Studio Sex

by Liza Marklund

  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.”

  “The PubReg is a really good tool. Sit down and check some friends out someday when you have the time.”

  Berit pressed the F8 key, name inquiry, to perform a national search on “Liljeberg, Hanna Josefin.” They got two hits, an eighty-five-year-old woman in Malmö and a nineteen-year-old girl in Dalagatan in Stockholm.

  “That’s her,” Berit said, and typed a v in front of the latter and hit the return key.

  The information appeared on the screen; “Liljeberg, Hanna Josefin, born in Täby, unmarried. The latest change to her entry in the population registry was less than two months old.”

  “Let’s check her previous address,” Berit said, and pressed F7, historical data.

  The computer paused a few seconds, as if it were thinking, and then another address appeared on the screen.

  ” ‘Runslingan in Täby Kyrkby,’” Berit read. “That’s a nice neighborhood. Upper-middle class. Row houses.”

  “Where does it say that?” Annika said, scanning the screen.

  Berit smiled. “Some data is located on this hard disk.” She tapped her forehead. “I live in Täby. This must be her parents’ home.”

  The reporter ordered a printout and tapped a new command. They read the result. Liljeberg Hed, Siv Barbro, Runslingan in Täby Kyrkby, born forty-seven years ago, married.

  “Josefin’s mother,” Annika said. “How did you find her?”

  “Through a search on women with the same surname and post code.” Berit ordered a printout and did the same search on men. The PubReg yielded two hits, Hans Gunnar, fifty-one, and Carl Niklas, nineteen, both resident in Runslingan.

  “Look at the boy’s date of birth,” Berit said.

  “Josefin had a twin brother.”

  Berit ordered one last printout and then logged off. She switched off the computer and went over to the printer.

  “You take these,” she said, handing the printouts to Annika. “Try to get hold of someone who knew her.”

  Annika went back to her desk. The subs were engrossed in their work. Jansson was shouting into the phone. The glow from the computer screens made the news desk look like a floating blue island in the newsroom’s sea. The image made her aware of the dark outside. Night was falling. She didn’t have much time.

  Just as she sat down, the Creepy Calls phone rang. She grabbed the phone in a reflex action. The caller was wondering whether it was true that the early-twentieth-century Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf had been a lesbian.

  “Call the Gay and Lesbian Switchboard,” Annika replied, and rang off.

  She pulled out the pile of Stockholm telephone directories, heaved a sigh, and looked at the covers. In her hometown, Katrineholm, there was one single book for the whole of the province of Södermanland; here there were four for one single area code. She looked up “Liljeberg, Hans,” in Runslingan in Täby Kyrkby. Vicar was his title. She took down the telephone number and stared at it for a long time.

  No, she thought in the end. There had to be other
ways of getting the facts she needed.

  She took out the business and services directory and looked in the section for local-government information. There were two high schools in Täby: Tibble and Åva. She called the switchboard numbers; both forwarded the calls to a municipal switchboard. She gave it a few seconds thought and then tried dialing the direct numbers. Instead of 00 at the end, she dialed 01, then 02 and 03. She got lucky with 05, where a voicemail message informed her that the deputy principal, Martin Larsson-Berg, was on holiday until 7 August. She found him in the phone book with the title BA. He lived in Viggbyholm and was both at home and awake.

  “I’m sorry to call you this late on a Saturday night,” Annika said after introducing herself, “but it’s about a serious matter.”

  “Is it my wife?” Martin Larsson-Berg anxiously asked.

  “Your wife?”

  “She’s out sailing this weekend.”

  “It’s not about your wife. A girl who might have been one of your students was found dead today in Stockholm,” Annika said, closing her eyes.

  “Oh, I see,” the man said with relief in his voice. “I thought something had happened to my wife. Which student?”

  “A girl called Josefin Liljeberg, from Täby Kyrkby.”

  “Which program was she in?”

  “I’m not even sure she went to Tibble School, but it seems most probable. You don’t remember her? Nineteen, pretty, with long blond hair, big breasts…”

  Now the deputy principal was with her. “Oh, yes, Josefin Liljeberg. Yes, she graduated from the media program in the spring, that’s right.”

  Annika breathed out and opened her eyes. “Do you remember her?”

  “Dead, you say? That’s horrible. What happened?”

  “The Jewish Cemetery in Kronoberg Park. She was murdered.”

  “But that’s awful! Do they know who did it?”

  “Not yet. Would you like to say something about her, a few words about what she was like, maybe express your feelings about it?”

  Martin Larsson-Berg sighed. “Yeah, well… What do you say? She was like most girls that age, giggly and vain. They’re all the same. They tend to melt into one, kind of.”

  So much for the teaching profession, thought Annika. The deputy principal thought about his reply.

  “She wanted to be a journalist, on television. Not very bright, to be honest. And she was murdered, you say. How?”

  “She was strangled. Did she graduate, then?”

  “Yes, she got a pass in all subjects.”

  Annika looked at the computer printouts in front of her. “Her father’s a clergyman. Did that affect her at all?”

  “Is he? I didn’t know that…”

  “And she had a twin brother, Carl Niklas. Did he also go to Tibble School?”

  “Niklas… yes, I think he graduated from the natural science program. He had quite a good head on him. He wanted to continue his studies in the U.S.”

  Annika took notes. “Anything else you remember?”

  Jansson appeared at her side, a pleading look on his face. She waved him aside.

  “Sorry, no. There are so many students.”

  “Did she have many friends?”

  “Yes, well, I think so. She wasn’t especially popular, but she had her friends. She wasn’t bullied, or anything.”

  “You don’t happen to have a class register handy?” she asked.

  “For Josefin’s class?” The deputy principal grunted a bit. “Yes, I have the school register. Do you want me to send it to you?”

  “Have you got a fax?”

  He did. Annika gave him the crime-desk fax number and he promised to fax Josefin’s class photo straightaway.

  As she hung up and stood up to go over to Eva-Britt Qvist’s desk, the Creepy Calls phone jangled again. She hesitated for a moment but stopped short and picked it up.

  “I know who shot Olof Palme,” someone slurred at the other end.

  “Do you really? Who was it then?”

  “What’s the reward?”

  “We pay maximum five thousand kronor for a tip-off that goes to print.”

  “Only five grand? That’s bullshit! I want to talk to one of the editors.”

  Annika heard the man gulp and swallow something.

  “I am an editor. We pay five thousand, it doesn’t matter who you talk to.”

  “It’s not enough. I want more.”

  “Call the police. Then you’ll get fifty million,” Annika said, and hung up.

  What if the drunk was right, she mused on her way to the fax machine. What if he really did know? What if the Rival had Palme’s murderer on tomorrow’s front page? She’d be remembered forever as the one who rejected the tip, like the record executives who turned down the Beatles.

  The fax was lousy— Josefin and her classmates were just black specks on a gray-striped background. But underneath the photo were the names of all the students, twenty-nine young people who must all have known Josefin. On her way back to her desk, she underlined those with unusual surnames, those she had a chance of finding in the phone book. These kids probably didn’t have their own phones, so she’d have to look for the parents.

  “Delivery for you,” the porter Peter Brand said. He was Tore’s son and worked the night shift during July.

  Surprised, Annika looked up and received a stiff, white envelope. “Do Not Bend,” she read on the outside. She quickly tore it open and emptied the contents onto the desk.

  There were three photos of Josefin. The top one was a relaxed studio shot. Wearing her white cap, she was smiling radiantly straight into the camera. Annika felt the hairs on her arms stand on end. This picture was so sharp that they could run it over ten columns if they wanted to. The other two were decent amateur photos, one of the young woman holding a cat and the other of her sitting in an armchair.

  At the bottom was a note from Gösta, the police press officer.

  “I’ve promised the parents that the pictures will be distributed to all media outlets who want them,” he’d written. “Please have them couriered over to the Rival when you’ve used them.”

  Annika hurried over to Jansson and put the pictures in front of him. “She was a clergyman’s daughter dreaming about becoming a journalist.”

  Jansson picked up the pictures and studied them closely. “Fantastic.”

  “We’re supposed to send them over to the Rival as soon as we’ve finished with them.”

  “Of course. We’ll have them couriered over as soon as they’ve printed their last edition tomorrow. Well done!”

  Annika returned to her desk. She sat down and stared at the phone. There wasn’t much to think about. It was half past two, and if she was going to get hold of any of Josefin’s friends, she had to get started right away.

  She started with two non-Swedish surnames but got no reply. Then she tried a Silfverbiörck and got hold of a young woman. Annika’s pulse quickened and she covered her eyes with one hand.

  “I’m sorry to call in the middle of the night,” Annika began slowly in a low voice. “My name is Annika Bengtzon and I’m calling from the newspaper Kvällspressen. I’m calling because one of your classmates, Josefin Liljeberg, has…” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat.

  “Yes, I’ve heard,” the girl— Charlotta, according to the class register— sobbed. “It’s awful. We’re all so shocked. We have to support each other.”

  Annika opened her eyes, grabbed a pen, and started taking notes. This was a lot simpler than she’d imagined.

  “It’s our biggest fear,” Charlotta said. “It’s what young women like us are most afraid of. Now it’s happened to a friend, one of us. We all have to respond to it.” She had stopped sobbing and sounded quite alert.

  Annika took notes. “Is it something you and your friends have discussed?”

  “Yes, sure. Though no one really thought it would happen to one of us. You never do.”

  “Did you know Josefin well?”

  Charlo
tta gave a sob, a dry, deep sigh. “She was my best friend.” Annika suspected she was telling a lie.

  “What was Josefin like?”

  Charlotta had a ready answer: “Always kind and cheerful. Helpful, fair, good grades. She liked partying. Yes, I suppose you can say that…”

  Annika waited in silence for a moment.

  “Will you need my picture?”

  Annika looked at her watch. She figured it out: to Täby and back, developing the film— it would be too tight. “Not tonight. The paper’s going to press soon. Can I call you again tomorrow?”

  “Of course, or you can try my pager.”

  Annika took the number. She leaned her forehead on her hand and had a think. Josefin still felt vague and distant to her. She couldn’t establish a clear picture of the dead woman.

  “What did Josefin want to do with her life?”

  “What do you mean, ‘do’? Have a family, get a job, you know…”

  “Where did she work?”

  “Work?”

  “Yes, which restaurant?”

  “Oh, I don’t know that.”

  “She’d moved in to Stockholm, to Dalagatan. Did you visit her there?”

  “Dalagatan? No…”

  “Do you know why she moved?”

  “She wanted to get into town, I guess.”

  “Did she have a boyfriend?”

  Charlotta was silent. Annika understood. This girl didn’t know Josefin well at all.

  “Thanks for letting me disturb you in the middle of the night,” Annika said.

  Now there was only one more call to make. She looked up Liljeberg in the phone book again, but there was no Josefin on Dalagatan. She’d recently moved there and hadn’t been listed yet, Annika thought, and called directory assistance.

  “No, we have no Liljeberg on Dalagatan sixty-four,” the operator informed her.

  “It could be a very new number.”

  “I can see all subscriptions that were ordered up until yesterday.”

  “Could she be ex-directory?”

  “No,” the operator said. “That information would have showed up on my screen. Could the number be in somebody else’s name?”

  Annika aimlessly leafed through the printouts. She came across Josefin’s mother, Liljeberg Hed, Siv Barbro. “Hed. Check if there’s a Hed on Dalagatan sixty-four.”