in small, careful sips.
'One should really drink Diet Coke, for the calories, but I can't stand the taste. What do you think?' she asked Annika.
Annika swallowed. 'You're absolutely right,' she said.
Beata smiled a bit.
'My decision helped me survive the evening because the nightmare wasn't over. Do you know who she chose for her Prince, her partner at table? Of course you know that, you had a picture of them together. All of a sudden everything fell into place. I knew what the purpose of my cold treasures at home was. It was all revealed to me. The big box was meant for Christina, the smaller cartridges for those who walked in her footsteps.
'My plan was simple. I would follow Christina around. Sometimes I got it into my head that she knew I was there. She would look around anxiously before she hurried into her big car, always with the laptop under her arm. I used to wonder what she wrote on it, if she wrote anything about me or maybe about Helena Starke. I knew she often went to Helena Starke's house. I would wait outside and see her leave early in the morning. I understood they were lovers. I knew it would be fatal for Christina if this got out. That made it simple, at least theoretically. Certain things get very messy when you put them into practice, don't you think?
'Anyway, last Friday night when I saw Christina and Helena leave the Secretariat's Christmas party, I knew the time had come. I went home and picked up my big treasure. It was heavy, and I put it next to me on the front seat. On the floor in the front was a car battery that I'd bought at a gas station in Vastberga. The timer I got from IKEA. People use them in their holiday cottages to fool burglars.
'I parked over where your car is now. The bag was heavy, but I'm stronger than I look. I was a bit nervous. I didn't know how much time I had, and I had to finish the preparations before Christina left Helena's house. Luckily, it all went quite quickly. I carried the bag up to the entrance around the back, switched off the alarms, and unlocked the doors. I nearly got into trouble there; a man saw me enter- he was on his way to that horrible club. If I'd still been the project manager, I'd never have allowed such an establishment right next to the stadium.
'That night, the arena was absolutely stunning. It shone at me in the moonlight. I put the box on the North Stand. The lettering gleamed all white in the dark: 'Minex 50 x 550, 24kg, 15 p.c.s. 1,600g.' I put the masking tape next to the box. It would be so easy to prime the charge, all I had to do was put the metal piece into one of the sausages and pull the fuse over toward the main entrance. There I put the battery and set the timer in the way I'd practiced. Where did I practice? In a gravel pit outside Rimbo, in the Loharad parish. The bus only runs twice a day, but I've had plenty of time to wait. I've only set off small charges, one peppermint rock at a time; they'll last me a long time yet.
'When I'd finished my preparations, I went and unlocked the main entrance, but I left the building via this passage. The entrance here from the stadium is at the bottom of the basement, deep under the main entrance. You can go down with the main elevator, but I used the stairs. Then I walked quickly over to Ringvagen; I was afraid I'd be too late. But I wasn't, on the contrary. I had to wait for a long time in a doorway on the other side of the street. When Christina stepped out, I dialed her number from my cellphone. They can't trace me, because I used a pay-as-you-go card. They couldn't trace the call to your car yesterday either; I still had time left on the card.
'It was easy to persuade Christina to come to the stadium. I told her I knew everything about her and Helena, that I had photographs of it all, and that I'd give the negatives to Hans Bjallra, the chairman of the board, if she didn't come and talk to me. Bjallra hates Christina. Everyone at the Secretariat knows that. He would pounce on the first opportunity to humiliate her. So, Christina came, but she must have been in two minds about it. She came walking across the footbridge from South Island, fuming. It took her quite a while. For a while I thought she wasn't going to show up.
'I was waiting inside the entryway, hiding among the shadows behind the statues. My blood was boiling. The whole building was exulting. My stadium was behind me; it would stand by me. I wanted to do this properly. Christina was going to die in the place where she had broken me. She was going to be torn to pieces on the Victoria Stadium North Stand because I had been. When she entered, I was going to hit her on the head with a hammer, the builder's classic tool. Then I'd move her to the stand, prime the charge, and with my snakes of pink plastic coiled around her body, I would tell her why she was here. I was going to reveal to her that I'd seen her monster. My superiority would shine like a star in the night. Christina would ask my forgiveness, and the explosion would be the consummation of our relationship.'
Beata paused for a moment to drink some Coke. Annika felt like she was about to faint.
'Unfortunately, that's not how it happened,' Beata said quietly. 'But the truth has to be told. I'm not trying to be a hero. I know that there'll be people who'll think I've done wrong. That's why it's important not to lie. You have to write it as it really was. Not glamorize it.'
Annika nodded sincerely.
'Everything went wrong. Hitting Christina with a hammer didn't knock her out; it only made her mad as hell. She started screaming like a madwoman that I was an incompetent lunatic and that I should leave her alone. I kept hitting her with my hammer. One blow hit her on the mouth and some of her teeth flew out. She screamed and screamed, and I hit and hit. The hammer was dancing on her face. There's a lot of blood in a person's eyes. I didn't know that. In the end she fell down, and it wasn't a pretty sight. She went on screaming, and to make sure she wouldn't get up again, I smashed her kneecaps in. I didn't enjoy it. It was hard work and difficult to do. You understand that, don't you? She wouldn't stop screaming, so I hit her on the throat. When I tried dragging her up to the stand, she scratched my hands. I had to hit her on the elbows and the fingers, too. Then I started the long climb up on the stand, up to the place where she'd stood that day she crushed me. I started sweating. She was quite heavy, and she wouldn't stop moaning. By the time I reached my treasure, my arms were shaking. I put her between the seats and started tying the explosives to her with the masking tape.
'But Christina didn't understand it was time to give up. Her role was to be the audience. She squirmed like the worm she was, and got out on the steps next to her. She started rolling down the stands, screaming all the while. I started losing control of my work; it was terrible. I went and got hold of her and hit her on the back a few times. I don't know if I broke it. In the end, she was lying still enough for me to tie the sausages on her. Fifteen in all. There was no time for forgiveness or reflection. I just pushed the metal piece into one of the sausages and ran over to the battery. The timer was set for five minutes, but I turned it down to three. Christina was still whimpering; she didn't sound human. She sounded like the monster she was. I stood at the entrance, listening to her song of death. When only thirty seconds remained, she managed to get two of the charges loose, despite her smashed-up limbs. That shows her strength, don't you think? Unfortunately, I couldn't stay to the end. I missed her last seconds because I had to take cover in my cave. I was halfway down the stairs when the shockwave hit me. I was amazed. I think I'd underestimated the power of the explosive. The damage was enormous. The whole North Stand was destroyed. That wasn't my intention, you understand that, don't you? I didn't want to damage the stadium. What had happened was none of the building's doing…'
Annika felt her tears rolling. She had never written anything so appalling in her life. She was close to passing out. She'd been sitting on the stool for several hours. Her legs ached so badly she wanted to scream out. The charge on her back was heavy. She was so tired she just wanted to lie down, even if it meant setting off the charge and dying.
'Why are you crying?' Beata said suspiciously.
Annika breathed for a second before she replied: 'Because it got so difficult for you. Why couldn't she have let you do it the right way?'
Beata nodded and also wiped away a tear. 'I know,' she said. 'Life's never fair.'
'It was easier with Stefan. That went more or less according to my plans. I made him responsible for finishing off the judges' changing rooms before the Christmas holidays. The choice of location was simple. That's where I first met Stefan and where he told me that the workers in Satra Hall would all freeze me out. I knew he would do the work himself. Stefan played the horses and took every opportunity to put in some overtime. He saw to it that he was the only one left at the site, and then he bumped up his hours on his time sheet. This must have been going on for years. No one ever checked up on him since he was a foreman. Besides, he was a fast worker when he wanted to be and pretty sloppy, too.
'Last Monday, I went to work as usual. Everyone was talking about the blowing up of Christina Furhage, but no one said anything to me. I hadn't expected them to either.
'In the evening, I stayed on in the office with my papers. When the hall was quiet, I took a stroll and saw that
