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 t
ake 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. Sp
ike 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.”
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