Liza Marklund - Red Wolf

‘Keep him company,’ Annika said, and the minister went hesitantly over to the terrorist, but as she leaned over him he screamed.

‘Not blood,’ he panted. ‘Take the blood away.’

Something short-circuited in Annika’s head. There he was, the mass-murderer, the professional hitman, the full-time terrorist, and he was whining like a cry-baby. She flew over to him and grabbed him by the coat.

‘So you don’t like the sight of blood, you bastard? But killing all those people, that was all right, was it?’

His head fell back and he closed his eyes.

‘I’m a soldier,’ he said flatly. ‘I am nowhere near as guilty as the leaders of the free world.’

She felt tears welling up.

‘Why Margit?’ she said. ‘Why the boy?’

He shook his head.

‘Not me,’ he whispered.

Annika looked up at Karina Björnlund, who was standing in the middle of the floor, a look of shock on her face.

‘He’s lying,’ she said. ‘Of course it was him.’

‘I only strike at the enemy,’ Göran Nilsson said flatly. ‘Not against friends or the innocent.’

Annika stared at the man’s pain-racked face, his apathy, disinterest, and she suddenly knew that he was telling the truth.

It wasn’t him who murdered them. There was no reason for him to kill Benny Ekland, Linus Gustafsson, Kurt Sandström or Margit Axelsson.

So who had done it?

She was shaking. She stood up on numb legs and walked unsteadily towards the door.

It was shut. Stuck fast, immovable.

She remembered the lock on the outside, and realization hit her like a physical blow. Hans Blomberg had shut them in.

She was locked inside an ice-box with three other people, it was thirty degrees below zero, two of them were wounded and the third was blind drunk.

Hans Blomberg , she thought. Is that remotely possible?

And the next moment the tunnel was over her again, the pipes stretching along the ceiling, she could feel the weight of the dynamite on her back, and somewhere in the distance a woman was crying, snorting and howling with pain and despair and she realized that it was the Minister of Culture, Karina Björnlund. And she wasn’t alone, she wasn’t alone.

She let go of the tunnel and grabbed hold of reality. She mustn’t fall apart, if she fell apart she would die.

It’s so cold , she thought, how long can you survive in this sort of cold?

Her breathing slowed down. She was in no immediate danger herself. In her polar outfit she could last the night if need be. The minister had her fur-coat, but the men were worse off. The drunk’s eyelids were already drooping, he wouldn’t last another hour. The terrorist had better clothes, but was lying directly on the cement floor, which was like a block of ice.

We have to get out of here. Now. How?

Her mobile!

She let out a small noise of triumph as she fumbled in her pocket and pulled out her phone.

No reception.

She held it up in the light of the candle, trying it in every corner of the room. Not a trace of a signal. She tried to make a call anyway. Nothing happened.

Don’t panic.

Think.

The minister had a phone. Annika had called her on it just a couple of hours before.

‘See if you can get reception,’ she said to the minister.

‘What?’

‘Your phone! You’ve got a mobile on you; I called you, didn’t I?’

‘Oh, right.’

The minister carefully searched in her black leather bag, pulled out her mobile and switched it on with pin-codes and a lot of loud puffing, then held it up in the air.

‘I haven’t got a signal,’ she said in surprise.

Annika put her hands over her face, feeling the cold bite at her skin.

It’s all right , she thought. I’ve already called the police. They should be here any minute .

And she studied the minister. The woman was bruised and shaken. She looked towards the alcoholic, in the flickering candlelight his lips looked dark blue. He was shaking with cold in his thin jacket.

‘Okay,’ Annika said, forcing her head to think rationally. ‘We are where we are. Is there any sort of blanket here? A tarpaulin, any insulating material?’

‘Where did Hans go?’ Yngve said.

‘Did he lock the door?’ Karina Björnlund asked.

Shaking, Annika did a circuit of the dusty little building: a few rusty tins, a lot of dirt, and a rat’s skeleton.

‘He can’t have locked the door,’ the Minister of Culture said, going over to try it for herself. ‘Göran has the key.’

‘You can just click a padlock shut,’ Annika said. ‘So what is this place, anyway?’

She felt the walls, saw that the windows were sealed shut with coarse wooden planks nailed from the inside, and remembered the metal shutters outside.

‘It’s been derelict for forty years,’ Karina Björnlund said. ‘My father was on the railway, he brought me here as a child.’

‘What’s it for?’

‘It was a compression room. They built a new one when they rerouted the railway. How are we going to get out?’

‘Are there any tools anywhere?’ Annika asked.

‘We’re stuck,’ Karina Björnlund said, her eyes now so swollen that they were almost completely closed. ‘God, how are we going to get out?’

She wouldn’t find any forgotten tools, Annika realized, they would have been removed years ago. The walls were of solid concrete, and the door couldn’t be forced.

‘We have to keep moving,’ she said. ‘We have to keep each other warm.’

She gulped, feeling panic creeping up on her. What if the police didn’t come? What if Karlsson in central control had forgotten her?

She shook off the thought and went over to the rancid-smelling man below the Mao poster. His breathing was shallow and rattling, a string of saliva hanging from his mouth.

‘Göran,’ Annika said, crouching down next to him and struggling against the stench. ‘Göran Nilsson, can you hear me?’

She shook his shoulder and the man looked up at her with vacant eyes, his bottom lip shivering with cold.

‘ J’ai très froid ,’ he whispered.

‘ Je comprends ,’ Annika said quietly, and turned to the minister. ‘Karina, come and sit next to Göran, put your arms round him and wrap him in your fur.’

The Minister of Culture backed away until she reached the corner behind the compressor.

‘Never,’ she said. ‘Never in a million years. He’s done me so much harm.’

Annika looked at the man beside her, his waxy, pale skin, his shaking hands. Maybe she should let him die? Wasn’t that what he deserved?

She left Göran Nilsson and went over to the man leaning against the wall.

‘Yngve?’ she said. ‘Is your name Yngve?’

The man nodded, had pushed his hands up into his armpits to keep them warm.

‘Come here,’ she said, opening her polar jacket. ‘Come and stand next to me. We’re going for a walk.’

He shook his head firmly and clutched the almost empty bottle.

‘Okay, don’t then,’ Annika said, closing the jacket and looking over to the minister.

‘He’s got a gun,’ Karina Björnlund said. ‘We can shoot our way out.’

Annika shook her head. ‘The door’s made of steel. The bullets would ricochet round the room and kill the lot of us. Besides, we’d have to hit the padlock on the outside to get out.’

‘What about the windows, then?’

‘Same thing.’

Should she say she’d told the police? How would they react?

‘I knew it would turn out like this,’ Karina Björnlund said with a sniff. ‘This whole Beasts thing has been a nightmare right from the start. I should never have gone with them when they left the Communist Party.’