Liza Marklund - Red Wolf

Annika leaned back on the pillows again, a fleeting smile crossing her face.

‘And she’s got no connection to the other three?’

‘Nothing we’ve found yet. Margit Axelsson, a nursery teacher in Piteå, married, two adult daughters, strangled on the landing of her home. Her husband was working shifts and found her when he got home.’

‘And was immediately suspected of the murder?’

‘Wrong. The time of death was before midnight, and he was in the liaison office at F21 with his colleagues until he finished his shift at one thirty.’

Annika felt the adrenalin reach her brain and automatically stretch her legs out, forcing her to sit up straight.

‘F21? He works at F21? Then there is a connection: the explosion of the Draken.’

‘We’ve already checked. He did his national service at I19 in Boden, wasn’t attached to the airbase until nineteen seventy-four. The fact that a murder victim’s husband’s employer happens to coincide with a crime scene which may have a connection to Ragnwald isn’t enough to get my pulse racing; unlike yours, apparently.’

‘The quote,’ she said. ‘What does it say?’

‘Hang on a moment…’

He put down the phone, opened a drawer, looked through some papers, cleared his throat and came back on the line.

‘ People of the world, unite and defeat the American aggressors and all their lackeys. People of the world, be courageous, and dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed .’

They thought in silence for a while, the swaying stopped.

‘“Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed,”’ Annika said. ‘Monsters. Of all kinds. Including nursery school teachers.’

‘She taught for the Workers’ Educational Association as well. Ran courses in napkin-folding and ceramics. We’re not paying too much attention to the quotation; I don’t think you should either. The woman putting the profile together thinks he uses them as messages, like your lipstick kisses.’

‘Have you got someone in from the FBI?’ Annika asked, swinging her legs off the side of the bed, warm feet against cold wood floor.

‘That was in the seventies,’ Q said. ‘We’ve been doing our own profiles of suspects for ten years.’

‘Sorry,’ Annika said. ‘What did the profiler come up with?’

‘You can pretty much guess. Male, older rather than younger, driven by hatred of a society that he has a partially warped view of, compensating for humiliations he’s suffered. Single, few friends, poor self-image, strong need for validation, restless, has difficulties holding down a job, fairly intelligent with good physical strength. More or less.’

Annika shut her eyes and tried to memorize the details, aware that he wasn’t telling her everything.

‘So why the quotes?’ she said. ‘Why that sort of scent-marking?’

‘On some level he wants us to know. He’s so incredibly superior to us that he can afford to leave these reminders of himself.’

‘Our Ragnwald,’ she said. ‘It feels almost like I know him. Imagine how it could have been – if that plane hadn’t blown up he might have been on his way to the Nobel dinner in the City Hall in three weeks’ time.’

She realized from the surprised silence that Q hadn’t followed her train of thought.

‘Karina Björnlund,’ she said. ‘Minister of Culture. She’s going to the Nobel dinner this year, or has at least been invited, and if Ragnwald hadn’t had to disappear they would have been married.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Q said.

‘Of course, there’s no way of knowing if the marriage would have lasted, but if it had…’

‘Listen,’ Q said. ‘Where the hell did you get that from?’

Annika twisted the phone cord.

‘The banns were published,’ she said. ‘They were due to have a civil wedding in Luleå City Hall at two o’clock on the Friday after the attack.’

‘Not a chance,’ Q said. ‘If that was true we’d know about it.’

‘Marriages had to be announced in those days, they had a note in the paper.’

‘And where was this note published?’

‘The Norrland News . I’ve got a bundle of cuttings from there about Karina Björnlund. Do you really mean to tell me you didn’t know they were together?’

‘A teenage fling,’ Q said. ‘Nothing more. Besides, she ended it.’

‘Retrospective adjustment,’ Annika said. ‘Karina Björnlund would do anything to save her own skin.’

‘I see,’ Q said. ‘Little Miss Amateur-Profiler has spoken.’

Annika was thinking about Herman Wennergren’s email, request for meeting to discuss a matter of urgency , and then the Minister of Culture’s last-minute amendment of the government proposal, so that the law on the deregulation of digital broadcasters would exclude TV Scandinavia, just like Herman Wennergren wanted, and the only outstanding question was what arguments her paper’s proprietors had applied to make her change her mind.

In her mind Annika could hear her own voice asking the Trade Minister’s press secretary to convey her request for a comment on the IB affair, and heard herself revealing the Social Democrats’ biggest secrets to Karina Björnlund. And just a few weeks later Björnlund was made a minister, in one of the most unforeseen promotions ever.

‘Trust me,’ Annika said. ‘I know more about her than you do.’

‘I’ve got to go,’ Q said, and she had nothing to add because the angels were gone now, they had withdrawn to their hiding place.

She put down the phone and hurried over to her laptop, switching it on and pulling on a pair of socks as the programs loaded. She typed in the new details from the conversation until the backs of her knees started to sweat and her ankles began to freeze.

The doorbell rang. Annika opened the front door cautiously, not sure what she would find out there. The angels started humming anxiously, but calmed down when she saw Anne Snapphane standing there breathless on the landing, lips white, eyes red.

‘Come in,’ Annika said, backing into the flat.

Anne Snapphane didn’t answer, just walked in, hunched and self-contained.

‘Are you dying?’ Annika asked, and Anne nodded, slumped onto the hall bench and pulled off her headband.

‘It feels like it,’ she said, ‘but you know what they say in Runaway Train .’

‘Anything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ Annika said, sitting down beside her.

As the central heating clicked, a toilet somewhere in the building flushed, and a bus pulled up and set off again down below, they sat there staring at the cupboard with the carved pineapples that Annika had bought from a flea-market.

‘There are always noises in the city,’ Anne eventually said.

Annika let some air out from her lungs in a dull sigh. ‘At least you’re never alone,’ she said, getting up. ‘Do you want anything? Coffee? Wine?’

Anne Snapphane didn’t move.

‘I’ve stopped drinking,’ she said.

‘Oh, it’s one of those days, is it?’ Annika said, standing and looking beyond the balcony at the courtyard below. Someone had forgotten to close the door to the room containing the waste-bins, it swung back and forth in the violent winds playing round the building.

‘It feels like I’ve been thrown in a bottomless pit and I’m just falling and falling,’ Anne said. ‘It started with Mehmet and his new fuck, then the talk about Miranda living with them; and now that my job has gone there’s nothing I can hold on to any more. Drinking on top of all that would be like pressing the fast-forward button.’