Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [17]
Annika, already on her way to the door, stopped and looked at her, confused.
‘Ah,’ the receptionist explained with a blush, ‘I saw that the invoice was going to the Evening Post.’
Annika took a few steps backwards, hitting her heel against the door. A moment later she was out in the wind. No parking ticket. She got into the freezing car and pulled out onto Södra Varvsleden. The steering wheel was ice-cold, and as she fumbled for her gloves in the bag she came close to hitting a fat woman pushing a pram. Turning the noisy ventilator on full, her heart thumping, she drove towards Malmudden.
At a red light on a viaduct over some railway tracks she checked the map again: she was already at the bottom-right corner. A couple of minutes later she was at the roundabout and from now on she would have to rely on road-signs. She glanced up: Skurholmen left, Hertsön straight on, Svartöstaden right. She caught sight of another sign – Frasse’s Hamburgers – and felt her blood-sugar plummet. When the lights turned green she swung off the road, parked by the petrol station and went in. She bought a cheeseburger with onions and ate it ravenously, taking in her surroundings: the smell of frying, the painted fibreglass walls, the plastic rubber plant in the corner, the Star Wars pinball machine, the shabby wood and chrome furniture.
This is the real Sweden, she thought. Central Stockholm is a little nature reserve. We have no idea what goes on out here in the wilderness.
Feeling slightly queasy from the melted cheese and raw onion, she drove on. Powdery snow swirled in front of the headlights, making it hard to see, even though she was alone on the road. She drove a few kilometres, and then suddenly, out of the haze of snow, the ironworks appeared right above her. Illuminated jet-black steel skeletons that let off steam and looked almost alive. She let out a small yelp of surprise. It was beautiful! So weirdly . . . alive.
A viaduct took her across a goods yard, twenty or so rail tracks criss-crossing each other.
The final stop of Malmbanan, ‘the ore railway’, of course. The contents of the trashed mountains in the iron-field were rolled down here to the coast by those endless ore-trains she’d seen on television.
Astonished, she drove on until she reached an illuminated sign by the main entrance, and parked by what turned out to be the West Checkpoint.
The immense monster above her was blast-furnace number two – a growling, rumbling giant turning ore into steel. Further away were the rolling-mill, the steelworks, the coke ovens, the power station. The whole site was enveloped in a rolling, rumbling sound that rose and fell, humming and singing.
What a place, she thought, feeling the cold. The angels kept quiet. It was now completely dark.
Anne Snapphane left the press conference with her knees trembling and her palms sweating. She wanted to cry, or scream. The rumbling headache only increased her anger at the MD who had taken off for the US and left the whole presentation to her. She wasn’t employed to take the flak for the whole of TV Scandinavia, just the programming.
She made it to her room, dialled Annika’s number and looked around desperately for a glass of wine.
‘I’m standing by the ironworks in Svartöstaden,’ Annika yelled from Anne’s home territory. ‘It’s a real monster, absolutely amazing. How did the press conference go?’
‘Crap,’ Anne Snapphane said in a dull voice, feeling her hands shake. ‘They tore me to shreds, and the boys from your lot were worst.’
‘Hang on,’ Annika said, ‘I have to move the car, I’m in the way of a truck . . . Yes! I know! I’m moving!’
The sound of a car engine; Anne looked for her headache pills in the desk drawer, but the box was empty.
‘Right, tell me what happened,’ Annika said to her friend.
Anne forced her hands to be still, then put her right hand to her forehead.
‘They want me to personify every super-capitalist, war-mongering, American, multinational blood-sucking corporation rolled into one,’ she said.
‘The first rule of dramaturgy,