Red Wolf: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

her hand and nodded. He introduced himself as Pekkari, the night manager.
    ‘He could have got a job at any of the Stockholm papers whenever he wanted. He turned them down often enough, preferred to stay up here.’
    Annika tried to smile to compensate for her white lie. ‘So I gather,’ she mumbled.
    ‘Do you want coffee?’
    She followed Pekkari to the staff room, a tiny windowless cell containing a small kitchen unit.
    ‘You’re the one from the tunnel, aren’t you?’ he asked, sounding confident of his facts.
    Annika nodded quickly, taking off her coat as he poured thick tar-like liquid into two badly washed mugs.
    ‘So what were you two going to talk about?’ Pekkari asked, handing her the sugar.
    She waved it away.
    ‘I’ve written quite a bit about terrorism recently. Last week I spoke to Benny about the attack on F21, and he said he was on the track of something new, something big – a description of what actually happened.’
    The editor put the sugar bowl on the table, digging among the lumps with nicotine-stained fingers.
    ‘We ran that last Friday,’ he said.
    She was shocked. She hadn’t heard anything about new revelations in any of the media.
    Pekkari dropped three lumps in his mug.
    ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘But you’re on one of the biggies; you don’t know what it’s like for locals. The agencies only care about Stockholm. As far as they’re concerned, our scoops are worth less than cats’ piss.’
    Not true
, she thought to herself,
it depends on the quality of the material
. She suppressed the thought and looked down at her lap.
    ‘I started out on the
Katrineholm Post
,’ she said, ‘so I know exactly what it’s like.’
    The man stared at her, eyes wide open. ‘Then you must know Macke?’
    ‘On sport? Of course I do. He’s an institution.’
    An o
ut-of-control alcoholic even when I was there
, Annika thought, smiling at Pekkari.
    ‘What did you have for Ekland?’ the man said, slurping his coffee.
    ‘A few historical summaries,’ she replied quickly. ‘Mostly archive material from the seventies, pictures and text.’
    ‘Must all be online,’ Pekkari said.
    ‘Not this.’
    ‘So you weren’t trying to get his story?’
    The man’s eyes stared fixedly at her over the edge of the mug, and she calmly met his gaze.
    ‘I have many good qualities,’ she said, ‘but mind-reading isn’t one of them. Benny called me. How else would I know what he was up to?’
    The editor took another lump of sugar, sucking on it thoughtfully as he drank his coffee.
    ‘You’re right,’ he said, once he had swallowed with an audible gulp. ‘What do you need?’
    ‘Help to get access to Benny’s articles on terrorism.’
    ‘Go down to the archive and talk to Hans.’
    Every newspaper archive in the whole of Sweden looks like this
, she thought,
and Hans Blomberg looks like archivists have always looked
. A dusty little man in a grey cardigan, glasses and a comb-over. Even his noticeboard contained the anticipated prerequisites: a child’s drawing of a yellow dinosaur, a noisy ‘Why aren’t I RICH instead of BEAUTIFUL?’ sign, and a calendar counting down to an unspecified goal with the words ‘NEARLY THERE!’
    ‘Benny was a stubborn bastard,’ the archivist said, sitting down heavily behind his computer. ‘Worse than a mule, never gave up. Wrote more than anyone else I’ve come across, sometimes at the expense of quality. You know the type?’
    He looked at Annika over the rim of his glasses, and she couldn’t help smiling.
    ‘Not to speak ill of the dead,’ the man went on, conducting a slow waltz on the keyboard with his index finger, ‘but we might as well be honest.’
    He batted his eyelashes at her.
    ‘His death seems to have affected people here badly,’ Annika said tentatively.
    Hans Blomberg sighed. ‘He was the star reporter, the darling of the management team, the union’s hate-figure, you know? The boy who dances into thenewsroom