‘Are these the pictures from the park?’
Pelle Oscarsson double-clicked an icon on the screen. The deep green of the park filled the screen, with patches of bright sunlight. Granite gravestones hung between the iron railings. You could just make out a woman’s leg, from her hip right down to her foot, in the middle of the picture.
‘That’s a bloody good picture, but maybe a bit hard to stomach,’ Annika said spontaneously.
‘Then you should see this one,’ Picture-Pelle said, clicking open the next image.
Annika shrank back as the woman’s clouded eyes stared out at her.
‘These were the first pictures,’ Bertil Strand said. ‘It’s a good job I moved, don’t you think?’
Annika gulped.
‘Daniella Hermansson?’ she asked.
Picture-Pelle clicked a third icon. The picture showed a nervous Daniella clutching her child and looking up at the park in horror.
‘Brilliant,’ Annika said
‘ “It could have been me”,’ Picture-Pelle said.
‘How did you know that’s what she said?’ Annika asked in surprise.
‘That’s what they always say, at least in our captions,’ Pelle said with a sigh.
Annika walked away.
All the doors leading to the management offices were closed. She hadn’t seen the editor-in-chief today. He’d been fairly invisible all week, now she came to think about it. None of the editors had arrived yet. The men who looked after the paper’s layout normally turned up after seven each evening, suntanned and drowsy after an afternoon in Rålambshov Park.
They usually started the night by each drinking a litre of black coffee, then they spent a while arguing about the mistakes they claimed to have found in that day’s paper, and then they would set to work. They juggled headlines, cut texts and clattered away on their Macs until the paper was sent to press at six in the morning. Annika was slightly afraid of them. They were noisy and a bit thoughtless, they were pretty cynical, and had a tendency to put people in boxes. But their skill and professionalism were astonishing. A lot of them seemed to live for the paper, four nights on, four nights off, year after year. The rota rolled throughout the year, taking no account of Christmas, Easter or Midsummer. Four on, four off. Annika couldn’t imagine how they did it.
She went over to the empty sports section. A television tuned to Eurosport was on in one corner. She stopped at the large windows at the end of the room, with her back to the newsroom, and looked out over the multi-storey car park opposite. The concrete looked as though it was steaming. When she put her nose to the glass and peered to her left, she could just make out the Russian Embassy. She rested her forehead against the glass, surprised it was so cool. Her sweat made a greasy mark on the glass, which she tried to wipe off with her hand. She drank the last of the mineral water. It tasted metallic. Slowly she walked back through the newsroom, and was gradually filled with an intense feeling of happiness.
She had made it. She was part of it. She was one of them.
This is going to work, she thought. Nothing’s going to get me out of here now.
6
It was a little after three o’clock. It was time to call the police. On her way back to her desk she popped into the staff kitchen and filled the empty bottle with tap water.
‘We don’t know enough yet,’ an officer on the duty desk said curtly. ‘Call the press office.’
The press spokesman had nothing to say.
The operations room confirmed that they had sent several units to Kronoberg Park, but of course she already knew that. The emergency control room told her once again how the call had been received from a member of the public at 12.48. There was no landline connected to the caller’s care-of address.
Annika sighed. She picked up her notepad and leafed through it, and her eye was taken by the call number on the Hawaiian detective’s car. She thought for a few moments, then called the operations room again. The car belonged to the Norrmalm crime unit. So she called them.
‘It’s out on loan today,’ the duty officer told her when he checked his list.
‘Who to?’ Annika wondered, her pulse rising.
‘Violent crime. They don’t have their own cars. There’s been a murder on Kungsholmen today, you see.’
‘Yes, I heard something about that. Do you know anything else?’
‘Not my district – Kungsholmen comes under south Stockholm. But this case has probably already been passed up to the national violent crime unit.’
‘The officer who was driving the car had short, fair hair and a Hawaiian shirt. Do you know who that might be?’
The duty officer laughed. ‘It sounds like Q,’ he said.
‘Q?’ Annika said.
‘That’s what we call the inspector of the violent crime unit. Okay, I’ve got another call coming in.’
Annika thanked him and hung up. She dialled the main reception desk again.
‘I’d like to talk to Q in violent crime,’ she said.
‘Who?’ the receptionist said in surprise.
‘An inspector with the nickname Q who works in the violent crime unit.’
She heard the receptionist groan. It was probably just as hot there as it was here.
‘One moment …’
There was a ringing tone as the call was put through. Annika was about to hang up when an irritated voice answered.
‘Hello, is that the violent crime unit?’ she said.
Another groan. ‘Yes, this is violent crime. What is it?’
‘I’m trying to get hold of Q,’ Annika said.
‘That’s me.’
Bingo!
‘I just wanted to apologize,’ Annika said. ‘My name’s Annika Bengtzon; I’m the woman who ran into you up in Kronoberg Park.’
The man on the other end sighed. There was a scraping noise in the background, it sounded like he was sitting down.
‘What paper are you calling from?’
‘The Evening Post. I’m on a placement here for the summer. I don’t know what you normally do in cases like this, how you organize your dealings with the media. Back home in Katrineholm I usually call Johansson in crime at three o’clock, he always knows everything.’
‘Here in Stockholm you call the press spokesman,’ Q said.
‘But you’re leading the investigation?’ Annika chanced.
‘Yes, so far, anyway.’
Yes!
‘Why not a public prosecutor?’ she hurriedly asked.
‘There’s no reason for that at this point.’
‘So you don’t have a suspect?’ Annika concluded.
The man didn’t answer.
‘You’re not as stupid as you make out,’ he said eventually. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘Who was she?’
He groaned again. ‘Listen, I’ve already told you, you’ll have to ask the—’
‘He says he doesn’t know anything.’
‘Then you’ll just have to make do with that for the time being!’
He was starting to get annoyed.
‘Sorry,’ Annika said. ‘I didn’t mean to pressure you into saying.’
‘Of course you did. Right, I’ve got a lot to—’
‘She’d had breast enlargements,’ Annika said. ‘She was wearing loads of make-up and had been crying before she died. Do you know why?’
The man on the other end didn’t say anything. Annika held her breath.
‘How do you know that?’ he asked, and Annika could tell he was surprised.
‘Let me put it like this: she hadn’t been lying there for long. Her mascara was smeared, she had lipstick on her cheek. She’s at the forensics lab out in Solna right now, isn’t she? So when do I get to know what you know?’
‘I didn’t actually know about the breast enlargements,’ he said.
‘Normal breasts kind of hang to the side when you’re lying down, whereas silicone tits stick straight up. That’s not very common in young girls. Was she a
prostitute?’
‘No, definitely not,’ the detective said, and Annika could almost hear him biting his tongue.
‘So you do know who she is! When will you be releasing her name?’
‘We’re not sure yet. She hasn’t been identified.’
‘But she will be soon? By the way, do you know what had been chewing at her?’
‘I haven’t got time for this,’ he said. ‘Goodbye.’
And Inspector Q hung up. It was only when she heard the dialling tone again that Annika realized that she still didn’t know what his real name was.
7
The minister put the car into fourth gear and accelerated into the Karlberg Tunnel. The air inside the car was oppressively hot, and he leaned across to the air-conditioning button. The cooler started up with a click, followed by a gentle hum. He sighed. The journey yawned endlessly ahead of him.
At least it’ll get cooler this evening, he thought.
He emerged onto the northern bypass, then turned into the tunnel leading to the E4 motorway, heading north. Various noises echoed through the car, growing and bouncing around the windows: the tyres on the tarmac, the hum of the air-conditioning, the whistle from a window that wasn’t shut properly. He switched on the car radio to drown them out. The sound of the most popular national station, P3, blared out. He looked at the digital clock on the dashboard. 17.53. Soon time for Studio Six, the evening news programme, with its debates and analysis of the news.
I wonder if I’ll be on, he thought briefly. Of course I won’t. Why would I be? They haven’t interviewed me today.
He pulled into the left-hand lane and overtook two French mobile homes. The north junction for Haga flew past, and he realized he was driving too fast. I really don’t want to get caught speeding right now, he thought, and pulled in again. The mobile homes filled his rear-view mirror, blowing their horns at his sudden braking.
At six o’clock he turned up the volume to hear the news. The US president was concerned about the progress of the peace process in the Middle East. He had invited the various parties to talks in Washington next week. No one knew if the Palestinian representative would accept the invitation. The minister listened attentively. This could have consequences for his own work.
That was followed by a report from Gotland, where there was a large forest fire burning. Vast areas on the east of the island were under threat. The reporter interviewed an anxious farmer. The minister noticed that his attention was divided. He was passing the Solna junction, and hadn’t even noticed that he had already gone past the intersection at Järva krog.
Then the newsreader read some short items from the studio. Negotiations to avoid the threatened strike by air-traffic controllers were underway, and the union was to respond to the mediators’ latest proposals by seven o’clock that evening. The body of a young woman had been found dead in Kronoberg Park in central Stockholm. The minister’s ears pricked up and he turned the volume up again. The police were saying little about the case at the moment, but there were clear signs that it was murder.
Then there was a short piece about a former party secretary who had written an article about the old Information Bureau affair in one of the morning papers. The minister started to get angry. The old git! Why the hell couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut, especially in the middle of an election campaign?
‘We did it for democracy,’ the former secretary said through the speakers. ‘Without us, the doors would have been wide open for a Marxist-Leninist paradise.’
And then the weather forecast. High pressure staying over Scandinavia for the next five days. The water table had sunk so low throughout the whole country that there was a severe risk of forest fires. A ban on outdoor fires covering the whole country had been imposed. The minister sighed.
The newsreader ended the broadcast just as he was driving past Rotebro, and he caught a glimpse of a large shopping centre down to his right. The minister waited for the shrill electric guitar that was the theme tune for Studio Six, but to his surprise it didn’t come. Instead the announcer introduced yet another programme presented by hysterical youngsters. Shit, of course, it was Saturday. Studio Six was only on Monday to Friday. Annoyed, he switched the radio off. At that moment his mobile phone rang. To judge by the sound, it was somewhere at the bottom of one of the cases on the back seat. He swore loudly and stuck his right arm through the gap between the seats. As the car wove erratically along the edge of the lane, he pushed his suitcase aside and got hold of the little overnight bag. A brand-new silver Mercedes honked angrily at him as it drove past.
‘Capitalist pig,’ the minister muttered.
He emptied the bag onto the passenger seat and found his mobile.
‘Yes?’ he said.
‘Hello, it’s Karina.’
His press secretary.
‘Where are you?’ she asked.
‘What do you want?’ he countered.
‘Svenska Dagbladet want to know if this latest crisis in the Middle East peace talks poses any threat to the delivery of Saab fighter planes to Israel.’
‘They’re just fishing,’ the minister said. ‘We haven’t signed any contracts to deliver JAS fighters to Israel.’
‘That wasn’t what they meant,’ his press secretary said. ‘They want to know if the negotiations are under threat.’
‘The government doesn’t comment on any potential negotiations regarding the purchase of Swedish arms or military aircraft. There are often a number of protracted negotiations underway with a number of interested parties, and in only a relatively small number of cases do these result in substantial deals. So there is definitely no threat to any deliveries in this instance, because none were due to take place, as far as I am aware, anyway.’
The press secretary was making notes in silence.
‘Okay,’ she said when she was finished. ‘Have I got this right: the answer is no. No deliveries are threatened, because no contract has been signed.’
The minister rubbed his tired brow.
‘No, Karina,’ he said, ‘that’s not what I said at all. I certainly didn’t give no as the answer. It’s unanswerable. Because no deliveries are planned, they can’t be under threat. Saying no to the question means implicitly that some sort of delivery will be made.’
He could hear Karina’s breathing down the phone.
‘Maybe you should talk to the reporter yourself,’ she said.
Bloody hell, he really ought to give this useless woman the sack! She was utterly and completely incompetent.
‘No, Karina,’ he said. ‘It’s your responsibility to formulate an answer in such a way that my point is conveyed and the statement correct. What else do you think we’re paying you for?’
He ended the call before she had a chance to reply. Just to make sure, he switched the phone off and tossed it back in the bag.
The silence was deafening. Gradually those earlier noises crept back into the car, the whistling window, the hot tarmac, the air-conditioning. Annoyed, he pulled open the top two buttons of his shirt and switched on the radio again. He really didn’t want to listen to fake phone-calls on P3, and clicked at random to get one of the pre-programmed stations. He got Radio Rix, where an old hit from his youth was playing. The song triggered some sort of memory, but he couldn’t identify exactly what it was. Probably a girl. He resisted the urge to turn the radio off again. Anything was better than those repetitive noises.
It was going to be a long night.
8
The editorial team rolled in just before seven with the usual noise. Their boss, Jansson, had settled in opposite Spike at the newsdesk. Annika and Berit had been down to the staff canteen, known generally as ‘The Seven Rats’, where they had had beef stew.
The combination of the heavy food and the men’s loud laughter gave her stomach cramp. She hadn’t got anywhere. She hadn’t got hold of the junkie informant. The press spokesman was a miracle of affability and patience, but he didn’t know anything. She had spoken to him
three times that afternoon. He didn’t know who the woman was, or where and how she died, and he didn’t know when he would find out. It was making Annika nervous and was probably contributing to her cramp.
She had to come up with a portrait of the woman; otherwise she’d lose her chance of the front cover.
‘Calm down,’ Berit said. ‘We’ll make it, just you see. And tomorrow’s another day. If we don’t have her name, then neither does anyone else.’
The main television news at 7.30 started with the crisis in the Middle East, and the US president’s appeal for new talks. The story seemed to go on for ever, and involved a satellite discussion with their Washington correspondent. Long speeches in standard-issue official Swedish were illustrated by archive footage of the intifada.
Then the forest fires on Gotland, precisely the same order of stories as on the radio earlier. The aerial footage was undeniably striking. They spoke to the head of the team combating the fires, a fireman from Visby. Then there was some film of an improvised press conference, and Annika couldn’t help smiling when she saw Anne Snapphane forcing her way through to the front, holding her recorder in front of her. The item concluded with an anxious farmer, and Annika thought she recognized his voice from the radio.
After the fire there wasn’t much news to report. There was a feeble attempt at a story about the election campaign starting early. Annika had been under the impression that it had started six months ago. The Prime Minister, a Social Democrat, was shown walking hand in hand with his wife across the main square of his hometown in Södermanland, waving to the people around him. Annika smiled when she saw her old workplace flash past in the background. The Prime Minister made a brief statement about the article his former party secretary had written on the IB affair.
‘I don’t think this is a story we want to drag around with us,’ he said tiredly. ‘We need to get to the bottom of it, once and for all. If we conclude that an official inquiry is what’s needed, then that’s what we’ll do.’
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