Vanished Read Free Page A

she was right, maybe he really was having trouble dealing with her success. Maybe they ought to go to that therapist after all.
    He folded the paper neatly again. Eleonor didn’t like it to be messed up. He put it on the little table they used for post and magazines. Then he went back to the bedroom, slid out of the dressing-gown and back under the sheets. She shifted in her sleep when she felt his cold body. He pulled her to him, blowing on the soft skin of her neck.
    ‘I love you,’ he said.
    ‘Me too,’ she mumbled.
    Carl Wennergren and Bertil Strand arrived at Frihamnen a little too late. As the photographer parked his companySaab they saw the ambulances pulling up inside the cordoned-off area. The reporter couldn’t help swearing. Bertil Strand always drove so carefully, sticking to the speed limit, even though there wasn’t a soul in sight. Bertil registered the unspoken criticism and felt irritated.
    ‘You sound like an old woman,’ he snapped.
    They plodded over to the police cordon, the distance between them clearly marking their annoyance with each other. When they caught sight of the lights of the police cars and the figures moving about, their differences faded and work took over.
    The cops were quick today, the storm must have got their adrenalin pumping. The cordon covered a large area, from the fence to their left, all the way to the office building far to their right. Bertil Strand gazed across the area, impressed. So close to the centre of town and yet completely alien. Good light, clear but still soft. Wonderful shadows.
    Carl Wennergren buttoned his oilskin coat. Damn, it was cold.
    They couldn’t really see the victims – their view was blocked by debris, police officers and the ambulances. Wennergren stamped his feet, hunched his shoulders, his hands deep in his pockets. He hated the morning shift. The photographer hauled out his camera and telephoto lens from his rucksack and slid off along the cordon. At the far left of the tape he got a couple of decent shots, uniforms in profile, the dark corpses, plain-clothed forensics officers.
    ‘Finished,’ he yelled before long.
    Carl Wennergren’s nose was red, a little drop of transparent snot hanging from the end. ‘What a fucking awful place to die.’
    ‘If we’re going to get anything into the late edition we’d better get going,’ Bertil Strand said.
    ‘But I’m not done yet. I haven’t even started.’
    ‘You’ll have to call from the car. Or the office. Just soak up a bit of local colour that you can spice it up with.’
    Bertil Strand walked off towards the car, his rucksack swinging. The reporter followed him. They sat in silence all the way back to Marieberg.
    Anders Schyman clicked to close the news agency’s website. It was like a drug. You could set the site to arrange updates by subject: domestic, foreign, sport, features, but he preferred to have it all. He wanted to find out about everything at once.
    He walked round his cramped, aquarium-like office to loosen his shoulders. He sat down on the leather sofa, picked up that day’s paper, the hurricane special, and nodded in satisfaction. His plan had succeeded. The different departments had worked together just as he had suggested. Jansson had told him that Annika Bengtzon had done most of the practical coordination, and it had worked bloody well.
    Annika Bengtzon
, he thought with a sigh.
    The young copy-editor had somehow come to be associated with his position on the paper in an entirely coincidental but regrettable way. He and Annika Bengtzon had arrived at the paper only a fortnight apart. His first battle with upper management had been specifically about her. It had concerned a lengthy fixed-term appointment to the news team, and he had assumed that Annika Bengtzon was the obvious choice. Admittedly, she was too young, too immature, too excitable and too impetuous, but in his opinion she had far more potential than most people. She was naïve, but had a strong sense