Prime Time

Prime Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Prime Time Read Online Free PDF
Author: Liza Marklund
Tags: thriller, Mystery
Schyman countered drily and got up. ‘I want to talk to Bengtzon when she calls.’
    ‘ If she calls,’ Spike said. But by then Anders Schyman had already left the room.
    The holiday motorcade inched its way along Route 55. Rain was coming down in buckets and the car’s windshield wipers creaked. The slow monotonous pace charged the atmosphere in the Saab with tension, and the silence was oppressive. Annika tried to get comfortable, but the seat belt chafed and the seat itself was designed to support the small of a taller person’s back. She realized that her discomfort had nothing to do with the seat, really; her feelings of insecurity were the culprit. Her maternity leave was over and she had only worked a few weeks so far, but she could tell that the others were already questioning her presence on the crime-desk team.
    During her pregnancy, Annika had been posted to other departments – Women’s Issues and stupid trivia assignments. Despite feeling demoted and dismissed, she hadn’t raised a fuss. Naturally, she was fully aware of management’s attitude towards young women who got pregnant soon after being made a permanent staff member. She knew that in their eyes she had let them down, that she was seen as deadbeat, as using the system to get paid maternity leave and leave the paper in the lurch. Adding insult to injury, a very pregnant crime reporter was something to joke about. One, it was presumed that she went brain-dead as soon as one of her eggs had been fertilized, and two, she had to be punished for letting everyone down. She could still remember the bitter tears that she’d shed and how Thomas, unable to really understand, made clumsy attempts to comfort her.
    ‘You’ll feel better soon, you’ll see,’ he had said, bringing her a glass of milk.
    Annika never told him that she wasn’t crying because she felt sick to her stomach.
    Her neck ached. She massaged the uppermost vertebra and tried to unclench her jaw muscles. During most of the trip she hadn’t been able to use her cellphone: her worthless service provider, Comviq, didn’t have enough coverage out in the sticks.
    The tiny morsels of information that she had told her that both the Eskilstuna police force and the national homicide division had been called in, a fact she found simultaneously comforting and disturbing. Annika was pretty familiar with the national homicide division, particularly Q, who was often in charge of these investigations. Her relationship with the Eskilstuna police force was somewhat more complicated. They had investigated the death of Sven Matsson in Hälleforsnäs, and she was certain that they hadn’t forgotten her.
    She stared out the car window, saw the blur of pine trees flash by; the same lush green landscape that she had been chased through all those years ago. Escaping from her stalker.
    It had been a chilly autumn day, the air crisp and clear. She had left Sven the night before, had broken off their sadistic relationship once and for all. His response had been to threaten to kill her, and he had chased her through the woods with a hunting knife and then attacked her cat, gutting the animal.
    Annika closed her eyes and let the poorly paved road in combination with the new Saab suspension rock her, concentrating on relaxing. Eyes closed, she saw Sven’s head being crushed by an iron pipe by her own hand. Saw him slowly crumple and fall over the railing into the blastfurnace and disappear. She started breathing rapidly and the skin of her legs was crawling, so she forced the image to recede.
    She had been convicted of manslaughter. The Eskilstuna County Court sentenced her to two years of probation. The court determined that she had acted in self-defence, so the charge had not been second-degree murder. She wasn’t certain that the verdict was the right one – she had wanted to kill Sven. Cradling her dying cat in her arms, its intestines spilling from its belly, she had been convinced that she had done the
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