The men chuckled; the ladies were no good at managing money, that was for sure. Diapers. And chocolate!
Schyman looked expressionlessly at the other man.
‘Really,’ he said. ‘So what’s the scoop?’
The laughter died down. Mr Flannel Jacket smiled uncomprehendingly.
‘In a private capacity,’ he said. ‘She bought personal stuff with the government card.’ The rest of the group nodded in agreement. Now that
was
a scoop.
‘All right,’ Schyman said. ‘We’ll pursue it. Where did the tip come from?’
The room filled with agitated murmuring – you didn’t discuss things like that. Schyman sighed.
‘For the love of God,’ he said. ‘It’s pretty obvious that someone’s trying to set her up. Check out who it is. That might be the real scoop, the power struggle within the Social Democrat camp. What they are prepared to do to hurt each other before the congress gets started. Anything else? What about members of the Riksdag?’
They continued to go through the assignments that were under way: politics, entertainment, foreign and domestic news. The manager of the editorial staff took notes and made comments, different policies were established, guidelines were drawn up.
‘What about the “Doughboys”?’
The work amd finances editor suggested with great enthusiasm a new series, exploring different monetary funds: which ones were on the way up, which ones to avoid, which were ethically sound and which were safe for the long haul. Headlines like ‘Be a winner’ always sold papers. Everyone nodded, no one had any reservations about this. Every single member of the entire Flannel Pack owned a substantial portfolio of options.
‘What about the crime beat?’
Sjölander cleared his throat and sat up straight. He had almost dozed off there on his chair.
‘Right, we’ve got that double homicide down at the free port, and the police say it’s only the beginning. As you can see in today’s paper, we’re the only ones that have the story about the missing cigarettes. Fifty million. They’re going to be killing each other in droves over this truckload.’
Everyone nodded appreciatively. This was good stuff.
‘And then there’s the privatization of the public sector,’ the editor-in-chief said, his voice slightly higher-pitched than the others. ‘Are any reporters working on that yet?’
Schyman ignored him.
‘Annika Bengtzon is on to something, I’m not sure where it will lead. She’s found some shady foundation that does things Social Services no longer has the capacity to do: they hide women and children whose lives are threatened.’
The Flannel Pack squirmed uncomfortably.
What the hell is it anyway, ‘some foundation’? Sounds pretty damn vague.
‘Annika Bengtzon is good at digging up stuff, but she’s too damn preoccupied with women’s issues,’ Sjölander said.
They all nodded. Yeah, it was just a lot of ranting. Nothing newsworthy about it, no cred, it was just messy and tragic stuff.
‘Then again, we’ve got to remember where she’s coming from,’ Sjölander said with a smirk. The others smirked too.
Yeah, right.
Schyman regarded them in silence.
‘Would the story be better if they were hiding
men
whose lives are threatened?’ he asked.
This set off more scraping of chairs and looking at watches;
Christ, is that the time? Better get back to business. Was that it?
Time to go, the radio was switched back on, the room was filled with hustling and bustling.
Anders Schyman returned to his room with the sense of slight frustration that these planning sessions usually produced. The way the management categorized reality, its uniformly incestuous view of the way things were, the unenlightened lack of self-criticism.
As he sat down and turned on the news bulletins his mind was filled with only one thought:
How the hell is this going to work out?
Annika got off the bus at the stop in front of the Co-op store. The sidewalk was slick and slippery. Hunching her shoulders, she ignored the looks of the crowd. Out of the corners of her eyes she observed people in loud ski-suits walking nearby. She turned away; if they wanted to stare, then let them, she wouldn’t be bothered. Gravel had been spread on the street. She stepped down on to the road and headed for the works. The industrial section of town clashed against the massive greyness of the winter sky, the smell of slush filled the air. As usual, she avoided looking at the abandoned blast-furnace, shifting her gaze to the left, resting her eyes lovingly on the beautiful old housing for workmen, thick wooden beams painted in rich brick-red hues. Her old apartment was on the right. She shot a glance in that direction – it had remained unoccupied since she moved out.
That was no longer the case.
Surprised, Annika stopped short in the middle of the street.
Curtains and flowers in the window, a shoemaker’s tiny lamp.
Someone had taken over her kitchen and was sleeping in her bedroom. Someone who decorated, watered plants and cared. The vacant windows had sprung back to life.
The intensity of the relief that she felt amazed her – it was almost physical. A weight was lifted off her chest. The familiar feeling of wanting to disappear subsided. For the first time since the terrible event she felt a pang of tenderness towards the old industrial community.
I had good times here too
, she thought.
We had nice moments.
Now and then there had been love between them.
Annika left the neighbourhood, reached Granhedsvägen, picked up her pace, hiked her bag up on her shoulder, looked up at the sky. The wind was murmuring in the treetops of the pines. Darkness wasn’t far off.
I wonder if there are trees on other planets
, she thought.
The road was icy and rough as she picked her way along it. A few cars passed, their dipped beams hazy – no one she knew.
Silence crept closer. The crunching of her footfall, her regular breathing, the muffled roar of a plane going in for a landing at Arlanda Airport. Her body grew light, dancing, as she gazed at her surroundings.
The woods had taken a beating from the storm. In the clearing behind Tallsjön, nearly all the pine seedlings had snapped. Power and telephone poles were down. Trees had been broken in any number of places and at different levels: lying uprooted and exposed, snapped off at the height of a man, split, treetops splayed. The road was littered with branches that had been torn off. She had to step over the remains of a fallen birch tree.
We’re so vulnerable
, Annika thought.
There’s not really much we can control.
The drive leading up to Lyckebo hadn’t been snow-ploughed. A car had been there a day or so earlier, tracks spreading to twice their width as they defrosted only to refreeze into channels of ice. Walking was difficult. Her bag banged against her hip.
The road barrier that marked the boundaries of Harpsund was open. The fir trees closed in around her. Here the darkness was more intense, the storm hadn’t caused as much damage. The government could afford to take good care of its forest.
She passed the brook. There was an ice sculpture where the water welled out. Under the crust you could hear trickling. Various sizes and shapes of animal tracks criss-crossed each other: moose, deer, rabbit, wild boar. The ones that were a few days old had spread into giant prints.
Then the clearing appeared with its three brick-red buildings: the cottage, the woodshed and the barn. Everything was still. The treehouse to the left, the sloping meadow leading down to the jetty. Annika stopped and pulled off her hat and her gloves, allowing the breeze from the lake to ruffle her hair, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. The image of the clearing remained on her retina like a black-and-white negative, still, colourless, soundless. Slowly a sense of unease began to take hold: what was wrong with this picture?
She opened her eyes wide, the light hitting them, the scene crystal clear, in two seconds she knew.
There was no smoke coming out of the chimney.
Annika dropped her bag on the ground and ran, her heartbeat like a roaring pulse in her brain. As she yanked the front door open she was confronted by a chill and a darkness, an unpleasant whiff of danger.
‘Gran!’
The old woman’s legs were visible under the gateleg table, clad in brown support hose, one shoe missing.
‘Gran!!’
Annika picked up the table, getting her left ring finger caught in the hinge of the table leaf.
‘Oh, my God, oh, my God . . .’
The elderly woman was lying in a semi-prone position. Some blood had dribbled out of her mouth. Annika flung herself at her, took her hand, it was so icy, stroked her hair, the tears welling up, adrenalin surging.
‘Gran, good Lord, can you hear me, Gran . . .?’
Annika felt her grandmother’s wrist for a pulse, couldn’t find the right spot, felt her throat, nothing there either. With hot and damp hands she rolled the old lady over on her back and bent over her, trying to detect breathing. Yes, she was breathing.
‘Gran?’
A moan, followed by murmuring.
‘Gran!’
The old woman’s head fell to one side. The blood had dried on her cheek. Her jaw was slack. More moans, then whimpering.
‘Hurts,’ she said. ‘Help me.’
‘Gran, it’s me. Oh, God, Gran, you fell down, I’m going to help you . . .’
Basic life-saving skills
, Annika thought as she stroked the old woman’s head.
Check for breathing, bleeding and shock.
Her grandmother had to be kept warm.
Annika got up quickly and hurried over to the bedroom. The antique Gustavian-era bed was carefully made. With a single motion, she jerked off all the bedding, including the sheet and the thin top mattress, and rushed back to the kitchen. She spread out the mattress on the floor, lifted her grandmother’s upper body and kicked the mattress in under her, then lifted her hips and legs over it, the bedding bunching up under her. Then Annika spread the blankets and sheets over her grandmother, lifting her legs up and tucking the covers in. The next step was to put her woollen cap on her grandmother’s head, touching the wiry grey hair with her shaking hands.
An ambulance
, Annika thought.
‘Wait here, Gran,’ she said. ‘I’m going to go get help. I’ll be right back.’
The old woman whimpered in reply.
Annika rushed outdoors, through the woods, past the brook, past the road barrier, across the road, ducked under a fallen power line, jumped from tuft to tuft across the marsh and ran up the hill to Lillsjötorp.
‘Dear God, please let old man Gustav be in!’
The old man was chopping wood. Hard of hearing, he didn’t hear Annika coming. She didn’t bother saying hello to him, just entered the house.
The Slut was there, Gustav’s home help and the woman Sven had once had on the side. Her name was Ingela. She was washing the dishes and looked at Annika in consternation.
‘What on Earth . . .?’
Annika rushed over to the telephone and dialled Emergency Services.
‘You could at least have closed the front door,’ the Slut said irritably as she wiped her hands on a towel and headed for the door.
‘Emergency Services, how may we help you, please?’ a lady’s voice said on the phone.
Annika started bawling.
‘It’s my grandmother!’ she howled.
‘Why don’t we start from the beginning? Tell me what happened.’
Annika closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead.
‘Something’s happened to my grandmother,’ she explained. ‘I thought she was dead. She’s at a cottage outside Granhed, you have to come and pick her up.’
‘What did you do to your hand?’ the Slut asked, alarmed.
‘Which Granhed would that be?’ the lady asked.
Annika stammered out a description: ‘Turn off at Valla in the direction of Hälleforsnäs, then take Stöttastensvägen, past Granhed, and then it’s the first right after Hosjön.’
‘Has something happened to Sofia?’ the Slut asked with an incredulous stare.
Annika put the receiver down and left the house, running back the same way she had come. It had grown dark and she fell several times. The small cottage had begun to blend into the background, the black forest.
The woman hadn’t moved; she was completely still, breathing calmly. Annika sat down beside her, put her grandmother’s head in her lap and cried.
‘Don’t you die, you hear? Don’t you die and leave me!’
Slowly Annika calmed down. It would take at least half an hour for the ambulance to arrive. She wiped her runny nose and her tears with the back of her hand, then she noticed the blood. The skin and flesh on her left ring finger had been severely pinched when she’d moved the gateleg table. Blood had dried to a crust under her fingernails and was still dripping down her wrist. The pain hit her at that very moment. She moaned and felt the room spin. What a baby she was! She wrapped the wound with a dishrag and tied it.
It would probably be a good idea to try to heat the kitchen.
Annika went over to the stove to start a fire, placing her hand on the iron surface. It was cool but not cold – it hadn’t been used since early morning. She crumpled up a few pieces of newspaper and put in a stick of firewood and some birch-bark kindling. Her hand was shaking as she lit the match, her finger throbbing painfully. She struck another match to light the kerosene lamp that she set in the window facing the waterfront.
She got a pillow and placed it under her grandmother’s head, carefully studying the old face. Sofia Katarina. The same name as the youngest foster child in the Kulla-Gulla girls’ books of the 1940s. Annika remembered how beautiful she’d thought the name was. When she’d been a child, she’d liked to pretend that Martha Sandwall-Bergström’s books were about her grandmother. Sofia Katarina, ‘Sossatina’.
Where was that damn ambulance?
Annika looked around the kitchen. There was no trace of anyone making coffee, sandwiches, porridge or lunch. Her grandmother must have collapsed early this morning, right after she had got up, made a fire in the stove and made her bed. That would make it eight hours ago, Annika concluded. Eight hours.
Is that too long?
Would she be able to make it?