“What does this have to do with anything?” the chairman of the board asked, now looking more confused than anything.
“With any crime or catastrophe,” Schyman said, “it’s vital for people to be able to empathize with the reactions of those involved. They have to feel the despair of relatives, to confront the destructive motivations of those responsible. In the foreign media it has largely been up to television to focus on ‘personal’ journalism of this sort, but here in Sweden the news broadcasters have chosen a direction largely regarded as more respectable. And this is where our new ventures come in.”
“I don’t quite follow you,” Herman Wennergren said, his eyes fluttering anxiously. “Do you mean that we have to become more female?”
Schyman leaned forward again and lowered his voice.
“This is the only untapped media space in Sweden today,” he said, underlining his words by tapping his pen on his printouts. “Tabloid news television, with a personal angle.”
“Television?” Wennergren echoed.
“Precisely,” Anders Schyman said. “Television is a useless medium for conveying facts, but wonderful for emotion, drama, people, closeness, everything the evening papers have long had a monopoly on. The day that someone seriously sets about making tabloid television for a broad audience, they’ll wipe the floor with their competitors.”
Wennergren looked up with an expression of amazement.
“But our principle shareholders, the family, have loads of television channels. Why hasn’t anyone done this already?” he asked, wide-eyed.
“Up to now there have been technological limitations and broadcast licenses to worry about,” the editor in chief said. “It’s always been prohibitively expensive, and outside the regulations. But now any resistance is largely a question of prejudice and obsolete traditions.”
Here he handed over the second sheet of paper.
“Today there’s nothing to stop it from happening,” he said. “It’s all about getting in there first and seizing the initiative; then we can deal with the exact shape and priorities.”
“This all sounds extremely visionary,” Herman Wennergren said, “but not really very realistic. Where exactly would there be the physical space for something like this?”
Anders Schyman felt the tension in his shoulders ease and he couldn’t help smiling.
“This is where infrastructure and technology come in,” he said.
“Any suggestion of a move is out of the question,” Wennergren said. “We can’t afford anything of that sort.”
Anders Schyman’s smile grew even broader.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking about that,” he said, “and I’ve got a suggestion.”
Spike was sitting eating a banana when Annika arrived in the newsroom.
“Was it worth covering?” he asked as she passed the news desk.
“You actually eat something apart from pizza?” Annika said in amazement, staring at the piece of fruit.
The head of news beamed.
“So did the king show up? Anyone from the competition?”
She composed her features and managed to sound quite nonchalant when she replied.
“That guy, Bosse, was there,” she said, “but the king couldn’t make it. It was pretty chaotic. The Karolinska Institute has got hold of a hundred million dollars for research, but they seemed to disagree about everything else. And they’re all upset that their Nobel chairperson is dead.”
“Good,” Spike said. “Let it go. We’ve got so many four-color adverts that I doubt we’d have room for the king even if he died.”
Annika went into her office and closed the glass door, tossed her outdoor clothes in a heap and switched on her computer. As the programs loaded she hunted about for anything edible in her desk drawers, to no avail.
What had gotten into her? She was flirting the pants off a reporter from their main competitor, someone who was the least suitable person she could have picked, not counting the fact that she was married with two kids and on the point of buying a house in Djursholm.
Thoughts aren’t unfaithful, she thought. I can feel whatever I like as long as I don’t do anything about it. I’m not going to be like Thomas.
And once again she saw that woman before her, Sophia Grenborg, blonde and smartly dressed, so lovely and respectable, a younger version of his ice-cold ex-wife Eleonor.
Without actively thinking about it she had looked up Sophia Grenborg on the net, on Google, Yahoo, and Eniro News, and had come up with some interesting results.
New Challenges was the title of one section of the County Council’s website covering internal information. Annika read the final item carefully:
The new clerk in the traffic safety department is to be former project leader Sophia Grenborg. Most recently Sophia worked as coordinator of the congress group.
“This feels like an exciting challenge,” Sophia says. “I’ve always been keen to experience new things, and I’m very grateful for the confidence management have shown in me.”
Annika read the piece twice. Was she being ironic or was she really that clichéd? A small photograph showed her bastard false fucking smile.
Burn in hell, bitch, Annika thought.
She clicked away from the picture and called up information about how much money the academic world had at its disposal.
I get too angry, Annika thought. I ought to do something about my rages. I don’t want her to go on poisoning my life. She’s gone, and she isn’t going to bother us again.
It turned out that Swedish universities and colleges had received in total 1.6 billion kronor for what was called commissioned research last year. Spread over five years, Medi-Tec’s grant came to something like one hundred and fifty million a year, which was a sizeable amount but not really a sensational sum. From the archives it was apparent that the Karolinska Institute had received one hundred and fifty million in donations from private individuals.
The fact that a single company was granting them money wasn’t particularly odd either. Forty-three percent of all their research grants came from both Swedish and foreign businesses, she read.
This really isn’t something for the Evening Post, she concluded.
“Have you eaten?” Berit said over the intercom, and Annika was so happy that she jumped for joy.
They settled down in the staff room with coffee and cheese sandwiches.
“There’s something not right about Neue Jihad,” Berit said, pouring milk into her plastic cup. “The day before yesterday, a reliable source told me that the German security police had arrested three young men as early as Friday, but I can’t get official confirmation of that anywhere. I’ve just spoken to the sister of one of the boys, and she’s adamant that the police broke in and dragged her brother away at four o’clock on Friday afternoon.”
Annika stirred her coffee.
“What’s so odd about that?” she asked.
“No one’s prepared to say there were actually any arrests,” Berit said. “The police say they don’t know anything about it. The men haven’t been charged, or remanded in custody, in either Stockholm or Berlin. They’ve just disappeared into thin air.”
“They must be somewhere,” Annika said, taking a bite of her sandwich. “And what’s the connection to Bandhagen that the police were talking about?”
Berit leaned forward.
“Ah, well,” she said, “there you’ve put your finger on something really nasty. The father there has disappeared as well, just like the boys in Berlin. The mother and girls have been released, but there’s been no sign of the father since he was dragged out of the flat.”
“Have you spoken to the mother?”
Berit chewed and shook her head.
“They’ve gone somewhere else. I got hold of the youngest girl’s teacher, who turned out to be very talkative. The girl is in year nine, and is captain of the basketball team. Her big sister is in the second or third year of a sixth-form science course at some college in the c
ity—she’s evidently so bright she’s practically a genius.”
“Where are they from?” Annika asked.
“Jordan, the teacher thinks, or maybe Syria. They arrived here when the older girl was small, and the basketball captain was born here. The mother’s got permanent residency, but for some reason the father hasn’t. They’ve lived in the same two-room apartment out in Bandhagen for thirteen years. The parents run a key-cutting and shoe-repair business down in a subway station somewhere.”
“They sound pretty dangerous,” Annika said.
“Yes, don’t they just?” Berit said. “I’ve put a note in their mailbox and left a message on their answering machine, at home and at the shop, so we’ll see if they get in touch.”
They sat in silence for a while, munching their way through their sandwiches. Annika thought the silence was a bit oppressive, but wasn’t sure if she was imagining things. Was Berit still upset about the possibility that she was sitting on information that no one else had?
“I haven’t heard a thing from the murder investigation,” she therefore said. “Have you got any idea of how they’re getting on? Do they know how the girl got into the banquet?”
“Well, she wasn’t on the guest list, that much is certain. They don’t think she spent long in either the Blue Hall or the Golden Hall before the killings. So she must have gotten into the building after half past ten that evening, but they don’t know how.”
Annika drained her coffee cup.
“Do they know how she got out?”
“Through a freight elevator and then a service entrance. The elevator isn’t supposed to work without a card and a code, but on such a stressful evening as the Nobel banquet, several of the elevators are left open; otherwise the event would grind to a halt. I’m writing a piece about that for tomorrow.”
“Is there a scapegoat yet?”
“Not yet,” Berit said. “They’re all shielding each other so far.”
Annika got up and fetched the coffeepot and refilled their cups.
“I heard that the getaway boat was stolen in Nacka in August,” she said. “Do you know any more about that?”
Berit nodded thoughtfully.
“There’s one thing I don’t get,” she said. “They found the boat in Gröndal, and they think the killer headed south by car.”
“And?” Annika said.
“There’s no junction onto the southbound road from Gröndal. You have to go all the way down to the Nyboda junction to get onto the expressway if you’re heading south, and that’s a really messy route. It would take at least five minutes longer.”
Annika emptied her second cup of coffee.
“If the alternative was heading north, surely the Nyboda junction makes more sense than that?” she said.
Berit pushed the remains of her sandwich away.
“But if she was heading south by car, why not leave the boat at Stora Essingen instead? It would have been a shorter trip by boat, and she could have gotten straight onto the expressway. I don’t understand it. Okay, so what have you been doing today?”
“I was out at Karolinska,” Annika replied. “I didn’t get anything. Which reminds me, have you ever heard of a Bernhard Thorell?”
She wondered for a moment if she should say anything about Bosse, but decided to keep quiet.
Berit gave the sandwich another chance and chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds.
“God, this wasn’t made in the past couple of days,” she said, swallowing with some effort. “Thorell? Related to Simon Thorell?”
Annika shrugged and gave up on her own sandwich.
“Simon Thorell,” Berit said thoughtfully, pulling the last pieces of the tough bread apart. “You don’t recognize the name? He was a venture capitalist, big in the seventies, pretty much the first to make a killing from it. He and his wife died in a car crash in the Alps, if I remember rightly. A pretty tragic story.”
“This bloke’s the head of a pharmaceutical company in the States,” Annika said.
Berit wiped her fingers on a napkin and emptied her cup.
“Are you writing anything for tomorrow?” she said, getting up.
“Spike wasn’t interested,” Annika said, following her out.
“Have you seen the amount of space we’ve got?” Berit said. “Christmas sales in the shops are going to hit a new record, if the number of ads in the Evening Post is anything to go by.”
“One more thing,” Annika said. “Do you know what Nemesis is?”
Berit tossed her cup, sandwich, and napkin into the garbage can.
“Nemesis,” she said. “That’s the name of the Greek god of revenge and retribution. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” Annika said.
SUBJECT: The Price of Love
TO: Andrietta Ahlsell
Bertha Kinsky arrives in Paris in early May 1876 to work as Alfred’s secretary. She’s thirty-two years old when they meet, an Austrian countess; she’s beautiful, unmarried, extremely intelligent—and very poor.
They meet at the morning train and take Alfred’s cab to breakfast at the Grand Hotel. Bertha, who went on to become an internationally famous author, describes the journey: The rays of sunlight played with the shimmering fountains of the Rond Point, and made the lanterns and harnesses of the countless vehicles sparkle.
They talk about the world and about people, about current affairs and eternal problems, Alfred is even able to talk about his experiments and she understands. They talk about art and life, and they talk about peace.
Alfred is concerned about what his inventions might do. He isn’t a violent man—quite the contrary! He believes that the art of war is in its very early stages, that an arms race is imminent. His conclusions are many decades ahead of their time: when destructive weaponry has finally reached its apex, fear will force people to live in peace with one another.
They have one week together. One week at the Grand Hotel in Paris. Alfred has found something he will never find again. He realizes this almost at once, that this is unique, here she is! And he asks her openly: is her heart free?
She replies honestly: there is a man, a young nobleman, whom she is not permitted to marry. She is too poor and too old, but her heart is his.
And Alfred goes; he leaves the Grand Hotel in Paris and when he returns she is gone. She has sold her last diamond necklace to pay her hotel bill.
She has fled to Russia with the young man. She marries Arthur von Suttner on June 12, 1876, and spends nine years in exile, living in the Caucasus mountains in a place called Mingrelia. She becomes an author and peace activist, but she never forgets. Bertha stays in touch with Alfred Nobel for the rest of his life, but almost only by letter. They meet on a few occasions after the summer of 1876, the terrible summer of 1876.
Alfred, Alfred, how he suffers in his apartment in Paris! How he grieves in his grand house on the Avenue Malakoff, painfully aware of the vacuum in his life. During the summer of 1876, when he is stumbling blind, worse than ever before, he reaches out his hand, and there stands a woman in a florist’s in Baden bei Wien. Her name is Sofie Hess, she is young (only twenty years old), she is an orphan and alone (just like him), she is pretty, and she reminds him, at least superficially, of Bertha.
Perhaps she could become like her. Perhaps Alfred could turn Sofie into a dame du monde. Perhaps she could become a countess with the ability to discuss the great issues of life.
How Alfred tries! How he exerts himself! He educates, informs, equips her. Perhaps he loves her, because he gives Sofie a villa in Ischl and a large apartment in Paris (not far from his own). Or perhaps he merely possesses, buying something that he cannot have.
But Sofie isn’t so young. She isn’t twenty, she’s almost thirty. She isn’t an orphan, her father Heinrich is alive.
She is merely alone, alone in her large apartment in Paris on the Avenue d’Eylau, alone and bored.
Alfred is so dull. He does nothing but make new demands. He travels around his factories and
writes loooong letters, about projects and experiments and legal problems and dynamite companies and Sofie yawns, she replies in her childish handwriting and tells him gossip and asks for more money.
Dearest Alfred, when do you realize that you have been deceived?
When you find out that father Heinrich is alive? When Sofie returns to Vienna and calls herself Frau Nobel? When she admits that she is expecting another man’s child?
Her coquettish begging echoes through the years:
My dearest Alfred!
I haven’t heard from you for a long time. I am also extremely concerned because I myself am very poorly and have no peace … I have no money to live on and must today pawn my last brooch. I have never experienced anything this bad before. I am quite wretched. And the poor child—what do the fates have in store for it?
Fondest wishes and kisses from your
Sofie
What must the industrial magnate have thought when he read this text in its big, round lettering? What strings is she plucking, the girl who never became a lady? What is it in her ingratiating tone that persuades him to send money, again and again and again?
Alfred, Alfred, why do you allow yourself to be exploited?
My dearest Alfred!
I can find no apartment, for they are all too dear … I am wretched. It is depressing to spend the winter living in a hotel room with a small child, with nothing but terrible food … Will you give me permission to use your surname? Can you send some money? You are all I have in the world.
Now I send you heartfelt kisses
From your eternally beloved
Sofie
Three million kronor. That is how much he sends, every year, the equivalent of three million kronor!
How incredibly starved he must have been, how incredibly alone and abandoned.
How much he pays, and how little he gets in return.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15
Anders Schyman knocked gently on the glass door to Annika’s office. The reporter looked up in surprise from the paper she was reading and gestured for him to come in.
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