Annika rubbed her forehead, feeling suddenly thirsty, her lips dry. A few frozen houses from the thirties huddled in the twilight, plumes of smoke rising straight up from their chimneys, the wind had given up, the cold was clear as glass.
I have to talk to Karina Björnlund, she thought. I have to set things up so that she doesn’t get away. She won’t wriggle out of this, lying and protecting herself at any cost.
She pulled her mobile from the bag, and found she had no reception. She couldn’t be bothered to get cross, just carried on towards Luleå, looking forward to being back in civilization again.
At the turning to Gäddvik she picked up her mobile again, shut her eyes and replayed the scene in her head: the Post-it note on the registrar’s computer screen, the Minister of Culture’s mobile number. The number of the devil, twice, and then a zero.
She keyed in 070-666 66 60, stared at the number on the screen for a moment, then realized with a start that she was on the point of ignoring a right-hand bend.
What was she going to say?
Karina Björnlund will listen, she thought. It was just a question of getting hold of her.
She pressed the call button, feeling the warmth of the mobile in her hand, and pressed in the earpiece as she slowed the car’s speed.
‘Hello?’
Annika braked in surprise, the first ring had hardly started before a woman’s voice answered.
‘Karina Björnlund?’ she said, pulling up at the side of the road and pressing the earpiece further in; there was a rushing, humming sound in the background.
‘Yes?’
‘My name’s Annika Bengtzon, I work for the Evening Post—’
‘How did you get this number?’
Annika stared at the red-painted wall of a Norrbotten farmhouse and adopted a neutral tone of voice.
‘I was wondering if the Red Wolf had met the Yellow Dragon recently?’ she said, and listened intently to the noise on the line, voices talking, a metallic clattering in the background, a tannoy announcing something, then a second later the line went dead.
Annika looked at the display. She pressed redial and got an impersonal electronic answering service, and ended the call without speaking.
Where had Karina Björnlund been when she took the call? What was the metallic voice saying over the tannoy in the background?
She shut her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her temples.
‘Last call for SK009 to Stockholm, gate number five’?
A flight announcement, that much was certain. But SK? Didn’t that mean an SAS flight?
She called directory inquiries and asked to be put through to the Scandinavian Airlines System for business customers, and waited in a queue for thirty seconds until the call was picked up.
‘SK009 is the afternoon flight from Kallax to Arlanda,’ the sales assistant at SAS told her.
Annika felt the adrenalin pumping.
Karina Björnlund was at the airport just five kilometres away and either was on her way back down to Stockholm or had just arrived and was collecting her bags. She considered booking her return flight to Stockholm but decided to wait, said thank you and ended the call.
Then she drove towards the roundabout, turned right and glided along frozen roads towards Kallax Airport.
Because of the taxi strike, anyone who didn’t have their own car was forced to take the bus from the airport into Luleå. Annika could see the queue trail back outside the terminal, huddled figures fighting against the cold and their own luggage. She was about to drive past the airport bus towards the hire-car parking lot when she caught sight of Karina Björnlund.
The minister was at the back of the queue, patiently waiting her turn.
Thoughts ricocheted round Annika’s head. What was Björnlund doing here?
She pulled up by the kerb, putting the car in neutral and pulling on the handbrake, stared at the minister and picked up her mobile again. She dialled the department and asked to speak to the minister’s press secretary. She was told that Karina Björnlund had taken the day off.
‘I have a question about the proposal being presented tomorrow,’ Annika said, her eyes glued to the woman at the end of the queue. ‘I have to talk to her today.’
‘I’m afraid that isn’t possible,’ the press secretary said amiably. ‘Karina’s away and won’t be back until late this evening.’
‘Isn’t it a bit odd for a minister to take time off the day before a major proposal is presented to parliament?’ Annika said slowly, staring at Karina Björnlund’s dark fur-coat.
The press secretary hesitated. ‘It’s a private matter,’ she said quietly. ‘Karina was called to an urgent meeting that couldn’t be postponed. It’s very unfortunate timing, I have to agree with you. Karina was very upset that she had to go.’
‘But she’ll be home this evening?’
‘That’s what she was hoping.’
What sort of meeting would make a minister abandon their work? A sick relative, a partner or child or parent? A meeting in Luleå, something she couldn’t avoid, something that took priority over everything else.
The Red Wolf.
The meeting to celebrate the return of the Dragon.
Annika’s fingers started to tingle, and sweat broke out along her back.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and ended the call.
She drove past the bus, and watched in the rear-view mirror as the minister climbed on, then let the bus pass her and stayed a hundred metres behind it. Just before the Bergnäs bridge she decided it was time to get closer.
You’re sitting in there, Annika thought, staring at the vehicle’s filthy back window. You’re on your way somewhere that you don’t want to be seen, but I’m here.
And the angels starting singing gently to her, slowly and mournfully.
‘Oh, shut up!’ Annika yelled, hitting her head with the palm of her hand, and the voices disappeared.
She followed the bus over the bridge and entered the frozen city, driving past panelled houses and banks of snow and frozen cars, and turned off at a junction by a petrol station.
The airport bus stopped just across the street from the City Hotel’s heavy façade. She braked and leaned forward to watch the passengers getting off. Her breath misted the widescreen, and she wiped it with her sleeve.
Karina Björnlund was the second last off. The Minister of Culture stepped carefully out of the bus with a black leather bag in her hand. Annika could feel herself on the verge of hyperventilating.
A bag to breathe into, she thought, realizing that she didn’t have one. Instead she held her breath and counted to ten three times, and her heartbeat slowed down.
It was getting dark, but the sunset was as slow and gradual as dawn had been, and she watched Karina Björnlund stand and freeze at the bus-stop, a thickset, dark woman in a fur-coat and no hat.
The Red Wolf, Annika thought, trying to make out the features of her face in the shadows, imagining that she could see a pair of anxious, sad eyes.
What are you doing here?
Her mother lives on Storgatan, she thought. Maybe she’s on her way there.
Then realized: this is Storgatan. Why would she be standing at a bus-stop to go somewhere else? She hasn’t come to visit her mother.
Suddenly her back window was filled with the headlights of one of the local buses. She put the car in gear and rolled forward a few metres to let the bus pull in, passing the little gaggle of people waiting in the queue. In her rear-view mirror she watched as Karina Björnlund picked her bag up and climbed on board.
I’ll follow the bus to see where she gets off, Annika thought, and rolled a bit further until she realized she was heading into a pedestrianized street. People were walking slowly in front of the car, challenging her with their stares. She looked up and noticed a sign indicating that all vehicles apart from public transport were forbidden. She felt herself starting to panic again, grappled with the gear-stick to find reverse, and saw the bus gliding slowly towards her
. She turned the wheel as hard as she could and swerved on crunching tyres.
The bus slid past and she felt the sweat sticking her legs to the seat. She was about to lose sight of the minister, and had no idea where she was heading.
Bus number one, she thought. The bus that Linus Gustafsson usually took.
Svartöstaden.
East, towards Swedish Steel.
And she drove down towards the harbour, turning right towards the ironworks. She pulled over to the side and waited; if she was right the bus would have to pass her here. Four minutes later the bus glided past her and carried on towards Malmudden.
She just had time to register the name of the street, Lövskatan, as the bus turned right; wasn’t that where Margit Axelsson used to live? Another sign, Föreningsgatan, and the bus carried on along the edge of a messy and desolate industrial estate, huddling in the shadow of an enormous jet-black mound of iron-ore. On the left was a row of identical two-storey apartment blocks from the forties, and up ahead loomed a huge, abandoned industrial building that seemed to have grown into the side of the mountain of iron-ore. Dark windows sent warnings into the twilight, cold cries into the darkness. She followed the bus as the road swung up and left and ran alongside the railway line. An immense steel pipe hung high above, and below lurked a row of graffiti-covered and ramshackle industrial units, surrounded by pipes, steel girders, tyres, pallets. No sign of life anywhere.
The bus indicated and pulled in at a bus-stop. Annika braked and pulled up behind an abandoned car twenty metres further down the hill.
Karina Björnlund got off, clutching her leather bag. Annika slumped down in her seat and stared at her.
The bus pulled away, and the Minister of Culture was left staring out at the railway track, her breath drifting like clouds around her. She seemed to hesitate.
Annika switched off the engine and pulled out the key, waiting inside the warm interior of the car without taking her eyes off the woman.
Then Karina Björnlund suddenly turned round and started walking towards the crown of the hill, away from the industrial units.
Annika stiffened, fumbled with the ignition key, biting the inside of her cheek.
Should she get out and follow the minister? Drive up and offer her a lift? Wait and see if she came back?
She rubbed her eyes for a moment.
Wherever Karina Björnlund was going, she evidently didn’t want company.
Annika opened the car door, pulling her hat and ski-gloves from her bag, pushed the door shut and locked the car with a bleep. She gasped for breath, reeling from the cold; how was it possible to live in a climate like this?
She blinked a few times; the cold was making the air incredibly dry, hurting her eyes.
The daylight was dark grey now, almost gone. The sky was distant, clear and entirely colourless; a few stars twinkled above the mounds of ore. Two streetlamps further down the road spread a dull, hopeless light in a small circle around their own feet. Karina Björnlund had disappeared over the crown of the hill, and there was no other sign of life anywhere. The rumble from the steelworks was carried through the cold along the railway track, reaching her like a dull vibration.
Walking carefully, she started up the hill, looking hard at every bush and shadow. At the top of the hill the road swung sharply to the left and led back into the housing estate. Straight ahead was a narrow track, clear of snow and ice, with a sign forbidding vehicle traffic.
Annika narrowed her eyes and peered around her, unable to see the minister anywhere. She took a few steps along the private track, jogging as fast as she dared on the ice and grit. She passed a bundle of cables leading down to the railway tracks and ran past an empty car park, then the track emerged alongside the railway line again. Far ahead the ironworks, coke ovens, and blastfurnaces sat brooding darkly against the winter sky, millions of tons of ore turned into a rolling carpet of steel. To the left was nothing but slurry and snow. The full moon had risen behind the mounds of ore, its blue light mixing with the yellow lights illuminating the ore railway.
She ran for several minutes until she was forced to stop and catch her breath, coughing drily and quietly into her glove, blinking moisture out of her eyes and looking round for Karina Björnlund.
The track looked as though it was rarely used. She could see just a few footprints, some tracks left by dogs and a bicycle, but no minister.
The angels suddenly burst out in song.
She hit the back of her head so hard that the voices fell silent. She shut her eyes and breathed for a few seconds, listening to the emptiness in her head, and in the echo of the silence she suddenly heard other voices, human voices, coming from within the forest up ahead. She couldn’t make out any words, could just hear a male and a female voice talking fairly quietly.
She passed beneath a viaduct, either a road or a railway, Annika couldn’t tell. She no longer knew where she was. The voices grew louder, and in the light of the moon and the railway track she suddenly saw footsteps leading into an opening in the scrub.
She stopped, peering through the low trees, just able to make out shadows, spirits.
‘Well, I’m here now,’ Karina Björnlund was saying. ‘Don’t hurt me.’
A rough male voice with a Finnish accent answered, ‘Karina, don’t be scared. I’ve never meant you any harm.’
‘Believe me, Göran, no one’s ever done me as much harm as you have. Say what you want and … let me go.’
Annika caught her breath, her stomach turning somersaults, her dry mouth turned to sandpaper. She took a careful step into the first of the footprints already there in the snow, then another, and another. In the moonlight she saw the forest open out into a clearing, and at its centre was a small brick building with a sheet-metal roof and sealed-up windows.
In the middle of the clearing stood the Minister of Culture in her thick fur, and a thin grey man in a long coat and leather cap, with a dark duffel bag beside him.
Göran Nilsson, the ruler with divine power, the Yellow Dragon.
Annika stared at him with painfully dry eyes.
Terrorist, mass-murderer, evil personified, this was what it looked like, hunched and dull and trembling slightly?
She had to call the police.
Then realized: her mobile was in the bag on the passenger seat of the Volvo down by the abandoned car.
44
‘How can you think I’ve ever meant you any harm?’ the man said, his voice carrying through the still air. ‘All my life you’re the person who’s meant the most to me.’
The woman shuffled her feet nervously.
‘I got your messages,’ she said, and Annika realized at once why she sounded so scared. She had received the same warnings as Margit.
The man, the Yellow Dragon, lowered his head for a few seconds. Then he looked up again, and Annika could see his eyes. In the strange light they glimmered red and hollow.
‘I had a reason for coming here, and you’re all going to hear it,’ he said, his voice as cold as the wind. ‘You may have come a long way, but I’ve come further.’
The woman was shaking under her fur, her voice scared, and she was close to tears. ‘Don’t hurt me.’
The man went up to her. Annika could see him pull something from his coat pocket, black, shiny.
A weapon. A revolver.
‘I shan’t trouble you again,’ he said quietly. ‘This is the last time. You’ll just have to wait at the meeting place. There’s something I need to take care of first.’
The wind freshened, tugging at the branches of the pine trees.
‘Please,’ the woman pleaded. ‘Let me go.’
‘In,’ he said harshly. ‘Now.’
And Karina Björnlund picked up her bag from the ground and, with the revolver aimed at her back, walked inside the little brick building. Göran Nilsson didn’t move, watched her go inside, put the gun in his pocket again, turned round and walked over to the duffel bag leaning against the wall of the building.
> Annika took a deep breath. She had heard more than enough. She moved softly and carefully back along the trail of footprints and emerged onto the track, casting a last glance at the trees so she could describe the site properly to the police.
Someone was moving, someone was coming towards her.
Her breathing came hard and deep. She looked around in panic.
Ten metres or so behind her was a metal box with a mass of thick cables snaking out of it, and behind it was a thicket of young pine trees. Annika fled towards them, her feet scarcely touching the crunching surface of the track. She flew into the sharp branches, parting them with both hands, then peered behind her.
The grey man emerged into the dim light from the railway track, dragging the duffel bag behind him. It was clearly very heavy. He stood still on the icy track for a few seconds, then put his hand to his stomach and bent over, his breath rising from his mouth in panting bursts. Annika craned her neck to see better. It looked like the man was about to fall flat on his face.
Then his breathing calmed down, he straightened his back and took a few unsteady steps forward.
Then he looked straight at Annika.
Horrified, she let go off the branch she had been holding back, and put her hand over her mouth to muffle the sound and cloud of her breath. She stood completely still in the darkness as the man slowly walked towards her. His panting breath and strained steps grew in her head, coming closer and closer until she thought she was going to scream. She closed her eyes and heard him stop a metre or so away from her, on the other side of the little pine trees.
There was a scraping noise. She opened her eyes.
Metal scraping against metal, she held her breath and listened.
The man was doing something with the metal box. He was opening the doors of the cabinet containing all the cables. She could hear him panting, and realized that she had to take another breath, inhaling quickly and silently, only to feel a huge and instant desire to throw up.
The man stank. A smell of decay filtered through the branches and made her put her hand in front of her mouth again. He was panting and struggling with something on the other side of the trees. The scraping sounds continued, then fell silent. There was a squeak, and then a click.
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