Red Wolf

Gunnel Sandstrom looked at her with eyes that Annika could see were devoid of something vital.

‘I’m going to get justice as well,’ she said.

Then she suddenly turned and went out into the hall, then up a creaking staircase to the floor above.

Annika quickly pulled on her outdoor clothes, and hesitated at the foot of the stairs.

‘Well, thank you,’ she shouted cautiously.

No reply.

23

Berit Hamrin bumped into Annika at the caretaker’s booth by the lifts.

‘Are you coming for something to eat?’ she asked.

Annika put the car-keys on the counter and looked at the time.

‘Not today,’ she said. ‘I’ve got loads to check, and I have to get the kids. Are you faint with hunger, or have you got time to look at something?’

Berit pondered this theatrically.

‘Faint with hunger,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘Follow me,’ Annika said, and sailed off towards her office. She tossed her outdoor clothes in the usual corner and emptied the contents of her bag on the desk, picking out her notebook. She leafed through to the last page, then rushed round the desk and tugged open the second drawer, pulling out another pad.

‘Read this,’ she told Berit, holding up two pages of notes.

Her colleague took the first pad and read the opening line aloud.

‘The present upsurge of the peasant movement is a colossal event.’ She put down the pad. ‘But this is a classic text.’

‘In what way?’ Annika said, like a coiled spring.

Without looking away from Annika, Berit intoned loudly and clearly from memory:

‘In China’s central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back.’

Annika felt her jaw drop; she stared speechlessly at her colleague.

‘Report on an investigation of the peasant movement in Hunan,’ Berit said. ‘Written in nineteen forty-nine, if I remember rightly. One of Mao Tse-tung’s most famous works. We all knew it off by heart.’

Annika searched through a box and pulled out a couple more notebooks. She leafed through them until she found what she was looking for.

‘What about this?’

She gave Berit the notes she had taken up in Lulea.

‘There is no construction without destruction,’ Berit read. ‘Destruction means criticism and rejection, it means revolution. It involves reasoning things out, which means construction. If you concentrate on destruction first, you get construction as part of the process.’

‘And?’ Annika said.

‘Another Mao quote. Why have you written them down?’

Annika had to sit down.

‘They’re letters,’ she said. ‘Anonymous letters to murder victims. The destruction one was sent to Benny Ekland’s workplace a couple of days after the first murder, the peasants’ movement was sent to a local councillor in Osthammar the day after his presumed suicide.’

Berit sat down on Annika’s desk, her face pale. ‘What the…?’

Anna shook her head, pressing her hands to her forehead. ‘I have to speak to Linus Gustafsson’s mother,’ she said.

The phone rang out into the echoing, frozen space a thousand kilometres north. Her hand was sweating as she pressed the phone to her ear.

‘Should I go?’ Berit mouthed, pointing first at herself, then at the sliding door.

Annika shook her head, closed her eyes.

In the middle of a ring the phone was picked up. The voice that answered sounded newly woken, confused.

‘My name’s Annika Bengtzon, I’m calling from the Evening Post in Stockholm,’ Annika said in the slow, clear tone of voice she had learned to use in her years as a night editor, the shift when most phone calls reached people who were fast asleep.

‘Who?’ the woman on the phone said.

‘I wrote about Linus in the paper,’ Annika said, suddenly feeling tears welling up. ‘I just wanted to call to say how very sorry I am.’

Suddenly the boy was in front of her, his spiked hair and watchful eyes, his defensive body language and uncertain voice; she couldn’t help a sudden and audible sob.

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I-’ She put her hand over her mouth to cover her sobs, ashamed that Berit, who was now sitting down in one of the chairs, should see her like this.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ the woman said, still sounding sleepy.

‘Are you his mum?’

‘I’m Viveka.’ She pronounced it unusually.

‘I feel horribly guilty,’ Annika said, realizing that the phone call wasn’t turning out as she had imagined. ‘I shouldn’t have written about Linus.’

‘We’ll never know,’ the woman said flatly. ‘But I thought it was a good thing that you got it out of him. I couldn’t work out what was wrong with him. He was a different person after it happened, and he refused to tell me what it was.’

‘Well,’ Annika said, ‘but what if-’

The woman interrupted her, rather sharply. ‘Do you believe in God, Annika Bengtzon?’

Annika hesitated as the tears dried up. ‘Not really,’ she managed to say.

‘Well, I do,’ the woman said slowly, and with slightly forced emphasis. ‘It’s helped me through many trials over the years. The Lord called Linus to Him; I don’t understand why, but I accept it.’

Sorrow travelled like an ice-cold wind down the phone line from Lulea, making Annika shiver. The destructive power of human loss, where God’s love might provide the flickering flame that prevented the definitive final chill.

‘My grandmother died,’ Annika said. ‘Seven years ago. I think of her every day. I can’t even begin to imagine your loss.’

‘I have to continue my time on earth without Linus,’ his mother said, ‘even if I can’t see right now how I’m going to manage. But I’m firm in my faith that God the Father is doing what is best for me, that His hand rests above me.’

The woman fell silent, Annika could hear her weeping. She waited, not sure if she should try to end the conversation and hang up.

‘In time I may come to understand why,’ the woman went on suddenly, in a clear, lucid voice. ‘And I shall meet Linus again, of course, in the House of Our Lord. I know this to be true. It gives me the strength to carry on living.’

‘I wish I had your God,’ Annika said.

‘He is there for you, too,’ the woman said. ‘He is there, if only you want to take Him to you.’

The silence that followed could have been difficult, but to her surprise Annika found it warm.

‘There was something else I wanted to ask,’ she said. ‘Have you had anything strange in the post since Linus died?’

Viveka Gustafsson thought for a few seconds before she replied. ‘You mean that thing about youth?’

Annika looked over at Berit.

‘Youth?’