The blood flow stopped in that arm.
Now he had to stop the arterial flow in the other arm, but he didn’t have another cuff with him.
“Shit, I need...” he began, but he faltered when he saw that Aida stood near the doorway with her back to them.
“God, god, god,” she was whispering.
For the first time in ages, Philip felt his heart pounding.
The metallic scent of blood filled his nose as he thought about how he needed one more bandage to stem the blood flow. He stood up.
“Philip,” Sandra said, but he had already left the room. He ran down the steps out to the ambulance. He found a tourniquet and ran back up the stairs with the strap in one hand. When he returned to the room, he saw that Aida had crawled into the fetal position in one corner of the sofa and was hugging a pillow so hard that her knuckles were white.
He placed the tourniquet around the woman’s left arm and began to twist it to tie it more tightly. Just as he was about to tie it off, he heard a voice.
“Mommy...”
The voice didn’t belong to the teenager. It was softer.
Philip lost his concentration when he glanced up and saw a little girl standing in the doorway, a scared look on her face. Her bangs were swept to the side, and her hair was messy. She was wearing a light blue nightgown with Princess Elsa from Frozen on the front.
“You were supposed to stay in our room,” Aida said, getting up. “Go back in there, Sara!”
Aida pulled the girl’s arm, but she resisted.
Philip and Sandra exchanged glances again before returning to the woman.
Philip was resolute as he released the zip tie.
“Help me now,” he said, signaling to Sandra to get hold of Shirin’s limp, heavy body.
They counted to three.
“One, two, three.”
They placed her carefully on the stretcher, working silently, knowing what was at stake. Her condition was critical.
“The hands...” Sandra said, nodding toward the severed body parts still lying on the floor.
“We need to bag them and put them in an ice water bath,” Philip said.
He opened the medical bag, pulled out two resealable bags. “Here, see if you can fill these in the kitchen.”
He slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then reached for the hands. But because of all the blood, he lost his grip on one of them and it slipped to the floor.
“Shit, shit, shit,” he said quietly and tried again as Sandra came back into the room with the bags filled with ice water.
His face was stony as he placed each hand into its icy bath and sealed the bag, then laid the bags next to Shirin’s body. He and Sandra counted to three again and lifted the stretcher.
Then the younger girl peed. The puddle spread under her bare feet.
“Mommy!” she cried, beginning to stomp her feet in the puddle.
Aida picked her up and carried her out of the room.
“We have to go,” Philip said to Aida. “The police are here now.”
“Go, then,” she said. “I’ll stay here. With Sara.”
Philip felt the bulk of the weight of the stretcher in his arms as he led them down step by step.
In the entryway, they met two uniformed officers who immediately continued up to the apartment.
As soon as they had gotten the patient into the ambulance, Sandra got behind the wheel as Philip connected the third wire of the EKG. He shook his head at the slow frequency. Usually he would have inserted an IV, but because of the severe blood loss, there was no chance he would find a large enough vessel.
He looked at the patient, studying her rib cage. It was hardly moving.
He considered using the intraosseous drill for access to the venous system through her bone marrow, but then folded the blanket back and looked at the tourniquet. He checked the strap multiple times and realized something wasn’t right. It was loose.
It wasn’t until then that he realized he hadn’t tied it properly.
As he threw the blanket completely back, he saw the last sight he wanted to see. Blood flow to her arm hadn’t stopped after all. It had continued to flow from her left wrist and collected under her body on the stretcher.
“For Christ’s sake!” he exclaimed.
“What’s going on? How is she?” Sandra shouted through the cab window.
“I can’t stop the bleeding!”
She met his eyes in the rearview mirror, then swerved to avoid a truck that hadn’t bothered to pull over for the flashing lights of the ambulance.
Philip pulled the tourniquet tighter, but the vehicle swayed and he lost his grip.
“Can you drive straight, please!” he screamed, reaching for the strap again. He pulled and pulled. He knew that every second counted now. Sweat beaded up on his forehead and his mouth was dry, but he was finally able to get the tourniquet in place. Just as he tied it off, he became aware of the sound from the EKG.
A single, solid tone.
And he knew. For the second day in a row it was the sound of a patient’s death.
CHAPTER
SIX
THE PROTECTIVE PLASTIC fluttered as Mia Bolander entered the living room of the apartment in Eneby. She surveyed the room. She estimated the ceiling height, length, width. Three hundred square feet, she thought, which was larger than her own living room.
But this room had blue wallpaper, knickknacks on the windowsill, and a leather sofa with a textured throw.
When she visited crime scenes in houses or apartments, they often had broken glass or overturned furniture. But here, everything seemed to be in its rightful place. That made it even stranger to see the sea of blood on the floor. Chaos in the middle of order.
What in the hell had happened?
She followed the red footprints with her gaze. It looked as if someone had slipped around in the blood.
“Those are sock prints,” Anneli Lindgren said, standing up. “Someone walked around in socks, then took them off and walked around in bare feet. Looks like a women’s size six.”
“Could be her oldest daughter,” Henrik said.
Mia looked at the floor again.
“The victim’s name was Shirin, right?”
“Yes,” Henrik said. “Shirin Norberg, forty-two years old. Born and raised in Iran. Two daughters, Aida, who’s eighteen, and Sara, who’s five. Was married to Magnus Norberg, who died in a car accident the same year Sara was born.”
“There’s a big gap between the children. Do they have the same dad?”
“Yes, Magnus was the father of both girls.”
Anneli went to get her camera from the hallway.
“And the oldest daughter found her?” Mia asked.
“Yes.”
“Jesus. Just think, finding your mom tied to a chair, her hands cut off.”
“I can’t even imagine,” Henrik said.
Mia looked at Anneli, who had returned with her camera around her neck.
“Is Shirin in the system?” Mia asked, but Henrik shook his head no.
“You’ve checked the offender database?”
“Yes.”
“And Social Services?”
“Yes, they don’t have anything on her.”
“The Women’s Crisis Center?”
“Nothing there, either.”
“Okay, so we have no known history. But she was born in Iran and has had both hands cut off. What should we call that, honor mutilation?”
Henrik looked at her without saying anything.
“I’ve read about thieves who’ve had their hands cut off as punishment,” Anneli said from behind her camera.
Henrik nodded, still silent as if he were lost in thought.
“Well, should we go to Vrinnevi and take a look at the body?” Mia a
sked.
“It’s already been transported to the Swedish National Forensic Center for the autopsy,” Henrik said.
“That was fast,” Mia said.
“Yes. The people at the morgue are always anxious to get rid of the bodies.”
“Let’s look at some of the photos, then,” Mia said.
“Sure,” Henrik replied. “But let’s call in a prosecutor first.”
* * *
The stairs down to the apartment garage seemed to take forever. Jana Berzelius took the last steps more quickly.
She had intended to work from home today but when her superior, Chief Public Prosecutor Torsten Granath, had personally called her, it was clear that she would have to get down to the station immediately. She had no choice but to leave Danilo alone in her apartment.
Her bag was heavy and was chafing her shoulder. She had packed it with things she didn’t want him poking around in, like her computer and her most important personal papers and binders. It was bad enough that Danilo had taken up residence in her apartment, making it into some sort of idiotic hideout.
She had a difficult time shrugging off the unpleasant feeling of him being in her space and didn’t really know how to handle it. Her whole adult life she had always lived alone, slept alone, eaten alone. She’d never had a visitor, never once let anyone come through the door.
When she’d left the apartment, Danilo had been standing in the hall, looking at her. His arms had been crossed and something resembling a sneer had been on his lips. But he hadn’t said anything, and she hadn’t, either. She had simply met his gaze and fantasized about putting her hands around his neck and squeezing until he was gasping for breath.
She would gladly break every bone in his body and would more than gladly erase him from the face of the earth. But killing him was not an option—not yet.
While driving to the police station she thought of her dead mother. She knew she had to make all the funeral arrangements. And she wanted to do them by herself, not involving her father.
* * *
She felt a few drops of rain on her face as she left the car and walked toward the station. She had decided she would not tell anyone at work about her mother’s death...at least for now. The automatic door whirred open, and the hallway smelled strongly of disinfectant. Damp stripes trailed along where the polishing machine had traveled. Henrik Levin caught up with her; she heard his long strides before his greeting.
“So great that you could come right away,” he said. “We’re starting the meeting immediately in the conference room.”
“Good,” Jana said.
“That looks heavy. Can I carry your bag for you?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
* * *
Mia Bolander looked up and sighed when Jana Berzelius and Henrik Levin stepped into the conference room where she, Gunnar Öhrn and technician Ola Söderström were already sitting.
Jana Fucking Berzelius, Mia thought. Career whore. Beautiful and successful, interesting and gorgeous, on her way up in life.
Didn’t they have any other choice to lead the preliminary investigation?
Mia had disliked Jana from the moment they’d met. But why? Because she was upper-class, proud and stiff? Jana was the best resource of the Public Prosecution Office, a truly competent preliminary investigation leader, no one could deny that. But if she’d been just a bit less competent, she would’ve been kicked off the team long ago because of her snobbiness. Normally, Mia would have refused to work with someone like Jana, but nothing was normal anymore when it came to work.
Nor in her own life.
Mia looked down at her hands and scraped her chipped nail polish with her thumbnail. A feeling of emptiness had begun to form inside her. It wasn’t exactly that she’d begun to doubt herself—she knew she was a good murder investigator. Her success rate was solid across the board, and she felt challenged by her work.
It wasn’t police work that was the problem, and she had no intention of changing careers. It was that only two men had approached her last night. And they had only looked at her without saying anything, without taking any fucking initiative. They didn’t even make a comment on her revealing blouse.
“Well, then,” Jana said, tapping on the table with her pointer finger. “Let’s get started, shall we?”
“Yes,” Henrik said. “Shirin Norberg, female, forty-two years of age, was found near death in her apartment and later passed away in the ambulance en route to the hospital. She died from complications related to the brutal violence she was subjected to. There were large bruises on her body, and both hands had been severed. If you look here...”
He nodded toward Ola, who pressed a few buttons on his computer. A number of pictures were projected on the wall.
Mia looked at the photo of the dead woman, her pale face and dry lips, her arms, lying at her sides. The photo of the severed hands made her open her mouth.
“Jesus,” she said, throwing her hand out in a gesture toward the photo, “this is so awful!”
“Yes,” Henrik said, looking up.
“How the hell can someone mutilate another person like that?”
“That’s a legitimate question,” Henrik said. “I can think of possible motives—sadism, desire, power, revenge—”
He pointed his finger toward the naked body and looked at Jana.
“—do you see this?” he asked.
Jana nodded, following his finger. Mia let her gaze travel over the large bruises that were visible under her ribs, on her hips, her thighs, her shins.
“She was tied up,” Mia said, “and it looks like someone beat her up really badly.”
“Do we have a theory about how these injuries occurred?” Jana asked.
“Björn Ahlmann has the body, so he will be able to tell when he examines it. But this thing with the hands,” Henrik said, sighing, “it’s one of the worst mutilations I’ve seen, and...”
“What?” Jana asked.
“No, nothing,” Henrik said.
“Yes, say it. What are you thinking about our course of action?” Jana said.
“What I’m thinking doesn’t matter until we have all of the facts from Björn first,” Henrik said.
“He couldn’t give us anything more to go on?” Jana said.
“No, not just yet, but I hope that he’ll get working on it soon. We’re dealing with a very depraved perpetrator here, as you see,” Henrik said, pointing to a new picture of the body.
“Those look like old burn marks on her chest,” Jana said.
“Yes, and it’s usually the case that violence like this is committed by someone close to the victim,” Henrik said. “But her husband died five years ago.”
“And now?” said Jana.
“No relationships we know of.”
“What’s next?” Jana said.
“We’ll be questioning her children.”
“Yes, do,” Jana said. “Right away.”
* * *
He sat unmoving on the couch and rested his legs on the table. She sat in one of the armchairs, wringing her hands. Philip Engström and Sandra Gustafsson avoided each other’s eyes as they sat alone in the crew lounge.
“What did the boss say?” she wondered after a moment.
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked with Eva yet.”
“Why not?”
He sighed.
“I have no reason to?”
“You know that we are required to self-report obvious cases of error...”
“For Christ’s sake, Sandra, don’t start with that again!”
“You promised to report yourself...”
“If I made a mistake, yes.”
“And what do you consider malpractice?”
“Well, maybe we need to tease out the concept a bit. Malpractice could be inadeq
uate routines, inadequate education, inadequate work relationships or inadequate equipment. And in this case, it was a tourniquet that didn’t function properly.”
“I assumed that...”
“You assumed what, that it was my mistake? Sorry to disappoint you, Sandra. It wasn’t me, it was the tourniquet. And who the fuck cares about a fucking tourniquet when a patient’s hands have been hacked off?”
The room was completely silent. He felt himself breathing more heavily; dizziness came and went. Just for a second or so, but he recognized it as the first sign that he needed a pill. He longed to feel its drowsiness wash over him, to feel his body relax.
“You’ll never be able to admit to having made a mistake, will you, Philip?”
Sandra looked at him with a serious expression, and he thought about how her eyes were greenest when she was angry.
“I’ve never had to think about it,” he said, “because I never make mistakes.”
* * *
Jana Berzelius had absolutely no desire to visit the funeral home to make her mother’s arrangements, but no one else was going to do it for her. And it had to be done.
Obviously, she’d lived her whole life knowing that her adoptive mother and father would pass away sometime, but she hadn’t counted on her mother leaving the world so suddenly.
Because of that, she had no idea what her mother would have wanted for a coffin, for hymns, for a gravestone. And maybe it was just as well—it gave her the freedom to decide what the ceremony would look like.
She turned off the ignition, stepped out of the car and thought how the errand would have felt less unpleasant if it had been for Danilo’s funeral.
The bell over the door jingled as she walked in.
A woman peered at Jana from behind the door to a break room. She had a light-colored, flowered dress on and permed hair.
“I’ll be right there,” she said with her mouth full. “Have a seat for just a moment.”
Jana stepped in, surveying the place, feeling how it oozed sorrow and thinking the air was far too warm and humid. The funeral home was on the corner of Hospitalgatan and Gamla Rådstugugatan. The windows facing the street were covered by vertical blinds, creating a gloomy atmosphere. A newspaper rack held several different brochures with titles such as “Arranging a Funeral,” “Estate Inventory Proceedings” and “Your Will.” Jana didn’t even like the name of the funeral home—The Hourglass. It was as if they wanted to remind everyone that their days were numbered.
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