The Bomber

'Did Christina have any enemies within the Olympic organization?'

Helena Starke gave a sob.

'Who would that be?'

'That's what I'm asking you. You work at the Secretariat, don't you?'

'I was Christina's PA,' the woman said.

'Meaning you were her secretary?'

'No, she had three secretaries. I was her right hand, you could say. I think it's time for you to go now.'

Annika collected her stuff in silence. Before she left, she turned around and asked:

'Christina fired a young woman from the Secretariat for having an affair with one of her superiors. How did the rest of the personnel react to that?'

Helena Starke stared at her.

'I think you should go now.'

'This is my card. I'll leave it here. Call me if there's anything you want to add or correct,' Annika reeled off her usual spiel and put the card on a table in the hall. She saw a note with a telephone number by the phone on the table, and she quickly jotted it down. Helena Starke didn't follow her to the door. Annika quietly closed it behind her.

HUMANITY

I have always liked walking. I love the light and the wind, the stars and the sea. I have walked for so long that my body would eventually start walking by itself, barely touching the ground, dissolving into the elements around me and becoming an invisible, jubilant cheer. At other times, my legs would help me focus on life. Instead of dissolving into the environment, they would contract it into a single darkening point. I have walked along the streets, concentrating on my body, letting the thrust from the heels travel up through my limbs. With every step the question would echo: What am I? Where am I? What makes me be me?

In the days when the question was important to me, I was living in a town where the wind never stopped blowing. Wherever I walked, I had the wind against me. The gusting winds were so strong that I would sometimes be breathless. While the dampness crept into my bones, I would go over my flesh and my blood, bit by bit, trying to determine where my essence was situated. Not in my heels and not in the fingertips, neither in my knees, nor in my womb or stomach. My conclusion after these long walks can hardly be considered controversial. My essence of being is somewhere behind my eyes, above the neck but below the top of my head, diagonally above my mouth and ears. That is where the part that is really me sits. That is where I live. That is my home.

My house at the time was cramped and dark, but I remember it as being immense, impossible to fill or conquer. I was so busy trying to understand what I was. In bed at night I would close my eyes and try to feel whether I was a man or a woman. How should I know? My sex throbbed in a way that could not be put down to anything other than lust. Had I not known what it looked like, I couldn't have described it in any other way than as heavy, deep, and pulsating. Man or woman, white or black? My mind could not define me any closer than as human.

When I opened my eyes, they would be hit by the electromagnetic radiation that we call light. They would interpret colors in a way which I could never be certain I shared with other people. What I called red and experienced as warm and pulsating might be seen differently by others. We have learned and agreed on common names, but perhaps our perception is wholly individual.

We can never know.

MONDAY 20 DECEMBER

Thomas left the house before Annika and the children woke up. He had a lot of work to get off his hands before the holiday, and today he was doing the nursery run early. They would take turns doing it during the week, preferably collecting them already by three. Partly because the children were tired and weary but also to get the house ready for Christmas. Annika had hung up an electric Star of Bethlehem made of copper and put out the Christmas candelabra, but that was all. They hadn't started with the Christmas shopping, either for food or presents, nor had they marinated the gravlax, glazed the ham, or chosen a Christmas tree, not to mention cleaning the house- they were six months behind on that. Annika wanted to hire a Polish cleaning woman, the one Anne Snapphane used, but Thomas refused. He couldn't be a manager at the Association of Local Authorities and hire workers off the books. She understood that, but she still didn't clean herself.

He stepped out and braved the slush. The holidays were ill-timed this year: Christmas Eve fell on a Friday and the days up to New Year's Eve were all normal working days. He should be pleased, being on the employers' side. Nonetheless he sighed again, wholly on behalf of himself, as he crossed Hantverkargatan to catch the 48 bus from the stop on the other side of Kungsholm's Square. He felt a dull pain in his lower back as he lengthened his strides; he often did when he'd slept in a funny position. Kalle had still been in their bed this morning, lying diagonally with his feet against Thomas's back. Thomas turned his torso from side to side, like a boxer, to bring some life into his stiff muscles.

The bus took an age to arrive. Thomas was completely soaked and frozen by the time it pulled up in the slush. He hated taking the bus, but the alternatives were even worse. The subway was just around the corner, but it was the blue Hjulsta line, which was halfway down to hell. It took longer getting through the tunnels down to the actual trains than walking all the way to T-Centralen. Then you had to change trains after only one stop. After that, new tunnels, escalators and walkways, and elevators that always reeked of urine. After that, another train to Slussen, steamed-up carriages, and a hundred elbows from Metro-reading commuters. Going by car was out of the question. He had kept his Toyota in the city at first, but when the monthly parking tickets began exceeding the daycare fees, Annika had had a fit and he'd deregistered it. Now the car was rusting away under a tarpaulin at his parents' house in Vaxholm. He wanted to buy a house outside the city, but Annika refused point blank. She loved their exorbitantly expensive rented apartment.

The bus was chock-full of people, and he had to jostle with the strollers and baby buggies by the middle doors. But already by City Hall the bus was emptying out and by the next stop he found a seat, at the back on top of the wheels, but a seat nonetheless. He pulled up his legs and glanced furtively at the government department buildings at Rosenbad as the bus drove past. He couldn't help wondering what it would be like to work there. And why not- his career, rising from accountant with the social services in Vaxholm to middle manager at the Association of Local Authorities, had been positively meteoric for that profession. That he'd been helped along by Annika and her work was something he did not admit even to himself. If things continued at this pace, he might have a job in the parliament or one of the government departments before he turned forty.

The bus rumbled on past Stromsborg and the House of Nobility. He felt impatient and restless but didn't want to admit that it was because of Annika. He had barely exchanged a word with her over the weekend. Last night he had thought she was on her way home when she didn't answer the phone at the paper. He had made toasted sandwiches and tea for her return. It took her several hours. He had finished his toast, the tea had a film on it, and he had read both Time magazine and Newsweek from cover to cover before he heard her keys in the door. When at last she tumbled through the double doors, she had had the phone earpiece in her ear and was talking to someone at the paper.

'Hello there, you've worked late,' he said as he walked toward her.

'I'll call you back on another phone,' she said, switched off the phone, and walked past him with a pat on the cheek. She'd walked straight over to her desk, let her coat drop in a heap by her feet, and called the paper again. She had been talking about some taxi journey that had to be checked with the police, and he had felt his irritation grow to the size of a nuclear bomb. When she'd hung up, she'd just stood there, holding on to the desk as if dizzy.

'I'm sorry I'm so late,' she'd said quietly, without looking up. 'I had to go to South Island for an interview on