his parents had invited them to celebrate Midsummer at their summer house. There had been a murder somewhere and naturally she was going to abandon all plans and take off.
'I'm not doing it just because I enjoy it,' she had said. 'I
'You never think of the children,' he'd fumed, and then she'd gone all cold and stand-offish.
'That's completely unfair,' she'd said. 'This will give me a whole week's extra holiday to be with them. They won't miss me for a second out on the island; there'll be loads of people there. You'll be there, gran and grandad, and all their cousins…'
'You're so damn selfish,' he'd said to her.
She had been absolutely calm when she'd replied:
'No, it's you who are selfish. You want me to be there to show your parents what a nice family you have and to prove I'm not always working. I know your mother thinks I do. And she believes the children spend far too much time at the daycare center. Don't contradict me. I've heard her say it myself.'
'Your work always comes before your family,' he'd blurted out, intending to hurt her.
She had given him a disgusted look, and then said:
'Who stayed at home for two years with the kids? Who stays at home when they're ill? Who drops them at the daycare center every day, and who picks them up most of the time?'
She'd walked right up to face him.
'Yes, Thomas, you're absolutely right. I
Then she'd turned on her heel and walked out the door taking not so much as a toothbrush with her.
The Midsummer weekend had of course been ruined. For him, not the kids. They didn't miss Annika for a second, just as she'd predicted. Instead they were overjoyed when they returned home and found Mommy waiting at home with freshly baked buns and presents. In retrospect, he had to admit she was right. She didn't often put her work before her family, only sometimes, just like he did. But that hadn't stopped him from being furious. And the past two months everything had revolved around the paper. Being a manager wasn't good for her: The others tore into her and she just wasn't prepared for it.
He'd seen another sign of her not feeling well: She wasn't eating. Once, covering a mass murder, she was away for eight days and came back having lost ten pounds. It took her five months to put them back on. The company doctor had warned her about the risks associated with being underweight. She took it as praise and proudly told all her friends on the phone. All the same, she still got it in her head to go on a diet now and then.
He turned off Fleminggatan and took the steps down past the restaurant Klara Sjo, along the canal, approaching the daycare center the back way. The children were waiting inside the door, dressed and ready to go. They were tired and hollow-eyed; Ellen was holding her blue teddy in her arms.
'Mommy's picking us up today,' Kalle said dismissively. 'Where's Mommy?'
The nursery teacher who had stayed behind with the children was really annoyed.
'I'll never be able to get compensation for these fifteen minutes.'
'I'm incredibly sorry,' Thomas said, noticing how out of breath he was. 'I don't understand where Annika's disappeared to.'
He hurried away with the kids, and after a quick run, they managed to get on the 40 bus outside the lunch restaurant Pousette a Vis.
'You shouldn't run for the bus,' the driver said irritably. 'How are we going to teach children that if their parents do it?'
Thomas almost punched the idiot in the mouth. He held up his travel pass and shoved the kids toward the back of the bus. Ellen fell over and started to cry. I'm losing my mind, Thomas thought to himself. They had to stand up, jostling with Christmas shoppers, dogs, and strollers. Then they nearly didn't get off at their stop. He groaned out loud when he pushed the street door open, and as he was stamping the snow off his shoes, he heard someone speak his name.
He looked up in surprise and saw two uniformed police officers walk toward him.
'You must be Thomas Samuelsson. I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you and the children to come with us.'
Thomas stared at them.
'We've been trying to get hold of you all afternoon. Haven't any of our messages reached you? Or any from the paper?'
'Where are we going, Daddy?' Kalle asked and took Thomas's hand. All at once Thomas realized something was terribly wrong. Annika! Christ!
'Annika. What's happened? Is she…?'
'We don't know where your wife is. She disappeared this morning. The officers in charge of the investigation will tell you more. If you'd be so kind as to come with us…'
'Why?'
'Your apartment may be booby-trapped.'
Thomas bent down and picked up both the children, one on each arm.
'Let's get away from here,' he said in a stifled voice.
The Six Session at the paper was the most tense in many years. Anders Schyman felt panic lurking just beneath the surface. His instinct told him they shouldn't be publishing a paper; they should be out looking for Annika, giving support to her family, hunting for the Bomber- anything.
'We're going to sell one hell of a lot of papers,' Ingvar Johansson said as he entered the room. He didn't sound smug or triumphant; it was more a sad statement of fact. But Anders Schyman went through the roof.
'How dare you?' the editor-in-chief shouted and grabbed Ingvar Johansson so violently that the news editor dropped his mug, spilling hot coffee down his leg. Ingvar Johansson didn't even feel the burn, he was so shocked. He had never seen Anders Schyman lose his cool like this. The editor-in-chief breathed in the other man's face for a few moments, then got a grip on himself.
'I'm sorry,' he said, let go of the man, and turned away. 'I'm not quite myself. I'm sorry.'
Jansson enterered the room last, as always, but without his usual cheerful remarks. The night editor was pale and subdued. This was going to be the hardest paper he'd put together his whole career, he knew that.
'Okay,' Schyman began, looking at the handful of men around the table: Picture Pelle, Jansson, and Ingvar Johansson. The soft-news and sports people had all gone home. 'How do we do this?'
For a few seconds, a tense silence filled the room. Everyone sat with his head bent down. The chair Annika normally occupied seemed to grow until it occupied the entire room. Anders Schyman turned to face the night outside the window.
Ingvar Johansson broke the silence and began talking, quietly and focused. 'I suppose what we have so far must be called embryonic. There are several editorial decisions involved in this…'
Unsure of himself, he leafed through his papers. The situation felt both absurd and unreal. It was rare that the people in this room were personally affected by the business they were dealing with. Now the discussion was about one of them. And he'd just been half-strangled by the editor-in-chief. As Ingvar Johansson started going through the items on his list and giving an account of what he'd done up to that point, they did at least find a sort of strength in their routine. They couldn't get away from it; the best they could do was to go on with their work as well as they were able.
So this is what it's like to be the colleague of a victim, Anders Schyman mused and stared out the window. It might be a good idea to remember this feeling.
'First, there's the bomb at the Klara sorting office,' Ingvar Johansson said. 'We need one story about the victims. The man who was most badly injured died an hour ago. The others are in stable condition. The authorities will be releasing their names during the night, and we're counting on getting passport photos of them. Then there's the damage to the building…'
'Leave the families alone,' Schyman said.
