head back and shut his eyes as she slowly began to ride him. The slow waves made his body take flight. As his orgasm approached he opened his eyes wide and happened to stare straight into Annika’s, as she tried to hide her resigned tolerance of the family party she had not been able to avoid.
He couldn’t help the cry he let out as he came.
In the silence afterwards he could hear the monotonous whirr of the air conditioning, the singing of the wires in the lift-shaft, an abandoned phone on another floor that rang and rang and rang.
‘We’re mad,’ Sophia Grenborg whispered in his ear, and he couldn’t help laughing. Yes, they really were mad, and as he kissed her and stood up, she tumbled off him and fluid ran out of her and down onto one of the project papers.
They hastily put their clothes back on, giggling and fumbling. Then stood close together, their arms around each other’s waist, smiling into each other’s eyes.
‘Thanks for today,’ Sophia said, and kissed him on the chin.
He caught her mouth, biting her tongue.
‘Thank you,’ he breathed.
She pulled on her coat, picked up her briefcase and was about to leave when she suddenly stopped.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I almost forgot what I came for.’
He was sitting on his chair, leaning back, feeling the sleepiness that always followed sex. Sophia put her briefcase on his desk, opened and took out a folder of papers bearing the logo of the Ministry of Justice.
‘I spent some time with Cramne this afternoon; we went through the outline for the action plan.’ She smiled at him with an almost bovine look on her face.
He felt his face close up, the need for sleep vanish.
‘What?’ he said. ‘I thought I was supposed to do that?’
‘Cramne called me. He couldn’t get hold of you because you were in a meeting. You can read it through this evening and call me early tomorrow morning, can’t you?’
He looked at his watch.
‘I have to pick up the kids,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I’ll have time tonight.’
Sophia blinked, something pale falling across her nose. ‘Okay.’ Her voice was suddenly smaller and sharper. ‘Call me when you can.’
And she turned and left the room, shutting the door behind her. Thomas stayed in his chair, suddenly aware of the stickiness around his groin.
How was the collaboration with the Federation of County Councils going? Sophia Grenborg, what was she really like?
He lunged forward, crumpled up the project document and threw it in the bin, left Sophia Grenborg’s discussions with the department next to the mug of pens and hurried off to the nursery.
Annika’s legs had almost gone to sleep on the uncomfortable chairs outside Anders Schyman’s room when the editor-in-chief finally opened the door and let her in.
‘I’ve got ten minutes,’ he said, turning his back on her before she had chance to reply.
She stood up, trying to shake some life into her legs, and feeling strangely ill at ease. She followed Schyman’s broad back into the room, taking nervous steps on the swaying floor. She was unnerved by his attempt to hurry her along, and sank into one of his visitor’s chairs, putting her notes on top of some sort of diagram on his desk.
The editor-in-chief walked slowly back behind his desk and sank into his creaking chair. He leaned back.
‘You’re not letting go of this terrorist angle, then,’ he stated, clasping his hands together over his gut.
‘I’ve uncovered information that’s extremely controversial,’ Annika said, staring down at her notebook, realizing it was open on the wrong page. She quickly pulled the notes over to her and searched feverishly for the summary she had put together. Schyman sighed.
‘Just tell me instead,’ he said, and Annika put the book down in her lap. She was fighting against a stubborn sense of falling, which was making the floor sway like mad.
‘The terrorist’s name is Goran Nilsson,’ she said. ‘Born in Sattajarvi in the Torne Valley in nineteen forty-eight, the son of a L?stadian preacher.’
She picked up her notes and leafed through them.
‘He moved to Uppsala to study theology at the age of nineteen, joined the Rebel movement in the spring of nineteen sixty-eight and became a Maoist. Abandoned his studies and moved back to Norrbotten where he worked for the Church. He joined Maoist groups in Lulea under the codename Ragnwald, and seems to have lost his faith, because he arranged a civil marriage ceremony. One way or another he was involved in the attack on F21, even if the police don’t believe that he actually carried it out. He disappeared from Sweden on the eighteenth of November nineteen sixty-nine and hasn’t been seen since then. The wedding, which was supposed to take place on the twentieth of November in Lulea City Hall, just two days after the attack, was cancelled.’
Schyman nodded slowly. ‘Then he went to Spain and became a professional killer for ETA,’ he filled in, glancing at the newspaper spread out on one of the side tables.
Annika raised her hand, putting her feet down hard to find solid ground.
‘It’s F21 that’s the interesting bit,’ she said.
‘I thought you said the police had discounted him, that he didn’t carry out the attack?’
She swallowed silently, nodded.
‘So who blew up the plane?’ Anders Schyman said in a neutral tone of voice, his hands still.
She was silent for a few moments before she replied.
‘Karina Bjornlund,’ she said. ‘The Minister for Culture.’
The editor-in-chief didn’t move a muscle. His hands remained clasped above his shirt buttons, his back stayed at the same angle, his eyes didn’t move, but the air in the room had suddenly turned grey, difficult to breathe in.
‘I presume,’ Schyman said after a silence of indeterminate length, ‘that you have bloody good back-up for this accusation.’
Annika tried to laugh, but the noise came out as a dry snigger.
‘Not really,’ she said, ‘but the minister really is the most likely culprit.’
Schyman leaned forward quickly, heaving himself out of the chair with the help of the desk and walked across the floor, not looking at Annika.
‘I don’t know that I want to listen to this,’ he said.
Annika was halfway out of her chair to follow him, but felt the whole room lurch. She sank back and picked up her notes.
‘The footprints found at the scene were size thirty-six,’ she said. ‘They must have been made by either a child or a small woman, and of those two alternatives an adult woman with small feet is most likely. Women hardly ever turn to terrorism unless it’s together with their men. Ragnwald planned the attack, his fiancee carried it out.’
Schyman interrupted his restless wandering across the floor and turned to face her, hands by his sides.
‘Fiancee?’
‘They were due to get married, parish assistant Goran Nilsson from Sattajarvi and Karina Bjornlund from Karlsvik in the parish of Lower Lulea. I’ve checked all the Goran Nilssons and Karina Bjornlunds with their backgrounds against the historical information in the National Population Address Register, and they’re the only two.’
‘The terrorist and the culture minister?’
‘The terrorist and the culture minister.’
‘They were getting married two days after the attack?’
Annika nodded, watching her boss’s unfeigned astonishment, and felt the ground slowly solidify beneath her again.
‘How do you know that?’
‘A wedding announcement in the
Anders Schyman folded his arms, rocked back on his heels and looked out of the large, dark window towards the Russian embassy.
‘You’re quite sure that Karina Bjornlund, in the autumn of nineteen sixty-nine, was planning to marry a man
