The Ninja Barbies had been completely overwhelmed by the police counter-attack, and had surrendered once two of the women were shot in the leg.
The article unsettled Annika. The uncritical parroting of the Ninja Barbies’ manifesto that had formed the core of the previous articles was completely absent this time, replaced by uniform praise for the heroic actions of the police. If any articles in the Evening Post deserved to be analysed and dissected, then it was these, she thought.
‘Soon we’ll be drowning in the tears of everyone wanting to give the kitten a home,’ Anne Snapphane said.
Annika smiled.
‘What’s it called?’
‘Harry, according to its collar. Have you had lunch?’
The minister was driving into a small town called Mellösa. He braked and looked left through the rain. The turning ought to be around here somewhere.
A big yellow building loomed through the greyness down by the water, and he slowed even more. This didn’t seem quite right. The car behind sounded its horn.
‘Okay, calm down, for fuck’s sake!’ the minister shouted, hitting the brakes. The Volvo behind slammed its brakes on, swerved, and drove past him with inches to spare.
His hire-car spluttered and died, the fan came on, and the windscreen wipers whined. He realized how much his hands were shaking.
What the hell am I doing? he thought. I can’t risk killing someone just because …
The irony of this ambiguous thought hit him, and he started the car again and drove slowly on. Two hundred metres further on he saw the sign: HARPSUND 5.
He turned left and crossed the railway. The road twisted and turned past the church, school and several farms in a landscape from another age. Large farmhouses with glassed-in verandas and conifer hedges slid past in the gloom.
Round here the landowners have been exploiting the working class for a thousand years, he thought.
A few minutes later he passed the heavy gates marking the entrance to the Prime Minister’s summer residence. At the end of the grand, well-kept drive he could just make out the main house.
He parked to the right of the main doorway and sat in the car for a while, looking at the house. It had two floors, and the hipped manor-house roof typical of the area. It was built sometime in the 1910s, a pastiche of earlier styles. He sighed, pulled out his umbrella, opened the door and ran to the house.
‘Welcome to Harpsund. The Prime Minister called to say you were coming. I’ve prepared some lunch for you.’
The housekeeper took his dripping umbrella and wet jacket.
‘Thanks, but I got something to eat on the way. I’d really just like to go to my room.’
The woman looked disappointed.
‘Of course. This way.’
She led him up to the first floor and stopped at a room with a view of the lake.
‘Just ring if there’s anything you need.’
The housekeeper closed the door silently behind her and he pulled off his shoes, and then his shirt. The Prime Minister was quite right. They’d never find him here.
He sat down on the bed and put the phone on his lap, then took three deep breaths.
Then he dialled the number to Karungi.
‘It’s over,’ he said when she answered.
There was a long pause while he listened.
‘No, darling,’ he said. ‘Don’t cry. No, I’m not going to prison. No, I promise.’
He stared out of the window and hoped he wasn’t lying.
45
The afternoon was sluggish. She hadn’t been given a story to work on. She understood what that meant, it was hardly subtle. She was no longer covering Josefin’s murder, or the story about the government minister.
At one point, when she was particularly bored, she phoned the violent crime unit and asked to speak to Q. He was actually there.
‘They were pretty hard on you on the radio last week,’ he said.
‘They were wrong,’ she said. ‘I was right. They were just making something out of nothing.’
‘I’m not sure I agree with you,’ he said calmly. ‘You can be bloody pushy.’
‘Rubbish,’ she said, annoyed. ‘I can be restrained when I want to!’
He laughed out loud.
‘Restraint isn’t the first thing I think of when you phone me,’ he said. ‘But you can deal with this sort of thing. You’re tough. You can’t be too sensitive in your job.’
To her own surprise she realized he was right.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘about this business with the Ninja Barbies.’
‘What?’ He was suddenly serious.
‘Were they carrying much cash?’
She heard him take a deep breath.
‘Why the hell do you want to know that?’
She shrugged and smiled to herself.
‘Just wondered …’
There was silence as he thought hard.
‘Do you know something?’ he said quietly.
‘Maybe,’ she said.
‘Okay, give it to me, baby,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘Like I’m going to do that!’
They sat in silence.
‘Not on them, no,’ he said.
Annika’s pulse quickened.
‘But in the car? At home? In the cellar?’
‘At home. Just one of them.’
‘Fifty thousand or so?’ Annika said innocently.
He sighed. ‘It would be nice if you just told me what you know,’ he said.
‘I could say the same about you,’ she said.
‘Forty-eight thousand and five hundred kronor,’ he said.
Confirmation of her suspicions bubbled through her brain. So he actually did it, the bastard!
‘Now maybe you’d like to tell me where the money came from?’ he said gently.
Annika didn’t answer.
When the theme tune of Studio Six started Annika turned off the radio and went down to the canteen. She had just got a plate of rabbit food from the salad bar when one of the staff called out her name.
‘There’s a phone-call for you,’ she said.
It was Anne Snapphane.
‘You should be listening to this,’ she said quietly.
Annika closed her eyes and felt her heart sink.
‘I can’t handle another character assassination,’ she said.
‘No, no,’ Anne said. ‘It’s not about you. It’s the minister.’
Annika took a deep breath.
‘Qué?’
‘It looks like he really did do it after all.’
Annika hung up and headed for the exit with her plate of salad. She heard someone shout behind her: ‘Hey! You can’t just walk off with that!’
‘So call the police!’ Annika shouted back as she pushed the door open and left.
The newsroom was completely silent.
The voice of the Studio Six presenter echoed from various speakers around the room, as all the journalists sat crouched over, trying to absorb the news.
Annika sat down gingerly behind her desk.
‘What is it?’ she whispered to Anne Snapphane.
Anne leaned over her desk.
‘They’ve found an expenses claim,’ she said quietly. ‘The minister was at the sex club the night Josefin was murdered. She added something to his bill half an hour before she died.’
The colour drained from Annika’s face.
‘Bloody hell!’
‘It all fits. Christer Lundgren was part of a meeting with some German Social Democrats and union leaders here in Stockholm on Friday the twenty-seventh of July. He gave a speech about trade and cross-border cooperation. Then he took the Germans on a serious pub crawl.’
‘What a slimeball,’ Annika said.
‘And that’s not all. Studio Six have evidently found the invoice. The names of the Germans are on the back.’
Annika sighed. ‘So has he resigned?’
‘Do you think he’s going to?’ Anne Snapphane said.
A man from the proofreaders’ corner shushed them. Annika turned on her radio and turned up the volume, and the presenter’s voice boomed out.
‘In the Foreign Ministry archive our reporter found the fateful invoice from the sex club. But by then the police were already on the trail of the minister …’
The man’s voice was full of scarcely contained triumph. He took a deep breath, and then said, slowly and deliberately: ‘Because there was … actually … a witness.’
A pre-recorded insert began to play, and it sounded like the reporter was inside a large, empty room, as the echo bounced off the walls. Annika shivered.
‘I’m standing inside the door of the block where Christer Lundgren, the Minister for Foreign Trade, has his secret overnight flat in Stockholm,’ the reporter whispered excitedly. ‘Until just a few days ago no one knew of its existence, not even his press secretary, Karina Björnlund. But there was one thing the minister hadn’t taken into account: his neighbours.’
This was followed by the sound of steps going up a staircase.
‘I’m on my way up to see the woman who has become the key to the investigation into the murder of stripper Josefin Liljeberg,’ the reporter said breathlessly.
The lift must have been on strike again, Annika thought.
‘Her name is Elna Svensson, and it was her early-morning routine and razor-sharp observations that caught the minister.’
A doorbell rang, and Annika recognized it. Yes, he was definitely inside number 64 Sankt Göransgatan. A door opened.
‘He was coming in through the front door just as Jesper and I were on our way out,’ Elna Svensson said.
Annika knew the whining voice at once: it was the fat woman with the dog.
‘Jesper likes to play in the park before I have my morning coffee. Coffee and a bun, that’s my breakfast …’
‘And on the morning in question you met the Minister for Foreign Trade, Christer Lundgren, on your way out?’
‘That’s what I just said!’
‘And he was coming in?’
‘He came in, and he looked a little the worse for wear. He almost trod on Jesper, and he didn’t even apologize.’
The worse for wear? Annika thought, jotting the phrase down in her notebook.
‘And what time would this have been?’
‘I get up at five every morning. It was soon after that.’
‘Did you see anything unusual up in the park?’
The woman sounded nervous now.
‘Absolutely not. Nothing at all. And Jesper didn’t either. He did his business and then we came home.’
The presenter’s voice came back on, this time joined by the commentator. They discussed whether the minister ought to resign, what the impact on the election campaign would be, the future of Social Democracy, the development of democracy generally. No subject was too big for Studio Six on a night like this.
‘God, that’s annoying,’ Anne Snapphane said.
‘What is?’ Annika said.
‘That it had to be them who found that bloody receipt. Why didn’t I go over to the Foreign Ministry and ask to see it?’
‘The real question is how they knew that it was there to be asked for,’ Annika said.
‘Of course, we tried to reach Christer Lundgren to get his reaction,’ the presenter said, ‘but the minister has gone to ground. No one knows where he is, not even his press secretary, Karina Björnlund. She also claims to have had no knowledge of his visit to the sex club.’
Karina Björnlund’s nasal voice came over the radio.
‘I have no idea where he was that evening,’ she said. ‘He told me he was having an unofficial meeting with several foreign visitors. I thought it was all very peculiar.’
‘Could he have meant the German union leaders?’ the reporter said in an insinuating manner.
‘I couldn’t really say,’ she said.
‘And where is he now?’
‘I’ve actually been trying to reach him all day,’ she said. ‘I think it’s very remiss of him to leave me to take responsibility for all of this mess.’
Anne Snapphane raised her eyebrows.
‘Karina Björnlund is no Einstein, is she?’ she said.
Annika shrugged.
‘The Prime Minister declined to comment on our new revelations,’ the presenter said. ‘He has announced that there will be a press conference at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘Do you think that’s when Lundgren will resign, then?’ Anne Snapphane said.
Annika frowned. ‘That depends,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘If the Social Democrats want an end to this, they’ll drop him like a hot potato. They can make him a county governor or bank director or something else dull up in bastard Lappland.’
Anne Snapphane wagged a finger at her.
‘Careful, my little metropolitan sophisticate – you’re talking about my home territory there.’
‘Provincialist!’ Annika said. ‘But on the other hand, that would mean that the government was admitting it had a murderer as a minister, even if he hasn’t been charged. If every Social Democrat is as pure as the driven snow, then the minister ought to be allowed to stay, if they’re being logical about it.’
‘In spite of the receipt from the sex club?’
‘You can bet they’ll have a damn good excuse for that. It was probably the chauffeur’s fault,’ Annika said with a smile.
The pseuds on the radio started solemnly summarizing the programme. Annika was forced to admit to herself that their revelations were sensational, the result of some good work.
‘A minister in a Social Democratic government invites seven German union bosses to a sex club,’ the presenter said. ‘A busty blonde stripper adds an item to his bill at half past four in the morning. The minister signs for it, and carefully writes the names of his German guests on the back of the receipt.
‘Half an hour later he gets home to his flat, the worse for wear. He almost stands on his neighbour’s dog without being aware of it. Later on that morning the stripper is found murdered fifty metres from his flat. She died sometime between five and seven o’clock. The minister has been called in by police for questioning several times, and is now in hiding somewhere …’
The last word was left hanging in the air as the theme music began. Annika turned the radio off.
46
The head honchos gathered round the newsdesk: Spike and Jansson, Ingvar Johansson, Picture-Pelle and the sports editor, Anders Schyman and the editor-in-chief. They had their backs to the rest of the newsroom.
‘God, what a symbolic sight,’ Annika said. ‘They have absolutely no idea they’re destroying this paper with that impenetrable backward-facing wall of theirs.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter what they decide, we won’t be involved,’ Anne Snapphane said. ‘They’ll get their blue-eyed boy to look after this little morsel.’
She was absolutely right: the group shifted collectively towards Carl Wennergren’s desk.
‘Does Jansson work all the time?’ Annika asked.
‘Three ex-wives and five kids to pay off,’ Anne Snapphane said.
Annika slowly ate her way through the wilting salad. Maybe that’s how you end up in this profession, she thought. Maybe it’s just as well to get out before I end up in the blue cock parade, just another sensation-fatigued old hypocrite with a brain that can only think in 72-point Arial.
‘You can keep an eye on Cold Calls,’ Spike said to her as he walked past.
A week and a half left, Annika thought, clenching her teeth as she took the plate into the little kitchen.
‘Oh well, I could probably do with a quiet evening,’ she said as she sat down again.
‘Ha!’ Anne Snapphane said. ‘That’s what you think! Look at the weather. All the nutters are at home thinking up things they can phone in as tip-offs. And especiall
y to us.’
And of course Anne was right.
‘I think immigration stinks,’ a voice said. It reeked of testosterone and the southern suburbs.
‘Really?’ Annika said. ‘In what way?’
‘They’re taking over. Why can’t they sort their own problems out in Bongo Bongo Land instead of bringing all their shit over here?’
Annika leaned back in her chair and sighed quietly.
‘Could you be more precise?’ she said.
‘First they kill each other at home and rape all the women. Then they come over here and strangle our girls. Like that dead girl in the park. I bet you it was one of them who killed her.’
So there was at least one person who didn’t listen to Studio Six.
‘Hmm,’ Annika said. ‘I’m not sure the police share your suspicions.’
‘You see? That’s the worst thing! The cops are protecting the bastards!’
‘So what do you think should be done?’ Annika said meekly.
‘Throw them all out. Ship them back to the jungle, for fuck’s sake. They’re no better than monkeys anyway.’
Annika smiled. ‘Well, I’m having a little trouble agreeing with you, because I happen to be black.’
The man on the line went completely quiet. Anne Snapphane stopped typing and looked up at her in surprise. Annika was having trouble keeping a straight face.
‘I want to talk to someone else,’ the racist said when he had gathered his thoughts.
‘I’m afraid there’s no one else available,’ Annika said.
‘What sort of nutter have you got there?’ Anne said.
‘Of course there is,’ the man said. ‘I can hear some bird in the background.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Annika said. ‘She’s Korean. Hang on, I’ll transfer you.’
‘Oh, fuck it,’ the man said and hung up.
‘God, there are some real cretins out there,’ Annika said.
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