Vanished Read Free Page A

Wennergren and Bertil Strand arrived late at the Free Port. As they parked the photographer’s Saab they were just in time to see the ambulances roll through the cordons. The reporter couldn’t help letting out an annoyed curse. Strand was such an extremely careful driver, keeping to 30 or even 20 m.p.h., even if there wasn’t a soul about. The photographer caught the unspoken criticism and was nettled.
    ‘You sound like a woman,’ he said to the reporter.
    The men walked over to the police cordon, the space between them accentuating the emotional distance. But as the flashing blue lights and the police officers’ movements became clearly visible, the distrust faded away, action taking over.
    The cops were working fast today. The storm probably had their adrenalin pumping already. The cordoned-off area was large, from the fence on the left side all the way over to the office building on the right. Strand sized up the situation: great place, almost right in the centre of the city and yet completely separate. Good light, clear yet warm. Magical shadows.
    Carl Wennergren buttoned up his oilskin coat. Shit, it was cold.
    They couldn’t see much of the victims. Junk, police officers and ambulances blocked their view. The reporter stamped his feet against the cold, hunched his shoulders and stuffed his hands deep into his pockets; he hated the morning shift. The photographer hauled out a camera body and a telephoto lens from his rucksack and glided along the cordon tape. He got a few good shots at the far left end: uniformed officers in profile, black bodies, plain-clothes technicians in caps.
    ‘I’m done,’ he yelled out to the reporter.
    Wennergren’s nose was red and a droplet of transparent snot hung suspended from the tip.
    ‘What a lousy place to die,’ he said when the photographer returned.
    ‘We’d better get a move on if we’re going to make the early editions,’ Strand said.
    ‘But I haven’t finished,’ Wennergren said. ‘I haven’t even started.’
    ‘You’ll have to make the calls from the car. Or the newsroom. Hurry up and soak up some atmosphere to spice up your copy with.’
    The photographer walked towards his car, the rucksack bobbing on his back. The reporter followed behind. They drove back to the office in silence.
    Anders Schyman shut down the TT news agency cable-copy list on his computer; it was addictive. You could set the computer so that the cables were sorted into different subjects – domestic, international, sports, features – but he preferred having them all in the same file. He wanted to know about everything at one fell swoop.
    He paced the floor of his cramped aquarium-like office, rolling his shoulders. He sat down on the sofa and picked up the day’s paper, the hurricane special. He nodded to himself, satisfied: it had gone according to plan. The different desks had cooperated in the way he’d suggested. Jansson had told him that Annika Bengtzon had handled the practical coordination; it had worked really well.
    Annika Bengtzon , he thought and sighed.
    The young sub-editor had in a purely coincidental and unfortunate way become bound up with his standing at the newspaper. He and Annika Bengtzon had started at the paper within a few weeks of each other. His first battle with the rest of the senior editors had been over her – a long-term contract at the news desk for which he felt she was the obvious candidate. True, she was young, immature, impetuous and inexperienced, but he felt she had a potential that went far beyond the norm. She had a lot to learn, but she had ethics and possessed an undeniable passion for justice. She was on the ball and was a good stylist. Furthermore, she had the characteristics of a steamroller, a great asset for a tabloid reporter. If she couldn’t go round an obstacle, she’d drive straight over it; she never gave up.
    The rest of the management, with the exception of the night editor, Jansson, didn’t share his opinion. They wanted