Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [131]
Then Karina Björnlund suddenly turned round and started walking towards the crown of the hill, away from the industrial units.
Annika stiffened, fumbled with the ignition key, biting the inside of her cheek.
Should she get out and follow the minister? Drive up and offer her a lift? Wait and see if she came back?
She rubbed her eyes for a moment.
Wherever Karina Björnlund was going, she evidently didn’t want company.
Annika opened the car door, pulling her hat and ski-gloves from her bag, pushed the door shut and locked the car with a bleep. She gasped for breath, reeling from the cold; how was it possible to live in a climate like this?
She blinked a few times; the cold was making the air incredibly dry, hurting her eyes.
The daylight was dark grey now, almost gone. The sky was distant, clear and entirely colourless; a few stars twinkled above the mounds of ore. Two streetlamps further down the road spread a dull, hopeless light in a small circle around their own feet. Karina Björnlund had disappeared over the crown of the hill, and there was no other sign of life anywhere. The rumble from the steelworks was carried through the cold along the railway track, reaching her like a dull vibration.
Walking carefully, she started up the hill, looking hard at every bush and shadow. At the top of the hill the road swung sharply to the left and led back into the housing estate. Straight ahead was a narrow track, clear of snow and ice, with a sign forbidding vehicle traffic.
Annika narrowed her eyes and peered around her, unable to see the minister anywhere. She took a few steps along the private track, jogging as fast as she dared on the ice and grit. She passed a bundle of cables leading down to the railway tracks and ran past an empty car park, then the track emerged alongside the railway line again. Far ahead the ironworks, coke ovens, and blastfurnaces sat brooding darkly against the winter sky, millions of tons of ore turned into a rolling carpet of steel. To the left was nothing but slurry and snow. The full moon had risen behind the mounds of ore, its blue light mixing with the yellow lights illuminating the ore railway.
She ran for several minutes until she was forced to stop and catch her breath, coughing drily and quietly into her glove, blinking moisture out of her eyes and looking round for Karina Björnlund.
The track looked as though it was rarely used. She could see just a few footprints, some tracks left by dogs and a bicycle, but no minister.
The angels suddenly burst out in song.
She hit the back of her head so hard that the voices fell silent. She shut her eyes and breathed for a few seconds, listening to the emptiness in her head, and in the echo of the silence she suddenly heard other voices, human voices, coming from within the forest up ahead. She couldn’t make out any words, could just hear a male and a female voice talking fairly quietly.
She passed beneath a viaduct, either a road or a railway, Annika couldn’t tell. She no longer knew where she was. The voices grew louder, and in the light of the moon and the railway track she suddenly saw footsteps leading into an opening in the scrub.
She stopped, peering through the low trees, just able to make out shadows, spirits.
‘Well, I’m here now,’ Karina Björnlund was saying. ‘Don’t hurt me.’
A rough male voice with a Finnish accent answered, ‘Karina, don’t be scared. I’ve never meant you any harm.’
‘Believe me, Göran, no one’s ever done me as much harm as you have. Say what you want and . . . let me go.’
Annika caught her breath, her stomach turning somersaults, her dry mouth turned to sandpaper. She took a careful step into the first of the footprints already there in the snow, then another, and another. In the moonlight she saw the forest open out into a clearing, and at its centre was a small brick building with a sheet-metal roof and sealed-up windows.
In the middle of the clearing stood the Minister of Culture in her thick fur, and a thin grey man in a long coat and leather cap, with a dark duffel bag beside him.
Göran Nilsson,