Studio Sex - Studio Sex Part 37
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Studio Sex Part 37

Roger turned around, and Annika saw people moving to the side, and in the distance, albeit out of focus, she saw Christer Lundgren running toward a gate. It was the former minister for foreign trade, without a doubt.

"Do you see?" Annika yelled out. "He's holding a ticket! He is boarding a plane."

On-screen Roger lost the minister in the crowd, looked in another direction, and called out, "Christer!" and then the screen went black. The picture jumped as the tape was beginning to rewind.

Annika felt a violent wave of adrenaline sweeping through her. "No wonder you didn't see him on the plane. Christer Lundgren took the flight from gate sixty-five, not sixty-four."

"Where was it going?" a confused Anne asked.

"That's what we're going to find out," Annika said. "Thank you so much for letting us disturb you, Roger."

She gave his hand a quick squeeze and hurried outside.

"What did I tell you?" she shouted with joy once they were outside. "I'll be damned! He did go somewhere that night. But he can't say where!" She performed a short war dance in the street.

"We know where he was," Anne said wryly. "He was at a sex club."

"No, he wasn't. He made a trip somewhere and the destination is top secret." Annika did a pirouette. "It's so damn secret that he'd rather be accused of murder and resign."

"Rather than what?"

Annika stopped. "Tell the truth."

Nineteen Years, Four Months, and Seven Days I have to decide what's important. I have to arrive at a conclusion about what I am. Do I exist, other than through him? Do I breathe, except through his mouth? Do I think, outside of his world?

I have tried talking to him about it. His logic is plain and lucid.

Do I exist, he asks, other than through you? Do I live- without you? he asks. Can I love without your love?

Then he gives me the answer.

No.

He needs me. He can't live without me. Never leave me, he says. We are the most important thing there is to each other.

He says he will never let me go.

I've been alone for a long time.

Tuesday 4 September Patricia had slept for a few hours when she woke up with a vague sense of unease. She sat up on her mattress, brushed her hair from her face, saw the man, and screamed.

"Who are you?" the guy in the doorway asked. He was crouching and looked at her as if he'd been there for a while.

Patricia pulled up the cover to her chin and backed up against the wall. "Who are you?"

"I'm Sven. Where's Annika?"

Patricia swallowed and tried to get a grip on the situation. "I... she... I don't know."

"Didn't she get back from her holiday yesterday?"

Patricia cleared her throat. "Yes... Yes, I think so. Her clothes had been hung out to dry when I got home."

"Home?"

She looked down. "Annika said I could stay here for a while. I was sharing with a friend who... I didn't see her yesterday. I don't know where she is. She didn't come home last night."

The words hung in the air, pulsating. Patricia was hit by a monstrous feeling of deja vu.

"Where do you think she is now?"

She had heard that question before; the whole room spun, and she gave the same answer now as then. "Don't know, maybe she's gone shopping, maybe she's with you..."

The guy gave her a searching look. "And you don't know when she'll be back?"

She shook her head, tears burning behind her eyelids.

Sven stood up. "Well, we've established who I am and what I want. Who the hell are you?"

She swallowed. "I'm Patricia. I got to know Annika when she worked at Kvallspressen. She said I could stay here awhile."

The man looked at her closely; she pressed the cover tighter against her chin.

"So you're a journalist too? What do you write about? Have you known her long?"

The unease sent shivers up and down her spine. She had answered so many questions, had been held responsible for so much that had nothing to do with her.

The man moved a few steps closer so that he stood right above her. "Annika hasn't been herself lately. She thought she'd make some kind of career here in the big city, but it was a nonstarter. Was it you who got her into all this?"

The words flashed through Patricia's mind and she yelled straight back at him, "I didn't get anyone into anything! No way." She glared up at the man, who started back.

"Annika will be moving to Halleforsnas soon. I hope you've got somewhere else to go then. I'll be staying here a few days. Tell her I'll be back tonight."

Patricia heard him walk out of the apartment, the front door shutting. A whimper rose in her mouth; she curled up in a small, hard ball, clutching her hands tightly, desperately.

Hans Snapphane was having coffee and reading the local newspaper when Annika padded into the kitchen.

"There are some boiled eggs on the stove," he said.

Annika fished one out and ran cold water over it.

"My daughter is still asleep, I imagine?"

Annika nodded and smiled. "She's worked hard for a long time."

"I'm glad she got away from there. That place did her no good. This new TV job seems to have decent hours. There are more women in management too."

Annika glanced at him furtively; he seemed to have a brain.

"Could I use your phone to make a few calls?" she asked as he got up and grabbed his briefcase.

"Sure, but go easy on Jim Steinman for a while, will you? Britt-Inger's working late again tonight."

He waved to her from the car as he drove off.

Annika gobbled down the egg and sprinted upstairs. She began by phoning the Civil Aviation Administration flight information at Arlanda.

"Hello, I was wondering if you could help me with something. I need to know when a particular flight departed."

"Sure," the customer service man said. "Which one?"

"It's a bit complicated. I only know which gate it left from."

"That's no problem- if it was today or yesterday, that is."

"Oh... No, it wasn't. Is it impossible to find out?"

"Have you got the time of departure? We can see the flights one day back and six days ahead."

Annika's heart sank. "This was five weeks ago."

"And all you have is the gate number? That makes it a bit tricky. I can't check that far back, I'm afraid."

"Don't you have timetables?"

"You'd have to get in touch with the airline. What's it about? Is it an insurance matter?"

"No, not at all."

They fell silent.

"Well," the man said, "you'd have to contact the airline."

She sighed. "I don't know which airline it was," she said glumly. "Which airlines fly out of Terminal Two?"

The man listed them. "Maersk Air, a Danish company that runs services to Jutland, among other places; Sabena to Brussels; Alitalia; Delta to the U.S.; Estonian Air; Austrian Airlines; and Finnair."

Annika jotted down the names of the airlines. "And do they all fly from all gates by turns?"

"Not really. The international flights usually use gates sixty-five to sixty-eight. Seventy to seventy-three are on the floor below for bus transfers."

"Gate sixty-five is international?"

"Yes. Customs and the security checkpoint are inside."

"And sixty-four, what kind of gate is that?"

"Mostly domestic. The gates are in pairs. But that can be altered by moving the doors about in a certain way-"

"Thanks a lot for your help," Annika said quickly, and rang off.

International indeed... Christer Lundgren traveled abroad on the night of the twenty-seventh of July and returned just after five in the morning on the twenty-eighth.

"So he didn't go to the U.S.," Annika said out loud, crossing out Delta Airlines.

He could have flown to Jutland, Finland, Brussels, Tallinn, and Vienna and back. The distances were short enough for it to be possible. Italy was more unlikely.

The question was, however, how did he get home in the middle of the night? It must have been a damned important meeting. It must have taken some time as well.

She counted on her fingers.

Say he left at 20:00; so wherever he was going, he wouldn't get there and clear customs before 21:30. Then he probably had to get somewhere in a taxi or a car, unless the meeting took place at the airport.

Suppose 22:00 was the time of the meeting. And suppose it finished at 23:00. Back to the airport, check in- he couldn't have been on a return flight before midnight.

There can't be that many scheduled flights at that time of the night, not with these airlines. And what was Maersk Air?

She sighed.

He could have got home some other way, she thought- by car or boat. That would exclude Vienna, Brussels, and anywhere in Italy.

She looked down at her pad; that left Jutland, Finland, and Tallinn. She looked up Finnair's ticket office in the phone book, dialed the toll-free number, and got the company's call center in Helsinki.

"No," said the friendly voice of a man who sounded like the Moomin Troll in Tove Jansson's children stories, "I can't check data like that on my computer. Did you say you don't have a flight number? If you did, I could check back."

Annika closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with her hand. "Which cities do you fly to from Stockholm?"

The man tapped on his computer. "Helsinki, of course. And Oslo, Copenhagen, Vienna, Berlin, and London."

Dead end. It was impossible to check this way where the plane went.

"One last question. When does the last flight to Stockholm leave?"

"From Helsinki? It leaves at twenty-one forty-five and arrives at twenty-one forty in Stockholm. You're one hour behind us."

She thanked him and rang off.

He must have got home some other way than on a regular flight. Private plane, she thought. He could have chartered a plane to return on.

It costs a lot of money, she thought, remembering the uproar surrounding the prime minister's private flights. You have to pay for a chartered plane, and she didn't think Christer Lundgren would do that out of his own pocket. It would be against his religion.

She raised her eyes and looked out of the window in Hans Snapphane's study. To the right she saw the most common house type in Pite, a red, seventies, prefab bungalow. Straight ahead, on the other side of the street, was a larger white-brick house with brown-stained paneling, and in the distance a stretch of woodland.

There has to be an invoice somewhere. Regardless of how he got home, the former minister for foreign trade must surely have invoiced his travel expenses to some department or government office.

It struck her that she didn't even know to which department foreign trade belonged.