Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [139]
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ she said. ‘This place is worse than a freezer. Can you help me carry him?’
‘But I’m wounded,’ the Minister of Culture said. ‘And why should I help him? After all he’s done to me. Can’t Yngve carry him?’
The alcoholic had sat down on the floor clutching the half-empty bottle in his arms.
‘You can’t fall asleep here,’ Annika said to Yngve, feeling reality letting go of her, the ice-cold room threatening to strangle her.
‘If you knew how much I’ve suffered over the years,’ Karina Björnlund said from over by the compressor. ‘Always afraid that someone would let on that I knew these fools. But that’s what happens when you’re young, isn’t it? You think a load of crazy things, get in with the wrong crowd?’
Göran Nilsson tried to sit up but let out a little cry and slumped back on the concrete floor.
‘Something’s broken in my hip,’ he whispered, and Annika remembered her grandmother’s broken hip that winter when there was so much snow.
‘I’ll go and get help,’ Annika said, but a second later the man was holding her wrist in a vice-like grip.
‘Where’s Karina?’ he muttered, his eyes unfocused.
‘She’s here,’ Annika said quietly and wriggled loose in horror, standing up and turning to the minister. ‘He wants to talk to you.’
‘About what? We’ve got nothing to say to each other.’
Karina Björnlund’s voice sounded thin and nasal. She took a few cautious steps towards the man and Annika could see that her nostrils were bleeding badly. Her face was bruised and swollen, from her lips right up to her eyes. Annika met her gaze, reading in it all the bewilderment that she herself was feeling, and inside her a small light went on: she wasn’t alone, she wasn’t alone.
‘Keep him company,’ Annika said, and the minister went hesitantly over to the terrorist, but as she leaned over him he screamed.
‘Not blood,’ he panted. ‘Take the blood away.’
Something short-circuited in Annika’s head. There he was, the mass-murderer, the professional hitman, the full-time terrorist, and he was whining like a cry-baby. She flew over to him and grabbed him by the coat.
‘So you don’t like the sight of blood, you bastard? But killing all those people, that was all right, was it?’
His head fell back and he closed his eyes.
‘I’m a soldier,’ he said flatly. ‘I am nowhere near as guilty as the leaders of the free world.’
She felt tears welling up.
‘Why Margit?’ she said. ‘Why the boy?’
He shook his head.
‘Not me,’ he whispered.
Annika looked up at Karina Björnlund, who was standing in the middle of the floor, a look of shock on her face.
‘He’s lying,’ she said. ‘Of course it was him.’
‘I only strike at the enemy,’ Göran Nilsson said flatly. ‘Not against friends or the innocent.’
Annika stared at the man’s pain-racked face, his apathy, disinterest, and she suddenly knew that he was telling the truth.
It wasn’t him who murdered them. There was no reason for him to kill Benny Ekland, Linus Gustafsson, Kurt Sandström or Margit Axelsson.
So who had done it?
She was shaking. She stood up on numb legs and walked unsteadily towards the door.
It was shut. Stuck fast, immovable.
She remembered the lock on the outside, and realization hit her like a physical blow. Hans Blomberg had shut them in.
She was locked inside an ice-box with three other people, it was thirty degrees below zero, two of them were wounded and the third was blind drunk.
Hans Blomberg, she thought. Is that remotely possible?
And the next moment the tunnel was over her again, the pipes stretching along the ceiling, she could feel the weight of the dynamite on her back, and somewhere in the distance a woman was crying, snorting and howling with pain and despair and she realized that it was the Minister of Culture, Karina Björnlund. And she wasn’t alone, she wasn’t alone.
She let go of the tunnel and grabbed hold of reality. She mustn’t fall apart, if she fell apart she would die.
It’s so cold, she thought, how long can you survive in this sort of cold?
Her breathing slowed down. She was in no immediate danger herself. In her polar outfit she could