Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [69]
Annika was taking notes.
‘And Ragnwald?’
‘We’re sure he’s back.’
‘Why? To kill these individuals?’
‘He’s been gone for more than thirty years, so he must have a bloody good reason for coming back. But what that is, we don’t yet know.’
‘Is he the Mao-murderer?’
‘Nice headline, shame you can’t use it. I don’t know if it’s him. It might be, but I wouldn’t swear to it.’
‘But he blew up the plane at F21?’
‘He was involved somehow, but we don’t know if he was there for the explosion itself.’
‘What’s his name? His real name?’
Commissioner Q hesitated.
‘You got a serial killer out of me,’ Annika said. ‘Surely I can get a terrorist out of you?’
‘You can’t use it,’ Q said. ‘We’ve kept his details quiet for thirty years, and it has to stay that way for a bit longer. This is only for your own personal records. No notes on the computer, no stray notes in the office.’
Annika swallowed hard, her pen poised, her pulse throbbing in her neck. She drew breath to ask about the level of secrecy when the door suddenly flew open and Kalle rushed in.
‘Mummy, she’s got Tiger! Make her give him back!’
A short-circuit in Annika’s brain meant that she breathed enough air for a primal scream. She felt the colour in her face rise, and looked at Kalle with crazed eyes.
‘Out!’ she whispered. ‘Now!’
The boy looked at her in horror, then turned and ran, leaving the door wide open behind him.
‘Mummy says you have to give Tiger to me,’ she heard him shout. ‘Now!’
‘Nilsson,’ Q said. ‘His name is Göran Nilsson. Son of a Læstadian minister from Sattajärvi in Norrbotten, born October nineteen forty-eight. Moved to Uppsala to study theology autumn nineteen sixty-seven, back in Luleå a year or so later, worked in cathedral administration, vanished on the eighteenth of November nineteen sixty-nine, and hasn’t been seen under his true identity since then.’
Annika was writing so hard that her wrist hurt, hoping she would be able to decipher her scribbles.
‘Læstadian?’
‘Læstadianism is a religious movement in Norrbotten, some aspects of which are incredibly strict. No curtains, no television, no birth control.’
‘Do you know why he’s called Ragnwald?’
‘That was his codename in the Maoist groups in Luleå in the late sixties. He kept it as his stage name when he became a professional killer, but his ETA identity is probably French. He’s most likely been living in a village in the Pyrenees, on the French side, and moving across the border pretty much at will.’
Annika could hear the children fighting it out in the television room.
‘So he really did become a professional killer? Someone like Léon?’
‘No, people like that don’t exist outside Luc Besson films, but we know he was involved in a few assassinations for money. I have to go, and it sounds like you need to sort things out there.’
‘They’re fighting over a stuffed tiger,’ Annika said.
‘O man, your legacy shall be violence,’ Q said, and hung up.
She watched the end of Pippi with the children, one on each knee, then brushed their teeth and read two chapters from the Bullerby books out loud to them. They sang three songs from the Swedish Songbook together, then went out like lights. She was dizzy with tiredness when she finally sat down to write. The letters floated across the screen, she couldn’t seem to focus, and was struck by an intense sense of falling, a short second of complete helplessness.
She fled from the screen into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, then went into the kitchen and boiled some water, measured four spoons of coffee into the cafetière, pouring the water on as it boiled, and forcing the metal filter down hard. She took the coffee and a mug from the Federation of Local Councils and sat down at the computer again.
Empty. She had nothing left.
She picked up the phone and called Jansson.
‘I can’t pull it together,’ she said. ‘It isn’t working.’
‘You’ll get it together.’ Jansson’s voice was alive with the adrenalin of the news torrent. ‘I need you now. We can help each other out here. Where have you