'Can I come with you?' Schyman quickly asked.
The policeman wavered only briefly. 'I don't see why not,' he said.
Schyman hurried back to the newsroom.
'The police are tracing the call, so you can hang up now,' he called out, putting his coat on.
'Do you think it'll do any harm if we keep listening?' asked Berit, who was now sitting with the phone against her ear.
'I don't know. I'll call if that's the case. Don't anyone leave. I need you all to stay right here.'
He took the stairs down to the entrance and noticed his legs were shaking from weariness. It wouldn't be a good idea to drive now, he thought, and ran over to the taxi stand.
It was still dark outside and the road out to Kista was deserted. They drove fast and met only a few other cars along the way, the taxi driver saluting those from his own firm with his left hand. They reached Borgarfjordsgatan, and while Schyman was paying the taxi with his company card, a car drove up next to them and stopped. A man got out and came over to Schyman. He asked Schyman who he was and introduced himself as a police officer.
'If we're lucky we might be able to track her down this way,' the policeman said.
His face was white with exhaustion and there was a rigid line round his mouth. Suddenly Anders Schyman thought he knew who this man must be.
'Do you know Annika?' the editor asked.
The policeman drew a deep breath and looked askance at Schyman.
'Sort of,' he said.
At that moment, a sleepy security guard appeared and let them into the building housing the head offices of both Comviq and Tele2. He led them through a series of long passages and corridors until they eventually stepped into a room filled by enormous TV screens. Anders Schyman gave a whistle.
'Looks like in an American spy movie, doesn't it?' a man approaching them said.
The editor nodded and said hello to the man. 'Or the control room at a nuclear power station,' Schyman said.
'I'm a systems technician here. Welcome. Please come this way,' the man said and showed them to the center of the room.
Anders Schyman slowly followed the cop and the technician. The room was packed with computers; projectors made the walls serve as gigantic computer screens.
'From here we control the entire Comviq network,' the technician began. 'There are two of us working the night shift. The search you want to do is a very simple one. I only had to execute one single command from my terminal and the search is underway.'
He indicated his workstation. Anders Schyman had no idea what he was looking at.
'It'll take up to fifteen minutes, even though I limited the search to start at 5 A.M. It's been going about ten minutes now. Let's have a look and see if we've got anything…'
He turned to a computer and clicked on the keyboard.
'Nope, nothing yet,' he said.
'Fifteen minutes, isn't that very long?' Anders Schyman said, noticing how dry his mouth was.
The technician regarded him steadily. 'Fifteen minutes is quick. It's Christmas Eve morning, and there's very little traffic right now. That's why I think the search will be fast.'
As he said that, a row of data appeared on the screen. He turned his back to Schyman and the cop and sat on his chair. He clattered away on his keyboard for a couple of minutes, then gave a sigh. 'I can't find it. Are you sure the call came from her cellphone?'
Schyman's pulse quickened. They couldn't screw it up. He felt confusion mount within him. Did these people even know what had happened? Did they know how important it was?
'Our night editor would know her number in his sleep. They were still sitting around listening to the static from her phone when I left the newspaper,' he said and licked his lips.
'Ah, that explains it,' the technician said and executed another command. The data disappeared from the screen and it went black.
'All we can do now is wait,' he said and turned to face Schyman and the policeman again.
'What do you mean?' Schyman queried, hearing himself sound upset.
'If the call is still going on, we haven't received any information yet. The data is stored internally in the phone for thirty minutes,' he said and got up from the chair. 'After thirty minutes, the telephone creates a bill, which it then sends here to us. Among that data, we can find A numbers and B numbers, base station and cell.'
Anders Schyman looked at the flickering screens and felt ever more confused. Exhaustion was pounding his brain; he felt he was in the middle of a surreal nightmare.
'Please explain that,' the cop asked.
'According to your information, the call from Annika Bengtzon reached the newsdesk of
'I don't understand,' Schyman said. 'How can you tell where she is from her cellphone?'
'This is how it works,' the technician said obligingly. 'Cellphones work just like radio transmitters and receivers. The signals are transmitted via a number of base stations, that is telephone masts, up and down the country. Each base station has various cells that pick up signals from different places in different directions. All cellphones that are switched on connect with the exchange every four hours. We ran the first search on Annika Bengtzon's telephone number already last night.'
'You did?' Schyman said with surprise. 'Can you do that on anyone, just like that?'
'Of course not,' the technician replied calmly. 'Any kind of search like this one has to be authorized by a court order.'
He walked over to another screen and typed something on the keyboard. Then he went to a printer and waited for the printout.
'Anyway, the last call from Annika's phone, apart from the ongoing one, was connected at 13:09 yesterday afternoon,' he said, studying the sheet. 'It was for the daycare center on 38B Scheelegatan in Kungsholmen.'
He put the computer printout on his lap. 'The signal from Annika's cellphone has been connected via a station in Nacka.'
The plain-clothes policeman took over: 'The call has been confirmed by the manager of the daycare center. Annika didn't sound strange or at all pressured. She was relieved when she heard they were open until five o'clock. This means she was still moving around freely at 1 P.M., and she was somewhere east of Danvikstull.'
The technician went back to reading the printout. 'The next signal from her phone went through at 17:09. As I said before, a phone that is switched on connects with the provider's exchange every four hours.'
Schyman barely had the energy to listen to the technician. He sank down on an empty swivel chair and rubbed his fingers against his temples.
'There's an internal clock in every telephone that begins the countdown every time it's switched on,' the technician continued. 'After four hours, the countdown is complete. Then a signal is transmitted that tells the system where the phone is located. Since the signals have been coming through during the night, Annika must have had her cellphone switched on. As far as we can see, she hasn't moved during the night.'
Schyman felt his body tense. 'So you know where she is?' he said in a strained voice.
'We know that her phone is somewhere near Stockholm city center,' the technician said. 'We can only see which area it is, and that means the central city districts and the nearby suburbs.'
'So she could be somewhere nearby?'
'Yes, her cellphone has not been moved outside of this area during the night.'
'Is that why you told us not to phone her?'
The policeman stepped forward. 'Yes, and for other reasons. If someone is with her and hears the phone ring, they might switch it off, and then we couldn't tell if she were moved.'
'If she is in the same place as the cellphone…' Schyman pointed out.
'Hasn't it been fifteen minutes yet?' the policeman asked.
'Not quite,' the technician replied.
