Red Wolf_ A Novel Part 29

'This way.'

They pa.s.sed two locked doors and a pa.s.sageway painted in diagonal stripes, and took the lift up to the sixth floor.

'To your right,' the man said.

The marble floor was replaced by linoleum.

'Down the steps.'

Worn oak tiles.

'This is my room. So, what did you want to see?'

'Everything,' Annika said, taking off her jacket and deciding to get as much spying done as possible. She put her coat and bag on a chair in the corner.

'Okay,' the man said, starting up a program on the computer. 'Karina has had six hundred and sixty-eight official items since she started as a minister almost ten years ago. I've got the whole list on here.'

'Can I have a printout?'

'This year?'

'Everything.'

The registrar's expression didn't change, he just started his printer.

She glanced down the first page of the printout: registration date, item number, in date, doc.u.mentation date. Then the name of the person who had been in charge of the item, the person who had sent it, name and address, a description of the item in question, and finally what it led to.

Decision, she read, ad acta.

'What does "ad acta" mean?' she asked.

'No reply,' the man with the ponytail said, turning to face her. 'Archived without action. Could have been an encouraging note, or a rambling letter from one of our more regular correspondents.'

She went through the descriptions of the items: an invitation to the Cannes Film Festival, a request for a signed photograph, a plea to save a publis.h.i.+ng company from closure, five questions from cla.s.s 8B in Sigtuna, an invitation to the n.o.bel dinner in Stockholm City Hall on 10 December.

'Where are all these letters and emails physically stored?'

'The items you're reading through now are still current, so they're with secretaries.'

She took the second page and her eye was caught by the first item.

Statement from the Newspaper Publishers' a.s.sociation regarding changes to broadcast rights for digital television.

Anne Snapphane's channel, she thought.

'Could I look at this one?'

The registrar stretched his back, looked at the printout she was holding out, and adjusted his gla.s.ses.

'You'll have to contact the person dealing with that,' he said and pointed at the name below the doc.u.ment date.

She moved on, there were periods of heavy correspondence regarding proposed legislation.

She reached a printout of items received very recently.

Registration date: 18 November.

Sender: Herman Wennergren.

Regarding: Request for meeting to discuss a matter of urgency.

'What's this?' Annika asked, handing the man the sheet.

He read silently for a moment.

'An email,' he said. 'Received Tuesday evening, registered yesterday.'

'I want to know what was in that email,' she said.

He shrugged. 'I can't help with that; it's with the person who's dealing with it. Anything else?'

She turned away, continued to look through the list, oddly agitated.

Why would the Evening Post Evening Post's chairman suddenly decide that he had to meet the Minister of Culture on Tuesday afternoon?

She forced her worries to one side.

Sender: Anonymous.

Regarding: Drawing of yellow dragon.

Decision: Ad acta.

She read the entry again.

'What's this?' she said, leaning forward and pointing, waiting for the man to put on his gla.s.ses and look.

'An anonymous letter,' he said. 'We get quite a few of those. Mostly newspaper cuttings or slightly muddled opinions.'

'Many yellow dragons?'

He laughed. 'Not too many.'

'Where are the anonymous letters?'

'I collect those here, they have their own box.'

The registrar took off his gla.s.ses and reached for a brown file labelled Government Offices: Anonymous Post Government Offices: Anonymous Post. He opened it and took out the letter at the top.

'We keep them in boxes arranged by year, five years up here and then they go into the central archive. Every envelope is stamped on the back.'

He held out the little envelope, letting her read it. It was stamped 31 October that year.

'What's in it?'

'I think this one's the dragon.'

He pulled out a sheet of A4 paper folded in four, smoothed it out and handed it to Annika.

'I don't know why they sent it here,' he said, 'but maybe it counts as culture.'

It really was a little dragon in the middle of the sheet of white paper, drawn with a rather shaky hand and coloured with yellow ink. Something clicked inside Annika's head. She felt it physically. She had seen a dragon almost exactly the same as this recently, but where?

'Can I have a copy of this?' she asked.

While the man went out into the corridor to get a photocopy, Annika picked up the envelope the dragon had arrived inside. It was addressed to Minister of Culture Karina Bjornlund, Stockholm, La Suede.

She looked closer at the stamp. Postmarked in Paris, le 28 Octobre.

Ragnwald had probably lived in the French part of the Pyrenees for the past thirty years. There could be a connection, but where had she seen the drawing before? She closed her eyes tight and searched her memory, catching a glimpse of something.

She opened her eyes wide, listening out for the registrar. She could hear him talking to someone down the corridor. She looked round the room and discovered a little Post-it note stuck to the bottom of his computer screen. She crept over to the computer and leaned over to read the note.

Karina direct, then a number through the departmental exchange, then the word mobile mobile followed by a GSM number. followed by a GSM number.

She stared at the number, 666 66 60. Twice the number of the beast, and then a zero. Was that just coincidence, or did it say something about Karina Bjornlund?

'Anything else I can help you with?'

Annika jumped and straightened up, turned round and smiled disarmingly.

'Maybe another time,' Annika said, picking up the sheaf of printouts, ten years of incoming post to the Minister of Culture.

She headed for the lifts with relief.

33.

Mehmet filled Anne Snapphane's office doorway, anger radiating from his head. Anne's reflex reaction at the sight of him was pure, uncomplicated joy, a blinding white jubilation that shot up from her stomach all the way to her scalp.

'We've got to sort this out,' he said. 'Now, before it gets so infected that we can never get to grips with it.'

Her happiness didn't want to go; it clung on as a fading hymn of praise: He came! He came here to me! I'm important to him.

And Anne saw him lean against the doorframe with all the elegant nonchalance that she loved so much, her handsome man, the man she longed for so much at night that it woke her. She pushed her swivel chair back from the desk and slowly stood up.

'I want that too,' she said, holding out her hand to him.

He pretended not to see it, staring down at the floor.

'Sylvia's been off sick all week,' he said, quietly and angrily.

Her jubilation shattered, she could hear the splinters. .h.i.tting the plastic mat.

'I haven't betrayed anyone,' she said, the sharp edges cutting her voice.

He raised both hands in a calming gesture.

'We've got to get past that bit,' he said. 'It's no one's fault. It wasn't working between us; surely we can at least agree on that?'

Defiance was forcing tears into Anne's eyes. She gasped for breath far too audibly before replying. 'I thought it was working.'

'But I didn't,' he said. 'So it couldn't go on. If two people are going to live their lives together they have to agree about that, don't they?'

She closed her eyes for a few seconds, then raised her head and tried to smile. 'Serfdom has been abolished, you mean?'

He took a couple of steps into the room.

'Anne,' he said in a pleading tone that made her smile fade, 'if we can't sort out normal communication, now, then we'll be sitting with a payment plan that'll last for ever. And Miranda will be the one it costs most. We can't mess up like this.'

She pressed her fingertips against the desk, looking down at her shoes.

A flash of insight worked its way up from her feet, through her gut, rus.h.i.+ng up to her head. She suddenly saw the world from his point of view, realized what was important for him: Miranda, his daughter; his new woman and new child. She was no longer in his consciousness in that way, all tenderness was exhausted and gone. Now she was a necessary evil, someone he once shared a child and a bed with, a by-product from a past life that he would always have to deal with.

Self-pity threatened to suffocate her; a feeble embarra.s.sing sound escaped her throat. She took several silent breaths.

'But I love you,' she said, without looking at him.

He went over to her and hugged her, she wrapped her arms hard round his waist and leaned her head against his neck and wept.

'I love you so b.l.o.o.d.y much,' she whispered.

He rocked her gently, stroking her hair, and kissed her on the forehead.

'I know,' he said softly. 'I understand that it hurts, and I'm sorry. Forgive me.'

Anne Snapphane opened her eyes to his polo sweater, feeling a tear run down her nose and hang there.

'There's no point in clinging on to pride any more,' he said quietly. 'Will you be okay?'

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

'I don't know,' she whispered.