Liza Marklund - Red Wolf

He looked at his wife as the pan of water began to bubble. Sharp and edgy, slight, with soft breasts. Vulnerable and fragile and hard as nails.

She must have felt him looking at her, because she looked up at him, confused. ‘What?’ she said.

He turned away. ‘Nothing.’

‘Right,’ she said, picking up the paper and leaving the kitchen.

‘Hang on,’ he called after her. ‘Mum rang and asked us to Sunday lunch. I said yes; hope that’s okay?’

Why am I asking ? he thought. Why am I apologizing for accepting an invitation to visit my own parents?

‘What did you say?’

She walked sternly back into the kitchen, he turned and looked at her, standing there with the newspaper dragging on the floor.

‘Twelve o’clock,’ he said. ‘Lunch in Vaxholm.’

She shook her head, steaming with disbelief. ‘How can you say yes to something like that without even asking me?’

He turned back to the stove, pouring water into the cafetière.

‘You were on your mobile again; I didn’t want to disturb you.’

‘This is disturbing me more. I’m not going.’

He was seized by an overwhelming and unreasonable impulse to shake her until the knot of hair on the top of her head came loose and her teeth shook and the dressing gown slid from her shoulders.

Instead he closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing, addressing his reply to the ventilation unit. ‘I’m not going to end up with the same crap relationship with my parents that you’ve got with yours.’

He heard from the rustling of the newspaper that she’d left the kitchen.

‘Okay,’ she said expressionlessly from the hall. ‘Take the children, but I’m not going.’

‘Of course you’re coming,’ he said, still to the ventilation unit.

She came back into the kitchen. He looked at her over his shoulder; she was naked apart from her socks.

‘And if I don’t?’ she said. ‘Are you going to hit me over the head and drag me there by my hair?’

‘Sounds good,’ he said.

‘I’m going to have a shower,’ she said.

His eyes were drawn to her buttocks as she walked back down the hall. Sophia was much more curvy, and her skin was pink. Annika’s had a green tint; in the sun she quickly went a deep olive-colour.

She’s an alien , Thomas thought. A little green woman from another planet, scratchy and shapeless and unreasonable . Was it possible to live with an alien? He shook off the thought with a gulp. Why was he making everything so damned hard for himself? There was a way out. He had a choice. He could get back the life he missed, living with a soft and pink woman with humanity and apple hair who would welcome him into her attic apartment.

Good grief , he thought, what am I going to do?

The next second the phone rang.

No , he thought. It’s her. What’s she ringing here for? I said she could never call here .

A second ring.

‘Are you going to get that?’ Annika called from the shower.

A third.

He grabbed the phone with throbbing temples, trying to find some saliva in his mouth.

‘Thomas and Annika,’ he heard himself say with a dry mouth.

‘I have to talk to Annika.’ It was Anne Snapphane. She sounded like she was suffocating, and he felt such a huge sense of relief that he could feel it in his balls.

‘Of course,’ he said, breathing out. ‘I’ll get her.’

Annika climbed out of the bathtub, grabbed a towel and left a trail of wet footprints behind her as she walked to the phone. The sharp stone twisted and turned in her chest, the angels humming anxiously in the background. She avoided looking at Thomas as she passed him and picked up the phone, his coolness made her keep her distance from his back.

‘Have you read the paper this morning?’ Anne Snapphane said, her voice hoarse and tight.

‘Have you got a hangover?’ Annika said, pushing the cheese away to make a place on the kitchen table. Thomas sighed loudly and moved two millimetres to make space for her.

‘Like a bitch, but that doesn’t matter. Björnlund has shut down the channel.’

Annika pushed the bread away to make more room.

‘What are you talking about?’ she said.

‘The Minister of Culture has just made me redundant. Says so in the paper.’

Thomas demonstratively turned ninety degrees away from her, his shoulders screaming out that he was actively distancing himself.

‘What? I’ve just read it.’

‘Top of the front page.’

Annika leaned forward and took hold of the first part of the paper as Thomas was reading it to peer at the front page. He snatched it away in irritation.

‘Hang on,’ Annika said, ‘can I just take a quick look? Björnlund changes terms for digital broadcast rights . And?’

‘The board were told last night, they got the last plane from New York and landed half an hour ago. They’ve already announced that the launch is being postponed. There’s an official board meeting at two thirty, and all our planning’s going to be stopped and TV Scandinavia wound down. I’m going to end up as the arts reporter for Radio Sjuhärad.’

‘But we shouldn’t think the worst,’ Annika said, hitting Thomas on the knee to get more room. Why can’t you become a satellite channel, or a cable channel?’

Anne started crying and the seriousness of the situation hit Annika, as well as guilt.

‘Hang on, I’m going to change phones,’ she said.

She put the receiver down and accidentally knocked Thomas as she jumped down from the table.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said, crumpling the paper in his lap.

‘Just carry on, I’m moving,’ Annika said and skipped down the hall and into the bedroom with her towel round her, then dropped it on the floor. She crept under the covers and picked up the phone by the bed.

‘There’s got to be a solution somewhere,’ was the first thing she said. ‘What’s the problem?’

Anne pulled herself together. ‘I told you before,’ she said grouchily, and Annika interrupted her.

‘I know I haven’t been a good listener. To me it’s always seemed a bit technical, like if I started telling you about print timings and plate changes. Tell me again.’

She sat up among the pillows and Anne took a deep breath.

‘The whole point of TV Scandinavia is, or was, to reach the whole of Scandinavia. That’s twenty-five million potential viewers, roughly a tenth of the population of the USA. And to reach that many people you need to be available in every household in Sweden, and that means broadcasting from Teracom’s transmitters. Advertisers in the American market aren’t interested in target groups smaller than that.’

‘Teracom?’

‘The national broadcast network, it used to be part of the old nationalized Televerket but got turned into a profit-making public company instead, along with everything else.’

The angels were silent, completely beaten by Anne Snapphane’s despair.

‘And there are no other masts? You’re not allowed to put up your own?’

‘Are you joking? Teracom is heading for bankruptcy even though all the masts already exist.’

Annika relaxed and tried to think of a solution, happily grasping this distraction Anne had provided, and leaving Thomas and Sophia and the children and Vaxholm behind.

‘But hardly anyone can watch digital television,’ she said. ‘You have to have one of those boxes, don’t you? Is it really such a big deal?’

‘In a couple of years digital television is all we’ll have. The government proposition is the big deal. When the terrestrial digital network works with the same criteria as the rest of the business – the world of satellite and cable – then the market will explode.’