Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [127]
Annika felt herself heating up, could feel the blood drain from her head, thought she was about to faint.
‘No one ever spoke about the Beasts, not ever. Margit heard nothing from them for all those years, not until this October.’
‘Then what happened?’ Annika whispered.
‘She got the call, the symbol of the yellow dragon, summoning her to their meeting place.’
Annika could see before her the strange drawing the Minister of Culture had received, in that envelope posted in France.
‘A meeting?’ she said. ‘When?’
Thord Axelsson shook his head and walked over to the sink, picked up a glass but did nothing with it.
‘Then they contacted her, one of them called her at work, asking if she was going to the meeting to celebrate the return of the Dragon. She told them to go to hell, said they’d ruined her life, and that she loathed the fact that she’d ever met them.’
His shoulders were shaking.
‘She didn’t hear from them again.’
Annika was struggling against a growing, sucking feeling of nausea. She sat for a long while, swallowing, watching the man weep, holding the glass to his forehead.
‘I want them caught,’ he said eventually, turning back to Annika, his face red and unlike itself. He sat down heavily on his chair again, and sat still for a while as the clock ticked and the antiseptic smell spread throughout Annika’s body.
‘Margit never got rid of her guilt,’ he said. ‘She paid for it all through her life. I can’t go on like this any more.’
‘Have you told the police now?’
He shook his head. ‘But I’m going to,’ he said. ‘As soon as the Dragon’s been caught and the girls are safe.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.
He looked at her blankly. ‘I don’t know. I just wanted to tell someone.’
He looked out through the window and stiffened. ‘Hanna and Emma are coming,’ he said. ‘You have to go.’
Annika stood up without thinking, stuffing her pad and pen in her bag and hurrying out into the hall, where she pulled her jacket from the hanger and tugged it on. She went back into the kitchen, and saw the man sitting there motionless, his eyes blank.
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.
He looked at her and tried to smile.
‘By the way,’ she said. ‘Did Margit have very small feet?’
‘Size thirty-six,’ he said.
She left him by the pine table in the scrubbed kitchen with the untouched cups of coffee gradually cooling.
43
The car had had time to get completely cold, so she kept her polar jacket on. For one panicky moment she thought the engine wasn’t going to start, that she was going to freeze in her hire-car among the identical seventies houses, for ever held fast in the little white lies of the Axelsson family.
She turned the key so hard that the metal almost snapped. The engine started with a hesitant rattle, and as she exhaled she saw her breath freeze to ice on the inside of the windscreen. She found reverse as the gearbox protested and backed into the street, hoping she wasn’t going to hit anything. She hadn’t scraped the rear window.
The two daughters passed close to her window. She attempted a smile and waved feebly as they looked curiously at her.
The rubber of the tyres creaked on the icy road as she rolled towards town. The nausea persisted, the smell of disinfectant still in her nostrils, the thoughts bouncing around her head and chest.
Was Thord Axelsson telling the truth? Was he exaggerating? Was he hiding anything?
She drove past the secondary school and the church and Åhléns department store, and was out of the town centre before she even realized she was in it.
He wasn’t glossing over his wife’s deeds, Annika thought, nor was he making excuses for her. On the contrary, he had stated soberly that she had set fire to the aviation fuel and caused the plane to explode. He hadn’t even tried to present it as an accident.
If he had wanted to lie, he would have done so then.
The Beasts, she thought. The