Liza Marklund - Red Wolf

‘Do you want coffee?’ she called, staring into her own eyes.

‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I’m fine. I have to get to work.’

She swallowed, realizing that this was going to be unpleasant. He wanted a quick line of retreat, not a scalding mug of coffee to empty in hurried embarrassment. He was standing at the living-room window, looking down at the neighbour’s garden.

‘What is it?’ she said, as she sat on the sofa.

Mehmet turned round. ‘We’re getting married.’

She felt the arrow hit her without trying to stop it.

‘That has nothing to do with me or Miranda,’ she said, blowing on her coffee.

He sat down opposite her, legs wide apart, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

‘We’re expecting a child,’ he said. ‘Miranda’s going to have a little brother or sister.’

Her head started to spin, and against her instinct she looked down at the floor.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘Congratulations.’

He sighed. ‘Anne, I know how hard this must be for you…’

She looked up, took a deep breath. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want your sympathy. What will it mean, in purely practical terms, for Miranda?’

Mehmet pressed his lips together in that way she knew so well, and she was overcome by a hot, intense longing for the man before her; her heart and groin ached. To her own irritation she let out a little sob.

He reached out a hand to her cheek; she closed her eyes and let him stroke her.

‘I’d like her to live with us,’ Mehmet said, ‘full time. But I won’t fight for it if you don’t want that.’

She forced herself to laugh. ‘You can take most things from me,’ she said, ‘but not my child. Get out.’

‘Anne-’

‘Get out!’ Her voice was cracking with rage.

Their daughter appeared in the doorway, looking from one to the other in surprise. ‘Are you angry?’ she said, a half-eaten muffin in her hand.

Mehmet stood up, strong and lithe as a hunter. He went over to the child and kissed her hair.

‘See you next Friday, darling.’

‘Why is Mummy sad? Have you been horrid to her?’

Anne shut her eyes and heard his steps disappear down the stairs. She waited until the front door had closed before running to the window to watch him go. He walked to the car without looking up, taking out his mobile from his inside pocket and dialling a number. To her, Anne knew. He was calling his fiancée to tell her what had happened, that it was done, that it had been unpleasant, that she had got upset and aggressive. I don’t think she’ll let Miranda go without a fight.

Berit Hamrin knocked on her glass door, opening it a crack and sticking her head in.

‘Hungry?’

Annika let her hands drop from the keyboard, and thought for a moment out of duty.

‘Not really.’

Berit opened the door wider and came into the room.

‘You need to eat,’ she said firmly. ‘God, the state in here – how can you work in this mess? You do have somewhere to hang your things, you know.’ Berit hung up Annika’s outdoor clothes. ‘It’s lasagne in the cafeteria today, I’ve already asked for two portions.’

Annika logged out of the system so that no one got the idea of reading her notes or sending false emails from her account.

‘What are you up to today?’ she asked, attempting to distract her colleague from the chaos she had surrounded herself with.

Berit was on temporary secondment from the crime section to the political team ahead of the impending EU elections.

‘Oh, writing up the latest pissing contest,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Nothing’s happening, but people are taking up positions, talking across party boundaries, looking for differences of opinion where there aren’t any.’

Annika laughed, following Berit out into the main office.

‘I can see the headline: The secret EU game, and a low-resolution shot of lights in the window of a government building.’

‘You’ve been working here too long,’ Berit said.

Annika shut the door behind her and headed off towards the canteen. As she followed Berit, the world seemed manageable, safe, the floor stable, no need for any doubts.

The cafeteria was half-empty, the lighting subdued. Most of the light came from the row of windows at the far end of the room. No faces were visible, just dark silhouettes.

They sat at a table overlooking the car park with their steaming plates of microwaved lasagne.

‘What are you working on?’ Berit said, once she’d got to the bottom of the plastic dish.

Annika sliced suspiciously at the layers of pasta.

‘That journalist’s murder,’ she said, ‘and the attack on a plane at F21. The police have a suspect, have had for years.’

Berit raised her eyebrows, catching a piece of meat that was trying to escape from the corner of her mouth, and waved her fork in the air encouragingly.

‘His name’s Ragnwald, someone who fled the Torne Valley for the south, came back and became a terrorist, then went to Spain and joined ETA.’

Berit looked sceptical. ‘And when is this supposed to have happened?’

Annika leaned back and folded her arms. ‘End of the sixties, early seventies.’

‘Hmm,’ Berit said. ‘The delightful age of revolution. There were a lot of people who thought they could liberate the masses through terrorism, and not just in our circle.’

‘Which one was your circle?’

‘ The Vietnam Bulletin ,’ Berit said, scraping at the oil at the bottom of the dish. ‘That’s how I got started as a journalist; I must have told you?’

Annika checked quickly in her failing memory.

‘Which circles wanted terrorism, then?’

Berit was staring at Annika’s half-eaten dish. ‘Are you done with that?’

Annika nodded. Berit sighed, put down her knife and fork.

‘I’ll get coffee,’ she said, and stood up.

Annika stayed where she was, watching her colleague queue up, her short hair sticking out at the back, radiating patience. She smiled as Berit came gliding back with two cups of coffee and some biscuits.

‘Now you’re spoiling me,’ Annika said.

‘Tell me about your terrorist,’ Berit said.

‘Tell me about the sixties,’ Annika countered.

Berit put the cups carefully on the table and looked sharply at Annika.

‘Okay,’ she said as she sat down and stirred two lumps of sugar into her coffee. ‘It was like this. In nineteen sixty-three there was the official break between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party. The split affected every communist movement around the world, including ours. The Swedish Communist Party split into three groups.’

She waved her left index finger.

‘The right-wing group,’ she said, ‘led by C-H Hermansson. They distanced themselves from both the Stalinists and the Maoists, and ended up with a sort of old-fashioned revisionism that we may as well call Social Democracy. They’re today’s Left Party, with almost ten per cent of our parliamentary seats.’

Berit took a sip of coffee, then raised her middle finger.

‘Then there was the centre,’ she said, ‘led by the chief editor of Northern Lights , Alf Löwenborg, who lined up on the Soviet side.’

She changed fingers.

‘And then there was the left-wing group, led by Nils Holberg, which favoured China.’

‘When did all this happen?’ Annika asked.

‘The Swedish Communist Party broke up after its twenty-first party congress, in May nineteen sixty-seven,’ Berit said. ‘The party changed its name to the Left Party Communists, and the left-wing group broke away to form the Communist Association of Marxist-Leninists. After that things developed quickly. The Vietnam movement, Clarté, the Rs – the revolutionaries – all popped up. In the spring of sixty-eight it culminated with the occupation of the student union and the rebel movement in Uppsala. They were actually the worst of all, the Uppsala rebels. They spent the whole of that spring making threats against us.’