Studio Sex aka Studio 69 / Exposed

her back. She had a scar in her armpit.'

Annika felt her blood pressure drop and leaned her head against her knees and did some deep breathing.

'Not a pretty sight, eh?' Berit said.

'I'm okay.'

After a minute or so, Annika felt better. The sounds came back to her in full force, hitting her brain with the earsplitting noise of a car factory: the roaring traffic on Drottningholmsvagen; two sirens blasting out of time; loud voices, their pitch rising and falling; clattering cameras; a child crying.

Bertil Strand had joined the small media posse that was forming down by the entrance to the cemetery; he was chatting to the Rival's photographer.

'What happens next? Who does what?' Annika asked.

Berit sat down next to Annika, looked at her notes, and began outlining their work.

'We've got to assume it's a murder, right? So we'll have a story on the actual event. This has happened: a young woman has been found murdered. When, where, and how? We need to know who found her and talk to him- have you got the guy's name?'

'A speed freak; his pal gave a care-of address for the tip-off money.'

'Try and get hold of him. The emergency switchboard will have all the information on the call-out,' Berit continued, ticking off her notes.

'I've got that already.'

'Great. Then we need to get hold of a cop who will talk. Their press officer never says anything off the record. Did the Hawaii detective tell you his name?'

'Nope.'

'Shame. Find out. I've never seen him before- he could be one of the new guys at Krim. Then we need to find out when she died and why. Have they got any suspects? What's next in the investigation? All the police aspects of the story.'

'Okay,' Annika said, taking notes.

'Christ, it's hot! It never gets this hot in Stockholm,' Berit said, wiping the sweat from her forehead.

'I wouldn't know. I only moved here seven weeks ago.'

Berit took out a Kleenex from her bag and wiped around her hairline. 'Okay- we have the victim. Who was she? Who identified her? She'll have a family somewhere, no doubt brokenhearted. We should consider contacting them one way or another. We need pictures of the girl while she was alive. Was she over eighteen, would you say?'

Annika gave it some thought and remembered the plastic breasts. 'Yes, probably.'

'Then there'll be pictures of her from high school, wearing her white graduation cap. Talk to her friends. Find out if she had a boyfriend.'

Annika took notes.

'Then there's the reaction of the neighbors,' Berit went on. 'This is practically downtown Stockholm, over three hundred thousand women live here. This type of crime will affect people's sense of security, their eating-out habits and whatnot. City life in general. That's two separate stories. You do the neighbors and I'll do the rest.'

Annika nodded without looking up.

'There's one more angle,' Berit said, dropping her pad into her lap. 'Twelve or thirteen years ago, a very similar murder was committed less than a hundred yards away.'

Annika looked up in surprise.

'If my memory serves me right, a young woman was sexually assaulted and murdered on some steps somewhere on the north side of the park,' Berit mused. 'The murderer was never caught.'

'Jesus! Do you think there's a chance it could be the same guy?'

Berit shrugged. 'I wouldn't think so, but we'll have to mention it. I'm sure lots of people remember it. The woman was raped and strangled.'

Annika swallowed. 'What an appalling job this is.'

'It sure is. But it'll get a bit easier if you can get hold of that guy before he leaves.'

Berit was pointing toward Sankt Goransgatan, where the man in the Hawaiian shirt was leaving the cemetery. He was walking toward a car that was parked around the corner in Kronobergsgatan. Annika leaped to her feet, grabbed her bag, and rushed down toward the street. She saw the reporter from the Rival attempting to talk to the cop, but he just waved him away.

At that moment, Annika stumbled on a ridge in the asphalt and nearly fell over. She staggered down the steep hill toward Kronobergsgatan with huge, uncontrolled steps. Unable to stop herself, she crashed into the back of the Hawaiian shirt. The cop fell straight over the hood of his car.

'What the hell!' he yelled. He turned around and grabbed Annika around the upper arms.

'I'm sorry,' she whimpered. 'I didn't mean to. I nearly fell.'

'What the hell's the matter with you? Are you crazy or something?' He was shocked and startled.

'I'm so sorry,' Annika said. As well as the humiliation, her left ankle suddenly hurt like hell.

The officer regained his composure and let go of her. He scrutinized her for a few seconds.

'You should watch your goddamn step,' he said, then got into his burgundy Volvo station wagon and drove off, tires screeching.

'Shit,' Annika whispered to herself. She squinted into the sun, trying to distinguish the fleet number of the car. She thought she saw 1813 written on the side. To be on the safe side, she also looked at the registration number and tried to memorize it.

Annika turned around and realized that the little group of media people by the cemetery entrance were all staring at her. She blushed from her hairline down to her neck. She quickly bent over and collected the things that had fallen out of her bag when she'd collided with the cop: her notepad, a packet of chewing gum, a near empty bottle of Pepsi, and three sanitary napkins in green plastic covers. Her pen was still in the bag, so she hauled it out and quickly jotted down the registration and fleet numbers of the car.

The reporters and photographers stopped staring at her and resumed chatting among themselves. Annika noted that Bertil Strand was organizing an ice cream run.

She threw her bag across her shoulder and slowly approached her colleagues, who didn't seem to be paying her any attention now. Apart from the reporter from the rival tabloid, a middle-aged man who had his picture byline next to his stories, she didn't recognize a single one of them. There was a young woman with a tape recorder marked Radio Stockholm; two photographers from two different picture agencies; the Rival's photographer; and three other reporters that she couldn't place at all. No TV teams were present- the public television local news only did a five-minute broadcast a day during the summer, and the local commercial stations only did agency stories. The morning broadsheets would probably get pics from the agencies and supplement with TT copy. The public radio news show Eko hadn't sent anyone, nor would they, she knew that. One of Annika's former colleagues at the local paper where she normally worked had been employed there as a casual one summer. Contemptuously, she had explained to Annika, 'We leave murders and that kind of thing to the tabloids. We're not scavengers.'

Already, back then, Annika had realized that this statement said more about her colleague than about Eko, but sometimes she wondered. Why shouldn't public radio find the curtailed life of a young woman worth covering? She couldn't understand it.

The rest of the people lining the cordons were curious passersby.

She slowly moved past and away from the group. The police- both the Krim, the criminal investigation department, and the forensic people- were busy inside the fence. No ambulance was in sight. She looked at her watch: seventeen minutes past one. Twenty-five minutes since she had received the tip-off on Creepy Calls. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do next. It didn't seem like a good idea to talk to the police now; they'd only get annoyed at her. She realized that they didn't know much yet, not who the woman was, how she'd died, or who'd done it.

She moved toward Drottningholmsvagen. There was a wedge of shade next to the houses on the west side of Kronobergsgatan; she went over and leaned against the wall. It was rough and hot. It was only fractionally cooler here and the air still burned her throat. She was thirsty beyond belief and pulled out the Pepsi bottle from her bag. The screw top had leaked and the bottle was tacky, making her fingers stick to the label. Damn this heat!

She drank the warm, sugary liquid and then hid the bottle in a doorway among some bags with newspapers left out for recycling.