Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [84]
‘I thought you said the police had discounted him, that he didn’t carry out the attack?’
She swallowed silently, nodded.
‘So who blew up the plane?’ Anders Schyman said in a neutral tone of voice, his hands still.
She was silent for a few moments before she replied.
‘Karina Björnlund,’ she said. ‘The Minister for Culture.’
The editor-in-chief didn’t move a muscle. His hands remained clasped above his shirt buttons, his back stayed at the same angle, his eyes didn’t move, but the air in the room had suddenly turned grey, difficult to breathe in.
‘I presume,’ Schyman said after a silence of indeterminate length, ‘that you have bloody good back-up for this accusation.’
Annika tried to laugh, but the noise came out as a dry snigger.
‘Not really,’ she said, ‘but the minister really is the most likely culprit.’
Schyman leaned forward quickly, heaving himself out of the chair with the help of the desk and walked across the floor, not looking at Annika.
‘I don’t know that I want to listen to this,’ he said.
Annika was halfway out of her chair to follow him, but felt the whole room lurch. She sank back and picked up her notes.
‘The footprints found at the scene were size thirty-six,’ she said. ‘They must have been made by either a child or a small woman, and of those two alternatives an adult woman with small feet is most likely. Women hardly ever turn to terrorism unless it’s together with their men. Ragnwald planned the attack, his fiancée carried it out.’
Schyman interrupted his restless wandering across the floor and turned to face her, hands by his sides.
‘Fiancée?’
‘They were due to get married, parish assistant Göran Nilsson from Sattajärvi and Karina Björnlund from Karlsvik in the parish of Lower Luleå. I’ve checked all the Göran Nilssons and Karina Björnlunds with their backgrounds against the historical information in the National Population Address Register, and they’re the only two.’
‘The terrorist and the culture minister?’
‘The terrorist and the culture minister.’
‘They were getting married two days after the attack?’
Annika nodded, watching her boss’s unfeigned astonishment, and felt the ground slowly solidify beneath her again.
‘How do you know that?’
‘A wedding announcement in the Norrland News published less than four weeks before the attack.’
Anders Schyman folded his arms, rocked back on his heels and looked out of the large, dark window towards the Russian embassy.
‘You’re quite sure that Karina Björnlund, in the autumn of nineteen sixty-nine, was planning to marry a man who ended up becoming a professional killer?’
She cleared her throat and nodded, and Schyman continued his reasoning. ‘And our Minister of Culture would have destroyed the property of the state, murdered one conscript and wounded another, all for love?’
‘I don’t know that, but it seems logical,’ Annika said.
The editor-in-chief went back to his chair and sat down carefully.
‘How old was she?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘Was she living with this bloke?’
‘She was still registered at her parents’ address in Karlsvik.’
‘What was her job?’
‘In the wedding announcement it said she was a student.’
Anders Schyman picked up a pen and wrote something on the corner of a diagram.
‘Do you know,’ he said, looking up at Annika, ‘this is the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard.’
He let the pen fall, the small sound of plastic on paper grew and echoed in the silence, the floor opened up beneath her and she was falling.
‘I’m glad that you came to me with this information,’ he went on. ‘I hope you haven’t mentioned this nonsense to anyone else?’
Annika felt the heat rising in her face, and her head was starting to spin.
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘Not to Berit? Not Jansson?’
He studied her close-up for a few seconds, then straightened his back.
‘Good.’ He turned away. ‘From now on you won’t be covering terrorism at all. You will not spend a minute more on Karina Björnlund or this bloody Ragnwald or any explosions in Luleå or anywhere else. Is that understood?’
She jerked back against her chair,