While the children chattered and made a mess he read through the advice on how threatened politicians should behave. All the way through, and then once more.
Then he thought about Sophia.
10
Annika switched off the car engine outside the darkened door of the
The time she had spent at home had given Thomas space which he had soon made his own. In three months he had got used to total service from her, with the children as accessories; his evenings free for tennis and work meetings, weekends for hunting and hockey trips. Since she had started work again, she was still doing most of the work at home. He criticized her for working, under the pretext that she needed to rest.
In fact, he just wanted to avoid heating up the meals she had prepared, she thought, surprised at how angry the idea made her.
She threw open the car door, picked up her bag and laptop and stepped onto the snowy street.
‘Pekkari?’ she said over the intercom. ‘It’s Bengtzon. There’s something I have to talk to you about.’
She was let in, and felt her way through the dark entrance hall. The night editor met her at the top of the stairs.
‘What’s this about?’
She recoiled from the smell of stale alcohol on his breath, but stood as close as she could and said quietly, ‘Benny may have come across something he shouldn’t have.’
The man’s eyes opened wide, the broken veins evidence of genuine sorrow.
‘F21?’
She shrugged. ‘Not sure yet. I need to check with Suup.’
‘He always goes home at five sharp.’
‘He isn’t dead as well, is he?’ Annika said.
She was shown to the letters-page editor’s room, where she cleared away the neat piles of angry handwritten correspondence on the desk and unpacked her laptop. She switched it on as she called the police station; Inspector Suup had indeed left at precisely 17.00.
‘What’s his first name?’ Annika asked.
The duty officer sounded surprised by his own reply: ‘I don’t actually know.’
She heard him call, ‘Hey, what’s Suup’s name, apart from Suup?’ Muttering, the scraping of chairs.
‘He’s down as L.G. on the files.’
She called directory inquiries from the phone on the desk, only to find that the number was blocked. It had been the same on the
On Telia’s website she discovered there was no Suup with the initials L.G. in the phonebook for Lulea, Pitea, Boden, Kalix or Alvsbyn. He could hardly commute further than that each day, she reasoned. Instead she went into the national census results, which, thank God, were now online. There was a Suup, Lars-Gunnar, born 1941, on Kronvagen in Lulea. Back to Telia again, Kronvagen in the address box, and
No sooner had she done that than her mobile rang, and she put a hand to her forehead.
‘I’m so fucked up,’ she said to Anne Snapphane. ‘Why on earth don’t I call from this phone instead?’
‘
The noises behind her suggested alcohol and minimalist decor.
‘Where are you?’ Annika asked.
The line crackled and hissed.
‘What?’ Anne said. ‘Hello? Are you in the middle of something?’
Annika spoke slowly and clearly. ‘I’ve uncovered the murder of a reporter. Call me at midnight if you’re still awake.’
She hung up and called the first of Suup’s numbers, but reached a fax machine. She called the second and heard the theme-music of the evening news.
‘So you’re the sort of person who disturbs people at home?’ Inspector Suup said, not sounding particularly upset.
The newsreader’s reliable tones filled the line for a few seconds, then the volume of the television was abruptly turned down.
‘Okay, you’ve got me really curious now,’ the inspector said.
‘There’s no leak,’ Annika said. ‘I spoke to a potential witness. Is the information correct?’
‘I can’t comment on that.’
‘Off the record?’
‘Can I switch phones?’
He hung up. Annika waited for an eternity before he picked up again, this time with no television in the back- ground.
‘You might have got the duty officer to read out the details of cars stolen from Bergnaset on Saturday night,’ he said.
‘So it’s correct, then?’
His silence was all the confirmation she needed.
‘Now I’d like
She hesitated, but only for the sake of it. Without the inspector she didn’t have a story.
‘I spoke to someone,’ she said, ‘who says they saw Benny Ekland get run down on Skeppargatan in Svartostaden. There was a gold-coloured Volvo V70 parked in the entrance to the football pitch, the front facing the road, with a man at the wheel. When Benny Ekland stumbled past the engine started, the car pulled out and drove at Ekland at full speed. My witness says Ekland tried to get out of the way, running from one side of the road to the other, but the car followed him. The collision happened more or less in the middle of the road.’
‘Bloody hell,’ the inspector muttered.
‘It gets worse,’ Annika said. ‘Ekland hit the car twice, and was thrown into the air, landing in the middle of the road. The car stopped, reversed and drove over him again, and then over his head. After driving over his skull the driver stopped – definitely a man – got out of the car and dragged the body up the slope towards the football pitch. There he wiped down the body somehow, then drove off towards – what’s it called? – Sjofartsgatan, down towards LKAB’s ore terminal. What was the damage to the car?’
‘Front and windscreen,’ Inspector Suup said without hesitation.
‘You must have worked out that this was no ordinary accident. The skull was crushed and his back was broken, all the internal organs mashed up.’
‘Quite right, the results of the post mortem came through this afternoon. So someone saw the whole thing?’
‘The witness wants to stay completely anonymous.’
‘You can’t persuade the person in question to contact us?’
‘I’ve already done what I can, but I’m happy to try again. What do you think?’
‘If the witness information is correct, which it may well be, then we’ll have a premeditated murder on our hands.’
Annika typed the quote directly onto her laptop.
‘Can you think of anything off the top of your head that Benny Ekland wrote that could explain why someone wanted him dead?’
‘Ekland wasn’t afraid of controversy and unpleasantness, so it’s not impossible. But I wouldn’t be doing my job
