THE SILVERY-GREY BMW 1-series m coupé had gone from a shiny, top-of-the-line technological wonder to a pile of scrap metal in a matter of seconds.
Ingvar Molander had always loved all German cars, and he had refused to drive any brand other than BMW since the latter half of the 1990s. Examining this demolished vehicle was extremely painful for him. As if that weren’t enough, he still hadn’t managed to find the cause of the crash, leaving him no choice but to review his notes one more time to ensure there was nothing he had missed.
Left side: dents and severe scratches in circular patterns. The car drove into the side of a truck and struck its middle set of wheels. He had already located the silver paint on the truck’s lug nuts. Blades of grass and dirt are present on all four tires, especially those on the right front and rear. The car ricocheted toward the edge of the road and out onto the grass. Right headlight shattered. The right front bumper collided with the road sign and the car spun around a few times as it entered the highway again. The majority of the rear half of the car is crushed. The truck drove right over it. There are several severe scratches and dents, primarily to the roof. It rolled and came to an upside-down stop.
Molander was frustrated. He’d gone through all the information more times than he could count, without finding anything to suggest it was murder. He couldn’t find any severed brake lines or loose lug nuts. There was nothing wrong with the steering- column lock or the servo, nor any indication that there had been another passenger in the car or any remote-controlled, foreign entity. The car looked exactly as it should after being run over by a truck and rolling over at 140 kilometres per hour.
He had spent three hours looking at the car — three hours with no results to show for it.
Molander had stopped smoking almost fifteen years ago. Since then, he only had a cigarette on special occasions. He didn’t know whether this particular occasion could be considered special, but the smell of cigarette smoke in the car had convinced him that abject failures were also worth a smoke.
He opened the top drawer of his workbench, found the tin of Fisherman’s Friend, took a cigarette from the pack of John Silvers, and sat on a chair outside the garage in the evening sun. He lit the cigarette and pulled the smoke as deep into his lungs as he could, trying to find pleasure in defeat.
His phone started to ring. He didn’t want to answer it in the middle of a smoke break, with no concept of when he might be able to have another one. The annoying melody persisted; nothing would shut it up, not even limited battery life or a third world war.
“Yes... hello?”
“Hi, it’s Irene. I’m just curious how it’s going with the car.”
“Badly.”
“Aren’t you finished yet?”
“I am.”
“But...”
“I can’t find anything that indicates there was foul play.”
There was a brief silence. Molander took the opportunity to take another drag of the cigarette, away from the phone; he noticed a tow truck turning into the police lot.
He heard Lilja sigh on the other end. “Then it’s probably even more important for me to be here.”
“Where is here?”
“Forensic medicine. Braids is going to show Elsa Hallin’s body to me. While I’m here I can try to convince him to take a look at Camilla Lindén’s body too.”
“Haven’t they already looked at her?”
“Braids hasn’t. She came in as a regular car accident victim.”
Now it was Molander’s turn to sigh.
“You don’t think his autopsy will turn up anything?” Lilja said.
“I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“Are you suggesting that Camilla Lindén wasn’t murdered?”
“Car crashes happen. Maybe the perpetrator heard about the accident and told the press he was behind it. And while we’re busy putting our resources into trying to find evidence that doesn’t exist, he can continue his preparations for the next victim.”
“You’re thinking of Hallin?”
“Could be — or someone else. After all, our working hypothesis right now is that he won’t be finished until the whole class is packed like sardines in the morgue.”
“You might be right, but that doesn’t change anything for us. All we can do is continue the investigation. I have to go now: Braids is here.”
Lilja hung up. Molander stuck the phone back in his pocket, took one last drag, and stubbed out his cigarette on the asphalt. The tow truck backed in and stopped outside his garage. He hadn’t realized until just now that it had Danish plates and was towing a Peugeot.
“Are you Molander?” the Danish driver asked.
Molander nodded, signing the delivery slip.
“This is also for you,” the driver said, giving him a handwritten note.
Dear Ingvar Molander,
Fabian Risk has spoken highly of you. I hope you can find something conclusive in this car, since nothing is being done here in Denmark.
Best wishes,
Dunja Hougaard
Homicide Unit of the Copenhagen Police
Molander already knew of Dunja Hougaard: she was a competent detective sergeant. But she certainly didn’t have the authority to send evidence to Sweden, which meant she had taken a great risk. He looked at the Peugeot, which slid silently to the pavement as the tow truck’s cable let it down. He wondered what secrets the car might be hiding. The GPS had already directed Risk to the crime scene over at Söderåsen. Could there really be more?
The perpetrator had put a lot of work into trying to get rid of the car, which suggested that there was more for him to find. The crime scene had been designed to be discovered, with or without a GPS. Risk had surely found it earlier than planned, but the arrangement had been there all along. The killer had likely intended for them to find a planted lead when the time was right. He’d wanted the scene at Söderåsen to be a demonstration of power: to show them how far behind, and above all how helpless, they really were.
But it didn’t explain the enormous risk the perpetrator must have taken during the chase with Morten. There must be something else in the car, something that the killer wanted to keep them from finding at all costs.
*
IRENE LILJA LET HIM have his way. Without interruption, Einar Greide — who was wearing four braids in honour of the day — showed her in great detail how the incision running from under Elsa Hallin’s chin down to her sternum had been done with surgical precision. She tolerated his overly exhaustive explanation of the way the perpetrator had avoided the aorta in order to keep the victim alive for as long as possible. She even let him demonstrate just how the killer might have pulled out Elsa’s tongue and draped it across her chest.
She didn’t drop the bomb until he was finished.
“Einar, I’m not here to discuss Elsa Hallin.”
“Excuse me... what?” Greide looked like a well-trained dog that had just performed its best trick without being offered a treat afterward.
“I know the Colombian necktie is an impressive procedure if you want your victim to suffer as much — and for as long — as possible. And I know you’ve never seen anything like it; incidentally I haven’t either. But I want to talk about someone else.”
“Who the hell are you here to talk about, then?”
“Camilla Lindén.”
“Who on earth is Camilla Lindén?” Einar reminded her even more of an angry mongrel.
“She died in an accident on the E6 yesterday. We suspect our guy is behind it.”
“She was in the same class?”
Lilja nodded. Greide started fiddling with one of his braids, something he only did when life wasn’t going his way. She knew the last thing she should do right now was pressure him. The slightest attempt to rush the process would have the opposite effect: he would dig in his heels and refuse to lift a finger.
She got the response she’d been hoping for two minutes later. Greide let out a melodramatic, tired sigh accompanied by a restrained shake of the head, and left the room, forcing Lilja to jog after him in order to keep up as they went through the long underground tunnel.
“Arne must have looked at her. You know what his motto is, don’t you?” Greide spat. “‘Why make things more complicated than they have to be?” he said, adding air quotes. “But in his case it actually means: Why do your job at all?”
“Einar, we’re not even sure if it’s true at this point. It’s possible it was just an accident.”
Greide shook his head. “How could it not be true? This isn’t the first time Arne has missed something. His vacation doesn’t start until next week, but two weeks ago he was already thinking about as clearly as a mouldy dishrag. Normally I double-check his bodies, but this time I was —”
“Full up with a Colombian necktie.”
Greide gave her a look, stopped outside the morgue, and swiped his security pass. Once inside, Lilja went straight over to the wall of cold boxes, while Greide searched for a copy of the autopsy report.
“Here it is. Blah blah blah... Substantial blow to the head, left posterior... Blah blah blah... Fractured skull, meningeal haemorrhage, cerebral swelling, cerebral haemorrhage, clear signs of increased cranial pressure... Hmm.”
“That doesn’t sound totally out of left field, does it?” Lilja asked, pulling out the box identified as CAMILLA LINDÉN in scrolling letters.
“No, but it is Head Injury 101. If you’re in an accident this violent and you manage to avoid becoming a hamburger, you’re very likely to hit your head so hard that you’ll die of a cerebral haemorrhage. This report could have been written without even examining the body and still be accurate in eight out of ten cases. The problem is that there’s nothing else here.” Greide held up the document between his thumb and index finger, waving it with disdain.
Lilja pulled back the sheet covering the naked body.
“There isn’t even the smallest description of any distinctive marks on the body,” Grede continued. “He’s provided no insight or argument of his own. There’s not a single observation here beyond the obvious.”
“So you don’t think he really examined her?”
“I don’t think it, I know it.” He let go of the report, which fell to the floor like a piece of trash. He walked over to stand on the opposite side of the body from Lilja.
The eyes were closed, and violent blows and impacts had left obvious marks on the face. Greide pulled on a pair of plastic gloves, rolled the stiff body onto its side and looked at the back of the head, revealing a severe wound and a ring of coagulated blood in the blonde hair. He released the body again, and started fiddling with one of his braids.
“Did you find what he missed?” Lilja regretted the question as soon as she’d asked, but it squeezed out like a mouse through a cracked door; she couldn’t help it.
Greide let go of his braid and glared at her as if she deserved to be shot at daybreak. Then he laid his hand across Camilla’s closed eyes and opened her eyelids.
Both of her eyes looked like someone had put out a cigarette on them.