Liza Marklund - Red Wolf

‘Definitely didn’t do it,’ Annika said. ‘He was at work sixty kilometres away from the scene of the crime, with three colleagues, at the time of the murder. And the police think they know who was responsible, but that hasn’t made any difference for this man. His neighbours saw him being taken away in a police car early in the morning and they all think they know what happened. The local papers wrote that he was taken in for questioning, but was released due to lack of evidence. He’ll be known there as the man who killed his wife until the day he dies.’

‘Hmm,’ Jansson said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Just imagine what it would be like to be in this poor man’s situation,’ Annika said. ‘Not only has he lost the wife he loved, but he’s lost his reputation among the people he’s spent his life among. How on earth can he go on?’ She fell silent and bit her lip, maybe she was pushing it a bit far now.

‘And he’s prepared to talk about all this?’

She cleared her throat. ‘Tomorrow lunchtime. Can I go ahead and book a ticket?’

Jansson sighed audibly. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘After all, you are an independent reporter.’

‘And this isn’t about terrorism,’ Annika said.

The editor laughed slightly sheepishly. ‘I heard Schyman had put his foot down there,’ he said.

‘New day, new byline,’ Annika said and hung up.

Then she dialled the number of the paper’s twenty-four-hour travel office and booked herself onto the 09.40 flight to Kallax, and a hire-car, and not a small one either.

She had just ended the conversation when the front door opened and the children tumbled in, buzzing with surplus energy. She went quickly over to the computer and switched it off, then went out into the hall.

‘Mummy! Do you know what, we got sweets for being so good at Grandma and Grandad’s, because we didn’t run and Daddy bought a paper with naked ladies and Grandad’s heart hurts again and can we go to the park, pleeeeease?’

She hugged them both, laughed and rocked them slowly, warm and fragrant.

‘Of course we can,’ she said. ‘Are your gloves dry?’

‘Mine are horrid,’ Ellen said.

‘We’ll find another pair,’ Annika said and opened the pineapple cupboard.

Thomas walked past her without a glance.

‘I’m going to Luleå for the day tomorrow,’ she said as she pulled the gloves onto the girl’s spread-out fingers. ‘You’ll have to drop them off and pick them up.’

He stopped at the door of the pantry, his shoulders hunched right up to his ears. Looked like he was going to turn inside out and explode; she waited for a blast that didn’t come.

He carried on towards the bedroom with the evening papers and an issue of Café under his arm and shut the door behind him.

‘Can we go now, Mummy?’

‘Yep,’ Annika said, grabbing her jacket and opening the balcony door to get the sledge they kept out there. ‘Off we go.’

In front of Annika lay an endless chalk-white landscape with roaring clouds of snow and deep-blue sky. She stood naked with both feet frozen solid in a block of ice, sharp wind howling round her and cutting small wounds in her skin. Her attention was entirely focused on the horizon, someone was heading towards her but she couldn’t see him yet; she could feel his presence as a bass note in her stomach as she peered into the sharp wind.

And then he came, a blurred grey silhouette against the velvet background, his coat swaying slowly from side to side as he walked, and she recognized him. He was one of the presenters from Studio Six. She tried to free her feet from the block of ice that had now turned to stone, the man came closer and his hands were visible and she saw the hunting knife in his hand and it was Sven, there was blood on the knife and she knew it was cat’s blood, he was walking towards her and the wind was blowing and she looked up at his face and it was Thomas, and he stopped right in front of her and said: ‘It was your turn to collect the children.’

She stretched her neck and back and looked past him and saw Ellen and Kalle hanging from meat hooks on a steel beam with their stomachs cut open and their guts dangling down towards the ground.

Annika stared up at the ceiling for a moment before realizing that she had woken up. Her pulse was throbbing hard in her throat, there was a shrieking sound in her left ear and the covers had slid off her. She twisted her head and in the dark she saw Thomas’s back heave in dreamless sleep. She sat up carefully. Her neck was aching and she had been crying in her sleep.

She crept through the hall on shaky legs, and into the children’s room and their living warmth.

Ellen had put her thumb in her mouth, even though they had cajoled, threatened and bribed her to stop. Annika took the little hand and pulled out her thumb, saw the girl’s mouth searching for what it had lost for a few seconds before sleep forgot it. She watched the sleeping child, marvelling at her complete unawareness of how precious and beautiful she was, feeling a great loss for the sense of the clarity of life that her daughter still possessed. She stroked her soft hair, feeling its warmth through the palm of her hand.

Little girl, little girl, nothing is ever going to happen to you.

She went over to her son, lying on his back in his Batman pyjamas, his hands above his head, just as she used to sleep as a child. Thomas’s blond hair, and already his broad shoulders, he was so like them both.

She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. The child took a deep breath and blinked up at her.

‘Is it morning?’

‘Soon,’ Annika whispered. ‘Sleep a bit longer.’

‘I was having a nasty dream,’ he said and turned onto his side.

‘Me too,’ Annika said quietly, stroking the back of his head with her hand.

She looked at the luminous face of her watch; it was about an hour before the alarm would go off.

She knew she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep.

She walked like a lost soul out into the living room. The draught from the window was moving the curtains. She went over and peered through the gap, Hantverkargatan was slowly coming to life below, the yellow streetlamp swinging in eternal isolation between the buildings. She warmed one foot against the radiator, then the other.

She went out into the kitchen, lit the stove and filled the pan with water, measured four spoonfuls into the coffee-pot, and looked out on to the frozen desert of the courtyard as the water came to the boil, the thermometer outside the window showed minus twenty-two degrees. She poured the water on the coffee and stirred, turned on P1 at low volume and sat down at the kitchen table. The burble from the radio drove out the demons from the corners. She sat quietly with frozen feet as the coffee slowly cooled.

Without her hearing or sensing him, Thomas came into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, hair all over the place.

‘What are you doing up so early?’ he said, taking a glass from the draining-board and filling it with water, drinking in deep gulps.

She turned her face away and stared at the radio without replying.

‘Okay, don’t then,’ he said, and went back into the bedroom.

She covered her eyes with a hand and breathed through her mouth until her stomach had calmed down and she could move again. She poured the coffee down the sink and went into the bathroom. She showered under scalding water and dried herself quickly. She dressed in her skiing outfit, thermal long-johns and vest, two layers of wool jumpers, thick jeans and a fleece top. She dug out the keys to the cellar and went out onto the empty street and through to the courtyard, down the steps, and undid the lock on their storeroom in the cellar.