The Bomber

by Liza Marklund

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Annika said.

  ‘Christina Furhage was the most wonderful woman in the world,’ Beata Ekesjö said. ‘It was so awful that it had to happen to her.’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ Annika said, and waited.

  The woman blew her nose again, and pushed her flax-blonde hair back behind her ears. Natural blonde, Annika noted; no streaky roots like Anne Snapphane. She looked about thirty, the same as Annika.

  ‘I knew Christina,’ Beata Ekesjö said, looking down at the roll of toilet paper in her lap. ‘I worked with her. She was my idol. That’s why I think it’s so awful that it had to happen to her.’

  Annika was starting to feel restless. This was going nowhere.

  ‘Do you believe in fate?’ the woman suddenly asked, looking up at Annika.

  Annika noticed that Henriksson had come in and was standing just behind her.

  ‘No,’ Annika said. ‘Not if you mean that everything is predetermined. I think we make our own fate.’

  ‘Why?’ the woman said with interest, straightening up.

  ‘Our future is determined by the choices we make. Every day we make life-changing decisions. Shall I cross the road now or wait until that car has passed? If we make the wrong decision, our life ends. It’s up to us.’

  ‘So you don’t think there’s anyone watching over us?’ Beata said, wide-eyed.

  ‘What, like God? I think there’s a purpose to our time on earth, if that’s what you mean. But I don’t think we’re supposed to know what it is, because if that were the case we’d know about it, wouldn’t we?’

  The woman stood up, evidently considering this. She was short, no more than one metre sixty, and skinny as a teenager.

  ‘What are you doing here now, sitting in here?’ Annika said eventually.

  The woman sighed and stared at one of the holes left by the cables in the wall.

  ‘I work here,’ she said, blinking back the tears again.

  ‘Did you work with Stefan?’

  She nodded, and the tears started to fall again. ‘Evil, evil, evil,’ she muttered as she rocked from side to side with her hands in front of her face. Annika picked up the toilet roll from where the woman had put it on the floor, and tore off a long piece.

  ‘Here you are,’ she said.

  The woman turned round so abruptly that Annika took a step back and trod on Henriksson’s foot.

  ‘If there’s no such thing as fate, who decided that Christina and Stefan had to die?’ she said, her eyes flaming.

  ‘A human being,’ Annika said calmly. ‘Someone murdered both of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be the same person.’

  ‘I was here when the bomb went off,’ Beata said, turning away again. ‘I was the one who asked him to stay late and check the changing-rooms. So how responsible does that make me?’

  Annika didn’t answer, just studied the woman more closely. She didn’t fit in here. What did she mean, and what was she doing here?

  ‘If it wasn’t fate that put Stefan in the way of the explosion, then it must be my fault, mustn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Why do you think it was your fault?’ Annika said, and at that moment she heard voices behind her.

  A uniformed policeman was coming through the main entrance together with eight or nine builders.

  ‘Can I take your picture?’ Henriksson said to the woman.

  Beata Ekesjö patted her hair.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I want you to write about this. It’s important that it gets out. Write about what I said to you,’ she said.

  She stared at the photographer as he took a couple of pictures without a flash.

  ‘Thank you for talking to us,’ Annika said quickly, shaking Beata’s hand again and then hurrying after the policeman. The police would be able to give her something, unlike this poor, confused woman.

  The group of men were on their way into the hall when Annika caught up with them. She introduced herself and Henriksson, and the policeman lost his temper immediately.

  ‘How the hell did you get in here? How did you get past the cordon?’

  Annika looked him calmly in the eye.

  ‘You were pretty sloppy last night, officer. You didn’t cordon off the south side of the hall, and you didn’t check the emergency exits.’

  ‘Never mind, you’re leaving now,’ the officer said, taking hold of Annika.

  At that moment Henriksson took a picture, this time with a flash. The policeman stopped and let go of Annika.

  ‘What’s happening now?’ Annika said, fishing her notepad and pen out of her bag. ‘Questioning and forensics?’

  ‘Yes, and you need to leave.’

  Annika sighed, lowering the pad and pen to her thighs.

  ‘Come on. We need each other. Give us five minutes to talk to the men and take a group picture inside the hall and we’ll be happy.’

  The policeman clenched his teeth, turned and pushed his way through the group of builders out towards the main entrance. He was presumably going to get backup. Annika realized she would have to move quickly.

  ‘Okay, can we have a group picture?’ she said, and the men gathered hesitantly next to the small stand.

  ‘Sorry, you probably think we’re being intrusive, but we’re just trying to do our job as well as possible. It’s vital that Stefan’s killer is caught, and hopefully the mass media can help,’ Annika said as Henriksson snapped away.

  ‘To start with, we’re really sorry you lost your workmate, it must be terrible to lose a colleague like that.’

  The men didn’t answer.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like to say about Stefan?’ she asked.

  The photographer had got them all to sit on the stand; they were all facing him, with the hall behind them. It would be an evocative picture.

  The men were still hesitant, none of them wanting to talk. They were all focused, serious, dry-eyed. They were probably in a state of shock.

  ‘Stefan was our boss,’ said a man in faded overalls. ‘He was a really good bloke.’

  The others muttered their agreement.

  ‘What sort of work are you doing here?’ Annika asked.

  ‘We’re going through the whole building and making a few changes for the Olympics. Health and safety, electricity, pipes … The same thing’s happening at all the Olympic venues.’

  ‘And Stefan was in charge?’

  The men started to mutter again, until the same man spoke once more: ‘Nah, he’s our boss,’ he said. ‘That one over there, the blonde, she’s the project leader.’

  Annika raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Beata Ekesjö?’ she said in surprise. ‘She’s in charge?’

  The men laughed slightly, glancing at each other conspiratorially: yes, Beata was in charge. The laughter was joyless and sounded more like a series of snorts.

  Poor cow, Annika thought. She can’t have an easy time with this lot.

  Unable to think of anything else to say, Annika asked if they knew Christina Furhage, and they all nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘Now she was a real woman,’ the man in blue overalls said. ‘Don’t suppose anyone else could have got this all going.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’ Annika asked.

  ‘She went out to all the sites, talking to the builders. God knows how she found the time, but she always wanted to meet everyone and see how it all worked.’

  The man fell silent, and Annika tapped her pen thoughtfully on her notepad.

  ‘Are you going to do any work today, then?’

  ‘We have to talk to the police, then we’re probably going home. And we’ll have a minute’s silence for Stefan,’ the man said.

  At that moment the policeman came back with two colleagues. They looked pretty cross, and were heading straight towards the little group.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ Annika said quietly, and picked up Henriksson’s camera case, seeing as she was closest to it. Then she turned on her heel and started to walk along t
he track, heading for the unlocked emergency exit. She heard the photographer jogging to catch up.

  ‘Hey, you!’ the policeman called.

  ‘Thanks, we won’t disturb you any longer,’ Annika called back, and waved without slowing down.

  She held the door open for Henriksson and let it slam shut.

  The photographer sat in silence as Annika drove back to the office. The snow was still falling, but at least there was proper daylight now. The traffic was even thicker, Christmas traffic was making it worse than usual. There were only three days left now.

  ‘Where are you spending Christmas?’ Annika asked, to break the silence.

  ‘What are you going to do with that?’ Henriksson replied.

  Annika glanced at him, surprised.

  ‘What? What do you mean?’

  ‘Can we really publish any of that when we just walked in like that?’

  Annika sighed.

  ‘I’ll talk to Schyman and explain what happened. I expect we’ll end up with a picture of the men sitting in the stand, and something about them holding a minute’s silence for Stefan. It won’t be much more than a caption, really. In the article alongside we can add any information from the police and something about interviews with the builders and ongoing forensic work, blah, blah, blah. You know the sort of thing.’

  ‘What about the woman?’

  Annika bit her lip.

  ‘I won’t mention her. She’s too unbalanced and didn’t really add anything new. I didn’t think she seemed all there. What did you make of her?’

  ‘I missed the start,’ Henriksson said. ‘Did she spend the whole time talking about evil and guilt?’

  Annika scratched her nose.

  ‘Pretty much. That’s why I won’t be using her. She may have been in the building when the bomb went off, but she had nothing to say about that at all. You heard her. This is probably one of those instances where we ought to try to protect someone, even if she does want to get in the paper. She doesn’t know what’s best for her right now.’

  ‘You said it wasn’t up to us to decide who can cope with being in the paper,’ Henriksson said.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Annika said. ‘But it is up to us to decide if a person is capable of understanding who we are and what we’re saying. That woman was too weird. She’s not going in the paper. But I’ll write something about the project leader being in the building at the time of the explosion, that she’s completely distraught after Stefan’s death, and blames herself for his death. I just don’t think we should publish her name or picture.’

  They sat in silence the rest of the way back. Annika let Henriksson out at the main door before driving the car down into the garage.

  41

  Bertil Milander was sitting in front of the television in his magnificent art nouveau library. He could feel the blood pulse through his body; it bubbled and rushed in his veins. His breathing filled the room. He sensed that he was falling asleep. The volume of the television was turned down to a faint whisper, reaching him as irregular murmurs through the mechanical sounds of his body. A group of women were talking and laughing with one another, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Every now and then banners listing various flags and phone numbers and currencies would appear on screen. He had no idea what was going on. The tranquillizers made everything so woolly. Occasionally he would let out a little whimper.

  ‘Christina,’ he muttered, and sobbed for a while.

  He must have dozed off, then suddenly he was wide awake. He recognized the smell, and knew that it meant danger. The warning signs were so deeply imprinted in him that it reached him through sleep and drugs.

  He struggled out of the leather sofa, his blood pressure sluggish, making him confused. He stood up, holding on to the back of the sofa, trying to work out where the smell was coming from. The drawing room. He moved carefully, holding on to the bookcases, until he felt his blood pressure rising.

  His daughter was crouched in front of the stove, feeding the contents of a cardboard box into it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Bertil Milander asked, bewildered.

  The old stove was badly ventilated, and the smoke was drifting out into the room.

  ‘I’m tidying up,’ his daughter said.

  He went over to the young woman and sat down beside her on the floor.

  ‘You’re lighting a fire?’ he asked cautiously.

  Lena looked at him.

  ‘Not in the middle of the floor this time,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ he said.

  Lena Milander stared at the flames as they slowly died away. She tore a new piece of cardboard and tried to get the fire going again. The flames caught hold and embraced it. For a few seconds it stood stiffly in the fire, then quickly rolled up and disappeared. Christina Furhage’s smiling eyes vanished for ever.

  ‘Don’t you want to keep any memories of your mum?’ Bertil asked.

  ‘I’ll always remember her,’ Lena said.

  She tore another three pages from the album and shoved them into the stove.

  Eva-Britt Qvist looked up as Annika walked past her on her way to her office. Annika said a friendly hello, but Eva-Britt cut her off sharply.

  ‘So you’re back from the press conference already?’ she said triumphantly.

  Annika realized straight away what the secretary wanted her to say: ‘What press conference?’ Then Eva-Britt would be able to prove that she performed a vital role coordinating things in the crime unit.

  ‘I didn’t go,’ she said, and gave an even broader smile as she went into her room and closed the door. There, she thought, that’ll get you wondering where I’ve been.

  Then she called Berit’s mobile. The phone rang, but she was put through to voicemail. Berit’s phone was always at the bottom of her bag, and she never managed to pull it out the first time you called. Annika waited thirty seconds, then called again. This time Berit answered straight away.

  ‘I’m at the press conference in police headquarters,’ the reporter said. ‘You were out on a job, so I came down here with Ulf Olsson.’

  Oh, thank you! Annika thought.

  ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘Some interesting stuff. I’ll be back soon.’

  They hung up. Annika leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the desk. She found some half-melted chocolate in her drawer and broke it into smaller pieces. It was covered in sugar crystals, but was perfectly edible.

  Even though she would probably not have dared to say so out loud in the office, she couldn’t help thinking that the connection between these bombings and the Olympics was really tenuous. What if they were just two privately motivated attacks against two specific individuals?

  Sätra Hall was as far as you could get from an Olympic arena. There had to be a lot of common denominators between Christina Furhage and Stefan Bjurling. Of course the connection could be the Olympics, but it didn’t have to be. There was something in their past that linked them to the same killer, Annika was willing to bet on that. Money, love, sex, power, jealousy, hate, injustice, influence, family, friends, neighbours, holidays, school, children, transport – there were a thousand ways their lives could have collided. Out at the hall this morning there were at least ten people who had met both Stefan Bjurling and Christina Furhage. The victims didn’t necessarily even have to have known each other.

  She called her source.

  He gave a deep sigh.

  ‘I thought you and I had said all we have to say to each other,’ he said.

  ‘Well, look where that got us! How much are you enjoying this whole security debate? “Hello? Hello? Is there anyone here?” ’ she said, imitating the report on the radio that morning.

  He sighed again and Annika waited.

  ‘I can’t talk to you any more.’

  ‘Fine, okay,’ Annika said quickly. ‘I understand that you’ve got a lot to do, because I reckon you’re all sitting there trying desperately to find some sort of common denominator bet
ween Stefan Bjurling and Christina Furhage. Maybe you’ve already found one. How many people do you think had access to the alarm codes, and knew Stefan as well?’

  ‘We’re trying desperately to fend off all these demands for more security guards …’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ Annika said. ‘You’re probably glad the focus has shifted away from the theory you believe in to an entirely irrelevant debate about security in the different venues.’

  ‘You can’t mean that,’ her source said. ‘When it comes down to it, security is always the responsibility of the police.’

  ‘I’m not talking about the police as a whole, just about you and your friends sitting there trying to solve these murders. Because it’s up to you lot, isn’t it? If you sort this out, the security debate goes away.’

  ‘If?’

  ‘When. Which is why I think you ought to talk to me again. The only way to get ahead in life is by communicating.’

  ‘Is that what you were doing inside Sätra Hall this morning, communicating?’

  Fuck, he’d heard about that.

  ‘Amongst other things,’ Annika said.

  ‘I’m going to hang up now.’

  Annika took a deep breath and said, ‘Christina Furhage had another child, a son.’

  ‘I know that. Goodbye.’

  He really was very angry. Annika hung up, and at that moment Berit walked in.

  ‘Terrible weather,’ she said, shaking her hair.

  ‘Have they caught the killer, then?’ Annika asked, holding out the chocolate. Berit looked at it in horror and declined the offer.

  ‘Nah, but they think it’s the same person. And they’re still saying that there’s no credible threat to the Games.’

  ‘What’s their argument?’

  Berit picked up her notepad and leafed through it.

  ‘There haven’t been any public threats against any venue or person connected to the Games. Any threats that have been received have been of a personal nature, unconnected to either the venues or the Games themselves.’

  ‘They’re talking about the threat against Furhage. Were there any threats against Stefan Bjurling?’

  ‘I’m hoping to find that out this afternoon, because I’ve arranged to meet his wife.’