"But I want to go in it, Mom," Ellen said.
Annika went back to the elevator, gently shoved her out, and closed the doors. She crouched on the carpet in the stairwell and gave Ellen a hug. The stiff beaver nylon of her snowsuit felt cold against her cheek.
"We'll take the bus today, and I'll carry you. Would you like that?"
The girl nodded and put her arms around her neck, hugging her tight.
"I want to be with you today, Mom."
"I know, but you can't. I have to go to work. But on Friday we'll all be together. Do you know what day that is?"
"Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve!" Kalle shouted.
Annika laughed. "That's right. And do you know how many days it is until then?"
"Three weeks," Ellen said and held up three fingers.
"Dimwit," Kalle said. "It's four days."
"Don't call people dimwits, but you're right, it's four days. Where are your mittens, Ellen? Did we forget them? No, here they are…"
Outside on the pavement, the slushy snow had turned to water. A thin drizzle was falling and the world was an absolute even gray. She carried the girl on her left arm and held Kalle's hand with the other. Her bag bounced on her back with each step she took.
"You smell nice, Mom," Ellen said.
She walked up Scheelegatan and took the 40 bus from outside Indian Curry House, rode two stops, and got off by the white 1980s palace where Radio Stockholm was housed. The children's daycare center was on the third floor. Kalle had been coming here since he was fifteen months old, Ellen since she was just over a year old. When talking to other parents, she realized they'd been lucky; the staff were long-serving and competent, and the manager was committed.
The hallway was full of people and noise, and the grit and the snow had collected in a mound inside the front door. There were screaming children and admonishing parents everywhere.
"Is it okay for me to join in the morning assembly today?" Annika asked and one of the staff nodded.
Her two children sat at the same table during meals. Despite all their fighting at home, they were good friends at daycare. Kalle protected his little sister. Annika sat with Ellen on her lap during the breakfast and had coffee and a sandwich.
"We're going on a trip on Wednesday so the kids need to bring a packed lunch," one of the staff said, and Annika nodded.
After breakfast, they gathered in a room filled with cushions where they held roll call and sang some songs. Quite a few children had already started their Christmas holidays. Those that were still there sang the old classics "I'm a Little Rabbit," "Fabian the Pirate," and "In a House at the Edge of the Wood." Then they talked a bit about Christmas and finished with a Christmas song.
"Now I have to go," Annika said as they all filed out. Ellen started crying, and Kalle clung to her arm.
"I want to stay with you, Mommy," Ellen wailed.
"Daddy is picking you up early today, after the afternoon snack," Annika said cheerfully while trying to free herself of the children's arms. "Won't that be fun? Then you can go home and do some Christmas stuff, maybe go and buy a Christmas tree. Would you like that?"
"Yes!" Kalle said, Ellen joining in like a little echo.
"See you tonight," she said, quickly shutting the door on the children's little noses. She paused for a moment outside the door, listening for any reaction inside. She heard nothing. With a sigh she opened the front door.
She caught the 56 bus outside the Trygg-Hansa building and didn't reach work until half past ten. The newsroom was full of babbling people. For some reason she could never get used to this. To her the normal state of the newsroom was when it was one big empty room with only a few people sitting quietly in front of flickering computer screens with some telephones ringing continuously for background noise. That was what it was like at the weekends and at night, but now there were close to ninety people here. She grabbed a copy of all the papers and started toward her own room.
"Nice job, Annika!" someone shouted, she couldn't tell who. She waved her hand above her head in acknowledgement.
Eva-Britt Qvist was clattering on her computer.
"Nils Langeby has taken paid leave today," she said without looking up.
Still sulking, in other words. Annika hung up her coat, went to get a cup of coffee, and walked past her pigeonhole. It was jammed. She groaned loudly and looked around for a bin to dump her coffee in; she'd never be able to take both the mail and the coffee without spilling it.
"Why this loud groaning?" she heard Anders Schyman say behind her, and she gave an embarrassed smile.
"Oh, it's just all this mail. Opening it is such a waste of time. We get more than a hundred press releases and letters every day. It takes forever to go through it all."
"But there's no reason you should sit there opening letters," Schyman said in surprise. "I thought Eva-Britt did that."
"No, I began doing it when the last chief went to New York and I've just kept on doing it."
"It was Eva-Britt's job before he became foreign correspondent. It makes more sense for her to take care of the mail, unless you want to control it. Do you want me to have a word with her?"
"Thanks, it would be a great relief."
Anders Schyman picked up the whole pile of letters and dumped it in Eva-Britt Qvist's pigeonhole.
"I'll speak to her right away."
Annika went over to Ingvar Johansson who, as always, sat with the phone glued to his ear. He was wearing the same clothes as the day before and the day before that. Annika wondered if he got undressed before he went to bed.
"The police are pissed at you. Your piece about the security codes," he said when he'd hung up.
Annika stiffened. Fear pounded like a fist in her stomach and roared in her forehead.
"What? Why? Have I made a mistake?"
"No, but you've blown their best lead sky high. They say you'd promised not to mention the codes."
She felt the panic rising in her veins like a seething poison.
"But I didn't write about the codes! I didn't even mention the word!"
She threw away the coffee and frantically looked at a paper. "The Bomber Was Close to Christina, Suspect Taken in for Questioning" was the front-page headline. Inside she found the big black headline: "The Solution Lies in the Security Codes."
"What the fuck!" she shouted. "Who wrote this headline?"
"Hey, don't get hysterical," Ingvar Johansson said to her.
She felt her field of vision fill with something red and warm, her gaze landing on the smug man in the office chair. She could see how pleased he was behind the nonchalant face he had on.
"Who approved this?" she asked. "Did you?"
"I have nothing to do with the inside-page headlines, don't you know that?" he said and turned around to continue working. But she wasn't letting him off the hook that easily. She grabbed the back of his chair and swiveled it around so that his legs hit the desk drawer.
"Don't be an asshole," she said, making a hissing sound. "It doesn't matter if I'm screwed, don't you see? But it will damage the paper. It will hurt you, Ingvar Johansson, and Anders Schyman— and your daughter who works in the mail room in the summer. I'm going to find out who wrote this headline and on whose initiative it was done. Don't you worry. Who called?"
His smug grin was gone, replaced by an expression of distaste.
"Don't make such a big deal of it," he said. "That was the police press officer."
She looked at him with surprise. The police press officer had no idea of what promises she had made. He was probably pissed off with the story being leaked. And that headline
was
completely unnecessary. But she was not going to treat Ingvar Johansson to a rebuke for her having betrayed a confidence.
She turned on her heel and walked away, not noticing the way people were staring at her. Scenes like this were commonplace at the paper and people always found it interesting to listen in. Bosses fighting was always great entertainment. Now they were wondering what had made the crime editor blow up. They would open the paper on pages six and seven and look at Annika's piece but not see anything out of the ordinary, and with that the fight would be forgotten.
But Annika didn't forget. She placed Ingvar Johansson's deed on top of all the others in a pile of shit that was growing taller by the day. Any day now she feared the shit would hit the proverbial fan, and then no one in the newsroom would escape without getting it on their faces.
"Do you want your personal mail, or do you want me to handle that as well?" Eva-Britt Qvist was standing in the doorway with a couple of letters in her hand.
"What? No, put them here, thanks…"
The crime-desk secretary walked up to Annika's desk on clattering heels and threw down the letters.
"Here you are. And if you want me to start making coffee for you, you can tell me straight to my face instead of sending the editor-in-chief."
Surprised, Annika looked at her. The other woman's face was dark with contempt. Before Annika had a chance to reply, she turned around and stormed out.
Christ almighty, Annika thought, tell me this isn't happening! She's pissed off because she thinks I went behind her back and ordered her to start opening the mail. Oh, Lord, give me strength!
And the pile of shit grew a bit taller.
* * *
Evert Danielsson stared at his bookcase, his mind a blank. He had a strange feeling of being hollow. He gripped the desk tightly with both hands, trying to keep it, or himself, in place. It wouldn't work, he knew that. It was only a matter of time before the board would issue a press release. They didn't want to wait until a new assignment had been arranged for him; they wanted to show their strength and decisiveness without Christina at the helm. Deep down he knew that he hadn't been quite up to all aspects of the job during these years, but with Christina right above him, he'd been sheltered. Now that she wasn't there any longer he had nothing to hold on to. He was finished, and he knew it.
Some things he had learned in this time, however. What happened to people who were no longer wanted, for example. Often you didn't even have to make a decision to remove people because they would leave of their own accord. There were many ways of freezing someone out, and he was familiar with most of them, even if he hadn't personally made use of them very often. When the decision was made, by whoever it may be, the staff would be informed. The internal reaction was almost always positive: A person who was made to leave had seldom managed to retain any popularity. Then the public would be informed, and if the person was known, the media was turned loose. That was where the story could move in either of two directions. Either the media would side with the ousted person and let him or her have a good public cry, or they would gloat and crow, "It serves you right!"
The first category was composed of mainly women, unless they were too highly placed. In the second category, you found mostly men from the private sector who were given enormous golden handshakes. He suspected he would end up with the latter. In his favor was the fact that he'd been fired, that he'd been made the scapegoat for Christina Furhage's death. It might be possible to steer things in that direction. Evert Danielsson felt that, even without quite being able to formulate the words in his empty mind.
There was a knock on the door, and his secretary popped her head in. Her eyes were a bit swollen and her hair was disheveled.
"I've written the press release. Hans Bjällra is here to go through it with you. Can he come in?"
Evert Danielsson looked at his secretary. She had stayed loyal to him for many years. She was close to sixty and would never get a new job. Because that's how things went when someone left, their assistants went with them. No one wanted to take on someone else's underlings. It didn't work. There would never be any real loyalty.
"Yes, of course, show him in."
The chairman of the board came in, tall and dressed in a black suit. He was in mourning after Christina's death, the bastard— everyone knew he couldn't stand her.
"I think we should keep this as brief and civilized as possible," Bjällra said and sat down on the couch, uninvited.
Evert Danielsson nodded energetically. "Yes. Clean and dignified…"
"I'm glad we agree on that. The press release will say that you're leaving your post as director of SOCOG, the Stockholm Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games. The reason being that after the tragic death of Christina Furhage you will be given another assignment. What this will be is not clear at the moment, but the matter will be worked out in cooperation with you. Nothing about being fired or about your severance package. The board has agreed to keep quiet about that. What do you think?"
