A woman with a stroller came walking from the playground toward Annika. The child in the stroller was holding a bottle containing a red liquid. Puzzled, the mother looked at the cordon along the sidewalk.
"What happened?" she asked Annika.
Annika straightened up and hoisted her bag higher up on her shoulder. "The police have cordoned off the area."
"I can see that. Why?"
Annika hesitated. She glanced over to the other reporters and saw that they were watching her. She quickly moved a few steps closer to the woman.
"There's a dead woman in there," she said quietly, and pointed at the cemetery. The woman turned pale.
"No kidding?"
"Do you live around here?"
"Yes, just around the corner. We went down to Rålambshov Park, but the place was so crowded you couldn't sit down, so we came here instead. Is she in there now?"
The woman craned her neck and tried to see in between the lime trees. Annika nodded.
"Jesus, that's so creepy!" the woman exclaimed, and looked at Annika with big eyes.
"Do you often come this way?"
"Sure, every day. My son, Skruttis, goes to playgroup in the park."
The woman couldn't tear her eyes away from the cemetery. Annika watched her for a few moments.
"Did you hear anything out of the ordinary last night or this morning? Any cries in the park or stuff like that?"
The woman pushed out her lower lip, gave it some thought, and then shook her head. "This neighborhood is always quite noisy. During the first few years I used to wake up every time the fire brigade turned out, but not anymore. Then there's the drunks down on Sankt Eriksgatan. Not the winos that live in the hostel- they're knocked out long before nighttime- but the regular drinkers going home. They can keep you awake all night. But the worst is the ventilation system at McDonald's. It's on all night and it's driving me insane. How did she die?"
"No one knows yet," Annika said. "So there were no screams, no one crying for help or anything?"
"Oh, sure there were. There's always a lot of bawling around here on Friday nights. Here you go, honey…"
The child had dropped its bottle and was whining; the mother picked it up and put it back in his hands. She nodded toward Bertil Strand and the others. "Are they the hyenas?"
"Yep. The guy with the ice cream cone's my photographer. And I'm Annika Bengtzon from Kvällspressen."
She held out her hand and the two women shook hands. Despite her contemptuous remark, the woman seemed impressed.
"I'm Daniella Hermansson. Pleased to meet you. Are you going to write about this?"
"Yes, or somebody else at the paper will. Do you mind if I take some notes?"
"No, go ahead."
"Can I quote you?"
"I spell it with two l's and two s's- just like it sounds."
"So you say it's always noisy around here?"
Daniella Hermansson stood on tiptoe and tried to peek at Annika's notepad. "Oh, yeah, extremely noisy, especially on the weekend."
"So if someone were to cry for help, no one would react?"
Daniella Hermansson pushed out her lower lip again and shook her head. "It would depend a bit on what time it was. By four, half past five, it calms down. Then it's just the ventilation system making a noise. I sleep with the window open all the year round- it's good for the skin. But I didn't hear anything."
"Do your windows face the front or the back?"
"Both. We're in the corner apartment on the third floor there. The bedroom faces the back, though."
"And you walk past here every day, you say?"
"Yes, I'm still on maternity leave, and all the mothers in my parenting group meet in the playground every morning. But, darling…"
The child had finished the red liquid and was howling like a siren. His mother bent down and with practiced movements put her middle finger down the back of the child's diaper, then pulled the finger out and smelled it.
"Whoops. It's time for us to go home. A new diaper and a little snooze, eh, Skruttis?"
Skruttis fell silent as he found a ribbon from his hat to chew on.
"Could we take your picture?" Annika quickly asked.
Daniella Hermansson's eyes grew wide. "My picture? You're kidding?" She laughed and pulled her hand through her hair.
Annika looked her straight in the eye. "The woman lying in that cemetery has probably been murdered. We feel it's important to give an accurate description of the neighborhood. I live down on Kungsholms Square myself."
Daniella Hermansson's eyes nearly popped out of her head. "Murdered? Jesus Christ! Here, on our block?"
"No one knows exactly where she died, only that her body was discovered here."
"But this is such a good neighborhood," Daniella Hermansson said, and bent down to pick up her son. The boy lost his ribbon and began howling again. Annika held on to her bag and started walking over to Bertil Strand. "Wait here," she said to Daniella over her shoulder.
The photographer was busy licking the inside of the ice cream wrapper when Annika reached him.
"Can you come with me for a moment?" she said quietly.
Bertil Strand slowly scrunched up the wrapper in a ball and pointed to the man next to him. "Annika, this is Arne Påhlson, reporter at the Rival. Have you met?"
Annika cast down her eyes, held out her hand, and mumbled her name. Arne Påhlson's hand was moist and warm.
"Have you finished your ice cream?" Annika asked tartly.
Bertil Strand's suntan got one shade darker. He didn't like being rebuked by someone who wasn't even on the staff of the paper. Instead of replying, he just bent down and picked up his backpack. "Where are we going?"
Annika turned around and walked back to Daniella. Annika glanced up at the cemetery; the plainclothes police were still there talking to each other. The child was still bawling, but his mother wasn't paying him any attention. She was busy painting her lips with a lipstick from a little light green box with a mirror on the inside of the lid.
"So how does it feel to find out that a dead woman's lying outside your bedroom window?" Annika asked with her pen poised on the pad.
"Awful," Daniella said. "I mean, all the nights my girlfriends and I have returned home after a night out. It could have been any one of us."
"Will you be more careful now?"
"Definitely," Daniella said without hesitation. "I'll never walk through that park at night again. Sweetheart, what's the matter now?"
Daniella bent down to pick up her boy again. Annika took notes and felt the hair on her neck stand on end. This was quite good, actually. It might even make a headline if she cut it a bit.
"Thanks a million," she said quickly. "Can you look at Bertil? What's your boy's name? How old is he? How old are you? And how would you like us to refer to you?… 'On maternity leave.' Okay. Maybe you shouldn't look quite so happy…"
Daniella Hermansson's practiced movie-star smile, the one she probably adopted for all holiday and Xmas snaps, faded. Instead, she looked confused and lost. Bertil Strand was snapping away, circling the woman and her child with short, cautious dance steps.
"Can I call you later if anything comes up? What's your phone number? And the code for the door from the street? You know, just in case."
Daniella Hermansson put the child in the stroller and walked off alongside the police cordon. To her annoyance, Annika saw Arne Påhlson from the Rival stop the woman as she walked past. Luckily, the child was by now howling so badly that the woman wouldn't wait for a second interview. Annika breathed again.
"Don't try to teach me my job," Strand said to Annika.
"Fine. But tell me, what would have happened if they'd taken the body away while you were busy buying ice cream for the competition?"