The Bomber

'I love you,' he said. 'The Christmas ham is in the oven. Take it out when it reaches 167 degrees.'

Annika's eyes opened wide.

'You found the cooking thermometer!' she exclaimed. 'Where was it?'

'In the bathroom, next to the family thermometer. I took Ellen's temperature when we came home, and there it was. I think Kalle put it there. Logical, really. He denies putting it there, of course.'

Annika pulled Thomas close and kissed him with her mouth wide open.

'I love you, too,' she said.

HAPPINESS

Far up in the forest, beyond the barn and the bogs, lay the lake, Langtjarn. In my earliest childhood, it came to represent the edge of the world for me, presumably because the grown-ups' land ended there. I often heard it used as a symbolic terminal point, and I pictured the lake as a bottomless pit of darkness and fear.

On the day when at last I had been given permission to go there on my own, all such thoughts vanished. Langtjarn was an absolutely wonderful place. The little lake lay wedged in the virgin forest, barely a mile long and a few hundred yards wide, with glittering water and beaches covered in pine needles. It felt like the innocence of dawn; this was what the world must have looked like before the arrival of humans.

Once there must have been fish in the lake. A small, dilapidated log cabin stood next to the stream. It had been used as a fishing and hunting cabin and was surprisingly ambitious in its construction. There was only the one room, but it had an open fire on the far end, planed floorboards, and a little window facing the lake. The furnishing was sparse: two bunks fixed to the wall, two rough-hewn stools, and a small table.

Thinking back, my happiest moments in life have been spent in that little cabin. Every now and again, I've returned to the peace and tranquillity of the lake; its shimmering surface changing with the seasons. I have lit a fire in the fireplace and looked out over the surface, filled with a sense of absolute harmony. It now shows traces of the ravagings of people: The wood surrounding the road leading to the lake has been felled, but they've spared the trees lining it.

It's possible these words may be seen as provocative and, as such, be interpreted as ingratitude or nonchalance, but nothing could be further off the mark. I'm highly satisfied with the success I've had, but this should not be confused with happiness. Society's fixation with success and hedonism is the opposite of true happiness. We have all become addicts of happiness; constantly striving for more, higher and farther, will never make us satisfied with our lives.

In reality, success and prosperity are far less interesting than failure and destitution. Real success creates a feeling whose exultation borders on the erotic. But it's a banal trip to the stars. A proper failure has considerably more nuance and depth. Prosperity breeds, at best, tolerance and generosity but more often envy and indifference.

The secret of happiness in life is to be satisfied with what one has, to stop climbing and find one's inner peace.

Sadly, I've rarely done so myself. Except in the cabin by the lake.

TUESDAY 21 DECEMBER

The smell of newly baked glazed ham was still in the air when Annika woke up- one of the few blessings of having a busted extractor fan in the kitchen. She loved the taste of newly baked ham, but really hot- just out of the oven, the juices still trickling. She took a deep breath and threw the duvet aside. Ellen moved in her sleep next to her. Annika kissed the girl's forehead and caressed her plump little legs. Today she had to see to it that she left for work in time, so she'd be able to finish everything off before she had to pick the kids up at three.

She got in the shower and emptied her bladder straight into the floor drain. The pungent smell rose with the steam and hit her straight in the face, making her instinctively turn her head away. She washed her head with dandruff shampoo and swore when she realized they were out of conditioner. Now her hair would look like wood shavings until she washed it again.

She got out of the shower, dried herself and the floor where the water had seeped out, applied a good amount of antiperspirant under her arms, and smeared her cheeks with moisturizer. The rash wasn't quite gone, so she put some cortisone cream on as a precaution. A little mascara and a daub of eye shadow and she was good to go.

Annika tiptoed into the bedroom and opened the door to the walk-in wardrobe. The squeak made Thomas turn in his sleep. He had been up reading his report until long after she'd gone to bed. The main report on the regional question, which was Thomas's responsibility, was supposed to be ready in January. His staff still hadn't produced the interim reports it would be based on, so the pressure on Thomas was mounting. She knew that he suffered from stress just as much as she did, only his deadlines were further away than hers.

She felt a bit Christmassy and put on a red stretch top, red jacket, and black trousers. She finished just in time to catch Rapport's first news of the day at six thirty.

The footage from Satra Hall wasn't very dramatic. The TV crew hadn't been allowed inside the cordons; they only had pictures of the usual blue-and-white tape flapping in the night wind. The voice-over announced that the explosion had occurred inside one of the changing rooms in the old part of the building. The fire brigade had found the remains of a man there.

There was a dispute between the police and firefighters' unions as to who should handle the remains of bodies they came across in their work. The fire department refused, saying it was not their responsibility; the police said the same. Rapport spent a large chunk of the program reporting on the standoff and announced they would return to the subject later on with a studio debate.

After that, a reporter walked around an empty arena somewhere in the suburbs, shouting 'Hello!' There was no reply, and the reporter considered this a scandalous state of affairs.

'How is the police handling the security?' was the predictable rhetorical question. The exhausted police press officer was interviewed, saying it was impossible to watch all parts of every facility all the time.

'So how will you manage during the Games?' the reporter asked insinuatingly.

The press officer sighed, and Annika knew that the police now were faced with exactly the debate they had wanted to avoid most of all. The discussion of Olympic security would naturally grow louder the longer it took for the Bomber to be apprehended. Samaranch appeared, telling the Reuters reporter the Games were not in jeopardy.

The transmission ended with an analysis of a meeting of the Bank of Sweden, Riksbanken, later in the day. What would happen to the interest rate? They wouldn't change it, guessed the reporter. So it will go up or down for sure, Annika mused. She switched off the TV and went to get the morning paper from inside the front door. There was no mention of the victim's name; one reporter had been walking around shouting, 'Hello!' in some other arena in some other suburb; Samaranch and the police press officer said the same things they had said on TV a second ago. None of the papers had time to get together any plans showing where the bomb had detonated; she wouldn't get that info until she reached the office and could get her hands on the evening papers.

Annika ate some strawberry yogurt and corn flakes, blow-dried her hair straight, and put on lots of warm clothes. The weather had changed during the night; it was snowing and a hard wind was blowing. Her original plan had been to catch the 55 bus to the paper, but she quickly revised it when the first squall hit her face, smearing her mascara. She quickly jumped into a taxi. The seven o'clock Eko started just as she landed on the backseat. Even the lofty Eko desk had been out 'helloing' during the night; the police press officer sounded tired and strained; Samaranch was getting repetitive. She turned a deaf ear and stared out at the houses they passed along Norr Malarstrand, one of the most high-priced