Lifetime (8 page)

Upstairs Gunnar Antonsson paced slowly back and forth. In the room on the right, Bambi Rosenberg never stopped crying. The sound rose and fell, and Anne Snapphane turned over to shut the noise out. In the room on her left she could hear the radio muffling Mariana’s murmured words. Anne understood what was going on – Mariana had turned on the clock radio to drown out the sound of cellphone calls. Pretty transparent.

She kicked off the sweaty covers, pushing them to the foot of the bed, then burrowed her feet into the damp mass while she stared at the ceiling. Restlessness churned inside her. This waiting was sheer torture.

Anne closed her eyes and breathed shallowly, listening to the chirpy backdrop of sound on the other side of the thin wall: two radio-show hosts were squabbling good-naturedly. The music in the background faded and was replaced by jingles followed by the news.

The flat tones of the woman in the news studio signalled how nervous she was about filling in on a holiday when most people had the day off. Anne heard about a terrorist attack on a bus in central Jerusalem without really listening and the spot gave way to a statement that the government was expected to finalize this autumn. The next item was Michelle’s death. Anne Snapphane concentrated on this, but the announcement was so short, matter-of-fact and without speculation that it almost seemed indifferent. Michelle Carlsson, the journalist, had been found dead in a control room after participating in a TV programme. The police suspected foul play. Investigations had not yet been concluded, and the police spokesman had declined to make further comments at this time.

The newswoman paused for a split second before moving on to the story of two men who had been reported missing after their boat was found drifting keel up on Lake Vänern. Then came a report of a flood in Poland, and a weather forecast. The cold front would continue to move south and would be followed by new low-pressure zones coming in from the Atlantic. The province of Svealand could expect a steady downpour of rain and some local thunderstorms during the day. These would clear up, beginning in the northernmost regions, this evening.

Suddenly, Mariana turned down the volume, and the weather conditions of Norrland disappeared somewhere halfway into the wall.

Anne Snapphane felt the wallpaper close in on her, as though it was pressing up against her lungs. She struggled to get up, walked around the bed to reach the window and looked out over the bridge and the small canal. The room needed airing, so she opened the window, gasping when the wind and the rain threatened to tear the window frame out of her hand. Alarmed, she shut it again, latching it with trembling fingers. She rested for a minute or so, sitting on the desk with her back to the rain. Then she went over to the door, sure that it would be locked.

It wasn’t. Opening it a crack, she heard the murmur of voices in the lounge. The hall was dark and empty, muffled sounds coming from all different directions. The light from her window fell on the door on the opposite side of the hallway, Karin Bellhorn’s room.

It was a split-second decision. Without making a sound, Anne closed her door, tiptoed a couple of steps in the darkness over to Karin’s door and opened it.

The producer was seated at the desk in her room, and she looked up in surprise, her eyes swollen and lips cracked, as Anne Snapphane entered the room and closed the door behind her.

‘What on––?’

She got halfway out of her chair. Anne put her finger to her lips.

‘I’ve got to talk,’ she whispered, ‘or I’ll go nuts.’

‘We’re not allowed to talk,’ Karin whispered back to her. ‘Go back to your room.’

Anne Snapphane’s lower lip began to tremble and so did her hands and arms.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘I can’t take it any more.’

The producer came up to her, studied her briefly, then took her hands.

‘You poor thing,’ she said softly. ‘Sit down for a while.’

Anne sunk down on the bed, buried her face in her hands and cried. The tears felt softer now, not as sharp and piercing as in her lonely room.

‘Shit,’ Anne sobbed. ‘This is so fucking awful! How could it happen?’

Karin Bellhorn sighed, a deep and ragged sound that bordered on a sob.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t make sense of it.’

‘Did you see her?’

Anne looked up at the producer. Karin smoothed her grey hair and averted her gaze.

‘I saw enough.’

‘She was still warm, but it was hot inside the bus. Did you see the gun?’

The older woman swallowed and nodded.

‘Nothing this awful has ever happened to me before,’ Anne Snapphane continued, the words tumbling like the waters of a brook in springtime. ‘I’ve never even seen a dead person before, and there she was, somebody I’ve worked with for nearly four years. A person who had been alive a few hours earlier . . . murdered. Shot! Did you see the grey stuff? Did you see the mess on the wall and on the monitors? That was her brain. Christ, that was her fucking brain coating the TV screens. It’s disgusting – her memories, her childhood, her feelings, everything she was – all that was left was a sticky, yucky, blown-away mess . . .’

Anne bowed her head and cried some more, louder this time, the sobs almost like screams. Karin placed a warm, dry hand on the back of her neck.

‘Anne,’ she whispered urgently. ‘Please, Anne, you aren’t supposed to be here, the police would flip if they found you here, please pull yourself together.’

With tears streaming down her cheeks, nose and chin, Anne Snapphane took a few deep breaths.

‘Shit,’ she whispered, ‘Karin, it’s so fucking awful . . .’

‘I know,’ the producer said and put her arms around her. ‘I know . . .’

They remained like that for quite some time, the older woman holding the younger one.

‘I’m so ashamed,’ Anne whispered as soon as she had calmed down. Karin released her. ‘I was always so nasty to Michelle.’

‘No, that’s not true,’ Karin said. ‘You weren’t nasty.’

‘Yes, I was,’ Anne Snapphane said, wiping her nose with her sleeve. ‘I couldn’t stand her, all because she was prettier than me, and better.’

‘That’s not true,’ the producer protested. ‘You were always a much better journalist than Michelle was.’

‘I mean better on TV,’ Anne said. ‘She had more screen presence than I ever had. You do know that both of us were up for the
The Women’s Sofa
gig, don’t you? She got it. And I never forgave her for that.’

‘So she got rich and famous at your expense?’

Anne hesitated and then nodded.

‘Something like that.’

Karin Bellhorn smiled wryly.

‘Well, see how much good it did her.’

Anne looked up at her with a shocked expression on her face. She met the producer’s gaze and began to giggle hysterically.

‘I certainly prefer being me today,’ she said.

The two women sat in silence on the bed. Anne Snapphane felt a melancholy calm start to radiate throughout her chest.

‘That was some night,’ she said after a while.

Karin Bellhorn sighed.

‘Not to mention the taping session; I’ve never seen such chaos and I’ve been around the track a few times. Those anarchists were just too much – who dug them up?’

‘Mariana, I think. And did you hear her talking to Bambi Rosenberg about nude pictures at two a.m. in the lounge? What a racket they made!’

‘Then Highlander showed up and had a fight with Michelle.’

‘The boss himself? What did they fight about?’ Anne Snapphane asked.

‘He fired her.’

‘You’re kidding me!’

Karin put her finger to her lips.

‘Careful . . . I saw them, he went up to her as soon as we had wrapped. Michelle wasn’t receptive, you know how hyper she gets after a show, and particularly after a special like this.’

‘Highlander’s nuts,’ Anne Snapphane said.

‘He certainly knew exactly what he was going to say. But his timing wasn’t very appropriate.’

‘Well, what
did
he say?’

‘That she was too old.’

‘Too old? She just turned thirty-four last Monday.’

Karin smiled with a trace of bitterness.

‘First it didn’t register: Michelle was still pretty buzzed after the show. Then I was afraid she was going to pass out – her face went all white and she was chewing her tongue. And suddenly she went berserk, yelling that Highlander was a pathetic fool who made his way up by sucking dicks, cleaning toilets and making coffee for the big shots in London.’

‘There is something to that,’ Anne interjected.

‘And that she wouldn’t accept orders from a conceited, power-crazed moron who didn’t have brains or balls. And she went on and on like that.’

Anne Snapphane giggled.

‘It was almost funny,’ the producer conceded.

‘Highlander felt that Michelle should be grateful that he had taken the trouble to talk to her in person. He wasn’t obligated to do anything beyond sending her written notice. Apparently, that’s in her contract. Naturally, she’d be paid for the duration of her contract, a little more than one and a half years, as long as she respected the terms of the quarantine clause.’

‘In other words, even though she had been fired, she wouldn’t be able to work for anyone else?’

‘Exactly,’ Karin Bellhorn replied. ‘If she hosted some other network’s shows, they could sue her for breach of contract. And that’s not all. After the showdown at the Stables, Michelle kicked out her manager. She called him a leech, a millstone, and a lot of other nice things.’

‘Did Follin get fired too?’ Anne asked.

Karin Bellhorn lit a cigarette and fingered her lower lip.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Right now I don’t know one damn thing for certain.’

Suddenly Anne felt like crying again.

‘What
are
we involved in?’ she whispered.

They sat for a while in silence. Sounds seeped in through the walls: Sebastian Follin was running water in the sink upstairs. To the right, Highlander’s radio blared. To the left, Barbara Hanson coughed.

‘Listen,’ Anne Snapphane said. ‘Who do you think did it?’

Karin gave this some thought, the tip of her tongue in the corner of her mouth.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Who do
you
think it was?’

‘Do you think it was one of us?’

Anne’s whisper was barely audible.

The producer’s gaze drifted off towards the window, her eyes glazed and vacant-looking.

‘The technical staff left as soon as the bus was packed,’ she said. ‘Gunnar was the only one left. Apart from us.’

‘Could someone else have come, an outsider?’

‘In the middle of the night?’

Turning with an unfathomable expression in her eyes, Karin looked at Anne and shook her head.

‘No,’ Anne whispered. ‘So it was one of us.’

The sound of Anne Snapphane gulping resonated in the room.

‘I agree, so be careful about who you talk to,’ Karin said, ‘and think of what you say.’

Anne nodded, her eyes wide with renewed fear.

‘Did you see anything?’ Karin asked. ‘Anything strange?’

Suspicion dropped like a stage curtain. Anne Snapphane felt doubt take root, felt how it drove a wedge into the foundation of trust. Her emotions were reflected in her eyes, and she felt how she distanced herself and grew watchful.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Did you?’

Karin shook her head and Anne saw her own emotions reflected in the producer’s eyes.

‘I’d better be going,’ Anne said, and got up to leave with a brand-new sorrow in her heart.

They wouldn’t be confiding in each other again.

Editor-in-chief Torstensson didn’t call in. A restless Anders Schyman sat in his glass cubicle at one end of the newsroom and felt irritation well up inside him. There was a pile of documents on his desk: legal action was being taken against
Kvällspressen
and the executive editor responsible for the publication. The charges ranged from defamation of character to libel.

And the person legally responsible for the publication was Torstensson. As executive editor he had the final say in controversial issues. It didn’t matter what the rest of the newsroom team felt, Torstensson called the shots. After a great deal of pussyfooting around, Schyman had made sure that he, the managing editor, was registered at the Patent and Registration Office as Torstensson’s deputy. This meant that Torstensson could delegate decisions to him, but only if the editor-in-chief expressly wished to do so. Whenever this occurred, the information listed in the corporate heading would be changed. This was simply a cosmetic change, but one that gave Schyman in-house clout. It didn’t happen very often.

Anders Schyman tore his hair. The situation was unpleasant. Michelle Carlsson had caused
Kvällspressen
a lot of trouble for a long time, and if truth be told,
Kvällspressen
had caused Michelle Carlsson trouble too. Some of his associates at the paper had decided that the TV personality didn’t cut the mustard, something they delighted in telling their readers. For two years running, she had topped the ‘Worst-dressed women of the year’ list. She had been called ‘The most over-hyped Swede of the millennium’, a ‘TV bimbo’ and other even less flattering names that Schyman couldn’t immediately recall. They jeered at her shows and lampooned her in the culture section of the paper, they gave her scathing reviews in the TV column and poked fun at her when she was given
Kvällspressen
’s People’s Choice award. Her landslide victory caused the paper to revise the rules for the award. The readers were no longer allowed to vote for anyone they wanted. A jury at the paper, led by Barbara Hanson, nominated four TV personalities that the readers could choose between. The last time around, Anders Schyman had never even heard of two of them.

As long as the criticism and the antics had remained at that level, Michelle Carlsson and her representatives had kept their distance.

She started suing them when the articles about her alleged shell-company dealings were published. As far as Anders Schyman could tell, the paper was going to go down for this.

The second time Michelle sued them was when they published nude photos of her and a man who was claimed to be an escaped convict. Michelle Carlsson was offended by the inference that she would have anything to do with a criminal. And to make matters worse, the paper had got the man’s identity all wrong – he was a Norwegian film star, and he decided to sue the paper as well. The film star was a married man with children and he claimed that the nude pictures had violated his privacy. The paper’s strategy in the two different cases was somewhat schizoid.