‘We don’t cover murders and that sort of thing. We leave that to the tabloids. We’re not ambulance chasers.’
Annika had realized that that statement said more about her colleague than it did about radio news, but sometimes she had to wonder. Why didn’t they regard a young woman’s life being snuffed out as a matter of public interest? She couldn’t understand that.
The other people gathered behind the cordon were curious members of the public.
She walked slowly away from the group. The police, both detectives and the forensics team, were busy inside the railings. There was no sign of an ambulance or hearse. She looked at her watch. Seventeen minutes past one. Twenty-five minutes since she got the tip-off from Cold Calls. She wasn’t sure what to do next. There was no point trying to talk to the police, they’d probably only get annoyed. She also guessed that they wouldn’t know anything yet – not the identity of the woman, or how she had died, or who might have done it.
She headed towards the Drottningholm road. A small slice of shade had formed by the buildings on the western side of Kronobergsgatan, and she went over and leaned against one of the walls. It was rough, grey and hot. The temperature was only a degree or so cooler than out in the full sun, and the air was burning her throat. She was horribly thirsty, and fished the bottle of Pepsi from her bag. The cap had leaked, making the outside of the bottle sticky, and her fingers stuck to the label. Oh, this fucking heat!
She drank the warm, flat liquid and hid the bottle between two bundles of newspapers waiting to be picked up for recycling in the nearest doorway.
The journalists over by the cordon had moved to the other side of the street. Presumably they were waiting for Bertil Strand to turn up with their ice-creams. For some reason the situation made her feel sick. A few metres away from them there were flies buzzing round a corpse while they were looking forward to ice-cream.
She looked across at the park. Steep, grass-covered hills and a lot of big deciduous trees. From her place in the shade she could see lime trees, beech, elm, ash and birch. Some were enormous, others newly planted. In amongst the gravestones were several gigantic trees, mostly limes.
I really need something else to drink, she thought.
She sat down on the pavement and leaned her head back. Something had to happen soon. She couldn’t just sit here.
2
The crowd of journalists was starting to thin out now. The girl from Radio Stockholm had left, but Bertil Strand had returned with the ice-creams. There was no sign of Berit Hamrin anywhere, and Annika wondered where she’d gone.
I’ll wait another five minutes, she thought. Then I’ll go and get a drink and start talking to the neighbours.
She tried to picture a map of Stockholm in her head, and work out exactly where she was. This was the very heart of Stockholm, the original city within the old tollgates. She looked towards the fire station to the south. In that direction lay Hantverkargatan, her street. She lived less than ten blocks from here, in a small building in the courtyard of a condemned property not far from Kungsholmstorg. Even so, she had never been up here before.
Beneath her was Fridhemsplan underground station. If she concentrated she could just make out the rumbling of the trains moving far below, their vibrations passing through concrete and asphalt. In front of her was a large, circular air vent from the tunnels, public toilets and a park bench. That could have been where the junkie who phoned Cold Calls was sitting in the sun while his mate went off for a piss. But why wouldn’t he just have used the public toilets? Annika wondered.
She thought about this for few moments, and in the end she had to go and take a look at the toilets. As soon as she opened the door she understood why. The stench inside was quite unbearable. She backed away a couple of steps and let the door close.
A woman pushing a buggy was heading towards her from the playground. The child in the buggy was clutching a beaker containing a red liquid. The mother was staring resentfully at the blue and white tape along the edge of the park.
‘What’s going on?’ she called.
Annika straightened up and hoisted the bag further onto her shoulder.
‘The police have cordoned off the park,’ she said.
‘I can see that. Why?’
Annika hesitated. She glanced over her shoulder and could see that the other journalists were watching her. She took a couple of quick steps towards the woman.
‘They’ve found a woman’s body in there,’ she said quietly, gesturing towards the cemetery. The mother’s face went white.
‘Bloody hell,’ she said.
‘Do you live nearby?’ Annika asked.
‘Yes, just round the corner. We’ve been down to Rålambshov Park, but it was so crowded you could hardly find space to sit down, so we decided to come up here instead. Is she still in there?’
The woman craned her neck to peer in through the lime trees. Annika nodded.
‘That’s terrible!’ the woman burst out, staring at Annika with wide-open eyes.
‘Do you often come here?’ Annika asked.
‘Yes, every day. My little one goes to the playgroup in the park.’
The mother couldn’t tear her eyes from the cemetery. Annika looked at her for several seconds.
‘Did you hear anything unusual last night or this morning? Any shouting from the park, anything like that?’
The woman bit her lip as she thought, then shook her head.
‘There’s always a lot of commotion around here. The first few years I was here I used to wake up every time the fire brigade set out, but not any more. Then there are the drunks down on Sankt Eriksgatan. I don’t mean the ones in the hostel, they never manage to stay awake until it’s dark. No, just the usual piss artists. They can keep you awake all night. But worst of all is actually the air-conditioning unit behind McDonald’s. It’s on twenty-four hours a day, and it’s driving me round the bend. How did she die?’
‘They don’t know yet,’ Annika said. ‘So there was no shouting, no calls for help?’
‘Well of course there was, there’s shouting and screaming here every Friday night. Here, darling, there you are …’
The child had dropped the beaker and started to grizzle, and his mother picked it up. Then she nodded in the direction of Bertil Strand and the others.
‘Are they the hyenas?’
‘Yep. The one with the Dime ice-cream is my photographer. I’m Annika Bengtzon, I’m with the Evening Post.’
She held out her hand. In spite of what she had just said, the woman seemed impressed.
‘Bloody hell,’ she said. ‘Daniella Hermansson; nice to meet you. Are you going to write about this?’
‘Yes, me or someone else on the paper. Do you mind if I take some notes?’
‘Sure, go ahead.’
‘Can I quote you?’
‘My name’s got two “l”s and two “s”s, just like it sounds.’
‘You were saying that it’s normally quite rowdy around here?’
Daniella Hermansson stood on tiptoe and tried to look at Annika’s notes.
‘Yes, really rowdy,’ she said. ‘Especially at weekends.’
‘So if anyone did call for help, people probably wouldn’t react?’
Daniella Hermansson bit her lip again and shook her head.
‘Mind you, that would depend on what time it was,’ she said. ‘By four or five in the morning things have normally calmed down. Then it’s just the air-conditioning unit. I sleep with my window open, all year round, it’s good for the skin. But I didn’t hear anything …’
‘Do your windows face the street or the courtyard?’
‘Both. We’ve got a two-room flat, at the end on the right, second floor. The bedroom faces the yard.’
‘And you come here every day?’
‘Yes, I’m still on maternity leave with this little one. All the mums round here meet in the playground every morning. No, darling …’
The child had stopped drinking and had st
arted to howl. His mother leaned over him, and with a practised hand stuck a finger in the back of his nappy and sniffed it.
‘Oops,’ she said. ‘Time for us to go in. Nappy change and then a nap, eh, tiddler?’
The child stopped howling when he found a string on his hat to chew on.
‘Could we take your picture?’ Annika asked quickly.
Daniella Hermansson looked startled.
‘My picture? Oh, surely you don’t want …’ She giggled and ran a hand through her hair. Annika gave her a stern look.
‘The woman over in the cemetery was probably murdered,’ she said. ‘It’s really important to give a good description of the area. I live down by Kungsholmstorg.’
Daniella Hermansson’s eyes were wide open.
‘Bloody hell. Murdered? Here, in our park?’
‘No one knows where she died, only that she was found here.’
‘But it’s always so quiet round here,’ Daniella Hermansson said, bending over and picking up the child.
Welcome to Cliché Central, Annika thought. A minute ago it was rowdy round here.
The boy let go of the string and started howling again. Annika took a firm grip of the strap of her bag and went over to Bertil Strand.
‘Hang on,’ she said to Daniella over her shoulder.
The photographer was licking the inside of his ice-cream wrapper as Annika came up to him.
‘Can you come with me for a moment?’ she asked quietly.
Bertil Strand crumpled the wrapper slowly in his hand, then gestured to the man beside him.
‘Annika, this is Arne Påhlson, he’s a reporter for our rivals. Have you met?’
Looking down, Annika held out her hand and muttered her name. Arne Påhlson’s hand was hot and sweaty.
‘Have you finished your ice-cream?’ she asked pointedly.
Bertil Strand’s suntan turned a shade darker. He didn’t like the idea of being shown up by someone who was just a summer temp. Instead of answering he bent over and picked up his rucksack.
‘Where are we going?’
Annika turned round and went back to Daniella Hermansson. She glanced over towards the cemetery, where the plain-clothes officers were still standing, deep in conversation.
The child was still crying, but his mother was ignoring him now. She was busy putting lipstick on, peering into the mirror on the back of a pale-green lipstick holder.
‘So, how did you feel when you heard there was a woman lying dead outside your bedroom window?’ Annika said, making notes.
‘Awful,’ Daniella Hermansson said. ‘I mean, the number of times my friends and I have come back this way late from the pub. It could have been any of us …’
‘Will this make you take more precautions in future?’
‘Yes, absolutely,’ Daniella Hermansson said without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I’m never walking through the park at night again. Oh, now come on, you’re all upset, aren’t you …?’
Daniella bent down to pick up her son again. Annika was taking notes, and could feel the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. This was really good stuff. It might even make a headline, with a bit of editing.
‘Thanks very much,’ she said quickly. ‘Could you look towards Bertil? What’s your son’s name? How old is he? And how old are you? And what title should we use? Maternity leave, okay. Maybe it would be better if you didn’t look quite so cheerful …?’
Daniella Hermansson’s practised smile, the one that she probably used in every holiday and Christmas photograph, faded. Now she just looked confused and lost instead. Bertil Strand took a whole series of shots, moving round the woman and child with careful little dance steps.
‘Can I call you later if I need to? What’s your phone number? And the code for the door? Just in case …’
Daniella Hermansson squeezed the shrieking toddler back in the buggy and headed off along the edge of the cordon. To her annoyance, Annika watched Arne Påhlson from the other evening paper stop her as she went past. As luck would have it, the child was screaming so hard that the young woman couldn’t stop for another interview.
Annika breathed out.
‘Don’t try to tell me my job,’ Bertil Strand said.
‘Okay,’ Annika said. ‘So what would have happened if they’d brought the body out while you were off buying ice-cream for our rivals?’
Bertil Strand looked at her disdainfully.
‘When we’re out in the field we’re not rivals, we’re colleagues,’ he said.
‘I think you’re wrong,’ Annika said. ‘We can’t get good journalism if we hunt as a pack. We ought to maintain a bit more distance, all of us.’
‘No one benefits from that.’
‘Yes they do – our readers. And our credibility.’
Bertil Strand hoisted the bag of cameras onto his back.
‘Thanks for telling me. I’ve only been with the paper for the past fifteen years.’
Fucking fuck, Annika thought as the photographer headed back to his ‘colleagues’. Why can’t I ever learn to keep my mouth shut?
She suddenly felt dizzy and weak. I have to get something to drink, right now, she thought. To her relief she caught sight of Berit walking up from Hantverkargatan.
‘Where have you been?’ Annika called, walking towards her.
Berit groaned. ‘I went back to the car to make some calls. I put in a request to have the cuttings of the previous murder sent up from the archive, and spoke to a few police contacts.’
She was trying in vain to cool herself by fanning one hand.
‘Has anything happened?’
‘I’ve just been speaking to one of the neighbours.’
‘Have you had anything to drink? You’re looking a bit pale.’
Annika wiped the sweat from her forehead and suddenly felt like she was about to cry.
‘I said something really stupid to Bertil Strand just now,’ she said quietly. ‘About not being too chummy with our competitors when we’re out at a crime scene.’
‘I couldn’t agree more. And I know that Bertil Strand doesn’t agree,’ Berit said. ‘He can be a bit tricky to get on with at times, but he’s a very good photographer. Go and get something to drink. I’ll keep an eye on things here.’
Annika was only too happy to leave Kronobergsgatan, and headed off along the Drottningholm road. She was standing in the queue to buy a bottle of mineral water at a kiosk on Fridhemsplan when she saw a police van turn left into Sankt Göransgatan, heading up towards Kronoberg Park.
‘Shit,’ she cried, running straight out into the traffic, forcing a taxi to slam on its brakes. She ran across Sankt Eriksgatan, back towards the park. She felt like she was about to faint by the time she got back.
The police van had stopped at the top of Sankt Göransgatan, and a man and a woman were just getting out.
‘Why are you so out of breath?’ Berit wondered.
‘The van … the body …’ Annika panted, resting her hands on her knees and leaning forward.
Berit sighed. ‘The van will be here for a while yet. That body isn’t going anywhere. Don’t worry so much, we won’t miss anything.’
Annika dropped her bag on the pavement and stood up.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
Berit smiled. ‘Go and sit in the shade. I’ll get you something to drink.’
Annika trudged off into the shadows. She felt like a real idiot.
‘I didn’t know,’ she muttered. ‘How could I …?’
She sat down on the pavement and leaned back against the wall again. The pavement burned her backside through her thin skirt.
3
The pair who had got out of the van were standing inside the cordon next to the gate, waiting. There were still three men inside the cemetery; she guessed that two were forensics officers and the third a photographer. They were moving very carefully, leaning down to pick things up, standing up again. They were too far away for her to see exactly what they were doing. Is it always this boring
at the scene of a murder? she wondered.
Berit came back a couple of minutes later. She was holding a large, chilled bottle of Coca-Cola.
‘Here you go; this has got lots of sugar and minerals in it. Just what you need.’
Annika unscrewed the top and drank so quickly that the bubbles went up her nose. She coughed, spilling some of the Coke on her skirt.
Berit sat down beside her and pulled her own bottle out of her bag.
‘What are they actually doing in there?’ Annika asked.
‘They’re checking for footprints. They use as few people as possible, and they move as little as possible. Usually it’s just a couple of forensics officers and maybe one of the detectives from the crime unit.’
‘Do you think that was the guy in the Hawaiian shirt?’
‘Maybe,’ Berit said. ‘If you look closely you might see one of the forensics officers holding his hand close to his mouth. He’s recording the details of everything they see at the scene on a small recorder. Everything from a precise description of how the body is lying, to the way the folds of the clothing are arranged, anything like that.’
‘She wasn’t wearing any clothes,’ Annika said.
‘Maybe the clothes are nearby. They document everything. When they’re done, the body will be taken to the forensics lab out in Solna.’
‘For a post-mortem?’
Berit nodded. ‘The forensics team will stay behind here and search the entire park. They’ll go through it centimetre by centimetre, checking for any signs of blood, saliva, hair, fibres, sperm, footprints, tyre tracks, fingerprints, anything at all.’
Annika sat in silence and watched the men inside the railings for a while. They were bending down by the body; she could see their heads bobbing against the grey backcloth.
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