It was 9:15, and Louise had just fit in a quick cup of tea at the office before crossing Hambroes Allé to pick up a car from the police garage. From a distance, she waved to Svendsen, the garage manager, as he left the section where the K-9 patrol parked and walked up to her, limping slightly. As usual, he was testy with her for not calling ahead and making a reservation when Willumsen’s group already had two of his cars.
“Both Toft and Michael Stig are out today,” she answered him.
Her colleagues had postponed the Haderslev bowling tournament, but hoped to leave by evening so they could make the rest of the weekend’s activities.
“We have two victims that we’re having a hard time identifying,” she said.
His attitude softened a little when she told him about the big fire out in Svanemølle, and how they’d gone around all night in hopes of finding out who it was who’d lost their lives in the flames.
It had been several years since Svendsen himself had driven patrol or been part of an investigation group. In 1987, he’d been involved in a serious car accident while chasing a bank robber out in Hvidovre. His partner was killed, and he’d lost his right leg at the knee and had had a hard time getting used to his prosthetic, both mentally and physically. Louise figured it was his sad fate that accounted for the harsh tone whenever officers took Svendsen and his work for granted. So, she always tried to express her appreciation for the puzzle he had to work out in painstakingly administering the police force’s vehicle fleet.
“It’s the weekend soon. Do you have it off?” he asked as he went over to the computer to sign her up for a patrol vehicle.
“You bet. It’ll be nice, but I have a couple of autopsies to get through first.”
He nodded.
“Do you have any particular preferences for which car?” he asked with his eyes still on the screen.
She shook her head and said she’d be happy with one of the smaller ones. That was easiest when she had to get around in the city.
The garage was as big as the parking basement under Falkoner Plads. The concrete walls produced hollow echoes, there were long rows of parking spots, and bright fluorescent lighting hung from the ceiling.
The patrol vehicles were spread out among the unmarked police cars, and in a row along the middle column there were spots for motorcycles. In the very back of the garage they parked the big vehicles, the armored personnel carriers that were sent into the streets when there were riots. They filled up most of the space.
“You should try the new Mondeo,” said Svendsen cheerfully and tossed Louise a set of keys. “It’s not quite as fast as the old model, but she’s a little angel to ride in.”
He said it so affectionately that he almost made it sound sexual.
Men and cars, thought Louise as she followed his directions over to the fifth parking spot along the wall. A boat, she realized as she carefully edged the car out past the concrete pillar. Svendsen would probably not be very pleased if she scratched the little angel’s paintwork all the way down the left side.
In her bag, she had two dental records. One of them Michael Stig had managed to get with help from the Næstved Police, and the other one she’d picked up herself over on Store Strandstræde.
Sebastian Styhne and Peter Nymann.
The café owner’s son with the full-body tattoo and the dark-haired guy with the ponytail who had run after Signe.
They still hadn’t managed to contact those two, and the parents on the farm just outside Næstved hadn’t seen or heard from their son. Now they were at home in their kitchen, sitting on pins and needles waiting for the news.
* * *
The glass doors at the Department of Forensic Medicine opened, and she looked at her watch. It was ten minutes before they were to start. Louise went up to the floor with the autopsy bays. She stood and looked out the window while she shook her hair out of the hairband and gathered her long, dark curls into a tight bun that was easy to tuck away under the hat she had to wear, along with the overalls and the blue plastic booties.
Flemming Larsen was on his way down with two cups of coffee, but the lab technicians hadn’t arrived yet.
She said hello to two forensic techs as they came out of the elevator from the basement with the burn victims. From the contours of the body bags it was obvious that the bodies still lay in their desperate fencing positions, with arms and legs stiffly bent.
Preparations had been made in two autopsy bays: the homicide room, which was the farthest back and largest and designed so that both lab technicians and investigators could be there while the medical examiner worked; but at the same time, the other body would be autopsied in a smaller bay next door, where space was a little tighter.
“We’ve just had both bodies scanned to see if there might be bullets inside them, which we hadn’t been able to spot because of the state of the corpses. But there was nothing to see. So now it will be interesting to confirm whether they were alive when the fire broke out,” said Flemming Larsen.
He passed a plastic cup to Louise.
“Based on the soot particles I found in the nasal cavities, I feel quite confident, but naturally I can’t say with certainty before we’ve had a proper look at them. On the other hand, I’m quite sure we’re looking at two young men, and that agrees very well with what you’ve come up with.”
She gestured with her hand to correct him.
“We haven’t come up with anything yet, but we have a suspicion of who they might be.”
She held out the two dental records.
Just then, four lab technicians came walking toward them. Their voices were loud, and their steps echoed. It was Klein’s voice that rose above the others.
“You should just be happy grill season is over for the year,” bellowed the experienced, teddy bear–shaped lab tech as he looked at his two male colleagues, who Louise didn’t know by name. “It’s awfully unappetizing to go home and fire up the Weber after a day with two charred and crispy-fried corpses.”
“Now stop it!” Åse said, irritated, and put her hand on the arm of Klein’s blue Windbreaker. “We don’t need to listen to that stuff.”
Even though Åse was petite and slender as a teenage girl, her light voice sliced straight through and put an effective stop to Klein’s noisy penchant for morbid similes.
The first time Louise had met Åse, she’d mistaken her for an intern. That happened four years ago, and at that point she’d already been in the same position with colleagues up in Ålborg, so she was far from inexperienced. Besides that, she was only a couple of years younger than Louise, who’d very quickly reevaluated her view of the other woman and had gained great respect for her crime photography, which was thorough down to the minutest detail.
“Let’s get started,” commanded Flemming Larsen with a smile, as the forensic technicians came out and said the bodies were ready for the external examination.
They walked into the tiny prep hall all at the same time, and suddenly the small space between the white tiles and the row of white rubber coroner boots became quite crowded.
Åse and Louise went into the women’s section and got coveralls and hair protection. Through the walls, they could hear Klein starting to talk about grill food again.
Åse shook her head forbearingly. Klein was one of the brightest, and in all the years that Louise had known him he’d been just the same. Same blue Windbreaker, probably replaced a couple of times, but the replacement resembled its predecessor so much that one really didn’t notice the change. His humor was also the same, morbid and dark, but it helped put a distance between them and the reality around them. And then he was meticulous in a way that always made her feel that if there were clues in a case, then it was sure to be Klein who’d ferret them out. That in itself was enough to forgive his rotten sense of humor.
* * *
Åse was starting to unpack her camera when Louise came into the autopsy bay. The smell of burned flesh was unmistakable, and she was grateful that Klein had divided it up so that he followed the autopsy next door. Otherwise she wasn’t sure her stomach could take it.
With her pad in her lap, Louise sat on a chair she’d pulled a little off to the side so she didn’t sit in the way but could still follow along as they got going on the external examination of the corpse.
She called to mind Bellahøj’s photos of Sebastian Styhne and Peter Nymann, but there was nothing left of what she might have been able to recall. Before they’d gone into the autopsy bays, she’d told Flemming and his female colleague who conducted the autopsy next door about Sebastian’s full-body tattoo, which should be recognizable if it were him and if even a little of the skin remained.
They started the exam by measuring the corpse’s length, but because of the constricted muscles in his arms and legs they had to rely on an estimate of how tall the person had been.
“Around five foot nine inches,” said Flemming Larsen and looked at Åse for confirmation.
She nodded that it seemed likely.
“There are widespread third-degree burns and charring in places on the front of the body,” dictated Flemming and made sure that Louise had enough time to write it down.
“Livor mortis on the back is very red, which suggests carbon monoxide poisoning,” he continued as Åse finished photographing the area where the skin was still visible.
They began to go over the body for intact skin. The front side was completely burned away, but when the corpse was turned over they found small areas around the shoulders, back, and behind the thighs where the skin was preserved.
A large operating lamp hung over the steel table, and the medical examiner pulled it down closer so they could study the skin minutely and look for defining characteristics.
“In this instance, there’ll have to be a tattoo on the back or a tongue piercing if we’re to have any hope of finding anything,” said Flemming.
Every other defining mark would have been burned away.
Louise felt her mind wandering. Fatigue ate away at her, and her body felt heavy. The light in the autopsy bay was bright and reflected off the white tile and cold steel—the beginning of a headache was coming on. She squinted a little and tried to keep some of the light out.
“Nothing,” concluded Flemming, who told the techs to go ahead and open the corpse.
Then it wasn’t the café owner’s son after all, thought Louise, and walked out to the hall. But she stopped when she heard the colleagues in the other bay agreeing with one another that it could very well be the boy with the full-body tattoo lying on their table.
“I’ve informed our forensics dentist. He’s ready to look at the dental records when we’ve determined the cause of death,” said Flemming as he began on the internal examination.
The light outside was gray and dull, and only a little of it came in through the vertical blinds that hung down from the tall windows of the autopsy bay.
“It’s amazing how intact the internal organs are,” Åse exclaimed and leaned forward.
“Yes,” nodded the medical examiner. “They’ve been affected by the heat, but undamaged. It looks like a healthy young man.”
He began going over the corpse from the top down. His eyes passed over the face, neck, and chest, attentive to every detail.
“There is soot far down in the windpipe and in the bronchioles,” he concluded after a short time and looked up. “He was alive when the fire broke out.”
“I’d like to know if he’s inhaled flammable liquids or if he died of carbon monoxide poisoning,” asked Louise, who’d come over to the table. “We need to know if the fire was deliberate.”
Flemming nodded. With his scalpel, he sliced off a piece of the brain and a piece of the lung, and put each sample in an airtight container, which would be sent to the forensic chemists for further study. Then he gave the word that the corpse could be wheeled down to the forensic dentist’s examination room.
“I’m afraid it’ll take a good week before we know anything,” he said apologetically and looked over at the technician. “By that time, I’m sure you’ll have found out what caused the fire.”
“I don’t think the fire broke out from an accident,” said Åse, once Flemming had placed the airtight containers over on the table. “The boathouse was consumed by flames, almost like an explosion, and that does not suggest a fire started by a candle or cigarette.”
Louise shrugged her shoulders. The fatigue had seriously gotten hold of her, and her head was way too foggy for guesswork. She preferred to wait for the technical studies. She closed her eyes a moment, while Flemming and Åse talked on. Everyone waited for the forensic dentist to take X-rays of the corpses’ teeth to compare them to the two dental records Louise had brought with her.
She didn’t know how much time had passed. Ten minutes—fifteen? Maybe she’d dozed off for a moment, but she straightened up when the corpses were wheeled into the bay again.
“Go ahead and close them up,” Flemming said, nodding to the technicians who’d come in with the corpses.
A moment later, the dentist came over and stood in the doorway.
“There’s a positive ID on both of them,” he said.
Louise felt heavy. Saw the restaurant owner before her. Hope for the best, fear the worst, he’d said. Now she’d have to go to him and confirm his worst fears.
She skimmed through her pad and made sure she had what she needed for her report, up to the conclusion of the medical examiner, which wouldn’t be available until sometime next week.
In the little dressing room, she washed her hands and pulled her sweater over her head, before taking her jacket down from the hook. Every one of her movements had suddenly shifted to a different frequency, as if her body had gone into slow motion.
It was hard to have to go over to New Harbor on an afternoon like this, with the weekend standing at the door, and what she looked forward to most of all was a Friday night of sitting on her parents’ sofa with Dancing with the Stars on the TV, candy in the dishes, and a little wine in her glass.
She said good-bye to the lab techs and waved to Klein. He and Åse stood with their bags, equipment, and paper sacks with the little bit of clothing that had been secured from the undersides of the two burn victims. Now it would go out to the Center for Forensic Services for further study.
Flemming came out buttoning up a clean white coat.
“What are you doing this weekend?” he asked.
“Next week’s fall break,” she reminded him. “I’ve taken a couple of vacation days at the beginning of the week, so we’re heading down to my parents’ in Hvalsø.”
They walked together down the hall.
“It’s the third attempt,” she said.
She smiled and told him how the first time had to be cancelled because Jonas wanted to go to Signe’s party, and the weekend after that was the funeral.
“But now it looks like it’ll work out, although we’ll be leaving a little later than I’d hoped to. We must inform the survivors first. The parents in Næstved will have to hear it from the police down there, but I’m going to Sebastian Styhne’s father myself. I spoke with him last night, and he’s naturally out of his mind with worry.”
Flemming nodded and gave her a quick hug before she took the stairs down to the foyer, where she called Willumsen and told him that the two boys had been identified. She said she was driving out to inform the restaurant owner.
“You’re coming in here afterward,” ordered the lead investigator.
Louise sighed and shut off her cell. She had been hoping that after New Harbor she could drive directly to the garage with the Mondeo and after that take a bus to go pick up her car on South Pier. Now she was beginning to doubt whether they’d make it to her parents’ in time for dinner.