Liza Marklund - Red Wolf

‘I just need to check the news,’ Annika said, reaching for the remote. The shadows withdrew with a hiss.

The television flickered into life, and Anne stiffened.

‘Mehmet’s new monogamous fuck is a news editor there,’ she said.

Annika nodded without taking her eyes from the screen. ‘So you said,’ she said. ‘Hang on a moment.’

She turned up the volume. Over the beat of the theme-music the newsreader read out the headlines in verbless soundbites: ‘Suspected murder of a journalist in Luleå; four thousand laid off at Ericsson; new library proposals from the Ministry of Culture. Good evening, but first the Middle East, where a suicide bomber has this evening killed nine young people outside a café in Tel Aviv… ’

Annika lowered the volume to a murmur.

‘Do you think it’s serious, then, Mehmet and this one?’

Anne took a gulp of wine, swallowing audibly.

‘She’s started picking Miranda up from nursery,’ she said, her voice flat and peculiar.

Annika thought for a moment, trying to imagine how that would feel.

‘I couldn’t handle that,’ she said, ‘another woman looking after my children.’

Anne pulled a face. ‘I haven’t got much choice, have I?’

‘Do you want more children?’

Annika heard the loaded subtext of her question, as if she had been working up to asking it. Anne looked up in surprise, and shook her head.

‘I want to be an individual,’ she said. ‘Not a function.’

Annika raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s the whole point,’ she said. ‘Becoming part of something bigger, something more important. Voluntarily giving up your freedom for someone else; that never happens anywhere else in our culture.’

‘I’ve never thought of it like that,’ Anne said, taking another drink. ‘But when you put it like that, that was one of the reasons why I didn’t want to live with Mehmet. Being alone with my thoughts is vital; otherwise I’d go mad again.’

Annika knew that Anne thought she had never understood the way she and her husband had lived, had never seen how well it worked until it suddenly collapsed.

‘But being an egotist doesn’t necessarily make you any truer to yourself,’ Annika said, then realized how harsh her words sounded. ‘I mean, we have to deal with any number of things every day. Not just kids, but jobs, sports, anything. How many people get to go around being individuals in their jobs? How much could I be Annika Bengtzon if I was in the national ice-hockey team?’

‘I knew there was a reason why I hate sports journalists,’ Anne muttered.

‘But seriously,’ Annika said, leaning forward, ‘being part of a context is vital, having a function that’s bigger than us individually. Why else would people be attracted to sects and other groups of nutters if there wasn’t something really appealing about it?’

‘I don’t like sects either,’ Anne said, taking another gulp of wine.

An image of Svartöstaden filled the screen behind the newsreader, and Annika turned the sound up again.

‘Police have confirmed that the death of journalist Benny Ekland is being treated as suspected murder, and that he was killed by a stolen Volvo V70.’

‘They haven’t come up with anything new,’ Annika said, lowering the volume again.

‘He was murdered by a Volvo?’ Anne asked, putting her hands down again.

‘Didn’t you read my article?’

Anne smiled briefly in apology.

‘Do you want some water?’

‘No, I’d like some more wine,’ Anne called after her.

The passageway to the kitchen was dark and full of silent sound. In the kitchen the subdued lighting of the extraction unit looked like a campfire from a distance. The water sloshed in the dishwasher, sending cascades up against its stainless-steel walls.

She poured two large glasses of water, even though Anne didn’t want any.

When she came back her friend was still sitting in the sofa with her empty wineglass in her hand. The alcohol had made her face relax. Her eyes were drawn to the silent television, and Annika followed her gaze and suddenly saw the broad, dark figure of the Minister of Culture fill the screen. She turned up the sound.

‘From July first, every council district will be obliged to have at least one public library,’ Karina Björnlund, the Minister of Culture, announced, her gaze fluttering about. ‘This new libraries law is a great step towards equality.’

She nodded emphatically on the screen, and the unseen reporter was evidently expecting her to go on. Karina Björnlund cleared her throat, leaned towards the microphone and said: ‘For knowledge. Equality. Potential. For knowledge.’

The reporter withdrew the microphone with his gloved hand and asked, ‘Doesn’t this initiative tread on the toes of local accountability?’

The microphone came back in a shot, as Karina Björnlund bit her lip.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘this is an issue that has been debated over many years, but we are proposing new state subsidies of twenty-five million kronor for the purchase of books for public and school libraries.’

‘God, she’s mad, isn’t she?’ Annika said, turning the volume down again.

Anne raised her eyebrows, seemingly unconcerned. ‘I don’t understand why you’re so against it,’ she said. ‘That proposal she’s talking about is what’s making my TV channel possible.’

‘She should never have been made a minister,’ Annika said. ‘Something went wrong after the whole Studio Six business. She was only the Trade Minister’s press secretary back then – Christer Lundgren, you remember him…?’

Anne frowned, thinking hard.

‘And she didn’t make a very good press secretary either, and then she gets to be Minister of Culture after the election.’

‘Aah,’ Anne said, ‘Christer Lundgren, the minister everyone thought killed that stripper.’

‘Josefin Liljeberg, exactly. Even though he didn’t do it.’

They sat in silence again, watching Karina Björnlund talk soundlessly. Annika had an idea of why the press secretary had become a minister, and suspected that she herself, entirely innocently, had been a contributing factor to her appointment.

‘Do you mind if I turn it off?’ she asked.

Anne shrugged. Annika considered getting up and fetching something else, anything else, to eat or drink or look at, something to consume, but she stopped herself, gathered her thoughts, allowed the grey anxiety to wash over her, and hopefully go away.

‘I got a load of really sensitive information from a policeman in Luleå today,’ she said. ‘About a bloke from the Torne Valley who probably blew up that plane at F21 and went on to become an international terrorist. What would make anyone leak that after thirty years?’

Anne let the words sink in.

‘Depends on what the policeman said,’ she replied. ‘I don’t suppose he was stupid, so there’s a reason behind the leak. What do you think he was after?’

Annika played with her glass of water.

‘I’ve been wondering that all day,’ she said. ‘I think the terrorist has come back, and the police want him to know that they know.’

Anne frowned, then her gaze cleared, intoxication fading. ‘Isn’t that a bit of a long shot?’ she said. ‘Maybe they want to scare someone who knows him. His old friends. Warn political groups, left and right alike, against God knows what. You can’t possibly know what the police’s motives are.’

Annika took a sip of water, swallowed with difficulty, then put the glass down.

‘The officer said he’d checked with the press officer at the airbase, which means the military have discussed it, so this is something they’ve been planning for a while. But why now, and why me?’