‘Well … like I said, somewhere dry.’
The line fell silent, and Jeanette thought for a moment before going on.
‘So pretty much anywhere, then? Could I have done it at home?’
She saw the disgusting and utterly absurd image in her mind’s eye. A dead boy at home in the house in Enskede, getting drier and more mummified by the week.
An indescribably terrifying picture was developing. What Ivo Andri? was explaining had a purpose.
‘I don’t know what your home’s like, but even an ordinary apartment might do. It might smell a bit to start with, but if you had access to a hot-air ventilator and put the corpse in an enclosed space, it would certainly be possible to do it before the neighbours started to complain.’
‘A wardrobe, you mean?’
‘Maybe not as small as that. A closet, a bathroom, something like that.’
‘That’s not much to go on.’ She could feel her frustration growing.
‘No, I realise that. But there is something that might be able to help you.’
Jeanette listened intently.
‘The preliminary chemical analysis indicates that the body is full of chemicals.’
Something, at last, she thought.
‘To start with, there’s amphetamines. We’ve found traces in the stomach and in the veins. So he’s either eaten or drunk a lot, but there’s also evidence to suggest that it had been injected as well.’
‘A drug addict?’ She hoped he was going to say yes, because everything would be a whole lot simpler if they were looking for an addict who had died in some drug den, then dried out over the passage of time. They’d be able to write off the case and draw the conclusion that one of the young boy’s drugged-up friends had dumped the body in the bushes in a state of confusion.
‘No, I don’t think so. He was probably injected against his will. The needle marks are fairly random, and most of them wouldn’t even have hit a vein.’
‘Oh, fuck.’
‘Yes, I’m inclined to agree with you there.’
‘And you’re quite sure he wasn’t shooting up himself?’
‘As sure as I can be. But the amphetamines aren’t the most interesting thing. What’s really strange is that he’s also got traces of anaesthetic in his body. More precisely, a substance known as Xylocain adrenalin, which is a Swedish invention from the forties. To start with, AstraZeneca marketed Xylocain as a luxury medicine: Pope Pius XII took it for hiccups, and President Eisenhower was treated with it for hypochondria. These days it’s a standard painkiller, the stuff you get injected into your gums if you ask the dentist for anaesthetic.’
‘OK … I’m not following you now.’
‘Well, this boy hasn’t got it in his mouth, of course, but throughout his body. Bloody weird, if you ask me.’
‘And he’s been severely abused as well?’
‘Yes, he’s taken a lot of beatings, but the anaesthetic would have kept him going. Eventually, after hours of suffering, the drugs would have paralysed his heart and lungs. A slow and horribly painful death. Poor kid …’
Jeanette was feeling dizzy.
‘But why?’ she asked, in the vain hope that Ivo had some sort of reasonable explanation.
‘If you’ll permit me to speculate …?’
‘By all means.’
‘The first thing that came to mind were organised dogfights. You know, two prize dogs fighting until one of them is killed. The sort of thing that sometimes goes on in the suburbs.’
‘That sounds like a hell of a long shot,’ Jeanette said instinctively, repulsed by the macabre thought. But she wasn’t entirely sure that it was. Over the years she had learned not to dismiss even the most unlikely ideas. On many occasions, once the truth was revealed it turned out to be far stranger than any fiction. She thought of the German cannibal who had used the Internet to find a man who was prepared to let himself be eaten.
‘Well, I’m just speculating,’ Ivo Andri? went on. ‘Another idea might sound more plausible.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That he’s been beaten beyond recognition by someone who didn’t stop even though the boy was dying. Someone who dosed him up with drugs and then carried on with the abuse.’
Jeanette felt a memory flicker.
‘Do you remember that ice-hockey player in V?ster?s, the one who was stabbed about a hundred times?’
‘No, I can’t say that I do. Maybe it was before I came to Sweden.’
‘Yes, it was a while back now. Mid-nineties. It was a skinhead off his head on Rohypnol. The hockey player was openly homosexual, and you know what neo-Nazis think of gays. The skinhead carried on stabbing the dead body way beyond the point when his arm should have cramped up.’
‘Yes, that’s more or less what I’m suggesting. A merciless lunatic full of hate and, well … Rohypnol or anabolic steroids, maybe?’
Jeanette hung up. She was feeling hungry and looked at the time. She decided to give herself a long lunch down in the police headquarters canteen. She’d grab the booth at the far end of the room so she had a chance of being left in peace. The restaurant would be full of people soon, and she wanted to be alone.
Before she sat down with her tray she snatched up a discarded copy of one of the evening papers. Almost at once she realised that the paper’s source in the police department was someone close to her, seeing as the article was based on facts that only someone intimately connected to the case could know. Since she was sure it wasn’t Hurtig, that only left ?hlund or Schwarz.
‘So you’re down here already?’
Jeanette looked up from the paper.
Hurtig was standing beside her, grinning.
‘Is it OK if I join you?’ He nodded to the empty seat opposite her.
‘Are you back already?’ Jeanette gestured to him to sit down.
‘Yes, we got finished an hour or so ago. Danderyd. Some rich bastard in construction with a hard drive full of child porn. Bloody awful.’ Hurtig walked round the table, put his tray down, then sat. ‘The wife went to pieces, and their fourteen-year-old daughter just stood and stared as we arrested him.’
‘Otherwise?’ she asked.
‘Mum called this morning,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘Dad’s not well, he’s in the hospital up in G?llivare.’
Jeanette put her knife and fork down and stared at him. ‘Is it serious?’
Hurtig shook his head. ‘More like unbelievable. Looks like he got his right hand caught in the circular saw, but Mum said they can probably save most of his fingers. She managed to find them and put them in a bag of ice cubes.’
‘Damn.’
‘But she couldn’t find his thumb.’ Hurtig grinned. ‘The cat probably got it. It’s OK, the right hand would be the best one for this to happen to for Dad. He likes carving and playing the fiddle, and for both of those his left hand is more important.’