Helene Tursten - The Torso

“Is it true? Beate Bentsen’s son?”

Irene nodded.

“That’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever heard! How’s she holding up?”

“She had to be taken to the hospital. Had a complete breakdown. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The killer cut away his penis, one chest muscle, and one buttock.”

Jonny looked at the remainder of his ham sandwich with distaste. He set it aside on his plate. “What a sick bastard!”

For once, the two of them were in agreement.

“I’ve booked us for one more night. We can keep the rooms we have and, Jonny. .” She leaned forward over the table and said seriously, “. . I would be very grateful if you could stay sober this last day. Andersson was right when he said that the murderer is working close to me. And you’re close to me. For your own safety, you should-”

Jonny’s face turned red, and he got up so quickly that he knocked over his half-full cup of coffee. “You’re no damn chief or boss over me! You have no say in what I do!”

Furious, he stormed out of the breakfast room. Irene sighed loudly. It looked as though it was going to be yet another day of schnapps drinking.

JUST AS Irene had thought the night before, it really was beautiful when the sun shone in through the multicolored glass windows in the stairwell. But she couldn’t enjoy the play of colors on the walls when she and her three male colleagues stepped out of the elevator and walked up to the door of Emil’s apartment. Jonny looked at the blue ceramic sign in surprise and bent over in order to check out the pigs. He mumbled something but he didn’t comment out loud.

He had ignored Irene on the car ride over to Emil’s apartment. Her appeal for restraint with respect to alcohol had not gone over well.

When they inspected the crime scene during the night, Irene had realized that the other door on the landing belonged to the rental portion of Emil’s apartment. It was made up of two large rooms with a communal kitchen, hall, and bathroom. Neither of the rooms seemed to be rented currently. A large door in the kitchen that was locked led to Emil’s bedroom.

The rooms were almost identically furnished; each held a wide bed, a large fancy dresser with a mirror above it, and a leather recliner with a floor lamp next to it. On the floor were worn but beautiful folk art rugs. The closets were empty as well as the dressers. Everything was covered by a thick layer of dust, which indicated that no one had lived in the rooms for several weeks, maybe even months. The only thing that made the rooms different was the color scheme. One of them was decorated blue, the other green. Both the rooms had wonderful views of the Botanical Gardens.

The kitchen and the bathroom were dusty and dirty, but not as filthy as Emil’s. There was actually a certain degree of impersonal order discernable.

Jens Metz turned around and breathed old booze in Irene’s face. “We’re going to let the technicians search for hair strands and so forth in both of the rental rooms. We have lots of hairs from the Hotel Aurora since the victim there was found in an old hotel room. We’re going to search Emil’s apartment thoroughly. It’s going to take a hell of a long time but if we’re lucky we’ll find hair or something else that matches,” he said.

Irene nodded. She couldn’t speak since she was holding her breath. The question was who had the most repulsive mouth odor, Jonny or Jens.

They left the rental area and entered Emil’s apartment. The smell of decaying flesh still hung in the air even though the body had been taken to the morgue. Irene opened the window in the kitchen. The technicians were in the process of collecting evidence in Emil’s bedroom. A short, rather rotund young man looked up at the police officers through the door opening, and said, “This is going to take a while. There is more dust and shit than you can imagine. It doesn’t look like the guy ever cleaned.”

“Fingerprints?” Peter Møller asked.

“Tons.”

“Anything of interest?”

“It looks like there are a lot of semen stains on the mattress and the bedclothes, but they appear to be older. We found a fresh semen stain under the bed. It’s very small but I think it will be enough for a DNA test. It looks like someone wiped up something with a rag, here by the bed. It’ll show up clearly when we light the area.”

“Did you find the rag?”

“No. The murderer probably wasn’t stupid enough to leave it behind.”

“Where is the area that was wiped clean?”

“Here.” The technician pointed at the floor just below the head of the bed.

Peter Møller nodded and turned to Irene. “Finally, we may have a bit of luck. The murderer slipped up and left some traces. If it’s from him, that is. Emil could have left a sample before he was killed.”

“You mean that if the semen belongs to the killer, he achieved climax through performing his rituals, and cleaned up afterward but missed a spot under the bed?”

“Yes.”

The bright sunlight fell on the only picture in the room, a large framed black-and-white photo of a man in an incredibly exposed pose. He was half sitting against some large pillows. The focus was on his very erect penis. Even though his face and upper body were a bit fuzzy, Irene recognized him. She hadn’t done so during the shock and chaos of the previous night. Now she saw that the model was Marcus Tosscander. What was even worse was that she recognized the type of photograph. Tom Tanaka had two of them hanging in his bedroom.

This realization hit her like a blow to the head. She needed to speak with Tom as soon as possible. He would probably be questioned since the police knew that Emil usually hung out in Tom’s store. But they wouldn’t find out anything from Tom. Emil’s murder would just confirm his suspicions about the police in general and the Vesterbro station in particular.

The four crime inspectors backed out into the hall. They had to leave the bedroom to the technicians for the time being.

“Since there are four of us, I suggest that we each take a room to check. Jonny can take the bathroom; Peter, the kitchen; Irene can take the other room-the music room-and I’ll take the living room,” said Metz.

No one else came up with a better suggestion so each went to his or her assigned room.

Irene opened the door and stopped abruptly on the threshold to the room. She recognized this smell: marijuana smoke. She hadn’t noticed it the previous night either. That evening’s investigation had been cursory. There hadn’t been time or personnel for a more careful investigation of the apartment.

She entered the music room and closed the door after her. The smell of pot mixed with the stale smell of a room that hadn’t been cleaned or aired out. It was large and practically unfurnished. The morning sun shone in through the dirt-streaked and curtainless window. A withered brown plant in a little plastic bucket was placed in the middle of the window’s marble ledge. Irene tore off a leaf. She crumbled the dry leaf in the palm of her hand and sniffed. It was a marijuana plant.

The floor was covered with a wall-to-wall carpet, which at some point in time had been light yellow. The dominating color at present was nicotine brown. The room had probably originally been used as a library. A built-in bookcase of dark wood ran along one of the walls. Emil had sloppily torn down some of the shelves in order to make room for two huge speakers and an impressive stereo setup. Along the sides of the speakers were overstuffed CD shelves. CDs and CD cases lay in random piles on the floor.

Irene assumed that Emil and his friends had laid on the floor to listen to music since there wasn’t any furniture to sit on. They could have rested their eyes on the posters that decorated the walls. Irene took a closer look at them. They showed various rock groups with names like Warriors of Satan, Deathlovers, and Necrophilia. The band members were depicted in different stages of decay. Worms crawled out of holes in their skulls. Despite this, they were standing and jamming on their instruments and bellowing out their lyrics. The living dead.