She stretched out on her back, put her hands behind her head, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. She heard the clatter of the crockery; Patricia was puttering about in the kitchen.
Structure, she mused. Sort through what you've got. Start at the beginning. Toss out everything that's wishful thinking- be logical. What actually did happen?
A minister resigns following suspicions of murder, and not just any murder- a sex murder in a cemetery. Suppose the man is innocent. Say he was somewhere completely different on the morning when the woman was raped and killed. Suppose he's got a watertight alibi.
Then why the hell doesn't he clear his name? His life is ruined; politically he's washed-up, socially he's poison.
There can only be one explanation, Annika thought. My first idea holds up: his alibi is even worse than the crime.
Okay, even worse- but for whom? For himself? Not likely. That would be close to impossible.
Only one alternative remains: worse for the party.
Right, so she'd reached a conclusion.
What about the rest? What could be worse for the party than having a minister suspected of murder in the middle of an election campaign?
She squirmed restlessly on the bed, turned on her side, and stared out into the room. She heard Patricia open the front door and walk down the stairs, probably to have a shower.
The realization came like a puff of wind in her brain.
Only the loss of power was worse. Christer Lundgren did something that night that would lead to the Social Democrats losing power if it came to light. It had to be something fundamental, something crucial. What could pull the rug out from under the governing party's feet?
Annika sat bolt upright. She remembered the words, played them back in her brain. She went out to the telephone in the living room, sat down on the couch with the phone on her lap. She closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths.
Anne Snapphane still talked to her even though she'd been thrown out. Berit Hamrin might also look on her as a colleague even if she'd stopped working there. If she didn't try, she'd never know.
Resolutely she dialed the number to the Kvällspressen switchboard. She spoke in a squeaky voice when she asked for Berit, not wanting the operator to recognize her.
"Annika, how nice to hear from you!" Berit said cordially. "How are things?"
Annika's heart slowed down.
"Thanks, I'm fine. I've been to Turkey for a couple of weeks. It was really interesting."
"Writing about the Kurds?" Berit thought like a journalist.
"No, just a vacation. Listen, I've got a couple of questions concerning IB. Do you have time to meet up for a chat?"
If Berit was surprised, she wasn't letting it show. "Yes, sure. When?"
"What are you doing tonight?"
They agreed to meet at the pizzeria near the paper in half an hour's time.
Patricia came back in, dressed in her sweat suit and with her hair wrapped in a towel.
"I'm going out for a while." Annika got to her feet.
"I forgot to tell you something. Sven said he was staying here for a few days."
Annika went over to the coatrack. "Are you working tonight?" she said as she put her coat on.
"Yeah, why?"
***
It was pouring rain. Annika's umbrella was twisted by the wind, so when she stumbled through the door of the restaurant, she was soaked to the skin. Berit was already there.
"How nice to see you." Berit smiled. "You're looking well."
Annika laughed and wriggled out of her wet coat. "Leaving Kvällspressen does wonders for one's health. What's it like these days?"
Berit sighed. "Bit of a mess, actually. Schyman is trying to give the paper an overhaul, but he's meeting a lot of resistance from the rest of the senior editors."
Annika shook her wet hair and pushed it back. "In what way?"
"Schyman wants to set up new routines, have regular seminars about the direction of the paper."
"I get it. The others are in an uproar, whining that he's trying to turn Kvällspressen into Swedish Television, right?"
Berit nodded and smiled. "Exactly."
A waiter took their insignificant order, a coffee and a mineral water. He walked away unimpressed.
"So just how badly are the Social Democrats doing in the election campaign?" Annika wondered.
"Badly. They've fallen from forty-five percent in the opinion polls last spring to below thirty-five percent."
"Because of the IB affair or the strip-club business?"
"Probably a combination of both."
Both the glass and the cup were placed on the table with unnecessary force.
"Do you remember our talk about the IB archives?" Annika said when the waiter was gone.
"Of course. Why?"
"You thought the original foreign archive still exists. What exactly makes you think that?" Annika sipped at her mineral water.
Berit gave it some thought before answering. "Several reasons. People's political affiliations had been put on a register before, during the war. The practice was forbidden after the end of the war, and much later Minister for Defense Sven Andersson said that the wartime archives had 'disappeared.' In reality, they had been at the Defense Staff Headquarters' archive. This was made public a few years ago."
"So the Social Democrats have lied about vanished archives before."
"That's right. And then, a year or two later, Andersson said that the IB archives were destroyed back in 1969. The latest version is that they were burned just before the exposure of IB in 1973. But the destruction was never entered in any official records, either domestic or foreign."
"And if the records had been destroyed, it would have been documented?"
Berit drank some of her coffee and made a face. "Yuck, this isn't exactly freshly made. Yes, IB was a standard Swedish bureaucratic organization. There are a lot of their documents in the Defense Staff Headquarters' intelligence archive. Everything was entered in a daybook, including reports of destroyed documents. There isn't one about these archives, which probably means that they're still there."
"Anything else?"
Berit thought about it for a moment. "They've always maintained that the foreign and domestic archives were destroyed at the same time and that there are no copies. We know that at least half of that is untrue."
Annika looked closely at Berit. "How did you get the Speaker to admit to his dealings with IB?"
Berit rubbed her forehead and sighed. "The force of reason," she said coyly.
"Can you tell me?"
Berit sat in silence for a while. She put two lumps of sugar in her coffee and stirred it.
"The Speaker has always refused to admit that he knew Birger Elmér," she said in a low voice. "He claimed he hadn't even met him. But I know that's not true."
She fell silent; Annika waited.
"In the spring of 1966," Berit said at length, "the Speaker, Ingvar Carlsson, and Birger Elmér met in the Speaker's home in Nacka. The Speaker's wife was also present. They had dinner, and the conversation turned to the fact the Speaker and his wife didn't have any children. Elmér thought the two should adopt, which they later did. I told the Speaker I knew about this meeting, and that's when he began to talk."
Annika stared at Berit. "How the hell do you know that?"
"I can't tell you. You understand."
Annika leaned back in her chair. It was mind-boggling. Jesus H. Christ! Berit had to have a source within the party leadership.
Neither woman spoke for a long time. They could hear the rain thundering outside.
"Where were the archives held before they disappeared?" Annika asked eventually.
"The domestic archive was at twenty-four Grevgatan and the foreign one at fifty-six Valhallavägen. Why do you ask?"
Annika had taken out a pen and paper and was writing down the addresses. "Maybe it wasn't the Social Democrats themselves that made sure that the archives disappeared."
"How do you mean?"
Annika didn't reply and Berit crossed her arms. "Hardly anybody knew that the archives existed, let alone where they were kept."
Annika leaned forward. "The copy of the foreign archives was found in the incoming mail at the Defense Staff Headquarters, right?"
"Right. The parcel arrived at their printing and distribution office. It was registered, entered in the daybook, and classified. The documents were not considered secret."
"What day did they arrive?"
"Seventeenth of July."
"Where did they arrive from?"
"The official record didn't say. The sender was anonymous. It could have come from any dusty government department."
"But why would they want to be anonymous in this case?"
Berit shrugged. "Maybe they found the documents deep inside an old storeroom and didn't want to admit to having them all these years."
Annika groaned, yet another dead end.
They sat in silence for a while and looked at the other customers in the restaurant. A couple of men in overalls were having an evening pizza. Two women were noisily drinking beer.
"Where were the documents when you looked at them?" Annika wondered.
"They'd just arrived at the archives."
Annika smiled. "You've got friends everywhere."
Berit returned her smile. "Always be nice to telephone operators, secretaries, registry clerks, and archivists."
Annika emptied her glass. "And there was nothing that indicated where the documents came from?"
"No. They were delivered in two big sacks."
Annika raised her eyebrows. "What do you mean, 'sacks'? Like potato sacks?"
Berit sighed lightly. "I didn't really pay much attention to what they were. I was interested in their contents. It was one of my all-time best tip-offs."
Annika smiled. "I believe you. What did the sacks look like?"
Berit looked at her for a few seconds. "Now that you mention it, there was something printed on the sacks."
"You didn't see what it said?"
Berit closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, and sighed, then rubbed her forehead and licked her lips.
"What?"
"It could have been a courier's bag."
"What the heck is a courier's bag?"
"Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, there's an article that deals with inviolability of the communication between a state and its foreign missions. Article twenty-seven, I think. The diplomatic mail is sent in a special bag that is immune to inspection. Diplomatic couriers carry the bags through customs. It could have been one of those."
Annika felt the hair on her neck stand on end. "How could it have ended up at the Defense Staff Headquarters?"
Berit shook her head. "A Swedish courier bag would never be sent there. They always travel between the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the various embassies around the world."
"But what if it were foreign?"
Berit shook her head. "No. I think I must be mistaken. Swedish courier bags are blue with yellow lettering and it says 'Diplomatic' on them. This was gray with red lettering. I really didn't pay attention to what it said, I was trying to get an idea of how comprehensive the archive material was, whether it contained any original documents. Unfortunately there weren't any."
They were silent for a while.
Annika looked at her former colleague. "How do you know about all these things? Sections and conventions…"
Berit smiled at her. "You get to write about most things over the years. Some of it sticks."
Annika's gaze traveled out through the window. "But it could have been a foreign courier's bag?"
"And it could have been a potato sack."
"Can you see where this is heading?"
"Where?" Berit didn't think it was going anywhere.
"I'll tell you when I know for sure. Thanks for talking to me!"
Annika gave Berit a quick hug, opened her umbrella, and braved the rain.
Nineteen Years, Four Months, and Thirty Days
H e can sense the chasm like a shooting sensation in the dark; he's walking on the edge without being aware of the abyss. It's manifested in desperate demands and hard lips. He licks me and sucks until my clitoris is big as a plum, maintaining that I cry from pleasure and not pain. The swelling remains for days, rubbing when I move.
I'm groping my way. The darkness is so vast. Depression hangs like a gray dampness inside me, impossible to exhale. My tears lie just below the surface, constantly present, unreliable, harder and harder to keep in check. Reality shrinks, contracted from the pressure and the cold.
My only source of warmth is spreading icy brutality at the same time.
And he says
he will never
let me go.
Wednesday 5 September
You can't fucking live here. No hot water, not even a damned toilet! When are you going to come home?"
Sven was sitting in the kitchen eating yogurt, dressed only in his briefs.
"Put some clothes on," Annika said, tightening the sash around her dressing gown. "Patricia's sleeping in there."
She walked over to the stove and poured herself some coffee.
"Yeah, and what the hell is she doing here?"
"She needed a place to stay. I had a room available."
"That stove, it's lethal. You'll set fire to the entire building."
Annika sighed inwardly. "It's a gas stove, it's no more dangerous than an electric one."
"Bullshit," Sven said truculently.
Annika didn't reply, just drank her coffee in silence.
"Hey, listen," Sven said in a conciliatory voice after a couple of minutes. "Stop what you're doing and come back home. You've had a go at it here and you can see it's not working. You're not a big-time reporter, you don't belong in this city."
He got to his feet, walked behind her chair, and started massaging her shoulders.
"But I love you anyway," he whispered, leaning forward and biting her earlobe. His hands slipped down along her neck and gently cradled her breasts.
Annika got up and poured out her coffee in the sink. "I'm not coming back yet," she said warily.
Sven gave her a penetrating look. "What about your job? You're going back to Katrineholms-Kuriren again after the election, right?"
She drew a sharp breath and swallowed. "I've got to get going. I've got things to do."
She quickly left the kitchen and got dressed.
Sven stood in the doorway watching her while she put on a pair of jeans and a sweater. "What do you do during the day?"
"Find out about things."
"You're not seeing someone else?"
Annika's arms fell down in a gesture of resignation. "Please. Even if you think I'm a terrible journalist, there are others who think I'm okay-"
He interrupted her by taking her in his arms. "I don't think you're terrible. On the contrary- I get mad when I hear them bad-mouthing you on the radio when I know how wonderful you are."
They kissed fiercely and Sven started opening her zipper.
"No," Annika said. "I've got to get going if I'm to-"
He shut her up with a kiss and moved her down onto the bed.
***
The archive of the highbrow broadsheet newspaper was located next door to the entrance of Kvällspressen. Annika walked quickly through the door, her eyes firmly on the ground. She didn't want to bump into anyone she knew. She walked past the reception and in among the shelves. Three men were standing over by the microfilm desk and the big table. She put her bag on the small table.
Issue nine of Folket i Bild Kulturfront, 1973, that Berit had mentioned had come out at the beginning of May. Annika pulled out the file containing the broadsheet from April the same year and began looking through it. She had to admit it was a long shot. She tore out the note from her pad and put it in front of her.
Domestic archive, 24 Grevgatan.
&nb
sp; Foreign archive, 56 Valhallavägen.
The newspaper pages were yellowed and torn in places. The print was tiny, no more than seven points, and hard to read. The editing was untidy. The fashion ads made her want to laugh out loud, people looked so silly in the early seventies.
But the subject matter of the articles felt surprisingly familiar. Millions of people were threatened with starvation in Africa; young people had difficulties fitting into the labor market; Lasse Hallström had made a new TV film called Are We Going to My Place, Your Place, or Each to Our Own?
The world ice hockey championships were in progress, it seemed, and Olof Palme had made a speech in Kungälv. Wars were being fought in Vietnam and Cambodia, and the Watergate scandal was unfolding in Washington. She sighed. Not a single line about what she was looking for.
She moved to the next file, from the April 16-30 to April 1-15.
Monday, April 2, was the same as every other. Guerrillas in Cambodia had attacked government forces in Phnom Penh. A Danish lawyer by the name of Mogens Glistrup was successful with a new one-man party called the Progressive Party. The former American attorney general John Mitchell had agreed to testify before a Senate committee. And then at the bottom left of page 17, next to the short item "Bright Aurora Borealis over Stockholm," she found it:
"Mysterious Break-In at Office Building."
Annika's pulse quickened, racing until it thudded through her head and filled the entire room.
According to the short piece, an office at 24 Grevgatan had been searched sometime during the weekend, probably Sunday night. But strangely, nothing was missing. All office equipment had been left untouched, but all cabinets and drawers had been gone through.
I know what was stolen, she thought. Good God, I know what disappeared!
She found the second item in Section 2, at the top left of page 34. An office in 56 Valhallavägen had been vandalized over the weekend. It was a short piece, squeezed in between a picture of Crown Prince Carl Gustaf, who had caught two trout in the Mörrum River, and a piece about Gullfiber AB in Billesholm closing down.
Studio Sex aka Studio 69 / Exposed Page 28