Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [87]
And ultimately: was he prepared to sacrifice his own career?
Anders Schyman picked up the balance sheet containing the notes and looked at the chairman of the board.
‘There is something,’ he said. ‘Something that Karina Björnlund really doesn’t want made public.’
Herman Wennergren raised his eyebrows, intrigued.
The winter sleet hit Annika in the face, making her gasp for breath. The doors slid shut behind her, the sucking sound mixed with the crunch of ice caught in the mechanism. She put her hand over her eyes to block the light of the paper’s illuminated logo above her head. In front of her the street and the world stretched out, vast and impassable. Her centre of gravity sank, through her stomach, past her knees. How could she possibly take another step? How was she going to get home?
This is the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard . . . I hope you haven’t mentioned this nonsense to anyone else?
At the back of her head the angels were tuning up their mournful voices, no words, just notes, reaching her through eternities of emptiness.
From now on you won’t be covering terrorism at all. You will not spend a minute more on Karina Björnlund or that bloody Ragnwald.
How could she have been so wrong? Was she really going mad? What had happened to her head? Was it because of her experience in the tunnel? Was something up there broken beyond repair?
She put her hands over her ears, closing her eyes to shut out the angels, but instead she kept them in. They overwhelmed her.
No. I don’t want this.
Her mobile started buzzing from the bottom of her bag. She shut her eyes tighter and felt the vibrations filter through her notebook, chewing-gum, the bag of sanitary towels, the padding of her coat, hitting her in the waist. She stood and waited until it had stopped.
I don’t want to hear another word about this.
Stockholm seemed to come to a standstill around her, the noise of traffic on the motorway disappeared, damp ghosts gathered around streetlamps and neon signs, her feet floated free of the ground, she took off and slowly floated above the pavement outside the entrance, down towards the garage, over the frozen grass lawn, past the concrete traffic island.
‘Annika!’
She fell to the ground with a bump, gasping for breath, and found herself standing right outside the crunching, sliding doors, the wind tugging at her hair again, spitting and snarling.
‘Hurry up, you’re getting soaked.’
Thomas’s old green Toyota had pulled up alongside the entrance to the garage. She looked at it in surprise. What was it doing here?
Then she saw him wave from the open driver’s door, his blond hair wet and sticking to his forehead, his coat stained with sleet. She ran towards him, right into his smiling eyes, flying over the tarmac and patches of ice, drowning in his endless embrace.
‘Good thing you got my message,’ he said, leading her round to the passenger side, carrying on talking as he opened the door and helped her in. ‘I tried to call your mobile but there was no answer so I told the caretaker that I’d come past and pick you up, I had to move the car anyway so it’s no trouble, I’ve picked up some goodies and I thought we could maybe . . .’
Annika was panting slightly through her half-open mouth.
‘I think I’m coming down with something,’ she whispered.
‘Right, let’s get you home and tucked up properly in bed; isn’t that right, kids?’
She turned round and saw the children sitting on their booster seats in the back seat. She smiled weakly.
‘Hello, darlings. I love you.’
Wednesday 18 November
31
The man walked with floating steps past the campsite reception, his body fluid, his mind razor-sharp. He felt sturdy, strong. His legs had the spring he remembered, muscles tensing and relaxing. He filled his lungs, hardly noticing the stab in his stomach as his diaphragm expanded. The air was so strangely and distantly familiar up here, like a song you used to sing as a child and had forgotten, then suddenly hear again from a distance on a crackling radio.
Sharp, he thought, and stopped.