"I'm sorry… Forgive me for disturbing you during dinner," she said quietly.
"I'm sure you have good reason to," Anders Schyman said shortly.
People were talking and laughing in the background.
"I'm also sorry I didn't make the Six Session tonight, we had a crisis at home…"
She broke out crying, uncontrollably and loud.
"What's happened? Is it something with the children?" he said with alarm.
She collected herself.
"No, no, nothing like that, but I have to ask— at the meeting, did you discuss what Spike has put on tomorrow's front page, that Christina Furhage was a lesbian?"
For several seconds, Annika only heard the background chatter and laughter.
"That what?" Anders Schyman finally said.
She put her hand on her chest and forced herself to breathe calmly.
" 'Her lover tells all,' according to the headline."
"Jesus Christ! I'm coming in," the editor-in-chief said and hung up.
She put the phone down, leaned over the desk, and started to cry. The mascara dripped onto her notes, and her whole body was shaking. I can't take it anymore, I can't, I'm dying, she thought. She realized she'd fallen down on the job. Now she'd really fucked it up. The sound of her despair would escape through the door and across the newsroom floor. Everyone would see that she wasn't up to it, it had been a mistake to promote her; she was a washout. This realization didn't help. She just couldn't stop crying. The stress and exhaustion had finally taken over her whole body. She couldn't stop shaking and crying.
After a time, she felt a hand on her shoulder and heard a soothing voice somewhere above her.
"Annika, it's all right. Whatever has caused this, we can sort it out. Do you hear me, Annika?"
She held her breath and raised her head; she felt a flashing pain at the light. It was Anders Schyman.
"I'm sorry…" she said, trying to wipe the mascara off with her hands. "Sorry…"
"Here, take my handkerchief. Sit up straight and wipe your nose while I fetch a glass of water."
The editor disappeared through the door, and Annika mechanically did as she had been told. Anders Schyman returned with a plastic cup of cold water, closing the door behind him.
"Have some of this, and then tell me what's happened."
"Did you talk to Spike about the headline?"
"I'll deal with that later. It's not so important. I am worried about you. Why are you so upset?"
She started crying again, this time softly and quietly. The editor waited in silence.
"I guess it's mostly because I'm tired and worn out," she said when she had collected herself. "And then Spike said all those things you only hear in your worst nightmares— about me being a useless idiot who wasn't up to the job and stuff like that…"
She leaned back in the chair; she'd said it now. Strangely, it had made her calm down. "He has absolutely zero confidence in me as a manager, that's obvious. And he's probably not the only one."
"That's possible," Anders Schyman said, "but immaterial. What matters is that I have confidence in you, and I am absolutely convinced that you are the right person for your job."
She drew a deep breath. "I want to quit."
"You can't," he said.
"I'm resigning," she said.
"I won't accept your resignation."
"I want to go right now, tonight."
"Impossible, I'm afraid. I intend to promote you."
She stared at her boss.
"Why?" she asked in amazement.
"I wasn't going to tell you yet, but sometimes your hand is forced. I have big plans for you, Annika. I might as well tell you about them now, before you decide to leave the company for good."
She stared at Anders Schyman in disbelief.
"This paper is facing big changes," the editor began. "I don't think any of the employees can imagine just how big. We have to adapt to completely new markets, the IT world and increased competition from the free papers. We have to concentrate on our journalism. We have to have senior editors competent in all these areas. People like that don't grow on trees. We can either sit around hoping for them to appear, or we can see to it that the people we most believe in are adapted to the new conditions in advance."
Annika listened wide-eyed.
"I'll be working for ten years longer at the most, Annika, maybe only five. There'll have to be people ready to take over after me. I'm not saying it'll be you, but you are one of three people I consider who might. There's a whole pack of things you need to learn before then, and controlling your temper is one of them. But right now you're the best candidate for my job. You're creative and quick-witted. I've never seen the like, actually. You take responsibility and conflict with equal aplomb. You're structured, competent, and full of initiative. I'm not going to let some idiot night editor drive you away, I hope you realize that. You're not the one who's leaving, the idiots are."
The potential future editor blinked in astonishment.
"So I would appreciate it if you could delay handing in your resignation until the new year," Schyman went on. "There are a couple of people in the newsroom who want to harm you, and it's hard to defend yourself against that. Leave it to me. We'll talk again when this Bomber crisis has calmed down a bit. I'd like you to think about what further training might be good for you. We need to make a plan for which different posts you should cover. It's important you learn the trade at all levels of the newsroom. You also need to have a grasp of the technical and administrative side of the company. You have to win acceptance and respect everywhere, that is imperative. And you will, if we do this the right way.
Annika just sat there gaping. She couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"You've really thought this through," she said in amazement.
"This isn't an offer to become editor-in-chief; it's a call for you to get started on your training and get the experience you need to be taken into consideration when the time comes. And I don't want this to go any further, excepting your husband. What do you say?"
Annika shook herself.
"Thank you."
Anders Schyman smiled. "Why don't you go on holiday now and come back after New Year's? You must have a mountain of overtime by now."
"I was going to work tomorrow morning, and I don't want to change that just because Spike was an asshole. I hope to have my picture of Christina Furhage clear by then."
"Anything we can use?"
She mournfully shook her head.
"I really don't know. We need to talk about it; it's a tragic story."
"All the more interesting. We'll talk about it later."
Anders Schyman got up and left the room. Annika was left sitting at her desk, an enormous feeling of peace inside her. That's how easy it was to feel okay again, all it took to erase despair as black as night. Setting the record straight, and it was as if the humiliation in the newsroom had never occurred.
She put her coat on and left through the back door, grabbed a taxi from the stand, and went home.
Thomas was asleep; she washed off the remnants of her mascara, brushed her teeth, and crept into bed next to her husband. It wasn't until there, in the dark, with the ceiling floating somewhere above her in the dark, that she remembered what the police had hinted to her earlier that night:
They knew who the Bomber was, and they were about to move in on him.
EVIL
My intuition warned me of its existence and power early on. Reason, surrounding me on all sides in the form of adults, was trying to tear this certainty out of me. "That's just make-believe," they would say. "That's not how it is in real life, and anyway, it's always the forces of good that win out." I knew this was a lie because I had heard the story of Hansel and Gretel. There, evil prevailed everywhere, even though the author insisted it was all part of a grander design. Evil forced the little children out into the woods, evil fatted Hans up and heated the oven, but Gretel turned out to be the most evil of them all, for she was the one who actually committed murder.
Stories of that kind never scared me. You don't fear the entity that you're familiar with. This gave me an advantage over the world around me.
Experiences later on in life naturally showed me I had been right. In our country, we've made the fatal mistake of abolishing evil. It doesn't exist officially. Sweden is a state governed by law; understanding and logic have taken the place of evil. That made it possible for evil to move underground, and there, in the dark, it thrived more than ever. It fed on envy and suppressed hatred, became impervious, and with time grew so dark that it became invisible. But I recognized it. Anyone who has once known its being can smell it out, wherever it lies hidden.
A person who has learned from Gretel knows how to deal with evil. Like cures like, that's the only way. I saw evil in the malicious faces at my workplace, in the eyes of the members of the board, in the taut smiles of my colleagues— and I would smile back. The seven-headed monster was nowhere to be seen; it hid behind union talks and in supposedly objective discussions. But I knew and played along. They couldn't fool me. I held up a mirror, and their powers were reflected.
But I saw it make other advances in society. I noted how the violence against several of my employees was ignored by police and prosecutors. A woman in my office reported her ex-husband some twenty times, and every time the police classified it as a "domestic incident." The social services appointed a mediator, but I knew it was futile. I could smell the stench of evil, and I knew her time was up. The woman would die because no one took evil seriously. "He didn't mean any harm; he really only wanted to see the children," I once heard the mediator say. I told my secretary to shut the door because people's inability to act vexes me.
In the end, the woman had her throat slit with a bread knife and those around her reacted with surprise and dismay. They looked for an explanation but overlooked the most obvious one.
Evil escaped yet another time.
THURSDAY 23 DECEMBER
The apartment was empty when Annika woke up. It was half past eight and the sun shone in through the bedroom window. She got up and found a big note on the fridge door, held up with Santa Claus magnets:
"Thanks for being there.
Kisses from your husband.
P.S. I'll take the kids to daycare. Your turn to pick up."
She made herself a cheese sandwich while leafing through the morning papers. They were also making a great deal of the government regional bill, and they had started their Christmas material, a historical retrospective of Christmas through the ages and stuff like that. There was nothing new on the Bomber. She had a quick shower, then microwaved a cup of water and added some instant coffee, which she drank while getting dressed. She took the bus to the old entrance and took the back stairs up to the newsroom. She didn't want to see anyone until she'd seen what had been published on Christina Furhage's sexuality.
There wasn't a single smutty line about Christina Furhage or Helena Starke in the entire paper. Annika switched on her computer and entered the so-called Historical server. You could read discarded copy there for up to twenty-four hours afterwards.
Nils Langeby had indeed written a piece titled "Christina Furhage— Lesbian." The copy had been discarded at 22:50 last night. Annika clicked to open it and skimmed through it. What she saw made her feel faint. The named source who supposedly had confirmed that Christina Furhage was a lesbian was a woman at the Olympic Secretariat whom Annika never had heard of. She said: "Well, of course we wondered. Christina always wanted to work with Helena Starke, and a lot of us found that peculiar. Everyone knew that Helena Starke is one of those… Some people even thought they were an item." The reporter then quoted a couple of anonymous sources saying they'd seen the two women together out on the town.
At the end was a quote from Helena Starke herself: "The last time I saw Christina was at the restaurant last Friday night. We left at the same time. We each went home to our respective houses."
That was it. No wonder Schyman had pulled the story.
Annika read on and was hit by an unpleasant thought: How the hell did Nils Langeby get hold of Helena Starke's unlisted phone number, if indeed he had talked to her?
She looked in the newsroom electronic contacts book and saw that she had made a mistake when inputting the woman's number. She had put it in the common book, instead of in her private one. Without a moment's hesitation, she lifted the receiver and dialed Helena's number to apologize. She got the phone company's automated response: "The number has been disconnected. The customer has not registered a forwarding number." Helena Starke must have left the country.
Annika sighed and went through what had been printed. They had chosen to lead with something completely different from the Bomber story: a celebrity telling all about his incurable condition. One of the anchors on the public service television sports desk suffered from gluten intolerance; he was allergic to flour and recounted how his life had changed since he was diagnosed with the ailment a year before. It was okay for a lead on a day like this, the day before Christmas Eve. Anne Snapphane would fall on it.
