‘I want to know what was in that email,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I can’t help with that; it’s with the person who’s dealing with it. Anything else?’
She turned away, continued to look through the list, oddly agitated.
Why would the Evening Post’s chairman suddenly decide that he had to meet the Minister of Culture on Tuesday afternoon?
She forced her worries to one side.
Sender: Anonymous.
Regarding: Drawing of yellow dragon.
Decision: Ad acta.
She read the entry again.
‘What’s this?’ she said, leaning forward and pointing, waiting for the man to put on his glasses and look.
‘An anonymous letter,’ he said. ‘We get quite a few of those. Mostly newspaper cuttings or slightly muddled opinions.’
‘Many yellow dragons?’
He laughed. ‘Not too many.’
‘Where are the anonymous letters?’
‘I collect those here, they have their own box.’
The registrar took off his glasses and reached for a brown file labelled Government Offices: Anonymous Post. He opened it and took out the letter at the top.
‘We keep them in boxes arranged by year, five years up here and then they go into the central archive. Every envelope is stamped on the back.’
He held out the little envelope, letting her read it. It was stamped 31 October that year.
‘What’s in it?’
‘I think this one’s the dragon.’
He pulled out a sheet of A4 paper folded in four, smoothed it out and handed it to Annika.
‘I don’t know why they sent it here,’ he said, ‘but maybe it counts as culture.’
It really was a little dragon in the middle of the sheet of white paper, drawn with a rather shaky hand and coloured with yellow ink. Something clicked inside Annika’s head. She felt it physically. She had seen a dragon almost exactly the same as this recently, but where?
‘Can I have a copy of this?’ she asked.
While the man went out into the corridor to get a photocopy, Annika picked up the envelope the dragon had arrived inside. It was addressed to Minister of Culture Karina Björnlund, Stockholm, La Suède.
She looked closer at the stamp. Postmarked in Paris, le 28 Octobre.
Ragnwald had probably lived in the French part of the Pyrenees for the past thirty years. There could be a connection, but where had she seen the drawing before? She closed her eyes tight and searched her memory, catching a glimpse of something.
She opened her eyes wide, listening out for the registrar. She could hear him talking to someone down the corridor. She looked round the room and discovered a little Post-it note stuck to the bottom of his computer screen. She crept over to the computer and leaned over to read the note.
Karina direct, then a number through the departmental exchange, then the word mobile followed by a GSM number.
She stared at the number, 666 66 60. Twice the number of the beast, and then a zero. Was that just coincidence, or did it say something about Karina Björnlund?
‘Anything else I can help you with?’
Annika jumped and straightened up, turned round and smiled disarmingly.
‘Maybe another time,’ Annika said, picking up the sheaf of printouts, ten years of incoming post to the Minister of Culture.
She headed for the lifts with relief.
33
Mehmet filled Anne Snapphane’s office doorway, anger radiating from his head. Anne’s reflex reaction at the sight of him was pure, uncomplicated joy, a blinding white jubilation that shot up from her stomach all the way to her scalp.
‘We’ve got to sort this out,’ he said. ‘Now, before it gets so infected that we can never get to grips with it.’
Her happiness didn’t want to go; it clung on as a fading hymn of praise: He came! He came here to me! I’m important to him.
And Anne saw him lean against the doorframe with all the elegant nonchalance that she loved so much, her handsome man, the man she longed for so much at night that it woke her. She pushed her swivel chair back from the desk and slowly stood up.
‘I want that too,’ she said, holding out her hand to him.
He pretended not to see it, staring down at the floor.
‘Sylvia’s been off sick all week,’ he said, quietly and angrily.
Her jubilation shattered, she could hear the splinters hitting the plastic mat.
‘I haven’t betrayed anyone,’ she said, the sharp edges cutting her voice.
He raised both hands in a calming gesture.
‘We’ve got to get past that bit,’ he said. ‘It’s no one’s fault. It wasn’t working between us; surely we can at least agree on that?’
Defiance was forcing tears into Anne’s eyes. She gasped for breath far too audibly before replying. ‘I thought it was working.’
‘But I didn’t,’ he said. ‘So it couldn’t go on. If two people are going to live their lives together they have to agree about that, don’t they?’
She closed her eyes for a few seconds, then raised her head and tried to smile. ‘Serfdom has been abolished, you mean?’
He took a couple of steps into the room.
‘Anne,’ he said in a pleading tone that made her smile fade, ‘if we can’t sort out normal communication, now, then we’ll be sitting with a payment plan that’ll last for ever. And Miranda will be the one it costs most. We can’t mess up like this.’
She pressed her fingertips against the desk, looking down at her shoes.
A flash of insight worked its way up from her feet, through her gut, rushing up to her head. She suddenly saw the world from his point of view, realized what was important for him: Miranda, his daughter; his new woman and new child. She was no longer in his consciousness in that way, all tenderness was exhausted and gone. Now she was a necessary evil, someone he once shared a child and a bed with, a by-product from a past life that he would always have to deal with.
Self-pity threatened to suffocate her; a feeble embarrassing sound escaped her throat. She took several silent breaths.
‘But I love you,’ she said, without looking at him.
He went over to her and hugged her, she wrapped her arms hard round his waist and leaned her head against his neck and wept.
‘I love you so bloody much,’ she whispered.
He rocked her gently, stroking her hair, and kissed her on the forehead.
‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘I understand that it hurts, and I’m sorry. Forgive me.’
Anne Snapphane opened her eyes to his polo sweater, feeling a tear run down her nose and hang there.
‘There’s no point in clinging on to pride any more,’ he said quietly. ‘Will you be okay?’
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.
There were five sheets in the fax machine when Annika got home. She dropped her outdoor clothes in a heap on the hall floor; she was going to have to go out to pick up the children later anyway.
She settled onto the wooden chair by the hall table, surrounded by piles of bills, and looked quickly through the documents the woman at the Norrland News archive had faxed through, in the order they had been published in.
The first cutting indicated that Karina Björnlund had been a promising athlete as a teenager. The article was a report from the NC, which Annika presumed meant either Norrland Championship or Norrbotten Championship. The picture was grainy, with too much contrast; Annika had to screw up her eyes to make out the skinny young girl with a ponytail and the number 18 on her chest, waving a bunch of flowers jubilantly towards the photographer. There was something ecstatic about the picture that was still almost tangible, thirty-five years after it had been taken. Karina Björnlund was a success, she won all the sprint distances at the championship and was predicted a glorious future.
For some reason it made the register detailing the minister’s post feel even mor
e shameful.
Annika put the picture of the athlete at the bottom of the pile and went on.
The second cutting was an article about the Working Dogs’ Club in Karlsvik, and showed Bamse the golden retriever and his owner Karina Björnlund, along with five other dogs and owners, getting ready for a display in the sports hall that weekend. The picture was smaller than the last one, and she could only really make out the minister’s white teeth and the dog’s dark tongue.
The third was stamped 6 June 1974, and showed a group of new graduates from the medical secretarial course at Umeå University. Karina Björnlund was third from the left in the top row. Annika glanced across the homogenous group on the picture, no men, no immigrants, most of them with their hair in a page-cut, one side curled to form a wing over one eyebrow.
The fourth cutting was the smallest, a note from 1978 under the heading Names & News, in which the Norrbotten County Council announced that Karina Björnlund had been appointed as secretary to the commissioner of the council.
The fifth was a report of what had evidently been a turbulent public meeting in the county council offices in the autumn of 1980. The picture showed four men discussing the coordination of healthcare in the district, with expansive gestures and presumably raised voices. In the background stood a woman in a flowery skirt, with watchful eyes and folded arms.
Annika looked at the sheet more closely and read the small print of the caption.
Council Commissioner Christer Lundgren defended the position of politicians on the issue of a new central hospital for Norrbotten in discussions with the Medical Council and the pressure group Protect Our Health. His secretary Karina Björnlund listens.
Okay, Annika thought, letting the paper drop. So that’s how she did it. She got a job with Christer Lundgren, who eventually became Trade Minister, clung on to his coat-tails and followed him all the way into government.
She looked at the cutting again, and saw it had been published on page twenty-two, a long way back for a local paper, and read the start of the article, which was about some technicality in the political decision-making process. She skimmed the rest of the piece until her eye caught the picture byline at the bottom right corner.
Hans Blomberg, council reporter.
She blinked, looked again. Yes, it was definitely him, a much younger and thinner version of the archivist at the Norrland News.
She let out a snort, suddenly picturing the archivist’s background as clearly as the messy table in front of her. There were people like him on every paper, conscientious but unimaginative reporters who covered Important Things, political decisions and social developments, the sort of person who wrote dull texts and defended the fact with reference to the seriousness of the subject, looking down derisively on journalists who wrote engaging, committed articles. He had probably been union representative at some point, fighting for all the hopeless cases, but never for people like her, because they could look after themselves.
And now he was sitting in the archive and counting the days until his misery was finally over.
Little Hans, she thought, twisting her arm to check the time.
Time to pick up the rugrats.
Ellen rushed towards her, arms open wide, Tiger dangling from her left hand. The joy that welled up within Annika was so hot that something melted, the sight of tights and pigtails and the red dress with a chequered heart on it made something hard and sharp give way and disappear.
She caught her daughter as she jumped at her, astonished at the child’s utter trust, and stroked her straight little legs and arms, her soft shoulders and stiff back, inhaling the divine softness of her hair.
‘I made a sweet machine,’ Ellen said, struggling to get down. She took Annika by the finger and pulled her over to the craft corner.
‘We’ll show Daddy,’ the child said, about to pick up her cardboard creation, as the top swayed disconcertingly and Annika leaped forward.
‘We can’t really take it with us today,’ she said, taking hold of the cardboard, ‘because we have to go into town and buy new shoes for Kalle. We’d better not take the sweet machine with us in case it gets broken.’
She put the contraption back on the worktop. The girl’s mouth fell open, her eyes welled up with tears, her lip starting to quiver.
‘But,’ she said, ‘that means Daddy won’t get to see it.’
‘Yes he will.’ Annika crouched down beside her. ‘The machine’s safe here, and we can get it tomorrow instead. Maybe you could paint it?’
Ellen looked down at her feet, shaking her head and making her pigtails dance.
‘What lovely pigtails you’ve got,’ Annika said, taking hold of one of them and tickling her daughter’s ear. ‘Who did those for you?’
‘Lennart!’ Ellen said, giggling and shrugging to escape the tickling. ‘He helped me with the sweet machine.’
‘Come on, let’s go and get your brother,’ Annika said, and the battle was over, Ellen put on her overalls, hat and gloves, and even remembered to take Tiger home with her.
Kalle’s school was on Pipersgatan, two blocks away. Annika held Ellen’s warm little hand in hers as they carefully negotiated the puddles, singing nursery rhymes.
Kalle was sitting in the reading corner concentrating on a book about Peter No-Tail. He didn’t look up until Annika crouched down next to him and kissed the top of his head.
‘Mummy,’ he said, ‘where’s Uppsala?’
‘Just north of Stockholm,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘Can we go and see Peter and the other cats one day?’
‘Definitely,’ Annika said, remembering that there were special cat walks where you could follow in the author Gösta Knutsson’s footsteps around the churches, castle and university.
‘I think she’s prettiest,’ Kalle said, pointing to a white cat and slowly spelling out ‘Ma-ry Cream-nose’.
Annika blinked. ‘Can you read?’ she said, astonished. ‘Who taught you to do that?’
He shrugged. ‘On the computer,’ he said. ‘Otherwise you can’t play.’
He stood up, closed the book and put it back on the shelf. Then looked sternly down at her sitting on the red cushion.
‘Boots,’ he said. ‘You promised. My old ones have got a hole in.’
She smiled, caught hold of one trouser leg and pulled him to her, he laughed and struggled, and she blew on his neck.
‘We’ll get the bus to the shops,’ she said. ‘Go and get your clothes on. Ellen’s waiting for us.’
The number one pulled up just as they reached the bus-stop, and the three of them found seats right at the back.
‘Army green,’ Kalle said. ‘I don’t want blue again, only babies have blue boots.’
‘I’m not a baby,’ Ellen said.
‘Of course you can have green,’ Annika said. ‘As long as they’ve got some.’
They got off at Kungsträdgården and hurried across the street between the showers of slush thrown up by the cars driving past. They tugged off their hats and gloves and scarves when they were inside the shopping centre, stuffing them into Annika’s roomy bag. In a shoe shop on the upper floor they found a pair of army-green, lined rubber boots in the right size, tall enough and with reflective patches. Kalle refused to take them off. Annika paid and they took the old ones home in a bag.
They got out in the nick of time, Ellen had got too hot and was starting to whine, but she fell silent again once they were out in the cold and darkness of Hamngatan, quietly walking along with her hand in Annika’s. Annika took Kalle’s hand as well as they went to cross the road by the department store, concentrating on fending off the cascades of dirty water from the cars, when the silhouette of a person on his way out of the shop across the street caught her eye.
That’s Thomas, she thought without realizing she was thinking it. What’s he doing here?
No, she thought, it isn’t him.
The man took a couple of steps forward, his breath lit up by a streetlamp, yes, it was him!
Her face broke into a broad smile, the warm joy that melted things came back. He was out buying Christmas presents! Already!
She laughed; he was such a Christmas freak. Last year he started buying presents in September – she remembered how angry he got when she found them at the bottom of his wardrobe and had wondered what those parcels were and what they were doing there.
A violent spray of slush hit them and Ellen screamed. Annika pulled the children back from the kerb and yelled angrily at the taxi. When she looked up again Thomas was gone, she searched the crowd for him, and saw him again, he was turning to face someone, a woman with blond hair and a long coat went up to him and he put his arm round her. Thomas pulled the other woman to him and kissed her. There was complete silence and everyone else vanished. Annika was staring down a long tunnel and at the other end her husband was kissing a blonde woman with a passion that made her insides freeze and shatter.
34
‘Mummy, it’s green!’
But she didn’t move. People jostled her, she saw their faces talking to her but their voices were mute. She saw Thomas go off, vanishing with his arm round the blonde woman’s shoulders, the woman’s hand round his waist, they walked slowly away with their backs to her, enclosed in their coupledom, swallowed up by the sea of people.
‘Why aren’t we going, Mummy? Now it’s red again.’
She looked down at her children, their faces looking up at her, eyes clear and questioning, and realized that her mouth was wide open. She swallowed a scream, snapped her mouth shut, looked at the traffic.
‘Soon,’ she said, in a voice that came from deep within her. ‘We’ll go next time.’
And the lights went green and the bus came and they had to stand all the way to Kungsholmstorg.
The children started singing as they climbed the stairs, the tune was familiar but she couldn’t place it, she couldn’t find the right door-key and had to try several times.
She went into the kitchen and picked up the phone, dialled his mobile number but got the message service. He had turned it off. He was walking with his arm round a blonde woman somewhere in Stockholm, not answering when she called.
So she called his office, and Arnold, his tennis partner, and no one anywhere answered.
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