Fatal Isles Page 3

  To the sound of the cat’s chewing, Karen turns on the coffee maker and cuts a couple of slices of bread. Fifteen minutes later, she’s gobbled two cheese sandwiches and washed them down with a pint of strong coffee. Her searing headache has mellowed into a dull ache and, suddenly, exhaustion overwhelms her. Without cleaning up after her meal, she drags herself up the stairs to her bedroom, pulls off her dress and lies down on the bed. I should at least brush my teeth, she thinks to herself. Moments later, she’s out like a light.

  5

  The sound is coming from far away, seeping into her consciousness through layers of sleep. When it finally gets through, she figures it’s the clock radio, but slamming the button to turn it off has no effect. The digital digits tell her its 1.22 p.m.; it takes her another few seconds to realise two things: she has slept through half of Sunday and the sound is coming from her phone, which she left in the kitchen.

  Annoyed, she throws her duvet aside, pulls on her robe, which was draped across the armchair in the corner, and staggers downstairs. The ringing is relentless; she digs through her bag as her stress level rises and fishes her phone out the same moment it falls silent. A quick look at the screen and she’s suddenly wide awake. Three missed calls, all from Chief of Police Viggo Haugen.

  Karen sits down on a kitchen chair and calls back while her thoughts race. What could the chief of police want? They hardly have a close working relationship. And on a Sunday, too. can’t be good news. On the third ring, an authoritative voice answers.

  ‘Haugen.’

  ‘Hi, this is Karen Eiken Hornby. You’ve been trying to reach me?’

  She makes an effort not to sound like she’d just woken up, goes a bit too far; her voice coming out squeaky and shrill.

  ‘I certainly have. Why aren’t you answering your phone?’

  Viggo Haugen sounds annoyed; she casts about for a white lie. She’s not about to admit she has spent half the day sleeping off a hangover.

  ‘I’ve been gardening and left my phone in the kitchen,’ she says. ‘It is Sunday,’ she adds, regretting it the moment she hears how it’s received.

  ‘As a detective inspector, you are supposed to be available twenty-four-seven. Is that somehow news to you?’

  ‘No, of course I’m aware that . . .’

  The chief of police interrupts her by clearing his throat loudly.

  ‘Well, anyway, something has come up that means you’re on duty immediately. A woman has been found beaten to death in her home. Everything points to it being straightforward murder. I want you to lead the investigation.’

  Karen feels herself sitting up straighter in her chair.

  ‘Of course. Can I ask . . .’

  ‘I want you to put together the team you need immediately,’ Viggo Haugen continues. ‘The chief inspector will give you the details.’

  ‘Of course. Just one question . . .’

  ‘Why am I calling you and not Jounas?’ the chief of police cuts her off again. ‘Yes, I can see why you would ask that.’

  The sharp edge in his voice has softened a little; Karen hears him take a deep breath before pressing on.

  ‘The thing is,’ Viggo Haugen says slowly, ‘the victim is Susanne Smeed – Jounas’s ex-wife.’

  6

  Karen says nothing for several seconds while the information sinks in. The image of a shivering woman in a drab brown robe flickers past.

  ‘Susanne Smeed,’ she says dully. ‘Are we sure it’s murder?’

  ‘Yes, or manslaughter, obviously we can’t say at this stage. But according to the chief inspector, she has definitely been beaten to death. There are two constables at the scene and they’re adamant on that point.’

  Viggo Haugen’s voice has become agitated again; now, she can clearly discern the apprehension in it.

  ‘As I’m sure you understand, Jounas can’t lead the investigation nor serve as the head of the division while the case is ongoing. I’ve already spoken to him about it and he agrees, of course. You’re going to have to take over until it’s cleared up.’

  Two seconds of silence.

  ‘Or until we can work out a different solution,’ he adds and clears his throat again.

  While listening, she’s been thinking ahead. Of course Jounas Smeed has to be put on leave. Until they know more, he’s on the shortlist of people they need to interview. Slowly but surely, the consequences dawn on Karen. With a mounting sense of unease, she realises she’s going to have to interview her own boss. The same boss she left in a hotel room in Dunker less than eight hours ago.

  As though her thoughts might give her away, she feels an instinctive need to end the call with Viggo Haugen as soon as possible.

  ‘I understand,’ she says curtly. ‘I live near Susanne Smeed; I can be there in thirty minutes. Do you know if the scene of crime team has arrived yet?’

  ‘Yes, or they’re on their way, the coroner, too, but it obviously takes a while to get out there. It’s only been about an hour since it was reported.’

  It must have happened sometime after eight, when she saw her alive, and before twelve when it was called in. A window of less than four hours during which someone beat Susanne Smeed to death.

  While I was sleeping my hangover off just over a mile away. Bloody hell!

  ‘OK, I’ll start calling people,’ she says.

  ‘Great, and one more thing . . .’

  The chief of police hesitates for a moment, as though looking for the right words.

  ‘As you will appreciate, this is a very sensitive situation. I can’t stress enough how important it is that you handle this as discreetly as possible. Leave the media to me, no spontaneous comments and no other . . . Well, discretion above all, suffice it to say. Have I made myself clear, Eiken?’

  Go fuck yourself, you pompous arse, she thinks to herself.

  ‘Perfectly clear,’ she replies.

  With that, the call is ended; Karen runs upstairs, her thoughts racing. Three minutes later, she steps out of the shower and brushes her teeth while she dries her hair with a towel. She can still feel the lingering hangover in every part of her body.

  I have to eat something before I go, she thinks. I won’t make it if I don’t. She pulls on a pair of jeans and a dark blue T-shirt and hurries back down to the kitchen. Yesterday’s lunch leftovers are in the fridge: a kind of chicken casserole thrown together using whatever she could find in the freezer. She turns the Tupperware container upside down on a plate, shoves the cold lump in the microwave and fetches her black boots from the hallway. A quick glance at the time: twenty to two. Just a moment ago, I thought my biggest problem was that I slept with my boss, she muses grimly as the microwave dings. Only now does it occur to her that she’s going to have to postpone her vacation again. She can probably forget about this year’s wine harvest in France.

  *

  Fourteen minutes later, Karen Eiken Hornby, Interim Head of the Criminal Investigation Department, buckles her seatbelt. She has placed a banana and a can of Coca-Cola she found in the fridge behind the chicken casserole, on the passenger seat. Before she starts the car, she pops two pieces of gum in her mouth to suppress the urge to smoke.

  Karen reverses down the driveway, turns out and hears the gravel spray behind her as she tears out of there. While wolfing down the casserole, she’d talked to the chief inspector at the Dunker Police headquarters, who painted a fairly clear picture. The call had come in at 11.49 a.m. A neighbour had for some, as yet unknown reason, peeked in through Susanne Smeed’s kitchen window and spotted a pair of feet and legs and a knocked-over kitchen chair. The rest of the body had been hidden from view behind a large fridge. The neighbour, a man by the name of Harald Steen, had at first thought Susanne must have passed out or slipped and hurt herself, and had called an ambulance. The operator who took the call, however, had been switched-on enough to inform the police as well, who had dispatched two constables, Björn Lange and Sara Inguldsen.

  Karen had momentarily sto
pped chewing her chicken when the chief inspector mentioned those names. Apparently, both constables had been on their way back from checking on a burglar alarm that was going off at a house just six miles south of Langevik and had consequently been the nearest unit to Susanne Smeed’s house. Within half an hour of being called, they had been at the scene, broken down the front door and immediately concluded that this was neither a case of low blood sugar nor an accidental fall.

  Björn Lange had been sitting on the front steps with his head between his knees when the EMTs arrived; Sara Inguldsen had told them they’d come out for nothing.

  ‘Apparently, it’s a mess,’ the chief inspector told Karen.

  7

  Karen parks at the end of a long row of cars on the muddy verge outside Susanne’s house. The first is the coroner’s black BMW, behind that is the scene of crime team’s white van. She climbs out and stands motionless in the light rain for a moment. Scans the road in both directions. Down by the house next door, she glimpses a patrol car. Any tyre tracks will be impossible to secure, she realises. By now, most of the villagers will have roused themselves and at least twenty vehicles are bound to have driven by the house.

  She looks up and gazes out across the landscape. This part of Heimö – the tall ridge in the north, the rushing river meandering toward the sea, the stone bridges arching across its bends, the heather-covered hills – has been etched into her since childhood. Now, she studies the surroundings with fresh eyes. Without seeing their beauty or noting their stillness, she matter-of-factly makes note of all possible routes by which a stranger could get here and back without being seen. Ordinarily, it would have been impossible without some of the neighbours noticing. But on this particular day, the most hungover day of the year, the otherwise oh-so-curious villagers likely had other things to worry about than which cars passed by on the road.

  ‘Good afternoon, boss.’

  Björn Lange gets up from the front steps when Karen approaches the house. She notices that the constable is looking several shades paler than when they had met that morning and that his hand seems to tremble when he salutes her.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she replies and smiles. ‘Is this your handiwork?’

  She nods to the door at the top of the steps. One of the panes in the leaded glass window has been shattered and two of the edges have been cleared of sharp pieces of glass. Björn Lange nods and quickly starts explaining, as though he’s unsure whether she’s going to be critical of his decision.

  ‘Yes, it was locked and we didn’t know if time was a factor. All we knew was that someone was in there, because the radio was on. I hope we didn’t compromise any evidence, but we thought she might need help. We obviously didn’t know it was too late . . .’

  He breaks off and Karen nods with a reassuring smile while pondering what made the sensitive Lange become a police officer.

  ‘You did the right thing,’ she says. ‘I’ve been told it’s ugly in there. I’m going to have to talk to both Inguldsen and you later on down at the station, but I suggest you take a couple of hours off now and go eat something. Where is she, by the way?’

  ‘She’s over at the neighbour’s house, the one who called it in. The old man was still here when we arrived and wasn’t feeling well, so she drove him home. Apparently, he’s got problems with his ticker.’ Lange makes an awkward gesture toward his heart.

  Karen curses inwardly. A lone female constable accompanying a witness who can’t be written off as a suspect. What the fuck were they thinking? She happens to know that old man Steen does in fact have a heart condition and wouldn’t be capable of killing so much as a kitten, but that’s not something Sara Inguldsen and Björn Lange know anything about.

  ‘All right, then head down and keep her company,’ she says tersely, refraining from scolding him. After her embarrassing early morning run-in with Lange and Inguldsen, she’s on the backfoot; this will have to be what makes them even.

  *

  A conspicuous warmth and a faint smell of smoke greets Karen when she opens the front door. Something burning, or traces of it. She’s looking into a square hallway with a flight of stairs leading up to the first floor. To the left of the stairs is a mahogany-coloured dresser with open drawers, and on the floor in front of it are scarves, gloves, a clothes brush and other things she can’t identify. Through the door further in on the right, she glimpses a beige sofa and the edge of a plush blue living-room carpet. There are faint noises and mumbling voices coming from the door on the left. Bent over a big black bag in the middle of the hallway is crime scene technician Sören Larsen. When he spots Karen, he raises his chin in greeting and hands her a pair of blue plastic shoe covers and a plastic cap.

  ‘Thanks, Sören, is Brodal inside?’ She nods toward the kitchen door while twisting her hair into a bun and pulling on the see-through cap. Sören Larsen meets her eyes, his eyebrows raised above his face mask and nods silently.

  She knows what that look means. Kneought Brodal is in a mood today. As usual.

  Karen takes a deep breath and walks over to the door. At first sight, disregarding the stepping pads, everything looks normal. Straight ahead is a hob, a workbench, a sink and a dishwasher and above that a row of grey-stained cupboard doors. On the right, on a long granite counter, sits a polished, over-sized machine Karen assumes to be some kind of coffee maker; the shelves above it are lined with various kitchen gadgets, bowls and copper pots. Immediately to the left of the door looms a tall blue cabinet with the stylised biblical motifs that characterise Doggerian folk art. Jonah and the whale is a common theme; whoever painted Susanne Smeed’s cabinet a couple of hundred years ago had been inspired by that particular story. An ordinary, fairly pleasant kitchen.

  But that impression changes as she continues to take in the scene. Further in is a heavy oak kitchen table, surrounded by three chairs. The fourth is lying on its side. She registers the stepping pads and the numbered yellow plastic triangles, and then her eyes are drawn to the blood, red spatter in an arc just a few feet from her.

  ‘Be really fucking careful, Eiken,’ a sharp voice says. ‘Pay attention to where you put your goddamn feet.’

  Karen takes a few cautious steps along the pads, cranes her neck to see past the big cabinet and gasps involuntarily. It takes her only a fraction of a second to successfully suppress the urge to look away. Expressionless, she studies the woman on the floor.

  Susanne Smeed is on her back, her head and neck at an unnatural angle between the floor and the edge of a black wood-burning stove. Her thick robe has fallen open, revealing a cream-coloured nightgown with lace embroidery along the deep neck line. One breast is exposed; Karen notes that it’s unexpectedly plump for such a slender body. Susanne Smeed’s left hand is hidden, but Karen notes that the other one lacks jewellery but has well-manicured nails painted a subtle shade of pale pink. Her head and upper body are resting in a pool of blood, which has soaked the thick terrycloth of her robe, dyeing the fabric a darker shade of drab. The hair that’s not blood-soaked looks well-cared for with blonder highlights on a somewhat mousy base. The legs are stretched out straight; a dark blue velvet slipper still dangles from the toes of the right foot; the other slipper is upside down under the kitchen table.

  Neat. The thought comes to her unbidden. Neat chaos.

  A technician in white coveralls moves in slow motion around the dead woman, taking pictures from every conceivable angle. There’s the soft rustling of protective clothing from two other technicians, who are slowly and deliberately circling the room. Karen knows their silent, measured movements – which to the uninitiated might look like a sign of respect in the face of death – are in fact the product of deep concentration while taping and brushing to collect every last shred of evidence. When one of the technicians moves to the side, it becomes clear what caused the smell of burning: a pile of what looks like the charred remains of a basket of firewood is sitting between the stove and the kitchen table. The flames have licked the wall, leaving a wide
swath of soot, dangerously close to the chequered kitchen curtain. She spots her own reflection in the glass and tells herself the dark circles under her eyes must be caused by the portable spotlights.

  Karen turns her attention back to Susanne Smeed’s head; this time, she forces herself to inspect it thoroughly. Strands of her blonde hair have got stuck in the blood, hiding parts of her battered face. With a growing sense of unease, she registers the crushed ocular bone and the nose that seems to have moved sideways. Her exposed teeth are white behind the split maxilla, giving the impression of a rictus smile. Her eyes are wide open and as empty and blank as on any other corpse Karen’s seen: no surprise, no fear, just an endless, grey nothingness.

  In the middle of the bloody wreckage, she can still make out Susanne Smeed’s familiar facial features. Her unease morphs into a sharp swirling in her stomach; to stifle the nausea, Karen turns to the kitchen table. A bowl containing the remnants of what looks like yoghurt with soggy muesli in it, a basket of sliced rye bread, a tub of butter that has liquefied in the heat, an empty coffee cup sitting neatly on its saucer.

  At least you had a cup of coffee after your morning swim, she thinks and lets her eyes linger on the cup’s blue floral pattern. But what happened after that?

  ‘All right, Kneought?’ she says softly, only now turning to the large man who is clearly having a hard time squatting next to the corpse. She studies the coroner’s broad back and is surprised Brodal can actually wriggle into standard coveralls without bursting the seams. ‘What have you got for me?’