to look at her; he feels like a kid. He doesn’t want her to think he needs his father to approve of her or anything. He doesn’t care what his father thinks. Aida looks nervous; her eyes dart from son to father. Before Benjamin has time to say anything by way of explanation, Erik sticks out his hand.
“Hi, there.”
Aida shakes his hand warily. Benjamin sees his father take in her tattoos: there’s a swastika on her throat, with a little Star of David next to it. She’s painted her eyes black, her hair is done up in two childish braids, and she wears a black leather jacket and a wide black net skirt.
“I’m Erik, Benjamin’s dad.”
“Aida.”
Her voice is high and weak. Benjamin blushes and looks nervously at Aida, then down at the ground.
“Are you a Nazi?” asks Erik.
“Are you?” she retorts.
“No.”
“Me neither,” she says, briefly meeting his eyes.
“Why have you got a—”
“No reason. I’m nothing. I’m just—”
Benjamin breaks in, his heart pounding with embarrassment over his father. “She was hanging out with these people a few years ago,” he says loudly. “But she thought they were idiots, and—”
“You don’t need to explain,” Aida interrupts, annoyed.
He doesn’t speak for a moment.
“I … I just think it’s brave to admit when you’ve made a mistake,” he says eventually.
“Yes, but I would interpret it as an ongoing lack of insight not to have it removed,” says Erik.
“Just leave it!” shouts Benjamin. “You don’t know anything about her!”
Aida simply turns and walks away. Benjamin hurries after her.
“Sorry,” he pants. “Dad can be so embarrassing.”
“He’s right, though, isn’t he?” she asks.
“No,” replies Benjamin feebly.
“I think maybe he is,” she says, half smiling as she takes his hand in hers.
14
tuesday, december 8: morning
The Department of Forensic Medicine is located in a redbrick building in the middle of the huge campus of the Karolinska Institute. And inside the department is the glossy white and pale matt grey office of Nils Åhlén, Chief Medical Officer, aka The Needle.
After giving his name to a girl at reception, Joona Linna is allowed in.
The office is modern and expensive and comes with a designer label. The few chairs are made of brushed steel, with austere white leather seats, and the light comes from a large sheet of glass suspended above the desk.
The Needle shakes Joona’s hand without getting up. He is wearing white aviator-framed glasses and a white turtleneck under his white lab coat. His face is clean-shaven and narrow, the grey hair is cropped, his lips are pale, his nose long and uneven.
“Good morning,” he says, in a hoarse voice.
On the wall hangs a faded colour photograph of The Needle and his colleagues: forensic pathologists, forensic chemists, forensic geneticists, and forensic dentists. They are all wearing white coats, and they all look happy. They are standing around a few dark fragments of bone on a bench; the caption beneath the picture states that this is a find from an excavation of ninth-century graves outside the trading settlement of Birka on the island of Björkö.
“New picture,” says Joona.
“I have to stick photos up with tape,” says The Needle discontentedly. “In the old pathology department they had a picture sixty feet square.”
“Wow,” replies Joona.
“Painted by Peter Weiss.”
“The writer?”
The Needle nods; the light from the desk lamp reflects off his aviators. “Yes. He painted portraits of all the staff in the forties. Six months’ work, and he was paid six hundred kronor, or so I’ve heard. My father is in the picture among the pathologists; he’s down at the end.” The Needle tilts his head to one side and returns to his computer. “I’m just working on the postmortem report from the Tumba murders,” he says.
“Yes?”
The Needle peers at Joona. “Carlos rang up to hassle me this morning.”
Joona smiles sweetly. “I know.”
The Needle pushes his glasses back. “I gather it’s important to establish the time of death of the different victims.”
“Yes, we need to know the order.”
The Needle searches on the computer, his lips pursed. “It’s only a preliminary assessment, but—”
“The man died first?”
“Exactly. I based that purely on the body temperature,” he says, pointing at the screen. “Erixon says both locations, the locker room and the house, were roughly the same temperature, so my estimate was that the man died just over an hour before the other two.”
“And have you changed your mind now?”
The Needle shakes his head and gets up with a groan. “Slipped disc,” he mutters, as he sets off down the hall.
Joona follows him as he limps slowly toward the postmortem unit. They pass a room containing a freestanding dissection table made of stainless steel; it looks like a draining board but with rectangular sections and a raised edge all round it. They enter a cool room where bodies being examined by the forensic unit are preserved in drawers at a temperature of forty degrees Fahrenheit. The Needle stops and checks the number, pulls out a large drawer, and sees that it’s empty.
“Gone,” he says, and they return to the corridor. As they walk, Joona notices that the floor is marked with thousands of scuffs from the wheels of trolleys. They reach another room and The Needle holds the door open for Joona.
They are in a well-lit white-tiled room with a large hand basin on the wall. Water is trickling into a drain in the floor from a bright yellow hose. On the long dissection table, which is covered in plastic, lies a naked, colourless body marked with hundreds of black wounds.
“Katja Ek,” states Joona.
The dead woman’s face is remarkably calm; her mouth is half open and her eyes have a serene look about them. She looks as if she is listening to beautiful music, but her peaceful expression is at odds with the long, vicious slashes across her forehead and cheeks. Joona allows his
