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it feels as if she isn’t telling the truth.”
    â€œAnd she probably isn’t, or at least not completely, but to arrest her I’m going to need more than that. If she doesn’t start talking or we can’t get any technical evidence, I’ll have to let her go. You’ve got three days.”
    Henrik ran his fingers through his hair.
    â€œAnd the secretary?” he said.
    â€œCheck out what she knows. I want you to visit her as soon as you can, but definitely by tomorrow. Unfortunately I have four cases which I have to pay attention to, and so I am not free to go with you. But I trust you.”
    â€œOf course. Mia and I will talk with her.”
    Jana said goodbye and walked past the other interrogation rooms.
    As a public prosecutor, she regularly visited the place. She was on emergency duty a certain number of weekends and nights every year—it went with the job. A rotating duty schedule was posted, whose main purpose was to ensure that a prosecutor was available for urgent decisions such as whether somebody should be detained. A prosecutor could keep somebody in detention up to three days without introducing charges. After that, a court hearing was necessary. On a number of occasions, sometimes late at night, Jana had been called in and, in a rush, had to make a decision about an arrest.
    Today all the cells in the center were full. She looked up toward the ceiling and thanked a higher power that she wasn’t on call the coming weekend. At the same time, she remembered that she would be on standby duty the weekend after that. She slowed her pace as she walked down the corridor, then stopped to sit and pull her calendar out. She turned the pages ahead to April 28. Nothing was noted there. Perhaps it was Sunday, April 29? Nothing there either. She turned a few more pages and caught sight of the entry for the first of May. A public holiday. ON CALL. And that was the day she had agreed to have dinner with her mother and father. She felt immediate stress. She couldn’t possibly be on call that same day. How had she not seen that? Of course, it was not absolutely necessary to be at her parents’ for dinner, but she didn’t want to disappoint her father by not coming over at all.
    I’ll have to swap days with somebody , she thought, as she put her calendar back in her briefcase. She got up and continued walking, wondering with whom she’d be able to swap days. Most likely Per Åström. Per was both a successful public prosecutor and a popular social worker. She respected him as a colleague. During the five years they had known each other, a friendship of sorts had grown up between them.
    Per was thirty-three years old and in good shape. He played tennis on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He had blond hair, a little dimple in his chin and eyes that were different colors. He smelled of aftershave. Sometimes he tended to go on a bit, but otherwise a nice guy. Only that; nothing more.
    Jana hoped that Per would swap with her. Otherwise she would resort to bribing him with wine. But red or white? She weighed the two choices in time with the sound of her heels on the floor. Red or white. Red or white.
    She contemplated taking the stairs down to the garage but chose the elevator instead. When she saw that the defense lawyer Peter Ramstedt was waiting there too, she immediately regretted her decision. She stood back from him at a safe distance.
    â€œAh, it’s you, Jana,” said Peter when he noted her presence. He rocked back and forth on the soles of his shoes.
    â€œI heard that you had gone to review the autopsy and see the victim’s body at the medical examiner’s.”
    â€œWhere did you hear that?”
    â€œOne hears a thing or two.”
    Peter gave a slight smirk and exposed his whitened teeth.
    â€œSo you like corpses?”
    â€œNot particularly. I’m just trying to lead an investigation.”
    â€œI’ve been a lawyer for ten years and