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 uncontrollably, 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."