The Final Word Read online

He sank back heavily in his chair, and reached for the sheet of paper at the top of the pile closest to him: the minutes of the management committee meeting, held on Friday, 29 May. It was a date that would go down in history, because it marked the indisputable beginning of the end. The age of Gutenberg was over; the printed word had played out its role.

  He got up and stood so close to the window that his breath misted the glass. Could he have done anything differently? Swedish journalism had developed hand in hand with the welfare state, the ‘People’s Home’, for almost a century, the connection between power and the people. When one was falling apart, the other was bound to go the same way. Media researchers were claiming twenty years ago that ‘The 1990s could be seen as the end of an era: the era of the national welfare state and journalism.’

  For a quarter of a century, the majority of his career, he had worked on borrowed time. It was no good crying over it: he could hardly rebuild the People’s Home single-handedly.

  On impulse, he took a book off the shelf, Jan Ekecrantz and Tom Olsson’s The Edited Society, and read an underlined passage in the introduction, even though he knew it by heart:

  Journalism based on substantiated evidence and serious reporting has increasingly been replaced by abstract descriptions of the state of affairs, in which those involved often feature as invisible sources. Modern journalism is characterized by an informed common sense that tends to change societal problems into informational problems, and the public arena into talk shows and infotainment. Openly commercial and biased journalism is gaining more and more ground. The traditional journalistic ideal (reflect what is actually happening, examine and criticize power, act as a channel between government and governed) has become counterproductive . . .

  He shut the book.

  We live our lives as we live our days, it had said on his breakfast bill at the hotel in Oslo, where he had been at a seminar with the family who owned the paper. The words had hit him like a punch in the gut. A cold sweat had broken on his palms. How did he live his days? How had he lived his life? That day in Norway, in a windowless conference room, they had discussed the digitalization of the media; today, their hopes for tomorrow’s front page rested upon two women exchanging barely literate insults on social media that no one in their right mind would read.

  He sat down again, his knees aching, and ran his fingers over the stacks of papers on his desk. Maybe he should have started his own business, built a house, had children, done something of lasting value. But he had done nothing like that: he had built for today, not the future; he had spent his entire working life defining and trying to explain the society he lived in, trying to make it better, fairer. He had his reputation, his role in media history. He was hardly likely to leave anything else behind.

  He looked out at the newsroom. How was he going to do this? Throughout all his years at the paper he had worked ceaselessly on development, nurturing colleagues to fill the posts that were required to keep finances and headlines alike in the black. But the industry wasn’t the only thing that kept changing: time itself kept being redrawn, and there were no maps. He was navigating the jungle on adrenalin and instinct, doing his best to avoid chasms and landmines. He had managed to fashion a number of colleagues into key figures within the organization, in news, sport, entertainment, online, arts and television. They had all had to define their own roles in the new, uncharted media landscape, and he was proud of them, of himself, and his capacity to see what was coming.

  But there was one overriding role that he had not managed to reconstruct: his own, model 2.0. A publisher with freedom of speech in his very marrow, lack of respect in his heart, technology at the forefront of his mind. He hadn’t had time to do it: the days were too short, passed too quickly, and now it was too late.

  There was so much time, until it was suddenly too late.

  Objective, critical, informative journalism, the way everyone knew it, everyone active today, would be no more than a short parenthesis in the history of humankind, and he was at the helm while they headed straight for Hell.

  The morning’s heavy rain had eased, leaving the streets dank and dark. The cold front was on its way north, and Mediterranean heat was due to reach central Sweden that afternoon. Annika could already feel the humidity on her skin. The traffic was moving like treacle so she ignored the buses and walked fast along the pavement.

  She cut through Rålambshovsparken and into the labyrinth of streets and alleys that made up Kungsholmen. She could find her way without thinking: she would walk and walk and suddenly find herself somewhere without being aware of how she had got there. The buildings leaned conspiratorially towards her, whispering a welcome. She had ended up among these streets when she had first arrived in Stockholm, in an unmodernized flat tucked away in a courtyard on Agnegatan, with just a cold tap and a bathroom in the basement of the adjacent building. And that building over there was where she had lived, in a magnificent apartment looking out on to Hantverkargatan, with Thomas when the children were young – they had held their wedding reception there. And Kungsholmen was where she had lived in a three-room flat after her divorce from Thomas.

  And this was where Josefin Liljeberg had worked, and where she had died.

  Annika crossed Hantverkargatan and saw Kronoberget rise behind the fire station, with its paths and lawns. The trees hadn’t yet developed the same shade of chlorophyll-heavy green that they’d had back then. The playground on Kronobergsgatan was full of people, mothers and children, a few fathers, the laughter and shouting triggering inside her a sadness for what had once been. She walked past the sandpits, climbing-frames and slides, and made her way up to the crown of the hill.

  ‘The Sex Killing in the Cemetery’ was how Josefin’s murder had been described, but that wasn’t really accurate.

  She had been found in an old Jewish cemetery, located on the outskirts of the city in the eighteenth century but now incorporated into one of the largest parks in inner Stockholm. And it wasn’t a sexually motivated killing: she had been strangled by her boyfriend.

  Annika walked slowly to the cast-iron railings. The area had been restored in recent years. The abundant vegetation was gone, the toppled headstones raised. Two hundred and nine people lay there, she knew, the last buried in 1857. There was something magical about the place. The noise of the city faded away – it was like a hole through time. She put her hand on the railing, her fingers tracing the circles and curls, the stylized stars of David.

  During that hot summer, Annika’s first on the paper as a temp, she had been manning the telephone tip-off line and this was her big break. She had insisted on being allowed to write about Josefin, her first articles under her own by-line. This was where the girl had been lying, just on the other side of the railings. The barren greyness of the rocks in the background, the silent greenery, the shadow-play of the leaves, the humidity and heat. Annika had looked into her eyes, clouded and grey, listened to her soundless scream.

  ‘He got away with it,’ Annika whispered to Josefin. ‘He was sent to prison, but not for what he did to you. Maybe it’s too late now.’ Tears welled in her eyes. That had been the first truth she never wrote about, and there had been more over the years. So long ago, yet still so close. Sven had been alive that summer. She could feel his anger in the darkness around her, how upset he had been that she had taken a job in Stockholm, consciously seeking to get away from him. Don’t you love me? Insecurity and fear had gone hand in hand: how would her life turn out? she had wondered.

  It had turned out like this, she thought, wiping her tears. I stayed here. This was where I was meant to be.

  She let go of the railings, took out her little video-camera, and filmed the cemetery freehand (she hadn’t felt like lugging the tripod with her). She zoomed into the place where Josefin had been lying, then focused on the trees above. If necessary, she could always come back and do a piece to camera in front of the murder scene, but for the time being she couldn’t judge what to say. First she had to edit
and structure her material. She turned her back on the cemetery, suddenly eager to get away.

  She made her way down towards the Public Prosecution Authority on Kungsbron. The temperature was rising. The road smelt of tar.

  Preliminary investigations were, in principle, always regarded as confidential, and this was true of Josefin’s murder, even if Annika had a good idea of what the file contained. It showed that Joachim, Josefin’s boyfriend, was probably guilty of her murder. Annika had requested to see the material, either in full or in part: information deemed unlikely to damage the investigation could, in exceptional cases, be released, even if no prosecution had ever been brought.

  The wind was getting stronger and the clouds were breaking up. She quickened her pace.

  Fifteen years had passed, but after the murder of Olof Palme the law had been changed so that murders never fell under the statute of limitations. There was still time for justice to be done if new evidence emerged, if a witness suddenly decided to talk.

  Her mobile rang, deep in her bag. She stopped and dug it out from among the ballpoint pens at the bottom. She glanced at the screen: Barbro, her mother. She took the call, a little warily.

  ‘Where are you?’ Barbro asked.

  Annika looked around. The corner of Bergsgatan and Agnegatan, right next to Police Headquarters. ‘I’m at work – or, rather, I’m about to interview a prosecutor about a murder case.’

  ‘Is it that Timberman?’

  ‘No, this is different.’

  ‘Do you know where Birgitta is?’

  Clouds were scudding across the sky. Darkness was curling in from the background. ‘I haven’t a clue. Why?’ Annika heard the anxiety in her own voice. What had she done wrong now?

  ‘When did you last hear from her?’

  God, when could it have been? Annika brushed the hair from her forehead. ‘About a year ago, I think. She needed a babysitter for the weekend. She and Steven were going to look for work in Norway.’

  ‘What about after that?’

  Annika felt a degree of stubbornness alongside her insecurity, and her jaw tightened. ‘Birgitta and I don’t talk often.’

  Why had she said that? Why not tell the truth? My sister and I have no contact at all. I don’t even know where she lives.

  She heard her mother sniff.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Annika asked, making an effort to sound friendly (not scared, not angry, not nonchalant).

  ‘She didn’t come home from work yesterday.’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘She was doing a day-shift in MatExtra, the supermarket. Steven and I are really worried.’

  Yes, they must be, if Barbro had taken the trouble to phone. Annika shifted position. ‘Have you called her work? Her friends? Have you tried Sara?’

  ‘Steven talked to her boss, and I’ve spoken to Sara.’

  Annika was anxious now. ‘What about her old art teacher, Margareta? They used to stay in touch.’

  ‘We’ve called everyone.’

  Of course Annika had been last on the list.

  ‘Have you any idea how worried we are?’ Barbro said, her voice rising.

  Annika closed her eyes. It made no difference what she said or did. She could see her mother before her, rubbing her hands, fumbling with her wine glass, trying to find someone to blame. She might as well say what was on her mind. ‘Mum,’ she said slowly, ‘are you sure Steven’s telling the truth?’

  A moment’s silence. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m not always sure that Steven is . . . well, very nice to Birgitta. I got the impression he was taking advantage of her, and she almost seemed a bit scared of him.’

  ‘Why would you say that? There’s nothing wrong with Steven.’

  ‘Are you sure he doesn’t hit her?’

  Another pause. Her mother’s voice was sharp when she eventually replied, ‘Don’t mix yourself up with Birgitta.’ Then she hung up.

  Annika brushed the hair from her face. She peered at the buildings. Up there was her old flat, where her former husband still lived. God, these streets were full of ghosts.

  A police car passed and turned into Kronoberg Prison a little way along the street. She glimpsed a young man with matted hair in the back seat. Perhaps he was going to be arrested and remanded in custody, or possibly just questioned. He must have done something: if he wasn’t a criminal, then he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unless he knew something he probably shouldn’t know.

  She had found herself in the back of a police car once, on that summer’s day out at the old ironworks in Hälleforsnäs when Sven died. She had been clutching her dead cat in her arms, refusing to let go of him, little Whiskas, her lovely, sandy-coloured cat, and in the end they had let her take his body into the car with her, and she had spent the journey crying into his fur.

  Birgitta had never forgiven her for Sven. Her sister had been crazy about him, in an irritating little-sister way. He used to grab Birgitta and tickle her until she screamed. There had been something uncomfortably intimate about it – Birgitta was only two years younger than her, blonde and pretty. Annika hunched her shoulders and took a firmer grip of her bag, then looked up ‘Birgitta Bengtzon’ on the phone-directory app on her mobile. (She hadn’t taken Steven’s surname, Andersson, when they married.)

  One result: Branteviksgatan 5F in Malmö.

  Malmö? Hadn’t she been going to move to Oslo?

  Thomas watched Annika put her mobile into that hideous bag of hers and hurry off towards Scheelegatan, a tiny bobbing head four floors below, dark hair flying. He watched her until she disappeared, just a few seconds later, swallowed by cars and treetops. His heart sank, his pulse slowed. He had caught sight of her by chance: she was standing on the pavement, her face turned up towards his bedroom window, and he’d assumed she was on her way to see him. He had made up his mind not to let her in: he had nothing to say to her.

  Then she had turned away and walked off.

  His disappointment turned to prickling rage.

  He was no one to her, the sort of no one whose windows you walked past or stopped directly below to talk on your mobile for a while, maybe to your new man. He hoped she’d been talking to him because she had looked uncomfortable. Trouble in Paradise? Already?

  The thought made him feel a bit better. He realized he was hungry, and he had some gourmet food in the fridge, ready to heat up. He was the sort of man who ate and drank well, who put a bit of effort into making sure everyday life had a bit of style to it. He had been brought up to recognize the importance and advantages of a well-groomed exterior, correct behaviour, and an engaging, articulate manner. And that was why he was so ill-suited to this terrible flat, a mere three rooms on the top floor of a building in an old working-class district. He opened the fridge with the hook, got out the sole fillets with his hand – his only hand – and put the dish into the microwave. It was so fucking unfair that he of all people should have suffered such an affliction.

  The microwave whirred. A light fish lunch because he would be having a substantial dinner, an official dinner, in the dining room on the ground floor of the government Chancellery. At least his job suited him. He had a high-profile role as a civil servant in the Ministry of Justice: he was secretary to a large inquiry with its own parliamentary committee, a prestigious assignment.

  He was looking into online anonymity (a superannuated former minister was the official investigator, but Thomas was doing all the work). Online bullying was a growing problem. Society needed sharper tools to find people who insulted others on the internet, but who should be allowed to identify their IP-addresses, when, and in what ways? The police, prosecutors, or should it require a court order? How should international cooperation be coordinated, and what were the complications if the servers were in other countries? As usual, technology and criminality were several steps ahead of the authorities and the police, and the law was without doubt lagging well behind.

  The directives governing the inquiry had been
worked out by the under-secretary of state, Jimmy Halenius, with the minister and the director general for legal affairs. It was an open investigation, rather than one with specific goals. Occasionally the government instigated an inquiry simply to confirm something that had already been decided, but that wasn’t the case this time. The result of the inquiry wasn’t predetermined, and therefore lay entirely in his hands. He was in charge of his own time, could come and go as he pleased, and now the report was practically finished, ready to be discussed at the next cabinet meeting, then sent out for consultation. Thomas was, in short, 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?