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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 matewent 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