Røed looked at him, nodded briefly and drained the glass.
The post-mortem technician held the door open, and he and Røed went inside.
Krohn went over to the window. They stood on either side of a trolley where the outline of a female form lay in profile underneath a white sheet. Apart from the head. Evidently there were microphones inside, and he could hear their voices over a loudspeaker above the window.
‘Are you ready?’
Røed nodded, and the post-mortem technician removed the sheet.
Krohn backed away from the window. He had seen corpses in his professional life but nothing like this. The post-mortem technician’s voice sounded dry and matter-of-fact over the loudspeaker.
‘I’m sorry, but it does appear as though the perpetrator has subjected her to extreme violence. One thing is what you see here, stab wounds over the entire body and the slashed stomach. But the worst is probably the area here around the anus, where we can see that the perpetrator must have used something other than a knife or his hands to cause so much damage. The entire rectum has been torn open and the mutilation continues upward, so he must have used a pipe, a thick branch or similar. I apologise if this is more information than you wish, but it’s necessary to explain the level of violence inflicted so that you understand she is no longer the woman you knew or were used to seeing. So, take your time and try to look beyond the injuries.’
Due to the face mask, Krohn couldn’t see Røed’s facial expression, but he did see the trembling of his body.
‘Di-did he do this while... while she was alive?’
‘I wish I could say that we knew for certain that she was dead, but I can’t.’
‘Then she suffered?’ Røed’s voice sounded thin and tear-filled.
‘Like I said, we don’t know. We can determine that some of the injuries were inflicted after the heart had stopped beating, but not all. I am sorry.’
A single whimper escaped from Røed. Johan Krohn had never at any point in their relationship felt sorry for Markus Røed. Not for one second — his client was too much of a bastard for it. But just now he felt compassion, perhaps because he had inevitably for a moment put his own wife on the trolley and himself in Røed’s shoes.
‘I know it’s painful,’ the post-mortem technician said, ‘but I have to ask you to take your time. Look at her and do your best to confirm whether or not this is Helene Røed.’
Krohn assumed it was the sound of her name in connection with the mutilated body that made Røed break down in convulsive sobbing.
Krohn heard the door behind him open.
It was Harry Hole accompanied by a dark-haired woman.
Hole gave a brief nod. ‘This is Alexandra Sturdza. She works here. We picked her up on the way.’
‘Johan Krohn, Røed’s lawyer.’
‘I know,’ Alexandra said, as she walked to the sink and began washing her hands. ‘I was here earlier today, but I’ve obviously missed out on all the action. Has she been identified?’
‘They’re doing it now,’ Krohn said. ‘It’s not an entirely... eh, straightforward task.’
Hole had come to the window beside Krohn and was now looking in. ‘Rage,’ he said simply.
‘Pardon?’
‘What he’s done to her. It’s not the same as he did to the other two. This is rage and hatred.’
Krohn tried to moisten his dry mouth. ‘You mean it’s someone who hates Helene Røed?’
‘Could be. Or he hates what she represents. Or he hates himself. Or he hates someone who loves her.’
As a lawyer, Krohn had heard these statements before. They were the court psychologist’s more or less customary description in cases involving violence and sexually motivated murder, except for the last one, about hating someone who loved the victim.
‘It’s her.’ Røed’s whispered voice over the loudspeaker caused the three of them outside the autopsy room to go quiet.
The dark-haired woman turned off the tap and turned to the viewing window.
‘I’m sorry, but I’m required to ask you if you are certain,’ the post-mortem technician said.
A new, shuddering sob escaped Røed. He nodded. Pointed to one shoulder.
‘That scar. She got it when we were in Chennai in India and she was riding on the beach. I’d hired a racehorse; it was to run in a race the following day. They were so beautiful together. But the horse wasn’t used to running on sand and didn’t see the sinkhole left by the tide. They were so beautiful as they...’ His voice didn’t carry any longer and he hid his face in his hands.
‘Must have been a bloody nice horse for him to take it so hard,’ the dark-haired woman said. Krohn turned to her in disbelief, met her cold gaze and swallowed the reprimand on the tip of his tongue. He turned to Harry in exasperation instead.
‘She’s analysed DNA material from Røed,’ Harry said. ‘It matches the saliva found on Susanne Andersen’s breast.’
Harry studied Johan Krohn’s face as he spoke the words. He thought he saw pure surprise, as though the lawyer had truly believed in his client’s innocence. But what lawyers and policemen believed didn’t really matter, research showed that there was little or no difference in people’s ability, irrespective of their occupations, to tell when someone was lying, or put another way: that we are all about as poor at it as John Larson’s lie detector. All the same, Harry found it hard to believe that Krohn’s surprise or Røed’s tears were an act. Of course, a man could grieve over a woman he had killed, either by his own hand or by paying someone else. Harry had seen enough guilty husbands who had wept, probably out of a mixture of guilt, lost love, that same jealous frustration that had led to the murder and the sudden violence in the moment of realisation. Christ, hadn’t he himself believed for a time that he, in the midst of an alcohol fog, had killed Rakel? But Markus Røed did not look like a man who had murdered the woman lying in front of him, though Harry was at a loss to explain quite why or how. The tears were too pure somehow. Harry closed his eyes. Tears too pure? He sighed. Screw this esoteric bollocks; the evidence was there, and it told its own story. The miracle that would save both him and Lucille was about to take place, so why not welcome it with open arms?
A buzz sounded in the room.
‘Someone at the main door,’ Alexandra said.
‘Probably the police,’ Harry said.
Alexandra left to open it.
Johan Krohn looked at him. ‘Was it you who called them?’
Harry nodded.
Røed entered the room and removed the coat, face mask and scrub cap. ‘When can we move her to a funeral home?’ he asked, addressing Krohn, and taking no notice of Harry. ‘I hate seeing her this way.’ His voice was hoarse, and his eyes moist and red. ‘And the head. We need to make a head for her. We’ve tons of pictures. A sculptor. The best, Johan. It has to be the best.’ He began to cry again. Harry had withdrawn to a corner of the room where he observed Røed closely.
Observed the puzzled shock as the door opened, three policemen and one policewoman entered, two of them seizing Røed by each arm, the third placing handcuffs on him and the fourth explaining why he was under arrest.
On his way out the door, Røed turned his head as though to get one last glimpse of the body of the woman lying through the window behind him, but only managed to turn it enough to notice Harry.
The look he gave him reminded Harry of the summer he had worked at a foundry, when the molten metal was poured into a mould and turned in seconds from hot, red and runny to cold, grey and hard.
Then they were gone.
The post-mortem technician entered and removed his face mask. ‘Hi, Harry.’
‘Hi, Helge. Let me ask you something.’
‘Yeah?’ He hung up his scrubs.