"Janet Ullman has the night shift. We can call her in early," Ingvar Johansson said.
Annika felt a giddiness grip her and pull her down to the floor and up the wall. Nightmare, nightmare. How could she have been so wrong? Had the police really been lying to her all along? She had staked her entire professional reputation on the paper covering the story along her lines. Could she really stay on as a chief after this?
"We have to go around and check security at all the other facilities,"
Spike said. "We'll need to call in some extras, the second night team, the second evening team…"
The men turned their chests toward each other and their backs against Annika where she was sitting in the corner. The voices dissolved in a cacophony; she leaned back and struggled to get air. She was finished, she knew she was finished. How the hell could she stay at the paper after this?
The meeting was brief and to the point; everyone was in total agreement. They all wanted to get to work and deal with the terrorist attack. Only Annika remained in the corner. She didn't know how she could leave it without falling to pieces. She had a lump the size of a brick in her throat.
Anders Schyman went to his desk and made a call. Annika could hear his voice rising and falling. Then he came over and sat down next to her.
"Annika," he said, trying to catch her eyes. "Don't worry, okay? It's all right."
She turned away and blinked away the tears.
"Everybody can be wrong," the editor continued in a low voice. "That's the oldest truth of them all. I was wrong, too. I reasoned just like you. Now we have to rethink. We just have to make the best of it, right? We need you here for that. Annika…"
She drew a deep breath and stared down at her lap.
"Yes, of course, you're right," she said. "But I feel like such an idiot. I was so sure I was right…"
"Well, maybe you are," Schyman said circumspectly. "It does seem improbable, I admit, but Christina Furhage could have a personal connection with Sätra Hall."
Annika couldn't help laughing. "Hardly," she said and smiled.
The editor put his hand on her shoulder and stood up.
"Don't let it get you down. You've been right about everything else on this."
She pulled a face and got to her feet, too.
"How did we find out about the explosion? Did Leif call it in?"
"Yes, he or Smidig in Norrköping. One of them."
Schyman sat down with a heavy sigh on the chair behind his desk.
"Will you go out there tonight?" he asked.
Annika pushed the chair in and shook her head.
"There's no point. Patrik and Janet will have to deal with it tonight. I'll get started on it tomorrow instead."
"When all this blows over, I think you should take a holiday. This weekend you must have collected more than a week off in overtime."
Annika smiled wanly. "Yes, thank you, I think I will."
"Go home and get some sleep."
The editor picked up the phone. Their talk was over. She picked up her bag and left the room.
The newsroom was on the boil, the way it always was when something really big had happened. Everything seemed calm enough on the surface, but you could see the tension in the watchful eyes of the senior editors and in the straight backs of the sub-editors. The words flying in the air were clipped and concise, reporters and photographers were purposefully moving to the phones or toward the exits. Even the receptionists were pulled into the flow, their tone of voice deepening and the fingers dancing more resolutely over the switchboard. Annika usually enjoyed the feeling, but now she felt uncomfortable crossing the floor.
Berit came to her rescue.
"Annika! Come and listen to this!"
Berit had brought her salad with her from the canteen and was sitting in the radio room, the booth next door to the crime desk, which had access to all the Stockholm police channels and one of the national channels. One of the walls was covered with loudspeakers and their respective switches and volume controls. Berit had switched on the ones for the South Stockholm and City police districts, those dealing with the explosion at Sätra Hall.
Annika could only hear crackling noise and blips. "What?" she said. "What's happened?"
"I'm not quite sure. The police arrived there about a minute ago. They started calling to the control room for a scrambled channel."
At that moment, the babbling resumed. The Stockholm police had two secure channels that were scrambled. You could hear that someone was talking, but the words were completely unintelligible. It sounded like Donald Duck talking backwards. These scrambled channels were rarely used, and then mainly by the drugs squad. The County Police Division might sometimes use them during big operations where they suspected that the criminals had access to police radio. A third reason for using them was when the information was so sensitive that they wanted it kept secret.
"Can't we get a descrambler?" Annika said. "We could miss out on big stuff this way."
The chatter died out while the blips and noise from the other channels continued. Annika's eyes traveled along the loudspeakers. The eight police districts in Stockholm County used two different radio systems, System 70 and System 80.
System 70 had channels from 70 megahertz and upwards, and System 80 was called that because it came into use in the 1980s. They were supposed to have transferred over to System 80 already ten years ago, but they hadn't managed it yet.
Annika and Berit listened expectantly to the noise and the electronic tones for a minute, and then a male voice on Channel 2 South dispersed the electronic mist:
"This is 2110."
The call was from a police car from the southern suburb of Skärholmen.
The response came after a second: "Yes, 2110. We read you."
"We need an ambulance to the address in question, a bag car, really…"
The noise took over for a moment. Annika and Berit looked at each other in silence. "Bag car" was another phrase for hearse. The "address" had to be Sätra Hall because nothing else was happening in the south suburbs at that moment. The police often used that kind of language when they didn't want to spell things out over the radio. They'd say "the place" or "the address" and suspects were often called "the subject."
The control room replied: "2110, ambulance or bag car? Over."
Annika and Berit both leaned forward. The answer was crucial.
"Ambulance, over."
"One dead, but not quite as badly smashed up as Furhage," Annika said.
Berit nodded.
"The head is still attached to the body, but the person's dead," she commented.
For a police officer to be authorized to pronounce someone dead, the head has to be severed from the body. It was a pretty reliable indicator of someone's demise. This was obviously not the case here, even if it was evident that the victim was dead. Otherwise the police officer wouldn't have talked of a hearse, the "bag car." Annika went out to the desk.
"There's a victim," she said.
Everyone around the desk where the paper was edited during the night stopped whatever he or she was doing and looked up.
"What makes you think that?" Spike said woodenly.
"The police radio," Annika replied. "I'll call Patrik."
She turned around and went to her office. Patrik answered on the first signal, as always; he must have been holding the cellphone in his hand.
"What's it like?" Annika asked.
"Shit, the place is crawling with cop cars!" the reporter roared.
"Can you get past the cordons?" Annika said, forcing herself not to raise the level of her voice above normal.
"Not a chance in hell," Patrik bellowed. "They've cordoned off the entire complex and grounds around it."
"Any reports of casualties?"
"What?"
"Any reports of casualties?!"
"Why are you shouting? No, no casualties, there are no ambulances or hearses here."
"There's one on its way. We heard it over the radio. Stay put and report to Spike. I'm going home now."
"What?" he roared down the line.
"I'm going home now. You report to Spike!" Annika yelled back.
"Okay!"
Annika hung up and then saw Berit in the doorway, grinning.
"You don't have to tell me who you were talking to," she said.
* * *
She came home to the apartment on Hantverkargatan just after eight. She'd taken a taxi and had been seized with a severe dizziness in the backseat. The driver was angry because of something the paper had written and was going on about the responsibility of reporters and the autocratic ways of politicians. That was the problem with the company charge card. Half the drivers felt obliged to sound off as soon as they knew they had someone from the paper on board.
"Talk to one of the editors. I'm just the cleaner," Annika had said, closing her eyes and leaning her head back. The dizziness turned into a feeling of sickness as the car weaved its way through traffic on Norr Mälarstrand.
"Are you not feeling well?" Thomas asked when he appeared in the hallway with a dish towel in his hand.
She sighed heavily. "I'm just a bit dizzy," she said and pushed the hair away from her face with both hands. Her hair felt greasy— she had to wash it in the morning. "Any food left?"
"Didn't you eat at work?"
"Half a salad. A news break got in the way."
"It's on the table— fillet of pork and roast potatoes."
Thomas flipped the dish towel onto his shoulder and started walking back to the kitchen.
"Are the kids asleep?"
"An hour ago. They were wiped out. Ellen might have caught something. Was she tired this morning?"
Annika tried to remember. "Not particularly. A bit clingy, perhaps. I had to carry her to the bus."
"You know, I can't take any time off work right now," Thomas said. "If she gets ill, you'll have to stay home with her."
Annika felt anger surge up within.
"But I can't stay at home right now, surely you know that. There's been another Olympic killing tonight, didn't you hear the news?"
Thomas turned around.
"Shit! No, I only heard the afternoon
Eko.
They said nothing about a murder."
Annika entered the kitchen; it looked like a bomb site. But a plate of food was waiting for her on the table. Thomas had put potatoes, meat, gravy, sautéed mushrooms, and iceberg lettuce on her plate. Next to the plate was a beer, which a couple of hours ago would have been ice cold. She put the plate in the microwave and set it for three minutes.
"You won't be able to eat the lettuce," Thomas said.
"I've been wrong all along," Annika said. "I've made the paper suppress anything about terrorism because I've been getting the opposite information from the police. It seems I've been well and truly conned. There's been another explosion at Sätra Hall tonight."
Thomas sat down at the table, throwing the dish towel on the worktop.
"That place? It barely has stands, you couldn't have any Olympic events there."
Annika poured a glass of water and removed the towel.
"Don't put that on here. It's filthy. Every damn arena in town seems to have been taken over by the Olympics. There are about a hundred facilities associated with the Games one way or another: arenas or training facilities or warm-up tracks."
The microwave beeped. Annika took out the plate and sat down opposite her husband. She ate in silence, greedily.
"So how was your day?" she asked, opening the tepid beer.
Thomas sighed and stretched his back.
"Well, I had hoped to finish off getting ready for the advisory committee on the 27th, but I didn't manage it. The phone never stops ringing. The regional question's coming on, and I'm happy about that, but it seems some days all I do is sit in meetings and talk on the phone."
"I'll do the nursery run tomorrow. Maybe you can get some of the work out of the way," Annika said, suddenly feeling a pang of guilt. She chewed the fillet; the microwave had made it tough.
"I was going to look at one of the interim reports now. One of my guys has been working on it for months. It's probably totally unreadable. It usually is when someone spends too long working on it. Hundred percent jargon."
Annika smiled feebly. Sometimes she was overwhelmed by these feelings of guilt. Not only was she a useless boss and a terrible reporter, but she was also a bad wife and an even worse mother to boot.
