Fatal Isles Read online

  He replies curtly, without looking up.

  ‘Well, she’s dead. How about that?’

  Karen ignores his harsh tone and silently waits for the coroner to continue. Brodal’s jargon often gets on her nerves, but in this particular case she sympathises to some extent; she knows Kneought Brodal and his wife saw Jounas and Susanne Smeed socially for years, before they were divorced. Brodal must have been more than superficially acquainted with the woman whose dead body he’s now examining.

  ‘I got here just after half past one and at that point she’d been dead for at least three, but I’d say no more than six hours,’ he says, the frustration in his voice palpable. ‘I can’t be more exact than that in this blasted heat. For some reason, someone decided to light a fire in that damn thing and then tried to set the house alight.’

  Kneought Brodal gestures toward the wood-burning stove in the corner, where one of the crime scene technicians is currently hunched down, peering into the open door. Then Brodal looks up and meets Karen’s eyes; she notices that his forehead is shiny with perspiration.

  She glances over at the modern, brushed steel induction hob at the other end of the kitchen and then back to the stove. Apparently, Susanne, like so many others, had wanted to preserve certain aspects of the old kitchen when she modernised. She wanted to retain the feeling of an old rustic kitchen while also investing in every conceivable modern convenience. That’s how most people go about it. But actually using the old stoves for heat, that was unusual, when the temperature was still well above freezing. Had her morning swim made Susanne so cold she turned to the wood-burning stove? Or was it the work of the killer?

  ‘When I got here, it was a bloody sauna,’ Brodal continues gruffly. ‘The technicians had finally put the stove out, thank Christ, but it’s going to be well-nigh impossible to pin down a more exact time of death. It’s pure luck the whole thing didn’t burn to the ground,’ he adds, nodding to the charred wood basket.

  ‘Lucky for us, perhaps,’ Karen replies drily. ‘But hardly for whichever stupid bastard’s planned to pass murder off as a regular house fire.’

  Brodal closes his bag and struggles to his feet. His coveralls strain across his ample gut; Karen worries the flimsy plastic zipper might give at any second.

  ‘Could be, it’s up to you to find out. Either way, I’m done here, I’ll have more for you after the autopsy,’ he says and wipes his brow with his wrist.

  ‘At least it looks like we’ve found the murder weapon. Have a look at this, Eiken!’

  Sören Larsen’s voice is coming from the doorway. He’s holding up a long iron poker, wrapped in a plastic bag with rust-coloured streaks on it.

  ‘Probably consistent with the injuries on the body, if you ask me,’ Larsen says, turning the bloody plastic bag this way and that, looking pleased. ‘We found it neatly hung up next to the cast-iron stove.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Brodal says. ‘Which is to say, he may have used it to smash in her face, but the cause of death is likely something else.’

  Both Karen and Sören Larsen look inquiringly at the coroner. For a second, he looks like he’s enjoying the attention.

  ‘My guess is she was sitting on the chair when the first blow landed, but I’m fairly certain that’s not what killed her. The second blow didn’t do the trick either, but it sent her flying backwards so hard her skull was crushed against the wood-burning stove. Whoever did this is an ice-cold son of a bitch, who was dead set on killing Susanne.’

  8

  Detective Inspector Karl Björken is at the supermarket, wavering between frozen pizza and fish fingers, when his phone vibrates in his pocket. His eighteen-month-old son Frode is sitting in the shopping trolley’s child seat, crying heartbreakingly. His chubby hands strain toward the end of the aisle, where his mum disappeared in the direction of the nappy section. Karl glances quickly at the screen; his dark eyebrows shoot up when he realises who’s calling. Karen Eiken Hornby may be his immediate superior, and over the years they have become friends, but she would hardly call just to chat. Especially today.

  ‘Please, sweetheart, Mummy will be right back,’ he says as he presses the phone to one ear and covers the other with his hand to block out the noise.

  ‘Hiya, Karen,’ he says. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure? Have you sobered up after Oistra?’

  ‘Shut up. Are you sitting down?’

  ‘Hardly. I’m at Tema. What do you think I should go for, frozen pizza with ham . . .’

  ‘Listen,’ Karen breaks in quickly. ‘I need you to come in, there’s been a murder.’

  While Karen explains what’s happened, Karl watches his wife return with dread. She’s pushing a trolley filled with three large packs of nappies; it looks like she really has to put her weight into it to get the heavy shopping cart rolling. In the child seat is Frode’s twin brother Arne, who’s chewing on something. Ingrid Björken’s neck is blotchy; she looks utterly exhausted when she gently pries something out of Arne’s sticky hands. His infuriated howls echo between the shelves of tinned vegetables and pasta sauces.

  When she spots Karl her face lights up and his heart sinks like a stone. He knows that smile – the one he fell in love with almost three years ago and which still sends jolts of electricity through him – will be erased two minutes from now.

  *

  Forty-five minutes later, Karl Björken steps aside to let the gurney carrying Susanne Smeed’s body out through the front door. Inside, he can see Karen in the hallway, talking to Sören Larsen, whose kinky blond hair looks like a tousled halo around his head. Karl notes that Larsen is standing unusually straight in an attempt to make the height difference between him and Karen less noticeable. Sören Larsen is five feet four inches in his stocking feet – the extra thick soles of his boots add another two inches, but he’s still more than an inch shorter than Karen.

  She looks focused; Karl has seen that mix of tension and restrained anticipation before. Now she turns her wrist to check her watch.

  ‘Björken should be here any minute,’ she says. ‘We’re going to have a poke around the house and talk to the nearest neighbours; I’m assuming you’ve got more to do here. I figured we could do an initial run-through at the station at seven tonight. Does that work for you?’

  ‘Seven’s fine,’ Larsen replies. ‘But don’t touch anything, you hear me? Even if you’re wearing gloves, I don’t want you adding fingerprints.’

  Karl steps over the threshold with a sigh; the moment his tall and wide silhouette darkens the hallway, Sören Larsen and Karen turn to the front door.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ she says. ‘Welcome; looks like we have a big mess on our hands.’

  ‘Definitely murder?’ Karl asks.

  ‘Without a doubt. Well, or possibly manslaughter, I suppose, if the lawyer’s really bloody good, but certainly not an accident. You can help me have a quick look around the house before we head down to see the neighbour who found her. Brodal just left and the body is being taken away right now, but you can have a look at the kitchen first and I’ll brief you on what we know after.’

  Karl pulls a pair of shoe covers from Sören Larsen’s bag and takes a deep breath before entering the kitchen. Ingrid won’t be happy when he gets home. Whenever that may be.

  *

  Karen stops in the doorway and scans the room. There’s an oat-coloured sofa in front of a low table straight ahead. A pile of women’s magazines on the smoked glass coffee table, next to three remote controls that look like they’ve been placed side by side with meticulous precision. Two black leather armchairs flank the sofa on either side; all three are turned toward a giant TV that covers most of the opposite wall.

  Further down the same wall is a fireplace and two more armchairs, while the opposite wall is dominated by a large white bookshelf. Everything looks neat, clean and slightly clinical. Where the kitchen, with its old cabinets and floral china, revealed a desire to hold onto the rustic, the living room looks like it was decorated by someone who s
imply opened a furniture catalogue to a random page and bought everything in the picture. Karen studies the impersonal interior; there’s probably not one piece of furniture older than ten years in here. And yet, the impression is far from modern, if anything it’s conventional, bordering on excruciatingly boring.

  Then she notices the mantel, where a handful of photographs in gold frames are lined up. She thoughtfully walks over to the fireplace to have a look at the pictures, but is soon interrupted by Karl, who has entered the room.

  ‘So that’s what a kitchen looks like after someone gets their head smashed in with a poker. I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to it’

  ‘And that’s after quite a lot of blood was soaked up by the bathrobe,’ she replies without turning around. ‘But according to Brodal the poker didn’t kill her; the back of her head hit the edge of the wood-burning stove. You can have a look at the pictures tonight, at the briefing.’

  Karl does a quick scan of the room and then walks over to stand next to Karen. They study the photographs in silence.

  ‘Her daughter?’ he asks after a while, nodding toward the pictures.

  They look like they’re all of the same person. A girl of about three on a beach. She’s smiling toward the photographer, brandishing a red plastic shovel. Then a whiteish-blonde six-year-old with a missing front tooth, wearing a pink ballet leotard and a tutu. An almost-as-blonde girl of about ten, eleven, proudly doing the splits on a gymnastics beam with her arms above her head. Another picture, probably from the same time, shows the same girl, smiling triumphantly from the top of a podium.

  ‘I guess so. Would you mind checking the bookshelf?’

  Karl walks over to the white laminate unit.

  ‘I don’t know if I’d call it a bookshelf.’

  With a weary look, he studies the ornaments scattered between rows of CDs and DVDs. A tiny basket full of porcelain flowers, a coloured glass paperweight, a collection of porcelain horses of various sizes and colours, a Spanish doll in a flamenco dress, a Japanese doll dressed as a geisha. The handful of books fit on two shelves: a smattering of bestselling romances and crime novels, a twelve-volume dictionary, a few thick books that look like some kind of self-help literature. Karl reads the titles out loud:

  ‘Dare to Be Happy, The Path to Your True Self, Stop Being a Victim – Seize Life, People Who Take, How to Cleanse Your Life of Negative Energy. Oh my God, do you read this crap, too?’

  ‘Every day, can’t you tell?’

  Karen is now studying the pile of women’s magazines on the coffee table. At the top of the pile is the latest issue of Vogue. She fishes a pen out of her breast pocket, carefully pushes the glossy magazine aside and finds herself looking into the bored eyes of a model on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. Further down the pile are several issues of various magazines full of fashion, beauty and celebrity gossip, alongside a couple of publications about antiques. Karen straightens up and scans the tidy, impersonal room, avoiding the empty windows, looking for anything that can tell her who Susanne Smeed was. Or maybe this is exactly who she was. A woman with no ideas of her own, anxious to have everything looking neat. Anxious to look good herself, Karen thinks, remembering the dead woman’s manicured nails and the exposed breast. Silicone, no question about it.

  She looks at the white walls, which are hung with a few oil landscape paintings, a framed reproduction of a Monet, another by Sisley and two gilded wall sconces with milky glass shades. This could be anyone’s house. Any neat, tidy, middle-aged woman’s.

  ‘I don’t think we’re going to find anything else in here,’ she says. ‘Shall we move on to the upstairs?’

  A thick beige carpet effectively muffles the sound of their footsteps. Up on the landing, two doors stand ajar while a third is closed. Karen notes that a golden heart – identical to the one on the downstairs bathroom door – adorns the closed door and decides to hold off on searching the bathroom. Instead, she pushes one of the other doors open and finds Susanne Smeed’s bedroom. The large double bed isn’t made but looks surprisingly untouched. A fluffy duvet is carefully folded back toward the side of the bed that has apparently not been used. The thick pillow has a pillowcase with the same floral pattern; a faint dent suggests that someone had at some point rested their head there. A pink blanket is folded over the armrest of a small armchair in floral chintz by the window. Across from it there’s a home gym with various devices and a display that looks to Karen like the cockpit of a small plane.

  ‘How much do you reckon that costs?’ she says, eyeing the monstrosity.

  ‘Well, I certainly couldn’t afford it,’ Karl says drily. ‘And why have such a big bed if she only uses half? Barely half, actually. She must lie still all night long. Does your bed look that neat when you wake up?’

  She makes no reply. Her bed is just as big, even though she usually sleeps alone, too. On the other hand, he’s right, it really does look like Susanne Smeed didn’t move a muscle all night.

  ‘I bet there’s a lover in the picture,’ says Karl, who apparently doesn’t want to drop the subject. ‘Home gyms and a king-size bed, she certainly seems prepared, is all I’m saying . . .’

  ‘If that’s the case, he didn’t sleep here last night, that much is clear. But we’ll have to look into it,’ Karen says, thinking she’s not at all sure she agrees with him. Going through Susanne’s house has given her virtually the opposite feeling; to her mind, the whole house exudes loneliness. The hope of a change, but nevertheless an almost unbearable loneliness.

  She bends down, gingerly grabs the underside of the left wardrobe door and pushes it aside. Neat rows of hangers with blouses, skirts and dresses meet her eyes. On the shelf above them are stacks of neatly folded tops in every imaginable colour and fabric. At the bottom are pairs of shoes, lined up three deep: a half-dozen pairs of pumps of various colours and heel height, strappy gold sandals, sandals with pearls, other kinds of strappy sandals, two pairs of loafers and, at the far back, at least five pairs of boots. Karen slides the next door open and stares at even more neatly hung-up clothes: dresses, skirts and jackets of various cuts and a couple of thin summer coats. The rest of the space is taken up by tall stacks of shoe boxes, several of them with red sale tags. A rough estimate tells Karen there must be at least twenty, maybe thirty shoe boxes in this wardrobe alone.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ she says. ‘Seems Susanne had at least one little weakness after all. Look!’ Karen steps aside to let Karl see.

  ‘Wow! But then, what woman isn’t crazy about shoes?’

  He’s right, she thinks. Susanne could barely have picked a more vanilla hobby than being a shopaholic. Everything’s in excess, yet nothing stands out; everything’s tidy, yet completely impersonal. And nothing here explains why someone smashed Susanne’s face in with what looks to have been unrestrained fury.

  Karl has opened the top dresser drawer and is carefully pushing aside knickers, bras and socks to see if there is anything interesting underneath. He closes it again with a sigh and pulls out the next one. Karen watches him gingerly dig around underwear and tights with gloved hands. Sören Larsen would not be happy if he came in right now.

  ‘Not exactly racy stuff. Not so much as a dildo,’ Karl says disappointedly.

  ‘I assume she would keep that in her nightstand if there is one,’ Karen replies. ‘No, don’t get excited; I already checked. Just a few packets of tissues, a bottle of hand lotion and a jar of sleeping pills.’

  Karl lights up momentarily but slumps back into dejection when Karen continues.

  ‘No prescription label. They were over the counter until a few years ago; she must have bought them before then. Or abroad.’

  Karl pulls out the bottom drawer and feels around under piles of neatly folded slips and nightgowns. Then he stiffens, frowns and draws out something that looks like a big book with a worn blue cover.

  ‘Bingo,’ he says. ‘A photo album.’

  ‘Better than nothing. We’ll have to let the technicia
ns take a look at it first. Let’s do a quick sweep of the rest of the upstairs. Then we have to talk to Harald Steen as soon as possible.’

  ‘The neighbour who found her?’

  Karen nods.

  On the door to the smaller bedroom are traces of screw holes, as though there was once a sign on it. Inside, on a narrow bed with a striped pink bed throw, sits a teddy bear, staring at them from under a poster of four smiling young men.

  ‘One Direction,’ Karl says. ‘My sister’s kids were nuts about them.’

  I know someone else who was, too. Karen feels her chest contract. But she says nothing.

  Sitting on a white dresser is a small stylised brass tree, with glass-bead necklaces and a small charm bracelet dangling from its thin branches. Above the dresser is a mirror and next to that a gilded hook from which hangs a pair of pink ballet shoes with long satin ribbons. Karen opens the top drawer and notes that it’s neatly lined with pink shelf paper, but otherwise empty. When she pulls out the bottom drawer, there’s a rattling sound and she discovers two little silver-coloured plastic trophies, rolling about desolately at the bottom of the drawer.

  A sense of sorrow pervades the abandoned girl’s room. A mausoleum for a lost child, a child who hasn’t lived here in many years. Karl looks like he can read her mind.

  ‘Maybe she uses it as a guest room,’ he says; Karen wonders whether he’s trying to comfort himself or her.

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ she says, unconvinced.

  Something tells her Susanne Smeed rarely had company. Each new room they’ve entered has made the feeling of loneliness grow more pronounced.

  A quick look in the bathroom is just as unproductive. The room is dominated by a corner tub with gold taps; the giant bath is ridiculously oversized. A pink, fluffy rug covers what little floor remains. The bathroom cabinet contains nothing out of the ordinary: an electric toothbrush, painkillers, vitamins, dental floss, another jar of sleeping pills and a long row of skincare products and perfumes. Possibly another sign of Susanne’s urge to consume. Karen looks with a degree of fascination at the jars and bottles with Clinique, Dr Brandt and Exuviance logos, as well as others she doesn’t recognise.