As if by previous agreement, they all waited for Konrad Simonsen, who, despite the pressure of their silence, took his time to gather his thoughts. Finally he said quietly, “Plastic on the floor, newspapers above to absorb the blood, then a whole podium that is erected for the occasion and then dismantled and taken away?”
It was a question and it was of acute significance. Pauline Berg said, “It fits nicely that the janitor’s father was a master carpenter-”
Simonsen interrupted her: “One moment, Pauline. Kurt?”
Kurt Melsing was as soft-spoken as Konrad Simonsen, but there was no hesitation in his answer.
“That is what happened, Simon. I know that it sounds sick, but it happened that way.”
“There’s no room for doubt?”
“No.”
The Criminal Forensics Division had produced a visual re-creation of the events in which stick figures enacted the tableau that Arthur Elvang described. The sequence lasted two minutes, with occasional close-ups for details of particular interest. The animation was done in three dimensions, and though it did not appear particularly lifelike it depicted a stylized gruesomeness that gripped its audience and depressed the atmosphere further.
They watched it twice.
Melsing made a single comment: “We have used two perpetrators. It could have been one or, for that matter, five. We don’t know and don’t have a way to make a reasonable determination.”
When the meeting came to an end, Simonsen lingered. First, however, he took the lead on psychologist Ditte Lubert, from Berg, who had made no headway with her. He would let the Countess or Pedersen-whichever one had the time-take a stab at it.
After the two others had left, he asked Elvang, “Can you give me a short lesson in craniofacial reconstruction?”
The old man beamed. It would be his pleasure, he said, and without any further need for reflection he launched into an explanation.
“The method is used for the purpose of obtaining an identification. It is not used here in Denmark, where forensic law enforcement in tandem with a wellfunctioning dental service with orderly files constitute a better, cheaper, and more secure method for establishing an identity. But it is employed to some extent in England, for example, and in the USA, where people are less documented, and in these places there are trained professionals. ‘Forensic anthropologist’ is what the Americans call them. The idea is that one models a face from an unidentified cranium, and the method is based on a combination of anatomy and statistics. In area upon area, one builds up single muscles or muscle groups once small custom-made pins are applied to the cranium. These anchors are placed in predetermined reference points and are trimmed in relation to the average softtissue thickness at a given location. The facial construction is often done with clay, and it is beneficial if the anthropologist has an artistic vein, a little like a translator, but an exact reconstruction of the face is impossible. For example, one can never replicate the ears.”
He paused, then added thoughtfully, “Implicit in your question is of course the question of whether this method can be applied in this case.”
“Yes, that was my thought. An identification is crucial. The odds that we will make it another way are good, but the teeth from Mr. Northwest and the pacemaker from Mr. Northeast can take a long time and do not of course guarantee success. If you can get me some photographs that more or less resemble the victims, I would like for you to start that now, rather than in a week. It is my only recourse if I am still empty-handed, and, as you know, money is no object for once.”
“No, I’ve heard that and that’s good, because it’s expensive. Unbelievably expensive.”
He stared straight out into the air, grunted something unintelligible, and said, “Come on, let’s go take a look.”
Melsing and Simonsen followed him.
The room they stepped into was light and clean. There was a terrazzo floor and walls covered in white tile, as in a bathroom from the fifties. The floor bulged slightly in the middle and sloped down to a trench that ran along the perimeter of the room, so that the entire area was easy to hose down. A couple of large stainless-steel sinks were placed between the windows, one for hands, the other for internal organs. Four stretchers were placed in the middle of the floor at least two meters apart, and a corpse lay on each. The sounds in the room were unpleasant and metallic as in a public swimming pool.
Arthur Elvang studied the facial remains on three of the bodies critically while his two companions remained silent. When he spoke, his words were directed mainly to himself.
“It doesn’t have to be an anthropologist. There is a great deal of information here and no maggots, so perhaps a skilled facial surgeon. That could be interesting, putting together a team and getting them to use each other’s knowledge. Perhaps a funeral director; a mortuary makeup artist from the States.”
He reached a conclusion but continued his train of thought, now turned to the others.
“Back here we just pop them in coffins and advise the survivors not to open the lid. They aren’t to be looked at here.”
The chief of Criminal Forensics had been listening intently and was fired up about the idea. “I have just the photographer,” he said. “She’s a pure genius with her camera and in developing the pictures.”
Elvang received this positively: “Yes, yes, good idea. I’d like to have her on the team as well.”
The decision had been made. Simonsen’s nighttime Internet research that lay behind his question had born fruit and he felt a measure of pride, although he could not know if the results had been the same had he been ignorant. He delicately inquired about a possible time frame and received-as expected-a rather gruff reply from the professor about how that could not be determined here and now. For the first time this Tuesday, Simonsen was finally in a good mood. Podium or not.
His good mood lasted less than ten minutes. When the meeting was over but before he had left the building, his cell phone rang. The Countess’s message was brief and to the point, in direct contrast to his exclamation, which echoed in the institute’s corridors.
“That is a lie; that is a damned lie.”
But it wasn’t.
Chapter 14
The Climber sized up the tree that stood in the square in Allerslev, a small provincial town outside Odense. It was a European beech; he estimated that it was about one hundred years old. The trunk was at least one meter in diameter and the canopy stretched out far above his head like an enormous red-violet bell; a couple of branches had been pruned here and there but on the whole it had been allowed to grow as it liked. It was not really in proportion to the square-it was simply too tall-but it had probably been there before most of the shops that lined the square were built. He let his gaze travel around and concluded with some satisfaction that there were no residential buildings nearby, which was key, because however carefully he tried to proceed, some noise was inevitable.
Coolly and soberly, he then surveyed the nearest hot-dog stand. The construction quality was low and the materials were cheap. Chips of concrete had crumbled onto the floor, the sliding door and the window to the right were Plexiglas, and white-painted plywood covered the counter under the window as well as the three outer walls. The lumber was simple pieces of pine hardly thicker than five-by-ten centimeters and the insulation was nothing to write home about-a single layer of rock wool held in place with faux tiles in hard Masonite. The roof was flat and sloped to a plastic gutter behind the building. One-half consisted of charcoal-colored roofing tiles, most likely fastened directly onto inexpensive veneer, and the other half-where the customers stood-was covered with translucent corrugated panels littered with leaves and insects and in rather desperate need of cleaning.