Liza Marklund - Red Wolf

Officer Karlsson sighed audibly down the line.

‘The duty officer is booking someone in,’ he said, ‘but I’ll pass on your message as soon as she gets back.’

‘No!’ Annika yelled. ‘You have to come now! I don’t know how long he’s going to be there.’

‘Listen,’ the policeman said firmly. ‘Calm down. I’ve just told you, I’ll talk to the duty officer.’

‘Good,’ Annika said, breathing heavily, ‘good. I’ll wait here by the bus-stop until you come so I can show you the way. I’m parked here, I’m in a silver Volvo.’

‘Okay,’ the policeman said. ‘Just you wait there.’ And he hung up.

Annika looked at the display on her phone, a glowing rectangle in the darkness.

She pushed in the earpiece and called Jansson’s direct number in the newsroom.

‘I might have to stay in Luleå tonight,’ she said. ‘Just wanted to check it’s okay to book into the City Hotel tonight if I have to.’

‘Why?’ Jansson said.

‘There might be something going on up here,’ she said.

‘No terrorism,’ Jansson said. ‘I got hauled over the coals this morning for letting you go up to Norrbotten again.’

‘Okay,’ Annika said.

‘Are you listening?’ Jansson said. ‘Not one single line about another bloody terrorist, is that clear?’

She waited a second before replying. ‘Of course. Understood. I promise.’

‘Stay at the City,’ the editor said closer to the receiver in a considerably quieter and friendlier voice. ‘Call room service. Get pay-TV and watch porn films, I’ll sign for the whole lot. I know how it is, we all have to get away sometimes.’

‘Okay,’ she said smartly and ended the call, dialled directory inquiries and asked to be put through to the City Hotel, Luleå, booking a business-class room on the top floor.

After that she sat in the car and stared out of the windscreen. Her breath hit the windows and they soon froze over again. She could do nothing more. All she could do was sit and wait for the police.

It’ll soon be over , she thought, feeling her pulse-rate slow.

She saw Thord Axelsson’s grey face before her, Gunnel Sandström’s swollen eyes and wine-red cardigan, Linus Gustafsson’s spiky gelled hair and watchful eyes, and was consumed with burning fury.

You’re finished, you bastard .

And she realized she was freezing. She thought about starting the car engine to heat it up, but opened the door instead and got out, far too restless to sit still. She checked that her mobile was in her pocket, locked the door and walked up towards the top of the hill.

The arctic night had taken an iron grip on the landscape, as hard and unrelenting as the steel produced in the blast-furnaces down by the shore. Annika’s breath drifted around her, light veils of frozen warmth.

It’s beautiful , she thought, her eyes following the rails and ending up among the stars.

Then she heard a vehicle rumbling behind her, she turned round, hoping it was the police.

It was a local Luleå bus, the number one.

It drove towards her and stopped. She realized that she was standing at the bus-stop and took a few steps to one side to indicate that she wasn’t waiting for it.

But the bus stopped a few metres away from her anyway, the back door opened and a thickset man stepped onto the street, moving slowly, heavily.

She looked at him and took a step closer.

‘Hans!’ she said. ‘Hans, hello; it’s me, Annika.’

Hans Blomberg, the archivist from the Norrland News , looked up and met her gaze.

‘What are you doing here?’ Annika said.

‘I live here,’ the man said, smiling cheerfully. ‘On Torsgatan.’

He gestured over his shoulder towards the housing estate.

‘Do you?’ Annika said as the bus pulled away. She took a step closer and looked into his eyes, and at that moment something clicked inside her head, suddenly she remembered when she had seen the drawing of the yellow dragon before, all of a sudden she knew where it was. She had thought it was a child’s drawing, a yellow dinosaur, on Hans Blomberg’s pinboard in the archive of the Norrland News . She took a couple of involuntary steps back.

‘Surely the real question is,’ Hans Blomberg said, ‘what are you doing here?’

The bus disappeared beyond the crown of the hill and the man walked towards her, his hands in his pockets. He stopped in front of her and in the moonlight his eyes were almost transparent.

She laughed nervously. ‘I’m up on a job and got lost,’ she said. ‘Föreningsgatan, which one is that?’

‘You’re standing on it,’ the archivist said in amusement. ‘Doesn’t anyone have a sense of direction in Stockholm?’

‘They’d run out by the time they got to me,’ she said, realizing she would soon be unable to speak.

‘Who are you meeting?’

She shrugged. ‘I’ve already missed my deadline,’ she said.

‘But then you must come inside and warm up,’ he said. ‘Can I offer you a cup of tea?’

She searched frantically for an excuse, the man took no notice of her hesitation and took a firm grip of her arm and started walking.

‘I live in a little two-room flat on the ground floor,’ he said. ‘It’s not much, but what can you do when consumer society has left you behind?’

She tried to pull her arm away and found it was held in a vice-like grip.

‘It’s not often a guy like me gets such a charming visitor,’ he said. ‘A lovely young lady all the way from the capital.’

He smiled genially at her, she tried to smile back.

‘Which one of them are you?’ Annika said. ‘The Panther, Tiger or Lion?’

He was looking straight ahead, pretending he hadn’t heard the question, just took tighter hold of her. The houses were disappearing behind them; they were approaching the no vehicles sign. She glanced over to the left, past the power cables and into the undergrowth.

‘So you live out here in the forest?’

He didn’t answer, and the next instant she was back in that tunnel. She felt the earth tilt, heard someone breathing hard, panting, and realized it was her, her mouth wide open.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to. Please.’

Her legs gave way beneath her. Hans Blomberg caught her with a smile.

‘You’re a reporter,’ he said. ‘A proper, inquisitive little reporter. Of course you want to get a good story, don’t you?’

Her memory flashed up the pipes in the roof of the tunnel above her, and she started to cry.

‘Let me go!’

She jammed her feet in the ice and struggled and was rewarded with a ringing blow to the head. She saw stars and Sven was there screaming at her and she ducked, sank to the ground and put her hands over her head.

‘Don’t hit me.’

The world slowed down and stopped, the ground stopped tilting and she could hear herself panting. She looked up cautiously and saw Hans Blomberg shaking his head anxiously at her.

‘God, the way you carry on,’ he said. ‘Up you get. The leader’s waiting.’

And she stumbled forward in the moonlight with the lights above the railway track swaying far off to the left. The angels were completely silent, where their anxious voices had been was now only dark emptiness.

They passed the Skanska building, it was completely black.

‘We’re going to the little brick building, aren’t we? The one beyond the viaduct?’

‘So you’ve already found our headquarters,’ the archivist said in his good-natured voice. ‘Have you been creeping around in the bushes? Very talented. Then I may as well tell you what to expect. The Dragon has called us together again. I don’t think everyone can make it, we’ve suffered something of a decline in membership recently, but Karina will probably be there, and Yngve, of course. He never misses a good party.’