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legs bent, as if someone had put her in the recovery position so that death would come gently.
    But she was looking up, with open eyes and an astonished, almost happy expression.
    Peace, the attendant thought to himself, and took out his
    mobile phone. The woman looked like she’d found peace. The
    man was tired of having to chase the prostitutes out of the huge car park, but deep down he felt for them. Their tiresome existence reminded him of the joys of his own life. His job was boring and monotonous, but he had a good wife and the children seemed to be turning out OK. He could afford a beer or two on Friday night and prided himself on always paying his bills before they were due.
    The reception for mobile phones was terrible down here.
    He recognized her. She was one of the regulars. She seemed to live down here, at the bottom of the stairwell, in a space that was barely five square metres. The blue and red stripes on the wall were no doubt meant to conjure up movement and light. A bag lay flung in the corner, and three papers and a magazine had been stuck underneath a rolled-up sleeping bag just under the stairs. A bottle of mineral water had fallen down behind her back.
    The attendant trudged up the stairs. His asthma was bothering him and he had to stop for a minute to draw breath. Finally he got to the top and opened a drab door out onto Brunkebergs Torg.
    The woman’s colleagues were already at work. He spotted a
    couple of them, shivering and emaciated; one of them got into a BMW which immediately accelerated towards Sergels Torg.
    He eventually got hold of the police. They promised to be
    there within half an hour.
    ‘Sure,’ he muttered and rang off. Last time he had been alone with the dead prostitute for over an hour.
    He lit a cigarette. The other woman, in thin tights and mock fur coat, got an offer on the other side of the square.
    The dead whore wasn’t that small. Quite the contrary, he
    thought, and took a long draw on his cigarette. She was the
    plumper type. There weren’t many of those. Prostitutes normally shrank over the years. They got smaller and skinnier for every shot they took, every pill they swallowed. Maybe this woman
    remembered to eat, in between tricks and drugs.
    He should go back down to keep an eye on her.
    Instead he lit another cigarette and stood out there in the cold until the police finally came. They took a few seconds to confirm what the attendant already knew, that the woman was dead. An ambulance was called and the body was taken away.
    Katinka Olsson was cremated three days later, and no one bothered to erect a stone to mark the remains of the late
    thirty-something prostitute. The four children she had brought into the world before she was thirty would never know that their biological mother carried baby pictures of them in her otherwise empty wallet, faded photographs with worn, uneven edges;
    Katinka Olsson’s only treasure.
    She died of an overdose and no would ever ask after her. No
    one grieved for Katinka Olsson and no one wondered why the
    dead prostitute smelt fresh and clean and had on newly washed, if worn clothes.
    No one.
     
    Vibeke Heinerback’s home surprised him.
    Standing in the middle of the relatively large sitting room, he got the impression of a far more interesting person than the media had ever managed to portray.
    When he thought about it, he couldn’t remember having seen
    any features about Vibeke Heinerback’s house. Adam Stubo had used the early hours of the morning to go through a large pile of interviews and other cuttings, sensational and glamorous tales of an apparently successful life.
    When her boyfriend proposed to her, the couple travelled to
    Paris with Hello!. The pictures of the two of them, embracing in front of the Eiffel Tower, under the Arc de Triomphe, outside well-known shops on the Champs-Elysees and on the streets of Montmartre, reminded him of advertisements from the seventies.
    Vibeke and Trond were both bottle blondes