26

TO LOUISE, AS SHE AND MIK ARRIVED AT THE PATHOLOGY LAB LATE that afternoon, it felt like the day would never end. She’d had her eyes closed most of the way there in the car, thinking that it was just typical that on the one day she didn’t show up to work perky and well rested, of course that would be the day all hell broke loose. But her father had once told her something that now rang profoundly true: If you’re up to partying all night, then you darn well ought to be up to doing your job the next day!

Åse was already there, and Flemming Larsen was ready as they walked into the autopsy room. It was the same setup as before, aside from the fact that it was now Dicta’s beaten, ill-treated body that was lying on the table waiting to be examined in minute detail by professional eyes and hands. Louise took a couple of deep breaths, and her hand brushed against Mik’s as she walked past him to lean up against the wall as Flemming got prepared. A strip of images from the CT scan of Dicta’s skull was hanging in front of a large light box to the left of the door.

“Can you tell what happened?” Louise asked, looking at Flemming.

He walked over and stood next to the light box and pointed up at the first picture.

“It is evident that she sustained several severe blows to the left side of the head and there are many bone fragments. The advantage to a CT scan, in a case where the injuries are as severe as these, is that we can see the lesions inside the skull. When I open it up a little later, most of her cranium will just fall apart, which can make it hard to tell how the blows impacted,” Flemming explained, turning to start securing Dicta’s bloody clothes. After that, every centimeter of her naked body was meticulously examined for particles. Åse leaned over several times and dabbed a piece of tape against her bare skin in the hope of removing some evidence, and Flemming used his Q-tips to search for anything that could be used for a DNA analysis. Meanwhile, Louise leaned against the wall, following along, prepared to work all night if that would bring them a step closer to whoever was responsible for this crime.

“There are fresh abrasions and subdermal hematomas on the chest.” Flemming pointed to the large, dark splotches scattered above and below the girl’s breasts. Then he leaned over and drew the big round operating lamp farther down over Dicta’s body.

“That looks like maybe a footprint,” he said, making room for Åse, who moved in with her camera. “I think she was kicked after she fell down.”

Rage, Louise thought, everything she saw in front of her radiated so much rage. It had been unleashed and transformed into raw violence.

Flemming cautiously allowed his hands to feel all the way around the head injuries before he walked over to the cabinet at the end of the room to retrieve a set of electric hair clippers, which he plugged in and used to start shaving the long blonde hair off the left side of the girl’s head.

Louise closed her eyes for a second. It was almost unbearable to see Dicta’s pride and vanity being peeled away from her, leaving her bald and naked.

“Let’s see how the skin looks,” Flemming said as he switched off the clippers, long tufts of light-blonde hair strewn in heaps on the floor. “She was severely beaten,” he said, confirming that the whole left side of her cranium was caved in.

Åse took her pictures and said it looked like there were more contusions.

She made room for Flemming, who leaned over Dicta’s head and studied it in detail. Then he straightened up his six-and-a-half-foot-tall body and stood there for a moment before he said, “I’d say we’re dealing with a pattern injury here.”

“What do you mean?” Louise asked from over by the wall.

Flemming pulled the lamp closer and asked Louise to come closer.

“Can you see those marks there? They appear to be identical. She was struck multiple times with a blunt object, which seems to have a distinctive appearance. It has two rounded protrusions spaced three centimeters apart.”

“Do you have any guess what it might be?” Louise asked, cursing her own tiredness as Flemming shook his head.

“Nothing other than the fact that it’s heavy and if you found the object of interest, I could easily tell you if it was the one.”

“Well, then, that’s what I’ll try to do,” she said, smiling at him. “What about the cause of death?”

He stood there looking at her for a moment before he answered.

“Dicta Møller asphyxiated on the blood from the severe cranial lesions. It ran down into her throat as she lay unconscious in the parking lot.”

Images from the crime scene pushed their way in front of Louise’s retinas, but she forced herself not to react, not to think about how long Dicta had lain dying in the parking lot, alone and without anyone coming to her aid. Louise took a seat on a stool by the wall while Flemming completed the exam. She didn’t get up until Mik put away his notes. Then she followed him down to the car in silence.

Louise didn’t get back to the hotel until around 8:00 P.M. Before she went up to her room, she stopped in the restaurant to order a little food she could bring upstairs with her. When she and Mik had returned from Copenhagen an hour earlier, the others were already eating, but she had declined the invitation to join them. The image of Dicta was still too clear in her mind.

Ultimately, however, hunger had won out and now she made her way up the stairs, balancing a brown wooden tray with a hamburger patty, boiled potatoes, and all the fixings.

It was ten past three when she woke up with the tray on her stomach and the TV on. It was a miracle that the gravy and potatoes hadn’t tumbled onto the bed while she slept. She got up and brushed her teeth before climbing into bed again to sleep for the last few hours before the alarm clock went off at six-thirty.