Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [61]
‘What does that mean?’
Annika shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Have you still got the envelope?’
They found it beneath the adverts, a simple little envelope with the ‘Sverige’ brand, and an ice-hockey player on the stamp. It was addressed to the Sandström family and postmarked in Uppsala the previous day.
‘Can you lay it out on the table so I can copy it?’
Dark fear swept across Gunnel’s eyes. ‘Do you think it’s something serious?’
Annika looked at the woman, her grey hair, her knitted cardigan, soft cheeks and bent back, and was overwhelmed by a sympathy that took her breath away.
‘No,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘I don’t think so. But I still think you should tell the police about the letter.’
Annika copied the letter on the kitchen table. The handwritting was even, soft and round, the words symmetrically placed on the page, every other line left blank to make it easier to read. She noted the torn edge, which showed that the sheet had been pulled from a pad of lined paper, and wondered if she ought to feel the quality of the paper in one corner, but decided against it.
‘Are you going to write anything in the paper about Kurt?’ Gunnel Sandström asked when she had stood up and pushed in her chair.
‘I don’t know,’ Annika said. ‘Maybe. If I do, I’ll call you first to let you know.’
She took the woman’s hand.
‘Have you got anyone to look after you?’ she asked.
Gunnel nodded. ‘We’ve got a son and two daughters. They’re coming this afternoon with their families.’
Annika felt the room spin again. There was something here, a sense of belonging that ran through the generations, a love that had lived here for centuries.
Maybe people shouldn’t leave their roots, she thought. Maybe our longing for progress ruins the natural force that makes us capable of love.
‘You’ll be okay,’ she said, surprised that she was so certain.
Gunnel Sandström looked at her with eyes that Annika could see were devoid of something vital.
‘I’m going to get justice as well,’ she said.
Then she suddenly turned and went out into the hall, then up a creaking staircase to the floor above.
Annika quickly pulled on her outdoor clothes, and hesitated at the foot of the stairs.
‘Well, thank you,’ she shouted cautiously.
No reply.
23
Berit Hamrin bumped into Annika at the caretaker’s booth by the lifts.
‘Are you coming for something to eat?’ she asked.
Annika put the car-keys on the counter and looked at the time.
‘Not today,’ she said. ‘I’ve got loads to check, and I have to get the kids. Are you faint with hunger, or have you got time to look at something?’
Berit pondered this theatrically.
‘Faint with hunger,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
‘Follow me,’ Annika said, and sailed off towards her office. She tossed her outdoor clothes in the usual corner and emptied the contents of her bag on the desk, picking out her notebook. She leafed through to the last page, then rushed round the desk and tugged open the second drawer, pulling out another pad.
‘Read this,’ she told Berit, holding up two pages of notes.
Her colleague took the first pad and read the opening line aloud.
‘The present upsurge of the peasant movement is a colossal event.’ She put down the pad. ‘But this is a classic text.’
‘In what way?’ Annika said, like a coiled spring.
Without looking away from Annika, Berit intoned loudly and clearly from memory:
‘In China’s central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back.’
Annika felt her jaw drop; she stared speechlessly at her colleague.
‘Report on an investigation of the peasant movement in Hunan,’ Berit said. ‘Written in nineteen forty-nine, if I remember rightly. One of Mao Tse-tung’s most famous works. We all knew it off by heart.’
Annika searched through a box and pulled out a couple more notebooks. She leafed through them until she found what she was looking for.
‘What about this?’
She gave Berit the notes she had taken up in Luleå.
‘There is no construction