“Good morning,” Superintendent Andersson said to his youngest detective.
“Morning, sir!” Stridh eagerly launched into his report. “The crime scene was secured by the patrol, and the technicians were already hard at work when I arrived at three-thirty A.M. Malm is here from Forensics, and he says it appears the girl was strangled.”
The superintendent nodded. “Why weren’t you here before three-thirty?” he asked.
“I’d swung by Hammarkullen to look at a guy who flew out of a ninth-floor window just before midnight. There were quite a few people in the apartment, and the party was still going strong. Either they’d all worked together to throw him out or he’d decided to jump on his own. We’ll have to see what the chief forensics officer has to say. Speak of the devil, here she comes now.”
They looked out the thick panes of the window as a white Ford Escort shot in through the gate and stopped sideways behind the superintendent’s car. The driver-side door opened, and flaming red hair popped up over the roof.
“Yvonne Stridner!” moaned Superintendent Andersson.
Criminal Inspector Irene Huss was irritated by the tone of her boss’s voice, but she hoped he’d control his temper long enough to profit from Stridner’s invaluable information. Stridner was incredibly capable, according to many people working in the department, and Irene agreed with them. The superintendent was probably thinking along the same lines, since he lumbered forward and held the door open for Professor Yvonne Stridner. She nodded condescendingly.
“Good morning, Andersson. I see that the Violent Crime Division has put in an appearance.”
The superintendent mumbled that this was indeed the case.
“Where’s the body?” Professor Stridner wondered aloud in her typical businesslike tone.
Fredrik Stridh showed them the way down the stairs to the basement.
“THE VICTIM HAS been identified as Marianne Svard. A nurse. Twenty-eight years old. Just below medium height, slim build. Lying on her stomach across a motor … rather, the hospital’s backup generator. Her clothes are in order. Missing a shoe from her right foot. Judging by rigor mortis, she has been dead approximately six hours, probably slightly longer. Livor mortis on the body parts closest to the ground corroborates this. I am measuring the body temperature now at the scene. The room temperature according to a thermometer on the wall is nineteen degrees Celsius.”
Yvonne Stridner turned off her tiny pocket recorder and began to examine the corpse. Police technician Svante Malm was careful to stay out of her way. Superintendent Andersson pulled his two inspectors out into the hall and whispered, “While Stridner sucks all the oxygen out of the room, what have you learned so far?”
He looked at Fredrik Stridh, who took his notebook from his pocket, licked his thumb, and began to flip through the pages. “The alarm came in at twelve forty-seven A.M. Dr. Sverker Lowander called from his cell phone to report that Lowander Hospital had a power failure. The backup generator also did not start. At the same time, a nurse had gone missing. The patrol arrived at one-ten A.M., the same time as security guard Folke Bengtsson. Dr. Lowander met them at the entrance. Since Bengtsson had a flashlight, Dr. Lowander asked him to go and check what was wrong with the backup generator. The guard was the one who found the body in the room where the main electrical-distribution panel and the backup generator are located.”
Fredrik Stridh had to stop and take a breath at that point. The superintendent quickly put in a question. “What was wrong with the lights? They’re working fine now.” He gestured at the fluorescent ceiling fixtures.
“Bengtsson took a look at the panel and saw that the main circuit breaker had been disconnected. All he had to do was reset it.”
“And what about the backup generator?”
“Someone had cut all the cables to and from the unit. Not a chance that it would work.”
Andersson’s eyebrows rose to his nonexistent hairline. “Anything else of interest?”
“The victim’s shoe was found in the elevator. By me. A hefty sandal. Scholl brand.”
“The victim. What do you know about her?”
“Dr. Lowander identified her as Marianne Svard. One of the night nurses employed at Lowander Hospital.”
“So you’ve talked to the doctor.”
“Yes. It appears he was spending the night at the hospital to keep an eye on a patient who was on a respirator. An elderly man, who’d been operated on earlier that day. By the way, the patient died while the power was out.”
The chief inspector took a quick, deep, audible breath. “So another person died, too?”
Detective Stridh lost his train of thought and said, slightly confused, “Yes … well … the respirator stopped working. He couldn’t breathe. He was in the ICU. Dr. Lowander and the old nurse who was making night rounds on that ward tried to revive him. But they couldn’t. It was then they realized that the victim—Nurse Marianne—had gone missing.”
Irene Huss looked thoughtfully at her colleague. “It seems that she was not at her station right before the power outage,” she pointed out.
Fredrik Stridh shrugged. “So it seems.”
Superintendent Andersson looked grim. “So. We have two people who died here at the hospital last night.”
“What did the other nurse have to say?” wondered Irene.
Fredrik Stridh snorted. “When I arrived, she appeared calm, but as soon as I started to question her about last night, she began to wail. By the way, her name’s Siv Persson. She insists that she saw a ghost walking through the hospital and that that’s who murdered Nurse Marianne. She even went to find an old photograph from some cupboard or other to show me.”
Fredrik Stridh was interrupted by the pathologist, who came out into the hallway. “You can move her now. The technician is almost finished,” Stridner said. Svante Malm was taping broad strips onto Marianne Svard’s body to prevent anything important from falling off it as well as protect it from any outside contamination.
The pathologist glanced sharply at Andersson, who’d unknowingly hunched his shoulders in defense. “An extraordinary case, Andersson,” she said. “That’s why I wanted to be here at the crime scene myself. Sometimes it reveals a great deal.”
“So what does this crime scene show you? How did Marianne Svard die?” Irene hurried to ask.
Yvonne Stridner looked at Irene with surprise, as if she’d just now noticed that she and the superintendent were not alone in the basement hallway. She raised her eyebrows slightly before she replied.
“She was strangled by a noose, and probably not in the room in which she was found. The traces of dirt on her heels indicate that she was dragged here. It appears that the murderer just opened the door and threw her inside, which is why she landed on the generator. She died sometime around midnight.”
The hallway was quiet as the police officers digested the information. Finally Irene asked, “Is the noose still around her throat?”
“No, but it’s left a deep mark. The murderer has strong arms. Now I must head off to the pathology lab. I’ll do an autopsy after lunch.”
Yvonne Stridner swept up the stairs, leaving behind her the scent of her perfume and the sound of her high heels clicking. Irene wondered what her boss would say if she informed him that Yvonne’s perfume was named Joy.
The police trio were lost in their thoughts until Andersson broke the silence.
“Marianne Svard apparently was murdered during the night, and there were only two people on the night shift in the entire hospital: Dr. Lowander and that nurse … Siv Persson. Am I right, Fredrik?”
“Yes, but they were not alone. There were six patients who’d been admitted into the care ward, not to mention the old guy on the respirator.”
“Irene and I will have a little chat with the doctor and Nurse Siv. Fredrik, go back to the station and get two or three people to canvass the neighborhood. Have them interview the other patients, too. Then go home and go to bed.”
“But I’m not tired!”
“Don’t backtalk. The directive coming down from the powers-that-be stipulates no expensive overtime.”
The inspector waved his finger under Stridh’s nose. Stridh loped away without a reply.
• • •
