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  “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 uncontrol
lably, 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 repor
ters 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.