– Dirty linen basket still full, then? he said, adding, before he had time to wince at his own comment: – So you’re feeling better?
She crossed the floor and stood in front of him.
– A bit hoarse, but yes, fine.
He stood up. – Miriam, he said, and put his arm around her. She moved in close to him. He stroked her hair, laid his face against her neck and inhaled. The smell reminded him of something he had forgotten.
The telephone rang. He reached across the table without letting go of her hand.
– Are you ready for your first patient? asked Rita, obviously as a way of reminding him that he was already ten minutes late.
– Send him in. Did you tell him that we have a student here?
– Yes, yes. Another thing, Axel, VG just called. I said you were busy.
– VG? What did they want?
– A journalist… Fredvold, she wanted to talk to you. I said she could try again at lunchtime.
Axel felt suddenly annoyed.
– Listen, Rita, I don’t have time to talk to VG.
– Okay then, she said, surprised. – What do you want me to say?
– Tell them I’ll be busy all day. It’s the truth, after all.
19
– THIS IS THE closest you get to knowing what it feels like to be a surgeon, said Detective Chief Inspector Viken after he and his sergeant, Arve Norbakk, had pulled on the disposable green capes, with hoods in an almost matching green, and the blue plastic shoe coverings. – And it’s plenty close enough for me. I’ve never yet met one doctor you could trust.
– Right now you look more like a chef, chuckled Norbakk as they entered the sharp light of the mortuary room in the basement of the Rikshospital.
Viken didn’t like delay, and he’d taken the trip up to the Institute of Pathology without Finckenhagen knowing anything about it.
– I know it’s not long till dinner, he said, wrinkling his nose, – but surely the smell down here doesn’t remind you of food?
Two people were already in the room, bent over a steel table. One was a tiny woman in her forties with a heavily made-up doll-like face. Viken knew her well, had worked with Jennifer Plåterud many times. He had quickly discovered that her mind and her tongue were equally sharp and he treated her with a respect that very few others of his acquaintance enjoyed. Viken knew a lot about most of the people he worked with. In his head he kept a catalogue of useful information regarding them, some of which he had even written down. He had tried on several occasions to worm out of Jennifer just what it was that had brought her to Norway. Surely her real reason for leaving Canberra and travelling to the other side of the globe couldn’t be that she’d met some farmer from Romerike, the guy she later married? But when it came to her private life Jennifer was a sphinx, and Viken still hadn’t got to the bottom of that particular question.
The other person standing there was a man of medium height wearing glasses, with a well-trimmed beard. Viken had never seen him before.
– Frederik Ovesen, the bearded man said, introducing himself with a cough. – Assistant professor at the Zoological Institute.
– Ovesen is their leading expert on beasts of prey, Jennifer announced in perfect Norwegian but with a broad Australian accent. Despite the fact that she was wearing stilettoes under her shoe coverings, she had to stretch to reach across the width of the steel table she was working at.
– How far have you got? asked Viken, with a glance at the body he had last seen in the forest a few kilometres beyond Ullevålseter. The ribcage had been opened up and the heart and both lungs taken out.
– The preliminary autopsy will be ready by tomorrow, Jennifer promised, and Viken couldn’t off-hand recall a single time she hadn’t kept her word.
– Time of death?
The pathologist pulled on her plastic gloves.
– Four to five days ago. Six at the most.
Viken’s eyes narrowed.
– So a week after she went missing. We can only guess what she was doing up there in the marka all that time. Does she look as if she spent four or five days sleeping rough in the forest?
– Not really, Jennifer replied. – But I wouldn’t exclude it either. Another thing is that we found large quantities of plaster under her fingernails. Some on the clothes, too. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it certainly doesn’t come from the forest floor.
– Any signs of sexual assault?
– Doesn’t look like it.
Norbakk said:
– I’ve seen a lot of animals killed by bears. There’s no mistaking these gashes across the neck and the back.
Ovesen coughed again.
– I agree. I’ve never seen a human being who’s been attacked, but we do have some archival material. I would say a fully grown adult bear.
– How certain can you be? Viken persisted.
Ovesen opened his mouth, coughed a couple more times; already these glottal eruptions had started to annoy the detective chief inspector.
– We’ll send the photos to Edmonton University in Canada, said the zoologist. – They’ve got documentation there they can use for comparison.
– Would a bear not have ripped open her stomach? Viken wondered.
Ovesen shook his head.
– We humans are not natural prey for a bear. It might gash us, bite, but it’s extremely rare that it would attack in order to eat us. Unless we’re talking about a seriously undernourished animal.
– Don’t rule out that it might help itself to a dead person, said Norbakk. – Old Bruin’s a scavenger, after all. And not a particularly fussy one.
– You’re right there, said the zoologist. – It might have started gnawing away at the body and been disturbed. Alarmed by something, for example.
Jennifer Plåterud interrupted:
– I can tell you that the deceased was still alive when these wounds were made. There was the hint of a smile about her mouth as she said this.
– So not a scavenger, then, said Norbakk firmly. – But the tracks up there looked fresh enough.
Again the zoologist backed him up.
– Not more than a day or two old. And remember too that it was raining five days ago.
Viken glanced at Norbakk, delighted to have the sergeant along. What do we need experts for, he thought with a grin, when we find all the answers ourselves?
– The preliminary conclusion then will be that all the visible injuries were inflicted by a bear, he announced, looking at Jennifer Plåterud across the partially autopsied body on the table.
– Not that one, Chief Inspector, she said, and pointed with a scalpel.
The smile spread across her face, revealing fine lines that were otherwise hidden by the make-up. She made Viken think of a child that had been working away inside its nose and come up with an enormous bogey. He leant over the body. Four small red pricks were clearly visible on the upper left arm. Jennifer held a magnifying glass to them.
– Injection marks, suggested Norbakk.
– That would be my opinion too, said the pathologist. – There are more of them here. She moved the magnifying glass to two areas on the inside of the thigh. – Moreover, she added, – note the red circles around the wrists.
Viken examined them closely.
– Tape marks?
– I’d guarantee it. There are traces of adhesive on the skin. And the same here. She made a circling motion around the dead woman’s mouth.