Red Wolf: A Novel (14 page)

He was rocked to sleep with the smell of horse manure in his nostrils.

Annika was walking through Kronoberg Park breathlessly, her steps crunching in the frost. It was cold, high pressure threatening to bring arctic weather. The tarmac was slippery with ice, the trees smothered in blankets of frost. The grass, yesterday damp and green, was now frozen stiff and swept in silver.

This was as light as it was going to get. The daylight was thin and shadowless. She lifted her head and squinted up at the porcelain-like sky – shades of blue fading to grey, white, pink clouds driven by the north wind high above.

She hurried along, the blades of grass crackling as they were crushed beneath her feet. She approached the Jewish cemetery from the back, near the place where Josefin had famously been found. She stopped by the black iron railing, her glove stroking its curves and stars, frost dusting her shoes like icing sugar.

The cemetery had been renovated a couple of years ago. Fallen, eroded lumps of sandstone had been replaced, the wild shrubbery had been cut back, the trees trimmed. And somehow the magic had vanished, the sense of experiencing a period in time that Annika had always felt there, the sounds of the city encroached
in a way that they never did before, the spirits that had owned the place had gone.

Only Josefin’s was left.

She sank to her knees and looked through the railing just as she had done that time so many summers before, that hot summer when the number of wasps broke all records and the election campaign just went on and on. Josefin had been lying there, mouth open in a soundless scream, eyes dull and matt, the young girl with all her dead dreams. There was a rustle in a frozen branch, a siren bounced off the buildings on Hantverkargatan.

He got his comeuppance in the end
, Annika thought.
Not for what he did to you, but at least he didn’t get away with it
.

And Karina Björnlund had gathered enough ammunition to get a ministerial post.

She stretched her legs, looked at the time, then left Josefin with a gentle stroke of the railing. She hurried across Fridhemsplan, the wind hitting her face in Rålambshov Park so that she was fiery-cheeked by the time she reached the entrance of the
Evening Post
office.

She made it to her aquarium of an office without triggering any tripwires and threw her outdoor clothing in a heap on the couch.

Ragnwald
, she thought as her computer whirred into life, forcing herself to concentrate on the present.
What does it mean? Who are you?

Once Explorer had started up she Googled the name, only getting a limited number of results. A summary of details about a Folke Ragnwald, died 1963; a genealogical site based in Malta; a Christian Democrat candidate, no indication for which constituency. She read quickly, checked a few more results. A French genealogical site, a German site about royalty, a newsletter about a Danish
pop star. She shut down the browser and rang Suup in Luleå instead.

‘We’re a bit tied up at the moment,’ the inspector said. He sounded upset.

‘What’s happened?’

Annika picked up a pen out of reflex, immediately feeling guilty about whatever it was.

‘We don’t know yet,’ the policeman said. ‘Can you call back after lunch, we should know more then?’

Something about his voice struck a chord inside Annika, making her clench all the muscles in her face.

‘It’s Ragnwald,’ she said. ‘It’s something to do with the terrorist.’

‘Not at all. Call back after two. You’ll get nothing out of me now.’ He sounded so surprised by the idea that she didn’t think to challenge his denial.

She looked at her watch; there was no point in pressing him right now, eighteen hours before her deadline. She thanked him and hung up, and laid her notes from their last meeting on the desk in front of her. She needed another cup of coffee before she got going.

She walked along the corridors with her head down, evading people’s gaze, and got two coffees from the machine behind the sports desk. Back at her keyboard, she arranged her material, trying to piece together an image of her terrorist.

The young man from the Torne Valley who travelled south, but eventually came back to Luleå.

She let her hands fall, drank some coffee.

Why would a young man travel south in the sixties?

Work or college
, she thought.

Why would he come back?

Because whatever he had done was over and done with
.

Why Luleå?

If the place you come from feels too restrictive, but you still want to go home, you’d pick one of the larger towns in the area
.

But why the biggest?

He must have lived in a big city. Maybe one with a university. Stockholm, Uppsala, Gothenburg or Lund
.

She typed the cities into her computer, then realized her mistake.

The young man need not have stayed in Sweden, he could have worked or studied anywhere.

Although this was long before the EU
, she reminded herself.

She let that thread fall, and picked up the next.

Where did he go after that?

ETA? Spain? Why?

Political conviction
, she thought, but there was a filter of doubt in front of her computer screen.

The Basque separatists were, of course, one of the few terrorist groups that had actually achieved some of their goals, including democracy and extensive political autonomy for the Basque Country. If ETA hadn’t blown up Franco’s successor in December 1973, Spain’s transition to democracy would have been more difficult; and, as far as she knew, the Basque Country today had its own police and its own tax system, and was well on its way to becoming a tax haven for international business.

But ETA had also, perhaps more than any other group, been afflicted with the self-perpetuating nature of terrorism. After the free elections of 1977 there was a whole generation of middle-aged Basques who had done nothing throughout their adult lives but conduct terrorist activities against the Spanish state. Peaceful daily life became too dull, so they decided the democratic state was as bad as the dictatorship and set about killing
again. And the Spanish state took its revenge by creating GAL, the anti-terrorist liberation group . . .

She needed to read more about ETA, but she knew they were among the least approachable terrorist groups in the world, killers for the sake of killing. As self-appointed representatives for a homeland that had never existed they demanded compensation for injustices that had never been committed.

She wrote ‘read more Björn Kumm’ as a reminder, then went on.

Why Ragnwald? Did the codename have a deeper meaning? Did it symbolize something she ought to know?

She looked the name up in the National Encyclopaedia and found out that it was a combination of Old Icelandic
ragn
, divine power, and
vald
, ruler. The ruler with divine power – not a bad alias. Did it actually mean anything, other than delusions of grandeur?

But then what was terrorism, if not that?

She sighed, fighting a wave of tiredness sweeping her eyes. The coffee was cold and tasted disgusting. She went out and poured the contents of the almost full cups down the toilet, stretched her back, blinded by the neon lights.

She looked over at Berit’s desk, but she hadn’t arrived yet.

She shut the door of her aquarium carefully behind her and went back to work.

What about the shoes? The footprints had been common knowledge for years, one of the few pieces of evidence the perpetrators had left, but their size had never been made public. Thirty-six. That couldn’t be anyone but a small woman, or a very young man, actually a boy. But what was most likely? That a twelve-year-old blew up a plane, or that an adult woman did it?

So he probably had a woman with him, she noted.

But who would want to do something like that? Suup hadn’t said anything about a woman. She wrote the question on her notes, but if she had to speculate? Historically, which women had become terrorists? Gudrun Ensslin had been Andreas Baader’s partner. Ulrika Meinhof became world-famous when she freed Baader. Francesca Mambro was convicted of blowing up the railway station in Bologna together with her boyfriend Valerio Fioravanti.

‘Ragnwald’s girlfriend’, she wrote, and summarized: ‘The young man from the Torne Valley went away and worked or studied in a large town down south, then came back to Norrbotten, joined a left-wing group under the name Ragnwald, the ruler with divine power, which suggests a certain megalomania. He got a girlfriend and persuaded her to blow up a fighter-jet. Then he fled the country and carried on as a killer with ETA.’

She sighed as she read through her notes.

If she was going to get any of this in the paper it had to be considerably more articulate and factual. She looked at her watch. It would soon be time to call Suup again.

Miranda rang the doorbell with her usual insistence. Anne Snapphane hurried down the stairs so that the old bastard downstairs wouldn’t go mad, one hand clutching the towel around her, the other holding a towel round her hair.

The door jammed. It always did when it was below freezing.

Her daughter ran to her without a word, and she leaned over and held her tight. From the corner of her eye she saw Mehmet approach from the car with the little girl’s bag, neutral but contained.

‘There are muffins in the kitchen,’ Anne whispered
in the girl’s ear, and the child let out a little cry and ran upstairs.

In a moment of defiance and pride she stood up without wrapping the towel around her, not caring if the neighbours saw her. Completely naked, apart from the towel round her hair, she looked Mehmet in the eye and took the little bag. He lowered his gaze.

‘Anne,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to—’

‘You wanted to talk to me,’ she said, forcing her voice to sound calm. ‘I presume it’s about Miranda.’

She turned her back on him, her buttocks dancing in front of his face as she went up the stairs. She went into the bathroom and pulled on a dressing gown, stopping in front of the mirror, trying to see herself through his eyes.

‘Do you want coffee?’ she called, staring into her own eyes.

‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I’m fine. I have to get to work.’

She swallowed, realizing that this was going to be unpleasant. He wanted a quick line of retreat, not a scalding mug of coffee to empty in hurried embarrassment. He was standing at the living-room window, looking down at the neighbour’s garden.

‘What is it?’ she said, as she sat on the sofa.

Mehmet turned round. ‘We’re getting married.’

She felt the arrow hit her without trying to stop it.

‘That has nothing to do with me or Miranda,’ she said, blowing on her coffee.

He sat down opposite her, legs wide apart, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

‘We’re expecting a child,’ he said. ‘Miranda’s going to have a little brother or sister.’

Her head started to spin, and against her instinct she looked down at the floor.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘Congratulations.’

He sighed. ‘Anne, I know how hard this must be for you . . .’

She looked up, took a deep breath. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want your sympathy. What will it mean, in purely practical terms, for Miranda?’

Mehmet pressed his lips together in that way she knew so well, and she was overcome by a hot, intense longing for the man before her; her heart and groin ached. To her own irritation she let out a little sob.

He reached out a hand to her cheek; she closed her eyes and let him stroke her.

‘I’d like her to live with us,’ Mehmet said, ‘full time. But I won’t fight for it if you don’t want that.’

She forced herself to laugh. ‘You can take most things from me,’ she said, ‘but not my child. Get out.’

‘Anne—’

‘Get out!’ Her voice was cracking with rage.

Their daughter appeared in the doorway, looking from one to the other in surprise. ‘Are you angry?’ she said, a half-eaten muffin in her hand.

Mehmet stood up, strong and lithe as a hunter. He went over to the child and kissed her hair.

‘See you next Friday, darling.’

‘Why is Mummy sad? Have you been horrid to her?’

Anne shut her eyes and heard his steps disappear down the stairs. She waited until the front door had closed before running to the window to watch him go. He walked to the car without looking up, taking out his mobile from his inside pocket and dialling a number. To her, Anne knew. He was calling his fiancée to tell her what had happened, that it was done, that it had been unpleasant, that she had got upset and aggressive. I don’t think she’ll let Miranda go without a fight.

Berit Hamrin knocked on her glass door, opening it a crack and sticking her head in.

‘Hungry?’

Annika let her hands drop from the keyboard, and thought for a moment out of duty.

‘Not really.’

Berit opened the door wider and came into the room.

‘You need to eat,’ she said firmly. ‘God, the state in here – how can you work in this mess? You do have somewhere to hang your things, you know.’ Berit hung up Annika’s outdoor clothes. ‘It’s lasagne in the cafeteria today, I’ve already asked for two portions.’

Annika logged out of the system so that no one got the idea of reading her notes or sending false emails from her account.

‘What are you up to today?’ she asked, attempting to distract her colleague from the chaos she had surrounded herself with.

Berit was on temporary secondment from the crime section to the political team ahead of the impending EU elections.

‘Oh, writing up the latest pissing contest,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Nothing’s happening, but people are
taking up positions, talking across party boundaries, looking for differences of opinion where there aren’t any.’

Annika laughed, following Berit out into the main office.

‘I can see the headline: The secret EU game, and a low-resolution shot of lights in the window of a government building.’

‘You’ve been working here too long,’ Berit said.