Last Will (18 page)

Berit stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.

“Did he say why?”

“The rest of you think it’s a nuisance having to work round me,” Annika said, making a real effort not to sound bitter.

“That’s just an excuse,” Berit said, “and you know it. What terms did you get?”

Annika sighed again, a bit too deeply, and it sounded almost like a sob.

“On leave with full pay and access to the archives. You know what?”

She smiled weakly.

“It doesn’t feel as bad as you might think. I’ve nothing against having some time off. We’re moving out to Djursholm in the spring, and maybe now I can do some packing, get things organized and do a bit of research without getting stressed. That can’t be bad, can it?”

Berit smiled back.

“Definitely not,” she said.

“And you know something else?” Annika said. “All that money helps. I know I don’t have to work anymore if I don’t want to. I’ve been toying with the idea of handing in my notice and going off to do something completely different. Study law, or maybe Russian, at university.”

Berit was the only person who knew exactly how much money Annika would be getting as her reward. Not even Thomas or Anne Snapphane knew the correct sum.

“You’ll need something to do,” Berit said, “otherwise you’ll go mad.”

“And it looks like Thomas is going to get a new job,” Annika said, “so I’ll probably be seeing even less of him in the future. He’s so full of himself right now he looks like he’s going to burst …”

“Why?” Berit said, reaching for Annika’s bar of chocolate.

“You know he was working on that project looking into how safe politicians are, together with the Association of County Councils and the Justice Department? Now they’re talking about him being part of a group drawing up new legislation governing the use of bugging and phone tapping for the Department. I don’t know if it’s going to come off, but he’s already entertaining all of our acquaintances with stories about how vital this new legislation is. You should have heard him out at his parents’ on Saturday.”

Berit shook her head.

“This legislation has all the signs of being a really nasty business. Do you want to go for lunch before you go home for the last time this year?”

“I just want to check I’ve got everything …”

She looked through the last of her folders, sent off some background notes about an old murder case to her email archive, then switched the computer off. She poked about in her desk drawers and realized that she didn’t want to take anything with her.

She got up and picked up her bag and coat.

“Okay, my treat this time,” she said.

The door to the government offices at Rosenbad was locked, cold. Thomas gave the brass handle, embossed with the three crowns, a cautious tug, but the door didn’t move. He glanced around to check if anyone was watching him, then pulled hard on the door, and it flew open.

“Oops,” he said out loud to himself, hearing how silly it sounded, and stepped inside the government building.

His shoes were muddy, leaving brownish-gray marks on the white marble floor. He tried in vain to wipe them before going through the swinging doors.

A white marble staircase led up to a white foyer, and his gravelly footsteps crunched under the vaulted ceiling. His heart was in his throat and his hands felt clammy.

He had spent seven years walking past the Cabinet Office on his way to work at the Association of Local Councils on Hornsgatan. Seven years of looking up at the apricot-colored façade and letting his thoughts run away with him: What would it be like to work in there? Going to work in Ferdinand Boberg’s solid art nouveau palace? Being a small cog in the machinery of power?

The fact was that he had never been in here before. During his previous project, looking into the threats faced by politicians, they had either met at the Association of County Councils, or the Association of Local Councils, or in some bar. Per Cramne, the representative of the Justice Department, had preferred the last.

Now he looked around, unable to conceal his fascination, the white floor with its inlaid granite triangles, the four statues along the wall on his left, the marble pillars, the vaulted ceiling.

Two workers in overalls were standing by the security desk, apparently arguing about something, but apart from them the foyer was empty. Thomas went and stood behind them, forming a short queue, and looked at his watch. Perfect. You had to be careful with your timing—you didn’t want to look too keen, or too nonchalant.

“You don’t have clearance,” the security guard said, passing back the men’s ID cards through a small hatch at the bottom of the glass screen.

The workmen looked at each other in resignation.

“It must be a misunderstanding,” one of them said. “We’re supposed to be doing a job here.”

The guard was a young woman, with a neat center part and a tie.

“I can’t help you,” she said curtly. “You names aren’t down here. You don’t have clearance.”

“Sorry,” Thomas said, “but could you just let me in?”

She looked at him closely.

Thomas pulled his driving licence out of his wallet and passed it through the hatch as the woman called the workmen’s boss.

“I’m seeing Per Cramne in Justice,” he said, feeling the workmen’s stares on his back.

She tapped at her computer and picked up a phone.

“Straight up the stairs,” she said, then turned back to the workmen.

Thomas tried to look relaxed and confident as he went through the doors leading into the government offices. He pressed the button of the elevator nearest to him, then looked up to find himself facing the deputy prime minister.

“Hello,” the deputy prime minister said. “Do you want right or left?”

“Sorry?” Thomas said, unsure if he had heard correctly.

“Right or left?” the deputy prime minister repeated.

“Er,” Thomas said, “I was thinking of going up.”

“In that case I recommend you go left. You’re heading toward the freight elevator. It stops on every half floor, like in John Malkovich’s head.”

The man, who was famous for speaking his mind when he thought no one was listening, smiled cheerily at him and held open the door of the lift to the right.

“After you.”

This can’t be happening, Thomas thought.

Cramne met him inside the doors to the sixth floor.

“Come in, come in,” the assistant undersecretary said, shaking Thomas warmly by the hand. “Welcome! Have you been here before?”

“Not for a long time,” Thomas said.

“Okay, we’ll take a quick tour of the corridors of power before I show you where you’ll be working—what do you say?”

Per Cramne turned and unlocked the doors leading to the offices without waiting for a reply. Thomas was sweating badly in his thick winter coat and would dearly have loved to take it off.

“There are sixteen sections in Justice, plus the legal secretariat and the metropolitan chancery,” Per Cramne said. “PO is the largest, the section
that deals with the police, as well as general issues of law and order. That’s where you and I belong. Oh, but take your coat off, otherwise you’ll burn up.”

Relieved, Thomas shrugged off his coat. He hung it over his arm and hurried to catch up with his new colleague.

“This is where the minister, the directors general for legal affairs, the press secretary, and the political advisers have their offices,” Cramne went on, gesturing vaguely as they walked quickly down a white-painted corridor.

The carpet on the floor was light gray, thick as a mattress. It swallowed every sound and left the air still and clean. From the rooms he sailed past, Thomas thought he could sense focused individuals at their desks, having reasoned discussions in low voices.

“Here, for instance,” Cramne said, stopping outside a half-open door. He lowered his voice, pointing at a woman sitting half-concealed behind the door, talking on the phone.

“Director general for legal affairs in L5, criminal jurisdiction. Damn smart girl, she’s spent a lot of time working on issues of sexual violence recently, and the whole issue of compensation for raped children, you know … The permanent undersecretary—no, down there—is responsible for legal procedure, courts, police, and all the rest of it. He had to deal with the raids on those security transports …”

Thomas straightened, feeling power tickle the back of his neck.

“The Blue Room,” Per Cramne said, pointing to one corner. “Mondays are departmental days, and that’s where we have our briefings. Each section presents its activities to the minister, at quite a pace. As one of the pen pushers, you’re bound to end up in there at some point.”

“Where’s my office?” Thomas asked, shifting his coat to the other arm.

Per Cramne laughed.

“Not up here, you’ll be with me down on four,” he said, then turned off around a corner.

A new corridor with similar white doors and gray carpet stretched off into the distance. Photographs of justice ministers through the ages
hung in three rows along one wall. The voices were louder here, someone laughing, the signature tune of the lunchtime radio news.

“This is the Minister’s office,” Per Cramne said, stopping by a door on the right. He glanced at his watch.

“He’s down in a cabinet meeting; they meet every day between twelve and one. Usually he doesn’t have to go—five ministers are enough to reach quorum—but there was going to be a roll call today and I think he was the one doing it. Difficult to miss something like that … His secretary is outside his actual office.”

Thomas put his head in and looked at the Justice Minister’s rooms. It reminded him of a small apartment, with the secretary’s room as an entrance hall, then a fairly nondescript office with light, modern furniture, a painting, a desk covered in papers and a computer, a low bookcase holding files and pictures of children. The room faced the Parliament building and the waters of Norrström, the water down there gray as lead.

“At the back there’s a small bedroom and bathroom,” Cramne said. “He’s a whiz at Sudoku; we think he sits in there practicing. Shall we move on?”

He gestured to a door on the left.

“The press secretary. If the minister gets kicked out, she goes too, as well as the undersecretary and the political advisers. Then the caretaker comes along and unscrews all the nameplates and that’s the end of them.”

“How many people are we talking about?” Thomas asked.

“What, political appointees? A handful, six or seven. No more than that. The rest of us faithfully serve whichever master we have. Are you hungry?”

Thomas shook his head.

“Excellent. You’ve met Karin, head of planning? She was responsible for your appointment. Shall we say hello to the undersecretary?”

Cramne went on, past several more doors.

“Jimmy? Have you got a moment to meet our new bugging adviser?”

The undersecretary of state for the Justice Department came out into the corridor in jeans and a checked beige shirt, his hair all over the place.

“Hi,” he said with a broad smile. “Welcome aboard. When do you start?”

They shook hands.

“After the New Year,” Thomas said, finally starting to relax.

“Bugging’s a real minefield,” Jimmy Halenius said. “You’ll have to watch your words if we’re going to steer it through the machinery this time round. What’s the timetable?”

This last question was directed at Per Cramne.

“Initial inquiry in six months,” the section head said. “Out to consultation in the Legislative Council this autumn, and a government proposal in February next year.”

“So a new law on July 1 in eighteen months time,” Jimmy Halenius said. “A slightly different tempo from your wife’s work. She works on one of the papers, doesn’t she?”

Thomas was momentarily at a loss for words, and he could feel himself blushing. How the hell did the undersecretary of state in the Justice Department know who Annika was?

“My best friend bought a car off her once,” Jimmy Halenius said, looking extremely amused. “It must be nine, ten years ago. ‘It’s goes like a dream’ she said, and it did, until it broke down.”

“Er,” Thomas said, not knowing what to do with his hands.

“Shall we take a look at your office?” Per Cramne said.

He doesn’t like being outside the conversation, Thomas thought, and shook the undersecretary’s hand again.

They walked in silence along the corridors, back out through the glass doors to the elevator.

“Where’s your office?” Thomas asked.

“Three rooms from yours. Can you press for four?”

They found themselves in the same sort of office setup as on the sixth floor, the same layout but less feeling of power. There were more magazine racks, bulletin boards on the walls, and a large, colorful tapestry in the hall.

Thomas’s room faced out onto Fredsgatan, over toward the corner with Drottninggatan. It was a reasonable size, but its position meant it was quite dark.

He leaned over and looked out. No view of Tegelbacken. He had never looked up at this window from the street.

“You know what this is all about?” Cramne said, pulling out a chair. “You’re putting together a departmental proposal which will then be sent out for consultation. Everyone gets to have their say, and we already know how most people are likely to respond. The police and prosecutors are in favor, the chancellor of justice is in favor, and the legal ombudsman against. The Lawyers’ Federation is against—they’re always against everything—and the authorities that deal with the victims of crime, and the women’s support units, will probably be in favor.”

“And then the work in the various sections here starts,” Thomas said.

“Exactly. You listen to God, God’s auntie, and everyone else, then you pull it all together with the head of section—in other words, me. Then we go to the director general for legal affairs, who says ‘think about this and this and this,’ then we tell Halenius, and when he says okay we get to show up for a Monday meeting in the Blue Room. Which is when it’s time to point out the stumbling blocks for the Minister.”

“And what will those be in this case?” Thomas asked.

“There’ll probably be a few modifications,” Per Cramne said. “The level of suspicion required, what crimes will be covered, synchronization with legislation in other countries, and then possibly the timescale.”