The Tenant

by Katrine Engberg

  “Good, you’re here. We found several interesting things over the course of the day.”

  He laid twelve pictures of the crime scene out in a row and pointed at them with a ballpoint pen.

  “As you know, we found blood spatter on the walls in the living room, the kitchen, and in the kitchen hallway, where she was found. We collected more than eighty samples from the carpets, walls, and furniture. It’s hard to say where the violence began, but based on the many elliptically shaped spatter marks on and around the sofa in the living room, I would think the first stabs took place here. The pattern of the bloodstains indicates that they were coming from above when they hit the wall. The length of the spatter marks also tells us that they struck the wall at high speed. The victim may have fallen onto the sofa, because there are two knife holes in the upholstery, where he must have stabbed at her. We found an impression of Julie’s left hand in a pool of blood just below the sofa. The same handprint was left on the floor three times, moving in the direction of the kitchen door. That corresponds with the stab wounds Nyboe found in her back. The killer stabbed her as she crawled away from him.”

  There was a momentary silence in the office. A spontaneous little gesture of respect for Julie Stender’s last awful minutes.

  Jeppe broke the silence with a little cough.

  “The murder weapon still hasn’t turned up? Whatever the killer hit her on the head with?”

  “He must have taken it with him,” Clausen said, shaking his head in annoyance. “There’s nothing in the apartment that can be picked up and weighs more than a carton of milk that hasn’t been thoroughly examined.”

  He reached across the wide linoleum-covered desk for another manila envelope and pulled a bloody object out of it.

  “We found this fleece jacket next to the body. It was full of blood, hers, of course. The coronors already examined it. It fits well with the theory that the killer placed some kind of protection over her face before he struck. The blood on it comes from the wounds on her body.”

  “What about prints? He must have left some trace behind.” Jeppe wiped his forehead on his shirtsleeve.

  “Sorry about the heat. Our air-conditioning is out of whack again,” Clausen said, clasping his hands. “We found several excellent prints of the killer’s shoe in the blood, ran the print in the database and found a match. Unfortunately, a shoe imprint is not unique like a fingerprint, so all we were able to determine from it was the brand and size of the shoes.”

  One of the forensic techs pulled himself away from his screen and turned to face them. His face was burly and friendly, with a thick beard. Underneath the desk his knee was bobbing in a restless routine so ingrained that he no longer noticed it himself.

  “Sneakers, Nike Free, size nine. Some of the best imprints I’ve seen in a long time. Right in the middle of a pool of blood on the floor. You would almost think he planted it there on purpose.”

  “The shoe was brand-new,” Clausen took over. “There isn’t a single wear mark on the sole, and neither pebbles nor any other impurities in the sole when he entered the apartment. That shoe has never been worn on the street.”

  Clausen and the tech nodded knowingly to each other before Clausen continued.

  “The killer would have caused a considerable amount of attention if he had strolled down the street covered in blood after the killing, and there weren’t any traces of blood in the stairs, either. He must have changed his clothes and shoes before he left the apartment.”

  “That sounds extremely well planned,” Jeppe interjected.

  Clausen turned to face them with a grim look on his face.

  “Planned? Yes, I can assure you it was well planned.”

  * * *

  ANETTE PINCHED THE bridge of her nose with two fingers and breathed out heavily. Everything about this case was complicated. Until she transferred to Homicide eight years ago, she had been part of OC, the Organized Crime unit. Gang crimes, drug sales, threats, and violence: everything had been about money and power. Not always pretty but at least understandable in all its simple brutality. Elaborate knife-work patterns, clothing changes, and crime-novel manuscripts felt like tinsel hitting her face every time she tried to orient herself.

  What was Julie’s death about if not money and power?

  She thumped Clausen on the shoulder. “I wonder if he didn’t wear a tracksuit over his regular clothes as a kind of protective suit? Like sweats maybe? He could ring the doorbell without causing suspicion and easily take it off and put it in a bag once he was done with the killing?”

  Clausen considered.

  “Yeah, that sounds plausible. He could have changed into the new shoes right before ringing the doorbell. What do I know, maybe he was already wearing gloves? I mean, a pair of latex gloves isn’t something she would notice until he was already inside. Then he would only have to pull out the knife once he was inside the apartment.”

  Anette furrowed her brow. A murderer wearing latex gloves?

  “What about the knife?” she asked. “Do we know for sure that the murderer brought it with him? It wasn’t the girls’?”

  “Caroline Boutrup denies having seen the knife before.”

  “So the murderer killed Julie, cut his gækkebrev into her face, and then packed his outer layer of clothing, the heavy murder weapon, and a change of shoes into a bag—and then strolled out onto the street? Why the hell would he have left the knife behind? That doesn’t make any sense. Also: can we not open a window or something? It’s roasting in here!” Anette started to feel like a piece in a game she couldn’t control, and the feeling was pissing her off.

  “We made silicone casts of a rib bone that was hit by the knife and of the knife blade on the folding knife.” Clausen walked to a window overlooking the parking lot and opened it while he spoke. Sun-warm air poured into the stuffy office, bearing a promise of vacation and better times ahead. “The knife blade matches the cut marks in the rib cartilage. Besides, the knife tested positive for blood, even though it had been wiped clean. I’m confident it’s the knife he used.”

  “Well, that’s good! Then we can run it in the system and see if we know it from somewhere.” Anette tried to sound positive.

  Clausen flung up his arms apologetically.

  “We’ve already done that,” he said. “The knife is a common hunting knife sold by countless online vendors for a few bucks. And the knife is new, too. There’s not a single irregularity in the knife blade—not a nick.”

  “New shoes, new knife, latex gloves.” Anette laughed bitterly. Maybe she should ask the superintendent for a transfer to a department where the criminals weren’t so cunning that she had to decode every single event from seven angles.

  One of the forensic techs got up from his seat and came over with a piece of paper fluttering from his hand. Anette recognized him. David Bovin, the fingerprint specialist. He, too, looked hot and bothered, his skin glistening uncomfortably. Every ten seconds he squeezed his eyes shut for a long, involuntary blink.

  “I found something!” he exclaimed. “On the inside of the doorframe by the kitchen door I lifted a very clear print from the heel of a right hand and thumb. The person must have leaned on the doorframe like this.” Bovin leaned on a fictional doorframe.

  “The way you would to keep your balance when putting your shoes on?” Anette asked.

  Bovin nodded and blinked again.

  “But isn’t that a really common thing to do? The print could be from pretty much anyone,” Anette protested. “It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the murder, does it?”

  “The print contains traces of cornstarch,” Bovin said, holding up his piece of paper. “Or rather, there’s a thick layer of particles in all of the interpapillary lines, so I guess one could say that the print is lathered in it.”

  “But what does that mean? Particles in the lines, what could that be?”

  “There are lots of everyday items that contain cornstarch, like creams and cosmetics. But o
nly in very small quantities. Much less than in this print here.” He gestured so the paper fluttered around him. “But it’s also used to lubricate the inside of sterile latex gloves. I can say with relative certainty that this print came from a person who had been wearing latex gloves until just before he or she leaned on the doorframe.”

  “So our murderer took off the bloody gloves in the doorway and then got careless and supported himself on the doorframe with his bare hand while changing his shoes?” Anette could hear her own heart beating inside her chest. A drop of sweat ran down her spine.

  “Sounds probable,” Bovin replied. “I’m going to match it to the fingerprints I’ve taken from Julie Stender’s family and friends and residents in the building. If that doesn’t give us anything, I’ll run it through the central database as well, and then we’ll have to take it from there.”

  Silence spread in the warm office. After half a minute Clausen exhaled audibly through his nose so that a hair that had escaped the trimmer flapped in the breeze. Then he swung his left hand to look at his watch.

  “Yes, we’ll have to hope Bovin finds a match. Otherwise we’ll just have to wait and see what the Forensics folks have to say about the blood and tissue samples we sent them. They can create DNA profiles out of almost nothing with that new PCR technique, but it takes a few days. And now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a stack of other items on my desk that also need to be looked at today, if not yesterday. You’ll let yourselves out, right?”

  * * *

  THE MILD AFTERNOON air in the parking lot felt soothing after the sauna-like temperature at NCTC. Anette opened the car doors and released a wave of shut-in heat. They were both hesitant about getting into the hot car and instead leaned their butts on the hood. A group of blackbirds fluttered around the treetops surrounding the parking lot, in a seemingly random choreography that somehow looked important to them.

  The ringtone from a phone frightened the birds into another synchronized flight from tree to tree. Jeppe answered the call, and Anette closed her eyes to the low-hanging sun and listened to his end of the call. It consisted mostly of neutral sounds, from which it was impossible to deduce whether he was receiving bad or good news.

  Jeppe concluded the call and put his cell phone back in his pocket.

  “That was Falck,” he reported. “He called the Faeroe Islands. Hjalti Patursson killed himself last summer. Jumped off a cliff at a place called Sumba while he was hiking. They didn’t find him for several days. He had put his backpack neatly on the ground and taken off his boots, but they didn’t find a suicide note.”

  Anette shook her head in disappointment. “Well, then he didn’t kill Julie.”

  “Why would he have done that anyway?”

  “It can’t be a coincidence,” Anette said. “The teacher Julie had an affair with kills himself less than a year before her murder?”

  “How do those things have anything to do with each other?” Jeppe squinted at the sun.

  “Christian Stender.”

  “But how?”

  “Well, I don’t know that yet.” She kicked the car door angrily to close it but, thanks to the hydraulics, the outburst ended up as a rather tame affair.

  Jeppe laughed wryly at his temperamental partner. “What, do you need a chocolate bar or something?”

  “Yes, please!” she snapped. “And would you please ask me if I’m having my period as well? That would make this just about perfect.” She scowled at her partner. Sometimes his arrogant taunting was more than she could take.

  Jeppe wiped the smile off his face. “Falck is going to find Hjalti Patursson’s mother, who’s still alive. We have to start by finding out why he killed himself and also hear what she knows about Julie and the pregnancy.”

  Anette nodded sullenly. Latex gloves, arrogant partners, and suspects who commit suicide—there were limits to how much a person could take in one day. She got in the driver’s seat and pulled her door shut with a bang, which completely made up for the unimpressive kick earlier. Jeppe walked around the car and climbed into the seat next to her. Took his time fastening his seat belt.

  “Do you really think Christian Stender would murder his own daughter?” he asked her.

  Anette turned on the engine, pushing angrily on the gas pedal.

  “Let me put it this way. I would like to know if his feet are a size nine!”

  She pulled out onto the road, so fast that her partner was pushed awkwardly back into his seat. That helped a little.

  * * *

  AT HEADQUARTERS, JEPPE took charge of the car keys to return them to the board, where all keys and radios hung on their marked spots. He ran up the stairs without waiting for Anette. Now seemed like a good time to deal the team leader card and delegate a few tasks that would keep her busy and far away from him.

  Members of the team were sitting at their computers and phones, though on a normal day they would have gone home ages ago. Falck was talking on the phone and Jeppe signaled with a raised finger that he wanted to talk to him afterward. He nodded distractedly and kept talking. Jeppe headed for his own office, but Thomas Larsen’s athletic footsteps caught up to him before he made it that far. Larsen looked like someone who had just bathed and done his hair.

  “Anything definitive from Forensics?”

  “A footprint,” Jeppe said, shaking his head. “But nothing usable aside from the fact that the killer can squeeze himself into a size nine. And a handprint that seems promising.”

  “Then let’s bring Kristoffer in. I mean, we know it’s him. His friends are covering for him, taking advantage of the fact that people at the Student Café were drunk and can’t remember the times exactly. If we put him in a cell overnight, Falck and I can get him to confess.”

  “I say we wait, Larsen.”

  “And I say we move, Kørner!”

  A sudden urge to punch Larsen’s attractive, Roman nose overwhelmed Jeppe. His temples tingled, and his throat felt tight. He controlled the urge but couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice.

  “As long as I’m the team leader, you’ll follow my orders. If I hear that you make a move without my permission, you’d better start preparing for a transfer to a very small island. Langeland for instance. Is that understood?”

  Larsen turned on his heel and marched away in a cloud of rage and expensive aftershave. Jeppe, who had absolutely no power to transfer a colleague and who could end up in serious trouble if his supervisors heard about such threats, walked into his office with sweaty palms and a pounding heart.

  By the early evening, a calm fell over Homicide. Witness statements from Gregers Hermansen, Caroline Boutrup, and the victim’s family were compared to see if anything disagreed, the manager of the Student Café was contacted yet again to check through the employees’ time statements once more, and Daniel Fussing and the band’s night on the town was dissected for a third time. Pizza boxes from a tall stack on a table were calmly and quietly emptied, and the scent of pepperoni spread through the office.

  Saidani sat bent over Esther de Laurenti’s laptop, trying to find more information about the chapters uploaded to the writers’ group. From the meeting room, Anette called Christian Stender to question him about Julie’s affair with Hjalti Patursson, the pregnancy, and the subsequent abortion. Jeppe closed the door to his own office to finally answer the three worried messages that his mother had sent during the day. He kept it brief. As long as she knew he was alive, she couldn’t really expect more from him right now.

  Falck knocked and cautiously opened the door, carrying Esther de Laurenti’s manuscript in a messy stack. Jeppe signaled for him to take a seat and offered him an open bag of candy. Some minor compensation for the fact that they’d been at this since eight this morning.

  “How did the questioning of de Laurenti go?”

  Falck took a candy and pushed it thoughtfully around in his mouth.

  “Hmm, well, I have to admit that she doesn’t seem like an obvious candidate. Not because she’s the least
bit weak, but she doesn’t strike me as the type who could ever be violent. Classic academic—the kind of person who thinks all conflict should be resolved by talking it through. Plus, I have a hard time seeing any possible motive.”

  Jeppe looked quizzically at him.

  “But that’s not to say that we shouldn’t keep an eye on her!” Falck shook his index finger admonishingly.

  “There’s not much risk that we’ll lose sight of her in this case,” Jeppe sighed. “She seems to be the focal point for the murder. Or, to be more precise, her manuscript is. Have you had a chance to read it?”

  “Yes. It’s a detailed draft for a crime novel, including the actual murder, about forty pages total.”

  “Are there other similarities between the draft and Julie’s killing?” Jeppe asked, flipping through the pages, skimming the text.

  “It’s a little hard to assess.” Falck helped himself to some more candies, filling up his mouth and making his speech somewhat fuzzy. “There are details from the real killing that don’t appear in the manuscript. The girl in the book doesn’t have a roommate, and the concert isn’t in there, either. But she meets the killer on the street and brings him up to the apartment the way it may have happened in reality. Unless he rang the bell right after she came home. Either way, she must have known him. A young woman doesn’t just let strange men in.”

  “What about the actual killing?” Jeppe asked.

  “Frighteningly similar. The manuscript doesn’t mention anything about protective clothing or gloves, but otherwise it matches eerily well.” Falck adjusted his suspender straps and then explained. “The killer takes out a knife immediately after being let into the apartment—in the book she’s in love with him, which could fit with the witness statements we have from Caroline Boutrup and Esther de Laurenti. He holds her down with his bare hands and carves the pattern in her face while she’s still alive. She bleeds to death in his arms.”