Red Wolf_ A Novel Part 42

'Which one? We've got three.'

'In crime?'

'Hang on, I'll put you through.'

The line went quiet and she ended up in a vague cybers.p.a.ce without sound or colour. After three minutes she gave up and rang again.

'I'm trying to get hold of someone on the Benny Ekland and Linus Gustafsson murder inquiries,' she said in a tone of panic when Karlsson answered once more.

'About what?' the young man said, uninterested.

She forced herself to breathe calmly.

'My name is Annika Bengtzon, and I'm a reporter on the Evening Post Evening Post, and I-'

'Suup's in charge of the press,' Karlsson interrupted. 'You'll have to call him tomorrow.'

'Listen to me!' she screamed. 'Ragnwald is here, Goran Nilsson, the Yellow Dragon, I know where he is, he's in a small brick building next to the ore railway together with Karina Bjornlund. You've got to come and arrest him, now!'

'Bjornlund?' Karlsson said. 'The Minister of Culture?'

'Yes!' Annika shouted. 'Goran Nilsson from Sattajarvi is with her in a small building below the ironworks. I can't explain exactly where, it's close to a viaduct-'

'Listen,' Karlsson said. 'Are you sure you're feeling okay?'

She paused and realized that she sounded like a lunatic, cleared her throat and forced herself to speak calmly and coherently. 'I know this might sound a little crazy,' she said, trying to smile down the line. 'I'm calling from somewhere called Lovskatan, it's not far from the ironworks, the railway track runs right alongside-'

'Lovskatan, yes, we do know where Lovskatan is,' the policeman said, and she could hear that his patience was wearing thin.

'A man you've been looking for for years has come back to Lulea,' Annika said, sounding almost normal. 'His name is Goran Nilsson, and since he returned to Sweden he's committed at least four murders. The Mao murders. And right now he's outside that building, or at least was very recently, a brick building with a tin roof a short way into the forest below a viaduct . . .'

Officer Karlsson sighed audibly down the line.

'The duty officer is booking someone in,' he said, 'but I'll pa.s.s on your message as soon as she gets back.'

'No!' Annika yelled. 'You have to come now! I don't know how long he's going to be there.'

'Listen,' the policeman said firmly. 'Calm down. I've just told you, I'll talk to the duty officer.'

'Good,' Annika said, breathing heavily, 'good. I'll wait here by the bus-stop until you come so I can show you the way. I'm parked here, I'm in a silver Volvo.'

'Okay,' the policeman said. 'Just you wait there.' And he hung up.

Annika looked at the display on her phone, a glowing rectangle in the darkness.

She pushed in the earpiece and called Jansson's direct number in the newsroom.

'I might have to stay in Lulea tonight,' she said. 'Just wanted to check it's okay to book into the City Hotel tonight if I have to.'

'Why?' Jansson said.

'There might be something going on up here,' she said.

'No terrorism,' Jansson said. 'I got hauled over the coals this morning for letting you go up to Norrbotten again.'

'Okay,' Annika said.

'Are you listening?' Jansson said. 'Not one single line about another b.l.o.o.d.y terrorist, is that clear?'

She waited a second before replying. 'Of course. Understood. I promise.'

'Stay at the City,' the editor said closer to the receiver in a considerably quieter and friendlier voice. 'Call room service. Get pay-TV and watch p.o.r.n films, I'll sign for the whole lot. I know how it is, we all have to get away sometimes.'

'Okay,' she said smartly and ended the call, dialled directory inquiries and asked to be put through to the City Hotel, Lulea, booking a business-cla.s.s room on the top floor.

After that she sat in the car and stared out of the windscreen. Her breath hit the windows and they soon froze over again. She could do nothing more. All she could do was sit and wait for the police.

It'll soon be over, she thought, feeling her pulse-rate slow.

She saw Thord Axelsson's grey face before her, Gunnel Sandstrom's swollen eyes and wine-red cardigan, Linus Gustafsson's spiky gelled hair and watchful eyes, and was consumed with burning fury.

You're finished, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

And she realized she was freezing. She thought about starting the car engine to heat it up, but opened the door instead and got out, far too restless to sit still. She checked that her mobile was in her pocket, locked the door and walked up towards the top of the hill.

The arctic night had taken an iron grip on the landscape, as hard and unrelenting as the steel produced in the blast-furnaces down by the sh.o.r.e. Annika's breath drifted around her, light veils of frozen warmth.

It's beautiful, she thought, her eyes following the rails and ending up among the stars.

Then she heard a vehicle rumbling behind her, she turned round, hoping it was the police.

It was a local Lulea bus, the number one.

It drove towards her and stopped. She realized that she was standing at the bus-stop and took a few steps to one side to indicate that she wasn't waiting for it.

But the bus stopped a few metres away from her anyway, the back door opened and a thickset man stepped onto the street, moving slowly, heavily.

She looked at him and took a step closer.

'Hans!' she said. 'Hans, h.e.l.lo; it's me, Annika.'

Hans Blomberg, the archivist from the Norrland News Norrland News, looked up and met her gaze.

45.

'What are you doing here?' Annika said.

'I live here,' the man said, smiling cheerfully. 'On Torsgatan.'

He gestured over his shoulder towards the housing estate.

'Do you?' Annika said as the bus pulled away. She took a step closer and looked into his eyes, and at that moment something clicked inside her head, suddenly she remembered when she had seen the drawing of the yellow dragon before, all of a sudden she knew where it was. She had thought it was a child's drawing, a yellow dinosaur, on Hans Blomberg's pinboard in the archive of the Norrland News Norrland News. She took a couple of involuntary steps back.

'Surely the real question is,' Hans Blomberg said, 'what are you doing here?'

The bus disappeared beyond the crown of the hill and the man walked towards her, his hands in his pockets. He stopped in front of her and in the moonlight his eyes were almost transparent.

She laughed nervously. 'I'm up on a job and got lost,' she said. 'Foreningsgatan, which one is that?'

'You're standing on it,' the archivist said in amus.e.m.e.nt. 'Doesn't anyone have a sense of direction in Stockholm?'

'They'd run out by the time they got to me,' she said, realizing she would soon be unable to speak.

'Who are you meeting?'

She shrugged. 'I've already missed my deadline,' she said.

'But then you must come inside and warm up,' he said. 'Can I offer you a cup of tea?'

She searched frantically for an excuse, the man took no notice of her hesitation and took a firm grip of her arm and started walking.

'I live in a little two-room flat on the ground floor,' he said. 'It's not much, but what can you do when consumer society has left you behind?'

She tried to pull her arm away and found it was held in a vice-like grip.

'It's not often a guy like me gets such a charming visitor,' he said. 'A lovely young lady all the way from the capital.'

He smiled genially at her, she tried to smile back.

'Which one of them are you?' Annika said. 'The Panther, Tiger or Lion?'

He was looking straight ahead, pretending he hadn't heard the question, just took tighter hold of her. The houses were disappearing behind them; they were approaching the no vehicles sign. She glanced over to the left, past the power cables and into the undergrowth.

'So you live out here in the forest?'

He didn't answer, and the next instant she was back in that tunnel. She felt the earth tilt, heard someone breathing hard, panting, and realized it was her, her mouth wide open.

'No,' she said. 'I don't want to. Please.'

Her legs gave way beneath her. Hans Blomberg caught her with a smile.

'You're a reporter,' he said. 'A proper, inquisitive little reporter. Of course you want to get a good story, don't you?'

Her memory flashed up the pipes in the roof of the tunnel above her, and she started to cry.

'Let me go!'

She jammed her feet in the ice and struggled and was rewarded with a ringing blow to the head. She saw stars and Sven was there screaming at her and she ducked, sank to the ground and put her hands over her head.

'Don't hit me.'

The world slowed down and stopped, the ground stopped tilting and she could hear herself panting. She looked up cautiously and saw Hans Blomberg shaking his head anxiously at her.

'G.o.d, the way you carry on,' he said. 'Up you get. The leader's waiting.'

And she stumbled forward in the moonlight with the lights above the railway track swaying far off to the left. The angels were completely silent, where their anxious voices had been was now only dark emptiness.

They pa.s.sed the Skanska building, it was completely black.

'We're going to the little brick building, aren't we? The one beyond the viaduct?'

'So you've already found our headquarters,' the archivist said in his good-natured voice. 'Have you been creeping around in the bushes? Very talented. Then I may as well tell you what to expect. The Dragon has called us together again. I don't think everyone can make it, we've suffered something of a decline in membership recently, but Karina will probably be there, and Yngve, of course. He never misses a good party.'

The archivist laughed happily. Annika struggled against nausea.

'Poor Yngve,' the man went on. 'Goran wanted me to look after him, but what's a chap to do? To help an addict you have to change the whole apparatus of oppression, and I haven't been able to do that. Unfortunately I have to admit that Yngve no longer has any hold on reality, it's truly tragic. I have failed in my duty . . .'

A moment later she heard something heavy and rhythmic behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and found herself staring into the headlight of a huge diesel locomotive coming down the track.

'Straight on,' Hans Blomberg said.

Annika obeyed, peering at the great engine as it slowly rumbled past her towards the ironworks with its endless train of fully laden ore-trucks behind it.

Her heart was thudding. She tried to see herself from the train-driver's perspective. She was dressed in black against a dark background of scrub, only lit by the cold moonlight.

She forced her heart to slow down; tried to see how long the train was without twisting her head, but couldn't see the end of it.

They walked under the viaduct, the train thundered past, dunkdunk dunkdunk dunkdunk dunkdunk dunkdunk dunkdunk, wagon after wagon after wagon, casting black shadows from the railway track.

Then the last one disappeared, the end of a long tail heading towards the fiery heat of the blast-furnace.

Annika swallowed hard and found that her hands were shaking.

They reached the transformer box where Goran Nilsson had hidden his duffel bag. She glanced at the box; it was closed, sealed up.

'Down to the left here,' Hans Blomberg said, pushing her towards the gap in the undergrowth.

She slipped and was on the verge of falling down the slope, but grabbed hold of some branches and managed to stay upright.

'Take it easy,' she said lamely and walked towards the brick building.

The windows were sealed with metal shutters, a half-collapsed flight of wooden steps led up to the door, which was slightly open. Annika stopped, but Blomberg shoved her in the back.