Last Will (35 page)

“If we can keep the focus on the flight itself rather than on who was exercising official authority we should be okay,” Bertstrand said. “Most editors are typical blokes, and airplanes are much sexier than legal paragraphs, aren’t they?”

The head of the Security Police groaned loudly, then went and sat at his desk.

“We have to handle this in the right way from now on,” Bertstrand said. “It’s important that we say the right things, and that other things are, ideally, not said at all.”

He smiled thinly.

“How did you say your lad was doing, Anton? Nine months old, you said? Have you ever thought about spending a bit more time with him?”

Anton merely nodded. He was unable to speak anymore.

The sun was already warm. It was going to be a really lovely day, the first real summer’s day.

Annika was taking a slow stroll around the garden while the children were putting their shoes on.

The new flower bed by the gap in the hedge wasn’t, if she was honest, a thing of great beauty. The plants looked tired and untidy, leaning limply against each other, and there weren’t enough of them. But with a bit of luck they’d fill out over the summer and look healthier.

Her mother-in-law had wrinkled her nose and wondered if Annika couldn’t have helped the children plant the bed.

“I planted it,” Annika had replied. “Don’t you like it?”

And Doris Samuelsson had changed the subject.

Kalle was coming toward her, dragging his heels. He took her hand and burrowed his face into her jeans.

“I want to stay at home today, Mommy,” he said.

“Why’s that, then?” she said, crouching down beside him. “Aren’t you feeling well, or are you just a bit tired?”

“I want to stay at home,” he repeated.

“But I’ve got to start going to work again,” Annika said, stroking his back. “In a few weeks’ time Daddy will be on vacation, and then you can be at home, and go swimming with Daddy for almost the whole summer, and that’ll be good, won’t it?”

The boy nodded. She took his hand and led him over to the SUV.

Ellen had climbed up into the backseat by herself. Annika helped her with her seat belt, and they set off.

When they arrived at the nursery school the little girl ran off with Poppy and Ludde under her arms, chatting to the staff, but Kalle hung back by the car.

“What’s the matter, Kalle?” Annika asked. “Why don’t you want to go in?”

“Come over here,” said Lotta, the member of staff who was making sure he settled in. “You’re so early today that you’ve got time to go on the computer before breakfast—if you’d like to?”

The boy nodded, took Lotta’s hand and disappeared into the building.

Help him, Annika thought, help him where I can’t. Please, someone, look after my children when I’m not able to.

And she got in the car and drove home, for the last day of her leave.

She cleared the breakfast things away. She wrote a shopping list of things she needed for dinner that evening. She made coffee. Drank it.

She sat at the kitchen window looking out and feeling the pressure in her chest grow.

Then she put her mug in the sink and went up to her computer again.

Yesterday she had tried sitting and writing out on the terrace, but the brand-new battery was broken, so she was stuck with the cable and plug inside the house.

The office was small and already full up. Thomas’s papers and books and reports lay all over the place, and she wondered if his office in the Department was this much of a mess. She quickly gathered together the documents on the desk into a pile, moved Thomas’s computer to one side, and put hers in the middle of the desk.

She went onto the Internet and checked the
Evening Post
’s home page, but there were so many flashing headlines and animated elements that she was obliged to freeze the page before she could read it.

Sunday had been relatively uneventful. Rumor had it that Princess Madeleine had decided to learn to sail; there’d been some sort of sexually motivated attack on Darin, a big pop star; and an eighteen-year-old in Borlänge had been shot in the leg by the police. And Zlatan had scored a goal.

Nothing about Caroline von Behring.

Nothing about the Nobel killings.

It was as if nothing had happened. People had already started to say,
Oh yes, the Nobel banquet, didn’t someone die there? Someone who fell over the railings into the water, or something?

She almost couldn’t remember it properly herself anymore. After just six months her memory was getting hazy. The music was almost silent now, the food had lost its insipid taste.

Only Caroline remained, the look in her eyes when she realized, her silent plea.

Like so many times before, Annika logged into her external email address, [email protected], and pulled her text about the Nobel banquet out of her electronic archive.

It was very fortunate that she’d written everything down immediately. It was a relief that her thoughts were all there, that her reactions were recorded unclouded. About the lights, the glasses, the dancing, and Bosse, of course. And getting pushed, the bruise on her foot, the shoulder strap, Caroline, the blood, those yellow eyes.

Those yellow eyes …

She closed her eyes and looked into them, now only remembering the memory of them.

How quickly things fade.

She closed the article and checked her regular email, the one connected to the paper that she accessed through Outlook Express.

She had gotten three new messages.

Party at the nursery school—bring cakes, we’ll provide coffee and juice!

She stared at the email for a long minute.

The nursery school in question was the one on Kungsholmen, and the email had reached her by mistake, a mass email sent to a mailing list that they hadn’t taken her name off.

They didn’t belong there anymore.

She clicked to open the second one:
New battery
.

She could pick up a replacement battery from Spike in the newsroom any time after eleven. Great.

Her hand stopped, hovering over the keyboard as she read the title of the third.

You’re lying, and you’re going to be punished!

The sender’s name made her lean closer:
Nobel Lives
.

What the hell?

She clicked to open the email.

You’re one of the hypocrites
, she read.
You’ve set yourself up as a champion of the truth, but all you bring are lies and darkness
.

What the … ?

She scrolled down and read on.

I know the truth about the Nobel Assembly
, the mail continued.
The high priest of hypocrisy, the Machiavelli of the Nobel Committee, the man who has turned dissembling into an art and despotism into a virtue, he thought he’d silenced me when he banished me, but that would take a far more serious offense, just ask Nemesis, ask Caroline von Behring! And ask Birgitta Larsén!

Aha, she thought, and went back up to the signature
Nobel Lives
. She highlighted the name, clicked to bring up
properties
, and found the real address behind the signature: [email protected].

She let out a deep breath—she might have known!

But what did he mean—who was he referring to? Ernst Ericsson, Caroline’s successor as chair of the Committee?

Everyone knows but no one’s saying anything; they’re all joining in this filthy game. The most powerful man has been bought, lock, stock, and barrel, by the pharmaceutical industry, and is resting safely in the monster’s maw. He drinks too much and lets through unreliable results—and now his MS treatment is being tested on people, but what happened during the tests on animals? Why were they buried in secret? We must all take our responsibility. Whose life is more important? The powerful man’s, or the sick man’s?

Annika’s unease grew the more she read.

Your friend is an opportunist who maneuvered her partners out of the way. I know what happened, only money counts, only Mammon matters. Now she has bought herself a position in the world again, a place at the table of the hungry, in the room where Sæhrimnir the hog is slaughtered day after day without any thought of the consequences
…

The last section was addressed directly to her.

You have a responsibility to the world, the responsibility you took upon yourself to safeguard the truth, but you are betraying it.

This will not go unpunished.

WILL NOT GO UNPUNISHED!

The email wasn’t signed.

She sat and stared at the screen until her eyes burned.

It was nothing unusual for nuts to contact you when you had your name under articles in one of the evening papers. Up in the newsroom she had a shoebox full of peculiar and threatening letters, faxes, and printouts of emails.

This was something else, something more.

The unhinged, ostracized professor really did want something with her.

He hadn’t signed the email, but had sent it from his usual address at the Karolinska Institute. So clearly he wasn’t bothered about concealing his identity. In that respect he was just like the member of staff at the Social Democrats’ party headquarters on Sveavägen who conducted a smear campaign against the leader of the Moderate Party. He could easily have set up a Hotmail address and called himself something like
single mom Alice
.

The fact that his signature was
Nobel Lives
was a bit odd, but she knew someone who worked for
Sydsvenskan
in Malmö who popped up as
Sherlock
when his name was Anders, so maybe it wasn’t that unusual.

She rubbed her forehead. This was quite straightforward, really.

Either Lars-Henry Svensson was a paranoid obsessive, or there was something in what he was saying.

She looked at the time; it was already quarter to nine. She reached for the phone on the desk, dialed reception at the Karolinska Institute, and asked to be put through.

Professor Birgitta Larsén picked up after the first ring. Annika said her name, but the professor cut her off abruptly.

“So what’s Caroline been telling you this time, then?”

“I’ve got a different source today,” Annika said. “I’ve received an anonymous email from the Karolinska Institute, and I think I know who wrote it.”

Birgitta Larsén sighed loudly.

“I see,” she said, “so Lars-Henry is writing to you as well, is he? What’s he threatening you with?”

“I’m betraying the truth,” Annika said, “and this won’t go unpunished. And I’m supposed to ask you about crimes that silence people.”

There was the sound of a chair scraping the floor, as if Birgitta Larsén were sitting down.

“There’s something fundamentally wrong with Lars-Henry,” she said. “One of the girls in our network is a university lecturer in medical psychiatry, she’d probably have a fancy name for it. Personally I just think he’s mad. Don’t worry about him.”

“Does he always carry on like this?”

“He has his moments, but this time he’s gone way over the limit. Do you feel threatened?”

Annika thought for a moment.

“Not exactly,” she said, “but it has made me think. Why is he sending this now, and why to me? Has anything happened?”

For once Birgitta Larsén was silent.

“You’ve spoken to Ebba since the seminar?” she said finally.

The seminar?

“Ebba’s in Dalarna,” Annika said. “I haven’t spoken to her for a couple of days.”

The seminar? On Saturday? After the Nobel Assembly held its first meeting about this year’s prize, with drinks and nibbles afterwards?

“What happened after the seminar?” Annika asked. “And why am I being dragged into it?”

“There was a bit of a fuss,” Birgitta said. “What else does he say in the email?”

Annika hesitated.

“He makes accusations against various people,” she said.

Birgitta Larsén groaned.

“And now you’re wondering if there’s any fire behind all the smoke,” she said. “Well, I think you should bring a printout of that email up here so we can take a look at these accusations. I’ve got a meeting at ten, so you’ll have to be quick.”

“I’ll set off at once,” Annika said.

“It really is time for us to sort this madman out once and for all,” Professor Larsén said as she hung up.

Annika sat with the phone in her hand for a few seconds.

She had evidently struck a sore point for Birgitta Larsén.

She wanted to see what Lars-Henry Svensson was saying, wanted to know what he knew.

Annika switched on the printer and printed off a hard copy of the email.

Birgitta Larsén’s department was much brighter and airier than Ebba’s. There were rows of double windows, all the doors were of glass, and the ceiling was noticeably higher. The walls were yellow, white, and blue, and the floor a warm red.

“These were Astra’s old premises, before they merged to form Astra-Zeneca,” Birgitta said, striding down the corridor. “Say what you like about the private sector, but they know how to build decent workplaces. I say a little prayer of thanks to Håkan Mogren every morning, that they decided to move the whole business down to Södertälje. This is my office.”

She unlocked the door as Annika looked in through the glass wall.

Desk, computer, a small microscope, test tubes, and pictures of children of various ages.

“You have children?” Annika asked, hearing the surprise in her own voice.

“And grandchildren,” Birgitta said, stopping in front of the photograph collection. She sighed happily.

“I can’t believe they’re all mine!”

With a swift gesture she pulled out two office chairs and indicated that Annika should sit down on one of them.

“Don’t worry about the radiation warnings,” the professor said, pointing at the yellow tape with red symbols that ran around the edge of the floor. “They’ve assured me that it’s all been sorted out now. If they’re lying, soon I won’t have to switch the lights on when I enter a dark room. Have you brought the email?”

Annika handed over the printout. Birgitta Larsén held it out in front of her and read, her eyebrows rising as she did so.