He turned away, his back to her. Annika stared at his shoulders, her tears silently streaming down on to the pillowcase.
‘I want us to get married,’ she whispered.
He didn’t reply.
‘In church,’ she went on. ‘And I want to wear a white gown, and the kids can be our attendants …’
Thomas yanked off the covers, his back rigid and forbidding in the summer night, leaving her hurt and longing in their bedding.
‘Thomas! Please!’
Annika’s voice pierced the air, small and reedy, anxiously waiting for a response that didn’t come. She struggled to free herself from the damp tangle of bedding and followed him into the darkness before he switched on the kitchen lamp. She stood in the doorway, naked and shivering.
‘People can see you,’ Thomas said as he sat there in his robe at the table with a newspaper.
‘Why don’t you want to marry me?’
He looked up. His eyes were expressionless.
‘I’ve been married. Believe me, there’s no difference.’
‘It would make a difference to me.’
‘Why?’ he said, pushing back his chair. ‘Because you could publish a wedding picture in your home-town paper, Katrineholms-Kuriren?’
Annika stood there, blinking away the verbal slap in the face.
‘I do everything for you,’ she pleaded.
Thomas got up and walked towards her, fire and ice in his eyes. She backed away, another image intruding, another face approaching her. She heard the echo of her own voice, the words she’d said before, ‘I do everything for you’, and the approaching form with icy fire in his eyes.
‘You want a ring on your finger? Is that it? You can have a ring, we’ll buy one tomorrow.’
She turned away and ran, escaping through the darkness, panic like a piercing shriek in her left ear.
‘Annika.’
His voice behind her, tired, flat.
‘Annika, I’m sorry. Annie, come here.’
His arms around her shoulders, his breath on the back of her neck.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to …’
Annika’s eyes were wide open, hot and dry, and she stared blankly at the wall.
I’ve heard this before. This has happened to me before. I’ve been ever forgiving, forgiving, forgiving …
She twisted out of his arms, grabbed a duvet and a pillow and headed for the children’s room.
‘Where are you going?’
‘That’s none of your damn business!’
MONDAY, 25 JUNE
The complex housing the Securities Register Centre was located on a street behind Sergels torg, one that used to be known for its hookers. It was a metal and glass structure from the 1970s, filled with mirrors and ornate concrete walls. Annika paused as she entered the building and closed her umbrella. The fastidiously official atmosphere made her uncomfortable; it clashed with the reason she was there. She wasn’t here as a journalist – she was a snoop, a secret agent, possibly even a traitor.
Slightly nervous, she took the escalator upstairs. On the second floor she encountered an artificial garden, the glass ceiling floating some twenty metres overhead. There were mosaic fountains and marble floors, and a footbridge lined with white stylized lanterns was surrounded by brown stucco office buildings. Annika tried, unsuccessfully, to blink away the surrealistic haze in her mind and stared at the glass sky instead, detecting rivulets of rain, sensing the moisture.
It’s only a standard procedure, nothing to make a fuss about.
The reception desk was on the right-hand side of the lobby. With a fixed smile on her face, she introduced herself. Her name, her personal ID number, the ID card serial number, and the date were noted in a large ledger. While the receptionist was busy writing this down, Annika glanced at the names of the previous visitors, recognizing a reporter from the financial paper Veckans Affärer.
‘The computers are over there, on the right. Let me know if you need any assistance.’
Two Philips flat-screens were humming with eternity’s journey through the universe, and Annika let her jacket, her bag and her umbrella drop to the floor between two chairs. She hit enter and a window with three small icons appeared. A click on Share Register produced a form to fill in: the issuer, a personal ID number or corporate registration number and the owner’s name.
She typed in Global Future as the issuer and Torstensson as the owner. A new window popped up next to the first one, with the heading ‘Search results for public ownership listing’.
No data accessed.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to the receptionist. ‘I have a few questions about how to search the database.’
The woman leaned over and said something that Annika didn’t quite catch into the intercom.
Annika stared at the computer screen and, just for the heck of it, tried to see how many members of the family who owned Kvällsposten also had MTG shares, seeing as they were their competitor.
Three hits.
She smiled wryly.
‘You’re doing just fine,’ a man said behind her.
Annika’s heart lurched. The carpet was so thick that she hadn’t heard the guy approach.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said. ‘How does … this work?’
The man smiled at her. There was a gleam in his eye that made her cheeks grow hot.
‘The share register is updated every six months,’ he said. ‘The version you have here is a record of public ownership as per 31 December of last year.’
Annika blinked a few times. There really wasn’t anything underhand about her business apart from its objective.
‘How would I go about finding the exact date when a certain holding was sold?’ she asked.
‘That can’t be done,’ the man said, still smiling. ‘Transactions are reported on a semi-annual basis.’
‘So no one would know?’ she continued, feeling relieved but also obligated to pursue the matter.
‘Yes, someone would,’ he said. ‘We register all transactions that exceed five hundred lots. Three working days after the transaction, the changes will be on the record.’
‘Only that information isn’t available to the general public.’
His gaze remained locked on hers. It spoke a different language to the officialese issuing from his mouth.
‘We conduct analyses. It’s a service we provide for reconciliation companies and certain foreign issuers so that they will be able to analyse the ownership structure of their company. Among other things, they can observe daily updates with regard to the directly registered shareholders.’
Annika looked down.
‘They can pay to see who buys and sells their stocks?’
‘That’s right, they can observe the registration process here.’
‘But I wouldn’t be able to obtain that service?’
She stole a glance at the guy and saw him shake his head. Then she took in his thick mane of hair, broad shoulders and khaki slacks.
‘Okay,’ she said to his shoes. ‘Say that I would like to find out exactly when a certain individual sold their holding of a particular company last summer or last fall, how would I do that?’
Annika met his gaze again, feeling shy and surprised by the warmth.
‘Why don’t you ask him?’
She smiled back.
‘I’m the kind of girl who likes to find out things for herself,’ she said.
‘I bet you are,’ the man said, grinning. His teeth were white and a tiny bit crooked. ‘You could always contact the company. I doubt that they would tell you, but you never know.’
‘Who should I ask to talk to?’
‘Try the Principal Financial Adviser or the person responsible for investor relations. Only many companies don’t have someone exclusively in charge of this type of business; it’s usually taken care of by some ordinary administrator or clerk.’
Annika got up, put on her raincoat, picked up her bag and umbrella, and ended up way too close to
the man in the confined space.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured.
‘It was my pleasure,’ he said. ‘Let me know if I can help you in any other way …’
The man let the sentence trail off and handed Annika his card without moving to let her pass. She met his gaze, strangely affected by his show of interest. Forcing herself to laugh to relieve the sensation, she took his card.
‘In that case I’ll let you know.’
Annika stood under the roof by the entrance for a while, feeling assaulted by the sounds of the city: tyres hissing on the rain-slick asphalt, water rushing along the gutters, engines throbbing. She stuffed the umbrella in her bag and walked out into the rain, letting the lukewarm droplets sprinkle her face and hair as she headed for the subway station. Exhaust fumes were trapped at street level, a grey pungent haze that was impossible to keep at bay. Feeling disgusted, she stopped a cab, told the driver to take her to Zero Television, and leaned back against the leather upholstery in the back seat. The fogged-up windows hid the streets from view, protecting her from their ugliness.
I don’t have to live like this. I deserve something better.
Annika closed her eyes. Her body and her clothing still retained the scents of her children: Ellen’s slightly sour odour from her breakfast of yogurt and cereal and Kalle’s more full-bodied aroma of bread and cheese. Her hands remembered the sensation of their silky hair, the warmth of their cheeks.
She had dropped them off at day care that morning. Ellen had accepted day care amazingly well. Kalle had been fussier – he had been older than Ellen when he’d started going to the centre, more aware. There were times when Annika had ended up crying by the door while her son had been crying on the other side.
She shook off the memory. Her children were in good hands. The community day-care centres were a blessing; she wished she could have attended one as a child.
Thomas would be picking the kids up today, since she had dropped them off. They tried to keep their hours to a minimum, generally picking the kids up at three and never coming later than four. This meant that they took turns working late when they weren’t going to pick up the kids, making up for supposedly lost time.
Lost in what way, Annika wondered. The absence of her children made her body ache. She opened her eyes, gazed out across the leaden grey surface of Riddarfjärden Bay and choked back her longing.
The Söderleden tunnel extinguished the grey light. Through the fog on the windows she saw the ancient black granite walls flash past.
I can make it, she thought. Everything will be all right.
The place where Anne Snapphane worked was located in a commercial area to the south of the city, close to the ski slopes in Hammarby, where the Olympic arena was being put up. Annika paid the taxi fare with a credit card, stuffed the receipt in her wallet and hoped that the paper would reimburse her for the trip.
The gate was in front of her, marking the outer limits of the television compound, tall grey concrete buildings that disappeared in the mist. On the left there were flat buildings, resembling hangars, that housed the broadcasting buses. She walked past the loading docks and wooden pallets and found the entrance.
Rows of vehicles were in there, all decked out in the same colours – white, with colourful logos – and in a range of different sizes and models. Two men were loading a small van. They looked at her briefly and she raised her hand in greeting.
The largest vehicle of them all was parked almost at the other end. In an indoor setting like this, and next to all the other vehicles, Outside Broadcasting Bus No. Five seemed positively gigantic. She approached it carefully, her footfall echoing on the concrete floor. There were piles of technical equipment by the bus, some of which was packed into metal cases labelled Sony BVP, Cam B Obl, Camera support No. Two.
The left-hand side of the bus had been expanded, just like it had been at Yxtaholm. The same perforated metal steps led up to the control room.
‘Hello? Excuse me … Gunnar?’
The Technical Operations Manager stuck his grey head out into the hallway. Annika put one foot on the steps and smiled.
‘Hi. It’s me, Annika Bengtzon – the train station at Flen, remember? May I come in?’
Gunnar Antonsson came out of the cubbyhole he’d been working in, wiped his hands off on his trousers and came to greet her.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Sure, come on in.’
He extended a warm, dry hand, and shook hers firmly.
‘Thanks for the ride, by the way. I caught a train fifteen minutes later.’
She smiled at him, then gazed at her surroundings and raised her eyebrows.
‘Impressive,’ she said.
The impression of being inside a vehicle was gone. This was a technically advanced office, tastefully decorated. The electronic equipment gently buzzing, an isolated universe of tiny shimmering lights and murmuring monitors.
The man’s face suddenly came to life. He lit up.
‘Want to take a tour?’
Annika nodded, slightly ashamed of her morbid curiosity.
Where was she found? Have you cleaned up the mess?
‘This is the sleeping quarters,’ the man said, indicating a recess on the right with a broad sweep of his arms.
Annika walked past a window with curtains on one side and a large distribution box on the other, looked into the tiny room and nodded knowingly.
‘And what goes on in here?’
Gunnar Antonsson made a sweeping gesture over the screens, controls and keyboards.
‘CCUs,’ he said. ‘The camera control units that the editor uses. It operates the cameras, regulates aperture settings, stuff like that.’
He turned around and continued.
‘Technology Row,’ he said, opening a door on the right.
Annika poked her head inside. There were millions of cables.
‘Everything’s in nineteen-inch racks,’ he said. ‘It’s standard equipment.’
He closed the door after Annika had moved away. Her gaze shifted to the opposite wall, which was covered with maps and wiring diagrams.
‘This is the editing area,’ the man said, already having moved on to the next recess. ‘It’s where they do the assemblies and other editing. Here are the beta tape machines, the digibetas, the VHS recorders for reference tapes and our profilers …’
Annika left the thin red lines of the diagrams and hurried on.
‘When we fixed up this bus two years ago, recording images on a hard drive seemed like science fiction,’ Gunnar Antonsson continued. ‘Now it’s reality. A few months ago we had to redo all the racks and put in profilers down here.’
He pointed at the space below the compact editing console, and bent down and picked up a cable. Annika cleared her throat.
‘I’m sorry, but what does that mean?’
The man, who was already on his way to the next section, stopped in surprise.
‘Editing,’ he said. ‘This is where you put the show together.’
‘On what?’ Annika persisted. ‘On actual tapes or on computers?’
‘You’ve never worked with TV?’ the man asked, shooting a quizzical look at her.
Annika tried to smile.
‘No, I stick to words. It’s easier to work at a paper.’
Gunnar paused and gave her a searching look as he wound the cable into a tight ring.
‘Why did you write so much about Michelle all the time?’
Annika felt her cheeks grow hot. She made an effort to look positive.
‘She was a very exciting public figure. An unusual mix of controversial and glamorous. Obviously, that was why the press liked to write about her.’
His expression remaining quizzical, Gunnar let the cable drop.
‘But why was she so much more important than everyone else?’
Annika coughed, managing to avert her gaze.
‘Michelle sold papers,’ she said. ‘It’s that simple, I guess. She wasn’t more important, really – she was
commercially viable. Like she was for TV Plus. Someone who appealed to everyone, a person who stood out in the global village. She was nice to look at, nice to read about …’
Gunnar Antonsson opened a metal door and put the cable away. ‘You always make broadcast-quality tapes,’ he said, moving further inside the bus. ‘That is, you use beta tapes or digital beta tapes nowadays. It’s a kind of videotape that uses another format and the quality’s much better. During this shoot we had four machines running simultaneously, just in case something went wrong – damaged tapes and stuff like that. Better safe than sorry, you know. But we didn’t use any profilers – computerized recording, that is. Regular videotapes, VHS cassettes, are only used for reference tapes.’
Annika followed him, studying the back of his head. Thin hair, grey. Neatly trimmed.
‘What’s a reference tape?’
The man cocked an eyebrow and said:
‘One is for the host – Michelle always wanted to check how she came across – then there’s one for the producer and one for the researcher. The idea is that you don’t need to make copies of the betas. The editor can use the time codes.’
Annika surveyed the wall of recorders, monitors and microphones with dozens of yellow markings – VTR 08, VTR 07 and so on – and felt more and more dazed.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘There sure is a lot to keep track of around here.’
‘There sure is,’ Gunnar Antonsson agreed, turning away from her and entering the production area.
The corridor opened up on a control room like the ones she’d seen Anne work in. An entire wall covered with monitors displayed the images from the various cameras, and there were buttons, lamps, controls, microphones and a large screen for the outgoing image. The walls were covered with blue and white patterned fabric, counter tops and floors were made of grey laminate, and the rounded wood trim had a shade reminiscent of cherry; Annika’s fingers traced the grain.
‘She was found lying between the slo-mo and the directing console.’
Annika took her hand away from the wood trim and followed Gunnar’s gaze to the floor, to a narrow space between the front and rear production consoles, right in front of the seat used by the technical director. There was a trapdoor in the floor. It had shiny handles and metal strips.
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