Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [135]
‘They’d run out by the time they got to me,’ she said, realizing she would soon be unable to speak.
‘Who are you meeting?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve already missed my deadline,’ she said.
‘But then you must come inside and warm up,’ he said. ‘Can I offer you a cup of tea?’
She searched frantically for an excuse, the man took no notice of her hesitation and took a firm grip of her arm and started walking.
‘I live in a little two-room flat on the ground floor,’ he said. ‘It’s not much, but what can you do when consumer society has left you behind?’
She tried to pull her arm away and found it was held in a vice-like grip.
‘It’s not often a guy like me gets such a charming visitor,’ he said. ‘A lovely young lady all the way from the capital.’
He smiled genially at her, she tried to smile back.
‘Which one of them are you?’ Annika said. ‘The Panther, Tiger or Lion?’
He was looking straight ahead, pretending he hadn’t heard the question, just took tighter hold of her. The houses were disappearing behind them; they were approaching the no vehicles sign. She glanced over to the left, past the power cables and into the undergrowth.
‘So you live out here in the forest?’
He didn’t answer, and the next instant she was back in that tunnel. She felt the earth tilt, heard someone breathing hard, panting, and realized it was her, her mouth wide open.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to. Please.’
Her legs gave way beneath her. Hans Blomberg caught her with a smile.
‘You’re a reporter,’ he said. ‘A proper, inquisitive little reporter. Of course you want to get a good story, don’t you?’
Her memory flashed up the pipes in the roof of the tunnel above her, and she started to cry.
‘Let me go!’
She jammed her feet in the ice and struggled and was rewarded with a ringing blow to the head. She saw stars and Sven was there screaming at her and she ducked, sank to the ground and put her hands over her head.
‘Don’t hit me.’
The world slowed down and stopped, the ground stopped tilting and she could hear herself panting. She looked up cautiously and saw Hans Blomberg shaking his head anxiously at her.
‘God, the way you carry on,’ he said. ‘Up you get. The leader’s waiting.’
And she stumbled forward in the moonlight with the lights above the railway track swaying far off to the left. The angels were completely silent, where their anxious voices had been was now only dark emptiness.
They passed the Skanska building, it was completely black.
‘We’re going to the little brick building, aren’t we? The one beyond the viaduct?’
‘So you’ve already found our headquarters,’ the archivist said in his good-natured voice. ‘Have you been creeping around in the bushes? Very talented. Then I may as well tell you what to expect. The Dragon has called us together again. I don’t think everyone can make it, we’ve suffered something of a decline in membership recently, but Karina will probably be there, and Yngve, of course. He never misses a good party.’
The archivist laughed happily. Annika struggled against nausea.
‘Poor Yngve,’ the man went on. ‘Göran wanted me to look after him, but what’s a chap to do? To help an addict you have to change the whole apparatus of oppression, and I haven’t been able to do that. Unfortunately I have to admit that Yngve no longer has any hold on reality, it’s truly tragic. I have failed in my duty . . .’
A moment later she heard something heavy and rhythmic behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and found herself staring into the headlight of a huge diesel locomotive coming down the track.
‘Straight on,’ Hans Blomberg said.
Annika obeyed, peering at the great engine as it slowly rumbled past her towards the ironworks with its endless train of fully laden ore-trucks behind it.
Her heart was thudding. She tried to see herself from the train-driver’s perspective. She was dressed in black against a dark background of scrub, only lit by the cold moonlight.
She forced her heart to slow down; tried to see how long the train was without twisting her head,