She shook her head.

The superintendent looked at her cool y.

"Can I ask you to reply verbal y so that your response gets picked up on the tape?"

Dessie sat up in her chair and cleared her throat.

"No," she said, a little too loudly. "No, I've never written about these murders."

"Is there anything else you might have done to provoke them into contacting you specifical y?"

"My obvious charm and flexibility?" she suggested.

Duval tapped away at a smal gadget that Dessie assumed was some sort of electronic notepad. His fingers were long and thin, the nails wel manicured.

He was dressed in a suit, a pink shirt, and a gray-on-blue striped tie.

"Let's move on to you: how long have you been working here at Aftonposten? "

Dessie clasped her hands in her lap.

"Almost three years," she said. "Part-time. I do research when I'm not here."

"Research? Can I ask what in?"

"I'm a trained criminologist, specializing in property crime. And I've done the extension course in journalism at Stockholm University, so I'm a trained journalist as wel. And right now I'm writing my doctoral thesis…

Glad you asked?"

She had let the sentence about her thesis trail off. Focusing on the social consequences of smal -scale property break-ins, it had been placed on the back burner – to put it mildly. She hadn't written a word of it in over two years. 12 "Would you describe yourself as a high-profile or famous reporter?" the superintendent asked.

Dessie let out a rather inappropriate laugh, partly through her mouth, partly her nose.

"Hardly." She recovered slightly. "I never write about the news. I come up with my own stories. For instance, I had an interview with Burglar Bengt in yesterday's paper. He's Sweden's 'most notorious' burglar. Found guilty of breaking into three hundred eighteen properties, and that doesn't include -"

Superintendent Duval interrupted her, leaning in closer across the table.