Studio Sex

by Liza Marklund

  He turned round and looked at the sports desk; Annika could only see his broad back. His voice carried almost as well.

  “I feel a deep sense of duty as a journalist. Ordinary people are my employers. I have fought corruption and the abuse of power all my working life. That’s the core of journalism. Truth is my guiding principle, not influence or power.”

  He turned so that Annika saw his profile.

  “Big words, I know. But I’m not being pretentious, only ambitious. I didn’t take this job for the salary and the title. I’ve come here today for one single reason, and that is to work with you.”

  You could have heard a pin drop. Spike’s phone rang and he quickly took it off the hook.

  “Together we can make this newspaper the biggest in Scandinavia. All the qualities required are already in place, meaning you, the staff. The journalists. You are the brain and heart of the paper. In time we’ll make everybody’s heart beat as one, and the roar that will issue forth will tear down walls. You’ll see that I’m right.”

  Without saying anything more, he stepped over the edge of the desk and jumped down to the floor. The murmur returned.

  “Amazing,” said Carl Wennergren, who had suddenly appeared by Annika’s side.

  “Yes, really,” she replied, still moved by the man’s presence.

  “I haven’t heard such pretentious nonsense spoken since my dad’s speech at my graduation. Did you get anywhere?”

  Annika turned around and returned to her desk. “The police have a suspect.”

  “How do you know that?” Carl said skeptically from behind her.

  Annika sat down and looked him straight in the eye. “It’s quite simple, really. It’s her boyfriend. That’s almost always the case, you know.”

  “Has he been arrested?”

  “Nope, he hasn’t even been cautioned.”

  “Then we can’t publish anything,” Carl said.

  “It depends how you formulate the words. What have you been doing?”

  “I’ve copied out my diary from the race. The guys at the sports desk want it. Do you want to read it?”

  Annika gave a lopsided grin. “Not just now, thanks all the same.”

  Carl sat down on her desk again. “It’s turned out to be quite a break for you, this murder.”

  Annika threw away some old TT wires. “That’s not exactly how I see it.”

  “First page two days in a row— no other freelancer has managed that this summer.”

  “Except you, of course,” Annika pointed out in a silken voice.

  “Well, yes, that’s true, but then I had a head start. I did my work experience here.”

  And your father’s on the board of the paper, Annika thought, but didn’t say.

  Carl got up. “I’ll go down to the murder scene and catch a few mourners,” he said over his shoulder.

  Annika nodded and turned to face the computer. She created a new document, setting a dramatic tone: “The police have made a breakthrough in the hunt for Josefin Liljeberg’s killer—”

  That’s as far as she got before the Creepy Calls phone rang. She swore and picked it up.

  “Enough is enough,” a woman’s voice wheezed.

  “I agree.”

  “We won’t bow to patriarchy any longer.”

  “Fine by me.”

  “We’re out for revenge.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Annika said, unable to keep the mocking tone out of her voice.

  The voice got irritated. “Just listen to me. We’re the Ninja Barbies. We’ve declared war on oppression and violence against women. We won’t take it anymore. The woman in the park was the final straw. Women shouldn’t have to be afraid to go outside. Men will know the fear of violence— you just wait and see. We’re starting with the police force, Establishment hypocrites.”

  Annika was listening now. This sounded like a genuine nutcase. “So why are you calling us?”

  “We want our message to be communicated in the media. We want maximum publicity. We’re offering Kvällspressen the opportunity to be present at our first raid.”

  What if she was serious? Annika looked around the newsroom, trying to catch someone’s eye and wave him or her over. “How… What do you mean?” she said hesitantly.

  “Tomorrow. Do you want to be in on it?”

  Annika frantically looked around the room. Nobody paid her any attention. “Are you serious?” she asked feebly.

  “These are our terms. We want full control over copy, headlines, and pictures. Guaranteed absolute anonymity. And we want fifty thousand kronor in advance. Cash.”

  Annika breathed silently down the phone for a few seconds. “That’s impossible. Out of the question.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I’ve never been more sure in my life.”

  “Then we’ll call the Rival,” the woman retorted.

  “Go ahead, be my guest. You’ll get the same answer from them. Sure as hell.”

  There was a click and the line went dead. Annika put the phone down, shut her eyes, and hid her face in her hands. Christ, what the hell should she do now? Call the police? Tell Spike? Pretend nothing had happened? She had a feeling she’d be taken to task whatever she did.

  “And this is where the night reporters sit,” she heard the editor in chief say. She looked up and saw the senior editors of the paper over at the picture desk, and they were walking in her direction. They were, apart from the editor in chief, the new deputy editor, Anders Schyman; the sports editor; the features editor; the picture editor; the arts editor; and one of the lead writers. They were all men, and all of them, apart from Anders Schyman, were dressed in the same navy jackets, jeans, and shiny shoes.

  The group of men stopped next to her desk.

  “The night reporters go on at noon and work until eleven P.M.,” the editor in chief said with his back turned to Annika. “They work on a roster and many of them are freelance. We see the night shift as a bit of a learning experience.”

  Schyman broke off from the group and came up to her. “I’m Anders Schyman.” He held out his hand.

  Annika looked up at him. “So I’ve gathered.” She smiled and took his hand. “I’m Annika Bengtzon.”

  He returned her smile as they shook hands. “You’ve been covering the Josefin Liljeberg murder.”

  Her cheeks turned red. “You’re on the ball.”

  “Are you on the permanent staff?”

  Annika shook her head. “No— I’m just covering for the summer. My contract ends in a few weeks’ time.”

  “We’ll get a chance to talk more later,” Schyman said, and returned to the group. All the eyes that had been fixed on Annika lifted and flew away over the newsroom.

  She made her decision when the group left.

  She was no squealer. She wasn’t going to call the police and tell them about the Ninja Barbies; neither would she tell Spike. So many lunatics called the paper every day, she couldn’t go running to the news editor with all of them.

  She returned to her story on the police breakthrough and managed to sound well informed without quoting Patricia. She wrote about the suspect without betraying the police press officer as her source and hinted the boyfriend was the wrongdoer without actually saying it explicitly. She kept the story about the Täby grief counseling concise and terse.

  She went to the cafeteria, bought a Coke, and listened to the headlines on Studio 69, the current affairs program. They were talking about the role of the media during the election campaign. She switched off and instead started working on Josefin’s last hours, entering addresses and times on a grid. The only thing she left out was the name of the club where Josefin had worked— she just called it the Club. When she had finished, she walked over to the illustrators, who would enter the data on a map or an aerial photograph of Kungsholmen.

  When she was done, it was nearly seven o’clock. She felt hot and weak and had no energy for more research. Instead she made herself comfortable and scrutin
ized the morning broadsheets. At half past seven, she turned up the volume on the TV and watched Rapport. They had nothing on either Josefin or the IB affair. The only item of interest came from the Russia correspondent, who rounded off his series on the Caucasus with an expert in Moscow who gave his view of the situation.

  “The president needs weapons,” the expert announced. “The country has completely run out of ammunition, shells, antiaircraft defenses, rifles, machine guns, everything. This is the main problem facing the president. As the U.N. has imposed a weapons embargo on the nation, he is finding it extremely difficult to get hold of anything. The only alternative is the black market, and he can’t afford that.”

  “How come the guerrillas are so well equipped?” the correspondent asked.

  The expert gave an embarrassed smile. “The guerrillas really are quite weak— they’re badly trained and have poor leadership. But they have unlimited access to Russian weapons. Russia has important interests in the Caucasus region and is subsidizing the guerrilla warfare.”

  Annika remembered the Swedish-speaking old man, the president, whose people suffered constant attacks from the guerrillas. World leaders were such cowards sometimes! Why didn’t they stop Russia from supporting this civil war?

  By the time Rapport had finished, the calm had returned to the newsroom. Spike had gone home and Jansson had taken his place in the chief’s chair. Annika scanned through the latest TT telegrams, read the copy on the server, and checked the headlines on the nine-o’clock TV news Aktuellt. Then she went over to Jansson.

  “Nice map,” the night editor said. “And good copy on the suspect boyfriend. No big surprise there.”

  “Is there anything else for me to do here?”

  Jansson’s phone rang. “I think you should go home now You’ve been here all weekend.”

  Annika hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  Jansson didn’t reply. Annika walked over to her desk and collected her stuff. She cleared up the desk as she would be gone for four days and some other reporter would be using it.

  She bumped into Berit on the way out.

  “Do you want to go for a beer at the pizza place on the corner?” her colleague asked.

  Annika was surprised but tried not to show it. “Sure, I’d love to. I haven’t had dinner.”

  They took the stairs down. The evening was as sultry as the day had been hot. The air above the multistory garage was still quivering.

  “I’ve never seen the likes of this summer,” Berit said.

  The women walked slowly toward Rålambsvägen and the seedy pizzeria that miraculously survived year after year.

  “Do you have any family in town?” Berit asked as they waited for the traffic light to change at the crossing.

  “My boyfriend lives in Hälleforsnäs. What about you?”

  “A husband in Täby, a son who’s away at university, and a daughter who’s an au pair in Los Angeles. Are you going to try to stay on at the paper this fall?”

  Annika gave a nervous laugh. “Well, I’d like to stay, and I’m giving it my best shot.”

  “Good, that’s the most important thing.”

  “It’s pretty tough going. I think they use the freelancers pretty ruthlessly. They take in a whole bunch of people and let them fight it out over the jobs, instead of filling the positions that are actually available.”

  “True. But it also gives a lot of people a chance.”

  The pizzeria was all but empty. They chose a table toward the back of the restaurant. Annika ordered a pizza and they both had a beer.

  “I read your piece on the IB affair on the server,” Annika said.

  “Here’s to more big scoops!”

  They clinked their glasses and sipped from them.

  “This IB story seems never-ending,” Berit said as she put down the misty glass on the plastic tablecloth. “As long as the Social Democrats go on telling lies and dodging the issue there will be a story in it.”

  “But maybe you need to see their side of it. It was the middle of the cold war.”

  “Actually, no. The first forms for the registration of people’s political affiliations were sent out from party headquarters on September twenty-first, 1945. The covering letter was written by Mr. Sven Andersson himself, party secretary and defense secretary to be.”

  Annika blinked in surprise. “That early?” she said skeptically. “Are you sure?”

  Berit smiled. “I have a copy of the letter in my filing cabinet.”

  They watched the other patrons in the restaurant in silence for a while, a few local loafers and five giggly youngsters who were probably below legal drinking age.

  “But seriously,” Annika said, “why would they want to keep a register of Communists if the cold war hadn’t even started yet?”

  “Power. The Communists were strong, especially in Norrbotten, Stockholm, and Gothenburg. The Social Democrats were afraid of losing their hold over the trade unions.”

  “Why?” Annika asked, feeling stupid.

  “The Social Democrats were determined to hold block membership in the party for all workers. Section One of the Metalworkers’ Union fell into Communist hands as early as 1943. When they canceled the collective affiliation to the Social Democrats, the party lost thirty thousand kronor in membership fees per year. That was a huge sum of money to the party in those days.”

  Annika’s pizza arrived. It was small and the base was tough.

  “I don’t get it,” Annika said after a few mouthfuls. “How could the registration help the Social Democrats maintain power over the unions?”

  “Can I have small piece? Thanks…. Well, there were certain representatives who rigged the elections of nominees to the party conference. All Social Democrats were ordered to vote for certain candidates just to cut out the Communists.”

  Annika chewed, looking at her colleague with skepticism in her eyes. “Come on. My dad was shop steward at the works in Hälleforsnäs. Are you saying that people like him obstructed democratic local proceedings to toe the line defined by the party in Stockholm?”

  Berit nodded. “Not everybody did it, but far too many. It didn’t matter who was the most competent or who had the trust of the union members.”

  “And the Social Democratic headquarters had lists of all the names?”

  “Not from the outset. At the end of the fifties the information was held on a local level. At its peak there were over ten thousand representatives, or ‘political spies,’ if you like, in Swedish workplaces.”

  Annika cut a slice from her pizza and ate it with her fingers. She chewed in silence, mulling over Berit’s words.

  “No disrespect, but aren’t you making too much out of this?”

  Berit crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “Sure, there’s people who think that. More and more people have no interest in even recent history. We’re talking about the fifties— that’s the Stone Age for today’s generation.”

  Annika ignored that one. She pushed her plate to one side and wiped her mouth and hands on the napkin. “What happened next?”

  “IB. It was established in 1957.”

  “The Information Bureau, right?”

  “Or ‘Inform Birger,” after the head of the IB domestic bureau, Birger Elmér. The foreign intelligence outfit was called the T Office for a while, after its boss, Thede Palm.”

  Annika shook her head. “Jesus. How do you keep track of everything?”

  Berit smiled and relaxed a bit. “I subscribed to Folket i Bild Kulturfront when they published the piece by Jan Guillou and Peter Bratt that started unraveling this major scandal. It was in 1973, the famous issue nine. I’ve written quite a lot about IB and SAPO since then. Nothing revolutionary, but I’ve kept an ear to the ground.”

  The waiter came and removed the remains of Annika’s pizza: the crusts and some particularly leathery processed pigs’ snouts.

  “My father talked a bit about IB,” Annika said. “He thought it was all ridiculously exaggerated. It h
as to do with the safety of the nation, he said, and the Social Democrats should really be commended for making the country safe.”

  Berit put down her glass with a bang. “The Social Democrats set up registers of people’s political opinions for the good of the party. They broke their own laws and lied about it. They’re still lying, by the way. I spoke to the Speaker of the Parliament today. He flatly denies having known Birger Elmér or having had anything to do with IB.”

  “Maybe he’s telling the truth,”

  Berit gave Annika a pitying smile. “Trust me. IB is the Achilles’ heel of the Social Democratic Party. Their great big, gigantic mistake that also happened to keep them in power for over forty years. They’ll do anything to keep their secrets. Through SAPO they mapped out the entire Swedish population. They persecuted people for their political opinions, had them frozen out at their workplaces and even fired. They will go on lying as long as no one produces the hard evidence, and that’s when they start to equivocate.”

  “So what was SAPO? A Social Democratic security police?”

  “No, SAPO stands for the Social Democratic Organization for Workplace Representatives. It was completely kosher on the surface— the SAPO reps were the party mouthpieces in the workplace.”

  “So why all the secrecy?”

  “SAPO were the ants on the floor in the IB organization. Everything they reported ended up with Elmér and the government. SAPO is the crux of the matter, the proof that IB and the Social Democrats are one and the same.”

  Annika looked over toward the window and the summer night outside. Three dusty artificial green plants obstructed her view. Behind them was the grimy window that laid a gray film against the busy street outside.

  “So what was in this foreign archive?” she asked.

  “The names of agents, journalists, seamen, aid workers. People who traveled a lot. They would hand in reports with the aim of predicting impending crises. They had agents in Vietnam whose information was passed straight to the Americans and to a great extent also to the Brits. Strictly speaking they were regular intelligence reports, outlining things like the Vietnamese infrastructure, how the people lived, how they responded to the war, how bad the devastation was.”