The Bomber Read Online Free PDF Page A

available resources to the search. That is all for the moment. Thank you."
     
     
He turned round and ducked under the cordon. A wave of voices and calls made him stop.
     
     
"…any suspects?"
     
     
"…other victims?"
     
     
"…the doctors at the scene?"
     
     
"That is all for the moment," the officer repeated and left. Shoulders hunched, he walked off with determined steps, followed by his colleagues. The media pack dissolved. The Rapport reporter entered the camera lights and ran through his piece to the camera, then handed over to the studio. Everyone was punching his or her phone and trying to get his or her pen to work.
     
     
"Right," Henriksson said, "that didn't tell us much."
     
     
"Time to go," Annika said. They left one of the freelancers behind and walked up toward Henriksson's car.
     
     
"Let's go past Vintertullstorget and get some eyewitness stories."
     
     
They visited the people who lived closest to the arena. They met families with children, seniors, a couple of drunks, and some club kids. They spoke of the bang that woke them up, if it had, the shock, and how frightening it was.
     
     
"That's enough now," Annika said at a quarter to seven. "We've got to pull things together."
     
     
They drove back to the office in silence. Annika composed intros and captions in her head. Henriksson mentally leafed through negatives, sorting them through, figuring which shots might work, pushing the film, and dodging the prints.
     
     
The snow was coming down heavily now. As a result, the temperature had risen and made the road surface dangerously slippery. They drove past four cars in a pileup on the West Circular. Henriksson stopped to take some shots.
     
     
They arrived at the newsroom just before seven. The atmosphere was composed but charged. Jansson was still there; on weekends the night editor also handled the suburban editions. Normally on a Saturday it was a question of changing the odd story, but they were always ready to change the whole paper around entirely. This was what was happening right now.
     
     
"Does it hold?" he asked, standing up the instant he spotted them coming in.
     
     
"I think so," Annika said. "There's a dead body on the Olympic stand, in pieces. I'd bet my life on it. Give me half an hour and I'll know for sure."
     
     
Jansson rocked to and fro on his feet. "Half an hour— not sooner?"
     
     
Annika threw him a glance over her shoulder while wriggling out of her coat. She picked up a copy of the early edition and walked into her office.
     
     
"Okay then," he said and went back to his chair.
     
     
First she wrote the news article, which was nothing but a supplemented rewrite of the night reporter's work from the first edition. She added quotations from the neighbors and the statement that the fire was under control. After that she set about writing the "I Was There" story, adding descriptions of sounds and other details. Twenty-eight minutes past seven she called her contact.
     
     
"I can't say anything yet," he began.
     
     
"I know," Annika said. "I'll do the talking and you say nothing, or tell me if I'm wrong…"
     
     
"I can't do that this time," he interrupted her.
     
     
Shit. She took a breath and chose to go on the offensive.
     
     
"Listen to what I have to say first," she said. "This is how I see it: Someone died at the Olympic stadium last night. Someone has been blown to bits on that stand. You have people there picking up the pieces as we speak. It's an inside job; all the alarms were disarmed. There must be hundreds of alarms at a stadium like this: burglar alarms, fire alarms, motion-sensor alarms— and they were all disarmed. No doors had been forced open. Someone with a key went inside and switched off the alarms, either the victim or the perpetrator. At this moment you are trying to find out who."
     
     
She fell silent and held her breath.
     
     
"You can't publish that now," the police officer at the other end