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sixty-year-old Harriet’s brain had refused to co-operate, each side refusing to allow the other to dominate. One consequence was that some of her limbs no longer obeyed orders from her brain. Among other things, poor Harriet was regularly attacked by her right hand, as if it were controlled by some extra-terrestrial force (hence the name of the condition). It could hit or scratch her, give her money away or undress her, and she was unable to stop it.
    Anders Schyman sighed. Here he sat, aware of a global exclusive, while his staff out in the newsroom were putting together a front page about alien hand syndrome.
    He had certainly considered ignoring the Justice Ministry’s plea for secrecy and publishing the story about the missing EU delegation anyway, but a residual measure of inherited ethics from his time at Sweden’s national broadcaster had stopped him. And, to a certain extent, consideration of Annika. The blogosphere’s conspiracy theories about how the media protected their own were wildly exaggerated, and the reverse was usually the case (everyone had an unhealthy obsession with their peers and consequently went overboard on what other journalists said and did), but he could still have a modicum of common human decency. And, besides, the story was hardly going to run away from them. So far, only those most closely concerned had been informed of events, and there were no journalists among them – he had been given assurances about that.
    His main concern was what this would do to Annika – and what he would do with her. He got up and went to stand by the door, where his breath fogged the glass.
    It was a new age out there. There was no longer any room for reporters who did in-depth investigative stories. What was needed were multimedia producers who could come up with filmed items for television, write short online updates and maybe put together an article some time in the evening. Annika belonged to a dying breed, at least on the
Evening Post
. There were no resources to cover complex legal cases or investigate complicated criminal networks, the sort of things Annika was predisposed towards. He knew she regarded having to work on Patrik’s wacky ideas as a form of punishment, but Schyman couldn’t carry on making a distinction between her and the others for ever. He couldn’t afford to keep her in Washington or slap Patrik down every time he came up with one of his daft ideas. The
Evening Post
was still the second largest newspaper in Sweden, and if they were ever going to beat their main rival they needed to think more broadly, more imaginatively.
    He needed Patrik far more than he needed Annika.
    He turned away from the glass door and walked restlessly around his little office.
    It wasn’t as if she’d done a bad job as a foreign correspondent – far from it. For instance, she’d covered the murder of the Swedish ambassador to the USA a year or so ago in an exemplary fashion. And getting back together with her husband seemed to have done her good. She’d never been a bundle of happiness and contentment, but the year she had spent separated from Thomas hadn’t been much fun for anyone around her.
    Schyman didn’t want to think of how she might react if anything happened to Thomas. He was aware that he was thinking very coldly, almost callously, but the
Evening Post
was no care home. If Thomas didn’t come back, the only option would probably be to lay her off with a hefty redundancy payment, then hope that the mental-health services and her own social network could handle the fallout.
    He sighed again.
    Alien hand syndrome.
    For Heaven’s sake.
    * * *
    ‘When’s Daddy coming home?’
    They’ve got a sixth sense, Annika thought, stroking her daughter’s hair. ‘He’s working in Africa, you know that,’ she said, tucking Ellen into her bed.
    ‘I know, but when’s he coming home?’
    ‘On Monday,’ Kalle said irritably, from his bed. ‘You never remember anything.’
    When Annika had lived