Patricia stiffened. 'No,' she said.
'Do they know you're here?'
The woman got up and went over to the counter. 'I don't think so.'
Annika also got up. 'Perhaps you should tell them. They might want to talk to you about something, and no one at the club knows you're staying here, right?'
'Please don't tell me what to do,' Patricia replied curtly.
She turned her back and put a pan on the stove to heat water for the dishes.
Annika went back to the table and for a while sat watching the woman's back.
Well, go ahead and sulk, she thought, and went into her room.
The rain rattled hysterically on the windowsill. Will it never stop? Annika thought, and sank down on her bed. She lay on top of the bed without switching on the light. The room was dark and gray. She stared at the worn wallpaper, yellowed with a gray pattern.
It all has to come together somehow, she thought. Something happened just before the twenty-seventh of July that made the minister for foreign trade take a flight from Terminal 2 at Arlanda, so jittery and stressed-out that he didn't even notice his relatives calling out to him. Or he ignored them. The Social Democrats must have been in a real panic.
But it could have been something private, Annika suddenly realized. Maybe he wasn't on a government or party errand at all. Maybe he had a mistress somewhere.
Could it be that simple?
Then she remembered her grandmother.
Harpsund, she thought. If Christer Lundgren had committed a private indiscretion, the prime minister would never have let him use his summer residence as a hiding place. It had to be something political.
She stretched out on her back, put her hands behind her head, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. She heard the clatter of the crockery; Patricia was puttering about in the kitchen.
Structure, she mused. Sort through what you've got. Start at the beginning. Toss out everything that's wishful thinking- be logical. What actually did happen?
A minister resigns following suspicions of murder, and not just any murder- a sex murder in a cemetery. Suppose the man is innocent. Say he was somewhere completely different on the morning when the woman was raped and killed. Suppose he's got a watertight alibi.
Then why the hell doesn't he clear his name? His life is ruined; politically he's washed-up, socially he's poison.
There can only be one explanation, Annika thought. My first idea holds up: his alibi is even worse than the crime.
Okay, even worse- but for whom? For himself? Not likely. That would be close to impossible.
Only one alternative remains: worse for the party.
Right, so she'd reached a conclusion.
What about the rest? What could be worse for the party than having a minister suspected of murder in the middle of an election campaign?
She squirmed restlessly on the bed, turned on her side, and stared out into the room. She heard Patricia open the front door and walk down the stairs, probably to have a shower.
The realization came like a puff of wind in her brain.
Only the loss of power was worse. Christer Lundgren did something that night that would lead to the Social Democrats losing power if it came to light. It had to be something fundamental, something crucial. What could pull the rug out from under the governing party's feet?
Annika sat bolt upright. She remembered the words, played them back in her brain. She went out to the telephone in the living room, sat down on the couch with the phone on her lap. She closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths.
Anne Snapphane still talked to her even though she'd been thrown out. Berit Hamrin might also look on her as a colleague even if she'd stopped working there. If she didn't try, she'd never know.
Resolutely she dialed the number to the
'Annika, how nice to hear from you!' Berit said cordially. 'How are things?'
Annika's heart slowed down.
'Thanks, I'm fine. I've been to Turkey for a couple of weeks. It was really interesting.'
'Writing about the Kurds?' Berit thought like a journalist.
'No, just a vacation. Listen, I've got a couple of questions concerning IB. Do you have time to meet up for a chat?'
If Berit was surprised, she wasn't letting it show. 'Yes, sure. When?'
'What are you doing tonight?'
They agreed to meet at the pizzeria near the paper in half an hour's time.
Patricia came back in, dressed in her sweat suit and with her hair wrapped in a towel.
'I'm going out for a while.' Annika got to her feet.
'I forgot to tell you something. Sven said he was staying here for a few days.'
Annika went over to the coatrack. 'Are you working tonight?' she said as she put her coat on.
'Yeah, why?'
It was pouring rain. Annika's umbrella was twisted by the wind, so when she stumbled through the door of the restaurant, she was soaked to the skin. Berit was already there.
'How nice to see you.' Berit smiled. 'You're looking well.'
Annika laughed and wriggled out of her wet coat. 'Leaving
Berit sighed. 'Bit of a mess, actually. Schyman is trying to give the paper an overhaul, but he's meeting a lot of resistance from the rest of the senior editors.'
Annika shook her wet hair and pushed it back. 'In what way?'
'Schyman wants to set up new routines, have regular seminars about the direction of the paper.'
'I get it. The others are in an uproar, whining that he's trying to turn
Berit nodded and smiled. 'Exactly.'
A waiter took their insignificant order, a coffee and a mineral water. He walked away unimpressed.
'So just how badly are the Social Democrats doing in the election campaign?' Annika wondered.
'Badly. They've fallen from forty-five percent in the opinion polls last spring to below thirty-five percent.'
'Because of the IB affair or the strip-club business?'
'Probably a combination of both.'
Both the glass and the cup were placed on the table with unnecessary force.
'Do you remember our talk about the IB archives?' Annika said when the waiter was gone.
'Of course. Why?'
'You thought the original foreign archive still exists. What exactly makes you think that?' Annika sipped at her mineral water.
Berit gave it some thought before answering. 'Several reasons. People's political affiliations had been put on a register before, during the war. The practice was forbidden after the end of the war, and much later Minister for Defense Sven Andersson said that the wartime archives had 'disappeared.' In reality, they had been at the Defense Staff Headquarters' archive. This was made public a few years ago.'
'So the Social Democrats have lied about vanished archives before.'
'That's right. And then, a year or two later, Andersson said that the IB archives were destroyed back in 1969.
