Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

‘But you also checked for me,’ Joona says.

‘So the obvious answer is that the body hasn’t been found,’ Åhlén mutters, taking off his glasses and polishing them.

‘Of course, but—’

‘Some are never found,’ Åhlén interrupts. ‘Some are found many years later... and some are found but never identified... We try dental records and DNA, and keep the bodies for a couple of years... The people at the National Board of Forensic Medicine are good, but even they have to bury a few unidentified bodies each year.’

‘The injuries would still be recorded, though, wouldn’t they?’ Joona persists.

Nils Åhlén has a strange glint in his eye as he lowers his voice.

‘I’ve thought of another possibility,’ he says. ‘There used to be a group of forensic medical officers who collaborated with certain detectives... They were known as the “Tax Savers”, and they believed they could identify in advance the cases that were never going to lead anywhere.’

‘You’ve never told me about that,’ Joona says.

‘It was back in the eighties... the Tax Savers didn’t want Swedish taxpayers to be burdened with the cost of pointless police investigations and hopeless attempts to identify bodies. It wasn’t a major scandal, a few people got ticked off, but it made me think... When you described Tina as a heroin addict, a prostitute, possibly a victim of human trafficking...’

‘You’re wondering if the Tax Savers are still active?’ Joona asks.

‘No paperwork,’ Nils Åhlén says, clicking his fingers. ‘No investigation, no Interpol, the body gets buried as an unknown, and the resources are used elsewhere.’

‘But in that case Tina would still be in the database of the National Board of Forensic Medicine,’ Erik says.

‘Try looking for an unidentified body, natural cause of death, illness,’ Åhlén says.

‘Who do I talk to?’ Joona asks.

‘Talk to Johan in Forensic Genetics, mention my name,’ he says. ‘Or I could give him a call, seeing as we’re here...’

He scrolls through his contacts, then puts his mobile to his ear.

‘Hello, this is Professor Nils Åhlén, I... no, thank you, it was very enjoyable... Just offbeat enough, I’d say...’

Åhlén circles the body twice as he talks. When he ends the call he stands in silence for a moment. His mouth twitches slightly. The empty benches spread out around them like the growth rings of a huge tree.

‘There’s only one unknown woman from Stockholm who matches Tina’s age during the period in question,’ Åhlén says eventually. ‘Either it’s her, or her body was never found.’

‘So could it be her?’ Erik asks.

‘The death certificate says heart attack... there’s a reference to another file, but that file doesn’t exist...’

‘There’s no description of the body?’

‘Obviously they kept a DNA sample, fingerprints, dental records,’ Åhlén replies.

‘Where is she now?’ Joona asks

‘She’s in Skogskyrkogården, buried among the trees of the Forest Cemetery.’ Åhlén smiles. ‘No name, grave number 32 2 53 332.’

Skogskyrkogården, to the south of Stockholm, is a Unesco World Heritage site, and holds more than one hundred thousand graves. Erik and Joona walk along the well-tended paths, past the Woodland Chapel, and notice the yellow roses in front of Greta Garbo’s red headstone.

Block number 53 is located further away, close to the fence facing Gamla Tyresövägen. The cemetery workers have unloaded a digger on caterpillar tracks from a council truck, and have already dug out the earth above the coffin. The grass is lying alongside the heap of soil, a tangle of fibrous roots and plump worms.

Nils Åhlén and his assistant Frippe are approaching from the other direction, and the four of them greet each other in subdued voices. Frippe has had a haircut and his face looks a bit rounder, but he’s still wearing the same old studded belt and washed-out T-shirt with a black Hammerfell logo.

The cab of the digger rotates gently and the hydraulics hiss as the scoop sinks and moves forward, carefully scraping the soil from the lid of the coffin.

As usual Nils is giving Frippe a short lecture, this time about how ammonia, hydrogen sulphide and hydrocarbons are released when proteins and carbohydrates break down.

‘The final stage of the decomposition process leaves the skeleton entirely exposed.’

Nils signals to the digger driver to back away. Clumps of clay soil fall from the blade of the scoop. He slides down into the grave with his hand on the edge. The lid of the coffin has given way under the weight of the soil.

He scrapes around the edge of the coffin with a spade, then brushes it clean with his hands, inserts the blade of the spade under the lid and tries to prise it open, but the chipboard snaps. There’s no strength left in it, it’s like wet cardboard.

Nils whispers something to himself, tosses the spade aside and slowly starts removing it, piece by piece, with his hands. He passes the pieces to Frippe, until the contents of the grave are entirely uncovered.

The dead body isn’t remotely unpleasant, it just looks defenceless.

The skeleton in the coffin looks small, almost like a child’s, but Nils Åhlén assures them that it belonged to a grown woman.

‘One metre sixty-five tall,’ he murmurs.

She was buried in a T-shirt and briefs, the fabric is clinging to the skeleton, the curve of the ribcage is intact, but the material has sunk into the pelvis.

An image of a cobalt-blue angel is still visible on the T-shirt.

Frippe walks round the grave taking photographs from every angle. Åhlén has taken out a small brush which he uses to remove soil and fragments of chipboard from the skeleton.

‘The left arm has been chopped off close to the shoulder,’ Åhlén declares.

‘We’ve found the nightmare,’ Joona says in a low voice.

They watch Åhlén carefully turn the skull. The jaw has come loose, but otherwise the cranium is in one piece.

‘Deep incisions across the front of the cranium,’ Åhlén says. ‘Forehead, zygomatic bone, cheekbone, upper jaw... the incisions continue across the collarbone and sternum...’

‘The preacher’s back,’ Erik says with an ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Nils Åhlén goes on brushing soil away from the body. Next to the hipbone he find a wristwatch with a scratched face. The leather strap is gone, turned to grey dust.

‘Looks like a man’s watch,’ he says, picking it up and turning it over.

The back is inscribed with Cyrillic letters. Åhlén takes out his mobile and takes a picture of the lettering.

‘I’ll send this to Maria at the Slavic Institute,’ he mutters.

Joona’s just had another cortisone injection, and is in Erik’s back garden practising combat techniques with a long wooden pole.

Nils Åhlén is trying to track down the colleague who signed Tina’s death certificate while they wait for the translation of the engraving on the watch, to find out if it can help them make progress.

Erik is sitting at the grand piano, watching his friend’s repetitive pattern of blocks and attacks as shadows cross the thin linen curtain.

Like a Chinese shadow-theatre, he thinks, then looks down at the piano keys in front of him.

He was planning to practise his étude, but can’t bring himself to try. His mind is too unfocused. He still hasn’t got hold of Jackie, and Nelly called him from work an hour ago to ask if she could come over.

Slowly he puts his little finger on a key and strikes it, making the first note echo as his phone starts to ring.

‘Erik Maria Bark,’ he answers.