The Blood Spilt by Åsa Larsson Read Free Book Online Page A

had cycled down to the village on an impulse to pick some flowers for the church.”
    Anna-Maria glanced at her son. He had discovered the box of papers waiting to be shredded. He was ripping one sheet after another to bits. Sheer bliss.
    Anna-Maria read on quickly. A considerable number of fractures to the upper jaw and zygoma. One pupil blown. Left pupil six millimeters, right four millimeters. It was the swelling in the brain that caused it. “Upper lip extremely swollen. Right-hand side discolored, bluish purple, incision shows heavy bleeding, blackish red…” God! All teeth in upper jaw knocked out. “Considerable amount of blood and blood clots in the mouth cavity. Two socks pushed into the mouth and rammed against the back of the throat.
    “Nearly all the blows directed just at the head,” she said.
    “Two chest wounds,” said Sven-Erik.
    “ ‘Crowbar-like object.’ ”
    “Presumably a crowbar.”
    “Extended wound left temple. Do you think that was the first blow?”
    “Yes. So we can assume he’s right-handed.”
    “Or she.”
    “Yes. But the murderer carried her a fair way. From the river to the church.”
    “How do we know he carried her? Maybe he put her in a wheelbarrow or something.”
    “Well, there’s knowing and knowing, you know what Pohjanen’s like. But he pointed out which way her blood had flowed. First of all it flowed downward toward her back.”
    “So she was lying on the ground on her back.”
    “Yes. The technicians found the spot in the end. Just a little way from the shore where she kept her boat. She took the boat across sometimes. She lived on the other side. In Poikkijärvi. Her shoes were on the shore too, just by the boat.”
    “What else? About the bleeding, I mean.”
    “Then there are lesser bleeds from the injuries to her face and head, running down toward the crown of the head.”
    “Okay,” said Anna-Maria. “The murderer carried her over his shoulder with her head hanging down.”
    “That could explain it. And it isn’t exactly gymnastics for housewives.”
    “I could carry her,” said Anna-Maria. “And hang her from the organ. She was quite small, after all.”
    Especially if I was kind of… beside myself with rage, she thought.
    Sven-Erik went on:
    “The final signs of bleeding run toward the feet.”
    “When she was hung up.”
    Sven-Erik nodded.
    “So she wasn’t dead at that point?”
    “Not quite. It’s in the notes.”
    Anna-Maria skimmed through the notes. There was a small bleed in the skin where the neck injuries were. According to Pohjanen, the medical examiner, this indicated a dying person. Which meant that she was almost dead when she was hung up. Presumably not conscious.
    “These socks in her mouth…” Anna-Maria began.
    “Her own,” said Sven-Erik. “Her shoes were still down by the river, and she was barefoot when she was hung up.”
    “I’ve seen that before,” said the prosecutor. “Often when somebody is killed in that particular way. The victim jerks and makes rattling noises. It’s most unpleasant. And to stop the rattling…”
    He broke off. He was thinking of a domestic abuse case that had ended with the wife being murdered. Half the bedroom curtains down her throat.
    Anna-Maria looked at some of the photographs. The battered face. The mouth gaping open, black, no front teeth.
    What about the hands, though? she thought. The side of the hand where the little finger is? The arms?
    “No sign of self-defense,” she said.
    The prosecutor and Sven-Erik shook their heads.
    “And no complete fingerprints?” asked Anna-Maria.
    “No. We’ve got a partial print on one sock.”
    Gustav had now moved on to pulling every leaf he could reach off a large rubber plant that was in a pot on the floor topped with gravel. When Anna-Maria pulled him away he let out a howl of rage.
    “No, and I mean no,” said Anna-Maria when he tried to fight his way out of her arms to get back to the rubber plant.
    The prosecutor