Red Wolf: A Novel (49 page)

Lotta Snickare, head of management training at FöreningsSparbanken, for constructive discussions on all manner of subjects, from capitalism to ceramics courses.

Lena Törnberg, head of the lost property section of
Stockholm Police; Niclas Abrahamsson, police inspector with the Norrmalm Police in Stockholm, and Tor Petrell, detective inspector with the Stockholm Police, for theoretical discussions concerning lost property.

Niclas Salomonsson, my literary agent, and his staff at Salomonsson Agency, for all their dedicated work.

Tove Alsterdal, dramatist, who follows me every step of the way and reads everything first of all. Without you there would be no books.

Any mistakes or errors that have crept in are entirely my own.

Name:
Eva Elisabeth Marklund (which only the bank statement calls her. To the rest of the world, she’s Liza).

Family:
Husband and three children.

Home:
A house in the suburbs of Stockholm, and a townhouse in southern Spain.

Born:
In the small village of Pålmark in northern Sweden, in the vast forests just below the Arctic Circle.

Drives:
A 2001 Chrysler Sebring LX (a convertible, much more suitable for Spain than Pålmark).

1. She once walked from Tel Aviv to London. It took all of one summer, but she made it. Sometimes she hitchhiked as well, sometimes she sneaked on board trains. When her money ran out she took various odd jobs, including working in an Italian circus. Sadly she had to give that up when it turned out she was allergic to tigers.

2. Liza used to live in Hollywood. Not because she wanted to be a film star, but because that was where her first
husband was from. In the early 1980s she had a two-room apartment on Citrus Avenue, a narrow side-street just a couple of blocks from Mann’s Chinese Theatre (the cinema on Hollywood Boulevard with all the stars’ hand and footprints). She moved back to Sweden to study journalism in Kalix.

3. She was once arrested for vagrancy in Athens. Together with fifty other young people from all corners of the world she was locked in a garage full of motorbikes. But Liza was released after just quarter of an hour: she had asked to meet the head of police, commended him on his work, and passed on greetings from her father, the head of police in Stockholm. This was a blatant lie: Liza’s father runs a tractor-repair workshop in Pålmark.

4. Liza’s eldest daughter is an actress and model. Annika, who lends her name to the heroine of Liza’s novels, was the seductress in the film adaptation of Mikael Niemi’s bestseller
Popular Music from Vittula
. Mikael and Liza have also been good friends from the time when they both lived in Luleå in the mid-1980s. Mikael was one of Liza’s tutors when she studied journalism in Kalix.

5. Liza got married in Leningrad in 1986. She married a Russian computer programmer to help him get out of the Soviet Union. The sham marriage worked; he was able to escape, taking his brother and parents with him. Today the whole family is living and working in the USA.

Book:
History
by Elsa Morante

Film:
Happiness
by Todd Solondz

Modern music: Rammstein (German hard rock)

Classical music: Mozart’s 25th Symphony in G-minor. And his Requiem, of course.

Idols: Nelson Mandela, Madeleine Albright and Amelia Adamo (the Swedish media queen).

1. North Korea. The most isolated country in the world, and the last iron curtain. Liza has seen it from the outside, looking into North Korea from the South, at the Bridge of No Return on the 38th parallel.

2. Masai Mara, Kenya. Her family co-owns a safari camp in the Entumoto valley.

3. Rarotonga, the main island in Cook archipelago in the South Pacific. The coolest paradise on the planet.

4. Los Angeles. Going ‘home’ is always brilliant.

5. Andalucia in southern Spain. The best climate in Europe, dramatic scenery, fantastic food and excellent wine. Not too far away, and cheap to fly to!

We hope you enjoyed
RED WOLF
.

Did you wonder about Annika’s claustrophobia and fear of the dark?

Do you want to find out exactly what
happened when she was held hostage in an
underground tunnel?

All is revealed in her multi-award
winning, unputdownable thriller
THE BOMBER
– coming in Spring 2011

Here’s a taster . . .

The woman who was soon to die stepped cautiously out of the door and glanced quickly around. The hallway and stairwell behind her were dark, she hadn’t bothered to switch on the lights on her way down. She paused before stepping down onto the pavement, as if she felt she were being watched. She took a few quick breaths and for a few seconds her white breath hung around her like a halo. She adjusted the strap of the handbag on her shoulder and took a firmer grasp of the handle of her briefcase. She hunched her shoulders and set off quickly and quietly towards Götgatan. It was bitterly cold, the sharp wind cutting at her thin nylon tights. She skirted round a patch of ice, balancing for a moment on the curb of the pavement. Then she hurried away from the street-lamp and into the darkness. The cold and the shadows were muffling the sounds of the night: the hum of a ventilation unit, the cries of a group of drunk youngsters, a siren in the distance.

The woman walked fast, purposefully. She radiated confidence and expensive perfume. When her mobile phone suddenly rang she was thrown off her stride. She stopped abruptly, glancing quickly around her. Then she bent down, leaning the briefcase against her
right leg, and started searching through her handbag. Her movements were suddenly irritated, insecure. She pulled out the phone and put it to her ear. In spite of the darkness and shadows there was no mistaking her reaction. Irritation was replaced by surprise, then anger, and finally fear.

When the conversation was finished the woman stood for a few seconds with the phone in her hand. She lowered her head, clearly thinking hard. A police-car drove slowly past her, the woman looked up at it, watchful, following it with her eyes as it went away. She made no attempt to stop it.

She had clearly reached a decision. She turned on her heel and started to retrace her steps, going past the wooden door she had come out of and carrying on to the junction. As she waited for a night-bus to pass she looked up, her eyes following the line of the street to the square, Vintertullstorget, and beyond to the Sickla canal. High above loomed the main Olympic arena, Victoria Stadium, where the summer games were due to start in seven months’ time.

The bus went past, the woman crossed the broad sweep of Ringvägen and started to walk down Katarina Bangata. Though her face was expressionless, her fast pace let on that she was freezing. She crossed the pedestrian bridge over Hammarby canal to reach the media village of the Olympic Park. With quick, slightly jerky movements she hurried on towards the Olympic Stadium. She decided to take the path beside the water although it was further, and colder. The wind from the Baltic was ice-cold, but she didn’t want to be seen. The darkness was dense, and she stumbled a few times.

She turned off by the post office and pharmacy towards the training area and jogged the last hundred metres towards the stadium. When she reached the main
entrance she was out of breath and angry. She pulled the door open and stepped into the darkness.

‘Say what you want to say, and be quick about it,’ she said, looking coolly at the figure emerging from the shadows.

She saw the raised hammer but didn’t have time to feel any fear.

The first blow hit her left eye.

The sound reached her in the middle of a bizarre sexual dream. She was lying on a bed of glass on a spaceship, Thomas was on top of her. Three presenters from the radio programme Studio Six were standing alongside them, watching expressionlessly. She was desperate for a pee.

‘You can’t go to the toilet now, we’re on our way into space,’ Thomas said, and, looking through the big panoramic window, she saw he was right.

The second ring tore the cosmos to shreds, leaving her sweaty and thirsty in the darkness. The ceiling loomed above her in the gloom.

‘Answer the bloody thing before it wakes the whole house,’ Thomas grumbled from the mess of pillows.

She twisted her head to see the time: 03.22. The excitement of the dream vanished in a single breath. Her arm, heavy as lead, reached for the phone on the floor. It was Jansson, the night-editor.

‘The Victoria Stadium’s gone up. Burning like fuck. Our reporter’s out there for the night edition, but we need you for the next edition. How soon can you get there?’

She took several breaths, letting the information sink in, feeling adrenalin rolling like a wave through her body and up into her brain. The Olympic Stadium, she thought. Fire, chaos. Bloody hell. South of the city centre. Should she take the southern bypass or the Skanstull bridge?

‘How are things looking in town, are the roads okay?’

Her voice sounded rougher than she would have liked.

‘The southern bypass is blocked. The exit by the stadium has collapsed, but that’s all we know. The Södermalm tunnel is shut off, so you’ll have to go above ground.’

‘Who’s doing pictures?’

‘Henriksson’s on his way, and the freelancers are already there.’

Jansson hung up without waiting for a reply. Annika listened to the dead crackle on the line for a few seconds before letting the phone fall to the floor.

‘So what is it this time?’

She sighed silently before replying.

‘Some sort of explosion at the Olympic Stadium. I’ve got to go. It’ll probably take all day.’

She paused before adding:

‘And all evening.’

He muttered something inaudible.

Carefully she extricated herself from Ellen’s slightly damp pyjamas. She breathed in her daughter’s scent, her skin sweet, her mouth sour, her thumb firmly lodged between her lips, then she kissed the child’s soft hair. The girl stretched happily, then rolled up into a ball, three years old and utterly content, even in her sleep. She dialled for a taxi with a heavy hand, climbing out
of the numbing warmth of the bed and sitting on the floor.

‘A car to Hantverkargatan 32 please. Bengtzon. It’s urgent. To the Olympic Stadium. Yes, I know it’s on fire.’

Three killings.

And one woman who knows too much . . .

Crime reporter Annika Bengtzon is woken by a phonecall in the early hours of a wintry morning. An explosion has ripped apart the Olympic Stadium. And a victim has been blown to pieces.

As Annika relentlessly delves into the details of the bombing and the background of the victim, there is a second explosion. These chilling crimes could be her biggest news story yet.

When her police source reveals they are hot on the heels of the bomber, Annika is guaranteed an exclusive with her name on it. But it soon becomes clear that she has uncovered too much, as she finds herself the target of a deranged serial killer . . .

Liza Marklund’s gripping new thriller
Available Spring 2011

James Patterson
& Liza Marklund

James Patterson teams up with bestselling author Liza Marklund to create the scariest vacation thriller ever written.

NYPD detective Jacob Kanon is on a tour of Europe’s most gorgeous cities. But the sights aren’t what draw him – he sees each museum, each cathedral, and each cafe through the eyes of his daughter’s killer.

Kanon’s daughter, Kimmy, and her fiancé were murdered while on vacation in Rome. Since then, young couples in Paris, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, and Stockholm have been found dead. Little connects the murders, other than a postcard to the local newspaper that precedes each new victim.

Now Kanon teams up with the Swedish reporter, Dessie Larsson, who received the postcard in Stockholm – and they think they know where the next victims will be. With relentless logic and unstoppable action,
Postcard Killers
may be James Patterson’s most vivid and compelling thriller yet.

Century • London