Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [134]
‘Good,’ Annika said, breathing heavily, ‘good. I’ll wait here by the bus-stop until you come so I can show you the way. I’m parked here, I’m in a silver Volvo.’
‘Okay,’ the policeman said. ‘Just you wait there.’ And he hung up.
Annika looked at the display on her phone, a glowing rectangle in the darkness.
She pushed in the earpiece and called Jansson’s direct number in the newsroom.
‘I might have to stay in Luleå tonight,’ she said. ‘Just wanted to check it’s okay to book into the City Hotel tonight if I have to.’
‘Why?’ Jansson said.
‘There might be something going on up here,’ she said.
‘No terrorism,’ Jansson said. ‘I got hauled over the coals this morning for letting you go up to Norrbotten again.’
‘Okay,’ Annika said.
‘Are you listening?’ Jansson said. ‘Not one single line about another bloody terrorist, is that clear?’
She waited a second before replying. ‘Of course. Understood. I promise.’
‘Stay at the City,’ the editor said closer to the receiver in a considerably quieter and friendlier voice. ‘Call room service. Get pay-TV and watch porn films, I’ll sign for the whole lot. I know how it is, we all have to get away sometimes.’
‘Okay,’ she said smartly and ended the call, dialled directory inquiries and asked to be put through to the City Hotel, Luleå, booking a business-class room on the top floor.
After that she sat in the car and stared out of the windscreen. Her breath hit the windows and they soon froze over again. She could do nothing more. All she could do was sit and wait for the police.
It’ll soon be over, she thought, feeling her pulse-rate slow.
She saw Thord Axelsson’s grey face before her, Gunnel Sandström’s swollen eyes and wine-red cardigan, Linus Gustafsson’s spiky gelled hair and watchful eyes, and was consumed with burning fury.
You’re finished, you bastard.
And she realized she was freezing. She thought about starting the car engine to heat it up, but opened the door instead and got out, far too restless to sit still. She checked that her mobile was in her pocket, locked the door and walked up towards the top of the hill.
The arctic night had taken an iron grip on the landscape, as hard and unrelenting as the steel produced in the blast-furnaces down by the shore. Annika’s breath drifted around her, light veils of frozen warmth.
It’s beautiful, she thought, her eyes following the rails and ending up among the stars.
Then she heard a vehicle rumbling behind her, she turned round, hoping it was the police.
It was a local Luleå bus, the number one.
It drove towards her and stopped. She realized that she was standing at the bus-stop and took a few steps to one side to indicate that she wasn’t waiting for it.
But the bus stopped a few metres away from her anyway, the back door opened and a thickset man stepped onto the street, moving slowly, heavily.
She looked at him and took a step closer.
‘Hans!’ she said. ‘Hans, hello; it’s me, Annika.’
Hans Blomberg, the archivist from the Norrland News, looked up and met her gaze.
45
‘What are you doing here?’ Annika said.
‘I live here,’ the man said, smiling cheerfully. ‘On Torsgatan.’
He gestured over his shoulder towards the housing estate.
‘Do you?’ Annika said as the bus pulled away. She took a step closer and looked into his eyes, and at that moment something clicked inside her head, suddenly she remembered when she had seen the drawing of the yellow dragon before, all of a sudden she knew where it was. She had thought it was a child’s drawing, a yellow dinosaur, on Hans Blomberg’s pinboard in the archive of the Norrland News. She took a couple of involuntary steps back.
‘Surely the real question is,’ Hans Blomberg said, ‘what are you doing here?’
The bus disappeared beyond the crown of the hill and the man walked towards her, his hands in his pockets. He stopped in front of her and in the moonlight his eyes were almost transparent.
She laughed nervously. ‘I’m up on a job and got lost,’ she said. ‘Föreningsgatan, which one is that?’
‘You’re standing on it,’ the archivist said in