The Bomber

by Liza Marklund

  When she got home the children rushed towards her and she was showered in kisses and drawings. Thomas gave her a quick peck on the way out, and picked up the same taxi she had arrived in.

  ‘Right, you’ve got to let me take my coat off, just calm down …’

  Ellen and Kalle stopped, surprised that she sounded so irritable. She leaned over and hugged them, too hard and too quickly, then went over to the phone. She called Ingvar Johansson, but he had already gone into the editorial meeting. Damn, now she hadn’t had time to tell anyone what her team had been doing today. Oh well, she’d just have to talk to Spike later.

  Dinner was on the table, and the children had already eaten. She sat down and tried to eat some of the chicken, but it seemed to grow in her mouth until she had to spit it out. She ate a little rice, then threw the rest away. She could never eat when she was this stressed.

  ‘You ought to eat up all your dinner,’ Kalle said reproachfully.

  She parked them in front of Swedish Television’s series of Advent programmes for children, shut the sitting-room door and called Patrik.

  ‘The Tiger’s called,’ the reporter yelled. ‘He’s really angry.’

  ‘Why?’ Annika asked.

  ‘He’s on his honeymoon in Tenerife, Playa de las Americas. He’s been there since Thursday, coming home tomorrow. He says the police knew perfectly well where he was, because they’d already checked all flights out of Arlanda and he was on the list. But the Spanish police got hold of him and forced him to sit through a whole afternoon of questioning. They made him miss the barbecue and a free drink by the pool. Can you believe they’d do anything so cruel?’

  Annika smiled weakly.

  ‘Are you going to put something together about it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did you hear the piece on the radio about the explosives?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’m working on at the moment. Ulf Olsson and I are in an explosives store, taking pictures of different types of dynamite. Do you know, they look just like big sausages!’

  Bless him! He had a capacity for relentless enthusiasm under all circumstances, and at the same time always managed to get a good angle to his stories.

  ‘Have you got anywhere with the police hunt for the Bomber?’

  ‘Nope, it’s all gone very quiet. I think they must be getting close to the bastard.’

  ‘We need to get some sort of confirmation. I’ll try to sort that tonight,’ Annika said.

  ‘Right, well, we’ve got to get out of here now, or else we’ll get a serious headache, according to our expert. Speak to you later.’

  The television programme had evidently finished, because the children were fighting over a comic. She went in and changed channels, and waited for the regional news to start.

  ‘Can we do a jigsaw, Mummy?’

  They sat on the floor and tipped out a twenty-five-piece wooden jigsaw. Annika sat down and moved the pieces around absent-mindedly. They sat like that until the local news started at ten past seven. She told them to go and brush their teeth while she checked what the news team had come up with. They had been out to Sätra Hall and had been allowed into the referees’ changing-room. The pictures weren’t terribly dramatic; the room itself didn’t seem to have suffered much damage. Every trace of poor Steffe had been carefully scrubbed away. There was no indication that an arrest was imminent. She went into the bathroom and helped the children brush their teeth while the local news moved on to a report about Christmas shopping.

  ‘Put on your pyjamas and we’ll read Peter No-Tail. Don’t forget your fluoride pills.’

  She left them arguing as the main television news got underway. They were pushing hard with the story of the government proposal for regional politics. Nothing she needed to watch, in other words. She read the children their story and tucked them up in their beds, as they protested and said they weren’t tired.

  ‘It’ll soon be Christmas Eve, and children have to be very good, because otherwise Father Christmas won’t come.’

  That worked, and soon they were asleep. She called Thomas at work and on his mobile, but of course he didn’t answer. She started up the old PC in their bedroom and quickly typed up what she had learned from her conversation with Helena Starke from memory. She saved the file on a USB stick, all the while growing more anxious. Where the hell had Thomas got to?

  He arrived just after half past eight.

  ‘Thanks, darling,’ he panted as he came through the door.

  ‘Did you ask the taxi to wait?’ she asked curtly.

  ‘Shit, no, I forgot.’

  She rushed down the stairs to catch the car, but of course it had driven off. She walked down to Kungsholmstorg, but naturally there were no cars waiting at the taxi rank. She carried on past the chemist, down towards Kungsholmsgatan: there was another taxi rank on Scheelegatan. There was a single car standing there, from some unfamiliar firm out in the suburbs. She got back to the office at five to nine. Everything was quiet and deserted. Ingvar Johansson had long since gone home and the night team were down in the canteen. She went into her room and started making phone-calls.

  ‘This is starting to get bloody monotonous,’ her source said.

  ‘Stop being so grouchy,’ she said tiredly. ‘I’ve been on the go for fourteen hours and I’m starting to get fed up. You know who I am and what I’m about, so come on … Ceasefire?’

  The policeman on the other end gave a deep sigh.

  ‘You’re not the only person who’s been at it since seven this morning.’

  ‘You’re closing in on him, aren’t you?’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘You usually stick to your allocated hours, especially ahead of public holidays. Something’s going on.’

  ‘Of course it is. There’s always something going on.’

  Annika groaned out loud.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said.

  ‘Look, we can hardly leak information that we’re closing in on the Bomber, can we? Surely you can see that? He’d just take off.’

  ‘But you’re close?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘But you are?’

  The man didn’t reply.

  ‘How much can I write?’ Annika asked cautiously.

  ‘Not a single bloody line, otherwise it’ll go to hell.’

  ‘When are you planning to arrest him?’

  The policeman was silent for a few seconds.

  ‘As soon as we’ve found him.’

  ‘Found?’

  ‘He’s disappeared.’

  53

  The hairs on the back of Annika’s neck stood up.

  ‘So you know who it is?’

  ‘We think so, yes.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Annika whispered. ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘We’ve had a good idea for a couple of days, but now we’re sure enough to want to bring the individual in for questioning.’

  ‘Can we come with you?’ she asked quickly.

  ‘For the arrest? I doubt it. We haven’t got a fucking clue where he is.’

  ‘How many have you got out looking for him?’

  ‘Not many, we haven’t put out a regional alert yet. We want to check the locations we know about first.’

  ‘When will you be putting out the alert?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  Annika was thinking so hard it hurt. How could she write about this without writing about it?

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ the policeman said. ‘Look upon this as a test. I’ve given you confidential information, so think bloody carefully before you do anything with it.’

  The conversation ended, and Annika was left sitting in her dusty room, her heart thudding. She could well be the only journalist who knew this, and she couldn’t do anything with it.

  She went out into the newsroom to calm down, and to have a word with Spike. The first thing she saw was a black-and-white printout of the next day’s newsbill. It sai
d: CHRISTINA FURHAGE LESBIAN – LOVER TALKS ABOUT HER FINAL HOURS.

  Annika felt the room start to spin. This can’t be true, she thought. Good grief, where had it come from? With something approaching tunnel vision, she walked over to the printout, grabbed it, and slapped it down on the desk in front of Spike.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ she said.

  ‘Our best story tomorrow,’ the night-editor said, nonchalantly.

  ‘But we can’t publish this,’ Annika said, unable to control her voice. ‘This is irrelevant. Christina Furhage never spoke openly about her sexuality. We’ve got no right to put her on display like this. She didn’t want to say anything while she was alive, so we don’t have any right to do it now that she’s dead.’

  The editor stretched his back, and put his hands behind his head. He leaned back, almost overturning his chair.

  ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, is it, liking women. Hell, I do too.’ He grinned. He looked over his shoulder to get support from the rest of the formatting team around the desk behind him. Annika forced herself to stick to the facts.

  ‘She was married and had children. Do you fancy volunteering to look her family in the eye tomorrow if you print this?’

  ‘She was a public figure.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any fucking difference!’ Annika said, unable to keep calm any longer. ‘The woman was murdered! So, who the hell wrote the article?’

  The night-editor got to his feet with an effort. Now he was angry as well.

  ‘Nils has got hold of some good information. He’s got confirmation from a named source that she was a lesbian. She had a relationship with that macho dyke, Starke—’

  ‘But that’s my information!’ Annika yelled, furious now. ‘I mentioned it as gossip at our run-through after lunch. So who’s the named source?’

  The editor stood with his face inches from Annika’s.

  ‘I don’t give a damn where the information comes from,’ he snarled. ‘Nils has come up with our best story for tomorrow. If you had that information, then why the hell didn’t you write the article? Don’t you think it’s about time you grew up?’

  Annika felt the words hit home. They struck her in the stomach, where the lump of stress expanded and made her lungs feel too small. She forced herself to steer away from the personal attacks and concentrate on the journalistic facts. Was she actually wrong about this? Was Christina Furhage’s sexuality really the most important story of the day? She pushed the thought aside.

  ‘Who Christina Furhage was fucking is completely irrelevant,’ she said in a low voice. ‘The interesting thing is who murdered her. Another interesting thing is how this affects the Olympic Games, sport generally, and Sweden’s international reputation. And it’s important to find out why she was killed, to work out who the killer is, and what his motivations were. I don’t give a shit about who she was sleeping with, as long as it doesn’t have anything to do with her death. And that’s really what you should be concentrating on too.’

  The night-editor breathed in through his nose, making a noise like an air-conditioning unit whirring into life.

  ‘Do you know what, esteemed head of crime? You are completely fucking wrong. You should have made sure you could fill those boots before you put them on. Nils Langeby is right: you aren’t up to the job. Can’t you see how pathetic you are?’

  The lump of stress exploded inside her, a physical sensation of falling apart. All sound vanished, and she saw flashes of light in front of her eyes. To her surprise she realized that she was still standing, that she was aware of what was happening around her, and that she was still breathing. She turned on her heel and went into her room, concentrating hard on crossing the floor of the newsroom, feeling the other journalists’ eyes on her back like arrows. She made it to her office and shut the door. She slumped to the floor inside the door, her whole body shaking. I’m not dying, I’m not dying, I’m not dying, she thought. This will pass, this will pass, this will pass. She felt short of air and was panting for breath, but the air wasn’t reaching her lungs. She took another deep breath, then another, until she started to get cramp in her arms. She realized she was hyperventilating and had too much oxygen in her blood. She struggled to her feet and staggered to her desk, pulled a paper bag out of the bottom drawer and started breathing into it. She conjured up Thomas’s voice, calm and soothing, calm and soothing, calm and soothing, it’ll be all right, darling, just breathe; you’re not falling apart, little Anki, calm and soothing, calm and soothing …

  The shaking subsided and she sat on her chair. She had a strong urge to cry, but suppressed it and called Anders Schyman at home. His wife answered and Annika did her best to sound normal.

  ‘He’s at the Christmas dinner in the executive suite,’ Schyman’s wife said.

  Annika called reception and asked them to put her through to the directors’ floor. She realized that she was no longer sounding coherent, and was hardly making herself understood. After several minutes of nothing but background conversation and the sound of serving dishes rattling, she heard Anders Schyman’s voice.

  ‘Sorry, sorry … to disturb you in the middle of dinner,’ she said quietly.

  Chatter and laughter in the background.

  ‘And sorry I wasn’t able to make it to the six o’clock meeting this evening, but there was a crisis at home—’ She started to sob loudly and uncontrollably.

  ‘What on earth’s happened? Has something happened to the children?’ Anders Schyman said, sounding horrified.

  ‘No, no, it’s nothing serious, but I have to ask – did you discuss what Spike is leading with tomorrow, about Christina Furhage being a lesbian?’

  Annika heard nothing but chatter and laughter for several seconds.

  ‘About what?’ Anders Schyman said eventually.

  She put a hand to her chest and forced herself to breathe normally and calmly.

  ‘Her lover speaking out about their last hours together, according to the newsbill.’

  ‘Bloody hell. I’m on my way down,’ the editor-in-chief said, and hung up.

  She put the receiver down, leaned over her keyboard and wept. Her mascara made a mess of her notes, and her whole body was shaking. I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, she thought.

  She knew that she was making a fool of herself, that she was burning her bridges, that she was finished in this job. The sound of her despair seeped under the door and out into the newsroom. Everyone could see that she couldn’t take the pressure, that she shouldn’t have been given the job, that her promotion had been a disaster. This realization did nothing to help, and she couldn’t stop crying. The great lump of stress and tiredness had finally taken over her whole body, and there was nothing she could do to stop the shaking or the tears.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder and a soothing voice from up above her.

  ‘Annika, Annika, it’s all right now. Whoever’s behind this, we’ll sort it out. Annika, do you hear what I’m saying?’

  She held her breath and looked up. Her head was aching badly and her eyes were still seeing flashes of light. It was Anders Schyman.

  ‘Sorry, I …’ she said, trying to wipe away the make-up from her face with the back of her hand. ‘Sorry …’

  ‘Here, use my handkerchief. Sit up properly and clean yourself up, I’ll go and get a glass of water.’

  The editor-in-chief disappeared through the door and Annika mechanically did as she was told. Anders Schyman returned with a plastic cup of cold water and closed the door behind him.

  ‘Drink some of this, then tell me what’s happened.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Spike about the newsbill?’ she said.

  ‘I’ll do that later, that’s not so urgent. I’m worried about you. Why are you so upset?’

  She started crying again, quietly this time. The editor-in-chief waited in silence.

  ‘I’m probably just worn out,’ she said once she’d pulled herself together again. ‘And then Spike said a
ll those things you only hear in nightmares, that I’m a worthless idiot who isn’t up to the job, all that …’

  She leaned back in her chair, she’d said it, and oddly enough, it made her feel calmer.

  ‘He has absolutely no confidence in my ability to do this job, he made that very clear. There are probably loads of people who think the same.’

  ‘That’s possible,’ Anders Schyman said, ‘but that’s not really very interesting. What’s important is that I have faith in you, and I’m absolutely convinced you’re the right person for the job.’

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘I want to leave,’ she said.

  ‘I won’t let you,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll resign,’ she said.

  ‘I won’t accept your resignation.’

  ‘I’ll go now, tonight.’

  ‘You can’t. I was planning to promote you.’

  She lost her thread and stared at him.

  ‘What?’ she said in astonishment.

  ‘I wasn’t going to tell you just yet, but sometimes plans have to change. I’ve got big ambitions for you, Annika. I suppose I might as well tell you about them now, before you make up your mind to leave the paper for good.’

  She stared at him sceptically.

  ‘This newspaper is facing some big changes,’ the editor-in-chief said. ‘Right now I don’t think anyone who works here appreciates just how big the challenge is. We have to adapt to entirely new ways of doing things, with all the technological changes and the competition from the free papers. And, above all, we have to keep pushing ahead with our journalism. To do all that, we need editorial leadership that’s capable of managing a whole range of different areas. And people who can do that don’t grow on trees. Either we can sit here with our fingers crossed, hoping that someone like that turns up, or we can make sure that the people we have most faith in are prepared for the changes well in advance.’

  Annika was listening, wide-eyed.

  ‘I’ve got at most another ten years in me, Annika, maybe no more than five. We have to make sure there are people ready to take over after me. I’m not saying that it’s going to be you, but you’re one of three people I think might be suitable. There’s an awful lot you’d need to learn before then, not least how to control your moods. But that’s just a bit of fine-tuning – otherwise, I think you’re the most suitable candidate to succeed me. You’re creative and you think on your feet – I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone as good as you are at that. You take responsibility and deal with conflicts with the same authority, you’re organized, competent and you show a lot of initiative. I’m not going to let some idiotic night-editor drive you away, I hope you realize that. It’s not you who should leave, but them.’