Red Wolf: A Novel (2 page)

She took a few deep breaths and sailed out into the room. The only activity over by the newsdesk was of the entirely silent, focused variety. Spike, the boss, was reading some pages with his feet crossed on his desk. The temporary head of news was staring at his computer screen with red-eyed attention – Reuters and French AFP, Associated Press and TTA and TTB; domestic and foreign, sport and financial, news and telegrams from all over the world, an endless stream. The exultant shouting hadn’t yet started; no noisy enthusiasm or disappointment about stories that had either worked out well or caused a stir, no excited arguments favouring one particular journalistic approach over another.

She slid past them without looking, and without being seen.

Suddenly a noise, a challenge, a voice breaking the electronic babble: ‘So you’re off again?’

She started, took an involuntary step to one side,
letting her gaze swing towards Spike, and was blinded by his desk lamp.

‘I hear you’re flying to Luleå this afternoon.’

She hit her thigh on the corner of the morning team’s desk as she tried to get to her own desk too quickly. She stopped, shut her eyes for a moment, felt her bag slide down her arm as she turned around.

‘Maybe. Why?’

But the editor had already moved on, leaving her adrift, caught between people’s stares and the hum of the newsroom. She licked her lips nervously and hoisted her bag back on to her shoulder, feeling their scepticism stick to the nylon of her quilted jacket.

She was almost there. The glass of her aquarium-like office came ever closer. Relieved, she slid open the door and fled inside. Easing the door shut behind her, she rested the back of her head against the cool glass. At least they had let her keep her own room. Stability and security were becoming more and more important, she knew that much, both for her personally and for society in general.

She dropped her bag and coat on the visitors’ couch and switched on the computer. News reporting felt increasingly distant, even though she was sitting right in the middle of its pulsing, electronic heart. Things that led the front page today were forgotten tomorrow. She no longer had the energy to keep up with AP’s ENPS, the news beast of the digital age.

She ran her fingers through her hair. Perhaps she was just tired. She sat patiently with her chin on her hands as all the programs loaded, then opened up her material. She thought it was looking pretty interesting already, but the suits in charge weren’t so enthusiastic.

She recalled Spike out there, his voice above the
waves. She gathered together her notes and prepared her presentation.

The stairwell was dark. The boy closed the apartment door behind him, listening intently. The loose window on the stairs up to old Andersson’s apartment was whistling as usual. The old boy’s radio was on, but otherwise it was completely quiet.

You’re useless
, he thought.
There’s nothing here. Wimp
.

He stood there for a few moments, then set off determinedly for the front door. A real warrior would never behave like that. He knew from his video games that the was almost a master; ‘Cruel Devil’ was about to become a Teslatron God. He knew what mattered: you must never hesitate in battle.

He pushed open the door, the same plaintive creak. The endless winter snow meant that it opened only a fraction – no one had cleared the steps that morning. He forced his way out, squeezing through the gap. His rucksack caught on the door handle, though, and the unexpected jerk almost made him cry out with annoyance. He tugged and pulled until one of the seams split, but he didn’t care.

He stumbled down the steps, waving his arms frantically to keep his balance. At the bottom, he peered through the falling snow above the fence, and stopped still.

The whole sky was illuminated with blue flashing lights.
They’re here now
, he thought, feeling his throat tighten.
This is for real
.

He set off, but stopped next to a broken lawnmower that was barely visible under the snow, feeling his heart hammering, faster and faster, thud, thud, thud, thud. He screwed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to see, didn’t dare
go up and look. He stood there, his hair-gel stiffening in the cold, hard snowflakes landing on his nose, his ears pricking. Every sound was wrapped in the cotton-wool of the snow, the sound of the ironworks barely audible.

Then he heard voices, a car engine, maybe two. He opened his eyes as wide as he could, looking over the fence towards the football pitch.

Police
, he thought.
Not dangerous
.

He waited until he had calmed down before creeping towards the road and leaning carefully forward. Two police cars and an ambulance, people with confident postures and broad shoulders, with belts and uniforms.

Weapons
, the boy thought.
Pistols. Bang, bang, you’re dead
.

They were standing there talking, walking about and pointing. One man had a roll of tape that he was unwinding; a woman closed the back doors of the ambulance before getting into the passenger seat. He waited for the sirens, but they didn’t come. No point rushing to the hospital.

Because he’s already dead
, the boy thought.
There’s nothing I could have done
.

The sound of a bus accelerating down the road grew louder. He watched the number one go past, annoyed that he had missed it. His mum got so angry if he was late.

He ought to hurry, he ought to run, but his legs refused to move. He couldn’t go onto the road. There might be cars. Gold-coloured cars.

He sank to his knees, his hands shaking, and started to cry, thinking what a wimp he was, but he couldn’t stop.

‘Mum,’ he whispered, ‘I didn’t want to see anything.’

Anders Schyman, editor-in-chief, unfolded the graph of the circulation figures on the conference table in front of him. His hands were twitchy and slightly sweaty. He already knew what the columns showed, but the conclusions and analysis made him blush.

It was actually working. It was okay.

He took a deep breath, put his hands palm-down on the table, leaned forward and let the information sink in. The new direction the team had taken was making a clear difference, both to the circulation figures and to the finances. Here it was, in black and white. It was working; the bitterness from the latest round of cutbacks was dying down. The reorganization was complete; people were motivated, working towards a common goal, in spite of the cuts.

He walked round the shiny walnut table, his fingers stroking the wood. It was a beautiful piece of furniture. He deserved it. His high-handed treatment of the staff had turned out to be exactly the right thing to do.

I wonder if anyone else could have done it
, he thought, even though he knew there was no one else. He had finally been able to prove himself.

The deal he had worked out with the printers had cut their print costs by eight per cent. That was saving
the owners millions each year. And the recession meant that the cost of paper had gone down, which of course he couldn’t take any credit for, but it all added to the successful development of the business. The recruitment of a new sales manager had helped attract advertisers, and in the last three quarters they had taken market-share from both the morning papers and the broadcast media.

And who had fired the old fogey who was still selling advertising space like he was working on some small-town local rag?

Schyman smiled to himself.

But the most important thing was probably his continued development of sales on the front page and flyers. He wasn’t counting his chickens, but, fingers crossed, it looked as though they were going to catch up with their competition during the next financial year, or possibly the one after.

The editor-in-chief stretched, massaging the small of his back. For the first time since he arrived at the
Evening Post
he felt a sense of real satisfaction. This was how he had imagined his new job would be.

It was just a bit of a fucker that it had taken almost ten years.

‘Can I come in?’ Annika Bengtzon asked over the intercom.

He felt his heart sink, the magic fade. He breathed in and out a couple of times before going over to his desk to press the reply button. ‘Of course’.

He stared out the window at the Russian embassy as he waited for the reporter’s nervous steps outside the door. The newspaper’s growing success meant that the newsroom had finally started to show him a little respect. Most noticeably, there was less traffic through his door. This was partly due to the reorganization of the
newsroom: four all-powerful editors now worked shifts, running the various departments, and it was working just as he had planned. He had handed the responsibility down, and instead of having to argue constantly with all of the staff, he imposed his authority through his deputies. Instead of making him weaker, the delegation of power had actually made him mightier.

Annika Bengtzon, the former head of the crime team, had been invited to become one of the four. She had declined, and they had fallen out. Schyman had already revealed his plans for her, seeing her as one of three possible heirs to his position, and wanted to get her involved in a larger programme of development. Becoming one of the editors was the first step, but she had turned the offer down.

‘I can hardly punish you,’ he had said, hearing exactly how that sounded.

‘Of course you can,’ she had replied, her unreadable eyes fluttering across his. ‘Just get on with it.’

Bengtzon was one of the few who believed they still had open access to him and his office, and it annoyed him that he hadn’t done anything about it. In part, her special treatment stemmed from the big media storm last Christmas, when she had been taken hostage in a tunnel by a mad serial killer. That had certainly helped break the paper’s downward spiral, the market research proved as much. Readers found their way back to the
Evening Post
after reading about the night the mother-of-two had spent with the Bomber. So there was good reason to treat Bengtzon with kid gloves for a while. Her way of dealing with the situation and the attention that followed her release had impressed even the board – particularly the fact that she had insisted on the press conference being held in the
Post
’s newsroom. The chairman of the board, Herman Wennergren, had
practically turned cartwheels when he saw the paper’s logo live on CNN. Schyman had more mixed memories of the press conference, partly because he had been standing directly behind Annika in the spotlight during the broadcast, and partly because of the countless repeats that had been shown on every channel. He had been staring at the tousled hair on her head, noting the tension in her shoulders. On screen Bengtzon had been pale and giddy, answering the questions clearly but curtly in decent school-level English. ‘No embarrassing emotional outbursts, thank God,’ Wennergren had said on his mobile to one of the owners from Schyman’s office afterwards.

He could well remember the fear he had felt at the mouth of the tunnel when the shot rang out.
Not a dead reporter
, he had thought,
anything but a dead reporter, please
.

He stopped looking at the bunker of the embassy and sat down on his chair.

‘It’ll all crumble around you one day,’ Annika Bengtzon said as she closed the door behind her.

He didn’t bother to smile. ‘I can afford a new one. The paper’s on a roll,’ he said.

The reporter cast a quick, almost furtive glance at the graphs on the desk. Schyman leaned back, studying her as she carefully sat down on one of the heavy chairs.

‘I want to do a new series of articles,’ she said, looking at her notes. ‘Next week is the anniversary of the attack on the F21 airbase in Luleå, so it would make sense to start there. I think it’s time for a proper summary of what happened, all the known facts. There aren’t many of those, to be honest, but I could do some digging. It’s over thirty years ago, but some of the employees from those days will still be in the Air Force. Maybe it’s time
for someone to talk. You don’t get any answers if you don’t ask the questions . . .’

Schyman nodded, folding his hands on his stomach. Once all the fuss had died down last Christmas, she had spent three months at home. A sabbatical, they had agreed to call it. When she returned to work at the start of April she had insisted on being an independent investigative reporter. Since then she had chosen to focus on terrorism, its history and consequences. Nothing remarkable, no revelations – routine reports from Ground Zero and 9/11; a few follow-up pieces about the bombing of that shopping centre in Finland; interviews with survivors of the Bali bombings.

The fact was that she hadn’t really done much lately. Now she wanted to investigate even deeper into past acts of terrorism. But just how relevant was all this, and did it make sense to embark on that battle right now?

‘Okay,’ he said slowly, ‘that could be good. Dusting off our old national traumas, the hijack at Bulltofta, the siege of the West German embassy, the hostage crisis on Norrmalmstorg—’

‘And the Palme murder, I know. And out of all of them, the attack on F21 is the least written about.’

She dropped her notes in her lap and leaned forward.

‘The Defence Department has kept the lid on this, applying a whole arsenal of secrecy legislation. There were no media-trained PR people on the defence staff in those days, so the poor bastard in charge of the base had to stand there in person shouting at reporters to respect the security of the nation.’

Let her run with it a bit longer
, he thought.

‘So what do we know?’ he said. ‘Really?’

She looked dutifully down at her notes, but he got the distinct impression that she knew all the facts by heart.

‘On the night of the seventeenth of November nineteen sixty-nine a Draken fighter-plane exploded in the middle of the F21 base at Kallax Heath outside Luleå,’ she said quickly. ‘One man was burned so badly that he died of his wounds.’

‘A conscript, wasn’t it?’

‘That only came out later, yes. He was transferred by air ambulance to the University Hospital in Uppsala, and hovered between life and death for a week before he died. The family was gagged. They kicked up a real stink a few years later because they never got any compensation from the Air Force.’