Free Lifetime by Liza Marklund Page A

mouth.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Who do you think it was?’
    ‘Do you think it was one of us?’
    Anne’s whisper was barely audible.
    The producer’s gaze drifted off towards the window, her eyes glazed and vacant-looking.
    ‘The technical staff left as soon as the bus was packed,’ she said. ‘Gunnar was the only one left. Apart from us.’
    ‘Could someone else have come, an outsider?’
    ‘In the middle of the night?’
    Turning with an unfathomable expression in her eyes, Karin looked at Anne and shook her head.
    ‘No,’ Anne whispered. ‘So it was one of us.’
    The sound of Anne Snapphane gulping resonated in the room.
    ‘I agree, so be careful about who you talk to,’ Karin said, ‘and think of what you say.’
    Anne nodded, her eyes wide with renewed fear.
    ‘Did you see anything?’ Karin asked. ‘Anything strange?’
    Suspicion dropped like a stage curtain. Anne Snapphane felt doubt take root, felt how it drove a wedge into the foundation of trust. Her emotions were reflected in her eyes, and she felt how she distanced herself and grew watchful.
    ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Did you?’
    Karin shook her head and Anne saw her own emotions reflected in the producer’s eyes.
    ‘I’d better be going,’ Anne said, and got up to leave with a brand-new sorrow in her heart.
    They wouldn’t be confiding in each other again.
    Editor-in-chief Torstensson didn’t call in. A restless Anders Schyman sat in his glass cubicle at one end of the newsroom and felt irritation well up inside him. There was a pile of documents on his desk: legal action was being taken against Kvällspressen and the executive editor responsible for the publication. The charges ranged from defamation of character to libel.
    And the person legally responsible for the publication was Torstensson. As executive editor he had the final say in controversial issues. It didn’t matter what the rest of the newsroom team felt, Torstensson called the shots. After a great deal of pussyfooting around, Schyman had made sure that he, the managing editor, was registered at the Patent and Registration Office as Torstensson’s deputy. This meant that Torstensson could delegate decisions to him, but only if the editor-in-chief expressly wished to do so. Whenever this occurred, the information listed in the corporate heading would be changed. This was simply a cosmetic change, but one that gave Schyman in-house clout. It didn’t happen very often.
    Anders Schyman tore his hair. The situation was unpleasant. Michelle Carlsson had caused Kvällspressen a lot of trouble for a long time, and if truth be told, Kvällspressen had caused Michelle Carlsson trouble too. Some of his associates at the paper had decided that the TV personality didn’t cut the mustard, something they delighted in telling their readers. For two years running, she had topped the ‘Worst-dressed women of the year’ list. She had been called ‘The most over-hyped Swede of the millennium’, a ‘TV bimbo’ and other even less flattering names that Schyman couldn’t immediately recall. They jeered at her shows and lampooned her in the culture section of the paper, they gave her scathing reviews in the TV column and poked fun at her when she was given Kvällspressen ’s People’s Choice award. Her landslide victory caused the paper to revise the rules for the award. The readers were no longer allowed to vote for anyone they wanted. A jury at the paper, led by Barbara Hanson, nominated four TV personalities that the readers could choose between. The last time around, Anders Schyman had never even heard of two of them.
    As long as the criticism and the antics had remained at that level, Michelle Carlsson and her representatives had kept their distance.
    She started suing them when the articles about her alleged shell-company dealings were published. As far as Anders Schyman could tell, the paper was going to go down for this.
    The second time Michelle sued them was when