Liza Marklund - Red Wolf

‘Benny Ekland wasn’t a name,’ Anders Schyman said, towards the glass of the window. ‘And besides, the link to terrorism was extremely vague.’

‘And how much of a name is Paula from Pop Factory?’

‘Paula came second in the competition last spring and released a single that got to number seven in the charts. She’s reported the incident to the police and is prepared to have her name and picture published, even in tears,’ Anders Schyman said, without sounding the slightest bit ashamed.

Annika took two steps towards his back.

‘And why does she do that? Because she’s fallen out of the charts. Surely we ought to think for a moment before we start doing the bidding of two-bit celebrities like her?’

‘Do you know, Annika,’ he said, ‘I can’t be bothered to argue with you about this. I don’t need to justify to you the priorities that are actually responsible for saving this paper from closure.’

‘So why are you doing it, then?’

‘What?’

She gathered her papers, tears bubbling under the surface.

‘I’m going to carry on,’ she said, ‘if you’ve no objection. But I know that you have to prioritize. If Ozzy Osbourne throws another T-bone steak into his neighbour’s garden, I realize that I’m fucked.’

She walked out before he could see her tears of rage.

They were sitting in front of the television, two glasses of wine in front of them. Annika was staring at the flickering picture without registering it. The children were asleep, the dishwasher was rattling away in the kitchen, the vacuum cleaner was waiting for her out in the hall. She felt completely paralysed, staring at a man walking to and fro in the foyer of a hotel, as the day, the week, hammered against the inside of her skull, heavy pressure weighing on her chest.

Her mind drifted to that boy, Linus, who had been so sweet with his spiky hair, so sensitive and hesitant… She closed her eyes and saw his eyes, intelligent, watchful. Schyman’s dry voice echoed through her head, Benny Ekland wasn’t a name… I don’t need to justify myself to you .

Thomas suddenly laughed out loud, making Annika jump.

‘What is it?’

‘He’s so fucking brilliant.’

‘Who?’

Her husband stared at her as though she was a bit slow.

‘John Cleese, of course,’ he said, waving his hand towards the television. ‘ Fawlty Towers .’

He looked away from her, concentrating on the television again, leaning forward and taking a sip of wine, smacking his lips appreciatively.

‘By the way,’ he said, ‘did you drink up my Villa Puccini?’

She shut her eyes for a moment, then glanced at him.

‘What do you mean, your?’

He looked at her in surprise.

‘What’s up with you? I just asked if you’d drunk my wine, I was thinking of opening it tomorrow.’

She got up.

‘I’m going to bed.’

‘What is it now?’

He threw out his arms as he sat in the sofa, she turned her back on him and sailed out towards the hall.

‘Anki, for God’s sake. Come here. I love you. Come and sit with me.’

She stopped in the doorway. He got up, walked over to her, wrapped his arms round her shoulders. She felt his heavy arms on her and around her, one hand on each breast.

‘Annika,’ he whispered, ‘come on. You haven’t touched your wine.’

She couldn’t help letting out a tearful sob.

‘Do you want to know what I did at work today?’ he said enthusiastically, pulling her back to the sofa again, pressing her down and sitting beside her, holding her to him. She ended up with her nose in his armpit, it smelled of deodorant and washing powder.

‘What?’ she muttered into his ribs.

‘I gave a bloody good presentation of the project for the whole working group.’

She sat still, waiting, expecting him to go on.

‘What about you?’ he said eventually.

‘Nothing special,’ she whispered.

The man was walking hesitantly, breathlessly, up Linnégatan towards the Fyris River. He was clutching his left hand against his stomach, and holding the right one up to protect his ear, grimacing slightly, not at the pain but rather at the wave of nostalgia the train journey had released. He was defenceless – the memories flooded over him, thundering through him, crashing like a tidal wave right into his mind, stirring up the sludge that had been lying on the bottom so long that he had forgotten it existed. Now it had all come back, the images and smells and sounds that had never done any harm as long as they were hidden among the other forgotten nonsense. But now they were singing, chanting and proclaiming so loudly that he couldn’t hear himself think.

He found himself staring up at a window on the second floor of the Fjellstedska student hostel, one with an Advent star and a little plant on the window sill. They were there again, the girls he had had behind that barred window three and a half decades ago, his first women; he could feel their beery breath and blushed at his own clumsy shyness.

He had been so amazed. The world had seemed so strange. What naïve astonishment at its scope and opportunities. What bitter disappointment when its limitations slammed in his face like iron gates.

The howl of the sounds became lonely. He could feel the draught from the floor, the rat that had stared at him from the window sill that ice-cold morning, the same window sill. He saw it in another light, the frost on the inside of the glass, the rug he had taken with him to remind him of Mother, the nice one where she had woven in his childhood smock and her worn-out petticoat.

‘It came from Kexholm,’ she had said, letting him feel the fine fabric beneath his child’s fingers, and he had appreciated the power of the old country, Mother’s childhood home, and understood her terrible sense of loss.

He gave a snort. This was too difficult. However would he manage?

The task. He had not failed yet, and he wasn’t about to start now where his family was concerned. They were all he had left.

He turned his back on the student hostel, keeping the window in the corner of his eye as long as he could, letting it slide away. He would never see it again.

He took a few stumbling steps along Svartbäcksgatan. The noise subsided, and it became easier to breathe. Slowly everything around him settled down. He had no memories of this place being full of the commercialism of Christmas. It must have looked completely different at the end of the sixties. He straightened his back, letting the hand fall from his ear, allowing reality to wash over him. Half-naked and headless plastic mannequins begged and enticed from the shop windows, with noisy battery-driven toys made in China, flashing strings of lights running across dressing gowns and silk ties, cordless electric tools to charge and use, charge and use.

He raised his head to escape the windows and his eyes fixed on a green artificial pine garland stretched across the whole street. He turned off to the right, across the river, up to the university.

Stopping to catch his breath, he heard the howling monster of consumer society like a waterfall behind him.

The cold was particularly harsh today. He could hardly remember ground this frozen. He was amazed at how the stillness of air from the arctic could emphasize colours and light, sharpening and clarifying his perceptions. He stared up at the cathedral’s twin towers as they struggled, heavy and full of shadows, to reach the translucent sky. He closed his eyes, it was long ago, so long ago; he had almost forgotten what it felt like to breathe in the glass-clear air that could only be found in Uppsala. Now the cold was taking possession of his insides, freezing his airways and the soles of his feet. His teeth started to chatter unconsciously.