Last Will (5 page)

“How far away were you from the couple when they fell?”

She thought for several seconds.

“Two meters, two and a half maybe.”

“The woman who pushed you, did you see her as they fell?”

Had she? Had she seen a woman? Had she seen shoulder straps?

“Shoulder straps,” Annika said. “She had narrow shoulder straps. Or a bag with a narrow strap.”

Q nodded and made a note in his pad.

Annika pressed her fingertips to her eyelids and tried, searching through images, moods—was there anything there behind the noise?

Bosse’s hand had been scorching through the fabric on her back, Bosse’s hand holding her so tightly to him that she could feel his cock against her stomach, her own hand behind his neck, that was what she felt, that was what she remembered. The music was there like an apron, dull, neatly ironed, but it was only there to conceal them, so they could hold on to each other in the glittering golden light.

“I was elbowed in the side,” she said hesitantly. “And someone stood on my foot. I don’t know which came first.”

Her cell phone started to ring again.

“Turn it off,” Q said, and she clicked to end the signal.

It was Jansson, of course.

“Was it done on purpose, you being trodden on?”

She put down her mobile, now on silent, and looked up in surprise.

“Definitely not,” she said. “There was a big fat man trying to boogie right next to us, and he knocked into the woman and she bumped into me.”

Something happened in Q’s eyes, a little flicker of interest.

“Did she say anything when she bumped into you?”

Annika looked down the bookcase, to a leather-bound volume of council protocols from 1964, the way she had looked down at the woman, the woman with the shoulder straps.

“She was looking for something in her bag,” Annika said. “The strap was quite short so she had to lift her arm up a bit to fish it out, like this …”

She raised her right arm and showed how she was looking for something in an imaginary evening bag.

“What color was the bag?”

“Silver,” she said, to her surprise and without hesitation. “It was matte silver-colored. The shape of an envelope, like an electricity bill or something.”

“What did she take out of her bag?”

Annika looked away from the protocols from 1964, searching and searching.

Nothing, just the pain in her foot.

“It hurt,” Annika said. “I let out a yelp. She looked up at me.”

Annika nodded hesitantly.

“Yes,” she said, convincing herself, “she looked up at me, right at me.”

“Did she say anything?”

Annika gazed out across the polished table.

“She had yellow eyes,” she said. “Completely cold, yellow eyes, almost golden.”

“Yellow?”

“Yes, golden yellow.”

“And how was she dressed?”

She shut her eyes again and heard the throb of the music, seeing the shoulder strap before her. It was blood-red, unless it was the bleeding woman’s dress that was red? Or the blood? Unless the shoulder strap was white, maybe, white as snow against brown skin, unless the shoulder was pale and the strap dark?

“I don’t know,” she said, perplexed. “My memories are sort of black and white, and then they change, like they’re negatives or something, I really don’t know …”

“Yellow eyes, could they have been lenses?”

Lenses? Yes, of course they could have been lenses, unless they weren’t actually yellow, but green?

Q’s cell phone started to vibrate, and a genuine Eurovision song rang out, “My Number One,” the Greek song that won a few years ago. The detective inspector glanced at the display and muttered “have to take this.” He switched off the tape recorder and turned toward the closed door as he spoke.

He went on and on, his voice rising and falling. Annika had to get up and move away, drawn by the sound of traffic seeping in through the gaps between the windows. Slowly she breathed out onto the cold windowpane, and the view vanished for a moment, and when it returned she could see Hantverkargatan, the street she lived on, and beyond that the Klara district of Stockholm, trains thundering past, and the old Serafen health center over to the left.

Her health center! Her doctors, where she had been with Kalle only that morning, another ear infection.

So close, in another reality, just four blocks from home.

She felt her throat constrict—oh God, I don’t want to move!

“The victims have been identified,” Q said, pulling her back into the room. “Maybe you recognized them?”

She went back to the chair on shaky legs, perched on the edge and cleared her throat.

“The man was one of the prizewinners,” she said. “Medicine, I think. I don’t remember his name off the top of my head, but I’ve got it in my notes.”

She reached for her bag to indicate that she could find out, just an arm’s length away. She stopped halfway through the gesture.

“Aaron Wiesel,” the detective said. “An Israeli, he shared the prize with an American, Charles Watson. The woman?”

Annika shook her head.

“I’d never seen her before.”

Q rubbed his hand over his eyes.

“Wiesel’s in surgery in Sankt Göran’s right now. The woman was Caroline von Behring, chair of the Karolinska Institute’s Nobel Committee. She died on the dance floor, pretty much instantly.”

All warmth vanished from her hands, cold eating in through her fingers and into her bloodstream, making her joints seize up. With an effort she pulled up the shawl that had fallen behind her and draped it over her shoulders again.

Her eyes as she was dying,
she was looking at me when she died
.

“I have to go now,” she said. “I’m really sorry, but I’ve got an awful lot to do.”

“You can’t write about this,” Q said, leaning back heavily in his chair. “Your observations about the woman who pushed you match the description of the fleeing killer. You’re one of our key witnesses, so I’m imposing a ban on disclosure, effective as of now.”

Annika was halfway out of her chair, but sank down again.

“Am I under arrest?” she asked.

“Don’t be stupid,” Q said, as he got up, clutching his cell phone in his hand.

“Disclosure bans only happen during arrest procedures,” Annika said. “If I’m not under arrest, and no one else has been arrested, how can you impose a ban on disclosure?”

“You’re not as smart as you think,” Q said. “There’s another form of disclosure ban, according to chapter twenty-three, paragraph ten, final clause, of the Judicial Procedure Act. It concerns the accounts of key witnesses and can be imposed by the head of an investigation where a serious crime is suspected.”

“Freedom of speech is protected by the constitution,” Annika said, “and that carries more weight. And you’re not the head of the investigation—in a case like this that would have to be a public prosecutor.”

“No, you’re wrong there as well. A head of this investigation hasn’t been appointed yet, so I’m acting head right now.”

Annika stood up angrily and leaned over the table.

“You can’t stop me saying what I saw!” she said in a shrill voice. “I’ve got the whole article in my head, I can write a fucking brilliant eyewitness account out of it, three double pages easily, maybe four—I saw the murderer in the act of killing, I saw the victim die …”

Q spun around toward her, pressed his face right up to hers.

“For God’s sake!” he yelled. “You’ll get a fine so big you won’t know what hit you if go ahead with this. Sit down!”

Annika fell silent and sat down with a bit of a thump, hunching her shoulders. Q turned his back on her and dialed a number on his cell phone. She sat in silence beneath the huge portraits as Q made his call and gave angry orders about something.

“You’re putting me in an impossible position if I can’t write anything,” Annika said.

“My heart bleeds,” Q said.

“What are my bosses going to say?” Annika went on. “What would your bosses say if you refused to investigate a crime because I said you couldn’t, because I have to write about you?”

Q sat down again with a deep sigh.

“Sorry,” he said, and gave her a slightly guilty look, then paused for a moment before saying: “Ask me something, and I might be able to give you an answer.”

“Why?” Annika said.

“Because you can’t write about it anyway,” he said, smiling for the first time.

She thought for a moment.

“Why couldn’t anyone hear the shots?” she asked.

“You could hear them. You said so.”

“But only as little
pouf
s.”

“A pistol with a silencer would fit into the sort of oblong bag you described. And you don’t remember anything else about her appearance? Her hair, or her clothes?”

Eyes, just eyes and the shoulder straps.

“She must have had long hair, otherwise I would have remembered, but I don’t think there was anything special about it. Dark, I think. I don’t think it was loose, maybe it was tied up somehow? And her dress—she must have been wearing an evening dress? I didn’t notice anything odd, so I suppose she must have looked like everyone else? How did she get into the Golden Hall, do you know?”

Q looked through his notes.

“We’re checking to see if she could have been on the guest list, but we don’t really know. There are other witness statements saying that it could have been a man dressed as a woman. What do you think about that?”

A man? Annika snorted.

“It was a girl,” she said.

“How can you be sure?”

Annika looked over at the protocols from 1964.

“She looked up at me, so she must have been shorter than me. How many men are that short? And she moved quickly, easily.”

“And men don’t?”

“Not in that sort of stiletto heel. It takes a lot of practice to move as easily as she did.”

“And you saw her heels?”

Annika stood up and hoisted her bag onto her shoulder.

“No, but I’ve got the bruise one of them made on the top of my right foot. Please, can I call you later tonight?”

“And where do you think you’re going?”

She stopped against her will, stifled in spite of all the air in the room.

“The newsroom. I have to go and talk to them. Unless you can stop me from working as well?”

“You have to go down to the profiling unit of National Crime and put together a photofit of the killer.”

Annika threw out her arms.

“Are you mad? I’ve got a deadline in a couple of hours. Jansson must be tearing his hair out by now.”

Q walked up to her, looking completely desperate.

“Please,” he said.

The door opened and a uniformed officer walked into the Small Common Room. For a moment she thought it was the same man who had escorted her to the interview, but it was a different one, similar, another one from the same breed, a stereotypical example of a broad-shouldered, thoroughly Swedish graduate from the police training course.

She stopped in the doorway, turned and looked at the detective inspector.

“Did you really call me a
headline-chasing bitch
?” she said.

He waved her out of the room without looking up.

She pushed past the stereotype, fished out the wire of her earpiece, and pulled her cell phone from the depths of her bag. The young police officer looked like he was about to protest, but she fixed her eyes on the end of the corridor and swept away from him without deigning to look at him.

“Where the hell have you been?” Jansson snarled before she had a chance to say anything.

“Questioning,” she said quietly, holding the microphone a millimeter from her mouth. “I had a sort of close encounter with the killer, they reckon she trod on my foot.”

She could feel the pain each time she took a step.

“Great, the eight and nine spread. What else have you got?”

“Hey,” the police officer behind her said, “who are you talking to?”

She sped up, but just in front of the opening to the large office she stumbled over the hem of her dress and dropped her earpiece. Her shawl slid onto the floor and the raw draft of the corridor swept over her, settling on her skin like a damp towel. She shivered and looked around; the
Academy member had been replaced by two stewards in white jackets with their backs to her.

“Annika?” Jansson said as soon as she popped the earpiece back in.

“I can’t write anything, Q has given me a disclosure ban. I could probably be charged just for talking to you about the killer. I have to go over to Kungsholmsgatan for further questioning.”

“Okay, put your cell phone away.”

Annika spun round and looked at the police officer.

“Listen,” she said, “I’m going to talk as much as I damn well like on this cell phone. If you don’t like it you can arrest me.”

She turned and carried on walking, away from the bitter cold.

“The term ‘arrest’ doesn’t apply in a situation like this within the Swedish judicial system,” the policeman said.

“Call the paper’s lawyers and find out exactly what I can and can’t say,” Annika said into the microphone. “How’s it looking? Is there anything particular you’re missing?”

She could hear Jansson tearing his hair; she shared his frustration and wished she could do something to assuage it.

“Everything. Everyone else has already got text and pictures up on their websites, and we’ve only got the stuff from the main news agency. When will you be back here?”

“Don’t know, but I’ll be there as soon as I can. How much did Olsson manage to get?”

Jansson groaned quietly.

“Nothing. He thought the angle was wrong and the light too poor, so he didn’t take any pictures.”

“You’re kidding.” Annika said.

The policeman held a door open for Annika and she emerged onto the balcony overlooking the Blue Hall, right beside the first doorway to the Golden Hall.

“Not really. Nothing of his material is useable. We’ve got no pictures, basically.”

Annika felt her heart sink.

It wouldn’t be the photographer who took the blame, it was always
the reporter, especially if it was her, and especially right now. It was only three weeks since she had forced the editor in chief to publish an article revealing that the family that owned most of the paper were dictatorial extortionists.