Prime Time (23 page)

The managing editor made a dismissive gesture with one hand and rubbed his brow with the other.

‘I might need your help on Monday with an extremely delicate matter. You aren’t allowed to mention it to anyone here at the paper, not even to Berit.’

A sense of surprise bubbled up Annika’s spine like a cold carbonated drink, forcing her to sit and lean forward.

‘What’s it all about?’

Annika studied her boss, trying to find what was hidden behind his bushy beard and his pale eyes.

‘What kind of trip is it? Don’t the news-desk editors know about it?’

‘It’s not a trip,’ Schyman said. ‘This concerns a private matter, one that I need help with.’

Not sure what to think, Annika leaned back.

‘I hope I still have a family after this is over,’ she said. ‘If I’m going to work for you as a personal favour, maybe you could––’

‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of it some other way. Go write your stories.’

Schyman bent over the papers on his desk, indicating that the conversation was over. Annika studied her boss again. He looked stressed out – there were dark circles under his eyes and rings of sweat under his arms. He seemed tired at times, but this was different.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

‘Nothing.’ He cut her short again.

Annika cocked her head and looked out over the newsroom. The news-desk gang was back, but someone else was there too, a small elderly man in casual clothes, leafing through a magazine.

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Is Torstensson here, on Midsummer’s Day?’

Schyman didn’t answer. He just stared at his papers without reading them.

‘I’m not the only one who has a say when it comes to making up for overtime,’ Annika said slowly. ‘Now that Sjölander’s in New York, I’m supposed to coordinate my schedule with the news-desk editor or the managing editor. If you’d like me to work on Monday, I’ll work on Monday.’

Silence filled the room.

‘Listen,’ Annika said, ‘this murder is presenting a problem. My best friend is one of the suspects. Does that disqualify me in some way?’

‘How?’

Tired and uninterested.

She hesitated and looked at her fingers clutching at the hem of her shirt.

‘Is it possible for me to cover this story in an impartial manner? What if she did it? What would I do?’

Annika looked up and met Schyman’s gaze.

‘Two of my reporters are suspects,’ the managing editor said in a resigned voice. ‘I can’t spare any more reporters.’

‘It’s a bit unethical, sort of like the Jesus Alcalà Amnesty International debacle,’ she said, noticing herself becoming evasive.

Anders Schyman sat up straight.

‘Some old friends of mine are suspects, too,’ he said. ‘Karin Bellhorn. We worked together for a short time on the news team for the public service network.’

Annika felt her eyebrows lift in surprise. Was Schyman that old?

‘What was she like?’

The managing editor leaned back heavily and stared into his bookcase.

‘Well informed,’ he said. ‘Feisty. A bad case of the camera jones.’

Annika blinked in astonishment.

‘The what?’

‘The camera jones. She was addicted to being on the screen. I was affected myself, but it’s wearing off now.’

Deep in thought, Schyman tapped a pen on the edge of the desk.

‘There was some gossip going around about her,’ he said. ‘Having to do with her last days on the job. I don’t know how true it is.’

His stare was still trained on the bookcase and his mind was focused inward.

Annika waited silently.

‘Karin circulated a love letter written by a male TV show host to an office trainee. Back in those days you had to sign for any copies you made, and Karin was the only one who had been there the night before this happened. The next day, everyone had received a copy of that love letter in their mail compartment. Karin swore that she hadn’t done it, but sources insisted that it couldn’t have been anyone else.’

Annika jotted down a few items.

‘What happened to the man?’

‘It was a feather in his cap.’

‘And the trainee?’

‘She was immediately dismissed.’

Feeling annoyed, Annika got up.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘There’s a different set of rules for women. And I don’t believe that story for a second – people are always putting successful women down.’

‘You’re quite a feminist, aren’t you?’ Anders Schyman said.

Annika thought she detected a tinge of derision.

‘Well, I’ve got a brain, haven’t I?’ she retorted.

Once the glass door closed behind Annika Bengtzon, Anders Schyman let his breath out in an audible sigh. She would do it. She won’t ask any questions. No doubt she would understand what was up, but she wouldn’t tell. For the first time that day, he felt a flicker of satisfaction. Even though she had been a bit tactless and upset, Annika Bengtzon had been the right horse to back.

He walked up to the glass door and looked out over the newsroom, at the desk where Torstensson had established himself, right at the heart of operations, yet still all alone. The conversations zipped past over his head. Schyman saw how subjects were lobbed back and forth between editors and the night-desk editor, between reporters and the picture editor, between proof-readers and the rewrite people – an organic flow reminiscent of waves, gentle ripples exerting more force than was apparent to the eye. In the middle of this sea the editor-in-chief was like a pile driven into the seabed, rigid and stationary, made of some other stuff. Unaffected by laughter or urgency, unable to contribute to discussions overloaded on adrenalin or possessing any complexity. At times he looked up, always with the same lack of comprehension. His vulnerability was enormous, and Schyman was struck by a great wave of genuine compassion.

Maybe things will be all right anyway
, he thought.
He’s too uninformed, that’s all. It’s a good thing that he’s out there tonight, it’s a good omen, maybe he’ll start cooperating.

Anders Schyman hesitated momentarily, then locked his door. He went back to his desk, sat down and unlocked the bottom drawer. He considered its contents; it was practically empty. The only file was a red, well-thumbed folder: his contingency plan, armaments for ethical and moral warfare. The volatile material had been stored there, like anthrax or mustard gas, for months, possibly even years, his journalistic weapons of mass destruction. Using this material would be risky, maybe even dangerous. If he went public with this, it could rebound like biological warfare and contaminate him as well.

I don’t have to make my decision tonight
, Schyman thought.

He picked up the folder anyway and weighed it in his hand. It was pretty thin.

He let it land on his desk; no problem, the material was only dangerous if it came into contact with other journalists. Off came the elastic band, exposing the photocopied sheets within the cardboard folder. He traced the top sheet with his fingers. It was dry and rough. The minutes from the board meetings of this paper for the past three years. Obviously he wasn’t supposed to have them, he wasn’t even allowed to read them. He didn’t have access to the boardroom run by the family that owned
Kvällspressen.

But Torstensson did. The editor-in-chief attended the board meetings as a co-opted member. He couldn’t vote, but he was present in order to pass on pertinent information and participate in discussions. This explained why he received one of the few existing copies of the minutes, documents he presumably kept under lock and key. They weren’t. Torstensson put them in a binder marked ‘Board meeting minutes’. This was something that Schyman had discovered late one night when he was on his way home. On his way to the garage, he’d suddenly had to take a leak and had used the closest restroom. When he came out he realized that he was facing the editor-in-chief’s spacious corner office, and without further ado he walked up to the door and tried the handle. It wasn’t locked. Without making a sound, he had entered the dark room and closed the door behind him.

For the next hour Schyman inspected the entire room. Every last document, newspaper and magazine, every binder, the channels on the TV set. The folder with the minutes was in a bookcase behind the desk. Without a qualm he made copies of every single page, in addition to a few other papers that he threw away later on.

But he saved the minutes. Since then, whenever he worked late, a commonplace occurrence, he would generally check out the editor-in-chief’s office, sometimes finding it locked. But not always. When it was possible, he took stock of whatever he felt he needed to know, which amounted to almost everything. At the present time he had access to all the documents that had any bearing on the future of the paper.

Am I being presumptuous?
he thought as he leafed through the minutes.
Why do I feel as if I’m responsible for the welfare of this paper?

Because I know the ropes
, he answered himself.
I see things. Making observations and figuring out the consequences is what I’m good at. That’s why I’m here. I have an obligation to act on my convictions, even if it means using public exposure as a weapon.

Some of the minutes were earmarked. Schyman picked them out. Two sets of minutes, that was all.

The first set concerned the apartment. Eighteen months ago, Torstensson had asked to be included on the board of the real-estate company owned by the Party. According to the minutes, the other members of the board saw no impediment to this request. The union representative, whose presence was tolerated only because it was required by law, had protested, and this was duly noted. He had felt that such an assignment was unsuitable for a member of the press whose job was to promote the freedom of the press and to question those in power. So an editor-in-chief should not be involved with a political commitment of that nature.

After he had read the minutes, Anders Schyman had contacted the Patent and Registration Office to obtain a list of the board members of the real-estate company. As anticipated, Torstensson had accepted the slot on the board, a fact that Schyman had underlined in pencil in the margins.

Nearly a year later an extremely distraught elderly woman had called Schyman. She had intended to talk to the editor-in-chief, but since Torstensson wasn’t available, the operator had put her through to the managing editor.

She introduced herself – her last name evoked the ranks of minor nobility – and told him a rather incoherent tale about how she used to live in a three-bedroom apartment on Floragatan in the fashionable Östermalm district of Stockholm, an apartment that she and her husband had moved into when they were married back in 1945, right after the war, did he remember the war? He didn’t? Well, in any case, her husband was no longer alive – the grief was frightful, absolutely frightful – and now her home was being taken away from her as well, she had been forced to move, which was frightful as well. The landlord had remodelled the building and she had been offered another apartment somewhere else – was that really legal?

Slightly annoyed, Schyman had listened to her tale with little interest until she mentioned the name of her landlord. It was the Party’s real-estate company. The reason why she was calling Torstensson was that his son now had possession of her old apartment, while she had been packed off to a smaller place on the outskirts of town, in Skärholmen. She didn’t want to live there, not at all, there were so many foreigners and you know what they’re like, violent terrorists, every last one of them, and the architecture was just frightful. She had been forced to buy a condo in Östermalm, and felt entitled to compensation from the real-estate company.

Schyman had cross-examined the old lady and came to the conclusion that she was telling the truth. Torstensson’s son had been listed as residing at that address two months prior to the lady’s call, and the apartment was on the same floor. In addition to this, the building was in the process of being turned into a co-op, and Torstensson’s son was the chairman of the association.

This might have been good enough, Anders Schyman thought with a sigh, but it wasn’t. He fingered the papers that he had collected and assessed their strength. The old lady wouldn’t do. Journalistically speaking, she didn’t cut the mustard. No one would feel sorry for a filthy-rich upper-class racist who could buy her own place. Sure, it was morally questionable of Torstensson to let his son cut to the head of the line, bypassing the countless hopefuls registered with the housing authorities of Stockholm. But Torstensson would cling to his position no matter what, and if he didn’t resign or get fired with a great deal of hue and cry the whole affair would only hurt the paper, not save it.

He had to find something dirtier.

One way of getting rid of Torstensson would be to let the paper botch things up royally, make a mistake that would be condemned by the entire population. If such a thing were to happen, the board would have to consider declaring a vote of no confidence. But Schyman would never go that far. His primary mission was to save the paper, not to send Torstensson to the gallows. The point was to target the editor-in-chief without harming anyone else, which made things much harder and required greater precision.

Schyman didn’t want any collateral damage. And he would probably be dismissed as well if the paper got into trouble.

So, it looked like the stock-market transaction was the key, along with Annika Bengtzon.

Schyman pulled out the papers at the very back: one set of minutes, a press release and two clippings from the business paper
Veckans Affärer.

The first clipping was an inventory of the media corporation controlled by the family that owned
Kvällspressen
, mapping out the financial ties between the different companies. Practically all the different companies were connected in one way or another. The corporate group included newspapers, periodicals, radio and TV networks, Internet services and manufacturing companies that made sanitary pads and nappies, among other things.