Sun Storm by Åsa Larsson Read Free Book Online

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 person,” wondered Anna-Maria out loud. “Anything else?”
    “Not at the moment. No drugs. No alcohol. And he hadn’t eaten for several days.”
    “What? Several days?”
    Anna-Maria herself found it necessary to eat every two hours.
    “He wasn’t dehydrated, so it wasn’t some kind of stomach bug or anorexia or anything like that. But he seems to have ingested only liquids. The lab will be able to tell you what else was in his stomach. You can switch off the tape recorder.”
    He passed over a copy of the preliminary autopsy report. Anna-Maria clicked off the tape recorder.
    “I don’t like guessing,” said Pohjanen, clearing his throat. “At least not when there’s a record.”
    He nodded in the direction of the tape recorder, which disappeared into Anna-Maria’s pocket.
    “But the cuts on the wrists were very neat,” he went on. “You’re looking for a hunter, Mella.”
    “So this is where you are,” came a voice from the doorway.
    It was Sven-Erik Stålnacke.
    “Yes,” replied Anna-Maria, and realized she was embarrassed in case her colleague thought she’d gone behind his back. “Pohjanen rang and he was just about to leave and . . . ”
    She stopped, angry that she’d tried to explain herself and to make excuses.
    “That’s fine,” said Sven-Erik cheerfully. “You can tell me all about it in the car. We’ve got problems with our pastors. Hell, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. In the end I asked Sonja on the switchboard who’d phoned you. We need to go now.”
    Anna-Maria glanced questioningly at Pohjanen; he shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows at the same time, as if to say that their business was finished.
    “I see Luleå got hammered by Färjestad.” Sven-Erik smirked as a parting shot to the doctor, at the same time hustling Anna-Maria along with him.
    “Go on, rub it in,” sighed Lars Pohjanen, fumbling in his pocket for a cigarette.

 
    T he plane to Kiruna was almost full. Hordes of foreign tourists off to drive a dog team and spend the night on reindeer skins in the ice hotel at Jukkasjärvi jostled for space with rumpled businessmen returning home clutching their free fruit and newspapers.
    Rebecka sank down and fastened her seat belt. The murmur of voices, the synthetic ping as the signs lit up and went off overhead and the humming of the engines lulled her