The Crow Girl (93 page)

The night was wonderful, and she can still detect Sofia’s scent, as if she were still close by.

Almost electric, Jeanette thinks.

As if Sofia’s touch had charged her with electricity. An intense, sparking red pulse.

They had talked and made love until four o’clock, when Jeanette, sweaty and breathless, had said she felt like a teenager in love, but that they really did have to bear in mind that there was a new day ahead.

Jeanette had fallen asleep, feeling as safe as a child.

After a quick shower she goes down to the kitchen, which is bathed in the glow of the weak autumn sun. The thermometer outside the kitchen window says it’s fifteen degrees, even though it’s only half past eight in the morning. It looks like it’s going to be another beautiful day.

It isn’t. But it will be incredibly long.

It’s just after nine o’clock when Jeanette gets out of the taxi at the pathology lab in Solna.

Ivo Andrić is waiting for her with two double espressos.

He’s an angel, she thinks, as her late night meant she’d had to do without her morning coffee.

‘Have you spoken to Hurtig? Maybe he’d like to be here as well?’

Of course; she hadn’t got round to that. But, on the other hand, she hadn’t even been awake forty-five minutes yet. She shakes her head as she calls his number.

The mummified body of a boy, estimated to be between ten and twelve years old, has been found in a black plastic bag in Norra Hammarbyhamnen. The body bears a striking resemblance to the boy found dead at Thorildsplan.

Karakul, she thinks as the call goes through.

Good timing. She’s not superstitious, but she can’t help thinking that the call from Iwan Lowynsky was oddly well timed.

Hurtig answers, and Jeanette updates him about what’s happened, and tells him what she’s found out about Annette Lundström since yesterday. She asks him to try to have a talk with her.

‘Don’t forget to ask if Annette can tell us more about Viggo’s adopted children, and try to organise a regular interview at headquarters as early as possible without causing any friction. And by that I mean free of bureaucratic interference.’

Ivo Andrić unlocks the door and they go inside. On the metal table is a cloth-covered bundle, and on the workbench over by the wall is a mass of photographs. She can see that the pictures are of their first victim, Itkul Zumbayev, the mummified boy found at Thorildsplan.

‘So, what do you know?’ she asks as he uncovers the body. She feels an instinctive revulsion at what she sees. The mouth is open, the skin has been loosened by the water, and her first impression is that his life came to an end mid-movement, and that the body is now decomposing.

‘The injuries are almost identical to those of the Thorildsplan victim. Signs of whipping and violence from a blunt instrument. Randomly distributed needle marks. Castrated.’

The boy is lying on his back, his arms are raised, bent in front of his face, which is turned to one side. She thinks it looks like a frozen image of the moment of death, as if the last thing the boy did was try to defend himself.

‘I suspect that the body is going to contain traces of Xylocain adrenalin,’ Ivo Andrić goes on, and Jeanette is suddenly transported back in time several months. ‘The samples have been sent to the forensic chemistry lab. As you can see, his feet are tied together with duct tape. That was used last time as well.’

She’s having trouble breathing, and her heart is beating harder. Organised fights, she thinks. That thought had struck her back in the spring, and Ivo had actually also mentioned it.

‘There are a few striking differences from the boy at Thorildsplan,’ Ivo says. ‘Can you see what they are?’

The pathologist gently touches one of the boy’s arms. One hand is missing. The right hand.

Now she can also see what else is different from the body at Thorildsplan. Although she’s having trouble keeping her eyes on the boy’s face, Ivo’s emphasis on the similarity of the injuries had made her miss the other, most obvious difference.

He gestures across the body. ‘Bite marks. On large parts of the body, but particularly the face. Do you see?’

She nods weakly. It’s more like someone’s actually bitten chunks out of him than just left marks. ‘There’s something I’m wondering. This body has a different … How shall I put it? Colour? The boy at Thorildsplan was more yellowy brown. This one’s almost greenish black. Why is that?’

How the hell could Sofia have been so right? she thinks. Less than twelve hours ago they had been sitting in the kitchen discussing cannibalism. She starts to feel sick again.

Ivo frowns. ‘Too early to say yet, but this boy has been in the water for at least two or three days, and has probably been subjected to a different, more thorough type of mummification.’

‘How long has he been dead?’ she gulps. Her nausea is making it hard even to talk.

‘Same thing there. Difficult to say, but I think we’re talking about a longer time than the boy at Thorildsplan. Possibly six months longer, which as I’m sure you can see might mean a number of things.’

‘Yes, pretty much anything. The boys died at roughly the same time, or one died before the other, or the other way round.’ Jeanette sighs, and Ivo gives her an almost hurt look. ‘Sorry, this is getting to me, that’s all,’ she explains. ‘Anything else I should know?’ She feels incredibly tired. The boy on the slab is guaranteed to give her nightmares, and she’s trying not to look at him, but she can see his body from the corner of her eye the whole time, and it now feels as if it’s reaching out to her.

‘Yes, a couple more things.’

She can see that Ivo Andrić is thinking hard, and realises that he’s trying to find the right words. His scrupulousness sometimes makes what he says sound like a prepared statement, and can mean that he loses sight of the big picture because of all the details he wants to convey. But he is very thorough.

‘The body at Thorildsplan was missing its teeth,’ he finally says. ‘This boy isn’t, so I’ve taken an imprint of them.’ He goes over to the workbench and picks up the little mould. ‘Super Hydro, very good, easy to work with, no bubbles in the imprint.’

‘An imprint of his teeth?’ Jeanette’s heart begins to race again, but she makes an effort to stay calm. ‘That’s vital for identification.’

‘Of course … We’ve got a good imprint, and that usually gives us a clear answer.’

The pathologist seems almost nervous, something she’s never seen in him before. He turns round quickly and puts the mould back on the workbench before picking up a picture of Itkul Zumbayev, the body at Thorildsplan. Jeanette’s pulse is racing.

‘I’m not entirely sure yet, but you might be able to see from this picture that the boy’s jaw is slightly crooked?’ He taps the picture with his finger. ‘The boy on the table also has a crooked jaw. My guess is that they’re brothers.’

Jeanette breathes out. Ivo Andrić doesn’t need to be sure, because she is.

Itkul and Karakul. Of course. It’s logical. She can’t get a word out, and Ivo looks questioningly at her. ‘Even if the victim at Thorildsplan had no teeth,’ he says, ‘it’s possible to estimate roughly how his teeth would have looked, particularly if there are any abnormalities. I didn’t really pay much attention to his crooked jaw at the time, but right now it’s of great interest.’

‘Yes, you can say that again.’ She can hear that she almost sounds like Hurtig, and she can hardly wait to tell him about this. ‘You’ve obviously been kept up to date about what happened yesterday? That the boy at Thorildsplan has been identified?’

Ivo looks surprised. ‘What are you saying?’

Jeanette feels herself getting angry. How incompetent could a person be and still get to call themselves a boss? Dennis Billing had promised to contact Ivo yesterday.

‘We’ve got a name for the boy at Thorildsplan, and we might have a name for this boy as well. He might very well be called Karakul Zumbayev, and his brother, in all likelihood, is called Itkul.’

Ivo Andrić throws up his hands. ‘OK, if I’d known that then obviously this would all have been a bit quicker. But let’s just be pleased. The picture is starting to get clearer.’

‘You’re right.’ Jeanette gives him a pat on the shoulder. ‘You’ve done a terrific job.’

‘One more thing,’ Ivo says, pulling at the duct tape around the boy’s feet. ‘I’ve found fingerprints, but there’s something odd.’

Jeanette stiffens.

‘Odd? What’s odd about that? Surely it’s –’

For the first time ever Ivo Andrić interrupts her. ‘It’s odd,’ he says, ‘because the fingerprints on the tape have no papillary ridge pattern.’

Jeanette considers this. ‘So you’re saying that the fingerprints had no fingerprints?’

‘Pretty much, yes.’

The perpetrator has been careful up to now, she thinks. No fingerprints at Thorildsplan, Danvikstull or out in Svartsjölandet. So why get careless now? Although, on the other hand … If you don’t have any fingerprints, why not leave some?

‘Could you elaborate, please? Whoever bound his ankles was wearing gloves?’

‘No, definitely not. But this individual’s fingertips don’t leave any prints.’

‘And why would that be?’

He looks bewildered. ‘It’s peculiar. I don’t know yet. I’ve read of cases where perpetrators have rubbed silicon on their fingertips. But that’s not what’s happened here. From the tape I managed to get a print of part of a palm, and it’s definitely bare skin I can see there, but at the end of the fingers it’s just, let’s say …’ He leaves a long pause.

‘Yes?’

‘Blank,’ Ivo Andrić suggests.

ULRIKA WENDIN UNDERSTANDS
that whoever is keeping her captive isn’t going to let her live. At the same time she also knows that her chances of getting out of here by herself are getting smaller and smaller with each passing hour. Her body is deteriorating rapidly and she’s worried that lack of nutrition is making her sluggish and apathetic. Her only chance is to hold out as long as she can and hope that someone finds her.

Can weakness of the body be countered by the brain working better? She’s heard of people who voluntarily choose to live an isolated life, hermits, wise men, and monks who live shut up in monasteries, meditating and learning to be at one with themselves. Some are even said to have learned to levitate, floating above the ground.

Now that she can hardly feel her own body any more, she’s starting to understand how they do it. Sometimes it almost feels like she’s floating in the dark space surrounding her, for long periods she doesn’t even think about where she is, and she’s also started travelling in her mind.

She spends a long time reciting multiplication tables. Then she moves on to listing all the countries she can think of in alphabetical order, and after that capital cities. The effect is that other, new thoughts come to her as she trawls through old knowledge she thought she’d forgotten.

When she recites the names of American states there are only four missing.

She realises that she knows much more than other people have had her believe. In her mind she builds up a mental map of Europe’s coastline, from the White Sea to the Black Sea. Then Asia and Africa and the rest of the world.

In the end she looks down at the world from above, as if she were a satellite, and she knows that what she sees matches reality.

She doesn’t need a map to know what the world looks like.

She doesn’t know if it happens in a dream or reality, but she feels someone removing the tape and coughs as two hands take hold of her face and push something into her mouth. A porridgy sludge that tastes dry and very bitter.

Then she is left alone, gliding back out into space and the stars.

Gradually Ulrika Wendin lets go of her body and disappears into the twinkling darkness.

It tastes like walnuts.

ANNETTE LUNDSTRÖM HAS
seen darkness. That’s the first thing that occurs to Hurtig when he enters the room. Her face is sunken and grey, and her body so thin that it feels like he might break her hand when he introduces himself.

He doesn’t, but her hand is ice-cold, which makes her even more like a ghost.

‘I don’t want to be here,’ she says in a low, broken voice. ‘I want to be with Linnea and Karl and Viggo. I want to be where everything’s the way it used to be.’

He suspects that this isn’t going to be an easy task. ‘I understand, but you’ll have to wait a little while for that. First we’re going to have a little talk, you and I.’

He feels unsettled, and he knows why.

The room reminds him of the one where his sister spent much of the last six months of her life.

But now he’s here in his capacity as a police officer, and he takes a deep breath and makes a concerted effort to suppress his memories.

‘Can you help me get out of here?’ Annette Lundström’s voice is pleading, almost hopeful. ‘I’m going back to Polcirkeln, it’s been so long since anyone checked the house up there. The plants need watering and all the apples … It is autumn now, isn’t it?’

‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘I come from Kvikkjokk myself, and that’s not so very far from Polcirkeln. But it’s winter up there now.’

His attempt at adopting a familiar tone seems to work. Annette Lundström brightens up a little and looks him in the eye. Her gaze is unnerving, and there’s a distance in her eyes that he has no words for.

Madness, he thinks. No, more the eyes of someone who’s left this world and is in another. A psychologist would probably call it psychosis, which is exactly what the doctor he just spoke to said. But he has a feeling that the woman’s physical and mental fragility are portents of something, and that this is what he can see in her eyes.

She’s going to die soon. Die of grief.

‘Kvikkjokk,’ the thin voice says. ‘I went there once. It was so beautiful. It was snowing as well. Is it snowing outside now?’

‘Not here. But up there it’s snowing. Are there more people you’re thinking of seeing when you go to Polcirkeln, apart from Karl, Viggo and Linnea?’

‘Gert, of course, and P-O and Charlotte, and their daughter. Hannah and Jessica probably won’t come.’