The Bomber

by Liza Marklund

  ‘Well, we’ve got the Klara bombing; we have to cover that,’ Ingvar Johansson said. ‘One article about the victims. The man who was most badly injured died an hour ago. He was single, lived in Solna. The others are out of danger. Their names will be released this evening or later tonight, and we should be able to get passport photographs of them. Then we’ve got the damage to the room—’

  ‘Leave the relatives alone,’ Schyman said.

  ‘What?’ Ingvar Johansson said.

  ‘The injured post office workers. Let’s leave their relatives alone.’

  ‘We don’t even have their names yet,’ Ingvar Johansson said.

  Schyman turned towards the table. He ran his hands despairingly through his hair.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Go on.’

  Ingvar Johansson took several deep breaths, collected himself, and went on. ‘We’ve been inside the room damaged by the bomb in the sorting office. I don’t know how Henriksson did it, but he got in and took a lot of pictures of the devastation. That room isn’t usually accessible even to the normal staff there. They only deal with registered mail. But we’ve got the pictures.’

  ‘We can add a discussion of principle to that,’ Schyman said, walking slowly round the room. ‘How far is the Post Office responsible for something like this? How carefully do they check parcels? Here we have the classic compromise between public integrity and the safety of Post Office staff. We’ll have to talk to the general director of the Post Office, the union, and the minister responsible for the Post Office.’

  The editor-in-chief stopped by the window, staring out at the darkness again. He listened to the hum of the ventilation unit, and tried to make out the sound of the traffic far below. It was quite soundless. Ingvar Johansson and Jansson were making notes. After a while the head of news went on with his run-through.

  ‘Then there’s our involvement. The fact that the bomb was addressed to the head of our crime team. We’ll have to cover that, everything from lunchtime when Tore Brand went to fetch the package to the work the police are doing to trace the source of the parcel.’

  The men made notes; the editor-in-chief listened with his back to the table.

  ‘Annika has disappeared,’ Ingvar Johansson said quietly. ‘We have to accept that now, and I suppose we should write about it …’

  Anders Schyman turned round. Ingvar Johansson looked uncertain.

  ‘The question is: can we write anything at all about the bomb being meant for us?’ the news-editor went on. ‘We may end up drowning in letter bombs if we do. We might encourage a gang of copycats to start kidnapping our reporters and threatening to send bombs …’

  ‘We can’t think like that,’ Schyman said. ‘If we did, we’d never be able to cover anything that affected anyone at all. We have to give an account of everything that’s happened, including the parts that affect us and our head of crime. But I need to talk to Thomas, Annika’s husband, about what we’re going to write about her as a private person.’

  ‘Does he know yet?’ Jansson asked, and Anders Schyman sighed.

  ‘The police got hold of him just after half past five. He’d been up in Falun all day, and had his mobile switched off. He had no idea what Annika was planning to do today.’

  ‘So we’ve got an article about Annika going missing?’ Jansson said.

  Schyman nodded and turned away again.

  ‘We give an outline of her work, but we have to be careful with any personal information about her,’ Ingvar Johansson summarized. ‘The next piece ought to be what the police think was the motive for Annika being … targeted.’

  ‘Do they know why?’ Pelle Oscarsson said, and the news-editor shook his head.

  ‘There’s no connection between her and the other victims, they’d never met. Their theory is that Annika was stirring things up so much that she had found out something she shouldn’t have. She was ahead of the pack on this story from the start, so the motive has to lie somewhere in there. Quite simply, she knew too much.’

  The men fell silent, each listening to the sound of the others breathing.

  ‘That needn’t necessarily be the case,’ Schyman said. ‘This bitch isn’t rational. The bomb may well have been sent for a reason that makes no sense to anyone except the Bomber herself.’

  The other men all looked up at the same time. The editor-in-chief sighed.

  ‘Yes, the police think it’s a woman. I think we should go ahead and publish that, sod them and their damn investigation. Annika knew this morning that the police were closing in on the woman, but they didn’t tell her who it was. We’ll say that the police are searching for a suspect, a woman that they haven’t been able to trace.’

  Anders Schyman sat down at the table with his hands over his face.

  ‘What the hell do we do if the Bomber’s got hold of her?’ he said. ‘What do we do if she dies?’

  The others didn’t answer. Somewhere out in the newsroom came the sound of the television news, they could hear the newsreader’s voice through the thin walls.

  ‘We ought to run something about all the bombings so far,’ Jansson said, taking over. ‘Someone will have to have a serious talk with the police about how they managed to identify this particular woman. There must be details there that we should …’

  He fell silent. All of a sudden it was no longer obvious what was interesting and what wasn’t. The horizon was blurred, and there were no longer any fixed points of reference, no clear focus.

  ‘We have to try to deal with this as normally as possible,’ Anders Schyman said. ‘Do what you always do. I’ll be staying on tonight. What pictures have we got for all this?’

  The picture editor explained the options.

  ‘We haven’t got many pictures of Annika, but we did take one last summer for the display of staff pictures. That should work okay.’

  ‘Have we got any pictures of her working?’ Schyman asked.

  Jansson clicked his fingers.

  ‘There’s a shot of her at Panmunjom, in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, standing next to the American president. She was there on some sort of grant, with the press delegation ahead of the four-party talks in Washington in the autumn. Do you remember? She happened to be getting off the coach just as the president got out of his limo, and AP took a shot of them next to each other …’

  ‘Okay, we’ll take that,’ Schyman said.

  ‘I’ve dug out pictures of the ruined stadium, Sätra Hall, Furhage and the construction worker, Bjurling,’ Pelle said.

  ‘Okay,’ Schyman said. ‘What have we got for the front?’

  They waited in silence, hoping the editor-in-chief would say it out loud.

  ‘A portrait of Annika, preferably one where she looks nice and happy. She’s the story now. The bomb was aimed at her, and now she’s vanished. And only we know that. I think we should tackle it logically and chronologically: on six and seven, the bomb in the sorting office; eight and nine, the new victims; ten and eleven, our reporter is missing; twelve and thirteen, the Bomber is a woman, the police are closing in; fourteen and fifteen, reminder of events so far, discussion of Post Office security versus confidentiality; centrefold, the article about Annika and her work, with the Korean picture …’

  He stood up, nauseated by his own decisiveness. Once again, he looked out over the darkened Embassy. They really shouldn’t be doing this. The paper really shouldn’t publish tomorrow. They really ought to shut down their coverage of the Bomber for the time being. He felt like a monster.

  The others ran through the rest of the paper quickly. None of them said anything as they left the room.

  65

  Annika was freezing. It was cold in the tunnel; she guessed it was between eight and ten degrees. Fortunately she had put on a pair of long-johns that morning because she had planned to walk home from work. At least she wouldn’t freeze to death. But her socks were wet from the trudge through the snow, making her feet cold. She tried wriggling her toes to w
arm them up. She was doing everything gently, trying not to move her feet too much, desperate not to set off the explosives on her back. She changed position every now and then, putting her weight on different parts of her body. If she lay on her side one of her arms got squashed, if she lay on her stomach her neck ached, kneeling and crouching made her legs go numb. She cried intermittently, but the more time passed, the more composed she became. She wasn’t dead yet.

  Her panic had subsided, and she had regained the power of thought. She was trying to think of a way out of this situation. It wasn’t very realistic to imagine that she could get loose and escape, certainly not at the moment. And attracting the attention of anyone working in the stadium seemed unlikely. Beata had probably been lying when she said they were hard at work up there. Why would they start reconstruction the day before Christmas Eve? Besides, Annika hadn’t seen a single vehicle or person near the stadium. If the builders really had started work, there would have been various different vehicles parked by the stadium, and there hadn’t been any. Anyway, they would all have gone home by now, it was already evening. Which meant that they should have started looking for her by now.

  She started to cry again when it dawned on her that no one had picked up the children from nursery. She knew how cross the staff there could get; Thomas had borne the brunt of that a year or so ago. The children would be sitting there waiting, eager to get home and decorate the tree, and she couldn’t get to them. Maybe she’d never get home again. Maybe she’d never see them grow up. Ellen probably wouldn’t even be able to remember her. Kalle may have some vague memories of his mum, especially when he looked at pictures of them out at the cottage last summer. She started crying helplessly, it all seemed so incredibly unfair.

  After a while her tears dried up, she seemed to have run dry. She mustn’t start thinking about death, because that could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy. She was going to make it. She should have been at the nursery at five o’clock. But it wasn’t too late for Christmas. She was sure the Bomber had some sort of plan for her -otherwise she would be dead already. And the paper and Thomas would have realized she was missing, and the police were bound to be looking for her car. Which was parked legally and discreetly in a row of other cars in a residential car park half a kilometre from the stadium. And who would ever think of looking in this tunnel? No one had found it so far; otherwise they would have discovered this little hiding place. How could the police have missed it? The entrance up in the stadium must be very well concealed.

  Her mobile rang at regular intervals. She had tried to find a stick or something that she could use to reach her bag, but hadn’t found anything. Her range of movement was restricted to three metres in all directions, and it sounded as though the phone was about ten metres away. Well, at least it proved that they were trying to find her.

  She had no real idea of what time it was, or how long she had been in the tunnel. It wasn’t quite half past one when she came down here, but she didn’t know how long she had been unconscious. And she had lost all track of time during her first panicked reaction. But at least five hours must have passed since then. As far as she could guess, it ought to be at least half past six now. But it could be much later, half past eight, nine o’clock. She was hungry and thirsty, and had wet herself once more. There hadn’t been any choice. The faeces had started to dry up and itch, it really was very uncomfortable. This must be what it’s like for little children in nappies, she thought. Mind you, at least they got changed regularly.

  Suddenly another thought struck her: what if Beata doesn’t come back! What if she was left here to die! No one would think of coming down here over Christmas.

  Human beings only survive a couple of days without water. By Boxing Day it would be too late. She started to cry again, quietly and tiredly. Then she made herself stop. The Bomber would come back. She had a reason for holding Annika captive here.

  Annika changed position again. She had to try to think clearly. She had met Beata Ekesjö before; she had to work with what she knew about her as a person. During their short conversation in Sätra Hall, Beata had been highly emotional. She had been genuinely upset about something, whatever it might be, and she had been keen to talk. Annika could exploit that. The only question was, how? She had no idea what you were supposed to do when you were held prisoner by a madman. She vaguely recalled hearing that you could go on courses about this sort of thing, unless she had read it somewhere? Or seen in on television? Yes, on television!

  In an episode of the old detective series, Cagney & Lacey, one of the female cops had been held prisoner by a madman. Cagney – unless it was Lacey? – had been on a course about how to behave if you were taken hostage. She talked all about herself and her children, her dreams, her loves, anything to arouse some sort of empathy in her kidnapper. If she was talkative and friendly enough, it would be harder for the kidnapper to kill her.

  Annika changed position again, getting to her knees this time. Maybe that would work with a normal person, but the Bomber was insane. She had already blown people up. Maybe talking about children would have no effect on Beata – she hadn’t shown much sympathy for anyone’s children or family so far. She would have to think of something else, based on what Cagney had done, and try to establish some form of communication with her kidnapper.

  What had Beata actually said? That Annika had misunderstood her emotional response? Was that really why she was here? She’d have to try to read the Bomber better from now on. She had to listen carefully to what the woman said and follow her reasoning as well as she could.

  And she would. She would conduct a dialogue with the Bomber, and pretend to understand and agree with her. She would stop protesting and just go with the flow.

  She lay down on the mattress again, on her right side, facing the concrete wall, and made up her mind to try to get some rest. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, so the darkness around her didn’t scare her. Soon she felt her body give that familiar little twitch, and shortly afterwards she was asleep.

  Death

  I went to school in a wooden, three-storey building. The older we got, the higher up the building our classroom was. Once each year, in the spring, the whole school took part in a fire drill. In those days old schools went up like tinderboxes, and everyone had to take the drills very seriously, with no exceptions.

  In my class we had a boy who was epileptic, I forget his name. For some reason he couldn’t raise his hands above his head. Even so, he took part in the fire drill the year after the end of the war. I remember that day quite clearly. The sun was shining with a cold, pale light, and the wind was sharp and gusty. I hate heights, always have done, so I was stiff with terror when I got onto the fire-escape. The world over by the river seemed to tip, and I clung to the rungs. Slowly I turned my head and stared at the red-stained wood of the school building, and I struggled down every rung with the same cramped grip. I was shattered when I finally reached the ground. My legs were shaking, and I stood there trying to pull myself together while my classmates headed back to our classroom. When I looked up I saw the epileptic boy slowly climbing down the ladders. When he reached the last platform I heard him say: ‘I can’t go any further.’ He lay down, turned his face to the wall, and died in front of our eyes.

  An ambulance came to fetch him. I’d never seen one before. I stood in the doorway as they put him on a stretcher. He looked the same as usual, just a bit paler, his eyes were closed and his lips were blue. His arms shook a little as the stretcher was pushed inside the ambulance, and a last breeze ruffled his blond curls before the doors closed.

  I can still remember my surprise at the fact that I wasn’t afraid. I saw a dead person, no older than me, and it didn’t upset me. It wasn’t unpleasant, or tragic, he was just completely still.

  Since then I have often wondered what it is that makes a person alive. Our consciousness is really nothing but signal substances and electricity. The fact that I still think about the epileptic boy to this day means t
hat he is actually still here. He is present in the dimension that we call reality, not in the form of his own signal substances, but in mine.

  The question is whether we can’t do worse things to people than merely kill them. Sometimes I suspect that I have destroyed people in other ways, not like the teacher who forced the boy down the ladders.

  The ultimate question, then, is whether or not I require absolution, and, if so, from whom?

  Friday 24 December

  66

  Thomas was sitting by the window looking out at Strömmen. It was clear and cold; the water was frozen and lay like a black mirror down below. The grey-brown façade of the Royal Palace was lit up, and looked like a stage-set against the winter sky. Over on Skeppsbron taxis glided past on their way to Gamla Stans Bryggeri. He could see the queue waiting to get into Café Opera.

  He was in the sitting room of a corner suite on the fifth floor of the Grand Hotel. The suite was the size of a normal two-room apartment, with a hall, sitting room, bedroom, and an enormous bathroom. The police had brought him here. They regarded the Grand Hotel as the best place in Stockholm to protect people under threat. Kings and presidents on state visits often stayed here. The staff were used to dealing with unusual situations. Naturally, Thomas was not booked in under his own name. In the room next door there were currently two bodyguards.

  About an hour ago the police had said that they hadn’t found any trace of explosives in the flat on Hantverkargatan. But they would still have to stay hidden until the Bomber was caught. Anders Schyman had decided that, if need be, Thomas and the children should spend Christmas in the hotel at the paper’s expense. Thomas turned away from the view and let his eyes sweep over the darkened room. He wished Annika was here, so they could enjoy the luxury together. The furniture was shiny and expensive, the green carpet thick as a mattress. He stood up and went in to see the children sleeping in the bedroom. They were sound asleep, snuffling slightly, exhausted after the excitement of this little holiday. They had had a bath in the beautiful bathroom, and had splashed water all over the floor. Thomas hadn’t bothered to mop it up. At midnight they had eaten meatballs and mashed potato, delivered by room service. Kalle thought the mash was disgusting. He was used to the powdered version that Annika served. Thomas didn’t like Annika serving hotdogs and mash for dinner, and had once described it as pigswill. As he remembered their stupid argument about it, he started to cry, something he very rarely did.