Lifetime (12 page)

‘Have a seat,’ she said and sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Have you talked to Schyman or anyone else at the paper?’

Carl Wennergren stared at her, his fear beginning to subside. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve been interviewed by the police.’

‘What luck that we ran into each other,’ Annika said. ‘Now you can tell me what happened yesterday.’

Her colleague snorted, a sound that was supposed to come out as a laugh.

‘Tell you? Why should I tell you anything?’

He really hates me
, Annika thought. The sulphurous fumes tore at her nostrils.

‘Because we work for the same paper,’ she replied, hearing to her dismay that her voice was quavering. ‘If we collaborate we’ll have a leg up on everyone else. I know some things, but you know so much more. We could work out what we can go to press with and what needs to be suppressed for the good of the investigation. This is going to be the biggest news item of the summer, and your story would put us way ahead of the competition.’

Annika looked up at her colleague, biting her lip when she realized that she’d been pleading.

‘Of course it would,’ Carl Wennergren said. ‘But my story is mine. Not yours. Why should I hand over a headline to you?’

She felt rage blaze through her body. His rejection of her suggestion made her stomach wrench. Carl Wennergren grinned. His self-confidence and arrogance had returned. Annika gritted her teeth and met his gaze.

‘All right,’ she said and got up. ‘Then I won’t be keeping you – you seemed so awfully busy. Would you like me to help you?’

She paused and looked up at him.

‘You know what I think?’ she said. ‘I think the police have already found it, whatever it may be.’

The grin was wiped off his face. Annika pushed past him, picked up her bag and headed for the back door.

‘What do you want to know?’

She paused and looked up at him.

‘What went on in here, for one thing.’

Carl Wennergren stared out into the gloom and swallowed audibly.

‘There was one hell of a row,’ he said.

Annika suppressed the urge to make a snide comment.

‘Sebastian Follin walked in on Michelle and John Essex while they were getting it on. He went crazy.’

‘Getting it on?’

‘Well, you’ve got two kids, so you must know the drill.’

Annika felt her cheeks grow hot.

‘So, did Sebastian Follin tear the place up?’

Carl Wennergren looked down at the floor. Annika saw his mouth tense up, but she wasn’t sure what that meant. Was he struggling with a lie or with the truth? Was he embarrassed about not knowing even though he had been there? Was he trying to protect someone? Was he the killer?

Involuntarily, Annika backed away from him. She realized that she couldn’t trust anything he said. So she slung her bag over her shoulder and pulled out her cellphone to call Berit on her way out.

As soon as Annika and Berit had parked in front of the Loftet motel in Flen, the rain ceased as suddenly as it had begun.

‘Well, it’s not exactly the Grand Hotel,’ Berit Hamrin said.

‘Are you kidding?’ Annika said. ‘My mother celebrated her fiftieth birthday here. Afterwards she claimed that the pork roast had given her food poisoning, but the rest of us knew why she’d been throwing up.’

Berit smiled wryly.

It was so much easier to breathe now. The thunderstorm had cleared the air and washed it crispy clean. Golden shafts of evening light filtered down on the asphalt. Apart from Bertil Strand’s and Berit’s cars, the parking lot was empty. On the other side of the road, Katrineholmsvägen, Annika could see a few young men talking over by the Statoil filling station. Feeling vaguely uncomfortable, she studied them for a second or two. All the kids from Hällefors had been bused into Flen, to attend secondary school at Stenhammarsskolan, and the locals had treated them like country bumpkins. This feeling of inferiority lingered when she encountered people of her own age in Flen. She thought she recognized at least two of the guys.

Then it struck her that they were ten years younger than her.

Oh my God
, she thought,
I’m getting old.

‘Can I get you something to eat? A schnitzel or a schnitzel?’

Annika smiled.

‘With fried potatoes?’

‘Or how about fried potatoes?’ Berit joked. ‘Now go upstairs, you’re in room three. The key’s in the door. I’m in room number one, Bertil’s in number four . . .’

The room was as lacklustre as the menu, but there was plenty of hot water in the shower. Annika had just slipped back into her clothes when Berit walked in with a tray.

‘
Voilà, mademoiselle
,’ Berit said as she set down the meal on one of the night-stands. ‘It is still “miss”, isn’t it?’

Annika rolled her eyes and started tucking into the tough pork.

‘I’ve been in touch with Schyman and Spike,’ Berit said as Annika chewed away. ‘We agreed that you and I would split the story as much as possible. There are a few reporters on the night shift up in Stockholm, but they’re rookies filling in for the holidays. Is it true that John Essex was there?’

Annika took big gulps of her cola and remembered how frustrating it was to fill in as a reporter: you were never included and never good enough.

‘Yes, indeed,’ she said.

‘The entertainment team has gone bananas. They’re hunting down his crew all over Europe for comments, so they’ll take that story. Let’s see . . .’

Berit checked different items off a list.

‘I’ve ordered copies of every story there is on Michelle from the paper’s morgue – they’re on their way as we speak. In addition to the crime stuff we have to write a cradle-to-grave version of the Michelle Carlsson story.’

‘
The girl from the wrong side of the tracks became Sweden’s biggest TV star
,’ Annika said somewhat indistinctly, her mouth full of food. ‘The sub-header:
Her life a sad fairy tale.
’

Berit smiled.

‘Then there’s the crime bit,’ she said. ‘
A star is killed: the death of Michelle Carlsson shocks Sweden’s entertainment community.
The hunt for the killer, the clues, how could it happen, all that.’

‘I can do it,’ Annika said and tried to remove a bit of gristle stuck between her molars. ‘The murder weapon belonged to one of the guests on the show, I’ll put that in.’

Berit nodded appreciatively.

‘The final show, facts about the series, the taping sessions, the guests – do you know anything about those things?’

‘Not much, but that’s easy. The entertainment department has got to have some material. If nothing else, the press rep over at TV Plus should be able to provide something for us. Why not let the entertainment department handle it?’

‘I’ll ask Spike,’ Berit said, taking notes. ‘They want a piece about the castle, too. They say you know all about it.’

‘That’s an overstatement,’ Annika replied and downed the last of her cola. ‘How much do they want?’

‘Two thousand characters, tops. Unlimited when it comes to the crime stuff. What else do you have?’

‘The last night at the castle, the survivors.’

‘Right,’ Berit said, pointing her pen skywards. ‘That’s the biggest story for tomorrow, that and the John Essex thing. Use whatever you’ve got, just be careful when it comes to the wording about suspects and potential killers.’

‘
This is how we will remember Michelle
– well-known Swedes saying nice and utterly pointless things?’

‘The night shift in Stockholm is on to that,’ Berit said.

There was a knock on the door. It was the receptionist, loaded down with a huge stack of papers.

‘This came in over the fax,’ she said, staring at the headlines with wide eyes.

Berit relieved her of her burden, closed the door in the receptionist’s curious face, and spread the clippings across the double bed.

‘Schyman wanted us to check these out before we got started,’ she explained.

‘Good grief,’ Annika said. ‘Have we written all that about her?’

‘Where have you been the past few years?’ Berit asked.

‘Stuck in Nappyland,’ Annika retorted, picking up an article.

It was a little over a year old and dealt with the fantastic new contract that Michelle had landed when she switched from the prosaic public service network to the hard-driving commercial cable outfit TV Plus. Michelle was beaming with joy and looked forward to meeting her new colleagues. Her manager, Sebastian Follin, who had negotiated her record-breaking contract, was giving Michelle a hug on the happy picture that illustrated the story.

Annika picked up another clipping at random, a
People are Talking
segment that had been published when Michelle had remained number one in the ratings for fifteen weeks in a row.

They spread out the clippings; the older stories went on the bedspread, the newer ones were put on the floor, where they were soon soiled by the women’s shoes and bags.

A small info box caught Annika’s attention. Michelle’s entire life was summarized.

Born in Belorussia: mother, Latvian; father, Swedish. She had grown up with her father, an oil driller, until his death, then she had spent some time in foster care. High school in Växjö, then a job as a tourist guide in Jönköping. Likes Japanese food, enjoys a glass of wine, is interested in yoga and water sports. Currently the host of
The
Women’s Sofa.

‘Did you know that she was an immigrant?’ Annika remarked.

‘Well, I would hardly call her that,’ Berit said. ‘She’s lived in this country since she was three. Pass me that pile, would you?’

Annika passed her the requested pile, made herself comfortable and skimmed through some of the articles. The ones that dated back a year or so seemed, generally, to concern successful ventures, prizes, positions on lists and good-natured gossip. After the network switch, the tone changed. Michelle’s show didn’t do as well as TV Plus had hoped. Anonymous sources from the management level of the network spoke of multimillion kronor losses and ratings that kept plummeting. Suddenly, the star was criticized for every single trait that used to be seen as an asset. Where once she was ‘unaffected’, she was now perceived as being ‘gushing’. The one-time ‘charmer’ changed to ‘silly’, ‘mellow’ became ‘sloppy’. A trade union attacked her for making appearances on radio and TV game shows free of charge. ‘We realize that she doesn’t need the money,’ a union rep acknowledged, ‘but she’s undermining the market for others.’ The next clipping was about a radio station executive who was furious with Michelle for having billed them five hundred kronor for expenses after participating in a show. ‘There’s no end to the greed of some people,’ the executive claimed.

‘No matter what you do, you’re screwed,’ Annika observed.

‘Just wait until you see the columns,’ Berit said.

Columnist Barbara Hanson had devoted miles of paper to the harassment of Michelle Carlsson. Hanson called for Michelle’s resignation, as if she had been appointed to office. The columnist harangued the TV star for committing tax fraud, even though the information was erroneous. She criticized Michelle’s appearance, her diction, her salary, her morals, her capabilities and her relationships.

However, the truly massive onslaught of criticism didn’t start until Michelle hosted an analytical news review, a concept that TV critics found positively ridiculous. When the series was taken off the air after only five shows, the maliciousness took on new heights: ‘
Michelle’s Fiasco
’ and ‘
The fall of the TV Queen
’ were some of the headers, and a nice publicity shot of Michelle was captioned,
‘Bad deal for Sweden’.
Highlander was quoted as saying that the network regarded Michelle’s contract as a long-term investment that would begin to show results in the appropriate demographics in a few years’ time.

‘This is insane,’ Annika said, resting a stack of papers in her lap. ‘Why have we written so much about this girl?’

Berit shrugged, pushed a few clippings into a pile and sat down on the bed. The articles slid down towards her behind, getting all disorganized.

‘She sold papers. Everyone knew who she was, and at first she didn’t mind getting personal or being controversial. She let us shoot her for the cover of an insert while she was wearing nothing but gold paint. She told the story of how she lost her virginity, talked about a lesbian encounter she’d had in high school, granted an interview at the hospital when she broke her leg – you know, stuff like that.’

‘But it didn’t last,’ Annika observed.

‘No,’ Berit agreed as she rummaged through the faxed material. ‘After a while Michelle started to cause trouble, which naturally made her even more interesting. That was when she started being the favourite celebrity screw-up in the news. Anybody who wanted to beef about Michelle Carlsson got in the headlines, and Michelle was forced to defend herself. I think you’re sitting on one of those articles, there you go . . .’

Annika pulled out a paper near her knee and skimmed through it. A middle-aged male TV personality from one of the other networks attacked Michelle Carlsson and claimed that she was a flop and a fraud. A million other Swedes could conduct TV interviews as well as Michelle, while no one else could compete with
him.

‘What a buffoon,’ Annika said as she studied the picture of the conceited man-with-a-tan.

‘These are the articles she sued us for,’ Berit said, handing over a stack next to the bed. ‘We’d better read them a little more carefully, just so we know what to avoid.’

Annika looked at the world war-like magnitude of the headlines:

‘
Michelle Carlsson – a white-collar criminal
’ covered the entire front page. The picture accompanying the headline was a passport photo of Michelle Carlsson that must have been nearly ten years old. She had an apprehensive look on her face, she was wearing too much make-up and her dated hairstyle was unflattering.
She looks like a carjacker
, Annika thought.

The story inside covered eight pages. The piece was written by Carl Wennergren. ‘
From celebrated star to white-collar criminal – Michelle moves from the top of the ratings to the courtroom
’ was the creative inside headline.