Hakan Nesser - Hour of the wolf

Although he supposed it could possibly be brain substances.

Two more cars arrived. Reinhart greeted Intendent Schultze, who weighed 120 kilos and was acting head of the scene-of-crime team.

‘It’s snowing,’ he said grimly. ‘That’s a damned nuisance. We’ll have to set up a canopy.’

Reinhart stayed there for a while and watched Schultze’s assistants hammering thin metal poles into the soft ground, then stretching a thin sheet of canvas a metre over the body. He wished them good luck with their analyses and went to the bus. Told Kellermann to go and help Joensuu and to cordon off the scene of the crime.

And also to do whatever they could to assist Schultze and his men.

Moreno seemed to have already squeezed out of the bus driver and his passengers what little contribution they could make. They had travelled past in the bus, and one of them had happened to see the body, that was about it. After checking their names and addresses, Reinhart told them they could continue on their way. But a bit of a palaver ensued, since none of the women wished to continue to Keymer Church — the service was already under way — and eventually Vlaarmeier rolled over and agreed to turn the bus round and take them back to Kaustin instead.

The timetable had gone to pot ages ago anyway, and there were no other passengers to take into consideration. There never were on a Sunday.

Half an hour later Reinhart and Moreno also left the scene. They had with them a record of the first oral report from Schultze: the dead victim was a red-headed woman of average height, round about thirty-five years old. She had been killed by several blows to the side and back of the head, probably during the night or in the early hours of the morning. It couldn’t have been any later than four a.m. in view of the state of rigor mortis. She was completely naked, apart from the two sheets she had been wrapped up in, and it seemed highly likely that the body had been dumped on the verge from a car. Nothing that could be of value for the investigation had been found, but the scene-of-crime team were still creeping around and searching, and would continue to do so for several more hours yet.

Both underneath and around the canopy that had been set up.

Just as Reinhart and Moreno were clambering into their car, the green body bag was being lifted into another car for transport to the Forensic Laboratory in Maardam. No unauthorized spectators had turned up at the scene, and the few cars that had passed by during these godforsaken Sunday hours had been waved on authoritatively by Joensuu or Kellermann. Or both.

The snow continued to fall.

‘The first of Advent,’ said Reinhart. ‘It’s the first of Advent today. A nice setting. We ought to light a candle.’

Moreno nodded. The thought occurred to her that Good Friday and death on the cross might be more appropriate; but she said nothing. She turned her head and looked out over the barren landscape and the occasional large snowflakes drifting down over the dark soil. Grey. Only shades of grey for as far as the eye could see. And hardly any light. She’d intended to have a lie-in this morning. Then sit up in bed with a newspaper, and spend two hours over breakfast. Go for a swim in the afternoon.

Had intended. That’s not the way things turned out. She would have to spend the day working instead. All day, most probably: especially if they succeeded in identifying the dead woman. Interrogations and interviews with her nearest and dearest. Questions and answers. Tears and despair. It wasn’t especially difficult to see the whole thing in her mind’s eye. While Reinhart led the way over the narrow, wet road, muttering and cursing to himself, she began to hope that they wouldn’t find out who she was… That the anonymous dead woman would remain anonymous for a few more hours. A whole day, even. It was probably a thought that would make things easier for those nearest and dearest, whoever they might be; but hardly compatible with her work as a detective officer. It didn’t fit in with the long-established rule that the first few hours of an investigation were always the most important ones — fitted in better, much better, she had to admit, with a vague hope that she might be able to spend a few hours at the swimming baths in the afternoon despite everything.

It was wrong to falsify one’s motives, Moreno thought with a sigh. That had been one of The Chief Inspector ’s favourite sayings, one she found it impossible to forget. Why is it that I always want to take a shower after looking at a dead body? she wondered out of the blue. Especially if it had been the body of a dead woman. Must have something to do with empathy…

‘I wonder why he left her there,’ said Reinhart, interrupting her train of thought. ‘In the middle of this flat plain. It would make more sense to have hidden her up in the forest instead.’

Moreno thought that one over.

‘Maybe he was in a hurry.’

‘Could be. In any case, there must surely be blood in his car. He must have had a car. If we can find it, there must be proof of his guilt there. What do you think?’

‘Nothing at all at the moment,’ said Moreno with a shrug.

‘We can always hope,’ said Reinhart. ‘Hope that her husband, or whoever it was that did it, has rung to confess. It seems to be… Yes, I have the feeling that he’s sitting in Krause’s office at this very moment.’

‘You think so?’ said Moreno.

‘Yes, I do,’ said Reinhart. ‘Sitting there, waiting for us. Hungover and half crazy… Saturday night, a bit too much to drink

… A quarrel, some infidelity, and then he appears with the iron in his hand. Yes, the poor bastards. You have to feel sorry for the human race.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Moreno. ‘Perhaps we ought to light a candle.’

There was no killer waiting for them, either in Krause’s office or anywhere else in the police station. Nor did anybody report a missing woman with red toenails and red hair during the next few hours. At half past one Reinhart and Moreno received a set of photographs from the scene of the crime, and shortly afterwards came a rather more detailed report from the doctors and forensic officers.

The dead woman was 172 centimetres tall and weighed 62 kilos. She had dark red hair, both on her head and round her pudenda; she had never given birth, but she had partaken of sexual intercourse in close proximity to the murder. Before the murder, thought both Reinhart and Moreno without needing to discuss the matter. There was a lot of sperm in her vagina — another piece of certain proof for when they caught the perpetrator. Freeze the sperm and run a DNA test. Mind you, it didn’t necessarily follow that they were the same person of course — the man who had sex with her not long before she died, and the man who made sure that she did. Die. But of course it was highly likely that the two were identical. That was the view of both Reinhart and Moreno.

Healthy teeth and no obvious distinctive features. She had been killed by three heavy blows to the side of her head and one to the back of it. The relatively large amount of blood was due to the fact that one of the blows to the side of her head had split an artery in her temple. The location of the murder was unknown, but it was definitely not the place where she was found. The exact time of death could not yet be established for certain, but it appeared to be somewhere between two o’clock and four o’clock in the early hours of Sunday morning. No clothes or belongings had been discovered at the place where the body was found, nor any other objects. The alcohol content in the woman’s blood was 1.56 per thousand.

‘She was drunk, then,’ said Reinhart. ‘Let’s hope that made it less horrendous for her. Fucking hell.’