Stalker. Ларс Кеплер

One side of the sink is blocked with wet kitchen roll, and a shower-scraper is visible in the murky water.

      ‘We’ve found prints from Björn’s feet,’ Erixon says. ‘First he went round in his blood-soaked socks, then barefoot … we found his socks in the rubbish bin in the kitchen.’

      He falls silent and they carry on into the passageway that connects the kitchen with the dining and living rooms.

      A crime scene changes over time, and is gradually destroyed as the investigation proceeds. So as not to miss any evidence, forensics officers start by securing rubbish bins and vehicles parked in the area, and make a note of specific smells and other transitory elements.

      Apart from that, they conduct a general examination of the crime scene from the outside in, and approach the body and the actual murder scene with caution.

      The living room is bathed in bright light. The cloying smell of blood is inescapable. The chaos is oddly invisible because the furniture has been wiped and put back in position.

      Yesterday evening Margot saw the video of Susanna as she stood in this room eating ice cream with a spoon, straight from the tub.

      A plane comes in to land at Bromma Airport with a thunderous roar, making the glass-fronted cabinet rattle. Margot notes that all the porcelain figures are lying down, as if they were asleep.

      Flies are buzzing around a bloody mop that’s been left behind the sofa. The water in the bucket is dark red, the floor streaked. It’s possible to see the trail of the mop by the damp marks left on the skirting boards and furniture.

      ‘First he tried to hoover up the blood,’ Erixon says. ‘I don’t really know, but he seems to have mopped the floor, then wiped it with a dishcloth and kitchen roll.’

      ‘He doesn’t remember anything,’ Margot says.

      ‘Almost all the original blood patterns have been destroyed, but he missed some here,’ Erixon says, pointing to a thin spatter on one strip of wallpaper.

      He’s used the old technique and has stretched eight threads from the outermost marks on the wall to find the point where they converge – the point where the blood originated.

      ‘This is one precise point … the knife goes in at an angle from above, fairly deep,’ Erixon says breathlessly. ‘And of course this is one of the first blows.’

      ‘Because she’s on her feet,’ Margot says quietly.

      ‘Because she’s still on her feet,’ he confirms.

      Margot looks at the cabinet containing the prone porcelain figures, and thinks that Susanna must have stumbled and hit it when she was trying to escape.

      ‘This wall has been cleaned,’ Erixon shows them. ‘So I’m having to guess a bit now, but she was probably leaning with her back against it, and slid down … She may have rolled over once, and may have kicked her legs … either way, she certainly lay here for a while with a punctured lung.’

      Margot bends over and sees the blood that has been exhaled across the back of the sofa, from below, possibly during a cough.

      ‘But the blood carries on over there, doesn’t it? It looks like it,’ she says, pointing. ‘Susanna struggled like a wild animal …’

      ‘And we don’t even know where Björn found her?’ Adam asks.

      ‘No, but we do have a large concentration of blood over there,’ Erixon says, and points.

      ‘And there,’ Margot says, gesturing towards the window.

      ‘Yes, she was there, but she was dragged there … she was in various different places after she died, she lay on the sofa, and … in the bathroom, as well as …’

      ‘So now she’s in the bedroom,’ Margot says.

       12

      The white light of the floodlamps fills the bedroom, forming blinding suns in the glass of the window. Everything is illuminated, every thread, every swirling mote of dust. A trail of blood runs across the pale grey carpet to the bed, like tiny black pearls.

      Margot stops inside the door, but hears the others carry on towards the bed, then the rustling of their overalls stops.

      ‘God,’ Adam gasps in a muffled voice.

      Once again Margot thinks of the video, of Susanna walking about with her trousers dangling from one foot as she kicked to get rid of them.

      She lowers her eyes and sees that her clothes have been turned the right way and are now piled neatly on the chair.

      ‘Margot? Are you OK?’

      She meets Adam’s gaze, sees his dilated pupils, hears the dull buzz of flies, and forces herself to look at the victim.

      The covers have been pulled up under her chin.

      Her face is nothing but a dark-red, deformed pulp. He’s hacked, cut, stabbed and carved away at it.

      She goes closer and sees a single eye staring crookedly up at the ceiling.

      Erixon folds the covers back. They’re stiff with dried blood; skin and fabric have stuck together. There’s a faint crunching sound as the dried blood comes loose, and little crumbs rain down.

      Adam raises one hand to his mouth.

      The inhuman brutality was concentrated around her face, neck and chest. The dead woman is naked and smeared in blood, with more stab-wounds and further bleeding beneath her skin.

      Erixon photographs the body, and Margot points at a mottled green patch to the right of her stomach.

      ‘That’s normal,’ Erixon says.

      Her pubic hair has started to regrow around the reddish blonde tuft on her pudenda. There are no visible marks or injuries to the insides of the thighs.

      Erixon takes several hundred pictures of the body, from the head resting on the pillow all the way down to the tips of her toes.

      ‘I’m going to have to touch you now, Susanna,’ he whispers, and lifts her left arm.

      He turns it over and looks at the defensive wounds, cuts which indicate that she tried to fend off the attack.

      With practised gestures he scrapes under her fingernails, the most common place to find a perpetrator’s DNA. He uses a new tube for each nail, attaches a label and makes a note on the computer on the bedside table.

      Her fingers are limp, because rigor mortis has loosened its grip now.

      When he’s done with her nails he carefully pulls a plastic bag over her hand and fastens it with tape, ahead of the post-mortem.

      ‘I pay house visits to ordinary people every week,’ Erixon says quietly. ‘They’ve all got broken glass, overturned furniture and blood on the floor.’

      He walks round the bed and carries on with the nails of the other hand. Just as he’s about to pick it up he stops.

      ‘There’s something in her hand,’ he says, and reaches for his camera. ‘Do you see?’

      Margot leans forward and looks. She can make out a dark object between the dead woman’s fingers. She must have been clutching it tightly because of rigor mortis, but now it’s visible as her hand relaxes.

      Erixon picks up the woman’s hand and carefully lifts the object. It’s as if she still wants to hold on to it, but is too tired to struggle.

      His bulky frame blocks Margot’s view, but then she sees what the victim was clutching in her hand.

      A tiny, broken-off porcelain deer’s head.

      The head is shiny, chestnut-brown, the broken surface at the bottom white as sugar.