The Final Word Read Free Page A

they had held their wedding reception there. And Kungsholmen was where she had lived in a three-room flat after her divorce from Thomas.
    And this was where Josefin Liljeberg had worked, and where she had died.
    Annika crossed Hantverkargatan and saw Kronoberget rise behind the fire station, with its paths and lawns. The trees hadn’t yet developed the same shade of chlorophyll-heavy green that they’d had back then. The playground on Kronobergsgatan was full of people, mothers and children, a few fathers, the laughter and shouting triggering inside her a sadness for what had once been. She walked past the sandpits, climbing-frames and slides, and made her way up to the crown of the hill.
    ‘The Sex Killing in the Cemetery’ was how Josefin’s murder had been described, but that wasn’t really accurate.
    She had been found in an old Jewish cemetery, located on the outskirts of the city in the eighteenth century but now incorporated into one of the largest parks in innerStockholm. And it wasn’t a sexually motivated killing: she had been strangled by her boyfriend.
    Annika walked slowly to the cast-iron railings. The area had been restored in recent years. The abundant vegetation was gone, the toppled headstones raised. Two hundred and nine people lay there, she knew, the last buried in 1857. There was something magical about the place. The noise of the city faded away – it was like a hole through time. She put her hand on the railing, her fingers tracing the circles and curls, the stylized stars of David.
    During that hot summer, Annika’s first on the paper as a temp, she had been manning the telephone tip-off line and this was her big break. She had insisted on being allowed to write about Josefin, her first articles under her own by-line. This was where the girl had been lying, just on the other side of the railings.
The barren greyness
of the rocks in the background, the silent greenery, the shadow-play of the leaves, the humidity and heat.
Annika had looked into her eyes, clouded and grey, listened to her soundless scream.
    ‘He got away with it,’ Annika whispered to Josefin. ‘He was sent to prison, but not for what he did to you. Maybe it’s too late now.’ Tears welled in her eyes. That had been the first truth she never wrote about, and there had been more over the years. So long ago, yet still so close. Sven had been alive that summer. She could feel his anger in the darkness around her, how upset he had been that she had taken a job in Stockholm, consciously seeking to get away from him.
Don’t you love me?
Insecurity and fear had gone hand in hand: how would her life turn out? she had wondered.
    It had turned out like this, she thought, wiping her tears. I stayed here. This was where I was meant to be.
    She let go of the railings, took out her little video-camera, and filmed the cemetery freehand (she hadn’t felt like lugging the tripod with her). She zoomed into the place where Josefin had been lying, then focused on the trees above. If necessary, she could always come back and do a piece to camera in front of the murder scene, but for the time being she couldn’t judge what to say. First she had to edit and structure her material. She turned her back on the cemetery, suddenly eager to get away.
    She made her way down towards the Public Prosecution Authority on Kungsbron. The temperature was rising. The road smelt of tar.
    Preliminary investigations were, in principle, always regarded as confidential, and this was true of Josefin’s murder, even if Annika had a good idea of what the file contained. It showed that Joachim, Josefin’s boyfriend, was probably guilty of her murder. Annika had requested to see the material, either in full or in part: information deemed unlikely to damage the investigation could, in exceptional cases, be released, even if no prosecution had ever been brought.
    The wind was getting stronger and the clouds were breaking up. She quickened her pace.
    Fifteen years had