Prime Time (26 page)

The shove came from nowhere, striking Bambi at shoulder height, right above her armpits, and making her tumble backwards with a scream.

‘What are you doing, you lunatic?’

‘Shut up,’ Sebastian Follin bellowed, coming up to her, pressing his body against hers, his head reaching no higher than her cleavage, his hands reaching for her neck.

What little hold her heels had on the wall-to-wall carpeting disappeared. Bambi Rosenberg crashed to the floor, biting her tongue as she banged her head on the glass wall, the manager on top of her. She fought for air and managed to scream.

‘Shut up, you little slut …’

Oh, dear God, I’m going to die, he killed Michelle and now he’s going to kill me, we’ll both die by the same hand …

‘Help, he’s crazy, he’s trying to kill me …!’

Bambi worked one of her arms loose and raked Follin’s puffy face with her fake nails, enjoying the drag of her fingers against his skin.

‘What on earth are you doing?’

A startled Mariana von Berlitz stood on the threshold.

‘Help,’ Bambi managed to say. ‘He’s trying to strangle me.’

The pressure on her body disappeared, leaving her reeling. Sebastian Follin got to his feet with amazing speed, smoothed his hair and tried to regain control of his breathing.

‘She accused me of murder!’ he said, pointing a finger at her. ‘That’s unlawful threat – she threatened me!’

Shocked and in pain, Bambi Rosenberg burst into tears. She felt around for something to support herself on, but couldn’t find anything.

‘He tried to steal Michelle’s stuff. Tell him he’s not allowed to take Michelle’s stuff!’

She saw Mariana von Berlitz enter the room warily, giving the crazy man a wide berth, and approach the desk.

‘Nothing is leaving this room,’ the editor said. ‘Everything on the premises is the property of Zero Television.’

Swaying, Bambi struggled to her feet. The manager opened his mouth to say something, and his hand went instinctively to his smarting cheek.

‘Blood …’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m bleeding.’

To prove this statement he held his hand out, showing it first to Bambi, then to Mariana. Unconsciously, Bambi stepped back and noticed that the editor did the same thing.

‘You aren’t taking anything away from this office,’ Mariana repeated. ‘I’m in charge here, this is company property.’

Bambi’s rage returned with a vengeance, white-hot.

‘It is not!’ she heard herself roar and noticed that her hands were shaking. ‘Neither of you has the right to take any of Michelle’s possessions. She told me to take care of everything if anything ever happened to her. I know what to do. You aren’t going to get a thing!’

The man and the other woman suddenly regarded Bambi with a different look in their eyes – supercilious, suspicious and slightly wary.

‘You?’ Mariana von Berlitz said. ‘Why on earth would she ask
you
to take care of things?’

Astonished, Bambi stared at the woman. Was she stupid or something?

‘Who else would she have asked?’

‘At any rate, the documentary is mine,’ Sebastian Follin said. ‘Michelle’s documentary of her own life is mine, and I have the papers to prove it.’

Mariana the professional stiffened and turned to face the manager.

‘Oh, really?’ she said. ‘As far as I know, TV Plus owns the rights to it.’

Bambi looked back and forth between the two of them as she felt the room start to sway.

‘No,’ Sebastian Follin said. ‘The contract hasn’t been signed, and according to
my
contract as a manager it falls under my jurisdiction.’

‘There is a letter of intent written by Michelle to the network. You can’t bypass––’

‘There’s nothing legally binding there.’

Bambi Rosenberg had to sit down, so she sank down on Michelle’s office chair and tuned out the bickering going on above her head.

I promise
, she thought.
I will take care of you. I’ll make sure everything’s done right.

The lack of sleep had left Torstensson pale as he stole into the newsroom dressed in a suit jacket without the matching trousers. No one noticed him as he stopped in front of the news desk and gazed around, looking for a seat, staring past Spike whose ear was glued to the phone and the daytime editor playing computer games. Then he went over to the desk belonging to the foreign correspondent. It was on the edge of the fray, but still close enough for him to be involved.

What is his driving force?
Schyman wondered from his vantage point in the fish tank.

It can’t be the creed of journalism, because it’s not something he lives by.

Maybe he likes to influence the issues presented to the public, or he enjoys being in a position of power. Could it be the approval of the family that owns the paper that spurs him on, or the salary, the potential political openings, or the acknowledgement of the Rotary Club?

The editor-in-chief put a few newspapers and a china coffee mug on the desk, pulled out the chair and settled in. Out of the corner of his eye, Spike looked at him, but made no effort to put the phone down or take his feet off the desk.

Schyman went to dial the in-house number to the foreign correspondent’s desk and saw Torstensson jump when the phone rang.

‘Could you step into my office?’ Schyman asked the editor-in-chief. Torstensson complied, his gait defiant.

‘What do you want?’

The editor-in-chief stood at the door, on the defensive and suspicious.

‘I’ve already received three calls about libel and possible suits with regard to the contents of today’s paper,’ Schyman said and sat down on his desk.

Torstensson folded his arms across his chest.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m sure you know what I mean,’ the managing editor replied. ‘I don’t agree with your decision, but of course I respect it. Would you like to call Michelle Carlsson’s family yourself, or should I refer them directly to our legal representative?’

Schyman held out a few slips of paper. The editor-in-chief didn’t take them.

‘You can’t scare me,’ Torstensson said. ‘I can see right through you.’

Anders Schyman let his arm drop to his side and sighed loudly.

‘It’s a shame that this has happened,’ he said.

‘I agree,’ Torstensson said and headed back to his seat. Schyman watched him go, studying his receding back, taking in the overly padded shoulders and the thinning hair.

Talk about poor judgement
, he thought, and he didn’t mean the publication of Barbara Hanson’s tasteless column.

How did you ever get involved in this business without having the expertise or the right weapons?

Schyman went over to the phone again and dialled Annika Bengtzon’s in-house number.

‘Go to the paper’s morgue,’ he said when the reporter picked up. ‘I’ll be there in a few minutes.’

He sank back down in his chair, unlocked the desk’s bottom drawer and pulled out his ‘Anthrax file’. It went straight down into his briefcase. Then he threw on his jacket, left the room and headed for the garage.

‘You can reach me on my cellphone if you need me,’ he told Spike as he passed him. ‘I’m going out to grab a bite.’

The news editor gave him the thumbs-up. Schyman left the newsroom through the main entrance and said hello to Bertil Strand on the way to the garage. Once the photographer had entered the office building, Schyman changed direction and went over to the outdoor entrance to the cafeteria, opened it with his pass and took the elevator to the second floor. The long corridor was cloaked in a bluish darkness, dimly lit by a few blinking fluorescent lights at the end of the hallway.

Annika Bengtzon stood with her back to the wall right next to the entrance to the morgue.

‘The police are going to arrest the neo-Nazi kid from Katrineholm,’ she said.

‘Let’s go inside and sit down,’ Schyman said, moving on to the next door.

‘Where is Carl Wennergren?’ Annika asked, coming up behind him. ‘Has he left on vacation a week early?’

‘I sent him home. It’s bad enough that one of the suspects is spewing garbage in our paper.’

‘I saw him at the Stables,’ the reporter said. ‘In the trashed room I wrote about. It seemed like he was looking for something. Has he said anything about it?’

‘It was a camera,’ Schyman said. ‘The police have already returned it – it had nothing to do with the murder investigation.’

Annika Bengtzon glanced up at him, almost disappointed.

The smell of dust and evaporating developer hit them, a cold draught from the filing cabinets loaded with thousands of pictures. Light came in from a window at the far end of the room, back-lighting the cabinets with their drawers labelled in such a cryptic way that no uninitiated person would ever be able to find what they were looking for.

‘This is about a suspected insider deal,’ the managing editor said as he sat down at an old wooden table by the windows and pulled out the red file from his briefcase.

The reporter silently sat down across from him, attentive and puzzled.

‘Substantial stock holdings of an IT company were sold some time during the second half of last year,’ he continued and removed the elastic-band closures. ‘I would like you to find out when this transaction took place, the exact date.’

‘That shouldn’t be difficult,’ Annika Bengtzon said. ‘Transactions like that are supposed to be reported to the Financial Supervisory Board.’

‘This case is a bit more complicated,’ Anders Schyman explained, picking up the minutes, the clippings and the press release. ‘The individual in question wasn’t obliged to report his transactions, he wasn’t a member of the board and he didn’t belong to the management of the company he owned stock in, so his business transactions were never registered.

‘So what’s the problem?’ the reporter asked.

The managing editor looked at the woman with a wary expression.

Oh, my God
, he thought.
What am I doing? She could bring me down, just get up and leave and make sure that I get fired before lunch.

Despair engulfed him, this new sense of powerlessness that was beginning to be a habit.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, leaning back and rubbing his eyes. ‘I don’t know how to explain it.’

‘This has something to do with Torstensson, doesn’t it?’ Annika Bengtzon asked. ‘He’s letting this paper go to the dogs and you don’t know how to stop him. Is this some old dirt you want me to root around in?’

Anders Schyman stopped holding his breath, letting it out in a lengthy sigh that ricocheted against the metal cabinets.

‘You do like calling a spade a spade, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Can I trust you?’

‘That depends,’ she replied.

Schyman hesitated momentarily.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Torstensson has to go, and he won’t go willingly.’

‘What about the board?’ Annika said. ‘Can’t they budge him?’

Schyman shook his head.

‘Herman Wennergren won’t play. If we want him out, we have to get rid of him ourselves.’

‘How?’

He showed her the minutes from last year’s meeting on 27 June that clearly showed that the board of
Kvällspressen
had received prior knowledge of Global Future’s impending profit warning. According to these minutes, Torstensson had been present as a co-opted member. At some point during the following six months, Torstensson sold his shares.

‘That isn’t necessarily a crime,’ Annika said.

‘No,’ Schyman conceded. ‘But it might be. It all depends on when the transaction took place. If he unloaded his holdings before this information was made public, he’s guilty of insider trading.’

‘Even if he wasn’t on the board of the company?’

‘If a cab driver overhears a conversation in the backseat of his cab, and uses that information to make a profit on the stock market, that would make him guilty of insider trading.’

‘That would be hard to prove, though,’ the reporter countered, a bit tartly.

‘This ought to be easier. Could you check up the facts for me?’

Expectantly and with a slight feeling of misgiving, Annika studied Schyman.

‘And if I find something, what do I do? Write a piece for tomorrow’s paper?’

He had to smile.

‘Not exactly. Just tell me what you find.’

‘So what’s the magic date?’

‘The report for the second quarter, the one that included a profit warning, was made public last year, on 20 July.’

Annika got a pen and a slip of paper out of a back pocket and made some notes.

‘So, all sales transactions taking place after 27 June but before 20 July would mean that Torstensson had exploited confidential information regarding the poor returns of Global Future,’ she said, summing things up.

Schyman sighed as weariness wrenched at his soul.

‘Actually, it’s worse than that. He knew that the family was going to bail out, which means that the company would be more or less worthless.’

Annika took some more notes and stuffed the paper back in her pocket again.

‘Why me?’

‘Anyone making inquiries is going to leave a trail,’ he said. ‘So I can’t do it myself.’

‘The Securities Register Centre,’ Annika said. ‘They keep a record of their visitors, right?’

‘That’s where you’ve got to start, but I don’t think it’ll be enough. You’ll need to pound the pavement to get anywhere.’

‘Why me?’

Schyman licked his lips and chose his words carefully.

‘There aren’t many reporters on this paper who have the capacity to get hold of this information.’

Annika made a sound somewhere in between a laugh and a snort.

‘And I’m the easiest one to persuade?’

He smiled a little.

‘If that’s what you think, you have a strange perception of yourself. You know exactly why?’

‘No, I don’t,’ she said as she got up and brushed the dust off the seat of her jeans. ‘Tell me.’

‘You think like me,’ he said.

For a brief moment the reporter was caught off guard and the astonishment she felt was clearly displayed on her face. Then she regained her composure and said in her usual bantering tone: