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back—then look up in life.
    The words of wisdom were written in red marker on the wall. The whore had obviously taken them literally. She was lying on her side with her head on her right arm, 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 cell phone. The woman looked like she’d found peace. The man was tired of having to chase the prostitutes out of the huge parking lot, 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 okay. 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 cell 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 fifty square feet. 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 a 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 that immediately accelerated toward Sergels Torg.
    He eventually got ahold of the police. They promised to be there within half an hour.
    “Sure,” he muttered and hung up. 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 faux fur coat, got an offer on the other side of the square.
    The dead whore wasn’t that thin. Quite the contrary, he thought as he took a long drag 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 again 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 one would ever ask about her. No one grieved for Katinka Olsson, and no one wondered why the dead prostitute smelled fresh and clean and had on newly washed, if worn, clothes.
    No one.
    Victoria Heinerback’s home surprised him.
    Standing in the middle of the relatively large living 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 Victoria Heinerback’s house. Adam Stubo had used the early hours of the morning to go through a large pile of interviews and other press cuttings, sensational and glamorous tales of an apparently successful life.
    When her boyfriend proposed to her, the couple traveled to Paris with Hello! The pictures of the two of them, embracing in front of the Eiffel Tower,