Annika swallowed, lowering the article to her lap.
‘I thought we might finally be getting to the bottom of this whole business,’ she said, trying to smile at the press officer.
He smiled back with intense blue eyes, and she leaned forward.
‘It’s more than thirty years ago, now, though. Can’t you at least say what caused the explosion?’
Silence spread, but she had nothing against that: the pressure was on him, not her. Unfortunately Captain Pettersson seemed completely unconcerned that she had travelled a thousand kilometres for nothing. She was obliged to drop the subject.
‘Why did you come to the conclusion that the Russians were behind it?’
‘A process of elimination,’ he said, leaning back in his chair and tapping his pen against the mug. ‘The local groups were soon written off, and the security police know that there were no external activists here at the time, neither right nor left wing.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
For the first time the officer was completely serious, his pen silent.
‘Local groups were put under immense pressure after the attack. A whole lot of information came out: we know, for instance, exactly who was running around with those matches, but no one said a word about the attack. We concluded that no one knew anything. If they had, we would have found out.’
‘Did you or the police conduct the interviews?’
He was smiling faintly again.
‘Let’s just say that we helped each other.’
Annika turned the facts over in her mind, staring at her notes without seeing them.
‘But,’ she said, ‘the degree of silence in any group is dependent on how fundamentalist they are, isn’t it? How can you be sure that there wasn’t a cast-iron core of fully-fledged terrorists that you never caught sight of, because they simply didn’t want to be seen?’
The man was silent for slightly too long, then he laughed. ‘Where?’ he said, standing up. ‘Here in Lulea? In the middle of nowhere? It was the Russians, it must have been.’
‘So why content themselves with one Draken?’ Annika asked, gathering her things. ‘Why not blow up the whole base?’
Captain Pettersson shook his head and sighed. ‘To show us that they could, probably; to knock us off balance. We all wish we had the ability to see into their minds, to understand their reasoning. Why did they send Polish art dealers to visit all our officers? Why beach that submarine, U137, on the rocks outside Karlskrona? I’m sorry, but I have to give a presentation in a few minutes.’
Annika zipped up her bag and stood up, pulling on her coat.
‘Well, thank you,’ she said. ‘And thanks for the offer of the museum tour, but I’m not sure I’ll have time tomorrow. I’ve still got a few things to do and I’m flying home after lunch.’
‘Try to find the time,’ the press officer said, shaking her hand. ‘Gustaf’s got it in pretty good shape.’
She looked down at the floor, muttering under her breath.
In restless disappointment she put her foot down on the accelerator. The car started to skid and she eased up, horrified.
At that moment her mobile rang, number withheld. She knew it was Spike before she even answered it.
‘Have you caught the men behind the attack then?’ he asked smoothly.
She braked cautiously and indicated right, adjusting the earpiece better.
‘The journalist I was supposed to meet is dead,’ she said. ‘Run down the day before yesterday in a hit-and- run.’
‘Ouch,’ Spike said. ‘There was a thing on one of the agencies about something like that this morning, credited to some rag up there. Was that him?’
She waited for a timber-truck to pass, making her Ford shake as it sped by. Her grip on the wheel stiffened.
‘Might have been,’ she said. ‘The staff on his paper were told yesterday, so it would be odd if it didn’t make their own paper.’
Cautiously she pulled out onto the main road.
‘Have they found the driver?’
‘Not as far as I know,’ she said, then heard herself say: ‘I was thinking of looking into his death a bit today.’
‘Why?’ Spike said. ‘He was probably just driving home drunk.’
‘Maybe,’ Annika said. ‘But he was in the middle of a big story, had some seriously controversial stuff in the paper on Friday.’
Spike sighed loudly. ‘Well, make sure it checks out, that’s all,’ he said, and hung up.
Annika parked outside the entrance to the hotel, went up to her room and sank onto the bed. The maid had been in and made the bed, eradicating the traces of her awful night. She had slept badly, woken up in a cold sweat and with a headache. The angels had been singing to her in a chorus of rising and falling notes almost all night long: they were much more persistent when she was away from home.
She plumped up the pillow behind her head, reached for the telephone on the bedside table and put it on her stomach, then she called her husband on his direct line at the Association of Local Authorities.
‘Thomas is at lunch,’ his secretary said sullenly.
She crept under the covers and closed her eyes as the angels’ song filled her head.
She let herself be swept away by the words.
7
She woke with a start, unsure where she was for a moment. Putting her hand to her chin she discovered that it was wet, as was her neck, and realized with disgust that it was her own saliva. Her clothes were sticking unpleasantly to her body, and there was a nasty whistling sound in her left ear. She got unsteadily to her feet and went to the bathroom.
When she came back into the room she realized that it was almost completely dark. In a panic, she stared at her watch, but it was only quarter past three. She wiped her neck with a towel, checked that she had what she needed in her bag and left the room.
She picked up a map of Lulea from reception, only to find that Svartostaden wasn’t on there, but the receptionist enthusiastically added the route that would take her there.
‘So you’re working on a story,’ the young woman said excitedly.
Annika, already on her way to the door, stopped and looked at her, confused.
‘Ah,’ the receptionist explained with a blush, ‘I saw that the invoice was going to the
Annika took a few steps backwards, hitting her heel against the door. A moment later she was out in the wind. No parking ticket. She got into the freezing car and pulled out onto Sodra Varvsleden. The steering wheel was ice-cold, and as she fumbled for her gloves in the bag she came close to hitting a fat woman pushing a pram. Turning the noisy ventilator on full, her heart thumping, she drove towards Malmudden.
At a red light on a viaduct over some railway tracks she checked the map again: she was already at the bottom-right corner. A couple of minutes later she was at the roundabout and from now on she would have to rely on road-signs. She glanced up: Skurholmen left, Hertson straight on, Svartostaden right. She caught sight of another sign – Frasse’s Hamburgers – and felt her blood-sugar plummet. When the lights turned green she swung off the road, parked by the petrol station and went in. She bought a cheeseburger with onions and ate it ravenously, taking in her surroundings: the smell of frying, the painted fibreglass walls, the plastic rubber plant in the corner, the
