‘… geographic and cultural circumstances,’ Halenius was saying.
‘And the kidnappers?’ Schyman said. ‘What sort of people might they be?’
‘These groups are strikingly similar all over the world,’ the under-secretary of state said. ‘Often it’s a group of eight to ten people under the leadership of one strong commander. Commercial kidnappers regard themselves as employees. Just like everyone else, they go to work and take holidays and spend their free time with their families. Often they’re childhood friends, or studied together, or belong to the same political or religious groups. They usually start as small-time criminals, raiding shops and banks, things like that.’
She looked at Halenius, sitting on her sofa, so relaxed and comfortable, with the top button of his shirt undone, his hair sticking out, his sleeves rolled up. For Jimmy Halenius this was just another working day, perhaps a bit more exciting than usual because he had the chance to use what he knew – and, my goodness, how much he knew!
‘It’s a bit different with religious or political kidnappings,’ he was saying. ‘Their leader is often a fairly well-educated man who saw the political light while he was at university. He may have embarked on this in a noble attempt to change the world, but once he gets a taste for the ransom money, the ideological fervour tends to diminish.’
‘Is that what we’re dealing with here?’ Schyman asked.
Halenius finished his coffee. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘The kidnapper who called spoke clear East African English, the sort you hear at the universities in Nairobi.’
‘How do you know that?’ Annika said, aware that her eyes had narrowed to slits.
‘My ex-wife studied there,’ he said. ‘The universities in South Africa weren’t open to people like her during apartheid.’
An African wife. She’d had no idea. She said something about ‘How?’ and ‘Why?’
‘The Swedish Social Democratic Youth Movement helped arrange an ANC Youth League congress in Nairobi in 1989,’ he said. ‘The president of Kenya at the time, Daniel arap Moi, had just released all political prisoners and was in the middle of some sort of charm offensive. That was where we met. She was born and raised in Soweto.’
He turned to the editor-in-chief. ‘That’s one of the reasons I was asked to handle this case. I’m not a native, of course, but of everyone who could have done it, I’m most familiar with the language and dialect.’
‘So you know Nairobi?’ Schyman asked.
‘We got married there. She moved to Södermalm once she’d graduated.’
‘But you’re divorced now?’
‘She works for the South African government,’ Halenius said. ‘She actually has much the same job as me, but in the Ministry of Trade.’
‘What’s her name?’ Annika asked.
‘Angela Sisulu.’
Angela Sisulu. It sounded like a song.
‘Any relation to Walter Sisulu?’ Schyman asked.
‘Distant.’
Annika was breathing through her mouth. They knew everything, were aware of everything, and she knew nothing. ‘Who’s Walter Sisulu?’ she asked.
‘ANC activist,’ Halenius said. ‘Nelson Mandela’s right-hand man, you could say. He was convicted along with Mandela in the Rivonia trial in 1964, and was with him throughout his time on Robben Island. He was elected deputy president of the ANC at their first legal congress in 1991. He died in 2003.’
Schyman nodded, striking right at the heart of her insecurity. She didn’t know the names of all the old ANC leaders off by heart. She hadn’t graduated in Nairobi or grown up in Soweto. She had only just made it through journalism college, and had grown up in Tattarbacken in Hälleforsnäs. They were sitting in her living room, talking hypothetically and in general terms about hostage-taking and kidnapping, but this was happening for real, it
had
happened, and her family had been hit by it, and there was nothing she could do.
‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about?’ she asked Schyman.
‘I’ve informed the chairman of the board about your situation and have been given the go-ahead to help you. I understand that it’s difficult to avoid the question of a ransom, so the newspaper would like to propose an agreement that would give you the chance to pay the ransom and bring Thomas home.’
She opened her mouth, but couldn’t find any words. Stunned, she shut it again. The newspaper was offering to pay? ‘How much?’ she managed to say.
‘As much as it takes,’ Schyman replied simply.
‘They want forty million dollars,’ Annika said, and was rewarded with a glare from Halenius. She bit her lip. She wasn’t supposed to reveal any details of the negotiations.
Schyman went rather pale.
‘If we agree on a figure for the ransom, it will be considerably lower than that,’ the under-secretary of state said. ‘But I must ask you not to divulge that information anywhere else.’
Schyman nodded again.
‘And what do I have to do in return?’ Annika asked.
‘The
Evening Post
gets exclusive rights to the story,’ Schyman said. ‘Either you write about it and do the filming yourself, or you pick a reporter to follow you the whole way through. Behind the scenes, through all the negotiations, possibly to Africa if that turns out to be necessary. If anything happens that may threaten the lives or wellbeing of other people, obviously we can edit that out, but otherwise the job would be a documentary account of the entire sequence of events. Tears, loss, pain, relief and joy.’
She leaned back in the sofa. Of course! She should have realized at once. Maybe it was because she hadn’t eaten anything, but she suddenly noticed how nauseous she was feeling. ‘Do you want me to blog as well?’ she asked. ‘I could be “The Hostage’s Wife”. A photographic blog, perhaps?’ She stood up, spilling coffee over the table. ‘I could take pictures of the children every day, show how they’re wasting away because they miss their dad so much. I could describe how much I miss getting fucked at night, because sex sells, doesn’t it? How about a fashion blog with the latest trends in widow’s weeds? Fashion blogs are the most popular ones, aren’t they?’
She went out into the hall, tripping over Kalle’s video game on the way, blinded by tears.
‘Annika!’
She aimed for the bathroom door, managed to get it open, stumbled over the threshold and locked herself in. She stood still in the pitch blackness, her heartbeat seeming to fill the whole room.
‘Annika?’ Schyman said, knocking on the door.
‘Get out of here,’ she said.
‘Think about it,’ the editor-in-chief said. ‘It’s an offer, that’s all. You don’t have to accept it.’
She didn’t answer.
The Dane was wheezing and rattling, whistling and gurgling with every breath. His chest was rising and falling with fluttering jerks. Even though he was lying right next to me, I couldn’t make out his features. It was darker there than in the last hut. There were no windows or other openings: the only light came from cracks and gaps between the panels that made up the walls. The door looked like a blinding rectangle against the light outside, if it could be called a door: a sheet of tin held in place by some sort of bar and a few bricks.
I had managed to find a position where I wasn’t lying on my hands, without having my face pressed into the bare floor. My head was resting on a stone I had found. My weight was resting on my right shoulder and left knee, in a sort of flattened recovery position, just with my wrists and ankles tied.
I hadn’t had to relieve myself again, which was some comfort, but it probably wasn’t a good thing: seeing as the main reason was that I hadn’t been given anything to eat or drink. My head felt light and I think I was drifting in and out of consciousness.
The Spaniard and Romanian weren’t moving. Perhaps they were asleep.
The heat inside the tin shack was stifling. My mouth tasted of sand.
None of us had mentioned the Frenchman.
I thought about Catherine, who was in the other hut with the German woman. She had no one to comfort her now. She was completely alone – but perhaps she always had been. What sort of support was I?
Tears stung my eyes, not only because of the sand and dust.
An image of Annika was hovering in front of me in the darkness, smiling at me like she does when she’s really looking at me, so close and vulnerable, that hesitant smile of hers, as if she’s unsure she has the right to be happy, or even to exist. You wouldn’t think it, but she’s so fragile, and I’ve been so heartless. I’ve seen the way I’ve hurt her and it’s made me cross and irritable. She makes me feel as if I’ve been found out. Unmasked. I can be standing right in front of her, and she can see into eternity through me. She has a remarkable ability to see through people, to understand their weaknesses, and she refuses to adapt. That can be a nuisance, embarrassing, even. I’m not saying that was why I went with other women – that would be shifting the blame on to her, and that’s not what I mean … but those women (there weren’t very many, not that that’s any excuse), what did they give me? Validation, I suppose. A diversion. Adrenalin, the joy of the chase, and a bitter aftertaste. They may have seen me for a short while, but they never really
saw
me.
What’s wrong with me?
Why do I keep hurting the person I love most?
* * *
Berit and the children came back with a clatter of noise and snow-caked boots. Annika had made baked cod with prawns, cream, dill and white wine, and had boiled some rice. It wasn’t Kalle’s favourite, but he’d eat it if he was allowed to pick out the prawns.
Halenius ate in the bedroom (Kidnap Control), but Berit sat down with them at the kitchen table. The children chattered about the snow and their sledges and how funny it was not being at school on a normal Friday. At the end of the meal, when they were waiting for Ellen to finish, Kalle fell silent and withdrew into himself, the way he sometimes did.
‘What’s up, sweetheart?’ Annika asked.
‘I’m thinking about Daddy,’ he said.
She wrapped her arms round him, her big boy, and rocked him until Ellen had put her plate on the draining board and he wriggled free to go into their room and watch a film, an unbelievable luxury for a Friday afternoon.
‘Have you had a chance to look at the papers?’ Berit asked, rinsing the gratin dish with hot water.
‘Don’t know if I want to,’ Annika said.
‘I wrote a piece about the mother who was found outside the nursery school in Axelsberg – I got hold of a talkative detective last night.’
‘Have they picked up the father yet?’
‘Looks like he’s got an alibi. He works for a haulage company that uses time stamps. He was on a job up to Upplands-Väsby all morning.’
‘Or so he says,’ Annika said.
‘His mobile supports his version of events.’
Annika threw her arms out, and water from the dishcloth sprayed across the kitchen window. ‘Yeah, but how difficult is it to hide your mobile in someone else’s car? Or make sure it doesn’t send signals to a base station while you go off and kill your ex?’
Berit filled the kettle. ‘Now we’re talking conspiracy theories.’
‘Not at all,’ Annika said. ‘Thieves and murderers are usually fairly fucked up, but if you were going to go off and kill someone, wouldn’t you switch your mobile off while you were doing it?’
Berit stopped, holding a spoonful of instant coffee in mid-air. ‘You’ve got a point there,’ she said.
Annika put
Finding Nemo
on the children’s television (she had an almost new, but bulky and old-fashioned set that Thomas hated; he’d bought a flatscreen model as soon as they’d got back from the US, and the old one had ended up in the children’s room), then went back out into the kitchen.
‘Schyman had a proposal for me,’ she said, sinking down at the kitchen table and reaching for her coffee. ‘The paper will pay the ransom if I agree to give them exclusive rights to the whole story.’
Berit nodded. ‘I know. He asked me to try to persuade you to agree to it. Do you want to?’
Annika looked around the kitchen, her domain during the kidnap crisis. She was in charge of logistics, tasked with making sure they had food and water, and keeping the mobiles charged. ‘He said it as if it was to my advantage. As if I ought to want to, as if I should somehow enjoy exploiting my own tragedy.’
‘Maybe he’s trying to help you.’
‘I’m not going to do it. No way.’
‘If you want, I could do the writing.’
She smiled at Berit. ‘That would be one reason to agree to it. Thanks, but no thanks.’
Halenius’s mobile was ringing on the other side of the wall. He answered. It sounded as if he was speaking English, but she couldn’t make out the words. Annika got up and put her almost untouched mug on the draining board. ‘Let’s go and sit in the living room – these chairs make my arse go numb.’
Berit stood up on slightly stiff legs. ‘I see what you mean. You’ve never thought of replacing them?’
‘They came from Thomas’s parents.’
‘Ah.’
Halenius’s voice was fainter in the living room, but Annika could still hear English.
She curled up on the sofa and reached for the
Evening Post
from the pile of newspapers. She leafed quickly through the articles about Thomas, six pages plus the centrefold, including pictures of her and the children. Thank you very much. ‘Nice work,’ she said tartly, ‘considering there was hardly a single fact to go on.’
There were articles about the conference in Nairobi, about Nairobi as a city, about the Kenyatta conference centre, about Frontex, about Thomas, about Thomas’s really, really,
really
important job, about the Swedish EU commissioner who was responsible for Frontex, about the video that had been posted online from a server in Mogadishu, about Mogadishu as a city, about Somalia, about the civil war in Somalia, and an overview of other kidnap videos. The one featuring Daniel Pearl wasn’t mentioned.
‘Elin Michnik is a real star,’ Berit said. ‘All the boys in the newsroom have got it into their heads that she’s related to Adam Michnik of the
Gazeta Wyborcza
, but she isn’t.’
Annika had no idea what the
Gazeta Wyborcza
was and had no intention of finding out. ‘She seems to have forgotten about Daniel Pearl,’ she said, turning the page.