Vanished Read online

She finished her coffee and threw the mug in the bin. She went to the toilet and drank some water.

  Two men didn’t point to murder and suicide, not in the City Free Port when a hurricane was blowing. Jealousy could probably be ruled out as a motive. That meant motives of bigger media interest were at play. A dispute in the underworld, meaning anything from biker gangs to various mafias and financial syndicates. Political motives. International mix-ups.

  Annika went back to her desk. She was sure about one thing: she wasn’t going anywhere near this murder. There were others who would cover the murder for Kvällspressen. She picked up her clothes.

  There was no morning shift on weekends, which meant that Jansson would stay on until the morning editions had gone to print. Annika stopped work at six.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this now,’ she said to the night editor when he walked past. He looked dead tired and would probably have liked her to stay.

  ‘You’re not waiting for the first edition?’ he asked.

  The bundles arrived by courier from the printers fifteen minutes after printing began. Annika shook her head and called a cab, then got up and put on her jacket, scarf and mittens.

  ‘Can you come in early tonight?’ Jansson called out after her. ‘Sweep up after the hurricane hell?’

  Annika hung her bag over her shoulder and shrugged.

  ‘Who’s got a life, anyway?’

  Thomas Samuelsson touched his wife’s stomach lightly. The old firmness was gone; her flesh was soft and warm under his hands. Since she became branch manager at the bank, Eleonor didn’t have time to work out as hard as before.

  His hand moved in circles downward, over her navel and down to the groin. His finger slowly trailed down and slipped in between her thighs, felt the hair, found the moistness.

  ‘Don’t,’ his wife mumbled and turned away from him.

  He sighed and swallowed, then rolled over on his back; excitement throbbing like a hammer. He folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. He listened as her breathing slowed down again. She was never interested these days.

  Annoyed, Thomas threw the cover back and went out into the kitchen naked, his dick a wilting tulip. He drank water from a dirty glass, then put coffee in a filter, filled the coffee maker with water and switched it on. He went to the bathroom and peed. In the bathroom mirror his tousled hair gave him a reckless look that was more in keeping with his age. He sighed and pushed his hair back.

  It’s too early to have a midlife crisis, he thought. Much too early.

  He returned to the kitchen and looked out the window at the sea. It was black and wild. Last night’s storm lingered in the sprays and white horses; the neighbours’ sundial lay overturned next to their terrace door.

  What’s the point? he thought to himself. Why do we go on?

  He was filled with a huge dark melancholy and realized that it verged on self-pity. There was a draught of cold air from the window – damned jerry-built house – so he went and got his dressing gown. A present from his wife last Christmas: green, blue and burgundy, and expensive; slippers to match, which he’d never used.

  The coffee maker started gurgling. He took out a mug with the bank logo and switched on the radio, hitting the Eko news. The news items were filtered through his weariness and coffee, entering his mind at random. Hurricane sweeping through southern Sweden causing considerable damage. Households without electricity. Insurance companies making assurances. Two men dead. Security zone in south Lebanon. Kosovo.

  Thomas switched off, walked out into the hallway and pulled his boots on. He’d get the newspaper from the letter box instead. The wind tore at the bits of paper, found its way in under his dressing gown, chilling his thighs. He stopped short, closed his eyes and breathed. There was ice in the air; the sea would soon freeze over.

  He looked down at their house, the beautiful house her parents had built, designed by an architect. The light was on in the kitchen on the upper floor, the lamp over the table by a designer whose name he’d forgotten. It gave a greenish and cold light – an evil eye watching over the sea. The white tiles were grey in the light of early dawn. His mother had always thought it was the most beautiful house in all of Vaxholm. She had offered to make curtains for all the rooms when they moved in. Eleonor had declined, politely but firmly.

  Thomas went inside. He leafed through all the sections without being able to focus on anything. As usual, he ended up on the ads for houses and flats for sale. ‘Four-bedroom flat in central Vasastan, tiled stove in every room. One-bedroom flat in the Old Town, penthouse w/ raftered ceilings, view in three directions. Timber cottage near Malmköping, electricity and water. Autumn bargain!’

  He could his his wife’s voice: Daydreamer! If you gave the stock market half the attention you give ads for flats, you’d be a millionaire by now.

  She already was.

  He immediately felt ashamed. She meant well. Her love was as firm as a rock. He was the problem. He didn’t have the energy. Maybe she was right in thinking that he couldn’t deal with her success. Maybe they should see that counsellor after all.

  He folded the paper along its original folds – Eleonor didn’t like to read a second-hand newspaper – and put it on the side table that was reserved for post and magazines. Then he went back into the bedroom, slipped out of the dressing gown and crept back into bed. His wife wriggled in her sleep when she felt his cold body. He pulled her up against him and blew into her soft neck.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered.

  ‘I love you too,’ she murmured.

  Carl Wennergren and Bertil Strand arrived late at the Free Port. As they parked the photographer’s Saab they were just in time to see the ambulances roll through the cordons. The reporter couldn’t help letting out an annoyed curse. Strand was such an extremely careful driver, keeping to 30 or even 20 m.p.h., even if there wasn’t a soul about. The photographer caught the unspoken criticism and was nettled.

  ‘You sound like a woman,’ he said to the reporter.

  The men walked over to the police cordon, the space between them accentuating the emotional distance. But as the flashing blue lights and the police officers’ movements became clearly visible, the distrust faded away, action taking over.

  The cops were working fast today. The storm probably had their adrenalin pumping already. The cordoned-off area was large, from the fence on the left side all the way over to the office building on the right. Strand sized up the situation: great place, almost right in the centre of the city and yet completely separate. Good light, clear yet warm. Magical shadows.

  Carl Wennergren buttoned up his oilskin coat. Shit, it was cold.

  They couldn’t see much of the victims. Junk, police officers and ambulances blocked their view. The reporter stamped his feet against the cold, hunched his shoulders and stuffed his hands deep into his pockets; he hated the morning shift. The photographer hauled out a camera body and a telephoto lens from his rucksack and glided along the cordon tape. He got a few good shots at the far left end: uniformed officers in profile, black bodies, plain-clothes technicians in caps.

  ‘I’m done,’ he yelled out to the reporter.

  Wennergren’s nose was red and a droplet of transparent snot hung suspended from the tip.

  ‘What a lousy place to die,’ he said when the photographer returned.

  ‘We’d better get a move on if we’re going to make the early editions,’ Strand said.

  ‘But I haven’t finished,’ Wennergren said. ‘I haven’t even started.’

  ‘You’ll have to make the calls from the car. Or the newsroom. Hurry up and soak up some atmosphere to spice up your copy with.’

  The photographer walked towards his car, the rucksack bobbing on his back. The reporter followed behind. They drove back to the office in silence.

  Anders Schyman shut down the TT news agency cable-copy list on his computer; it was addictive. You could set the computer so that the cables were sorted into different subjects – domestic, international, sports, features – but he preferred having them all in the same file. He wanted to know about everything at one fell swoop.

  He paced the floor of his cramped aquarium-like office, rolling his shoulders. He sat down on the sofa and picked up the day’s paper, the hurricane special. He nodded to himself, satisfied: it had gone according to plan. The different desks had cooperated in the way he’d suggested. Jansson had told him that Annika Bengtzon had handled the practical coordination; it had worked really well.

  Annika Bengtzon, he thought and sighed.

  The young sub-editor had in a purely coincidental and unfortunate way become bound up with his standing at the newspaper. He and Annika Bengtzon had started at the paper within a few weeks of each other. His first battle with the rest of the senior editors had been over her – a long-term contract at the news desk for which he felt she was the obvious candidate. True, she was young, immature, impetuous and inexperienced, but he felt she had a potential that went far beyond the norm. She had a lot to learn, but she had ethics and possessed an undeniable passion for justice. She was on the ball and was a good stylist. Furthermore, she had the characteristics of a steamroller, a great asset for a tabloid reporter. If she couldn’t go round an obstacle, she’d drive straight over it; she never gave up.

  The rest of the management, with the exception of the night editor, Jansson, didn’t share his opinion. They wanted to give the contract to Carl Wennergren, the son of one of the members of the board, a good-looking and wealthy guy with considerable gaps in his morals. He had shown disregard both for the truth and for the protection of his sources. For reasons that were beyond Schyman, this was considered honourable, or at least not controversial, by the rest of the senior editors.

  The management of the
newspaper Kvällspressen was composed exclusively of white, heterosexual middle-aged men with a car and a steady income, the kind that both society and the paper were built on and for. Anders Schyman suspected that Carl Wennergren reminded these men of themselves as young men or, rather, personified their illusions about their own youth.

  Eventually, he found Annika a contract – which she accepted – covering maternity leave as a sub-editor on Jansson’s night team. He’d had to twist several arms in the management before they’d agreed to it. Annika Bengtzon became the issue he’d had to push through to prove his drive. It ended in disaster.

  A few days after the appointment was made public, the girl went and killed her boyfriend. She had hit him with an iron pipe so that he’d fallen into a disused furnace at the Hälleforsnäs works. The very first rumours to reach the paper had mentioned self-defence, but Schyman could still recall the feeling when he heard about it, wishing the ground could swallow him up; and then the thought: Talk about backing the wrong horse! She’d phoned him in the evening, reticent, still in shock, confirming that the rumours were true. She had been questioned and was suspected of manslaughter, but she hadn’t been arrested. She would be staying in a cottage in the woods for a couple of weeks until the police investigation was complete. She wanted to know whether she still had a job at the paper.

  Schyman had told her the truth: the contract was hers even though there were people at the paper who complained – she wasn’t the flavour of the day with the union representatives. Manslaughter meant some form of accident. If she were to be convicted of causing an accident where someone lost their life, it was unfortunate, but it didn’t constitute grounds for dismissal. But she had to understand that if she were to be sentenced to prison, it would make it difficult for her to get an extension of the contract.

  When he’d got that far, Annika had begun to cry. He had fought the instinct to shout at her, to criticize her for being so monumentally clumsy and dragging him down with her.

  ‘I won’t be sent to prison,’ she had whispered into the phone. ‘It was him or me. He would have killed me if I hadn’t hit him. The prosecutor knows that.’

  She had begun her work on the night team as planned, paler and thinner than ever before. From time to time she’d talk to him, to Jansson, Berit, Picture Pelle and a few others, but mostly she kept to herself. According to Jansson, she did a hell of a job rewriting, adding copy, checking facts, writing captions and front-page leads, never making a great fuss. The rumours died out, sooner than Schyman would have expected. The newspaper dealt with murder and scandal every day; there were limits to how long people had the energy to gossip about a tragic and unfortunate death.

  The case of the death of the abusive hockey-player Sven Matsson from Hälleforsnäs wasn’t given high priority by the Eskilstuna County Court. Annika was charged with justifiable homicide or involuntary manslaughter. The sentence had been passed the week before Midsummer last year. Annika Bengtzon was acquitted of justifiable homicide but convicted of the lesser charge and given a probational sentence. A period of counselling had been part of the probation, but as far as he knew, the matter was by now settled in the eyes of the court.

  The deputy editor returned to his desk and clicked on the list of cable copy again. He quickly scrolled through the last additions. The Sunday sports results were beginning to come in; there were reports of the continued after-effects of the hurricane; a series of rehashed cables from Saturday. He heaved another sigh – things rolled on, it was never-ending, and now there was going to be another reorganisation.

  The editor-in-chief, Torstensson, wanted to introduce a new managerial level in order to centralize the decision-making. The model was already in place at their biggest rival tabloid, as well as at several other national media. Torstensson had decided it was time for Kvällspressen to follow suit and become a ‘modern’ enterprise. Anders Schyman was in two minds about it. All the signs of an impending disaster were in place: the poor state of the finances; the falling circulation; the grim faces of the members of the board; the newsroom that swayed in a storm, poorly guided and with a run-down radar. The truth was that Kvällspressen didn’t know where it was headed or why. He hadn’t succeeded in establishing a collective vision of their boundaries, despite numerous seminars and conferences on the aims and responsibility of the media. They had steered clear of any regular shipwrecks since his arrival at the newspaper, but the repairs to previous damage were slow.

  Furthermore, and this worried Schyman slightly more than he wanted to admit, Torstensson had hinted at a new job, some fancy post in Brussels. Maybe that was the reason for this hurried reorganization. Torstensson wanted to make a mark, and God knows he hadn’t had any editorial achievements.

  Schyman groaned and impatiently shut down the list again.

  Something had to happen soon.

  Darkness lurked in the corners by the time she woke. The brief day had spent itself while she had perspired and tossed in bed; she never should have had that last cup of coffee. She took a few deep breaths and forced herself to lie still, exploring how she felt. It didn’t hurt anywhere. Her head felt a bit heavy, but that was due to working nights. She glanced up at the ceiling, so spotty and grey. The previous tenant had applied latex paint on top of the old distemper, leaving the entire surface streaked with cracks in a range of hues. She traced the cracks, broken and irregular, with her gaze. Found the butterfly, the car, the skull. A single note began to peal loudly in her ear: the note of loneliness, wobbling slightly up and down the scale.

  Feeling the need to pee, she sighed; what a bother. She got out of bed, the wooden floor rough under her feet and an occasional source of splinters. Pulling on her robe made her shiver, the material silky and cool against her skin. She opened the front door and listened for sounds in the stairwell. Apart from the note in her ear there was silence. She quickly padded down a half-flight of stairs to the lavatory she shared with the other occupants of the building, her feet immediately getting cold and sandy, but she lacked the energy to care.

  She noticed the draught as soon as she returned to her apartment. The sheer curtains billowed against the walls even though she wasn’t airing the room. The voile subsided as she closed the door behind her and wiped her feet on the rug in the hall before walking into the living room.

  One of the window-panes had been smashed during the night, either by a gust of wind or by flying debris. The outer pane appeared to have disappeared completely, while a few substantial shards of the inner one still clung to the frame. Plaster and glass were heaped on the floor beneath the window. She regarded the mess, closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead.

  Isn’t that typical? she thought, lacking the strength to conjure up the word ‘glazier’.

  A draught swept around her legs. She left the living room and went into the kitchen instead. Sank down on a chair and looked out the window at the apartment on the opposite side of the courtyard, the one on the third floor of the building facing the street. A construction company used it to put up official guests, and the bathroom windows had frosted-glass panes. The people who spent a night or two there never knew that their every visit to the bathroom was visible. As soon as they turned on the light, their wavy contours leapt into view. For the past two years or so, she had seen the construction-company guests making love, taking a dump or changing their tampons. At first it had embarrassed her – but after a while she found it amusing. Later on it irritated her, she didn’t want to see people taking a leak while she had dinner. These days she was simply indifferent. There were fewer guest over time, the building was so run-down there was nothing much to show. Now the window was grey and still, empty.

  A great deal of plaster from the exterior of the building had fallen down during the night and it mingled with the grimy slush out in the courtyard. Two windows on the first floor had been smashed. She got up, went over to the window and saw the black holes down below just like hers. The electric radiator in the kitchen warmed her legs and she remained standing there until she felt a burning sensation. She wasn’t hungry, even though she should have been, and she drank some water straight from the tap.

  I’m doing fine, she thought. I have everything I want.

  Restless, she went back into the living room. Sat on the couch, feet up on the cushions, arms clasping her knees, gently rocking. Breathed deeply – in out, in out – it was pretty cold. There was no central heating, and the portable space heaters she had put in barely managed to keep the apartment warm even when the windows were intact. The draught swirled unchecked across the empty floor. What furnishings she had came from thrift shops and IKEA; there was nothing with a shared history.