Exposed by Liza Marklund Read Free Book Online Page A

seven each evening, suntanned and drowsy after an afternoon in Rålambshov Park.
    They usually started the night by each drinking a litre of black coffee, then they spent a while arguing about the mistakes they claimed to have found in that day’s paper, and then they would set to work. They juggled headlines, cut texts and clattered away on their Macs until the paper was sent to press at six in the morning. Annika was slightly afraid of them. They were noisy and a bit thoughtless, they were pretty cynical, and had a tendency to put people in boxes. But their skill and professionalism were astonishing. A lot of them seemed to live for the paper, four nights on, four nights off, year after year. The rota rolled throughout the year, taking no account of Christmas, Easter or Midsummer. Four on, four off. Annika couldn’t imagine how they did it.
    She went over to the empty sports section. A television tuned to Eurosport was on in one corner. She stopped at the large windows at the end of the room, with her back to the newsroom, and looked out over the multi-storey car park opposite. The concrete looked as though it was steaming. When she put her nose to the glass and peered to her left, she could just make out the Russian Embassy. She rested her forehead against the glass, surprised itwas so cool. Her sweat made a greasy mark on the glass, which she tried to wipe off with her hand. She drank the last of the mineral water. It tasted metallic. Slowly she walked back through the newsroom, and was gradually filled with an intense feeling of happiness.
    She had made it. She was part of it. She was one of them.
    This is going to work, she thought. Nothing’s going to get me out of here now.

6
    It was a little after three o’clock. It was time to call the police. On her way back to her desk she popped into the staff kitchen and filled the empty bottle with tap water.
    ‘We don’t know enough yet,’ an officer on the duty desk said curtly. ‘Call the press office.’
    The press spokesman had nothing to say.
    The operations room confirmed that they had sent several units to Kronoberg Park, but of course she already knew that. The emergency control room told her once again how the call had been received from a member of the public at 12.48. There was no landline connected to the caller’s care-of address.
    Annika sighed. She picked up her notepad and leafed through it, and her eye was taken by the call number on the Hawaiian detective’s car. She thought for a few moments, then called the operations room again. The car belonged to the Norrmalm crime unit. So she called them.
    ‘It’s out on loan today,’ the duty officer told her when he checked his list.
    ‘Who to?’ Annika wondered, her pulse rising.
    ‘Violent crime. They don’t have their own cars. There’s been a murder on Kungsholmen today, you see.’
    ‘Yes, I heard something about that. Do you know anything else?’
    ‘Not my district – Kungsholmen comes under south Stockholm. But this case has probably already been passed up to the national violent crime unit.’
    ‘The officer who was driving the car had short, fair hair and a Hawaiian shirt. Do you know who that might be?’
    The duty officer laughed. ‘It sounds like Q,’ he said.
    ‘Q?’ Annika said.
    ‘That’s what we call the inspector of the violent crime unit. Okay, I’ve got another call coming in.’
    Annika thanked him and hung up. She dialled the main reception desk again.
    ‘I’d like to talk to Q in violent crime,’ she said.
    ‘Who?’ the receptionist said in surprise.
    ‘An inspector with the nickname Q who works in the violent crime unit.’
    She heard the receptionist groan. It was probably just as hot there as it was here.
    ‘One moment …’
    There was a ringing tone as the call was put through. Annika was about to hang up when an irritated voice answered.
    ‘Hello, is that the violent crime unit?’ she said.
    Another groan. ‘Yes, this is violent crime. What is