Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [65]
The editor looked at his watch.
‘Get downstairs straight away,’ he said, putting out the half-smoked cigarette in the chrome ashtray. ‘I’ll get a car.’
She spun to her right and raced, with tunnel-vision, towards the lift. She ran down the stairs because both lifts were busy.
A taxi was waiting outside the main entrance.
‘Name?’ the driver said.
‘Torstensson,’ Annika said as she sank into the back seat.
It was an old trick of the trade from the previous editor’s time. Annika, Jansson and a few of the others got into the habit of booking taxis in the former editor-in-chief’s name, because it was usually quicker to jump into another taxi than the one you yourself had booked. Occasionally the booked taxi-driver who had been left waiting angrily for ‘Torstensson’ would go in and shout his name in the newsroom, which never failed to raise a laugh. Even though Torstensson had been elbowed out by Schyman, the old tradition lived on.
Sleet was whipping at the windows of the car, making Annika blink and flinch. The traffic was solid; a traffic-light changed up ahead but the line of cars failed to move at all.
Annika could feel adrenalin making her fingers itch.
‘I’m in one hell of a hurry,’ she said. ‘Is there any other way of getting there?’
The driver looked at her over his shoulder with a look of scorn. ‘You called for a taxi, not a tank.’
She checked the time, trying to tell herself that the traffic would be just as bad for Q.
‘After these lights there’s a bus lane,’ the driver said encouragingly.
At three minutes to four he pulled up on Hamngatan, at the corner of Regeringsgatan. She scrawled her name on the receipt for the invoice and leaped out of the taxi with her bag hanging from one arm, her chest hammering with anxiety.
The traffic was roaring around her, splashing water and mud up her trousers. The banks and shops had all put in their Christmas windows already, the lights flashing in her eyes. She peered through the sleet.
Was she too late? Had he already gone in?
A dark-blue Volvo with tinted windows pulled up outside Regeringsgatan 30–32. She noticed it because it was far too unobtrusive. Before her brain had even worked out why, she knew he was inside. She rushed over and positioned herself by the doorway, so he would have to pass her on his way in.
‘My secretary said you called and were fishing,’ he said as he slammed the back door of the Volvo. The car glided away quickly and noiselessly into the traffic, swallowed up by the snow, totally neutral.
‘I want to know if you know about the serial killer,’ she said, staring at him, icy water trickling down her temples.
‘Which one?’ he said.
‘Very funny,’ she said, feeling the sleet run down the back of her neck. ‘The one sending Mao quotes to his victims.’
Q stared at her for several seconds. She saw the snow settle on his hair and slowly slide down towards his eyebrows. The shoulders of his flame-coloured raincoat were soon soaked. The bare hand clutching his briefcase imperceptibly gripped the handle tighter.
‘I’m not with you,’ he said, and she felt a chill come from inside out rather than the other way round.
‘The journalist in Luleå,’ she said. ‘The boy who witnessed his death. A Centre Party councillor in Östhammar. There must be something that connects them.’
He took a couple of paces towards her, his eyes darkly watchful, and tried to get past her.
‘I can’t talk now,’ he said from the corner of his mouth.
She moved quickly to the right, blocking his path.
‘It’s Ragnwald,’ she said in a low voice when he was right in front of her. ‘He’s back, isn’t he?’
Commissioner Q looked at her for several long seconds, their white breath mingling as it was blown away by the wind.
‘One fine day you’re going to be too clever for your own good,’ he said.
‘Have been, all my life,’ she said.
‘I’ll call you this evening,’ he said, and she let him walk round her, hearing him speak into the entry phone, and the click as the lock opened.
Anne Snapphane was walking straight into the wind, no matter which direction