Red Wolf

There was something dark and unfathomable in there, shadows of desire and ambition and social conscience that had been shaped and misshaped by time and experience. When thoughts and problems were poured into the editor-in-chief’s head, they didn’t run smoothly in straight lines. They jolted and twisted along the tracks carved by previous experiences, but their path was still logical.

Anders Schyman was a pragmatist. He would do whatever was required for him and his pet project to escape as unscathed as possible.

She suddenly had to smile.

‘So what would happen if we ran the piece?’ he said quietly, doubt rising behind his larynx.

She felt her eyes calm down.

‘The Evening Post reinforces its position as the last outpost of freedom of expression,’ she said, ‘stifling any doubts about what we stand for these days. We alone stand for truth and democracy. Without us the barbarians would run amok.’

‘Thin,’ he said.

‘Depends entirely on how we present it,’ Annika replied. ‘People will believe us if we believe it.’

He sat up, reached for a bottle of mineral water, drank some, and looked at her under his brow.

‘You’re bluffing,’ he said, once he had put the bottle down. ‘You’d never do this to the paper.’

Annika thought for a moment.

‘Not before,’ she said, ‘but I won’t hesitate now.’

‘You’ve gone mad,’ Schyman said.

She sat down on the desk, rested her elbows on her knees, put her hands together and leaned forward.

‘Do you know,’ she said quietly, ‘you might well be right; but only you and I know that. If you try to stop me publishing this because you think I’m mentally ill, you’ll make things even worse.’

He shook his head. ‘If I were to even contemplate publishing this, I’d be finished, utterly finished,’ he said, so quietly she could hardly hear him.

‘But don’t you see how wrong you are?’ Annika said. ‘If we get this right you can sit at that desk for ever, completely untouchable.’

He looked at her, the abyss dancing inside him, a battle of shadows.

‘Just think,’ she said, feeling her eyes narrow. ‘We tell it exactly how it is, the whole story, how we discovered that Karina Bjornlund was a member of a terrorist cell, how I told you, you told the chairman of the board, he sent an email to the minister and demanded an urgent meeting – I’ve got the register number of the email – how he exploited what we knew, you and me, to blackmail the minister into changing a government proposal in order to close down a television channel that posed a threat to the interests of our proprietors. But now we’re revealing the truth, in spite of the danger, you had the nerve to do it, you’re legally responsible for what we publish and you’re the chair of the Newspaper Publishers’ Association, and you took your responsibility, in spite of all the pressure.’

‘It won’t work,’ he said quietly.

She gave a thin smile. ‘Yes it will. And you know why? Because it’s true.’

‘It isn’t worth the risk,’ he said.

‘If this isn’t,’ she said, ‘then what is? What are we for? To provide a dividend on our proprietors’ shares, or to protect democracy?’

‘It’s not that simple,’ he said.

‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘It’s precisely that simple.’

She stood up, picking up her bag and hanging it on her shoulder.

‘I’m going now,’ she said.

‘But it was only a crap American commercial channel,’ he said.

‘That doesn’t make any difference,’ she said.

She saw the air go out of him as he slumped back.

‘Wait,’ he said, holding up one hand. ‘Don’t go yet. You’re not serious?’

She swayed a little.

‘Yes I am,’ she said.

Silence spread out around her, large and heavy and dark. She stood there, halfway to the door, and looked at him, saw the doubts and various alternatives coursing through him.

‘The owners would have the whole edition withdrawn,’ he said.

‘True,’ she said.

‘This mustn’t leak out,’ he said.

‘No, it mustn’t,’ she said.

‘So we can’t run it through the newsroom.’

She didn’t reply, allowing the dizzying conclusions to settle in his head.

‘All the work will have to be done in here,’ he went on. ‘That means you and me. Can you do layout?’

‘More or less.’

He shut his eyes, and covered them with his hands for a few seconds.

‘How many pages are we talking about?’

‘Four spreads,’ she said. ‘Plus the front and the leader.’

He sat silent, thinking, for an infinitely long minute before he spoke.

‘I’ll call the printers and tell them to shift half the news section.’

‘Extra pages?’

‘Two plates is enough,’ Schyman said, ‘eight pages.’

‘Is there anyone we can trust to keep quiet at the printers?’

‘Bob. He can set the plates. How quick are you with Quark?’

She dropped her bag on the floor.

‘Not very.’

She looked at his eyes. Concentration had drawn a veil of decisiveness and determination over them.

‘It’s going to be a long night,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she said.

A Word from the Author

I spent several years wondering how to set a novel in the northern Swedish region of Norrbotten. I wanted to show the unique isolation and majestic strangeness of the place. You really are on the roof of the world up there, and that was the feeling I wanted to convey. I was born there, in a small village called Palmark, between the tiny towns of Pitea and Alvsbyn. (Palmark actually isn’t even a village; just a dozen houses spread out along three kilometres of road leading to the thorp of Holmtrask.)

In many ways it turned out very well. Red Wolf was probably my best novel up to that point. It became an international success, and was actually the twelfth best-selling book worldwide when it was first published.

But there was one group of people who didn’t appreciate the book quite as much: the inhabitants of Norrbotten itself. They said I had portrayed the people there as provincial, the landscape as bare and tundralike, and they definitely didn’t agree with me describing the location as cold and dark.

I thought that was a perfectly understandable reaction. Someone was finally describing their corner of the world in a novel – a medium that could cross national boundaries – and the people of Norrbotten wanted a description taken from some tourist brochure: a nice, shiny picture of how great everything was. But here I was, telling things the way they really were.

The people of Norbotten came to the conclusion that I didn’t like them, so they were certainly not going to like me. To their great irritation, I had already been granted a plaque and an engraved portrait on the main street in the town of Pitea, and there was a lot of discussion about digging it up and getting rid of it; after all, in their eyes I had slandered my hometown. Eventually the fuss died down, though, and a year later I was awarded the finest