ASA LARSSON ~ THE SAVAGE ALTAR by Åsa Larsson Read Free Book Online

right-handed,” continued Pohjanen. “Then, after the blow to his head, he receives these two stab wounds to the stomach and the chest.”
    He pointed to two of the wounds on Viktor Strandgård’s body.
    “It’s impossible to speculate about the height of the perpetrator from the blow to the back of the head, and unfortunately there are no clues from the stab wounds either. They were delivered from above, so it’s my guess that Viktor Strandgård was on his knees when he received those wounds. Either that, or the perpetrator is immensely tall, like an American basketball player. But I would presume that Strandgård suffered the blow to his head first. Bang.”
    The doctor smacked his own bald head to illustrate the blow.
    “The blow makes him fall to his knees—there are no grazes or hematomas on the knees, but the carpet was quite soft—and then the killer stabs him twice. That’s why the angle of entry is sloping from above. So it’s difficult to say anything about his height.”
    “So he died from the blow and the two stab wounds?” asked Anna-Maria.
    “Yes,” continued Pohjanen, suppressing a cough. “This stab wound through the wall of the rib cage splits the seventh rib bone on the left-hand side, opens the pericardium—”
    “The peri—?”
    “The heart sac, the right ventricle, the heart chamber. This causes a bleed into the heart and the right lung. With the second blow the knife cut through the liver and caused a bleed into the abdominal cavity and the peritoneum.”
    “Did he die immediately?”
    Pohjanen shrugged his shoulders.
    “What about the rest of his injuries?” asked Anna-Maria.
    “He sustained those after death. All this damage to the torso and belly with a sharp object. These blows came from directly in front and were delivered after the moment of death. I would guess that Viktor Strandgård was lying on his back at the time. There’s also this long gash which opened up the stomach.”
    He pointed at the long reddish blue wound in the stomach, which was now held together with rough stitches.
    “And the eyes?” asked Anna-Maria, gazing at the gaping holes in Viktor Strandgård’s face.
    “Look at this,” said Pohjanen, slotting in another X-ray plate. “Just here! Can you see this splinter that’s come away from the cranium right inside the eye socket? And here! I hardly noticed it at first, but then I rinsed out the socket and looked at the skull itself. There are marks where something has scraped against the skull on the edge of the eye sockets. The murderer pushed the knife into the eyes and twisted it. Gouged them out, you could say.”
    “What the hell was he trying to do?” exclaimed Anna-Maria with feeling. “And the hands?”
    “They were also removed after death. One was still at the scene.”
    “Fingerprints?”
    “Maybe on the wrist stumps, but it’s up to the forensic lab in Linköping to sort that out. I don’t hold out much hope, though. There are a couple of decent marks around the wrists where somebody has gripped them hard, but as far as I can see, there aren’t any prints. I think Linköping will say that the person who cut off the hands was wearing gloves.”
    A nna-Maria felt her courage fail. She was seized by a strong desire to catch the murderer. All of a sudden she felt as if she couldn’t bear it if the investigation was just shelved in some archive in a few years’ time. Pohjanen was right. She would probably dream about Viktor Strandgård.
    “What kind of knife was it?” she asked.
    “Some kind of biggish hunting knife. Too broad for a kitchen knife. It wasn’t double-edged.”
    “What about the blunt object that hit him on the back of the head?”
    “Could have been anything at all,” said Pohjanen. “A spade, a large stone…”
    “Isn’t it odd that he was hit from behind with a weapon and then stabbed from the front?” asked Anna-Maria.
    “You’re the detective,” said Lars Pohjanen.
    “Maybe there was more than one