The Final Word (34 page)

He reached for his glass, his hand trembling slightly, and drank what was left in it. Should he get himself a top-up straight away, or wait a bit?

The presenter crossed her legs and glanced down at
her notes, then looked up at Annika again. (She hadn’t taken
his
name when they’d got married. Oh, no.)

‘Today is an historic day,’ the woman said. ‘Today sees the publication of the final print edition of the
Evening Post
, a newspaper for whose publication you’ve been legally responsible for four months. As I understand it, it’s been something of a turbulent time.’

‘I can’t disagree with that,’ Annika said, with a faint smile, the one that indicated she wasn’t at all happy.

‘But doesn’t this mean the end of serious journalism, abandoning the print edition?’

He looked carefully at his ex-wife. He probably knew her better than anyone else did, and he could see that she was struggling to be polite. She really wasn’t suited to this sort of interview situation.

‘We’ve decided to focus on the content, rather than allow ourselves to be limited by the format,’ Annika said. ‘You don’t necessarily have to kill trees to do good journalism. Quite the contrary. Once a piece of news has been printed on paper and distributed to the reader, it is no longer news. But paper is good for longer texts, in-depth analysis and reportage, so we’re focusing hard on our printed weekend magazine, which . . .’

He stood up and went out into the kitchen. He could manage without hearing her boast about her job. The bottle of wine was standing on the worktop: he could see the label reflected in the black granite.

The new kitchen was a great success, modern yet
timeless, architect-designed and made to measure from stone, brushed steel and oak.

He took a deep breath to calm himself. There was no reason to be annoyed. The stone felt cold and hard under his good hand. He took the bottle back into the sitting room with him.

‘A hundred
posts
had to go, not a hundred people,’ Annika was saying on the screen. ‘That’s a crucial difference. We were able to meet the reduction partly through retirement and voluntary redundancies, but of course it was very hard for the people for whom there wasn’t room in the new organization.’

Were they still talking about her tedious job?

Thomas poured more wine into his glass. It was the larger sort, the ones Sophia thought so vulgar, but he liked the big bowls: they felt generous, and could hold almost an entire bottle.

‘It’s been said that you went in pretty hard right from the outset . . . Starting by closing down the print edition didn’t make you very popular.’

Annika smiled that crooked smile again. ‘I wasn’t very popular before that either,’ she said, picking up the glass of water from the table in front of her. She took a sip.

‘Can you understand why your predecessor in the role, Anders Schyman, chose to resign in protest at the cuts?’

Thomas drank some more of his wine and felt the warmth spread through his body. Strangely, he could feel the hook tingling as well, and wondered what that might be called: phantom intoxication?

‘I worked with Anders Schyman for fifteen years, and have the greatest respect for him. His is an incredibly important voice in the debate about the future of the media, and he’ll do an excellent job as professor at the Institute for Media and Communication.’

His head began to swim. The wine was almost gone. Maybe he should open another bottle.

The interviewer leaned forward in her chair, as though she wanted to get closer to her subject. ‘You have young children,’ she said, ‘and your husband has just been appointed director general of the Council for Crime Prevention. You must have hesitated before agreeing to take on such a demanding job?’

Ah, they were getting to the good bit at last, all the juicy details. Annika looked distinctly uncomfortable, didn’t she?

‘On the contrary,’ she said, sounding almost cheerful. ‘I applied for the job, and fought to get it.’

Her hair was different – had she had it cut? Or was it just that it had been sorted out properly for once?

‘You fought to get it? How do you mean?’

‘I fought to make the board understand that it would be a huge mistake to bring in a high-profile candidate from outside. The challenges facing the evening papers are unique, and bringing in someone with a fancy name wouldn’t help solve them.’

‘So why you, specifically?’

‘I had the necessary professional experience to take on this challenge, I know the organization inside out, and
eventually I received the backing of the board. I was given the choice of either taking on the responsibility myself or finding someone else to do it. There was also a sense of duty. Not just towards the paper and the other staff, but . . . well, this sounds horribly clichéd, but towards myself as well.’

‘You never had any doubts?’

‘The decision to stop publishing the print edition had already been taken, and the cutbacks were going to be implemented regardless of what I or anyone else thought. It would have been much easier to sit on the sidelines and complain about developments in the media.’

He couldn’t sit there listening to this, his ex-wife giving a pompous speech about her responsibilities and sacrifices. He drank the last of the wine and heaved himself off the sofa. He’d had more than enough experience of the way she dealt with her responsibilities, how loyal she was, and how much she cared about other people.

He hit the hook on the door frame as he went into the kitchen, hard, and felt his upper arm quiver.

They had invested in a wine fridge when they’d renovated the kitchen, an exclusive (and reassuringly expensive) affair that lent a touch of elegance to the whole kitchen. The door opened with a sigh as he heard Annika laugh on television. He spun the rack and made his selection: a cheap Shiraz from South Africa, a full-bodied wine to match the television interview.

He closed the door and checked the temperature on the thermostat: thirteen degrees, perfect.

‘Did you have any particular demands when you accepted the job?’ the interviewer asked, in the sitting room.

‘Yes, I did, actually,’ he heard Annika reply. ‘I insisted on Berit Hamrin agreeing to be deputy editor, as well as acting publisher.’

Next to the wine fridge, they had mounted a corkscrew on the wall so he could remove the corks with just one hand. He hadn’t quite got the knack yet, and the bottle slipped a few times before he got it into the right place. He was a bit sweaty and slightly out of breath when the cork finally popped out, and a few drops of wine landed on his shirt. He rubbed them with the hook as tears welled in his eyes.

Maybe he shouldn’t drink any more: it left him unbalanced and clumsy, and that wasn’t what he was like.

After a moment’s hesitation, he took the bottle into the sitting room with him anyway, but he certainly wasn’t going to drink it all.

‘Arne and Ivar Berglund were sentenced to life imprisonment,’ the interviewer was saying, as Thomas sat down on the sofa. ‘Does that feel like a victory?’

‘Not at all. There are no winners here.’

‘Your sister’s remains were found in woodland in Norrbotten this summer, together with those of eight other missing people, among them Viola Söderland. Have you really been able to be objective in your coverage of these events?’

‘Responsibility for our coverage of Arne and Ivar
Berglund has rested with our head of news, Patrik Nilsson, and he’s done an excellent job.’

‘But the fact that the prosecutor-general has allowed appeals to be raised in four of the five convictions against Gustaf Holmerud has to be seen as a personal triumph for you?’

Annika looked thoughtful, a miracle of studied modesty. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘For me, personally, it was more important that the murder of Josefin Liljeberg was finally solved.’

‘Why?’

‘She deserved justice. I wrote about her during my first summer as a temp on the newspaper, and it was very important to me that the witnesses chose to speak out and give her some form of redress.’

‘Do you know what made the witnesses change their minds? To step forward and tell the truth?’

Annika lowered her gaze. ‘Perhaps their lies had been tormenting them for a long time. But that’s just speculation. They didn’t give any explanation during the trial, and none of them has volunteered to be interviewed by the media.’ She looked up at the presenter. ‘Carrying guilt and secrets doesn’t necessarily get easier over the years,’ she said. ‘Quite the reverse, actually. It can become unbearable, and then you have to do something about it.’

His mobile buzzed, a message on Viber from Sophia:
Hello, darling, are you watching the interview?

He put the phone down on his thigh as he replied – he had developed a technique that allowed him to send
messages with just one hand.
Haven’t got time, working. Might catch up online later. See you tomorrow! Big kiss!

She wouldn’t contact him again that evening: she respected his work.

The presenter tilted her head on the screen. ‘Your mother agreed to be interviewed after your sister’s death. She said it was your fault that Birgitta was murdered. How is your relationship now? Has there been any reconciliation?’

The set of Annika’s mouth looked rather tense now, didn’t it? ‘Naturally everyone was incredibly shocked and upset after the murders of my sister and brother-in-law. My mother and Birgitta were extremely close to each other so, under the circumstances, perhaps it isn’t strange that you say things in the heat of the moment that you don’t really mean.’

Thomas snorted loudly. He didn’t have much time for Annika’s lush of a mother. There was the old saying, of course:
If you want to know what your wife will look like in thirty years’ time, just look at her mother!

He chuckled to himself. Maybe Jimmy Halenius should have gone to see Barbro in Tattarbacken before he proposed. He and Annika had got married on the jetty of that old cottage they’d managed to rent from the Harpsund estate. The whole thing stank of corruption and nepotism.

‘What about the adoption of your niece? Has that been formalized now?’

‘The case is with the Stockholm District Court. We’re hoping it will be decided before the end of the year.’

‘How has she settled in with you?’

Annika folded her arms. ‘Very well.’

She evidently didn’t want to talk about Birgitta’s daughter. Ellen, on the other hand, wouldn’t stop talking about Diny, how she, Serena and Diny had been given the big bedroom so all the girls could sleep together, how they had pictures of Diny’s mummy and daddy on the fridge and by Diny’s bed, but Diny hardly ever talked about them now, and how lovely it was that Diny had come to live with them.

He let his head fall back against the cushion and the voices from the television sank to a murmur . . . and the future? . . . the development of the media . . . Yes, I . . . We’ve heard that you’re going to be taking six months off . . . Yes, well, I’m pregnant . . .

He sat bolt upright. Had he heard right?

‘Congratulations,’ the presenter said. ‘When are you due?’

He stared at her on the screen.
Say it isn’t true, that it was a misunderstanding.

‘In the spring.’

He reached for the remote and switched off the television. The room fell dark, and the silence was deafening. It crackled against his eardrums like rifle-fire.

I’m pregnant.

There was some frost on the skylight facing the courtyard. It would be cold later that night. Down in the street he heard a car start up and drive away; the radiators were singing, and the hand he no longer had itched.

He was
Someone
.

The new minister had the sense to appreciate the contribution he was making at work. She had listened seriously and attentively when he explained why the boundary for coercive measures regarding people who incited hatred online ought to be set at four years, the same as bugging. He had prepared her thoroughly for the protests that would arise when the proposed legislation was sent out for consultation: they would complain noisily that the law would be ineffective, that it would be impossible for the police to investigate crimes, but it was important to stick to the spirit of the inquiry and not compromise legal rectitude.

And the minister had pledged to push the legislation through, no matter what resistance it met. At ten the following morning he was due to present the results of his inquiry at a cabinet meeting. The press room at Rosenbad had been booked, and his article for
Dagens Nyheter
had been checked and passed for publication.

And that weekend he would be taking his hunting exam. He had studied the theory and learned to shoot at elk-shaped targets on the estate, with the barrel resting on the hook, his forefinger on the cold trigger.

In the spring.

He pulled his laptop towards him from the side-table and logged in.

Gregorius had a thing or two to say about the state of things.

First of all, a declaration: Annika Bengtzon lives in an alternative reality, and her years don’t necessarily correspond to ours.

The descriptions of Hälleforsnäs and its industrial history are based upon real places and events, but all characters and many of the incidents related in this novel are an expression of the author’s artistic licence.

In order to depict the future of the media industry I have taken inspiration from, among others, a radio interview with Casten Almqvist on the
Ekot
news programme of 23 August 2014, Jan Scherman’s book
Räkna med känslorna
(‘Count on Emotion’), Thomas Mattsson’s blog for
Expressen.se
, and Jan Hellin’s Sunday columns for
Aftonbladet.se
.

The online post attributed to Gregorius and the four comments by his admirers are genuine, and were published anonymously on Swedish internet sites. The post dated 3 June, 16.53, was tried and dismissed in a Swedish court. The comments were all written by people who
applied for politically sensitive posts in Sweden. Their identities were made public after a series of revelations by the
Expressen
newspaper in collaboration with Researchgruppen, a network of freelance journalists.