Last Will (6 page)

“What do you need?” she asked.

“Anything with blood and policemen …”

Annika ended the call and turned off sharply to the left. She was inside the Golden Hall before the stereotype had time to react and tell her to stop.

The whole of the banqueting room was bathed in light from the powerful lamps of the forensics team. In the far distance, beneath a headless St. Erik, the result of confusion over the height of the ceiling when the hall was built, two men were crouching beside the spot where the woman had died.

Annika raised her cell phone, activated the camera function on the edge of the phone, and pressed
take picture
. She took another two steps,
take picture
, five more,
take picture
.

The police officer grabbed the top of her arm but she pulled free.

She jogged ten paces,
take picture
, the forensics officers noticed her and looked up in surprise,
take picture
.

“Okay, you’re leaving right now,” the police officer said, picking her up physically so that she lost contact with the floor, and he carried her out onto the balcony, not putting her down until they were over by the staircase. She could feel the stone floor under her feet, and she suddenly realized she was standing on the very spot where members of the royal family and the Nobel Prize winners always had their pictures taken before their long, gliding progress down one of the most famous staircases in the world.

How different it was for them, she thought, looking out over the remains of the dinner for one thousand three hundred guests. Earlier that evening the prizewinners had gazed out over meticulously laid tables and immaculately dressed guests, sparkling crystal and porcelain with real gold rims, flowers and trumpets.

The Blue Hall with its mute brick walls was desolate now, left more abandoned to its fate than ever before. The top table had been cleared, but the rest of the plates were still there, food congealing on soiled
tablecloths. Napkins lay scattered across plates as well as on the floor; the chairs were all over the place, some of them tipped over. At 10:45 all activity in the Blue Hall had ceased, time had stopped, and the moment when the next tables were to have been cleared never arrived.

“How long will the City Hall be closed off?” Annika asked.

“As long as necessary. Where are your outdoor clothes?”

There was a uniformed officer in the cloakroom. He handed over Annika’s padded jacket with an expression of deep disappointment at the role he had been allocated.

“I had a bag with my shoes in it as well,” Annika said. “Black boots.”

The policeman’s frustration seemed boundless as he went back to look for the bag. Annika turned around and pulled out her cell phone. While the officer was searching the racks, she brought up the pictures of the Golden Hall and pressed
send
.

She stared fixedly at the shell-shaped bronze lamps of the hallway as the message glided away through the pitch-black winter night and landed in the
Evening Post
’s server.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11

Anders Schyman was standing in his corner office, staring down at the Russian Embassy. The whole area lay in darkness, the only exceptions the circle of light around the weak lamp by the entrance and the light creeping out of the security hut with its frozen soldier. Sometimes the soldier made little excursions, a few steps along the inside of the iron gate, then back again, slapping his arms against his sides to warm up.

How surprised he would be if something actually happened, the editor in chief thought. How astonished he would be if someone drove up in a car and started shooting toward the Embassy building, or clambered over the wall and landed right in front of him. He wouldn’t have a chance, because the intruder would have everything on his side: surprise, determination, knowledge of the next step in the chain of events.

We’re so terribly exposed, Anders Schyman thought. So incredibly vulnerable. It’s completely impossible to be on your guard the whole time, never missing a single detail about your own security. The whole world faced the same dilemma, not just the West, not just democracies: everyone was affected in the same way by truly ruthless criminals.

Money and power and influence, Schyman thought. The world has never been safe from people who are prepared to take shortcuts in order to get these, but it feels as if everything is getting more and more raw, getting worse and worse.

There were rumors that the Nobel killer was a woman. At the press conference the police had neither confirmed nor denied anything at all, they didn’t want to say anything about any threats received, or about the security arrangements. Security had been good, and they weren’t aware of where it had broken down. Everything had gone according to plan, and it wasn’t yet possible to say why it had failed.

It had started to snow, lonely flakes drifting hesitantly toward the ground. Anders Schyman felt his eyes sting with tiredness; he blinked a few times and went and sat down at his desk. He checked his watch.

Maybe this isn’t what I ought to be doing after all, he thought. If this is the new age, if this is the new state of things, if terrorism has arrived here and security is to be the main focus from now on, maybe I should let someone else take over. If terrorism has arrived, then the freedom of the individual is dead. Security will be used as an argument to justify more and more restrictions, more and more surveillance, and the principle of freedom of information will be utterly undermined. Maybe a new type of journalist is needed to keep watch over this new age, and they’ll probably need a new sort of leader.

For a moment he succumbed to self-pity. The paper’s proprietors had no confidence in him, and he couldn’t look ahead to any more weighty appointments.

“Annika’s here now,” Jansson said over the intercom.

He pressed the button and leaned forward to reply.

“Good. Bring her in to see me.”

Who dressed her this morning? he thought as she entered the room. Cowboy boots, a black quilted jacket, a huge, filthy bag, and a pink tulle skirt. She had piled her hair into a heap on top of her head and had stuck a pen through it to get it to stay up.

“The lawyer’s confirmed that she can’t write about the actual shootings, or anything that happened immediately before or after,” Jansson said, tumbling into one of the chairs. “And she can’t be interviewed or convey her observations of the event in any other way either. Breaking a ban on disclosure isn’t punishable according to statute, but there’d be big fines, apparently, however the hell they get that to fit together …”

“What did you see?” Anders Schyman asked.

“Like you just heard …” Annika Bengtzon said, sinking into a chair as well, pale, a bit sweaty, in a bit of a state.

The editor in chief waved away her reluctance and she seemed to shrink under his gaze, lacking the energy to protest.

“I got a pretty good look at the person they think is the killer,” she said. “Evidently there weren’t many people who …”

She ran her hand through her hair, dislodging the pen, and her hair fell like a heavy curtain over her face.

“I’ve spent three and a half hours in National Crime Headquarters, trying to put together a picture of the girl. It didn’t exactly turn out well, but the police say it’s better than a written description …”

“So you saw the killer?” the editor in chief said, noticing to his own embarrassment that he sounded excited. “So the shots were fired by a woman. Did you see the actual murder as well?”

The reporter looked down at her hands, hesitant.

“She was looking at me,” Annika Bengtzon said, looking up to meet his gaze. “She was looking at me when she died.”

“Caroline von Behring? You saw her get shot?”

Without thinking, she pushed her hair up again and fixed it with the pen. Her eyes were staring at a point somewhere above the roof of the Russian Embassy when she answered.

“There was something in the way she looked at me,” Annika Bengtzon said, still staring out of the window, her hands in her lap now.

“And you’ve got nothing to contribute? To us, I mean, your employers?”

She looked up at him, and something dark crossed her eyes.

“I don’t know anything about what the police are doing apart from what I’ve experienced personally, you’re far better informed about that than I am. I presume that the color of Queen Silvia’s dress is no longer particularly important.”

Anders Schyman suppressed his annoyance and turned toward the night editor instead.

“Is there any way of getting round this?”

“Not according to the lawyer.”

The editor in chief stood up, unable to sit still.

“This is just what I was afraid of,” he said, far too loudly, throwing his arms out in frustration. “We’ve got a unique firsthand account and our hands are tied by the police. The terrorism laws are already in action. They’re forbidding us to report one of the most spectacular crimes ever, and on what grounds? For fuck’s sake, we live in a democracy!”

Jansson glanced quickly at his watch, disconcerted, as always, by emotional outbursts of this sort.

“Chapter twenty-three of the Judicial Procedure Act,” Annika said, “paragraph ten, final section. The accounts of key witnesses can be protected by the head of an investigation where a serious crime is suspected. It’s a very old law, mainly there to make sure investigations can’t be sabotaged.”

“There are always good reasons to impose limits on freedom of speech,” Schyman said, waving a finger at his employees. “Anyway, how the hell could they let something like this happen? Wasn’t there any sort of security in the City Hall?”

Annika Bengtzon rubbed her eyes with the palm of her hand.

“Of course there was, but the Nobel banquet has always been regarded as a fairly average security risk. The level of security has been the same for years now. The police work together with the security forces, the organizers and City Hall management—there’s nothing unusual about it.”

“The police man the doors, and the security forces take care of individual protection,” Schyman summarized.

“Exactly,” Annika said, sounding very tired. “The cordons around the City Hall have never been especially comprehensive. It’s a much bigger job to secure the Concert House for the actual awards ceremony: they shut off all of Hötorget and parts of Kungsgatan …”

“What about bodyguards?” Anders Schyman said. “Where the hell were they?”

“The security police never comment on personal protection,” Annika said, “but the escort regulations determine how and in what ways the police are to transport and guard the government and royal family and guests on state visits and so on, there’s a certain number of functions …”

Anders Schyman raised his hands to stop the reporter going on.

“I’m talking about the complete failure of the police!” he said. “How could this happen? I want to focus on that. The police aren’t going to get away with this by whining about needing new legislation …”

“Do you want a quick run-through of the morning editions?” Jansson asked, shifting uncomfortably on his chair.

Anders Schyman sat down again, his face red after his outburst. He gestured to the night editor to go ahead.

“We haven’t got much in the way of pictures of the crime scene,” Jansson said. “Ulf Olsson, you know, that idiot who loves celebrity events, he had five hundred shots of Princess Madeleine and not a single one of the attack. He didn’t manage to set the aperture or sort out the focus, and is blaming the resolution of his digital camera. Annika got a few shots of the Golden Hall when the whole City Hall was cordoned off—no one else has got anything like that—but they were taken on a cell phone and the technical quality leaves a lot to be desired. We’re running one on page eight, and another on nine—two forensics officers by a pool of blood, they’re pretty strong images.”

“What else have we got?” Schyman asked.

“We’re keeping an eye on Swedish Television, to see if they release any of the material they didn’t broadcast. They had a camera inside the Golden Hall when the shots were fired, but it looks like it was positioned next to the orchestra at the wrong end of the room. The question is how much it shows, and whether they’re going to release anything at all anyway.”

“Of course they won’t,” Schyman said. “Why on earth would they?”

“Well, this is a pretty special case,” Jansson said.

Anger flashed through the editor in chief like a pillar of smoke.

“Why?” he said. “What really makes this murder so special, other than the fact that it was unusually public?”

“Triple murder,” Jansson said. “The second guard just died, and the third’s still critical. And no, I don’t think anyone sees this as a normal murder.”

“The dead guards must have families and children,” Annika said.

The editor in chief stood up again.

“So these murders are so unusual that we need new legislation?” he said. “So special that we suddenly need a completely new set of ethical rules?”

Annika Bengtzon looked at her watch and glanced at the night editor.