Last Will Read Online Free Page B

happened.”
    She stared back for a moment, then looked away, her gaze sliding over the heavy leather-bound books on the dark oak shelves. Then she nodded.
    Did he really just call her a headline-chasing bitch ?
    “We’ll question you more thoroughly later,” Q said quietly, sounding friendlier and more tired now. “Right now we need a description. Take it chronologically, from the moment you saw this person, and leave us to work out what’s important.”
    He started the tape recorder again. Annika cleared her throat and tried to relax her shoulders.
    “A woman,” she said, “it was a woman who pushed me, with her elbow; then she stood on my foot.”
    “What did the woman look like?”
    The room was collapsing on top of her, with its heavy oil paintings and dark oak bookcases. She put her hands over her eyes and heaved a sigh.
    “I don’t know,” she said.
    Her cell phone started to ring; the sound made her pull herself together. They waited in silence for it to stop.
    “Okay, let’s try it a different way,” Q said when it had finally fallen silent. “Where were you when she pushed you?”
    She summoned up the music, the glamour, the happiness, the darkness, the crush.
    “On the dance floor, I was dancing. At one end of the Golden Hall, not the one with the orchestra, the other end.”
    “Who were you dancing with?”
    Confusion and shame washed over her and she looked down at her lap.
    “His name’s Bosse, he’s a reporter for the opposition.”
    “Blond guy, quite well built?”
    Annika nodded, still staring at her lap, her cheeks hot.
    “Can you answer verbally, please.”
    “Yes,” she said, slightly too loudly, and straightened her back. “Yes, that’s right.”
    “Might he have seen anything?”
    “Yes, obviously, although I don’t think she trod on him.”
    “And then what happened?”
    Then what happened? Nothing else. Nothing at all, that was all she saw.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I turned my back on her and didn’t see anything else.”
    “And you didn’t hear anything?”
    The hubbub? The music? Her own breathing?
    “Only a couple of pouf s.”
    “ Pouf s?”
    “Muffled noises, sort of, like puffs of air. I turned around and saw a man slump to his knees. He was dancing with a woman and she looked surprised when he just collapsed like that—she looked up and she looked at me and then she looked down at her chest and then I looked as well and saw she was bleeding—it was sort of pumping out and she looked up again and looked at me and then she slumped to the floor and everyone started screaming …”
    “When did the second pouf come?”
    Annika glanced at Q.
    “The second?”
    “You said ‘a couple of pouf s.’”
    “Did I? I don’t know. There was a pouf and then the woman was looking at me and then there was another pouf— yes, two pouf s, I think …”
    “How far away were you from the couple when they fell?”
    She thought for several seconds.
    “Two meters, two and a half maybe.”
    “The woman who pushed you, did you see her as they fell?”
    Had she? Had she seen a woman? Had she seen shoulder straps?
    “Shoulder straps,” Annika said. “She had narrow shoulder straps. Or a bag with a narrow strap.”
    Q nodded and made a note in his pad.
    Annika pressed her fingertips to her eyelids and tried, searching through images, moods—was there anything there behind the noise?
    Bosse’s hand had been scorching through the fabric on her back, Bosse’s hand holding her so tightly to him that she could feel his cock against her stomach, her own hand behind his neck, that was what she felt, that was what she remembered. The music was there like an apron, dull, neatly ironed, but it was only there to conceal them, so they could hold on to each other in the glittering golden light.
    “I was elbowed in the side,” she said hesitantly. “And someone stood on my foot. I don’t know which came first.”
    Her cell phone started to ring again.
    “Turn it