Exposed (26 page)

She walked up to the cemetery, the photographer following behind her as she headed towards the ornate railings. Her mouth was bone-dry, and she gulped, her pulse racing. When she was just a couple of metres from the youngsters, they started screaming and shouting.

‘There they are. They’re here! Vultures, vultures!’

Annika stopped. Pettersson started taking pictures. The attention of the whole crowd was focused on the two journalists now.

‘Is Lisbeth here?’ Annika asked, but she couldn’t make herself heard.

‘Fuck off, scum!’ shouted a boy who couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen.

He walked aggressively towards Annika, and she backed away instinctively. The boy’s face was swollen with crying and exhaustion, and his whole body was trembling with adrenalin and rage. Annika stared at him, lost for words.

‘We don’t want to disturb you at all,’ she said. ‘We’re not trying to intrude—’

A heavily built girl stepped up and shoved Annika on the shoulder. ‘Fucking hyenas!’ she shrieked in a spray of saliva.

Annika stumbled back, unable to comprehend what was happening. She tried to disarm the girl’s fury by being calm and sensible.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘can’t we talk to each other like—’

‘Hyena!’ the girl screamed. ‘Scum! Scum!’

The circle of young people tightened around Annika, and she suddenly felt scared. Someone jabbed her in the back, and she lurched forward into the heavily built girl.

‘What the fuck are you doing, you cunt?’ the girl screamed. ‘You having a go at me?’

Annika tried to see where Pettersson was. Where the hell had he gone?

‘Pettersson?’ she shouted. ‘Pettersson, where the fuck are you?’

She heard his voice from over towards the entrance to the car park.

‘Bengtzon,’ he shouted, panic-stricken. ‘They’re trying to rip my clothes off!’

Suddenly one voice, threatening and hysterical, could be heard above all the others, cutting through the noise.

‘Where are they? Where are they?’

The girl who had grabbed hold of Annika’s bag let go of it at once and turned towards the source of the voice.
Annika saw a copy of the
Evening Post
heading towards her, held up above the sea of heads.

The crowd parted, and she saw several more youngsters pulling out copies of the paper.

As the path opened up she caught sight of Charlotta, Josefin’s classmate, heading towards her. Annika took another step back at the sight of her.

The girl was on the brink of total collapse. Her eyes were red, her pupils enlarged and black, she had saliva round her mouth, and her movements were jerky and uncoordinated. Her hair was dirty and unkempt, and she was panting for breath.

‘You … vulture!’ she screamed as she rushed towards Annika. ‘You bitch!’

Charlotta whacked the paper against the side of Annika’s head as hard as she could. Annika put her hands up to her head instinctively as the blows rained down. Other youngsters were aiming at her arms and back, and the screams around her had risen to a collective howl.

Annika felt all reasoned thought vanish. She turned and, shoving one teenager aside, ran for her life. Away, oh God, get me away from here! She heard her steps pounding the street. The greenery on her right rushed past, the ground swayed, the buildings bounced and jerked irregularly. She had a sense that Pettersson was somewhere behind her, followed in turn by the crowd.

The entrance to the car park was pitch black after the sunlight of the park, and she stumbled in the darkness.

‘Pettersson?’ she shouted. ‘Are you there?’

She had reached the car, and as her eyes got used to the darkness she saw the photographer running down the ramp. He had his cameras in one hand, his photographer’s tunic hanging from one shoulder. His hair was a complete mess.

‘They tried to pull my clothes off,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘They were tearing my hair! It was stupid to march up to them like that.’

‘Just shut the fuck up!’ Annika screamed. ‘Get in the damn car and let’s get out of here!’

He got the driver’s door open, climbed in and unlocked the passenger door. Annika leaped into the car, it must have been a hundred degrees in there. She wound the window down. Astonishingly, the car started first time, and Pettersson roared up the ramp on screeching tyres. Up at street-level again, the light blinded them and Annika shut her eyes for a couple of seconds.

‘There they are!’

The shout came through the open window and she turned to see the mob racing towards them like a wall.

‘Drive, for fuck’s sake!’ she yelled, winding the window up.

‘It’s one way!’ the photographer shouted back. ‘I’ve got to go up past the cemetery.’

‘No way!’ Annika screamed. ‘Just drive!’

Pettersson had just pulled out into Kronobergsgatan when the car stalled. Annika locked the door and put her hands over her eyes. Pettersson twisted the key over and over again. The starter motor clicked, but nothing happened. The mob surrounded them, and someone tried to climb on top of the car. The teenagers were banging on the car with their fists, and their screams changed character, becoming a rhythmic chant:

‘Burn them! Burn them!’

Annika saw a copy of the
Evening Post
coming towards her, and her article about reactions in Täby was pressed against the window. The picture of the girls with their poems lefts smears of ink on the glass.

‘Burn them! Burn them!’

The crumpled paper was placed on the bonnet and
someone set light to it. Annika was screaming at the top of her voice, scared out of her wits.

‘Get the fucking car started! Drive, drive!’

More newspapers started to burn, and pictures of the girls and their poems caught fire all around them. The car rocked, and it felt like they were trying to turn it over. The sound of beating fists grew ever louder. Pettersson yelled and the car suddenly burst into life. It jerked forward: the photographer pushed the clutch down and revved the engine. He jammed his hand on the horn and the car slowly crept through the crowd, and the person on the roof jumped off. Annika put her head down, shut her eyes and blocked her ears with her hands. She didn’t look up again until the car turned into Fleminggatan.

Pettersson was trying not to cry. He was shaking and could hardly drive. They were heading into the city centre, and pulled in at a petrol station near the Trygg Hansa building.

‘We shouldn’t have gone up to them,’ he sobbed.

‘Stop crying,’ Annika said. ‘What’s done is done.’

Her hands were shaking, and she felt shaken and paralysed. The photographer was the same age as her, but she felt that it was somehow her responsibility to sort things out.

‘Hey, come on,’ she said in a friendlier tone of voice. ‘We’re okay, aren’t we?’

She hunted around in her bag and found an unopened pack of tissues.

‘Blow your nose,’ she said, ‘then I’ll treat you to a cup of coffee.’

Pettersson did as he was told, grateful that Annika had taken charge. They went into the petrol station shop, which actually had both coffee and some little marzipan and chocolate cakes.

‘God, that was horrible,’ Pettersson said quietly, taking a bite of marzipan. ‘That’s the worst thing I’ve ever done.’

Annika smiled wryly. ‘You’ve been pretty lucky, then,’ she said.

They drank their coffee and ate their cakes in silence.

‘You ought to get that car fixed, you know,’ Annika said.

He groaned. ‘Yeah, tell me about it!’

They got some more coffee.

‘So what do we do with this?’ he wondered.

‘Nothing,’ Annika said. ‘And I hope no one else does anything with it either.’

‘Like who?’ Pettersson asked in surprise.

‘You don’t want to know,’ Annika said.

They drove back to the paper, taking the long way round via Gamla Stan and Södermalm. There was no way they were going to drive past Kronoberg Park again.

It was almost half past four by the time they got back to the newsroom.

‘So how did you get on?’ the head of news, Ingvar Johansson, asked.

‘Fucking awful,’ Annika said. ‘They attacked us and tried to set fire to the car with burning newspapers.’

Ingvar Johansson blinked sceptically. ‘Yeah, right!’

‘God’s own truth,’ Annika said. ‘It was bloody nasty.’

She suddenly felt she had to sit down, and sank onto the newsdesk.

‘So you didn’t get to talk to any of them? No pictures?’ the head of news asked in a disappointed voice.

Annika looked at him, feeling that there was a thick layer of bullet-proof glass between them.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t a story, anyway. They were just letting off steam, winding themselves into a state of mass psychosis. We were lucky, they came very close to overturning the car and setting fire to it.’

Ingvar Johansson was looking at her with wide eyes, then turned away and picked up the phone.

Annika got up and walked over to Berit’s desk. She was suddenly aware that her legs were shaking, and she was on the brink of bursting into tears.

God, I’m turning into a right cry-baby, she thought.

She sat down and read news agency stories and some peculiar industry journals until the theme music of
Studio Six
came on the radio at three minutes past six.

Afterwards she would look back on that hour as a surreal nightmare. It would continue to haunt her dreams for the next ten years.

She would remember the feeling when the electric guitar started up, how open-minded and unprepared she was, how naïvely she stood there, waiting to be shot down.

‘The evening papers have today plumbed new depths in their relentless search for sensation,’ the presenter thundered. ‘They expose grieving young people in their pages, they spread false rumours about victims’ relatives, and they do the bidding of the police in order to deceive the public. Debate and analysis of this in today’s edition of
Studio Six.’

Annika heard the words without them actually sinking in. She had a vague idea, but simply didn’t want it to be true.

The electric guitar faded away and the presenter’s voice resumed: ‘It’s Tuesday, August the second. Welcome to Studio Six in Radio House in Stockholm,’ he intoned. ‘Today we’re looking at the
Evening Post
’s coverage of the murder of stripper Josefin Liljeberg. With us in the studio we have two people who knew Josefin well: we have her best friend, Charlotta, and her former headmaster, Martin Larsson-Berg. And we’ve also spoken to her boyfriend, Joachim …’

Giddiness started to rock all her senses. A suspicion of what was to come began to grow in her mind. She stretched out a hand to turn off the radio, but stopped herself.

Better to hear what they say now than wonder later what they might have said, she thought.

She would regret that decision many times. What she heard fastened like a mantra in her memory.

‘If we start with you, Charlotta … Can you tell us how the
Evening Post
has treated you?’

Charlotta started howling in the radio studio. The presenter evidently thought it sounded rather effective, because he let it go on for thirty seconds before wondering if she could stop. Which she did, instantly.

‘Well,’ Charlotta said with a sniff, ‘I got a call at home from this reporter, Annika Bengtzon. She wanted to poke about in my misery.’

‘In what way?’ the presenter said, sounding incredibly sensitive and sympathetic.

‘My best friend had just died, and she called in the middle of the night and asked, “How do you feel?” ’

‘That’s awful!’ the presenter exclaimed.

Charlotta sniffed. ‘Yes, it was one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me. How can you go on after something like that?’

‘And was it the same for you, Martin Berg-Larsson?’

‘Larsson-Berg,’ the headmaster said. ‘Yes, by and large. I wasn’t a close friend of the girl, of course, for obvious reasons, but I’m very close to the family. Her brother was a very talented pupil; he graduated this spring and is going to college in the United States this autumn. We’re immensely proud at Tibble High School when our students go on to higher education at international institutions.’

‘So how did it feel to get these terrible questions in the middle of the night?’

‘Well, naturally, I was shocked. To start with I thought something had happened to my wife, she likes sailing, you see …’

‘How did you react?’

‘It’s all a bit hazy …’

‘Was it the same reporter who bothered Charlotta, this summer temp, Annika Bengtzon?’

‘Yes, it was her.’

The presenter rustled a newspaper.

‘Let’s see what Annika Bengtzon wrote. Take this, for instance.’

The man began to read excerpts from Annika’s articles in a gently mocking tone, about Josefin, her dreams and hopes for the future, Charlotta’s quotes, and then the orgy of grief in Täby.

‘What do you say to that?’ he concluded, in a deathly dark tone of voice.

‘It’s just awful that they wouldn’t leave us alone with our grief,’ Charlotta squeaked. ‘Why don’t the mass media ever respect people’s privacy when they’re in the middle of a crisis? And today, at our demonstration against pointless violence, she forced herself on us again!’

Martin Larsson-Berg cleared his throat. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you have to understand the mass media as well. We had a very fine set-up in place to deal with the crisis out in Täby, and of course we wanted to set an example for—’

The presenter interrupted him. ‘But the
Evening Post
and Annika Bengtzon didn’t stop there. The paper has been actively attempting to whitewash the suspected government minister, Christer Lundgren. In her capacity as the parrot of the Social Democratic Party, Annika Bengtzon has tried to pin the blame for Josefin’s murder on the person who was closer to her than anyone, her boyfriend Joachim. Our reporter went to meet him.’

They played a recording. Annika was glued to her seat. She was cold with sweat all over, and she had a
sense of complete and utter unreality. The newsroom was full of people, but no one was paying any attention to her. She didn’t exist. She was already dead.