Last Will (24 page)

“How?” Annika asked.

“She got over the border into Finnish Karelia. The border guards shot at her, but she thought they were intentionally trying to miss her. That’s what Mom was like, always thinking the best of people … Are you happy with your work?”

“Sometimes,” Annika replied truthfully.

“You’ve never thought about writing about the academic world?” Ebba said. “About the research itself, of course, but there needs to be far more careful coverage of the actual institutions, their funding, and their methods.”

“How do you mean?” Annika asked, feeling that she was getting interested.

“Some people will do practically anything to get ahead,” Ebba said, her eyes darkening. “They spy on other people, steal their results, publish their discoveries as their own. In some institutions it’s gotten to the point where everyone locks all their material away the moment they leave the room.”

“That’s astonishing,” Annika said.

“Not really,” Ebba said. “There’s so much at stake. Take that project we got last winter, for instance—three quarters of a billion kronor, but not a mention of it in the media.”

“I got the impression that it wasn’t really such a lot of money in that context.”

“That’s true,” Ebba said, “and that’s exactly what I mean. You could find plenty to write about if you took a closer look at the scientific establishment.”

“That’s not such a bad idea,” Annika said, looking at the time. “I’ll give it some thought.”

“Just ask if you need any help,” Ebba said, getting up from the sofa. “I’m going into the lab this afternoon. Maybe you’d like to come and have a look round sometime?”

Annika picked up her mug and got up.

“I’d like that,” she said. “Thanks for the coffee …”

They went out into the kitchen, an enormous old-fashioned kitchen with huge cupboards on the walls and a great big table in the middle.

“Oh, let me,” Ebba said, taking the mugs and going over to the dishwasher.

She stopped halfway and turned back toward Annika.

“Hang on,” she said, “if you were at the Nobel banquet, does that mean you saw what happened there?”

Annika rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand.

“Caroline von Behring was looking at me when she died,” she said. “I have dreams about her several times a week. It’s starting to get a bit unpleasant.”

Ebba turned away and put the mugs in the dishwasher.

Anders Schyman was standing behind the glass wall looking out across the newsroom.

The fact was that he preferred his modest new office on practically every point to the huge old corner room with its view of the Russian Embassy. And this was best of all: access to the working environment, people coming and going, the blue glow of the computers during the dark nights, a view of something that was, at best, reality, or at any rate something commercially viable.

The only thing he missed was the guard in his hut beside the Embassy gates.

But the old man can’t help but be happy, the editor in chief thought as he watched the chairman of the board, Herman Wennergren, stride across the newsroom.

“Well, it does feel like rather a tight fit,” Wennergren said as Schyman opened the door to his cubbyhole. Schyman couldn’t tell if the chairman was referring to the newsroom, his office, or his own rather stiff blazer.

“It’s probably best if we go and sit in the cafeteria,” Anders Schyman said. “I don’t have any extra chairs anymore. But, here, let me hang up your coat while we’re here …”

“Hmm,” Herman Wennergren said, handing the editor in chief his coat and scarf. “I understand that you haven’t exactly been letting the grass grow up here.”

The chairman looked like he wasn’t particularly pleased with the pace of change at the paper.

“We’ve started up experimental ventures with both television and
radio,” Schyman said. “And the website has been completely redesigned. We felt it was important to get everything working as quickly as possible, to give the board something to base its decisions on.”

I’m using the royal we, Schyman thought, and decided to carry on with it.

“So the pace of change is in no way an attempt to preempt the decision of the board?” Wennergren asked sourly. “After all, it’s much harder to say no to something that already exists and is up and running.”

Schyman pulled out a folder of designs and other documents.

“I have to say,” he said, “that the reorganization has gone much more smoothly than anyone could have guessed. Because every department was getting less space, including management, neither the union nor the employees’ forum had any objections.”

“The Swedish mentality,” Wennergren said. “As long as everyone goes without, it’s fair.”

“Precisely,” Schyman said, stepping out of the room and leading the chairman off to the right and down a narrow corridor. “If I could just show you, the whole of sports now fits into my old office …”

They stopped outside the open door to the editor in chief’s former territory and the chairman craned his neck to look in.

“Remarkable,” he said, “that you can squeeze so many computers into such a small space.”

“And it’s working extremely well,” Anders Schyman said, walking on. “To the left here we’ve done away with all the private offices and installed the whole of the marketing department. That’s had some unexpected advantages, largely because marketing and advertising are cooperating much better.”

“What were these rooms used for before?”

“The day-shift reporters,” Anders Schyman said. “We’ve given them all laptops and are encouraging them to work from home as much as possible. They’re all very happy.”

“Hmm,” Wennergren said. “Personally I believe in keeping your staff where you can see them.”

Spike came over from the news desk, looking like he wanted something.

“The Parliamentary Ombudsman’s report into the security problems at the Nobel banquet is due out tomorrow,” he said. “Who can we use to try to get hold of it today?”

Schyman was extremely annoyed at the interruption, and even more annoyed when he realized he couldn’t hide it.

“Use whoever you like,” he said, “it doesn’t matter that much.”

“I’ve spoken to some of the boys on the online edition,” Spike said. “They don’t appear to know what the Parliamentary Ombudsman is.”

The editor in chief avoided the chairman of the board’s gaze and wished Spike would just vanish.

“Sort it,” he said, then turned toward Herman Wennergren. “Over there,” he said, pointing, “was where entertainment used to be. Now we’ve squeezed in both planning and advertising. You can’t see the wages office from here, we’ve fitted that into the left-hand corner. We’ve rebuilt the staff room as a television studio, and the stationery cupboard is now a control room. Basically, we’ve managed to fit in our entire broadcast operation into space that was just being wasted before …”

Herman Wennergren turned toward the editor in chief with a slightly strained look in his eyes.

“To be honest,” he said, “I’m not really interested in questions of space. Why haven’t we got an editor who can solve the problem with the ombudsman’s report?”

Anders Schyman felt like he wanted to clear his throat, but suppressed the urge.

“If I could just …”

He held out his arm and showed the way to the newly built cafeteria, a small space beside the elevator with a coffee machine and automatic sandwich dispenser. A few members of staff were sitting in one corner, talking into their cell phones. Schyman fetched coffee for the pair of them, and put the cups down on a rather unsteady coffee table. He opened his folder of documents and contracts and leafed through them.

“At the moment I’m negotiating with several different commercial radio stations with a view to supplying radio news and possibly some talk shows. The website has been designed so that everything we broadcast
anywhere can also be put up on the Internet. There’s a lot of potential for the future: television via broadband.”

Herman Wennergren took off his glasses.

“But no editors with the sense to call the Parliamentary Ombudsman?”

“The digital television network will be integrated with the Internet,” Anders Schyman said, pretending he hadn’t heard Wennergren’s comment. “It’s only a matter of time, and it’s going to affect everyone in this business. How is the government going to tackle the complete freedom this gives anyone in this area? What does it mean for the various regulatory bodies? For taxes on advertising? There’s a lot to consider. But what’s unique about us is still our basic approach, exploiting that previously untapped market in the media. In other words, tabloid news on television.”

The chairman of the board put his glasses back on and reflected for a few seconds.

“In purely concrete terms,” he said, “what are we talking about here? Live coverage of things like those American car chases?”

“Car chases, of course,” Schyman confirmed. “In-depth personal interviews, hidden camera footage of important people, scandals and accidents. Natural disasters and fires, children crying in every broadcast, politicians in hiding, love-rat celebrities. Revealing footage from behind the scenes at big events like the Eurovision song contest, of course. But I still maintain that it’s the personal approach that’s the unique factor in our new venture. People speaking out, telling us their personal experiences of events, big and small.”

“I see,” Wennergren said, and sighed. “I can already hear the objections of our proprietors. More gutter journalism isn’t exactly what anyone wants right now.”

“No,” Anders Schyman said. “What they want is at least a hundred million to cover the financial disaster of our illustrious morning paper stablemate.”

“Perhaps,” the chairman said, “you should choose your words with a little more care. As you can imagine, you’re not exactly top of their list of favorite people at the moment.”

“That’s been made abundantly clear,” Schyman said curtly, wishing that his bitterness wasn’t quite so obvious.

Herman Wennergren took off his glasses once more and leaned forward. Schyman could see the pores on his nose.

“I understand,” he said, “that you’re upset with the individual who wrote the piece about TV Scandinavia. I’ve explained to the family that you didn’t have much choice. If you’d said no she would just have taken the story somewhere else. Now at least we had a chance to steer the whole process of publication and claim the moral high ground.”

He leaned back, his blazer creaking slightly as he did so.

“What’s happened to her, anyway? I never see her name in the paper these days.”

“She’s on leave,” Schyman said, choosing not to mention such details as pay and conditions.

“Excellent,” Wennergren said, standing up. “And is there reason to hope that this might become permanent?”

If Schyman didn’t know better, he could have sworn that Wennergren was smiling, but it must have been a trick of the light. Herman Wennergren never smiled.

“I’m going to deal with that,” Anders Schyman said.

“And find someone who can call the Parliamentary Ombudsman,” Herman Wennergren said.

Annika was standing in the kitchen peeling potatoes when she heard the outside door open and close.

“Hello,” she called over her shoulder.

No answer.

She put the potato peeler down on the draining board and listened.

“Thomas?” she said, a bit louder. “Is that you?”

Still no answer.

She turned around and took a few steps toward the door, suddenly anxious.

“Who’s there?” she said. “Hello?”

The door to the closet under the stairs was half open, and there was a sound of hangers rattling. Annika ran over and pulled the door open,
and inside a blond woman was crouching down and looking for something on the floor.

It took a couple of seconds before Annika realized it was Anne Snapphane. Annika laughed in relief and felt her shoulders relax.

“Damn it!” she said. “You gave me an awful fright. What on earth are you doing?”

Anne looked up at her.

“Hello, country bumpkin. I thought I’d dig out those shoes you borrowed before I forget. Are they in here or in the bedroom?”

“What, the stilettos?” Annika asked in surprise. “But I gave those back to you when you were going to Crazy Horse.”

It must have been more than six months ago, Annika thought. Back when Anne was still drinking.

Anne stopped and thought.

“Fuck, so you did,” she said. “You’re right. And both heels snapped that evening and I threw them away, that was it. Crazy Horse is a real dump. Never go there!”

She stood up and brushed off some invisible dust.

“Can I borrow these instead?” she asked, holding up Annika’s newly bought cowboy boots from NK.

Annika felt her smile fade.

“I haven’t actually had a chance to wear them yet,” she said.

“Okay, forget it, then,” Anne said, dropping the boots on the floor.

“No, no, take them,” Annika said. “I don’t need them when I’m here all the time …”

Anne looked at her for a few seconds, then bent over and picked up the boots again.

“That’s really damn nice of you,” she said with a smile. “You know, I have to change my clothes between lectures. I can’t do one performance after another looking exactly the same—the media would start making fun of me.”

She looked admiringly at the boots.

“These really are very nice. It’s such a stroke of luck that we’re the same size.”

“Do you want to stay for dinner?” Annika asked, heading back to the sink. “I was going to do steak with a potato gratin and garlic bread.”

“You really haven’t got the hang of the GI Index, have you?” Anne said, taking a walk around the open space that made up the ground floor of the house: kitchen, dining room, and living room rolled into one.

“Are you staying?” Annika asked again.

“No thanks,” Anne said. “I’m trying to eat a bit more healthily. I’ve got to lose weight. My agent wants to get some pictures done for new posters, and the camera puts five kilos on you—did you know that?”

“How can it possibly do that?” Annika asked, pulling out her food processor to slice the potatoes. “If that’s true, then there must be something wrong with the lens—it’s not reproducing the perspective properly or something. Can you pass me the cream?”