“Things got a bit out of hand there, I heard.”
Annika dropped her bag on the floor and threw up her hands in a gesture of exasperation. It felt good to be talking about this at last.
“They’re in mourning so you can’t have a serious conversation with them. We’re supposed to feel sorry for them but not to go near them in any way. You’re not allowed to breathe a word about anything in this country that’s the least bit unpleasant or controversial. We think that death and violence and suffering will go away if we just bury them and never discuss them. That’s wrong! It’s getting worse every day! Those kids were crazy, they would have set fire to us!”
“I don’t think they would have gone that far.” Annika was worked up and Schyman thought he should try to calm her down.
“Yes, they would. You weren’t there,” Annika shouted. “Those pathetic social workers took control of the grieving process. ‘Crisis management team’— my ass! All they’ve done is to work the kids into a frenzy. I bet most of them hadn’t so much as spoken to Josefin! What are they doing joining in an orgy of grief for a whole goddamn week? They were in some kind of a trance, Schyman, they didn’t know what they were doing. They made us into Evil. As though we were to blame. They offered us up as scapegoats. Don’t tell me I’m exaggerating!” Her face was blotchy from agitation and anger, her breathing sharp and hard.
The deputy editor eyed her with interest. “I think you may be right.”
“Of course I’m right, for fuck’s sake.” Annika was holding nothing back because that’s exactly how much she had to lose.
He smiled. “It’s a good thing you don’t swear like that in your copy.”
“Of course I don’t.”
Anders Schyman started laughing.
Annika took a step forward. “It’s no laughing matter. It’s serious. Those youngsters at the cemetery were like a lynch mob. I can’t say for sure they would have harmed us, but they gave us a fucking good scare. We should report them to the police, really. Pettersson’s car got badly banged up, not that you can tell with that wreck, but still. We should make it clear that people can’t behave like that, even if they are grieving.”
“There are crisis management teams that do a fantastic job,” the deputy editor said gravely.
Annika didn’t respond and the man watched her for a while in silence.
“You’ve been working quite a lot lately, haven’t you?”
She immediately was on the defensive. “I’m not overreacting because I’m overworked,” she snapped.
The deputy editor got to his feet. “That’s not what I meant. Are you on your regular shift now?”
She cast down her eyes. “No, I’m on next on Saturday.”
“Take the weekend off. Go away and take a rest, you could do with some peace and quiet after what just happened.”
She turned around and left the room without saying a word.
On her way out from the newsroom she heard Jansson cheering out loud, “Holy smokes, are we putting out a great newspaper or what! ‘The Speaker admits, “I was in charge of IB.” ‘ We’ve got a comment from the prime minister on the murder suspicions, and the Ninja Barbies have been arrested, of which we have the exclusive pictures!”
Annika quickly stepped into the elevator.
*
Not until she was standing outside her apartment block did she remember she didn’t have any keys. She needed a key to open the door from the street as there was no code lock. She almost began to cry again.
“Fuck!” she said, and pulled at the door in exasperation. To her surprise, the door opened. A small piece of light-green cardboard fell to the ground. Annika bent down to pick it up. She recognized the pattern; it came from the box of a Clinique moisturizer she had.
Patricia, Annika thought. She knew I wouldn’t be able to get in so she put the piece of paper in the lock.
She walked up the stairs, a short journey that felt interminable. Taped to the front door was an envelope; the keys jangled inside when she took it off.
Thank you so much for everything. Here are your keys, I’ve made copies. I’m at the club and will be back early tomorrow morning.
P.S. I’ve done some shopping, I hope you don’t mind.
Annika opened the door. She was met by the fresh smell of floor cleaner. The voile curtains flew dramatically in the draft. She shut the door and the curtains sank back down. She wandered slowly through the rooms, looking around.
Patricia had cleaned the whole apartment, except for Annika’s room, which was as messy as ever. The fridge was full of fresh cheeses, olives, hummus, and strawberries, and on the counter were plums, grapes, and avocados.
I’ll never be able to eat all this before it goes bad, Annika thought. Then she remembered there were two of them now.
She opened the door to the maid’s room a crack. Patricia’s mattress lay in a corner, neatly made with flowery bedclothes. Next to it was a carryall with clothes and, on a hanger on the wall, Josefin’s pink suit.
I want to stay here, Annika thought. I don’t want to go back to my old apartment. Neither do I want to spend the rest of my life in Grandma’s cottage at Lyckebo.
That night she dreamed for the first time about the three men from the radio program Studio 69: the studio reporter, the field reporter, and the commentator. Silent, faceless, and dressed in black, they were standing at her bedside. She could feel their malice like a cramp in her stomach.
“How can you say it was my fault?” she cried out.
The men drew nearer.
“I’ve thought it through! Maybe I did the wrong thing, but at least I tried!”
The men tried to shoot her. Their weapons thundered inside her head.
“I’m not Josefin! No!”
All together they leaned over her, and when she felt their icy cold breaths, she was woken up by her own scream.
The room was pitch-dark. The rain was pouring down outside. The rolls of thunder and flashes of lightning were almost simultaneous. The bedroom window was banging in the wind and the room was quite cold.
She struggled to her feet to close the window; it was hard to push it against the wind. In the silence after the rain outside, she felt the trickle down her leg. Her period had started. The bag with sanitary napkins was empty, but she had a few loose ones in her handbag.
While the storm went by, she lay crying in her bed for a long time, curled up in a little ball.
Eighteen Years, Six Months, and Fourteen Days
He feels deeply offended and my protests seem so feeble. I know he’s right. No one could ever love me the way he does. There is nothing he would hesitate to do for me, and yet I care more about the outside world than I do about him.
My despair grows, my imperfection blossoms: poisonous, ice-cold, blue. It’s so demoralizing, never to be up to standard. I want to watch TV when he wants to make love, and he twists my arm out of joint. The big void gets the upper hand, black and wet, shapeless, impenetrable. He says I let him down, and I can’t find a way out.
We have to work together, find the way back to our heaven. Love is eternal, fundamental. I will never doubt it. But who says it should be easy? If perfection were universal, then why should anyone strive for it?
I can’t give up now.
We are the most important thing
ever to happen
to each other.
Friday 3 August
Anders Schyman got soaked running the short distance to his car. It was teeming down, avenging all the boiling-hot days in one single cloudburst. Squeezed in behind the steering wheel, the deputy editor swore as he tried to wrestle out of his jacket. His shirt was soaked through on his back and shoulders.
“It’ll dry off,” he said to himself.
His breath had already misted up the windows, so he put the defroster on full blast.
His wife was waving from the kitchen window. He wiped the side window, blew her a kiss, and started his journey into town. He could hardly see a th
ing, even though the windshield wipers were on full speed. He had to wipe the inside of the windshield constantly to see anything at all.
Traffic was flowing reasonably well on Saltsjöbads Way, but once he was past Nacka, it came to a standstill. An accident on Värmdö Way had caused a five-mile backup. Schyman groaned out loud. Exhaust fumes rose like a fog into the rain. In the end he turned the engine off and let the defroster recycle the air.
He couldn’t quite work Kvällspressen out. He’d been reading it closely for four months now, ever since he was asked to step into the driver’s seat. Certain things were a given. The paper was always teetering on the brink of what was morally and ethically defensible, for example. Any self-respecting tabloid should be like that. Sure, there were occasional transgressions, but they were surprisingly few. He had analyzed complaints to the press ombudsman and the Press Council, and obviously the tabloids had far more complaints against them than all the other papers, which was as it should be. It was their job to provoke a reaction in the reader. And still, only a few complaints per year were upheld. He had been surprised to learn that the articles singled out for censure often came from small-town papers around the country that hadn’t been able to judge where to draw the line.
He concluded that Kvällspressen was an extremely smart publication with well-balanced articles, front pages, and headlines. It was committed to openness and a dialogue with its readers.
So it was in theory at least. The reality was distant from that.
The people at Kvällspressen often didn’t have a damn clue what they were doing. For instance, they’d sent that country girl out among the dead bodies and lynch mobs, expecting her to make clear and rational assessments of the situation. He’d spoken to the news and night editors the night before, and none of them had really discussed the coverage of the murder of Josefin Liljeberg with her. In his eyes, that was both irresponsible and incompetent.
And then there was the peculiar affair with the female terrorist group. None of the editors seemed to know how the story had got into the paper. A summer freelancer waltzed into the newsroom with the sensational pictures in his hand, and everybody just cheered and published them without a moment’s thought.
It couldn’t go on like that. To be able to sail that close to the wind, you had to know exactly which way it was blowing. A disaster was just waiting to happen; he could smell it. The radio program the day before was a first sign that Kvällspressen was becoming fair game. If the newsroom started bleeding, the vultures would soon be circling. The competition would line up to tear the paper apart. It wouldn’t matter what they wrote or how they wrote it, it would all be wrong. Unless the general level of awareness of all the staff was raised, and quickly and thoroughly, they were ruined, in terms of the circulation, journalism, and finances.
He sighed. The cars were beginning to move in the lane next to his. He started the engine and let it run, but he left the parking brake on.
There was a lot of professionalism in the newsroom, there was no doubt about it. But there was a lack of leadership and overall responsibility. All the journalists at the paper had to be made aware of their specific job and what they were expected to do. The overall direction of the paper had to be clearer.
This had made him realize yet another function he was expected to fill: he would be the searchlight sweeping over the barbed wire, looking for intruders. Part of that would take the form of discussions, seminars, focus meetings, and new practices.
The cars to his left swished by faster and faster while he wasn’t moving forward an inch. He swore and tried to look behind him but couldn’t see a thing. In the end, he indicated and turned left without looking. The driver he’d cut off leaned on his horn.
He muttered something in the direction of the rearview mirror.
At that very moment the traffic came to a halt again. The cars to his right, in the lane he’d just left, started moving and soon picked up speed.
He put his forehead on the steering wheel and groaned out loud.
*
Annika cautiously put her head around the door of Patricia’s room. She was asleep. Annika closed the door and quietly set about making coffee. She tiptoed out into the hall and picked up the morning paper, which she threw on the kitchen table. It fell open on a page with the column header “Yesterday on the Radio.” Annika’s eyes were drawn to the headline, and she read the radio columnist’s words with a mounting feeling of sickness.
“The most lively and informative newsmagazine program on the air at the moment is undoubtedly Studio 69 on P3. Yesterday they focused on the continual dumbing down of the tabloids and the ruthless exploitation of bereaved individuals. Sadly, this is a debate that never ceases to be topical and…”
Annika crumpled up the paper into a ball and pushed it into the trash can. Then she went to the phone in the living room, called the newspaper, and canceled her subscription.
She tried to eat half an avocado, but she gagged on the rich green flesh. She tried a few strawberries but with the same result. She could manage some coffee and orange juice but threw away the avocado and a few strawberries so that Patricia would think she’d eaten them. Then she wrote a note telling her that she was going to Hälleforsnäs for the weekend. She wondered to herself whether she’d ever return. If not, then Patricia could have the apartment. She needed it.
*
The rain formed a wall outside the door when she went to leave. She just stood staring toward the house opposite, which was barely visible behind the curtain of rain.
Perfect, she thought. No one will be out and about. No one will see me. Mum won’t have to feel ashamed.
She stepped out into the heavy rain and was soaked to the skin before she’d even reached the communal refuse room. She threw the half-full trash bag away with the paper, strawberries, and bits of avocado and slowly walked toward the subway station.
She’d heard in a movie that you reach a point when you can’t get any wetter.
When she got to the railway station, she found out she’d have to wait nearly two hours for a train that went past Flen. She sat down on a bench in the roomy, brightly lit hall. The noises from the travelers, the trains, and the station loudspeakers all fused into a cacophony of city chaos.
Annika closed her eyes and let the sounds bombard her brain. After a while she felt cold, so she went to the ladies’ room and stood with her hands under a hand dryer until people got pissed off with her taking too long over it.
At least they don’t know who I am, she thought. They don’t know that I’m the big loser. Thank God, I never got a picture byline.
She took a small regional train that quickly got packed with people. Opposite her was a fat man wet with perspiration and rain. Breathing hard, he unfolded a copy of Kvällspressen that Annika tried to avoid looking at.
She couldn’t help noticing that Berit had got the Speaker to admit his involvement in the IB affair.
“I was posted with Elmér during the war,” said the front-page story.
Oh, well, she thought. That’s none of my business anymore.
At Flen she had another hour’s wait for the bus to Hälleforsnäs. The rain was still pouring down, and a small lake had formed in the street behind the bus stop. She sat facing the waiting room wall in the railway station, not wanting any contact with anyone.
It was afternoon when the bus pulled up at the foot of Tattarbacken. The water-filled parking lot next to the co-op lay deserted, so no one saw her step off the bus. Tired and shaky, she made her way up to her house on legs that ached after the previous day’s run.
Her apartment was dark and smelled of dust. Without lighting any lamps, she pulled off her wet clothes and crept into bed. Three minutes later she was asleep.
*
“It’s only a matter of time,” said the prime minister.
The chief press secretary protested, “We can’t know that for sure. Nobody knows where the media pack chooses to stop.”
The chief press secr
etary knew what he was talking about. He had been one of the toughest and most experienced political reporters in the country. Nowadays his job was to spin the media coverage in a favorable direction for the Social Democrats. He was, together with the election strategists from the United States, the most influential person outlining the election campaign for the governing party. The prime minister knew he voted Liberal.
“I have to admit I’m worried,” the prime minister said. “I don’t want to leave this to chance.”
The big man got to his feet and walked restlessly over to the window. The rain was like a gray screen outside, hiding the view over the water.
The press secretary stopped him. “You shouldn’t be standing there brooding in full view of everyone in the street. Pictures like that make a brilliant illustration of a government in crisis.”
Vexed, the prime minister stopped himself. His bad temper grew even worse, and he abruptly turned to his foreign trade minister and barked, “How the hell could you be so damned stupid?”
Christer Lundgren didn’t respond, just went on staring at the lead-gray sky from his place in the corner.
The prime minister moved closer to him. “Goddammit, you know we can’t go interfering in the work of a government authority!”
The minister looked up at his superior. “Exactly. Neither the police or anybody else’s.”
The prime minister’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “Don’t you realize the predicament you’ve put us in? Do you recognize what the consequences of your actions will be?”
Christer Lundgren jumped to his feet and rushed up face-to-face with the prime minister and yelled, “I know exactly what I’ve done! I’ve fucking saved this goddamn party, that’s what I’ve done!”
The press secretary stepped in. “We can’t undo what’s already been done,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “We have to make the best of the situation. Going in and altering documents after the fact could end in disaster. We simply can’t do that. I really don’t think the journalists are capable of locating those receipts of yours.” He circled the two ministers. “The most important thing is to cooperate with the police without giving them too much information.”
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