The Bomber

by Liza Marklund

  The potential future editor-in-chief blinked in surprise.

  ‘I’d be grateful if you could delay your resignation until after the New Year,’ Schyman went on. ‘There are a couple of people in this newsroom who mean you no good, and it’s very difficult to defend yourself against that sort of antipathy. It has to be rooted out. Let me take a few measures first, then we can talk again once this business with the Bomber has calmed down. I’d also like to talk about your background and discuss what additional training might be appropriate for you. We ought to put together a plan about which posts you should have experience of before the time comes. It’s important that you learn about all the different aspects of the newsroom. You’ll need to have a good grasp of the technical stuff and the organization of the rest of the company. You need to be respected and accepted everywhere, that’s vital, and you will be if we do this the right way.’

  Annika’s mouth was hanging open. She couldn’t believe her ears.

  ‘You’ve really thought about this, haven’t you?’ she said, amazed.

  ‘Well, this isn’t an invitation to become editor-in-chief, it’s a challenge to you to educate yourself and gain the experience necessary so that you would be eligible for the job in the future. I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention this to anyone else just yet, apart from your husband. What do you say?’

  Annika shook herself.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Anders Schyman smiled.

  ‘Take some time off now, until New Year. You must have a mountain of time owing as big as the Himalayas.’

  ‘I was thinking of working tomorrow morning, and I don’t want to change that just because of Spike. I hope I can get my picture of Christina Furhage’s life-story sorted out by then.’

  ‘Anything we can publish?’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘I don’t actually know. We’ll have to talk it through properly. It’s a really tragic story.’

  ‘Which makes it all the more interesting. Well, let’s talk about that later.’

  Anders Schyman got up and walked out. Annika stayed where she was, overcome by a vast sense of peace and surprise. How easy it was to feel good again, how little it took to get rid of all that dark despair. One serious bolstering session, and it was like the public humiliation had never happened.

  She put her coat on and went out the back way, picked up a taxi at the taxi rank and went home.

  Thomas was asleep. She washed off the last of her make-up, brushed her teeth, and crept into bed beside her husband. Only then, in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling through the gloom, did she remember what she had learned from the police that evening: they knew who the Bomber was, and they were about to arrest him.

  Evil

  My intuition told me very early on that there was such a thing, and that it was strong. Accepted wisdom, in the form of fairy tales and grown-ups, tried to shake my certainty. ‘It’s only make believe,’ they said. ‘It isn’t like that in real life, and good always wins in the end.’ I knew that was a lie, because I had heard the story of Hansel and Gretel. Evil was victorious there, even if the narrative suggested that it all ended on terms dictated by goodness. Evil forced the little children into the forest, evil fattened Hansel up and heated the oven, but Gretel turned out to be most evil of all, because she was the only one who actually killed anyone.

  Stories like that never frightened me. Things you know well rarely scare you. That gave me an advantage over the world around me.

  Later experience naturally proved that I was right. In this country we have made the grave mistake of abolishing evil. Officially it doesn’t exist. Sweden is a constitutional state, where understanding and logic have taken the place of evil. This meant that evil was forced underground, and there, in the darkness, it thrived better than ever. It grew on a diet of jealousy and suppressed hate, it became impenetrable and, over the course of time, so dark that it couldn’t be seen. But I recognized it. Anyone who has ever got to know it can sniff it out wherever it is.

  Anyone who has learned from Gretel knows how to deal with evil. Evil must be fought with evil, nothing else has any effect. I saw evil in the malevolent faces at work, in the eyes of committee members, in the fixed smiles of colleagues, and I smiled back. Its hydra-headed form was nowhere to be seen, it was hiding behind union negotiations and formal discussions. But I knew, and I played along. It couldn’t fool me. I held up a mirror and reflected its power back at it.

  But I watched it make progress elsewhere in society. I saw how violence against several of my employees was disregarded by the police and the legal system. A woman in my department reported her ex-husband twenty times or more, and the police filed every report under ‘domestic incident’. Social Services appointed a mediator, but I knew there was no point. I could smell the stench of evil, and knew its time had come. The woman was going to die because no one took evil seriously. ‘He didn’t mean any harm, he just wanted to see the children,’ I once overheard the mediator say. On that occasion I told my secretary to close the door, because human inertia always puts me in a bad mood.

  The woman eventually had her throat cut with a bread-knife, and everyone was surprised and upset. They tried to find an explanation, but ignored the most obvious one.

  Evil had got away with it, yet again.

  Thursday 23 December

  54

  The apartment was empty by the time Annika woke up. It was half past eight and light was just starting to fall through the bedroom window. She got up and found a large note on the fridge door, held by magnets in the shape of Christmas elves:

  Thanks for being you.

  Love and kisses from your husband.

  PS. I’m taking the kids to nursery, your turn to pick up.

  She ate a cheese roll as she leafed through the morning papers. They were all focusing on the government’s plans for regional politics, and had started to run their Christmas material: historical overviews of Christmas through the ages, and so on. There was nothing new about the Bomber. She took a quick shower, heated some water in the microwave and made some instant coffee that she drank as she was getting dressed. She took the number 62 bus to the morning paper’s old entrance and went up the back stairs to the newsroom. She didn’t want to meet anyone until she found out what they had published about Christina Furhage’s sexuality.

  There wasn’t a single disrespectful remark about Christina Furhage or Helena Starke in the paper. Annika switched on her computer and went into something called the ‘historical list’. It was where articles that had been deleted were stored for twenty-four hours after they were dumped.

  And there it was. Nils Langeby had indeed written an article under the title ‘Furhage Lesbian’. The article had been dumped at 22.50 the previous evening. Annika opened the file and quickly scanned the article. What she read made her feel sick. The source, named in the article, who was supposed to have confirmed that Christina Furhage was a lesbian, was a woman from Olympic headquarters who Annika had never heard of. The woman said: ‘Of course we wondered. Christina always wanted to work with Helena Starke, and a lot of people thought that was a bit strange. Because everyone knew that Helena was one of those … Several of us thought they were having a relationship.’ The reporter went on to quote a couple of unnamed sources who said they had seen the women out together.

  At the bottom was a quote from Helena Starke herself: ‘The last time I saw Christina was in the Vildsvin restaurant on Fleminggatan on Friday evening. We left the restaurant together at midnight. We went our separate ways home.’

  That was all. No wonder Schyman had pulled the article.

  Annika read on, and was struck by an uncomfortable thought: how the hell had Nils Langeby managed to get hold of Helena Starke’s ex-directory number, if he had actually spoken to her at all?

  She opened the shared database of telephone numbers and realized she had made a mistake when she had entered the woman’s private number on the computer. Instead of putting it in her own
private file, she had entered it in the shared database. Without stopping to think, she dialled Helena’s number to apologize on Nils Langeby’s behalf. But all she got was an automatic message: ‘This number is no longer in use. Please hang up.’ Helena Starke had left the country.

  Annika sighed and looked through what they had actually published. They had chosen to lead with something other than the Bomber, a celebrity revealing all about his incurable illness. It was one of the television sports presenters who suffered from gluten intolerance. In other words, he was allergic to flour. He talked about how his life had changed in the year since the diagnosis. Perfectly okay as a lead story on a day like this, the day before the big day. Anne Snapphane would be delighted with it. Herman Ösel’s picture of Christina Furhage and Stefan Bjurling was terrible, but it worked well enough. The two murder victims were sitting next to each other in a dimly lit room, the flash giving Christina red eyes and making her teeth glow. Stefan Bjurling was pulling some kind of face. The focus was a bit blurred. It was on the page six and seven spread, next to Patrik’s piece about the police. The headline was the one Ingvar Johansson had come up with earlier on the spur of the moment: NOW THEY’RE BOTH DEAD. Patrik’s article about the explosives was on page eight. She made a mental note to tell him how good his work was next time she saw him.

  Annika leafed through the other evening paper, which had chosen to lead with financial advice: Do YOUR TAX RETURN Now AND SAVE MONEY! They always ran something like that at the end of December, because there was always some change to the tax regulations coming in at the turn of the year. Annika didn’t bother reading it. It didn’t affect her, or people like her, who didn’t have a portfolio of shares or property, or drove a company car for work. She knew that sort of story sold well, but always felt they should be used with caution.

  She pulled the USB stick containing what Christina Furhage’s lover had really said about their last hours together out of her bag, and put it with the rest of her more sensitive material. She called her source, but he was at home, probably asleep. Feeling suddenly restless, she went out into the newsroom, but Berit hadn’t arrived yet. She asked the picture desk to call Herman Ösel about payment, fetched a cup of coffee, and said hello to Eva-Britt Qvist.

  ‘What was all the fuss about yesterday?’ the secretary asked, trying to hide her glee.

  ‘What fuss?’ Annika said, pretending to think. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know, here in the newsroom. With you and Spike?’

  ‘Oh, you mean Spike’s ridiculous newsbill about Christina Furhage being a lesbian? Yes, I don’t know what happened, but Anders Schyman must have put a stop to it. Poor Spike – such a bad mistake,’ Annika said as she went into her office and shut the door. She couldn’t resist being a bit cruel.

  She drank her coffee and started to sketch a plan of the day’s work. There was a chance the police would be arresting the Bomber today, but they probably wouldn’t mention it over their radio channels. So they’d have to rely on other sources, not the usual tip-off agents. She would have to talk to Berit and Ingvar Johansson about that. She was thinking of trying to pull together her overview of Christina Furhage’s past, so would have to try to get hold of her son, Olof.

  She closed her notepad and went on the internet. When she had time she preferred to look things up online rather than calling Directory Inquiries, where the operators sometimes managed to miss the most obvious details. She did a national search for Olof Furhage, and the computer checked through the databases. Bingo! Just one result, living in Tungelsta, south of Stockholm.

  ‘Got you!’ Annika said.

  Christina Furhage had left her five-year-old son in Tungelsta almost forty years ago, and there was still a man with that name living there today. She wondered for a moment if she should call him first, but decided to make the trek out instead. She needed to get out of the office.

  At that moment there was a knock on her door. It was the editor-in-chief, holding a large jug of water. He looked terrible.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Annika said, concerned.

  ‘Migraine,’ Anders Schyman said curtly. ‘I drank a glass of red wine with my venison last night, so I’ve only got myself to blame. How are you feeling today?’

  He closed the door behind him.

  ‘Thanks, I’m good,’ Annika said. ‘I gather you stopped the newsbill about Christina’s lesbian adventures.’

  ‘It wasn’t too difficult; the article it was based on was very thin.’

  ‘Did Spike explain why he chose that for the newsbill?’ Annika asked.

  The editor-in-chief sat down on Annika’s desk.

  ‘He hadn’t read the article, just heard Nils Langeby describing it. When we went to Langeby and asked to see the text, the matter was sorted. There was no information, and even if there had been we wouldn’t have published it. It would be another matter if Christina had told the world about her love life, but writing about a dead person’s most personal activities has to be the worst possible infringement of the sanctity of private life. Spike realized that, once I’d explained it to him.’

  Annika bowed her head, relieved that her gut instinct had been right.

  ‘It was true,’ she said.

  ‘What was?’

  ‘They had a relationship, but no one knew about it. Helena Starke is in pieces. She’s just left for the US.’

  ‘Wow,’ the editor-in-chief said. ‘So what else have you found out that we can’t print?’

  ‘Christina hated her children and terrified everyone around her. Stefan Bjurling was a drunk who beat his wife.’

  ‘What a pair. What are you up to today?’ the editor-in-chief asked.

  ‘I’m heading out to talk to someone, then I need to check something with my source. They’re closing in on the Bomber.’

  Anders Schyman raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Will we be able to put that in tomorrow’s paper?’

  ‘I hope so,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘What did your husband say about our plans for the future?’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to him yet.’

  The editor-in-chief got up and left. Annika put her notepad and pen in her bag, and noticed that her mobile was almost out of battery. Just to be sure, she put the charger in her bag.

  ‘I’m going out for a while,’ she said to Eva-Britt, who was almost hidden behind the pile of post.

  She picked up the keys to a fairly nondescript car and went down to the garage. It was a beautiful winter’s day. The snow was several inches thick, making the city look picture-postcard pretty. As long as we get a white Christmas, so the kids can go sledging in Kronoberg Park, she thought.

  55

  She turned on the car radio, found one of the commercial stations, and set off along the Essinge motorway towards the Årsta link road. They were playing an old Supremes classic.

  Annika sang along at the top of her voice as the car headed towards the Huddinge junction. She took the Örby link road as far as the Nynäshamn junction, singing along merrily to old classics and laughing all the way. Everything was white and crystal clear, and she was soon going to be away from work for more than a week, and she was going to be editor-in-chief! Well, maybe not, but she was going to get training, and her superiors believed in her. She would doubtless have more setbacks along the way, but you just had to roll with them. She turned up the volume to Simon and Garfunkel.

  Tungelsta was an old garden suburb some 35 kilometres south of Stockholm, and it was like a gentle oasis after the concrete desert of Västerhaninge. Building had started in the 1910s, and it didn’t look much different today from many other places built at the same time, with one exception: every garden had a greenhouse, or the remains of a greenhouse. Some had been beautifully well kept, but a few were just spiky skeletons.

  Annika arrived early in the morning. Old men were clearing snow, and waved cheerily as she drove past. Olof Furhage lived on Älvvägen, and Annika had to pull up outside a pizzeria and ask for direc
tions. An elderly man who turned out to have been the local postman talked animatedly about the original plan for the place, and knew exactly where Olof Furhage lived.

  ‘A blue cottage with a big greenhouse,’ he said.

  She drove across the railway line and could see, even from a distance, that she was on the right track. The greenhouse was close to the road, and further up towards the forest lay a blue-painted detached house. Annika pulled into the drive, stopping the car in the middle of an Abba song, hoisted her bag on her shoulder and got out. She had put her mobile phone on the passenger seat in case it rang, and she saw it was still there, but decided not to take it.

  She stopped and looked up at the house. The design reminded her of a much older sort of building, but the windows and façade made her think it must have been built in the 1930s. It had a tiled, hipped roof, and generally looked well-kept and neat.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  It was a man in his forties, with medium-length brown hair and bright blue eyes. He was wearing a knitted sweater and dirty jeans.

  ‘I hope so. I’m trying to find someone called Olof Furhage,’ Annika said, holding out her hand in greeting. The man smiled and shook her hand.

  ‘Well, you’re in the right place. I’m Olof Furhage.’

  Annika smiled back. This next bit was going to be a bit tricky.