Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [30]
He didn’t wait for her to reply. There was a dull thud in her ear as the inspector put the phone down and crossed the floor, then the sound of a door closing.
‘But on the other hand,’ he said, back on the line, ‘there is something that I’ve spoken to Captain Pettersson about this morning that concerns you.’
She took her foot off the accelerator in sheer shock.
‘I don’t want to discuss it on the phone,’ the inspector went on. ‘Have you got time to come up here this afternoon?’
She shook her arm vigorously to get her watch to slide out of the sleeve of her coat.
‘Not really,’ she said, ‘my plane leaves at two fifty-five and I have to get over to the Norrland News before that.’
‘Okay, I’ll meet you there,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a team there now, and I’ve just promised that I’d go and talk to them about what we’re looking for.’
The receptionist’s face was puffy from crying. Annika approached cautiously and respectfully, well aware that she was disturbing her.
‘The paper’s closed to visitors,’ the woman snapped. ‘Come back tomorrow.’
‘My name’s Annika Bengtzon,’ Annika said gently. ‘I’m the one who—’
‘Is there something wrong with your hearing?’ the woman said, getting up, visibly trembling. ‘We’re in mourning today, in mourning; one of our reporters has . . . left us. So we’re closed. All day. Go away.’
Annika was furious. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘Has everyone gone mad? Sorry for being here.’
She turned her back on the woman and headed for the stairs to the newsroom.
‘Hey!’ the receptionist yelled. ‘This is a private company. Come back.’
Annika kept walking, glanced over her shoulder and made sure she got the last word in.
‘So shoot me.’
After just a few steps she could hear some sort of memorial service going on upstairs. From the landing outside the main office she could see the participants, a colourless mass of grey hair, dark-grey jackets, brown sweaters. Backs bent, sweaty necks, the sort of confused rage that makes people bloodless and mute. Their sighs seemed to suck up all the air, emptying the building of oxygen.
With a deep breath she slid in to the back of the room, making herself invisible whilst simultaneously craning to see whoever was talking at the front.
‘Benny Ekland had no family,’ the man said, a middle-aged media type in a dark suit and shiny shoes. ‘We were his family. He had us, and he had the Norrland News.’
The people in the room didn’t react to the words, each of them consumed by their own shocked disbelief, the impossibility of death. Fumbling hands, eyes glued to the floor or searching restlessly, each of them an island. Reporters and several photographers stood along the walls, people from other media outlets. She could pick them out by their greedy curiosity; they didn’t care, their interest was focused on the man speaking and the mourners.
‘Benny was the sort of journalist that no longer exists,’ the man in the polished shoes intoned. ‘He was a reporter who never gave up. He always had to know the truth, whatever the cost. We who had the privilege of working with Benny all these years have been given a great gift, the gift of being able to get to know such a devoted and responsible professional. For Benny there was no such thing as overtime, because he took his work seriously . . .’
‘Hmm,’ someone whispered in her ear, ‘now we’re getting to the truth.’
She jerked her head and saw Hans Blomberg, the archivist, standing right behind her, nodding and smiling. He leaned forward and went on in a whisper, ‘Benny was popular with management because he never asked for overtime or a pay rise. And because he earned so little he presented them with the perfect argument: if their star earned so little, surely it was only right that the others did too?’
Annika listened, astonished.
‘He broke the pay deal?’ she whispered back. ‘Why?’
‘Five weeks’ paid holiday with the whores of Thailand every year, and a running tab at the City Pub. What more could a man want?’
Two older women in front of them, with matching sweaters and swollen eyes,