Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [91]
Now she was just her own self, off sick, holed below the waterline, a used-up reporter who had passed her sell-by date, and the nuances submerged her, making her listen in mute astonishment.
The fridge was rumbling, deep and steady, a half-tone lower than the ventilation unit on the roof of the next building. The smell of frying was creeping in from somewhere, a restaurant in the block heating up pans and griddles and preparing lunch of the day. The buses at the stop down on Hantverkargatan sighed and groaned, sirens from the fire engines stationed by Kronoberg Park rose and fell.
Suddenly the panic struck.
I can’t bear it.
All the muscles in her body strained, sound and breathing vanished.
There’s nothing wrong, she thought. It just feels like it. I’m not suffocating, but the opposite. I’m hyperventilating, it’ll pass, just wait, calm down.
And the floor came closer and pressed against her thighs and elbows until she ended up staring under the dishwasher.
He completely invalidated me as a person, she thought, a moment of clarity that brought back sound and colour. Schyman wasn’t just seeing me as a reporter; he took away my honour and value as a person. He’s never done that before. He must be under serious pressure from an unlikely desire to be accepted. I’m not accepted. He can’t go into battle on my side right now, because it would cost too much.
She got up, noticing that she had banged her knee. Her arms and feet ached, a sign that she had absorbed too much oxygen. Her panic attacks had disappeared for several years. She hadn’t had any since the children were born, until the Bomber got her. Now they came at irregular intervals, with the same violence and terror as they had before.
I wonder if I need happy pills, she thought.
She knew that Anne Snapphane had a large bottle hidden in her bathroom cabinet.
But it’s all my imagination, she thought. I’m scared of my own fear. It’s all in my head. Drag these thoughts into the light and they’ll vanish, let them out and look at them and they’ll just disappear.
And she stood there with her hands on the dishwasher, feeling her body stabilize.
She knew she was right. There was a link between Ragnwald, the Minister of Culture, the attack on F21 and the deaths of the boy, the journalist and the councillor.
She had also clearly understood that she was not allowed to look into the story any more, under any circumstances.
I don’t want to hear another word about this.
At work, no, she thought. But if I make a few calls when I’m off sick at home, then it doesn’t count.
So she went into the bedroom and got dressed, then went back into the kitchen and made coffee, without clearing the mess left by Thomas and the children, just pushed all the dirty crockery into a corner of the table and sat down with her mug of coffee, her pad of paper and a ballpoint pen from the Association of Local Authorities.
She needed to know more about both the terrorist and the minister in order to see the bigger picture. She had the internet at home, but only via an old modem. Thomas had wanted to get broadband but she had refused, because he spent too much time on the computer already.
Check the church records, she wrote; backgrounds and parents.
Ask for the minister’s public records, start with the post, then journeys, representations, declarations, property register, company register, and so on.
Read more about ETA and Læstadianism.
She looked at the short list.
That would be enough for today.
She picked up the phone and asked directory inquiries to put her through to the parish office in Sattajärv – and discovered that there wasn’t one. She asked for the numbers of all parish offices