Red Wolf

‘I… I’m sorry,’ Annika said, swallowing. ‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ the woman said, now almost in tears. ‘I have to take another call now, then I’m done for the day. It’s been a terrible day, a terrible day…’

Silence on the line again. Annika hung up, sat down on the bed and fought a sudden feeling of nausea. She saw that there was a local telephone directory under one of the bedside tables. She pulled it out, found the number for the police, dialled, and ended up talking to the station.

‘Ah, the journalist,’ the duty officer said when she asked what had happened to Benny Ekland. ‘It was out in Svartostaden somewhere. You can talk to Suup in crime.’

She waited, one hand over her eyes, as he transferred her, listening to the organic noises of the hotel: water rattling through a pipe in the wall, a rumbling ventilator outside, sexual groans from the TV in a neighbouring room.

Inspector Suup in the criminal investigation department sounded like he had reached the age and experience where very few things actually shook him.

‘A bad business,’ he said with a deep sigh. ‘I must have spoken to Ekland every day for the past twenty years. He was always on the phone, like a dog with a bone. There was always something he wanted to know more about, something he had to check but which we really couldn’t tell him, and of course he knew that. “Listen, Suup,” he used to say, “I can’t make sense of this, what about this, or that, what the hell do you lot spend your time doing, unless you’ve got your thumbs rammed up your backsides…”’ The inspector gave a quiet, sad little laugh.

Annika stroked her forehead, hearing the German porn-stars faking their noisy orgasms on the other side of the wall, and waited for the man to go on.

‘It’ll be empty without him,’ Suup eventually said.

‘I was supposed to be meeting up with him,’ Annika said. ‘We’d arranged to compare notes. How did he die?’

‘The post mortem isn’t done yet, so I don’t want to speculate about the cause of death.’

The policeman’s measured note of caution unsettled her. ‘But what happened? Was he shot? Beaten to death? Stabbed?’

The inspector sighed once more. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘it’ll get out anyway. We think he was run over.’

‘Run over?’

‘Hit at high speed, probably by a large-engined car. We found a stolen Volvo down in the ore harbour with some damage to the bodywork, so that might be the one.’

She took a few steps, reaching for her bag, and pulled out her notebook.

‘When will you know for sure?’

‘We brought it in yesterday afternoon. The experts are checking it now. Tomorrow or Wednesday.’

Annika sat down on the bed with the notebook in her lap. It bent and slid away from her as she tried to write.

‘Do you know what time it happened?’

‘Sometime during Sunday night or early Monday morning. He was seen in the pub on Sunday and seems to have caught the bus home.’

‘Did he live in…?’

‘Svartostaden. I think he may even have grown up there.’

Her pen wouldn’t work. She drew big heavy circles on the paper until it started again.

‘Where was he found, and who by?’

‘By the fence down by Malmvallen, opposite the ironworks. He must have been thrown quite some distance. A bloke finishing his shift called early yesterday morning.’

‘And there’s no trace of the culprit?’

‘The car was stolen in Bergnaset on Saturday, and of course we found a few things at the scene…’ Inspector Suup trailed off.

Annika listened to the silence for a while. The man next door had switched the channel to MTV. ‘What do you think happened?’ she eventually asked quietly.

‘Junkies,’ the policeman went on in the same tone. ‘Don’t quote me, but they were high as kites. It was icy; they hit him and drove off. Death by dangerous driving. We’ll get them. No question.’

Annika could hear voices in the background, people working in the police station demanding the inspector’s attention.

‘One more thing,’ she said. ‘Were you working in Lulea in November nineteen sixty-nine?’

The man gave a short laugh. ‘Well, I’m old enough,’ he said, ‘so I could have been. No, I missed the explosion at F21 by a few months. I was in Stockholm at the time, didn’t start up here until May nineteen seventy.’

4

The main office of the Norrland News was in a three-storey office block between the Town Hall and the County Governor’s Residence. Annika looked up at the yellow brick facade, estimating that it had been built in the mid-1950s.

It struck her that it could have been the Katrineholm Post. It looked just the same. That impression only grew stronger when she leaned against the glass door, shielding her eyes from the lamp above with her hands to get a look at the reception area. Gloomy and deserted, just an illuminated emergency exit sign casting a dull light on green newspaper racks and chairs.

The speaker above the doorbell crackled. ‘Yes?’

‘My name’s Annika Bengtzon, I’m on the Evening Post. I was supposed to be seeing Benny Ekland this evening, but I’ve just found out that he’s dead.’

The silence radiated out into the winter darkness, accompanied by some crackles of static. She looked up at the sky. The clouds had cleared and the stars were out. The temperature was falling rapidly now, and she rubbed her gloved hands together.

‘Oh?’ the voice from the newsroom said, suspicion clearly audible over the poor connection.

‘I was going to give Benny some material; there were a few things we were going to discuss.’

This time the reply came immediately. ‘In return for what?’

‘Let me in and we can talk about it,’ she said.

Three seconds of static hesitation later the lock clicked and Annika opened the door. Warm air smelling of paper dust enveloped her. She blinked to get used to the low green light and let the door click shut behind her. The stairs up to the newsroom were to the left of the door, worn grey linoleum with rubber edges.

A large man with his white shirt hanging out met her by the photocopier. His face was flushed, his eyes painfully red.

‘I’m really very sorry,’ Annika said, holding out her hand. ‘Benny Ekland was a legend even down in Stockholm.’

The man took her hand and nodded. He introduced himself as Pekkari, the night manager.

‘He could have got a job at any of the Stockholm papers whenever he wanted. He turned them down often enough, preferred to stay up here.’

Annika tried to smile to compensate for her white lie. ‘So I gather,’ she mumbled.

‘Do you want coffee?’

She followed Pekkari to the staff room, a tiny windowless cell containing a small kitchen unit.

‘You’re the one from the tunnel, aren’t you?’ he asked, sounding confident of his facts.

Annika nodded quickly, taking off her coat as he poured thick tar-like liquid into two badly washed mugs.

‘So what were you two going to talk about?’ Pekkari asked, handing her the sugar.

She waved it away.

‘I’ve written quite a bit about terrorism recently. Last week I spoke to Benny about the attack on F21, and he said he was on the track of something new, something big – a description of what actually happened.’

The editor put the sugar bowl on the table, digging among the lumps with nicotine-stained fingers.