Liza Marklund: The Bomber

"What do you want?" Jansson said.

"An ambulance is coming up to the arena," Annika said.

"I've got a deadline in seven minutes."

She heard the clatter of his keyboard. "What are the news agencies saying? Any reports of injuries?"

"They've got the taxi driver, but they haven't talked to him. There's the destruction, comments from the Krim duty desk. They're saying nothing as yet, well, a lot of crap. Nothing important."

"The taxi driver was taken away an hour ago, this is something different. Aren't they saying anything over the police radio?"

"Nothing interesting."

"Anything scrambled?"

"Nope."

"And the radio news?"

"Nothing so far. There's a special Rapport bulletin on TV at six o'clock."

"Yes, I saw their van."

"Keep your eyes open, I'll call you when the front page goes to press."

He hung up. Annika dropped the call but kept the earpiece in her ear.

"Why do you have one of those?" Henriksson asked and pointed at the cord hanging down her cheek.

"Don't you know that your brain is fried by the radiation from cellphones?" she said, smiling. "It's handy. I can run and write and talk on the phone at the same time. And it's quiet; you don't hear when I make a call."

There were tears in her eyes from the cold, so she had to squint to see what was going on over by the stadium. "Have you got a mega telephoto lens?"

"They don't work when it's this dark," Henriksson replied.

"Then take the biggest one you've got and try and see what's going on over there," she said, pointing with her gloved hand.

Henriksson sighed a bit and put his camera bag on the ground. He looked through the lens. "I need a tripod," he mumbled.

The vehicles had driven up a grass slope and parked by the stairs to one of the big entrances. Three men stepped out of the doctor's car and stood talking behind it. A policeman in uniform approached them, and they shook hands. There was no movement in the ambulance.

"They don't seem to be in any hurry," Henriksson said.

Another two men went up to them, one a policeman in uniform, the other he assumed to be a cop in plain clothes. The men were talking and gesticulating with their hands, one of them pointing up toward the gaping bomb hole.

Annika's phone rang. She pressed the answer button. "Yes?"

"What's the ambulance doing?"

"Nothing. Waiting."

"What have we got for the next edition?"

"Have you found the taxi driver at the hospital?"

"Not yet, but we've got people there. He's not married, no partner."

"Have you tried contacting the Olympic boss, Christina Furhage?"

"Can't find her."

"What a disaster for her. She's worked so hard… We have to do the whole Olympic angle, too. What happens to the Games now? Can the stand be fixed in time? What does Samaranch say? All that stuff."

"We've looked into it. There are people here working on it."

"I'll do the story on the actual blast, then. It has to be sabotage. Three pieces: the police hunt for the bomber, the scene of the crime this morning, and…" She fell silent.

"Bengtzon…?"

"They're opening the back doors of the ambulance. They're taking out the stretcher, wheeling it up to the entrance. Shit, Jansson, there's another victim!"

"Okay. The Police Hunt, I Was at the Scene, and the Victim. You've got pages six, seven, eight plus the center spread." The line went dead.

She was on full alert as the ambulance people walked toward the stadium. Henriksson's camera was rattling. No other journalists had noticed the newly arrived vehicles; the training facility blocked their line of vision.

"Christ, it's cold," Henriksson said when the men had disappeared inside the arena.

"Let's go back to the car and make our calls," Annika said.

They went back toward the media gathering. People were standing around, freezing in the frigid air. The TV people were unrolling their cables, and some reporters were blowing on their ballpoint pens. Why don't they ever learn to use pencils when it's below freezing? Annika thought to herself and smiled. The radio people looked like insects with their sound equipment jutting out their backs. Everyone was waiting. One of the freelancers from Kvällspressen had returned from a trip to the newsdesk.

"They're having some kind of press briefing at six o'clock," he said.

"Live on the Rapport special bulletin- how convenient," Annika muttered.

Henriksson had parked his car way off, behind the tennis courts and the sports clinic.

"I took the route they first cordoned off to come here," he said apologetically.

They had some way to walk. Annika could feel her feet grow numb from the cold. A light snow had started falling- too bad, when you're planning to take photos in the dark with a telephoto lens. They had to brush the snow off the windshield on Henriksson's Saab.

"This is good," Annika said, looking toward the arena. "We can see both the ambulance and the doctor's car. We've got it all covered from here."

They got in and warmed up the engine. Annika started making her calls. She tried the Krim duty desk again. Busy. She called the emergency services control room and asked who had first raised the alarm, how many calls they had received, if anyone in the apartments nearby had been hurt by flying glass, and whether they had any idea as to the extent of the damage. As usual, the emergency people knew the answers to most of her questions.

She then dialed the number she had found on the sticker on the entrance doors of Victoria Stadium, the one belonging to the security company responsible for guarding the premises. She found herself at an emergency service switchboard in Kungsholmen in west-central Stockholm. She asked if they had received any alarms from the Olympic arena in the early morning hours.

"We treat all incoming alarm calls as confidential," said the man at the other end.

"I understand that," Annika said. "But I'm not asking about an alarm call you've received but about one you probably haven't received."

"Hey," the man said, "are you deaf?"

"Okay," Annika said. "Put it this way: What happens when you get an alarm call?"

"Eh… it comes here."

"To the emergency control room?"

"Yeah, where else? It's entered into our computer system and then it comes up on our screens with an action plan telling us what to do."

"So if there were an alarm call from the Olympic stadium, it would appear on your screen?"

"Eh… yeah."

"And then it says exactly what steps you should take concerning that alarm call?"

"Eh… right."

"So what has your company been doing out at the Olympic stadium tonight? I haven't seen a single one of your cars out here."

No reply from the man.

"Victoria Stadium has been blown up. We can agree on that, can't we? What's your company supposed to do if the Olympic area catches fire or is damaged in some other way?"

"It comes up on the computer," the man said.

"So what have you been doing?"

The man said nothing.

"You haven't received any alarm whatsoever from the arena, have you?" Annika said.

The man was quiet for a while before he replied.

"I can't comment on the alarm calls we don't get either."

Annika took a deep breath and smiled.

"Thank you," she said.

"You won't write any of what I've said, will you?" the man said anxiously.

"Said?" Annika said. "You haven't said a word. All you've done is refer me to your confidentiality policy."

She switched off. Yes, she had her angle now. She drew a deep breath and stared out through the windshield. One of the fire engines pulled off, but the ambulance and the doctor's car remained. The explosives experts had arrived; their vehicles were dotted around the forecourt. Men in gray overalls were lifting things out of the cars. The fire had been extinguished, so she could hardly make out any smoke.