For a short moment, it felt like someone else had taken over his thoughts.
He wondered where all the good old-fashioned sexual fantasies had gone, those fantasies the latest research said should grip us at least fifteen times a day.
One last thought flashed through his mind before he caught a whiff of the predatory animals: who the hell were these model people who had enough time for fifteen sexual fantasies a day? But then the stench took over and Paul Hjelm found himself feeling genuine expectation, like a child in the minutes before Father Christmas turns up, at that moment when fathers sneak off to the toilet with an utterly expressionless look plastered on their faces. In this case, Father Christmas’s real name was Jorge Chavez and he was a detective inspector in Sweden’s national CID.
Just like Paul Hjelm.
The smell disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Paul Hjelm was lost. He would later deny all knowledge of the incident, but he really was lost inside Skansen. His children were nearing twenty and it had been years since the cheap trip-to-Skansen trick had last worked on them, the thing you resorted to when you ran out of other ideas. The section for wild animals had been completely rebuilt during that time, and he suddenly found himself talking to an utterly listless, cud-chewing male elk that looked more mechanical and stuffed than real. He had no one else to converse with. It was nearing ten, and Skansen was still closed. There wasn’t a person in sight and the bloody elk didn’t have much to say.
Above all, he seemed remarkably clueless about where the bestial predatory animals could possibly be living.
Eventually, Hjelm found his way to the bear mountain. This was unknown territory. Everything was heavily reinforced and he finally made it out of the labyrinthine construction with the feeling that he was following an unravelled ball of yarn. He passed horses and lynx, wild boar and wolves, and suddenly he was there.
At the wolverine enclosure.
There were considerably more people around him now. He immediately recognised the white-clad technicians who, like amateur mountain climbers, were moving up and down the little hills inside. He recognised the blue-and-white plastic tape stretched here and there in front of the safety fence, screaming ‘Police’. He recognised the more or less weather-beaten, eighty-odd-year-old face belonging to the chief medical examiner, Sigvard Qvarfordt. He also recognised the stern Germanic-looking face of the chief forensic technician, Brynolf Svenhagen. And he recognised the particularly energetic face of his close colleague – who was also Chief Forensic Technician Svenhagen’s son-in-law. His name was Jorge Chavez.
Chavez caught sight of Hjelm and his face lit up. He moved towards the deep moat separating the wolverine enclosure from the rest of the park, holding out his hands and shouting, as though he had rehearsed it (which he probably had): ‘Cast off your human shell, O crown of creation, and enter into our animalistic orgy.’
Paul Hjelm sighed and said: ‘How the hell do I do that, then?’
Jorge Chavez raised an eyebrow in surprise and glanced around. Eventually, he turned to Brynolf Svenhagen, who didn’t seem to be doing much other than wandering around looking stern. As though it was his life’s mission.
‘Was it you who nicked the gangplank, Brunte?’
Brynolf Svenhagen looked at his son-in-law with sincere distaste and helpfully replied: ‘My name isn’t Brunte.’
Whereby he continued his stern wandering.
Chavez scratched his head.
‘Porn police probably took it,’ he said. ‘They’ll be letting the wolverines in soon.’
Paul Hjelm climbed up onto the shaky wooden fence, balancing for a moment before taking a reckless leap into nothingness. He floated like a butterfly over the deep, water-filled moat and landed safely on dry ground next to his colleague. It was highly surprising.
‘Nice,’ Chavez said appreciatively.
‘Thanks,’ Hjelm replied, still not quite believing that he wasn’t covered in wolverine shit, having stumbled backwards into the moat and cracked a couple of vertebrae.
He glanced around. The wolverine enclosure was fairly extensive, a piece of hilly terrain which stretched up to a relatively high peak. There were holes dotted here and there, presumably dens, and large areas of the grass-covered ground seemed to be littered with tiny shreds of material, almost like feathers, all different colours and different materials. The forensic technicians were doing all they could to stop the light morning breeze from blowing them away.
Paul pointed at the fibres. Jorge nodded, grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him in the direction of the enclosure’s bottom corner, where the moat was nothing more than a three-metre vertical concrete drop down to the earthy floor.
‘Let’s start from the beginning,’ Jorge said.
The two men stopped. Over in that corner, the fibres had slightly more coherent shapes, most notably the leg of a pair of light pink-coloured trousers.
A few inches of chewed-off bone were sticking up out of it.
Probably a tibia and a fibula.
‘That’s the biggest bit left,’ Chavez said calmly, squatting down. Hjelm did the same and waited for him to continue. He did.
‘Gulo gulo, they’re called. Latin for wolverine. Cute little things. Look like fluffy little bear cubs. Their closest relatives are the badger, pine marten, polecat, weasel, otter and mink. They’re endangered, there are just a hundred or so left in Sweden. High up in the mountains. They can grow up to a metre in length and as a rule they live on voles and lemmings. Though sometimes they change their prey-’
Hjelm stood up and stretched his back.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Someone got drunk, climbed into Skansen and ended up among the predators. Can’t be the first time.’
‘Would I have called you here if that were the case?’ Chavez asked, meeting his eye. ‘These are specially evolved killing machines. Don’t you know your Ellroy? They’ll tear a man to pieces at the slightest provocation, especially if there’s a pack of them. They’ve got jaws like bolt cutters. They can break bones and grind them up like they’re nothing. It’s pure luck we’ve got so much left here.’
Using a pencil, Chavez carefully lifted the trouser leg up. There was still some flesh clinging to the bone a bit further up, holding it together. There was also a knot. On a piece of rope.
‘Ah,’ Hjelm said, squatting down once more.
‘Exactly,’ Chavez replied, adding: ‘M.’
‘U,’ said Hjelm.
‘R,’ said Chavez.
‘D,’ said Hjelm.
‘E,’ said Chavez.
‘R,’ said Hjelm.
‘No doubt,’ said Chavez. ‘And it would be nice if we could find a head. At least it’s a variation on a theme,’ he continued, stopping Qvarfordt as he was passing by. ‘Any news, my good man?’ he asked gallantly.
‘Negative,’ the eternally-working Sigvard Qvarfordt replied, pushing his loose dentures into place with a well-practised movement. ‘No head, no fingers. It’ll be hard to get an ID. We’ll be able to get some DNA, but as you know the system isn’t especially well developed. It is a man though. An adult male. The coagulation level of the blood suggests the time of death was yesterday evening or last night. I’d be surprised if he’d been here longer than that. There would definitely have been some complaints from the parents if our friend here had been eaten in broad daylight. That’s all I’ve got for you.’
Just then, they heard a shout from the hill. One of the forensic technicians was waving something he had fished out of a hole in the air. It looked like a wolverine turd.
Paul Hjelm tried the phrase a few times. Wolverine turd. How many times had he said that in his life? Zero.