Exposed (44 page)

Lie, she thought, but keep it as close to the truth as possible.

‘I needed to make some money fast,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘I got fired from my last job – they thought I was a troublemaker. A … a customer complained about me and the boss got jittery.’

Joachim laughed, stroked her shoulder and let his hand linger on her breast.

‘What sort of work was it?’

She swallowed, fighting an urge to pull away from him.

‘Supermarket,’ she said. ‘The meat counter at Vivo on Fridhemsplan. Slicing sausage all day long. Not exactly fun, day after day.’

He laughed loudly, and removed his hand.

‘I’m not surprised you got out,’ he said. ‘Who did you work with?’

Her heart stopped. Did he know someone there?

‘Sorry?’ she said with a smile. ‘You’ve got friends in the sausage world?’

He burst out laughing. ‘You really should consider going on stage,’ he said when he’d calmed down, taking another step closer. ‘You’d look great under the spotlights. Haven’t you ever dreamed of being a star?’

He thrust both hands into her hair, caressing her neck. To her horror, it made her crotch tingle.

‘What, a star like Josefin?’

The question slipped out of her mouth before she had time to think. He reacted as though she’d slapped him, letting go of her and stepping back.

‘What the fuck? What do you know about her?’

Fuck, how stupid could she possibly be? she thought, cursing her big mouth.

‘She worked here, didn’t she?’ she said, unable to suppress a shiver.

‘Did you know her, or what?’

Annika smiled nervously. ‘No, not at all, I never met her. But Patricia told me she worked here …’

He stepped closer again and put his face right up to hers.

‘Things didn’t turn out well for Josefin,’ he said tightly. ‘We have a lot of powerful clients, you see. She thought she could trick them out of their money. Watch out for that. Never try to trick anyone here, not the clients, and not me.’

Joachim turned on his heel and went up the spiral staircase.

Annika grabbed the roulette wheel, ready to faint.

It felt odd to be going up in the lift again. She remembered the last time she had been in there, when she had been convinced it was the last time ever.

Nothing lasts for ever, she thought. Everything is cyclical.

The newsroom was light, quiet and completely empty, just the way she liked it. Ingvar Johansson had his back to the door and was talking on the phone. He didn’t see her.

Anders Schyman was sitting behind his desk in the aquarium.

‘Come in,’ he said, gesturing towards the dark red leather sofa that had replaced its stinking predecessor. Annika shut the door behind her, glancing out at the newsroom behind the tired curtains. It felt odd that it all looked just the same as when she left, almost as if she’d never been there.

‘You look well,’ he said.

Rubbish, Annika thought.

‘I can’t imagine I was ever this tired before,’ she said, sitting down on the sofa. The seat was firm, the leather cold.

‘How was the Caucasus?’ he wondered.

She didn’t follow, and bit her lip.

‘Isn’t that where you were going?’ Schyman said.

‘There were no last-minute deals,’ Annika said. ‘I went to Turkey instead.’

The head editor smiled. ‘That was lucky,’ he said. ‘They’re heading for war down there. The army’s mobilizing, apparently.’

Annika nodded. ‘The government forces have got hold of some weapons at last.’

The sat in silence for a few moments.

‘So what is it that you’re working on?’ Schyman asked.

Annika took a deep breath.

‘I haven’t written it yet,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got a computer at home. I thought I’d tell you about it instead and you can see what you think.’

‘Go ahead,’ the head editor said.

Annika pulled the photocopies out of her bag.

‘It’s about the murder of Josefin Liljeberg and the minister suspected of killing her,’ she said.

Anders Schyman waited without saying anything.

‘The minister didn’t kill her,’ she said. ‘The police regard the case as finished. It was her boyfriend, Joachim, the owner of the sex club. They can’t arrest him, because he’s got six witnesses to confirm his alibi. They can’t all be convicted of perjury, but the police are sure they’re lying.’

Annika fell silent and looked at her papers.

‘So no one will ever be charged with her murder?’ Schyman said slowly.

‘Nope,’ Annika said. ‘It’ll remain unsolved unless one of the six men talks. It’ll be beyond the statute of limitations in twenty-five years.’

She stood up and laid two receipts on Schyman’s desk.

‘Look at these,’ she said. ‘This one’s the bill from
Studio Six, from the night of twenty-seventh to the twenty-eighth of July this year. Seven people enjoyed “entertainment and refreshments” worth fifty-five thousand, six hundred kronor. It’s under Josefin’s name, you can see that from this code, and it was paid for with a Diners Club card issued to Christer Lundgren. Look at the signature.’

Anders Schyman picked up the photocopy and studied it.

‘It’s illegible,’ he said.

‘Yep,’ Annika said. ‘Now look at this one.’

She handed him the expenses claim from Tallinn.

‘Christer Lundgren,’ Schyman read, then looked up at Annika’s face. ‘These were written by different people.’

Annika nodded and moistened her lips. Her mouth was completely dry and she wished she had a glass of water.

‘The Minister for Foreign Trade was never at the sex club,’ she said. ‘I think the Studio Six bill was signed for by his undersecretary in the department.’

Anders Schyman picked up the first receipt again and held it close to his glasses.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That would make sense.’

‘Christer Lundgren was in Tallinn that night,’ Annika said. ‘He flew out with Estonian Air at eight o’clock on the evening of July twenty-seventh; you can see that from the expenses claim. He met someone there, and flew back on a private plane in the early hours of the next morning.’

The head editor looked at the other photocopy.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘What was he doing there?’

Annika breathed in.

‘The meeting was top secret,’ she said. ‘It was to do with weapons exports. He didn’t want to make the expenses claim through his own department where
it might be found. He sent it to the Inspectorate for Strategic Products.’

Anders Schyman looked up at her. ‘The body that monitors Swedish weapons exports?’

Annika nodded.

‘Are you sure?’

She pointed at the verification stamp without speaking.

‘Good grief,’ the head editor said. ‘Why?’

‘I can only think of one explanation,’ Annika said. ‘There was something dodgy about this deal.’

Anders Schyman frowned. ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘Why would the government get involved with anything like a dodgy weapons deal?’

Annika straightened her back and gulped.

‘I don’t think they had any choice,’ she said quietly.

Schyman leaned back in his chair.

‘This is starting to get a bit tenuous,’ he said.

‘I know,’ Annika said stubbornly, ‘but the facts remain: Christer Lundgren went to Tallinn that night to do something so controversial that he’d rather be suspected of murder and have to resign than tell anyone what he was really doing. That much is absolute fact. And what could possibly be worse than that?’

She had stood up and was gesticulating wildly now. Anders Schyman was looking at her thoughtfully.

‘I assume you have a theory,’ he said.

‘IB,’ she said. ‘The lost archives of the Information Bureau – the originals that would ruin the Social Democrats for the foreseeable future if they ever came out.’

Schyman leaned over his desk.

‘They were destroyed.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Annika said. ‘A copy of the foreign archive arrived at the Defence Ministry on July seventeenth this year. It was a warning to the government:
do as we say, or the rest will come out. In their original form.’

‘But,’ Schyman said, ‘how on earth could that have happened?’

Annika sat on the corner of the desk and sighed.

‘The Social Democrats were spying on Communists for the whole of the post-war period, storing whatever information they could find about them. Do you suppose the lads over there just sat and twiddled their thumbs while that was going on?’

She pointed over her shoulder, towards the Russian Embassy complex.

‘Hardly,’ she continued. ‘They were perfectly aware of what the Swedes were up to.’

She stood up and dug her notebook out of her bag.

‘In the spring of 1973 Elmér and his cronies knew that Guillou and Bratt were on their trail,’ she said. ‘The Social Democrats started to panic. And the Russians would have been aware of that. They realized the Swedes would try to remove any trace of their spying. So what did they do?’

She held out the text she had copied from the newspaper articles published on 2 April 1973.

‘The Russians stole the archives,’ she said. ‘The senior KGB officer posted to the embassy in Stockholm made sure everything was taken out of the country, probably in large diplomatic bags.’

Schyman took her notepad and read in silence.

‘And who was the senior KGB officer in Stockholm in the early 1970s? Well, he just happens to be the man who is currently President of that benighted country in the Caucasus. He even speaks Swedish. And that President has a massive problem: he has no weapons to fight the guerrillas with, and the global community has decreed that he isn’t allowed to buy any.’

The head editor was staring at the photocopies again.

Annika sat down on the sofa and presented her conclusion: ‘So what does the President do? He digs out his old files from twenty-four Grevgatan and fifty-six Valhallavägen. If the Swedish government won’t supply him with arms, he’ll make sure they’re out of power for decades. First the government refuses to listen. Maybe they think he hasn’t actually got the archives, which is why that warning was sent to the Ministry of Defence. A selection of papers from the foreign section of the archive, not enough to bring down the government, but enough to be a problem in the middle of an election campaign. So the Prime Minister decides to send one of his ministers to meet representatives of the President. They meet halfway, in Estonia. The deal is agreed, and the weapons are shipped at once via a third country, probably Singapore. And the army mobilizes.’

Annika rubbed her forehead.

‘It all goes according to plan,’ she said. ‘There’s just one problem. The same night that the meeting in Tallinn takes place, a young woman is killed outside the minister’s front door. Through a bizarre set of circumstances it turns out that the minister’s undersecretary took a group of German union bosses to the sex club where the woman worked, and paid the bill with the minister’s card. The minister is in the shit. And he can’t do anything. He can’t tell anyone where he’s been, or what he’s done …’

The ensuing silence was deafening. Annika could see Anders Schyman’s brain whirring at high speed. He was looking between the photocopies and the notebook, making his own notes, running a hand through his hair.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘This is incredible … So what does he have to say?’

Annika swallowed in a desperate attempt to moisten her throat. It didn’t really work.

‘I’ve only spoken to his wife, Anna-Lena. Christer Lundgren refuses to come to the phone. Then I tried to go through his press secretary, Karina Björnlund. I laid out the whole scenario for her, exactly as I thought it had unfolded. She said she’d try to get a comment from him, but she never called back …’

They sat in silence again, until the head editor cleared his throat.

‘How many people have you told about this?’ he asked.

‘No one,’ Annika said quickly. ‘Only you.’

‘And Karina Björnlund. Anyone else?’

Annika shut her eyes and thought.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Just you and Karina Björnlund.’

She felt her muscles tense. Here came the counterargument.

‘This is absolutely fascinating,’ Anders Schyman said. ‘But it isn’t publishable.’

‘Why not?’ Annika snapped.

‘Too many loose threads,’ Schyman said. ‘Your reasoning is logical, even highly credible, but it can’t be proved.’

‘But I’ve got copies of the receipts!’ Annika said.

‘Yes, you have, but that isn’t enough. You know that.’

Annika didn’t reply.

‘The fact that the minister was in Tallinn is new, but it doesn’t give him an alibi for the murder. He was home by five, when the girl was killed. Remember, the neighbour who met him at the door?’

Annika nodded. Schyman went on: ‘Christer Lundgren has resigned, and you don’t kick—’

‘You don’t kick a man when he’s down, I know,’
Annika said. ‘But we can publish the facts: the break-ins at the addresses where the archives were kept, the travel expenses, the receipt from the sex club …’

The head editor sighed. ‘To what purpose? To prove that the government is smuggling arms? Imagine the implications for freedom of the press that would inevitably follow something like that.’

Annika was staring at the floor.

‘This story is dead, Annika,’ Anders Schyman said.