Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [4]
The editor-in-chief stretched, massaging the small of his back. For the first time since he arrived at the Evening Post he felt a sense of real satisfaction. This was how he had imagined his new job would be.
It was just a bit of a fucker that it had taken almost ten years.
‘Can I come in?’ Annika Bengtzon asked over the intercom.
He felt his heart sink, the magic fade. He breathed in and out a couple of times before going over to his desk to press the reply button. ‘Of course’.
He stared out the window at the Russian embassy as he waited for the reporter’s nervous steps outside the door. The newspaper’s growing success meant that the newsroom had finally started to show him a little respect. Most noticeably, there was less traffic through his door. This was partly due to the reorganization of the newsroom: four all-powerful editors now worked shifts, running the various departments, and it was working just as he had planned. He had handed the responsibility down, and instead of having to argue constantly with all of the staff, he imposed his authority through his deputies. Instead of making him weaker, the delegation of power had actually made him mightier.
Annika Bengtzon, the former head of the crime team, had been invited to become one of the four. She had declined, and they had fallen out. Schyman had already revealed his plans for her, seeing her as one of three possible heirs to his position, and wanted to get her involved in a larger programme of development. Becoming one of the editors was the first step, but she had turned the offer down.
‘I can hardly punish you,’ he had said, hearing exactly how that sounded.
‘Of course you can,’ she had replied, her unreadable eyes fluttering across his. ‘Just get on with it.’
Bengtzon was one of the few who believed they still had open access to him and his office, and it annoyed him that he hadn’t done anything about it. In part, her special treatment stemmed from the big media storm last Christmas, when she had been taken hostage in a tunnel by a mad serial killer. That had certainly helped break the paper’s downward spiral, the market research proved as much. Readers found their way back to the Evening Post after reading about the night the mother-of-two had spent with the Bomber. So there was good reason to treat Bengtzon with kid gloves for a while. Her way of dealing with the situation and the attention that followed her release had impressed even the board – particularly the fact that she had insisted on the press conference being held in the Post’s newsroom. The chairman of the board, Herman Wennergren, had practically turned cartwheels when he saw the paper’s logo live on CNN. Schyman had more mixed memories of the press conference, partly because he had been standing directly behind Annika in the spotlight during the broadcast, and partly because of the countless repeats that had been shown on every channel. He had been staring at the tousled hair on her head, noting the tension in her shoulders. On screen Bengtzon had been pale and giddy, answering the questions clearly but curtly in decent school-level English. ‘No embarrassing emotional outbursts, thank God,’ Wennergren had said on his mobile to one of the owners from Schyman’s office afterwards.
He could well remember the fear he had felt at the mouth of the tunnel when the shot rang out. Not a dead reporter, he had thought, anything but a dead reporter, please.
He stopped looking at the bunker of the embassy and sat down on his chair.
‘It’ll all crumble around you one day,’ Annika Bengtzon said as she closed the door behind her.
He didn’t bother to smile. ‘I can afford a new one. The paper’s on a roll,’ he said.
The reporter cast a quick, almost furtive glance at the graphs on the desk. Schyman leaned back, studying her as she carefully sat down on one of the heavy chairs.
‘I want to do a new series of articles,’ she said, looking at her notes. ‘Next