that the victim’s profile is already in the police database or that you’ll find another sample to match it against at a later point in the investigation.”
A few moments of silence followed. The air-conditioning rumbled in the background. The low sound was like thunder, gradually creeping closer.
“Add to that the black garbage bags the body parts were wrapped in,” the pathologist went on. “To start with, they were sealed with cable ties rather than tape. No sticky surfaces where forensics experts could find hairs or fibers. And as weights the perpetrator used ordinary gray stones found in any garden or stone wall. Nothing to go on there. And I found small holes here and there in the plastic, probably from a narrow knife blade. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say there are probably similar holes on the torso of the body. We’ll see once I’ve been able to stretch what remains of the skin across the stomach, but I’m fairly confident.”
“How can you be?” Amante’s voice sounded muffled. “How can you know that the perpetrator stabbed—”
“Because all the body parts were found in a limited area,” Julia said. “In one of the deepest parts of the inlet. Probably in exactly the same spot where the perpetrator dumped them last winter.”
The pathologist nodded.
“The gases given off by decomposition usually make bodies float to the surface after a week or two. A bit longer if the water’s cold; it can take a few months then. In contrast to what most people think, bodies dumped in water usually get washed up on a beach somewhere, and then they get found by a member of the public. Your perpetrator stuck holes in the bags and probably also the torso, where the decomposition is most noticeable. That way the gases were able to escape and the body parts stayed where they were down on the bottom. And the holes would also make it easier for scavengers to get in and do their thing. We’ve got half a bucket full of various bottom-feeders that made their way inside the bags. A few more months underwater and there wouldn’t have been much left.”
“You’re saying that our perpetrator is someone who knows exactly what they’re doing,” Julia said.
The pathologist held his hands up in front of him in a gesture that managed simultaneously to convey agreement and dissociation.
“Like I said, this is all speculation. All I can say is that this scenario is unlike anything I’ve come across before. If those two yachtsmen hadn’t lost their anchor in that inlet and decided to dive down to get it, this poor soul would never have been found.” He nodded toward the table. “Imagine the shock when they realized what they’d stumbled across down there in the darkness.”
Amante cleared his throat again and looked like he wasn’t having any trouble at all imaging the men’s horror.
Julia ignored him and looked back at the table again, where the dead body grinned at her with its wrecked smile. She had to admit that the pathologist’s theory was good. Logical, in light of the evidence. The perpetrator appeared to be extremely methodical, ice-cold in his thoroughness and attention to detail. But she still couldn’t shake the feeling the grimacing face gave her. A feeling of rage, of hatred.
Someone wanted you to disappear, she thought. Wanted to make sure you’d never be found. Someone you’d upset so badly that he destroyed your face. That’s what happened, isn’t it?
The dead body didn’t answer. Just went on smiling at her, as if her words amused him.
* * *
Twenty-two pills. Twenty-two white, oblong pills that he’d paid for with just as many nightmare-filled nights.
David Sarac had surreptitiously googled sleeping pills. Taking into account his emaciated body and generally poor state of health, he had worked out that twenty pills would be enough for what he wanted to achieve. But with twenty-five there would be no doubt, so he had another three nights to struggle through. Three nights of lying curled up in bed, drifting in the indistinct borderland between sleep and wakefulness, while everything that had happened out on the island replayed in his head. Always in the same order. First the snow. Heavy flakes falling on a frozen forest. A silent, dark old house. Then a low bass note, a threatening rumble on the horizon, growing louder and louder as the winter thunder approaches. Then suddenly beams of light from headlights cutting through the trees. The sound of powerful engines, of gunfire and shouted orders. Flashes from gun barrels creating a ghostly shadow play as the howls of anger, pain, and terror grow ever louder.
The thunder keeps building in intensity in the background, swallowing up all other sound until it transforms into the roar of the flames consuming the old house. A rain of sparks flies through the night sky, and the stench of gunpowder, soot, and burning flesh makes his throat sting. Just when he thinks it’s all over, when he thinks he’s finally on his way out of the nightmare, he finds himself in the middle of it again. Feels the heat of the pressure wave as it knocks him flying. The bullet hitting him in the neck, filling his airways with liquid iron. The blood on the white ground. His own blood. That of others. All of it sucked up by the snow crystals around him, until he’s lying on his back in a sea of carmine red. He hears himself laugh. A shrill laugh that sounds more like a sob. His head falls back on the snow. The world slowly starts to dissolve at the edges. Curling up like a burning photograph until it fades to black.
All this is your fault, David, the voices whisper.
It was your plan. Your fault.
Then the film starts over again. Unless he’s lucky enough to wake up, that is. Wake up locked away in a nursing home in the middle of nowhere. “For your own good, David,” as the senior consultant had said during their first conversation.
But he didn’t complain, couldn’t see any reason to do so. In a few days he was planning to leave it all behind: the island of Skarpö, the nightmares, and this place.
He scratched at the red scar running across his neck. Caught at it with his nails until it started to sting. The whispers were right. He should have died out there in the snow along with the others. Should have drowned in his own blood. It would have been a fitting punishment for his sins. Some things were simply too broken to mend.
But instead, against all the odds, he had survived. Had made a mockery of the justice he had tried to implement. David Sarac, heroic police officer. The hero who had to be kept locked away in a secure unit for his own good. But what was the alternative? For him to tell the truth about what had happened out on Skarpö? The reason why all those men had died out there in the snow? That was hardly an option, either for him or his superiors. A public relations disaster that must be avoided at all costs. That was why he was where he was. Planning his own escape.
It had taken time to build up the stock of pills. The staff had been very vigilant during the first week. They followed their routines to the letter, forcing him to open his mouth and stick his tongue out every time he took a sleeping pill. He had been careful. Played along and gained their confidence. He couldn’t afford to fail. If just one of the caregivers started to suspect, he’d find himself in the suicide wing and his plan would be thwarted.
He glanced out through the window. Between the trees he could just make out the little lake in the distance. He had explored the park during a couple of short walks when he was still considering other options beside the pills. But the light and all the sensory impressions out there had been too sharp. They exhausted his broken brain and forced him to stagger back into the safety of the building. But at least he knew that there was a fence and a heavy metal gate by the jetty. Floodlights, alarms, and cameras too, just as there were along the high brick wall by the road, and the double fence facing the dark forest
