Free Last Will by Liza Marklund Page B

and gave her a skeptical look.
    “Why? What sort of questions?”
    Annika put her bag down on the floor and held out her hand.
    “Annika Bengtzon,” she said, then jumped in. “From the Evening Post newspaper. Naturally we have to cover the events at the Nobel banquet last night, and that’s why we’d like to write about Caroline von Behring.”
    The woman had taken her hand, hesitantly.
    “I see,” she said. “So what sort of thing are you thinking of writing?”
    “She seems to have been fairly withdrawn in her private life,” Annika said. “Obviously we’ll respect that. But she did have a very public role in her professional life, and I’d like to ask a few questions about her work and position as the chair of the Nobel Committee.”
    “How did you know to ask for me?” the woman said.
    Annika pointed at the sign on the door saying Nobel Office.
    “No, no,” the woman said, taking out a handkerchief from her trouser pocket and blowing her nose. “I don’t work in there.”
    She took Annika’s hand again.
    “Birgitta,” she said, “Birgitta Larsén. I’m part of Carrie’s network. Orwas … I suppose. The network’s still there, of course, it’s just not Carrie’s anymore. I don’t know how to put it, but I daresay you will—you work with words, don’t you?”
    Annika considered how best to reply, but Birgitta Larsén wasn’t really interested.
    “This is where the office staff works,” the woman said, gesturing over her shoulder, then started walking down the corridor. “The Assembly and Committee consist of professionally active professors, spread out across the campus. What do you want to know?”
    She stopped and looked at Annika, as if she had only just noticed her.
    “I’d just like to talk to someone who knew Caroline,” Annika said. “Someone who could tell me a bit about what she was like as a person, and as a colleague.”
    Birgitta Larsén turned on her heel.
    “Well, then,” she said. “Let’s find somewhere to sit down.”
    The woman swept away down the corridor on clattering heels, and Annika followed her, feeling oddly clumsy. She was feeling the effects of her short nap in the taxi, and couldn’t quite shake them off.
    Close to the entrance Birgitta Larsén turned sharply to the left and went into a bland conference room with an overhead projector and a little television set on wheels.
    “This room is used for small meetings, such as when the Nobel Committee meets. That piece of art’s called The Mirror, ” she said, pointing at some black and white squares on the east wall of the room.
    Annika glanced round the room, and her attention was taken by a window oddly positioned in one corner of a large wall.
    It was getting dark already; the light outside was a deep graphite-gray.
    “So you work here at the Karolinska Institute as well?” Annika asked, sitting down at the circular conference table.
    “I’m a professor in FBF—the Department of Physiology and Biophysics,” she explained when she saw the blank look on Annika’s face. “Carrie worked with immunology at MEM, the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Molecular Biology.”
    “How well did you know Caroline?” Annika asked, holding her notebook in front of her.
    The professor stopped at the window beside the television and stared out at the snow as it gradually melted away.
    “We took our doctorates at the same time,” she said. “There were several of us, quite a few women, who got them the same month. That was pretty unusual in those days, even though it was only twenty-five years ago.”
    She turned to look at Annika again.
    “It’s crazy, the way time passes so incredibly quickly, isn’t it?”
    Annika nodded without saying anything.
    “Caroline was youngest, of course,” Birgitta Larsén said, “she always was.”
    “From what I understand, she was very successful,” Annika said.
    Birgitta Larsén sank onto a small side table.
    “Successful, yes, that’s one way of putting