Lifetime

by Liza Marklund

  Which left editorial staff and admin.

  Anders Schyman sighed. He wondered if he could be bothered to go and get a plastic mug of coffee from the machine. He closed his eyes, imagined the bitter taste and decided against it.

  The other way of raising profit was to increase the number of copies sold, which placed serious demands on the journalists’ competence. Which in turn meant that every cutback on editorial staff needed to be done with surgical precision.

  Which brought him back to the union, and likely conflict.

  He needed to keep and fire people according to their abilities, but the union was guaranteed to trot out the old maxim ‘last in, first out’.

  If they got their way, everyone who had been recruited recently would be thrown out, leaving just the old hacks, and that was impossible if the paper was going to survive. The new website people were essential, or the entire online investment would collapse. But he also needed to retain the experience and competence of the older employees, the ones who still knew who and what the Chancellor of Justice was, for instance.

  He let out a loud groan.

  The Salaried Employees’ Union and the Journalists’ Association were relatively weak and flexible unions. They seldom rode into battle. Schyman could still remember his astonishment when the Journalists’ Association had unilaterally suggested that trainee reporters should be forced to accept other types of work (dishwashing, cleaning, the Volvo production line) as soon as they became unemployed, a suggestion so controversial that not even the government or business community had considered it.

  He scratched his beard.

  The local branch of the union had its annual general meeting on Monday. They would be choosing a new chair – the current incumbent was going on study leave from August. The post was much sought-after because the holder spent all their time on union matters, and therefore played no part in the editorial work of the paper. It also meant power, because you became part of the management group and took part in some sections of committee meetings as the staff representative.

  Just let it be someone with a brain, Schyman thought, and made up his mind to go and get that cup of coffee after all.

  Annika thought people were looking at her rather oddly as she walked through the newsroom with her newly purchased bag over her shoulder. Naturally, her colleagues loved gossip, it went with the job, and she realized that her burned-down house must have been yesterday’s hot topic.

  She hoisted the bag higher on her shoulder and quickened her pace. First she had to get the requisition note to pick up the new laptop from Technical Support, then try to track down her old notes and put together a piece about Julia Lindholm.

  But before any of that she needed coffee.

  She dropped her bag and her new jacket at the long desk shared by the day-shift reporters and went off to the machine.

  She found Anders Schyman staring short-sightedly at all the options. ‘Strong with sugar but no milk. How do you get that?’ he asked. Annika swiftly pressed a few buttons.

  ‘The laptop,’ she said. ‘Can I get it now?’

  ‘The requisition’s ready and waiting on my desk,’ he said. ‘Is there anything else you need?’

  She paused. ‘If I could borrow one of the paper’s cars for the weekend …’

  ‘That’ll probably be okay,’ Anders Schyman said, and started to walk towards his office. ‘By the way, do you know what the CJ is?’

  ‘The Chancellor of Justice?’ Annika said. ‘A dinosaur. Why?’

  He stopped. ‘A dinosaur?’

  ‘Or some other prehistoric relic,’ Annika said. ‘It’s completely absurd that a post like that is still bestowed for life because that was what happened in the 1700s. Everyone in Sweden has the right to change their lawyer, apart from the government. It’s completely ridiculous.’

  ‘Can’t the CJ be dismissed?’ Schyman said.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Follow me, and I’ll give you the requisition note.’

  She trudged after him to his office. The room wasn’t actually that small, but Schyman was so expansive that it shrank when he went in. ‘Here you are,’ he said, handing her the sheet of paper. ‘Have they found whoever set fire to your house yet?’

  She shook her head and swallowed.

  Hopkins, the miserable old bastard. May he burn in Hell.

  Schyman hunted through a desk drawer and pulled out another requisition request, which he signed with a scribble. ‘You can have the car for a week,’ he said. ‘If Tore makes a fuss, refer him to me.’

  She put the piece of paper into her bag and went to see the caretaker. She could feel people’s eyes on her as she crossed the newsroom.

  She had to wait for five minutes as Tore concluded an important telephone conversation about racing tips. ‘You can have this one,’ he said, putting a battered laptop on the counter when she had explained why she was there.

  ‘Does it work?’

  Tore looked affronted. ‘Of course it bloody works. I checked it over.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Annika said, switching it on.

  The programs loaded. Explorer logged in automatically to the paper’s wireless network. MS Word turned out to be full of Sjölander’s old articles.

  She sighed quietly. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘And a car as well, please …’ She handed over the requisition note with Schyman’s signature.

  Tore looked sceptically at the sheet of paper. ‘And what do you need a Volvo V70 for?’

  ‘I’m thinking of robbing a bank, and I need a discreet getaway car,’ Annika said.

  ‘Sounds fun,’ Tore said, handing her the keys. ‘It’s got a full tank. Make sure it’s full when it comes back.’

  She went back to the newsroom and set up the laptop on the reporters’ desk. She began by reading everything she could find about the police murder from the main news agency and in the Evening Post’s internal files.

  ‘Annika,’ Spike said, putting his hand on her shoulder. ‘How do you feel about writing a true story? “How I Escaped the Flames”?’

  She looked up. A troop of people had gathered around her.

  ‘Is it true they know who started the fire?’ wondered crime reporter Patrik Nilsson, currently the only reporter on the paper with that title apart from Berit.

  ‘I need you to fill in a report about the loss of your old laptop as soon as possible,’ said Eva-Britt Qvist, the editorial secretary, who had been promoted to paper-shuffler in Admin. She looked almost happy for the first time ever.

  Even the girl with the piercings, who ran the commercial radio station with all the adverts, had left her nest in Annika’s old office and come out to stare. ‘I mean, like, what the fuck?’ she said. ‘Like, poor you.’

  ‘Okay,’ Annika said, rolling her chair back to the edge of the table. ‘I’m fine, everything’s fine. Thanks for your concern, but I’m kind of busy …’

  Nobody moved.

  ‘Must be really fucking awful for you,’ said the girl with the piercings.

  ‘Go and get on with your work,’ Spike said, rather loudly, and they began to move away, muttering in disappointment.

  ‘I want the loss report by Monday at the latest, otherwise you’ll be liable for it,’ Eva-Britt Qvist said, over her shoulder.

  Spike turned back to Annika. ‘We haven’t put anything in the paper, but if you feel like writing an eyewitness account, we’ve got a gap on eleven.’

  Annika cleared her throat. ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ she said. ‘Schyman’s asked me to write about Julia Lindholm.’

  ‘That’s great,’ Spike said. ‘“Exclusive: Cop-killer’s Secret History”.’

  ‘Mm,’ Annika said. ‘She hasn’t been found guilty yet, of course.’

  ‘That’s just a technicality,’ Spike said, and went back to his desk.

  She left the news pages and logged into her personal email archive. Slowly she began to click open notes and documents from several years before. Some were so old that she had almost forgotten them.<
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  All of a sudden it hit her: This is all I’ve got left. Everything else went up in flames. What a relief that I thought to keep my archive on the Internet …

  She pushed her hair from her face and carried on clicking. It had to be here somewhere. Finally she found the document, and glanced through the single page.

  Nina Hoffman and Julia Lindholm had grown up in the Södermanland countryside, had been in the same class since their third year at school, and were both good at athletics, one or the other winning the regional championships over several consecutive years. They had joined the youth wing of the Social Democratic Party in Katrineholm when they were fifteen, and had studied social sciences at Duveholm School, just as Annika had done. If they had been just a year or two older, maybe she would have remembered them, but four years made a big difference at that age. After high school, Nina had travelled in Asia for six months while Julia had worked as a teaching assistant at Stenhammar Middle School in Flen. When Nina had returned to Sweden they had applied to the Police Academy, and had been accepted at once. By the time Annika had spent a night with them, they had served about five years as neighbourhood police officers in the Katarina district of Stockholm.

  Both girls had agreed that they were fed up with the macho atmosphere in the police station. You could never show any sign of weakness, because then you were finished.

  Pretty much like the Evening Post.

  Annika logged out of her archive and began reading the articles about David Lindholm in the Evening Post and elsewhere. The obituaries were uncritical in their praise and admiration, precisely as the situation demanded. She made a note of a couple of officers who had commented on the dead man: Christer Bure of Södermalm Police, and Professor Lagerbäck at the Police Academy. They described David Lindholm in terms that suggested he was Christ reincarnated.

  She looked through the great work the officer had done for society. Naturally, there was the famous hostage drama in Malmö, with the pictures of David and the hostage-taker emerging from the nursery arm in arm. Then there was the security van: he had single-handedly cleared up a major robbery in which two guards were shot and wounded, and reclaimed the stolen money.

  This wasn’t the whole picture of David Lindholm, she knew. The hero who had solved these spectacular crimes had been murdered in his bed, shot by his wife.

  There’s another truth. She must have had a reason.

  She closed the battered laptop and went over to Patrik Nilsson. His nose was almost pressed to his screen, and he was reading intently.

  ‘Have you ever thought about glasses?’ Annika asked, as she sat down on Berit’s seat.

  ‘National Crime have been searching a farm in Södermanland, trying to find the boy,’ Patrik said, still concentrating on the screen. ‘There are signs that he may have spent time at the location during the past week.’

  ‘I hope you’re not thinking of writing that,’ Annika said.

  Now he looked at her in surprise. ‘Of course I am,’ he said.

  ‘“May have spent time at the location” is police-speak,’ Annika said. ‘Anyone normal would say “may have been there”. What makes them think that?’

  Patrik read on. ‘They’ve found evidence to support the idea,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t say what. I’ll have to check my source.’

  ‘Something that suggests a child has been there,’ Annika said slowly. ‘The floor covered with Disney comics? Half-eaten lollies in the bin? A plastic bath on the kitchen table full of lukewarm water, bubbles and rubber ducks?’

  Patrik was chewing a biro. ‘Or footprints of exactly the right size in the sandpit,’ he said.

  ‘I’m guessing the bin,’ Annika said. ‘If anyone ever throws anything in a bin, you can tell pretty much exactly when they were there.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Patrik said.

  ‘Date stamps,’ Annika said. ‘Every family with children buys and drinks milk. All milk cartons have a best-before date.’

  ‘But the bins are always being emptied,’ her colleague said.

  ‘Not that often,’ Annika said. ‘Katrineholm Council does fortnightly collections. Or you can request collections only during the summer, although the bin-men are so nice they usually empty them anyway.’

  Patrik raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I used to be a local reporter for the Katrineholm Courier,’ Annika said. ‘I’ve written thousands of articles about rubbish collections from the farms between Floda and Granhed.’

  Her colleague leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘How do you know where the cop-killer’s summer place is?’

  ‘Nina told me,’ Annika said, getting up. ‘I don’t know exactly which house it is, but I have a rough idea. It’s outside Floda, on a road called Stöttastenvägen.’

  ‘There’s nothing in the property register.’

  ‘Yes, there is, just not under her name. I think she rented it. Have the police released anything about the murder weapon?’

  Patrik shook his head, eyes on the screen again.

  ‘Anything about when Alexander was last seen alive?’ Annika asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Has anything got out about David? Have you heard any gossip about him?’

  ‘What are you after?’ Patrik asked suspiciously.

  ‘Have we done all the usual checks on him? Money, businesses, property, cars, TV licence, tax?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘You never know,’ Annika said. ‘It might give us an idea of what he was like without his halo, some kind of lead or explanation for what made his wife flip out like that …’

  ‘You won’t find that sort of thing in the archive,’ Patrik said, and returned to the screen.

  Suddenly something clicked inside Annika’s head.

  ‘The Personnel Committee of the National Police Board,’ she said. ‘Has anyone checked there?’

  Patrik pulled a face.

  ‘To see if there were any complaints about him?’

  ‘As if they’d be public!’ he scoffed.

  ‘You can check everything they do,’ Annika said. ‘You just have to go in, ask the clerk and they give you the information.’

  ‘They always hush up that sort of thing,’ Patrik said.

  Annika opened up her laptop, then did a search for ‘Lindholm, David, Stockholm’ on the National Registry. She made a note of his date of birth and ID number, then slung her bag over her shoulder and walked out.

  The entrance to the National Police Board was via the main doors of Police Headquarters on Polhemsgatan, the part of the complex that had been built in the 1970s, its façade covered with brown panelling. The taxi dropped her off beside a cluttered motorcycle park. She zigzagged her way towards the doors and went into Reception.

  ‘I need to check some information with the personnel office,’ she said, without introducing herself or showing any ID: she was there to look at public documents in her capacity as an interested citizen.

  ‘Have you made an appointment?’ the receptionist asked, a young man with a heavy fringe and thick-framed glasses.

  Annika shifted her weight to the other foot. ‘I don’t need one,’ she said. ‘I’d like to check possible complaints.’

  The receptionist sighed and picked up the phone. He turned away and muttered something into the receiver. ‘He’s coming,’ he said, then went back to his Sudoku.

  Annika looked out through the doors and up towards the park.

  ‘How can I help you?’

  An older, bearded man in a cardigan was blinking amiably at her. Annika was at a loss for words, then remembered why she was there. ‘I’d like to know if a particular police officer has ever been prosecuted for criminal activity,’ she said.

  ‘Is there reason to believe that he or she might have been?’

  ‘Isn’t there always?’ she said.

  ‘This way,’ the man said. He led her through a glass door and into a lift, then pressed the button for the eleventh floor. ‘You’ve got the ID number
of the person in question?’ the man asked, and Annika nodded.

  The lift came to a halt with a little sigh, and Annika’s stomach lurched. She followed the man through the police complex, along winding corridors, until finally they reached a cramped little room with a contrastingly stunning view of the park.

  She held out her notepad with David’s date of birth and ID number and the man typed the details into the computer.

  ‘Do you hold all the records of police officers who have been charged with offences?’ she asked, as the hard disk chewed its way through its files.

  ‘Not all of them,’ the clerk said. ‘Only from 1987 onwards. The older records are kept by the County Administrative Board.’ He looked up at her. ‘Which of the reports did you want to look at?’

  Which of the reports?

  Her heart skipped a beat. ‘There’s more than one?’

  The man peered at the screen. ‘Two.’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘I need to check that they’re not confidential. Could you come back on Monday?’

  Annika leaned across the man’s desk to squint at his screen. It was angled in such a way that she couldn’t see anything. ‘Couldn’t you check now?’ she asked. ‘Please?’

  The man looked more closely at the screen. ‘Interesting cases,’ he said. ‘They were a long while ago, but the subject has, of course, become very interesting now, through no fault of his own.’ He smiled and glanced over his shoulder. ‘Our lawyer is here today, and the files are in the archive. I’ll fetch them and see if we can’t get them checked at once.’

  He disappeared back into the labyrinth of corridors.

  Annika resisted the urge to go round his desk and sneak a look at the screen. Instead she went to stand by the window, looking out over Kronoberg Park. Their old flat was on Hantverkargatan, just two blocks from here. Once she had passed this building every day with Kalle and Ellen, in rain and sun and snow. She had struggled up the slopes to take the children to the playground by the fire station and always ended up on a hard park bench surrounded by café-latte mothers trying loudly to outdo each other with their tales of troublesome building work and trips to France.

  She let her thoughts wander. If she was honest, she hadn’t been particularly happy in the city either, but at least the neighbours had never tried to burn her house down.