Helene Tursten: The Torso

In an exaggerated, pedagogic tone of voice he continued, “But now you’re going to hear something really strange. The pathologist has pin-pointed the time of death as sometime early Sunday morning, between two and four. A witness who staggered home around three o’clock on Sunday morning from a drinking party stopped and peed in the doorway next to Martinsson’s. Suddenly, a black Mercedes stopped outside the door where Martinsson was living. A huge and amazingly fat Chinese man got out of the car, according to the witness, who wasn’t completely sober. But he describes the Chinese man’s strange haircut as small, hard buns on his head. And he maintains that the Chinese man had horrible scars on his face!”

Metz fell silent. For lack of a better comment Irene repeated, “Oh my God!” She couldn’t come up with anything else.

“That’s what we said. But Tanaka has six witnesses who swear that he held a party for them in his apartment. None of them left before five o’clock. We can’t get them to budge. Every one of them is standing by this story. It’ll be difficult to prove that it was him. Tanaka himself maintains that the witness might have been in his shop and seen his scarred face. Then, later, in his intoxicated condition, he imagined he had seen Tanaka again outside Martinsson’s door but in reality it was another large man.”

“Martinsson lived just a few hundred meters from Tanaka,” Metz added. He paused dramatically. “The question then is how could Tanaka know Sebastian Martinsson’s identity and address?”

Tom had a network of friends and contacts. Irene had mentioned the name Basta and said that he was studying at an art school called Kreuger Academy. ‘Not Kreu. . no,’ Tom had answered, before he stopped himself. So he knew of the Krøyer Academy. And Tom most likely was acquainted with someone who could find out if someone at the academy was named Sebastian, but was called Basta, and where this Basta lived. Tom had made it very clear to her that Sebastian deserved the death penalty.

Trying to sound convincing, Irene said, “I haven’t given Tom any information about Martinsson nor did I tell him we suspected the killer was in Copenhagen. Tanaka is a man with many contacts.”

“We know. Also within the police,” Metz replied in a poisonous tone of voice.

Thank God Tommy had left the room on an errand. She was alone in the office. In her hand she held her bright yellow Nokia. She slowly flipped through her address book. When she came to Tom’s name and number, she started erasing them.

She would never call Tom Tanaka again.

It would be several years before she went back to Copenhagen.

1

One meter equals 3.28 feet.

2

One centimeter equals 0.39 inches, so eleven by seventeen centimeters is about four and a quarter inches by six and three-quarters inches.

3

One kilogram or kilo equals 2.2046 pounds, so twenty kilos is about forty-four pounds.