Karin Fossum - Don't Look Back

Six men came tramping out of the woods. Their voices died out except for a few faint coughs when they caught sight of the men by the water. A second later they saw the dead woman. Sejer stood up and gestured.

"Stay on that side!" he shouted.

They did as he ordered. They all recognised his grey shock of hair. One of them measured the terrain with a practised eye, trod a bit on the ground, which was relatively solid where he stood, and muttered something about a lack of rain. The photographer went first. He didn't spend much time by the body, but instead looked at the sky, as if he wanted to check the light conditions.

"Take pictures from both sides," Sejer said, "and get the vegetation in the shot. I'm afraid you'll have to go out in the water after that, because I need pictures from the front without moving her. When you've used up half the roll, we'll take off her jacket."

"Mountain lakes like this are usually bottomless," he said sceptically.

"You can swim, can't you?"

There was a pause.

"There's a rowboat over there. We can use that."

"A dinghy? It looks rotten."

"We'll soon know," Sejer said, brusquely.

While the photographer was working, the others stood still and waited. One of the technicians was already working further up the shore, searching through the area, which proved to be quite free of litter. This was an idyllic spot, and in such places there was usually bottle caps, used condoms, cigarette butts, and sweet wrappers. Here they found nothing.

"Unbelievable," he said. "Not so much as a burnt match."

"He probably cleaned up after himself," Sejer said.

"It looks like a suicide, don't you think?"

"She's stark naked," he replied.

"Yes, but she must have done that herself. Those clothes were not pulled off by force, that's one thing for certain."

"They're dirty."

"Maybe that's why she took them off," he smiled. "Besides, she threw up. Must have eaten something she couldn't digest."

Sejer bit back a reply and looked at her. He could understand how the technician had come to that conclusion. It really did look as if she had lain down herself; her clothes were piled carefully next to her, not thrown about. They were muddy but seemed undamaged. Only the jacket that covered her torso was dry and clean. He stared at the mud and dirt and caught sight of something that looked like a shoe print. "Look at that," he said to the technician.

The man squatted down in his coveralls and measured all the prints several times.

"This is hopeless. They're filled with water."

"Can't you use any of them?"

"Probably not."

They squinted into the water-filled ovals.

"Take pictures anyway. I think they look small. Maybe a person with small feet."

"Roughly 27 centimetres. Not a big foot. Could be hers." The photographer took several shots of the footprints, then got into the old rowboat and sloshed around. They had found no oars, so he had to keep paddling into position with his hands. Every time he moved, the boat tilted alarmingly.

"It's leaking!" he shouted anxiously.

"Relax, we've got a whole rescue team here!" Sejer said.

When the photographer was done, he had taken more than 50 photos. Sejer went down to the water, took off his shoes and socks and placed them on a rock, rolled up his trousers and waded out. He stood a metre from her head. She had a pendant around her neck. He fished it out carefully with a pen he took from his inside pocket. "A medallion," he said in a low voice. "Probably silver. There's something on it. An H and an M. Get a bag ready."

He bent over and loosened the chain, then he removed the jacket.

"The back of her neck is red," he said. "Unusually pale skin all over, but extremely red on the back of her neck. An ugly blotch, as big as a hand."

Snorrason, the medical examiner, waded out in his gumboots and inspected in turn the eyeballs, the teeth, the nails. Noticed the flawless skin and the light red marks – there were several of them – scattered seemingly at random across her neck and chest. He noticed every detail: the long legs, the lack of birthmarks, which was uncommon, and found nothing more than a few small spots on her right shoulder. He cautiously touched the foam above her mouth with a wooden spatula. It seemed solid and dense, almost like a mousse.

Sejer nodded to her mouth. "What's that?"

"Right off I would think it's a fluid from the lungs, containing protein."

"Which means?"

"Drowning. But it could mean other things."

He scraped away some of the foam, and soon new foam began oozing out.

"The lungs are collapsed," he said.

Sejer pressed his lips tight as he watched. The photographer took more pictures of her, now without the jacket.

"Time to break the seal," Snorrason said, rolling her carefully on to her stomach. "A slight incipient rigor mortis, especially in the neck. A big, well-built woman in healthy condition. Broad shoulders. Good musculature in upper arms and thighs and calves. Probably played sports."

"Do you see any sign of violence?" Sejer asked.

Snorrason inspected her back and the backs of her legs. "Apart from the reddening of the neck, no. Someone may have grabbed her hard by the back of the neck and pushed her to the ground. Obviously while she was still clothed. Then she was pulled up again, carefully undressed, laid in place, and covered with the jacket."

"Any sign of sexual assault?"

"Don't know yet."

He proceeded to take her temperature, quite unperturbed, in the presence of everyone, and then squinted at the result.

"It's 30 degrees Celsius. Together with the blood spots under the skin and only a slight rigor mortis in the neck, I would estimate the time of death as being within the past ten to twelve hours."

"No," Sejer said. "Not if this isn't where she died."

"Are you doing my job for me?"

He shook his head. "There was a search made here this morning. A group of boys with dogs searched along this tarn for a little girl who was reported missing. They must have been here sometime between midday and 2 p.m. The body wasn't here then – they would have seen it. The little girl turned up by the way, in good shape," he said.

He looked about him, staring down at the mud with his eyes narrowed. Something tiny and pale-coloured caught his attention. He picked it up carefully between two fingers. "What's this?"

Snorrason peered into his hand. "A pill, or a tablet of some kind."

"Do you think you might find more in her stomach?"

"Quite possibly. But I don't see a pill bottle here."

"She could have carried them loose in her pocket."

"In that case we'll find powder in her dungarees. Bag it up."

"Do you recognise it?"

"It could be almost anything. But the smallest tablets are often the strongest. The lab will figure it out."

Sejer nodded to the men with the stretcher and stood watching them with his arms crossed. For the first time in a long while he raised his eyes and looked up. The sky was pale, and the pointed firs stood around the tarn like raised spears. Of course they would figure it out. He made himself a promise. They'd figure everything out.

Jacob Skarre, born and raised in Søgne in the mild Southland, had just turned 25. He had seen naked women plenty of times, but never as naked as the one by the tarn. It struck him just now, as he sat with Sejer in the car, that this one had made more of an impression than all the other corpses he had seen before. Maybe it was because she lay as if trying to conceal her nakedness, with her back to the path, head tucked down and knees drawn up. But they had found her anyway, and they had seen her nakedness. Turned her and rolled her over, pulled back her lips to look at her teeth, raised her eyelids. Took her temperature, as she lay on her stomach with her legs spread. As if she were a mare at auction.