Killing Moon

‘The cases he’s solved have made him one of the few detectives with a public profile of sorts. And an image as uncompromising, someone with don’t-give-a-damn integrity. Overblown, of course, but people like those kind of myths. And for our purposes that image could allay suspicions of his investigation being bought and paid for.’

‘You’re worth every penny, Johan Krohn.’ Røed grinned. ‘He’s the man we want!’

‘The problem—’

‘No! Just up the offer until he says yes.’

‘—is that no one seems to know exactly where he is.’

Røed raised his whiskey glass without drinking, just frowned down at it. ‘What do you mean by “exactly”?’

‘Sometimes in an official capacity I run into Katrine Bratt, the head of Crime Squad where he worked, and when I asked, she said the last time he gave a sign of life was from a big city, but she didn’t know where he was in that city or what he was doing there. She didn’t sound too optimistic on his behalf, let’s put it that way.’

‘Hey! Don’t back out now that you’ve sold me on the guy, Johan! It’s him we want, I can feel it. So find him.’

Krohn sighed. Again regretted opening his mouth. Being the show-off he was he had of course walked right into the classic prove-you’re-the-best trap that Markus Røed probably used every single day. But with his leg stuck in the trap it was too late to turn. Some calls would need to be made. He worked out the time difference. OK, he may as well get right on it.

3 Saturday

Alexandra Sturdza studied her face in the mirror above the sink while routinely and thoroughly washing her hands, as though it were a living person and not a corpse she would soon touch. Her face was hard, pockmarked. Her hair — pulled back and tied in a tight bun — was jet black, but she knew the first grey hairs were in store — her Romanian mother had already got them in her early thirties. Norwegian men said her brown eyes ‘flashed’, especially when any of them tried to imitate her almost imperceptible accent. Or when they joked about her homeland, a place some of them clearly thought was a big joke, and she told them she came from Timişoara, the first city in Europe to install electric street lighting, in 1884, two generations before Oslo. When she came to Norway as a twenty-year-old, she had learned Norwegian in six months while working three jobs, which she had reduced to two while studying chemistry at NTNU, and now just one, at the Forensic Medical Institute while also concentrating on what would be her doctoral thesis on DNA analysis. She had at times — although not that often — wondered what it was that made her so obviously attractive to men. It couldn’t be her face and direct — at times harsh — manner. Nor her intellect and CV, which men seemed to perceive as more threatening than stimulating. She sighed. A man had once told her that her body was a cross between a tiger and a Lamborghini. Odd how so cheesy a comment could sound totally wrong or completely acceptable, yes, wonderful even, depending on who said it. She turned off the tap and went into the autopsy room.

Helge was already there. The technician, two years her junior, was quick-minded and laughed easily, both qualities Alexandra viewed as assets when one worked with the dead and was tasked with extracting secrets from a corpse about how death occurred. Helge was a bioengineer and Alexandra a chemical engineer, and both were qualified to carry out forensic post-mortems, if not full clinical autopsies. Nevertheless, certain pathologists attempted to pull rank by calling post-mortem technicians Diener — servants — a hangover from German pathologists of the old school. Helge didn’t care but Alexandra had to admit it got to her now and again. And especially on days like today, when she came in and did everything a pathologist would do in a preliminary post-mortem — and equally well. Helge was her favourite at the institute, he always showed up when she asked, not something every Norwegian would on a Saturday. Or after four o’clock on a weekday. Sometimes she wondered where on the index of living standards this work-shy country would have been placed if the Americans hadn’t discovered oil on their continental shelf.

She turned up the light on the lamp hanging above the naked body of the young woman on the table. The smell of a corpse was dependent on many factors: age, cause of death, if medication was being taken, what food had been eaten and — of course — how far along the process of decay had come. Alexandra had no problems with the stench of rotting flesh, of excrement, or urine. She could even tackle the gases created by the process of decomposition that the body expelled in long hisses. It was the stomach fluids that got her. The smell of vomit, bile and the various acids. In that sense, Susanne Andersen was not too bad, even after three weeks outdoors.

‘No larvae?’ Alexandra asked.

‘I removed them,’ Helge said, holding up the vinegar bottle they used.

‘But kept them?’