Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [153]
He followed her, breathing in the scent of her apple hair.
‘Absolutely,’ he said, getting her coat.
She kissed him gently before turning round and letting him help her with her coat.
‘Can’t you come over tonight?’ she whispered into his neck. ‘I could cook something Italian.’
He felt the sweat break out between his shoulder blades.
‘Not tonight,’ he said quickly. ‘My wife’s home. Haven’t you seen the paper?’
‘What?’ She opened her damp eyes wide. ‘Which paper?’
He walked away from her, went over to the desk, and held up the front page of the Evening Post towards her. Annika’s dark, unseeing eyes stared at them.
‘Cracked terrorist gang,’ Sophia read in astonishment and disbelief. ‘What does your wife do, exactly?’
Thomas looked at his wife as he replied. ‘She used to be head of the crime desk, but that took too much time from the family. Nowadays she’s an independent reporter, looking into official corruption and political scandals. She’s been working on this terrorism case for the last few weeks.’
He put the newspaper down, the picture facing upwards, noting the pride in his voice and behaviour.
‘She was supposed to come back yesterday, but this came up instead. She’s flying home this afternoon.’
‘Oh well,’ Sophia said, ‘I can understand that you’re busy tonight.’
She left without saying anything else, and he was surprised at how genuinely relieved he felt when she had gone.
Annika was staring at the countryside outside the window of the Arlanda Express. Frozen fields and icy farms rushed past but she barely registered them. Her eyes were fixed.
The night had disappeared as she had weighed up and analysed different options and their consequences, piecing together the facts and formulating her argument. Now the article was in her notepad, ready to be printed.
Home, she thought. It doesn’t have to be a place or a house; it’s something else entirely.
She shut her eyes and thought through her decisions one more time. One: the text would be published. Two: she had lived in the building on Hantverkargatan for ten years. That didn’t mean that her home was there. Thomas had never really liked living in the city, for him it would come as a relief.
You have to win, she thought. You have to be stronger. You can’t give your opponent a chance. She must not be an alternative. Thomas will never pick a loser.
Her phone started to vibrate in the inside pocket of the polar jacket. She pulled it out and saw it was Q, calling from his private number.
‘Congratulations,’ the head of the national crime unit said.
‘What for?’ Annika said.
‘I heard you got your mobile phone back.’
She smiled weakly. ‘From your lads up in Luleå. Hans Blomberg had it in his trouser pocket when they caught him out on the ice. What can I do for you today?’
‘I was wondering about something,’ he said. ‘It’s this business of the money.’
‘What money?’ Annika said.
‘Ragnwald’s money. A bag full of euros.’
Annika watched blue-panelled industrial units fly by at 160 kilometres an hour.
‘Don’t know what you mean,’ she said.
‘How did you find it?’
She shut her eyes, swaying with the movement of the train.
‘I was just out taking a walk. I stumbled across a bag of money that someone must have dropped. I handed it over to the police as lost property. Anything else you’re wondering?’
‘That’s Ragnwald’s life’s work,’ the commissioner said. ‘He killed people for money all his life and never used a franc to make his life easier, and because of that he was never caught. He collected it all in his doctor’s safety deposit box in Bilbao and took the whole lot out one month ago.’
Annika looked through the window again.
‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘I wonder what happened to it.’
‘Perhaps he dropped it? In a transformer box, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps, but I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.’
The commissioner chuckled, admitting defeat.
‘Do you know how much it was?’
‘I’d guess about twelve million.’
‘Almost fourteen; one hundred and twenty-eight million kronor.’
‘Wow.’
‘No one has reported the money as missing. If the owner doesn’t come forward within