Last Will

Book : The Annika Bengtzon Series

by Liza Marklund

Genres: Media Tie-In; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

For the first time in her career, investigative reporter Bengtzon is covering the glamorous Nobel Prize Dinner, traditionally held in Stockholm's City Hall. Some of the most notable scholars in the world are in attendance when gunshots suddenly break out. Bodies fall to the floor and Annika catches a glimpse of the suspect as he flees the scene. As the key witness, she is soon caught in the middle of an intricate drama with links to international terrorism, global pharmaceutical corporations, and Alfred Nobel himself. In pursuit of a trained assassin called The Kitten, she learns that in the scientific community, secrets are closely guarded. And some will kill, just to protect them.

Release date: April 10, 2012

Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Print pages: 416

Sample

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10

Nobel Day

The woman known as the Kitten felt the weight of the weapon dangling under her right armpit. She tossed the cigarette to the ground, lifted her skirt, and thoroughly crushed the butt with the underside of her high-heeled sandals.

Try to find any DNA on that if you can.

The Nobel festivities had been going on inside the banqueting rooms of the City Hall for three hours and thirty-nine minutes now. The dancing was underway, and she could make out the sound of the music in the chill of the street. The target had left the table down in the Blue Hall and was walking up the flight of steps toward the Golden Hall. The text message she had just received on her cell phone had given her the target’s position, as precisely as possible under the circumstances.

She sighed and recognized how irritated she felt, and gave herself a mental slap. This job required concentration. There was no room for existential worrying or thoughts of alternative careers. This was all about basic survival.

She forced herself to focus on the immediate future, on the sequence of events she had memorized by going over it again and again until she was bored stiff by it, certain that the job would be carried out successfully.

So now she set off with light and measured steps, one two three, the salt and gravel rough under the thin soles of her sandals. The temperature had fallen below zero, forming patches of ice on the ground, a detail she had hoped for but hadn’t been able to take for granted. The cold made her hunched and pale, and was making her eyes water. If they looked red it would be no bad thing.

The police officers in their uniforms and yellow tunics were positioned where they should be, two on each side of the archway that formed the entrance to the Stockholm City Hall. She calibrated her internal resources.

Time for mark number one: pale and beautiful, frozen and cold, cell phone in her hand. Ta dah, showtime!

She stepped into the archway just as a group of happy revelers rolled up from the other direction. The group’s voices jangled in the cold air, their happy laughter echoing. The indirect lighting along the façade of the building threw shadows over their cheerful faces.

She looked down and reached the first police officer at the same time as the raucous men started yelling for a taxi. When the cop made an attempt to talk to her she threw out her arms and pretended to slip. The policeman reacted instinctively, the way men do, and he caught her flailing arm in a gentlemanly fashion. She muttered something embarrassed in incomprehensible English, withdrew her cold hand and glided off toward the main entrance, thirty-three measured steps.

So fucking easy, she thought. This is beneath my dignity.

The flagged courtyard of the City Hall was full of limousines with tinted glass, and she spotted the security guards from the corner of her eye. People were streaming out of the building, breath pluming from their mouths in cones. Straight ahead, beyond the cars and the garden, lay the glittering black waters of Lake Mälaren.

She skipped up to mark number two: the entrance to the Blue Hall. An elderly man was blocking the doorway and she had to stop. The man stood to one side to let out a group of elderly women who were following him, and she had to bite her tongue and stand there shivering in the cold while the old fossils creaked out into the courtyard. One intoxicated gentleman said something impertinent as she slipped into the cloakroom with her cell phone in her hand but she ignored him, just left him in her wake and made it to mark number three.

Annika Bengtzon stood up from table number fifty as her dinner partner, the managing editor of the journal Science, held her chair for her. She noticed that her legs were a bit unsteady. Her shawl was on the point of sliding down onto the floor and she clutched it more tightly round her waist. There were so many people, so many swirling colors everywhere. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy hurry past her table. God, he was handsome.

“It’s been a pleasure,” the editor said, kissing her hand before vanishing into the crowd. Annika smiled politely. Maybe he had been a bit upset when she turned down his invitation to dance.

She fiddled with her shawl and checked the time. She didn’t have to get back to the newsroom just yet. Anders Wall, the financier, slid past with his wife, as the head of Swedish Television moved in the opposite direction.

Then she felt someone stop right behind her, and she looked round to see Bosse, the reporter for the other main evening paper.

“How many stars do you give the starter?” he said quietly with his lips far too close to her ear.

“Four skulls and crossbones,” Annika said, standing quite still, her bare shoulder against the front of his jacket. “How many points does Princess Madeleine’s neckline get?”

“Two melons,” Bosse said. “The speech by the guy who got the prize for medicine?”

“Eight sleeping pills …”

“May I?”

He bowed dramatically. Annika looked round quickly to make sure the man from Science was nowhere nearby. Then she nodded. She quickly pushed her elegant evening bag inside her larger bag and hoisted it onto her shoulder.

Her grandmother’s best shawl was draped over her lower arms, and as Annika’s skirt crunched, Bosse took her hand and led her toward the steps leading to the Golden Hall. They sailed between the tables, between the flowers and crystal glasses. Annika had skipped most of the wine, just tasting it so she could report on it (which was frankly an insult to the readers, seeing as she didn’t know a thing about wine). Even so, she still felt a bit giddy, a bit too light on her feet. She took Bosse’s arm as they started to ascend the staircase, holding up her skirt with her other hand.

“I’m going to trip,” she said. “I’ll fall on my ass and roll all the way down and knock the legs out from under some important politician.”

“No one has ever fallen down these stairs,” Bosse said. “When they were building it the architect, Ragnar Östberg, made his wife walk up and down it in an evening gown for a whole week, while he adjusted the steps to make sure you could glide up and down and never fall. The staircase has worked beautifully ever since, but his wife snapped and demanded a divorce.”

Annika laughed.

Soon she would have to leave the party and go write it up back in the newsroom. Soon the spell would be broken, soon her flowing long dress would turn into a top from H&M and a polyester skirt with enough static electricity for it to do a passable job as a vacuum cleaner.

“It’s completely crazy, really, being part of something like this,” she said.

Bosse put his hand on her arm and guided her up the last steps the same way the winner of the chemistry prize had just done with the queen.

They emerged onto the long balcony overlooking the Blue Hall, then had to fight their way through the crowd surrounding a drinks table just outside the doors to the Golden Hall.

“One for the road?” Bosse asked, and she shook her head.

“One dance,” she said, “then I have to go.”

They stepped into the Golden Hall, the fantastic banqueting hall whose walls were covered with artworks and mosaics made with real gold. The orchestra was playing but Annika couldn’t hear the music, it was all just a tapestry of sound. All that mattered was that she was here and Bosse had his arm round her back and she was spinning round and round, the golden mosaics swirling.

The vaulted ceiling, limestone floors: the woman known as the Kitten was inside the building itself. Silk crunched and stretched across full stomachs, cravats rubbed against red necks. She slid unnoticed among the other evening gowns, no need to look around. In recent months she had been on a number of guided tours, in three different languages, through the halls and galleries of the City Hall. She had taken pictures and carefully studied the whole arena, she had been on test runs, even test slips, and she knew the exact length of her stride and where she could catch her breath.

It was a pretty impressive building, she had to admit. The architecture was the best thing about this job.

Twelve steps into the Blue Hall.

She stopped under the six-pointed stars of the pillared walkway and collected herself before entering the dizzying space of the hall, 1,526 slightly asymmetrical square meters, the aftermath of the meal, people crowding onto the marble floor, the light sparkling from thousands of glasses. The royal couple were gone, and the security staff had of course gone with them. She allowed herself a brief moment of contemplation, and realized that she would rather have taken part in the dinner than have to do her job. The theme of the meal had been Nordic winds, which actually sounded rather disgusting, but she liked the way it had all been set out.

Damn, she thought, I really have to come up with some other profession.

Oh well. Mark number four. Turn right, narrow shoulders, a quick glance.

She stepped out from the paired granite pillars and set off toward the staircase, ten steps in her high heels. She could hear the music from the Golden Hall clearly now.

A moment later a man was standing in front of her saying something incomprehensible. She stopped and took a step to the side, and then another. The bastard wasn’t letting her through, and she was forced to push her way past him and hurried up the forty-two steps, each one thirteen centimeters high, thirty-nine centimeters across.

Then the long balcony of the Blue Hall, seven doorways into the Golden Hall, seven doorways leading to the great works of art in there, The Queen of Lake Mälaren and Saint Erik.

She skipped on, pushing her way through, efficient now, warm and quick, past doorway after doorway until she reached the very last one. The music was louder, a key change; it was getting close to the end of the piece, and she walked right out among the crowd of dancing partygoers. Now she really had to keep her focus.

For the first time during the whole of this job she felt the familiar tickling sensation, the crackling rush that sharpened her senses, the swaying sense of satisfaction. The millions of mosaic pieces shimmered in her eyes, cutting into her head; she looked round, the musicians over by the ugly Queen of Lake Mälaren on the far side were building up to the crescendo. Her eyes scanned the clothes, the people, she had to locate the target now.

And there it was.

Right there, on a direct line from mark number five to mark number six, dancing and jigging about. Ha!

Ninety seconds from now. She fired off a text to her wingman, raised her right arm, opened her evening bag and dropped her cell phone in, then felt for the pistol.

At that moment she was jolted by a laughing figure moving just to the left of her, what the fuck? The floor slid for a moment; she lost her balance and took another unplanned step, feeling her heel sink into something soft and her elbow jab at someone’s ribs, then a yelp of pain in her ear.

The sound came so unexpectedly that she looked up and stared into a pair of heavily made-up eyes that were reflecting both annoyance and pain.

Shit! Fuck!

She looked quickly away and took the final steps.

The weapon was heavy and solid in her hand. It felt good, and the concentration that finally, finally filled her made all the sounds around her fade away; she was calm and clear. She raised the bag toward the dancing couple, aiming at the man’s leg, the first shot. The sound was scarcely audible, the recoil manageable. The man sank to his knees, leaving the woman unshielded. She raised the bag, aimed at the woman’s heart, and fired the second shot.

Her hand let go of the weapon, the ruined bag dangling from its strap once more; she refocused her gaze on the oak door, eight steps to the oak door that symbolized the next mark, one two three four five six (now the screaming started) seven eight, made it, and pulled the door open with no problem. It closed silently behind her, four steps to the service lift, two floors down, and then three steps down the slope to the service entrance.

Her focus started to relax, the wonderful rush started to disintegrate.

Not yet, for fuck’s sake, she said angrily to herself. This is the tricky bit.

The cold was paralyzing as she stepped out into the south pillared arcade. Ninety-eight slippery, cold bastard steps toward the water, a hundred-meter dash.

The guards in the courtyard stiffened and in unison raised one hand to their ears, oh shit. She’d expected to get a bit further before they found out what had happened. She pulled the gun from her bag as she let the door of the service entrance close behind her. Three guys were guarding the side facing the water; just as planned, she shot them one by one, intending to render them harmless, not necessarily to kill.

Sorry boys, she thought, nothing personal.

A bullet fired from somewhere behind her hit the granite pillar beside her, chipping off a shard of stone that hit her in the cheek, and the unexpected pain made her flinch. She quickly crouched down, pulled off her shoes, and ran.

Her sense of hearing was coming back and she could make out the roar of the powerful outboard motor.

She left the shadows and turned sharply to the right through the garden, frozen grass crunching beneath her feet, cutting into her like needles. Shots were coming from somewhere behind her and she was flying, darting and flying, with the pistol and shoes in her hands as she tried to hold her skirt up.

The sound of the engine cut off as the boat swung in alongside the City Hall.

Winds of ice cut into her skin as she threw herself down the granite steps.

The waves of Lake Mälaren were hitting the hull and splashing over the sides as she landed awkwardly in the stern of the boat.

The feeling of triumph vanished almost immediately and was replaced by a restless irritation. She felt her cheek, damn, she was bleeding. As long as it didn’t leave a scar. And it was cold as fuck as well.

Only when the tower of the City Hall had disappeared behind them and she was taking off her evening gown did she realize that she had lost one of her shoes.

Detective Inspector Anton Abrahamsson’s baby was three months old and had colic. The child had been screaming day and night for eight weeks now and he and his wife were at their wits’ end. He was able to go off to work and get a break sometimes, but it was worse for his wife. Anton tried vainly to comfort her over the phone: “It has to stop sometime, darling. Has he burped? Have you tried Minifom?”

The emergency call came through to the communications office of the Security Police just as Anton’s wife started to sob with exhaustion.

“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” Anton Abrahamsson said, hanging up on his despairing spouse and angrily snatching up the emergency call. His reaction could probably be explained by the fact that the call didn’t come from either the bodyguard unit or any of their own units, but from the regular police.

Which meant that the regular police force, whose primary duties were to look after the traffic and keep curious bystanders away from crime scenes, had a better grasp on the security situation than the Security Police.

That was Anton Abrahamsson’s first conclusion.

The second dawned on him a second later:

Someone’s going to end up in serious shit because of this.

The third made the hairs on his arms stand up:

Shit. They’re here now.

I have to call the paper, Annika thought.

She had ended up lying face down on the dance floor, the marble ice-cold against her bare arms. A man was throwing up in front of her, another was standing on her hand. She pulled it away without any sense of pain. A woman was shrieking somewhere to her right, skirts brushed over her head. The orchestra stopped playing in the middle of a note, and in the sonic vacuum the screams echoed like an icy wave around the Blue Hall and out into all the rooms of the City Hall.

Where’s my bag? she thought and tried to get up, but was knocked on the head and sank back down.

A moment later the people around her vanished and she was being lifted up out of the crowd of people, a dark-gray suit sitting her down with her back to the rest of the hall. She found herself staring at a dark oak door.

I have to get hold of Jansson, she thought, and tried to look round for her bag. She’d left it by the copper doors leading to the Three Crowns Chamber, but all she could see now was a mass of people milling about and dark-gray men rushing in.

Her knees started to tremble and she felt the familiar rush of angst but managed to hold it at bay, this isn’t dangerous, this isn’t dangerous. She forced herself to take deep breaths and see the situation for what it was.

There was nothing she could do.

The mosaic figure on the far wall stared at her encouragingly, its snake-hair floating around its face. A fat woman in a black lace dress turned her eyes up and fainted dead away beside her. A young man was shouting so loudly that the veins on his neck were standing out like rubber bands. A drunk old man dropped his beer glass on the floor with a crash.

I wonder where Bosse’s got to? she thought.

Her pulse slowed down, the carpet of noise in her head slowly began to fragment, and she could make out words and phrases again. She could hear calls and orders, mostly from the dark-gray suits. They were talking in steel-plated voices into wires that snaked from their ears toward their mouths, then down into inside pockets and trouser linings.

“The service elevator is too small, the gurney won’t go in—we’ll have to take it out through the ceremonial entrance in the tower.”

She could make out the words, but not who was saying them.

“The building’s secure, over. Yes, we’ve separated the witnesses and are in the process of emptying the banqueting halls.”

I have to get my bag, she thought.

“I have to get my bag,” she said out loud, but no one heard her. “Can I get my bag? I need my cell phone.”

She turned round. The mass of people was moving slowly now, like ants before the first frost. A white-clad woman came running in from the Three Crowns Chamber, pushing a gurney in front of her, then a man with another gurney, then several men with stethoscopes and oxygen masks and drips. Further away in the Golden Hall the Nobel banquet guests stood like a wall, faces white, their mouths black holes. All the screaming had stopped and the silence was deafening. Annika could make out the fragmented sound of quiet talking from the white coats, then the bodies were loaded onto the gurneys, and only then did Annika notice the man, the man who had fallen on the dance floor: he was conscious, moaning. The woman was lying completely still.

A moment later they were gone.

The noise rose again with ear-splitting force and Annika took her chance. She slunk past two suits and managed to reach her bag. One of them grabbed hold of her just as she was fishing out her cell phone.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said with unnecessary force, and she shook herself free.

She rang Jansson’s direct line in the newsroom and got three short bleeps in response.

Network busy.

What the …?

Contacts, press, Jansson, press.

Bleep bleep bleep. Network busy.

Contacts, press, Jansson, press.

Network busy.

Annika looked round, trying to find help. Nobody noticed her.

“Your name?”

A man in jeans was standing in front of her, holding a pad and pen.

“Sorry?” Annika said.

“Criminal Investigation Department, can I have your name? We’re trying to figure out exactly what happened. Did you see anything?”

“I don’t know,” Annika said, looking over at the blood on the marble floor, already dark and congealing.

No angels, she managed to think, thank god the angels are keeping quiet.

She shivered and realized that she had dropped her shawl, her grandmother’s best shawl that she had worn back when she was a housekeeper at Harpsund, the prime minister’s country estate. It was in a heap on the floor next to the vivid pool of blood.

Dry cleaners, Annika thought. Hope it’s okay.

“My name’s Annika Bengtzon,” she said to the police officer. “I’m covering the Nobel banquet for the Evening Post. What happened?”

“Did you hear the shots?”

Shots?

Annika shook her head.

“Did you notice anyone suspicious in connection with the shots?”

“I was dancing,” she said, “it was crowded. Someone pushed into me, but nothing suspicious, no …”

“Pushed? Who was doing the pushing?”

“A woman, she was trying to get through, and she stood on my foot.”

“Okay,” the policeman said, writing something in his pad. “Wait here and someone will come and get you for questioning.”

“I can’t,” Annika said. “I’ve got an article to write. What’s your name? Can I quote you?”

The man in jeans stepped closer to her and pressed her up against the wall.

“You’re going to wait right here,” he said, “until I get back.”

“Not on your life,” Annika said in a voice that threatened to turn into falsetto.

The police officer groaned and dragged her into the Three Crowns Chamber.

My deadline, Annika thought. How the hell am I going to get out of this?

Editor in chief Anders Schyman had just settled into the sofa in his living room with his wife and an Almodóvar film when the night editor rang.

“There’s been shooting at the Nobel banquet,” Jansson said. “At least five people have been shot, we don’t know if they’re alive or dead.”

Anders Schyman looked at his wife, as she pressed in vain on the remote to get the right subtitles.

“It’s the round button,” he said, showing her at the same time as the night editor’s words landed in his head.

“Annika Bengtzon and Ulf Olsson from pictures are there,” Jansson said. “I haven’t been able to contact them, the mobile network’s jammed. Too much traffic.”

“Tell me again,” Schyman said, signaling to his wife to pause the film.

“Too much traffic on the mobile network; one thousand three hundred people trying to make calls from the City Hall at the same time, and it’s gone down.”

“Who’s been shot? At the Nobel banquet?!”

His wife opened her eyes wide and dropped the remote on the floor.

“Some were security guards, but we don’t know about the others. The ambulances headed off, sirens blaring, toward Sankt Göran Hospital a few minutes ago.”

“Damn!” Schyman said, sitting up straight. “When did this happen?”

He glanced at his watch, 10:57 PM.

“Ten minutes ago, fifteen at most.”

“Is anyone dead?” his wife asked, but he hushed her.

“This is mad,” he said. “What are the police doing? Have they arrested anyone? Where were the shots fired? Inside the Blue Hall? Where were the king and queen? Haven’t they got any fucking security in that building?”

His wife laid a calming hand on his back.

“The police have sealed off the City Hall,” Jansson said, “no one can get in or out. They’re questioning everyone and will start to let people out in half an hour or so. We’ve got people on their way to get eyewitness accounts. We don’t know if they’ve arrested anyone, but they’re certainly still looking for more people.”

“What do things look like in the rest of the city?”

“They’ve stopped all the trains, and the main roads out are blocked off, but planes are still taking off from Arlanda. There aren’t many flights left this evening. We’ve got people heading for the Central Station, the motorways, pretty much everywhere.”

His wife gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, then got up and left the room. Pedro Almodóvar’s women disappeared into an indeterminate future, their impending nervous breakdowns on hold.

“Have the police said anything?” Anders Schyman asked. “Terrorism, extremists, any suggestion of a threat?”

“They’ve announced a press conference, but not until 1:00 AM …”

Someone shouted in the background and Jansson disappeared for a moment.

“Well,” he said when he came back on the line, “things are pretty hectic here. I need some quick decisions: how many extra pages can we add? Can we hold back some of the ads? And who do you think we should get in to do the lead article?”

The darkness hung heavily outside the editor in chief’s living room; he could see his own reflection in the glass and heard his wife running a tap out in the kitchen.

I’m starting to get old, he thought. I’d rather spend the evening with Antonio Banderas and Carmen Maura.

“I’m on my way,” the editor in chief said.

Jansson hung up without replying.

His wife was standing by the counter making a cup of tea; she turned around and kissed him when she felt his hands on her shoulders.

“Who’s been killed?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” he whispered.

“Wake me up when you get home,” she said.

He nodded, his lips touching the back of her neck.

The Kitten changed to a higher gear and accelerated cautiously. The little motorbike growled encouragingly, its headlight playing over the graveled tarmac of the path.

This really was too damn easy.

She knew that any sense of superiority wasn’t good, it increased the risk of carelessness.

But in this case there were no more difficulties. The rest was just a walk in the park.

The job itself had been presented to her as a challenge, and that was what had interested her. After an initial check she had realized how simple it would be, but that wasn’t something she had any intention of revealing to her employer. Negotiations had taken place with the understanding that the job was extremely dangerous and difficult, which had obviously had a decisive effect on the size of her fee.

Ah well, she thought. You wanted it to be spectacular. Okay, hope you like it.

She swung into a narrow bikeway. A branch struck her helmet; it was black as the grave. Stockholm was usually described as a major city, a metropolis with glittering nightlife and a functioning security service, which was a laughable exaggeration. Everything outside the city center itself seemed to consist of scrappy patches of woodland. There was a chance that the couple with the dog had seen her and her wingman head off in different directions on their bikes, but since then she hadn’t seen a single person.

A major city, she thought scornfully, as she rode past a deserted campsite.

She rolled her shoulders; she was still freezing. Her thick jacket couldn’t really thaw her out, and the boat trip in her evening gown had practically frozen her.

Well, now that wretched silk outfit was at the bottom of the lake together with her bag and eight bricks. The sack was made of netting, so the water would rinse through the material, and any biological evidence would be washed away in a few hours. She still had the gun, as well as the one shoe and the cell phone. She was planning to get rid of those somewhere in the middle of the Baltic.

The thought of the other shoe preyed on her mind.

It had her fingerprints on it, she was sure of that. The shoes had been clean of evidence when she set out on the job, but before that last sprint she had taken it off, held it in her hand.

God knows where she’d dropped it.

There was light ahead of her and she realized she had reached the only inhabited road along the whole of the shore. She forced that damn shoe out of her mind, changed down a gear and turned of