Red Wolf_ A Novel Part 46

Karina Bjornlund stopped right next to her and whispered so low that no one else could hear. 'I'm going to say everything myself,' she said. 'You can forget all about your exclusive.'

And then the minister went out to the floodlights and police cars and ambulances.

48.

Inspector Forsberg had a cramped, messy office on the second floor of the yellow-brown monstrosity that was the police station. Annika was dozing off on one of the chairs, but gave a start and sat up straight when the door flew open.

'Sorry you've had to wait. No milk or sugar,' the police officer said, putting a steaming-hot plastic cup in front of her on the desk, then went round and sat on his swivel-chair.

Annika picked up the cup, burning her hands and blowing on the drink. She took a cautious sip. Machine coffee, the worst sort.

'Is this an interrogation?' she asked, putting the cup down.

Forsberg looked through a drawer without answering.

'Witness questioning, I suppose we should call it. Where the h.e.l.l have I put it? There it is!'

He pulled out a little tape-recorder and a mess of cables, straightened up, looked Annika in the eye and smiled.

'You're not too frozen, then?' His gaze held hers.

She looked away.

'Oh, I am,' she said. 'But I learned to dress properly the hard way. How are the others?'

'Ragnwald is dead, like you thought. Yngve Gustafsson is in intensive care, his body temperature was down to twenty-eight degrees. He'll make it though. Did you know he was the father of Linus, the boy who was killed?'

Annika looked up at the police officer, a lump in her throat, and shook her head.

'And Karina Bjornlund?' she said.

'She's having her face patched up, and she's got frostbite in her feet. So what happened?'

He leaned forward and switched on the tape-recorder.

'Okay,' she said, 'do you want the full story?'

He looked at her thoughtfully for a few moments, then looked away and pulled out her personal details.

'Witness questioning of Annika Bengtzon,' he said, 'of Hantverkargatan thirty-two in Stockholm; location: questioner's office; conversation begins . . .'

He looked at his watch.

'. . . at twenty-two fifteen. How did you come to be in an abandoned compressor shed near Swedish Steel in Lulea this evening?'

She cleared her throat towards the microphone, which was standing on a memo from the National Police Commissioner.

'I wanted to interview the Minister of Culture, Karina Bjornlund, and happened to catch sight of her at Kallax Airport, and I followed her.'

The inspector looked at her and smiled. 'Interview her?' he said. 'What about?'

She tried to smile back but discovered that she was too exhausted.

'The imposition of the new library regulations,' she said.

He sat in silence, pondering her reply for several seconds, then leaned over and switched off the tape-recorder.

'Better now?' he said, blinking flirtatiously.

She nodded and reached for the plastic coffee, prepared to give it another chance.

'What happened?' he said.

'Just so we get this straight from the start,' she said, sipping the drink again and suppressing a grimace, before putting the cup down for good. 'I'm a journalist. All my sources are protected by law. You represent an official authority and you would be breaking the law if you made any attempt to find out what I know and who I learned it from.'

He stopped smiling. 'And I have a case to solve. Can you tell me why you came to Lulea in the first place?'

'I was here on a job,' she said. 'I got it into my head to call the Minister of Culture and ask her about her connection to Ragnwald, and I could hear that she was at Kallax Airport, so I drove off to find her.'

'Why?'

'She didn't want to discuss anything over the phone, if I can put it like that.'

He nodded and jotted something down.

'And the Minister of Culture went for a walk in the woods next to the railway and you followed her?'

Annika nodded.

'I drove to Lovskatan, my hire-car is still there.'

Forsberg reached for a sheet of paper and read it with a frown.

'I've got a report here,' he said, 'which says that a person with your name called Central Command at fifteen twelve and said that someone we've been looking for was in a brick building, location unknown, near a viaduct. Does that ring any bells?'

'The guy on the phone wasn't exactly Einstein,' Annika said, realizing that her whole body was still cold in spite of the checks and efforts of the hospital staff. 'I tried to explain to him as best I could, but he wasn't grasping it.'

The Inspector studied the report.

'The caller, in other words you, is described as incoherent and hysterical.'

Annika looked down at her hands, dry, chapped and red, and didn't respond.

'How were you able to identify Goran Nilsson?'

She shrugged slightly without looking up. 'Karina called him Goran, and I knew they were together once upon a time.'

'And the revolver you handed to us, he gave that to you of his own free will?'

'I took it out of his pocket when he collapsed on the floor . . .'

All of a sudden she had had enough. She stood up and walked nervously round the room.

'I've been digging into this story for a couple of weeks now, everything just fell into place. Have you found Hans Blomberg?'

She stopped in front of Forsberg with her hands on her hips. The police officer paused for a moment before turning away.

'No,' he said.

'It was Blomberg who locked us in.'

'So I heard,' Forsberg said. 'As well as the story about the Beasts, and the plane getting blown up at F21.'

'Can I go now? I'm shattered.'

'We'll have to talk to you in more detail, about what was said and exactly what happened in that shed.'

She looked at the police officer from the end of a long tunnel.

'I don't remember anything else,' she said.

'Rubbish,' he said. 'You're going to tell me what you know before you leave.'

'Am I being arrested?' Annika asked. 'Suspected of some crime?'

'Of course not.'

'Right, then,' Annika said. 'I'm leaving.'

'I'm ordering you to stay.'

'So lock me up,' Annika said, and walked out.

She took a taxi out to Lovskatan to pick up her car, and paid with the paper's credit card, one of the few perks she had been able to keep since she voluntarily stopped being an editor. As the taxi rolled away she was left standing there, infinite s.p.a.ce above her, listening to the rumble of the steelworks.

She had hardly thought about Thomas all day. One of the nurses had called to tell him that she had been taken in for observation in Lulea Hospital, which wasn't quite true, she had just been examined and released, but she wasn't complaining. It wouldn't do him any harm to think she was ill.

She took a deep breath, the air crackling like sandpaper in her throat.

The light around her changed. She lifted her face to the sky and saw a veil drift across the moon, and the next moment a firework display went off above her head, like something she'd never seen before.

From horizon to horizon, an arc of pale-blue light stretched across the sky, moving in sweeping ripples, splitting into cascades of luminous colours over the whole sky. She stood there gawping at it. Pink, white, swirling and twisting, colours and lights and stars tumbling over one another, getting brighter and then dissolving.

The northern lights, she thought, and a second later the sky began to crackle.

She gasped and took several steps back, surrounded by sparkling s.p.a.ce.

A streak of purple merged with a semicircle of green, the two playing around each other, cracking and sparking and vibrant.

It's a strange world up here, she thought. When the earth is frozen solid the sky starts singing and dancing When the earth is frozen solid the sky starts singing and dancing.

She laughed quietly, a soft and unfamiliar sound. It had been a very peculiar day. She clicked open the lock, climbed in and put the key in the ignition. The engine protested but decided to cooperate, and she found an ice-sc.r.a.per in the glove compartment, got out and cleared the ice and frost from all the windows. Got in again, turned the headlights on full.

There was a glow at the top of the hill where Karina Bjornlund had disappeared earlier. On the horizon she saw a ribbon of pink light flicker and die, and suddenly remembered the transformer box and the duffel bag.

Less than a kilometre away, she thought.

She put the car in first gear and drove slowly up the road, as the ball-bearings in the wheels protested. She went past the no vehicles sign, under the power lines, past the Skanska building and the empty car park. The track got narrower and narrower; she crept along as the headlights played over scrub and craggy snowdrifts.

She put the car in neutral and pulled on the handbrake shortly after the viaduct, climbed out and walked towards the box. There was a handle, and a sliding bolt. Hesitant, she took hold of the frozen metal, twisted and pulled. The door opened and the duffel bag fell out at her feet. It was heavy, but not as unwieldy as it had looked when Goran Nilsson was dragging it behind him.

Annika looked round, feeling like a thief in the night. Nothing but the stars and northern lights. Her breath hung white around her, making it hard to see when she crouched down. Whatever this might be, it was Ragnwald's bequest to his children. He had gathered them together to read them his will. She held her breath and untied the large knot holding the bag closed, then stood up, holding the bag upright.

She peered into it, heart pounding, saw nothing, reached in her hand and found a box of Spanish medicine. She put it carefully on the ground, reached in for the next.

A bottle of large yellow pills.

Goran Nilsson had been heavily medicated towards the end.

A packet of suppositories.

A box of red and white capsules.

She sighed and reached in one last time.

A five-centimetre-thick bundle of notes.

She stopped and stared at the money, as a light wind blew eerily through the trees.

Euros. Hundred-euro notes.

She looked around her. The sky was flaming, blast-furnace number two over at the ironworks was roaring.

How much?

She pulled off her gloves and ran a finger over the notes, new notes, entirely unused, at least a hundred of them.

One hundred hundred-euro notes.

Ten thousand euros, almost one hundred thousand kronor.

She pulled on her gloves again, leaned over and pulled out two more bundles.