Anna-Maria sighed. There was no money for witness protection or anything else when it came to a few poxy tires being nicked. She typed “Toyota Hilux” into the computer and made a note of the owner’s name. Petty criminals, little tyrants who take whatever they want. It was more than likely that she would come across him in some other context in the future. She ran a multiple query on the owner. Convictions for assault and illegal possession of a firearm. He was also listed as a suspect several times.
Pull yourself together, she told herself. Don’t just sit here opening and closing files and surfing databases.
She put the tire theft to one side. They weren’t going to get anywhere with that one. The prosecutor might as well drop it. From the coffee machine outside her door she could hear the sound of a plastic cup dropping down and the loud whine as it was filled with that wretched instant machine coffee. For a while she hoped it might be Sven-Erik, and that he might come in with some news about Viktor Strandgård. But then she heard the steps disappearing down the corridor; it must be somebody else.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said half out loud, and reached for another folder from the pile.
Her gaze immediately strayed away from the text and wandered aimlessly over the desk. She looked sadly at the mug of cold tea. The very thought of coffee almost made her throw up at the moment. But she’d never been a tea drinker either. It just stood there and went cold, every time. And Coke made her stomach too gassy.
When the phone rang she snatched up the receiver. She thought it would be Sven-Erik, but it was Lars Pohjanen, the medical examiner.
“I’ve finished the initial autopsy report,” he said in his rasping coffee percolator voice. “Do you want to come down?”
“Well, Sven-Erik’s in charge of this one,” she said hesitantly. “And von Post.”
Pohjanen’s voice became irritated.
“I’ve no intention of hunting all over town for Sven-Erik, and his lordship the prosecutor can read the report. I’ll pack up and get back to Luleå, then.”
“No, damn it. I’ll come,” said Anna-Maria, just as she heard the conversation at the other end being cut off with a click.
I hope the old bastard heard that, she thought as she pulled on her leather boots. He’ll probably have gone by the time I get to the hospital.
She found Lars Pohjanen in the hospital security guards’ smoking room. He was slumped on a sturdy green seventies sofa. His eyes were closed, and only the glowing cigarette in his hand gave any indication that he might be awake, or even alive.
“So,” he said without opening his eyes, “aren’t you interested in Viktor Strandgård, deceased? I would have thought this was just up your street, Mella.”
“I’m supposed to be pushing paper until I have the baby,” she said, standing in the doorway. “But it’s better if I talk to you before you go, rather than nobody doing it.”
He gave a croaky laugh that turned into a feeble cough, opened his eyes and fixed her with his piercing blue gaze.
“You’re going to dream about him at night, Mella. Come and talk it through, otherwise you’re going to be running round with the pram interrogating suspects while you’re on maternity leave. Shall we?”
He made an exaggerated gesture, inviting her into the autopsy room.
The room where the autopsies were held was very neat. A clean stone floor, three stainless-steel tables, red plastic boxes stacked according to size under the sink, two hand basins where Anna Granlund made sure there was a constant supply of spotlessly clean hand towels. The dissection table had been sluiced down and dried off. Out in the sluice room the dishwasher was running. The only thing that made you think of death was a long line of ID-marked transparent plastic jars containing gray or light brown bits of brain or internal organs, preserved in formalin so that tests could be carried out on them at a later stage. And Viktor Strandgård’s body. He was lying on his back on one of the tables. An incision ran across the back of his head from one ear to the other, and the whole of his scalp had been drawn away from his skull up over the forehead to expose his cranium. Two long wounds ran across his stomach and were held together with rough sutures. One had been made by the autopsy technician in order to allow an examination of the internal organs. There were also several short wounds on the body; Anna-Maria had seen marks like these before. Knife wounds. He was clean, stitched up and sluiced down, pale under the fluorescent lights. It bothered Anna-Maria to see his slender body lying naked on the cold steel table. She had kept her fleecy jacket on.
Lars Pohjanen pulled on a green surgical gown, shoved his feet into his worn old clogs, which bore only vestiges of the white they had once been, and slipped on his thin, supple rubber gloves.
“How are the kids?” he asked.
“Jenny and Petter are fine. Marcus is suffering from a broken heart and is mostly just lying on his bed with his headphones on, developing tinnitus.”
“Poor kid,” said Pohjanen with genuine sympathy, and turned to Viktor Strandgård.
Anna-Maria wondered whether he meant Marcus or Viktor Strandgård.
“Do you mind?” she asked, and took her tape recorder out of her pocket. “So the others can listen later.”
Pohjanen shrugged his shoulders in agreement. Anna-Maria switched on the tape recorder.
“Chronologically,” he said. “First a blow to the back of the head with a blunt instrument. You and I are not really in a position to try and turn him over, but you can see it on here.”
He took out a computer slide and clipped it on to the X-ray light box. Anna-Maria looked at the images in silence, thinking of the black-and-white ultrasound pictures of her baby.
“You can see the split in the skull here. And the subdural bleed. Just here.”
The doctor’s finger traced a dark area on the pictures.
“It might have been possible to save his life if he had suffered only the blow to the head, but probably not,” he said.
“Your murderer is most likely right-handed,” continued Pohjanen. “Then, after the blow to his head, he receives these two stab wounds to the stomach and the chest.”
He pointed to two of the wounds on Viktor Strandgård’s body.
“It’s impossible to speculate about the height of the perpetrator from the blow to the back of the head, and unfortunately there are no clues from the stab wounds either. They were delivered from above, so it’s my guess that Viktor Strandgård was on his knees when he received those wounds. Either that, or the perpetrator is immensely tall, like an American basketball player. But I would presume that Strandgård suffered the blow to his head first. Bang.”
The doctor smacked his own bald head to illustrate the blow.
“The blow makes him fall to his knees-there are no grazes or hematomas on the knees, but the carpet was quite soft-and then the killer stabs him twice. That’s why the angle of entry is sloping from above. So it’s difficult to say anything about his height.”
“So he died from the blow and the two stab wounds?” asked Anna-Maria.
“Yes,” continued Pohjanen, suppressing a cough. “This stab wound through the wall of the rib cage splits the seventh rib bone on the left-hand side, opens the pericardium-”
“The peri-?”
“The heart sac, the right ventricle, the heart chamber. This causes a bleed into the heart and the right lung. With the second blow the knife cut through the liver and caused a bleed into the abdominal cavity and the peritoneum.”
“Did he die immediately?”
Pohjanen shrugged his shoulders.
“What about the rest of his injuries?” asked Anna-Maria.
“He sustained those after death. All this damage to the torso and belly with a sharp object. These blows came from directly in front and were delivered after the moment of death. I would guess that Viktor Strandgård was lying on his back at the time. There’s also this long gash which opened up the stomach.”