Prime Time (10 page)

‘Listen,’ Annika said, ‘do you know who shot her?’

Anne Snapphane started breathing heavily. The nightmarish feeling was back.

‘I heard an awful fight right after midnight,’ she said. ‘Over at the Stables, the place is a shambles.’

‘Who was involved?’

‘Mariana and Michelle,’ Anne said in a whisper.

‘Christ, that’s unpleasant,’ Annika said.

‘I know,’ Anne Snapphane said. ‘Hey, something’s happening outside my door. I’ve got to go.’

They hung up and Annika reflected on their conversation for a few seconds before she called the newsroom.

Anders Schyman looked up when Spike jerked open his sliding glass door.

‘Heard anything from the Music Man?’

Schyman sighed.

‘No, not so much as a minor chord. We’ll have to get someone from the night shift to trace him. How are we doing?’

Spike raised one arm and swept his right hand across the imaginary headlines.

‘
The suspects: The entire list.
The sub-heading:
A dozen celebrities and the witching hour at the castle.
’

He lowered his hand.

‘And one of them happens to be John Essex.’

The managing editor whistled and got up.

‘The Elvis Presley of our day,’ he said. ‘This is shaping up into a world-class story.’

Schyman walked past Spike out on the newsroom floor.

‘Have they arrested them all?’

‘Not yet,’ Spike replied, one hand jammed in a pocket.

‘Then we better steer clear of calling anyone a suspect. Hey, Pelle. We’re having a brief meeting over by the desk.’

The picture editor was holding a receiver in one hand and made a thumbs-up gesture with the other. Spike shuffled after Schyman with mixed feelings of humiliation and respect. Schyman was a mean bastard, but he was a good mean bastard.

‘Is Jansson in yet?’

‘He was just––’

Anders Schyman dismissed the rest of the sentence with a wave.

‘Tell me what’s on the way in.’

He sat down on a vacant chair that belonged to the foreign correspondent and was located at the heart of the newsroom. Spike went to his own spot, cleared his throat and polished off the dregs of a cup of coffee.

‘We have a list of the twelve people who were at the castle that night. As far as Bengtzon could figure out, all of them are still on the premises except for John Essex. He left before Michelle was found.’

Eyebrows raised in surprise, Anders Schyman took notes.

‘That’s excellent,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen this on the news agency flash. Is it official information?’

Jansson, the night-desk editor, rushed in, spilled some coffee and grinned.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Our source is Annika Bengtzon. We might even have an exclusive.’

Anders Schyman saw the coffee drip down into a waste-paper basket.

‘How did she get hold of the list?’

‘The cars in the parking lot. And she has a source she doesn’t want to reveal.’

‘Picture’ Pelle and Spike rolled their eyes.

‘John Essex,’ Schyman continued. ‘What was he doing there? He’s too big for the Globe Arena these days. That’s an article in itself – have the showbiz section check it out.’

Spike took notes.

‘So what do we do about the list?’ Jansson asked. ‘What do we call the dirty dozen?’

Anders Schyman tapped his pen on his pad.

‘Not suspects, at any rate. Friends, maybe, or witnesses. Let’s read the story and see where it takes us.’

‘
Mates meeting with murder
,’ Pelle Oscarsson suggested in the background, with rhythmic emphasis.

‘Naturally, we’ve got to cover the police manhunt,’ Schyman said.

‘And then there’s the castle itself,’ Spike added, ‘Yxtaholm. It’s supposed to be quite a place. Only a hundred kilometres from Stockholm, but very secluded all the same.’

The managing editor nodded.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘The government uses the place for secret negotiations. I know that the Colombian government held negotiations with the FARC guerrillas there a few years back.’

‘They say that Arafat and the Israelis have been there too,’ Jansson said.

Spike nodded in approval.

‘It would work as a separate piece, for page twelve,’ he said. ‘Who’s going to do it?’

‘Annika Bengtzon was the one who told me about the place,’ Schyman said, ‘so I think she’s the most suitable choice. And how’s our man in the trenches? Wennergren? Has anyone talked to him?’

Spike squirmed a little.

‘Not yet – seems he can’t call in right now, not with the police interrogations and all that …’

‘Is it true that Barbara is there too?’

The acid tone of Schyman’s voice caused Spike to pause.

‘Well, Barbara does whatever she wants,’ Jansson explained. ‘I talked to her before she left and she told me she’d write whatever she felt like in her columns as long as she has the support of the executive editor.’

‘And the blessing of the family that owns the paper,’ Picture Pelle said.

‘She belongs to it,’ Jansson retorted.

‘What do we do about Michelle?’ Schyman said.

A dense silence hovered over the news desk. Picture Pelle leafed through the prints, Jansson focused on drinking his coffee, Schyman noticed how Spike hesitated before taking the plunge.

‘The best angle would be to run her entire background,’ he said. ‘Her mother was an alcoholic whore, her father died in a car crash, the many lovers – she’s controversial and rich, much talked-about and much disliked …’

Anders Schyman had raised his right hand and Spike stopped talking.

‘Just for starters, this paper has already paid fifty thousand kronor in damages,’ the managing editor said. ‘All because we published the story of her drug-addicted whore of a mother. In addition to that, we’ve signed an agreement stating that we would never write about her again, ever. Our archives are not authorized to sell those old articles. And, Spike, those other adjectives you used to describe Michelle, they weren’t generally used by the police, now, were they? Practically no one outside this paper used them.’

Beads of perspiration had formed on the news-desk editor’s upper lip.

‘We can’t pretend we never gave her a bad press.’

‘That’s true,’ Schyman said. ‘But we don’t need to keep heaping on the dirt after her death, either. I want to see a restrained and dignified account of Michelle Carlsson’s life. And death too, by the way. All the awards she won, how much audiences loved her – the story about her dad is tragic but good …’

Suddenly Schyman felt drained.

Death and destruction:
the words flashed through his mind.
Terror and tragedy, murder and mayhem, that’s what puts the daily bread on the table.

‘Anything else?’ he asked in a dull voice.

‘What about Torstensson?’ Spike asked. ‘Isn’t he the one who should be making these decisions?’

‘I’ll be in the fish tank,’ Schyman said. ‘Let me know if there are any calls, like from some musician or something …’

He slumped slightly as he headed towards the glass cubicle.

The reporters from
Katrineholms-Kuriren
had left to cover the Midsummer festivities in Bie, but the people from the regional TV news team were still around. They had thermoses full of coffee, which they consumed inside their minibus. The TV team from the state-owned public service broadcasting service were somewhat superior in their uplink bus, and the reporter from Radio Sörmland was taking a cellphone call over by the Stables.

Bertil Strand was still keeping warm inside the competition’s car, where the motor had been kept running, when Annika knocked on the front passenger window. The photographer opened the window a mere two centimetres.

‘It’s time,’ Annika said.

One second later, the photographer had left the car, and so had the other journalists.

‘A meat wagon!’ the reporter from their capital’s other major evening paper shouted and rushed over to the police-line tape by the canal. Shaky and speechless, Annika remained where she was. She looked up at the castle. On the other shore a flagpole was like a landmark for the community. The small boat bobbed at the water’s edge.

She was hit by a nasty flashback of the first time that she had seen the police remove the body of a dead person. It was in Kronobergsparken in Stockholm, just a few blocks away from where she lived. Shielded by tall trees, the small Jewish cemetery had been dark and in a state of neglect. The heat, the stench, the wide-open eyes and the slightly screaming mouth of the dead woman. Her name had been Josefin. Josefin Liljeberg. She died because she loved too much.
It could have been me
, Annika thought.

Then she caught a glimpse of the hearse between the trees over by the smithy and the beach house. Slowly, it pulled up at the roadblock where the reporters were waiting. Cameras whirred and clicked, photographers stepped on each other’s toes and heels. Annika wasn’t standing with the crowd; she saw the car roll up and the policeman drive the media pack away. The tape was pulled back to allow the hearse to accelerate across the bridge, the white body-bag barely visible through the tinted glass windows, and head for the drive. The reporter from the local radio station ran after the vehicle, pointing his mike at the wheels. Annika blinked – talk about tasteless!

Bertil Strand followed the car with his telephoto lens until it disappeared from sight over by the stud farm.

‘There are two things I’d like you to tell me,’ he said to Annika. ‘How do we get out of here, and how do I get my car back?’

Annika stared at the photographer.

‘Is that all you need help with?’ she asked. ‘Anything else I can do for you?’

She picked up her cellphone and dialled a preprogrammed number.

‘I’ve reached Flen,’ Berit Hamrin said, using the hands-free feature of her cellphone. ‘Where’s Yxtaholm?’

Annika exhaled with relief.

‘You’re coming by way of Norrköping, right? Drive across town, take the 55, turn left, then make a right at the sign … Yeah, we’re inside, but I doubt they’ll let you pass. We rowed over. That’s right, we used a rowboat.’

She laughed as she hung up.

‘Berit will be here in ten minutes. As soon as we’re done here, she can give you a lift over to your car.’

‘What are we waiting for?’

‘For the twelve people who were detained to put in an appearance. Or eleven, as the case may be. If we stay here at the parking lot, we’ll have the best shot at getting to them before they leave.’

‘Something’s happening up at the castle,’ Bertil Strand said, peering over her head.

A policeman wearing a leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt was crossing the bridge. The rest of the press representatives were gathered on one side of the barrier. The policeman stopped on the other side.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘The press officer just informed me that he won’t be coming, so I have some information to impart to the press. Let’s make this short and sweet.’

Annika fished a pad and a marker out of her bag. She saw her colleagues repeatedly click their ballpoint pens. They never learned. Ballpoint pens were useless: water made the ink run and if it was cold enough, the ink would freeze. When it was as damp as this you couldn’t even use a pencil, only a waterproof marker.

‘Michelle Carlsson was found dead in a mobile control room parked behind the New Wing in the grounds of Yxtaholm. She had been shot in the head. Death was instantaneous …’

‘Were there any signs of a struggle in the control room?’ one of the TV reporters called out. Annika recognized the woman, knowing that she always prided herself on winning press conferences. In other words, the reporter thought she showed the world how good she was by being loud and by butting in first as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Lieutenant Q sighed.

‘Could we take this nice and easy? Thank you. The victim has been taken to the medical examiner’s office in Solna. Pathologists and investigators will continue their work there. During the day we have interviewed a number of people who were in the vicinity of the castle at the time of the murder. There are no suspects at present, but the police will continue to investigate this case and conduct interviews, here and at other locations. Naturally, this means that I will not, at this point in time, reveal details such as if there were any signs of a struggle in the control room. Any questions?’

‘How long will the suspects be held at the castle?’ the TV reporter bellowed.

Q paused a few seconds before answering.

‘As I just mentioned,’ he said slowly and deliberately, ‘there are
no
suspects at present. No one is being detained at the castle involuntarily. The individuals who have been interviewed today elected to stay on in order to assist the investigation, something they are anxious to do.’

‘Will the witnesses want to go home this evening, or will they elect to spend another night at Yxtaholm?’ Annika asked in a polite voice.

Q almost smiled.

‘My assessment is that the witnesses will all elect to spend the night at the castle,’ he replied. ‘Are there any more questions?’

And, naturally, there were. The different news teams had to ask their questions one at a time, since their inquiries were so tremendously special and required an exclusive answer. In other words, Annika watched Q say the exact same thing three times in a row. He began by talking into the large, unwieldy camera operated by the national broadcasting network, since TV is superior to radio and national trumps being local. Next came the small digital camcorder provided by
Öst-nytt
, the local TV news show. Finally, he spoke into the mike of the local radio station.

Annika prowled back and forth behind them and waited. Once all the broadcasting media had had their shot, she approached Q.

‘Damn, you’re wet,’ he exclaimed.

‘Have you got hold of Essex yet?’ she asked.

The lieutenant sighed and hauled out a pack of cigarettes from the inside breast pocket of his leather jacket.

‘Anyone wanting to get hold of John Essex just needs to follow the trail of screaming teenage girls,’ he replied, lighting up and taking a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Of course we have.’