Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [31]
‘Where was Benny’s desk?’ she whispered to the archivist.
‘Follow me,’ he said, and backed out of the room.
They left the grey sea of people and went up to the next floor.
‘He was the only one besides the publisher who had his own office,’ Hans Blomberg said, pointing down a short, narrow corridor.
Annika walked along it, feeling at once the walls pressing in on her, looming over her. She stopped, took a deep breath, and saw the walls as they really were. Not moving. The hideous yellow-brown panels were bulging slightly, though, where they had come loose.
She went up to Benny Ekland’s brown-painted door and knocked loudly. To her surprise it flew open at once.
‘Yes, what is it?’ A plain-clothes policeman was kneeling in the centre of the room. He looked her up and down in irritation. Behind him two other officers looked up from cupboards and drawers. Annika took a step backward, feeling herself blush.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m looking for . . . I was wondering . . .’
‘This is Benny Ekland’s room,’ the plain-clothes officer said, then went on in a more friendly tone, ‘You’re Annika Bengtzon, aren’t you? The one who got stuck with the Bomber in the tunnel?’
She stared at him for a couple of seconds, contemplating running away, but nodded. She could hear the angels tuning up at the back of her mind. No, she thought. Not now.
‘Suup called and said he was going to meet you here, but he’s not here yet. Forsberg,’ he said, getting up and holding out his hand. He gave her a wolfish grin beneath his mane of blond hair.
Annika looked down, bewildered, and realized that her hands were cold and sweaty.
‘How’s it going?’ she said, only to have something to say, rubbing her head lightly with one hand to get the voices to shut up.
‘Suup said how you got hold of the Gustafsson boy,’ Forsberg said as he put a bundle of papers back on a shelf, sighing. ‘This place is a hell of a mess.’
‘He got quite a bit of post today,’ Hans Blomberg said from behind Annika’s back. ‘Have you been through that yet?’
The officers looked at one another, and all three shook their heads.
‘Where is it?’ Forsberg asked.
‘I put it in his pigeon-hole, like I usually do. Do you want me to get it?’
Annika went with the archivist down to the postroom rather than stay and get in the way of the police.
‘You don’t seem to have been Benny Ekland’s biggest fan,’ she said as Hans Blomberg pulled out the dead man’s post.
‘There’s no need,’ the fat man puffed. ‘There are plenty of others fighting for that accolade. I have a more nuanced view of our star reporter.’
He headed towards the stairs again. Annika followed the bobbly cardigan.
‘What sort of view would that be, then?’
The man panted as he laboriously climbed the stairs.
‘It didn’t matter who got who a tip-off here. If there was anything worth having then Big Ben got his hands on it. He was always the last one here in the evening, so he could go in and change a sentence or two in someone else’s article and get a double byline.’
‘Was that his nickname, Big Ben?’
‘Mind you, he was brilliant at digging up stories,’ Hans Blomberg conceded. ‘You’ve got to give him that.’
‘Annika Bengtzon?’ a voice said from below.
She went back down a few steps, leaned over and looked round the corner.
‘Suup,’ said a thin man with grey hair. ‘Can I have a word?’
She went down and shook the older man’s hand, looking into a pair of eyes that for a moment seemed to her to belong to a child, bright and translucent.
‘I promised to talk to the staff in a little while, but this won’t take long,’ he said. The wrinkles in his face emphasized the impression of stability and honesty.
‘You’re making me very curious,’ Annika said, going into the letters-page editor’s room where she had written her article the previous evening.
It struck her that he wasn’t bitter. He’s a good man; he does what he thinks is right, and other people respond to that. He’s a solid person.
She pulled out a chair for the inspector, then sat down herself on the corner of the desk.
‘We appreciate the