They sat in silence for a few minutes. Annika drank the last of her cold coffee. The detective finished his sandwich.
‘One of them might talk,’ Annika said.
‘Sure,’ Q said. ‘The problem is that most of them were too drunk to remember anything at all. They’ve had the story served up to them as the truth, so now they probably actually believe it. I should think maybe one, or at most two of them, actually know that they’re lying. They’re Joachim’s best friends. And they’ve both suddenly got a lot of money to splash around. They’re not going to squeal.’
Annika felt tired, almost ill.
‘So what really happened?’ she asked in a flat voice.
‘Exactly what you think,’ Q said. ‘He strangled her in the cemetery.’
‘And raped her?’
‘No, not there, and not then. We found traces of sperm inside her, and the DNA test proved it was Joachim’s. They’d probably had sex within the past few hours, and it was still there.’
Annika shut her eyes and searched her memory.
‘But you said it was a sexually motivated killing to start with,’ she said. ‘You said there were traces of sexual violence.’
The detective rubbed his forehead.
‘That was mostly old injuries,’ he said. ‘Mostly to the opening of the anus. He used to rape her anally.’
Annika felt like she was going to be sick.
‘Bloody hell …’ she said.
They sat in silence again.
‘What about the other woman who was murdered in Kronoberg Park?’ Annika suddenly asked. ‘Eva – that was her name. That was never cleared up, was it?’
Q sighed. ‘That’s right, but the same thing applies there. We regard the case as closed. It was her former husband. We picked him up two or three years later, but had to let him go. We never got him convicted. He’s dead now.’
‘So is Joachim going to get away with it?’ Annika said.
Q was putting his jacket on.
‘Not if your information is correct,’ he said. ‘There isn’t time to organize a raid tonight, but we’ll be going in tomorrow. Make sure you’re not there.’
He stood up, and stopped by her chair.
‘There’s one thing we’re still wondering about,’ he said.
‘What?’ Annika said.
‘How she got the injury to her hand.’
Annika sat slouched on her chair as he left the café.
67
Time dragged by in the club. Patricia looked at Annika in concern.
‘You look really knackered. Are you coming down with something?’
‘I think I might be,’ she said. ‘I’m freezing, and I feel sick.’
They sat down on the wooden bench in the changing room, and the harsh lighting made the blisters on Annika’s feet shine bright red.
‘How much money have you taken tonight?’ Patricia said.
Annika felt like crying.
‘Not enough,’ she said, staring down at her sky-blue bikini.
She was having more and more difficulty suppressing the urge to throw up. It was Friday, and there were even more girls wandering around the club completely naked. They were sitting on the men’s laps, grinding their crotches against ironed creases and silk ties. They enticed the men into private rooms and smothered them in massage lotion: big bottles from the chemist, cheap and unperfumed.
‘It has to be unperfumed,’ Patricia had explained. ‘They have to go home to their wives afterwards.’
Annika was nervous and worried. What if she’d got everything wrong?
She didn’t dare ask Patricia anything else about the bookkeeping, and Patricia didn’t bring it up again. What if the police came tonight after all? What if Joachim had already moved the books?
She brushed her hair from her face with trembling hands.
‘Would you like a sandwich? Or some coffee?’ Patricia asked anxiously.
Annika forced herself to smile. ‘No thanks, I’ll be fine in a minute or two.’
Joachim was sitting in the office next door. Thank goodness she had been busy with clients when he arrived.
How does someone end up like that? she thought. What has to be wrong with you to make you kill the person you love? How could you kill another person and then just carry on with your life as though nothing had happened?
‘I’d better get out there again,’ Patricia said. ‘Coming?’
Annika leaned over and put fresh plasters on her blisters.
‘Sure,’ she said.
The music was louder now. Two girls were up on stage. One was writhing around the pole, thrusting against it and licking it, and the other had pulled a man out of the audience. He was smearing shaving foam over the girl’s breasts, and she was moaning, head thrown back, in a semblance of ecstasy.
Annika followed Patricia behind the bar and poured herself a Coke.
‘Don’t you get fed up, having to look at that all night long?’ Annika whispered in Patricia’s ear.
‘Another bottle of champagne on the bald one’s bill,’ one of the naked girls said to Patricia, who turned away to mark it up.
Annika went out, back to her table. She shivered, it was cold out there.
Sanna wasn’t there. She settled onto the bar stool she had dragged behind the roulette table.
‘How’s business?’
Joachim was standing in the door of the office, smiling, arms folded.
Annika leaped to the floor at once.
‘Okay, but not as good as last night.’
He came over to the table without letting his smile drop, and without looking away from her.
‘I think you’ve got a great future ahead of you here,’ he said, coming round the table to stand beside her.
Annika licked her lips and tried to smile.
‘Thanks,’ she said, and fluttered her eyelashes.
‘So how come you ended up here?’ he said, his voice a touch cooler.
Lie, she thought, but keep it as close to the truth as possible.
‘I needed to make some money fast,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘I got fired from my last job – they thought I was a troublemaker. A … a customer complained about me and the boss got jittery.’
Joachim laughed, stroked her shoulder and let his hand linger on her breast.
‘What sort of work was it?’
She swallowed, fighting an urge to pull away from him.
‘Supermarket,’ she said. ‘The meat counter at Vivo on Fridhemsplan. Slicing sausage all day long. Not exactly fun, day after day.’
He laughed loudly, and removed his hand.
‘I’m not surprised you got out,’ he said. ‘Who did you work with?’
Her heart stopped. Did he know someone there?
‘Sorry?’ she said with a smile. ‘You’ve got friends in the sausage world?’
He burst out laughing. ‘You really should consider going on stage,’ he said when he’d calmed down, taking another step closer. ‘You’d look great under the spotlights. Haven’t you ever dreamed of being a star?’
He thrust both hands into her hair, caressing her neck. To her horror, it made her crotch tingle.
‘What, a star like Josefin?’
The question slipped out of her mouth before she had time to think. He reacted as though she’d slapped him, letting go of her and stepping back.
‘What the fuck? What do you know about her?’
Fuck, how stupid could she possibly be? she thought, cursing her big mouth.
‘She worked here, didn’t she?’ she said, unable to suppress a shiver.
‘Did you know her, or what?’
Annika smiled nervously. ‘No, not at all, I never met her. But Patricia told me she worked here …’
He stepped closer again and put his face right up to hers.
‘Things didn’t turn out well for Josefin,’ he said tightly. ‘We have a lot of powerful clients, you see. She thought she could trick them out of their money. Watch out for tha
t. Never try to trick anyone here, not the clients, and not me.’
Joachim turned on his heel and went up the spiral staircase.
Annika grabbed the roulette wheel, ready to faint.
Nineteen years, seven months and fifteen days
I’m driven by a desire to understand. I know I’m looking for explanations and connections that may not even exist. What do I know about the way love works?
He isn’t really mean. Just isolated, small and fragile, damaged by his childhood. There’s no reason why his sense of powerlessness should always express itself the way it does. When he grows up maybe he’ll drop the violence. My own pathetic lack of faith makes me horribly ashamed. I’ve been far too quick to judge him. I take my own development for granted, and ignore his completely.
Even so, I feel a great chill in my chest.
Because he says
he will never
let me go.
Saturday 8 September
68
It felt odd to be going up in the lift again. She remembered the last time she had been in there, when she had been convinced it was the last time ever.
Nothing lasts for ever, she thought. Everything is cyclical.
The newsroom was light, quiet and completely empty, just the way she liked it. Ingvar Johansson had his back to the door and was talking on the phone. He didn’t see her.
Anders Schyman was sitting behind his desk in the aquarium.
‘Come in,’ he said, gesturing towards the dark red leather sofa that had replaced its stinking predecessor. Annika shut the door behind her, glancing out at the newsroom behind the tired curtains. It felt odd that it all looked just the same as when she left, almost as if she’d never been there.
‘You look well,’ he said.
Rubbish, Annika thought.
‘I can’t imagine I was ever this tired before,’ she said, sitting down on the sofa. The seat was firm, the leather cold.
‘How was the Caucasus?’ he wondered.
She didn’t follow, and bit her lip.
‘Isn’t that where you were going?’ Schyman said.
‘There were no last-minute deals,’ Annika said. ‘I went to Turkey instead.’
The head editor smiled. ‘That was lucky,’ he said. ‘They’re heading for war down there. The army’s mobilizing, apparently.’
Annika nodded. ‘The government forces have got hold of some weapons at last.’
The sat in silence for a few moments.
‘So what is it that you’re working on?’ Schyman asked.
Annika took a deep breath.
‘I haven’t written it yet,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got a computer at home. I thought I’d tell you about it instead and you can see what you think.’
‘Go ahead,’ the head editor said.
Annika pulled the photocopies out of her bag.
‘It’s about the murder of Josefin Liljeberg and the minister suspected of killing her,’ she said.
Anders Schyman waited without saying anything.
‘The minister didn’t kill her,’ she said. ‘The police regard the case as finished. It was her boyfriend, Joachim, the owner of the sex club. They can’t arrest him, because he’s got six witnesses to confirm his alibi. They can’t all be convicted of perjury, but the police are sure they’re lying.’
Annika fell silent and looked at her papers.
‘So no one will ever be charged with her murder?’ Schyman said slowly.
‘Nope,’ Annika said. ‘It’ll remain unsolved unless one of the six men talks. It’ll be beyond the statute of limitations in twenty-five years.’
She stood up and laid two receipts on Schyman’s desk.
‘Look at these,’ she said. ‘This one’s the bill from Studio Six, from the night of twenty-seventh to the twenty-eighth of July this year. Seven people enjoyed “entertainment and refreshments” worth fifty-five thousand, six hundred kronor. It’s under Josefin’s name, you can see that from this code, and it was paid for with a Diners Club card issued to Christer Lundgren. Look at the signature.’
Anders Schyman picked up the photocopy and studied it.
‘It’s illegible,’ he said.
‘Yep,’ Annika said. ‘Now look at this one.’
She handed him the expenses claim from Tallinn.
‘Christer Lundgren,’ Schyman read, then looked up at Annika’s face. ‘These were written by different people.’
Annika nodded and moistened her lips. Her mouth was completely dry and she wished she had a glass of water.
‘The Minister for Foreign Trade was never at the sex club,’ she said. ‘I think the Studio Six bill was signed for by his undersecretary in the department.’
Anders Schyman picked up the first receipt again and held it close to his glasses.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That would make sense.’
‘Christer Lundgren was in Tallinn that night,’ Annika said. ‘He flew out with Estonian Air at eight o’clock on the evening of July twenty-seventh; you can see that from the expenses claim. He met someone there, and flew back on a private plane in the early hours of the next morning.’
The head editor looked at the other photocopy.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘What was he doing there?’
Annika breathed in.
‘The meeting was top secret,’ she said. ‘It was to do with weapons exports. He didn’t want to make the expenses claim through his own department where it might be found. He sent it to the Inspectorate for Strategic Products.’
Anders Schyman looked up at her. ‘The body that monitors Swedish weapons exports?’
Annika nodded.
‘Are you sure?’
She pointed at the verification stamp without speaking.
‘Good grief,’ the head editor said. ‘Why?’
‘I can only think of one explanation,’ Annika said. ‘There was something dodgy about this deal.’
Anders Schyman frowned. ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘Why would the government get involved with anything like a dodgy weapons deal?’
Annika straightened her back and gulped.
‘I don’t think they had any choice,’ she said quietly.
Schyman leaned back in his chair.
‘This is starting to get a bit tenuous,’ he said.
‘I know,’ Annika said stubbornly, ‘but the facts remain: Christer Lundgren went to Tallinn that night to do something so controversial that he’d rather be suspected of murder and have to resign than tell anyone what he was really doing. That much is absolute fact. And what could possibly be worse than that?’
She had stood up and was gesticulating wildly now. Anders Schyman was looking at her thoughtfully.
‘I assume you have a theory,’ he said.
‘IB,’ she said. ‘The lost archives of the Information Bureau – the originals that would ruin the Social Democrats for the foreseeable future if they ever came out.’
Schyman leaned over his desk.
‘They were destroyed.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Annika said. ‘A copy of the foreign archive arrived at the Defence Ministry on July seventeenth this year. It was a warning to the government: do as we say, or the rest will come out. In their original form.’
‘But,’ Schyman said, ‘how on earth could that have happened?’
Annika sat on the corner of the desk and sighed.
‘The Social Democrats were spying on Communists for the whole of the post-war period, storing whatever information they could find about them. Do you suppose the lads over there just sat and twiddled their thumbs while that was going on?’
She pointed over her shoulder, towards the Russian Embassy complex.
‘Hardly,’ she continued. ‘They were perfectly aware of what the Swedes were up to.’
She stood up and dug her notebook out of her bag.
‘In the spring of 1973 Elmér and his cronies knew that Guillou and Bratt were on their trail,’ she said. ‘The Social Democrats
started to panic. And the Russians would have been aware of that. They realized the Swedes would try to remove any trace of their spying. So what did they do?’
She held out the text she had copied from the newspaper articles published on 2 April 1973.
‘The Russians stole the archives,’ she said. ‘The senior KGB officer posted to the embassy in Stockholm made sure everything was taken out of the country, probably in large diplomatic bags.’
Schyman took her notepad and read in silence.
‘And who was the senior KGB officer in Stockholm in the early 1970s? Well, he just happens to be the man who is currently President of that benighted country in the Caucasus. He even speaks Swedish. And that President has a massive problem: he has no weapons to fight the guerrillas with, and the global community has decreed that he isn’t allowed to buy any.’
The head editor was staring at the photocopies again.
Annika sat down on the sofa and presented her conclusion: ‘So what does the President do? He digs out his old files from twenty-four Grevgatan and fifty-six Valhallavägen. If the Swedish government won’t supply him with arms, he’ll make sure they’re out of power for decades. First the government refuses to listen. Maybe they think he hasn’t actually got the archives, which is why that warning was sent to the Ministry of Defence. A selection of papers from the foreign section of the archive, not enough to bring down the government, but enough to be a problem in the middle of an election campaign. So the Prime Minister decides to send one of his ministers to meet representatives of the President. They meet halfway, in Estonia. The deal is agreed, and the weapons are shipped at once via a third country, probably Singapore. And the army mobilizes.’
Annika rubbed her forehead.
‘It all goes according to plan,’ she said. ‘There’s just one problem. The same night that the meeting in Tallinn takes place, a young woman is killed outside the minister’s front door. Through a bizarre set of circumstances it turns out that the minister’s undersecretary took a group of German union bosses to the sex club where the woman worked, and paid the bill with the minister’s card. The minister is in the shit. And he can’t do anything. He can’t tell anyone where he’s been, or what he’s done …’
The ensuing silence was deafening. Annika could see Anders Schyman’s brain whirring at high speed. He was looking between the photocopies and the notebook, making his own notes, running a hand through his hair.
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