Studio Sex

by Liza Marklund

  In a gesture of conciliation, he put a hand on the shoulder of the minister for foreign trade. “Christer, it all depends on you now.”

  The minister shrugged off the hand. “I’m a murder suspect,” he said in a strained voice.

  “Yes, it’s ironic,” the press secretary said. “The death business is your responsibility in the cabinet. As far as arms sales are concerned. I suppose it wasn’t meant literally.”

  *

  It was evening by the time she woke up. Sven was sitting next to her on the bed, watching her.

  “Welcome home,” he said, and smiled.

  She returned the smile. She was thirsty and had a headache.

  “You sound as if I’ve been gone for ages.”

  “It feels like it,” he said.

  She pushed away the bedcover and got out of bed, feeling dizzy and queasy. “I don’t feel well,” she mumbled.

  She staggered out to the bathroom and took a Tylenol. She opened the bathroom window to get some air. The rain had eased off but not stopped completely.

  Sven came and stood in the doorway. “Shall we go and get a pizza?”

  She swallowed. “I’m not really hungry.”

  “You’ve got to eat something. Look at you, you’ve gotten so thin.”

  “I’ve been busy.” She walked past him and into the hallway.

  He followed her out to the kitchen. “I heard they gave you a hard time on the radio.”

  She poured herself a glass of water. “Have you started listening to the current affairs program with debate and analysis?” she said tartly.

  “No. Ingela told me.”

  She paused with the glass next to her mouth. “The sperm bucket?” she said with surprise. “Are you seeing her?”

  He got angry. “That’s such a mean old nickname. She hates it.”

  Annika smiled. “It was you who came up with it.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, right.” He chuckled.

  Annika drank the water in big gulps, and he came up to her and hugged her from behind.

  “I’m cold. I’ve got to put some clothes on.” She wriggled free.

  Sven kissed her. “Sure. I’ll call Maestro in the meantime.”

  Annika went into the bedroom and opened her closet. The clothes she’d left here were creased and smelled musty. She heard Sven call the local pizzeria and order two quattro stagioni. He knew she didn’t eat mussels.

  “You’ll stay here now, won’t you?” he called out to her after hanging up.

  She searched through her clothes. “Why do you think that? My contract lasts until the fourteenth of August. I’ve got a week and a half left.”

  He leaned against the doorpost. “Do they still want you, though, the way you were disgraced like that?”

  Her cheeks were burning. She rummaged deeper inside the closet. “The paper doesn’t give a damn about what they say in a ridiculous radio program like that.”

  He came up to her and hugged her again. “I don’t care what they say about you,” he whispered. “To me you’ll always be the best, even though all the others say you’re worthless.”

  She pulled on a pair of old jeans that were too big for her now and an old sweater.

  Sven shook his head disapprovingly. “Do you have to look like that? Haven’t you got a dress?”

  She closed the door of the closet. “How long will the pizzas be?”

  “I mean it. Put something else on.”

  Annika stopped, breathed. “Come on,” she begged him. “I’m hungry. The pizzas will get cold.”

  Eighteen Years, Ten Months, and Six Days

  I long to return to the light and bright times. When days floated into shadowy nights like a spirit: clean, clear, fragrant, and soft. Time was a hole, weightless. The elation, the first touch, the wind, the light, and the feeling of absolute perfection. More than anything else in the world I want that moment to return.

  His darkness blocks out the horizon. It isn’t easy to navigate in the dark. The circle is round and evil. I bring out in him the darkness that cloaks our love in a fog. My steps grow unsteady and I stumble on our path. His patience gives out. I pay the price.

  But we are the most important thing

  there is

  to each other.

  Monday 6 August

  The water boiled over and then, pouring it into the filter, she spilled some and scalded herself.

  “Shit!” she cried out, jamming her burned finger into her mouth.

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  A drowsy Patricia was standing in the doorway to the maid’s room, dressed in T-shirt and panties, her hair tousled.

  Annika was immediately gripped by a pang of guilt. “Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to wake you up. I’m really sorry.”

  “What’s the matter? Did something happen?”

  Annika turned around and poured the rest of the water on the coffee. “My job’s hanging by a thread. Do you want some coffee, or are you going back to bed?”

  Patricia rubbed her eyes. “I’m off tonight. I’d love a cup.”

  She put on a pair of shorts and disappeared into the stairwell to go to the bathroom. Annika quickly blew her nose and wiped her eyes. She took out a couple of slices of bread from the freezer, put them in the toaster, and put cheese and marmalade and margarine on the table. She heard Patricia come back in and close the front door.

  “What happened?”

  Patricia was staring at Annika’s legs, and Annika herself looked down at them.

  “I was chased by a lynch mob last Thursday. They almost set fire to the car as we were driving away.”

  Patricia gaped. “Jesus, sounds like a James Bond movie!”

  Annika laughed. The toaster clicked and threw the slices up in an arc, and as they caught one each, Patricia laughed too.

  They sat down at the kitchen table and made breakfast. Annika missed the morning paper. She looked out the window; the rain was pattering on the windowsill.

  “So how was the countryside?”

  Annika let out a sigh. “Just what you’d expect in this weather. I spent Friday night with Sven, my boyfriend, and then I went to my grandmother’s. She’s got a cottage that’s part of Harpsund. She can rent it for as long as she likes, as she was the housekeeper there for thirty-seven years.”

  “What’s Harpsund?”

  Annika poured the coffee. “It’s an estate between Flen and Hälleforsnäs. A man called Hjalmar Wicander donated it to the government when he died in 1952. The condition was that the prime minister could use it as a recreational residence.”

  “What’s a recrea… residence?”

  “It’s a summerhouse but it has reception rooms.” Annika smiled. “Harpsund has been a big hit among prime ministers, especially the present one. He’s from Sörmland and most of his family still lives there. I met him there on Midsummer Eve a couple of years ago.”

  Patricia was impressed. “You’ve been there?”

  “I often went with Grandma when I was a kid.”

  They ate in silence.

  “Are you working today?” Patricia asked.

  Annika nodded.

  “You’ve got a really hard job, don’t you?” Patricia said. “And dangerous— if there are people trying to set fire to you.”

  Annika gave a lopsided smile. “Someone set fire to your workplace too.”

  “That wasn’t personal.”

  Annika sighed. “Still, I wish I could stay.”

  “Why do you have to go in?”

  “My contract ends next week. Only one or two of the summer freelancers will get to go on working at the paper.”

  “Couldn’t you be one of them? You’ve written a lot.”

  Annika shook her head. “They’ve got a recruitment meeting with the union tomorrow, and after that we’ll find out who gets to stay. What are you doing today?”

  Patricia’s gaze turned inward and disappeared out in the rain. “I’m going to think about Josefin. I’m going to speak to the
spirits and look for her on the other side. When I make contact with her, I’m going to ask her who did it.”

  *

  Anne Snapphane was at her desk when Annika walked into the newsroom.

  “So you’re alive,” Annika established.

  “Barely. It’s been a goddamn awful weekend. The bosses have been completely nuts. Any assignments the news editor has handed out during the day, the night editor has trashed at night. I’ve had five stories spiked.”

  Annika dropped down at her desk. The dragon had left behind a battlefield of empty coffee mugs, wire copy, and used Kleenex tissues.

  “I did think twice before I came in,” Annika said. “Now I know why.”

  Anne began to laugh. Annika swept everything on the desk, including five notepads, two books, and three mugs marked Mariana, into the wastebasket. “Take that, you upper-class bitch.”

  Anne laughed so hard she fell off her chair.

  “It wasn’t that funny, was it?“Annika said.

  Anne sat up again and tried to stop laughing. “No, it wasn’t that funny,” she said, chuckling. “It won’t take much to make me laugh today. I know that I’m going to be getting out of here.”

  Annika stared at her. “You’ve got a job? Where?”

  “With a TV production company in Hammarby Dock. I’ll be researcher on a cable-station talk show aimed at women. It starts in about five weeks. It could be really trashy. I’m really looking forward to it.”

  “What if you get a job here?”

  “Christ knows if I want to. Besides, the TV job is a permanent post.”

  “Congratulations.” Annika walked around the desk to give her friend a hug. “I’m so happy for you!”

  “Hey, could you dykes spare a minute to do some work?”

  Spike was back in the news editor’s chair.

  “Shove it, you randy old goat!” Anne shouted at him.

  “Are you crazy?“Annika said under her breath.

  “Who cares? I’m leaving.” Anne got up.

  Anne got the assignment, a story about a kitten rescued by the Norrköping police. It had been living at the station for two weeks and now it had to be put to sleep.

  “We’ve got to get a photo of the stupid cat in a cell,” Anne said. “Just imagine the headline: ‘Puss on Death Row.’”

  Spike looked at Annika. “I’ve got nothing for you right now. Stand by for the time being.”

  Annika swallowed. She got it. The fridge door had slammed shut.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll read the papers.”

  She walked over to the archive shelves and picked up all the Kvällspressen issues since last Friday. She had neither read a paper nor watched TV all weekend. She would never listen to the radio again unless she was forced to.

  She started with Berit’s IB piece. Without beating about the bush, the Speaker now admitted he’d used his contacts with Birger Elmér at the IB domestic bureau to escape a military posting, a training assignment, in the autumn of 1966.

  It was in the middle of an election campaign, and the Speaker was the deputy chairman of the Young Social Democrats at the time. The posting came at an inconvenient moment so Elmér set him up with a war job at IB.

  This meant he could go on as usual with his political work, while doing his military service at the same time.

  According to the records that Berit had dug up, the Speaker had been called up for service at the Defense Staff Intelligence Division, which could be another name for the IB. In 1966 he was thirty-three years old and he was never called up again.

  Annika let the paper drop. How did Berit get the Speaker to admit all of this? He’d been denying all involvement for three decades, and now suddenly he’d come clean about everything. Weird.

  The following spread showed some sensational pictures of the arrest of the Ninja Barbies, all of them taken by Carl Wennergren. In the article the readers were told that the group had decided to attack a judge’s house in the leafy Stockholm suburb of Djursholm. The judge had recently acquitted a suspected pedophile for lack of evidence. The police had been tipped off and had sent in the terrorist squad. They had evacuated the surrounding houses and set up roadblocks. Parts of the squad had taken up position in the Stockhagen sports field right next to the judge’s house; the rest had hidden in the garden.

  The Ninja Barbies were taken completely by surprise and had surrendered after two of the women were shot in the leg.

  The article gave Annika a bad taste in her mouth. Gone was the uncritical reiteration of the Ninja Barbies’ grievances that had been the framework of the earlier articles; now the police were the heroes. If any articles in Kvällspressen ever merited analysis, it was these, she thought.

  “We’re going to drown in the tears of readers wanting to take care of little Puss,” Anne Snapphane said.

  Annika smiled. “What’s the cat’s actual name?”

  “It said Harry on the collar. Have you had lunch yet?”

  *

  The minister drove into the little village called Mellösa. He slowed down and looked left through the rain. His turn should be somewhere here.

  A large yellow house appeared in the grayness down by the water, and he slowed further; it didn’t seem quite right. The car behind beeped.

  “Calm down, for Christ’s sake!” the minister cried out, and slammed on the brakes. The Volvo behind him braked, swerved, and missed him by an inch.

  His rented car coughed and died; the fan hissed and the windshield wipers continued to squeak. He noticed that his hands on the wheel were shaking.

  Jesus! What am I doing? he thought. I can’t risk other people’s lives just because…

  The irony in his reasoning hit him full force. He started the car and slowly drove on. Two hundred meters farther on he saw the sign: Harpsund 5.

  He turned left and crossed the railway. The road wound past a church, a school, and farms in a landscape that belonged to another time; manor houses with sunporches and fir hedges drifted past in the mist.

  Here the landowners had sucked the working class dry for a thousand years, he mused.

  After a few minutes he drove through the massive stone gateposts that marked the entrance to the prime minister’s summer residence. A large, well-kept barn lay on the left, and behind it he glimpsed the main house.

  He parked to the right of the entrance and sat in the car for a moment, looking at the building. It was two stories high with a mansard roof, built in the 1910s. A Caroline pastiche. He fished out his umbrella, opened the car door, and ran to the door.

  “Welcome. The prime minister called. I’ve prepared some lunch for you.” The housekeeper took his wet umbrella and jacket.

  “Thanks, I’m fine. I had lunch on the way. I just want to go to my room.”

  The woman didn’t express any disappointment. “Of course. This way, please.”

  She walked ahead of him up to the second floor and showed him to a room with a view over the lake. “Just call if you want anything.”

  The housekeeper closed the door without making a sound, and he took off his shirt and shoes. The prime minister was right— they’d never find him here.

  He sat down on the bed with the telephone on his lap and took three deep breaths. Then he dialed the number for Karungi.

  “It’s over,” he said when she answered.

  He listened to her for a long time.

  “No, darling,” he said. “Don’t cry. I’m not going to jail. No, I promise.”

  He stared out the window, hoping he wasn’t lying.

  *

  The afternoon dragged. She didn’t get any assignments. She took the hint, which wasn’t even particularly subtle. She was taken off everything to do with the Josefin murder and the minister suspect. Carl Wennergren got all those jobs.

  In an attack of boredom she called Krim and asked for Q. He actually answered the phone.

  “They were hard on you on the radio last Thursday,” he said.

  “They were wrong.
I was right. They got the wrong end of the stick.”

  “I don’t know if I agree,” he said genially. “You can be damned pushy.”

  “I’m smooth as a ballet dancer!”

  He laughed out loud. “That’s not exactly the metaphor that comes to mind when you call,” he snorted. “But you can handle that, I expect. You’re a tough nut, so you’ll take it in your stride. You have to take a few on the chin.”

  Amazingly enough, she felt he was right.

  “Now listen,” she said, “I have a few questions about the Ninja Barbies.”

  He immediately turned serious. “What?”

  “Did they have any cash on them when they were arrested?”

  She heard the police captain draw a breath. “Why the hell do you ask that?”

  She shrugged and smiled. “Just wondering, that’s all…”

  He thought about it for a long while. “Do you know anything about this?” he said in a low voice.

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, give it to me, baby.”

  She laughed coarsely. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you!”

  “They didn’t have anything on them.”

  Annika’s heart started beating faster. “But in the car? At home? In the basement?”

  “In the house of one of them.”

  “Like around fifty thousand?” Annika said innocently.

  He sighed. “I wish you’d tell me straight.”

  “I could say the same to you.”

  “Forty-eight thousand five hundred. In an envelope.”

  He’d done it, the bastard!

  “Maybe you could tell me where it came from,” he said, trying to sound sweet.

  She didn’t reply.

  *

  When she heard the signature tune to Studio 69, Annika turned off the radio and went down to the canteen. She’d just finished filling a plate with rabbit food from the salad bar when a counter attendant with a prominent perm called out her name.

  “You’ve got a call,” the Perm said.

  It was Anne Snapphane.

  “You should listen to this,” she said in a low voice.

  Annika closed her eyes and felt her heart sink deep into her shoes. “Why would I want to listen to them rip me again?”