The Final Word Read Online Free Page A

representative of power, a man of responsibility, someone who was shaping the future.
    The microwave pinged. The sole fillets were ready, but they would have to wait. Instead he made his way to his computer and logged in via a site whose IP-address could never be traced. He went on to the discussion forum where he had created an alternative identity for himself some time ago. He had called himself Gregorius (after Hjalmar Söderberg’s antihero in the novel
Doctor Glas
: betrayed by his wife, murdered by his doctor). He had started by posting something there, just to see what happened. The text had been about Annika’s boss, a pretentious bastard. To this day, people were still contributing to the thread he had started, and he found it interesting to see how the debate had developed.
    GREGORIUS
    Anders Schyman should be fucked up the arse with a baseball bat. Hope the splinters form a bleeding wreath around his anus.
    His palms always felt a bit clammy when he read those lines. His pulse increased and he felt his top lip start to sweat. No further comments had been added since he had last checked, he noted, with a degree of disappointment. He scrolled down the existing comments. The first, ‘Hahaha, way to go man! U buttfuck him real good’, was representative of those that followed. The level of debate wasn’t particularly high, he had to admit. A number of contributors had questioned his choice of language, calling him a
vulgar idiot
and a
brain-dead amoeba
, but how tasteful was it of them to express themselves like that? He couldn’t claim to be particularly proud of it, but who hadn’t made mistakes along the way?
    Besides, it was both interesting and justified, a way of gaining knowledge of the issue he was investigating. A democracy is based upon the fact that unpleasant things must be allowed to exist. As Voltaire said, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ (well, he hadn’t actually used those words, but that was the meaning of a letter he wrote to Abbot le Riche on 6 February 1770).
    Thomas looked back at his post once more.
    Anders Schyman should be fucked up the arse with a baseball bat . . .
    The words were there, expressed and eternal, commented upon and affirmed.
    He took a deep breath and closed the site. A sense of calm spread through him. Annika was welcome to stand down there in the street with her mobile phone and her ugly bag.
    He was properly hungry now, and the sole fillets were just the right temperature.
    Admired, respected, feared.
    Someone
.
    Annika announced her arrival at the reception desk of the Public Prosecution Authority and was asked to take a seat in a waiting room that might have belonged to a dentist. It smelt of disinfectant and unspecified discomfort. She was alone, and for that she was grateful.
    The man who had been in charge of the preliminary investigation into Josefin’s murder, Chief Prosecutor Kjell Lindström, had retired, and the matter was now in the hands of Deputy Prosecutor Sanna Andersson. Discreetly, she took out her camera. She filmed the room and the signs on the walls for a minute or so: they might be good as inserts. She put the camera away and started to read a two-year-old issue of
Illustrated Science
, which featured an article about how fish had crawled up on toland 150 million years ago, developed legs and turned into reptiles, carnivores and humans.
    ‘Annika Bengtzon? Deputy Prosecutor Andersson can see you now.’
    She put down the magazine, picked up her bag, and was shown along a corridor to a cramped office. The woman who met her, hand outstretched, was barely thirty. ‘Welcome,’ she said, in a thin, high voice.
    Fifteen years had passed, so obviously Josefin had sunk like a stone down the list of the justice system’s priorities.
    ‘Sorry you had to wait,’ Sanna Andersson said. ‘I’ve got a case in court in forty-five minutes. It was Liljeberg you wanted help with, wasn’t it?’
    Annika