An image flashed inside Annika's head- breast, eyes, screams.
The press officer looked up from his papers. "We need the help of the public to catch whoever did this," he said wearily. "We haven't got much to go on."
Annika glanced at Berit; she had been right.
"We're working with the theory that the place of discovery is the place of murder; we have forensic evidence to indicate this. The last person to see Josefin alive, apart from her killer, was her roommate. They parted at the restaurant where they both work just before five A.M. This means that we can narrow down the time of her death by another two hours."
A few camera flashes went off. Annika assumed they were Bertil Strand's.
The press officer recapitulated, "Hanna Josefin Liljeberg was murdered in Kronoberg Park in Stockholm between five and seven A.M. The injuries to her body indicate that she was raped."
His gaze had traveled over the reporters attending the press conference and finally landed on Annika. She swallowed.
"We ask anyone, I repeat, anyone, who was in the vicinity of Kronoberg Park, Parkgatan, Hantverkargatan, or Sankt Göransgatan 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 Påhlson 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 Gösta."
"Gösta?"
"That's his name. Will you stay here, Bertil? I'll grab a cab later."
After Eko it was Arne Påhlson'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 Påhlson 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.
Gösta 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.
Gösta 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 Gösta 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."