"Did you trick him into talking?" Anders Schyman said.
"Absolutely not," Annika replied.
"Was he reluctant in any way?"
"No, not at all. He asked us to come, so that he could tell us about Christina. I've written the copy, and it's on the server. He didn't say much, though."
"Do we have a picture?" Schyman wondered.
"Henriksson got a great photo," Pelle Oscarsson said. "The man is standing by the window, tears glistening in his eyelashes. It's a beauty."
Schyman gave the picture editor an expressionless look.
"Okay. I want to see that picture before it goes off to print."
"Sure," Pelle Oscarsson said.
"Well, then," Schyman said. "There's another issue I'd like to discuss, so we might as well do it right away."
He pulled his fingers through his hair, leaving it standing on end, then reached for his coffee, but changed his mind. For some reason this gave Annika the creeps. Had she made any more mistakes?
"There's a killer on the loose," the editor said, quoting a famous 1970s rock song. "I want each and every one of us to be aware of this when we publish pictures and interviews with people who were close to Christina Furhage. The majority of all murders are committed by someone close to the victim. That seems to be the case here, too: The Bomber could be someone who wanted revenge on Christina personally."
He fell silent and let his gaze travel around the table. No one said anything.
"Well, you must know what I'm getting at," he said. "I'm thinking of the Bergsjö murder, you remember? The little girl who was murdered in the basement. Everyone pitied the weeping mother while the father was the main suspect. Then the mother turned out to be the killer."
He raised his hand against the immediate protests.
"Yes, I know, we can't be police detectives and it's not our job to judge, but I do think we should bear it in mind with this case."
"Statistics say it should be her husband," Annika said dryly. "Husbands and partners are responsible for almost all murders of women."
"Could that be the case here?"
Annika paused and considered the question.
"Bertil Milander is a stooped old man. It's difficult to imagine him running about in sport arenas with his arms full of explosives. But he may not have done it himself. He could have hired someone to do it."
"Any other possible suspects? What about the people at the Secretariat?"
"Evert Danielsson, the director," Annika said. "The deputy managing directors of the different divisions: accreditation, transport, arenas, events, the Olympic Village. There are quite a few of them. There's the chairman of the board, Hans Bjällra. Among the members of the board, there are both local politicians and cabinet ministers…"
Schyman sighed.
"Okay, it's pointless to lose sleep over that. What have we got for the rest of the paper?"
Ingvar Johansson ran through the rest of his list: a pop singer who'd been given planning permission to build a winter garden despite protests from the neighbors, a cat that had survived five thousand spins in a tumble-dryer, a sensational derby victory, and all-time high audience figures for Channel 1's Saturday programming.
They ended the meeting soon afterwards, Annika hurrying away to her office. She closed the door behind her, feeling dizzy. Partly because she'd forgotten about dinner, partly because she could feel the power struggles in the news conferences were grinding her down. She held on to the desk while walking toward the chair. She'd just sat down when there was a knock at the door and the editor-in-chief walked in.
"What did your source say?" Schyman asked.
"It was an act by a single perpetrator," Annika said and pulled out the bottom drawer. If her memory served her right, there was a cinnamon bun there.
"Directed at Furhage personally?"
The bun was moldy.
"Yep, not at the Games. They are convinced of it because someone had used the security codes to disarm the alarm system to get in the stadium. The codes were only distributed to a very narrow circle of people. The threat against her had nothing to do with the Olympics. It came from someone close to her."
The editor gave a whistle.
"How much of this can you write about?"
She pulled a face.
"None of it, really. It's difficult to say anything about serious threats against her immediate family. The family would have to comment, and they don't want to do that; I asked today. The security codes I promised to keep quiet about. The codes and Patrik's missing laptop are essentially all the police have to go on."
"That's what they say to you," Schyman said. "It's not clear they're telling you everything."
Annika looked down.
"I'm going off to Langeby to find out what the hell he's up to. Don't go anywhere, I'll be back."
He got up and closed the door carefully behind him. Annika stayed in her chair, her head almost empty and her stomach emptier than that. She had to eat something before she fainted.
* * *
Thomas didn't come home with the kids until half past six. All three of them were soaked through, exhausted and supremely happy. Ellen almost fell asleep on the sled on the way home from the park, but one more song and a snowball fight soon made her shriek with laughter again. Now they all fell in a big heap on the floor inside the front door and helped each other off with their wet clothes. The kids took hold of one foot each to help Thomas off with his boots. When they didn't succeed, they both pulled in opposite directions until he pretended to split in two. Then he put them in a hot bath and let them splash around while he cooked semolina pudding for them. That was real Sunday-night food: white porridge with lots of cinnamon and sugar, plus ham sandwiches. He took the opportunity to wash Ellen's long hair, using the last of Annika's conditioner because the girl so easily got knots in her hair and it hurt her to comb it out. They ate in their towel bathrobes, and then they all crept into the big double bed and read
Bamse.
Ellen fell asleep after two pages, but Kalle listened wide-eyed to the end of the story.
"Why is Burr's daddy so mean all the time?" he asked afterwards. "Is it because he doesn't have a job?"
Thomas thought about it. He ought to be able to answer that, manager at the Association of Local Authorities that he was.
"You don't get mean and unkind just because you don't have a job," he said. "But you can become unemployed if you're really nasty and mean. Nobody wants to work with someone like that, do they?"
The boy gave that some thought.
"Mommy sometimes says I'm mean to Ellen. Do you think I'll get a job?"
Thomas lifted the boy into his arms and blew softly in his wet hair, rocking him slowly back and forth, feeling his damp warmth through the bathrobe.
"You're a wonderful little boy, and you're going to get any job you want when you grow up. But both Mommy and I get sad when you and Ellen quarrel, and you can be such a tease, you know. You don't have to tease people and quarrel with them. You and Ellen love each other, you're sister and brother. That's why it's nicer for everyone if we can all be friends."
They boy nestled up in a little ball, put his thumb in his mouth, and said: "I love you, Daddy."
The words filled Thomas with a great and powerful sense of warmth. "I love you, too, my little boy. Do you want to go to sleep in my bed?"
Kalle nodded, and Thomas pulled off his damp bathrobe and put the pajamas on him. He carried Ellen to her bed and put on her nightie. He watched her lying in her little bed for a few moments; he never tired of looking at her. She was the spitting image of Annika, but she had his blond hair. Kalle looked just like he had at that age. They were truly two miracles. It sounded banal, but it was an inescapable fact.
He put out the lamp and closed the door quietly. This weekend the children had barely laid eyes on Annika. He had to admit that it got to him when she worked this much. She became engrossed in her work in an unhealthy way. She got completely absorbed, and everything else in the world came second. She lost her temper with the children and thought only about her stories.
He went into the TV room, grabbed the remote, and sat down on the couch. The bomb attack and Christina Furhage's death was undeniably a big thing. All the channels, including Sky, BBC, and CNN, had nonstop coverage of it. On Channel 2, there was a commemorative program about the Olympic supremo; a load of people in a studio discussing the Olympics and Christina's achievements, interspersed with an interview with the deceased that Britt-Marie Mattsson had conducted a year before. Christina Furhage was actually extremely clever and funny. He watched with fascination for a while. Then he called Annika to see if she was on her way home.
* * *
Berit stuck her head through the door.
"Do you have a minute?"
Annika waved her in. The phone started ringing. She glanced at the display and continued writing.
"Aren't you going to get it?" Berit wondered.
"It's Thomas," Annika replied. "Asking me when I'll be leaving— trying to sound sweet. If I don't answer he'll be happy because he'll think I've already left."
The phone on the desk stopped ringing, and instead the cellphone started playing a melody that sounded familiar to Berit. Annika ignored that too and let the answering service take it.
"I can't get hold of this Helena Starke woman," Berit said. "She's not listed, and I've asked her neighbors to ring her doorbell and put notes in her letterbox asking her to call us and all sorts of things like that, but she hasn't been in touch. I don't have time to go there myself. I have to write up my Christina Furhage story…"
"Why?" Annika said with surprise and stopped writing. "I thought the features department was taking care of that?"
Berit smiled a lopsided grin
"Yes, but the master of style developed a migraine when he heard the pull-out had been spiked. So I now have three hours to write a puff piece."
"Oh, I'm sorry. Don't despair," Annika said. "I'll pass by Starke's on my way home. South Island, wasn't it?"
Berit gave her the address. When the door closed behind her, Annika tried calling her police contact again, in vain. She groaned quietly. She'd have to write the story now; she just couldn't sit on this information any longer. It would have to be a technical somersault, since the words "security codes" couldn't be mentioned, but the essentials would be there.
She managed better than she'd expected. The angle was that the act was an inside job. She couldn't mention that the arena's alarms were not primed and nothing had been broken into. She quoted sources other than the police in connection with the entry card and the possibility of getting access to the arena in the middle of the night. She also wrote that the police were closing in on a small group of people who, theoretically speaking, could possibly have committed the act. Together with Patrik's stuff, it made two great stories. After that, she wrote up a separate piece about the police having already interviewed the person who threatened Christina Furhage a couple of years back. She was almost done when Anders Schyman returned.
"Why did I ever become an editor!" he exclaimed and sat down on the couch.
"What do we do? Splash the news of an international terrorist organization on the front page, or expose the Olympic Secretariat?" Annika asked.
"I think Nils Langeby is losing it," Schyman said. "He maintains his story is accurate but refuses to divulge a single source or say exactly what they've said."
"So what do we do?" Annika said.
"We do the insider job, of course. But let me read it first."
"I've got it right here." Annika clicked on the document, and the editor got up and walked over to her desk.
"Do you want to sit down?"
"No, no, you sit…"
He glanced through the text.
"Crystal clear," he said and prepared to leave. "I'll talk to Jansson."
"What else did Langeby say?" Annika quietly asked.
He stopped and gave her a serious look.
"I think Nils Langeby is going to become a real problem for both of us," he said, leaving the room.
* * *
Helena Starke lived in a brown 1920s apartment block on Ringvägen. Naturally, the street door had a code lock and Annika didn't have the code. She pushed the phone earpiece into her ear and called information, asking for numbers for some of the residents at 139 Ringvägen.
"We can't just hand out numbers like that," the operator said tartly.
Annika let out a sigh. Sometimes it worked to ask for numbers in that way but not always.
"Okay, I'm looking for an Andersson at 139 Ringvägen."
