Prime Time (36 page)

‘I don’t think so,’ Annika replied. ‘She did work there, after all.’

‘They’re going to turn it into a tasteless publicity stunt. TV Plus and Sebastian pushed her around and used her while she was alive, and now that she’s dead they’re going to exploit whatever’s left.’

Bambi Rosenberg’s pupils were enlarged, practically covering up her irises. She licked her lips and picked at her face.

‘That’s not really the whole story, is it?’ Annika said. ‘TV and Sebastian Follin opened the door, made her famous.’

Bambi was walking very close to her now. Her breath smelled sour.

‘All Michelle tried to do,’ she said, ‘was to live up to everyone’s expectations. No one ever asked her what she wanted, what she really dreamed of doing.’

‘So she was forced into becoming a TV star?’

Annika could hear how sarcastic she sounded.

‘Of course not,’ Bambi Rosenberg said. ‘Michelle was very aware of what she was doing, and for increasingly shorter periods of time she was convinced that she had made the right choice. But you can always fool yourself with logic. This is the best course, because I’ll be famous and loved and wealthy, and that’s got to be the best thing life has to offer, right?’

‘You mean that’s just a lie?’

The actress gave a sob.

‘Of course it is. The only thing that really matters is people, love, and relationships.’

Annika felt irritation well up inside her head, causing her to purse her mouth even though she knew she wasn’t being rational. What right did she have to dismiss Bambi Rosenberg’s truths as platitudes?

‘How did you get to know Michelle?’ she asked, trying to keep her arrogance in check.

The woman answered in a flat voice.

‘It was in Playa de las Americas. We were both vacationing alone, only I had arrived the week before. I thought Michelle seemed really nice, only she seemed pretty sad too.’

Bambi paused and looked up at Annika.

‘This was before she was famous, you see.’

Annika nodded and tried to look encouraging.

‘So you became friends?’

Bambi Rosenberg nodded too.

‘It was like we shared the same dreams – we both wanted to make something of our lives. Mickey got a job at Zero after we got home, and I got a modelling contract, so you could say we were in synch.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Super-nice. She really wanted to help people with problems. She couldn’t see needy kids on TV without crying. She signed every list around about refugee kids who were petitioning to be granted asylum, and so did I.’

Well, hallelujah
, Annika thought, and decided to play hardball.

‘Then you loved it when Michelle became a superstar while you were only an actress in the soaps?’

Bambi’s eyes widened to the size of saucers.

‘Of course I loved it! It was great. Mickey was a journalist, I’m an actress. I don’t like politics and all that stuff, I like to portray human emotions. We helped each other out.’

‘Did Michelle
need
help? From you?’

‘Mickey needed a lot of help, she needed someone to take care of her. Someone who listened, who talked about everyday stuff. A lot of times she would call at four in the morning, when she couldn’t sleep. That was when she needed to talk, because she was lonely. Now I’m the lonely one.’

Bambi Rosenberg rummaged around in a pocket of her jacket, pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose, then proceeded to totter over to the bench by the bus stop.

Annika looked around and tried to hear the sounds from the nearby commercial area.

No bus.

‘She was famous and admired and rich,’ Annika said as she walked over to the bench and sat down next to Bambi, kicking at a dandelion that had erupted through the asphalt.

‘What about the other stuff? Love, relationships?’

‘For short periods of time,’ Bambi Rosenberg said, flicking back her mane of hair and putting away the handkerchief. ‘Friends were the hard part. Lots of her girlfriends let her down when she started hosting TV shows; they spread nasty rumours about her, bad-mouthed her, just out of spite. Once she was a star, some of them came back, drooling and fawning all over her, and wanting to be friends again. Naturally, she cut them dead. And she felt she couldn’t really trust her new friends.’

The actress stopped talking and sat silently for a while, staring at the stadium on the other side of the builders’ emporium without seeing it.

‘What about men?’ Annika asked.

Bambi Rosenberg’s chest heaved in an unconscious sigh.

‘She could have whoever she wanted.’

Bambi looked up at Annika. There was too much mascara on the actress’s lashes.

‘Naturally,’ she said. ‘Michelle could just take her pick. Only the guy she really wanted could never be hers.’

‘Why is that?’

The question popped out before Annika had thought it over. She bit her cheek, but realized that she really wanted to know. She could feel her eyes sparkle: she was curious.

‘He was married, and had kids. It was Stefan Axelsson, the technical director, you know. They had a brief affair a few years back, before Michelle was really big, and it was awfully hard on her.’

Annika blinked, picturing the enraged man, hearing him shout, ‘Leave me alone, leave
her
alone!’ There was something there: he’d wanted to protect her, even in death.

‘Did
he
love
her
?’

Bambi didn’t reply. Her eyes had filled with tears. Behind the silence between them, Annika could hear the rumbling of the Stockholm Transit Authorities bus approaching.

‘I had an affair with a married man once,’ Annika said, trying to keep the conversation rolling.

‘You did?’ Bambi Rosenberg said, turning to face her, the teary eyes growing even wider. ‘What happened?’

‘I got pregnant and he moved in with me,’ Annika said, hearing a note of pride in her voice.

‘Are you married?’

Her pride was wiped out in a second.

‘No, but we have two kids now.’

‘Michelle got pregnant too,’ Bambi Rosenberg said, looking at the builders’ emporium again. ‘Stefan went crazy, started screaming that she had to have an abortion. She cried for two weeks, then she did it. The next day he did a complete turnaround, he came back to her, told her that he had told his wife, that he wanted to live with her and the baby. Only then it was too late, it was too late for them. They couldn’t get past it. Michelle never got over it.’

Annika saw the bus pull up behind Bambi Rosenberg’s professionally streaked head.

‘That’s terrible,’ she said in a low voice.

‘I don’t know what Michelle ever did to deserve such a rotten life,’ the actress said.

The crowded bus stopped and Annika got on. She wriggled past baby carriages and bags of groceries, found a seat located over one of the rear wheels, and saw Bambi Rosenberg disappear from view as the bus accelerated away.

The commercial area was drab, its grey buildings sprouting like mushrooms from the ground. Annika closed her eyes for a few minutes, her belly tense with unshed tears, and immediately felt carsick.

So very unfortunate. So tremendously unfair. The words of the soap-opera actress rang in her ears:

I don’t know what Michelle ever did. To deserve. Such a rotten life.

She could have had a child, a man who loved her, a home and a family.

Then it hit Annika.

Like I have.

Opening her eyes wide, she forced back the tide of sentimental salt water.

The bus pulled up at another stop. A large older man wearing a cap and an oilskin coat pushed his way to the back of the bus and sat down next to Annika. She pulled her raincoat tighter around her and stared out the window. The wind caused the rain to pelt her side of the bus, sketching psychedelic patterns of dirt and grime on the window.

The man gasped, coughed, and cleared his throat. Annika wrapped her raincoat even tighter around herself. She closed her eyes and saw the negative image of the stripes of rain dance on her eyelids. The driver headed for Gullmarsplan. Squirming passengers rubbed damp fabrics against each other and Annika closed her nose off to the smell of unwashed humanity.

‘Excuse me,’ the man in the seat next to her said in a commanding voice. ‘Could I ask you something?’

The bus swayed as it ran a yellow light. Annika had to grab on to the seat in front of her to avoid being tossed against the man who’d spoken to her.

‘Sure,’ she said, looking at him quizzically once the vehicle was back on an even keel.

‘Aren’t you on TV?’ the man said and smiled, displaying a set of yellow teeth.

Annika tried to smile back and then had to hang on again when the bus braked sharply at the junction between the bridge at Johanneshov and Nynäsvägen.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, you’re mistaken.’

‘But I recognize you,’ the man insisted. ‘You sit on that sofa, with all the women.’

Annika took a deep breath and looked out over Gullmarsplan.

‘Sorry,’ she said, picking up her bag to indicate that she was getting off.

The man’s smile died. He muttered something inaudible and moved his legs a mere millimetre, indicating that Annika should climb over him. Rage exploded behind her eyes, intense and sudden.

‘What the hell? Now move it, let me out,’ she said in a loud and aggressive voice.

The old man’s eyes flew open in surprise and, befuddled by astonishment, he got up.

Annika got off by way of the rear exit, stepping out into the wind. A gust grabbed hold of her raincoat, finding its way under her sweater, wetting her stomach. She let the wind have its way with her for a few seconds, feeling the goose bumps rise on her skin. She looked up at the glass structure that housed the subway station, at the red steel girders around the glassed-in entrance, not wanting to go in. Not wanting to go to the newsroom.

She went over to the news-stand instead, got out of the wind and pulled out her cellphone. She called information and got the number for Global Future, breathing heavily while she waited for them to pick up.

‘I’d like to talk to the person in charge of investor relations,’ she said to the switchboard operator.

‘We don’t have anyone like that around here any more,’ the girl replied.

Annika moved to let an elderly lady with a walker get past.

‘What don’t you have? The investors or the people who coordinate their relations?’

The girl giggled.

‘We don’t have the one or the other.’

There was a flight of stairs on her right, in front of the health-food store.

‘What about the executive manager?’

‘He was fired last week.’

Annika hurried over to the staircase and raced downstairs, stopping on the landing in the middle to get out of the rain.

‘Are you the only person left?’

‘More or less,’ the girl said. ‘What would you like to know?’

The stairwell smelled of piss and damp concrete. Annika swallowed and decided to go for it.

‘I have a question about the analyses that the Securities Register Centre does for you …’

‘I take care of that at the moment,’ the girl said, ‘so you can see how far down on the list of priorities
that
particular job has fallen. You see, we don’t exactly get good news.’

Annika kicked away a few dented soft-drink cans and an empty bottle of drinkable yogurt, and looked out over the subway tracks below her. ‘How much is one of your shares worth today?’

‘The last time I checked, half an hour ago, the price was SEK 38.50.’

‘That’s pretty lousy, isn’t it?’ Annika asked.

The girl at the other end laughed again, this time sadly.

‘You’re not exactly a business wiz, are you?’

With a squeal of brakes, a train pulled up on a side track.

‘That’s right,’ Annika said. ‘I’m no good at playing the market, but other people like to see themselves as smart investors. People who have caused companies like yours to go belly-up. I’m investigating a story like that.’

‘So, what are you looking for?’ said the switchboard operator cum investor relations coordinator cum general manager of Global Future.

Residents of the southern suburbs of Stockholm filed past Annika, a damp grey crowd issuing from blue metal trains. She turned her back on them.

‘The date for a certain transfer of shares,’ she replied in a low voice.

‘I’m not at liberty to divulge information like that,’ the girl said.

‘I’m aware of that,’ Annika said. ‘And I’m not asking you to. I figured I’d tell you what I’ve dug up, and you can check it out if you like.’

There was no response at the other end. A subway train roared into the station somewhere on her right, causing the concrete to vibrate.

‘What’s it all about?’

‘An insider deal, but not one that involves any members of your board or your management.’

The train came to a stop, the stream of people dried up and Annika’s head was filled with a ringing silence.

‘When did this take place?’

‘Right before that disastrous second-quarter report last year …’

‘The one dated 20 July, I know. Who is it?’

Annika took a deep but silent breath while a bus headed for Tyresö started up with a loud rumble above her.

‘A man by the name of Torstensson,’ she said, hunched over her cellphone. ‘A pretty sizeable transaction: 9,200 shares.’

‘Hang on.’

This was said in a whisper.

Annika looked up the stairs. The graffiti and the power lines laced into a framework of steel reminded her of monsters from a nightmarish video by Pink Floyd. The wind whistled through the perforated metal, making the lines sing. Holding her breath, she listened.

‘9,200 shares,’ the woman said. ‘I’ve got it right here.’

Annika closed her eyes and felt her pulse rate go through the roof.

‘What date was it?’

‘24 July.’

She pulled her chin down to her chest, closed her eyes tight and felt her jaws clench until her molars squeaked.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much.’

‘You won’t tell, will you?’

‘Tell anyone that the information came from you? No way.’