Without a Trace (Annika Bengtzon 10) Page 2

  ‘I mean, you know about timesheets, Lamia can sort out a pass-card, computer and a login ID, and you can go round saying hello to people later, can’t you?’

  Presumably Lamia was the blonde. She would have been happy to do the course – she wasn’t sure she remembered how to fill in a timesheet. The system had probably been updated during the four years that had passed since she’d left the force.

  The head of CIS took her silence as agreement. ‘Do you know who Ingemar Lerberg is?’ he asked.

  Nina searched her memory: a politician, forced to resign. ‘Of course.’

  Superintendent Q opened the second file and pulled his glasses onto his nose. ‘Lerberg has been found assaulted in his home in Solsidan, out in Saltsjöbaden, it’s not yet clear if he’s going to make it. We’ve received a request for assistance from Nacka Police. Do you have any contacts out there?’

  Solsidan? Wasn’t that a comedy series on television?

  ‘Not that I can think of.’

  He held the folder across the desk. ‘We’re putting together an investigative team today, two or three people to start with. I’d like you to go out and take a look. Don’t be afraid to ask if there’s anything you’re not sure about … See it as an introduction to working here.’

  The superintendent leaned back in his chair. ‘We’ll get together in the meeting room at nine o’clock sharp tomorrow morning. Bring whatever you’ve been able to find. Lamia will sort out a car for you.’

  *

  The house was on its own at the end of the road, not too far from the little station.

  Annika Bengtzon switched off the wipers, then leaned forward and tried to peer through the windscreen. The heater was spewing hot, stuffy air into her face, and she turned it down, then glanced up the road.

  Nacka Police had cordoned off the turning circle and the far end of the road, the whole of the property and parts of the neighbours’ lawn. Several other journalists had already parked their cars at the side of the road and were either sitting in the warm, behind misted-up windows, or standing about by the cordon. The first news-agency report had claimed that Ingemar Lerberg was dead. Then it had been changed to ‘very seriously injured’. The initial mistake was probably the reason for the remarkably large media interest. A murdered politician was always a murdered politician even if he’d only been a member of Nacka’s social-services committee. But in the past Lerberg had also been a controversial Member of Parliament, someone of whom there were plenty of pictures in the archives.

  Annika took a deep breath. Violence still made her feel uneasy, as did hordes of journalists. She decided to stay in the car as long as she could.

  The house was situated towards the back of the plot, partially concealed by a thin lilac hedge and a few apple trees, all dripping with water. A rocky outcrop rose up behind it, greyish-yellow from the remnants of last year’s grass. There was nothing remarkable about the building: painted red, white gables, hipped roof, probably built in the 1920s and renovated in the 1970s, when a new façade and large picture windows had been put in. The result was a mishmash, a strained attempt at modernity. It would be difficult to make it live up to its billing as the luxury villa the head of news had said it was, but everything was relative. It was a question of how you phrased things. For her mum at home in Hälleforsnäs, a renovated wooden house in Saltsjöbaden was definitely a luxury villa.

  Lerberg had been taken to hospital, she knew that much. There was already some mobile-phone footage on YouTube of him being driven off in the ambulance. Picture-Pelle had spoken to the man who’d shot the footage and offered to buy the rights to post it on the Evening Post website, but had lost out to their wealthier competitors.

  The rain wasn’t showing any sign of letting up. A television van turned into the narrow road and parked in front of her, blocking her view of the house. She switched off the engine, pulled up the hood of her raincoat, slung her bag over her shoulder, grabbed the tripod and got out of the car. The wind tugged at her coat. It really was bloody cold. She said a brief hello to TV4 and the prestigious morning paper, but pretended not to notice Bosse, from the other evening paper, who was standing by the turning circle, talking far too loudly into his mobile. She looked at her watch. She hadn’t got the children that week, but she wanted to get away as quickly as possible. Jimmy, her partner, was cooking that night and she’d promised to be home in time for dinner. And there was no exclusive here, nothing to dig out, just routine coverage. Fast and efficient. Get some clips for the website and some quotes from a police officer, then try to embroider a story with fragments of fact.

  Assaulted in his home. Very seriously injured.

  She set up the tripod in the road in front of the cordon, just a couple of metres from a local radio reporter, then pulled the video-camera out of her bag and fixed it to the stand.

  ‘Do you want me to hold an umbrella over that?’ the reporter offered. He was tall and thin – she recognized him but didn’t know his name. He was carrying a radio transmitter, with four aerials and a little flashing light, on his back. It made him look like an insect.

  She smiled tentatively at him. ‘That would be great. Mind you, by now my camera’s got its own swimming badge, and can ski down black runs …’

  ‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?’ Insect Man agreed. ‘Where does all this snow and rain come from? It’s got to stop at some point …’

  She plugged the microphone cable into the audio socket, cleared her throat, pressed play and stood in front of the camera. ‘Here,’ she said, looking hard into the lens, ‘in the middle of the idyllic residential area of Solsidan in Saltsjöbaden, politician Ingemar Lerberg was found seriously assaulted earlier this morning. He has been taken to Södermalm Hospital in Stockholm, where he remains in a critical condition.’ She looked at the radio reporter. ‘That was fifteen seconds, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe fourteen.’

  She lowered the microphone, went to the camera and let it pan across the scene: the dripping cordon, the media scrum, the figures visible behind the closed curtains up in the house. She would use the pictures as a backdrop to a voiceover once she knew more about the case. The reporter was still holding the umbrella above her.

  ‘It’s not quite as smart as I thought it would be out here,’ he said.

  ‘It’s probably only the address that’s smart, not the houses,’ Annika said.

  She pressed stop, then put the camera back into her bag. The reporter lowered the umbrella.

  ‘Do you know who first reported it?’ Annika asked.

  ‘No, just that the alarm was sounded at nine thirty-six.’

  Annika looked at the house. The radio reporter and head of news weren’t the only ones who had expected something more. Ingemar Lerberg was the sort of politician who expressed himself through grand gestures and seemingly infinite pomposity. He called himself a businessman, and often had himself photographed on impressive yachts.

  ‘Why did he resign? From Parliament, I mean.’

  ‘Something to do with tax,’ Annika said. ‘One of his companies, I think.’ She gestured towards some unmarked cars inside the cordon. ‘National Crime?’

  ‘I think so,’ the reporter said.

  Annika looked up at the house again. Another floodlight was switched on upstairs, and the acid bluish-white light made the dampness outside the window seem to crackle. ‘If National Crime are here, things must be pretty terrible inside,’ she said.

  ‘Unless the Nacka Police are just covering their backs,’ Insect Man said.

  Recent graduates weren’t stupid these days, she thought.

  ‘Annika Bengtzon,’ a voice said behind her.

  Her heart sank. ‘Hello, Bosse,’ she said. She couldn’t understand why she’d once found the idiot attractive.

  ‘Changing the world at this time in the morning?’

  She could either ignore him, which would amount to a declaration of war, or talk to him – he really wasn’t worth getting upset about. She turned and sm
iled. ‘It’s all food on the table, Bosse. We can’t all live off the dividends from our investments.’

  Bosse was fond of holding court at the Press Club, where he would bang on about his risky investments, often made with borrowed money. But the joys of hunting in the stock-market jungle were seldom long-lived. Now his smile became rather more strained. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘here you are, still trudging about in the mud with the rest of us mere mortals.’

  Annika raised her eyebrows quizzically.

  ‘You should be sitting in some state-owned palace in Norrköping, shouldn’t you, now that Jimmy Halenius – your new boyfriend – is about to take charge of the Migration Authority?’ Bosse went on.

  Annika had heard Jimmy had been offered the post. She sighed theatrically. ‘Bosse,’ she said, ‘you disappoint me. I thought you were a man with his eye on the ball.’

  ‘Something’s happening up there,’ the radio reporter said.

  Annika pulled out the video-camera and focused on the house. A group of police officers, two in uniform and three in plain clothes, were standing on the porch steps. One of the detectives was a young woman, broad shoulders, slim legs and a long, poker-straight brown ponytail. Annika’s breath caught – could it be …?

  ‘That’s Nina Hoffman,’ Bosse said, nodding at the woman. ‘She was involved in the David Lindholm murder case. I thought she’d been pensioned off.’

  The two reporters went on talking, but Annika didn’t hear what they said. Nina Hoffman had lost weight since she and Annika had last met. Now she was pulling off pale blue plastic bootees and walking towards one of the unmarked police cars, ignoring the media.

  The officers on the steps were still talking, and one of the detectives was gesticulating wildly. Then he headed towards the reporters. He stopped a metre or so from the cordon and Annika aimed her camera at him as, beside her, the radio reporter held out his microphone.

  ‘Well, I can confirm that Ingemar Lerberg was found unconscious in the property behind me,’ the police officer said. ‘We have decided to make this information public, even though some of his family have not yet been informed.’

  ‘Who hasn’t been informed?’ a woman from the local television station shouted.

  The policeman ignored her. A trickle of rainwater ran down his forehead. ‘Ingemar Lerberg has been taken to Södermalm Hospital, where he is currently being operated on. We’ve been told that the outcome is uncertain.’

  ‘Who made the emergency call?’ The television journalist again.

  The policeman rocked on his heels. ‘A full investigation is now under way,’ he said. ‘The chief prosecutor in Nacka, Diana Rosenberg, has been appointed head of the preliminary stages. We will issue further information when—’

  ‘Who made the call?’ The woman wasn’t about to give up.

  ‘It was an anonymous tip-off,’ the police officer said.

  ‘Man or woman?’

  ‘I can’t answer that.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’

  The policeman had had enough. He turned to go back to the house. His hair was plastered to his head, and his jacket was streaked dark with rain.

  ‘Are you aware of any possible motives for the assault?’ the woman yelled after him. ‘Had Lerberg received any threats? Are there any signs of a break-in?’

  The policeman stopped and looked at her over his shoulder. ‘The answer to all your questions is no,’ he said, then hunched his shoulders and hurried towards the house.

  Annika put the camera down again and turned back to the group of people gathered by the police cars. There was no sign of Nina Hoffman.

  ‘Do you want a lift into the city?’ she asked the radio reporter.

  ‘Thanks, but I’ve got to do a live broadcast at two o’clock.’

  ‘Have you heard about Schyman?’ Bosse said.

  Annika gave him a quizzical look. Bosse looked like a cat that had just caught a canary.

  ‘He faked his way to the Award for Excellence in Journalism – the series of articles about the billionairess who disappeared?’

  Annika raised her eyebrows. ‘Says who?’

  ‘New information on the internet.’

  Dear God, she thought. ‘It was a television documentary,’ she said, getting out her car keys.

  Bosse blinked several times.

  ‘Schyman got the award for a documentary on television,’ she repeated. ‘On both occasions.’

  She went to her car, gave Insect Man a wave and got in. While the fan dealt with the condensation on the windscreen, Nina Hoffman drove past and disappeared into the rain.

  Editor-in-chief Anders Schyman studied Ingemar Lerberg’s familiar smiling face on the computer screen: chalk-white teeth, dimples, neon-blue eyes. He was standing on a quayside in front of a large oil-tanker wearing an open sports jacket, his shirt unbuttoned at the neck, wind in his hair.

  They had known each other for ten years, possibly more. Fifteen? For a couple of years they had both been on the Rotary Club’s committee, but since the revelations about Lerberg’s tax affairs, contact between them had been sporadic. Schyman liked him, though, and wondered who on earth could have wanted to beat the crap out of him.

  He refreshed the page to read the latest news on the attack. Annika Bengtzon had posted a picture of the crime scene on Twitter: media coverage of the case seemed to be pretty extensive. There was no motive, no acknowledged threat and no sign of a break-in.

  He went back to Lerberg’s website – or, rather, his company’s, International Transport Consultancy. Lerberg was a smart businessman, active in shipping and sea transport, something to do with digital systems for the coordination of maritime shipments. He was also pushing for the development of a new marina in Saltsjöbaden, a luxury harbour for yachts and cruisers. But, of course, he was best known as a politician.

  Schyman typed in a search for ‘lerberg politician saltsjöbaden’. A number of articles in the Evening Post came up – always a source of satisfaction to him, even if he knew that the search results were adapted to suit his own preferences. He glanced down the page, and found a thread on a discussion forum that made him lean forward: Gossip about powerful people in Saltsjöbaden. With Lerberg’s and several others, he found his own name: Anders Schyman, Crusader for Truth.

  What was this? He didn’t usually Google himself, not often, anyway, but he’d never seen this before. Curious, he clicked on the link. A short video appeared on the screen, a lit candle and a picture of him taken at some party. He was standing with a glass in his hand, smiling broadly at the camera, his eyes and forehead glowing slightly. Could it have been taken after some debate at the Publicists’ Club?

  We know him, everyone knows him, our hero, the defender of reality, the Man Who Saves Us from Corruption and Abuses of Power, the great editor and legally accountable publisher of the Evening Post.

  He leaned even closer to the screen. What the hell was this?

  Admittedly, there are those who claim he sacrificed his ethics and morals on the altars of the paper’s proprietors and capitalism when he left state-funded television and took charge of the most frivolous, attention-seeking tabloid in Sweden, but the Light of Truth judges no one without giving them a fair hearing. We value tolerance and openness here, and we stick to verifiable facts.

  Schyman glanced up at the top of the screen: yes, the blogger had evidently called the site ‘The Light of Truth’. It sounded ominous.

  We’re all aware of his magnificent past achievements, his personal appeal, his considerable background in journalism: a university lecturer, chair of the Newspaper Publishers Association, the editor who made the Evening Post ‘Sweden’s Biggest Daily Paper’ – as well as winning the Award for Excellence in Journalism twice! What an achievement! What a triumph! An (almost) unparalleled accomplishment! Let us all break out into a heartfelt chorus of hallelujahs!

  Well, it was hardly that remarkable. Several other journalists had won the prize twice.

  But the Light of Truth di
dn’t acquire that name for nothing. This is the home of the Light that illuminates Reality and What Really Matters. This is a haven for Critical Thinking and Counterintuitive Thought, Opposition to the ghastly Political Correctness of the Media Establishment. Feel free to call me the Scourge of Hypocrisy and Cant.

  Let us take a closer look at Anders Schyman’s great journalistic achievements. Let us take a step closer to the Light, and examine these triumphs carefully …

  What on earth was going on?

  No one remembers the first time Our Hero was accorded the extraordinary honour known as the Award for Excellence in Journalism.

  It is Anders Schyman’s second journalistic triumph that warrants proper illumination, his true media breakthrough, the documentary that led him to step out of the concrete grey shadows of state-funded television and into our cosily furnished living rooms. Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, let us shine the Light on Viola Söderland.

  ‘He’s still alive.’

  Anders Schyman started. The head of news, Patrik Nilsson, was standing, legs apart, on the other side of the desk, his voice full of disappointment. Schyman clicked away from the blog with a quick, embarrassed gesture. He hadn’t heard the glass door slide open and was still seeing Viola Söderland before him in all her surgically enhanced elegance. ‘I was as certain as anyone could be,’ he said. ‘She disappeared of her own volition.’

  Nilsson looked at him blankly. ‘Södermalm Hospital has just issued a new statement,’ he said. ‘Lerberg suffered a cardiac arrest during the operation and the staff had to use a defibrillator to get him going again. He’s being kept sedated because of the extent of his injuries.’

  Schyman’s thoughts were running like lava through his head, but he tried to maintain a neutral expression. He cleared his throat and looked at the empty screen in front of him. The blog post had shaken him, and he felt as if its insinuations were written on his face.