it felt like an entire year had passed. Maybe it was the change in the weather that gave her this feeling. Last week she had been cold and had shivered, and now she was enjoying the warm wind’s promise of summer.
Beate Bentsen, Peter Moller, and Jens Metz were already sitting in Bentsen’s office. The air was thick with smoke. Irene hesitated on the threshold before she stepped into the room. Moller seemed to sense why. He opened the window. Whether the air outside was any cleaner was debatable but at least it diluted the nicotine concentration in the room.
Everyone greeted her warmly and welcomed her back, even if the reason for her return might have been more pleasant.
“Weren’t there supposed to be two of you?” Beate Bentsen asked.
Irene had hoped to avoid that particular question but realized that was wishful thinking. “Yes. . but my colleague wasn’t feeling well this morning. I thought it would be best if he could sleep.”
“Does he need a doctor?”
“No. It will pass on its own. Eventually.”
“A hangover,” Jens Metz whispered theatrically.
He winked meaningfully at Irene. She was ashamed of Jonny’s behavior. Personally, he wouldn’t have the good sense to be ashamed, she thought, and her irritation grew.
“We’ll start without your colleague and you’ll have to try and bring him up to speed when he gets here. Both Jens and Peter were present at the Hotel Aurora when Isabell Lind was found.”
Beate Bentsen looked at the two inspectors over the rims of her French designer glasses.
Jens Metz leaned back in his chair and linked his sausage-like fingers over his belly. The backrest protested nervously but Metz didn’t seem to hear it. Or maybe he was used to chairs whining under his weight.
“We got the call on Thursday afternoon, May 20, that a dead woman had been found at the Hotel Aurora by some painters. Peter and I got there shortly after four thirty. The medical examiner had already arrived and was inspecting the corpse. Here you can see the pictures of what we were faced with.”
Metz bent forward, breathing heavily, and shook some photos out of a thick envelope.
Irene started with a picture of the room. It was taken from a high angle. The photographer must have been standing on a tall stool or a ladder.
Under the bare window, an overturned nightstand lay on the floor next to a lamp with a broken plastic shade. A bed could be seen in the rear next to the wall. Another bed had been placed in the center of the room. Isabell was lying on top of it.
Irene took out another photo. It was an enlargement of the bed with Isabell’s body spread out on top.
Her hands were chained with handcuffs to the high wooden bed-posts. She was lying on her back, completely naked, with her legs spread apart. There was a deep incision from the top of her collarbone all the way down to her pelvic bone. Mechanically, Irene noticed that the incision hadn’t bled very much. There was, however, a good deal of blood under her, from her waist down to her separated legs.
Irene switched to the next photo, which was a close-up of the head and neck area. Strangulation marks from a noose were evident on her throat. Isabell’s eyes were wide open, and her tongue hung out of her mouth, dark and swollen.
Irene was completely unprepared for her reaction. She was barely able to make it to her knees by the wastepaper basket before she threw up. The entirety of the delicious Danish breakfast came up.
When she was done, she got up on shaky legs and stammered, “Excuse me. . I’ll go and wash the basket. . but this girl was a friend of my daughters’ for many years. . lived next door. . and stayed over and ate with us. . ”
“We understand. It’s difficult when you know the victim,” Bentsen said soothingly.
Irene quickly grabbed the basket and slipped down the corridor. She knew where the bathroom was.
She cleaned the basket and blessed the fact that it was made of plastic. Woven rattan would have been worse. She bathed her face with ice-cold water and washed her mouth clean. Then she saw her pale face in the mirror and mumbled half inaudibly to her reflection, “It’s not just the fact that I knew you. It’s my fault that you died. I led the murderer to you. Oh, Bell!”
Her throat felt thick with suppressed sobs, but there wasn’t time for sorrow right now. For Bell’s sake she was forced to try to be professional and objective. And what would the Danes think? One Swedish police officer is lying in bed at the hotel with a hangover, and the other pukes when she sees pictures from the murder scene.
Her Danish colleagues were sitting in the same places, waiting for her arrival, each with a fresh cigarette. The smoke made her feel ill again, but she braced herself.
“I’m sorry. It’s OK now,” Irene said and sat down.
She didn’t pick up the close-up of Bell again, but turned to Jens Metz instead and asked, “What did the medical examiner say?”
“She had been dead more than twelve hours but less than twenty when she was found. He thought that fifteen to seventeen hours was a good guess. It matches the time she disappeared. She was strangled first. That’s the cause of death.”
“So she was dead when the trauma to her abdomen was inflicted?”
“Yes.”
Thank God, thought Irene.
Metz picked up the enlargement of the photo of Isabell on the bed. He said, “The medical examiner thinks that she was chained with the handcuffs first. There are marks on the wrists that indicate she struggled to get free. Then she was strangled. As soon as she was dead, the murderer started striking her pubic bone with a heavy object. The bone was completely crushed, just like with Carmen Ostergaard and your guy. . what’s his name.”
“Marcus Tosscander,” Irene added.
“Marcus. Both he and Carmen display exactly the same type of injuries. The object was also driven into her vagina and rectum. They were heavily damaged. Finally, he slit her open. According to Professor Blokk, he used the same incision that Ostergaard and your guy had. Notice how careful he has been not to cut through the navel. The words are Blokk’s, not mine.” Metz made an ironic face.
“The object was not left in the room?” Irene asked.
“No. Blokk estimates that it was a sturdy, short clublike object.”
“Could it be a large baton?”
Irene could hear that her voice sounded unsteady when she asked the question.
Metz looked surprised when he answered. “That’s actually what Blokk guessed, but we really don’t know.”
A baton. The police officer, she thought. And she was sitting in a room with three officers who had known about her private search for Isabell.
Metz picked up the photo of Isabell on the bed. He studied the scene thoughtfully before he said, “The knife that was used was powerful, a hunting knife or an autopsy scalpel. According to Blokk, the murderer would have had a heck of a time with the breastbone even if he had had a proper knife. With the other two victims, the breastbone was sawed through with a circular saw, but here he must have decided not to worry about opening the chest.”
“Why not? Wouldn’t it have been easy to bring along a circular saw?” said Irene.
For the first time, Peter Moller responded. “Maybe he didn’t have access to the saw this particular night. But it’s probably because a circular saw makes a lot of noise. Even at the Hotel Aurora they would have reacted to the sound of a circular saw in the middle of the night.”
It sounded like a plausible explanation. Metz nodded in agreement before he cleared his throat and continued. “We found out from the staff at the hotel that a woman had called and asked about Isabell. First she had asked for a guest who was called Simon Steiner but when the porter said that there wasn’t a guest with that name, she got worried. That’s when she asked about Isabell.”
“Did any of the employees at the hotel see Isabell?”
“No, but we know why. The top floor was closed due to renovation. The room that Isabell was found in was one of the last ones to be fixed. The other rooms were still empty because they had just glued the carpets down and the smell was horrible. No one will be able to stay in those rooms for quite some time. We found marks on the emergency exit door that leads to the back lot behind the hotel. Someone picked that lock as well as the lock on the door of the hotel room. Our theory is that the murderer met Isabell outside the hotel and took her up to the top
