Liza Marklund - Red Wolf

It was getting dark, but the sunset was as slow and gradual as dawn had been, and she watched Karina Björnlund stand and freeze at the bus-stop, a thickset, dark woman in a fur-coat and no hat.

The Red Wolf , Annika thought, trying to make out the features of her face in the shadows, imagining that she could see a pair of anxious, sad eyes.

What are you doing here?

Her mother lives on Storgatan , she thought. Maybe she’s on her way there .

Then realized: this is Storgatan . Why would she be standing at a bus-stop to go somewhere else? She hasn’t come to visit her mother.

Suddenly her back window was filled with the headlights of one of the local buses. She put the car in gear and rolled forward a few metres to let the bus pull in, passing the little gaggle of people waiting in the queue. In her rear-view mirror she watched as Karina Björnlund picked her bag up and climbed on board.

I’ll follow the bus to see where she gets off , Annika thought, and rolled a bit further until she realized she was heading into a pedestrianized street. People were walking slowly in front of the car, challenging her with their stares. She looked up and noticed a sign indicating that all vehicles apart from public transport were forbidden. She felt herself starting to panic again, grappled with the gear-stick to find reverse, and saw the bus gliding slowly towards her. She turned the wheel as hard as she could and swerved on crunching tyres.

The bus slid past and she felt the sweat sticking her legs to the seat. She was about to lose sight of the minister, and had no idea where she was heading.

Bus number one , she thought. The bus that Linus Gustafsson usually took.

Svartöstaden.

East, towards Swedish Steel.

And she drove down towards the harbour, turning right towards the ironworks. She pulled over to the side and waited; if she was right the bus would have to pass her here. Four minutes later the bus glided past her and carried on towards Malmudden.

She just had time to register the name of the street, Lövskatan, as the bus turned right; wasn’t that where Margit Axelsson used to live? Another sign, Föreningsgatan, and the bus carried on along the edge of a messy and desolate industrial estate, huddling in the shadow of an enormous jet-black mound of iron-ore. On the left was a row of identical two-storey apartment blocks from the forties, and up ahead loomed a huge, abandoned industrial building that seemed to have grown into the side of the mountain of iron-ore. Dark windows sent warnings into the twilight, cold cries into the darkness. She followed the bus as the road swung up and left and ran alongside the railway line. An immense steel pipe hung high above, and below lurked a row of graffiti-covered and ramshackle industrial units, surrounded by pipes, steel girders, tyres, pallets. No sign of life anywhere.

The bus indicated and pulled in at a bus-stop. Annika braked and pulled up behind an abandoned car twenty metres further down the hill.

Karina Björnlund got off, clutching her leather bag. Annika slumped down in her seat and stared at her.

The bus pulled away, and the Minister of Culture was left staring out at the railway track, her breath drifting like clouds around her. She seemed to hesitate.

Annika switched off the engine and pulled out the key, waiting inside the warm interior of the car without taking her eyes off the woman.

Then Karina Björnlund suddenly turned round and started walking towards the crown of the hill, away from the industrial units.

Annika stiffened, fumbled with the ignition key, biting the inside of her cheek.

Should she get out and follow the minister? Drive up and offer her a lift? Wait and see if she came back?

She rubbed her eyes for a moment.

Wherever Karina Björnlund was going, she evidently didn’t want company.

Annika opened the car door, pulling her hat and ski-gloves from her bag, pushed the door shut and locked the car with a bleep. She gasped for breath, reeling from the cold; how was it possible to live in a climate like this?

She blinked a few times; the cold was making the air incredibly dry, hurting her eyes.

The daylight was dark grey now, almost gone. The sky was distant, clear and entirely colourless; a few stars twinkled above the mounds of ore. Two streetlamps further down the road spread a dull, hopeless light in a small circle around their own feet. Karina Björnlund had disappeared over the crown of the hill, and there was no other sign of life anywhere. The rumble from the steelworks was carried through the cold along the railway track, reaching her like a dull vibration.

Walking carefully, she started up the hill, looking hard at every bush and shadow. At the top of the hill the road swung sharply to the left and led back into the housing estate. Straight ahead was a narrow track, clear of snow and ice, with a sign forbidding vehicle traffic.

Annika narrowed her eyes and peered around her, unable to see the minister anywhere. She took a few steps along the private track, jogging as fast as she dared on the ice and grit. She passed a bundle of cables leading down to the railway tracks and ran past an empty car park, then the track emerged alongside the railway line again. Far ahead the ironworks, coke ovens, and blastfurnaces sat brooding darkly against the winter sky, millions of tons of ore turned into a rolling carpet of steel. To the left was nothing but slurry and snow. The full moon had risen behind the mounds of ore, its blue light mixing with the yellow lights illuminating the ore railway.

She ran for several minutes until she was forced to stop and catch her breath, coughing drily and quietly into her glove, blinking moisture out of her eyes and looking round for Karina Björnlund.

The track looked as though it was rarely used. She could see just a few footprints, some tracks left by dogs and a bicycle, but no minister.

The angels suddenly burst out in song.

She hit the back of her head so hard that the voices fell silent. She shut her eyes and breathed for a few seconds, listening to the emptiness in her head, and in the echo of the silence she suddenly heard other voices, human voices, coming from within the forest up ahead. She couldn’t make out any words, could just hear a male and a female voice talking fairly quietly.

She passed beneath a viaduct, either a road or a railway, Annika couldn’t tell. She no longer knew where she was. The voices grew louder, and in the light of the moon and the railway track she suddenly saw footsteps leading into an opening in the scrub.

She stopped, peering through the low trees, just able to make out shadows, spirits.

‘Well, I’m here now,’ Karina Björnlund was saying. ‘Don’t hurt me.’

A rough male voice with a Finnish accent answered, ‘Karina, don’t be scared. I’ve never meant you any harm.’

‘Believe me, Göran, no one’s ever done me as much harm as you have. Say what you want and… let me go.’

Annika caught her breath, her stomach turning somersaults, her dry mouth turned to sandpaper. She took a careful step into the first of the footprints already there in the snow, then another, and another. In the moonlight she saw the forest open out into a clearing, and at its centre was a small brick building with a sheet-metal roof and sealed-up windows.

In the middle of the clearing stood the Minister of Culture in her thick fur, and a thin grey man in a long coat and leather cap, with a dark duffel bag beside him.

Göran Nilsson, the ruler with divine power, the Yellow Dragon.

Annika stared at him with painfully dry eyes.

Terrorist, mass-murderer, evil personified, this was what it looked like, hunched and dull and trembling slightly?