Liza Marklund - The Bomber

"Does it hold?" he asked, standing up the instant he spotted them coming in.

"I think so," Annika said. "There's a dead body on the Olympic stand, in pieces. I'd bet my life on it. Give me half an hour and I'll know for sure."

Jansson rocked to and fro on his feet. "Half an hour- not sooner?"

Annika threw him a glance over her shoulder while wriggling out of her coat. She picked up a copy of the early edition and walked into her office.

"Okay then," he said and went back to his chair.

First she wrote the news article, which was nothing but a supplemented rewrite of the night reporter's work from the first edition. She added quotations from the neighbors and the statement that the fire was under control. After that she set about writing the "I Was There" story, adding descriptions of sounds and other details. Twenty-eight minutes past seven she called her contact.

"I can't say anything yet," he began.

"I know," Annika said. "I'll do the talking and you say nothing, or tell me if I'm wrong…"

"I can't do that this time," he interrupted her.

Shit. She took a breath and chose to go on the offensive.

"Listen to what I have to say first," she said. "This is how I see it: Someone died at the Olympic stadium last night. Someone has been blown to bits on that stand. You have people there picking up the pieces as we speak. It's an inside job; all the alarms were disarmed. There must be hundreds of alarms at a stadium like this: burglar alarms, fire alarms, motion-sensor alarms- and they were all disarmed. No doors had been forced open. Someone with a key went inside and switched off the alarms, either the victim or the perpetrator. At this moment you are trying to find out who."

She fell silent and held her breath.

"You can't publish that now," the police officer at the other end said.

Quick release of breath. "What part?"

"The insider theory. We want to keep it secret. The alarms were fully functional but had been disarmed. Someone has died, that's true. We don't know who yet." He sounded completely exhausted.

"When will you find out?"

"Don't know. It could prove difficult to establish the victim's identity visually, if I may put it that way. But we do seem to have certain other leads. That's all I can say."

"Man or woman?"

He hesitated. "Not now," he said and hung up.

Annika darted out to Jansson. "The death has been confirmed, but they still don't know who it is."

"Mincemeat, eh?" Jansson said.

She swallowed and nodded.

Helena Starke woke up with a hangover that was out of this world. As long as she stayed in bed it was all right, but when she got up to get a glass of water she threw up on the mat in the hallway. She stayed panting on all fours for a while before she could make it into the bathroom. There she filled the toothbrush glass with water and gulped it down. Dear God, she was never going to drink again. She lifted her gaze to meet her bloodshot eyes among the toothpaste specks in the mirror. Christ, would she never learn? She opened the bathroom cabinet and fumbled with the Tylenol container. She swallowed three with a great deal of water and prayed she'd keep them down.

Helena staggered out into the kitchen and sat down by the table. The seat was cold against her naked thighs. How much did she drink last night? The brandy bottle stood on the worktop, empty. She leaned her cheek against the tabletop and searched for memories of the night before. The restaurant, the music, peoples' faces- it was all one big flashback. Christ, she couldn't even remember how she got home! Christina was with her, wasn't she? They left the restaurant together, didn't they?

She groaned, stood up, and filled a jug with water that she took with her to the bedroom. On her way to the bedroom, she scrambled together the hall mat and threw it in the laundry basket in the wardrobe; she nearly threw up again from the stench.

The clock radio by the bed said five to nine. She groaned. The older she got, the earlier she woke up, especially if she'd been drinking. In years gone by she'd been able to sleep it off for a whole day. Not any more. Now she woke early, sick as a dog, and then spent the rest of the day sweating in bed. She'd drift off for short periods, but she couldn't sleep. Mustering all her energy, Helena reached for the jug. She piled the pillows up against the headboard and settled herself against them. Then she saw her clothes from last night folded up in a neat pile on the chest of drawers by the window, and a shiver went up her spine. Who the hell had put them there like that? Probably she did. That was the scariest thing about having blackouts when you drank: You went around like a zombie, doing normal things without having a clue. She shuddered and switched on the radio. She might as well listen to the news while waiting for the Tylenol to kick in.

The main news this morning made her throw up again. She also knew that there would be no more rest for Helena Starke today.

After flushing her vomit down the toilet, she picked up the phone and called Christina.

The news agency TT ran Annika's information at 9:34 A.M. So, Kvällspressen had been first with the report of a victim at the Olympic blast. Their headlines ran: OLYMPIC BLAST KILLS ONE and THE HUNT IS ON FOR THE BOMBER.

The last one was a gamble, but Jansson argued it would hold. Henriksson's picture from the Olympic flame dominated most of the center spread. It was a striking image: the illuminated circle beyond the hole made by the bomb, the men bent forward, the falling snowflakes. It was extremely nasty without being macabre. No blood, no body, only the knowledge of what the men were doing. They had already sold the picture to Reuters. TV2's Rapport quoted Kvällspressen, while the radio news program Eko pretended the story was theirs.

When the city edition had gone to press, the crime reporters and news editors gathered in Annika's office. Boxes with her ring binders and files with cuttings of her old articles were still piled up in the corners. The couch had been inherited, but the desk was new. For two months now Annika had been crime editor; the office had been hers for as long.

"There are of course a number of things we have to go through and parcel out among ourselves," she said, putting her feet on the desk. Tiredness had hit like a rock to the back of the head when the paper went to press and she came to a halt. She leaned back and reached for her coffee mug.

"One: who is the corpse on the stand? Tomorrow's major splash, which could become several. Two: the hunt for the killer. Three: the Olympic angle. Four: How could it happen? Five: the taxi driver; no one has talked to him yet. Maybe he saw or heard something."

She looked up at the people in the room, reading their reactions to what she had said. Jansson was half asleep; he was going home soon. The news editor Ingvar Johansson looked at her with an expressionless face. The reporter Nils Langeby, the oldest on the crime desk at 53, was, as usual, unable to hide his hostility toward her. The reporter Patrik Nilsson was listening attentively, not to say rapturously. The third reporter, Berit Hamrin, calmly paid attention. The only one not there from the crime desk was the combined secretary and research assistant, Eva-Britt Qvist.

"I think the way we approach these things is disgusting," Nils said.

Annika sighed. Here we go again. "What approach would you suggest?"

"We're far too focused on this type of sensationalist violence. What about all the environmental crime we never write about? Or crime in schools."

"It's true that we should improve our coverage of that type of…"

"We damned well should! This desk is sinking into a shit hole of women's sob stories and bombs and biker wars."