Åsa Larsson - Sun Storm aka The Savage Altar

The doctor smacked his own bald head to illustrate the blow.

“The blow makes him fall to his knees-there are no grazes or hematomas on the knees, but the carpet was quite soft-and then the killer stabs him twice. That’s why the angle of entry is sloping from above. So it’s difficult to say anything about his height.”

“So he died from the blow and the two stab wounds?” asked Anna-Maria.

“Yes,” continued Pohjanen, suppressing a cough. “This stab wound through the wall of the rib cage splits the seventh rib bone on the left-hand side, opens the pericardium-”

“The peri-?”

“The heart sac, the right ventricle, the heart chamber. This causes a bleed into the heart and the right lung. With the second blow the knife cut through the liver and caused a bleed into the abdominal cavity and the peritoneum.”

“Did he die immediately?”

Pohjanen shrugged his shoulders.

“What about the rest of his injuries?” asked Anna-Maria.

“He sustained those after death. All this damage to the torso and belly with a sharp object. These blows came from directly in front and were delivered after the moment of death. I would guess that Viktor Strandgård was lying on his back at the time. There’s also this long gash which opened up the stomach.”

He pointed at the long reddish blue wound in the stomach, which was now held together with rough stitches.

“And the eyes?” asked Anna-Maria, gazing at the gaping holes in Viktor Strandgård’s face.

“Look at this,” said Pohjanen, slotting in another X-ray plate. “Just here! Can you see this splinter that’s come away from the cranium right inside the eye socket? And here! I hardly noticed it at first, but then I rinsed out the socket and looked at the skull itself. There are marks where something has scraped against the skull on the edge of the eye sockets. The murderer pushed the knife into the eyes and twisted it. Gouged them out, you could say.”

“What the hell was he trying to do?” exclaimed Anna-Maria with feeling. “And the hands?”

“They were also removed after death. One was still at the scene.”

“Fingerprints?”

“Maybe on the wrist stumps, but it’s up to the forensic lab in Linköping to sort that out. I don’t hold out much hope, though. There are a couple of decent marks around the wrists where somebody has gripped them hard, but as far as I can see, there aren’t any prints. I think Linköping will say that the person who cut off the hands was wearing gloves.”

Anna-Maria felt her courage fail. She was seized by a strong desire to catch the murderer. All of a sudden she felt as if she couldn’t bear it if the investigation was just shelved in some archive in a few years’ time. Pohjanen was right. She would probably dream about Viktor Strandgård.

“What kind of knife was it?” she asked.

“Some kind of biggish hunting knife. Too broad for a kitchen knife. It wasn’t double-edged.”

“What about the blunt object that hit him on the back of the head?”

“Could have been anything at all,” said Pohjanen. “A spade, a large stone…”

“Isn’t it odd that he was hit from behind with a weapon and then stabbed from the front?” asked Anna-Maria.

“You’re the detective,” said Lars Pohjanen.

“Maybe there was more than one person,” wondered Anna-Maria out loud. “Anything else?”

“Not at the moment. No drugs. No alcohol. And he hadn’t eaten for several days.”

“What? Several days?”

Anna-Maria herself found it necessary to eat every two hours.

“He wasn’t dehydrated, so it wasn’t some kind of stomach bug or anorexia or anything like that. But he seems to have ingested only liquids. The lab will be able to tell you what else was in his stomach. You can switch off the tape recorder.”

He passed over a copy of the preliminary autopsy report. Anna-Maria clicked off the tape recorder.

“I don’t like guessing,” said Pohjanen, clearing his throat. “At least not when there’s a record.”

He nodded in the direction of the tape recorder, which disappeared into Anna-Maria’s pocket.

“But the cuts on the wrists were very neat,” he went on. “You’re looking for a hunter, Mella.”

“So this is where you are,” came a voice from the doorway.

It was Sven-Erik Stålnacke.

“Yes,” replied Anna-Maria, and realized she was embarrassed in case her colleague thought she’d gone behind his back. “Pohjanen rang and he was just about to leave and…”

She stopped, angry that she’d tried to explain herself and to make excuses.

“That’s fine,” said Sven-Erik cheerfully. “You can tell me all about it in the car. We’ve got problems with our pastors. Hell, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. In the end I asked Sonja on the switchboard who’d phoned you. We need to go now.”

Anna-Maria glanced questioningly at Pohjanen; he shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows at the same time, as if to say that their business was finished.

“I see Luleå got hammered by Färjestad.” Sven-Erik smirked as a parting shot to the doctor, at the same time hustling Anna-Maria along with him.

“Go on, rub it in,” sighed Lars Pohjanen, fumbling in his pocket for a cigarette.

The plane to Kiruna was almost full. Hordes of foreign tourists off to drive a dog team and spend the night on reindeer skins in the ice hotel at Jukkasjärvi jostled for space with rumpled businessmen returning home clutching their free fruit and newspapers.

Rebecka sank down and fastened her seat belt. The murmur of voices, the synthetic ping as the signs lit up and went off overhead and the humming of the engines lulled her into a restless sleep. She slept for the whole journey.

In her dream she is running across a cloudberry bog. It is a hot August day. The heat of the sun is making the moisture rise from the bog. Sweat and midge repellent are pouring down her forehead and into her eyes. It stings. There are tears in her eyes. A black cloud of midges creeps into her nostrils and ears. She can’t see. Someone is chasing her. They’re right behind her. And as always in her dreams, her legs won’t carry her weight. They have no strength and the bog is waterlogged. Her feet sink deeper and deeper into the peat moss and someone, or something, is chasing her. Now she can’t lift her foot. She’s sinking into the bog. She tries to shout for her mummy, but only a faint sound comes from her throat. Then she feels a hand, heavy on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, did I frighten you?”

Rebecka opened her eyes and saw a flight attendant bending over her. The woman smiled a little uncertainly and took her hand from Rebecka’s shoulder.

“We’re preparing to land in Kiruna; I’ll have to ask you to put the back of your seat into the upright position.”

Rebecka’s hand flew up to her mouth. Had she been dribbling? Or worse, screaming? She didn’t dare look at her neighbor, but turned to look out into the darkness. It was down there. The town. It shone like a jewel glittering at the bottom of a well, its lights surrounded by the darkness of the mountains. It felt like a blow to the stomach and the heart.

My town, she thought, the melancholy of seeing it again blending with happiness, rage and fear in a strange mixture.

Twenty minutes later she was sitting in the rented Audi on the way down to Kurravaara. The village lay fifteen kilometers outside Kiruna. As a child she had often traveled the whole way from Kiruna down to the village on her kick sledge. It was a happy memory. Especially in the late winter when the road was covered with a wonderful layer of thick, shining ice, and nobody spoiled it with sand, salt or grit.