The Bomber Read online

  Liza Marklund is an author, publisher, journalist, columnist, and goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. Her crime novels featuring the relentless reporter Annika Bengtzon instantly became an international hit, and Marklund’s books have sold 12 million copies in 30 languages to date. She has achieved the unique feat of being a number one bestseller in all five Nordic countries, and she had a number one bestseller in the USA with The Postcard Killers, the novel she co-wrote with James Patterson. She has been awarded numerous prizes, including a nomination for the Glass Key for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel.

  The Annika Bengtzon series is currently being adapted into film.

  Neil Smith studied Scandinavian Studies at University College London, and lived in Stockholm for several years. He now lives in Norfolk.

  Also by Liza Marklund

  RED WOLF

  EXPOSED

  By Liza Marklund and James Patterson

  POSTCARD KILLERS

  VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2011

  Copyright © 2005 Liza Marklund

  English translation © 2011 Neil Smith

  Published by agreement with Salomonsson Agency

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2011. Published in the United States of America by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, New York, in 2005. First published with the title Sprängaren in 1998 by Ordupplaget, Stockholm. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited.

  Vintage Canada with colophon is a registered trademark.

  www.randomhouse.ca

  Grateful thanks is given to Riksidrottsmuseet for their assistance with the map and Olympic locations.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Marklund, Liza, [date]

  The bomber / Liza Marklund; translated by Neil Smith.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-35844-8

  I. Smith, Neil II. Title.

  PT9876.23.A653S6313 2011 839.73’74 C2010-904089-9

  Map © Tom Coulson at Encompass Graphics

  Cover design by Tom Poland

  Image credits: © Jonathan Andrew/Corbis

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map

  Prologue

  Saturday 18 December

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Sunday 19 December

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Monday 20 December

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Tuesday 21 December

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Wednesday 22 December

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Thursday 23 December

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Friday 24 December

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Epilogue

  Author’s Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  The woman who was soon to die stepped cautiously out of the door and glanced around. The hallway and stairwell behind her were dark; she hadn’t bothered to switch on the lights on her way down. She paused before stepping onto the pavement, as if she felt she were being watched. She took a few quick breaths and for a moment her white breath hung around her like a halo. She adjusted the strap of the handbag on her shoulder and took a firmer grasp of the handle of her briefcase. She hunched her shoulders and set off quickly and quietly towards Götgatan. It was bitterly cold, the sharp wind cutting at her thin nylon tights. She skirted round a patch of ice, balancing for a moment on the kerb. Then she hurried away from the street lamp and into the darkness. The cold and the shadows were muffling the sounds of the night: the hum of a ventilation unit, the cries of a group of drunk youngsters, a siren in the distance.

  The woman walked fast, purposefully. She radiated confidence and expensive perfume. When her mobile phone suddenly rang she was thrown off her stride. She stopped abruptly, looking quickly around her. Then she bent down, leaning the briefcase against her right leg, and started searching through her handbag. Her movements were suddenly irritated, insecure. She pulled out the phone and put it to her ear. In spite of the darkness and shadows there was no mistaking her reaction: irritation was replaced by surprise, then anger, and finally fear.

  When the conversation was finished the woman stood for a few seconds with the phone in her hand. She lowered her head, clearly thinking hard. A police car drove slowly past her; the woman looked up at it, watchful, following it with her eyes as it went away. She made no attempt to stop it.

  She had clearly reached a decision. She turned on her heel and started to retrace her steps, going past the wooden door she had come out of and carrying on to the junction with Katarina Bangata. As she waited for a night-bus to pass she looked up, her eyes following the line of the street to the square, Vintertullstorget, and beyond to the Sickla canal. High above loomed the main Olympic arena, Victoria Stadium, where the summer games were due to start in seven months’ time.

  The bus went past, the woman crossed the broad sweep of Ringvägen and started to walk down Katarina Bangata. Though her face was expressionless, her fast pace let on that she was freezing. She crossed the pedestrian bridge over Hammarby canal to reach the media village of the Olympic Park. With quick, slightly jerky movements she hurried on towards the Victoria Stadium. She decided to take the path beside the water although it was further, and colder. The wind from the Baltic was ice-cold, but she didn’t want to be seen. The darkness was dense, and she stumbled a few times.

  She turned off by the post office and
pharmacy towards the training area and jogged the last hundred metres towards the stadium. When she reached the main entrance she was out of breath and angry. She pulled the door open and stepped into the darkness.

  ‘Say what you want to say, and be quick about it,’ she said, looking coolly at the figure emerging from the shadows.

  She saw the raised hammer but didn’t have time to feel any fear.

  The first blow hit her left eye.

  Existence

  Just beyond the fence was a huge anthill. When I was a child I used to stand there and study it intently for hours. I would stand so close that the insects ran over my legs. Sometimes I would follow an individual ant from the grass down in the courtyard, over the gravel drive, and up the bank of sand to the anthill. I was always determined not to lose sight of it at that point, but I always did. Other ants caught my attention. When there were too many of them my interest fractured in so many different directions that I ran out of patience.

  Sometimes I would put a sugar-lump on the anthill. The ants loved my gift, and I would smile as they swarmed over it and pulled it down into the depths. In the autumn, when the cold came and the ants got slower, I would poke a stick into the anthill to wake them up again. The grown-ups got angry with me when they saw me doing that, and told me I was spoiling the ants’ hard work and destroying their home. To this day I can still remember the sense of injustice, because I didn’t mean any harm. I just wanted to have a bit of fun. I wanted to get them moving again.

  My games with the ants gradually started to infiltrate my dreams. My fascination with the insects turned into an inexpressible horror at their creeping and crawling. Now that I’m grown up I can’t stand the sight of more than three insects at any one time, no matter what species they are. I start to panic when I lose sight of them. My phobia developed at the moment I realized the parallels between myself and the little insects.

  I was young, still actively trying to find answers to my life, building up theories in my head, testing them against each other in various ways. The fact that life could be capricious wasn’t part of my world view. Something had created me. I had no idea what that might be: coincidence, fate, evolution, maybe even God.

  But it did seem to make sense that life could be meaningless, and this made me angry, and sad. If there wasn’t any point to our time on the planet, then our lives were simply an ironic experiment. Someone put us here to study the way we fought, crawled, suffered and struggled. Occasionally this Someone would distribute random rewards, a bit like putting a sugar-lump on an anthill, and watch our joy and despair with the same emotionally detached interest.

  As the years passed, a sense of reassurance grew. Eventually I realized that it doesn’t matter if there’s no great purpose to my life. And even if there is, there’s no point in me knowing it here and now. If there were any answers, then I’d already know them, and because I don’t, then it doesn’t matter – however much I might think about it.

  This has given me a certain sort of freedom.

  Saturday 18 December

  1

  The sound reached her in the middle of a bizarre sexual dream. She was lying on a bed of glass on a spaceship; Thomas was on top of her, inside her. Three presenters from the radio programme Studio Six were standing alongside them, watching expressionlessly. She was desperate for the loo.

  ‘You can’t go to the toilet now, we’re on our way into space,’ Thomas said, and, looking through the big panoramic window, she saw he was right.

  The second ring tore the cosmos to shreds, leaving her sweaty and thirsty in the darkness. The ceiling loomed above her in the gloom.

  ‘Answer the bloody thing before it wakes the whole house,’ Thomas grumbled from the mess of pillows.

  She twisted her head to see the time: 03.22. The excitement of the dream vanished in a single breath. Her arm, heavy as lead, reached for the phone on the floor. It was Jansson, the night-editor.

  ‘The Victoria Stadium’s gone up. Burning like fuck. Our reporter’s out there for the night edition, but we need you for the next edition. How soon can you get there?’

  She took several breaths, letting the information sink in, feeling adrenalin rolling like a wave through her body and up into her brain. The Victoria Stadium, she thought. Home of the Olympics. Fire, chaos. Bloody hell. South of the city centre. Should she take the southern bypass or the Skanstull bridge?

  ‘How are things looking in town? Are the roads okay?’

  Her voice sounded rougher than she would have liked.

  ‘The southern bypass is blocked. The exit by the stadium has collapsed, but that’s all we know. The Södermalm tunnel is shut off, so you’ll have to go above ground.’

  ‘Who’s doing pictures?’

  ‘Henriksson’s on his way, and the freelancers are already there.’

  Jansson hung up without waiting for a response. Annika listened to the dead crackle on the line for a few seconds before hanging up and letting the phone drop to the floor.

  ‘So what is it this time?’

  She sighed silently before replying.

  ‘Some sort of explosion at the Victoria Stadium. I’ve got to go. It’ll probably take all day.’

  She paused before adding: ‘And all evening.’

  He muttered something inaudible.

  Carefully she extricated herself from Ellen’s slightly damp pyjamas. She breathed in her daughter’s scent, her skin sweet, her mouth sour, her thumb firmly lodged between her lips, then she kissed the child’s soft hair. The girl stretched happily, then rolled up into a ball, three years old and utterly content, even in her sleep. She dialled for a taxi with a heavy hand, climbing out of the numbing warmth of the bed and sitting on the floor.

  ‘A car to Hantverkargatan 32 please. Bengtzon. It’s urgent. To the Victoria Stadium. Yes, I know it’s on fire.’

  It was bitingly cold outside, at least ten degrees below zero. She turned up the collar of her coat and pulled her woollen hat down over her ears, her toothpaste breath hanging in a haze around her. The taxi pulled up just as the front door clicked shut behind her.

  ‘Hammarby Harbour, the Victoria Stadium,’ Annika said as she landed with her bulky handbag on the back seat.

  The driver glanced at her in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Bengtzon, the Evening Post, eh?’ he asked with a hesitant grin. ‘I always read your stuff. I like what you said about Korea, my family come from there. I was up in Panmujom as well – you caught the atmosphere really well, the soldiers standing there facing each other, never allowed to talk to one another. That was a really good report.’

  As usual she heard the praise but didn’t take it in, couldn’t take it in, because that might make the magic ingredient, the thing that made her texts work, vanish.

  ‘Thanks. I’m glad you liked it. Do you think the Södermalm tunnel is okay or should we stick to the streets?’

  Like most of his colleagues, he had a perfect overview of the situation. If something happened anywhere in the country at four in the morning, there were only two calls you had to make: one to the police, and one to the taxi service. That was enough to guarantee you an article for the national edition: the police could confirm what had happened, and the taxi-drivers were almost always able to give some sort of eye-witness account.

  ‘I was on Götgatan when it went off,’ he said, performing a U-turn. ‘God, the street lamps were swaying like hell. Christ, I thought, a bomb’s gone off. The Russians are here. I radioed in, wondering what the fuck … They said the Victoria Stadium had blown up. One of our guys was right next to it when it went up, he had a call-out to an underground club in one of the new blocks out there …’

  The car raced down towards the City Hall as Annika fished her notepad and pen out of her bag.

  ‘Was he okay?’

  ‘Fine, I think. A lump of metal came through the side window, missed him by a couple of centimetres. Just a cut on his face, so they said over the radio.’

  They passe
d the metro station in the old town, heading towards the big junction at Slussen.

  ‘Where did they take him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your colleague – the one with the bit of metal?’

  ‘Oh, him, his name’s Brattström. Södermalm Hospital, I think; that’s the closest one.’

  ‘First name?’

  ‘Don’t know, but I can check over the radio …’

  His name was Arne. Annika pulled out her mobile, put in the earpiece and dialled Jansson’s desk in the newsroom. He knew from the number on the phone’s LCD-screen that it was her calling before he answered.

  ‘A taxi-driver’s been injured, Arne Brattström, he was taken to Södermalm Hospital,’ she said. ‘We might be able to get up there and see him; we can do that in time for the first edition …’

  ‘Okay,’ Jansson said. ‘We’ll find out what we can about him.’

  He put the receiver down and yelled to a reporter: ‘Look up an Arne Brattström, then check with the police to see if his family’s been told, then call his wife if he’s got one.’

  Back on the line he said, ‘We’ve sorted an aerial shot. When will you be there?’

  ‘Seven, eight minutes, depending on what they’ve closed off. What are you working on?’

  ‘We’ve got the bare facts, comments from the police. I’ve got reporters ringing people in the buildings facing the stadium for their comments, and one reporter’s already there but is about to go home. And we’re rerunning the earlier Olympic bombs, the bloke who let off fire-crackers in the old Victoria Stadium in Stockholm and New Ullevi in Gothenburg when the Stockholm bid went in—’

  Someone interrupted him, and Annika could feel the buzz of the newsroom all the way down the line to the taxi. She said quickly, ‘I’ll be in touch when I know more.’

  ‘Looks like they’ve closed off the warm-up area,’ the taxi-driver said. ‘We’d better take the scenic route.’

  The taxi swung onto Folkungagatan and down towards the Värmdö road. Annika dialled the next number on her phone. As the call went through she watched the last stragglers going home from their night out, raucous and stumbling. There were a lot of them, more than she would have imagined. It was always the same these days: the few times she was out at this time of day were always because a crime had been committed somewhere. She had forgotten that the city could be used for more than just crime or work, had somehow suppressed the fact that there was an entirely different life that only emerged at night.