The Silenced. Литагент HarperCollins USD

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СКАЧАТЬ something on the back. He picked the envelope up, turned it over, and held it up to the light. The back was blank, the envelope smooth and flat. It couldn’t really contain anything but a sheet or two of paper.

      He hadn’t had any visitors for a long time, no contact with the outside world except for TV and the Internet. Perhaps Frank was yet another reporter trying to arrange an interview with him, an unusually creative one who was willing to bribe a staff member.

      He slowly opened the envelope with his forefinger and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. At the top was a message in the same impersonal font as the envelope. Four lines, seven sentences, forty-six words. More than enough to make his heart beat faster.

       He betrayed you, David. Swapped his future for you and Janus. Then he moved on while we bled and died out there on the island. No punishment, no consequences, straight to the top. How about a swap? Your secret for mine? A chance to get justice.

      Sarac unfolded the bottom part of the sheet of paper. Two photos fell out onto the bed, landing upside down.

      He turned the first one over. Husband, wife, two teenage girls dressed up for some sort of premiere. A good-looking, happy family smiling assuredly toward the photographer with perfect, dazzling media smiles.

      His heart beat even faster. Spread out from his chest and up into his throat. He turned the second photograph over. Felt his hand tremble. He swallowed hard a couple of times.

      The dead blonde woman was lying on her stomach across the black hood of a car. The pool of blood formed a sort of aura around her naked body. The force of her descent had been so strong that it almost welded her body to the expensive car. Transforming it into a single horrifying sculpture of skin, glass, and metal.

      * * *

      “The dismembered body at Källstavik: What do we know?”

      The waitress had barely put their plates down on the checkered cloth and walked off before Deputy Police Commissioner Oscar Wallin revealed the purpose of their meeting. Julia couldn’t help smiling. Wallin hadn’t changed. Straight to the point, no unnecessary beating around the bush. Just like her. That morning he had suddenly called after months of silence. Now she understood why. Or at least what he wanted to talk about.

      “Aren’t you going to ask me how I am or what I’ve been doing for the past six months?” Julia smiled, but Wallin’s expression didn’t change. “Anyway, you didn’t have to ask me to lunch. Most of it’s already been in the papers.”

      That was more accurate than she would have liked. No more than a couple of days had passed since her visit to the Forensic Medicine Unit, but the public already knew almost as much as she did. The evening tabloids loved summer murders, and their reporting followed the usual pattern. Yesterday there had been a few grainy pictures of police boats and divers, and a map covering the whole centerfold. Where the body parts were found. Quotes from a source with inside knowledge of the investigation, obviously her own boss, and today she had just read the assortment of speculation and confident assertions from the usual academic detectives who had never seen a dead body in real life.

      This could be connected to the criminal underworld. Statistically, the killer is likely to have been known to the victim, and her personal favorite: Dismemberment is a way for the killer to get rid of the body.

      Wallin put what looked like a perfectly judged mix of beef patty, potato, sauce, and lingonberry preserve in his mouth. He chewed slowly as he raised his eyebrows quizzically.

      “The victim, according to the latest we’ve got from the pathologist, is a white male between thirty-five and forty-five,” Julia said. “Just over one meter eighty centimeters tall, with short, dark brown hair. We may need to take that last bit with a pinch of salt. The crayfish didn’t leave much of his scalp.”

      She fell silent. Wallin went on chewing, as implacable as ever. If the malicious rumors about his career contained any truth at all, there certainly wasn’t any sign of it in his behavior or appearance. His boyish features, emphasized by his perfectly combed side parting, formed such an abrupt contrast to his tailor-made three-piece suit that it almost jarred. He looked like a boy dressed up as a grown man, he always had. Previously only the most deranged of his colleagues had made fun of that. Only in recent months had she heard his nickname spoken out loud in the corridors of Police Headquarters. Even by some of her superiors.

      Manboy.

      She didn’t approve. Wallin was a talented policeman and an equally skilled administrator. But now others were enjoying the fruits of his labors, and the whole of his handpicked team had been transferred to the staff of the national police chief. All but Wallin himself, which most of his colleagues took to mean that he was going to be sidelined somewhere and never heard from again. She hoped that interpretation didn’t turn out to be correct.

      “Have you been able to identify the body?” Wallin wiped his mouth on his napkin with exaggerated thoroughness.

      “Not yet. We’ve checked for a match on the missing persons register: nothing there. His hands haven’t been found, so we haven’t got fingerprints. Same with teeth and dental records. We’re expecting DNA results from the National Forensics Lab by tomorrow at the earliest but probably on Friday, maybe even Monday. It’s not at all certain that they’ll be able to get any DNA. The body was in a very poor state.”

      “And the face? Could you release a photograph to the press? Ask the general public to get in touch with tip-offs?”

      Julia shook her head.

      “The perpetrator had a go at the face with a chain saw. It’s completely unrecognizable.”

      At least for the time being, she added to herself. She considered telling Wallin about her backup plan. Let him know how good she was at her job. Six months ago she would have done so without hesitation. But for some reason she decided to wait. Besides, she wasn’t even sure if what she was considering could actually be done.

      “The experts in the tabloids are right, then,” Wallin said. “You’ve got a real challenge on your hands with this case. You know the statistics as well as I do. Only six out of ten dismemberments get cleared up. A sixty percent chance that quickly shrinks to single digits if you don’t manage to identify the body. And what would that do to your solving rate?”

      The question seemed to be rhetorical, because Wallin turned his attention back to his food without waiting for an answer. Julia stuck her fork into her Caesar salad, took a mouthful, and discovered at once that something was missing from the dressing. It took her a few seconds to work out what. Anchovies. What chef would make a Caesar salad without using anchovies? Presumably one who thought he could get away with it.

      The murmur of conversation in the restaurant rose in volume as more and more diners sat down at the tables. One or two suits, but mostly neon-clad laborers. People who, like Wallin, had a preference for traditional Swedish fare. Personally she preferred Asian. Lighter food: less flour, cream, and potato.

      Wallin went on eating calmly. He was evidently planning to make her ask.

      “So, tell me! Why is the minister of justice’s special investigator so interested in an old dismembered body?”

      Wallin took a sip of his lingonberry drink and then carefully wiped his mouth again before leaning over the table.

      “As you may be aware, the party has its training center in Källstavik. Several of the higher-ups rent houses on СКАЧАТЬ