV screen.
In the echo after the shot the sound of breathing could be heard, a heavy asthmatic wheeze.
‘Michelle?’
Static coupled with rustling sounds.
‘Michelle? Oh, my God – Michelle! Oh, no …’
A dull thud, the sound of a heavy object dropping on carpeting. Gasps of hyperventilation, someone moving around. A whoosh of air followed by silence.
Annika didn’t move, the sound of the shot still ringing in her ears. The stares of the crowd shifted from the screen to Highlander, to Karin Bellhorn, all flushed and sweaty. Gunnar Antonsson straightened up, then turned away and left. An exalted Barbara Hanson was whispering to the people around her. Not bothering to disguise her tears, Mariana von Berlitz clung to Carl Wennergren.
When the tide of accusing looks grew too strong, Karin Bellhorn shrank back, bumping into the wall.
‘What?’ the producer demanded as she looked around. ‘Do you believe this?’
Bambi Rosenberg’s face was all red except for a white ring around her tightened mouth. Her eyes blazed.
‘Damn you!’ she screamed at Karin Bellhorn. ‘Damn you to hell!’
One of the policemen grabbed hold of the woman, restraining her. Sebastian Follin was still standing by the lectern, stunned and confused, his notes clenched in his hands. Highlander was dialling a long number on his cellphone, probably to London, and he moved to a corner of the stage. Stefan Axelsson’s head was bowed and he was crying so hard that his shoulders were shaking.
Annika turned to gaze at the producer again; she had suspected as much, but the truth hadn’t really sunk in. She hadn’t understood the forces at work even though they had surrounded her the whole time.
‘For God’s sake!’ Karin Bellhorn shouted, feeling hot and hunted, her gaze darting around in desperation. ‘It’s all a fake! Don’t you get it? She did it, Anne Snapphane, she mixed this tape, you know how it’s done …’
The insight Annika had just acquired fanned the flames of her fundamental sense of judgement: that bitch was trying to put the blame on someone else, attempting to finger Anne who wasn’t even here! The room faded, leaving the black-robed producer who had her back to the wall highlighted and exposed.
‘This is an outrage!’ Karin Bellhorn cried on the other end of eternity. ‘She’s ruthless! Now why would I want to murder Michelle?’
Annika braced herself against the radiator and tensed her fingers to gain a sure grip. Then she let her voice ring out:
‘Cain and Abel,’ she said, her voice as clear as a bell. ‘The most ancient motive for murder in the history of the world. It’s so easy to become what you do. You believe that you are what everyone else sees.’
Heads turned as astonished glances were shot in her direction, Annika could sense them without seeing them, felt their attention, but didn’t care. She knew that their minds were wide open, that all the fences were down, that they were ready for anything.
Karin Bellhorn leaned forward, her eyes dark with rage, fighting for her life.
‘Are you insinuating that I would kill someone out of simple envy?’
Total silence. The crowd had stopped breathing. The electronic whir of the cameras filled the room in between the exchanges of words. The spotlights made faces flush, while the scent of the flowers was oppressive.
‘Absolutely not,’ Annika said, the voice from beyond. ‘It’s so much bigger than that.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Karin Bellhorn screamed.
Annika closed her eyes for a moment and found her truth.
‘If you don’t think you’re worth anything, you become what you do. If no one sees what you do, you become invisible twice over. The more you try to be noticed, the more annoying you become, sort of like a buzzing fly. And if someone else should happen to be acknowledged at the same time, and taken seriously, someone who might not deserve it …’
‘Are you out of your mind?’
The producer’s voice broke, while Annika’s rang out across the room.
‘Karin,’ Annika said, ‘you have given more thought to the mechanisms that control celebrity than anyone else. I think you reached the end of your tether. Everyone saw Michelle Carlsson, but no one saw you.’
Annika locked stares with the producer across the room, over the heads of the mourners.
‘I understand, Karin,’ Annika said. ‘I know why you did it. I understand Cain too. If you’re invisible for too long, you cease to be human. In the end, you’ll do anything just to prove that you exist.’
Karin Bellhorn blinked. Annika saw her falter.
‘The revolver was on the floor,’ Annika said. ‘You picked it up. It was sticky, but you didn’t know why.’
There was no comment from the producer other than the wheezing of her airways.
Annika closed her eyes and let it come to her, channelling the events, feeling them seep into her.
‘You raised the revolver,’ she said. ‘You didn’t feel its weight, only the cold metal. It wa
s weightless, an extension of your arm.’
Karin Bellhorn tried to say something, but words failed her.
‘Michelle stood there, her words cutting you to pieces. You knew that you would die if she continued.’
The producer gaped and stared at her.
‘It was either her or you,’ Annika said. ‘And it was so easy to pull the trigger that you hardly felt it. You looked into her eyes as the impact knocked her backwards, and you saw that she didn’t get it. She died without understanding a thing.’
Karin Bellhorn’s face was now white and she struggled to get air.
‘Later on, you heard the bang and felt the gun recoil, and your mind went blank. You knew what had happened, and you knew that it was wrong. Isn’t that right, Karin?’
Annika’s voice was a whisper floating on the scent of the flowers.
‘I only wanted to make her shut up,’ Karin Bellhorn said.
Anne Snapphane stared at Annika on the monitor, perched up on the windowsill, the heads turning in the crowd, going from Karin to Annika. Backlit by the sun through the window, her body was outlined with a golden halo. Her hair was translucent and glowing.
Anne took a deep breath and noticed that the cramping sensation in her stomach was slowly easing up. Her legs started to shake instead, so she sat down carefully among the bags of tapes, taking shallow breaths. She felt as if she had escaped being pushed off a cliff, even though she had been in free fall.
‘What the hell are you up to?’
Highlander loomed up over the pile of impounded and returned evidence. His face was a mess of make-up, confusion and rage. The silvery tie was no longer on straight.
Anne tried to say something, but couldn’t find her voice and cleared her throat. Looking at the floor, she felt tears well up.
‘I didn’t do it,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t you give me that!’ Highlander said in a voice that was dull with rage. ‘The guys went through every last source in the control room. You bypassed the regular circuit and ran something through the talk box.’
Anne looked up, tears blurring her sight.
‘I didn’t shoot her. I walked around outside the bus, looking for her, but I didn’t do it.’
She bowed her head, the tears falling into her lap. The sound of a footfall in the corridor made her try to pull herself together. She pressed the back of her hand under her nose, swiped away the mucus and tears, then wiped her hand on her jeans and got up, feeling unsteady.
There wasn’t much space by the door, the bags were in the way, and she could see Q’s head bobbing impatiently on the other side.
‘We’ve got to move this garbage.’
‘Careful now!’ Highlander admonished.
The bags flew out into the corridor. Lieutenant Q stood in front of her, pale and determined-looking.
‘Annika tells me you found a reference tape of the intercom circuit that had been running in the bus on the night of the murder.
Anne Snapphane felt a new surge of panic spread from her stomach to her legs and shoot up to her shoulders. She swallowed and nodded.
‘I presume that the conversation we heard in the conference room was that very tape. Am I right?’
Another nod.
‘The engineers have established that the tape was played in this room. I assume that you had something to do with it?’
Anne tried to breathe, bent down, pushed eject on the VHS player, and handed the tape to Q.
‘This wasn’t exactly the ideal way to pursue an investigation,’ he said, teeth clenched.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking down at the floor but still feeling the scorch of his glare.
The policeman bagged the tape as evidence.
‘I’ll be talking to you again,’ he said as he left the room.
Highlander remained stationed behind the monitors, looking at the jumble of tapes and papers, and straightened his tie. He sighed, smoothed his brow, looked like he was about to say something, but decided not to. Instead, he turned and left the room.
As Anne gazed at his retreating back, she suddenly realized the obvious.
‘We don’t have a producer,’ she said. ‘How are we going to put a show together by Saturday without one?’
Highlander whirled around to face her, panic in his eyes. He flicked his tongue across his lips a few times while thoughts shot through his mind like balls of lightning.
‘Oh, my God,’ he said. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘I’ve located most of the material,’ Anne said in a dull voice. ‘I could run up a rough copy with all the in and out times, and get everything together …’
‘Why don’t you do the final cut?’ Highlander asked. ‘You can do it.’
Utterly surprised, Anne inhaled sharply and sat down. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
‘I want a producer’s salary and a company car,’ she said quickly.
They would never be able to afford to demote her again.
Her boss kept looking at her as he slowly exhaled, expressing contempt.
‘Karin always warned me about you, said you’d take over as soon as you got the chance. She was right to keep you in check. How can you even think of using a situation like this?’
‘Well, you should talk,’ Anne countered.
Annika stopped as she reached the light, resting in the whoosh of the doors closing behind her, sealing in the dust and the air-conditioned air of the newsroom. Relief gushed through her system like a waterfall.
She had eight days off ahead of her.
Exhaling, she blinked up at the sun, feeling its warmth. The wind had died down, having blown the low-pressure zone from the Atlantic elsewhere, opening the door to a heat wave from Russia. She pulled off her sweater and let summertime caress her skin and hair. Hitched her bag up on her shoulder and slowly headed for Rålambshovsparken. There was a smell of hot asphalt in the air, for the first time this summer. She took a deep breath of it and had to smile. Mother Nature responded, delirious with longing, with an explosion of aromas, colours and insects.
The paper and Michelle Carlsson were left behind her, and they faded into a haze. The newsroom had been in a void: Torstensson remained in his room, Schyman had continued to be absent-minded. Rumours were flying around about an extra board meeting.
She hadn’t been allowed to write about the memorial service, since she had been involved in the broadcast. Sjölander had interviewed her instead, which was strange, but prudent.
‘Why did you cross-examine Karin Bellhorn from across the room?’ he had asked.
‘Because I knew what the answers would be,’ Annika had replied. ‘And I wanted everyone else to know too.’
That was the truth, and Anne Snapphane had provided her with another reason as well:
‘Thank you,’ Anne had whispered in the corridor behind the conference room. ‘You saved me from becoming a murderer in the minds of everyone around for ever and ever. It wouldn’t have mattered who really did it, people would just remember this: “Hmm, Anne Snapphane, didn’t she get accused of murder on TV?”’
Riddarfjärden surged and fell, the water flashing like the shards of a shattered mirror. Annika rummaged through her bag for her sunglasses. No such luck. As she walked along the edge of the water, positively drunk with joy, she squinted so hard that she missed seeing a poodle on a lead and tripped over it.
Q had been a bit upset, but not as angry as she feared. A public confession was hardly a bad thing, even though it wasn’t legally binding.
In the initial interview, Karin Bellhorn had tried to claim that the gun went off accidentally and that it was unpremeditated, which didn’t quite make sense.
‘She’s going down,’ Q said when he called from his crummy cellphone inside police headquarters. ‘One way or another, she’s going down.’
Annika walked along Kungstorget, passing police headquarters and glancing up at the jail, Kronobergshäktet, at the top of the complex. Where could Karin Bellhorn be?
The thought sent a shiver down her legs and a chill up her spine. Darkness welled up in her chest and she swallowed hard to make it go away. She speeded up, her heels tapping along the pavement and the breeze ruffling her hair.
The children were playing outdoors. Ellen was in the sandbox, dressed in a nappy, a shirt and a sun hat. Kalle was on the slide. His feet were bare and he was in high spirits. She saw both of them at the same time – both of them and only them. Two clear-cut figures. Running up to them, her joy at being reunited with them equalled that of her children at being with their mother. She held them and rocked them, both at the same time. Kissed sandy hands and snotty cheeks, the natural thing to do.
She informed the staff that her children would not be coming in for the rest of the week, and probably not the following week either. They all walked slowly down the sunny side of Scheelegatan in the direction of the Co-op store. Ellen was tired and quiet. She snuggled up in her stroller with her thumb in her mouth. Kalle jabbered away. Soon he would get overtired and become cranky. Annika felt as if her feet weren’t quite touching the ground. Utterly present in this moment of being with her children in the summer weather, she floated along. In the cool recesses of the supermarket, she bought chicken and coconut milk, along with ice-cream bars and some beer. Then she raced home to Hantverkargatan while Kalle stood on the kiddy board, crowing with glee. This sense of bliss stayed intact until Kalle dumped fish sauce on the floor and Ellen pooped.
When Thomas unlocked the front door, she felt herself go rigid and the last trace of bliss evaporated. The children had eaten, Ellen had fallen asleep and Kalle had put on his pyjamas. She assessed the kitchen with a quick glance and inspected her son’s appearance before she forced herself to stop.
It wasn’t up to him to judge her or the housekeeping standards, and she shouldn’t hand him the chance to do it.
She was standing in the kitchen when he came in. She saw traces of her own mood surrounding him.
He kissed her on the mouth. His lips were cold.
‘Just you wait, I’ve got lots to tell you.’
‘So have I,’ she said.
He turned away, grabbed Kalle and swung him up high.
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