Herman Ösel's snapshot of Christina Furhage and Stefan Bjurling was lousy, but it worked. The two murder victims were sitting next to each other in a dark room. The flash had given Christina red-eye and her teeth shone white. Stefan Bjurling was pulling some kind of a face. The photo was blurred but was spread over pages six and seven with Patrik's piece about the police hunt directly underneath. The headline was the one Ingvar Johansson had coined: "Now They're Both Dead." Patrik's story on the explosives was on page eight. She would tell him he'd done a good job when she next saw him.
Annika leafed through the rival, which had opted for a lead about the economy: "Do Your Tax Returns Now— Save Thousands." You could always lead with stuff like that at the end of December because there would always be one tax law or another changing at the turn of the year. Annika couldn't be bothered to read the advice. It never concerned the likes of herself, people who neither saved in share funds, nor owned houses or drove a company car to work. She knew this kind of material sold well but believed you should use it sparingly.
She fished out the disk from her bag on which Christina Furhage's lover really told all about their last hours and put it in the drawer together with the rest of her sensitive material. She called her contact, but he didn't answer. He had to sleep some time. In a fit of restlessness, she walked out to the newsroom, and noted that Berit wasn't there yet. She asked the picture desk to call Herman Ösel to arrange his payment, fetched coffee, and said good morning to Eva-Britt Qvist.
"So what was the fuss about yesterday?" the secretary asked with poorly disguised glee.
"Fuss?" Annika said, pretending to search her mind. "What do you mean?"
"Here in the newsroom. You and Spike?"
"Oh, you mean Spike's bullshit front page on Christina Furhage as a lesbian? Well, I don't know what happened, but Anders Schyman must have stopped it. Poor Spike, talk about a loser," Annika said and walked into her office. She couldn't resist it.
She drank her coffee and started outlining the day's work. The police might pick up the Bomber today, and most likely they would not announce it over the radio. So they had to rely on sources other than the tipsters. She would have to talk to Berit and Ingvar Johansson about that. Personally, she was going to try to put the pieces of Christina Furhage's past together. She would try to find her son Olof.
She closed her notebook and went on the Internet. When she had time, she did her own search with the phone company on the Net. It took longer, but it was probably more secure and more reliable. Directory enquiries would sometimes miss obvious things. She did a national search for Olof Furhage, the computer searched and sorted, and she got a hit as clear as a bell. There was only one in all of Sweden, and he lived in Tungelsta, south of Stockholm.
"Bingo!" Annika said.
Christina Furhage had placed her five-year-old son in Tungelsta, almost forty years before, and a man with that same name lived there now. She wondered whether to call him first but decided to go on an outing instead. She needed to get away from the newsroom.
At the same moment, there was a knock on the door. It was the editor; he was holding a large jug of water and he looked terrible.
"What's happened?" Annika said anxiously.
"Migraine," Anders Schyman said curtly. "I had a glass of red wine with the venison last night, so I only have myself to blame. But how are
you
today?"
He closed the door behind him.
"I'm fine, thanks," Annika said. "I can see why you pulled the story about Christina's lesbian escapades."
"It wasn't difficult: The story had nothing to substantiate it."
"Did Spike say how he felt he could go to press with it?" Annika asked.
The editor sat down on Annika's desk.
"He hadn't read the story, only heard Nils Langeby's description of it. When I asked Langeby to see his copy, it was settled. He had nothing substantial, and even if he had had something, we couldn't have published it. It would have been different if Christina herself had made her love affair known publicly, but to write about a dead person's intimate secrets is the worst way to intrude on her private life. She can't answer back. Spike understood that when I explained it to him."
Annika bowed her head, noting that her reflex response had been the correct one. She wondered what the editor's "explaining" consisted of.
"It was true," she said.
"What was?"
"They had a relationship, but no one knew about it. Helena Starke has been absolutely devastated. She seems to have left for the U.S., by the way."
"Really?" said the editor. "What else have you found out that we can't print?"
"Christina hated her children and scared the shit out of the people around her. Stefan Bjurling was a drunk and wife-beater."
"Shit, is that all? And we can't use it. Okay. So what are you up to today?"
"I'm off to talk to a guy, and then I'm going to check something with my contact."
Anders Schyman raised an eyebrow.
"Something we might read about in tomorrow's paper?"
"I hope we might," she said and smiled.
"What did your husband think of our plans for the future?"
"I haven't talked to him yet."
The editor got up and left the room. Annika packed her pad and pen and noted that the battery of the cellphone was running low. She packed a fully charged one to be on the safe side.
"I'm going out for a while," she said to Eva-Britt, who was barely visible behind the piles of post.
She picked up the keys from the porters for a car without the newspaper's logo on it and went down to the car park. It was a glorious sunny winter day. The snow was almost knee-deep and covered the city the way it does on postcards. Nice. With a white Christmas, now the kids can go sledding in the park, she thought.
Annika turned on the car radio and switched to one of the commercial stations and took the West Circular to the Årsta Bypass. They were playing an old Supremes song. Annika sang along at the top of her voice while the car rushed along toward Huddinge Way. She drove over the Örby Link to Nynäs Way. All the time they played songs she could sing along to. She screeched and laughed straight up into the ceiling of the car. Everything was white and crystal-clear, and soon she'd be off for a week,
and
she was going to be the editor-in-chief! Well, maybe not, but she would be training, and the management had faith in her. She'd suffer setbacks over time, but that came with the territory: That was a fact of life. She turned up the volume when Simon and Garfunkel started singing.
Tungelsta is a garden city about thirty-five kilometers south of Stockholm, a little oasis after the concrete desert of Västerhaninge. Work had begun on the suburb just before the First World War. Today there was nothing much distinguishing it from other residential areas of that era, with one exception: All of the gardens had greenhouses, or remnants of greenhouses. Some were beautiful, others just jagged skeletons.
Annika arrived in mid-morning. Old men shoveling snow gave her a friendly wave as she drove past. Olof Furhage lived in Älvvägen. Annika had to stop at the local pizzeria and ask for directions. An old man who'd been a postman in Tungelsta all of his adult life gave her an animated account of the old district; he knew exactly were Olle Furhage lived:
"Blue house with a big greenhouse," he informed her.
She drove across the railway and saw the place from far off. The greenhouse was by the road: further up toward the woods stood an old blue house. Annika parked on the front lawn, stopping in the middle of an ABBA tune, grabbed her bag, and stepped out of the car. She had put the phone on the front seat so she would hear it if it rang. Seeing it lying there, Annika couldn't be bothered to take it with her. She looked at the house. It was an old-fashioned semidetached house. From the windows and front she guessed it was built in the 1930s. The mansard roof was tiled with red shingles. It was a cozy and well-kept little house.
She started walking toward it when she heard a voice behind her.
"Can I help you with anything?"
It was a man in his forties, with medium-length brown hair and clear blue eyes. He was wearing a knitted woollen sweater and a pair of soil-covered jeans.
"Yes, thank you, you can. I'm looking for an Olof Furhage," Annika said and held out her hand.
The man took her hand and smiled. "You've come to the right place. I'm Olof Furhage."
Annika smiled back. This could be tricky.
"I'm from
Kvällspressen,"
she said. "I was wondering if I could ask you some rather personal questions?"
The man gave a laugh. "Oh, well, that's direct. What sort of questions would those be?"
"I'm looking for the Olof Furhage who's the son of the late MD of SOCOG, Christina Furhage," she said calmly. "Would that be you?"
The man looked down on the ground for a moment, then looked up and pushed his hair back.
"Yes," he said, "that's me."
They stood in silence for a few seconds. The strong sunlight was harsh on their eyes. Annika felt the chill rise up through her thin soles.
"I don't want to be forward," she said, "but in the last few days I've spoken to a lot of people who were around Christina Furhage. It's important for me to speak to you too."
"Why have you been talking to people?" the man said guardedly but not unpleasantly.
"Your mother was a well-known figure, and her death has had worldwide repercussions. But despite her prominent position, she was virtually anonymous as a private person. This has prompted us into speaking to the people closest to her."
"But why? She wanted to be anonymous. Couldn't you respect that?"
The man was no fool; that much was clear.
"Naturally," Annika said. "It's out of respect for her family and her own wish to remain anonymous that I'm doing this. Since we don't know anything about her, there's a real risk of our making fundamental errors in writing about her, mistakes that could hurt her family. Unfortunately, this has already happened. Yesterday we ran an article where your mother was described as an ideal woman. That made your sister Lena extremely unhappy. She called me yesterday, I met her, and we had a long talk. I wanted to make sure we didn't overstep the mark the same way with you."
The man looked at her in wonder.
"You make it sound like you are doing me a favor."
Annika didn't know whether she should smile or be serious. The man saw her puzzlement and laughed.
"It's okay," he said, "I'll talk to you. Do you want a cup of coffee, or are you in a hurry?"
"Both," Annika said, returning the laugh.
"Would you like to have a look at my greenhouse first?"
"I'd love to," Annika said, hoping it would be warmer in there.
It was. The air was warm and smelled of soil and damp. The greenhouse was old-fashioned, and big, at least fifty yards long and ten yards wide. The ground was covered with enormous dark green plastic sheets. Two parallel paths ran alongside the wall.
"I grow organic tomatoes," Olof Furhage said.
"In December, too," Annika remarked.
The man laughed again; laughter seemed to come easily to him.
"No, not at the moment. I lifted the plants in October. You let the soil rest over the winter. In organic farming, it's vital to keep the greenhouse and soil free of bacteria and fungus diseases. Present-day farmers often use rock wool or peat, but I stick to soil. Come here, I'll show you."
He walked down the path and stopped at the far end. There was a big metal device on the outside.
"This is a steam-boiler," Olof Furhage said. "Through the pipes that enter here I pipe in steam, which goes down into the soil and warms it up. That kills off the fungus. I've had it on in the morning, which is why it's so warm in here."
Annika watched with great interest. There are so many things one doesn't know.
"So when will there be some tomatoes?" she asked politely.
"You shouldn't rush tomatoes; the plants become weak and unstable. I start toward the end of February, and by October the plants are up to eighteen feet tall."
Annika looked around the greenhouse.
"How? The ceiling isn't high enough."
Olof Furhage gave another laugh.
"Do you see that wire up there? When the plant reaches that, you bend it over the wire. About two feet from the ground is another wire. That has the same function: You bend the plant around it and it starts growing upwards again."
"That's clever," Annika said.
"How about that coffee now?"
They left the greenhouse and walked toward the house.
