40
Kalle came up to Annika at the front door, wearing his new green boots with the reflective patches. His cheeks were glowing from the heat inside his overalls, his eyes large and shiny.
‘Why is Daddy cross with us?’
Annika kneeled down next to him and stroked him on the cheek. ‘Daddy’s tired,’ she said. ‘He’s been working hard. It’ll be better soon.’ She smiled into his eyes, conveying calm and security that she didn’t feel.
‘I want to stay at home with you,’ Ellen said.
Annika turned to her daughter, who was sweating from having to wait.
‘Anne’s coming to see me, she’s a bit sad and I’m going to help her with something.’
‘Grown-ups can be sad too,’ Kalle said.
Annika had to look away to hold herself together, the sadness in her chest so painful she thought she might burst.
‘See you soon,’ she said, getting up and adjusting the belt of her dressing gown.
Thomas came flying out into the hall with his hair in a mess and a little black cloud hanging over his head.
‘What are you looking for?’ Annika said, keeping her voice steady.
‘My mobile. Have you seen it?’
‘Do you have to take it with you?’
He looked at her as if she was an idiot.
‘Have you tried calling it?’ Annika said.
His expression changed from derision to surprise. She swallowed and floated over to the phone and dialled his mobile number. His coat pocket rang.
‘Drive carefully,’ she said as he nudged the children through the door ahead of him.
A dark, wounded look back over his shoulder.
The door closed and she stood there with ice-cold feet in the draught that crept in from the stairwell. She had no floor below her, she was in free fall, the sky rushed around her, the angelic choir thundering. She knew the seeds she had sown were sprouting and growing in the minds of the Federation’s managers.
She clapped her hands over her ears, clenched her jaw and fled, away from the door, away from the draught, back into bed. She pulled the covers over her head, took deep breaths and concentrated on not hyperventilating and cramping.
She threw off the duvet, reached for the phone and dialled Q’s direct line.
But he did answer, and he sounded tired. She sat up in bed and the angels withdrew immediately.
‘Has something happened?’ she asked nervously.
‘Are you thinking of anything in particular?’
She shut her eyes, relieved to hear his voice.
‘I don’t mean whether or not you’ve been fucked.’
‘Okay,’ Q said. ‘And what would you know about things like that?’
She tried to smile towards the phone.
‘Have you found our friend Ragnwald?’
He pretended to yawn.
‘Seriously,’ she said, yanking the phone lead. ‘You must have made some sort of progress. Kurt Sandstrom, what’s happened with him?’
‘He died. Definitely died.’
She leaned back hard against the pillows, feeling the pain settle down, and almost relaxed.
‘Goran Nilsson from Sattajarvi,’ she said. ‘How can someone vanish for thirty years without you or Interpol or the CIA or Mossad or anyone else getting hold of him? How is that possible?’
Q was silent for several long seconds. ‘We haven’t exactly been dragging our feet, whatever you might think.’
‘No?’ She looked up at the ceiling. ‘You knew he lived in France; how hard can it be? Surely it’s just a question of getting out the vacuum cleaner and pressing the on button?’
‘The French police have big vacuum cleaners that suck up almost every sort of particle. This one kept getting through the filter, for all those years.’
Reality clarified and her free fall stopped. She was floating weightless and secure, calm.
‘How could he do that? If he’s as dangerous as you think, if he really was an international killer who took on assassinations for loads of money, how could he possibly get away with it? Why didn’t anyone catch him?’
‘We don’t know how much money was involved, or if there was any money at all. Maybe he killed out of pure, unadulterated conviction.’
‘But how do you know it’s him?’
‘There are a number of cases where we’re convinced, and several more where we’re pretty sure, and a whole heap of bodies where we’ve got nothing but our suspicions.’
She was safe now, secure in her work.
‘But why Ragnwald? Did he leave fingerprints? Little napkins with lipstick kisses at the crime scenes?’
‘Undercover agents,’ Q said. ‘The security apparatus.’
‘Ah,’ Annika said. ‘You mean rumours and speculation.’
‘Now you’re just being silly.’
They were silent for a few moments, her chest felt warm, as did the stone.
‘But there’s something I don’t understand,’ Annika said when the silence had grown so large that she suddenly feared that she was alone on the line. ‘Someone must have had some way of communicating with him, because otherwise how would he contact his employers?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Someone must have hired him for all those messy jobs. How did they get hold of him?’
The commissioner was quiet for a moment.
‘Off the record,’ he said, and she swivelled her head, ‘through ETA. For years the Spanish police have suspected a doctor in Bilbao of being his go-between, but they’ve never had enough evidence to charge him. This is sensitive stuff in the Basque Country. If their colleagues start openly harassing and accusing decent members of the civilian population, the whole region could ignite. The doctor in question is an unimpeachable family man, a professional with his own practice specializing in internal medicine.’
‘Couldn’t you have hired Ragnwald for something yourselves?’ Annika asked. ‘Lured him into a trap?’
A moment of hesitation.
‘Attempts may have been made, but I know nothing about that.’
So that’s where the boundary of his openness was. She decided not to press him, and rubbed her feet together, feeling the circulation coming back again.
‘But if he wasn’t in France, where was he?’
‘He most likely spent a lot of time in France,’ Q said, back on solid ground again, ‘but he didn’t live there. We don’t think he settled anywhere.’
‘So he’s spent thirty years camping?’
A short, weary sigh. ‘We believe he pretended to be from north Africa,’ Q said, ‘as part of the group of illegal
