The Nightmare by Lars Kepler Read Free Book Online Page A

knocks at The Needle’s door, and goes right in. As usual, The Needle’s office is completely barren of anything extraneous. The blinds have been drawn but sunshine still filters in between the slats. The light is bright on white surfaces but disappears into the gray areas of brushed steel.
    As if to match his environment, The Needle wears white aviator glasses and a white polo shirt underneath his lab coat.
    “I just put a parking ticket on a white Jaguar outside,” Joona says.
    “Good for you.”
    Joona pauses in the middle of the room, his serious gray eyes darkening.
    “So how’d he really die?”
    “You’re talking about Palmcrona?”
    “Right.”
    The telephone rings and The Needle hands the autopsy report to Joona.
    “You didn’t need to come all the way here to find that out,” The Needle says before he picks up the phone.
    Joona sits down on a white leather chair. The autopsy on Carl Palmcrona’s body is complete. Joona flips through the file and eyes a few entries at random:
    74. Kidneys weigh 290 grams together. Surfaces are smooth. Tissues are gray-red. Consistency is firm and elastic. Renal capsule is clear.
    75. The ureters have normal appearance.
    76. The bladder is empty. Mucous membrane is pale.
    77. The prostate is normal size. Tissues are pale.
    The Needle pushes his glasses up his narrow, hooked nose and finishes his phone call. He looks up.
    “As you see,” he says, yawning, “nothing unusual. Cause of death is asphyxiation, that is, suffocation … but with a successful hanging we’re not talking about your typical meaning of suffocation. Rather, here we have closure of artery supply.”
    “So the brain dies when the flow of oxygenated blood is stopped.”
    The Needle nods. “That’s right. Artery compression, bilateral closure of the carotids. It happens unbelievably quickly, of course. Unconsciousness within seconds—”
    “But he was alive before the hanging?” Joona asks.
    “Right.”
    The Needle’s narrow, smooth face is gloomy.
    “Can you determine the drop?”
    “I imagine it was a matter of decimeters. There aren’t any fractures of the cervical vertebra or at the base of the skull.”
    “I see…”
    Joona is thinking of the briefcase with Palmcrona’s shoe prints. He opens the file again and flips to the external examination: the investigation of the skin of the neck and the measurement of the angles.
    “What’s bothering you?”
    “Could the same rope have been used to strangle him before the hanging?”
    “Nope.”
    “Why not?”
    “Well, first of all there is just one line and it’s perfect.” The Needle starts to explain. “When a person is hanged, the rope or line cuts into the neck and it—”
    “But a killer might know that,” Joona says.
    “But it’s practically impossible to reconstruct … you know, with a successful hanging, the line around the neck is like the point of an arrow with the edge on the upward side, right at the knot—”
    “Because the weight of the body tightens the loop.”
    “Exactly. And for the same reason the deepest part must be precisely across from the edge.”
    “So hanging was the cause of death.”
    “No doubt about it.”
    The tall, thin pathologist gently gnaws his lower lip.
    “But could he have been forced to kill himself?” Joona asks.
    “There are no signs of it on the body.”
    Joona shuts the file, drums on it with both hands, and thinks about the housekeeper’s statement that other people had been involved in Palmcrona’s death. Was it just confused rattling on? But what about the two sets of shoe prints Tommy Kofoed had found?
    “So you’re absolutely sure of the cause of death?” Joona stares into The Needle’s eyes.
    “What did you expect?”
    “I expected this,” Joona says slowly, tapping the autopsy. “Exactly this. But still, something’s not right.”
    The Needle smiles thinly.
    “Take it and use it as bedtime reading.”
    “Fine,” Joona agrees.
    “Still, I’m sure you