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 Goransgatan, 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 Drottningholmsvagen. 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 Rlambshov 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 Kvallspressen."
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 Phlson, reporter at the Rival. Have you met?"
Annika cast down her eyes, held out her hand, and mumbled her name. Arne Phlson'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."