Without a Trace (Annika Bengtzon 10)

by Marklund, Liza

  When darkness fell and the daytime staff had gone home, the light would shrink to islands around the newsdesk, the sports desk and the entertainment section. The noise was lower, more intense and focused. Heartbeats rose, the pace of activity increased and everyone was focused. As the clock approached 04.45, the deadline for deliveries to the Norrland flight, the atmosphere was tense. Hair on end, shirt-tails flapping, howls of rage at crashing computers, crisis calls from the print-works, always about the failure of the yellow plate to arrive on time, and could they try sending it again? Then, as the deadline passed, the sense of release once the night-editor had sent the last colour file and the message arrived telling them that the presses had started to roll in Akalla. Shoulders slumped and keyboards were pushed away. All of that was ancient history, these days. She didn’t understand why she even remembered it.

  Annika dropped her bag and raincoat on the floor and hooked her laptop into the wireless network. Her homepage was set to the Evening Post’s online edition: the paper’s surveillance of modern society was governed now by clicks. Not that that was anything to complain about. Active participation by the country’s citizens in its ultimate form. Give the people what the people want. Want to know who slept with whom in the Big Brother house last night? Click here! Watch grainy footage of a cheap duvet bouncing up and down in one corner, and remember to like us on Facebook! Or watch the car-chase right up to the crash! Watch an Indian man pop his eyeballs out! Must read – RIGHT NOW!

  The online updates happened in a constant, arrhythmic torrent, made up of every conceivable colour, all mixed together, meaning that the end result was inevitably brown. There was no day, no night. Just a constant howl of stress.

  She looked over at Schyman’s glass bunker. He was reading something on his computer, something very important from the look of it. It was ironic, really. He had turned the Evening Post into the biggest printed newspaper in Sweden just as that had ceased to matter, when the printed edition was merely an advertisement for the digital edition. The internet was what mattered, and online they were hopelessly outclassed in spite of all the infrastructure projects, high-tech digital solutions and android-based platforms. Their competitors owned the internet, not as a result of their journalism but because of their flashy adverts, street pictures and traffic information.

  ‘Good morning.’

  Annika looked up. Valter was disgracefully alert.

  ‘Can I sit here?’ He had already put his rucksack in Berit’s place.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Welcome to another day in the citadel of free speech.’

  Valter Wennergren put a copy of the declining print edition of the paper on the desk, took off his jacket, laid it on top of his briefcase and sat down. ‘What are you doing today?’ he asked, sounding genuinely interested.

  ‘The Lerbergs,’ Annika said. ‘We’ll have to keep an eye on Ingemar. Whether he dies or not, it’s a story. And there’s an alert out for his wife now. “Where is Nora?” You know the sort of thing … If anyone releases pictures of the kids, we’ll change that to “Where’s Mummy?” Or, even better, “Mummy, where are you?”’

  She handed him a copy of the picture of Nora that the police had issued, a portrait from the family album, with a description attached: ‘Nora Maria Andersson Lerberg, twenty-seven years old, 1 metre 68 centimetres tall, long, ash-blonde hair, grey-blue eyes, normal build, weight approximately 65 kilos. Probably wearing a crucifix round her neck, plus wedding and engagement rings, plain, eighteen-carat gold. Clothing at time of disappearance: unknown. Healthy skin, doesn’t use makeup. Takes Levaxin for thyroid problems. No other medication, no allergies.’

  ‘I’d be happy to tag along,’ he said, taking the picture and studying it for a moment. ‘I’ve just got one question first.’

  Annika logged into Facebook. At the top of her newsfeed she read that Sjölander, a colleague who was sitting on the other side of the partition, had eaten breakfast with a secret source at the Sheraton. (If you really wanted to describe a source as secret, why write on Facebook where and when you met them?)

  Valter Wennergren opened the paper again. ‘On page thirteen.’

  Annika looked away from the screen.

  ‘It’s about Gustaf Holmerud,’ Valter said.

  She pushed the laptop away and grabbed a copy of the paper. Entire mornings could pass now without her ever leafing through it. ‘What is it you’re wondering about?’ she asked, turning to pages twelve and thirteen. Twelve was an advert for a new type of scratch-card. Thirteen was dominated by two pictures. One showed a man smiling, wearing a crayfish-party hat and bib, and the other a young woman in a school-graduation cap.

  I KILLED JOSEFIN

  Serial killer confesses new crime

  Annika looked at the photograph of the blonde girl, Hanna Josefin Liljeberg, from Täby kyrkby, nineteen years old when she was found murdered on Kungsholmen in Stockholm. Suddenly the past fifteen years vanished and Annika was back there, her first summer temping job at the Evening Post, that scorching Saturday afternoon at the end of July, peering in at the crime scene through black iron railings. Josefin’s eyes staring straight into hers, clouded and grey, her head thrown back, mouth open in a silent scream. The bruise on her right breast, the green tinge to her stomach. The blunt grey of the stone behind her, the muted vegetation, the shadow play of the foliage, the closeness and heat, the nauseating smell.

  ‘Why isn’t anyone else writing about this?’ the young man wondered.

  Annika put her hand on the girl’s smiling face. ‘Maybe we’ve got better sources,’ she said quietly.

  Sjölander had written the article. The bulk of the text was an ecstatic account of the fantastic breakthrough in the hunt for Josefin’s unknown killer: at last, the mystery surrounding the young woman’s murder could be solved after fifteen years of uncertainty!

  Annika looked at the rain streaming down the window. ‘It was that scorching hot summer,’ she said. ‘You know, when Sweden was a banana republic: forty degrees centigrade, ridiculously high interest rates, and we were really good at football …’

  Valter Wennergren blinked, totally uncomprehending. He had probably still been at nursery school then.

  ‘Josefin was found behind a gravestone in the little Jewish cemetery in Kronoberg Park. She was naked, strangled … Her boyfriend had done it. His name was Joachim. He was never convicted.’

  ‘But now Gustaf Holmerud has claimed responsibility. Will it go to trial?’

  She closed the paper, finished her coffee and stood up, still holding the plastic cup. ‘Probably not. There’s a new prosecutor looking after Holmerud, now that the last one’s been promoted. I’m going to get some more. Do you want any?’

  She waved her cup, and he looked horrified. ‘Do you really drink that stuff?’

  Her intercom crackled. It was Anders Schyman. ‘Annika, can you pop into my office?’

  *

  He watched Annika Bengtzon stride towards the coffee machine. He really ought to follow through on his idea of introducing a dress code for the newsroom – he couldn’t have reporters looking like that when they were representing the newspaper in the city. She was wearing some sort of jacket, jeans and a creased top, and she obviously hadn’t washed her hair that morning.

  Annika pulled open the sliding door and poked her head into the room. ‘What?’

  ‘Come in and close the door behind you.’

  She stepped into his cubicle, shut the door and faced him. Now he came to think about it, there wasn’t much wrong with her clothes. They just looked a bit odd on her, as if she hadn’t put them on properly that morning. And the jeans were definitely too big for her.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked, trying to look relaxed.

  ‘The police have put out an alert for Nora Lerberg now,’ Annika said. ‘It’s a really weird case. I’m heading out there again in a while.’

  ‘I know Ingemar Lerberg pretty well. Or knew him, at least. We don’t have much contact an
y more. He’s a nice man.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, his political ideas might be a bit radical—’

  ‘That people with a BMI of over thirty should no longer be treated by the national health service, you mean? Or that libraries should stock only “authorized” books?’

  He stood up irritably. ‘Have you seen this?’ he asked, twisting his computer so she could read it.

  She came over to his desk. ‘The Light of Truth. What is it?’

  ‘A blog,’ Schyman said, and pointed at his chair. ‘Sit down.’

  She did so, pulled herself close to the desk and read.

  ‘This is the second post,’ Schyman said. ‘He wrote one yesterday as well.’

  ‘So I see,’ she said.

  ‘He’s claiming that Viola Söderland is dead,’ Schyman said. ‘His sources are two of Viola’s former business partners. They were convicted of false accounting and defrauding creditors when Golden Spire went bankrupt, Linette Pettersson and Sven-Olof Witterfeldt, two really reliable witnesses … He claims I tricked my way to those two journalism awards, that I produced the documentary about Viola Söderland as a freelance commission for the insurance company so they wouldn’t have to pay out on her life insurance policy to the children. He writes that—’

  ‘Yes, I can see,’ she interrupted.

  ‘All the evidence suggested she was alive,’ he said. ‘Alive at the time, anyway. When I made the documentary. Perhaps she’s dead now, I don’t know …’ He reached for a printout of that day’s blog-post. There was a photograph taken from the hill on Vikingavägen, not of his house but only a few hundred metres away.

  ‘This is what Bosse was talking about,’ she said.

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘Who?’

  ‘On the other paper. Covers crime. He mentioned it yesterday, out at the crime scene in Solsidan.’

  Schyman felt anger rising: that was precisely the sort of thing he needed to know. He had to put a stop to it, and find out how far it was spreading. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

  She brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. ‘Like what? That someone said something nasty about you?’ She turned her attention to the text again. ‘There must be something wrong with whoever wrote this. “Without culture, morals, or any other lasting values, he infects our planet, using up air and space …” So your resignation isn’t enough for him. He thinks you ought to die?’

  His mouth dried. ‘I presume so.’

  ‘Why do you think it’s a man? The worst idiots can actually be women. Like Anne Snapphane, to take just one striking example.’

  She sounded very matter-of-fact, as if the blunt attacks on her in the media by her former best friend had had no effect on her at all. Schyman was fairly certain that they had.

  ‘What does he want?’ Annika asked, looking up at him. ‘What’s the point, assuming that there is one? Do you know? Or is this just another case of plain old envy?’

  He sank down on the visitor’s chair. ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand what’s so controversial about what I did. I made a television documentary eighteen years ago about a missing billionairess, in which I listed all the evidence that suggested she was still alive. I didn’t claim she was, though.’

  ‘Oh,’ Annika said. ‘I remember that programme – they used to use it as course material at the College of Journalism. You did claim she was alive, didn’t you?’

  ‘I said that everything pointed towards the likelihood that she was alive,’ Schyman said.

  ‘It doesn’t sound like the Light of Truth is interested in linguistic niceties,’ Annika said. ‘“He has intentionally lied and deceived the entire Swedish people, this self-appointed crusader for honour—”’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he interrupted. ‘How should I deal with it?’

  ‘Seriously?’ Annika said. ‘Ignore it. After all, there isn’t anything you can do about it.’ She stood up.

  The editor-in-chief’s shoulders tightened in frustration. ‘He claims I was bribed by the insurance company, and that I bought my “luxury villa” in Saltsjöbaden with the money! That’s insane. It used to belong to my wife’s parents and we bought it more than thirty years ago, twelve years before I made that documentary!’

  ‘If you start to fight him, you’ll only make him look legitimate,’ Annika said.

  ‘But he’s wrong! I can prove it – I’ve still got the deed of purchase and—’

  ‘“Speak in anger and you will deliver the greatest speech you will ever live to regret.”’

  He closed his eyes. Dear God, she was quoting Churchill at him. ‘You have a very low opinion of my ability to express myself,’ he said.

  ‘As long as the established media don’t jump on the story, there’s no need for you to worry,’ she said. She walked out of his office, closing the door behind her. He watched her go across to the desk where Albert Wennergren’s boy was waiting. Why on earth did the lad want to become a journalist when he had every opportunity to pick a well-paid, respected profession with a decent future?

  He sighed and decided to check the weather in the Rödlöga archipelago.

  Nina’s room was cramped, with thin, bluish-grey curtains, pale wood furniture from Kinnarp, and a window facing an internal courtyard and the brown panelling of the building opposite. She shared it with a man called Jesper Wou, whom she hadn’t met yet – he was away on international business in Asia.

  She put her gym-bag on the floor next to the bookshelf, on her side of the shared desk. Even if her colleague was away, she wasn’t about to start invading his space – that sort of thing quickly became a habit, and she’d soon find herself thinking that all his things belonged to her, that he was in the way, even when he was just sitting on his own chair.

  Her thoughts were going in circles. The violence to which Lerberg had been subjected was so precise, the torture methods used so specific that they had to mean something. She had seen violence at close quarters as a child, had grown up with it: violence as an instrument of power, a way to crack helplessness and frustration, to claim territory. But this was something different.

  She opened the most recent working document on her computer.

  ‘Nina Hoffman?’ Another colleague was looking in at the doorway, keen to say hello. This one was very tall and thin, and was wearing a baseball cap. They shook hands. ‘Welcome to National Crime.’

  His name was Oscar Gyllensköld, a police investigator with an office three doors down on the left.

  Lovely to meet you, yes, she was sure she was going to enjoy working there.

  When he shuffled away in his Birkenstocks she contemplated closing the door, but decided against it. She’d just have to put up with the introductions for a while.

  She went back to her notes, and the collection of documents, search results and extracts in the digital folder.

  Looking for answers about Lerberg’s attackers using an analytical approach was pointless. People were capable of doing anything to each other – she knew that from both theory and practice. She had shot and killed her elder brother, Filip, whom she had worshipped. Yes, she had been afraid of him, but she’d still adored him.

  Out of the window she studied the building on the far side of the courtyard. Everything was earth-coloured in Sweden, grey and beige and brown. She wondered if other people reacted to that. Somewhere inside her she carried the colours of her childhood, sharp and pungent, solid green, bright blue sea, blinding white light from a sun high in the sky.

  She looked away from the brown and the contrast inside her.

  The nature of the violence spoke volumes. It was important – of crucial importance. In the past twenty-four hours she had read more than she’d ever wanted to about torture, and had examined every component part of its brutality. In rare cases it could be the result of pure evil, a delight in inflicting pain, but that was unusual. Usually it was an expression of power, ordered or at least sanctioned by a state. Torture had been around as long as civilization, and was stil
l used in three-quarters of the countries in the world.

  Most people would be capable of inflicting a degree of torture if they were ordered to and the conditions were right. She remembered how surprised some on her course had been when they read about the Milgram experiment, and how upset they were by the results. They had tried to come up with explanations in their bright seminar rooms, in their course literature, something to say, There’s no way I would ever do that.

  The experiment, which had been conducted at Yale in the 1960s, had never been refuted. Forty volunteers, all empathic, well-balanced and mentally stable, had been given the role of ‘teacher’ in a piece of scientific research led by an ‘experimenter’. The ‘teacher’ was to ask questions and punish or reward a ‘learner’, another man in the next room, using electric shocks.

  Fairly soon the learners began to scream with pain on the other side of the wall. They shouted that they had heart problems, that they feared for their lives. All the teachers were unsettled by this, but the experimenters in charge of the study encouraged them to carry on, using four degrees of verbal prompt:

  ‘Please continue.’

  ‘The experiment requires that you continue.’

  ‘It is absolutely essential that you continue.’

  ‘You have no choice. You must go on.’

  Sixty-five per cent of the teachers went on tormenting their learners until the maximum dose of shock had been administered three times, 450 volts each time. (In fact, the learners were actors and there were no electric shocks, but the teachers didn’t know that.)

  Other similar experiments had followed, conducted all round the world. The number of individuals who were prepared to go all the way was constant: between 61 and 66 per cent of the population. Women were just as likely as men to give the maximum dose of electricity, but felt worse about it when they did so.