Even though she was only just past thirty, Detective Inspector Julia Gabrielsson had seen plenty of dead bodies. Probably more than most police officers, with the exception of the bull elephants in the far corridor of the Violent Crime Unit. The old guys with minty breath who appraised her figure unashamedly, used password as the password on their computers, and could never be reached after two o’clock. But she doubted that the closet alcoholics in the Tic Tac club had ever seen anything as disgusting as the body lying on the autopsy table in front of her. If you could actually call it a body.
Nine years had passed since her earliest visit to the Forensic Medicine Unit in Solna. Her first body hadn’t wanted to make a lot of fuss. He lay there quietly in his apartment for a whole summer while the maggots slowly dissolved him onto the parquet floor, and she felt her knees wobble when the body bag was opened. The body on the slab in front of them was worse. Much worse.
She glanced at her colleague, Amante, who was standing beside her. His Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down frenetically in his freshly shaven neck. Not exactly a gentle introduction. As long as he didn’t actually throw up. She stepped back discreetly to remove her shoes and trousers from the danger zone.
Amante seemed to notice her looking. He turned his head and gave her an apologetic smile. The eyes behind his dark-framed glasses were brown and looked simultaneously friendly and mournful, which surprised Julia. Revulsion would have been much more expected. Or why not a hint of good old Get-me-out-of-here panic? That would have been perfectly understandable. After all, her new partner wasn’t a proper police officer but a civilian investigator. Infinitely more at home sitting in a cozy office surrounded by statistics than getting stuck in practical police work. The only question was why her fat boss had without warning foisted an oversensitive office clerk on her? She made up her mind to solve that particular mystery before the day was out.
The thin-haired pathologist in front of them leafed through his sheaf of papers but evidently failed to find the form he was looking for. Unless he was just searching for the right words with which to start his explanation. Somewhere in the depths of the Forensic Medicine Center an air-conditioning unit rumbled to life, making a subdued but ominous sound.
Amante swallowed again. Julia nodded at him and forced herself to summon up something that resembled an encouraging smile.
Just look away for a minute, she thought. That’s a perfectly understandable human response. The living don’t like to see the dead. Don’t like to be reminded of what lies ahead. Rich, poor, good or evil. Sooner or later we all end up lying there with cold, stiff limbs. All the same in death. That’s why most people look away from the dead, say something unrelated, or make some stupid joke simply to break the silence.
But not her. She belonged to a considerably smaller group of people. People who exploit the silence surrounding the dead. Observing. Listening. Understanding.
Everyone has a rhythm, a way they move through life. She learned that in her first year in Violent Crime. With some people you can see their rhythm fairly easily, but others require more concentration. Especially if you’re trying to work out that rhythm in hindsight. Reading it from homes, belongings, bodies, and—not least—crime scenes. It’s easy to let yourself be distracted. Do what most of her colleagues
