The Long Shadow (13 page)

She was on the point of falling asleep when she sat up with a jolt. She had to read the article about her.

She straightened her back and cleared her throat, as if she were about to give a speech.

‘By Bo Svensson,’ she read. Bloody gorilla, she thought.

Annika Bengtzon’s day-job is to keep watch on those in power in Sweden. Today we can reveal that she goes much further than that. The night before last she was seen in the Järnet restaurant in Stockholm with the justice minister’s right-hand man, under-secretary of state Jimmy Halenius, a Social Democrat.

The picture shows the couple enjoying their night out together, kissing and cuddling.

A statement from the
Evening Post
says that her employers have full confidence in their reporter. ‘I have every faith in her judgement,’ says editor-in-chief Anders Schyman.

Does this damage Annika Bengtzon’s credibility?

‘Absolutely not.’

But other commentators don’t agree.

‘Annika Bengtzon crossed the line when she kissed her source,’ says political journalist Arne Påhlson.

How will this affect Annika Bengtzon’s credibility as someone who reports on those in power?

‘Clearly, that’s going to look a bit threadbare now …’

She had to get up and take a walk around the room.

Who the hell was Arne Påhlson to sit in judgement on her? An overhyped dime-a-dozen reporter, who was being wheeled out as some sort of expert on ethics and morals.

She returned to the laptop.

At the Ministry of Justice, where Jimmy Halenius is one of the most senior officials, the significance of the pictures is being downplayed.

‘The fact that politicians and journalists are in contact with each other is hardly news,’ the justice minister’s press secretary said.

The department is reluctant to confirm whether or not Jimmy Halenius was on duty on the evening in question.

Annika Bengtzon herself has referred to the confidentiality of sources and has declined to comment.

She pushed the computer aside and stood up. Her heart was pounding. It was incredibly unpleasant to read about herself in the third person. As a human being she had no value: she was merely a symbol, a punch-bag; she had been set up in a version of reality that was untrue.

She realized how impotent she was in the face of the paper’s sweeping generalizations. It didn’t matter that what they had written was either wrong or irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was the media’s judgement, the newspaper’s world-view, its redacted truth.

She picked up the laptop, but resisted the urge to throw it at the wall.

She sat down, took three deep breaths and rubbed her eyes.

Then she read the article again.

It wasn’t well written. Admittedly, every article like this followed a ridiculously formulaic template, but this one was particularly clichéd. Bosse had clearly had trouble expressing himself.

She felt rather embarrassed at her first reaction: to feel sorry for herself.

Was this what she did? Did she ride roughshod over other people in her articles?

Of course. Probably every day.

What was the alternative? Should she stop looking for headlines and pictures, just report, never reflect?

She walked around the room, then thrust the thought aside. She sat down again and scrolled through the rest of the other paper’s website to see what they had written about the gassings. The reporter was their Madrid correspondent, a stylish woman in her fifties who presumably spoke fluent Spanish. They had a picture of the house from the road as well, but with the shadows at a different angle. The photographer had his own byline, a Spanish name. So, they were a team and must have been there earlier in the day.

The article contained the facts Annika had got from Niklas Linde, but here they were attributed to sources within the Spanish police. The reporters had evidently gone to the Los Naranjos golf club to speak to grieving Swedes there. They had ended up with the same sort of quotes that Annika had taken from La Garrapata.

In other words, a dead heat between her and the Madrid stringer.

It was always a relief not to have been outdone …

Her mobile rang again, and sounded somehow angrier this time. She let it ring twice before reaching out for it. She sighed. ‘Hi, Patrik,’ she said.

‘The golf club in mourning!’ Patrik shouted. ‘The tennis club in mourning! See if you can’t get together a group of old ice-hockey stars for a minute’s silence in memory of Sebastian Söderström on a green somewhere. Why limit it to old players? Get any sports stars you can find!’

‘I’ve got a number of other angles,’ Annika said. ‘Pictures from inside the house, from the scene where they died. There might be another child in the family, a girl who survived. I need to look into that a bit more.’

‘The sports stars is a much better story. Make sure they all look fucking miserable.’

Annika closed her eyes. ‘I don’t have a photographer with me,’ she said.

‘You’ve got a camera, haven’t you? Call once you’ve sent the picture. By the way, what sort of behaviour do you call hanging out with the under-secretary of state and snogging his face off in public?’ Then he was gone.

Annika let her mobile fall to the floor. This was crazy.

She got up and walked to the window. It was a long time since she had been in this situation. During her years as an independent reporter she had been excused jobs designed to reflect the world-view of the head of news. Instead she had reported what she had thought proper and important. There was a difference between creating reality and reporting it.

If a gang of former sports stars took it upon themselves to mourn their colleague with a minute’s silence, she wouldn’t have any problem reporting on the event, but staging the image was something completely different.

She went back to the computer, opened the website of Spanish Directory Enquiries, and looked up the numbers for Sebastian Söderström’s tennis club and the Los Naranjos golf club. She rang both.

The tennis club was closed, a man said, in English with a Spanish accent. No, nothing was planned to commemorate the deceased owner. Yes, he’d call her if they changed their minds. Neither had the Los Naranjos golf club planned any sort of ceremony to mark Sebastian Söderström’s death, but he had been a member so perhaps that wasn’t a bad idea. In fact, it was an extremely good idea. They’d been thinking of something along those lines that morning. Round about four o’clock that afternoon …

She bit her lip as she hung up. She had adapted reality to make it fit her five-column tabloid format.

She went back to the window.

The clouds were so low that they had surrounded the large mountain in front of her with thick grey cotton-wool. The traffic was moving sluggishly along the old Roman road.

Who could she call to find out more about Suzette?

She went over to the minibar and found that the cleaner had restocked the chocolate. She helped herself to a Snickers bar and threw herself on the bed with her mobile.

Knut Garen answered at once. He seemed to be standing close to running water.

‘I’m in Granada,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to call Niklas Linde about that. He’s still down on the coast.’

She swallowed her question about what he was doing in Granada and dialled Linde’s number. He answered after four rings. ‘Now isn’t a good time,’ he said in a low voice.

‘Quick question,’ Annika said. ‘Do you know anything about a girl called Suzette who lived in Sebastian Söderström’s villa?’

‘Negative. I’ve got to go.’

Annika ended the call. She felt oddly indignant.

Did they really have that much to do, or did the two police officers simply not want to talk to her?

She ate the chocolate and tossed the wrapper into the wastepaper basket, then sat down at the computer. The Spanish Directory Enquiries website was still on the screen.

She typed in the name of the Swea woman, whose name was Margit. She wasn’t listed in the
Paginas Blancas
, so she couldn’t call her.

Maj-Lis, the older woman, was there, however. She
lived in an
urbanización
called Los Cuervos in Estepona.

‘What’s this about?’ she croaked when she answered, then cleared her throat loudly. ‘Why are you asking about Suzette?’

‘She’s got a room in the Söderström family home,’ Annika said. ‘Who is she?’

‘Can you hold on just one moment?’ The woman put the phone down without waiting for an answer. Annika heard her shuffling off somewhere, then coughing and hacking and spitting. A toilet flushed. She came back to the phone. ‘Oh, Suzette,’ the woman said, with a sigh. ‘She’s Sebastian’s daughter from his first marriage. A proper little storm-cloud. What do you want to know?’

‘What was she like? How old is she?’

The woman coughed. ‘Fifteen, sixteen, I should think.’

‘She wasn’t in the house during the break-in. Do you know where she might be?’

‘Well, I suppose she’s with her mum in Sweden.’

‘So she doesn’t live here?’

‘Just sometimes during the holidays, if that. Suzette isn’t very easy to deal with.’

Annika was clicking her ballpoint in frustration. If there was one thing she was allergic to, it was generalizations about teenage girls ‘not being easy to deal with’. That was how they had described her at school in Hälleforsnäs. ‘In that case, why did she have her own room?’

‘Oh, Astrid probably insisted. Astrid always stuck up for the girl. Sometimes I thought she was the only person who liked her. Suzette used to call her Grandma.’

‘Even though she wasn’t her grandmother?’

Maj-Lis fell silent, then sniffed. When she spoke again her voice was weak and broken. ‘It’s so hard to accept that she’s gone. How can people just disappear? Where
do they go? God, I wish I were Christian.’ She blew her nose loudly. ‘Of course it’s terrible about Veronica, Sebastian and the children, but I was so close to Astrid. I can still feel her here, right next to me, a sort of warmth, a vibration in the air. Hold on …’

Annika heard the sucking sound of a cork being pulled from a bottle.

‘Cheers, Astrid.’ Maj-Lis took an audible gulp of wine.

‘So Suzette lives with her mother,’ Annika said. ‘Do you know where? You don’t happen to know her mother’s name?’

‘Sebastian’s first wife was a mistake, according to him. I can’t remember her name, but it’s something pretty plain – it reminded me of an actress in a seventies porn film. She was his childhood sweetheart from somewhere out in the suburbs, if I’m not mistaken. I never met her.’ She took another audible gulp of wine.

‘And they were married? Do you know if she’s still called Söderström?’

‘Oh, yes, they were certainly married,’ Maj-Lis said. ‘It was a really messy divorce. She demanded half of all Sebastian’s earnings from his time in the NHL, but he was about to use that money to buy the tennis club.’

‘And Suzette, is her name Söderström?’

‘Veronica took his name at once, didn’t hesitate. She wanted a large family, lots of children, and she wanted them all to have the same surname.’

Dear old Maj-Lis was starting to get a bit drunk.

‘Well, thanks very much indeed for your time. Would you mind me calling again if …’

‘Veronica never forgave her. Never!’

‘Thanks, goodbye,’ Annika said, and clicked to end the call.

She hesitated for a moment, then dialled Berit’s mobile.

Her colleague was at home, not in the newsroom. ‘I’m on a rota, these days, you know. I get evenings, weekends and public holidays off from now on unless I’m told otherwise at least two weeks in advance,’ Berit said.

‘Oh,’ Annika said. ‘In that case I’m not supposed to be working either.’

‘Not according to the locally negotiated agreement,’ Berit said. ‘Congratulations!’

Annika heard a tap being turned on, then running water. ‘I could have spent today unpacking the children’s toys.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to do that with them?’ Berit said. ‘Or they might get the feeling that they live in a hotel.’

Annika sat up straight. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘Let’s try to learn from each other’s mistakes,’ Berit said. ‘How are you getting on?’

‘Have you got a few minutes to go through a couple of things with me?’

The running water stopped. ‘Of course,’ Berit said. Annika heard her pull out a chair and sit down.

‘I got inside the family’s house this morning and took some pictures on my mobile,’ Annika said. ‘I’m about to load them into the laptop and see how they turned out. And I’ve uncovered another child, a teenage girl who evidently survived the gas attack.’

‘What?’ Berit said. ‘How?’

‘She wasn’t there,’ Annika said, ‘so it’s not quite as dramatic as it sounds. But someone should still try to talk to her. She lives with her mother somewhere in Sweden.’

‘That’s brilliant. Who’s dealing with that in the newsroom?’

‘No one,’ Annika said. ‘Patrik just shrugged it off. He wants grieving sports stars.’

‘That’s a bad call,’ Berit said calmly. ‘Of course he can have his grieving sports stars, but a child who survived mass-murder is considerably more important.’

Annika breathed out. Of course she knew that, but it was still a relief to hear someone else say it.

‘Have you got the passwords for the national ID database with you?’ Berit asked.

‘Of course. I’ll have a look from here.’

‘If that doesn’t work, I’ll be back on duty on Friday,’ Berit said. ‘What sort of weather are you having?’

‘Very grey,’ Annika said. ‘One more thing.’

‘Halenius,’ Berit said.

‘Hmm,’ Annika said.

‘Were you really kissing? It looks like it in the picture.’

‘Actually we weren’t,’ Annika said. ‘Does it matter?’

Berit thought for a moment. ‘From now on it’ll be difficult for you to look into anything that Jimmy Halenius does,’ she said. ‘But there are other people who can do that.’

‘So you don’t think I’ve blown my credibility?’

‘A bit, maybe, but it’ll pass.’

‘Thanks,’ Annika said quietly.

‘Remember to make a note of the overtime,’ Berit said. ‘You won’t get paid, but you take it as time owing.’