Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [94]
‘Where are all these letters and emails physically stored?’
‘The items you’re reading through now are still current, so they’re with secretaries.’
She took the second page and her eye was caught by the first item.
Statement from the Newspaper Publishers’ Association regarding changes to broadcast rights for digital television.
Anne Snapphane’s channel, she thought.
‘Could I look at this one?’
The registrar stretched his back, looked at the printout she was holding out, and adjusted his glasses.
‘You’ll have to contact the person dealing with that,’ he said and pointed at the name below the document date.
She moved on, there were periods of heavy correspondence regarding proposed legislation.
She reached a printout of items received very recently.
Registration date: 18 November.
Sender: Herman Wennergren.
Regarding: Request for meeting to discuss a matter of urgency.
‘What’s this?’ Annika asked, handing the man the sheet.
He read silently for a moment.
‘An email,’ he said. ‘Received Tuesday evening, registered yesterday.’
‘I want to know what was in that email,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I can’t help with that; it’s with the person who’s dealing with it. Anything else?’
She turned away, continued to look through the list, oddly agitated.
Why would the Evening Post’s chairman suddenly decide that he had to meet the Minister of Culture on Tuesday afternoon?
She forced her worries to one side.
Sender: Anonymous.
Regarding: Drawing of yellow dragon.
Decision: Ad acta.
She read the entry again.
‘What’s this?’ she said, leaning forward and pointing, waiting for the man to put on his glasses and look.
‘An anonymous letter,’ he said. ‘We get quite a few of those. Mostly newspaper cuttings or slightly muddled opinions.’
‘Many yellow dragons?’
He laughed. ‘Not too many.’
‘Where are the anonymous letters?’
‘I collect those here, they have their own box.’
The registrar took off his glasses and reached for a brown file labelled Government Offices: Anonymous Post. He opened it and took out the letter at the top.
‘We keep them in boxes arranged by year, five years up here and then they go into the central archive. Every envelope is stamped on the back.’
He held out the little envelope, letting her read it. It was stamped 31 October that year.
‘What’s in it?’
‘I think this one’s the dragon.’
He pulled out a sheet of A4 paper folded in four, smoothed it out and handed it to Annika.
‘I don’t know why they sent it here,’ he said, ‘but maybe it counts as culture.’
It really was a little dragon in the middle of the sheet of white paper, drawn with a rather shaky hand and coloured with yellow ink. Something clicked inside Annika’s head. She felt it physically. She had seen a dragon almost exactly the same as this recently, but where?
‘Can I have a copy of this?’ she asked.
While the man went out into the corridor to get a photocopy, Annika picked up the envelope the dragon had arrived inside. It was addressed to Minister of Culture Karina Björnlund, Stockholm, La Suède.
She looked closer at the stamp. Postmarked in Paris, le 28 Octobre.
Ragnwald had probably lived in the French part of the Pyrenees for the past thirty years. There could be a connection, but where had she seen the drawing before? She closed her eyes tight and searched her memory, catching a glimpse of something.
She opened her eyes wide, listening out for the registrar. She could hear him talking to someone down the corridor. She looked round the room and discovered a little Post-it note stuck to the bottom of his computer screen. She crept over to the computer and leaned over to read the note.
Karina direct, then a number through the departmental exchange, then the word mobile followed by a GSM number.
She stared at the number, 666 66 60. Twice the number of the beast, and then a zero. Was that just coincidence, or did it say something about Karina Björnlund?
‘Anything else I can help you with?’
Annika