The Bomber

by Liza Marklund

  He sat down on a box in the corner.

  Annika told them, to general acclaim: of course, the Olympic torch! That was one to get the Press Club talking.

  ‘So what are we doing now?’

  Annika dropped her feet to the floor and leaned over the desk, ticking off points on her list as she read them out.

  ‘Patrik, you can cover the murder hunt and forensic evidence, and stay in touch with the police. There’s bound to be some sort of press conference this afternoon. Find out when, and get a photographer ready to go. We should probably all go along to that.’

  Patrik nodded.

  ‘Berit, you’re doing the victim – who and why? And there’s our old Olympic bomber, the Tiger, of course. He has to be a suspect, even if his little bombs were child’s play compared to this. What’s he doing now, and where was he last night? I’ll try to get hold of him; I interviewed him at the time. Nils, you can take the security aspect of the Olympics, how the hell could something like this happen seven months before the Games, and what are the security arrangements like from now on?’

  ‘I think that’s a pretty irrelevant line of inquiry,’ Nils Langeby said.

  ‘Really?’ Anders Schyman said. ‘I don’t. It’s one of the most important general questions we’ve got on a day like this. Getting to grips with that proves that we’re putting this sort of violence into a social and global context. What impact will this have on sport generally? It’s one of our most important articles today, Nils.’

  The reporter didn’t know how to react – should he feel honoured to have been given one of the most important jobs or upset at being corrected? As usual, he chose the option that made him look best, and puffed out his chest.

  ‘Well, of course, it all depends how you do it,’ he said.

  Annika cast a grateful glance at Schyman.

  ‘And maybe the evening crew can deal with quotes from the Olympic officials and the taxi-driver?’

  Ingvar Johansson nodded. ‘My lads are taking the taxi-driver to a hotel in the city as we speak. He lives in a one-room flat out in Bagarmossen, so everyone else will be trying to get hold of him there. We’re keeping him hidden at the Royal Viking Hotel until tomorrow morning. Janet Ullberg is trying to get hold of Christina Furhage, a shot of her in front of the hole made by the bomb. Students from the journalists’ college are answering the phones for Have Your Say …’

  ‘What was the question?’ Anders Schyman said, reaching for a paper.

  ‘ “Should the Olympics be stopped? Call us tonight between five and seven o’clock.” It’s pretty obvious that this must be another attack by the Tiger or some other group that doesn’t want the Games held in Sweden.’

  Annika paused for a moment before saying, ‘That’s one line we have to look into, of course. But I’m not so sure that’s actually the case.’

  ‘Why not?’ Ingvar Johansson said. ‘We certainly can’t ignore the possibility. Apart from the victim, the terrorism angle is our main focus tomorrow.’

  ‘I think we need to be careful not to push the sabotage angle too far,’ Annika said, cursing her promise not to say anything about insider involvement. ‘As long as we don’t know who the victim was, we can’t really speculate about what the bomb was meant to do.’

  ‘Of course we can,’ Ingvar Johansson said. ‘Obviously we’d have to get the police to comment on the theory, but that shouldn’t be too hard. They can’t deny or confirm anything right now—’

  Anders Schyman interrupted. ‘I don’t think we can rule anything in or out at the moment. We’ll keep all our options open until we have to make up our minds about our angle tomorrow. Anything else?’

  ‘No, not with what we know at the moment. As soon as the victim’s been identified we’ll get onto the relatives.’

  ‘Okay, but be careful,’ Schyman said. ‘I don’t want to hear any complaints about us harassing the family.’

  Annika smiled. ‘I’ll be looking after that myself.’

  8

  When the meeting broke up Annika called home. Kalle, her five-year-old son, answered.

  ‘Hello, darling, how are you?’

  ‘Good. We’re going to McDonald’s, and Ellen spilled orange juice on the One Hundred and One Dalmatians DVD, which was stupid because now we can’t watch it any more …’

  The boy fell silent and let out a few small sniffs.

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame. How did she manage to spill juice on it? What was the film doing in the kitchen?’

  ‘It wasn’t, it was on the floor in front of the television, and Ellen kicked my glass over when she got up to go to the toilet.’

  ‘But why was your juice on the floor in the television room? You know you shouldn’t take your breakfast into the television room.’

  Annika could feel herself getting angry. Surely she could do something as simple as going to work without their domestic routine falling apart and things getting broken?

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ the boy yelped. ‘It was Ellen! It was Ellen who broke the film!’

  He was crying properly now, and dropped the phone and ran off.

  ‘Hello? Kalle!’

  Bloody hell, how had this happened? She had only called home to hear their voices and ease her conscience a bit. Thomas came on the line.

  ‘What on earth did you say to him?’ he said.

  She sighed and felt the beginnings of a headache.

  ‘Why were they eating breakfast in front of the television?’

  ‘They weren’t,’ Thomas said in a controlled voice. ‘I let Kalle take his juice in there, that’s all. Turns out that wasn’t a smart move considering what happened, but I’m bribing them with lunch at McDonald’s and a new film. Stop thinking we can’t cope for a minute without you! Concentrate on your big story. How’s it all going?’

  She gulped.

  ‘One dead, really messy. Murder, suicide, maybe just an accident, we don’t know yet.’

  ‘Yes, I heard. You’re going to be late, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s putting it mildly.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  For some reason she felt tears welling up.

  ‘I love you too,’ she whispered.

  Her source had been on the night shift and had gone home now, so she had to make do with the usual police channels. Nothing new had happened that morning, the body hadn’t been identified, the fire was now completely out, and the forensic work was still going on.

  She decided to go out to the stadium again with another photographer, a part-time temp called Ulf Olsson.

  ‘Actually, I don’t think I’m dressed right for this sort of assignment,’ Ulf said in the lift on the way down to the garage.

  Annika looked up at him.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The photographer was wearing a dark grey wool coat, a suit and smart shoes.

  ‘I thought I was going to be covering the red carpet at the National Theatre tonight. You could have told me sooner that we were heading out to a murder scene, you must have known for a couple of hours.’

  He gave her a pathetic look. Something clicked inside Annika’s head, and her tiredness got the better of her.

  ‘Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do. You’re a photographer, so you ought to be able to cover anything from a traffic accident to a gala premiere. If you don’t like taking pictures of mincemeat in an Armani suit, you should have some overalls in your camera case.’

  She kicked the lift door open and marched into the garage. Fucking amateurs.

  ‘I can’t say I like the way you’re talking to me,’ the photographer said.

  Annika blew up, spinning to face him.

  ‘Stop being so fucking pretentious,’ she snarled. ‘There’s nothing stopping you from finding out for yourself what’s going on in the paper. Do you really imagine that I – or anyone else, for that matter – has time to organize your fucking wardrobe?’

  The photographer gulped and clenched his fists.

&nb
sp; ‘Now you’re just being unfair,’ he muttered.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Annika groaned, ‘stop whining! Just get in the car and drive to the stadium. Or do you want me to drive?’

  The tradition was always for photographers to drive when a team went out on a job, even in vehicles from the paper’s car-pool. A lot of papers had actually given their photographers company cars, but there’d been such a fuss about the impact on people’s tax status that the Evening Post had stopped that.

  This time Annika got behind the wheel and headed out onto the Essinge motorway. The atmosphere in the car was tense all the way out to Hammarby Harbour. Annika decided to try the road through the old industrial area, but it didn’t help. The entire Olympic site was blocked off. Much to her annoyance, Annika could feel herself getting frustrated, while Ulf Olsson looked relieved at the possibility of not having to get his shoes dirty.

  ‘We have to get a picture of the stand in daylight,’ Annika said, and did a U-turn by the roadblock on Lumavägen. ‘I know a couple of people who work for a television company based out here. If we’re lucky they might let us onto the roof.’

  She pulled out her mobile and dialled her old friend Anne Snapphane, a producer of daytime chat-shows for a cable channel.

  ‘I’m up to my neck in editing,’ Anne snarled as she took the call. ‘Who is it and what do you want?’

  Five minutes later they were up on the roof of the magnificent old light-bulb factory next to Hammarby Harbour. The view of the damaged stadium was fantastic. Using a telephoto lens, Olsson quickly took a whole sequence of shots.

  They said nothing as they drove back to the office.

  9

  ‘The press conference starts at two o’clock,’ Patrik shouted as she walked into the newsroom. ‘The photographer’s all set.’

  Annika waved in reply and went into her office. She hung up her coat, tossed her bag onto the desk, and plugged her mobile phone in to charge.

  She felt exhausted and inadequate after her outburst at the photographer. Why had she reacted so strongly? Why had she let it bother her? She hesitated for just a moment before dialling the editor-in-chief’s internal number.

  ‘Of course I’ve got time to see you, Annika,’ he said.

  She walked through the open-plan newsroom towards Anders Schyman’s office in the corner of the building. There was almost no sign of any activity. Ingvar Johansson was holding a phone to his ear as he ate a tuna salad. The picture editor, Pelle Oscarsson, was trying something in Photoshop, and one of the layout team was setting up the next morning’s pages.

  As Annika closed the door behind her she heard the theme tune of the lunch news bulletin on Anders Schyman’s radio. They were going with the sabotage angle, claiming that the police were hunting a madman who hated the Olympics. So they hadn’t got any further than that.

  ‘The madman theory is all wrong,’ Annika said. ‘The police think it was an inside job.’

  Schyman let out a shocked whistle.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There was no sign of a break-in, and the alarms were switched off. Either the victim turned them off or the Bomber did. Either way, it means that someone on the inside is responsible.’

  ‘Not necessarily; the alarms could just have been broken,’ Schyman said.

  ‘They weren’t,’ Annika said. ‘They were all in working order, just switched off.’

  ‘Someone might have forgotten to turn them on,’ the editor-in-chief said. Annika thought about this for a moment, then nodded: that could have happened.

  They sat down on the sofas in one corner of the office, listening to the radio. Annika looked out at the Russian Embassy. The daylight was starting to fade even though it had only just arrived, and a grey haze outside made the windows look dirty. Someone had made a belated attempt to decorate the office for Christmas with a couple of potted poinsettias and some Advent candles in the windows.

  ‘I had a go at Ulf Olsson today,’ Annika said quietly.

  Anders Schyman waited for her to go on.

  ‘He was moaning about wearing the wrong clothes for the Hammarby job, making out that it was my fault – he said I should have told him earlier that we were heading out there.’

  She fell silent. Anders Schyman looked at her for a moment before replying.

  ‘Annika, you don’t decide which photographer gets allocated to which job. The picture editor does that. And anyway, reporters and photographers alike need to wear clothes that work for any job, no matter where. That’s part of the deal.’

  ‘I swore at him,’ Annika said.

  ‘Well, maybe that wasn’t a good move,’ the editor-in-chief said. ‘If I were you I’d apologize for swearing and give him a bit of general advice on what to expect. And keep an eye on how we cover the sabotage angle – I don’t want us pushing too hard on terrorism if that isn’t what happened.’

  Schyman stood up, indicating that the conversation was finished.

  Annika felt relieved, partly because she had some support for her coverage of the Olympics story, and partly because she had told Schyman about her outburst herself. Of course people got angry with each other every day at the paper, but she was a woman, and she hadn’t been in a position of authority for long, so she had to be prepared for extra scrutiny.

  She walked straight over to the picture editing section, picking up one of the big bags emblazoned with the paper’s logo on her way. Ulf Olsson was on his own, leafing through a glossy blokes’ magazine.

  ‘I’m sorry I swore at you,’ Annika said. ‘Here, use this for winter clothes. Keep a change of thermals, some winter boots, and a hat and scarf in your locker or in the back seat of your car.’

  He glared sourly at her.

  ‘You should have told me sooner that we were going—’

  ‘You’ll have to take that up with the picture editor or the editor-in-chief. Have you uploaded those pictures?’

  ‘No, not yet …’

  ‘Could you get onto it, then?’

  She walked away, feeling his eyes on her back. As she approached her office it struck her that she hadn’t eaten anything all day, not even breakfast. She headed off to the canteen instead and picked up a meatball sandwich and a Diet Coke.

  The news of the explosion at the Victoria Stadium had made headlines all round the world. All the big TV stations and international papers had sent people to the press conference in police headquarters at two o’clock. CNN, Sky News, BBC, and all the Nordic channels, as well as reporters from Le Monde, the Herald Tribune, The Times, Die Zeit, and many more. The approach to the building was full of outside-broadcast trucks.

  Annika was there, together with four others from the paper: Patrik and Berit, and two photographers. The room was packed with people and equipment. Annika and the two reporters found chairs close to the door, while the photographers elbowed their way closer to the front. As usual, the television crews had parked themselves right in front of the podium, blocking the view for everyone else. Their cables snaked all over the floor, and everyone would have to remember to let them ask their questions first. Their lights seemed to sweep all over the room, even if most of them were focused on the makeshift platform where the police would soon be making their appearance. Several of the news teams would be broadcasting live, among them CNN, Sky and Swedish television news. Their reporters were practising their pieces to camera and scribbling notes, while the radio reporters checked their recording equipment with repeated chants of ‘one two, one two’. The hubbub of voices was like a waterfall. The room was already unbearably hot. Annika groaned and dropped her outdoor clothing in a heap on the floor.

  The police emerged from a side-door close to the podium. The voices fell silent and the click of cameras took over. There were four of them: a spokesman for Stockholm Police, Chief Prosecutor Kjell Lindström, a detective from the violent crime unit whose name Annika couldn’t remember, and Evert Danielsson from the Olympic organizing committee. They sat down at the table and dutifully sipped fr
om their glasses of water.

  The police spokesman began, running through the facts that had already been made public: that there had been an explosion, that one person had died, the extent of the damage, the fact that forensic work was still going on. He looked tired and drawn. Annika wondered what on earth he would look like after several more days of this.

  Then the Chief Prosecutor took over.

  ‘We haven’t yet identified the victim at the stadium,’ he said. ‘Our work has been complicated by the fact that the body is severely damaged. We do, however, have a number of leads which may help us to confirm identity. The explosive material itself is being examined in London. As yet we haven’t received confirmation, but preliminary reports indicate that the explosives were not of military origin.’

  Kjell Lindström took a sip of water. The cameras clicked.

  ‘We are also looking for the man who was convicted of the bombings that damaged two sports stadiums seven years ago. The man is not suspected of any involvement, but he may be able to help with our inquiries.’

  The Chief Prosecutor looked down at his notes, almost as if he were hesitating. When he started to speak again, he was looking right into the camera of the Swedish television news team: ‘A person wearing dark clothing was observed close to the stadium shortly before the explosion. We appeal to anyone who may have any information about the explosion at the Victoria Stadium to come forward. The police would like to talk to anyone who was in South Hammarby Harbour between midnight and three twenty this morning. Even if your information does not seem particularly relevant, it could be vital in helping the police piece together the sequence of events.’

  He listed some phone numbers that would soon be rolling across the bottom of the screen of the television news.

  When the Chief Prosecutor had finished, Evert Danielsson cleared his throat.

  ‘Obviously, this is a great tragedy,’ he said nervously, ‘both for Sweden as host of the Olympic Games, and for sport in general. The Olympic Games stand for fair competition, regardless of race, religion, politics or gender. And that is why it is so distressing when someone commits an act of terrorism against a global symbol like the Victoria Stadium.’