Red Wolf_ A Novel Part 41

The Red Wolf.

The meeting to celebrate the return of the Dragon.

Annika's fingers started to tingle, and sweat broke out along her back.

'Thank you,' she said, and ended the call.

She drove past the bus, and watched in the rear-view mirror as the minister climbed on, then let the bus pa.s.s her and stayed a hundred metres behind it. Just before the Bergnas bridge she decided it was time to get closer.

You're sitting in there, Annika thought, staring at the vehicle's filthy back window. You're on your way somewhere that you don't want to be seen, but I'm here You're on your way somewhere that you don't want to be seen, but I'm here.

And the angels starting singing gently to her, slowly and mournfully.

'Oh, shut up!' Annika yelled, hitting her head with the palm of her hand, and the voices disappeared.

She followed the bus over the bridge and entered the frozen city, driving past panelled houses and banks of snow and frozen cars, and turned off at a junction by a petrol station.

The airport bus stopped just across the street from the City Hotel's heavy facade. She braked and leaned forward to watch the pa.s.sengers getting off. Her breath misted the widescreen, and she wiped it with her sleeve.

Karina Bjornlund was the second last off. The Minister of Culture stepped carefully out of the bus with a black leather bag in her hand. Annika could feel herself on the verge of hyperventilating.

A bag to breathe into, she thought, realizing that she didn't have one. Instead she held her breath and counted to ten three times, and her heartbeat slowed down.

It was getting dark, but the sunset was as slow and gradual as dawn had been, and she watched Karina Bjornlund stand and freeze at the bus-stop, a thickset, dark woman in a fur-coat and no hat.

The Red Wolf, Annika thought, trying to make out the features of her face in the shadows, imagining that she could see a pair of anxious, sad eyes.

What are you doing here?

Her mother lives on Storgatan, she thought. Maybe she's on her way there Maybe she's on her way there.

Then realized: this is Storgatan this is Storgatan. Why would she be standing at a bus-stop to go somewhere else? She hasn't come to visit her mother.

Suddenly her back window was filled with the headlights of one of the local buses. She put the car in gear and rolled forward a few metres to let the bus pull in, pa.s.sing the little gaggle of people waiting in the queue. In her rear-view mirror she watched as Karina Bjornlund picked her bag up and climbed on board.

I'll follow the bus to see where she gets off, Annika thought, and rolled a bit further until she realized she was heading into a pedestrianized street. People were walking slowly in front of the car, challenging her with their stares. She looked up and noticed a sign indicating that all vehicles apart from public transport were forbidden. She felt herself starting to panic again, grappled with the gear-stick to find reverse, and saw the bus gliding slowly towards her. She turned the wheel as hard as she could and swerved on crunching tyres.

The bus slid past and she felt the sweat sticking her legs to the seat. She was about to lose sight of the minister, and had no idea where she was heading.

Bus number one, she thought. The bus that Linus Gustafsson usually took.

Svartostaden.

East, towards Swedish Steel.

And she drove down towards the harbour, turning right towards the ironworks. She pulled over to the side and waited; if she was right the bus would have to pa.s.s her here. Four minutes later the bus glided past her and carried on towards Malmudden.

She just had time to register the name of the street, Lovskatan, as the bus turned right; wasn't that where Margit Axelsson used to live? Another sign, Foreningsgatan, and the bus carried on along the edge of a messy and desolate industrial estate, huddling in the shadow of an enormous jet-black mound of iron-ore. On the left was a row of identical two-storey apartment blocks from the forties, and up ahead loomed a huge, abandoned industrial building that seemed to have grown into the side of the mountain of iron-ore. Dark windows sent warnings into the twilight, cold cries into the darkness. She followed the bus as the road swung up and left and ran alongside the railway line. An immense steel pipe hung high above, and below lurked a row of graffiti-covered and ramshackle industrial units, surrounded by pipes, steel girders, tyres, pallets. No sign of life anywhere.

The bus indicated and pulled in at a bus-stop. Annika braked and pulled up behind an abandoned car twenty metres further down the hill.

Karina Bjornlund got off, clutching her leather bag. Annika slumped down in her seat and stared at her.

The bus pulled away, and the Minister of Culture was left staring out at the railway track, her breath drifting like clouds around her. She seemed to hesitate.

Annika switched off the engine and pulled out the key, waiting inside the warm interior of the car without taking her eyes off the woman.

Then Karina Bjornlund suddenly turned round and started walking towards the crown of the hill, away from the industrial units.

Annika stiffened, fumbled with the ignition key, biting the inside of her cheek.

Should she get out and follow the minister? Drive up and offer her a lift? Wait and see if she came back?

She rubbed her eyes for a moment.

Wherever Karina Bjornlund was going, she evidently didn't want company.

Annika opened the car door, pulling her hat and ski-gloves from her bag, pushed the door shut and locked the car with a bleep. She gasped for breath, reeling from the cold; how was it possible to live in a climate like this?

She blinked a few times; the cold was making the air incredibly dry, hurting her eyes.

The daylight was dark grey now, almost gone. The sky was distant, clear and entirely colourless; a few stars twinkled above the mounds of ore. Two streetlamps further down the road spread a dull, hopeless light in a small circle around their own feet. Karina Bjornlund had disappeared over the crown of the hill, and there was no other sign of life anywhere. The rumble from the steelworks was carried through the cold along the railway track, reaching her like a dull vibration.

Walking carefully, she started up the hill, looking hard at every bush and shadow. At the top of the hill the road swung sharply to the left and led back into the housing estate. Straight ahead was a narrow track, clear of snow and ice, with a sign forbidding vehicle traffic.

Annika narrowed her eyes and peered around her, unable to see the minister anywhere. She took a few steps along the private track, jogging as fast as she dared on the ice and grit. She pa.s.sed a bundle of cables leading down to the railway tracks and ran past an empty car park, then the track emerged alongside the railway line again. Far ahead the ironworks, c.o.ke ovens, and blastfurnaces sat brooding darkly against the winter sky, millions of tons of ore turned into a rolling carpet of steel. To the left was nothing but slurry and snow. The full moon had risen behind the mounds of ore, its blue light mixing with the yellow lights illuminating the ore railway.

She ran for several minutes until she was forced to stop and catch her breath, coughing drily and quietly into her glove, blinking moisture out of her eyes and looking round for Karina Bjornlund.

The track looked as though it was rarely used. She could see just a few footprints, some tracks left by dogs and a bicycle, but no minister.

The angels suddenly burst out in song.

She hit the back of her head so hard that the voices fell silent. She shut her eyes and breathed for a few seconds, listening to the emptiness in her head, and in the echo of the silence she suddenly heard other voices, human voices, coming from within the forest up ahead. She couldn't make out any words, could just hear a male and a female voice talking fairly quietly.

She pa.s.sed beneath a viaduct, either a road or a railway, Annika couldn't tell. She no longer knew where she was. The voices grew louder, and in the light of the moon and the railway track she suddenly saw footsteps leading into an opening in the scrub.

She stopped, peering through the low trees, just able to make out shadows, spirits.

'Well, I'm here now,' Karina Bjornlund was saying. 'Don't hurt me.'

A rough male voice with a Finnish accent answered, 'Karina, don't be scared. I've never meant you any harm.'

'Believe me, Goran, no one's ever done me as much harm as you have. Say what you want and . . . let me go.'

Annika caught her breath, her stomach turning somersaults, her dry mouth turned to sandpaper. She took a careful step into the first of the footprints already there in the snow, then another, and another. In the moonlight she saw the forest open out into a clearing, and at its centre was a small brick building with a sheet-metal roof and sealed-up windows.

In the middle of the clearing stood the Minister of Culture in her thick fur, and a thin grey man in a long coat and leather cap, with a dark duffel bag beside him.

Goran Nilsson, the ruler with divine power, the Yellow Dragon.

Annika stared at him with painfully dry eyes.

Terrorist, ma.s.s-murderer, evil personified, this was what it looked like, hunched and dull and trembling slightly?

She had to call the police.

Then realized: her mobile was in the bag on the pa.s.senger seat of the Volvo down by the abandoned car.

44.

'How can you think I've ever meant you any harm?' the man said, his voice carrying through the still air. 'All my life you're the person who's meant the most to me.'

The woman shuffled her feet nervously.

'I got your messages,' she said, and Annika realized at once why she sounded so scared. She had received the same warnings as Margit.

The man, the Yellow Dragon, lowered his head for a few seconds. Then he looked up again, and Annika could see his eyes. In the strange light they glimmered red and hollow.

'I had a reason for coming here, and you're all going to hear it,' he said, his voice as cold as the wind. 'You may have come a long way, but I've come further.'

The woman was shaking under her fur, her voice scared, and she was close to tears. 'Don't hurt me.'

The man went up to her. Annika could see him pull something from his coat pocket, black, s.h.i.+ny.

A weapon. A revolver.

'I shan't trouble you again,' he said quietly. 'This is the last time. You'll just have to wait at the meeting place. There's something I need to take care of first.'

The wind freshened, tugging at the branches of the pine trees.

'Please,' the woman pleaded. 'Let me go.'

'In,' he said harshly. 'Now.'

And Karina Bjornlund picked up her bag from the ground and, with the revolver aimed at her back, walked inside the little brick building. Goran Nilsson didn't move, watched her go inside, put the gun in his pocket again, turned round and walked over to the duffel bag leaning against the wall of the building.

Annika took a deep breath. She had heard more than enough. She moved softly and carefully back along the trail of footprints and emerged onto the track, casting a last glance at the trees so she could describe the site properly to the police.

Someone was moving, someone was coming towards her.

Her breathing came hard and deep. She looked around in panic.

Ten metres or so behind her was a metal box with a ma.s.s of thick cables snaking out of it, and behind it was a thicket of young pine trees. Annika fled towards them, her feet scarcely touching the crunching surface of the track. She flew into the sharp branches, parting them with both hands, then peered behind her.

The grey man emerged into the dim light from the railway track, dragging the duffel bag behind him. It was clearly very heavy. He stood still on the icy track for a few seconds, then put his hand to his stomach and bent over, his breath rising from his mouth in panting bursts. Annika craned her neck to see better. It looked like the man was about to fall flat on his face.

Then his breathing calmed down, he straightened his back and took a few unsteady steps forward.

Then he looked straight at Annika.

Horrified, she let go off the branch she had been holding back, and put her hand over her mouth to m.u.f.fle the sound and cloud of her breath. She stood completely still in the darkness as the man slowly walked towards her. His panting breath and strained steps grew in her head, coming closer and closer until she thought she was going to scream. She closed her eyes and heard him stop a metre or so away from her, on the other side of the little pine trees.

There was a sc.r.a.ping noise. She opened her eyes.

Metal sc.r.a.ping against metal, she held her breath and listened.

The man was doing something with the metal box. He was opening the doors of the cabinet containing all the cables. She could hear him panting, and realized that she had to take another breath, inhaling quickly and silently, only to feel a huge and instant desire to throw up.

The man stank. A smell of decay filtered through the branches and made her put her hand in front of her mouth again. He was panting and struggling with something on the other side of the trees. The sc.r.a.ping sounds continued, then fell silent. There was a squeak, and then a click.

Ten seconds of easier breathing, then some more steps, away.

Annika turned round and pushed the branch aside to take another look.

The man was on his way back into the bushes. The duffel bag was gone.

He put it in the box, she thought.

The undergrowth swallowed him up, erasing his presence in the weak light.

Annika stood up and flew along the track, only pausing at the edge of the forest. She turned and ran as quietly as she could, under the viaduct and back up to the Skanska building, past the empty car park, until suddenly she saw another figure coming towards her.

She stopped instantly, looked around with adrenalin racing through her veins, threw herself down in the forest and sank up to her chin into the snow.

It was a man. He was bare-headed, dressed in jeans and a thin padded jacket. From his stumbling gait and unsteady movements she read the signs of serious and long-term alcohol abuse, a drunk.

A few seconds later he had vanished behind the Skanska building and she was able to get out onto the road again, rus.h.i.+ng on without trying to brush off the snow.

To begin with she couldn't see the hire-car, and had a moment of panic before she found it behind the abandoned car. She clicked open the lock and threw herself into the driver's seat, pulling off her gloves and fumbling for her mobile, her fingers trembling so much that she had trouble keying in Inspector Suup's direct number.

'Karlsson, Central Control.'

She had reached the switchboard.

'Suup,' she said, 'I'm trying to reach Inspector Suup.'

'He's finished for the day,' Karlsson said.

Her brain went into overdrive; she shut her eyes and rubbed a sweaty palm across her forehead.

'Forsberg,' she said. 'Is Forsberg there?'