The Bomber

by Liza Marklund

  ‘Did you ever try a women’s refuge?’

  The question came out quite naturally; Annika must have asked it a hundred times or more over the years. Eva Bjurling hesitated once more, but decided to answer.

  ‘A couple of times, but it was hard for the kids. They couldn’t go to nursery and school as usual, it just got too messy.’

  Annika waited without saying anything.

  ‘So you’re wondering why I’m not in pieces?’ Eva Bjurling said. ‘Of course I’m sorry, mostly for the kids’ sake. They loved their dad, but life will be easier now he’s not here. He used to drink a lot. So it’s …’

  They were silent for a few moments.

  ‘ Well, I won’t take up any more of your time,’ Annika said. ‘Thank you for being so honest. It’s important to get the facts straight.’

  The woman suddenly got worried.

  ‘You’re not going to write about this? The neighbours round here don’t know any of this.’

  ‘No,’ Annika said. ‘I’m not going to write about it, but I’m glad I know, because it might stop me getting things wrong later on.’

  They hung up and Annika turned off the tape-recorder. She sat at her desk staring into thin air for a while. Women were being abused all over the place; she had learned that over the years. She had written several series of articles about women and the violence they suffered, and as her thoughts roamed freely she realized that this was another factor the victims had in common. People who didn’t know them particularly well heaped praise on them, then they turned out to be real bastards. As long as Evert Danielsson wasn’t lying about Christina.

  She sighed and switched on her Mac.

  It was just as well to get everything written down while it was still fresh in her head. As the various programs started up on the computer she fished her notepad out of her bag. She really wasn’t sure what to make of Evert Danielsson. One moment he seemed professional and competent, and the next he was crying because they’d taken his company car away. Were men in positions of power really so sensitive and naïve? The answer was probably yes. Men in positions of power were no more unusual than any others. If they lost their job or anything else they cared about, they had a crisis. A person under pressure and in a crisis doesn’t act rationally, no matter what title they happen to have.

  She had almost written up all her notes when the phone rang.

  ‘You said I should get in touch if you got anything wrong,’ a voice said.

  It was a young woman’s voice, but Annika couldn’t place it.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, trying to sound neutral. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘You said it when you came to see us on Sunday. That I should call you and tell you if there was anything wrong with anything in the paper. Well, you’ve really messed up big time.’

  It was Lena Milander. Annika’s eyes opened wide and she fumbled with the tape-recorder.

  ‘How do you mean?’ she said.

  ‘You must have read your own paper. You’ve got a huge picture of Mum, and underneath it you put the ideal woman. How the hell would you know?’

  ‘What do you think we should have written, then?’ Annika said.

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Lena Milander said. ‘Leave Mum alone. We haven’t even buried her yet.’

  ‘As far as we know, your mum was an ideal woman,’ Annika said. ‘How can we say anything else if no one tells us otherwise?’

  ‘Why do you have to go on writing anything at all?’

  ‘You mum was a public figure. She chose that for herself. She helped create the public image of her. If no one tells us otherwise, then that’s all we’ve got to go on.’

  Lena Milander was silent for a while, then she said, ‘Meet me at the Pelican on Södermalm in half an hour. Afterwards you’ll be promising me never to write this sort of rubbish again.’

  Then she hung up, leaving Annika staring at the receiver in surprise. She quickly saved the file of notes from her meeting with Evert Danielsson onto a USB stick, deleted the document from the computer, grabbed her bag and coat and hurried out.

  50

  Anders Schyman was sitting in his office going through the sales figures for the past weekend. He felt good; this was what it should look like. On Saturday the competition had beaten them, as they usually did. But on Sunday they had bucked the trend. The Evening Post had won the sales war for the first time in over a year, even though their supplement was neither as big nor as expensively produced as the other evening paper’s. It was their coverage of the bombing at Stockholm’s Victoria Stadium that had driven up sales, and the defining article was obviously the one on the front, Annika’s discovery that Christina Furhage’s life had been threatened.

  There was a knock on the door. It was Eva-Britt Qvist.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ the editor-in-chief said, gesturing towards the chair on the other side of the desk.

  The secretary smiled fleetingly, adjusted her skirt and cleared her throat.

  ‘Well, there’s just something I’d like to talk to you about.’

  ‘By all means,’ Anders Schyman said, leaning back in his chair. He put his hands behind his head and looked at Eva-Britt Qvist through half-closed eyelids. He was willing to bet that this was going to be unpleasant.

  ‘There’s a really bad atmosphere in the crime team these days,’ the secretary said. ‘No one enjoys working there any more. I’ve been here a long time, and I don’t think we should just accept that’s the way it has to be.’

  ‘No, of course we shouldn’t,’ Anders Schyman said. ‘Can you give me a concrete example of what you mean?’

  The secretary shifted on her seat and tried to think.

  ‘Well, it’s not nice to be ordered to come into work when you’re in the middle of baking, just before Christmas and everything. There has to be a degree of flexibility in a team like this.’

  ‘Were you called into work when you were in the middle of baking?’ Schyman said.

  ‘Yes, by Annika Bengtzon.’

  ‘Was it to do with the Bomber, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, and I think she handled it incredibly badly.’

  ‘So you don’t think it’s right that you should have to put in extra hours when everyone else is?’ he said calmly. ‘Tragic events on this scale happen very rarely in this country, thank goodness.’

  The woman was starting to blush, and decided to go on the attack.

  ‘Annika Bengtzon has no idea how to behave! Do you know what she said after lunch today? That she wanted to kick Nils Langeby’s teeth in!’

  Anders Schyman had difficulty not laughing.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Did she really say that to Nils Langeby?’

  ‘No, not to anyone, more to herself, but I still heard it. And it was quite unreasonable; you really shouldn’t say things like that at work.’

  The editor-in-chief leaned forward, his clasped hands almost reaching the far side of the desk.

  ‘You’re quite right, Eva-Britt, that sort of thing isn’t appropriate. But do you know what I think is considerably worse? When workmates keep running to the boss to tell tales.’

  Eva-Britt Qvist’s face went completely white, then flaming red. Anders Schyman didn’t take his eyes off her. She looked down at her lap, looked up, then down again, then got up and walked out. She would probably spend the next fifteen minutes crying in the toilet.

  The editor-in-chief leaned back and sighed. He hoped he’d done his share of playground management for the week, but somehow he doubted it.

  Annika jumped out of the taxi outside number 40 Blekingegatan, momentarily bewildered by little Miss Milander from lovely Östermalm’s choice of meeting-place. The Pelican was an old-fashioned beer hall, with tall ceilings, good traditional food and fairly raucous noise levels in the evenings. At the moment it was relatively quiet in the main hall, just a few people sitting around the walls and chatting over a beer or a sandwich. Lena Milander had just arrived, and was sitting with her back to the far wall,
taking deep drags on a hand-rolled cigarette.

  Lena Milander fitted in perfectly here, with her short hair, black clothes and sombre facial expression. She could easily have been a regular. That theory turned out to be accurate when the waitress came over to take their order, saying: ‘The usual, Lena?’

  Annika ordered a cup of coffee and a cheese and ham sandwich; Lena a beer and a plate of hash. The young woman stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette, looked at Annika and gave her a crooked smile.

  ‘I don’t really smoke, but I like lighting cigarettes,’ she said, studying Annika intently as she said it.

  ‘Yes, I know you like setting fire to things,’ Annika said, blowing on her coffee. ‘The children’s home in Botkyrka, for instance.’

  Lena’s expression didn’t change.

  ‘How long are you going to go on lying about Mum?’

  ‘Until we know better,’ Annika said.

  Lena lit the cigarette again and blew smoke in Annika’s face. Annika didn’t blink.

  ‘Have you bought any Christmas presents yet, then?’ Lena said, pulling a strand of tobacco from her teeth.

  ‘Some. Have you got one for Olof?’

  Lena’s eyes glazed over slightly, and she took a deep drag on the cigarette.

  ‘Your brother, I mean,’ Annika went on. ‘We may as well start with that, don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t have any contact with him,’ Lena said, looking out of the window.

  Annika felt a shiver run down her spine. Olof was alive!

  ‘Why not?’ she asked, as blankly as she could.

  ‘We never have had. Mum didn’t want us to.’

  Annika took out her pad and pen, as well as the copy of the family portrait taken when Olof was two years old, and put it on the table in front of Lena. The girl stared at it for a long time.

  ‘I’ve never seen this before,’ she said. ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘It was in the archive. You can have it if you like.’

  Lena shook her head.

  ‘There’s no point, I’d only set fire to it.’

  Annika put it back in her bag.

  ‘So what did you want to tell me about your mum?’ she said.

  Lena fingered her cigarette.

  ‘Everyone keeps saying that she was so wonderful. In your paper today she’s practically a saint. But Mum was a really tragic person. She failed at loads of things. And she hid all the failures by threatening and betraying people. Sometimes I think there was something wrong with her, she was so fucking mean.’

  The young woman fell silent and looked out through the window again. It was starting to get dark already, and the snow looked like it was never going to stop falling.

  ‘Can you tell me what you mean by that?’ Annika said carefully.

  ‘Take Olof, for instance,’ Lena went on. ‘I didn’t even know he existed until Grandma mentioned him. That was when I was eleven.’

  Annika was making notes, waiting for her to go on.

  ‘Grandpa died when Mum was little. Grandma sent her to stay with family in upper Norrland. That was where she grew up. The relatives up there didn’t like her, but Grandma was paying them.

  ‘When she was twelve she was sent to boarding school, and she stayed there until she got married to Carl. The old man in the photograph. He was almost forty years older than Mum, but he came from a very good family. Grandma thought that sort of thing was important. She was the one who arranged it.’

  Lena started rolling a new cigarette. She did it by hand, and wasn’t very good at it, scattering tobacco on her untouched plate of food.

  ‘Mum was only twenty when Olof was born, and old Carl liked showing off his new family. Then his business went bust and the money ran out. Suddenly it was no fun having a penniless child-bride any more, so the old bastard dumped Mum and Olof and got married to an old bag who was loaded.’

  ‘Dorotea Adelcrona,’ Annika said, and Lena nodded.

  ‘Dorotea was an old forestry owner’s widow from somewhere near Sundsvall. She was rolling in money, and Carl was keen to get his hands on it. The old bag died a year or so later, and Carl was suddenly the richest widower in Norrland. He set up some sort of big award for daft forestry stuff.’

  Annika nodded. ‘That’s right. It still gets awarded every year.’

  ‘Whatever. Mum didn’t get a penny. And of course she was a social pariah. In the fifties, a poor, divorced single mother wasn’t exactly the most popular person to have around, and Mum always set great store by that kind of thing. She had some sort of business qualification from boarding school, and moved to Malmö where she got a job as a secretary for someone running a scrap business. She left Olof with an old couple out in Tungelsta.’

  Annika looked up from her notes.

  ‘She gave him away?’

  ‘Yep. He was five years old. I don’t know if she ever saw him again.’

  ‘Why?’ Annika said, slightly shocked. The thought of giving away Kalle made her feel sick.

  ‘He was too much trouble, she said. But the real reason was that she wanted to work and not have to drag a child around with her. She wanted a career.’

  ‘Yes, and she certainly managed that,’ Annika muttered.

  ‘Things were pretty bad to start with. Her first boss forced himself on her and she got pregnant, or at least that’s what she said. She went to Poland to have an abortion, and ended up getting really ill afterwards. The doctors didn’t think she’d ever be able to have children again. She got fired, of course, but found a new job in a bank in Skara. She stayed there until she got a job in head office in Stockholm. She climbed the greasy ladder pretty quickly; and somewhere along the way she met Dad, and he fell head over heels in love with her. They got married a couple of years later, and then Dad started going on about wanting children. Mum said no, but stopped taking the pill to make him happy. Presumably she didn’t think she could get pregnant again.’

  ‘But she did,’ Annika said.

  Lena nodded.

  ‘She was over forty. You can imagine how angry she was. Abortions were legal by then, but for once Dad stood up to her. He refused to let her have an abortion, and threatened to leave her if she went ahead anyway. So she bit the bullet and gave birth to me.’

  The young woman made a face and drank some beer.

  ‘Who told you all this?’ Annika asked.

  ‘Mum, of course. She made no bones about what she thought of me. She always said she hated me. My earliest memory is Mum pushing me away so hard that I fell over and hurt myself. Dad liked me, but he never had the courage to show how much. He was pretty scared of Mum.’

  She thought for a moment, then went on: ‘I think most people were scared of Mum. She had a way of frightening people. Anyone who ever got close to her had to sign a confidentiality agreement. They were never allowed to talk about Christina in public without her approval.’

  ‘Is that even legal?’ Annika said.

  Lena Milander shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter. People believed it, and were scared into silence.’

  ‘It’s hardly surprising we never really found out much at the paper, then,’ Annika said.

  ‘Mum herself was only frightened of two people: me and Olof.’

  How sad, Annika thought.

  ‘She was worried I’d set fire to the house,’ Lena said with a wry smile. ‘Ever since I set fire to the parquet floor in the sitting room out in Tyresö she was terrified of me getting hold of a box of matches. She sent me to a clinic for “disturbed children”, the children’s home, but when I burned that down I was sent home again. That’s what happens to children who are out of control. When the Social Services can’t be bothered to try any more, the parents get their little brats back again.’

  She lit a fresh, crumpled cigarette.

  ‘Once I was experimenting with homemade explosives out in the garage. It detonated too soon and blew the garage door off. I got shrapnel in my leg. Mum was convinced I was going to blow her up with a car-bomb, an
d after that she had a massive complex about car-bombs.’

  She laughed humourlessly.

  ‘How did you learn how to make explosives?’ Annika asked.

  ‘Oh, there are various recipes floating around on the internet, it’s not that difficult. Do you want to know how?’

  ‘No thanks. So why was she frightened of Olof?’

  ‘I don’t really know, she never said. She just said I should watch out for Olof, that he was dangerous. He must have threatened her somehow, I suppose.’

  ‘Have you ever met him?’

  The young woman shook her head, her eyes moist. She blew out a plume of smoke and tapped a long pillar of ash onto the side of her plate.

  ‘I don’t know where he is,’ she said.

  ‘But you think he’s still alive?’

  Lena took a deep drag on the cigarette and looked at Annika.

  ‘Why else would Mum have been so frightened?’ she said. ‘If Olof was dead then we wouldn’t have to keep our identities secret.’

  That makes sense, Annika thought. She hesitated for a moment, then asked a difficult question. ‘Do you think your mum ever met anyone else that she fell in love with?’

  Lena shrugged.

  ‘I don’t give a shit,’ she said. ‘I doubt it, though. Mum hated men. Sometimes I think she hated Dad too.’

  Annika dropped the subject.

  ‘So as you can see, she wasn’t exactly “the ideal woman”,’ Lena said.

  ‘No, she wasn’t,’ Annika said.

  ‘So will you be printing that again?’

  ‘I hope we can avoid that in future,’ Annika said. ‘But it sounds to me as though your mum was a victim as well.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Lena said, suddenly wary.

  ‘Well, she got sent away, just like Olof.’

  ‘There was a big difference. Grandma couldn’t look after her, there was a war on, and Grandma did really love her. It was Grandma’s biggest regret that Christina didn’t grow up with her.’

  ‘Is your grandmother still alive?’

  ‘No, she died last year. Mum actually went to the funeral, probably because it would have looked bad if she didn’t. But Grandma saw Mum every school holiday when Mum was little, and always spent Mum’s birthday with her.’