She started by getting rid of the long, dark hair at the back of her head, then the sides. Suddenly she heard male voices outside the door and froze.
She shut her eyes. If they opened the door then that was it, she’d never be able to hold it shut.
But the voices quickly disappeared, and a few minutes later her hair was almost completely shaved off and she smiled at her reflection.
Now she was someone who could be of use, someone who could work. Not a mamzer.
I’m going to be strong, she thought. Stronger than Father.
Hundudden – Island of Djurg?rden
‘THIS IS IT,’ Jeanette says, opening the steel door in the cellar beneath Viggo Dürer’s garage and pointing with her arm before immediately going back to her work in the outer room.
The pathologist looks in through the doorway with a strong sense of reluctance. He realises immediately that this is going to take all night.
The grief he had suffered over many years is nothing compared to the collective despair contained in this room. The room itself is an installation, a calculated staging of sorrow, death and perversion.
Only three hours later can he begin to see an end to his work.
One by one his colleagues have excused themselves, and he sympathises with them. Now he’s left alone with just one forensics expert. A young man who, despite the look of revulsion on his face when he entered the room, has gone on working almost mechanically without complaint. Ivo can’t help wondering if his young colleague is forcing himself to put up with it because he feels the new recruit’s pressure to put his best foot forward, no matter what the cost.
‘You’ve done a good job,’ the pathologist says, switching off the tape recorder he’s holding in front of his mouth. ‘There’s no need for you to stay any longer. We’re almost done, and I can finish up myself.’
The young man glances at him. ‘No, thanks. I can manage.’ He smiles a wan, almost watery smile, and Ivo looks at him curiously.
He switches on the recorder again. Everything has to be documented.
In front of him are the four steel cables, and from the corner of his eye he can see the object on the floor. He’s trying not to look at it, and begins with what’s hanging from the cables, attached to small hooks.
‘In summary: the genitals of forty-four boys, the organs preserved using a technique that’s a combination of taxidermy and embalmment. The material used as stuffing is ordinary clay.’ He begins to walk along the cables with his eyes attached to the ceiling. ‘The type of clay varies, but in most cases it appears to be a type of fuller’s earth not found in Sweden,’ he adds dully, and clears his throat.
He turns round and glances at the object on the floor.
He wouldn’t like to call it a sculpture, but recognises that it’s a description that comes fairly close to the truth.
A sculpture of a human insect. A sick fantasy.
Then he returns to the steel cables again. ‘Forty-four photographs, one of each boy; the pictures were taken after embalmment, with dates added by hand, running from October 1963 to November 2007.’
He curses the fact that there are no names or locations, then walks further along the cable and stops at the other end, next to the wall, beside the large extractor fan.
‘At the end of each of the four steel cables there are completely dried hands, all of them amputated above the wrist. Eight in total. To judge by the size of the hands, they also appear to have come from children …’
And now for the very worst thing of all, he thinks, and walks towards the middle of the room as he looks at the young forensics officer, who is taking down the photographs with his back to him. ‘In the middle of the floor …’ Ivo Andri? begins, but then speech fails him.
He shuts his eyes and tries to find the right words. What he’s looking at can scarcely be described verbally. ‘In the middle of the floor,’ he tries again, ‘is a construction consisting of body parts that have been sewn together.’ He walks around the hideous sculpture. ‘Here once again the technique is taxidermy using clay, as well as traditional embalming.’ He stops and stares at the head, or, rather, the heads.
An insect from hell, he thinks.
He wants to look away, but one detail remains.
‘The body parts are joined together with coarse thread, probably a sturdy sort of fishing line. As far as the limbs are concerned, arms as well as legs, they all appear to belong to children, and have been joined in a manner that resembles –’
He breaks off suddenly, because he usually refrains from personal observations of the objects he’s documenting. But this time he can’t help it.
‘Resembles an insect,’ he says. ‘A spider or a centipede.’
He breathes out and switches off the recorder as he turns towards the young man. ‘Have you got the photographs I picked out?’
A short nod in response, and Ivo shuts his eyes for a moment of silent contemplation.
The Zumbayev brothers, he thinks. And Yuri Krylov and the as yet unidentified body, the boy from Danvikstull. He recognised all four of them from their photographs. He has examined their desiccated bodies so thoroughly that there’s no doubt whatsoever that it really is them, and in some way it feels like a relief. ‘And the fingerprints,’ he says, opening his eyes again. ‘Can I see the pictures once more?’
A hundred digital images of the same, blank, cancer-eaten fingertips that they had previously found on the fridge in Ulrika Wendin’s flat.
The fingerprints are all over the place in here, and Ivo Andri? realises that the end is close.
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
SINCE JEANETTE AND Hurtig got back to police headquarters they’ve avoided talking about what they found in Dürer’s cellar, but they’re united in the tacit realisation that the investigation that has gone on all spring and summer is finally heading towards a conclusion.
Now we just have to find Ulrika, Jeanette thinks.
‘Where do you think that is?’ Hurtig asks thoughtfully as he looks at the photograph they found under Dürer’s garage.
‘Could be anywhere.’
The police up in Norrbotten have just told them that the Lundstr?m family’s old house in Polcirkeln has been demolished, and that the same thing applies to the property Dürer owned in Vuollerim.
‘Looks like Norrland,’ Hurtig goes on, ‘but I’ve seen houses down in Sm?land that look the same. A run-of-the-mill forester’s house. There are thousands of them, all around the country.’ He puts the photograph down and tips his chair back with one foot on the floor.
‘Give it here,’ Jeanette says, and Hurtig passes her the photograph.
Viggo Dürer is sitting on the veranda in front of a small cottage, looking into the camera. He’s smiling.