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can’t tell it like it is, they’ll think I did it.
    The man in front of her studied her, examined her, read her mind.
    ‘Lying will only complicate things,’ he said.
    ‘I wanted to throttle her,’ Anne said, looking away, tears burning in her eyes. ‘But we were drunk.’
    The lieutenant got up, walked around the table and sat back down again.
    ‘Drunk,’ he repeated. ‘How drunk? Does that go for the whole film team?’
    She shrugged her shoulders, suddenly exhausted and fed up with the whole business.
    ‘Words, please.’
    Her brain short-circuited, signalling error and overload.
    ‘How should I know?’ she shouted. ‘How could I know such a thing? It’s not like I went around picking up the empties, even though certain people seemed to think that was my job.’
    ‘Like who? Did Michelle think you ought to clear away the empty bottles?’
    ‘No,’ she replied in a somewhat more subdued voice.
    The silence deepened, her nausea increased.
    ‘Were there any other disputes as the night wore on?’
    Out of breath, Anne Snapphane swallowed hard.
    ‘Maybe,’ she whispered.
    ‘Who was involved?’
    ‘Ask the others. I don’t know, I wasn’t listening.’
    ‘But there was some sort of commotion around here last night, wasn’t there? Things got kind of rowdy.’
    ‘Ask around and you’ll find out,’ Anne replied. ‘Ask what it was like over at the Stables.’
    ‘Were you there?’
    ‘Not for long.’
    ‘But you were one of the people who found her, right?’
    The lieutenant didn’t insist on hearing her affirm this.
    ‘Apart from you, who else entered the bus?’
    She closed her eyes briefly.
    ‘Sebastian,’ she said, noticing how feeble her voice sounded.
    ‘Sebastian Follin, Michelle Carlsson’s agent?’
    Anne nodded. Then she remembered something.
    ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Oh, he’s her manager. Sebastian Follin is Michelle’s manager.’
    Confused, she stopped.
    ‘How should I put that? That he is? Or was . . .?’
    ‘Anyone else?’
    ‘Karin. Karin Bellhorn, the producer. She was there too.’
    ‘Anyone else?’
    ‘Mariana and Bambi. They can’t stand each other.’
    ‘Why were you up all night?’
    Anne laughed, a single short bark.
    ‘There was still some booze left.’
    ‘Who are Mariana and Bambi?’
    ‘Mariana von Berlitz is a feature editor for Summer Frolic at the Castle , we work for the same production company. Bambi Rosenberg, the soap actress, was a guest on the next to last show. She and Michelle were pals.’
    ‘Right,’ the policeman said. ‘The manager, the producer, the editor, the friend and you. Would that be everyone?’
    Anne considered the question briefly.
    ‘Well, Gunnar was around too,’ she said. ‘He had the key. His last name’s Antonsson. He works in the bus and you should have seen him.’ A fit of the giggles bubbled up inside her, passing through her brain and over her lips, oozing like green poison. ‘He was more upset about the mess than . . .’
    She motioned with a hand and grew silent.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘It bugged Gunnar more that Michelle had messed up his equipment than that she was dead.’
    ‘Messed up?’
    ‘Yeah, all that grey goo, you know . . .’
    The image flashed before her, filtered through intoxication and shock: the slim body sprawled in a grotesque position, enormous eyes that would never see again.
    ‘I can’t do this . . .’ Anne Snapphane murmured and passed out.
    The pier in front of the Grand Hotel was clogged with people. The passenger boats to Stockholm’s archipelago bobbed like whales behind a curtain of rain, the wind whipping the bunches of birch branches embellishing the bow and stern of each vessel. This is impossible , Thomas thought. There won’t be room for us.
    ‘Gällnö? That’s the boat at the far end. Have a nice Midsummer.’
    Thomas tried to smile at the employee from Waxholmsbolaget shrouded in raingear, gripped the handle of the stroller firmly, ploughed through a deep