"We ask anyone, I repeat, anyone, who was in the vicinity of Kronoberg Park, Parkgatan, Hantverkargatan, or Sankt Goransgatan 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 Phlson 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 Gosta."
"Gosta?"
"That's his name. Will you stay here, Bertil? I'll grab a cab later."
After Eko it was Arne Phlson'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 Phlson 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.
Gosta 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.
Gosta 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 Gosta 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 Malmo 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 Taby, 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 Taby 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 Taby. 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 Taby 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 Lagerlof 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 Sodermanland; here there were four for one single area code. She looked up "Liljeberg, Hans," in Runslingan in Taby 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 Taby: Tibble and va. 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 Taby 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?"