Studio Sex - Studio Sex Part 29
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Studio Sex Part 29

"Shove it, you randy old goat!" Anne shouted at him.

"Are you crazy?"Annika said under her breath.

"Who cares? I'm leaving." Anne got up.

Anne got the assignment, a story about a kitten rescued by the Norrkoping police. It had been living at the station for two weeks and now it had to be put to sleep.

"We've got to get a photo of the stupid cat in a cell," Anne said. "Just imagine the headline: 'Puss on Death Row.'"

Spike looked at Annika. "I've got nothing for you right now. Stand by for the time being."

Annika swallowed. She got it. The fridge door had slammed shut.

"Okay," she said. "I'll read the papers."

She walked over to the archive shelves and picked up all the Kvallspressen issues since last Friday. She had neither read a paper nor watched TV all weekend. She would never listen to the radio again unless she was forced to.

She started with Berit's IB piece. Without beating about the bush, the Speaker now admitted he'd used his contacts with Birger Elmer at the IB domestic bureau to escape a military posting, a training assignment, in the autumn of 1966.

It was in the middle of an election campaign, and the Speaker was the deputy chairman of the Young Social Democrats at the time. The posting came at an inconvenient moment so Elmer set him up with a war job at IB.

This meant he could go on as usual with his political work, while doing his military service at the same time.

According to the records that Berit had dug up, the Speaker had been called up for service at the Defense Staff Intelligence Division, which could be another name for the IB. In 1966 he was thirty-three years old and he was never called up again.

Annika let the paper drop. How did Berit get the Speaker to admit all of this? He'd been denying all involvement for three decades, and now suddenly he'd come clean about everything. Weird.

The following spread showed some sensational pictures of the arrest of the Ninja Barbies, all of them taken by Carl Wennergren. In the article the readers were told that the group had decided to attack a judge's house in the leafy Stockholm suburb of Djursholm. The judge had recently acquitted a suspected pedophile for lack of evidence. The police had been tipped off and had sent in the terrorist squad. They had evacuated the surrounding houses and set up roadblocks. Parts of the squad had taken up position in the Stockhagen sports field right next to the judge's house; the rest had hidden in the garden.

The Ninja Barbies were taken completely by surprise and had surrendered after two of the women were shot in the leg.

The article gave Annika a bad taste in her mouth. Gone was the uncritical reiteration of the Ninja Barbies' grievances that had been the framework of the earlier articles; now the police were the heroes. If any articles in Kvallspressen ever merited analysis, it was these, she thought.

"We're going to drown in the tears of readers wanting to take care of little Puss," Anne Snapphane said.

Annika smiled. "What's the cat's actual name?"

"It said Harry on the collar. Have you had lunch yet?"

The minister drove into the little village called Mellosa. He slowed down and looked left through the rain. His turn should be somewhere here.

A large yellow house appeared in the grayness down by the water, and he slowed further; it didn't seem quite right. The car behind beeped.

"Calm down, for Christ's sake!" the minister cried out, and slammed on the brakes. The Volvo behind him braked, swerved, and missed him by an inch.

His rented car coughed and died; the fan hissed and the windshield wipers continued to squeak. He noticed that his hands on the wheel were shaking.

Jesus! What am I doing? he thought. I can't risk other people's lives just because...

The irony in his reasoning hit him full force. He started the car and slowly drove on. Two hundred meters farther on he saw the sign: Harpsund 5.

He turned left and crossed the railway. The road wound past a church, a school, and farms in a landscape that belonged to another time; manor houses with sunporches and fir hedges drifted past in the mist.

Here the landowners had sucked the working class dry for a thousand years, he mused.

After a few minutes he drove through the massive stone gateposts that marked the entrance to the prime minister's summer residence. A large, well-kept barn lay on the left, and behind it he glimpsed the main house.

He parked to the right of the entrance and sat in the car for a moment, looking at the building. It was two stories high with a mansard roof, built in the 1910s. A Caroline pastiche. He fished out his umbrella, opened the car door, and ran to the door.

"Welcome. The prime minister called. I've prepared some lunch for you." The housekeeper took his wet umbrella and jacket.

"Thanks, I'm fine. I had lunch on the way. I just want to go to my room."

The woman didn't express any disappointment. "Of course. This way, please."

She walked ahead of him up to the second floor and showed him to a room with a view over the lake. "Just call if you want anything."

The housekeeper closed the door without making a sound, and he took off his shirt and shoes. The prime minister was right- they'd never find him here.

He sat down on the bed with the telephone on his lap and took three deep breaths. Then he dialed the number for Karungi.

"It's over," he said when she answered.

He listened to her for a long time.

"No, darling," he said. "Don't cry. I'm not going to jail. No, I promise."

He stared out the window, hoping he wasn't lying.

The afternoon dragged. She didn't get any assignments. She took the hint, which wasn't even particularly subtle. She was taken off everything to do with the Josefin murder and the minister suspect. Carl Wennergren got all those jobs.

In an attack of boredom she called Krim and asked for Q. He actually answered the phone.

"They were hard on you on the radio last Thursday," he said.

"They were wrong. I was right. They got the wrong end of the stick."

"I don't know if I agree," he said genially. "You can be damned pushy."

"I'm smooth as a ballet dancer!"

He laughed out loud. "That's not exactly the metaphor that comes to mind when you call," he snorted. "But you can handle that, I expect. You're a tough nut, so you'll take it in your stride. You have to take a few on the chin."

Amazingly enough, she felt he was right.

"Now listen," she said, "I have a few questions about the Ninja Barbies."

He immediately turned serious. "What?"

"Did they have any cash on them when they were arrested?"

She heard the police captain draw a breath. "Why the hell do you ask that?"

She shrugged and smiled. "Just wondering, that's all..."

He thought about it for a long while. "Do you know anything about this?" he said in a low voice.

"Maybe."

"Well, give it to me, baby."

She laughed coarsely. "You'd like that, wouldn't you!"

"They didn't have anything on them."

Annika's heart started beating faster. "But in the car? At home? In the basement?"

"In the house of one of them."

"Like around fifty thousand?" Annika said innocently.

He sighed. "I wish you'd tell me straight."

"I could say the same to you."

"Forty-eight thousand five hundred. In an envelope."

He'd done it, the bastard!

"Maybe you could tell me where it came from," he said, trying to sound sweet.

She didn't reply.

When she heard the signature tune to Studio 69, Annika turned off the radio and went down to the canteen. She'd just finished filling a plate with rabbit food from the salad bar when a counter attendant with a prominent perm called out her name.

"You've got a call," the Perm said.

It was Anne Snapphane.

"You should listen to this," she said in a low voice.

Annika closed her eyes and felt her heart sink deep into her shoes. "Why would I want to listen to them rip me again?"

"No, no. It's not about you. It's about the minister."

Annika took a deep breath. "Que?"

"It seems he did it after all."

Annika hung up and walked toward the exit with her salad plate.

"Hey, you!" the Perm shouted after her. "You're not allowed to take the plate with you!"

"So call the police," Annika retorted, pushed the door open, and walked out.

The newsroom was deathly quiet. The voice of the studio reporter resounded from the loudspeakers in the open-plan office, and all the journalists at the paper were leaning forward, taking in the message.

Annika gingerly sat down at her desk. "What's up?" she whispered to Anne Snapphane.

Anne leaned over toward her. "They've found the receipt," she said quietly. "The minister was at the strip club on the night of Josefin's murder. She rang up his check half an hour before she died."

Annika went completely pale. "Jesus Christ!"

"It all adds up. Christer Lundgren attended a conference with German Social Democrats and trade union representatives here in Stockholm on Friday, July twenty-seventh. He spoke about trade and cross-border cooperation. Afterward he took the Germans out on a spree."

"What a loser," Annika said.

"The Studio 69 reporters have found the receipt. And he noted down the names of the Germans on the reverse."

"Has he resigned yet?"

"Do you think he will?" Anne Snapphane said.

"Well, it doesn't look very good. You can picture the headline. 'Social Democrat Spends Taxpayers' Money at Strip Joint.'"

A man from the proofreading desk hushed them. Annika switched on her radio and turned up the volume.

"Our reporter found the fateful receipt from the strip club in the archive of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. But by then the police were already on the minister's track."

The man's voice was full of restrained triumph. He was milking it, speaking slowly in an ominous voice.

"There was, it appears... a witness."

A reporter began speaking, sounding as if he were standing in an empty hallway. The echo bounced around between the walls.

"I'm standing in the stairwell of the house where Minister for Foreign Trade Christer Lundgren has his overnight apartment," the reporter whispered excitedly. "Up to a few days ago, no one knew about it, not even his press secretary, Karina Bjornlund. But there was one thing the minister failed to reckon with: the neighbors."

A sound effect faded in, shoes walking up marble steps.

"I'm on my way up to the woman who was to become a key witness in the investigation into the murder of the stripper Josefin Liljeberg," the reporter said, slightly out of breath.

The elevator must be out of order again, Annika thought.