The minister nodded eagerly. ‘He was so strong and clever. He could get anyone to go along with him. All the girls wanted to be with him, all the boys looked up to him. But I should have walked away when he was thrown out. It was stupid to go along with his idea for the Beasts.’
Karina Bjornlund lost herself in memories for a moment, Annika watched her with increasingly clear eyes.
‘How come you never got caught?’ Annika asked.
The minister looked up. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I never actually did anything, and Goran was very thorough. We only communicated through symbols, a forgotten old language comprehensible to anyone, across borders, races, cultures.’
‘So no minutes of meetings?’ Annika asked.
‘Not even letters or phone calls,’ Karina Bjornlund said. ‘We were summoned to meetings by a drawing of a yellow dragon. A day or so later came a combination of numbers giving the day and time of the meeting.’
‘You each had a symbol?’
The woman nodded carefully, still holding the T-shirt to her nose. ‘But only the Dragon could call a meeting.’
‘And at the end of October you got the call again, in an anonymous letter to the department?’
A flicker of fear crossed the minister’s eyes. ‘It took a few seconds before I realized what I was looking at, and when I did I had to go out and throw up.’
‘Yet you still came,’ Annika said.
‘You don’t understand,’ the minister said. ‘I’ve been so scared all these years. After F21, when Goran disappeared, I got a warning in the post…’ She hid her face in the T-shirt.
‘A child’s finger,’ Annika said, and the minister looked up in surprise.
‘How do you know?’
‘I spoke to Margit Axelsson’s husband, Thord. The symbolism was crystal-clear.’
Karina Bjornlund nodded. ‘If I didn’t keep quiet then not only would I die, but so would any children I might have in the future, and those close to me.’
Goran Nilsson groaned on the floor, moving his left leg in agitation.
Annika and the Minister of Culture looked at him with empty eyes.
‘He’s been stalking me,’ Karina Bjornlund said. ‘One night he was standing outside my house in Knivsta. The next day I saw him behind a display in Ahlens in Uppsala. And on Friday I got another letter.’
‘Another warning?’
The minister closed her eyes for a few moments.
‘A drawing of a dog,’ she said, ‘and then a cross. I had an idea of what it might mean, but daren’t actually take it in.’
‘That Margit was dead?’
Karina Bjornlund nodded.
‘We don’t have any contact with each other any more, of course, but I spent the whole night thinking, and in the morning I called Thord. He told me that Margit had been murdered and I understood exactly. Either I came here or I would die as well. So I came.’
She looked up at Annika, taking the T-shirt from her nose.
‘If you knew how scared I’ve been,’ she said. ‘How much I’ve suffered. Being terrified every day that someone would find out about all of this. It’s poisoned my whole life.’
Annika looked at her, this powerful woman in her thick fur, the girl who had hung out with her cousin, first sport, then politics, who got together with the leader of the gang, strong, charismatic, but then finished with him when he lost his power.
‘Shutting down TV Scandinavia to sweep it all under the carpet was a huge bloody mistake,’ she said.
Karina Bjornlund looked at her like she hadn’t understood what she’d just heard. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve got the email that Herman Wennergren sent you. I know why you changed the culture proposal.’
The Minister of Culture got to her feet and took three quick steps over to Annika, her swollen eyes narrow slits.
‘You, you shitty little gutter reporter,’ she said, her bloody face right in front of Annika’s. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’
Annika didn’t back down, but looked into her bloodshot eyes.
‘Don’t you know?’ she said. ‘We’ve spoken before. A long time ago, almost ten years now.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘I contacted you for a comment about Christer Lundgren’s trip to Tallinn the night Josefin Liljeberg was murdered. I told you what had happened to the lost archive. I told you the government was being blackmailed to conduct illegal weapons exports, and I asked you to pass on my questions to the Trade Minister. But you didn’t go to him; you went to the Prime Minister, didn’t you?’
Karina Bjornlund had turned white as Annika spoke, staring at her like she’d seen a ghost.
‘That was you?’ she said.
‘You used the information to get a cabinet post, didn’t you?’
The Minister of Culture gasped loudly, suddenly colouring again.
‘How dare you?’ she yelled. ‘I’ll sue you for this.’
‘I’ve only got one question,’ Annika said. ‘Why are you getting so upset?’
‘You come here and make terrible insinuations like that? Am I supposed to have called the Prime Minister in Harpsund and forced my way into a ministerial post?’
‘Oh,’ Annika said. ‘So you got hold of him out at Harpsund? How did he react? Was he angry? Or is he really as pragmatic and rational as people say?’
Karina Bjornlund fell silent, her eyes bulging.
A moment later the silence was shattered by Yngve’s empty bottle hitting the cement floor and splintering into a thousand pieces. The alcoholic slid, unconscious, down the wall and slumped on the floor.
Annika stopped focusing on the Minister of Culture and ran over to Yngve.
‘Hello!’ she shouted, slapping him lightly on the cheek with her glove. ‘Up you get!’
The man blinked. ‘What?’
She tugged open her coat, grabbed the man by the armpits and dragged him to his feet.
‘Hold on to me,’ she said, wrapping the polar jacket round him at the same time as she clasped her arms round his back. The man breathed warmly and damply against her neck, he was so skinny that she could almost fasten the coat behind his back.
‘Can you move your feet? We have to keep moving.’
‘You won’t get away with this,’ the Minister of Culture said, but Annika paid her no attention, putting all her effort into getting the drunk to shuffle across the floor in a macabre and ice-cold dance.
‘Which one are you?’ Annika said quietly to Yngve. ‘Lion or Tiger?’
‘The Lion of Freedom,’ the man said through chattering teeth.
‘So where’s the Tiger?’
‘Don’t know,’ the drunk muttered, almost asleep.
‘He had the sense not to come,’ Karina said. ‘He always was the smartest one of us.’
Suddenly, over by the wall, Goran Nilsson moved, trying to get up, kicking with his good leg, his eyes staring as he tried to take his jacket off.
‘
‘Put your coat back on,’ Annika said, trying to go over to him, but the alcoholic had his arms round her and wouldn’t let go.
‘Listen to me, Goran, put your coat on.’
But the man slumped beneath the poster of Mao, his legs jerked spasmodically before settling, and he fell asleep. His chest was fluttering lightly under his ivory-coloured linen shirt.
‘You’ve got to help him,’ Annika said to Karina. ‘At least put his coat back on.’
The woman shook her head, and at that moment the candle went out.
‘Light it again,’ Annika said, hearing the fear in her voice.
‘It’s burned out,’ Karina said. ‘There’s no wick left.’
