Studio Sex aka Studio 69 / Exposed

Seventeen Years, Four Months, and Sixteen Days

I thought love was only for others, for those who are visible and who count. My mistake is singing inside me, great shouts of joy. It's me he wants.

The euphoria, the first touch, his fringe falling into his eyes when he looked at me; nervous, not at all arrogant. Crystal clear: the wind, the light, the feeling of absolute perfection, the sidewalk, the hot wall of the house.

I got the one I wanted.

He's the center of attention. The other girls smile and flirt, but I'm not jealous. I trust him. I know he's mine. I see him from the other end of the room, blond hair that gleams, the movement as he smooths it back, a strong hand, my hand. My chest contracts under a band of happiness; I'm breathless, tears are in my eyes. The light clings to him, making him strong and whole.

He says he can't manage without me.

His vulnerability lies just beneath his smooth skin. I lie on his arm and he draws his finger along my face.

Never leave me,

he says;

I can't live without you.

And I promise.

Saturday 28 July

There's a dead girl in Kronoberg Park."

This one had the breathless voice of a heavy drug user. Amphetamines perhaps. Annika Bengtzon took her eyes away from the screen and fumbled for a pen amid the mess on her desk.

"How do you know?" she asked, too much skepticism in her voice.

"Because I'm fucking standing next to it!"

The voice rose to falsetto and Annika held the phone away from her ear.

"Okay. How dead?" she said, realizing she sounded ridiculous.

"Shit! Stone dead! How fucking dead can you be?"

Annika looked around the newsroom uncertainly. Over at the news desk, Spike, the news editor, was talking on the phone. Anne Snapphane was fanning herself with a pad at the desk across from Annika, and Pelle Oscarsson was standing at the picture desk, clicking away at his Mac.

"Yeah, right," she said, and found a pen in an empty coffee mug. She started taking notes on the back of an old wire report from the news agency TT.

"In Kronoberg Park, you say. Whereabouts?"

"Behind a gravestone."

"A gravestone?"

The man started crying. Annika waited a few seconds in silence. She didn't know what to say next. The tip-off phone's official name was The Hot Line, but in-house it was never called anything other than Creepy Calls. The majority of the callers were either jokers or nutcases. This one was definitely a candidate for the latter.

"Hello…?" Annika said warily.

The man blew his nose. He took a couple of deep breaths and told Annika his story. Anne Snapphane was watching from the other side of the desk.

"Where do you find the energy to keep answering that phone?" Anne asked as Annika hung up. Annika didn't respond, but just continued scribbling her notes.

"I've got to get another ice cream or I'll die. Do you want anything from the café?" Anne Snapphane asked as she got to her feet.

"I've got to check something first," Annika said, lifting the receiver and dialing the direct number to the emergency switchboard. It was true. Four minutes earlier, they had received a call about a body being found next to Kronobergsgatan.

Annika got up and walked over to the news desk with the wire in her hand. Spike was still on the phone, his feet on his desk. Annika stationed herself right in front of him, demanding his attention. The news editor gave her an annoyed look.

"Suspected murder, young woman," Annika said, and waved the printout in front of him.

Spike hung up abruptly and put his feet on the floor.

"Did you get it from TT?" he asked, and clicked on his computer.

"No, Creepy Calls."

"Confirmed?"

"It was reported to the emergency services center."

Spike turned to look round the newsroom. "Okay. Who's here?"

Annika braced herself. "It's my tip-off."

"Berit!" Spike said, standing up. "This summer's murder!"

Berit Hamrin, one of the older reporters at the paper, picked up her handbag and came over to the desk.

"Where's Carl Wennergren? Is he in today?"

"No, he's off. He's sailing the Round Gotland Race," Annika said. "It's my tip-off, it came in to me."

"Pelle, photo!" Spike yelled in the direction of the picture desk.

The picture editor gave him the thumbs-up, then called out, "Bertil Strand."

"Okay," the news editor said, and turned to Annika. "What have we got?"

Annika looked at her messy notes, suddenly noticing how nervous she was. "A dead girl behind a gravestone at the Jewish Cemetery in Kronoberg Park on Kungsholmen."

"Doesn't mean it's a goddamn murder, does it?"

"She's naked and she's been strangled."

Spike gave Annika a scrutinizing look. "And you want to do it?"

Annika swallowed and nodded.

The news editor sat down again and pulled out a notepad. "Okay. You can go with Berit and Bertil. Make sure you get some good pictures, the rest of the information we can get later, but you've got to get the pics straightaway."

The photographer put the backpack with his equipment over his shoulder as he walked past the news desk. "Where is it?" he said, directing the question at Spike.

"Kronoberg Jail," Spike said, and picked up the phone.

"The park," Annika said, and looked for her bag. "Kronoberg Park. The Jewish Cemetery."

"Just make sure it isn't a domestic incident," Spike said, and dialed a London number.

Berit and Bertil Strand were already on their way to the elevator to go down to the garage, but Annika stopped in her tracks.

"What do you mean?" she said.

"Exactly what I said: we don't meddle in family matters." The news editor turned his back on her.

Annika felt anger surge through her body and reach her brain like an electric shock. "It doesn't make the girl any less dead."

Spike began talking on the phone and Annika saw it meant the end of their discussion. She looked up, and Berit and Bertil Strand had already disappeared into the elevator. She hurried over to her desk, pulled out her bag, which had disappeared under the desk, and ran after her colleagues. The elevator was gone, so she took the stairs. Damn, damn- why the hell did she always have to take up arms? She might have lost her first big assignment just so she could take the news editor to task.

"Moron," she said out loud to herself.

She caught up with the reporter and the photographer at the entrance to the garage.

"We'll work side by side and keep an open mind until we have to split up and work different parts of the story," Berit said, writing on a pad while walking. "I'm Berit Hamrin, by the way. I don't think we've said hello."

The older woman smiled at Annika. They shook hands while getting into Bertil Strand's Saab, Annika in the back, Berit in front.

"Don't slam the door so hard," Bertil Strand said with disapproval, glancing over his shoulder at Annika. "It can damage the paint-work."

Jesus Christ, Annika thought to herself. "Oops, sorry," she said to Strand.

The photographers had the use of the newspaper's vehicles more or less as company cars. Most of the photographers took their car-care responsibilities extremely seriously. Maybe this was because all photographers, to a man, were men. She had been at Kvällspressen only seven weeks but was already acutely aware of the sanctity of the photographers' cars. On several occasions, she had had to postpone scheduled interviews because the photographers had been busy getting their cars washed. At the same time it showed what importance was attached to her pieces at the newspaper.

"We're better off approaching the park from the other side and avoiding Fridhemsplan," Berit said as the car picked up speed at the junction of Rålambsvägen and Gjörwellsgatan. Bertil Strand put his foot down and drove through right as the light turned red, down Gjörwellsgatan and on toward Norr Mälarstrand.

"Could you run through the information you got from the tipster again?" Berit said, leaning her back on the car door so that she could look at Annika in the backseat.

Annika fished out the crumpled piece of paper. "Right- there's a dead woman behind a gravestone in Kronoberg Park. She's naked and has probably been strangled."

"Who called?"

"A speed freak. His pal was taking a leak by the fence and spotted her between the bars."

"Why did they think she had been strangled?"

Annika turned the paper round and read something she had scribbled in a corner of the paper. "There was no blood, her eyes were wide open, and she had injuries to her neck."

"That doesn't have to mean that she was strangled, or even murdered," Berit said, and turned to face the front again.

Annika didn't reply. She turned to look out through the tinted windows of the Saab, seeing the sun worshipers of Rålambshov Park slide past. The glittering waters of Riddarfjärd Bay lay before her. She had to squint, despite the UV coating on the windshield. Two windsurfers were heading for Långholmen Island, but slowly. The air barely moved in the heat.

"What a great summer we're having," Bertil Strand said as he turned into Polhemsgatan. "You wouldn't have thought it, after the amount of rain we had in the spring."

"Yeah, I've been lucky," Berit said. "I've just had my four weeks' holiday. Sun every single day. You can park just behind the fire station."

The Saab sped down the last few blocks along Bergsgatan. Before Bertil Strand slowed down, Berit had undone her seat belt; she jumped out of the car before he had even started parking. Annika hurried after her, gasping in the heat that hit her outside the car.

Strand parked the car while Berit and Annika set off alongside a redbrick, fifties building. The narrow asphalt path skirting the park was bordered by high paving stones.

"There's a flight of steps farther on," Berit said, already out of breath.

Six steps later they were in the park proper. They ran along a path leading up to a well-equipped kids' playground.

On the right were several barrackslike buildings. Annika read the sign Playground as she ran past. There was a sandbox, benches, picnic tables, a jungle gym, several slides, swings, and other things that children could play with and climb on. Three or four mothers with children were in the playground; it looked as if they were packing up to leave. At the far end two police officers in uniform were talking to a fifth mother.

"I think the cemetery is farther down toward Sankt Göransgatan," Berit said.

"You know your way around here," Annika said. "Do you live in the neighborhood?"

"No. It's not the first murder in this park."

Annika saw that the police officers were each holding a roll of official blue-and-white tape. They were evacuating the playground to cordon it off from the public.

"We're just in time," she mumbled to herself.

They veered to the right, following a path that took them to the top of a hill.

"Down to the left," Berit said.

Annika ran ahead. She crossed two paths, and there it was. She saw a row of Stars of David standing out against the deep green foliage.

"I see it!" she yelled over her shoulder, noting out of the corner of her eye that Bertil Strand was catching up with Berit.

The fence was black, made of beautifully rendered wrought iron. Each bar was crowned with a stylized Star of David. She was running on top of her shadow and realized she was approaching the cemetery from the south.

She stopped on the crest of the hill; she had a good view from here. The police hadn't cordoned off this part of the park yet, which they had on the north and west sides.

"Hurry up!" she yelled to Berit and Bertil Strand.

The fence surrounded a small cemetery with dilapidated graves and granite headstones. Annika quickly estimated there were around thirty of them. Nature had virtually taken over; the place looked overgrown and neglected. The enclosure was no more than thirty by forty yards, the fence at the far end no more than five feet high. The entrance was on the west side, facing Kronobergsgatan and Fridhemsplan. She saw a team from their main tabloid rival stop at the cordon. A group of men in plain clothes were inside the cemetery, on the east side. That's where the woman's body lay.

Annika shuddered. She couldn't afford to screw this up, her first proper tip-off.

Just as Berit and Bertil Strand came up behind her, she saw a man open the gates down on Kronobergsgatan. He was carrying a gray tarpaulin. Annika gasped. They hadn't covered her up yet!

"Quick!" she called over her shoulder. "We might be able to get some pictures from up here."

A police officer appeared on the hill in front of them. He was unrolling the blue-and-white tape. Annika rushed up to the fence, hearing Bertil Strand jogging heavily behind her. The photographer used the last few yards to wriggle out of the backpack and fish out a Canon and a telephoto lens. The man with the gray tarpaulin was only three yards away when Bertil fired off a sequence of pictures in among the bushes. He moved a yard to the side and fired off another. The officer with the tape yelled something; the men inside the cemetery were made aware of their presence.

"It's in the bag," Bertil Strand said. "We've got enough."

"Hey, you, goddammit!" the officer with the tape called out. "We're cordoning off this area!"

A man in a flowery Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts came toward them from inside the cemetery.

"That's enough now, guys," he said.

Annika looked around, not knowing what to do. Bertil Strand was already on his way to the footpath leading down to Sankt Göransgatan. Both the man in front of her and the police officer behind her looked mad. She realized she would have to start to leave soon, or they would make her. Instinctively, she moved sideways to where Strand had taken his first shots.

She peered in between the black iron bars, and there she was, the dead woman. Her eyes were staring into Annika's from a distance of ten feet. They were clouded and gray. Her head was thrown back, the upper arms stretched out above her head; one of her hands seemed to have injuries to it. Her mouth was wide open in a mute cry; the lips were a brownish black. She had a big bruise on the left breast and the lower part of her stomach had a greenish hue.

Annika took in the entire picture, crystal clear, in a moment. The coarseness of the gray stone in the background; the sultry summer vegetation; the shadow play of the foliage; the humidity and the heat; the revolting stench.

Then the tarpaulin made the whole scene gray. They weren't covering the body with it, but the fence.

"Time to move on," the officer with the tape said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

What a cliché, Annika found herself thinking as she turned around. Her mouth was dry. She noticed that all sounds were coming from a long way off. She moved, as if floating, toward the path where Berit and Bertil Strand were waiting behind the cordon, the photographer with a bored look of disapproval, Berit almost smiling.

The policeman followed her, his shoulder against her back. Annika thought it must be hot in uniform on a day like this.

"Did you manage to get a look?" Berit asked.

Annika nodded and Berit wrote something in her pad.

"Did you ask the detective in the Hawaiian shirt anything?"

Annika shook her head and ducked under the cordon, kindly assisted by the policeman.

"Pity. Did he say anything?"

" 'That's enough now, guys,'" Annika quoted him.

Berit smiled. "What about you, are you okay?"

Annika nodded. "Sure, I'm fine. And she could very well have been strangled; her eyes were almost popping out of their sockets. She must have tried to scream before she died- her mouth was wide open."

"So maybe someone heard her. We could try the neighbors later. Was she Swedish?"

Annika needed to sit down for a moment. "I forgot to ask…"

Berit smiled again. "Blond, dark, young, old?"

"Twenty, at most. Long blond hair. Big breasts. Silicone implants, probably, or saline."

Berit gave her an inquiring look.

Annika dropped down on the grass, legs crossed. "They were pointing straight up even though she was flat on her back. She had a scar in her armpit."

Annika felt her blood pressure drop and leaned her head against her knees and did some deep breathing.

"Not a pretty sight, eh?" Berit said.

"I'm okay."

After a minute or so, Annika felt better. The sounds came back to her in full force, hitting her brain with the earsplitting noise of a car factory: the roaring traffic on Drottningholmsvägen; two sirens blasting out of time; loud voices, their pitch rising and falling; clattering cameras; a child crying.

Bertil Strand had joined the small media posse that was forming down by the entrance to the cemetery; he was chatting to the Rival's photographer.

"What happens next? Who does what?" Annika asked.

Berit sat down next to Annika, looked at her notes, and began outlining their work.

"We've got to assume it's a murder, right? So we'll have a story on the actual event. This has happened: a young woman has been found murdered. When, where, and how? We need to know who found her and talk to him- have you got the guy's name?"

"A speed freak; his pal gave a care-of address for the tip-off money."

"Try and get hold of him. The emergency switchboard will have all the information on the call-out," Berit continued, ticking off her notes.

"I've got that already."

"Great. Then we need to get hold of a cop who will talk. Their press officer never says anything off the record. Did the Hawaii detective tell you his name?"

"Nope."

"Shame. Find out. I've never seen him before- he could be one of the new guys at Krim. Then we need to find out when she died and why. Have they got any suspects? What's next in the investigation? All the police aspects of the story."

"Okay," Annika said, taking notes.

"Christ, it's hot! It never gets this hot in Stockholm," Berit said, wiping the sweat from her forehead.

"I wouldn't know. I only moved here seven weeks ago."

Berit took out a Kleenex from her bag and wiped around her hairline. "Okay- we have the victim. Who was she? Who identified her? She'll have a family somewhere, no doubt brokenhearted. We should consider contacting them one way or another. We need pictures of the girl while she was alive. Was she over eighteen, would you say?"

Annika gave it some thought and remembered the plastic breasts. "Yes, probably."

"Then there'll be pictures of her from high school, wearing her white graduation cap. Talk to her friends. Find out if she had a boyfriend."

Annika took notes.

"Then there's the reaction of the neighbors," Berit went on. "This is practically downtown Stockholm, over three hundred thousand women live here. This type of crime will affect people's sense of security, their eating-out habits and whatnot. City life in general. That's two separate stories. You do the neighbors and I'll do the rest."

Annika nodded without looking up.

"There's one more angle," Berit said, dropping her pad into her lap. "Twelve or thirteen years ago, a very similar murder was committed less than a hundred yards away."

Annika looked up in surprise.

"If my memory serves me right, a young woman was sexually assaulted and murdered on some steps somewhere on the north side of the park," Berit mused. "The murderer was never caught."

"Jesus! Do you think there's a chance it could be the same guy?"

Berit shrugged. "I wouldn't think so, but we'll have to mention it. I'm sure lots of people remember it. The woman was raped and strangled."

Annika swallowed. "What an appalling job this is."

"It sure is. But it'll get a bit easier if you can get hold of that guy before he leaves."

Berit was pointing toward Sankt Göransgatan, where the man in the Hawaiian shirt was leaving the cemetery. He was walking toward a car that was parked around the corner in Kronobergsgatan. Annika leaped to her feet, grabbed her bag, and rushed down toward the street. She saw the reporter from the Rival attempting to talk to the cop, but he just waved him away.

At that moment, Annika stumbled on a ridge in the asphalt and nearly fell over. She staggered down the steep hill toward Kronobergsgatan with huge, uncontrolled steps. Unable to stop herself, she crashed into the back of the Hawaiian shirt. The cop fell straight over the hood of his car.

"What the hell!" he yelled. He turned around and grabbed Annika around the upper arms.

"I'm sorry," she whimpered. "I didn't mean to. I nearly fell."

"What the hell's the matter with you? Are you crazy or something?" He was shocked and startled.

"I'm so sorry," Annika said. As well as the humiliation, her left ankle suddenly hurt like hell.

The officer regained his composure and let go of her. He scrutinized her for a few seconds.

"You should watch your goddamn step," he said, then got into his burgundy Volvo station wagon and drove off, tires screeching.

"Shit," Annika whispered to herself. She squinted into the sun, trying to distinguish the fleet number of the car. She thought she saw 1813 written on the side. To be on the safe side, she also looked at the registration number and tried to memorize it.

Annika turned around and realized that the little group of media people by the cemetery entrance were all staring at her. She blushed from her hairline down to her neck. She quickly bent over and collected the things that had fallen out of her bag when she'd collided with the cop: her notepad, a packet of chewing gum, a near empty bottle of Pepsi, and three sanitary napkins in green plastic covers. Her pen was still in the bag, so she hauled it out and quickly jotted down the registration and fleet numbers of the car.

The reporters and photographers stopped staring at her and resumed chatting among themselves. Annika noted that Bertil Strand was organizing an ice cream run.

She threw her bag across her shoulder and slowly approached her colleagues, who didn't seem to be paying her any attention now. Apart from the reporter from the rival tabloid, a middle-aged man who had his picture byline next to his stories, she didn't recognize a single one of them. There was a young woman with a tape recorder marked Radio Stockholm; two photographers from two different picture agencies; the Rival's photographer; and three other reporters that she couldn't place at all. No TV teams were present- the public television local news only did a five-minute broadcast a day during the summer, and the local commercial stations only did agency stories. The morning broadsheets would probably get pics from the agencies and supplement with TT copy. The public radio news show Eko hadn't sent anyone, nor would they, she knew that. One of Annika's former colleagues at the local paper where she normally worked had been employed there as a casual one summer. Contemptuously, she had explained to Annika, "We leave murders and that kind of thing to the tabloids. We're not scavengers."

Already, back then, Annika had realized that this statement said more about her colleague than about Eko, but sometimes she wondered. Why shouldn't public radio find the curtailed life of a young woman worth covering? She couldn't understand it.

The rest of the people lining the cordons were curious passersby.

She slowly moved past and away from the group. The police- both the Krim, the criminal investigation department, and the forensic people- were busy inside the fence. No ambulance was in sight. She looked at her watch: seventeen minutes past one. Twenty-five minutes since she had received the tip-off on Creepy Calls. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do next. It didn't seem like a good idea to talk to the police now; they'd only get annoyed at her. She realized that they didn't know much yet, not who the woman was, how she'd died, or who'd done it.

She moved toward Drottningholmsvägen. There was a wedge of shade next to the houses on the west side of Kronobergsgatan; she went over and leaned against the wall. It was rough and hot. It was only fractionally cooler here and the air still burned her throat. She was thirsty beyond belief and pulled out the Pepsi bottle from her bag. The screw top had leaked and the bottle was tacky, making her fingers stick to the label. Damn this heat!

She drank the warm, sugary liquid and then hid the bottle in a doorway among some bags with newspapers left out for recycling.

The reporters over by the police line had moved to the opposite side of the street. They had to be waiting for Bertil Strand. For some reason, the situation made her sick. Ten yards away, the flies were buzzing around a dead body while the media people were looking forward to their ice cream.

Her gaze wandered over the park. Its steep, grassy hills were dotted with clumps of large trees. From her place in the shade she could distinguish lime, beech, elm, and birch. Some of the trees were huge; others were newly planted. The trees growing among the graves were mainly gigantic lime.

I've got to have something more to drink, she thought.

She sat down on the sidewalk and leaned her head against the wall. Something had to happen soon. She couldn't stay here much longer.

She looked at the media scrum; it was beginning to thin out. The girl from Radio Stockholm was gone and Bertil Strand had returned with the ice cream. Berit Hamrin was nowhere in sight; Annika wondered where she'd disappeared to.

I'll wait for another five minutes, she thought. Then I'll go and buy something to drink before I start talking to the neighbors.

She attempted to conjure up a map of Stockholm in her head, placing herself on it. This was the heart of Stockholm, the stony city within the old tollgates. She looked at the fire station to the south. It lay on Hantverkargatan, her own street. She lived only about half a mile away from here, on Kungsholms Square, at the back of the block of a building scheduled for renovation. Still, she'd never been here. Underneath her lay Fridhemsplan's subway station; if she concentrated, she could just about feel the trains' vibrations spreading through the concrete and asphalt. Straight in front she could see a ventilation shaft for the tunnels, a urinal, and a park bench. Maybe the guy who phoned in the tip sat there speeding in the hot sun with the pal who later went to take a piss. Why didn't he use the urinal? Annika asked herself. She thought about it for a while and eventually went over to take a look. When she opened the door, she knew why. The stench inside was absolutely unbearable. She recoiled and quickly shut the door.

A woman with a stroller came walking from the playground toward Annika. The child in the stroller was holding a bottle containing a red liquid. Puzzled, the mother looked at the cordon along the sidewalk.

"What happened?" she asked Annika.

Annika straightened up and hoisted her bag higher up on her shoulder. "The police have cordoned off the area."

"I can see that. Why?"

Annika hesitated. She glanced over to the other reporters and saw that they were watching her. She quickly moved a few steps closer to the woman.

"There's a dead woman in there," she said quietly, and pointed at the cemetery. The woman turned pale.

"No kidding?"

"Do you live around here?"

"Yes, just around the corner. We went down to Rålambshov Park, but the place was so crowded you couldn't sit down, so we came here instead. Is she in there now?"

The woman craned her neck and tried to see in between the lime trees. Annika nodded.

"Jesus, that's so creepy!" the woman exclaimed, and looked at Annika with big eyes.

"Do you often come this way?"

"Sure, every day. My son, Skruttis, goes to playgroup in the park."

The woman couldn't tear her eyes away from the cemetery. Annika watched her for a few moments.

"Did you hear anything out of the ordinary last night or this morning? Any cries in the park or stuff like that?"

The woman pushed out her lower lip, gave it some thought, and then shook her head. "This neighborhood is always quite noisy. During the first few years I used to wake up every time the fire brigade turned out, but not anymore. Then there's the drunks down on Sankt Eriksgatan. Not the winos that live in the hostel- they're knocked out long before nighttime- but the regular drinkers going home. They can keep you awake all night. But the worst is the ventilation system at McDonald's. It's on all night and it's driving me insane. How did she die?"

"No one knows yet," Annika said. "So there were no screams, no one crying for help or anything?"

"Oh, sure there were. There's always a lot of bawling around here on Friday nights. Here you go, honey…"

The child had dropped its bottle and was whining; the mother picked it up and put it back in his hands. She nodded toward Bertil Strand and the others. "Are they the hyenas?"

"Yep. The guy with the ice cream cone's my photographer. And I'm Annika Bengtzon from Kvällspressen."

She held out her hand and the two women shook hands. Despite her contemptuous remark, the woman seemed impressed.

"I'm Daniella Hermansson. Pleased to meet you. Are you going to write about this?"

"Yes, or somebody else at the paper will. Do you mind if I take some notes?"

"No, go ahead."

"Can I quote you?"

"I spell it with two l's and two s's- just like it sounds."

"So you say it's always noisy around here?"

Daniella Hermansson stood on tiptoe and tried to peek at Annika's notepad. "Oh, yeah, extremely noisy, especially on the weekend."

"So if someone were to cry for help, no one would react?"

Daniella Hermansson pushed out her lower lip again and shook her head. "It would depend a bit on what time it was. By four, half past five, it calms down. Then it's just the ventilation system making a noise. I sleep with the window open all the year round- it's good for the skin. But I didn't hear anything."

"Do your windows face the front or the back?"

"Both. We're in the corner apartment on the third floor there. The bedroom faces the back, though."

"And you walk past here every day, you say?"

"Yes, I'm still on maternity leave, and all the mothers in my parenting group meet in the playground every morning. But, darling…"

The child had finished the red liquid and was howling like a siren. His mother bent down and with practiced movements put her middle finger down the back of the child's diaper, then pulled the finger out and smelled it.

"Whoops. It's time for us to go home. A new diaper and a little snooze, eh, Skruttis?"

Skruttis fell silent as he found a ribbon from his hat to chew on.

"Could we take your picture?" Annika quickly asked.

Daniella Hermansson's eyes grew wide. "My picture? You're kidding?" She laughed and pulled her hand through her hair.

Annika looked her straight in the eye. "The woman lying in that cemetery has probably been murdered. We feel it's important to give an accurate description of the neighborhood. I live down on Kungsholms Square myself."

Daniella Hermansson's eyes nearly popped out of her head. "Murdered? Jesus Christ! Here, on our block?"

"No one knows exactly where she died, only that her body was discovered here."

"But this is such a good neighborhood," Daniella Hermansson said, and bent down to pick up her son. The boy lost his ribbon and began howling again. Annika held on to her bag and started walking over to Bertil Strand. "Wait here," she said to Daniella over her shoulder.

The photographer was busy licking the inside of the ice cream wrapper when Annika reached him.

"Can you come with me for a moment?" she said quietly.

Bertil Strand slowly scrunched up the wrapper in a ball and pointed to the man next to him. "Annika, this is Arne Påhlson, reporter at the Rival. Have you met?"

Annika cast down her eyes, held out her hand, and mumbled her name. Arne Påhlson's hand was moist and warm.

"Have you finished your ice cream?" Annika asked tartly.

Bertil Strand's suntan got one shade darker. He didn't like being rebuked by someone who wasn't even on the staff of the paper. Instead of replying, he just bent down and picked up his backpack. "Where are we going?"

Annika turned around and walked back to Daniella. Annika glanced up at the cemetery; the plainclothes police were still there talking to each other. The child was still bawling, but his mother wasn't paying him any attention. She was busy painting her lips with a lipstick from a little light green box with a mirror on the inside of the lid.

"So how does it feel to find out that a dead woman's lying outside your bedroom window?" Annika asked with her pen poised on the pad.

"Awful," Daniella said. "I mean, all the nights my girlfriends and I have returned home after a night out. It could have been any one of us."

"Will you be more careful now?"

"Definitely," Daniella said without hesitation. "I'll never walk through that park at night again. Sweetheart, what's the matter now?"

Daniella bent down to pick up her boy again. Annika took notes and felt the hair on her neck stand on end. This was quite good, actually. It might even make a headline if she cut it a bit.

"Thanks a million," she said quickly. "Can you look at Bertil? What's your boy's name? How old is he? How old are you? And how would you like us to refer to you?… 'On maternity leave.' Okay. Maybe you shouldn't look quite so happy…"

Daniella Hermansson's practiced movie-star smile, the one she probably adopted for all holiday and Xmas snaps, faded. Instead, she looked confused and lost. Bertil Strand was snapping away, circling the woman and her child with short, cautious dance steps.

"Can I call you later if anything comes up? What's your phone number? And the code for the door from the street? You know, just in case."

Daniella Hermansson put the child in the stroller and walked off alongside the police cordon. To her annoyance, Annika saw Arne Påhlson from the Rival stop the woman as she walked past. Luckily, the child was by now howling so badly that the woman wouldn't wait for a second interview. Annika breathed again.

"Don't try to teach me my job," Strand said to Annika.

"Fine. But tell me, what would have happened if they'd taken the body away while you were busy buying ice cream for the competition?"

Bertil Strand gave her a contemptuous look. "In the field we're not competitors. Out here we're colleagues."

"I think you're wrong. We lose out if we hunt as a pack. We ought to keep more to ourselves, all of us."

"No one would gain anything by that."

"Well, I think it would help our credibility with our readers."

Bertil Strand swung the cameras onto his shoulder. "Well, thanks for telling me. I've only been at the paper for fifteen years."

Shit! Annika thought as the photographer walked back to his "colleagues." Why can't I ever keep my big mouth shut?

She suddenly felt dizzy and weak. I've got to get something to drink, and fast, she thought. To her great relief, she saw Berit walking toward her from the direction of Hantverkargatan.

"Where have you been?" Annika called out, moving in her direction.

"I went back to the car to make some calls. I ordered up the cuttings on the other murder and had a chat with a few police contacts."

In vain, Berit was trying to cool herself by waving her hand in front of her face. "Anything happen?"

"I talked to a neighbor. That's all."

"Have you had anything to drink? You look a bit pale."

Annika wiped the sweat from her brow. Suddenly she felt close to tears. "I really stuck my foot in it with Bertil Strand just now," she said in a subdued voice. "I said that we shouldn't mingle with our competitors at a crime scene."

"I agree with you. Bertil Strand doesn't, I know that. He can be a bit difficult to work with sometimes, but he's a good photographer. Why don't you go and get something to drink? I'll hold the fort."

Annika gratefully left Kronobergsgatan and walked down along Drottningholmsvägen. She was in line to buy a bottle of mineral water in the kiosk on Fridhemsplan when she saw the ambulance turn left on Sankt Göransgatan and head for the park.

"Shit!" she cried out, and ran straight out into the traffic, forcing a taxi to slam on the brakes. She crossed Sankt Eriksgatan and headed back to the park. She thought she was going to faint before she reached it.

The ambulance had stopped at the top of Sankt Göransgatan; a man and a woman got out.

"Why are you so out of breath?" Berit asked.

"The car! The body!" Annika panted, bending over with her hands on her knees, gasping for air.

Berit sighed. "The ambulance will be here for a while. The body isn't going to disappear. Don't worry- we won't miss anything."

Annika dropped her bag onto the sidewalk and straightened up. "I'm sorry."

Berit smiled. "Go and sit down in the shade. I'll go and buy you something to drink."

Annika slunk away and sat down. She felt like an idiot. "I didn't know," she mumbled. "I don't know how this works."

She sat down on the sidewalk and leaned against the wall again. The ground burned her through her thin skirt.

The man and the woman from the ambulance were waiting inside the cordon, just inside the entrance to the cemetery. Three men remained inside the iron fence. Annika guessed that two of them were forensic people and the third one a photographer. They moved with great care, bending over, picking things up, straightening up. She was too far away to see exactly what they were doing.

A few minutes later Berit returned with a big, ice-cold Coke. Annika unscrewed the top and drank so quickly that the bubbles rose the back way and came out of her nose. She coughed and spluttered, spilling Coke on her skirt.

Berit sat down next to her and took out a bottle of her own from her bag.

"What are they doing in there?" Annika asked.

"Securing evidence. They use as few people as possible and move around as little as they can. Usually there's only two crime scene technicians and maybe an investigator from Krim."

"Could that have been the guy in the Hawaiian shirt?"

"Maybe," Berit said. "If you look closely, you'll see that one of the technicians is holding his hand close to his mouth. He's using a Dictaphone, recording everything he sees at the scene. It could be an exact description of the position of the body, the way the clothes are creased. Things like that."

"She wasn't wearing any clothes."

"Maybe the clothes were scattered around, they record that kind of thing too. When they've finished, the body will be moved to the forensic medical unit in Solna."

"For autopsy?"

Berit nodded. "The technicians will stay behind and comb the whole park. They'll go over it inch by inch to secure any traces of blood, saliva, hairs, fibers, semen, footprints, tire imprints, fingerprints- anything you can think of."

Annika watched the men inside the fence in silence. They were leaning over the body; she could see their heads bob up and down against the background of the gray tarpaulin. "Why did they cover the fence instead of the body?"

"They don't cover up the body at the scene of a crime unless it's going to rain or snow. It's all about evidence; they're trying to disturb the area as little as possible. The screen is only to shut the place off from people's view. It makes sense."

Then, suddenly, the technicians and the photographer all stood up.

"It's time," Berit said.

All the journalists got up simultaneously. Everybody went up to the cordon as if at a given signal. The photographers all loaded the cameras that hung around their necks. A few new journalists had joined the group; Annika counted five photographers and six reporters. One of them, a young guy, had a laptop marked TT, the news agency, and a woman was holding a notepad with the logo of the broadsheet Sydsvenskan on it.

The man and the woman from the ambulance opened the back doors and pulled out a collapsible gurney. Calmly and methodically, they unfolded it, pushing the various clasps into place. Annika felt the hair on her arms stand on end. A puff of fizz from the Coke rose into her mouth and made her burp. They'll roll out the body any moment now. She was ashamed of her morbid excitement.

"Could you move to the side?" the woman with the gurney said.

Annika looked down at the gurney rolling past. It shook as the wheels crunched over the uneven asphalt. On top of it lay a neatly folded bluish gray plastic sheet. The shroud, Annika thought, a cold thrill traveling up her spine.

The man and the woman ducked under the cordon. The orange sign saying No Entry swung after them.

The ambulance drivers reached the body. The men and the woman stood in a group discussing something. Annika felt the sun burn on the back of her arms.

"Why is it taking so long?" she asked Berit in a stage whisper.

Berit didn't reply. Annika took up the Coke bottle and drank some.

"Isn't it horrible?" the woman from Sydsvenskan said.

"Oh, yeah, it is," Annika said.

The ambulance people unfolded the plastic sheet and spread it over the gurney, its bluish gray, shiny surface flapping among the leaves. They lifted the young woman onto the gurney and wrapped her in the sheet. Annika suddenly felt tears come into her eyes. She saw the woman's mute scream, her clouded eyes, the bruised breasts.

I mustn't start crying now, she thought, and stared hard at the worn gravestones. She tried to distinguish names or dates, but the inscriptions were in Hebrew. The delicate characters had almost been erased over time by the elements. All at once, everything went very quiet. Even the traffic down on Drottningholmsvägen stopped for a moment. The sunlight that filtered through the enormous crown of the lime trees was dancing across the granite.

The cemetery was here before the city surrounding it. And the trees were here, smaller and frailer, when the dead were buried. But their leaves would have performed the same shadow play on the stone when these graves had just been dug.

The gates were opening and the photographers got down to work. One of them pushed past Annika, jabbing an elbow so hard in her midriff that she lost her breath for a moment. Taken by surprise, she stumbled backward and lost sight of the gurney. She quickly moved farther away.

Which direction is her head pointing? Annika found herself wondering. They wouldn't roll her away feet first.

The photographers accompanied the gurney alongside the cordon. All the camera motors were rattling out of time; the odd flash went off. Bertil Strand was jumping up and down behind his colleagues, alternately snapping away above their heads and in between them. Annika held on to the back door of the ambulance; the paintwork burned her fingers. The driver stopped five inches away from her, operating the various mechanisms of the car. Annika noticed that he was perspiring. She looked down at the plastic-covered body.

I wonder if the sun has kept her warm, she thought.

I wonder who she was.

I wonder if she knew she was going to die.

I wonder if she had time to be scared.

All at once, tears were rolling down Annika's face. She let go of the door, turned around, and took a few steps away. The ground was moving, she felt as if she was going to throw up.

"It's the smell. And the heat," Berit said, suddenly at her side. She put her arm around Annika's shoulders and pulled her away from the ambulance.

Annika wiped away the tears.

"Let's go back to the paper," Berit said.

Patricia woke up with a strange feeling of suffocation. There was no air in the room, she couldn't breathe. She slowly became aware of her body on the mattress, naked and glistening. She lifted her left arm and the sweat trickled down her ribs and into her navel.

Jesus Christ, she thought, I've got to have air! Water!

For a moment she contemplated calling out to Josefin, but something made her change her mind. The apartment was completely quiet, so either Jossie was asleep or she'd gone out. Patricia groaned and rolled over, wondering what time it could be. Josefin's black curtains shut out the daylight and made the room swim in a musty gloom. There was a smell of sweat and dust.

"It's a bad omen," Patricia had said when Josefin had come home with the thick, black material. "You can't have black curtains. The windows will be wearing mourning- you'd stop the flow of positive energy."

Josefin was annoyed. "Then don't have them!" she'd exclaimed. "Nobody's forcing you. But I want my room dark. How the heck are we going to be able to work nights if we don't get to sleep during the day? I bet you didn't think of that!"

Jossie got her way, of course. She usually did.

Patricia sat up on the mattress with a sigh. The sheet underneath her was screwed up in a damp knot in the middle of the bed. Angrily, she tried to straighten it out.

It's Jossie's turn to do the shopping, she thought, so I don't suppose there's anything in the fridge.

She got out of bed and went to the bathroom. She borrowed Josefin's bathrobe and returned to her own room to open the curtains. The light hit her like nails in the eyes and she quickly closed them again. Instead she opened one of the windows wide, wedging in a flowerpot so it wouldn't slam shut. The air outside was even hotter than inside, but at least it didn't smell.

She slowly walked out to the kitchen, filled a big beer glass with tap water, and drank it greedily. The kitchen clock showed five to two. Patricia was pleased with herself. She hadn't slept through the whole day, even though she'd worked until five this morning.

She placed the glass on the kitchen counter, between an empty pizza box and three mugs with dried-out tea bags in them. Jossie was terrible at cleaning. Patricia sighed and cleared things away, throwing out the trash, doing the dishes, and wiping counters without thinking.

She was just about to step in the shower when the phone rang.

"Is Jossie there?"

It was Joachim. Patricia straightened up and made an effort to seem alert.

"I just got up, so I don't know, actually. Maybe she's sleeping."

"Be a darling and wake her up, will you?" Succinct but friendly.

"En seguida, Joachim. Hang on a moment…"

She tiptoed to the end of the hallway to Josefin's room and knocked softly on the doorpost. There was no reply, so she opened the door slightly and peeked in. The bed was exactly as unmade as it had been the day before when Patricia had left for work. She hurried back to the phone.

"No, I'm sorry, I think she's gone out."

"Where to? Who is she seeing?"

Patricia gave a nervous laughter. "Nobody- or you, maybe? I don't know. It's her turn to do the shopping…"

"But she slept at home?"

Patricia tried to sound indignant. "Of course she did! Where else?"

"That's exactly it, Titsie. Do you have any suggestions?"

He hung up just as the anger started to surface in Patricia's mind. She hated it when he called her that. He did it to humiliate her. He didn't like her. He felt she stood between him and Josefin.

Patricia slowly walked back to Josefin's bedroom and took another peek inside. The bed really did look exactly as it had the night before, the cover on the floor to the left of the bed and Josefin's red swimsuit on the pillow.

Jossie had never come home last night.

The realization made Patricia feel ill at ease.

The air in the main entrance of the newspaper hit them like a cold, wet towel. The damp glistened on the marble floor and made the bronze bust of the newspaper shine. Annika shuddered and felt her teeth give a rattle.

Tore Brand, the porter, sat sulking in the glassed-in reception booth in the far left-hand corner. "You're all right!" he shouted as the small group passed him on their way to the elevators. "You can go outside and defrost now and then. This place is so damn cold that I've had to bring the car heater in so I don't get frostbite!"

Annika tried to smile but didn't quite manage. Tore Brand hadn't been allowed to take this year's holiday until August, something he considered to be little less than harassment.

"I'm going to the bathroom," Annika said to the others. "You go on upstairs."

She rounded Tore Brand's little cubicle and could smell that he'd smoked a cigarette on the sly again. After a moment's hesitation she chose the disabled washroom before the ladies'. She didn't want to be jostling in front of the sinks with a bunch of sweaty women.

Tore Brand's plaintive voice followed her into the washroom. She locked the door by turning the door handle upward and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked awful. Her face was blotchy and her eyes red. She opened the cold-water tap and, holding up her hair, bent forward and let the cold water run over her neck. The enamel of the sink was icy cold against her forehead. A rivulet of water trickled down her spine.

Why do I do this to myself? she thought. Why am I not lying on the grass by Pine Lake, reading Vogue?

She pushed the red button on the hand dryer, held out the neckband, and tried to dry her armpits. Without much success.

Anne Snapphane's desk was empty when Annika got back to the newsroom. Two mugs with dried-up coffee were on the desk, but the Coke was gone. Annika figured Anne had been sent out on a job.

Berit was talking to Spike over by the news desk. Annika flopped onto her chair and let the bag fall to the floor. She felt dizzy.

"So, how was it?" Spike called out.

Annika hastily dug out her pad and walked over to the desk.

"Young, naked, plastic tits," she said. "Lots of makeup. She'd been crying. No decomposition, so she can't have been there for very long. As far as I could see, her clothes weren't anywhere nearby." She looked up from her pad.

Spike gave her a nod of approval. "Well, I'll be damned… Any terrified neighbors?"

"A twenty-nine-year-old mother, Daniella, with a small child. She'll never cross the park at night again. 'It could have been me,' she said."

Spike took notes, nodding appreciatively. "Do they know who she is?"

Annika pressed her lips together and shook her head. "Not that we know."

"Let's hope they release her name during the evening. You didn't see anything that indicated where she lived?"

"Her address tattooed on the forehead, you mean? Sorry…"

Annika made a smile that Spike did not return.

"Okay, Berit, you do the police hunt for the killer, who the girl was- check with her family. Annika, you do the scared mother and check the cuttings on the old murder."

"We'll probably be working together a bit," Berit said. "Annika has information from the crime scene that I don't have."

"Do whatever you like," he said. "I want a report on how far you've got before I go to the handover at six."

He swiveled round in his chair, lifted the receiver, and dialed a number.

Berit closed her pad and walked over to her desk. "I've got the cuttings," she said over her shoulder. "We could go through them together."

Annika borrowed a chair from the next desk. Berit took out a heap of yellowed sheets from an envelope marked "Eva Murder." The killing had obviously taken place before the newspaper was computerized.

"Anything that's more than ten years old you'll find only in the paper archive," Berit said.

Annika picked up a folded sheet, the paper feeling stiff and brittle. She ran her eyes over the page. The typeface of the headline seemed straggly and old-fashioned. A four-column black-and-white photo showed the north side of the park.

"I was right," Berit said. "She was climbing the steps and somewhere halfway up she met someone going down. She didn't get any farther. The murder was never solved."

They sat down on opposite sides of Berit's desk and became absorbed in the old stories. Berit had written several of them. The murder of young Eva really was similar to today's.

A warm summer night twelve years ago, Eva had been climbing the steep hill that was a continuation of Inedalsgatan. She was found next to the seventeenth step, half-naked and strangled.

For a few days the stories were both numerous and long, with big pictures high up on the page. There were reports of the murder investigation and summaries of the autopsy report; interviews with neighbors and friends; and a piece with the headline "Leave Us in Peace." Eva's parents were pleading with someone for something, holding each other and gazing earnestly into the camera. There were public rallies against violence- violence against women and violence on the streets. A memorial service was held in the Kungsholm Church, and a mountain of flowers collected at the murder scene.

Strange that I can't remember any of this, Annika thought. I was old enough to understand things like that.

As time went by the stories became shorter. The pictures shrank and ended up farther down on the page. Three and a half years after the murder, a short item reported the police bringing someone in for questioning but subsequently releasing him. After that it went quiet.

Now Eva was newsworthy again, twelve years after her death. The comparison was inevitable.

"So what do we do with this?" Annika wondered.

"Just a short summary," Berit replied. "There's not much else we can do. I'll type out what we've got- you do your mother and I'll do Eva. By the time we've done that, Krim ought to be on the case and then we can start making some calls."

"Are we in a hurry?" Annika asked.

Berit smiled. "Not really. Deadline isn't until four forty-five A.M. But it would be good if we finished a bit before, and this is a good start."

"What'll happen to our stories in the paper?"

Berit shrugged. "Maybe they won't get printed at all. You never know. It depends on what's going on in the world and on how much paper we've got."

Annika nodded. The number of pages in the paper often determined whether a story would be printed. It was the same at Katrineholms-Kuriren, the provincial paper were she normally worked. In the middle of the summer, the management would economize on paper, partly because ad revenue went down in July, partly because nothing much happened. The number of pages always went up or down by four, as there were four pages to a printing plate.

"I have a feeling this may get quite high priority," Berit said. "First the news event of the murder itself, the police hunt, and then a spread on the girl, who she was. After that they'll have the recap of the Eva murder, your frightened mother, and last, possibly, a piece on 'Stockholm, City of Fear.' That's my guess."

Annika leafed through the cuttings. "How long have you worked here, Berit?"

Berit sighed and gave a faint smile. "It'll be twenty-five years soon. I was about your age when I came here."

"Have you been on the crime desk all this time?"

"Christ, no! I started out with animals and cooking. Then, in the early eighties, I was a political reporter. It was the thing to have women in such positions at the time. Then I had a stint on the foreign desk, and now I'm here."

"Where have you liked it the best?"

"I enjoy writing the most- doing the research and finding my way through something. I like it a lot at the crime desk. I can do my own thing, pretty much. I often dig out my own stuff. Pass me those cuttings, will you? Thanks."

Annika stood up and walked over to her desk. Anne Snapphane hadn't returned. The place seemed empty and quiet when she was gone.

Annika's Mac had gone into some kind of power-saving state; the loud sound when it restarted made her jump. She quickly wrote what Daniella Hermansson had said to her: intro, body text, and a caption. Then she filed her copy into the list of stories held on the newsroom server. That's it! Great!

She was just off to get some coffee when her phone rang. It was Anne Snapphane.

"I'm at Visby Airport!" she shouted. "Was it a murder in the park?"

"You bet," Annika said. "Naked and strangled. What are you doing on Gotland?"

"Forest fire. The whole island's going up."

"The whole island? Or just nearly all of it?"

"Details. I'll be away until tomorrow, maybe longer. Can you feed the cats?"

"Haven't you got rid of them yet?" Annika said tartly.

Anne ignored her. "Can you change the cat litter as well?"

"Sure…"

They hung up.

Why can I never say no? Annika thought, and sighed. She went to the cafeteria and bought coffee and a can of mineral water. With the coffee in one hand and the water in the other, she restlessly paced the newsroom. The air-conditioning didn't quite make it all the way up here, so the air wasn't much cooler than outside. Spike was on the phone, of course, two big patches of sweat in his armpits. Bertil Strand stood over by the picture desk talking to Pelle Oscarsson, the picture editor. She went up to them.

"Are those the photos from Kronoberg Park?"

Oscarsson double-clicked on an icon on his big screen. The deep green of the park filled the entire surface. The harsh sunlight put flecks all over the scene. Granite gravestones floated between the wrought-iron bars. A woman's whole leg could be discerned at the center of the picture.

"It's good. Disturbing," Annika said spontaneously.

"Wait until you see this one," Picture Pelle said, and clicked again.

Annika recoiled as the clouded eyes of the woman met her own.

"These are the first few pics," Bertil Strand said. "Lucky I moved, wasn't it?"

Annika swallowed. "Daniella Hermansson?"

Picture Pelle clicked a third time. A tense Daniella with the boy in her arms looking up toward the park with frightened eyes.

"Great," Annika said.

" 'It could have been me,'" Picture Pelle said.

"How did you know that's what she said?" Annika said in surprise.

"That's what they always say," Pelle said smugly.

Annika walked on.

The doors at the editorial end of the office were all shut. She had not seen the editor in chief today. Come to think of it, she had barely seen him all week. The subeditors hadn't arrived yet. The men responsible for the layout of the paper usually turned up after seven in the evening, sunburned and drowsy after a long afternoon in the Rålambshov Park. They would start the night by guzzling two pints of black coffee each, rant about all the mistakes in yesterday's paper, and then set to work. They would try out headlines, cut copy, and clatter away at their Macs until the paper went to print at six in the morning. Annika was a little scared of them. They were loud and brash, but their skill and professionalism were great. Many of them lived for the newspaper; they worked for four nights and had four off, year in, year out. The schedule rolled on over Christmas, Easter, and Midsummer Day, four off, four on. Annika didn't know how they could stand it.

She walked over to the empty sports desk. The Eurosports Channel was showing on a TV in a corner. She stopped in front of the large windows at the far end and stood gazing at the multistory garage opposite. The concrete looked as if it were steaming in the heat. If she put her face right up to the windowpane and looked to the left, she could just make out the Russian embassy. She leaned her forehead against the glass and marveled at how cool it was. Her sweat left a sticky patch on the pane and she tried to wipe it off with her hand. She drank the last of the mineral water. It tasted metallic. She slowly walked back across the newsroom floor, an intense feeling of happiness gradually spreading inside her.

She was here. She'd been accepted. She was one of them.

It's going to work, she thought.

It was after three and time to call the police.

"We don't know enough yet," came the terse answer from a lieutenant at the duty desk of the criminal investigation department, Krim. "Call the press officer."

The police press officer had nothing to say.

The police communications center confirmed that they had dispatched patrol cars to Kronoberg Park, but she already knew that. The emergency services control room reconfirmed that they had received a police call from a private person at 12:48 P.M. There was no telephone subscription at the care-of address the tipster had given.

Annika let out a sigh. She pulled out her pad and leafed through it. Her eyes landed on the fleet number of the Hawaiian detective's car. She gave it a moment's thought, then phoned the police communications center again. The car belonged to Krim at the Norrmalm precinct. She called there.

"That car's out on loan," the officer on duty informed her after checking a list.

"To whom?" Annika wondered, her pulse quickening.

"Krim, the criminal investigation department- they haven't got their own cars. There's been a death on Kungsholmen today, you see."

"Yes, I've heard about that. Do you know anything about it?"

"Not my turf. Kungsholmen's in the Södermalm District. My guess is it's already with Krim."

"The guy who borrowed the car has short blond hair and was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Do you know who that is?"

"That must be Q."

"Q?" Annika echoed.

"That's what he's called. He's a captain in the Krim. There's another call coming in…"

Annika thanked the officer and ended the call. She phoned the switchboard again.

"I'd like to speak to Q in the Krim."

"Who?" the operator said, puzzled.

"A captain called Q who works in the Krim."

She heard the operator groan. It was probably as hot there as it was at the paper.

"One moment, please…"

The signals went through. Annika was just about to hang up when someone answered in a gruff voice.

"Is this the Krim?" she inquired.

Another groan. "Yes, this is the Krim. What's this about?"

"I'm looking for Q."

"Speaking."

Bingo!

"I wanted to apologize. My name is Annika Bengtzon. I ran into you today in Kronoberg Park."

The man sighed. She heard a scraping noise in the background, as if he was sitting down on a chair.

"Which paper are you with?"

"Kvällspressen. I'm covering over the summer. I'm not quite sure how you go about these things, how you communicate with the media. Back home in Katrineholm, I always call Johansson at Krim at three o'clock, he usually knows everything."

"Here in Stockholm you call the press officer."

"But you're in charge of the investigation?" Annika chanced it.

"So far, yes."

Yes!

"No prosecutor?" Annika quickly asked.

"There's no need for that at this stage."

"So you don't have a suspect."

The man didn't confirm it, then said, "You're smarter than you look. What are you getting at?"

"Who was she?"

He groaned again. "Listen, I told you to speak to the-"

"He says he doesn't know anything."

"Then you'll have to content yourself with that for now." He was getting annoyed.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to put pressure on you."

"Yes, you were. Now, I've got a lot-"

"She had silicone breasts," Annika said. "She wore heavy makeup and had been crying. What does that suggest?"

The man stayed silent. Annika held her breath.

"How do you know all that?" he asked. Annika could tell that he was surprised.

"Well, she hadn't been lying there for very long. The mascara was smeared, she had lipstick on her cheek. She must be at the forensic medical unit in Solna now, right? When will you tell me what you know?"

"What makes you think she had silicone breasts?"

"Ordinary breasts sort of float out to the side when you're lying down. Plastic tits point straight up. It's not that common on young girls. Was she a prostitute?"

"No, absolutely not," the police captain said, and Annika could hear him bite his tongue.

"So you do know who she was! When will you publish the name?"

"We're not one hundred percent sure yet. She hasn't been formally identified."

"But she will be soon? And what was wrong with her hand?"

"Sorry, I haven't got time now. Bye!"

Q, the police captain in charge of the investigation, hung up. Not until the tone was in her ear did Annika realize she still didn't know what his name was.

The minister shifted to fourth gear and sped into the Karlberg Tunnel. It was stifling hot inside the car, so he leaned forward and groped for the air-conditioning. The cooling system clicked on and turned to a hushed murmur. He let out a sigh. The road felt endless.

At least it'll cool down toward evening, he thought. He turned onto the North Circular and got in the lane for the tunnel leading to the E4. The different sounds of the vehicle echoed inside the car, becoming amplified and bouncing between the windows: the tires thundering against the asphalt road; the wheezing of the air-conditioning; a whining from a seal that wasn't airtight. He switched on the radio to drown out the sounds. The blaring music on the P3 station filled the car. He looked at the digital clock on the dashboard: 17:53. Studio 69, the news and current affairs program, would be starting soon.

A thought crossed his mind: I wonder if I'm going to be on.

His next thought: Of course not. Why would I be? They haven't interviewed me.

He moved over to the fast lane and overtook two French camper vans. The Haga North bus terminal flickered past, and he realized he was driving much too fast. That would be a pretty story, getting caught speeding, he reflected as he changed lanes. The vans filled his rearview mirror and hooted at his sudden braking.

It was six o'clock, and he turned up the volume to listen to the Eko news. The U.S. president was concerned about the Middle East peace process. He had invited the parties for talks in Washington the next week. It wasn't clear whether the Palestinian representatives would accept the invitation. The minister listened attentively; this could have repercussions for his own work.

Then came a report from Gotland where a big forest fire was raging. Large areas of the eastern part of the island were threatened. The reporter interviewed a worried farmer. The minister noticed that his concentration was divided. He had passed the turnoff to Sollentuna- he hadn't noticed driving past Järva Krog.

Eko left Gotland and returned to the studio reporter. Air-traffic controllers were threatening industrial action; negotiations were going on and the deadline for the union representatives' response to the employer's latest offer was 7 P.M. A young woman had been found dead in Kronoberg Park in central Stockholm. The minister pricked up his ears and turned up the volume. There wasn't much information, but signs indicated the woman had been murdered.

Eko continued with a short piece on the former Social Democratic Party secretary who had written an op-ed article on the old IB affair in one of the broadsheets. There had been a scandal involving a clandestine intelligence outfit, the Information Bureau, in the service of the ruling Social Democratic Party. The minister got annoyed. Stupid old man! He should keep his mouth shut- they were in the middle of the election campaign.

"We did it for the sake of democracy," he heard the old party secretary say floridly over the radio. "We were all that stood between Sweden and the Marxist-Leninists."

The weather report followed. The high-pressure system would stay over Scandinavia for the coming five days. By now the water table was below normal in the whole country, and the risk of forest fires was high. The ban on the lighting of fires remained. The minister sighed.

The studio reporter concluded the news bulletin just as the minister drove past the Rotebro Interchange and a hypermarket flashed by to the right. The minister waited for the howling electric-guitar signature tune of the current affairs program Studio 69, but to his surprise it didn't come on. Instead they announced yet another program with hysterically shouting youths for hosts. Shit, it was Saturday. Studio 69 was only on Monday to Friday. Annoyed, he switched off the radio. The moment he did, his cell phone rang. Judging by the signal, it was somewhere deep inside a bag on the backseat. He cursed out loud and threw his right arm back. Swerving within his lane, he pulled the suitcase onto the floor and fished out the small overnight bag. A late-model, silver Mercedes beeped at him angrily as it drove past.

"Capitalist swine," the minister muttered.

He turned the overnight bag upside down on the backseat and fished out the cell phone.

"Yes?"

"It's Karina. Hi." His press secretary. "Where are you?"

"What do you want?" he countered brusquely.

"Svenska Dagbladet wants to know whether the new crisis in the Middle East peace talks will threaten the consignment of JAS fighter aircraft to Israel."

"That's a trick question. We haven't signed any contract for JAS deliveries to Israel."

"That's not the question," the press secretary said. "The question was whether the negotiations are threatened."

"The government won't comment on potential negotiations with potential buyers of Swedish munitions or Swedish fighter aircraft. Lengthy negotiations with prospective buyers take place all the time and relatively seldom lead to any big purchases. In this case, there is no threat to any consignment, as there won't be any- at least not to my knowledge."

The press secretary took down his words in silence.

"Okay," she then said. "Have I got this right? 'The answer is no. No consignments are threatened, as no contract has been signed.'"

The minister passed his hand over his tired brow. "No, no, Karina. That's not at all what I said. I didn't answer no. It's an unanswerable question. Since there are no planned consignments, they can't be threatened. Answering no to the question would mean that the consignments will be made."

Karina breathed quietly down the phone. "Maybe you should talk to the reporter yourself."

Goddamn it, he had to fire this woman. She was brain-dead. "No, Karina. It's your job to formulate this in the appropriate manner so that my intention is conveyed with an accurate quotation. What do you think you're being paid forty thousand kronor a month to do?"

He switched off before she had time to reply. To be on the safe side, he turned off the phone and threw it into the bag.

The silence was oppressive. Slowly, the sounds of the vehicle increased inside the car: the whining of the seal, the asphalt, the wheezing of the fan. Exasperated, he tore open his top two shirt buttons and turned on the radio again. He couldn't stand the prank phone calls on P3 so he pressed a station at random and got Radio Rix. Some old hit rolled out of the speakers; one he recognized from his youth. He had some kind of memory related to this tune but couldn't place it. Some girl, probably. He resisted an impulse to switch the radio off- anything was better than the racket the car was making.

It was going to be a long night.

The subediting crowd tumbled in just before seven, noisy as ever. Their chief, Jansson, parked himself opposite Spike at the desk. Annika and Berit had just returned from the canteen- known as the Seven Rats- both having eaten beef stew.

The food sat heavily with Annika and gave her a stomachache. The boisterous subs weren't helping. She wasn't getting anywhere with her calls. She couldn't get hold of the tipster. The police press officer was kind and had the patience of a saint, but he didn't know anything. She'd spoken to him three times during the afternoon. He didn't know who the woman was, when or how she had died, or when he would find out. It all made Annika nervous and probably contributed to the stomachache.

She had to find out something about the woman for the front page, or her name wouldn't be getting on it either.

"Take it easy," Berit advised her. "We'll get there. And tomorrow is another day. If we don't get hold of the name, no one else will either."

Of course, TV2's Rapport at 7:30 P.M. led with the Middle East crisis and the U.S. president's appeal to resume the peace talks. The story lasted forever and was interspersed with questions to the Washington correspondent via satellite. Lengthy narratives in officialese were spread over agency footage from the intifada.

Next came the Gotland forest fire, with exactly the same news assessment Eko had made. The aerial footage was undeniably stunning. First, they interviewed the director of the emergency-and-rescue services, a chief fire officer from Visby. Then they showed an impromptu press conference, and Annika smiled when she spotted Anne Snapphane jostling at the front with her tape recorder in the air. Last, they interviewed a worried farmer; Annika thought she recognized his voice from Eko.

After the fire, there wasn't much in the way of news. There was a labored piece on the election campaign's making a false start. Annika thought they could have run this about six months ago. The Social Democratic prime minister, hand in hand with his new wife, was walking across the square in his Södermanland hometown. Annika smiled when she saw the sign of her old workplace in the background. The prime minister gave a brief comment to the former party secretary's article about the IB affair.

"It's not an issue we want to drag with us into the twenty-first century," he said wearily. "We're going to get to the bottom of this matter. If the need arises, we shall order a review."

Then they'd dug out a feature they must have had on file. The public service network, Sveriges Television, had sent their masterly Russia correspondent to the Caucasus to report on the long and bloody conflict in one of the old Soviet republics there. This is the advantage of the silly season, Annika thought. They show things on the news programs that you'd never get to see normally.

The aging president of the republic was interviewed. He surprised the reporter by answering the questions in Swedish.

"I was posted in the Soviet embassy in Stockholm from 1970 to 1973," he said with a strong accent.

"Amazing," Annika said.

The president was deeply concerned. Russia was supplying the rebels with arms and ammunition, whereas he suffered under the international weapons embargo imposed on his country by a UN decree. He had been the target of repeated assassination attempts, and on top of all this he had a heart condition.

"My country is suffering," he said in Swedish, and stared straight into the camera. "Children are dying. This is wrong."

Christ, what a world, Annika thought, and went to get a mug of coffee. When she returned, the news program had moved on to the smaller domestic news items: a car crash in Enköping; a young woman found dead in Kronoberg Park in Stockholm; the strike among air-traffic controllers that had been averted after the union had accepted the final offer of the arbitrator. The bulletins were read in rapid succession, accompanied by nondescript archive footage. Some cameraman had apparently dragged himself over to Kungsholmen as a few seconds of blue-and-white police tape and park foliage appeared on the screen. That was all there was.

Annika gave a sigh. This wasn't going to be easy.

Patricia was cold. She hugged herself and pulled her feet up on the seat. A combination of exhaust fumes and pollen was being whisked around by the air-conditioning. She sneezed.

"Have you got a cold?" the guy in the front passenger seat asked. He was kind of cute but he was wearing a hideous shirt. No style. She liked older guys, though; they were less eager.

"No," she replied morosely. "I have allergies."

"We'll be there in a minute."

The woman driving the car was a real bitch. She was one of those women cops who had to be twice as tough as the guys to get respect. She'd said a stiff hello to Patricia and after that had ignored her.

She's looking down on me, Patricia thought. She thinks she's better than me.

The bitch had driven along Karlbergsvägen and was crossing Norra Stationsgatan. Only buses and taxis were allowed to do this, but she didn't seem to care. They drove under the West Circular and entered the Karolinska Institute grounds the back way. They rolled past redbrick buildings from different periods; it was a town within the town. There wasn't a soul around- it was Saturday night, after all. The rust-colored palace of the Tomteboda School towered on the hill above them to the left. She turned right and parked in a small parking lot. The guy in the loud shirt got out and opened the door for Patricia.

"You can't open it from the inside," he said.

She couldn't move. She sat with her feet drawn up on the seat, her knees under her chin. Her teeth were rattling.

This isn't happening, she thought. It's just a bunch of bad omens. Think positive thoughts. Think positive thoughts…

The air was so dense that it didn't penetrate her lungs. It stopped somewhere at the back of her throat, thickening, choking her.

"I can't do it. What if it's not her?"

"We'll soon know that," the guy said. "But I understand if it's hard for you. Come on, I'll help you out of the car. Do you want something to drink?"

She shook her head but accepted the hand he was holding out to her. She climbed out onto the asphalt on shaky legs. The bitch had started down a small path, the gravel crunching under her feet.

"I feel sick," Patricia said.

"Here, have some chewing gum," the guy said.

Without replying, she stretched out her hand and took a Stimorol.

"It's down here," he said.

They walked past a sign with a red arrow saying 95:7 Dep. Forensic Med. Morgue.

She chewed the gum hard. They were walking among the trees: limes and maples. A gentle wind whispered in the leaves; perhaps the heat would finally let up.

She first saw the wide canopy roof over the entrance. It protruded from the bunkerlike building like an oversize peaked cap. The building material was the universal red brick, and the front door was of gray-black iron, heavy and shut.

STOCKHOLM MORGUE she read in capital gold lettering underneath the roof, and at the bottom, Entrance for relatives. Identification. Removal to mortuary.

The entry phone was made of chipped plastic. The guy pushed a button and a low voice answered. Patricia turned her back to the entrance and looked back at the parking lot. She had a vague sensation of the ground rocking, like the slow swell on a vast ocean. The sun had disappeared behind the Tomteboda School, and barely any daylight was left under the roof. Straight ahead was the College of Health Sciences: dull red brick, sixties. The air got heavier and heavier; the chewing gum grew in her mouth. A bird was singing somewhere inside the bushes; the sound reached her as if through a filter. She could hear her own jaws grinding.

"Welcome."

The guy put his hand on her arm so she had to turn around. The door had been opened. Another guy stood in the doorway, smiling cautiously at her. "This way, please. Step right inside."

"I've got to get rid of my gum," she said.

"You can use the bathroom," he said.

The bitch and the shirt guy let her go first. It was a small room. It reminded her of a dentist's waiting room: gray couch to the left; a low birchwood table; four chrome chairs with blue-striped seats; abstract painting on the wall- three fields in gray, brown, and blue; a mirror to the right; cloakroom straight ahead; bathroom. She walked toward it with an unpleasant feeling that she did not reach all the way down to the floor.

Are you here, Josefin?

Can you feel my spirit?

Once inside the bathroom, she locked the door and threw the chewing gum in the bin. The wire basket was empty, and the gum stuck to the edge of the plastic bin liner. She tried to flick it farther down but it stuck to her finger. There were no paper cups, so she drank water straight from the tap. It's a morgue. The place is likely to be clean, she thought.

She breathed deeply through her nose a few times and went outside. They were waiting for her by another door, between the mirror and the exit.

"This isn't going to be easy," the guy said. "This girl hasn't been washed since she was found. She's also in the same position."

Patricia swallowed. "How did she die?"

"She was strangled. She was discovered in Kronoberg Park on Kungsholmen today at lunchtime."

Patricia held her hand over her mouth; her eyes grew wide and filled with tears. "We usually take a shortcut through the park on our way home from work," she whispered.

"We don't know for sure that it is your friend," the guy said. "I want you to take your time and have a good look at her. It's not that bad."

"Is she all… bloody?"

"Oh, no, not at all, she looks fine. The body has begun to dry out, that's why the face may look a bit sunken. Her skin and her lips are discolored, but it's not too bad. She's not horrible to look at." The guy spoke in a quiet, calm voice. He took her by the hand. "Are you ready?"

Patricia nodded. The bitch opened the door. A cool puff of wind blew from the room inside. She breathed in its moisture, expecting the stench of corpses and death. But, no, the air was fresh and clean. She took a wary step onto the shiny gray-brown stone floor. The concrete walls were white, plastered, uneven. Two electric radiators were mounted on the far wall. She raised her eyes- a cupola was suspended from the ceiling. Twelve burning lamps spread a dim light in the room. It reminded her of a chapel. Two tall, wooden candlesticks. They weren't lit but Patricia could still smell wax. Between the candlesticks was the gurney.

"I can't do it."

"You don't have to," the guy said. "We can ask her parents to do it, or her boyfriend. But that'll take longer and give the murderer an even bigger lead over us. Whoever did this shouldn't be walking around."

She swallowed. A big, blue textile screen hung behind the gurney, covering the entire back door. She stared at the blue, trying to discern a pattern.

"I'll do it."

The guy, who was still holding her hand, slowly pulled her closer to the gurney. The body was lying underneath a sheet, the hands above the head.

"Anja will remove the sheet from her face now. I'll be standing right next to you all the time."

Anja was the bitch.

Patricia saw the movement in the corner of her eye, the removal of white fabric; she felt the slight draft.

He's right, she thought. She looks fine. She's dead but she doesn't look disgusting. She looks surprised, she thought, as if she hadn't quite understood what had happened.

"Jossie," Patricia whispered.

"Is it your friend?" the guy asked.

She nodded. The tears welled up; she did nothing to stop them. She reached out her hand to stroke Josefin's hair but stopped in midair.

"Jossie, what have they done to you?"

"Are you absolutely sure?"

She closed her eyes and nodded. "Oh, my God."

She put her hand over her mouth and shut her eyes tighter.

"Can you confirm that this is your roommate, Josefin Liljeberg, with one hundred percent certainty?"

She nodded and turned around, away from Jossie, away from death, away from the floating blue behind the gurney.

"I want to go," she said in a stifled voice. "Get me out of here."

The man put his arm across her shoulders and pulled her close to him, stroking her hair. She was crying uncontrollably, soaking his ugly Hawaiian shirt.

"We'd like to do a thorough search of your apartment tonight," he said. "It would be good if you could be there."

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and shook her head. "I've got to work. With Jossie gone, I'll have to do a lot more. They're probably missing me already."

He gave her a searching look. "Are you sure you can handle that?"

She nodded.

"Okay," he said. "Let's go."

The press release dropped out of the fax machine at 21:12. Since the Stockholm police press department always sent their dispatches to the newsroom secretary, Eva-Britt Qvist, who didn't work weekends, no one saw it. Not until the news agency TT filed a brief item at 21:45 did Berit notice the information.

"Press conference at police headquarters at ten!" she called out to Annika on her way to the photo room.

Annika threw a pad and pen into her bag and walked toward the exit. Expectation was churning in her stomach- now she'd find out. She was nervous; she had never been to a press conference at the Stockholm police headquarters.

"We've got to move the fax machine from Eva-Britt's desk," Berit said in the elevator.

They squeezed into Bertil Strand's Saab, just as they had last time, with Annika in the back again, in the same place. She shut the door softly this time. When the driver sped toward Västerbroplan, she noticed that she hadn't shut the door properly. She quickly locked the door, grabbed the door handle, and hoped Bertil wouldn't notice.

"Where are we going?" Strand asked.

"The entrance on Kungsholmsgatan," Berit answered.

"What do you think they'll say?" Annika wondered.

"They've probably identified her and informed the members of the family," Berit said.

"Yes, but why hold a press conference for that?"

"They haven't got any clues," Berit said. "They need maximum media exposure. They want to alert the detectives among the public while the body is fresh. We're the alarm clock."

Annika swallowed. She changed hands on the door handle and looked out the window. The evening looked dusky and gray through the tinted glass. The neon signs on Fridhemsplan blinked palely in the evening light.

"I should be sitting in a café with a glass of red wine," Bertil Strand said.

Neither of the women responded.

They drove past the park; Annika saw the police cordons sway lightly in the breeze. The photographer skirted the lush vegetation to arrive at the entrance at the top of Kungsholmsgatan.

"It's ironic," Berit said. "The biggest collection of cops in Scandinavia is sitting about two hundred yards from the murder scene."

The brown metal complex of the national police headquarters appeared on Annika's right side. She looked up toward the park through the back window. The green hill was in the shade and filled the whole window. She suddenly felt queasy, squeezed in between the metal house and the dark green of the park. She rummaged through her bag and found a roll of hard mints. She quickly put two in her mouth.

"We'll just make it," Berit said.

Bertil parked a little too close to the street corner and Annika hurried out of the car. Her wrist was stiff from holding the door all the way there.

"You look a bit pale," Berit said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Annika hung her bag over her shoulder and walked off in the direction of the entrance, chewing frenetically on the mints. A security guard from Falck Security was stationed at the gate. They showed their press cards and walked into a cramped office where most of the floor space was taken up by a photocopier. Annika looked around the room with curiosity. There were long corridors both on her right and her left.

"This is the identification and fingerprint section," Berit whispered.

"Straight on," the security guard ordered them.

It said National Criminal Investigation Department in reversed, blue lettering on the glass door ahead of them. Berit pushed it open. They entered another corridor with beige metal walls. Some ten yards ahead and to the right was the press conference room.

Bertil Strand gave a sigh. "This must be the worst place in Sweden for taking pictures. You can't even throw a flash off the ceiling. It's dark brown."

"Is that why their press officer always has red eyes?" Annika gave a faint smile.

The photographer grunted.

It was quite a large room with orange, wall-to-wall carpeting, beige-brown chairs, and blue and brown textile works of art on the walls. A small gathering of reporters had assembled at the front. Arne Påhlson and another reporter from the rival tabloid were there; they were chatting with the police press officer. Q was not there. To her surprise, Annika saw that Eko was represented, as was the highbrow broadsheet housed in the same building as Kvällspressen.

"Murder gains importance when there's a press conference, you see," Berit whispered.

The room was stifling hot, and Annika soon started sweating all over her body. As no TV stations were there to take the spaces, they sat at the front. Normally, TV cameras and all the equipment occupied the first few rows. The people from the Rival sat down next to them. Bertil Strand loaded his cameras.

The press officer cleared his throat. "Welcome," he said, and stepped onto the small podium at the front. He rounded a lectern and sat down heavily behind a conference table. He fiddled with some papers and tapped the microphone in front of him. "Well, we've asked you to come here tonight to tell you about the dead woman who was found in central Stockholm today at lunchtime." He put his papers to the side.

Sitting next to each other, Annika and Berit both took notes. Bertil Strand was walking around somewhere to the left, looking for camera angles.

"A lot of people have been phoning us during the day for information about the case, which is why we've chosen to call this press conference. First, I'll give you the facts of the case and then I'll be happy to answer your questions. Is that all right?"

The reporters nodded.

The press officer picked up the papers again. "The emergency services center received a call about a dead body at twelve forty-eight P.M. The caller was a member of the public."

The "junkie" Annika wrote on her pad.

The press officer went quiet for a moment, bracing himself.

"The victim is a young woman, Hanna Josefin Liljeberg, nineteen years of age and resident in Stockholm. The members of her family have been informed."

Annika felt a burning sensation in her stomach. The clouded eyes had been given a name. She furtively looked around at her colleagues to see how they reacted. No one batted an eyelid.

"The cause of death was strangulation. Time of death has not been definitely established but is thought to be sometime between three and seven this morning." The press officer hesitated before continuing, "The postmortem points to the young woman having been sexually assaulted."

An image flashed inside Annika's head- breast, eyes, screams.

The press officer looked up from his papers. "We need the help of the public to catch whoever did this," he said wearily. "We haven't got much to go on."

Annika glanced at Berit; she had been right.

"We're working with the theory that the place of discovery is the place of murder; we have forensic evidence to indicate this. The last person to see Josefin alive, apart from her killer, was her roommate. They parted at the restaurant where they both work just before five A.M. This means that we can narrow down the time of her death by another two hours."

A few camera flashes went off. Annika assumed they were Bertil Strand's.

The press officer recapitulated, "Hanna Josefin Liljeberg was murdered in Kronoberg Park in Stockholm between five and seven A.M. The injuries to her body indicate that she was raped."

His gaze had traveled over the reporters attending the press conference and finally landed on Annika. She swallowed.

"We ask anyone, I repeat, anyone, who was in the vicinity of Kronoberg Park, Parkgatan, Hantverkargatan, or Sankt Göransgatan between five and seven this morning to contact us. The police will gratefully accept all information that could be of interest. Several phone lines are open for the public to call in to, with a choice of speaking to a telephone operator or an answering machine. An incident may seem insignificant to an outsider, but it may fit into a larger pattern. That is why we're asking anyone who saw anything out of the ordinary at the time to contact us."

He fell silent. The dust in the air was still. Annika's throat burned from the dryness.

The reporter from the highbrow broadsheet cleared his throat. "Have you got any suspects?"

Annika looked at him with surprise. Didn't he understand what the guy had just said?

"No," the press officer answered good-naturedly. "That's why it's so important for us to get information from the public."

The reporter took notes.

"What's the forensic evidence that indicates the place of discovery and murder is the same?" Arne Påhlson asked.

"We can't go into that at this moment in time."

There were several more lame questions from the reporters but the press officer had nothing to add. At the end, the reporter from Eko asked if he could ask a few questions off the record. That marked the end of the press conference. It had only lasted for about twenty minutes. Bertil Strand was leaning against the wall at the back of the room.

"Shall we wait for Eko to finish and talk to him afterward?" Annika said.

"I think we should split up," Berit said. "One of us stays and talks to the press officer, the other starts looking for pictures of the girl."

Annika nodded; it sounded sensible.

"I could go to the National Police Board duty desk and check the passport register," Berit said, "and you could stay and talk to Gösta."

"Gösta?"

"That's his name. Will you stay here, Bertil? I'll grab a cab later."

After Eko it was Arne Påhlson's turn. The other Rival reporter had disappeared, and Annika could bet her shirt on Berit's bumping into him at the passport register.

Arne Påhlson took his time, as long as the entire press conference had taken. By a quarter to eleven, everybody had given up except Annika and Bertil Strand. The press officer was tired when Annika finally sat down with him in a corner of the now empty hall.

"Do you find this difficult?" Annika asked him.

Gösta looked at her in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"You have to see so much shit."

"It isn't that bad. Do you have any questions?"

Annika leafed through her pad. "I saw the girl in the park," she said calmly, as if in passing. "She wasn't wearing any clothes, and I couldn't see any clothes nearby. Either she must have climbed naked into the cemetery or her clothes were somewhere around. Did you find them?" She caught the press officer's eye.

He blinked in surprise. "No, just her panties. But you can't write that!"

"Why not?"

"Because of the investigation," the man said quickly.

"Come on. Why not?"

The man thought about it for a moment. "Well, I suppose we could disclose that. It doesn't make any difference."

"Where did you find the panties? What do they look like? How do you know they were hers?"

"They were hanging from a bush next to her. Pink polyester. We've had them identified."

"Right. The identification was quick. How did you do it?"

The press officer sighed. "She was identified by her roommate, like I said."

"Man or woman?"

"A young woman, just like Josefin."

"Had Josefin been reported missing?"

The press officer nodded. "Yes, by her roommate."

"When?"

"She didn't come home last night, and when she didn't show up at work, the friend called the police, around half past six."

"So the girls lived and worked together?"

"It appears so."

Annika took notes and considered the information. "What about the rest of the clothes?"

"We haven't found them. They're not within a radius of five blocks from the murder scene. Unfortunately, the trash cans in the area were emptied this morning, but we've got people searching the dump right now."

"What had she been wearing?"

The press officer put his hand inside his right uniform pocket and pulled out a small notebook. "Short black dress, white trainers, and a blue jeans jacket. Probably an imitation-leather shoulder bag."

"You don't happen to have a photo of her, do you? Her high school graduation photo, wearing the white cap, maybe?" Annika said.

The press officer pulled his hand through his hair. "People need to know what she looked like."

Annika nodded.

"Wearing the white cap? I'll see what I can do. Anything else?"

She chewed her lip. "There was something else about the body. One of the hands. Like it had been mangled or chewed up."

Again, the press officer looked taken aback. "Then you know more than I do."

Annika dropped her pad on her lap. "What was she like?" she said in a low voice.

Gösta sighed. "We don't know. All we know is that she's dead."

"What kind of life was she living? Which restaurant did she work at? Did she have a boyfriend?"

The press officer put his notebook back in his pocket and got up. "I'll see what I can do about that photo."

Berit was hard at work at her desk when Annika and Bertil Strand returned to the newsroom.

"She was pretty cute." Berit pointed toward Picture Pelle's desk.

Annika walked straight over to the picture desk to have a look at the small black-and-white picture from the passport register. Hanna Josefin Liljeberg was laughing at the camera. She had the bright gaze and radiant smile that you only see on a teenager who is full of self-confidence.

"Nineteen years old," Annika said, her chest feeling constricted.

"We'd better get a proper photo," Pelle Oscarsson said. "If we blow this up more than one column, it'll get grainy and gray."

"I think we'll find one," Annika said, sending a quiet prayer to Gösta while she walked over to Berit.

"Do you know the PubReg?" Berit asked her.

Annika shook her head.

"Then let's go over to Eva-Britt's desk," Berit said.

A computer with a modem was on the newsroom secretary's desk. Berit switched it on and logged on to the network. Via the Info Market, a collection of databases, she got into the Public Register, the government department for citizen information.

"You can find information about every resident in Sweden here," she explained. "Their home address, previous addresses, maiden name, national identification number, place of birth, all that kind of stuff."

"That's incredible," Annika said. "I hadn't the faintest idea."

"The PubReg is a really good tool. Sit down and check some friends out someday when you have the time."

Berit pressed the F8 key, name inquiry, to perform a national search on "Liljeberg, Hanna Josefin." They got two hits, an eighty-five-year-old woman in Malmö and a nineteen-year-old girl in Dalagatan in Stockholm.

"That's her," Berit said, and typed a v in front of the latter and hit the return key.

The information appeared on the screen; "Liljeberg, Hanna Josefin, born in Täby, unmarried. The latest change to her entry in the population registry was less than two months old."

"Let's check her previous address," Berit said, and pressed F7, historical data.

The computer paused a few seconds, as if it were thinking, and then another address appeared on the screen.

" 'Runslingan in Täby Kyrkby,'" Berit read. "That's a nice neighborhood. Upper-middle class. Row houses."

"Where does it say that?" Annika said, scanning the screen.

Berit smiled. "Some data is located on this hard disk." She tapped her forehead. "I live in Täby. This must be her parents' home."

The reporter ordered a printout and tapped a new command. They read the result. Liljeberg Hed, Siv Barbro, Runslingan in Täby Kyrkby, born forty-seven years ago, married.

"Josefin's mother," Annika said. "How did you find her?"

"Through a search on women with the same surname and post code." Berit ordered a printout and did the same search on men. The PubReg yielded two hits, Hans Gunnar, fifty-one, and Carl Niklas, nineteen, both resident in Runslingan.

"Look at the boy's date of birth," Berit said.

"Josefin had a twin brother."

Berit ordered one last printout and then logged off. She switched off the computer and went over to the printer.

"You take these," she said, handing the printouts to Annika. "Try to get hold of someone who knew her."

Annika went back to her desk. The subs were engrossed in their work. Jansson was shouting into the phone. The glow from the computer screens made the news desk look like a floating blue island in the newsroom's sea. The image made her aware of the dark outside. Night was falling. She didn't have much time.

Just as she sat down, the Creepy Calls phone rang. She grabbed the phone in a reflex action. The caller was wondering whether it was true that the early-twentieth-century Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf had been a lesbian.

"Call the Gay and Lesbian Switchboard," Annika replied, and rang off.

She pulled out the pile of Stockholm telephone directories, heaved a sigh, and looked at the covers. In her hometown, Katrineholm, there was one single book for the whole of the province of Södermanland; here there were four for one single area code. She looked up "Liljeberg, Hans," in Runslingan in Täby Kyrkby. Vicar was his title. She took down the telephone number and stared at it for a long time.

No, she thought in the end. There had to be other ways of getting the facts she needed.

She took out the business and services directory and looked in the section for local-government information. There were two high schools in Täby: Tibble and Åva. She called the switchboard numbers; both forwarded the calls to a municipal switchboard. She gave it a few seconds thought and then tried dialing the direct numbers. Instead of 00 at the end, she dialed 01, then 02 and 03. She got lucky with 05, where a voicemail message informed her that the deputy principal, Martin Larsson-Berg, was on holiday until 7 August. She found him in the phone book with the title BA. He lived in Viggbyholm and was both at home and awake.

"I'm sorry to call you this late on a Saturday night," Annika said after introducing herself, "but it's about a serious matter."

"Is it my wife?" Martin Larsson-Berg anxiously asked.

"Your wife?"

"She's out sailing this weekend."

"It's not about your wife. A girl who might have been one of your students was found dead today in Stockholm," Annika said, closing her eyes.

"Oh, I see," the man said with relief in his voice. "I thought something had happened to my wife. Which student?"

"A girl called Josefin Liljeberg, from Täby Kyrkby."

"Which program was she in?"

"I'm not even sure she went to Tibble School, but it seems most probable. You don't remember her? Nineteen, pretty, with long blond hair, big breasts…"

Now the deputy principal was with her. "Oh, yes, Josefin Liljeberg. Yes, she graduated from the media program in the spring, that's right."

Annika breathed out and opened her eyes. "Do you remember her?"

"Dead, you say? That's horrible. What happened?"

"The Jewish Cemetery in Kronoberg Park. She was murdered."

"But that's awful! Do they know who did it?"

"Not yet. Would you like to say something about her, a few words about what she was like, maybe express your feelings about it?"

Martin Larsson-Berg sighed. "Yeah, well… What do you say? She was like most girls that age, giggly and vain. They're all the same. They tend to melt into one, kind of."

So much for the teaching profession, thought Annika. The deputy principal thought about his reply.

"She wanted to be a journalist, on television. Not very bright, to be honest. And she was murdered, you say. How?"

"She was strangled. Did she graduate, then?"

"Yes, she got a pass in all subjects."

Annika looked at the computer printouts in front of her. "Her father's a clergyman. Did that affect her at all?"

"Is he? I didn't know that…"

"And she had a twin brother, Carl Niklas. Did he also go to Tibble School?"

"Niklas… yes, I think he graduated from the natural science program. He had quite a good head on him. He wanted to continue his studies in the U.S."

Annika took notes. "Anything else you remember?"

Jansson appeared at her side, a pleading look on his face. She waved him aside.

"Sorry, no. There are so many students."

"Did she have many friends?"

"Yes, well, I think so. She wasn't especially popular, but she had her friends. She wasn't bullied, or anything."

"You don't happen to have a class register handy?" she asked.

"For Josefin's class?" The deputy principal grunted a bit. "Yes, I have the school register. Do you want me to send it to you?"

"Have you got a fax?"

He did. Annika gave him the crime-desk fax number and he promised to fax Josefin's class photo straightaway.

As she hung up and stood up to go over to Eva-Britt Qvist's desk, the Creepy Calls phone jangled again. She hesitated for a moment but stopped short and picked it up.

"I know who shot Olof Palme," someone slurred at the other end.

"Do you really? Who was it then?"

"What's the reward?"

"We pay maximum five thousand kronor for a tip-off that goes to print."

"Only five grand? That's bullshit! I want to talk to one of the editors."

Annika heard the man gulp and swallow something.

"I am an editor. We pay five thousand, it doesn't matter who you talk to."

"It's not enough. I want more."

"Call the police. Then you'll get fifty million," Annika said, and hung up.

What if the drunk was right, she mused on her way to the fax machine. What if he really did know? What if the Rival had Palme's murderer on tomorrow's front page? She'd be remembered forever as the one who rejected the tip, like the record executives who turned down the Beatles.

The fax was lousy- Josefin and her classmates were just black specks on a gray-striped background. But underneath the photo were the names of all the students, twenty-nine young people who must all have known Josefin. On her way back to her desk, she underlined those with unusual surnames, those she had a chance of finding in the phone book. These kids probably didn't have their own phones, so she'd have to look for the parents.

"Delivery for you," the porter Peter Brand said. He was Tore's son and worked the night shift during July.

Surprised, Annika looked up and received a stiff, white envelope. "Do Not Bend," she read on the outside. She quickly tore it open and emptied the contents onto the desk.

There were three photos of Josefin. The top one was a relaxed studio shot. Wearing her white cap, she was smiling radiantly straight into the camera. Annika felt the hairs on her arms stand on end. This picture was so sharp that they could run it over ten columns if they wanted to. The other two were decent amateur photos, one of the young woman holding a cat and the other of her sitting in an armchair.

At the bottom was a note from Gösta, the police press officer.

"I've promised the parents that the pictures will be distributed to all media outlets who want them," he'd written. "Please have them couriered over to the Rival when you've used them."

Annika hurried over to Jansson and put the pictures in front of him. "She was a clergyman's daughter dreaming about becoming a journalist."

Jansson picked up the pictures and studied them closely. "Fantastic."

"We're supposed to send them over to the Rival as soon as we've finished with them."

"Of course. We'll have them couriered over as soon as they've printed their last edition tomorrow. Well done!"

Annika returned to her desk. She sat down and stared at the phone. There wasn't much to think about. It was half past two, and if she was going to get hold of any of Josefin's friends, she had to get started right away.

She started with two non-Swedish surnames but got no reply. Then she tried a Silfverbiörck and got hold of a young woman. Annika's pulse quickened and she covered her eyes with one hand.

"I'm sorry to call in the middle of the night," Annika began slowly in a low voice. "My name is Annika Bengtzon and I'm calling from the newspaper Kvällspressen. I'm calling because one of your classmates, Josefin Liljeberg, has…" Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat.

"Yes, I've heard," the girl- Charlotta, according to the class register- sobbed. "It's awful. We're all so shocked. We have to support each other."

Annika opened her eyes, grabbed a pen, and started taking notes. This was a lot simpler than she'd imagined.

"It's our biggest fear," Charlotta said. "It's what young women like us are most afraid of. Now it's happened to a friend, one of us. We all have to respond to it." She had stopped sobbing and sounded quite alert.

Annika took notes. "Is it something you and your friends have discussed?"

"Yes, sure. Though no one really thought it would happen to one of us. You never do."

"Did you know Josefin well?"

Charlotta gave a sob, a dry, deep sigh. "She was my best friend." Annika suspected she was telling a lie.

"What was Josefin like?"

Charlotta had a ready answer: "Always kind and cheerful. Helpful, fair, good grades. She liked partying. Yes, I suppose you can say that…"

Annika waited in silence for a moment.

"Will you need my picture?"

Annika looked at her watch. She figured it out: to Täby and back, developing the film- it would be too tight. "Not tonight. The paper's going to press soon. Can I call you again tomorrow?"

"Of course, or you can try my pager."

Annika took the number. She leaned her forehead on her hand and had a think. Josefin still felt vague and distant to her. She couldn't establish a clear picture of the dead woman.

"What did Josefin want to do with her life?"

"What do you mean, 'do'? Have a family, get a job, you know…"

"Where did she work?"

"Work?"

"Yes, which restaurant?"

"Oh, I don't know that."

"She'd moved in to Stockholm, to Dalagatan. Did you visit her there?"

"Dalagatan? No…"

"Do you know why she moved?"

"She wanted to get into town, I guess."

"Did she have a boyfriend?"

Charlotta was silent. Annika understood. This girl didn't know Josefin well at all.

"Thanks for letting me disturb you in the middle of the night," Annika said.

Now there was only one more call to make. She looked up Liljeberg in the phone book again, but there was no Josefin on Dalagatan. She'd recently moved there and hadn't been listed yet, Annika thought, and called directory assistance.

"No, we have no Liljeberg on Dalagatan sixty-four," the operator informed her.

"It could be a very new number."

"I can see all subscriptions that were ordered up until yesterday."

"Could she be ex-directory?"

"No," the operator said. "That information would have showed up on my screen. Could the number be in somebody else's name?"

Annika aimlessly leafed through the printouts. She came across Josefin's mother, Liljeberg Hed, Siv Barbro. "Hed. Check if there's a Hed on Dalagatan sixty-four."

The operator typed it in. "Yes, there's a Barbro Hed. Could that be the one?"

"Yep."

She dialed the number without hesitation. A man answered on the fourth ring.

"Is this Josefin's house?"

"Who are you?"

"My name's Annika Bengtzon and I'm calling from-"

"Damn it, I'm running into you everywhere." Now Annika recognized the voice. "Q!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing there?"

"What do you think? And how the hell did you get hold of this number? Even we haven't got it!"

"It was really hard, you know. I called directory assistance. What have you got?"

"I really don't have time right now." The man hung up.

Annika smiled. At least she had the right number. And she could add the fact that the police had been at Josefin's apartment during the night.

"I've got to know what you've got," Jansson said, and sat down on her desk.

"This is how it'll be," she said, and made a quick outline on a pad. Jansson nodded approvingly and jogged back to his desk.

She wrote the article about who Josefin was- the ambitious clergyman's daughter who dreamed of becoming a journalist. She wrote another piece on her death, mentioning her eyes and the death scream, her gnawed hand and the grief of her friend. She left the silicone breasts out. She wrote about the police hunt, the missing clothes, her last hours, the agitated tipster who had phoned the paper, about Daniella Hermansson's unease and the appeal of the press officer: "This maniac has to be stopped."

"This is pretty good," Jansson said. "Elegantly written, factual, and to the point. You've got some potential!"

Annika immediately had to walk away. She was bad at handling criticism, even worse at dealing with praise. She treasured the magic, the dance of the letters, that which gave her words wings. If she accepted the praise, the shimmering bubbles might burst.

"Let's have a cup of cocoa before you go home," Berit said.

The minister passed Bergnäs Bridge. He met a vintage American convertible halfway across, some aging rockers draped over the sides of the car. Other than that, he didn't see a single living soul.

He breathed out when he turned into the side streets behind the green bunker of the social security office. The noises and the whining had accompanied him for over 150 miles. It would soon be over.

After parking next to the rental firm office, he just sat in the car, enjoying the silence. He still had a little ringing in his left ear. He was exhausted. Still he had no choice. He groaned and climbed out of the car with stiff limbs. He quickly glanced about him and then urinated behind the car.

The bags were heavier than he'd imagined. I won't make it, he thought. He walked toward Storgatan, past the Citizen's Advice Bureau, then entered the old residential district of Östermalm. He got a glimpse of his own house behind the birch trees, the old windows glittering in the early dawn. The kids' bikes lay next to the porch. The bedroom window was ajar, and he smiled when he saw the curtain flutter in the breeze.

"Christer…?" His wife looked over at him drowsily when he crept into the bedroom. He hurried over to the bed and sat down next to her, stroked her hair, and kissed her on the mouth.

"You go on sleeping, darling," he whispered.

"What's the time?"

"Quarter past four."

"How was the drive?"

"Fine. Go back to sleep now."

"How was your trip?"

He hesitated. "I bought some Azerbaijani brandy. We've never tried that, have we?"

She didn't reply but pulled him close, reached over, and undid his fly.

The sun was up and hung like an overripe orange just above the horizon, shining straight in her face. It was already hot, at half past five in the morning. Annika was dizzy with fatigue. She had to get home. Gjörwellsgatan was deserted, and she walked in the middle of the street on her way to the bus stop. Once there, she dropped onto the bench, her legs completely numb.

She had seen the outline of the front page on Jansson's screen before she'd left, dominated by the graduation photo of Josefin and the banner headline "Cemetery Sex Murder." She had written the short front-page item with Jansson. Her stories were on pages six, seven, eight, nine, and twelve. She had filled more columns tonight than in all her first seven weeks at the paper.

It worked, she thought. I did it. It worked.

She leaned her head against the Plexiglas of the bus shelter and closed her eyes. She took deep breaths and focused on the sounds of traffic. They were few and far away. She almost fell asleep but was woken up by a bird chirping loudly inside the embassy compound.

After some time, she realized that she didn't know when the bus would come. Stiffly, she got to her feet and went to look at the timetable. The first 56 bus on this Sunday morning wouldn't be running until 7:13, almost two hours away. She groaned out loud. There was nothing for it but to start walking.

She got up speed after a couple of minutes. It felt good. Her legs were soon moving by themselves and set the air around her in motion. She walked down the extension of Västerbron and in the direction of Fridhemsplan. She reached Drottningholmsvägen and saw the dense green looming at the far end of the street. Kronoberg Park looked eerily dark. She knew she had to go there.

The cordons had been removed. There was plastic tape only on the fence itself. She walked up to the iron gate and traced the metal arch of the padlock with her fingers. The sun reached the crowns of the lime trees, making the leaves glow.

She would have come here around this time, Annika thought. She saw the same sun make the same pattern in the foliage. It's all so fragile. It can happen so fast.

Her hand running along the circles and arches of the wrought-iron fence, Annika walked around the cemetery and reached the east side. She recognized the bushes and the toppled gravestone, but aside from this, nothing betrayed this as the place where Josefin died.

She held on to the fence with both hands and stared into the undergrowth. She slowly slid down to the ground. Her legs gave way and she softly sat down on the grass. Without her realizing, she had started to cry. The tears ran down her cheeks and fell onto her crumpled skirt. She leaned her forehead against the bars and softly cried.

"How did you know her?"

Annika started up. Arms flailing, she slipped on the grass and landed hard on her tailbone.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

The face of the young woman who had spoken was red and swollen from crying. She spoke with a faint but distinct accent.

Annika stared at her. "I… didn't. I never met her. But I saw her when she was lying here. She was dead."

"Where?" the young woman said, taking a step forward.

Annika pointed. The woman walked up and looked at the spot in silence for a minute. Then she sat down on the grass next to Annika, turning her back to the cemetery and leaning against the fence.

"I saw her too," she said, fiddling with the hem of her blouse.

Annika rummaged through her bag for something to blow her nose on.

"I saw her at the morgue. It was her. All in one piece. She looked fine, really."

Annika swallowed and stared at the young woman again. Jesus! This must be Josefin's roommate, the girl who had identified her! They had to have been close friends.

She thought about the following day's front page and was hit by a sudden and unexpected feeling of shame. It made her start crying again.

The woman next to her started sobbing too. "She was so kind. She never hurt anybody."

"I didn't know her." Annika blew her nose on a page from her big notepad. "I work for a newspaper. I've written about Josefin."

The woman looked at Annika. "Jossie wanted to be a journalist. She wanted to write about abused children."

"She could have worked at Kvällspressen."

"What did you write?"

Annika took a breath, hesitating for a moment. All the satisfaction about her pieces she had felt earlier was gone. She only wanted to sink through the grass and disappear.

"That she was assaulted and murdered in the cemetery," she said quickly.

The woman nodded and looked away. "I warned her about this."

Annika, who was squeezing the notepaper into a small ball, stopped in midmovement. "What do you mean?"

The woman wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands. "Joachim wasn't good for her. He beat her up all the time. She could never do anything right. She was always covered in bruises, which could be a problem at work. 'You've got to leave him,' I told her, but she couldn't."

Annika listened wide-eyed. "Good God! Have you told the police about this?"

The woman nodded and pulled out a tissue from the pocket of her jean jacket and blew her nose. "I've got bad allergies. You don't have any Seldanes, do you?"

Annika shook her head.

"I've got to go home," the woman said, and stood up. "I'm working tonight again. I need to get some sleep."

Annika also got to her feet and brushed some grass from her skirt. "Do you really think it could have been her boyfriend?"

"He used to tell Jossie he'd kill her one day." The woman started walking down toward Parkgatan.

Annika stared in at the graves with a new feeling in her stomach. The boyfriend! Perhaps the murder would be cleared up soon.

"Hey! What's your name?" she called through the park.

The woman stopped and called back. "Patricia."

Then she turned around and disappeared down toward Fleminggatan.

Not until she stood outside the street door of her apartment block did Annika remember that she had promised to feed Anne Snapphane's cats. She sighed and quickly turned the matter over in her mind. The cats would probably survive. The question was whether she would if she didn't get to sleep soon. On the other hand, it was only a few hundred yards, and she had promised. She poked about in her bag and found Anne's keys at the bottom, an old chewing gum wrapper stuck to them.

I'm just too nice, she thought.

She took the steps from Pipersgatan up to Kungsklippan; her legs were trembling before she reached the top. Her tailbone was aching after her fall in the park.

Anne Snapphane's little apartment was on the sixth floor and had a balcony with a fabulous view. The cats started meowing as soon as she put the key in the lock. When she opened the door, two little noses appeared around it.

"Hello, little kittens, are you waiting for me?"

She shoved the kittens inside with her foot and closed the door behind her. She sat down on the floor, and both the animals immediately jumped up in her arms, nuzzling her chin.

"What's this? Do you want to have a kiss?" Annika laughed.

She petted the kittens for a minute, then got up and walked over to the kitchenette. The cats' three bowls sat on a leftover piece of linoleum next to the stove. The milk had gone bad. The food and the water bowls were both empty.

"Here you go, little kittens."

She threw out the milk, washed the bowl, and poured fresh milk from the fridge. The kittens were rubbing against her legs, purring expectantly.

"Hey, take it easy."

They were so eager they nearly turned the bowl over before she'd had time to put it down. While the cats were guzzling the milk, she filled the third bowl with water and looked for the cat food. She found three tins of Whiskas in a cupboard. It made her smile. Whiskas was the name of her own cat in Hälleforsnäs. He was staying with Grandma in her cottage in Lyckebo over the summer.

"Why am I getting so sentimental?" she said out loud.

She opened a tin, wincing at the smell, and emptied it in the third bowl. She had a look in the litter tray in the bathroom; it would have to do until tomorrow.

"Bye-bye, little cats."

The kittens took no notice of her.

She quickly left the apartment and walked back down to Kungsholms Square. The day was starting. All the birds were in full voice now. She felt a bit shaky and was swaying slightly; her judgment of distance was poor.

You couldn't go on like this forever, she thought.

The air in her apartment was still stuffy from the day before. It was on the top floor at the back of the block, but it had neither its own bathroom nor hot water. But she had three rooms and a large kitchen. Annika had thought herself incredibly lucky when she got it.

"Nobody wants to live that primitively," the woman at the housing department had said to Annika when she had stated on the form that she could live without elevator, hot water, bathroom, or even electricity if necessary.

Annika had persevered.

"Here you are. Nobody wants this," the woman said, and gave her a computer printout with the address, 32 Hantverkargatan, fourth floor across the yard.

Annika took it without even seeing it. She had thanked her lucky stars every single day since then, but she knew her joy would be short-lived. She had agreed to one week's notice of eviction as soon as the owner of the block secured a loan for a complete renovation of the building.

She dropped her bag on the floor in the hallway and went into her bedroom. She had left the window open yesterday morning, but it had banged shut during the day. She opened it again and walked toward the living room to open a window in the hopes of stirring up a draft.

"Where have you been?"

Annika jumped in the air and screamed out loud.

The voice was quiet and came from the shadows over by her bed. "Jesus, have you completely lost your nerves?"

It was Sven, her boyfriend.

"When did you get here?" she said, her heart jumping against the inside of her chest.

"Last night. I wanted to take you to the movies. Where have you been?"

"At work," she said, and went into the living room.

He got up from the bed and followed her. "No, you haven't. I called an hour ago and they said you'd left already."

"I went to feed Anne's cats." She opened the living-room window.

"That's your excuse?"

She'd been there for about a minute and already they were arguing. Annika sometimes wondered what she still saw in Sven.

Seventeen Years, Six Months, and Twenty-One Days

There is a dimension where the boundaries between human bodies are erased. We live with each other, in each other, spiritually and physically. Days become moments; I drown in his eyes. Our bodies dissolve and enter another time. Love is gold and crystals. We can travel anywhere in the universe, together, two and yet one.

A soul mate is someone who has a lock that fits our keys and keys that fit our locks. With this person, we feel safe in our own paradise. I read that somewhere, and it's true for us.

I long for him every moment we're not together. I didn't know that love was so compelling, so complete, so all-consuming. I can't eat or sleep. Only when I'm with him, I'm whole, a true human being. He is the sine qua non of my life and meaning. I know that I'm the same to him. We have been granted the biggest gift.

Never leave me,

he says;

I can't live without you.

And I promise him.

Sunday 29 July

Patricia put her hand on Josefin's door handle. She hesitated. The bedroom was Josefin's domain. Patricia didn't have access and Jossie had been very clear about it:

"You can stay here, but the bedroom is mine."

The handle was a bit loose. Patricia had been meaning to tighten it, but they didn't have a Phillips screwdriver. Carefully, she pushed down on the handle. The door creaked. She was met by a musty smell; the air in the room was hot and stagnant. Jossie was supposed to clean her own room, which meant it never got done. The police search during the night had stirred up two months' worth of dust.

The room was bathed in sharp sunlight. The police had opened the curtains, and Patricia realized she had never seen the room like that before. The daylight exposed the dirt and the grimy wallpaper. Patricia felt ashamed when she thought of the police officers. They must have thought Jossie and Patricia were total slobs.

She slowly walked over to the bed and sat down. It was really only a mattress from IKEA that they had put on the floor. She sat about a foot off the ground.

Patricia was tired. She had slept badly in the heat- waking up, sweating, crying. She slowly lay down on the bed. When she had come home this morning, a dull and gloomy loneliness had met her at the door. The police were gone and only the traces of the search remained behind. They really had turned the entire apartment upside down but hadn't taken much with them.

She nearly dropped off among the pillows; she felt the familiar twitch. She instantly sat up. She must not sleep in Jossie's room.

A pile of magazines was next to the bed. Patricia bent down and leafed through the top one. Woman's Weekly, Jossie's favorite. She didn't like it much; there was too much about makeup, weight loss, and sex. Patricia always felt stupid and ugly after reading it, as if she weren't quite good enough. She knew that this was the whole idea of the magazine. On the face of it, they were helping young girls feel better about themselves but were in fact just making them feel inadequate.

She picked up the next magazine in the pile. It was smaller and Patricia had never come across it before. The paper was of poor quality and so was the print. It opened at the center spread. Patricia realized she was looking at two men with their penises inside a woman, one in her anus, the other in her vagina. You could just make out the woman's face in the background. She was screaming as if she were suffering. The image hit Patricia in the groin like an electric shock. She recoiled, disgusted, partly by the picture and partly by her own reaction to it. She threw the magazine on the floor as if it burned her fingers. Josefin didn't look at stuff like that. Patricia knew it was Joachim's.

She lay back down, staring at the ceiling and trying to repress her shameful excitement. It slowly faded. Was she never going to get used to it?

Her gaze traveled around the room. The door to the walk-in closet was open, Josefin's clothes hanging untidily on their hangers. Patricia knew this was the work of the police officers. Jossie was particular about her clothes.

I wonder what will become of them now? she thought. Maybe I could have some of them.

She got up and walked over to the closet. She ran her hand over the garments. They were expensive; Joachim had bought most of them. Patricia wouldn't be able to wear the dresses- they'd be too loose across the chest. But the skirts, and perhaps some of the suits…

The jingling of keys in the front door made her start. She quickly closed the closet and flew across the wooden floor in her bare feet. She had just closed the door to Josefin's room when Joachim stepped inside the hall.

"What are you doing?" He was sweating at the hairline and had dark patches on his shirt.

Patricia looked at the man, pulse racing in her veins and mouth completely dry. She tried to smile. "Nothing," she said nervously.

"Stay the fuck out of Josefin's bedroom. We've told you enough times." He slammed the front door shut.

"The cops. The fucking cops have made a mess everywhere, in here too."

He swallowed the bait. "Fucking cops." Patricia sensed a catch in his voice. "Did they take anything?"

He walked toward Patricia, who stood in front of Jossie's bedroom. "I don't know. Not from me, anyway."

He threw the bedroom door open and walked over to the bed, lifting the cover. "The sheet. They've taken the bedclothes."

Watchful, Patricia remained in the doorway. He walked round the room, seemingly checking to see everything was accounted for. He sat down heavily on the bed with his back to the door, leaning his head in his hands. Patricia breathed in the dust, too scared to move. She looked at his broad shoulders and strong arms. The light from the window made his hair glow. He really was good-looking. Josefin had been the happiest girl in the world when they became a couple. Patricia remembered her tears of joy and accounts of how wonderful he was. As if she were delirious.

Joachim turned round and looked at her. "Who do you think did it?" he said quietly.

Patricia's face was expressionless. "Some madman," she said calmly and firmly. "Some drunk on his way home. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

He turned away again. "Could it have been one of the customers?" he asked without looking up.

Patricia carefully weighed her answer. "One of the big shots from last night, you mean? I don't know. What do you think?"

"It would be the end of the club."

She looked down at her hands, twiddling with the hem of the T-shirt. "I miss her already."

Joachim stood and came up to her, putting his hand on her shoulder and stroking her arm.

"Patricia," he said guardedly. "I understand how sad you must be. I'm just as sad myself."

It made her skin crawl and she had to brace herself not to recoil from his touch.

"I hope the police catch him," she said.

Joachim pulled her close, a sob shaking his big body. "Shit, shit," he said in a stifled voice. "She's dead."

He began to cry. Patricia gingerly put her arms on his back, rocking him slightly.

"My Jossie, my angel!"

He cried, sobbing and blubbering. She closed her eyes and forced herself to stay where she was.

"Poor Joachim," she whispered. "Poor you…"

He let go of her and went to the bathroom. She could hear him blowing his nose and urinating. Embarrassed, she waited in the hall, listening to the stream of piss and then the flushing water.

"Did the police talk to you?" he asked when he came out.

She swallowed. "A bit, yesterday. They want to talk to me again today."

He studied her closely. "That's good. The scumbag has to be locked up. What are you going to tell them?"

She turned away and walked out into the kitchen and poured a glass of water.

"Depends on what they ask me. I don't really know anything," she said, and drank from the glass.

He followed her and stopped in the doorway, leaning against the door frame. "They're going to ask you what Jossie was like and stuff. How she was…"

Patricia placed the glass on the counter with a bang and looked Joachim in the eye. "I'll never say anything that would be bad for Jossie," she said assertively.

He looked happy with that. "Come with me," he said, placing his arm around her shoulders. He pulled her along through the hallway, into Josefin's bedroom and over to her closet.

"Have a look at these," he said, rifling through Jossie's expensive suits with his free hand. "Do you want any of these? This one, maybe?"

He took out a bright pink, silk-and-wool, fitted suit with large gold buttons that Josefin had adored. She thought she looked like Princess Diana in it.

Patricia felt tears well up in her eyes. She swallowed. "Joachim, I couldn't…"

"Go on, take it. It's yours."

She started crying. He let go of her and held up the suit in front of her.

"Your tits are a bit small, but maybe we could see to that." He smiled at her.

Patricia stopped crying, looked down, and let him put the hanger in her hand. "Thanks," she whispered.

"You could wear it to the funeral."

She heard him go out into the kitchen and get something from the fridge. Then he left the apartment.

Patricia remained standing in Josefin's overheated bedroom, frozen to the spot. She chased away a thought she had about being safe there. Patricia had nowhere else to go.

The Rival had talked to the father. He didn't say anything interesting, only that he couldn't believe that she was gone. But they had got a quote…

"You never know which way the wind's going to blow," Berit said. "If they're unlucky, they'll have a big discussion about media ethics on their hands."

"For approaching the family?" Annika asked, and skimmed through the story.

Berit nodded and took a sip from a can of mineral water. "You've got to be extremely careful when you do that. Some people want to talk, but many don't. You mustn't ever trick anyone into talking to you. Did you call her parents?"

Annika folded up the paper and shook her head. "I couldn't bring myself to do it. It didn't seem right."

"That's not a very good guiding principle," Berit said seriously. "Just because it's unpleasant for you, it doesn't necessarily mean that it will be for them. Sometimes the family feels better if they know what the papers will be writing about them."

"So you think the media should call the family when a child has died?" Annika knew she sounded confrontational.

Berit drank some more water and thought for a moment. "Well, each case is different. The only thing you'll know for sure is that people react in different ways. There is no universal right or wrong way of doing things. You have to be careful and sensitive so you don't hurt anyone."

"Well, I'm glad I didn't call." Annika got up to get some coffee.

By the time she returned, Berit had gone back to her own desk.

I wonder if I've offended her, Annika thought to herself. She saw Berit sitting hunched over a paper at the other end of the newsroom landscape. She quickly picked up the phone and dialed Berit's extension.

"Are you mad at me?" she asked, meeting Berit's gaze across the floor.

Annika saw her laughter and heard it in the earpiece. "Not a bit! You have to find out for yourself what's right for you."

The Creepy Calls phone rang and Annika switched receivers.

"How much for a really hot tip?" an excited male voice asked.

Annika groaned inwardly and reeled off the information.

"Okay," the man said. "Wait for this- you got a pen?"

"Yeah. Get to the point."

"I know a TV celebrity who dresses up in women's clothes and visits sex clubs." The man sounded as if he were ready to burst, and he named one of Sweden's most popular and admired TV presenters.

It made Annika crazy. "Bull. Do you think Kvällspressen's going to print that garbage?"

The caller was taken by surprise. "But it's a big story."

"Jesus, people can do whatever they like. And what makes you think it's true?"

"I have it from a reliable source," the man said proudly.

"Sure. Thanks for calling." Annika hung up.

She saw that their tabloid rival had roughly the same copy and photos in their murder coverage as Kvällspressen. But Annika thought they hadn't done as good a job. For example, they didn't have the portrait of Josefin in her graduation cap. And their pictures from the murder scene were weaker and the articles more prosaic; the neighbors they had interviewed were more boring, and their update on the old Eva murder was less thorough. They had no teacher or friend, where Kvällspressen had short interviews both with the friend Charlotta and the deputy principal Martin Larsson-Berg.

"Well done," Spike said from somewhere above her head. She looked up and met the gaze of her superior.

"Thank you," she said.

He sat down on the edge of her desk. "What are we doing today?"

A peculiar warmth spread inside her. She was one of them now. He had come up to her and asked what she was doing.

"I thought I'd go and talk to her roommate, the girl who identified the body."

"Do you think she'll talk to you?"

"It's not impossible. I've been trying to get in touch with her."

She knew instinctively that she shouldn't tell him about meeting Patricia in the park. If she did, Spike would get steamed up about her not coming right back to write a story on it.

"Okay," the news editor said. "Who's doing the police investigation?"

"Berit and I are doing it together."

"Okay. What else? Do you think the father and mother will do a weepie?"

Annika fidgeted. "I'm not sure now's the right time to disturb them."

"He talked to the Rival. What did he say when you called?"

Annika's cheeks turned red. "He… I… didn't want to intrude so shortly after…"

Spike got up and left without a word. Annika wanted to explain how wrong it had felt, that you couldn't behave like that. But she didn't make the rules. The stout back of Spike drifted away and she saw him plunk his heavy body down in the swivel chair by his desk. Despite the distance, Annika could make out its heavy creaking.

She quickly grabbed a pad and a pen and a tape recorder, stuffed everything in her bag, and went over to the picture desk. No photographers were in the office and consequently no cars were available. She ordered a cab.

"To Vasastan, Dalagatan."

She wanted to know what life the dead woman had led.

He woke with a start from the light touch of his wife's hand on his shoulder.

"Christer," she whispered. "It's the prime minister."

He sat up, feeling slightly disoriented. The bed swayed and his body ached with weariness.

He got up and walked over toward his study. "I'll take it in here."

The prime minister sounded steady and clear on the phone. He'd probably been awake for several hours.

"Well, Christer, did you get back home all right?"

The minister for foreign trade slumped down on the chair by his desk, pulling his hand through his hair. "Yes, but the drive up was tedious. How are you?"

"I'm just fine. I'm at Harpsund with the family. So how did it go?"

Christer Lundgren cleared his throat. "As expected. They're not exactly ballerinas at the negotiating table."

"Well, the arena isn't exactly an opera stage either. How do we proceed?"

The minister for foreign trade quickly sorted through the thoughts in his muddled brain. When he started speaking, his words were tolerably structured and clear. He had had time to think it over on the drive up to Luleå.

After the call he stayed at his desk, his head hanging over the writing pad. It showed a world map from before the fall of the Iron Curtain. He looked among the republics' anonymous yellow patches without cities or borders.

His wife opened the door slightly. "Do you want some coffee?"

He turned around and smiled at her. "I'd love some," he said, his smile widening, "but first I want you."

She took his hand and led him back into the bedroom.

The doorbell made Patricia jump. The police weren't coming for several hours yet. Her mouth turned dry. What if it was Jossie's parents?

She tiptoed out in the hall and peeked through the peephole. She recognized the woman from the park this morning. She opened the door without hesitation.

"Hi. How did you find me?"

The journalist smiled. She looked tired. "Computers. There are registers for everything these days. Can I come in?"

"It's a bit of a mess. The police were here and turned everything upside down."

"I promise not to start clearing up."

Patricia gave it another moment's thought. "Okay." She held the door wide open to the woman. "What did you say your name was?"

"Annika. Annika Bengtzon."

They shook hands.

The journalist stepped inside the dark hall and took her shoes off. "Phew, it's hot."

"I know," Patricia said. "I hardly slept at all last night."

"Because of Josefin?"

Patricia nodded.

"Nice suit." Annika nodded in her direction.

Patricia turned red and passed her hand over the shiny pink fabric. "It was Josefin's. I've been given it."

"You look like Princess Diana in it."

"I don't…! I'm too dark. I'll take it off. Just wait here."

Patricia disappeared into her room, which was the living room, and put the suit back on the hanger. She looked around for a hook to hang it on and, when she didn't find one, hung it on a door. She quickly put on a pair of jeans and a camisole.

The journalist was in the kitchen when Patricia came out of her room.

"The cops should clear up after themselves. Would you like some tea?"

"I'd love some," Annika said, and sank down onto a chair.

Patricia lit the gas stove, poured water into an aluminum saucepan, and started putting things back in the cupboards.

"Jossie's stars were lined up against her. Things weren't looking too rosy right now. Her sun sign had been dominated by Saturn for almost a year; she's been having a tough time." Patricia broke off and blinked away the tears.

"Do you believe in that stuff?" Annika thought it was bullshit.

"I don't believe, I know," Patricia said. "We've got English Breakfast or Earl Grey."

Annika chose the Breakfast tea.

"I brought the paper." She put the first edition of Kvällspressen on the table.

Patricia didn't touch it. "You can't use anything I tell you."

"Okay."

"You can't say that you've been here."

"Fine."

Patricia watched the journalist in silence. Annika looked young, not much older than herself. She dipped the tea bag in the mug a few times, twirled the string round the tea bag on the spoon, and squeezed out a few more drops of strong tea.

"So what are you doing here?"

"I want to understand," Annika said calmly. "I want to know who Josefin was, how she lived, her thoughts and feelings. You know all that. When I know, I can put the right questions to a lot of other people, without saying a word of what you tell me. You're protected by law when you speak to me. No person in authority is allowed even to ask who I've spoken to."

Patricia gave it some thought while she drank her tea.

"What do you want to know?"

"I think you probably know that best. What was she like?"

Patricia sighed. "She could be really childish sometimes. I could get really mad at her. She'd forget that we'd arranged to meet in town. There I'd stand waiting, looking like a fool. And then she wouldn't even be sorry. 'Oh, I forgot' was all she'd say."

Patricia fell silent, then added, "I miss her, though."

"Where did she work?"

She had taken out a pen and pad. Patricia noticed and straightened her back. "You won't write about this, will you?"

Annika smiled. "My memory can be as bad as Josefin's. I'm just taking notes for my own sake."

Patricia relaxed. "A club called Studio 69. It's in Hantverkargatan."

"Is it?" Annika said in surprise. "That's where I live. Where on Hantverkargatan?"

"On the hill. Not that there's a big neon sign, or anything. It's pretty discreet, all you see is a small board in the shop window."

Annika gave it some thought. "But isn't that the name of the radio show, Studio 69?" she said hesitantly.

Patricia giggled.

"Yes. But Joachim, the guy who owns the club, realized that the radio station hadn't registered it. He thought it was funny to use the same name. And it's a really good name- you know what it's about. The whole thing might end up in court."

"Joachim. Is that Josefin's boyfriend?"

Patricia's face turned serious. "The stuff that I told you in the park, you mustn't ever tell anyone about it."

"But you did tell the police, didn't you?"

Patricia's eyes grew wide. "That's true," she said, as if she had forgotten. "I did."

"Don't worry about having told them. It's very important that the police get to know about stuff like that."

"But Joachim's really upset. He came here this morning and he was crying."

Annika looked down at her notes and decided to drop the subject for the time being.

"So what did Jossie do at the club?"

"She waited on tables and danced."

"Danced?"

"Onstage. Not naked, that's not allowed. Everything's strictly legal, Joachim's particular about that. She wore a G-string."

Patricia saw that the journalist was mildly taken aback.

"So she was… a stripper?"

"I suppose you could say that."

"And you, are you also a… dancer?"

Patricia gave a laugh. "No. Joachim thinks my boobs are too small. I work at the bar, and then I'm trying to learn to be a croupier at the roulette table. I'm not doing very well, though. I can't count that fast."

Her laughter died out and became a sob. Annika waited silently while Patricia collected herself.

"Were you friends at school, you and Josefin?"

Patricia blew her nose on a piece of paper towel and shook her head. "No, not at all. We met at the Sports Club on Sankt Eriksgatan. We used to go to the same aerobics class and our lockers were next to each other. It was Josefin who started talking to me- she could talk to anyone. She'd just met Joachim and she was so in love. She could talk about him for hours, how good-looking he was, how much money he had…" Her voice trailed off as the memories came back.

"How did they meet?" Annika asked after a while.

Patricia shrugged. "Joachim is from Täby, like her. I got to know Jossie the Christmas before last, a year and a half ago. Joachim had just opened the club and it was an immediate success. Jossie started working weekends and helped me get a job behind the bar. I've got a diploma in food presentation."

The phone in the hall rang and Patricia jumped up to get it.

"Sure, that's fine," she said into the receiver. "In half an hour."

When she returned to the kitchen, Annika had put her mug on the counter.

"The police will be here in a while," Patricia said.

"I won't disturb you any longer," Annika said. "Thanks for seeing me."

Annika walked out into the hall and put her sandals back on.

"How long will you stay on in the apartment?"

Patricia chewed on her lip. "I don't know. The apartment is Josefin's. Her mom bought it so that Jossie wouldn't have to commute all the way to Täby Kyrkby when she's admitted to the College of Media and Communication."

"Would they have taken her? Were her grades good enough?"

Patricia looked hard at Annika. "Jossie's really smart. She's got top grades. Swedish is her best subject, she writes really, really well. You think she's stupid just because she's a stripper?"

Patricia could see, in spite of the dim lighting, that the journalist's face had turned red.

"I spoke to the deputy principal of her old school. He didn't think she had very good grades." Annika was trying to cover herself.

"He probably just thinks blondes are dumb."

"Did she have a lot of friends?"

"At school, you mean? Hardly any. Jossie spent most of her time doing homework."

They shook hands and Annika opened the door. She stopped short in the doorway.

"How come you moved in here?"

Patricia lowered her gaze. "Jossie wanted me to."

"Why?"

"She was afraid."

"Of what?"

"I can't tell you."

But Patricia saw in the journalist's eyes that she knew.

Annika stepped outside in the heat of Dalagatan and screwed up her eyes against the sun. It was a relief to come out of the dark and dingy apartment. Black curtains- that was a bit macabre. She didn't like Josefin's house. She didn't like what she'd found out. Why the hell would she choose to be a stripper?

If she had chosen.

The subway station was just around the corner, so she took it the two stops over to Fridhemsplan. She went out the Sankt Eriksgatan exit and walked past the gym where Josefin and Patricia had met, then took a right up to the murder scene. Two small bunches of flowers were by the entrance. Annika had a suspicion they'd soon be accompanied by many more. She stood for a while next to the fence. It was just as hot as the day before and she soon got thirsty. Just when she had made up her mind to leave, she saw two young women, one blond, one dark, slowly walking toward the park from Drottningholmsvägen. Annika decided to stay. They were dressed in the same miniskirts and high heels; both were chewing gum and had a Pepsi in their hand.

"A girl died in there yesterday," the blond woman said, and pointed in among the graves as they walked past Annika.

"No kidding?" the dark one said, eyes open wide.

The first one nodded in a bossy way and waved her hand around. "She lay in there, completely cut open. She'd been raped after she was killed."

"That's awful."

They stopped a few yards away, engrossed in the dark shadows among the stones. After a minute or so, they were both crying.

"We've got to leave a message," the blond woman said.

They dug out a piece of paper from one bag, a pen from another. The blonde leaned on the other's back to write the note. Then they dried their tears and walked off toward the subway.

When they'd disappeared around the corner, Annika walked over and read the note:

"We miss you."

At that moment she saw a team from the Rival step out of a car parked by the playground on Kronobergsgatan. She turned around and quickly walked down Sankt Göransgatan; she most definitely did not want to stand around chatting to Arne Påhlson.

On her way down to the 56 bus stop, she walked past Daniella Hermansson's street door, the cheery mother who always slept with her window open. She fished out her pad- yes, she had the entry code jotted down next to Daniella's address. Without deliberating any further, she punched in the code and entered the building.

The current of air that hit her was so cold that she shivered. She stopped to hear the street door close behind her. The entrance was decorated with murals with park motifs.

Daniella lived on the third floor. Annika took the elevator. She rang the doorbell but nobody answered. She looked at her watch: ten past three. Daniella was most likely in the park with her kid.

She sighed. The day hadn't been particularly productive so far. Especially in terms of material she could write about. She looked around the hallway. There were a lot of doors, so the apartments had to be small. On the mailboxes were the names of the tenants in plastic lettering that had turned yellow. Annika walked up and studied the one nearest to her. Svensson, she read. She might as well get some reactions from other neighbors now that she was here.

Annika rang the Svenssons' bell, and through the narrow crack that opened came the stench of acrid BO. Annika took a step back. A shapeless woman in a mauve and turquoise polyester dress peered out through the opening: myopic eyes, gray tangle of greasy hair. She was holding a fat little mutt of indeterminable breed.

"Excuse me for disturbing you. I'm from the newspaper Kvällspressen."

"We haven't done anything." The woman gave Annika a frightened look.

"No, of course not," Annika said politely. "I'm just knocking on the doors of this house to hear how people in the neighborhood are reacting to a crime being committed nearby."

The woman pulled the door closed a bit. "I don't know anything."

Annika started regretting disturbing the woman; maybe it wasn't such a good idea. "Perhaps you haven't heard that a young woman was murdered in the park," she said calmly. "I thought the police might have been here and-"

"They were here yesterday."

"So then they would have asked-"

"It wasn't Jasper!" the woman cried out unexpectedly, making Annika take an involuntary step back. "There was nothing I could do to stop him! And I don't believe the minister had anything at all to do with it!"

The woman slammed the door on Annika. Jesus, what had happened?

A door at the other end of the hallway opened a crack. "What's going on?" an old man's irritated voice sounded.

Annika picked up her pad and took the stairs down. Well out on the street, she started walking to the right without looking at the park.

"Thanks for feeding the cats."

Anne Snapphane was back and was sitting on her chair with her feet on the desk.

"How was Gotland?" Annika asked, dropping her bag on the floor.

"Scorching. Like having a fire next to a pizza oven. But they've got it under control now. But what the hell's happened to you?"

"What?" Annika said, not understanding.

"You've got a great big cut above your eye!"

Annika's hand flew up to her left eyebrow. "Oh, that. I hit my head on the bathroom cabinet this morning. Guess where I've been."

"At the murder victim's house?"

Annika smiled broadly and sat down.

"Well, I never," Anne said.

"Have you had lunch?"

They went to the cafeteria.

"So tell me about it," Anne Snapphane said with curiosity, loading a big forkful of pasta shells into her mouth.

Annika reflected. "Her roommate's an immigrant, or first-generation Swedish. From South America, is my guess. A bit odd, believes in astrology, but I like her."

"And what was Josefin like?"

Annika put down her fork. "I don't know. I can't figure her out. Patricia says she was really smart, the deputy principal that she was a stupid blonde, and her classmate Charlotta didn't seem to know the first thing about her. She wanted to be a journalist and help children, and at the same time she worked as a stripper."

"Stripper?"

"Her boyfriend runs some kind of strip joint. Studio 69, it's called."

"But that's that radio show. Boring old P3 trying to be intellectual. I hate it."

Annika nodded. "Yep. Joachim, the boyfriend, apparently thought it was hilarious. Studio 69 must be the most pretentious radio show around."

"If his aim was to bait those hotshots at the radio station, it points to a certain degree of intelligence."

Annika smiled and stuffed her mouth full.

"Tell me more. What was the apartment like?"

Annika chewed and thought about the question. "Spartan. Like it wasn't really furnished, you know, mattresses straight on the floor. As if they hadn't moved in for real."

"How the hell did she get an apartment on Dalagatan?"

"Mommy Barbro bought it. The phone's in her name too."

Anne Snapphane leaned back in her chair. "Why did she die?"

Annika shrugged. "Don't know."

"What are the cops saying?"

"I haven't talked to them yet."

They both bought a bottle of mineral water to take back to the newsroom. Spike was on the phone; no one else was in the office.

"What are you doing today?" Annika wondered.

"New forest fires have flared up all over the realm. I'll be putting them all out single-handedly."

Annika laughed.

She switched on her computer and loaded a floppy disk. She swiftly entered the notes from her conversation with Patricia, saved the file to the floppy, and deleted it from the hard disk. She put the floppy in her bottom desk drawer.

Annika's phone rang. She knew from the signal that it was an internal call.

"You've got a visitor," Tore Brand informed her.

"Who is it?"

Brand disappeared from the phone; she could hear him hollering in the background, "Hey! Stop! You can't just walk in there-"

Steps returning to the phone.

"Listen, he went right upstairs. But I think it's all right. It's a guy."

Annika felt the irritation growing inside her. Tore Brand was there to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening. Stupid old man.

"Did he say what he wanted?"

"He wanted to discuss something in today's paper. We're supposed to be accessible to the readers," Tore Brand said, as if it were meant literally.

At that instant, Annika spotted the man out of the corner of her eye. He was moving toward her, his eyes glaring. Annika hung up the phone and watched the man stalk through the newsroom and up to her desk.

"Are you Annika Bengtzon?" he said tensely.

Annika nodded.

The man geared himself up and slammed a copy of the day's Kvällspressen onto Annika's desk. "Why didn't you call?" His voice cracked in a spasm that came somewhere from his stomach.

Annika stared at the man- she didn't have a clue who he was.

"Why didn't you tell us what you were going to write? Her mother didn't know that this is how she died. Or that someone had been chewing on her. Jesus Christ!"

The man turned round and sat down on her desk, then hid his face in his hands and started crying. Annika picked up the paper he'd slammed down in front of her. It was open on the story on what Josefin looked like when she was found: her mute scream and bruised breasts, and the picture with the naked leg in the dense summer vegetation. Annika closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead.

This was Josefin's father, of course. Good God, what have I done? Annika felt shame wash over her like a giant tidal wave, coming at her in hot flushes. The floor started rolling. Christ Almighty, what had she done?

"I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd want to be disturbed-"

"Disturbed?" the man shouted out loud. "Do you think we could get more disturbed than this? Did you think we wouldn't see the garbage you wrote? Were you hoping we'd die too and never find out about it? Were you?"

Annika was on the verge of tears. The man was red in the face and was practically foaming at the mouth. Spike had turned around and was looking in her direction. Picture Pelle had showed up and was staring at the scene.

"I'm very sorry," she said.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Berit materialized. Without a word, she put an arm around the man's shoulder and led him away toward the cafeteria. He went with her without arguing, shaking with tears.

Annika grabbed her bag and hurried to the back exit. She was breathing raggedly and had to make a huge effort to walk normally.

"Where are you going, Bengtzon?" Spike hollered after her.

"Out!" she yelled back in a far too shrill voice.

She ran down the steps and threw her body at the back door. Two floors down, in the stairwell outside the archive, she sat down.

I'm a contemptible human being, she thought. This is never going to work.

She just sat on the stairs for a while and then left the building via the entrance next to the printing works.

She walked slowly down to the water by Marieberg Park. The noise of kids swimming traveled over the surface from Smedsudds Beach. She sat down on a bench. This is what it's like to live, she mused. You hear the sounds, feel the wind and the heat. You fail and you're ashamed of it. That's what it's all about- to live and learn.

I'll never hesitate again to make a call or make contact. I'll always stand up for what I write. I'll never be ashamed of my work or my words. She made promises to herself.

She slowly made her way along the water's edge over to the beach. There she took the path skirting Fyrverkarbacken and leading back to the newspaper offices.

"You have to tell me when you leave the building," Tore Brand grumbled at the reception desk when she passed.

She didn't have the energy to answer but just took the elevator up, praying that the father would be gone. He was, along with everybody else. Spike and Jansson were doing the handover, the subeditors weren't in yet, and Berit was out someplace.

Annika sat down heavily at her desk. She hadn't produced anything useful today. All that remained was to call the police.

The press officer said that the investigation was in progress.

There was no reply at the Krim duty desk.

The police control room hadn't been involved in the murder case during the day.

She hesitated but then decided to call the captain in charge of the investigation all the same.

When she dialed the number for the Krim duty desk, he answered the phone. Her pulse quickened.

"Hello, this is Annika Bengtzon at-"

"I know, I know." Quiet groan.

"Are you always at work?"

"Same with you, it seems like." His tone was cold and curt.

"I've got a few quick questions-"

"I can't talk to every reporter in town. If I'm on the phone, I can't be doing my job." Angry, annoyed.

"You don't have to talk to everybody, only to me."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Tired.

Annika reflected in silence for a few seconds. "This is taking a long time. It'd be quicker if you just answered my questions."

"The quickest thing would be for me to hang up."

"So why don't you?"

He breathed silently down the line, as if asking himself the same question. "What do you want?"

"What have you been doing today?"

"Routine interviews."

"Patricia? Joachim? The other people at the club? Maybe even a few of the customers? The parents? Her twin brother? People living near the park? The fat lady with the dog? And who's Jasper? And who's the minister?"

There was a pause. She'd got him. "You've done your homework."

"Just the normal research."

"We've found her clothes."

Annika felt the hair on her arms stand on end. This was news. He was giving her an exclusive.

"Where?"

"At the incinerating plant in Högdalen."

"At the dump?"

"No, they were in a compactor together with a whole lot of other garbage. They must have been thrown in a trash can somewhere on Kungsholmen. They're emptied into open wagons every day and the contents are compacted along with everything that's picked up from the street. So you can imagine."

"Will you be able to use the clothes as evidence?"

"So far the techs have found parts of a TV, fibers from couch upholstery, what look like bits of banana, and feces from a diaper among the clothes." He sighed.

"So it's useless?"

"So far, yes."

"Were the clothes torn?"

"Torn to pieces- by the compactor."

"So all fingerprints, hairs, tears, and other stuff that could have told you something is ruined."

"You've got it."

"Can I write that?"

"Do you think it's of any interest?"

"The murderer must have dumped the clothes in the trash can. Someone might have seen him."

"Where? How many people throw rubbish in a bin on Kungsholmen every day? Take a guess!"

"Like… everybody?"

"Correct! And it doesn't even have to have been the murderer who put them in the bin. The clothes could have been found by some concerned citizen who thought they were littering the footpath or something."

She waited in silence. "At least it shows that the police are doing something," she said after a while.

He laughed. "Which must be a good thing."

"Perhaps I don't need to state exactly how ruined the clothes are. The murderer doesn't need to know."

He grunted but didn't respond.

"What about the interviews?"

"I can't say anything about them. They're progressing." The chill was back.

"What about the people I mentioned earlier?"

"They're just a start."

"What about the autopsy? Did it produce anything?"

"It will be performed during office hours, that is, tomorrow."

"What kind of place is Studio 69?"

"Go find out for yourself."

"Do you know which minister the woman was talking about?"

"I'm glad there's something left for you to find out. I can't talk any longer now. Bye."

Annika contemplated the information she'd been given. The clothes thing was new, they could work that. Pity the police didn't rate the find highly, but at least they knew now that the murderer didn't keep the clothes.

Spike, Jansson, and Picture Pelle had returned from the handover. They were chatting over at the news desk.

"I've got an exclusive, at least for the time being."

The men looked at her, all with the same surprised and slightly annoyed look on their faces.

"They've found her clothes."

The men straightened up and reached for their pens.

"No shit. Can we get a photo of them?" the picture editor asked.

"No, but of the place where they were found. The incineration plant in Högdalen."

"They get any leads?"

Annika weighed her answer. "Not really, but the police don't want to say that."

The men nodded.

"It's looking good," Jansson said. "Together with what we've got already, this is some good stuff. Look at it."

He held out a sketch pad to Annika.

"I think we'll lead off with your story, 'New Police Lead'; photo of Josefin; photo of the dump. Soon we'll have to get a picture byline for you, Bengtzon!"

The men all laughed, kindly laughs. Annika cast down her eyes and blushed.

"Then there's the dad," Jansson went on. "Berit got a fantastic interview with him."

Annika was dumbfounded. "She did?"

"She sure did. He came up here shouting and going on about getting screwed, and Berit took care of him. Said he wanted to tell his story. She's gone out to the parents with the copy. They wanted to see the story first."

"Incredible," Annika mumbled.

"Then we need something from the murder scene. Any flowers there yet?"

"There weren't many this afternoon."

"Can you go and check out if there's any more now? Maybe talk to some mourners, someone leaving a message or lighting a candle."

Annika sighed and nodded. "What about her classmates?"

"Berit couldn't find any, apart from your Charlotta. We've got a photo of her in her room. Some of them are sure to be returning home tonight- it's the end of the industrial holidays today. But leave that for the time being, this will do for today. We've got the forest fires and the situation in the Middle East as well. It's getting pretty bad…"

The subeditors clattered in, raring to go to work. Annika returned to her desk, wrote her copy about the new police lead, and packed her bag to go down to the murder scene again.

Bertil Strand wasn't in, so she switched on the TV that was suspended from the ceiling above the desk. Josefin wasn't even mentioned on the local news.

Rapport spent half of their thirty-minute broadcast on the Middle East. Seven Israelis and fifteen Palestinians had been killed during the day. Three of them were small children. Annika shuddered.

After that the spokesperson for the Green Party demanded a commission be set up to look into the systematic registration of leftists in the seventies and into the IB affair.

Toward the end they showed part two of the Russia correspondent's report on the Caucasus conflict. The day before he had interviewed the Swedish-speaking president, today the reporter was with his guerrilla opponent.

"We're fighting for freedom," the leader said, one Kalashnikov in each hand. "The president is a hypocrite and a traitor."

There were women and children at the opposition headquarters. The little ones were laughing, running around barefoot, covered in dust. The women pulled their kerchiefs over their heads and disappeared into the black doorways of the houses. The guerrilla leader opened a door to a cellar and the TV reporter followed him underground. In the camera's light you could see row upon row of Russian arms: crates of mines, handguns, automatic weapons, hand grenades, antitank-grenade launchers, and on and on.

Annika was depressed. She was tired and hungry. What did it matter what she wrote about one dead Swedish girl when people around the world did nothing but destroy each other?

She went to the cafeteria and bought a bag of raspberry candies. She ate the entire contents of the bag on the way back to her desk and felt sick.

"How's it going, Annika?" It was Berit.

"So-so. I can't help thinking about all the misery in the world. It brings me down. Did you do okay with the parents?"

"Oh, yes. They had a few minor objections to what I'd written, but on the whole we agreed. We've got a picture of them sitting on the bed in Josefin's room. It looked untouched."

Berit walked over to the news desk to tell the editors. At the same moment Bertil Strand walked in.

"Have you got time for a quick trip to the murder scene?" Annika said, reaching for her bag.

"I just parked the car in the garage. Couldn't you have said something earlier?"

Patricia lay on her mattress, behind the drawn black curtains, sweating in the dark. Her legs ached and she felt sick with tiredness. She wasn't capable of spying on Joachim. They just couldn't ask that of her; the mere thought of it gave her goose bumps.

She closed her eyes and tried to shut out the sounds of the city. Night was falling out there; people were on their way to bars and restaurants. She focused inward and tried to find the truth inside, listening to her breathing and sinking into a form of self-hypnosis.

She conjured up Josefin's voice in the gloom, deep from within herself. At first the voice was lighthearted and happy, rising and falling, and Patricia smiled. Jossie was humming and singing in a high, clear voice. When the screams came, Patricia was prepared. She listened patiently to the blows and thuds, to Joachim's roaring. She hid in the shadows until he went silent and had left. She waited for the desperate tears from Jossie's room. The guilt was gone; she couldn't have stopped it. She wasn't alarmed; she wasn't scared. He couldn't do it anymore. Not to Jossie.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to the surface. The real world returned, sultry and hot.

I have to consult the cards, she thought.

She slowly got up; her blood pressure didn't keep up with her and she wobbled slightly. She took a balsawood box from a bag in the corner. She opened the box and stroked the black velvet lining. This was where she kept her cards.

She sat down on the floor in the lotus position and reverentially shuffled the tarot cards three times. Then she cut the deck three times. She repeated the procedure twice, just as the energies demanded. After the last cut she didn't collect the deck but chose one of the piles with her left hand and then shuffled these cards once more.

Finally, she put down the cards in a Celtic cross on the parquet floor, ten cards representing the quality of the moment from different angles. The Celtic cross was the most comprehensive spread to use when dealing with a significant change, which is what she felt she was facing now.

She deferred studying and analyzing the cards until the cross was complete. She then contemplated her situation. Her first card was Three of Swords, which stood for Saturn in Libra. She nodded- that was obvious, really. Three of Swords signified mourning and tension in three-way relationships. It urged her to make clear and unequivocal decisions.

The card crossing the card in the first position, standing in the way of her taking a stand, was the fifteenth of the Major Arcana, of course. The Devil, the male sex. It couldn't be more explicit.

The third and fourth cards represented her conscious and unconscious thoughts regarding the situation. Nothing strange there- Nine of Swords and Ten of Wands. Cruelty and oppression.

But the seventh and eighth cards made a big impression on her. The seventh card represented her self and was the eighteenth of the Major Arcana- the Moon. Not good. It meant she was facing a final and difficult test associated with the female sex.

The eighth card puzzled her. It represented external forces that would influence her situation. The Magician symbolized a ruthless communicator, an ingenious wordsmith, constantly moving on the edge of truth. She already had a hunch who this could be.

The tenth card, the outcome, made her feel calm. Six of Wands. Jupiter in Leo. Clarity. Breakthrough. Victory.

Now she knew she would make it.

Seventeen Years, Nine Months, and Three Days

Our happiness is so great. He holds me, always. His commitment is enormous; sometimes it's hard for me to live up to it. He gets very disappointed if I don't tell him everything. I must do better. Our travels through time and space are limitless. I love him so.

I have tried to explain that the fault does not lie with him. It's me; I'm the one who can't give him the appreciation he deserves.

He has bought clothes for me that I have hardly ever worn, symbols of love and trust. My ingratitude is based on egotism and immaturity; his disappointment is deep and hard. There is no excuse; universal togetherness brings responsibility.

I cry when I realize the scope of my imperfection. He forgives me. Then we make love.

Never leave me,

he says;

I can't live without you.

And I promise.

Monday 30 July

When Annika got to work, Spike was waiting impatiently by her desk, even though she didn't officially start for another hour and a half.

"Berit got a hot tip on another story," the news editor said. "You and Carl Wennergren will cover the murder today."

Annika dropped her bag on the floor and wiped the sweat from her forehead. "It's just getting hotter and hotter," she sighed.

"Carl's on his way up from Nynäshamn. Did you hear that he won the Round Gotland Race?"

Annika sat down and switched on her computer. "No, I didn't. That's nice for him."

Spike sat down on her desk and leafed through the rival tabloid. "We won today. They've got neither the parents nor the retrieved clothes. You did really well yesterday, you and Berit."

Annika lowered her head. "How are we going to develop the story today?"

"It won't be on the first page today. Sales always go down on the third day. Besides, it would have to be something pretty damn big to beat Berit's story. Why don't you try squeezing some kind of theory out of the cops? They should have one by now. Do you know if they have one they're working on?"

Annika hesitated as Joachim popped up in her mind, remembering Spike's dislike of "domestic quarrels."

"Perhaps," was all she said.

"If the police don't get a breakthrough, the story will soon be running on empty," Spike went on. "We'll have to keep an eye on the murder scene. Today would be the day for crying friends and stuff like that."

"Some graphics and a map detailing her last hours?"

Spike's face lit up. "You're right, we haven't done that. Get the data for it and talk to the illustrators."

Annika took notes. "Anything else new?"

"Well, our new deputy editor is coming in today. Anders Schyman. We'll have to see how it works out…"

Annika had heard the office talk about the new deputy editor, a presenter from a television current affairs program. She had never met him, only seen him on TV. He was big and blond and she thought he seemed boorish and unsympathetic.

"What do you think of him?" Annika asked circumspectly.

"It'll be a mess. What makes a goddamn TV celebrity think he can come here and teach us our jobs?"

Thereby he had voiced the collective opinion of the entire newsroom. Annika dropped the subject.

"Could Anne Snapphane help me on the murder case, or is she doing something else?"

Spike stood up. "Little Miss Snapphane has developed a new brain tumor and is undergoing some magnetic resonance imaging. Hey, there you are, Carl! Congratulations, pal!"

Carl Wennergren strolled into the newsroom with what must have been the sailing cup in his arms. Spike went up to him with long strides and slapped him on the back. Annika sat at her desk, numb. A brain tumor! Was he serious? Her hands trembled as she lifted the phone and dialed the number. Anne Snapphane answered on the first ring.

"How are you?" Annika said, a big lump in her throat.

"I'm really scared. I feel dizzy and weak, you know. When I close my eyes, I see flashes."

"Spike told me. Jesus, why haven't you told me about this?"

"What?"

"That you had a brain tumor!"

Anne Snapphane sounded slightly confused. "But I've never had a brain tumor. I've had all kinds of examinations, but they've never found anything."

Annika was at a loss. "But Spike said… So you don't have cancer of the brain?"

"Listen. You could say that I have a tendency to believe that I have various ailments. I know this, but all the same, a few times a year I will think I'm dying. Last winter I actually managed to pester the hospital into doing an MRI on me. Spike thinks it's hilarious."

Annika leaned back in her chair. She's a serious hypochondriac, she thought.

"Anyway, I've got another doctor's appointment at three-thirty this afternoon. You never know…"

"What are you going to do on your days off?"

"If they don't admit me to the hospital, I'm going up to Piteå with the cats. I've got tickets for the night train."

"Okay," Annika said. "I'll see you when we're back on."

They finished the call and Annika became absorbed in thoughts about her own impending vacation. This was the last of a five-day shift and she would be off for four days. She'd go home to Hälleforsnäs, see Sven and say hello to Whiskas. She sighed. She'd have to make her mind up soon. Either she'd stay and try to make a go of it here in Stockholm or she'd have to give her landlord notice and move back home.

She looked out over the newsroom. It was Monday and the place was swarming with people. She felt awkward and insecure. She didn't know the names of half the people. The warm feeling of belonging that she had felt during the weekend was gone. It was somehow linked to the quiet, the darkness outside, the empty corridors, and the low drone of the air-conditioning. During the day, the workplace was completely different, invaded by light and noise and loud people. She had no control; she had no status.

"Things have happened around here while I've been away," Carl Wennergren said, and settled on Annika's desk chummily.

Annika pointedly pulled out a computer printout from under the man's backside. "It's a tragic story."

Carl Wennergren put the cup down on top of the printout. "It's a challenge trophy," he said, handling his sailing cup. "Nice, isn't it?"

"Very."

"The owner of the boat gets the cup. The others just got a lousy diploma. The IOR class- the biggest boats- that's my kind of thing."

"I prefer to borrow Grandma's old rowing boat and row around Ho Lake. It can be pretty out there." Annika clicked to open a telegram on her screen.

Carl Wennergren looked at her in silence for a moment.

She didn't look up when he got up and walked off but made an effort to shut out him and the rest of the newsroom. She reached for the Rival. They didn't have much on the murder. She noted that they'd made something of a slip of paper at the murder scene with the words "We miss you." Annika shook her head and turned over the pages. A piece on relationships and holidays caught her attention. The divorce rate rose dramatically during the fall, she read, as the expectations that had kept marriages alive during the winter dropped with the leaves. She thought of herself and her own relationship and sighed.

"Why the long face? Do you want to grab a cup of coffee?"

Berit smiled cheerfully at her and Annika responded with a lopsided grin.

"I heard you got a tip," Annika said, fishing out her wallet from her bag.

"Yes, I did. Are you familiar with the IB affair?"

Annika quickly counted her money and saw that she'd have to go to the ATM today. "So-so. Sometime in the seventies Jan Guillou and Peter Bratt exposed how the government had set up an illegal register of people's political affiliations."

They were walking toward the cafeteria.

"Right," Berit said. "The Social Democrats panicked. They put the reporters in prison and acted pretty irrationally all along the line. Among other things, they destroyed their own archives, both for foreign and domestic affairs."

They took their coffee and sat down at a table by the window, not so much for the view as for the outlet of the air-conditioning overhead.

"So no one will ever find out what they were really up to at the Information Bureau?" Annika said.

"Exactly," Berit replied. "No one could find out much because the archives were lost. The Social Democrats have felt safe. Until now."

Annika stopped munching on her chocolate doughnut. "What do you mean?"

Berit lowered her voice. "I got a call yesterday, in the middle of the night. The foreign archive has been found."

"For real?"

"Yes and no. They've suddenly 'found' copies of the archive at the Defense Staff Headquarters, with no references to original sources or documents, but still."

"That doesn't mean the originals still exist." Annika blew on her coffee.

"True, but it increases the chances. Until last night there hasn't been even a scrap left of the archives. Not a single document, no recordings, nothing. These are copies of large chunks of the archive, so of course it's very valuable."

"Have you seen it?"

"Yes, I went over there first thing this morning."

"What a scoop. And right in the middle of the election campaign."

"You'll never guess where they found it."

"In the men's room?" Annika ventured.

"In the mail."

The minister pulled the swing as far back as he could.

"Are you ready?" he yelled.

"Yes," his daughter squeaked.

"Ready?" He was really hollering now.

"Yees!" the child shrieked.

With the sound of the child screeching in his ears, he rushed forward with the swing, pushing it ahead of him and letting it go high up in the air.

"Iiiii!" the child shrieked.

"Me too, Daddy! Me too! Run under me, run under me!"

He smiled at his son and wiped his forehead. "Okay, cowboy, but this is the last time."

He rounded the tree, tickled his daughter's tummy on the way, grabbed the boy's swing, and did his "Are you ready?" routine. Then he ran under the swing but did the whole thing a bit gentler than with his daughter. His son was of a slighter build and was more timid, despite their being twins.

"Do me again, Daddy!" his daughter yelled.

"No, that's it now. When the swing stops, you can come and sit with me over on the garden bench."

"But, Daddy…"

He walked over to his wife, who was sitting under a parasol. The garden furniture, made of ecofriendly blue pine, was from IKEA. Sometimes he just felt so unbelievably predictable.

"When do you have to go back?"

He kissed his wife's hair and sank down next to her on the bench. "I don't know," he sighed. "I'm hoping I can have the rest of the week off."

The phone rang inside the house.

"No, you sit there. I'll get it."

She got up and ran with a light step to the veranda where the cordless phone lay. Her skirt flapped around her calves and her hair danced around her tanned shoulders. His heart warmed. She answered the phone and was talking to someone. She looked over at him with surprise on her face.

"Of course," she said, loud enough for him to hear it. "He'll take it in his study."

She put the phone down and came over to him.

"Christer, it's for you. It's the police."

Annika couldn't get hold of Q. He was conducting an interview. She tried all the other numbers. The control room had nothing new, at the Krim duty desk she got an angry brush-off, and the press officer was busy. No one answered at Patricia's. She found the number for Studio 69 in the phone book, dialed it, and got an answering machine. A young woman's voice, trying hard to sound sexy, informed her of the business hours: 1 P.M. to 5 A.M. You could meet gorgeous girls, buy them champagne, watch the floor show or a private show, watch or buy erotic movies. All guests were welcome to the most intimate club in Stockholm.

Annika felt nauseated. She called the number once more and recorded the message. Then she tried the press officer again and this time she was lucky.

"A chief of investigation has been appointed," he told her.

Annika's heart quickened. "Who?"

"Chief District Prosecutor Kjell Lindström."

"How come?" she asked, even though she'd already guessed the answer.

The press officer stalled. "Yes, the investigation has gained some ground, and the Krim detectives thought it was time for the prosecutors to get involved."

"So there's a suspect."

The press officer cleared his throat. "Like I said, the investigation has gained some ground and-"

"Is it Joachim, the boyfriend?"

The press officer heaved a sigh. "I can't confirm that. We can't divulge any such information at this point in time."

"But that is the case?" Annika persisted.

"We've conducted quite a few interviews and there are signs pointing in that direction, yes. But I must ask you not to publish anything about it yet. It would be detrimental to the investigation."

A sense of triumph rose within her. Yes! It was him! The bastard.

"So what can I write? Surely I could say that the police have a clear lead and a suspect, that you've interviewed lots of people… Did sheever report him?"

"Who?"

"Josefin. Did she ever file a report against Joachim for intimidation or assault?"

"No, not that we've been able to track down."

"What makes you think it's him?"

"I can't go into that."

"So it's something someone has said in an interview? Was it Patricia?"

The press officer hesitated. "Now look, please respect what I've said to you. I can't give you any details. We haven't come that far. So far, no one has been charged with the crime. The police continue to have an open mind in their hunt for Josefin's killer."

Annika realized she wouldn't get any further. She thanked him, hung up, and called Chief District Prosecutor Kjell Lindström. He was in court all day. She sighed. She might as well go down to the Seven Rats and get something to eat.

"Message for you," the porter said in a surly tone, and gave Annika a note when she walked past the reception on her way up.

Martin Larsson-Berg had called, the deputy principal at Josefin's old school. The number wasn't for his house but looked like an extension number.

"I'm glad you called back," he said energetically when she got hold of him. "We've opened up the youth club here in Täby a week early."

"Really. Why's that?"

"The youngsters need an outlet for their grief over Josefin's death. We've got a crisis management team here to take care of all these unhappy people. A counselor, a psychologist, a priest, youth workers, teachers… Our school is making preparations for dealing with the difficult questions."

Annika hesitated. "Did Josefin really have that many friends?"

Martin Larsson-Berg's tone was extremely serious when he answered, "A crime of this nature can shake a whole generation. Here at our school we feel we need to be there for the students and support them in their trauma. You mustn't turn your back on a collective pain of this magnitude."

"And you want us to write about this?"

"We feel it's important to act as role models for people in similar situations. Show them that you can move on. This calls for commitment and resources, and we have both here."

"Could you hold for a moment?" She got up and walked over to Spike.

As usual, the news editor was on the phone.

"Do we want to look at the grieving in Täby? Where she came from," Annika asked without waiting for him to finish his call.

"What's that?" Spike put the phone against his stomach.

"The deputy principal of her school has opened a crisis management center at the youth club. He's very pleased with himself. Do we want to visit them?"

"Go," Spike said, and returned to his phone conversation.

Annika returned to her desk. "So where can we find you?"

She was assigned a freelance photographer by the name of Pettersson. He had an old VW Golf that stalled at every other junction.

I'll never complain about Bertil Strand again, she thought.

The youth club, housed in a complex of seventies-style buildings, comprised a kitchen, a poolroom, and some couches. The boys naturally took up most of the space. The girls were squeezed into a corner, and several of them were crying. Annika and the photographer did a quick tour before Martin Larsson-Berg received them.

"It's important to take the youngsters' feelings seriously," he said with an air of concern. "We will be open around the clock for the rest of the week."

Annika took notes, an unpleasant feeling spreading through her. It was loud in there and the young people were upset and acting out their feelings; they were yelling at each other and were generally jittery. Two guys tried to tear the T-shirt off one of the girls in the poolroom and didn't stop until the counselor intervened.

"Lotta likes the boys," Larsson-Berg said apologetically.

Annika stared at him in disbelief. "It looked like they were trying to strip her shirt off."

"They're having a hard time right now. They didn't sleep much last night. Here's Lisbeth, our counselor."

Annika and Pettersson introduced themselves.

"I feel it's very important to really listen to these young people," the counselor said.

"Can you really do that in this environment?" Annika asked tentatively.

"The children need to share their pain with someone. They help each other overcome the grief. We welcome all of Josefin's friends."

"Including people from out of town?" Annika wondered.

"Everybody is welcome," Larsson-Berg said emphatically. "We can help everybody who needs it."

"Do you do house calls?" Annika asked.

The counselor smiled an uneasy smile. "How do you mean?"

"Well, Josefin's best friend, Patricia- have you been in contact with her?"

"Has she been here?" the counselor asked, a puzzled look on her face.

Annika looked around the room. Four girls sat next to a crackling stereo, sobbing and playing Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven" at high volume. Three others were writing something to Josefin with a lit candle and the graduation photo from Kvällspressen on the table in front of them. Six boys were playing cards. She couldn't imagine Patricia setting foot here of her own free will.

"I doubt it."

"But she's very welcome. Everybody's welcome," the counselor declared.

"And you're going to stay open all night?"

"Our support is unwavering. I broke off my holiday to be here for them."

The counselor smiled. Something shiny and unearthly was in her eyes. Annika stopped writing. This didn't feel right. The woman wasn't there for Josefin's or her friend's sake, but for her own.

"Maybe I could have a word with some of her friends?" Annika suggested.

"Whose?" the counselor asked.

"Josefin's."

"Oh, yes, of course. Anyone in particular?"

Annika gave it a moment's thought. "Charlotta? They were in the same class."

"Oh, yes, Charlotta. I believe she's organizing a mourning procession to the murder scene. There's a lot to arrange, hiring a coach and stuff like that. This way."

They went into an office behind the poolroom. A young woman with a short bob and a healthy tan was discussing something over the phone. She glared at them for disturbing her, but her face lit up when Annika mouthed, "Kvällspressen." She promptly finished the call.

"Charlotta, Josefin's best friend," the counselor said by way of introduction, flashing an appropriately mournful smile.

Annika mumbled her name and lowered her gaze. "We've spoken."

Charlotta gave a nod of assent. "Yes. I'm still in shock," she said dryly. "It's been such a blow."

The counselor gave her a sympathetic hug.

"But together we're strong," Charlotta resumed. "We have to rouse public opinion against senseless violence. Josefin will not have died in vain, we'll see to that."

There was passion and dedication in her voice. She would be the perfect guest on a talk show, Annika thought.

"In what way?" Annika asked quietly.

Charlotta shot the counselor a hesitant glance. "Well, we have to be united. And protest. Show that we won't give way. That feels most important right now- to support each other in our grief. Share our feelings and help each other through the difficulties." Charlotta gave a wan smile.

"And now you're organizing a mourning procession?" Annika remarked.

"Yes, so far over a hundred people have signed up. We'll fill at least two coaches." Charlotta rounded the desk and picked up some lists of names that she showed to Annika.

"Naturally, we'll pay for all expenses," the counselor interjected.

Pettersson, the photographer, appeared in the doorway. "Can I take a picture of you two?"

The two women, one young, one older, lined up next to each other with straight backs.

"Could you try to look a bit sadder?" the photographer asked.

Annika groaned inwardly, shut her eyes, and turned her back. To the great satisfaction of the photographer, the women hugged each other and quivered their lips for him.

"We won't take up any more of your time now," Annika said, and moved toward the exit.

"There are several more weeping kids out there," Pettersson said.

Annika wavered. "Okay," she said reluctantly. "We'll ask them if they want to be in a picture."

They did. The girls cried their eyes out, the candles sparkled, and the grainy photocopy of Josefin's graduation photo floated behind them. Pettersson took pictures of the girls' poems and drawings, and while he was snapping away, the sound level rose to even higher levels. The youths were pumped up by the presence of the two journalists, their excitement growing fast.

"Hey, we want to be in a picture!" two guys with pool cues in their hands shouted out.

"I think it's time to leave," Annika whispered.

"Why?" Pettersson asked in surprise.

"Let's go," Annika hissed. "Now."

She walked off to find Martin Larsson-Berg while the photographer began to pack up his equipment. They thanked the deputy principal and left the building.

"What's the goddamn hurry?" Pettersson asked Annika testily on the way to the car. He was walking ten feet behind Annika, his camera bag bouncing against his hip.

Annika replied without turning round to look at him, "That was a freak show. It could get out of hand real fast."

She climbed in the car and turned on the radio.

They didn't speak on the way back to town.

Annika had just got back to her desk when she saw the man come walking from the far end of the newsroom. He was big and blond and the light from beyond the sports desk fell on him. She followed him curiously with her gaze. The man stopped every three feet, shaking hands and saying hello. Not until he reached the news desk did she see that the editor in chief was walking next to him, his slight figure almost invisible.

"Could I have your attention, please," the editor in chief said in his nasal voice over at the news desk. Spike was on the phone, feet on the desk, and didn't even look up. Picture Pelle gave the man a quick glance and continued working at his screen. Some of the other staff stopped what they were doing and watched the men with skepticism. Nobody had asked to have a TV celebrity for editor.

"Could you listen, please?" asked the editor in chief.

The faces of the staff were impassive. Suddenly the big blond took a step toward Spike's desk. Athletically, he climbed up on the long desk and walked along it, dodging the telephones and coffee mugs. He came to a stop right in front of Spike, whose eyes traveled up his body. "I'll call you back," Spike said, and put the phone down. Picture Pelle let go of his Mac and came over. The sound level dropped to a quiet murmur as the staff slowly gathered in the center of the newsroom.

"I'm Anders Schyman," the man said. "At present I'm in charge of the current affairs desk at Swedish Television. Starting on Wednesday, August first, I'll be your new deputy editor."

He paused; a palpable silence filled the big room. His voice had the intensity and bass that characterized the voice-overs you'd hear on TV documentaries. Fascinated, Annika stared at him.

The man took a step and looked out over another part of the newsroom. "I don't know your job. You know it. I can't teach you what to do. You know that better than anyone."

New silence; Annika could hear the sounds of the evening, the air-conditioning, and the traffic in the street below.

Annika felt he was looking straight at her. "What I will do is smooth the ground for you. I won't be driving the engine. I will break the ground and plan the tracks. I can't lay them myself, we have to do that together. But you are the engine drivers, the stokers, and the conductors. You'll be the ones talking to the passengers and you'll be signaling to us so the train arrives on time. I'll be coordinating departures and make sure that we go to the right places and that there are tracks all the way. I'm no engineer. I want to become one in time, when you have taught me all the things I don't know. But today I'm only one thing: a media man."

He turned round and looked at the sports desk; Annika could only see his broad back. His voice carried almost as well.

"I feel a deep sense of duty as a journalist. Ordinary people are my employers. I have fought corruption and the abuse of power all my working life. That's the core of journalism. Truth is my guiding principle, not influence or power."

He turned so that Annika saw his profile.

"Big words, I know. But I'm not being pretentious, only ambitious. I didn't take this job for the salary and the title. I've come here today for one single reason, and that is to work with you."

You could have heard a pin drop. Spike's phone rang and he quickly took it off the hook.

"Together we can make this newspaper the biggest in Scandinavia. All the qualities required are already in place, meaning you, the staff. The journalists. You are the brain and heart of the paper. In time we'll make everybody's heart beat as one, and the roar that will issue forth will tear down walls. You'll see that I'm right."

Without saying anything more, he stepped over the edge of the desk and jumped down to the floor. The murmur returned.

"Amazing," said Carl Wennergren, who had suddenly appeared by Annika's side.

"Yes, really," she replied, still moved by the man's presence.

"I haven't heard such pretentious nonsense spoken since my dad's speech at my graduation. Did you get anywhere?"

Annika turned around and returned to her desk. "The police have a suspect."

"How do you know that?" Carl said skeptically from behind her.

Annika sat down and looked him straight in the eye. "It's quite simple, really. It's her boyfriend. That's almost always the case, you know."

"Has he been arrested?"

"Nope, he hasn't even been cautioned."

"Then we can't publish anything," Carl said.

"It depends how you formulate the words. What have you been doing?"

"I've copied out my diary from the race. The guys at the sports desk want it. Do you want to read it?"

Annika gave a lopsided grin. "Not just now, thanks all the same."

Carl sat down on her desk again. "It's turned out to be quite a break for you, this murder."

Annika threw away some old TT wires. "That's not exactly how I see it."

"First page two days in a row- no other freelancer has managed that this summer."

"Except you, of course," Annika pointed out in a silken voice.

"Well, yes, that's true, but then I had a head start. I did my work experience here."

And your father's on the board of the paper, Annika thought, but didn't say.

Carl got up. "I'll go down to the murder scene and catch a few mourners," he said over his shoulder.

Annika nodded and turned to face the computer. She created a new document, setting a dramatic tone: "The police have made a breakthrough in the hunt for Josefin Liljeberg's killer-"

That's as far as she got before the Creepy Calls phone rang. She swore and picked it up.

"Enough is enough," a woman's voice wheezed.

"I agree."

"We won't bow to patriarchy any longer."

"Fine by me."

"We're out for revenge."

"Sounds like fun," Annika said, unable to keep the mocking tone out of her voice.

The voice got irritated. "Just listen to me. We're the Ninja Barbies. We've declared war on oppression and violence against women. We won't take it anymore. The woman in the park was the final straw. Women shouldn't have to be afraid to go outside. Men will know the fear of violence- you just wait and see. We're starting with the police force, Establishment hypocrites."

Annika was listening now. This sounded like a genuine nutcase. "So why are you calling us?"

"We want our message to be communicated in the media. We want maximum publicity. We're offering Kvällspressen the opportunity to be present at our first raid."

What if she was serious? Annika looked around the newsroom, trying to catch someone's eye and wave him or her over. "How… What do you mean?" she said hesitantly.

"Tomorrow. Do you want to be in on it?"

Annika frantically looked around the room. Nobody paid her any attention. "Are you serious?" she asked feebly.

"These are our terms. We want full control over copy, headlines, and pictures. Guaranteed absolute anonymity. And we want fifty thousand kronor in advance. Cash."

Annika breathed silently down the phone for a few seconds. "That's impossible. Out of the question."

"Are you sure about that?"

"I've never been more sure in my life."

"Then we'll call the Rival," the woman retorted.

"Go ahead, be my guest. You'll get the same answer from them. Sure as hell."

There was a click and the line went dead. Annika put the phone down, shut her eyes, and hid her face in her hands. Christ, what the hell should she do now? Call the police? Tell Spike? Pretend nothing had happened? She had a feeling she'd be taken to task whatever she did.

"And this is where the night reporters sit," she heard the editor in chief say. She looked up and saw the senior editors of the paper over at the picture desk, and they were walking in her direction. They were, apart from the editor in chief, the new deputy editor, Anders Schyman; the sports editor; the features editor; the picture editor; the arts editor; and one of the lead writers. They were all men, and all of them, apart from Anders Schyman, were dressed in the same navy jackets, jeans, and shiny shoes.

The group of men stopped next to her desk.

"The night reporters go on at noon and work until eleven P.M.," the editor in chief said with his back turned to Annika. "They work on a roster and many of them are freelance. We see the night shift as a bit of a learning experience."

Schyman broke off from the group and came up to her. "I'm Anders Schyman." He held out his hand.

Annika looked up at him. "So I've gathered." She smiled and took his hand. "I'm Annika Bengtzon."

He returned her smile as they shook hands. "You've been covering the Josefin Liljeberg murder."

Her cheeks turned red. "You're on the ball."

"Are you on the permanent staff?"

Annika shook her head. "No- I'm just covering for the summer. My contract ends in a few weeks' time."

"We'll get a chance to talk more later," Schyman said, and returned to the group. All the eyes that had been fixed on Annika lifted and flew away over the newsroom.

She made her decision when the group left.

She was no squealer. She wasn't going to call the police and tell them about the Ninja Barbies; neither would she tell Spike. So many lunatics called the paper every day, she couldn't go running to the news editor with all of them.

She returned to her story on the police breakthrough and managed to sound well informed without quoting Patricia. She wrote about the suspect without betraying the police press officer as her source and hinted the boyfriend was the wrongdoer without actually saying it explicitly. She kept the story about the Täby grief counseling concise and terse.

She went to the cafeteria, bought a Coke, and listened to the headlines on Studio 69, the current affairs program. They were talking about the role of the media during the election campaign. She switched off and instead started working on Josefin's last hours, entering addresses and times on a grid. The only thing she left out was the name of the club where Josefin had worked- she just called it the Club. When she had finished, she walked over to the illustrators, who would enter the data on a map or an aerial photograph of Kungsholmen.

When she was done, it was nearly seven o'clock. She felt hot and weak and had no energy for more research. Instead she made herself comfortable and scrutinized the morning broadsheets. At half past seven, she turned up the volume on the TV and watched Rapport. They had nothing on either Josefin or the IB affair. The only item of interest came from the Russia correspondent, who rounded off his series on the Caucasus with an expert in Moscow who gave his view of the situation.

"The president needs weapons," the expert announced. "The country has completely run out of ammunition, shells, antiaircraft defenses, rifles, machine guns, everything. This is the main problem facing the president. As the U.N. has imposed a weapons embargo on the nation, he is finding it extremely difficult to get hold of anything. The only alternative is the black market, and he can't afford that."

"How come the guerrillas are so well equipped?" the correspondent asked.

The expert gave an embarrassed smile. "The guerrillas really are quite weak- they're badly trained and have poor leadership. But they have unlimited access to Russian weapons. Russia has important interests in the Caucasus region and is subsidizing the guerrilla warfare."

Annika remembered the Swedish-speaking old man, the president, whose people suffered constant attacks from the guerrillas. World leaders were such cowards sometimes! Why didn't they stop Russia from supporting this civil war?

By the time Rapport had finished, the calm had returned to the newsroom. Spike had gone home and Jansson had taken his place in the chief's chair. Annika scanned through the latest TT telegrams, read the copy on the server, and checked the headlines on the nine-o'clock TV news Aktuellt. Then she went over to Jansson.

"Nice map," the night editor said. "And good copy on the suspect boyfriend. No big surprise there."

"Is there anything else for me to do here?"

Jansson's phone rang. "I think you should go home now You've been here all weekend."

Annika hesitated. "Are you sure?"

Jansson didn't reply. Annika walked over to her desk and collected her stuff. She cleared up the desk as she would be gone for four days and some other reporter would be using it.

She bumped into Berit on the way out.

"Do you want to go for a beer at the pizza place on the corner?" her colleague asked.

Annika was surprised but tried not to show it. "Sure, I'd love to. I haven't had dinner."

They took the stairs down. The evening was as sultry as the day had been hot. The air above the multistory garage was still quivering.

"I've never seen the likes of this summer," Berit said.

The women walked slowly toward Rålambsvägen and the seedy pizzeria that miraculously survived year after year.

"Do you have any family in town?" Berit asked as they waited for the traffic light to change at the crossing.

"My boyfriend lives in Hälleforsnäs. What about you?"

"A husband in Täby, a son who's away at university, and a daughter who's an au pair in Los Angeles. Are you going to try to stay on at the paper this fall?"

Annika gave a nervous laugh. "Well, I'd like to stay, and I'm giving it my best shot."

"Good, that's the most important thing."

"It's pretty tough going. I think they use the freelancers pretty ruthlessly. They take in a whole bunch of people and let them fight it out over the jobs, instead of filling the positions that are actually available."

"True. But it also gives a lot of people a chance."

The pizzeria was all but empty. They chose a table toward the back of the restaurant. Annika ordered a pizza and they both had a beer.

"I read your piece on the IB affair on the server," Annika said.

"Here's to more big scoops!"

They clinked their glasses and sipped from them.

"This IB story seems never-ending," Berit said as she put down the misty glass on the plastic tablecloth. "As long as the Social Democrats go on telling lies and dodging the issue there will be a story in it."

"But maybe you need to see their side of it. It was the middle of the cold war."

"Actually, no. The first forms for the registration of people's political affiliations were sent out from party headquarters on September twenty-first, 1945. The covering letter was written by Mr. Sven Andersson himself, party secretary and defense secretary to be."

Annika blinked in surprise. "That early?" she said skeptically. "Are you sure?"

Berit smiled. "I have a copy of the letter in my filing cabinet."

They watched the other patrons in the restaurant in silence for a while, a few local loafers and five giggly youngsters who were probably below legal drinking age.

"But seriously," Annika said, "why would they want to keep a register of Communists if the cold war hadn't even started yet?"

"Power. The Communists were strong, especially in Norrbotten, Stockholm, and Gothenburg. The Social Democrats were afraid of losing their hold over the trade unions."

"Why?" Annika asked, feeling stupid.

"The Social Democrats were determined to hold block membership in the party for all workers. Section One of the Metalworkers' Union fell into Communist hands as early as 1943. When they canceled the collective affiliation to the Social Democrats, the party lost thirty thousand kronor in membership fees per year. That was a huge sum of money to the party in those days."

Annika's pizza arrived. It was small and the base was tough.

"I don't get it," Annika said after a few mouthfuls. "How could the registration help the Social Democrats maintain power over the unions?"

"Can I have small piece? Thanks… Well, there were certain representatives who rigged the elections of nominees to the party conference. All Social Democrats were ordered to vote for certain candidates just to cut out the Communists."

Annika chewed, looking at her colleague with skepticism in her eyes. "Come on. My dad was shop steward at the works in Hälleforsnäs. Are you saying that people like him obstructed democratic local proceedings to toe the line defined by the party in Stockholm?"

Berit nodded. "Not everybody did it, but far too many. It didn't matter who was the most competent or who had the trust of the union members."

"And the Social Democratic headquarters had lists of all the names?"

"Not from the outset. At the end of the fifties the information was held on a local level. At its peak there were over ten thousand representatives, or 'political spies,' if you like, in Swedish workplaces."

Annika cut a slice from her pizza and ate it with her fingers. She chewed in silence, mulling over Berit's words.

"No disrespect, but aren't you making too much out of this?"

Berit crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. "Sure, there's people who think that. More and more people have no interest in even recent history. We're talking about the fifties- that's the Stone Age for today's generation."

Annika ignored that one. She pushed her plate to one side and wiped her mouth and hands on the napkin. "What happened next?"

"IB. It was established in 1957."

"The Information Bureau, right?"

"Or 'Inform Birger," after the head of the IB domestic bureau, Birger Elmér. The foreign intelligence outfit was called the T Office for a while, after its boss, Thede Palm."

Annika shook her head. "Jesus. How do you keep track of everything?"

Berit smiled and relaxed a bit. "I subscribed to Folket i Bild Kulturfront when they published the piece by Jan Guillou and Peter Bratt that started unraveling this major scandal. It was in 1973, the famous issue nine. I've written quite a lot about IB and SAPO since then. Nothing revolutionary, but I've kept an ear to the ground."

The waiter came and removed the remains of Annika's pizza: the crusts and some particularly leathery processed pigs' snouts.

"My father talked a bit about IB," Annika said. "He thought it was all ridiculously exaggerated. It has to do with the safety of the nation, he said, and the Social Democrats should really be commended for making the country safe."

Berit put down her glass with a bang. "The Social Democrats set up registers of people's political opinions for the good of the party. They broke their own laws and lied about it. They're still lying, by the way. I spoke to the Speaker of the Parliament today. He flatly denies having known Birger Elmér or having had anything to do with IB."

"Maybe he's telling the truth,"

Berit gave Annika a pitying smile. "Trust me. IB is the Achilles' heel of the Social Democratic Party. Their great big, gigantic mistake that also happened to keep them in power for over forty years. They'll do anything to keep their secrets. Through SAPO they mapped out the entire Swedish population. They persecuted people for their political opinions, had them frozen out at their workplaces and even fired. They will go on lying as long as no one produces the hard evidence, and that's when they start to equivocate."

"So what was SAPO? A Social Democratic security police?"

"No, SAPO stands for the Social Democratic Organization for Workplace Representatives. It was completely kosher on the surface- the SAPO reps were the party mouthpieces in the workplace."

"So why all the secrecy?"

"SAPO were the ants on the floor in the IB organization. Everything they reported ended up with Elmér and the government. SAPO is the crux of the matter, the proof that IB and the Social Democrats are one and the same."

Annika looked over toward the window and the summer night outside. Three dusty artificial green plants obstructed her view. Behind them was the grimy window that laid a gray film against the busy street outside.

"So what was in this foreign archive?" she asked.

"The names of agents, journalists, seamen, aid workers. People who traveled a lot. They would hand in reports with the aim of predicting impending crises. They had agents in Vietnam whose information was passed straight to the Americans and to a great extent also to the Brits. Strictly speaking they were regular intelligence reports, outlining things like the Vietnamese infrastructure, how the people lived, how they responded to the war, how bad the devastation was."

"But Sweden's a neutral state," Annika said with surprise.

"Yeah, sure," Berit said tartly. "Birger Elmér used to have lunch with the American ambassador and their Secret Service chief in Sweden. And Elmér and the Prime Minister Olof Palme met quite often. 'I'll handle the politics, you keep the Americans happy,' Palme told him. 'I've got to walk in the demonstrations, meanwhile you take care of the Americans.'"

"And a copy of their archive has suddenly shown up."

"I'm convinced that the originals still exist," Berit said. "The only question is where."

"What about the domestic archive?"

"It was entirely illegal and contained detailed personal data about people who were considered the enemies of the Social Democrats. Somewhere in the region of twenty thousand names. Everyone on that register was to be imprisoned if war broke out. They might have found it difficult to get a job and they were excluded from all union work. You didn't have to be a Communist to end up like that. It was enough to read the wrong papers, to have the wrong friends. Be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

They sat in silence for a while.

Annika cleared her throat. "Still, these things happened forty years ago. In those days people were sterilized by force and DDT was sprayed everywhere. What makes these papers so important today?"

Berit pondered the question. "They are most likely full of unpleasant details about bugging, break-ins, and stuff like that. But the really sensitive material is gone: the whole picture."

"What do you mean?"

Berit closed her eyes. "In practice it means that high-ranking Social Democrats were American spies. Today, the proof of repeated deviations from Sweden's official neutrality that may be hidden among these documents would be worse than the systematic registration of political affiliations. The Social Democrats didn't just lie to the nation; they were horse-trading under the table with the superpowers. This wasn't completely without risk. The Soviet Union knew what was going on in Sweden, the spy Wennerström had seen to that. It was accounted for in the Russians' war preparations. Sweden was probably a primary target if war broke out, precisely because of this double game."

Annika looked wide-eyed at Berit. "Jesus Christ. Do you really think it was that bad?"

Berit drank the last of her beer. "If the activities of IB were to be thoroughly investigated, down to the last vile detail, it would be devastating for the Social Democrats. They would lose all credibility. Completely. The key is in the archives. The Social Democrats would find it difficult to form a government for a long time if they came to the surface."

The young people left the restaurant and spilled out loudly onto the street. They left an abstract pattern of peanuts and spilled beer on their table. Annika and Berit followed them with their gaze through the window, saw them cross the busy road and walk to the bus stop, where the 62 bus rolled in and the youngsters climbed on it.

A thought suddenly occurred to Annika. Should she tell Berit about the Ninja Barbies?

Berit looked at her watch. "Time to go. My last train will leave soon."

Annika hesitated and Berit waved to the waiter.

Never mind, Annika thought. No one's ever going to find out.

"I'm off tomorrow," she said. "I'm really looking forward to it."

Berit gave a sigh and smiled. "I'll have to give this IB stuff everything I've got for a couple of days. Though I'm enjoying it, really."

Annika returned her smile. "Yes, I can see that. Are you a Communist yourself?"

Berit laughed. "And you're spying for SAPO, I guess!"

Annika joined in the laughter.

They paid the check and stepped outside. Slowly the evening had changed color and texture and become night.

Seventeen Years, Eleven Months, and Eight Days

Time is rent apart, leaving deep marks. Reality tears love to pieces with its pettiness and tedium. We are both equally desperate in our ambition to find the Truth. He's right; we have to share the responsibility. I lack consideration; my focus is blurred; I don't concentrate fully. I take too long to reach orgasm. We have to come closer, commit completely, without interference. I know he is right. With the right kind of love in your mind there are no obstacles.

I know where the problem lies: I have to learn to harness my desire. It comes between our experiences, our journeys into the cosmos. Love will carry you anywhere but you have to have absolute dedication.

His love for me is beyond words. All the wonderful details, his concern for every aspect of me: his choice of books for me, of clothes, music, food, and drink. We share the same pulse and breath. I have to rid myself of my egotistic tendencies.

Never leave me,

he says;

I can't live without you.

And I promise, again and again.

Tuesday 31 July

The draft woke her up. She stayed in bed, eyes closed. The sharp light from the open window penetrated her eyelids. It was morning. Not so late that she would feel depressed about having slept through the whole day, but enough for her to feel rested.

Annika pulled on her dressing gown and walked out into the stairwell. The cracked mosaic floor sent a welcome chill through her body. The toilet was a half-floor down; she shared it with the other tenants on the top floor.

The curtains flapped like big sails in the breeze when she came back into the apartment. She had bought thirty yards of light-colored voile and draped it over the old curtain rails- with striking effect. The walls all through the apartment were painted white. The previous tenant had rolled on a coat of primer and then given up. The matte walls reflected and absorbed the light at one and the same time, making the rooms seem transparent.

She walked slowly through the living room and into the kitchen. The floor space was clear as she had hardly any furniture. The floorboards shimmered in gray and the ceiling floated like a white sky high above her. She boiled some water on the gas stove, put three spoonfuls of coffee in a glass Bodum cafetière, poured the water, and pushed down the filter after a couple of minutes. The fridge was empty; she'd have a sandwich on the train.

A torn morning paper lay on the floor inside her front door. The mail drop was too narrow for it. She picked it up and sat down on the kitchen floor with her back to the cupboard.

The usual: the Middle East, the election campaign, the record heat. Not a line about Josefin. She was history already, a figure in the statistics. There was another op-ed article on the IB affair. This time she read it. A professor in Gothenburg demanded the formation of a truth commission. Right on! Annika thought.

She didn't bother going down to the basement to have a shower but washed her face and armpits in the kitchen sink. The water didn't get icy cold now, so she didn't need to heat any.

The first editions of the evening papers were just out, and she bought both from the newsdealer on Scheelegatan. Kvällspressen led with the IB story. Annika smiled. Berit was the best. Her own pieces were in a good place, pages eight, nine, ten, and center spread. She read her own text about the police theory. It was quite good, she thought. The police had a lead that pointed to a person close to Josefin, she'd written. It appeared that Josefin had felt under threat and had been scared. There were signs that she'd been physically abused before. Annika smiled again. Without writing a word about Joachim, the police theory was there. Then came the stage-managed orgy of grief in Täby. She was glad she'd kept it concise and to the point. The photo was okay. It showed a few girls next to some candles, not crying. She felt good about it. The Rival had nothing special, apart from the sequel to the piece "Life After the Holidays." She would read that on the train.

A hot wind was rising. She bought an ice cream on Bergsgatan and walked down Kaplansbacken to Centralen, the railway station. She was in luck, the Intercity train to Malmö was leaving in five minutes. She sat down in the buffet car and was first in line to buy a sandwich when it opened. She bought her ticket from the conductor.

Only she and three Arab men got off the train in Flen. The bus for Hälleforsnäs left in fifteen minutes and she sat down on a bench opposite the municipal offices and studied a sculpture called Vertical Tendency. It really was terrible. She ate a bag of jelly cars on the bus and got off outside the co-op.

"Congratulations!" Ulla, one of her mother's workmates, shouted. The woman stood over by a flowerbed in her green work coat, smoking a cigarette.

"For what?" Annika smiled at her.

"Front page and everything. We're proud of you," Ulla yelled.

Annika laughed and made a deprecating gesture with her hand. She walked past the church and toward her house. The place looked deserted and dead, the red rows of forties houses steaming in the heat.

I hope Sven isn't here, she thought.

The apartment was empty and all the plants were dead. A horrendous stench came from a forgotten garbage bag in the kitchen. She threw it in the garbage chute and opened all windows wide. She left the dead plants to their fate. She couldn't be bothered just now.

When she went home, her mother was genuinely happy to see her. She gave her an awkward hug, her hands cold and clammy.

"Have you had dinner? I've got elk casserole cooking."

Her mother's latest boyfriend was a hunter.

They sat down at the kitchen table, her mother lighting a cigarette. The window was ajar and Annika could hear some kids fighting over a bicycle in the street. She looked out toward the works and the dreary gray tin roofs that stretched out as far as the eye could see.

"Now tell me, how did you do it?" Her mother smiled expectantly.

"How do you mean?" Annika said, returning the smile.

"All that success, of course! Everybody's seen it. They come up to me at the checkout and congratulate me. Great articles. You've been on the front page and everything!"

Annika bowed her head. "It wasn't that difficult. I got a good tip-off. How's things here?"

Her mother's face lit up. "Oh, I have to show you!" She got to her feet. The cigarette smoke eddied in the air as she moved over to the counter. Annika followed it with her gaze as her mother returned to the table. She spread a bunch of photocopies in front of Annika.

"I like this one," she said, rapping her knuckle on the tabletop. She sat down and took a deep drag on the cigarette.

Sighing lightly, Annika looked at her mother's papers. They were prospectuses from various real estate agents in Eskilstuna. On the one that her mother had indicated with her knuckle she read, Exclusive splitlevel house w/ high standard, sunken bathtub in a tiled bathroom, L-shaped living room, den w/ fireplace.

"Why do they abbreviate with?" Annika wondered.

"What?"

"They've abbreviated about the shortest word of the sentence. It doesn't make sense."

Annoyed, her mother waved aside the smoke between them. "What do you think?"

Annika hesitated. "It seems a bit on the expensive side."

"Expensive?" Her mother snatched the Xerox copy from the table. " 'Marbled hallway floor, tiled kitchen floor, and a basement bar'- it's perfect!"

Annika heaved another silent sigh. "Sure, I was just wondering if you can afford it. One point three million is quite a lot of money."

"Look at the others."

Annika leafed through the sheets. They were all monstrosities on the outskirts of Eskilstuna, situated in districts with names like Skiftinge, Stenkvista, Grundby, Skogstorp. All with more than six rooms and a big garden.

"You don't like gardening," Annika remarked.

"Leif is a nature person." Her mother put out the half-smoked cigarette. "We're thinking of buying something together."

Annika pretended not to hear. "How's Birgitta?" she asked instead.

"She's okay. She gets on really well with Leif. I think you would like him too, if you met him." A tone of accusation and injury was in her mother' voice.

"Will she get to keep her job at Right Price?"

"Don't change the subject." Her mother straightened up. "Why don't you want to meet Leif?"

Annika got up and walked over to the fridge, opened it, and had a look inside. The shelves were clean but almost empty.

"I don't mind meeting him if it makes you happy. But I've been so busy this summer, as you can imagine."

Her mother disregarded the tone in her voice and also got up. "Don't rummage about in the fridge. We'll be eating soon. You can set the table."

Annika took a small pot of low-fat yogurt and closed the fridge door.

"I don't have time to stay for dinner. I'm going out to Lyckebo."

Her mother's mouth became a thin white line. "It'll be ready in a few minutes. You could wait."

"I'll see you again soon." Annika hung her bag over her shoulder and hurried out of the apartment. Her bicycle stood where she had left it. The back tire was flat. She pumped it up, fastened the bag to the rack, and pedaled away toward Granhed. She cycled past the works and glanced at it out of the corner of her eye. The works- beating heart of the small community. Forty thousand square meters of deserted industrial park. Sometimes she hated it for all it had done to her during her youth. Twelve hundred people had worked here when she was born. By the time she left school, that number was down to a few hundred. Her father had had to go when they cut it to one hundred and twenty. Now there were eight workers. She cycled past the parking lot. She counted three cars and five bicycles.

Her father couldn't deal with being unemployed. The lousy job had been his life. He never got a new one, and Annika had a feeling she knew why. Bitterness is hard to hide and unpleasant to hire.

She cycled past the entrance gate to the canoe club and automatically speeded up. That's where they'd found him, half an hour too late. His body temperature was too low. He survived for another twenty-four hours at the hospital in Eskilstuna, but the alcohol did its part. In her darkest moments she felt it was just as well. And if she thought about it, which she rarely did, she suspected she had never allowed herself to mourn him properly.

A thought entered her mind. He's the one I take after. Immediately she brushed the thought aside.

After the turning to Pine Lake, the road became narrower and full of holes. It weaved through the trees. She didn't like the late-summer color of the trees. The dense vegetation was so sated with chlorophyll that it was no longer breathing and was exactly the same shade all over. She found it monotonous.

Forest paths crisscrossed the road from the right and left. Locked barriers blocked off all the roads on the left-hand side; this was the perimeter of the Harpsund compound.

The road climbed and she breathed heavily as she stood up and pedaled. The sweat ran down from her armpits; she'd need a dip in the lake after this.

The turning to Lyckebo appeared as unexpectedly as it always did. Almost every time she nearly missed the side road in the sharp bend and skidded slightly as she braked. She unhooked her bag, leaned the bicycle against the barrier, ducked under it, and waded through the tall grass.

"Whiskas!" she called out. "Little kitty!"

A few seconds later she heard a distant meowing. The ginger cat emerged from the grass, the sun glittering on its whiskers.

"Whiskas, sweetheart!"

She threw the bag in the grass and let the cat jump up into her arms. Laughing, she lay down among the ants and rolled around with the cat, tickling its stomach and stroking its soft back.

"But you've got a tick, you little rascal. Hang on, let me pull it out."

She took a firm hold of the insect that had bored into the cat's fur and pulled. She got it out in one piece. She smiled. She still had the knack.

"Is Grandma home?"

The old woman sat in the shade under the old oak tree. Her eyes were closed and she had her hands clasped over her stomach. Annika picked up her bag and walked over with the cat bouncing around her legs, rubbing against her knees and meowing; he wanted more cuddling.

"Are you asleep?" Her voice was no more than a whisper.

The old woman opened her eyes and smiled. "Not at all. I'm listening to nature."

Annika gave her grandmother a long hug.

"You're thinner every time I see you. Are you eating properly?"

"Sure." Annika smiled. "Now look what I've got for you." She let go of the woman and rummaged around in her bag. "Look at this," she said brightly. "For you!"

She held out a box of handmade chocolates from a small factory on Gärdet in Stockholm.

Her grandmother clapped her hands together. "How sweet of you! I'm touched."

Grandmother opened the box and they had one piece each. It was a little too rich for Annika, who didn't like chocolate that much.

"So how are you?"

Annika looked down. "It's hard going. I'm really hoping they let me stay on at the paper. I don't know what I'll do if they don't."

The old woman looked at her, a long warm gaze. "You'll make it, Annika," she said in the end. "You don't need that job. You'll see it will all work out."

"I'm not so sure."

"Come here."

Grandmother reached out and pulled Annika down onto her lap. Gingerly, Annika sat down and placed her forehead against the woman's neck.

"You know what I think you should do?" Grandmother said in a serious tone. She held her grandchild and slowly rocked her from side to side. The wind rose and the leaves on the aspen tree next to them rustled. Annika saw Ho Lake glitter between the trees.

"You know I'm always here for you," Grandmother said. "I'll be here whatever happens. You can always come to me."

"I don't want to drag you into it," Annika whispered.

"Silly girl." Grandmother smiled. "You mustn't talk like that. I've got nothing to do these days. Helping you is the least I can do."

Annika kissed the woman's cheek. "Are there any chanterelles yet?"

Grandmother chuckled. "All that rain in the spring and now all this heat- the whole forest is golden yellow. Take two bags with you!"

Annika leaped to her feet.

"I'll just go for a quick swim first!"

She tore off her skirt and top on the way down to the jetty. The water was lukewarm and the bottom muddier than ever. She swam over to the cliffs, pulled herself up, and lay breathing deeply for a while. The wind tore at her wet hair, and when she looked up, the clouds were flying past at a good speed several thousand feet up. She slid into the water again and slowly floated back on her back. Dense forest surrounded the lake, and not a living soul was to be seen apart from Whiskas, waiting for her on the jetty. You could get lost in these woods. She had once as a child. A search party from the local orienteering club had found her in a forest clearing, frozen blue.

She started sweating as soon as she got up on land. She pulled on her clothes without drying herself.

"I'll borrow your rubber boots," she called to her grandmother, who had picked up her knitting.

She tucked one plastic bag in her waistband and carried one in her hand. Whiskas followed in her footsteps as she strode into the woods.

Her grandmother was right- the chanterelles grew in clusters alongside the path, as big as the palm of your hand. She found some cèpes as well, parasol mushrooms, and hoards of little pale hedgehog mushrooms. All the time, Whiskas was dancing around her feet, chasing ants and butterflies, jumping after mosquitoes and birds. Annika crossed the road and walked past Johannislund and Björkbacken. There she took a right and walked in the direction of Lillsjötorp to say hello to Old Gustav. His beautiful little house stood in the sun, a wall of huge fir trees behind it. The silence was absolute and she didn't hear the sound of the ax from over by the woodshed. That probably meant that the old man had gone out into the forest, probably for the same reason she had.

The door was locked. She continued up toward White Hill, where she climbed a hunting tower and sat down for a rest. The forest clearing stretched out below her. She'd hear an echo if she called out. She closed her eyes and listened to the wind. It was loud and hot, almost hypnotic. She sat like this for a long while, until a sound startled her. She carefully looked out over the edge.

A stout man came cycling from the direction of Skenäs. He was breathing heavily and wobbling somewhat. A dried pine twig was stuck in his back wheel. The man stopped right underneath the tower, pulled out the twig, mumbled something, and continued on his way.

Annika blinked in astonishment. It was the prime minister of Sweden.

Christer Lundgren stepped inside his overnight apartment with a feeling of unreality. He had a sense of impending catastrophe. Hot winds were blowing in his face. The electrically charged air made him realize the inevitable: the storm was blowing his way. He was going to get drenched.

The heat in the small apartment was indescribable. It had been exposed to the scorching sun all day. He was annoyed. Why weren't there any blinds?

He dropped his bag on the floor in the hallway and opened the balcony door wide. The ventilation system in the backyard was roaring.

Damn that hamburger chain, he thought.

He went into the small kitchen and poured himself a big glass of water. The drains smelled of old yogurt and apple peel. He flushed away what he could.

His meeting with the party secretary and the undersecretary of state had been dreadful. He had no illusions about his position. It was crystal clear.

He took the glass of water with him and with a heavy sigh sat down on the bed with the phone on his lap. He took a few deep breaths before he dialed his home number.

"I'll be staying here for a while," he said to his wife after the initial small talk.

His wife paused. "For the weekend?" she eventually asked.

"You know I don't want to."

"You promised the kids."

He closed his eyes and held his forehead in his hand. "I miss you so much I feel sick."

She became worried. "What's wrong? What happened?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. It's one big nightmare."

"Jesus, Christer! Tell me what's happened!"

He swallowed and braced himself. "Listen to me- take the kids and go to Karungi. I'll follow as soon as I can."

"I won't go without you."

His voice acquired a hard edge. "You must. I'm telling you all hell's about to break loose. You're going to be besieged if you stay there. It would be best if you could leave tonight."

"But Stina isn't expecting us until Saturday!"

"Call her and ask if you can't come earlier. Stina's always willing to help."

His wife waited in silence. "It's the police," she then said quietly. "The thing with the police calling."

He heard the twins laughing in the background.

"Yes," he said. "Partly. But that's not all."

Annika returned home just in time for the quarter-to-five Eko.

"Guess who I saw in the forest? The prime minister!"

As she tipped the contents of the two plastic bags on the table, the opening chimes of the news pealed from the transistor radio.

"He's got it into his head he should lose some weight," her grandmother said. "He often cycles past here."

They sat down opposite each other at the kitchen table and cleaned the mushrooms while the radio voices droned on. Nothing was happening.

"So, you still keep in contact with people at Harpsund?"

Grandmother smiled. She had been the housekeeper at the prime minister's summer residence for thirty-seven years. The local news came on and she turned up the volume.

Annika cut the chanterelles in pieces and placed them in the bowl next to her. Then she let her hands drop and eyes rest. The wall clock ticked and the minutes went by. For Annika, her grandmother's kitchen was the very home of peace and warmth. The iron range with its white plaster hood, the linoleum flooring, the plastic tablecloth, and the wild meadow flowers in the windows. This was where she'd learned to live without hot running water.

"Will you stay the night?" her grandmother asked.

Just then the signature tune to Studio 69 rang out. The old woman reached out to turn the volume down but Annika stopped her.

"Let's hear what they're up to today."

The music faded and the deep bass of the program presenter sounded:

"The police have questioned a man on suspicion of the sex murder of a young woman in Kronoberg Park in Stockholm. The man is said to be Minister for Foreign Trade Christer Lundgren. More about this in today's current affairs program with debate and analysis, live from Studio 69."

The signature tune resumed, and Annika put her hands across her mouth. Good God, could it be true?

"What's wrong? You've gone all pale," her grandmother said.

The music faded out and the presenter was back: "Tuesday, July thirty-first. Welcome to Studio 69 from the Radio House in Stockholm." He continued in a somber voice, "Social Democracy in Sweden is facing one of its biggest ever scandals. The minister has been interviewed twice, yesterday over the phone and today at Krim, the criminal investigation department on Kungsholmen. We'll go direct to the police headquarters in Stockholm."

Some rustling static was heard.

"I'm standing here with the police press officer," a male reporter with an authoritative voice said. "What has happened here today?"

Annika turned up the volume. The voice of the press officer filled the kitchen.

"It's true that the police are following certain leads in the hunt for Josefin Liljeberg's murderer. However, I can't give you any details. Nobody has been arrested even if our interviews are pointing in one particular direction."

The reporter wasn't listening. "A minister suspected of having committed this kind of crime in the middle of an election campaign- what's your comment on that?"

The press officer hesitated. "Well, I can neither confirm nor deny anything at the moment. No one has as yet been-"

"But the minister was here today for an interview?"

"Minister for Foreign Trade Christer Lundgren is one of several persons that have been interviewed in the line of the ongoing investigation, that's correct," the press officer answered mechanically.

"So you will confirm that the interviews have taken place?" the reporter said in a triumphant tone.

"I can confirm that we have carried out around three hundred interviews in the investigation so far." The press officer sounded as if he was beginning to sweat a bit.

"What did the minister have to say in his defense?"

The press officer was becoming annoyed. His pager started bleeping. "As everyone must understand, I can't comment on what has been said in any interviews during an ongoing police investigation."

The control room cut in and the program presenter reappeared. "We're back in Studio 69 at Radio House in Stockholm. Now, this will naturally give the Social Democrats a run for their money during the election campaign, even if the minister isn't guilty of the crime. The mere fact that a cabinet minister should figure in this kind of context is devastating for the party image. We will be discussing this in today's edition of Studio 69."

A jingle played, and when the presenter returned, he had a guest in the studio, a poor excuse for a media professor. Annika knew him by reputation. He had got the post through having worked as the politically appointed editor in chief of the labor movement newspaper that also ran Sweden's biggest printing house for pornographic material.

"Well," said the professor, "this is of course a downright disaster for Social Democracy. The mere suspicion of this kind of abuse of power puts the party in a very difficult situation. Very difficult, indeed."

"Though we don't know if the minister is guilty, and we won't judge anyone beforehand here," the program presenter pointed out. "But what would happen were he to be arrested?"

Annika got up, her head spinning. So a government minister was involved. The fat woman had been right.

The professor and the studio reporter droned on, occasionally with the involvement of two reporters out on location.

"Does this have anything to do with your job?" Grandmother asked.

Annika gave a wan smile. "You can say that again. I've written quite a lot about this murder. She was only nineteen, Grandma. Her name was Josefin."

The studio reporter sounded serious and confident. "We have not been able to get hold of the minister for foreign trade for a comment. He has been in a meeting with the prime minister and the party secretary all afternoon. Our reporter is outside the Cabinet Office."

Annika opened her eyes wide. "They're wrong!" she exclaimed.

Her grandmother gave her a quizzical look.

"The prime minister- he hasn't been in any meetings. I've got to go back to Stockholm. You have the mushrooms."

"Do you have to?"

Annika hesitated. "No, but I want to."

"Take care of yourself," the old woman said.

They hugged quickly and Annika stepped out into the hot evening sun. Whiskas scampered along the path with her.

"No, go back. You can't come with me. You have to stay with Grandma."

Annika stopped and cuddled the cat for a moment before she pushed him back in the opposite direction.

"Stay there. That's it, go back to Grandma."

The cat ran past her on the path, toward the barrier. Annika sighed, called the cat to her, scooped him up in her arms, and returned with him to the house.

"I think you'll have to shut the front door until I'm gone," Annika said, and her grandmother chuckled.

The wind had picked up and was sweeping down the road, helping Annika along. She pedaled equally hard up and down the hills and was out of breath when she parked the bicycle outside the house on Tattarbacken.

"I heard you were back."

Sven slammed the car door and came walking toward her from the parking lot. Annika locked her bicycle and gave him a pale smile.

"It's only a quick visit."

Sven took her in his arms. "I've missed you," he whispered.

Annika hugged him and he kissed her hard. She withdrew.

"What's wrong?" He let go of her.

"I've got to go back to Stockholm."

The gravel crunched under her feet as she walked over to the street door. She heard him following behind.

"But you just got here. Don't you get any time off at all?"

She pulled the door open. The stairwell smelled of garbage.

"Yes, I'm off right now. But things have happened in the murder case I'm covering."

"And are you the only reporter they have?"

She leaned against the wall, shut her eyes, and thought about it. "I want to go. This is my chance."

He stood in front of her. He placed one hand on each side of her head, a thoughtful look in his eyes. "To get away from here? Is that it?"

She looked him in the eyes. "To get somewhere. I've already written everything there is to write about at Katrineholms-Kuriren: forestry supplements, auctions, municipal meetings, composting reports… I want to move on." She ducked under his arm.

He grabbed her by the shoulder. "I'll drive you."

"That's okay. I'll take the train."

The club was empty. Daytime business was slow in this heat. The men could ogle tits for free on the beach. Patricia took a quick look in the register- only three thousand. Five customers all afternoon and evening. Pitiful. She pushed the register closed. Oh, well, they'd make good during the night. The heat got the tourists' blood boiling.

She went into the bare dressing room next to the office and hung up her bag and jeans jacket, pulled off her top and shorts, and put on the sequined bra. Her panties were dirty and she had to remember to wash them before she left tomorrow morning. She quickly put on a thick layer of makeup. She didn't really like wearing it. Her shoes were wearing down; the heel was almost gone on one of them. She did up the straps, took a deep breath, and tripped back to the entrance.

The roulette table was gray from cigarette ash on the guests' side; she noticed yet another cigarette burn on the green baize. She removed the ashtray- smoking shouldn't be allowed at the table. She picked up the brush from the shelf on the croupier side and brushed off the ash, up over the edge and down on the floor.

"So the cleaning lady is keeping herself busy."

Joachim was standing in the doorway to the office, leaning against the doorpost.

Patricia stiffened. "It was filthy."

"You shouldn't have to think about that." Joachim smiled at her. "You should only be beautiful and sexy."

He straightened up and approached her slowly, still smiling and with his hand stretched out. Patricia swallowed. He stroked her shoulder and down her arm. She pulled back. His smile died.

"What are you afraid of?" The look in his eyes was totally different now, cold and penetrating.

Patricia looked down at her glittering breasts. "Nothing at all. What makes you think I am?" Her voice wasn't steady.

Abruptly, he let go of her. "You shouldn't believe what you read in the newspapers," he spat.

Patricia looked up with innocent eyes. "Which one of them?"

His gaze rested heavily on her; she made an effort to return it.

"They'll catch him soon," he said.

She blinked. "Who?"

"The minister- they said it on the radio. Those bigwigs that were here that night, he was one of them. He's been interrogated all day. They say the prime minister's mad as hell."

Her eyes narrowed. "How do you know?"

He turned around and walked toward the bar. "They said so on the radio. Studio 69."

He stopped short, looked at her over his shoulder, and smiled again. "Now isn't that just too fitting?"