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officer standing in the doorway was young and obviously nervous.
    ‘Right, you can come along now.’
    She stared at him.
    ‘I’m pretty thirsty,’ she said.
    The policeman didn’t see how unreal she felt, he didn’t see her as a person at all. He looked right through her.
    ‘Go out through the door and to the left. Hurry up.’
    The rainy weather and all the closed doors left the hallway dark. The walls seemed to billow – she wasn’t quite sober yet. In order to gather some physical and emotional support, she walked down the hallway with one hand touching the wall. No other members of the TV team were in sight.
    When the policeman opened the front door, the chill and the damp slapped at her like a wet towel. She gasped, swaying there in the doorway and looking up at the castle. Policemen and police cars were blurred by the curtain of grey rain.
    ‘You wouldn’t happen to have an umbrella, would you?’
    Her guard replied by pointing to the corner of the house. Anne Snapphane hunched up her shoulders and reluctantly walked out on the stone steps. Water seeped inside her collar in no time at all.
    ‘Where am I supposed to go?’
    ‘To the house down by the water. Right now.’
    A cold rivulet ran down her spine and she had water in her eyes. She blinked to get rid of it, started weaving her way down the three steps to the gravel path and followed the boxwood hedge over to the herb garden. She followed the whitewashed wall that led her to the New Wing, passed a small group of enamelled cast-iron furniture items and stopped. The wall encircled a small courtyard: it had arches and was topped with red tile. It wouldn’t be hard to escape from here, she thought.
    ‘Straight ahead, keep moving.’
    Anne Snapphane looked away from the wall and focused on the door.
    The police lieutenant was seated at a table in the large conference room. Right behind him, on the other side of the window, the OB bus was parked. Unconsciously, Anne shrank back, stepping on the guard’s toes. The bus stood out like a cardboard cut-out, white than white and emblazoned with the extremely flashy company logotype.
    I wonder if she’s still in there , she thought. I wonder if she’s gone cold by now.
    ‘Have a seat.’
    Anne sank down on the chair that the officer had indicated, wiped the rain out of her eyes, blinked and noticed that the lieutenant was wearing a colourful Hawaiian shirt. A sense of relief washed over her.
    ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’
    The man didn’t seem to have heard her.
    ‘We’ve met, in Stockholm,’ she told him eagerly. ‘Annika Bengtzon was there.’
    ‘You were one of the people who found her,’ he said.
    Confused, Anne blinked.
    ‘Um,’ she said. ‘Yes, I was one of them.’
    Suddenly, the sense of unreality returned, the floor began to rock under her feet and she grabbed hold of the desk.
    ‘Could I . . . please have some water?’
    An officer came over with a pitcher and a glass. With shaking hands, she poured herself a glass of water and greedily downed the entire contents of the glass, spilling some.
    ‘Got a hangover?’
    Waves of nausea swept over Anne Snapphane as she leaned back in her chair.
    ‘I think I’m going to have an asthma attack.’
    ‘Is it customary to have a blow-out when you wrap up a TV show?’
    She smoothed her hair and noticed how damp it was.
    ‘Why am I here? When do I get to go home?’
    The lieutenant got up.
    ‘We’re going to interview the whole group of you today, one by one. So far, no one is more of a suspect than anyone else but, naturally, we have to ask you all about last night. I hope you understand.’
    Trying to make sense of what he was saying, Anne looked at the man, her mouth half-open.
    ‘Until we have finished these interviews, you will be restricted to your rooms. You will be summoned at our convenience. You are not allowed to talk to each other, or communicate in any other fashion. Is that clear? Anne Snapphane, did you hear what