‘Lay off, Kneought,’ she says sharply. ‘He has a unique sense of humour,’ she adds, addressing Byle. ‘Which is to say, no sense of humour at all. So, shall we take a quick look at Fredrik Stuub then, before heading up to the Karby quarry?’

*

Fredrik Stuub is covered by a thin plastic sheet. His body is still dressed and the only skin on display is on his face, neck, hands and one foot. His head is turned to one side and almost his entire face is covered in blood. Karen finds herself thinking of one of the plastic-wrapped lamb’s heads in her freezer back home, probably primed by Brodal’s words in the kitchenette. That association and the temperature in the cold room at the far back of the small clinic make the skin on her forearms pebble. The whole thing is a formality; coroners and lead investigators are supposed to perform a visual inspection of the body as close to the time of death as possible. From now on, the only person allowed to touch the body is the coroner. Kneought Brodal won’t perform a full examination of the dead man until tomorrow at the Centre for Forensic Medicine in Ravenby, and he will be accompanied by the lead investigator then, too. Karen is not looking forward to it.

Sven Andersén carefully folds back the plastic sheet and nods for Brodal to come closer.

‘What do you think?’ he says once Brodal has made a quick visual inspection of the head and then turned Stuub’s left lower leg over to study the parallel scratches running from the top of the heel toward the malleolus.

Brodal nods for Sven Andersén to cover the body back up and removes his latex gloves.

‘Well, I don’t know what kind of rambling you do up here, but marks like those usually mean one thing in my experience. We obviously can’t be sure until we’ve completed the autopsy and the crime scene investigation, but I’m ready to bet a couple of pints that you’re right. He was dragged.’

‘So, murder,’ Karen says and rubs her forehead with her wrist. ‘Or at least manslaughter.’

And for the first time since Jounas Smeed called and freed her from her Christmas obligations, that familiar worry about how an investigation is going to turn out makes itself known to Karen. On the phone the night before, he’d promised to try to get her some reinforcements, but so far she hasn’t heard anything to suggest he has succeeded.

‘Well, happy holidays, Eiken,’ she hears Kneought Brodal say with something awfully close to schadenfreude in his voice. ‘Looks like you’re going to be stuck out here in the middle of nowhere for a while.’

Chapter 9

9