Exposed Read online

  The story began that spring when Dagens Nyheter, one of the two big Stockholm broadsheets, published a long article on the club itself. A few days later this was followed up by an exclusive on the front page. During the course of his research the reporter, Peter Bratt, had uncovered a bill for 55,600 kronor, signed for by the head of the professional workers’ union, Björn Rosengren, and paid for using a union bank card. And now Rosengren had come forward to explain what had happened.

  It was very embarrassing that he had been to a sex club, and extremely unfortunate that the union had paid, but everything had been sorted out in the end.

  Björn Rosengren explained that on the evening of 3 September 1991 he had eaten dinner at Café Opera with an American businessman in the ventilation industry. After the meal the American wanted to go on somewhere, so they jumped into a taxi, and the driver had dropped them off at a nightclub called Tabu.

  Björn Rosengren and the American ordered champagne. Three quarters of an hour after they arrived at the club, a naked woman came over to them, and that was when Björn Rosengren realized what sort of place it was, and he paid the bill and left.

  It wasn’t until the following day that he realized that the club had cheated him. The bill should have been for 600 kronor, not 55,600. With the help of a lawyer, also named Björn Rosengren (what a coincidence!), he eventually negotiated the amount down to ‘below 10,000 kronor’, and paid with his own money.

  No more was written about the story in the press. It looked like it was done and dusted.

  Then several weeks later the other big evening paper, Aftonbladet, published an entirely different version of events during the night of 3 September 1991. They printed a photograph of a young, blonde Swedish woman with her back to the camera, a tie hanging down her back.

  She said that she had been at Café Opera with a female American friend. After a while an American man came over and joined them, then a few minutes later Björn Rosengren came over as well. He was happy and drunk and gave her his tie. When the bar closed at three o’clock the four of them got into a huge white limousine and went on to the Tabu sex club. Björn Rosengren fell down the stairs into the club, then vanished into one of the private rooms with a naked Asian girl. The women and the American man found the whole thing embarrassing and were driven home by the chauffeur, who then returned to pick up Björn.

  The article was written by the reporter Bengt Michanek.

  At Expressen our reaction was one of complete panic. We were way behind on the story, and I was given the job of trying to catch up and find something new. I went into my office and thought for a while. Either the young woman was lying, or Björn Rosengren was. It was as simple as that.

  So who was in a position to confirm what had actually happened?

  The staff at Café Opera obviously had no idea what had happened after they closed. Maybe the guy at the hotdog kiosk in Östermalm would remember a big white limo, but three years later? That was pretty unlikely, and he wouldn’t have known where they were going. The naked Asian girl would probably remember, but where was she? And how credible a witness was she?

  Which left one person who must have been sober: the driver of the limo. And there ought to be some sort of receipt for payment of the trip. I started making some phone-calls, asking questions, trying to feel my way forward. To my surprise I got lucky almost straight away.

  Björn Rosengren turned out to be a big customer of the limo company Freys Hyrverk. He spent up to quarter of a million kronor on limos each year, even though the union provided him with a car.

  And I found out something else interesting: only three weeks after the now infamous night at Tabu, Freys Hyrverk went bust. I got hold of the official receiver at his summer cottage down in Skåne and was told that there were no suspicions of tax evasion or anything else illegal concerning the bankruptcy, which meant that all documentation surrounding the case was in the public domain. They were gathering dust in a massive storage facility in South Hammarby Harbour.

  I went out there the next day and discovered twenty-six metres of shelving full of old invoices and other documents. After an hour or so I found it: the order form and receipt from Freys Hyrverk showing that a customer called Rosengren had booked a limo from Café Opera on 4 September 1991 at 3.22 in the morning.

  After that everything happened pretty quickly.

  Björn Rosengren had clearly not been telling the truth about that night at Tabu, but that wasn’t why he had to resign.

  The board of the Confederation of Professional Employees had no idea that he had a contract with Freys. They didn’t know that their chairman, his family, and people at the top of the Social Democratic Party hierarchy had been travelling around for years in limos paid for by the union’s members. And that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  On 19 July 1994, Björn Rosengren resigned as chair of the Confederation of Professional Employees. The press conference where he announced his decision was well-attended, all the main media were there. I saw the union’s head of information go round greeting people: he smiled rather sadly as he shook hands with Peter Bratt from Dagens Nyheter and Bengt Michanek from Aftonbladet, and then he reached me.

  When I said my name his face darkened, contorted with rage. He yanked his hand back and shouted:

  ‘HAVE YOU ANY IDEA WHAT YOU’VE DONE?!’

  I took a couple of steps back and tried to say something, but before I found the right words he had turned round and was marching off through the room, fuming.

  Afterwards I thought a lot about this.

  Why was the head of information so angry with me in particular? Bratt had written that Rosengren had been in a sex club. Michanek had written that he had disappeared into a private room with a naked Asian girl. All I had written was that the man had taken a few car journeys.

  In the end I reached the conclusion that it was easiest to blame me. I was twenty years younger than the others, and I was also female.

  But the worst was yet to come.

  Once Björn Rosengren had resigned there was a campaign to distort the truth about the media’s coverage of the case. There was a rumour that Bengt Michanek and I had been the victims of ‘planted’ stories – that we had been tricked or bribed to write our articles. The rumour became more and more widespread until it ended up becoming the established truth.

  Worst of all, as usual, was the radio programme Studio Ett (Studio One).

  I was in Gothenburg, covering the murder of a young woman in a cemetery, when one of the programme’s presenters called me to get me to answer for what I’d done. Then they set loose a whole group of liars who made up stories on the radio.

  At that point, Bengt Michanek and I did something that reporters on rival papers never usually do: we met and laid all our cards on the table.

  And this is what really happened:

  As early as the morning of 4 September, the day after the visit to the Tabu sex club, Aftonbladet’s editors already knew the whole story.

  The girl with the tie was going out with someone who worked on the paper, and she told him everything when she got home that morning.

  An article was written, about the union boss going to a sex club, and it was considered for publication for several days, but in the end the decision was taken not to publish. The reason was that the story was thought to be too sordid and too private. Björn Rosengren had been drunk and not in full control of his faculties, and there was no public interest in exposing his personal misery.

  Three years later, when it came out that he had paid for the whole thing with union money, the story looked completely different. The only problem was that the girl with the tie had moved to the USA and no one knew where she was. It took a couple of weeks to track her down, which was why the article was so slow appearing.

  As far as my own articles were concerned, I didn’t speak to a single person about what I was doing or what I was thinking of writing. Not even my news editors knew who I was calling or what I was working o
n.

  No one influenced what I wrote, not even my bosses at the paper. It was all the result of my own initiative, entirely my own work.

  Together, Bengt Michanek and I wrote a long article for our union paper, Journalisten, where we explained exactly what had really happened. And after that the lies did actually stop.

  Everything turned out okay in the end, but afterwards I thought a lot about the forces that had been set in motion during and after Björn Rosengren’s visit to Tabu. It was abundantly clear that men were prepared to do whatever it took to protect their power and influence.

  I was able to withstand the pressure heaped upon me because I had been working for ten years and knew exactly what I was doing. But what would have happened if I had written those articles during my first summer at the paper? How would I have handled the attacks and lies?

  These events and thoughts formed the basis for this book, Exposed.

  When it was first published in Sweden, in 1999, a branch of the Confederation of Professional Employees, the Swedish National Union of Local Government Officers, named me Author of the Year.

  It’s funny the way things turn out.

  Liza Marklund

  Stockholm, April 2011

  Author’s Acknowledgements

  This is fiction. The Evening Post newspaper does not exist, but it bears traces of many different actual media organizations.

  The novel’s depiction of Swedish government departments, their areas of responsibility and geographic locations is largely based upon the situation that existed before 1999.

  All the characters are entirely the product of the author’s imagination. Any similarities to real people are purely coincidental. However, a number of political figures appear under their real names. These names are taken from historical records of the Social Democratic Party’s espionage on the population of Sweden. The details of this activity depicted in the novel are based on previously published facts. The conclusion of the IB affair and its repercussions as shown in the novel are, however, entirely fictional.

  My sources for information about the IB affair are: Folket i Bild Kulturfront (People in Focus) no. 9, 1973, by Jan Guillou and Peter Bratt; Kommunistjägarna (The Communist Hunters) by Jonas Gummesson and Thomas Kanger (Ordfront förlag); Aftonbladet, supplement 3/12 1990, ‘Sanningen om den Svenska neutraliteten’ (The Truth About Swedish Neutrality), by Jonas Gummesson and Thomas Kanger; item on TV4 News broadcast during the 1998 election campaign.

  Information about and interpretation of tarot cards is taken from Gerd Ziegler’s book Tarot, själens spegel (Tarot, the Mirror of the Soul) (Vattumannen förlag).

  Details concerning the management of a sex club are taken from Isabella Johansson’s biography En strippas bekännelse (Confessions of a Stripper).

  I would also like to thank the following, who have been kind enough to answer my occasionally bizarre questions: Jonas Gummesson, head of domestic news for TV4, for source material, proofreading and information about Swedish espionage, both domestic and foreign; Dr Robert Grundin of the Department of Forensic Medicine in Stockholm, for an introduction to the work of the department; Sven-Olov Grund, head of the technical unit of Stockholm Police, for his patient explanations of the department’s work; Claes Cassel, press spokesman for the Stockholm Police, for a guided tour of police headquarters; Kaj Hällström, a pattern-maker at Hälleforsnäs foundry, for a tour of the site and for advice on the terminology of forging and blast furnaces; Eva Wintzel, a district prosecutor in Stockholm, for legal advice and analysis; Kersti Rosén, press ombudsman, and Eva Tetzell, section head of the Broadcasting Commission, for advice and analysis of questions of media ethics; Birgitta Wiklund, head of information at the Ministry of Defence information department, for explanations of public access and postal routines within the ministry; Nils-Gunnar Hellgren, departmental secretary in the Foreign Ministry’s courier office, for background and regulations governing diplomatic couriers and bags; Peter Rösch, winner of the Round Gotland race, for sailing terminology; Olov Karlsson, head editor of TV Norrbotten, for detailed information about Piteå; Maria Hällström and Catarina Nitz for details about Södermanland; Lotta Snickare, head of management training at FöreningsSparbanken, for ongoing creative discussions; Emma Buckley, my fantastic editor at Transworld; my agent Niclas Salomonsson and his staff at Salomonsson Agency.

  And, last but not least, Tove Alsterdal, dramatist, who reads everything first of all: a genius sounding-board, reader and critic.

  Any mistakes or errors that have crept in are entirely my own.

  Liza Marklund

  Name: Eva Elisabeth Marklund (which only the bank statement calls her. To the rest of the world, she’s Liza).

  Family: Husband and three children.

  Home: A house in the suburbs of Stockholm, and a town-house in southern Spain.

  Born: In the small village of Pålmark in northern Sweden, in the vast forests just below the Arctic Circle.

  Drives: A 2001 Chrysler Sebring LX (a convertible, much more suitable for Spain than Pålmark).

  Five Interesting Facts About Liza

  1. She once walked from Tel Aviv to London. It took all of one summer, but she made it. Sometimes she hitchhiked as well, sometimes she sneaked on board trains. When her money ran out she took various odd jobs, including working in an Italian circus. Sadly she had to give that up when it turned out she was allergic to tigers.

  2. Liza used to live in Hollywood. Not because she wanted to be a film star, but because that was where her first husband was from. In the early 1980s she had a two-room apartment on Citrus Avenue, a narrow side-street just a couple of blocks from Mann’s Chinese Theatre (the cinema on Hollywood Boulevard with all the stars’ hand and footprints). She moved back to Sweden to study journalism in Kalix.

  3. She was once arrested for vagrancy in Athens. Together with fifty other young people from all corners of the world she was locked in a garage full of motorbikes. But Liza was released after just quarter of an hour: she had asked to meet the head of police, commended him on his work, and passed on greetings from her father, the head of police in Stockholm. This was a blatant lie: Liza’s father runs a tractor-repair workshop in Pålmark.

  4. Liza’s eldest daughter is an actress and model. Annika, who lends her name to the heroine of Liza’s novels, was the seductress in the film adaptation of Mikael Niemi’s bestseller Popular Music from Vittula. Mikael and Liza have also been good friends from the time when they both lived in Luleå in the mid-1980s. Mikael was one of Liza’s tutors when she studied journalism in Kalix.

  5. Liza got married in Leningrad in 1986. She married a Russian computer programmer to help him get out of the Soviet Union. The sham marriage worked; he was able to escape, taking his brother and parents with him. Today the whole family is living and working in the USA.

  Liza’s Favourites

  Book: History by Elsa Morante

  Film: Happiness by Todd Solondz

  Modern music: Rammstein (German hard rock)

  Classical music: Mozart’s 25th Symphony in G-minor. And his Requiem, of course.

  Idols: Nelson Mandela, Madeleine Albright and Amelia Adamo (the Swedish media queen).

  Liza’s Top Holiday Destinations

  1. North Korea. The most isolated country in the world, and the last iron curtain. Liza has seen it from the outside, looking into North Korea from the South, at the Bridge of No Return on the 38th parallel.

  2. Masai Mara, Kenya. Her family co-owns a safari camp in the Entumoto valley.

  3. Rarotonga, the main island in Cook archipelago in the South Pacific. The coolest paradise on the planet.

  4. Los Angeles. Going ‘home’ is always brilliant.

  5. Andalucia in southern Spain. The best climate in Europe, dramatic scenery, fantastic food and excellent wine. Not too far away, and cheap to fly to!

  Turn the page for a sneak preview

  of Liza Marklund’s gripping,

  multi-award-winning thriller,

/>   THE BOMBER – coming soon

  ‘The Bomber is a classic international thriller:

  sharply written, briskly paced, politically

  intriguing, and psychologically astute.

  It’s no accident that Liza Marklund is

  one of the most popular crime

  writers of our time.’

  PATRICIA CORNWELL

  Prologue

  The woman who was soon to die stepped cautiously out of the door and glanced quickly 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 down onto the pavement, as if she felt she were being watched. She took a few quick breaths and for a few seconds 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 of the pavement. 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, glancing 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.