The Bomber Read Free Page B

Annika found Henriksson over by the building that was going to house the restaurants and the cinema. An improvised media center was forming where the sidewalk was at its widest, in front of the post office. Journalists were arriving all the time, many of them walking around smiling, greeting their colleagues. Annika wasn't too keen on the backslapping of fellow journalists, people who would wander about scenes of accidents bragging about the parties they'd been to. She moved aside, pulling the photographer with her.
     
     
"Do you have to go to the paper now?" she asked. "The first edition is going to press."
     
     
"No, I've sent my rolls along with the other freelancers. It's cool."
     
     
"Great. I have a feeling something's about to happen."
     
     
An outside broadcast van from one of the TV companies pulled up alongside them. They wandered off in the other direction, past the bank and the pharmacy down toward the canal. She stopped and stood looking toward the arena. The police vehicles and fire engines were still on the forecourt. What were they doing? The wind from the sea was bitterly cold. Further out on Hammarby Inlet, the sea approach to Stockholm, a channel through the ice glowered like a black wound. She turned her back to the wind and warmed her nose in her gloved hand. Through her fingers she saw two white vehicles on the footbridge from Södermalm. Bloody hell, it was an ambulance! And a doctor's car! She looked at her watch, just gone twenty-five to five. Three hours until she could call her contact. She pushed the earpiece into her ear and tried the Krim duty desk. Busy. She called Jansson, Menu 1.
     
     
"What do you want?" Jansson said.
     
     
"An ambulance is coming up to the arena," Annika said.
     
     
"I've got a deadline in seven minutes."
     
     
She heard the clatter of his keyboard. "What are the news agencies saying? Any reports of injuries?"
     
     
"They've got the taxi driver, but they haven't talked to him. There's the destruction, comments from the Krim duty desk. They're saying nothing as yet, well, a lot of crap. Nothing important."
     
     
"The taxi driver was taken away an hour ago, this is something different. Aren't they saying anything over the police radio?"
     
     
"Nothing interesting."
     
     
"Anything scrambled?"
     
     
"Nope."
     
     
"And the radio news?"
     
     
"Nothing so far. There's a special Rapport bulletin on TV at six o'clock."
     
     
"Yes, I saw their van."
     
     
"Keep your eyes open, I'll call you when the front page goes to press."
     
     
He hung up. Annika dropped the call but kept the earpiece in her ear.
     
     
"Why do you have one of those?" Henriksson asked and pointed at the cord hanging down her cheek.
     
     
"Don't you know that your brain is fried by the radiation from cellphones?" she said, smiling. "It's handy. I can run and write and talk on the phone at the same time. And it's quiet; you don't hear when I make a call."
     
     
There were tears in her eyes from the cold, so she had to squint to see what was going on over by the stadium. "Have you got a mega telephoto lens?"
     
     
"They don't work when it's this dark," Henriksson replied.
     
     
"Then take the biggest one you've got and try and see what's going on over there," she said, pointing with her gloved hand.
     
     
Henriksson sighed a bit and put his camera bag on the ground. He looked through the lens. "I need a tripod," he mumbled.
     
     
The vehicles had driven up a grass slope and parked by the stairs to one of the big entrances. Three men stepped out of the doctor's car and stood talking behind it. A policeman in uniform approached them, and they shook hands. There was no movement in the ambulance.
     
     
"They don't seem to be in any hurry," Henriksson said.
     
     
Another two men went up to them, one a policeman in uniform, the other he assumed to be a cop in plain clothes. The men were talking and gesticulating with their hands, one of them pointing up toward the gaping