Last Will Read Free

skirts brushed over her head. The orchestra stopped playing in the middle of a note, and in the sonic vacuum the screams echoed like an icy wave around the Blue Hall and out into all the rooms of the City Hall.
    Where’s my bag? she thought and tried to get up, but was knocked on the head and sank back down.
    A moment later the people around her vanished and she was being lifted up out of the crowd of people, a dark-gray suit sitting her down with her back to the rest of the hall. She found herself staring at a dark oak door.
    I have to get hold of Jansson, she thought, and tried to look round for her bag. She’d left it by the copper doors leading to the Three Crowns Chamber, but all she could see now was a mass of people milling about and dark-gray men rushing in.
    Her knees started to tremble and she felt the familiar rush of angst but managed to hold it at bay, this isn’t dangerous, this isn’t dangerous. She forced herself to take deep breaths and see the situation for what it was.
    There was nothing she could do.
    The mosaic figure on the far wall stared at her encouragingly, its snake-hair floating around its face. A fat woman in a black lace dress turned her eyes up and fainted dead away beside her. A young man was shouting so loudly that the veins on his neck were standing out like rubber bands. A drunk old man dropped his beer glass on the floor with a crash.
    I wonder where Bosse’s got to? she thought.
    Her pulse slowed down, the carpet of noise in her head slowly began to fragment, and she could make out words and phrases again. She could hear calls and orders, mostly from the dark-gray suits. They were talking in steel-plated voices into wires that snaked from their ears toward their mouths, then down into inside pockets and trouser linings.
    “The service elevator is too small, the gurney won’t go in—we’ll have to take it out through the ceremonial entrance in the tower.”
    She could make out the words, but not who was saying them.
    “The building’s secure, over. Yes, we’ve separated the witnesses and are in the process of emptying the banqueting halls.”
    I have to get my bag, she thought.
    “I have to get my bag,” she said out loud, but no one heard her. “Can I get my bag? I need my cell phone.”
    She turned round. The mass of people was moving slowly now, like ants before the first frost. A white-clad woman came running in from the Three Crowns Chamber, pushing a gurney in front of her, then a man with another gurney, then several men with stethoscopes and oxygen masks and drips. Further away in the Golden Hall the Nobel banquet guests stood like a wall, faces white, their mouths black holes. All the screaming had stopped and the silence was deafening. Annika could make out the fragmented sound of quiet talking from the white coats, then the bodies were loaded onto the gurneys, and only then did Annika notice the man, the man who had fallen on the dance floor: he was conscious, moaning. The woman was lying completely still.
    A moment later they were gone.
    The noise rose again with ear-splitting force and Annika took her chance. She slunk past two suits and managed to reach her bag. One of them grabbed hold of her just as she was fishing out her cell phone.
    “You’re not going anywhere,” he said with unnecessary force, and she shook herself free.
    She rang Jansson’s direct line in the newsroom and got three short bleeps in response.
    Network busy.
    What the …?
    Contacts, press, Jansson, press.
    Bleep bleep bleep. Network busy.
    Contacts, press, Jansson, press.
    Network busy.
    Annika looked round, trying to find help. Nobody noticed her.
    “Your name?”
    A man in jeans was standing in front of her, holding a pad and pen.
    “Sorry?” Annika said.
    “Criminal Investigation Department, can I have your name? We’re trying to figure out exactly what happened. Did you see anything?”
    “I don’t know,” Annika said, looking over at the blood on the marble floor, already