Red Wolf: A Novel (43 page)

‘How come you never got caught?’ Annika asked.

The minister looked up. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I never actually did anything, and Göran was very thorough.
We only communicated through symbols, a forgotten old language comprehensible to anyone, across borders, races, cultures.’

‘So no minutes of meetings?’ Annika asked.

‘Not even letters or phone calls,’ Karina Björnlund said. ‘We were summoned to meetings by a drawing of a yellow dragon. A day or so later came a combination of numbers giving the day and time of the meeting.’

‘You each had a symbol?’

The woman nodded carefully, still holding the T-shirt to her nose. ‘But only the Dragon could call a meeting.’

‘And at the end of October you got the call again, in an anonymous letter to the department?’

A flicker of fear crossed the minister’s eyes. ‘It took a few seconds before I realized what I was looking at, and when I did I had to go out and throw up.’

‘Yet you still came,’ Annika said.

‘You don’t understand,’ the minister said. ‘I’ve been so scared all these years. After F21, when Göran disappeared, I got a warning in the post . . .’ She hid her face in the T-shirt.

‘A child’s finger,’ Annika said, and the minister looked up in surprise.

‘How do you know?’

‘I spoke to Margit Axelsson’s husband, Thord. The symbolism was crystal-clear.’

Karina Björnlund nodded. ‘If I didn’t keep quiet then not only would I die, but so would any children I might have in the future, and those close to me.’

Göran Nilsson groaned on the floor, moving his left leg in agitation.

Annika and the Minister of Culture looked at him with empty eyes.

‘He’s been stalking me,’ Karina Björnlund said. ‘One night he was standing outside my house in Knivsta.
The next day I saw him behind a display in Åhléns in Uppsala. And on Friday I got another letter.’

‘Another warning?’

The minister closed her eyes for a few moments.

‘A drawing of a dog,’ she said, ‘and then a cross. I had an idea of what it might mean, but daren’t actually take it in.’

‘That Margit was dead?’

Karina Björnlund nodded.

‘We don’t have any contact with each other any more, of course, but I spent the whole night thinking, and in the morning I called Thord. He told me that Margit had been murdered and I understood exactly. Either I came here or I would die as well. So I came.’

She looked up at Annika, taking the T-shirt from her nose.

‘If you knew how scared I’ve been,’ she said. ‘How much I’ve suffered. Being terrified every day that someone would find out about all of this. It’s poisoned my whole life.’

Annika looked at her, this powerful woman in her thick fur, the girl who had hung out with her cousin, first sport, then politics, who got together with the leader of the gang, strong, charismatic, but then finished with him when he lost his power.

‘Shutting down TV Scandinavia to sweep it all under the carpet was a huge bloody mistake,’ she said.

Karina Björnlund looked at her like she hadn’t understood what she’d just heard. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve got the email that Herman Wennergren sent you. I know why you changed the culture proposal.’

The Minister of Culture got to her feet and took three quick steps over to Annika, her swollen eyes narrow slits.

‘You, you shitty little gutter reporter,’ she said, her bloody face right in front of Annika’s. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’

Annika didn’t back down, but looked into her bloodshot eyes.

‘Don’t you know?’ she said. ‘We’ve spoken before. A long time ago, almost ten years now.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘I contacted you for a comment about Christer Lundgren’s trip to Tallinn the night Josefin Liljeberg was murdered. I told you what had happened to the lost archive. I told you the government was being blackmailed to conduct illegal weapons exports, and I asked you to pass on my questions to the Trade Minister. But you didn’t go to him; you went to the Prime Minister, didn’t you?’

Karina Björnlund had turned white as Annika spoke, staring at her like she’d seen a ghost.

‘That was you?’ she said.

‘You used the information to get a cabinet post, didn’t you?’

The Minister of Culture gasped loudly, suddenly colouring again.

‘How dare you?’ she yelled. ‘I’ll sue you for this.’

‘I’ve only got one question,’ Annika said. ‘Why are you getting so upset?’

‘You come here and make terrible insinuations like that? Am I supposed to have called the Prime Minister in Harpsund and forced my way into a ministerial post?’

‘Oh,’ Annika said. ‘So you got hold of him out at Harpsund? How did he react? Was he angry? Or is he really as pragmatic and rational as people say?’

Karina Björnlund fell silent, her eyes bulging.

A moment later the silence was shattered by Yngve’s
empty bottle hitting the cement floor and splintering into a thousand pieces. The alcoholic slid, unconscious, down the wall and slumped on the floor.

Annika stopped focusing on the Minister of Culture and ran over to Yngve.

‘Hello!’ she shouted, slapping him lightly on the cheek with her glove. ‘Up you get!’

The man blinked. ‘What?’

She tugged open her coat, grabbed the man by the armpits and dragged him to his feet.

‘Hold on to me,’ she said, wrapping the polar jacket round him at the same time as she clasped her arms round his back. The man breathed warmly and damply against her neck, he was so skinny that she could almost fasten the coat behind his back.

‘Can you move your feet? We have to keep moving.’

‘You won’t get away with this,’ the Minister of Culture said, but Annika paid her no attention, putting all her effort into getting the drunk to shuffle across the floor in a macabre and ice-cold dance.

‘Which one are you?’ Annika said quietly to Yngve. ‘Lion or Tiger?’

‘The Lion of Freedom,’ the man said through chattering teeth.

‘So where’s the Tiger?’

‘Don’t know,’ the drunk muttered, almost asleep.

‘He had the sense not to come,’ Karina said. ‘He always was the smartest one of us.’

Suddenly, over by the wall, Göran Nilsson moved, trying to get up, kicking with his good leg, his eyes staring as he tried to take his jacket off.

‘
C’est très chaud
,’ he said, lying down again.

‘Put your coat back on,’ Annika said, trying to go over to him, but the alcoholic had his arms round her and wouldn’t let go.

‘Listen to me, Göran, put your coat on.’

But the man slumped beneath the poster of Mao, his legs jerked spasmodically before settling, and he fell asleep. His chest was fluttering lightly under his ivory-coloured linen shirt.

‘You’ve got to help him,’ Annika said to Karina. ‘At least put his coat back on.’

The woman shook her head, and at that moment the candle went out.

‘Light it again,’ Annika said, hearing the fear in her voice.

‘It’s burned out,’ Karina said. ‘There’s no wick left.’

And with the darkness came silence, as the cold grew sharper and drier.

Annika opened her eyes wide but could see absolutely nothing. She was hovering in an empty, ice-cold space, and was struck with a sense of utter and immense loneliness. Surely nothing in the world could feel worse than this. Anything but isolation.

‘We have to keep moving,’ Annika said. ‘Karina, don’t stand still.’

But Annika heard the minister sink to the floor, and a muffled and uncontrollable attack of sobbing rose from the corner.

The woman was crying, wailing, drooling, and Annika and Yngve were moving ever slower in the ice-cold freezer. She held the shivering man in her arms, feeling his limbs getting heavier and heavier, his breathing more and more strained, and she tightened her grip, her arms rigid.

Responsibility for others
, she thought, staring into the darkness.
Nothing without each other
. And Ellen’s and Kalle’s soft faces appeared in front of her, she could feel their silky-smooth warmth and sweet smell.

Soon
, she thought.
I’ll soon be with you again
.

The Minister of Culture gradually calmed down, her sobbing dying away. The silence that followed was even deeper than before. It took a few seconds before Annika realized why.

Göran Nilsson had stopped breathing.

The thought sent sparks through her mind. Her fingers itched like mad, a sound emerged.
Panic
.

A moment later Yngve slumped in her arms, his legs gave way beneath him and his head fell on her shoulder.

‘Shit!’ she screamed in the man’s ear. ‘Don’t die. Help, someone, help!’

She didn’t have the strength to hold the man upright, he slid into a heap at her feet and she was hit by a complete blackout.

‘Help!’ she screamed at the top of her voice. ‘Help us, someone!’

‘There isn’t any help,’ Karina Björnlund said.

‘Help!’ Annika shrieked, fumbling forward to where she thought the door was, and walked right into the compressor, her knee striking the metal. ‘Help!’

Somewhere behind her she heard muffled voices and for a moment feared she was about to suffer a new onslaught from the angels. Talking, cries, the voices were definitely human, and a moment later came a sharp knocking sound.

‘Hello?’ a male voice called from the other side of the wall. ‘Is there someone in there?’

She spun round and stared into the darkness in the direction the voice had come from.

‘Yes!’ she screamed, falling over Yngve. ‘Yes! We’re in here. We’re locked in. Help us!’

‘We’ll have to cut the padlock off,’ the man said. ‘It may take a while. How many of you are there?’

‘Four,’ Annika said, ‘but I think one man is dead.
Another is on the point of falling asleep; I can’t keep him awake. Hurry!’

‘I’ll get the tools,’ the voice said, then Karina Björnlund came back to life.

‘No!’ the minister shouted. ‘Don’t leave me! I have to get out, now!’

Annika found her way over to Yngve where he lay on the floor, breathing shallowly. She stroked his rough hair, clenching her jaw, then lay down on the floor and pulled the man on top of her, wrapping the polar jacket around them both.

‘Don’t die,’ she whispered, rocking him as though he were a child.

And she lay like that until she heard the cutting torch break the lock and the door was pulled open, and a torch was shining right in her eyes.

‘Take him first,’ Annika said. ‘I think he’s about to give up.’

A moment later the man was lifted off her, put on a stretcher, and floated out of her line of vision in just a couple of seconds.

‘What about you? Can you stand?’

She peered up at the light, could see nothing but the silhouette of a policeman.

‘I’m okay,’ she said, and stood up.

Inspector Forsberg looked at her anxiously.

‘You’ll have to go to hospital and get checked out,’ he said. ‘When you feel like talking I want to speak to you down at the station.’

Annika nodded, suddenly mute. Instead she pointed at Göran Nilsson, noting that her hand was trembling.

‘You’re so frozen you’re shaking,’ Forsberg said.

‘I think he’s dead,’ she whispered.

The paramedics returned and went over to Göran Nilsson, checked his breathing and pulse.

‘I think he broke his leg,’ Annika said. ‘And he’s ill; he said he was going to die soon.’

They put him on a stretcher and carried him quickly out of the building.

Karina Björnlund stepped out from the shadows, leaning on a paramedic. Her face had dissolved in tears, her nose still bleeding.

Annika looked at her swollen face and memorized it.

Karina Björnlund stopped right next to her and whispered so low that no one else could hear. ‘I’m going to say everything myself,’ she said. ‘You can forget all about your exclusive.’

And then the minister went out to the floodlights and police cars and ambulances.

Inspector Forsberg had a cramped, messy office on the second floor of the yellow-brown monstrosity that was the police station. Annika was dozing off on one of the chairs, but gave a start and sat up straight when the door flew open.

‘Sorry you’ve had to wait. No milk or sugar,’ the police officer said, putting a steaming-hot plastic cup in front of her on the desk, then went round and sat on his swivel-chair.

Annika picked up the cup, burning her hands and blowing on the drink. She took a cautious sip. Machine coffee, the worst sort.

‘Is this an interrogation?’ she asked, putting the cup down.

Forsberg looked through a drawer without answering.

‘Witness questioning, I suppose we should call it. Where the hell have I put it? There it is!’

He pulled out a little tape-recorder and a mess of cables, straightened up, looked Annika in the eye and smiled.

‘You’re not too frozen, then?’ His gaze held hers.

She looked away.

‘Oh, I am,’ she said. ‘But I learned to dress properly the hard way. How are the others?’

‘Ragnwald is dead, like you thought. Yngve Gustafsson is in intensive care, his body temperature was down to twenty-eight degrees. He’ll make it though. Did you know he was the father of Linus, the boy who was killed?’

Annika looked up at the police officer, a lump in her throat, and shook her head.

‘And Karina Björnlund?’ she said.

‘She’s having her face patched up, and she’s got frostbite in her feet. So what happened?’

He leaned forward and switched on the tape-recorder.

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘do you want the full story?’

He looked at her thoughtfully for a few moments, then looked away and pulled out her personal details.

‘Witness questioning of Annika Bengtzon,’ he said, ‘of Hantverkargatan thirty-two in Stockholm; location: questioner’s office; conversation begins . . .’

He looked at his watch.

‘. . . at twenty-two fifteen. How did you come to be in an abandoned compressor shed near Swedish Steel in Luleå this evening?’

She cleared her throat towards the microphone, which was standing on a memo from the National Police Commissioner.

‘I wanted to interview the Minister of Culture, Karina Björnlund, and happened to catch sight of her at Kallax Airport, and I followed her.’