Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [75]
‘When do you need it?’
‘Yesterday,’ Annika said. ‘It’s urgent.’
‘When isn’t it?’
‘I’m sitting here waiting and can’t do anything until I hear from you.’
An almost inaudible sigh on the line. ‘I’ll do a quick check and see if I can find him in his own right. Reading through everything that was published on Maoism would take several weeks.’
Annika stood and looked out over the newsroom until she got an answer.
‘Sorry. No Göran Nilsson described as a Maoist. We’ve got a couple of hundred others though.’
‘Thanks for checking so quickly,’ Annika said.
What other archives were there from that period, in the places where Maoists were active? The university cities, she thought. The Competitor existed then, but there was no point in calling them. Upsala Nya Tidning? She had no contact there. Was there a newspaper in Lund?
She scratched her head in irritation.
What about Luleå?
She had picked up the phone and dialled the Norrland News reception before even realizing she was doing it.
‘Hans Blomberg was off sick yesterday, I don’t know if he’ll be in today,’ the receptionist said, ready to disconnect her.
Annika suddenly felt an immediate and inexplicable fear. Good God, surely nothing could have happened to him?
‘Why? Is it serious?’
The receptionist sighed, as if she were dealing with someone who was a bit slow. ‘Burned out, like everyone else. Personally I think they’re just lazy.’
Annika started. ‘You’re not serious?’ she said
‘Have you thought that all these people started getting burned out when we joined the EU? All the shit coming over our borders comes from the EU, people, toxins, burn-out. And to think I voted yes. Fooled, that’s what we were.’
‘Is Hans Blomberg often ill?’
‘He only works part time now, got a disability pension a while back. Often he’s not even here on the days he’s meant to be.’
Annika bit her lip. She had to get into the Norrland News archive as soon as possible.
‘Can you ask him to call me when he comes in?’ She left her name and number.
‘If he comes in,’ the receptionist said.
Göran Nilsson, she thought as she hung up and stared at the young man on her computer screen. Is that you, Göran?
The coffee machine had been repaired and the drinks were hotter than ever. She took her two cups into her room, letting the caffeine warm her brain.
Her eyes were stinging from lack of sleep. She had lain in bed with her eyes closed for hours while Thomas twisted and turned, moaning and scratching. The death of the local councillor had really shaken him.
She shook off her tiredness and carried on searching, typing in ‘Sattajärvi’, and reached a site about a building project at the end of the nineties.
There was a map. She leaned towards the screen to find the village and could just make out the tiny letters spelling out the names in the surrounding area: Roukuvaara, Ohtanajärvi, Kompeluslehto.
Not just another language, she thought. Another country, frozen solid, stretching up across the tundra above the Arctic Circle.
She leaned back.
What was it like growing up north of the Arctic Circle in the fifties, in a family where the father was a religious leader in a strict and weird belief system?
Annika knew the Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller had found that a striking number of West German terrorists were the children of Protestant ministers. Miller saw a connection: the terrorist’s violence was a rebellion against a strict religious upbringing. The same could easily be true of Sweden and Læstadianism, the religious movement of Northern Sweden.
Annika rubbed her eyes. At that moment she caught sight of Berit hurrying past. She forced her mind to clear and pulled herself up out of her chair.
‘Have you got a minute?’ she called from her door.
Berit took off her hat and gloves and folded her scarf. ‘I’m thinking of going to lunch early today. Do you want to come?’
Annika logged out of the system, fished her