Studio Sex aka Studio 69 / Exposed

important meeting. It must have taken some time as well.

She counted on her fingers.

Say he left at 20:00; so wherever he was going, he wouldn't get there and clear customs before 21:30. Then he probably had to get somewhere in a taxi or a car, unless the meeting took place at the airport.

Suppose 22:00 was the time of the meeting. And suppose it finished at 23:00. Back to the airport, check in- he couldn't have been on a return flight before midnight.

There can't be that many scheduled flights at that time of the night, not with these airlines. And what was Maersk Air?

She sighed.

He could have got home some other way, she thought- by car or boat. That would exclude Vienna, Brussels, and anywhere in Italy.

She looked down at her pad; that left Jutland, Finland, and Tallinn. She looked up Finnair's ticket office in the phone book, dialed the toll-free number, and got the company's call center in Helsinki.

'No,' said the friendly voice of a man who sounded like the Moomin Troll in Tove Jansson's children stories, 'I can't check data like that on my computer. Did you say you don't have a flight number? If you did, I could check back.'

Annika closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with her hand. 'Which cities do you fly to from Stockholm?'

The man tapped on his computer. 'Helsinki, of course. And Oslo, Copenhagen, Vienna, Berlin, and London.'

Dead end. It was impossible to check this way where the plane went.

'One last question. When does the last flight to Stockholm leave?'

'From Helsinki? It leaves at twenty-one forty-five and arrives at twenty-one forty in Stockholm. You're one hour behind us.'

She thanked him and rang off.

He must have got home some other way than on a regular flight. Private plane, she thought. He could have chartered a plane to return on.

It costs a lot of money, she thought, remembering the uproar surrounding the prime minister's private flights. You have to pay for a chartered plane, and she didn't think Christer Lundgren would do that out of his own pocket. It would be against his religion.

She raised her eyes and looked out of the window in Hans Snapphane's study. To the right she saw the most common house type in Pitea, a red, seventies, prefab bungalow. Straight ahead, on the other side of the street, was a larger white-brick house with brown-stained paneling, and in the distance a stretch of woodland.

There has to be an invoice somewhere. Regardless of how he got home, the former minister for foreign trade must surely have invoiced his travel expenses to some department or government office.

It struck her that she didn't even know to which department foreign trade belonged.

She went into Anne and woke her up.

'I've got to go back to Stockholm,' Annika told her. 'I've got a lot to do.'

***

Anne wasn't surprised at Annika's reawakened enthusiasm for her job. She helped Annika make the return arrangements. Back in Stockholm, Annika went straight from City Terminal to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Gustav Adolfs Square. But the pink-and-yellow building was surrounded by shiny, dark cars. Important men stood around watchfully, and pensioners with cameras were dotted here and there. The people made her uneasy as she approached the entrance. A large black vehicle with a ridiculous registration plate in the form of a crown blocked the entrance. When she'd walked around it, an obese security guard in olive drab uniform blocked her way.

'Where are you going?'

'Inside,' Annika replied.

'We've got enough reporters as it is.'

Shit, Annika thought. 'But I'm going to the registrar.'

'Then you'll have to wait,' the guard said, and with a peremptory gesture crossed his hands over his crotch.

Annika didn't move. 'Why's that?'

The guard's gaze shifted slightly. 'State visit. The president of South Africa is here.'

'No shit?' Annika said, and realized how far out of the news loop she was already.

'Come back after three o'clock.'

Annika turned on her heel and walked away across Norrbro. She looked at her watch. She had over an hour to kill. The rain had stopped, so she decided to take a quick walk up to South Island. She had run regularly in Turkey, feeling the need and enjoying the calm that returned to her body. Now she walked fast and vigorously through Old Town and over to the steps around Mosebacke Square. With her bag across her chest, she ran up and down the steps until her pulse was beating fast and she was dripping with sweat. She paused at the top of Klevgrand and looked out over Stockholm: the narrow alleys cutting in between the Skeppsbro facades; the white hull of the af Chapman sparkling in the water; the light-blue roller coaster of Grona Lund, resting against the green foliage like a tangled ball of yarn.

I really have got to find a way to stay here, she thought.

***

By five to three, all the cars in front of the Arvfurstens Palace were gone.

'I'd like to know something about how the cabinet ministers arrange their travels,' Annika said politely to the Foreign Ministry lady behind the counter. Annika felt a bead of perspiration run along the root of her nose and quickly wiped it off.

The woman raised her eyebrows slightly. 'Oh,' she said in a disdainful tone of voice. 'And may I ask who's asking?'

Annika smiled. 'I'm not obliged to prove my identity. You don't even have the right to ask me. But you are obliged to answer my questions.'

The woman stiffened.

'So what happens when a cabinet minister wants to travel?' Annika asked in her silkiest voice.

The woman's voice was frosty around the edges. 'The minister's assistant books the tickets through the agency that has the government contract. At present Nyman and Schultz has that remit.'

'Do the ministers have their own travel budgets?'

The woman sighed soundlessly. 'Yes, naturally.'

'Right. Then I'd like to make a request to look at an official document. An invoice with a credit card slip handed in by the former minister for foreign trade Christer Lundgren on the twenty-eighth of July this year.'

The woman could barely conceal her delight. 'No, that will not be possible.'

'Oh, no? Why not?'

'Because the minister for foreign trade falls under the Ministry of Industry, Employment, and Communications, not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which he or she did until the current prime minister took over. The prime minister transferred questions concerning the promotion of export trade from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of Industry, Employment, and Communications. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs got asylum and immigration matters instead.'

Annika blinked. 'So the minister for foreign trade doesn't hand in his invoices here at all?'

'No, not at all.'

'Not for entertainment expenses or anything?'

'No.'

Annika was at a loss. The studio reporter on Studio 69 had claimed they'd found the receipt from the strip joint at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she was absolutely sure of that. The entire program resonated like a stubborn tune in her head, whether she wanted it to or not.