Prime Time (40 page)

Puzzled, she saw that the number on the glowing display wasn’t one that she recognized.

‘Hello? Is that you, Annika? It’s me, Bosse.’

She stared at the street where there were no shadows, frantically searching her memory.

‘Who?’

‘Bosse – I work for the competition. How are you?’

She inhaled sharply and felt a rush of blood to her face. Anne was suddenly light years away from her thoughts.

‘Oh, I’m fine,’ she said, weak at the knees. ‘Everything’s great. How about you?’

‘A few of us are going out after work to grab a beer and I wondered … if you wanted to come along?’

Annika stopped breathing. Her mouth was open but nothing came out.

What she wanted to shout was ‘Yes! Yes! I want to drink beer and laugh and be acknowledged; I want to discuss the headlines and Michelle Carlsson and the clowns on Studio 69; I want to listen to time-worn media anecdotes and accounts of the state of the world; I want to look into eyes that give me warmth in return, I want to sit close to someone, I want to be a part of it all. I want to have fun!’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said curtly. ‘I have to go home.’

She swallowed hard. Something warm flowed through her body, blazing alive.

‘I see …’

The voice on the other end couldn’t conceal its disappointment.

Annika pressed her lips together hard, holding back the joy she felt.

‘Oh well,’ Bosse said, trying to laugh. ‘That’s life. Some other time, maybe?’

She closed her eyes and felt the tears coming on.

‘I don’t think so,’ she whispered.

‘You don’t … It was just … You sounded so pleased when you answered.’

An oppressive silence mushroomed between them.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said finally. ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Okay. Take care.’

Annika clicked off her cellphone.

She kept her gaze fixed on the road. It was straight and narrow. The scattered raindrops turned into a shower. She would be soaked by the time she reached the train.

Annika pulled up the hood of her jacket and ran.

Exhausted, Thomas sank down at the kitchen table with a brandy and a magazine. His head was buzzing with thoughts and voices. He gulped down the liquor to quiet them.

South Korea, the Fourth International Next-Generation Leaders’ Forum.
Holy shit.
He’d been chosen to be a leader of the next generation.

The crass voice in his head protested immediately. Sung-Yoon just wanted to talk about old times, that was all.

He opened his magazine and rubbed his eyes. The English words were hopping like bunnies.

2-12 September. He would be going – just let Annika try stopping him.

Irritated, he turned the page and tried to read the next article.

‘I’m scared.’

Thomas looked up and saw the little boy standing in the doorway, clutching his blanket and his teddy and sucking on a finger.

A tremendous sense of resignation wound itself around him.

‘Come on, son,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to go to bed now. We’ve already talked about this.’

‘But I’m scared.’

For a brief second, Thomas struggled with his fatigue and gave up.

‘I’ve tucked you in three times now, Kalle. Go back to bed. Go on.’

Then he made a great show of going back to reading his magazine.

‘I want Mommy. Where’s Mommy?’

Thomas kept his gaze fixed on his magazine.

‘Kalle,’ he said. ‘Now that’s enough. We’ve checked under the bed several times and there isn’t anything there. Go. To. Bed.’

The boy went away and shadows took over the doorway.

Thomas rested his head in his hands, slumped a bit and listened for sounds in the hallway. Grey, cold silence. The landlord had turned off the central heating for the summer and the dampness from the rain had seeped into every single corner.

Feeling irritated, he pushed away the magazine. This was what it was like living in a fucking apartment, you had no say, some lousy bureaucrat decided whether you were going to be hot or cold. At least if they had lived in a condo, then he could have been on the board and had some kind of influence, but not in this fucking rental.

He downed the rest of his brandy, went over to the cabinet to get the bottle, and poured himself another one.

Taking care of kids really drained the hell out of you.

Thomas slumped against the counter and swirled the amber liquid in a sturdy Duralex glass.

Maybe that’s why he hadn’t had the energy to work as much as he should have. Time and energy had gone elsewhere. If it weren’t for the kids, he might have already received a new assignment, he would have been immersed in the regional development of Sweden’s social services. They might have wanted to keep him on if he could have put more effort into his work.

A noise from the hallway caught his attention. He got up, walked over to the door, opened it and turned on the light.

The little boy was huddled in the far corner, shuddering with sobs, his eyes wide with reproach and exhaustion. The feelings that assaulted him were conflicting and obscure.

‘What’s this? Why are you in the hallway?’

Thomas tried to keep his irritation in check and conjured up some patience. He went over to the three-year-old and kneeled down to his height. The boy turned away and face the wall.

‘Hey, Kalle, you’ve got to get some sleep, you’re going to nursery school tomorrow, you know that.’

He put his hand on the rounded shoulder. The child pulled away, shuddering with sobs.

‘No! I want my mummy!’

‘Okay,’ Thomas said, picking up his son. ‘Now that’s enough.’

The boy howled, his body rigid as a bow, and pulled his father’s hair.

‘Stop it!’ Thomas yelled back and yanked the boy’s hand away, scattering a flurry of hairs over his face.

‘No-o-o!’ the boy screamed as he kicked and twisted in his dad’s arms.

A sudden draught of air made Thomas stop in his tracks. Annika was standing in the doorway, the bright light of the stairwell turning her shape into a dark silhouette.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked in a subdued voice as she shut the front door.

‘He won’t go to sleep!’ Thomas shouted, setting down the boy. Kalle let go of his teddy and his blanket and hurled himself at his mother. Thomas saw her drop her jacket and bag on the floor, get down on her knees and open her arms wide and let the boy tumble into her arms. She sat there, rocking him, murmuring words of comfort, and his crying subsided in a matter of minutes. A few seconds after that, the boy giggled, a golden chirping sound that he never shared with Thomas. Annika chimed in with a soft chuckle and gently smoothed his hair.

‘I’ll go with you, and you and I will tuck Teddy in,’ she said. ‘Now, where’s Teddy?’

The boy pointed sulkily in his dad’s direction.

Annika looked at Thomas steadily as she walked over to her son’s bedtime buddy and picked it up from the floor without averting her accusing gaze.

‘You’re spoiling him,’ Thomas said.

‘Shut up,’ Annika said in a quietly dismissive voice.

He gritted his teeth and flushed. But Annika was already gone; she was in the nursery, whispering and joking with the boy.

Thomas returned to the kitchen, gulped down his brandy and poured himself some more.

‘Now that’s mature,’ Annika remarked as she walked in and saw him knock back the brandy. ‘That’s terrific. Booze it up, now that’s a sure-fire way to make things better.’

She took a glass, filled it with tap water, and sat down at the kitchen table.

‘Do you know what time it is?’ Thomas asked.

Annika drank without answering him.

‘So, you figured it was time to come home now, did you? Do you have any idea how rough it’s been taking care of everything around here? You’ve got a lot of nerve, leaving all this to me.’

‘Stop it,’ she said, her voice devoid of emotion.

‘Stop what?’ he said as he downed the rest of his brandy, choking on it. ‘Exactly what should I stop doing? Taking care of your kids? Your apartment? Your dirty laundry?’

‘It’s time you cleaned up your act,’ she said, walking right up to Thomas. ‘You have everything a person could ask for, and all you do is complain. Why don’t you stop wallowing in self-pity, for a change?’

‘What do you want?’ he asked, way too loud. ‘Do you expect me to stop working and be a household drone? You might get what you want sooner than you think. I’m all washed up, in every way.’

‘Christ, you’re such a baby,’ Annika said, her eyes flashing with contempt. ‘We brought two kids into this world, and it’s our goddam obligation as parents to make sure that they grow up and have a reasonably good environment. Stop feeling so fucking sorry for yourself just because you don’t live in your fancy old brick house by the sea any more. This is where you live now, so pull yourself together and make the best of it. For God’s sake, grow up!’

Thomas shrank back, edging up against the counter.

‘Don’t you tell me what to do,’ he said in an unsteady voice.

She stepped up to him.

‘Well, who else is going to do it?’ she shouted. ‘You’re totally incapable of making decisions, for Christ’s sake. How the hell can you be in charge of a project? Everything is too much trouble. You’ve been so over-indulged, I swear you’re almost lazy!’

He pushed her away and headed for the hallway.

‘I’m not going to listen to this,’ he said.

‘Great!’ Annika called out to his retreating form. ‘Do it, run away, go and find someone who will stroke that goddam super-sized ego of yours’

Thomas staggered out into the hallway and, with shaking hands, put on his boots and his raincoat.

Then he slammed the door shut behind him.

TUESDAY, 26 JUNE

T
he newsroom was at rest, the morning light painting it a delicate shade of blue. The night desk pulsated like a living organism. Its human occupants had gone, but the room still echoed with the sound of chairs being pushed back, computers powering down, and pens rolling away and dropping to the floor.

At this moment, the Knights of the Night Desk were probably sitting in the canteen two floors down, red-eyed and wired, trying to wash the excess adrenalin back down into the darkest recesses of their brains with beer and tea.

The morning team sat further away, concentrated and silent. The next deadline was seventy-five minutes away, one and a half eternities away, all the time in the world.

Anders Schyman took in the sight, tucking it away in his soul. It was a sight he might never see again.

He went to his room, set his mug of coffee on his desk and tossed the first edition, the one sent out to the provinces, next to it. The newsprint was still slightly damp; a half-hour earlier it had rolled off the presses.

Schyman was always in early, since only two possibilities were available to him: he could spend hours in traffic on his way in from Nacka, or he could risk a ticket or even losing his licence by cruising in the bus lanes.

This particular morning was nothing like the usual grind. The air was charged with electricity, and he knew why.

It was always easier to get up and go into battle.

Peacetime was so much less inspiring.

His body felt supple as he sat down, opened the paper and started to read it enthusiastically.

The front page was terrific: a soulful close-up of John Essex, sad and devoid of make-up, taken at a hotel room in Berlin the day before. The pop icon had granted Berit Hamrin at
Kvällspressen
an exclusive interview about his friendship with the murdered TV star Michelle Carlsson, telling everything about the events of that fatal night and what it was like to be interrogated by the Swedish police. Fabulous stuff.

The editorial dealt with a consumer issue, an article that had been produced as a front-page back-up during the holidays but which hadn’t been used due to the murder of Michelle Carlsson. An article somewhere else in the paper covered the story of hazardous medications: the entire list.

The editorial demanded that drastic measures should be taken against the jaded giants of the pharmaceutical industry. The piece wasn’t very good.

The managing editor rolled his shoulders restlessly and flipped through the pages of the paper.

The Lifestyle section, on the other hand, contained an astute observation of the future of TV, a timely blow straight to the solar plexus, a clear-headed and talented analysis by one of the paper’s own reporters.

The interview with the pop star was splashed across pages six and seven. The Entertainment section had felt that it should be featured in their section, but Spike had insisted on this location. Schyman smiled and brushed his hand lovingly over the words.

‘Michelle Carlsson was a wonderful woman,’ John Essex had told
Kvällspressen
’s representative.

‘We only met on that one occasion, but we bonded immediately. She had vitality, a sparkling intellect, and we got along very well. Her death is a great loss, both on a personal level and with regard to European TV audiences. She had so much left to give.’

‘Do you think your friendship would have continued?’ Berit Hamrin had asked Essex.

‘I would have enjoyed getting to know Michelle better. Very few people understand where I’m coming from right off the bat, but she did. We could get right down to the important issues, which was unusual. In addition to all that, she was incredibly lovely. I haven’t met many women who could hold a candle to her, and I’ve known quite a few.’

The whole world would be wanting to copy the interview and buy the pictures. When Schyman asked Berit how she had pulled off such a feat she simply made a reference to
The Godfather
, something about making an offer that John Essex couldn’t refuse. He hadn’t pursued the subject.

Schyman carefully sipped the hot coffee from the automat, turned the page and caught sight of Carl Wennergren striking a pose in front of Yxtaholm Castle.
Kvällspressen
’s reporter tells all about the tragedy that rocked Sweden’s entertainment community. Sjölander had written the piece, and, to be honest, you could tell that he had been affected by jet lag. The article wasn’t Pulitzer Prize-winning material, but at least now they had run the story.