Exposed (21 page)

She went over and picked up a couple of copies of the paper instead. The front page was dominated by a picture of the Minister for Foreign Trade, Christer Lundgren. He was standing next to the Prime Minister, who had his arm round Lundgren’s shoulders. They were both smiling broadly. The picture had been taken when Lundgren was appointed and presented to the
media eight months earlier. The headline struck Annika as rather weak: S
TORMY WEATHER
.

The news from the flysheet was at the very top of the page, above the title, with a reference to pages six and seven inside. She leafed through, her hands shaking. She scanned the page to see who had written the article.

Carl Wennergren.

She lowered the paper.

‘It’s bloody awful, isn’t it?’ Tore Brand said.

‘You’re damn right there,’ Annika said, heading towards the lifts.

She went to the cafeteria and sat down with a coffee and a large roll. The drink cooled as she read the articles, first the one about the Ninja Barbies, and then the government minister.

They got what they wanted, she thought, staring at the picture of the burning car. The vehicle was on its side, its underside facing the photographer. She noted that Carl Wennergren was also credited with the picture. According to the caption, the car belonged to a chief constable in the Stockholm district. Behind the flames you could make out a detached house built in the sixties. The article gave the Ninja Barbies the opportunity to broadcast their childish, violent message. It didn’t include a single word of criticism. Annika started to feel sick. Fuck, she thought. Fuck that fucking bastard.

The article about the minister in stormy weather was better. It treated the accusations from the
Studio Six
programme for what they were: unsubstantiated rumours of guilt. The minister himself hadn’t been available for comment, but his press secretary, Karina Björnlund, declared that the allegations had no basis whatsoever in fact.

Annika didn’t know what to believe. Christer Lundgren had certainly been questioned, that much had
been confirmed by the police’s press spokesman on the radio the day before. But a lot of the other information in the programme was undoubtedly false. And what had happened to the suspicions against Joachim?

She threw her roll in the bin without even unwrapping it. She finished the coffee in three large gulps.

Spike was already at his post, phone glued to his ear. He didn’t react to the fact that Annika had come in on her day off; that sort of thing was normal behaviour for the summer temps.

‘You fucked up badly on that murder,’ he said as he hung up.

‘The minister, you mean? It doesn’t make any sense, though,’ Annika said.

‘Aha,’ Spike said. ‘In what way?’

‘I thought I’d dig about a bit today, if that’s all right?’

‘Bloody lucky that we got that scoop about the Ninja Barbies,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we’d have had to run harder on the minister and the murder. And it would have looked pretty bloody weird if we’d run with two different murderers, two days in a row, don’t you think?’

Annika blushed. She didn’t have a reply. Spike’s eyes were cold and watchful.

‘Thanks to Carl we managed to keep our dignity intact,’ the head of news said, spinning away from her on his chair, inadvertently showing her the beginnings of a bald patch.

‘Okay,’ Annika said. ‘Is Berit here?’

‘She’s out on Fårö, trying to track down the speaker of parliament. For her IB scoop,’ Spike said without turning round.

Annika went back to her desk and dropped her bag on the floor, her cheeks burning. Presumably she wouldn’t
be getting a picture byline for quite some time now.

She looked through what the other papers had about the minister and his suspected involvement in the murder. No one else was running very hard with the story.

The morning papers just had short pieces about a government minister, Christer Lundgren, being questioned in relation to the murder of a young woman in Stockholm. And the other evening paper had taken pretty much the same line as the
Evening Post
.

So how could
Studio Six
be so sure of their story? Annika wondered. They have to know more than they’re letting on. There’s a lot more to come out yet.

The thought made her stomach churn. Why on earth do I feel so guilty? she thought.

The air was dusty and hot in spite of the air-conditioning. She went off to the toilets and rinsed her face in cold water.

I’ve got to get to the bottom of this, she thought. I’ve got to work this out. I’ve missed something, but what?

She leaned her forehead against the mirror and shut her eyes. The glass was cool, spreading clarity through her sinuses and into her brain.

The old woman, she thought. The fat old woman with the dog, Daniella’s neighbour.

She wiped her face with a paper towel. She left behind her a smear of sweat and water on the mirror.

The new head editor, Anders Schyman, was worried. He had been aware of the ethical difficulties that went with his new job, but he would have preferred to wait a day or two before being forced into any acrobatic manoeuvres on the moral trapeze. What on earth was this hysterical story Carl Wennergren had uncovered? A feminist combat group that set fire to cars and
threatened the police … What the fuck? And not a single critical comment, just the police spokesman’s predictable comment that they took matters of this nature very seriously and were devoting the necessary resources to track down those responsible.

Schyman sighed and sat down on the orange-flowered sofa in his little alcove. This sofa has to go, he thought. It was so ingrained with cigarette smoke that it stank like an old ashtray. He got up and sat down behind his desk instead. This really wasn’t a very nice room. There were no windows, just indirect light from the glass walls facing the newsroom. He could just make out the contours of the multi-storey car park through the windows on the far side of the sports section. With a sigh he stared at the mountain of cardboard boxes that had been delivered from Swedish Television the previous evening.

God, what a lot of crap we accumulate, he thought.

He decided to skip the unpacking for now, and spread the newspaper out in front of him instead. He read through the controversial articles slowly one more time. He may not be legally responsible for the paper’s contents, but he knew that from now on he needed to be aware of the mechanisms that shaped the paper’s editorial line, as well as its contents.

There was something not quite right about the terrorism article. How on earth could their reporter have been at the right place at exactly the right time, and how come the women spoke to him? ‘He got a tip-off,’ was all Spike had said. That wasn’t good enough. If the group wanted maximum publicity, they would have filmed and documented their actions themselves, then sent them to all the media. But if they did that, their problem would be that they wouldn’t have control of how it was used. So they must have had some sort
of arrangement, or they’d imposed a set of conditions. Something odd, anyway.

He’d have to look into this with the reporter.

The story about the minister wasn’t quite as peculiar. It wasn’t impossible for government ministers to be questioned about various crimes. Personally he thought that the radio programme had gone too far when it identified Christer Lundgren as a suspect. As far as he could make out, there was nothing to suggest that. Even so, a paper like the
Evening Post
had to cover the story.

Anders Schyman sighed.

He may as well get used to it.

No one answered. Annika rang and rang, but the old woman was pretending not to be at home. She could hear the dog’s panting breath through the letterbox, and the woman’s heavy steps on the floor.

‘I know you’re in there,’ she called through the letterbox. ‘I just want to ask you some quick questions. Please, just open the door!’

The steps fell silent, but the dog carried on panting. She waited another five minutes.

Stupid woman, Annika thought, and rang on Daniella Hermansson’s door instead. The young woman opened, her child and a baby’s bottle in her arms.

‘Oh, hello! It’s you!’ Daniella Hermansson exclaimed happily. ‘Come in! It’s a bit of a mess, but you know how it is with small children …’

Annika muttered something and stepped into the dark hall. The flat was long and narrow, and had been decorated and polished to within an inch of its life. There was a large mirror and a chest of drawers in front of her, and on top of that a blue glass vase with carved wooden tulips. Annika shuddered as she saw her own reflection. She looked pale in spite of her suntan, her cheeks drawn. She quickly looked away and took off her sandals.

‘What a wonderful summer we’re having, don’t you think?’ Daniella chirruped from the kitchen. ‘Feel free to look round, by the way.’

Annika dutifully looked into the bedroom and sitting room, and said that the flat was lovely, and that the lease must have cost a fortune.

‘It’s awful, this business with Christer Lundgren,’ Daniella said as the coffee machine spluttered between them on the kitchen table. The child was clutching Annika’s leg and dribbling on her skirt, but she tried to ignore him.

‘How do you mean?’ she asked, taking a bite of one of the low-fat biscuits.

‘As if he could be a murderer, it’s crazy. He’s a bit of a skinflint, but he isn’t the violent sort …’

Annika’s eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘You know him?’

Daniella poured weak coffee into some cups from the fifties.

‘Of course I do,’ she said, offended. ‘He’s been putting the brakes on plans to renovate the front of the building for over a year now. Milk and sugar?’

Annika blinked in confusion and gulped the coffee.

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but I don’t quite understand?’

‘It isn’t really his flat; it belongs to some newspaper, a Social Democrat paper up in Luleå. He’s chairman of the board and has been treating the flat like it’s his own for the past year or so. He’s really mean.’

Daniella refilled Annika’s cup.

‘So he lives in this building!’ Annika said.

‘Fourth floor of the western stairwell,’ Daniella said. ‘One and a half rooms, forty square metres. Balcony. A nice little flat. The price of flats here is something like fourteen thousand kronor per square metre these days.’

Annika finished her second cup and leaned back.

‘Bloody hell,’ she said. ‘Fifty metres from the scene of the murder.’

‘More coffee?’ Daniella said.

‘Mean, you say? In what way?’

‘I’m secretary of the residents’ committee,’ she said. ‘Christer’s one of the members. Every time we discuss any improvements or renovations, he always opposes them. He flatly refuses to see the service charges go up. I think it’s pathetic. He hasn’t even bought his flat like the rest of us, he’s just sponging off one of the party’s papers, and the service charge is the only thing he has to pay. Oh, come here, darling …’

Daniella picked up her son. He promptly upset his mother’s coffee cup, and the warm liquid ran across the table and into Annika’s lap. It wasn’t hot enough to burn, just left yet another stain on her skirt.

‘Don’t worry,’ Annika said.

Daniella rushed over with an evil-smelling dishcloth and tried to wipe her skirt, but Annika slipped quickly into the hall and pulled on her sandals.

‘Well, bye for now,’ she said, and went out into the stairwell.

‘I’m really sorry, he didn’t mean to …’

Annika walked down the stairs to the ground floor, then went past the door and across to the other lift. It wasn’t working. She groaned and started walking up the stairs. By the third floor she was shattered and had to stop and catch her breath.

I really ought to start taking vitamin pills, she thought.

She padded up the last flight, breathing deeply and silently through her open mouth, and looked at the eight apartment doors. Hessler. Carlsson. Lethander and Son. HB Lundgren. She stared at the minister’s letterbox. His name was handwritten and taped onto the plastic
of the actual name-plate. She walked slowly over to it, listening intently. She put her finger to the doorbell, then hesitated. Instead, she opened the letterbox. A warm stream of air flowed out at her from inside the flat.

At that moment a phone started to ring inside. Aghast, she let go of the letterbox, which closed without a sound. She put her ear to the door. The ringing had stopped, so someone must have answered. She could make out an indistinct male voice. Her upper lip started to sweat, and she wiped it with the back of her hand. She looked at the letterbox. She really shouldn’t do this.

Mind you, the Social Democrats bugged and burgled flats, she thought. So surely I can eavesdrop a bit …

She bent over and opened the letterbox again. The warm air hit her in the face. She turned her head and put her ear to the gap, into the stream of air.

‘I’ve got to attend another session of questioning,’ she thought she could hear a male voice say through the rush of air.

Silence. She changed position to be able to hear better.

‘I don’t know. It’s not good.’

Another silence. Sweat was running down her cleavage now. When the voice spoke again it was louder, more agitated.

‘What the hell am I supposed to do, then? The girl’s dead, for fuck’s sake!’

Annika sank to her knees to be more comfortable. She thought she could hear him clearing his throat, then footsteps. Then the voice again, quieter now.

‘Yes, yes, I know. I’m not going to say anything. No, I’m not going to confess. What the hell do you take me for?’

The door opposite, Hessler’s, opened. Annika’s heart leaped, and she jumped clumsily to her feet. She put her
finger firmly on the doorbell and glanced at Hessler out of the corner of her eye. He must have been eighty, and he was holding a little white dog on a lead. He glared suspiciously at Annika, and Annika looked up and smiled.

‘Isn’t it hot?’ she said.

The man didn’t answer. He walked over to the lift instead.

‘I’m afraid it’s not working,’ Annika said, and rang again.