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  Praise for Liza Marklund’s previous Annika Bengtzon thrillers, The Bomber and Studio 69

  ‘Take the independence and determination of Peter Hoeg’s Miss Smilla, stir in the sharpness and honesty of Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs . . . and you begin to sense the qualities that make up Annika Bengtzon’ Daily Express

  ‘The story moves along at high speed and with gratifying directness’ Independent

  ‘An entertaining story, but it’s the portrayal of the newspaper office, with its internal bickering and its determination to stay ahead of its rival which particularly impresses’ Sunday Telegraph

  ‘A taut and well-paced read’ Observer

  ‘The pace never slackens’ Sunday Express

  ‘The efforts of the independent, gutsy reporter to establish the truth make for an enjoyable and fast-paced thriller’ The Times

  ‘This superbly written thriller exhibits a depth of characterisation, intelligence and energy that raises it above the competition’ Good Book Guide

  Liza Marklund is a print and television journalist. She lives in Stockholm with her husband and three children. She is the author of the international bestsellers The Bomber and Studio 69.

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2004

  This edition first published by Pocket Books, 2004

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  A Viacom Company

  Copyright © Liza Marklund, 2000

  English language translation copyright © 2004

  by Ingrid Eng-Rundlow

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention

  No reproduction without permission

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved

  Pocket Books & Design is a registered trademark of

  Simon & Schuster Inc

  The right of Liza Marklund to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  Africa House

  64–78 Kingsway

  London WC2B 6AH

  www.simonsays.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia

  Sydney

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 0-7434-6907-0

  eISBN 9-7818-4983-944-0

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by SX Composing DTP, Rayleigh, Essex

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE OCTOBER

  I’M NOT AN EVIL PERSON.

  SUNDAY 28 OCTOBER

  MONDAY 29 OCTOBER

  TUESDAY 30 OCTOBER

  WEDNESDAY 31 OCTOBER

  PART TWO NOVEMBER

  NO ONE IS WITHOUT BLAME.

  THURSDAY 1 NOVEMBER

  FRIDAY 2 NOVEMBER

  SATURDAY 3 NOVEMBER

  SUNDAY 4 NOVEMBER

  MONDAY 5 NOVEMBER

  TUESDAY 6 NOVEMBER

  PART THREE DECEMBER

  SHAME IS THE BIGGEST TABOO.

  MONDAY 3 DECEMBER

  TUESDAY 4 DECEMBER

  WEDNESDAY 5 DECEMBER

  THURSDAY 6 DECEMBER

  FRIDAY 7 DECEMBER

  THEY HAVE CONFRONTED ME.

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PARADISE

  PROLOGUE

  Time’s up, she thought. This is what it’s like to die.

  Her head hit the tarmac, her consciousness getting a jolt. The terror vanished with the wounds. There was stillness.

  Her thoughts were calm and clear. Stomach and groin pressed against the ground, ice and gravel against her hair and cheek.

  Life’s weird. There’s so little that you can predict. Who would have guessed this was where it would happen? On a foreign coast, in the far north.

  Then she saw the boy before her again, reaching out to her; she felt the terror, heard the shots, and was overwhelmed by her shortcomings.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she whispered. Forgive my cowardice, my miserable failings.

  Suddenly she felt the wind again. It was tugging at her big bag, hurting her. The sounds returned and her foot ached. She became aware of the cold and the damp that had penetrated her jeans. She had only fallen, not been hit. Her mind went blank again. There were no thoughts.

  Got to get away.

  She pushed up onto all fours but the wind beat her back down; she struggled up again. The surrounding buildings made the gusts unpredictable, pounding up from the sea and along the street like relentless cudgels.

  I’ve got to get out of here. Now.

  She knew the man was somewhere behind her. He was blocking the way back into town. She was trapped.

  I can’t stay here in the floodlights. I’ve got to get out. Away from here!

  A new gust knocked the breath out of her. She gasped for air, turned her back. More floodlights, yellow, making gold of the shabby surroundings – where would she go?

  She grabbed her bag and ran with the wind at her back towards a building by the water. A loading platform on one side, a lot of rubbish that had been blown about, some of it down onto the ground. What was that – a staircase? A chimney; pieces of furniture; a gynaecologist’s table; an old Model T Ford; the instrument panel from a fighter plane.

  She threw the bag onto the platform and then pulled herself up. She weaved her way past old bathtubs and school desks, finding a hiding place behind an old desk.

  He’ll find me here, she thought. It’s only a matter of time. He’ll never give up.

  She was crouching low, swaying and panting, soaked through with sweat and from the slush. Realizing she’d walked into the trap. There was no way out of here. All he had to do was walk up to her, put the gun against the back of her head and pull the trigger.

  She peered out from behind the desk. Saw nothing, only ice and warehouses bathing in the gold of the floodlights.

  I’ve go to wait, she thought. I’ve got to know where he is. Then I can try to sneak away.

  The backs of her knees started aching after a couple of minutes. Her thighs and lower legs went numb, her ankles throbbed, especially the left one. She must have sprained it when she fell. Blood was dripping from the cut on her forehead and down onto the platform.

  Then she saw him. He was standing by the edge of the dock, only ten feet away, his sharp profile dark against yellow light. The wind carried his whisper to her.

  ‘Aida.’

  She shrank back and shut her eyes tightly, making herself small, like an animal. Invisible.

  ‘Aida, I know you’re there.’

  She breathed with her mouth open, soundlessly. Waiting. The wind was on his side, muffling his steps. The next time she looked up, he was walking along the fence on the other side of the wide street, holding his gun discreetly inside his jacket. She was breathing faster now, in ragged gasps; it made her dizzy. When he disappeared round the corner and into the blue warehouse she got up, jumped down on the ground and ran. Her feet pounding – treacherous wind. Her bag bouncing on her back, her hair in her eyes.

  She didn’t hear the shot but sensed the bullet whistling past her head. She began zigzagging in a sharp illogical pattern. Another whistle, another turn.

  Suddenly she ran out of ground where the roaring Baltic Sea took over. Waves as big as sails, as sharp as glass. She only hesitated for a moment.

  The man walked up to the edge where the woman had jumped in and
looked out over the water. He screwed his eyes up, gun at the ready, trying to spot her head in between the waves. Useless.

  She’d never make it. Too cold, the wind too fierce. Too late.

  Too late for Aida from Bijelina. She grew too big. She was too alone.

  He stood there for a while, letting the cold bite into him. He had the wind in his face; it was throwing lumps of ice straight at him.

  The sound from the truck starting up behind him was swept away, never reaching him. The juggernaut rolled off in the golden light, soundlessly, without a trace.

  PART ONE

  OCTOBER

  I’M NOT AN EVIL PERSON.

  I’m the product of my circumstances. All human beings are born into the same life, their circumstances being all that differ: genetic, cultural, social.

  I have killed, it’s true, but that’s of no consequence here. The question is whether the person who is no longer alive ever deserved to live. I know what my own position is on this, but it may not correspond to anybody else’s.

  I may be perceived as violent, which doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with evil. Violence is power, just like money or influence. Anyone who chooses violence for a tool can do so without being evil. You will always have to pay the price, though.

  Taking to violence does not come free of charge; you have to pledge your soul. That way, the stakes are raised; for me there wasn’t much to give up.

  The void is then filled with the prerequisites for having the strength to use violence: evil is one of them, despair another, revenge a third, fury a fourth, the desire of the sick.

  And I’m not an evil person.

  I’m the product of my circumstances.

  SUNDAY 28 OCTOBER

  The security guard was on the alert. The devastation after the previous night’s hurricane was visible everywhere: trees blown down, bits of sheet metal from roofs, scattered pieces of the warehouses.

  When he arrived at the free-port compound, he slammed on the brakes. On the open space facing the sea lay the interior of an airplane cockpit, miscellaneous hospital equipment, parts of a bathroom. It took the security guard a few seconds before he realized what he was looking at – detritus from the props storage of one of the major TV stations.

  He didn’t see the dead bodies until he had switched off the engine and removed his seat belt. Strangely enough, he felt neither fear nor terror, only genuine surprise. The black-clad bodies lay stretched out in front of a broken staircase from some old TV soap. He knew the men had been murdered before he’d even stepped out of the car. It didn’t take any major powers of deduction; parts of their skulls were missing and something sticky had run out on the icy tarmac.

  Without regard for his own safety, the guard left his car and walked up to the men. They were only a few yards away. His reaction was one of wonder. The bodies looked really weird, like Marty Feldman’s kid brothers: eyes partly popped out of their sockets, tongues lolling. They both had a small mark high up on the head and both of them were missing an ear, as well as big chunks of the backs of their heads and necks.

  The living man looked at the two dead men for a period of time that he later couldn’t specify. He was interrupted by a gust of wind that threw him to the ground. He put out his hands to break the fall and placed one hand in a pool of brain tissue. The sticky, viscous substance seeping between his fingers made the living man suddenly feel violently sick. He threw up over the bumper of his car and then frantically wiped the sticky stuff off his hands on the upholstery of the driver’s seat.

  The police’s central control room in Stockholm received the call from the Värtan Free Port at 5.31 a.m. The news reached the newspaper Kvällspressen three minutes later. Leif phoned in the tip-off.

  ‘Car 1120 is on the way to Värtan, plus two ambulances.’

  At this time in the morning, forty-nine minutes after deadline and twenty-six before the paper went to print, the usual focused and creative chaos reigned in the newsroom. The red-eyed sub-editors were punching in the last headlines, putting the final touches to the front-page lead and captions, and correcting errors. Jansson, the night editor, was scrutinizing the dummies and sending off pages to print via the new electronic highway.

  The worker responsible for answering tip-off calls at this point was the night-shift sub-editor, Annika Bengtzon.

  ‘Meaning?’ she said, taking hurried notes on a Post-it pad.

  ‘At least two murders,’ Leif said and hung up, in order to be the first with the news to the next newspaper. Second in line with a tip-off didn’t get any money.

  Annika stood up and put the receiver down in one movement.

  ‘Two stiffs in the Värtan Free Port. Possible murders but not confirmed,’ she said to the back of Jansson’s head. ‘Do you want it in the first edition?’

  ‘Nope,’ said the back of the head.

  ‘Shall I give it to Carl and Bertil?’ she asked.

  ‘Yep,’ said the back of the head.

  She walked over to the reporters’ area, the yellow note stuck like a flag on her index finger.

  ‘Jansson wants you to check this out,’ she said and pointed her finger at the reporter.

  Carl Wennergren pulled off the note, a look of mild distaste on his face.

  ‘Bertil Strand is in, if you need to go there,’ she said. ‘He’s in the photo lab.’

  Annika turned round and walked off without waiting for a reply from Carl. Their relationship wasn’t what you’d call ‘hearty’. She sank down on her chair. She was done in. The night had been a hard one with lots of last-minute saves. The night before, a hurricane had swept in across Skåne and continued up the country. Kvällspressen had put a lot of resources into covering the storm, and with considerable success. They had flown down both reporters and photographers on the last flight to back up the Malmö team. The journalists in Växjö and Göteborg had been at it all night, assisted by a number of stringers supplying both copy and pictures. All their material had ended up on the night desk and it was Annika’s job to organize and structure the articles. This meant rewriting every single one so that they would harmonize with each other and fit the context. Yet her name wouldn’t appear anywhere in the paper except for under the fact box about hurricanes that she had prepared in advance. She was a sub-editor, one among the many anonymous, invisible journalists.

  ‘Shit!’ Jansson suddenly shouted. ‘The damned yellow hasn’t reproduced on the front-page picture. The goddamn . . .’

  He raced over to the picture desk and yelled out for the picture editor Pelle Oscarsson. Annika smiled wanly – Brave New World. According to the futurist gurus, digital technology would make everything work faster, safer and simpler. In reality, the little gremlin that resided in the ISDN cable that ran between the newsroom and the printers intermittently gobbled up one of the colour plates, usually the yellow. If the mistake wasn’t spotted, the outcome would be some very peculiar pictures in the paper. Jansson maintained that the colour-gobbler was the same little devil that lived in his washing machine and constantly ate that other sock.

  ‘ISDN!’ the night editor snorted derisively on his way back to his desk after the catastrophe had been averted and the picture retransmitted. “It Sends Damned Nothing.” ’

  Annika tidied up on her desk.

  ‘Still, it worked out in the end, didn’t it?’ she said.

  Jansson dropped into his chair and put an unlit low-tar cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘You did well tonight,’ he said and nodded appreciatively. ‘I saw the original copy. You really did a good job on it.’

  ‘It’ll do,’ Annika said, embarrassed.

  ‘What was that about some stiffs in the port?’

  ‘Don’t know. Do you want me to check?’

  Jansson got up and walked over the Smoking cubicle.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

  She started out with the emergency services control room.

  ‘We’ve sent two ambulances,’ the manager confirmed.
>
  ‘Not bag cars, then?’ Annika asked.

  ‘We discussed it, but as it was a security guard who called in, we sent ambulances.’

  Annika took notes. The bag cars, or hearses, were only sent in if the victims were certifiably dead. According to the rules, a police officer could only order out a bag car if the victim’s head was severed from the body.

  She had difficulty getting through to the police central control room and had to wait for several minutes before anyone answered the phone. Then it was another five minutes before the officer on duty could come to the phone. When he eventually answered, he was clear and concise.

  ‘We’ve got two bodies,’ he said. ‘Two males. Shot. We can’t say whether it’s murder or suicide. You’ll have to get back to us.’

  ‘They were found in the City Free Port,’ Annika said quickly. ‘Does that mean anything to you?’

  The duty officer hesitated.

  ‘I can’t make any guesses at this point in time,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got a brain yourself.’

  Putting the phone down, she knew the double murder would dominate the paper for several days to come. For some reason, two murders weren’t just twice as big as one murder, but infinitely bigger.

  She sighed and contemplated getting a plastic cup of coffee. She was thirsty and felt faint. It would do her good. But caffeine at this time of the night would keep her awake late into the morning, eyes staring at the ceiling, her body throbbing with fatigue.

  Oh, what the heck, she thought and walked over to the machine.

  It was hot and did her good. She went back to her chair at the night desk and sat down with her feet on the desk.

  A small double murder in the Free Port, there you have it.

  Annika blew at her coffee.

  That the victims had been shot indicated that it wasn’t the result of a drunken brawl. Winos killed each other with knives, bottles, fists, kicks, or they were pushed off a balcony. If they ever had access to a weapon, they’d sell it to buy booze.