"Some pictures are on their way from Vallentuna of Christina Furhage and Stefan Bjurling together. Develop the film and make prints of all negs. I have to go, but I'll be back by eight. Okay?"
Picture Pelle nodded and resumed his conversation.
She didn't bother to call for a taxi but took one from the stand in the street below. She felt the stress like a lump in her stomach. It grew until she had difficulty breathing. This was certainly not what she needed right now.
Back at home, the children rushed toward her with kisses and drawings. Thomas gave her a quick kiss on his way out. He took the taxi she'd arrived in.
"Hey, listen, let me take my coat off. Calm down…"
Ellen and Kalle were stopped short by the irritated note in her voice. She leaned down and hugged them just a little bit too hard and walked over to the phone. She called Ingvar Johansson, but he'd gone into the Six Session. She groaned out loud. Now she wouldn't have time to tell the others what her desk had been doing all day. Oh, well, she'd have to talk to Spike later.
The food was on the table, and the kids had eaten already. She sat down and tried to eat a chicken leg, but the food just grew in her mouth until she was forced to spit it all out. She had a few mouthfuls of rice and then threw the rest away. She usually didn't manage to eat at all when she was this stressed.
"You have to eat," Kalle said reproachfully.
She placed the kids in front of the TV, closed the door to the living room, and called Patrik.
"The Tiger phoned," the reporter howled. "He's furious."
"Why?" Annika asked.
"Believe it or not, he's on his honeymoon on Tenerife— Playa de las Americas. He left last Thursday and will be coming home tomorrow. He says the cops knew very well that he was there; they'd checked all departures from Arlanda and found his name. The Spanish police picked him up and held him for questioning a whole afternoon. It made him miss a barbecue and the free pool-side drink. Sad, isn't it…?"
Annika smiled wanly.
"Will you write something on that?"
"Sure."
"Did you hear the
Eko
item about the lab report on the explosives?"
"Yes, I'm sorting that out as we speak. Ulf Olsson and I are in an explosives depot, blowing shit up. Did you know the explosives look like sausages?"
Dear Patrik! He was so enthusiastic. Whatever the situation. He always found his own angle.
"Did you get anywhere with the police hunt?"
"Nope, they're not saying a word. But I think they're closing in on someone."
"We have to get some kind of confirmation. I'll try to get something out of them tonight," Annika said.
"We have to get out of here now or we'll get a headache, our blaster friend is telling us. Talk to you later."
The children's programs must have ended. The kids had started squabbling over a comic book. She went in to them and switched over to TV2 for the local news.
"Can we do a jigsaw, Mom?"
They sat down on the floor with a wooden jigsaw puzzle of twenty-five pieces depicting the storybook's characters Alfons and Milla in their treehouse. They stayed there until the familiar tune of the local
ABC
news started up at ten past seven. She sent the children out to brush their teeth while she checked out what
ABC
had put together. They had been to Sätra Hall and got in the judges' room. The footage wasn't particularly dramatic, since there didn't seem to have been much blast damage to the room itself. All traces of poor Steffe had been thoroughly scrubbed away. They said nothing about an arrest being at hand. She went out into the bathroom and helped the children with their teeth while
ABC
proceeded with a report on Christmas sales.
"Put your pajamas on and then we'll read a story. And don't forget the fluoride tablets!"
She left them to bicker in their room while watching the headlines of
Rapport.
They went to town on the regional bill, nothing she needed to watch. She read a story to the children and tucked them in, but they were being difficult and did not intend to go to sleep.
"It's Christmas soon and all children have to be good, or Santa Claus won't come," she said menacingly, feeling bad for threatening her kids.
But it did the trick, and soon they were asleep. She called Thomas at work and on his cellphone, but naturally he didn't answer either. She started up the old PC in the bedroom and quickly wrote down the main points of her conversation with Helena Starke from memory. As she saved the document onto a disk, she was becoming increasingly anxious. Where the hell was Thomas?
Just after half past eight he arrived.
"Thanks, honey," he panted as he stepped inside the front door.
"Did you tell the taxi to wait?" she asked more brusquely than she intended.
"Shit! No, I forgot."
She ran down the stairs to catch the taxi, but of course it was already gone. She walked down to the square, but there were no cars at the taxi stand. She walked past the pharmacy and toward Kungsholmsgatan where there was another stand. There was one single car from some suburban company. She walked into the newsroom at five to nine. The place was deserted and quiet. Ingvar Johansson had gone home ages ago, and the night people had all gone to the canteen. She went into her room and started making calls.
"This is getting tedious," said her contact.
"Don't be difficult," she said wearily. "I've been on the go for fourteen hours, and I'm getting fed up. You have the measure of me, and you know where I stand. Come on now— truce?"
The police officer at the other end clicked his tongue a couple of times.
"You're not the only one who's been at it since seven this morning."
"You've got a fix on him, haven't you?"
"What makes you think that?"
"You usually stick to your working hours, especially when a big holiday is coming up. You've got something in the pipeline."
"Of course, we always do. This is a big case, of course we're working late."
Annika groaned out loud. "For Christ's sake…"
"We couldn't leak any information about being close to apprehending the Bomber. You must understand that. Then he'll get clean away."
"But you're closing in on him?"
"I didn't say that."
"But are you?"
The man didn't reply.
"How much can I write?" Annika asked cautiously.
"Not one line, it could wreck the whole thing."
"When are you moving in?"
The police officer was quiet for a couple of seconds, then said:
"As soon as we locate him."
"Locate?"
"He's disappeared."
The hair on Annika's neck rose.
"So you know who it is?"
"We think we do, yes."
"Christ," Annika whispered. "How long have you known?"
"We've had our suspicions for a couple of days, but now we're certain enough to want to bring the person in for questioning."
"Would you let us be there?"
"At the arrest? I find that hard to imagine. We haven't a clue where the person is."
"Are there many of you out looking?"
"No, we haven't put out a wide alert yet. We want to check the places we know about first."
"When will you put out an alert?"
"Don't know."
Annika racked her brains. What could she write without using this?
"I know what you're thinking," the police officer said, "and you may as well give up wondering. Think of it as a test. I've trusted you with some information. Think very carefully before you use it."
The call was over and Annika sat in her office with a pounding heart. She might be the only reporter to know about this, and she couldn't do a thing with it.
She walked out into the newsroom to calm down and have a word with Spike. The first thing she laid her eyes on was a dummy of the next day's front page. It said: "CHRISTINA FURHAGE LESBIAN— Her Lover Talks About Their Last Hours Together."
Annika felt the whole room turn around. It can't be, she thought. Christ, where did they get this? With tunnel vision, she walked up to the easel where the layout was fastened, pulled it down, and threw it down on the desk in front of Spike.
"What the hell is this?" she demanded to know.
"Tomorrow's biggest story," the night editor said indifferently.
"We can't print this," Annika said, unable to keep her voice under control. "It has nothing to do with anything. Christina Furhage never spoke publicly about her sexuality. We have no right to expose her like this. She didn't want to talk about it when she was alive, and we have no right to do it now she's dead."
The night editor straightened up, clasped his hands behind his head, and leaned back so that his chair nearly tipped over.
"It's nothing to be ashamed of, liking girls— I do, too," he leered. He looked over his shoulder to get support from the sub-editors around the desk.
Annika forced herself to be businesslike.
"She was married and had a daughter. Could you look her family in the eye tomorrow if you print this?"
"She was a public person."
"That's got fucking all to do with it!" Annika said, unable to curb her outrage. "The woman has been murdered! And who the hell wrote the fucking story?"
The night editor laboriously got to his feet. He was riled now.
"Nisse has dug up some good stuff. He's got confirmation from a named source that she was a dyke. She had a relationship with that woman Starke…"
"That's my material!" Annika raved. "I mentioned it as a rumor at our lunch meeting. Who's the named source?"
The night editor went up to Annika and said, inches away from her face:
"I don't give a fuck where it came from," he hissed. "Nisse has written the best piece of tomorrow's paper. If you knew about it, why then didn't you write something? Isn't it time you dried out behind your ears?"
Annika felt the words sink in. They landed in her midriff and added to the lump in her gut, making her lungs too small. She couldn't breathe. She forced herself to ignore the attack on her person and to focus on the journalistic part of the argument. Was she right? Perhaps Christina Furhage's sexual preference really was a scoop they should publish? She pushed the thought away from her.
"Who Christina Furhage slept with is neither here nor there," she said softly. "What
is
interesting is who killed her. Another interesting aspect is what effect it will have on the Olympic Games, on sports, and on Sweden's standing in the world. It's also important to sort out why she was killed, who the killer is, and what motivated him. I don't give a shit who she fucked, unless it's got something to do with her death. And neither should you."
The night editor breathed in so forcefully through his nose that he sounded like a fan.
"Do you know what, Miss Crime Editor? You are so totally wrong. You should have made sure your feet were big enough before you stepped into those shoes. Nils Langeby is right, you obviously can't handle your job. Can't you see how pathetic you are?"
The lump of stress in her stomach exploded. She felt as if she had broken into pieces. All sounds disappeared and she saw flashes before her eyes. To her own surprise, she discovered that she was still standing up, registering things with her eyes and still breathing. She turned on her heel and walked over to her office, focusing on crossing the newsroom floor with the other reporters' eyes like darts in her back. She reached her office and closed the door. She slumped down on the floor inside the door, her entire body shaking. I'm not dying, I'm not dying, I'm not dying, she thought. It'll pass, it'll pass, it'll pass… She wasn't getting any air and tried desperately to breathe; the air wasn't reaching her lungs and she took another breath, yet another one, and in the end her arms started cramping. She realized she was hyperventilating and had too much oxygen in her blood; she got to her feet and staggered over to the desk, pulled out a plastic bag from the bottom drawer, and started breathing into it. She conjured up Thomas's voice:
Nice and easy, nice and easy, everything'll be all right, my friend, just breathe, you're not falling to pieces, my sweet little Annie, nice and easy, nice and easy…
The shaking subsided and she sat down in the chair. She wanted to cry but swallowed it and called Anders Schyman's home number. His wife answered and Annika tried to sound normal.
"He's at the management Christmas dinner," Mrs. Schyman said.
Annika called the switchboard and asked them to put her through to the banqueting room. She could hear that she wasn't being coherent anymore, that she barely managed to make herself understood. After a long interval of murmuring and rattling, she heard the voice of Anders Schyman.
