Liza Marklund - Red Wolf

The fifth book in the Annika Bengtzon series, 2003

Translated by Neil Smith

Originally published by Piratförlaget in 2003 as Den Röda Vargen First publication in Great Britain Corgi edition published 2010

He had never been able to stand the sight of blood. There was something about the consistency, thick and viscous. He knew it was irrational, especially for someone like him. Recently this revulsion had taken over his dreams, presenting itself in ways he couldn’t control.

He looked down at his hands and saw they were covered in dark-red human blood. It was dripping onto his trousers, still warm and sticky. The smell hit his nose. He jerked back in panic and tried to shake it off-

‘Hey, we’re here.’

The voice interrupted his sleep. The blood suddenly vanished, but the intense feeling of nausea remained. Sharp, cold air rushed in through the door of the bus. The driver hunched his shoulders in a vain attempt to escape it.

‘Unless you want to come down to the garage?’

All the other passengers had got off the airport bus. He stood up with an effort, bent over with pain. He picked up his duffel bag from the seat, muttering, ‘ Merci beaucoup .’

The jolt as his feet hit the ground made him groan. He leaned against the frosted side-panelling of the bus for a moment, rubbing his forehead.

A woman in a crocheted hat was making her way to the local bus-stop a bit further on. She stopped next to his duffel bag; there was genuine concern in her eyes as she leaned towards him.

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

He reacted strongly and immediately, waving his hand in her face. ‘ Laissez-moi tranquille! ’ He spoke far too loudly, panting from the effort.

The woman didn’t move, just blinked a few times, open-mouthed.

‘ Êtes-vous sourde? Je vous ai dit: laissez-moi tranquille .’

Her face crumbled at his aggression and she backed away. He watched her go, heavy and thickset, plodding towards the number three with her bulging carrier bags.

I wonder if this is how I sound when I speak Swedish , he thought. Then he realized that his thoughts were actually formulating themselves in his mother tongue.

Indépendence , he thought, forcing his brain back into French. Je suis mon propre maître .

The woman glared at him one last time before getting on the bus.

He stood there in the diesel fumes as the buses slid away and the street emptied of people; listening to the silence of the cold, absorbing the shadowless light.

Nowhere on earth was outer space as close as it was at the Polar Circle. When he was growing up he took the isolation for granted, not realizing the implications of living on the roof of the world. But he could see the buildings, the frozen conifers now, as clearly as if they were engraved on the streets: isolation and exposure, endless distance. So familiar, and yet so alien.

This is a harsh place , he thought, in Swedish once more. A town that’s frozen solid. Just like me .

He carefully lifted the strap of the bag over his shoulder and chest and started to walk towards the City Hotel. The exterior, from the turn of the last century, was just as he remembered, but he had no way of knowing whether the interior had changed. During his time in Luleå he had never had any reason to enter such an opulent building.

The receptionist welcomed the old Frenchman with a distracted politeness. She checked him into a room on the second floor, told him when breakfast was served, gave him the key, and promptly forgot all about him.

You’re least visible in a sea of people , he thought, thanking her in broken English and heading off to the lifts.

The room had an air of trying too hard. The cool tiling and replicas of fashionable furniture suggested luxury and tradition, but behind the façade he could see dirty windows and grubby fibreglass walls.

He sat on the bed for a moment, looking out at the twilight. Or was it still dawn?

The sea view that the website boasted about consisted of grey water, some wooden buildings next to a harbour, a neon sign and a large black felt-roof.

He was on the verge of falling asleep and shook himself to clear his head, noticing the smell that emanated from him. He stood up and opened his bag, then went over to the desk where he lined up his medicines, starting with the painkillers. Then he lay down on the bed as the nausea gradually eased.

So, he was finally here.

La mort est ici .

Death is here.

Annika Bengtzon stopped at the entrance to the newsroom, blinking against the sharp white neon lighting. The noise crashed against her: chattering printers, whirring scanners, the tapping of nails against keyboards; people feeding machines endlessly with text, images, letters and commands.

She took a few deep breaths and sailed out into the room. The only activity over by the newsdesk was of the entirely silent, focused variety. Spike, the boss, was reading some pages with his feet crossed on his desk. The temporary head of news was staring at his computer screen with red-eyed attention – Reuters and French AFP, Associated Press and TTA and TTB; domestic and foreign, sport and financial, news and telegrams from all over the world, an endless stream. The exultant shouting hadn’t yet started; no noisy enthusiasm or disappointment about stories that had either worked out well or caused a stir, no excited arguments favouring one particular journalistic approach over another.

She slid past them without looking, and without being seen.

Suddenly a noise, a challenge, a voice breaking the electronic babble: ‘So you’re off again?’

She started, took an involuntary step to one side, letting her gaze swing towards Spike, and was blinded by his desk lamp.

‘I hear you’re flying to Luleå this afternoon.’

She hit her thigh on the corner of the morning team’s desk as she tried to get to her own desk too quickly. She stopped, shut her eyes for a moment, felt her bag slide down her arm as she turned around.

‘Maybe. Why?’

But the editor had already moved on, leaving her adrift, caught between people’s stares and the hum of the newsroom. She licked her lips nervously and hoisted her bag back on to her shoulder, feeling their scepticism stick to the nylon of her quilted jacket.

She was almost there. The glass of her aquarium-like office came ever closer. Relieved, she slid open the door and fled inside. Easing the door shut behind her, she rested the back of her head against the cool glass. At least they had let her keep her own room. Stability and security were becoming more and more important, she knew that much, both for her personally and for society in general.

She dropped her bag and coat on the visitors’ couch and switched on the computer. News reporting felt increasingly distant, even though she was sitting right in the middle of its pulsing, electronic heart. Things that led the front page today were forgotten tomorrow. She no longer had the energy to keep up with AP’s ENPS, the news beast of the digital age.

She ran her fingers through her hair. Perhaps she was just tired. She sat patiently with her chin on her hands as all the programs loaded, then opened up her material. She thought it was looking pretty interesting already, but the suits in charge weren’t so enthusiastic.