Helene Tursten - Detective Inspector Huss

Amazingly poetic for Andersson. Jonny knew what he meant and agreed. He’d been a cop long enough to recognize something unpleasant when it popped up. This whole case was unpleasant. Like the superintendent said-it stank.

EXACTLY FORTY-EIGHT hours earlier Andersson had walked through the doors to Pathology, just as he was doing now. Yvonne Stridner didn’t know he was coming in person this time either. She expected him simply to call her. But the pale sunshine had prompted an impulse to get outside for a while. It seems reasonable to ask why someone who longs for a little sunshine gets into a car and drives through downtown Göteborg breathing nothing but exhaust. But he knew the answer. He wanted to get out of the four walls of police headquarters. Sometimes they stifled him. Not that the walls at Pathology were any less stifling, but they would do as a change of scene.

Stridner wasn’t in her office. No matter how much he hated the idea, he was going to have to go into the autopsy room. With a gurgling feeling of discomfort in his stomach region, he was already regretting his little outing.

She stood dressed in a green paper smock and something that looked like a shower cap of the same material, talking to a young man who was also dressed in scrubs. Slowly she pulled off her rubber gloves as she coldly observed the graduate student.

“If you don’t finish up the course on forensic medicine I don’t comprehend how your previous autopsies could be approved. You’re a typical slacker. Others have to do the job, while you stand next to them and ‘assist.’ That means handing them instruments and looking the other way. Leaving the room when it starts getting disgusting. Don’t you understand that pathology is the basis of all medicine? If you don’t know what it looks like both inside and outside a person who’s been struck by a particular illness or trauma, you’ll never be able to figure out what’s happening! What stage is the illness in? How is it developing? What’s happening to the patient? And if the patient is dead, what happened, and why did it happen? If this doesn’t interest you, I think you ought to seriously consider whether you’re at all suited for the medical profession! I’m flunking you!”

The young man hadn’t said a word during the dressing-down. Without a word he turned on his heel and rushed out. He apparently didn’t notice the superintendent, who saw the expression in the student’s eyes. An experienced detective can read murder in someone’s eyes when he sees it.

Stridner noticed Andersson and nodded curtly. She gave him a stern look, and the superintendent had the strong feeling that he had also flunked.

“The standards for graduates are getting worse and worse. They’re slackers. They think all they have to do is read a few pages in a textbook to make it! No desire whatsoever to do a little extra,” fumed the professor.

She snorted audibly and fixed Andersson with her gaze. The feeling that The Last Judgment was approaching grew stronger.

“And you police officers! Can’t even tell the difference between girls and boys.”

Astonished, he stared at the angry redheaded pathologist. Lamely he stammered, “That. . that’s something we can usually handle.”

“Not this time.”

With determined steps she strode across the room to an autopsy table. His stomach turned over when he realized what she was about to do. She whipped off the sheet. The body was severely charred. Arms and legs were bent in the typical defensive position since the intense heat had contracted the musculature. A faint smell of roasted meat penetrated the other odors in the autopsy room.

“Late yesterday afternoon this body was brought in. Your guys told our duty officer that it was the body of a young man, just over twenty years old,” Stridner said.

“Yes, that’s right. Mattias Karlsson-”

“Wrong! The body I just finished the postmortem on this morning belongs to a middle-aged woman. Apparently thirty-five to forty-five years old. Height about one-point-five-five meters. Weight is hard to determine, but she was stocky. Bad teeth. She has had a child. European.”

The superintendent stared at the charred corpse. For a moment he felt dizzy, but it quickly passed.

“Finnish,” he managed to say.

Andersson heard his voice croaking. Stridner gave him a sharp look and snapped, “Finnish? That’s possible. Are you missing someone Finnish?”

“You can say that again! Pirjo Larsson, thirty-two years old. The description matches so far. She was von Knecht’s cleaning woman. What the hell is she doing here?”

“Well, she didn’t come here herself. You should be asking what she was doing there!”

There was no answer to that. He glared, but he had to agree with her. What was Pirjo doing in von Knecht’s office when the bomb went off?

She pulled up the sheet and said, “I’m going to wash up. You can wait in my office.”

He obediently slouched off.

“FINISHING UP Richard first, I can say that the identification is quite clear. The forensic odontologists didn’t doubt it for a second. The teeth matched perfectly. I’ve also checked the fracture of the right tibia. I managed to dig up thirty-five-year-old X rays taken after a skiing accident in St. Anton. Uncomplicated healing.”

She waved some large X rays in the air. Andersson had a hard time trying to look interested when his thoughts were hovering around another body. How was he going to get hold of Hannu? He’d have to borrow a phone.

“Excuse me. May I borrow your phone? I have two inspectors running all over town looking for the woman lying under the sheet out there.”

She nodded and gestured to the phone on her desk. Andersson got hold of a secretary who promised to track down Hannu Rauhala and Birgitta Moberg. She would call them back to headquarters at once for an urgent meeting with him.

Now he could pay better attention to Stridner’s continuing report. It had been proven beyond all doubt that it really was von Knecht who was crushed on the sidewalk on Tuesday evening. Seventy-two hours ago. Since then, he felt like he had aged three years.

Stridner’s pedagogical voice snapped him out of his reverie. “There were no other signs of violence other than the contusion on the back of his neck and the cut across the back of his hand. Other injuries resulted from the height of the fall. Oh, that’s right-I did do one slightly unnecessary thing. Just to satisfy my curiosity. Today I got preliminary results on the PAD I requested. There is a clear fat buildup in the liver. Our good Richard had apparently been drinking quite a bit lately.”

“Does that surprise you?”

“Yes. He was always careful of his appearance and stayed in good shape. He was precise about how much food and drink he consumed. I never saw or heard that he was highly intoxicated at any party during the years we knew each other. But of course, that was fifteen years ago.”

“What does that indicate?”

She sucked in her lower lip and seemed to ponder this a long time before she replied. “Hard to say. Most commonly people take to the bottle when they have problems they can’t solve. Especially men.”

Andersson guiltily thought of the strong beer he drank every evening, but decided quickly that he wasn’t an alcoholic. At his age it was good to relax in the evening with a beer or two. Or three. And it helped him sleep well. Although it did have some side effects. Unconsciously, he tried to suck in his stomach. Glumly, he looked at the pathologist and summarized the situation.

“So we have a healthy sixty-year-old man fresh out of the sauna. Physically in good shape, but with recent signs of increased alcohol intake. Blood alcohol content one-point-one. In his stomach a good lunch is being digested. At five-thirty one rainy and blustery November evening he goes out on his balcony, despite his great fear of heights. There he is struck on the back of the head, cut on the hand, and shoved over the balcony railing. And not a trace of the murderer! And you found nothing else on his body?”