The Nightmare. Ларс Кеплер

Чтение книги онлайн.

       12

       Unusual death

      Joona Linna stands completely still, just two steps down on the dark flight of steps leading to the galley and front cabin. From there he can see the bottom of the glass doors and some of the aft-deck. A shadow crosses the dusty glass, and suddenly a hand comes into view. Someone is creeping across the deck. The next moment he recognises Erixon’s face. Drops of sweat are running down his cheeks as he rolls out his gelatine foil over the area around the door.

      Joona takes the bag from the cabin up into the saloon with him. He carefully turns it upside down over the little hardwood table. Then he pokes the red wallet open with his pen. There’s a driver’s licence in the worn plastic pocket. He looks more closely and sees a beautiful, serious face caught in the flash of a photograph booth. She’s leaning back slightly, as if looking up. Her hair is dark and curly. He recognises the girl from the table in the pathology lab, her straight nose, eyes, South American features.

      ‘Penelope Fernandez,’ he reads on the driver’s licence, and thinks that he’s heard that name before.

      In his mind he goes back to the pathology lab, with the naked body on the table, the tiled roof, the smell of death, her slack features, a face beyond sleep.

      Outside in the sunshine Erixon’s bulky frame is moving very slowly as he secures fingerprints from the railing, brushing them with magnetic powder and using tape to lift them. Slowly he wipes one wet area, adds some drops of SPR solution and photographs the imprint that appears.

      Joona can hear him sighing deeply the whole time, as if every movement required painful effort, as if he’d just expended the last of his energy.

      Joona looks out at the deck, and sees a bucket on a rope next to a training shoe. A faint smell of potatoes is coming from the galley.

      He turns back at the driver’s licence and the little photograph. He looks at the young woman’s mouth, at the slightly parted lips, and suddenly realises that something is missing.

      It feels like he’s seen something, was on the point of saying something, but forgot what.

      He starts when his phone begins to vibrate in his pocket. He takes it out, sees from the screen that it’s The Needle, and answers.

      ‘Joona.’

      ‘My name is Nils Åhlén, and I’m a senior pathologist at the Department of Forensic Medicine in Stockholm.’

      Joona smiles: they’ve known each other for twenty years, and he’d recognise The Needle’s voice without any introduction.

      ‘Did she hit her head?’ Joona asks.

      ‘No,’ Nils replies, surprised.

      ‘I thought maybe she hit a rock when she was diving.’

      ‘No, nothing like that – she drowned, that was the cause of death.’

      ‘You’re sure?’ Joona persists.

      ‘I’ve found fungus inside her nostrils, perforations in the mucous membrane in her throat, probably the result of a severe vomit reflex, and there are bronchial secretions in both her trachea and bronchi. Her lungs look typical for a drowning: full of water, increased weight, and … well.’

      They fall silent. Joona can hear a scraping sound, as if someone were pushing a metal trolley.

      ‘You had a reason for calling,’ Joona says.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Do you feel like telling me?’

      ‘She had a high concentration of tetrahydro‌cannabinol in her urine.’

      ‘Cannabis?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘But she didn’t die of that,’ Joona says.

      ‘Hardly,’ Nils says, sounding amused. ‘I just assumed that you were probably busy reconstructing the sequence of events on the boat, and that this was one little detail of the puzzle that you may not have known about.’

      ‘Her name is Penelope Fernandez,’ Joona says.

      ‘Good to know,’ Nils mutters.

      ‘Was there anything else?’

      ‘No.’

      Nils breathes down the phone.

      ‘Say it anyway,’ Joona says.

      ‘It’s just that this isn’t an ordinary death.’

      He falls silent.

      ‘What have you spotted?’

      ‘Nothing, it’s just a feeling …’

      ‘Great,’ Joona says. ‘Now you’re starting to sound like me.’

      ‘I СКАЧАТЬ