Poor cow, Annika thought. She can't be having an easy time with these guys.
For want of anything else to say, Annika then went on to ask if they'd known Christina Furhage. Now all the men were nodding appreciatively.
"Now, there was a woman and a half," said the man in overalls. "The way I see it, no one could have pulled this off except her."
"Why do you think so?" Annika asked.
"She went around all the building sites and talked to the workers. No one could understand how she found the time to do it, but she insisted on meeting everyone and finding out how everything worked."
The man fell silent. Annika tapped pensively with her pen against the pad.
"Will you go on working today?"
"We're talking to the police, but then I guess we'll go home. And we're holding a minute's silence for Stefan," said the man in overalls.
The police officer returned together with two colleagues. They looked pretty uptight and were heading straight for the little group.
"Thanks a lot," Annika said in a hushed voice and picked up Henriksson's bag that was next to her. Then she abruptly turned on her heel and started walking along the side of the building toward the open emergency exit. She heard the photographer jogging behind her.
"Hey, you!" the policeman called out.
"Thanks a million, we won't bother you any more now," Annika called back, waving her hand but not slowing down.
She held the door open for Henriksson and then let go of it with a bang.
The photographer was silent while Annika drove back to the paper. It was still snowing, but they had full daylight now. The traffic was even heavier, Christmas shoppers having added to the usual flow. There were only three days left now.
"Where are you spending Christmas?" Annika said to break the silence.
"Are you going to use any of that stuff?" was Henriksson's reply.
Annika looked at him in surprise. "Why?"
"Can you really use it when you just marched in like that?"
Annika gave a sigh. "I'll talk to Schyman and explain what happened. I think we'll run a picture of the guys and let them say something about their minute's silence for Stefan Bjurling. It won't be much more than a caption. In the story next to it, I can quote what the police have said and that the questioning of the builders continues, as does the forensic investigation, blah, blah, blah— you know."
"What about the woman?"
Annika chewed on her lip. "I'm not using her. She was too unbalanced. She didn't have anything useful. I thought she wasn't all there. All that crap about fate."
"I didn't hear all of it," Henriksson said. "Did she talk about evil and guilt all the time?"
Annika scratched her nose.
"More or less… That's why I won't use her. She
was
in the building when the bomb went off, but she had nothing to say about that. You heard her. I don't want to expose her, even though she wanted it. I don't think she's capable of judging what's best for her."
"But you said it isn't up to us to decide who can cope with being written about in the paper," Henriksson retorted.
"True, but it
is
up to us to judge whether a person is sound enough of mind to understand who we are and what we are saying. That woman was just too unhinged. She's not going in the paper. But I can say something about the project manager being in the building when the explosion took place and that she is completely devastated by Stefan's death and blames herself for it. But I don't think the paper should publish her name and picture."
They drove in silence the rest of the way. Annika dropped Henriksson outside the main entrance before parking the car in the multistory car park.
* * *
Bertil Milander sat in front of the TV in his magnificent Art-Nouveau library, feeling his heart thumping in his chest. There was a murmur and trickle in his veins; his breath filled the room. He could feel he was falling asleep. The sound on the TV had been turned down to a soft whisper and reached him intermittently above the clamor of his body. Right now there were some women talking and laughing on TV, but he couldn't hear what they were saying. Some signs appeared with regular intervals on the screen, showing flags and telephone numbers next to different currencies. He didn't understand what it was all about. The sedatives were blurring everything. Now and then he gave a little sob.
"Christina," he muttered and cried some more.
He must have nodded off, but suddenly he was wide awake. He recognized the smell and knew it meant danger. The warning signal had been so deeply ingrained in him that it reached him even through his drug-induced sleep. He struggled to get up from the leather couch. His blood pressure was low, which made him slightly dizzy. He got to his feet and held on to the back of the couch and tried to locate the smell. It came from the drawing room. He walked carefully, holding on to the bookcases until he could feel his blood pressure catching up.
His daughter was crouching in front of the tiled stove, feeding it with a rectangular piece of stiff paper.
"What are you doing?" Bertil Milander asked, confused.
The old stove didn't draw well and some of the smoke was puffing into the room.
"I'm clearing up," said his daughter Lena.
The man went up to the young woman and sat down next to her on the floor.
"Are you making a fire?" he asked warily.
His daughter looked at him. "I'm using the stove. Not on the parquet floor this time."
"Why?" he said.
Lena Milander stared into the flames, which quickly died out. She took another page and fed the fire with it. The flames engulfed it and embraced it. For a few seconds it lay flat in the fire, then it quickly rolled up and disappeared. Christina Furhage's smiling eyes dissolved forever.
"Don't you want any memories of Mom?" Bertil asked.
"I'll always remember her," Lena replied.
She tore another three pages from the photo album and tossed them into the fire.
* * *
Eva-Britt Qvist looked up when Annika walked past on the way to her room. Annika gave her a friendly greeting, but Eva-Britt immediately cut her off.
"You're back from the press conference already?" she said triumphantly.
Annika realized that Qvist wanted her to say "which press conference?" and then the secretary would have a chance to make it known that she was the one who had to take care of
everything
on the crime desk.
"I didn't go," she said, smiling even wider, and then walked into her room and shut the door. There, now you can sit there and wonder where I've been, she thought.
She phoned up Berit's cellphone. The signal went through, but then the voice mail took the call. Berit always had her phone at the bottom of her bag and never managed to find it in time. Annika waited thirty seconds and tried again. This time Berit answered straight away.
"I'm at a press conference at police headquarters," the reporter said. "You were out on a job. I came here with Ulf Olsson."
Thank you, darling! Annika thought.
"What's going on?"
"Some good stuff. I'll be back soon."
They switched off. Annika leaned back in her chair and put her feet on the desk. She found a half-melted chocolate bar in the pencil tray of the top drawer and broke it into smaller pieces. The chocolate was partly crystallized but edible.
She couldn't help thinking, even though she probably wouldn't dare say it out loud in the newsroom: The link between the two murders and the Olympics was extremely weak. Perhaps they were two personally motivated murders of two individuals. Sätra Hall was as far from an Olympic arena as you could get. But there had to be a lot of common denominators for Christina Furhage and Stefan Bjurling. The link could of course be the Olympic Games but not necessarily. Somewhere in their past there was something that tied them to the same person who became their killer. Annika was sure of that. Money, love, sex, power, envy, injustice, family, friends, neighbors, schools, childcare, transport— their lives could have intersected a thousand different ways. Already at the building site this morning there were at least ten people who had met both Stefan Bjurling and Christina Furhage. The victims didn't even have to know each other.
She called her contact.
He gave a deep sigh. "I thought you and I had finished talking to each other."
"Right, and see where that landed you. You enjoying this security debate? 'Hello! Hello, is anybody there?' " she said, imitating the reporter on radio that morning.
He sighed again and Annika waited.
"I can't talk to you anymore."
"Okay, fine," Annika swiftly replied. "I know you're busy. I'm sure you're all frantically searching for links between Stefan Bjurling and Christina Furhage. Perhaps you've found the right one. How many people had access to the security codes
and
knew Stefan?"
"What we're trying to do is answer the questions about security."
"I don't think so," Annika said. "You're quite happy the focus has been moved from the investigation to an irrelevant debate about arena security."
"Bullshit," her contact said. "At the end of the day, security is always the first responsibility of the police."
"I'm not talking of the entire police force, I'm talking about you and your friends who are trying to solve these murders. It's all down to you, isn't it? If you succeed, the whole debate is finished."
"If?"
"When. That's why I think you ought to start talking to me again. The only way to get anywhere is through communication. We've got to keep talking."
"Is that what you were doing in Sätra Hall this morning— communicating?"
Shit, he'd heard about that.
"Among other things," Annika said.
"I've got to go," he said.
Annika drew a breath and then said: "Christina Furhage had another child, a son."
"I know. Bye!"
He was still pissed. Annika hung up. Berit stepped through the door.
"Awful weather," she said, shaking snowflakes out of her hair.
"Have they caught anyone?" Annika asked facetiously and offered Berit some chocolate. She looked at it with alarm and declined.
"No, but they think it's the same person. They maintain there's no threat to the Games."
"What makes them think that?"
Berit picked up her pad and started leafing through it.
"They say there have been no threats to any people associated with the Games. No threats against any Olympic building. The threats that have been made have all been personal and had no connection to arenas or Olympic events."
"They're talking about the threat to Furhage. Had Stefan Bjurling received any threats?"
"I'm hoping to find out this afternoon— I'm meeting his wife."
Annika raised an eyebrow. "Really? Was she okay with that?"
"Yes, she had no objections to seeing me. We'll see what that leads to. She may be too shaky to say anything we could put in the paper."
"Still, it's great. Anything else?"
Berit turned over the pages.
"Yes, they'll soon have a preliminary analysis of the explosives from the first murder. They were hoping to issue a press release by noon. They thought it'd be ready for the press conference, but it was held up by something in London."
"Why was the stuff sent to London in the first place?" Annika asked.
Berit smiled. "The equipment at the lab in Linköping was out of order, as simple as that."
"Did they say why they're still ignoring the terrorist angle?"
"Didn't say."
"You know what," Annika said. "I think they're close to solving the murders."
"But you don't know who they're looking at?"
"No," said Annika.
Berit got up. "Well, I'm hungry. What about you?"
They went to the cafeteria, where Berit had lasagne and Annika chicken salad. As their food arrived, Patrik came in. His hair was in disarray and he looked like he'd slept in the clothes he was wearing.
"Good morning," Annika said. "Great job last night. How did you get all those quotes from Bjurling's workmates?"
The young man grinned, embarrassed, and said: "I just called them at home and woke them up."
Annika smiled.
They talked about Christmas neurosis, buying presents, and the stress of the season. Berit had bought all her presents before the beginning of December; neither Patrik nor Annika had even started.
