Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [146]
She laughed quietly, a soft and unfamiliar sound. It had been a very peculiar day. She clicked open the lock, climbed in and put the key in the ignition. The engine protested but decided to cooperate, and she found an ice-scraper in the glove compartment, got out and cleared the ice and frost from all the windows. Got in again, turned the headlights on full.
There was a glow at the top of the hill where Karina Björnlund had disappeared earlier. On the horizon she saw a ribbon of pink light flicker and die, and suddenly remembered the transformer box and the duffel bag.
Less than a kilometre away, she thought.
She put the car in first gear and drove slowly up the road, as the ball-bearings in the wheels protested. She went past the no vehicles sign, under the power lines, past the Skanska building and the empty car park. The track got narrower and narrower; she crept along as the headlights played over scrub and craggy snowdrifts.
She put the car in neutral and pulled on the handbrake shortly after the viaduct, climbed out and walked towards the box. There was a handle, and a sliding bolt. Hesitant, she took hold of the frozen metal, twisted and pulled. The door opened and the duffel bag fell out at her feet. It was heavy, but not as unwieldy as it had looked when Göran Nilsson was dragging it behind him.
Annika looked round, feeling like a thief in the night. Nothing but the stars and northern lights. Her breath hung white around her, making it hard to see when she crouched down. Whatever this might be, it was Ragnwald’s bequest to his children. He had gathered them together to read them his will. She held her breath and untied the large knot holding the bag closed, then stood up, holding the bag upright.
She peered into it, heart pounding, saw nothing, reached in her hand and found a box of Spanish medicine. She put it carefully on the ground, reached in for the next.
A bottle of large yellow pills.
Göran Nilsson had been heavily medicated towards the end.
A packet of suppositories.
A box of red and white capsules.
She sighed and reached in one last time.
A five-centimetre-thick bundle of notes.
She stopped and stared at the money, as a light wind blew eerily through the trees.
Euros. Hundred-euro notes.
She looked around her. The sky was flaming, blast-furnace number two over at the ironworks was roaring.
How much?
She pulled off her gloves and ran a finger over the notes, new notes, entirely unused, at least a hundred of them.
One hundred hundred-euro notes.
Ten thousand euros, almost one hundred thousand kronor.
She pulled on her gloves again, leaned over and pulled out two more bundles.
She folded down the sides of the bag and looked openmouthed at its contents. Nothing but bundles of euros, dozens of them. She pressed the bag, trying to work out how many layers there were inside. A lot. An absurd number.
Then she felt sick.
The executioner’s death-tainted bequest to his children.
Without reflecting any more about it she picked up the bag and threw the money into the boot of the car.
49
The glass internal doors of the City Hotel slid open with a swishing sound. Annika walked into the chandelier-lit space, blinking against the light.
‘I think she’s just walked in,’ the receptionist said into a telephone behind the counter. ‘Annika Bengtzon?’
Annika looked at the young woman.
‘It is you, isn’t it? From the Evening Post? We spoke when you were here two weeks ago. I’ve got your boss on the phone.’
‘Which one?’
The woman listened.
‘Anders Schyman,’ she called across the lobby.
Annika hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and walked over to the desk.
‘Tell him I’ll call him in five minutes, I just need to check in.’
Ten seconds of silence.
‘He says he wants to talk to you now.’
Annika reached for the receiver.
‘What do you want?’
The editor-in-chief sounded muted and clenched when he spoke.
‘The newspaper’s telegram agency has just sent out a newsflash that the police in Luleå have cracked a thirty-year-old terrorist cell. That the attack