‘I won’t let myself be intimidated. I’ll do my job and Intelligence can do theirs.’
‘We all think you should put in a request for bodyguards. They can protect you, if –’
‘No, no bodyguards.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t believe there’s any need. The message is an end in itself. It was written by some sad sack who wants to stay hidden behind a screen, and anyway, we could really do without that at home right now.’
Engells looks at her in mild astonishment, the way he always does on the rare occasions when she mentions her private life.
‘We need things to be normal if we want to move on.’
The Chief of Staff is about to say something, and Rosa can see he doesn’t agree.
‘Engells, I appreciate your concern, but if there’s nothing else I’d like to head into the Chamber for the Prime Minister’s opening speech.’
‘Of course. I’ll pass on your instructions.’
Rosa walks over to the door, where Liu is waiting. Engells watches her leave, and Rosa senses he will remain standing there long after she has gone.
16
The long rectangular building with its adjoining chapel is situated on the traffic-choked artery between the districts of Nørrebro and Østerbro. Not far from the entrance the city is full of life, teeming with cars and busy pedestrians, and only a stone’s throw away happy voices can be heard from the playgrounds and skateparks on the Common – yet in the oblong building with its four sterile autopsy rooms and basement cold stores it’s impossible not to be reminded of death and the ephemerality of all things. There is a sense of unreality about the place. Thulin has been to the Department of Forensic Medicine plenty of times, but she’s never got used to it, and she always looks forward to re-emerging through the swing doors at the end of the much-too-long corridor she’s walking down now. She has just watched the coroner examine Laura Kjær’s body, and she’s trying to get hold of Genz. His voicemail begins to repeat its automatic invitation to leave a message, but Thulin cuts it short and tries again impatiently. Genz promised her the preliminary transcripts of Laura Kjær’s email correspondence as well as her texts and call history by 3 p.m., but it’s now half past and still she’s heard nothing. Normally you can set your watch by him, and Thulin has never known him fail to deliver on time. Nor, in fact, has he ever not answered his phone when she wants to speak to him.
The examination of the body brought no crucial new evidence to light. Their guest from Europol, or wherever he now calls home, did not – of course – turn up as agreed, and Thulin didn’t bother to wait more than half a second. She simply asked the coroner to start. The earthly remains of Laura Kjær lay on the autopsy slab while the coroner scrolled through his notes on a screen and chatted about his unusually busy day. There had been several traffic accidents, he informed her, presumably due to the heavy rain. Anyway, he continued, starting systematically. Her stomach contents revealed an evening meal of squash soup and chicken-and-broccoli salad, possibly washed down with a cup of tea – although that may have been ingested slightly earlier. Thulin asked him impatiently to fast-forward to the useful bit. The coroner always reacted testily to that sort of request – ‘Thulin, that’s like asking Per Kirkeby to explain his paintings!’ – but she insisted. The day hadn’t yet brought her the answers she was hoping for, and while the coroner read aloud from his notes she heard the rain beat against the roof as though drumming down on to a coffin.
‘There are a number of puncture wounds and lacerations, and she has been struck up to fifty or sixty times with a bludgeon made of steel or aluminium. What kind of bludgeon I can’t say, but judging by the marks it’s fitted with a ball the size of a fist, which is densely studded with small spikes approximately two or three millimetres in length.’
‘Like a mace?’
‘In principle, yes, but it’s not a mace. I’ve been wondering whether it might be a tool used for gardening, but I haven’t got anywhere with that. The cable ties around her wrists left her unable to defend herself. She also fell repeatedly on to the ground, which caused additional injuries.’
Thulin knew most of that already, after the morning’s conversation with Genz: she was more interested in whether there was any evidence pointing to the boyfriend, Hans Henrik Hauge.
‘Yes and no,’ came the infuriating answer. ‘So far my examination has revealed his DNA on her knickers, chemise and body, but no more of it than one might expect if she’d been sleeping in the double bed they shared.’
‘Raped?’
But the coroner dismissed that possibility – so much for a sexual motive. ‘Unless one takes the view that there’s some sexual urge behind sadistic punishment.’ Thulin asked him to expand on that remark, and the coroner pointed out that Laura Kjær had been tortured.
‘He must have seen that she was in pain as he was inflicting it. If he’d merely wanted to kill her, he could have done so very quickly. She would have lost consciousness several times during the attack, and my guess is that she was assaulted for roughly twenty minutes before the blow to the eye, which was the proximate cause of death.’
Nor did the wound left by the missing right hand, which had still not been found, offer any new evidence. The coroner couldn’t say what kind of tool had been used to amputate it, but it prompted him to muse that amputations were most often seen among biker gangs – although as a general rule they stuck to individual fingers, collected in lieu of money owed, and their instruments of choice were usually meat shears, samurai swords or the like. He couldn’t confirm whether that was the case here.
‘Hedge clippers? Shears?’ Thulin asked, thinking of the tools in the garage at Husum.
‘No, it was definitely some kind of saw. Possibly a circular saw or a plunge saw. Most likely battery-powered, given that the killer was sawing freehand in the middle of a playground. On the face of it I’d say a diamond blade or similar.’
‘A diamond blade?’
‘There are various types of sawblade, depending on what they’re used for. Diamond ones are the most robust. Typically they’re used for cutting tiles, concrete or brick, and can be purchased at most DIY stores. This cut was made quickly. On the other hand, the blade was evidently coarse-toothed, because the laceration was jagged and more haphazard than we’d see with a fine-toothed blade. Either way, the amputation would have weakened her considerably.’
So Laura Kjær had been alive during the amputation: the idea was so unpleasant that Thulin barely heard the next few sentences, and had to ask the coroner to repeat them. Judging by her other injuries, Laura Kjær had then tried to flee again, woozy and increasingly incapacitated by loss of blood, until she’d apparently become so weak the killer was able to take her to the execution site outside the playhouse without a fight. For a moment Thulin pictured the woman running through the pitch-dark, her pursuer at her heels, and into her mind’s eye popped a scene she’d witnessed one summer as a child: a headless chicken darting panic-stricken around a friend’s farmyard. Forcing the image aside, Thulin asked about the victim’s nails, mouth and skin abrasions, but besides the injuries the coroner had already mentioned there was no evidence of physical contact with the killer. He did, however, point out that the rain might have had something to do with that.
Thulin gets Genz’s voicemail for the third time as she reaches the swing door. This time she leaves a terse message, making it clear that Genz should call back as soon as possible. The rain is still bucketing down outside, and as Thulin shrugs on her coat she decides it would be best to drive back to the station while she waits. By now they have confirmed that Hans Henrik Hauge left the trade fair the previous evening around 9.30 p.m. in his car, after having drunk a glass of white wine with one of his bosses and two colleagues from Jutland while they discussed a new firewall. After that, however, Hauge’s alibi is shaky. He indeed checked into the motel, but nobody could say for sure whether his black Mazda 6 was parked there all night. He could, in theory
at least, have driven to the house in Husum and back, but as yet they don’t have enough evidence to justify investigating Hauge and his car more thoroughly – hence why she needs Genz and the results of his forensic tests promptly.
‘Sorry. Took a while.’
Hess has arrived at the morgue, emerging through the swing door. His clothes drip small puddles on to the floor, and he gives his soaking-wet jacket a shake.
‘I couldn’t get hold of my property manager. Everything okay?’
‘Yep, all fine.’
Thulin strides through the swing door without glancing back. Emerging out into the rain, she jogs over to her car, trying to avoid getting wetter than absolutely necessary. She can hear Hess’s voice behind her.
‘I don’t know where you’ve got to, but I can take statements from the victim’s workplace, or –’
‘Nope, already done, so no need to worry about that.’
Thulin unlocks her car and climbs in, but before she can slam the door Hess catches up and blocks her. He shivers in the rain.
‘I don’t think you understood what I said. I’m sorry about the delay, but –’
‘I do understand. You bollocksed things up at the Hague. Somebody told you to clock in at the station here until you get the green light to come back, but you couldn’t care less about the job, so you’re just marking time while you do as little as possible.’
Hess doesn’t move. He just stands and stares at her with the eyes she still isn’t used to. ‘Well, today’s wasn’t exactly the toughest assignment.’
‘I’m trying to make things easy for you. You concentrate on the Hague and your apartment, and I won’t say anything to Nylander. Okay?’
‘Thulin!’
Thulin glances towards the entrance, where the coroner has come outside and is standing under an umbrella.
‘Genz says he can’t get through to you, but you’re to head to Forensics straight away.’
‘Why? Can’t he just call me?’
‘There’s something you’ve got to see. He says you need to see it or you’ll think he’s pulling your leg.’
17
The new cube-shaped headquarters of the Criminal Forensics Department are located in the north-west part of the city. It has begun to grow dark outside among the birch trees in the carpark, but in the labs on the storey above the large garage they’re still hard at work.
‘Texts, emails, phone calls, have you checked all that?’
‘The IT guys haven’t found anything significant yet, but anyway, that’s not as important as what I’ve got to show you.’
Thulin follows Genz, who has just fetched them from reception and confirmed that she and Hess are his guests. Hess insisted on coming along, but probably only so she can’t say he’s neglecting the investigation. In the car on the way over the man skimmed the autopsy report without much interest, and Thulin didn’t deem it necessary to discuss the case with him. The drive has put her on edge, and so has Genz’s cryptic reply, but he gives no sign of explaining further until they reach his lab.
There are large frosted glass partitions everywhere. Forensics techs are swarming around their desks like small white bees, and a plethora of air-conditioning units and thermostats on the walls ensure that the temperature and humidity are kept at the correct level for the tests being conducted in the various glass compartments. It’s at the Forensics Department that material gathered from any and every crime scene is examined and assessed. It’s often the forensic evidence that determines the direction of a case, and during her short tenure on the murder squad Thulin has seen the Forensics Department carry out meticulous examinations of such various items as clothing, bed linen, carpets, wallpaper, food, vehicles, vegetation and soil; in principle the list is endless. The coroner’s office and the Forensics Department are the two scientific legs of any investigation, and both identify the evidence that the prosecutor will later use to secure a conviction.
Since the 1990s, the Forensics Department has also been responsible for digital evidence, incorporating a sub-department that investigates technological items belonging to victims and suspects. With the increasing focus on global cyber crime, hacking and international terrorism, since 2014 its responsibilities have gradually been transferred to NC3, but for practical reasons the department still carries out smaller, local tasks itself, such as the examination of the computers and mobile phones from Laura Kjær’s home.
‘What about other evidence? The bedroom, the garage?’ Thulin stands impatiently in the big lab where Genz has taken them.
‘No. But before I say more, I need to know whether we can trust him.’
Genz shuts the door and nods at Hess. Although Thulin is rather gratified that Genz is suddenly being so explicitly cautious about the stranger, it also takes her by surprise.
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I have to say to you is big news, and I don’t want to risk the information getting out. It’s not personal, I hope you understand.’ The latter remark is addressed to Hess, who remains expressionless.
‘He’s been taken on as an investigator by Nylander. And since he’s actually here, I’d say we can trust him.’
‘I mean it, Thulin.’
‘I’ll take responsibility. Tell me what you’ve got.’
Genz hesitates a moment before turning to his keyboard and rapidly typing in an access code, while with his other hand he reaches for his reading glasses on the table. Thulin hasn’t seen Genz like this before, earnest and exultant at the same time. And she expected a more sensational reason for his peculiar mood than the ordinary-looking fingerprint that now appears on the HD screen on the wall above the imposing desk.
‘I found it quite by chance. We decided to brush the playhouse for fingerprints where the body had been placed, just in case the killer had supported himself on the posts, maybe cut himself on a nail or something. A waste of time, of course. It was teeming with prints, probably from all the children who use the playhouse. But for the same reason we did a routine check of the little doll, the chestnut man, because it was hanging so close to the body.’
‘Genz, what is it that’s so important?’
‘The print was on the bottom chestnut. On the bit you might call the body, I mean. It was the only one on the doll. I don’t know whether you’re aware of this, but when it comes to identifying fingerprints we normally look for ten points of comparison. With this print, unfortunately, it was only possible to establish five points, because it’s smeared. But five points ought in principle to be enough. Certainly it’s been sufficient in several court cases where –’
‘Enough for what, Genz?’
As he spoke Genz was pointing out the five points on the fingerprint with his electronic pen and the digital tablet on the desk, but now he puts down the pen and looks at Thulin.
‘Sorry. Enough to establish that the fingerprint on the chestnut man – at least, five points on it – are identical with Kristine Hartung’s fingerprints.’
For a brief moment Thulin forgets to breathe. She doesn’t know what bombshell she expected Genz to drop, but at least something in roughly the same solar system as hers.
‘The match came from the computer as it gradually identified the five points. It happens completely automatically, because the material is connected to the database with thousands of prints from previous cases. Normally, of course, we’d like to see more points. Ten is most common, but as I say, five points is enough to –’
‘Kristine Hartung is presumed dead.’ Thulin has regained her poise, and when she continues her voice is exasperated. ‘The investigation concluded she was killed about a year ago. The case is solved, and the killer has been convicted.’
‘I know that.’
Genz removes his reading glasses and studies her.
‘All I’m saying is the print –’
‘But it must be a mistake.’
‘No mistake. I’ve been going over it again and again for the last three hours because I didn’t want to s
ay anything until I was certain. But now I am. Going on five points of comparison, it’s a match.’
‘What programme are you using?’
Hess has risen from his seat in the background, where he’s been fiddling with his phone, and Thulin notices the new, alert expression on his face. She hears Genz guardedly explaining the dactyloscopic system he used, and she hears Hess confirm that it’s the same system used at Europol to identify prints.
Genz perks up, surprised and pleased to find his guest knows the system, but Hess doesn’t return his enthusiasm.
‘Who is Kristine Hartung?’ he asks instead.
Thulin looks up from the fingerprint on the screen and gazes into the blue-and-green eyes.
18
The rain has stopped and the football fields are deserted. He sees the lone figure emerge through the trees and cross the pitches, the wet AstroTurf glittering beneath the floodlights. Not until she passes the last goalpost and approaches the concrete barrier to the empty carpark does he begin to grasp that it’s genuinely her. She’s wearing the same clothes as the day she disappeared and walking with the gait he knows so well; he’ll always be able to tell her from thousands of other children by the way she walks. When she notices the car she starts to run, and he watches her smile broaden as her hood falls back and the light hits her face. Her cheeks are red with cold; he can already smell her, and he knows exactly how she will feel in his arms when he squeezes her close. She laughs and calls to him as she’s done so many times before, and his whole body feels about to explode as he flings the door open and hugs her, beginning to swing her around and around.
‘What are you doing? Drive!’
The back door slams hard. Steen Hartung wakes in confusion. He’s been asleep, resting against the side window. His son is sitting in his training gear on the back seat amid bags and racquets, while outside other children are cycling away, staring at Steen and laughing to each other.
‘Are you done with –’
The Chestnut Man Page 5