I met Annika Linden in 1995 while I was working in London trading the Asian Markets. We were very well suited; we both had a love of travel and socialising. After a year together we decided to take a year off and travel around the world. We then moved to Singapore and spent the next six years living together in Asia.

Annika was a very warm and dynamic person to whom friendship and family counted the most. She was at once the centre of everything, yet also very humble. She set up two companies and created a women’s group in Bangkok. Though she only lived a short life, she filled it with many adventures. Bali was one of her favourite places, and she visited it on many occasions. She was always taken with the spirit and warmth of the islanders and the pervasive magic that filled their world.

Annika visited Bali in October 2000 on a girls’ trip with her friend Polly Derby. On that trip Polly met Dan Miller who was playing in a rugby tournament. Two years later they married. Polly, Annika and Dan decided to go back to Bali six weeks after Polly’s wedding for the Bali Rugby tournament.

I remember the morning of October 13th very well. I was in the airport and received a phone call from a friend who told me that there had been a bomb in Bali and two nightclubs had been wiped out. I immediately said that Annika was in Bali and I had to go. I realized at that moment that there was something wrong as I would definitely have heard from her otherwise. I spent the rest of the day on the phone to family and friends and then went to the office to print posters and letters to hand out to everyone in what was to be a fruitless search.

I flew on the first plane to Bali the next morning; it was filled with journalists and photographers from around the world. I handed out pictures of Annika to everyone. On arrival at the airport I was met by Emma and her girlfriend Moo. Emma worked with my company Switchfix and both of them were close friends of both myself and Annika. By chance they happened to be in Bali on holiday.

Emma and Moo had already been through all the hospitals the day before and we already knew that the chances of finding Annika alive were diminishing. I felt as though I were in a tunnel on my first day there. It was chaos. Bali just wasn't prepared for something like that. I was sent from one place to another to fill out forms, and then learned that the authorities had lost them all. I felt enormous anger at that point. Then I went through some distressing photographs to try to identify her, and finally there were bodies to look at.  Emma, wanting to protect me, volunteered to look first.

By mid afternoon the harsh realization set in that we would not find her alive, and we concentrated on finding her body. They found one body that  partly matched Annika’s description. I went to the makeshift mortuary and met David Magson who told me that it was better that I took a look.  It was very, very hard. But the person inside the bag was wearing a ring I didn't recognise and I knew it wasn't her. I felt such enormous relief: I didn't want to see Annika in that state. Of course, I wanted to find her, I'd told her family that I would - but the last thing I wanted was an image that would haunt me forever.

In my room that night I felt that she was around. Her image filled my mind. At one point my hotel door opened. I went outside to see who it was even though I wasn’t completely dressed. Then the door closed on me. I laughed, feeling that even in this moment Annika was smiling at me half naked in the hallway of the hotel.

That night her words came to me and I wrote down the following lines:

I have faith, yet I have no religion

I have knowledge, yet I don’t understand

I have vision, yet I cannot see reason

I walk free, free of hatred

I touch you, touch with compassion

I have life, life in your heart

That night I made a decision that I would take the anger and resentment and turn the negative energy into a positive one. I decided to set up a foundation in Annika’s name, to help her spirit live on and to make sure that even out of this evil some good was created.

I returned to Bangkok and within days they had found Annika’s body. But they never found her spirit, because that remains in the magical island of Bali and is alive and well.

Mark Weingard
August 2007