Exposed (38 page)

Although it could have been a private matter, Annika suddenly realized. Maybe he wasn’t on duty for the government, or the party. Maybe he had a lover somewhere.

Could it really be that simple?

Then she remembered her grandmother.

Harpsund, she thought. If Christer Lundgren had messed things up in his private life, the Prime Minister would never have let him use his summer residence as a hiding place. It had to be political.

She stretched out on her back, put her hands behind her head and took several deep breaths with her eyes closed. Patricia was busy in the kitchen, she could hear plates clattering.

Structure, she thought. Work out what happened. Take it right from the start. Get rid of any wishful thinking, be logical. Weigh things up. What is it that has actually happened?

A minister resigns from the government following suspicions of involvement in a murder. And not just any murder: a sexual attack in a cemetery. Suppose the man is innocent? What if he was somewhere else entirely the morning the woman was raped and murdered? Suppose he has a watertight alibi?

Then why the hell doesn’t he come clean? His life is in ruins, his political career is finished, he’s a social pariah.

There’s only one explanation, Annika thought. My first instinct was right: the alibi is even worse.

Okay, even worse, but who for? For himself? Unlikely, that could hardly be possible. Which leaves just one option: worse for the party.

So, she had reached one conclusion.

What about the rest of it, then? What could be worse for the party than having a minister suspected of murder in the middle of an election campaign?

She shifted uncomfortably on her bed, lay on her side and looked out into the room. She heard Patricia open the front door and go down the stairs. She was probably heading for the shower.

The idea drifted into her head like a soft breeze.

Only the loss of power could be worse. Christer Lundgren did something that night that would lead to the Social Democrats losing power if it ever came out. It had to be something utterly fundamental, something massive. What sort of thing could bring a government down?

Annika sat bolt upright on the bed. She could remember the words, replaying them in her head. She hurried into the living room and sat down on the sofa with the phone on her lap. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths.

Anne Snapphane was still talking to her, even though she’d lost her job. Maybe Berit Hamrin would still regard her as a colleague as well, even though they were no longer working together. If she didn’t try, she’d never know.

With a sense of determination she dialled the
Evening Post
’s reception desk. When she asked to speak to Berit
she tried to make her voice sound lighter than usual, in the hope that the receptionist wouldn’t recognize her.

‘Annika, great to hear from you!’ Berit said merrily. ‘How are things with you, then?’

Annika’s pulse began to calm down.

‘Fine, thanks. I spent a couple of weeks in Turkey, it was really fascinating.’

‘Were you doing something about the Kurds?’

Berit assumed she was still a journalist.

‘No, just holiday. Listen, there’s something I’ve been wondering about the Information Bureau, the whole IB thing. Have you got time to meet for a chat?’

If Berit was surprised, she didn’t show it.

‘Of course, when?’

‘Are you busy this evening?’

They agreed to meet at the grotty pizza parlour in half an hour.

Patricia came back in, in her tracksuit and with a towel wrapped round her hair.

‘I’m heading out for a while,’ Annika said, standing up.

‘I forgot to give you a message,’ Patricia said. ‘Sven said that he’ll be staying for a couple of days.’

Annika went over to the coat-rack.

‘Are you working tonight?’ she said as she pulled on her coat.

‘Yes, why?’

The rain was tipping down, making the restaurant’s filthy windows glisten in the darkness. Berit was already there. Annika’s umbrella had blown inside out, and she stumbled through the door, soaked to the skin.

‘Good to see you,’ Berit said with a smile. ‘You’re looking well.’

Annika laughed and shrugged off her wet coat.

‘Leaving the
Evening Post
has done wonders for my health. How are things up there?’

Berit sighed. ‘Pretty messy. Anders Schyman’s trying to sort things out, but the rest of the management team are presenting serious opposition.’

Annika shook her wet hair and pushed it back.

‘In what way?’

‘Schyman wants to establish new routines, have regular progress meetings and seminars about the direction of the paper.’

Annika opened her eyes wide.

‘That would explain it,’ she said. ‘Let me guess: the others are saying that he’s trying to turn the
Evening Post
into a new version of Swedish Television?’

Berit nodded and smiled. ‘Exactly. You picked up quite a bit about how that paper works during your few weeks there, didn’t you?’

A waiter came to take their order: coffee and a bottle of water. He walked away sullenly, annoyed the order was so small.

‘So how badly is the election campaign going for the Social Democrats?’ Annika wondered.

‘Appallingly,’ Berit said. ‘They’ve dropped from fifty-four per cent in the polls back in the spring to less than thirty-five per cent now.’

‘Is that because of the IB affair or the business with the sex club?’

‘Probably a combination of both,’ Berit said.

Their drinks arrived with an unnecessary amount of clattering.

‘Do you remember our talk about the IB archives?’ Annika said once the waiter had gone. ‘Of course,’ Berit said. ‘Why?’

‘You said you thought the original archives still existed somewhere. What makes you so sure?’ Annika said, taking a sip of her water.

Berit thought for a moment before replying.

‘Several reasons,’ she said finally. ‘There were registers of political affiliations before and during the war, but they were made illegal after the war ended. Long after that the Defence Minister, Sven Andersson, said that the register from the war years had “disappeared”. In actual fact, it was in the Ministry of Defence archive the whole time, filed as a security document. It was finally made public a few years ago.’

‘So the Social Democrats have lied about archives disappearing before,’ Annika said.

‘Exactly. And a year or so later Sven Andersson said that the IB archives were destroyed as long ago as 1969. The latest suggestion is that they were burned shortly before the story broke in 1973. But the destruction of the archives was itself never documented – not
the domestic list, and not the foreign files.’

‘You mean they used to keep records of when things were destroyed?’ Annika said.

Berit sipped her coffee and pulled a face.

‘Ugh, this has been stewing for a while. Yes, the Information Bureau was a typical piece of Swedish bureaucracy. There are masses of IB papers stored in the security archives of the Ministry of Defence. Everything was documented, including reports of when records were destroyed. And there’s nothing like that relating to the archives of political affiliations, which suggests that they still exist somewhere.’

‘Anything else?’ Annika said.

Berit thought for a moment.

‘They’ve always claimed that the domestic and foreign archives were destroyed at the same time, and that there are no copies. But now we know that’s a lie.’

Annika looked hard at Berit.

‘How did you persuade the speaker of parliament to admit his involvement with IB in the paper?’

Berit rubbed her forehead and sighed. ‘I had a good argument,’ she said.

‘Can you tell me?’

Berit sat in silence for a while, stirring two sugar-lumps into her coffee.

‘The speaker always maintained that he never knew Birger Elmér,’ she said quietly. ‘He claimed they had never even met. But I know that’s wrong.’

She fell silent. Annika waited.

‘In the spring of 1966,’ Berit finally continued, ‘the speaker, Ingvar Carlsson and Birger Elmér, all met in the speaker’s flat out in Nacka. The speaker’s wife was there as well. They had dinner together. Conversation turned to the fact that the speaker and his wife had no children. Birger Elmér suggested that they consider
adopting, which they later went on to do. I repeated this to the speaker, and that’s when he decided to talk …’

Annika was staring at Berit.

‘How the hell could you know that?’

Berit looked at her tiredly.

‘I can’t tell you, you know that,’ she said.

Annika leaned back in her chair. It was mind-blowing. Bloody hell! Berit must have a source right at the very top of the party.

They sat without talking for several minutes, listening to the rain outside.

‘Where were the archives kept before they disappeared?’ Annika eventually said.

Berit sighed. ‘The domestic archive was kept at twenty-four Grevgatan, and the foreign archive at fifty-six Valhallavägen. Why do you ask?’

Annika had pulled out her notebook and was writing down the addresses.

‘Maybe it wasn’t the Social Democrats themselves who made the archives vanish,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’ Berit said.

Annika didn’t reply, and Berit folded her arms.

‘Hardly anyone knew that the archives even existed, much less where they were kept.’

Annika leaned forward.

‘The copy of the foreign archive was found in the post room at the Ministry of Defence, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Berit said. ‘The parcel arrived at the ministry’s print and distribution centre, where it was registered, logged and classified. It wasn’t deemed confidential.’

‘What date did it arrive?’

‘The seventeenth of July.’

‘Where did it come from?’ Annika wondered.

‘The log doesn’t reveal that,’ Berit said. ‘The sender
was anonymous. It could have come from any dusty old government office.’

‘But why would a government office want to stay anonymous like that?’ Annika said, surprised.

Berit shrugged. ‘Maybe they found the documents at the back of a cupboard and didn’t want to admit to sitting on them all these years.’

Annika groaned. Another dead end.

They sat in silence for a while, looking at the other customers. At the back of the room a group of men in overalls were eating. A couple of noisy women were drinking beer.

‘So where were the documents when you read them?’ Annika wondered.

‘They’d only just arrived at the ministry,’ Berit said.

Annika smiled. ‘You’ve got friends all over the place,’ she said.

Berit smiled back. ‘It’s very important to be nice to receptionists, secretaries, registrars and archivists.’ Annika emptied her glass.

‘And there was no indication of where the documents might have come from?’

‘No. They arrived in two big bags, sacks almost.’

Annika raised her eyebrows. ‘Sacks? What, like potato sacks?’

Berit sighed. ‘I didn’t really think about what they were in, I was concentrating on what was in the documents themselves. It was one of the best tip-offs I’d had in my entire career.’

Annika smiled. ‘I can understand that. What did the bags look like?’

Berit looked at her for a few seconds.

‘Now that you mention it,’ she said, ‘they had some sort of printed text on them.’

‘You didn’t see what it said?’ Annika asked.

Berit shut her eyes and rubbed them, stroked her forehead and ran her tongue over her lips.

‘What is it?’ Annika said.

‘It might have been a diplomatic bag,’ she said. Annika didn’t follow. ‘What the hell’s a diplomatic bag?’

‘In the Vienna Convention there’s a paragraph about inviolable communications between a state and its diplomats abroad, I think it’s article twenty-seven. That means that diplomatic mail is sent in special diplomatic bags that are immune from any sort of interference. Government couriers usually take the bags through customs. It could have been that sort of bag.’

Annika felt her hair stand on end.

‘How would any of those end up at the Ministry of Defence like that, though?’

Berit shook her head. ‘A Swedish diplomatic bag should never end up there. They’re supposed to go between the Foreign Ministry and our missions abroad, and nowhere else.’

‘But these were foreign bags?’

Berit shook her head. ‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘I must be getting confused. Swedish diplomatic bags are blue with yellow text – the word “diplomatic”. This one was grey with red lettering. I didn’t really think about what it said, because I was really only interested in getting an idea of how comprehensive the archive was, and whether it contained any of the original documents or appendices. Which it didn’t, of course …’

They sat without talking for a while, and Annika looked at her former colleague.

‘How do you know all this? Articles and conventions …’

Berit smiled at her. ‘Over the years you get to write about most things. Some of it sticks.’

Annika looked out through the window.

‘So this could have been a diplomatic bag from another country?’

‘Or a potato sack,’ Berit said.

‘Do you see what this points to?’ Annika said.

‘What?’ Berit said, curiously.

‘I’ll tell you when I know for sure,’ Annika said. ‘Thanks for coming!’

She gave Berit a quick hug, opened her umbrella and rushed out into the pouring rain.