She turned around and the policeman saw the pack of dynamite on her back.
"Oh, my God, don't move," he said.
"It's all right," Annika said, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand. "It's been there all night without going off."
"Evacuate the tunnel!" he shouted back toward the door. "Hold the ambulance people! We've got a charge here!"
The man leaned over her, and Annika closed her eyes. She could hear there were more people nearby, steps and voices.
"Take it easy, Annika, we'll sort it out," the policeman said.
Beata groaned where she lay on the floor.
"Make sure she doesn't get hold of the fuse," Annika said in a low voice.
The man got to his feet and followed the fuse with his eyes. Then he took a few steps, grabbed the yellow and green wire, and pulled it to him.
"There we are," he said to Annika. "Let's see what you've got here."
"It's Minex," Annika said. "Small, like peppermint rock."
"Yes," the policeman replied. "What else do you know?"
"It's approximately four pounds, and the firing switch could be unstable."
"Shit! I'm not very good with these things," he said.
Annika heard sirens far away. "Are they coming here?"
"Right again. Lucky you're still alive."
"It wasn't easy," Annika said, sniffling.
"Keep very still now…"
He studied the charge with great concentration for a few seconds. Then he grabbed the fuse, at the top of the charge, and pulled it out. Nothing happened.
"Thank God," he mumbled. "It was as easy as I thought."
"What?" Annika asked.
"This is an everyday charge, the kind you use at building sites. It wasn't booby-trapped. All you have to do to disarm it is to pull the metal piece away from the cartridge."
"You're joking," Annika said in disbelief. "I could have pulled it out myself, when she wasn't here?"
"More or less."
"So why the hell have I been sitting here all night?" she said, furious with herself.
"Annika, Annika, there was a noose around your neck as well. That could have killed you just as effectively. And were your hands free? You've got some nasty bruises, by the way. And if she had as much as let the fuse touch the battery it would have been the end, both for her and you."
"There's a timer as well."
"Hang on, let me get this off your back. What the hell has she fastened it with?"
"Masking tape."
"Okay. There's no wiring inside the tape? Good, I'll just rip it off… There, it's gone now."
Annika felt the weight lift from her back. She leaned back against the wall and pulled the tape from her stomach.
"You couldn't have gotten far anyway, the policeman said, pointing at the chains. "Do you know where the keys are?"
Annika shook her head and pointed at Beata. "She must have them on her somewhere."
The policeman picked up his radio and called out that the others could come in; the charge was disarmed.
"There's more dynamite over there," Annika said, pointing.
"Good, we'll take care of it.
He picked up the taped-up cartridges and put them among the others and then went up to Beata. The woman lay on her stomach, completely still, with blood running out of a hole in her shoulder. The policeman felt her pulse and lifted her eyelids.
"Will she live?" Annika asked.
"Who gives a damn?" he answered.
Annika heard herself say: "I do."
Two paramedics appeared in the tunnel, wheeling a stretcher between them. The policeman helped them lift Beata onto it. On his instruction, one of the paramedics went through her pockets and found two padlock keys.
"I'll do it," Annika said, and the policeman handed them over to her.
The paramedics checked Beata's vital signs while Annika unlocked the chains. She stood up on shaky legs and watched the men pushing Beata toward the exit of the tunnel. The woman's eyelids fluttered and she caught sight of Annika. It seemed as if she tried to say something, but her voice didn't carry.
Annika followed the stretcher with her eyes while it disappeared around the corner. Policemen and civilians were standing in the passageway. Speech was filling the air, voices rising and falling. She blocked her ears: She was near collapse.
"Do you need help?" her source said.
She sighed and felt that her tears were near. "I want to go home," was all she said.
"You have to go to the hospital for a check-up," he said.
"No," Annika said firmly, thinking of her soiled trousers. "I want to go past Hantverkargatan first. Where's Thomas? And the kids? Are they there?"
"Come on, I'll help you out. Everyone's fine. We're looking after them."
The man grabbed her around the waist and led her toward the exit. Annika realized something was missing.
"Hang on, my bag," she said, stopping. "I want my bag and the Powerbook."
The man said something to a uniformed policeman and someone handed Annika her bag.
"Is this your computer?" the policeman asked her.
Annika hesitated.
"Do I need to answer that right now?"
"No, it can wait. Let's get you home first."
They were approaching the exit and Annika glimpsed a wall of people in the dark outside the arena. Instinctively, she drew back.
"It's just police and medical personnel out there," the man next to her said.
At the same moment that she put her foot on the ground outside, a flash went off right in her face. For a second, she was blinded and heard herself cry out. The contours returned and she caught sight of the camera and the photographer. In two bounds, she reached him and decked him with a straight right.
"You bastard!" she screamed.
"Christ, Annika, what are you doing?" the photographer yelped.
It was Henriksson.
* * *
She asked the police to stop at a corner shop near her house and buy her some conditioner. Then she walked the two floors up to her apartment, unlocked the front door, and stepped inside the quiet hallway. It felt like another time, as if several years had gone by since she was here last. She pulled off all her clothes and dropped them on the floor. She took a towel from the toilet next door and wiped her stomach and bottom. She marched straight into the shower and spent a long time in there. She knew that Thomas was at the Grand Hotel. They'd come home when the children woke up.
She put on clean clothes. All the used ones, including the shoes and the coat, she put in a big black trash bag. She picked up the trash bag and went and threw it in the communal refuse room.
Now there was only one thing she had to do before she could lie down and sleep. She switched on Christina's computer; the battery was nearly dead. She got a disk and downloaded her own piece to it. She hesitated for a moment, but then she clicked on Christina's file, marked "Me."
There were seven documents, seven chapters that all began with one single word: Existence, Love, Humanity, Happiness, Lies, Evil, and Death.
Annika opened the first one and started reading.
She had spoken to everyone around Christina Furhage: her family, her lover, her colleagues, everyone who knew her. They had all contributed to the image of the Olympic supremo that Annika had formed in her mind.
At last, Christina was speaking for herself.
EPILOGUE
Late in June, exactly six months after the last explosion, Beata Ekesjö was convicted by the Stockholm City Court of three counts of murder, four counts of attempted murder, arson, the destruction of civic buildings, endangering the lives of the public, unlawful abduction, theft, and driving without a license. She did not utter one word during the trial.
Beata Ekesjö was sectioned under the Mental Health Act to indefinite detention in a secure unit, subject to Home Office conditions. The sentence was not appealed, and it came into effect three weeks later.
Hardly anyone noticed, but all through the five-week-long trial the defendant wore the same piece of jewelry. It was a cheap, old garnet brooch in gold and silver.
* * *
The story of how the constructional engineer Beata Ekesjö became the serial killer called "The Bomber" was never published.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. All similarities between the characters in the novel and any real living persons are entirely accidental.
The newspaper
Kvällspressen
doesn't exist. It has traits of various existing media companies but is wholly a product of the author's imagination.
All the places that the characters in the novel visit have, however, been rendered as they are or would have looked. This includes Victoria Olympic Stadium and the Olympic Village.
