Liza Marklund: Red Wolf

None of them like ours, though , he thought. There’ll never be any like ours .

Two young women were on their way out. He saw them stop in the lobby and read the notices of cultural events on the board.

Maybe it’s unlocked , he thought vaguely. Maybe I can get in .

The girls glanced at him as they passed each other a few metres from the door, the sort of unfocused glance that you only get in small, narrow-minded places: we don’t know him, we’ll ignore him. In larger towns no one noticed anyone at all. That suited him much better.

The library was still open. He stopped in the middle of the lobby to let the memories come. And they came, overwhelmed him, took his breath away. The years were erased, he was twenty again, it was summer, hot, his girl was beside him, his beloved Red Wolf who was to succeed in ways no one could have dared to imagine. He held her to him and smelled the henna in her copper-coloured hair-

A sudden draught hit his legs and pulled him back to the present.

‘Are you all right? Do you need help?’

An old man was looking amiably at him.

The standard phrase , he thought, shaking his head and swallowing his French reply.

The hall came back into focus. The other man went into the warmth and left him alone with the notices on the board: a storyteller session, a carol service, a concert by Håkan Hagegård, and a festival of feminism. He waited until his breathing had calmed down, ran his hands over his hair and took a cautious step towards the internal door, checking discreetly behind the glass. Then he quickly crossed the hall and went down the backstairs.

Good grief , he thought, I’m here. I’m actually here .

He looked at the closed doors, one after the other, conjuring up the images behind them. He knew all of them. The cheap oak-coloured plywood panels, the stone steps, the folding tables, the bad lighting. He smiled at his shadow, the young man who booked rooms in the name of the Fly Fishing Association, then held Maoist meetings until long into the night.

He was right to have come.

Anders Schyman pulled on his jacket and drank the dregs of his coffee. The lingering darkness made the windows look like mirrors. He adjusted his collar against the image of the Russian embassy, stopping to stare at the holes where his eyes ought to be.

Finally , he thought. Not just a useful idiot, but the driving force . At the board meeting that would begin in quarter of an hour he would not only be accepted, but respected. So where was the euphoria? The twitchy happiness he felt when he looked over the graphs and diagrams?

His eyes didn’t answer.

‘Anders…’ His secretary sounded nervous over the intercom. ‘Herman Wennergren is on his way up.’

He didn’t move. Daylight crept closer as he waited for the chairman of the board of the newspaper.

‘I’m impressed,’ Wennergren said in his characteristically deep voice as he sauntered in and grasped Schyman’s hand in both of his. ‘Have you found a magic wand?’

Over the years the chairman had rarely commented on the paper’s journalism. But when the quarterly report was fourteen per cent over budget, official circulation figures showed steady growth and the gap between them and their competition was shrinking, he assumed it had to be magic.

Anders Schyman smiled, offering Wennergren one of the chairs and sitting down opposite him.

‘The structural changes have settled down and are now working,’ Schyman said simply, careful not to mention Torstensson, his predecessor and a close friend of Wennergren. ‘Coffee? Some breakfast, perhaps?’

The chairman waved the offer away. ‘Today’s meeting will be short because I have other business to attend to afterwards,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘But I’ve got a plan I wanted to discuss with you first, and it feels rather urgent.’

Schyman sat up, checking that the cushion was supporting the small of his back, and fixed a neutral expression on his face.

‘How active have you been in the Newspaper Publishers’ Association?’ Wennergren asked, looking at his fingernails.

Schyman was taken aback. He had never really had anything to do with it. ‘I’m a deputy member of the committee, but no more than that.’

‘But you know how it works? Gauging the mood in the corridors, that sort of thing? How the different interest groups fit together?’ Wennergren rubbed his fingernails on the right leg of his trousers, looking at Schyman under his bushy eyebrows.

‘I’ve no practical experience of it,’ Anders Schyman replied, sensing that he was walking on eggshells. ‘My impression is that the organization is a little… complicated.’

Herman Wennergren nodded slowly, picking at one nail after the other. ‘A correct evaluation,’ he said. ‘The A-Press, the Bonnier group, Schibsted, the bigger regional papers, like Hjörnes in Gothenburg, Nerikes Allehanda , the Jönköping group, and us, of course – there’s a lot of different priorities to try to unite.’

‘But it sometimes works. Take the demand that the government abolish tax on advertising,’ Schyman said.

‘Yes,’ Wennergren said, ‘that’s one example. There’s a working group up in the Press House that’s still dealing with that, but the person responsible for pushing it through is the chairman of the committee.’

Anders Schyman sat quite still, feeling the hair on the back of his neck slowly prickle.

‘As you probably know, I’m chair of the Publishers’ Association election committee,’ Wennergren said, finally letting his fingers fall to the seat of the chair. ‘In the middle of December the committee has to present its proposals for the new board, and I’m thinking of proposing you as the chair. What do you think?’

Thoughts were buzzing around Schyman’s head like angry wasps, crashing against his temples and brain.

‘Doesn’t one of the directors usually occupy that post?’

‘Not always. We’ve had editors before. I don’t mean that you would forget about the paper and just be chair of the association, which we’ve seen happen before, but I think you’re the right man for the job.’

An alarm bell started to ring among the wasps.

‘Why?’ Schyman asked. ‘Do you think I’m easily led? That I can be managed?’

Herman Wennergren sighed audibly. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, ready to stand up.

‘Schyman,’ he said, ‘if I was thinking of installing a patsy as chair of the Publishers’ Association, I wouldn’t start with you.’ He got to his feet, visibly annoyed. ‘Can’t you see that it’s the exact opposite?’ he said. ‘If I get you that post, which I may not be able to do, our group will have a publicity-minded brick wall at the top of the Publishers’ Association. That’s how I see you, Schyman.’

He turned towards the door.

‘We mustn’t delay the meeting,’ he said with his back to the editor.

Annika drove past the exit for Luleå airport and carried on towards Kallaxby. The landscape was completely devoid of colour; the pine trees dark ghosts, the ground black and white, the sky lead-grey. White veils of snow danced across the dark-grey asphalt, to the beat of the central road-markings. The hire-car’s thermometer was showing eleven degrees inside the car, minus four outside. She passed a topsoil pit and about three million pine trees before reaching the turning to Norrbotten Airbase.

The straight road leading to the base was endless, monotonous, the ground on both sides flat and with no sign of vegetation, the pines squat and feeble. After a gentle right-hand curve, gates and barriers suddenly came into view, with a large security block, and behind a tall fence she could make out buildings and car parks. She was suddenly struck by the feeling that she was seeing something she shouldn’t, that she was a spy, up to no good. Two military aircraft stood just inside the gate. She thought one of them was a Draken.