The girl was on the brink of total collapse. Her eyes were red, her pupils enlarged and black, she had saliva round her mouth, and her movements were jerky and uncoordinated. Her hair was dirty and unkempt, and she was panting for breath.
‘You … vulture!’ she screamed as she rushed towards Annika. ‘You bitch!’
Charlotta whacked the paper against the side of Annika’s head as hard as she could. Annika put her hands up to her head instinctively as the blows rained down. Other youngsters were aiming at her arms and back, and the screams around her had risen to a collective howl.
Annika felt all reasoned thought vanish. She turned and, shoving one teenager aside, ran for her life. Away, oh God, get me away from here! She heard her steps pounding the street. The greenery on her right rushed past, the ground swayed, the buildings bounced and jerked irregularly. She had a sense that Pettersson was somewhere behind her, followed in turn by the crowd.
The entrance to the car park was pitch black after the sunlight of the park, and she stumbled in the darkness.
‘Pettersson?’ she shouted. ‘Are you there?’
She had reached the car, and as her eyes got used to the darkness she saw the photographer running down the ramp. He had his cameras in one hand, his photographer’s tunic hanging from one shoulder. His hair was a complete mess.
‘They tried to pull my clothes off,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘They were tearing my hair! It was stupid to march up to them like that.’
‘Just shut the fuck up!’ Annika screamed. ‘Get in the damn car and let’s get out of here!’
He got the driver’s door open, climbed in and unlocked the passenger door. Annika leaped into the car, it must have been a hundred degrees in there. She wound the window down. Astonishingly, the car started first time, and Pettersson roared up the ramp on screeching tyres. Up at street-level again, the light blinded them and Annika shut her eyes for a couple of seconds.
‘There they are!’
The shout came through the open window and she turned to see the mob racing towards them like a wall.
‘Drive, for fuck’s sake!’ she yelled, winding the window up.
‘It’s one way!’ the photographer shouted back. ‘I’ve got to go up past the cemetery.’
‘No way!’ Annika screamed. ‘Just drive!’
Pettersson had just pulled out into Kronobergsgatan when the car stalled. Annika locked the door and put her hands over her eyes. Pettersson twisted the key over and over again. The starter motor clicked, but nothing happened. The mob surrounded them, and someone tried to climb on top of the car. The teenagers were banging on the car with their fists, and their screams changed character, becoming a rhythmic chant:
‘Burn them! Burn them!’
Annika saw a copy of the Evening Post coming towards her, and her article about reactions in Täby was pressed against the window. The picture of the girls with their poems lefts smears of ink on the glass.
‘Burn them! Burn them!’
The crumpled paper was placed on the bonnet and someone set light to it. Annika was screaming at the top of her voice, scared out of her wits.
‘Get the fucking car started! Drive, drive!’
More newspapers started to burn, and pictures of the girls and their poems caught fire all around them. The car rocked, and it felt like they were trying to turn it over. The sound of beating fists grew ever louder. Pettersson yelled and the car suddenly burst into life. It jerked forward: the photographer pushed the clutch down and revved the engine. He jammed his hand on the horn and the car slowly crept through the crowd, and the person on the roof jumped off. Annika put her head down, shut her eyes and blocked her ears with her hands. She didn’t look up again until the car turned into Fleminggatan.
Pettersson was trying not to cry. He was shaking and could hardly drive. They were heading into the city centre, and pulled in at a petrol station near the Trygg Hansa building.
‘We shouldn’t have gone up to them,’ he sobbed.
‘Stop crying,’ Annika said. ‘What’s done is done.’
Her hands were shaking, and she felt shaken and paralysed. The photographer was the same age as her, but she felt that it was somehow her responsibility to sort things out.
‘Hey, come on,’ she said in a friendlier tone of voice. ‘We’re okay, aren’t we?’
She hunted around in her bag and found an unopened pack of tissues.
‘Blow your nose,’ she said, ‘then I’ll treat you to a cup of coffee.’
Pettersson did as he was told, grateful that Annika had taken charge. They went into the petrol station shop, which actually had both coffee and some little marzipan and chocolate cakes.
‘God, that was horrible,’ Pettersson said quietly, taking a bite of marzipan. ‘That’s the worst thing I’ve ever done.’
Annika smiled wryly. ‘You’ve been pretty lucky, then,’ she said.
They drank their coffee and ate their cakes in silence.
‘You ought to get that car fixed, you know,’ Annika said.
He groaned. ‘Yeah, tell me about it!’
They got some more coffee.
‘So what do we do with this?’ he wondered.
‘Nothing,’ Annika said. ‘And I hope no one else does anything with it either.’
‘Like who?’ Pettersson asked in surprise.
‘You don’t want to know,’ Annika said.
They drove back to the paper, taking the long way round via Gamla Stan and Södermalm. There was no way they were going to drive past Kronoberg Park again.
39
It was almost half past four by the time they got back to the newsroom.
‘So how did you get on?’ the head of news, Ingvar Johansson, asked.
‘Fucking awful,’ Annika said. ‘They attacked us and tried to set fire to the car with burning newspapers.’
Ingvar Johansson blinked sceptically. ‘Yeah, right!’
‘God’s own truth,’ Annika said. ‘It was bloody nasty.’
She suddenly felt she had to sit down, and sank onto the newsdesk.
‘So you didn’t get to talk to any of them? No pictures?’ the head of news asked in a disappointed voice.
Annika looked at him, feeling that there was a thick layer of bullet-proof glass between them.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t a story, anyway. They were just letting off steam, winding themselves into a state of mass psychosis. We were lucky, they came very close to overturning the car and setting fire to it.’
Ingvar Johansson was looking at her with wide eyes, then turned away and picked up the phone.
Annika got up and walked over to Berit’s desk. She was suddenly aware that her legs were shaking, and she was on the brink of bursting into tears.
God, I’m turning into a right cry-baby, she thought.
She sat down and read news agency stories and some peculiar industry journals until the theme music of Studio Six came on the radio at three minutes past six.
Afterwards she would look back on that hour as a surreal nightmare. It would continue to haunt her dreams for the next ten years.
She would remember the feeling when the electric guitar started up, how open-minded and unprepared she was, how naïvely she stood there, waiting to be shot down.
‘The evening papers have today plumbed new depths in their relentless search for sensation,’ the presenter thundered. ‘They expose grieving young people in their pages, they spread false rumours about victims’ relatives, and they do the bidding of the police in order to deceive the public. Debate and analysis of this in today’s edition of Studio Six.’
Annika heard the words without them actually sinking in. She had a vague idea, but simply didn’t want it to be true.
The electric guitar faded away and the presenter’s voice resumed: ‘It’s Tuesday, August the second. Welcome to Studio Six in Radio House in Stockholm,’ he intoned. ‘Today we’re looking at the Evening Post’s coverage of the murder of stripper Josef
in Liljeberg. With us in the studio we have two people who knew Josefin well: we have her best friend, Charlotta, and her former headmaster, Martin Larsson-Berg. And we’ve also spoken to her boyfriend, Joachim …’
Giddiness started to rock all her senses. A suspicion of what was to come began to grow in her mind. She stretched out a hand to turn off the radio, but stopped herself.
Better to hear what they say now than wonder later what they might have said, she thought.
She would regret that decision many times. What she heard fastened like a mantra in her memory.
‘If we start with you, Charlotta … Can you tell us how the Evening Post has treated you?’
Charlotta started howling in the radio studio. The presenter evidently thought it sounded rather effective, because he let it go on for thirty seconds before wondering if she could stop. Which she did, instantly.
‘Well,’ Charlotta said with a sniff, ‘I got a call at home from this reporter, Annika Bengtzon. She wanted to poke about in my misery.’
‘In what way?’ the presenter said, sounding incredibly sensitive and sympathetic.
‘My best friend had just died, and she called in the middle of the night and asked, “How do you feel?” ’
‘That’s awful!’ the presenter exclaimed.
Charlotta sniffed. ‘Yes, it was one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me. How can you go on after something like that?’
‘And was it the same for you, Martin Berg-Larsson?’
‘Larsson-Berg,’ the headmaster said. ‘Yes, by and large. I wasn’t a close friend of the girl, of course, for obvious reasons, but I’m very close to the family. Her brother was a very talented pupil; he graduated this spring and is going to college in the United States this autumn. We’re immensely proud at Tibble High School when our students go on to higher education at international institutions.’
‘So how did it feel to get these terrible questions in the middle of the night?’
‘Well, naturally, I was shocked. To start with I thought something had happened to my wife, she likes sailing, you see …’
‘How did you react?’
‘It’s all a bit hazy …’
‘Was it the same reporter who bothered Charlotta, this summer temp, Annika Bengtzon?’
‘Yes, it was her.’
The presenter rustled a newspaper.
‘Let’s see what Annika Bengtzon wrote. Take this, for instance.’
The man began to read excerpts from Annika’s articles in a gently mocking tone, about Josefin, her dreams and hopes for the future, Charlotta’s quotes, and then the orgy of grief in Täby.
‘What do you say to that?’ he concluded, in a deathly dark tone of voice.
‘It’s just awful that they wouldn’t leave us alone with our grief,’ Charlotta squeaked. ‘Why don’t the mass media ever respect people’s privacy when they’re in the middle of a crisis? And today, at our demonstration against pointless violence, she forced herself on us again!’
Martin Larsson-Berg cleared his throat. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you have to understand the mass media as well. We had a very fine set-up in place to deal with the crisis out in Täby, and of course we wanted to set an example for—’
The presenter interrupted him. ‘But the Evening Post and Annika Bengtzon didn’t stop there. The paper has been actively attempting to whitewash the suspected government minister, Christer Lundgren. In her capacity as the parrot of the Social Democratic Party, Annika Bengtzon has tried to pin the blame for Josefin’s murder on the person who was closer to her than anyone, her boyfriend Joachim. Our reporter went to meet him.’
They played a recording. Annika was glued to her seat. She was cold with sweat all over, and she had a sense of complete and utter unreality. The newsroom was full of people, but no one was paying any attention to her. She didn’t exist. She was already dead.
‘I loved Josefin; she was the most important thing in my life,’ a male voice said. He sounded young and vulnerable.
‘How did it feel when the Evening Post identified you as Josefin’s killer?’ the reporter asked cautiously.
The man sighed. ‘Well, I can’t really describe it. What can I say? Reading that you’re supposed to have … No, you just can’t take it in.’ And he actually sniffed, as if on cue.
‘Have you thought about suing the paper?’
Another sigh. ‘No, it wouldn’t be worth it, everyone knows that. Corporations like that pay whatever it takes to crush ordinary people. I’d never get justice against that rag. Besides, it would stir up too many memories.’
The presenter came back on, and now he had another reporter with him in the studio who was evidently there as some sort of expert commentator.
‘Well, this is definitely a problem, isn’t it?’ the presenter said.
‘Yes, that’s absolutely right,’ the commentator said keenly. ‘A young man is identified as a murderer by a summer temp who has decided to play at being an investigative reporter, and then the lie is established as a truth. It’s very difficult to get any justice in cases like this. It costs a lot of money to bring a case against a newspaper, but we should point out to anyone who feels that they have been exploited or libelled by the media that they can get legal aid to help convict journalists who overstep the mark and spread lies.’
‘Could this be something for Joachim to look into?’
‘Yes, it might very well be. We can only hope that he wants to pursue this all the way through the courts. It would be very interesting to see this become a test case.’
The presenter rustled his papers.
‘But why would a young summer temp do something like this?’
‘Well, part of the explanation is that she is prepared to do whatever it takes to keep her position at one of the evening papers. The evening press survives on sales of loose copies, and the juicier the headlines and flysheets, the more papers they sell and the more money they earn. Journalists who stoop to this level usually earn a very good salary from their sordid business, I’m afraid.’
‘So the juicier the headline, the bigger the journalist’s salary?’
‘Yes, that’s not an unfair summary of the situation.’
‘But do you really think it’s that simple, that she was trying to advertise her services to the highest bidder?’
‘No, I’m afraid there could well be more dubious motivations in this case.’
‘Such as?’
The commentator cleared his throat. ‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘There are ten thousand lobbyists in Stockholm. These lobbyists are only after one thing: to get the media and those in positions of power to do what their employers want. Influencing the media is known as “planting” stories. These people trick or bribe a journalist by planting news stories, and then the journalist runs off and does the lobbyists’ work for them.’
‘Do you think that’s what happened in this case?’
‘Yes, I’m quite convinced that’s exactly what happened here,’ the commentator said solemnly. ‘It’s quite obvious to anyone with any sort of knowledge of the industry that Annika Bengtzon’s articles about Christer Lundgren are the result of planted information.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ the presenter said, sounding impressed.
‘I’d like to play you a piece of evidence, a sequence that I recorded outside Rosenbad this morning,’ the commentator said triumphantly.
The Prime Minister’s voice filled the airwaves.
‘Of course I have every sympathy for what Christer is going through right now. This sort of media witch-hunt is always a severe trial. But I can assure you that for the government, and for the party, these exaggerated allegations have absolutely no significance at all. You must have seen today’s Evening Post, which explains why Christer has been questioned. He just happens to have a flat close to Kronoberg Park. Even government ministers need somewhere to sleep!’
Then back to the studio again.
‘Yes, we heard that with our own
ears,’ the commentator said. ‘The Prime Minister made a direct reference to the newspaper and clearly hoped that the rest of the media would follow its lead.’
‘How much responsibility does the government have here?’
‘Well, of course they can be criticized for exploiting such a young and inexperienced journalist. Summer temps are unfortunately rather easier to manipulate than more practised hands.’
The presenter’s voice once more: ‘Naturally, we asked the editor-in-chief of the Evening Post to participate in this discussion, but were told that he wasn’t available …’
Annika got up to go to the toilet, the floor swaying beneath her. The feeling only intensified as she got out into the corridor, and she had to lean against the wall.
I’m falling apart, she thought. This isn’t working. I’m not going to make it. I’m going to be sick on the floor.
She threw up in the hand-basin of the handicapped toilet, blocking the plughole when she tried to rinse it away. She looked in the mirror and was surprised to see that she was still intact. She looked the same as usual, she was still breathing, her heart was still beating.
I’ll never be able to show my face out there again, she thought. I’m finished now, for ever. I’ll never get another job. They won’t even want me at the Katrineholm Courier now, I’ll get the sack.
She started to cry.
Hell, where am I going to live? If I can’t pay the rent, where am I going to go?
She sank onto the floor, crying into her skirt.
Lyckebo, she thought suddenly, and stopped crying. I’ll go to Grandma’s. No one will find me there. Grandma moves into her flat in Hälleforsnäs in October each year, but I could stay on out there.
She blew her nose on some toilet paper and dried her tears.
Yes, that’s what she would do. Grandma had said she’d always be there for Annika, she wouldn’t let her down. She was in the union, she’d get unemployment benefit for at least a year, then she’d just have to see. She could move abroad, a lot of people did that. Pick oranges in Israel or grapes in France. Or why not New Zealand?
Exposed Page 21