Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [12]
‘The photocopier’s out by the stairs. If you give it a knock it might work.’
5
The man glided soundlessly through dark streets. The pain was under control, his body vibrated with energy. His thoughts echoed between the frozen walls, giving answers that were alien to him.
Luleå had shrunk over the years. He remembered the town as big and brash, full of self-confidence, rolling in glitter and commercialism.
Tonight the self-confidence was gone, way out of sight. It had probably never really existed. The place felt impotent. The main street had been closed to traffic and turned into a long, windswept playground, lined with sad little birch trees. This was where people were supposed to make their living; this was where they were meant to consume their way out of depression.
The curse of freedom, he thought. The bastard Renaissance man who woke up one morning in twelfth-century Florence and invented capitalism, sitting up in bed and realizing the possibilities for his own ego, realizing that the state was an organism that could be controlled and manipulated.
He sat down on a bench outside the library to let the worst of the morphine rush leave his body. He knew it wasn’t good to sit still in this sort of cold, but he didn’t care. He wanted to sit here and look at the cathedral, the building where he had founded his dynasty. The ugly extension on the corner of ‘nameless street’ was one of his old haunts. The lights were still on. There were probably meetings going on right now, just as there had been all those years ago.
None of them like ours, though, he thought. There’ll never be any like ours.
Two young women were on their way out. He saw them stop in the lobby and read the notices of cultural events on the board.
Maybe it’s unlocked, he thought vaguely. Maybe I can get in.
The girls glanced at him as they passed each other a few metres from the door, the sort of unfocused glance that you only get in small, narrow-minded places: we don’t know him, we’ll ignore him. In larger towns no one noticed anyone at all. That suited him much better.
The library was still open. He stopped in the middle of the lobby to let the memories come. And they came, overwhelmed him, took his breath away. The years were erased, he was twenty again, it was summer, hot, his girl was beside him, his beloved Red Wolf who was to succeed in ways no one could have dared to imagine. He held her to him and smelled the henna in her copper-coloured hair—
A sudden draught hit his legs and pulled him back to the present.
‘Are you all right? Do you need help?’
An old man was looking amiably at him.
The standard phrase, he thought, shaking his head and swallowing his French reply.
The hall came back into focus. The other man went into the warmth and left him alone with the notices on the board: a storyteller session, a carol service, a concert by Håkan Hagegård, and a festival of feminism. He waited until his breathing had calmed down, ran his hands over his hair and took a cautious step towards the internal door, checking discreetly behind the glass. Then he quickly crossed the hall and went down the backstairs.
Good grief, he thought, I’m here. I’m actually here.
He looked at the closed doors, one after the other, conjuring up the images behind them. He knew all of them. The cheap oak-coloured plywood panels, the stone steps, the folding tables, the bad lighting. He smiled at his shadow, the young man who booked rooms in the name of the Fly Fishing Association, then held Maoist meetings until long into the night.
He was right to have come.
Wednesday 11 November
6
Anders Schyman pulled on his jacket and drank the dregs of his coffee. The lingering darkness made the windows look like mirrors. He adjusted his collar against the image of the Russian embassy, stopping to stare at the holes where his eyes ought to be.
Finally, he thought. Not just a useful idiot, but the driving force. At the board meeting that would begin in quarter of an hour he would not only be accepted, but respected. So where was the