Without a Trace Read Free Page A

live up to its billing as the luxury villa the head of news had said it was, but everything was relative. It was a question of how you phrased things. For her mum at home in Hälleforsnäs, a renovated wooden house in Saltsjöbaden was definitely a luxury villa.
    Lerberg had been taken to hospital, she knew that much. There was already some mobile-phone footage on YouTube of him being driven off in the ambulance. Picture-Pelle had spoken to the man who’d shot the footage and offered to buy the rights to post it on the
Evening Post
website, but had lost out to their wealthier competitors.
    The rain wasn’t showing any sign of letting up. A television van turned into the narrow road and parked in front of her, blocking her view of the house. She switched off the engine, pulled up the hood of her raincoat, slung her bag over her shoulder, grabbed the tripod and got out of the car. The wind tugged at her coat. It really was bloody cold. She said a brief hello to TV4 and the prestigious morning paper, but pretended not to notice Bosse, from the other evening paper, who was standing by the turning circle, talking far too loudly into his mobile. She looked at her watch. She hadn’t got the children that week, but she wanted to get away as quickly as possible. Jimmy, her partner, was cooking that night and she’d promised to be home in time for dinner. And there was no exclusive here, nothing to dig out, just routine coverage. Fast and efficient. Get some clips for the website and some quotes from a police officer, then try to embroider a story with fragments of fact.
    Assaulted in his home. Very seriously injured
.
    She set up the tripod in the road in front of the cordon, just a couple of metres from a local radio reporter, then pulled the video-camera out of her bag and fixed it to the stand.
    ‘Do you want me to hold an umbrella over that?’ the reporter offered. He was tall and thin – she recognized him but didn’t know his name. He was carrying a radio transmitter, with four aerials and a little flashing light, on his back. It made him look like an insect.
    She smiled tentatively at him. ‘That would be great. Mind you, by now my camera’s got its own swimming badge, and can ski down black runs …’
    ‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?’ Insect Man agreed. ‘Where does all this snow and rain come from? It’s got to stop at some point …’
    She plugged the microphone cable into the audio socket, cleared her throat, pressed play and stood in front of the camera. ‘Here,’ she said, looking hard into the lens, ‘in the middle of the idyllic residential area of Solsidan in Saltsjöbaden, politician Ingemar Lerberg was found seriously assaulted earlier this morning. He has been taken to Södermalm Hospital in Stockholm, where he remains in a critical condition.’ She looked at the radio reporter. ‘That was fifteen seconds, wasn’t it?’
    ‘Maybe fourteen.’
    She lowered the microphone, went to the camera and let it pan across the scene: the dripping cordon, the media scrum, the figures visible behind the closed curtains up in the house. She would use the pictures as a backdrop to a voiceover once she knew more about the case. The reporter was still holding the umbrella above her.
    ‘It’s not quite as smart as I thought it would be out here,’ he said.
    ‘It’s probably only the address that’s smart, not the houses,’ Annika said.
    She pressed stop, then put the camera back into her bag. The reporter lowered the umbrella.
    ‘Do you know who first reported it?’ Annika asked.
    ‘No, just that the alarm was sounded at nine thirty-six.’
    Annika looked at the house. The radio reporter and head of news weren’t the only ones who had expected something more. Ingemar Lerberg was the sort of politician who expressed himself through grand gestures and seemingly infinite pomposity. He called himself a businessman, and often had himself photographed on impressive yachts.
    ‘Why did he resign? From