Joona Linna: Stalker Part 11

'He had a still at home ... I don't know. But he did take a few pictures with his mobile in case the police showed up and started asking questions ... and he kept the finger at the bottom of his fridge.'

'Have you got the pictures?'

'Yes,' she says, and pulls out her phone. 'It must be him ... look at the gunshot wounds.'

hlen looks at the first picture. On the bare cement floor of the tool-shed lies a bloated, marbled torso with just one arm. The skin has split across the chest and slipped down. There are four ragged gunshot holes on the body. The water has made a black mark on the pale grey floor a shadow that gets narrower towards the drain in the floor.

'That looks good, very good,' Nils hlen said, handing her phone back.

There is a tense look in his eyes as he gets to his feet and picks the gla.s.s jar up from the desk, and he looks at her as if he were about to say something else, but walks out of the room instead.

20.

Saga follows Nils hlen through a dark corridor with narrow wheel-tracks on the floor, into the closest pathology lab. The chilly fluorescent lights in the ceiling flicker a few times before settling and lighting up the white tiled walls. Beside one of the metal tables is a desk with a computer and a large bottle of Trocadero.

The room smells of disinfectant and drains. A bright yellow hose is attached to one of the taps. A trickle of water runs from the end of the hose towards the drain in the floor.

hlen walks straight over to the long, plastic-covered post-mortem table with its double trough and drainage runnels.

He pulls over a chair for Saga, then places the gla.s.s jar on the slab.

She watches him put on protective overalls, a mask and latex gloves. Then he stops, quite still, in front of the jar, like an old person disappearing into a memory. Saga is on the point of saying something when hlen takes a deep breath.

'The right finger of a body found in brackish water, preserved in strong alcohol at a temperature of eight degrees for four months,' he says to himself.

He photographs the jar from various angles, then unscrews the lid bearing the words BOB Raspberry Jam.

Using a pair of steel tweezers he removes the finger, lets it drip for a while, then puts it down on the post-mortem table. The nail has come off, and is still lying in the murky liquid. A nauseating smell of rotten seawater and decaying flesh spreads through the room.

'It's certainly true that the finger was removed from the body long after death,' he says to Saga. 'With a knife or perhaps a pair of pliers or secateurs ...'

hlen is breathing audibly though his nose as he carefully rolls the finger over so he can photograph it from every angle.

'We can get a good fingerprint from this,' he says seriously.

Saga has backed away, and is standing with her hand over her mouth, watching as hlen picks up the dead finger and holds it against a print-scanner.

The machine bleeps when the print has been scanned.

The tissue is swollen and pudgy, but the fingerprint that appears in the little screen is still very clear.

The papillary lines are really the ridges between the cells and sweat pores that develop in the epidermis while an embryo is still in the womb.

Saga stares at the oval containing a labyrinth of swirls.

The room feels full of suppressed antic.i.p.ation.

hlen takes off his protective clothing again and logs into the computer, hooks up the scanner and clicks on the icon with the text LiveScan.

'I've got a private AFIS system,' he says straight out as he clicks another icon and types in a new pa.s.sword.

Saga sees him search for 'Walter', then click to bring up the digital image of the ID form that was compiled at the time of Jurek's arrest. The sharp reproductions of the thumb and fingerprints from both hands were made in ink.

Saga tries to control her breathing.

Sweat is trickling down her sides from her armpits.

hlen whispers something to himself, and drags the best image from LiveScan across to the search box of the AFIS system, then clicks the b.u.t.ton saying a.n.a.lysis and Comparison, and immediately gets a result.

'What's happening?' Saga says, and swallows hard.

The reflections of the fluorescent lights slide across his gla.s.ses. She sees his hand shake as he points at the screen.

'The details of the initial level are rather vague ... mostly just patterns,' hlen explains, and clears his throat quickly. 'The second level are so-called Galton details ... you can see the length of the papillary lines and the way they relate to each other. The differences are only the result of tissue breakdown ... And the third level, that's primarily concerned with the layout of pores, and there the match is perfect.'

'Do you mean that we've found Jurek?' she whispers.

'I'll send the DNA to the National Forensics Lab in Linkping, but purely as a formality,' he replies with a nervous smile. 'You've found him, there's no doubt that it's him. It's over now.'

'Good,' she says, feeling hot tears well up in her eyes.

The initial relief is full of contradictory impulses and emptiness. Her heart is still pounding hard in her chest.

'You've said all along that you were sure you killed Jurek why was it so important to find his body?' hlen asks.

'I couldn't try to find Joona before I'd found it,' she replies, rubbing her cheeks with her hand to wipe the tears away.

'Joona's dead,' hlen says.

'Yes,' she smiles.

Joona's jacket and wallet were found in the possession of a homeless man who hung around Strmparterren, at the end of the island housing the parliament building in Stockholm. Saga's watched the video of the interview plenty of times. The homeless man identified himself as Constantine the First. He usually borrowed one of the fishing boats and slept outside a heating vent.

He sat in the interview room with his big beard and dirty fingers, cracked lips and a wary look in his eyes. In a rattling voice he told them about the big Finn who told him to keep his distance, before taking his jacket off and swimming out into the water. He watched him swim out towards Strmbron until he reached the fast-flowing current and disappeared.

'You don't believe he's dead?' hlen asks calmly.

'Several years ago he phoned me ... he wanted me to find out some information about a woman in Helsinki, in secret,' Saga says. 'At the time I thought the woman had something to do with the case at Birgittagrden.'

'What about her, then?'

'She was seriously ill, she was in hospital for an operation ... Her name was Laura Sandin,' Saga says, holding hlen's gaze. 'But she was really ... really Summa Linna, his wife, wasn't she?'

'Yes,' he nods.

'I tried to get hold of Laura to tell her that Joona was dead,' Saga explains. 'Laura had been in a cancer hospice for palliative care, but two days after Joona's suicide she was discharged to spend her last days at home ... but neither Laura nor her daughter are still at their address on Elisabetsgatan.'

'Really?' hlen says, his thin nostrils turning pale.

'They aren't anywhere,' Saga says, taking a step towards him.

'That's good to hear.'

'I think Joona arranged his suicide so he could go and pick up his wife and daughter and go into hiding with them.'

Nils hlen's eyes are red, and his mouth is twitching slightly with emotion when he speaks: 'Joona was the only person who believed that Jurek's reach extended beyond the isolation unit, and as usual, he was right ... If we hadn't done this, Jurek would have killed Summa and Lumi, just as he killed Disa.'

'Nils, I need to find Joona and tell him that Jurek Walter is dead,' Saga says. 'He needs to know that the body's been found.'

She puts her hand on his arm and sees his shoulders slump when he makes his mind up.

'I don't know where they are,' he eventually says. 'But if Summa is dying, like you say ... I know where you could try looking ...'

'Where?'

'Go to the Nordic Museum,' he says in a thick voice, as if he were worried about changing his mind. 'There's a small bridal crown, a Smi bridal crown made of woven roots. Look at it carefully.'

'Thanks.'

'Good luck,' hlen says seriously, then hesitates. 'No one wants to hug a pathologist, but ...'

Saga hugs him hard, then leaves the room and hurries along the corridor.

21.

Saga parks in front of the large flight of steps leading up to the Nordic Museum, drinks a sip of cold coffee from a 7-Eleven mug, and looks at the people around her, all dressed for summer. It's as if she hasn't really paid attention to her surroundings before now. Adults and children, tired from the sun or long picnics, or excited and expectant on their way to the amus.e.m.e.nt park or some restaurant.

She's barely noticed the summer pa.s.sing her by again. Since Joona disappeared she has withdrawn from the world, searching for Jurek's body.

Now it's time to bring this to an end.

Saga gets out of the car and goes up the steps. There's a broken syringe on one of the top steps.

She walks in through the imposing entrance, buys a ticket, picks up a plan of the museum and carries on into the entrance hall. A colourful statue of Gustav Vasa sits on a huge wooden throne gazing off towards the replica of a post-war home that's been installed in the museum.

As she walks towards the staircase she catches a glimpse of a text about the people's home and the Social Democratic vision of a modern, supportive and equal Sweden in which all families had the right to a home with hot water, a kitchen and bathroom.

She jogs up the stone steps and carries on to the section for Smi handicrafts. A few visitors are walking along the gla.s.s cabinets containing jewellery, knives with reindeer-horn handles, cultural artefacts and clothes.

She stops in front of a display featuring a bridal crown. This must be the one hlen meant. It's a beautiful piece of work, made of woven birch-root, with points that look like the fingers of two interlaced hands.

Saga looks at the small lock on the case, sees that it would be easy to pick, but the cabinet is alarmed and there's a risk that a guard would arrive before she had time to look at the crown.

An elderly woman stops next to her and says something in Italian to a man pushing a stroller a short distance away.

The man speaks to the guard and is helped towards the lifts. A girl with straight fair hair is looking at the ceremonial Smi costumes.

There's a crackle of velcro as Saga pulls out her tiny dagger for hand-to-hand fighting from its sheath below her left armpit. She carefully slides the tip in next to the lock on the gla.s.s door, and jerks it. The door shatters and the splinters fall to the floor as an alarm goes off.

The girl looks at Saga in astonishment as she calmly puts the knife away, opens the door and removes the bridal crown.

It looks smaller outside the case, and weighs practically nothing. Saga stares at it as the alarm blares.

hlen told her that Summa's mother had woven the crown for her own wedding, and that Summa had worn it for hers, and then donated it to the museum of handicrafts in Lule.

Saga sees the guard hurrying back, and carefully turns the crown over in her hands, looks inside it and sees that someone has burned the name 'Nattavaara 1968' into it with a brand. She puts the crown back in the case and closes the shattered door.

She knew there was some sort of family connection to Nattavaara, and a.s.sumes that that's where Joona is at the moment.

Saga feels her heart swell at the thought of being able to tell Joona Linna that it's all over.

The guard's cheeks are flushed as he stops five metres away and points at her with his radio without managing to get a word out.

22.

The train pulls out of Stockholm Central Station, rocking noisily across the points as it rolls away from the dirty sidings. To the left, big white boats are gliding along on Karlbergssjn, while to the right is a concrete wall covered in badly painted-over graffiti.

Seeing as the bunks were all booked, Saga has had to take an ordinary seat. She shows her ticket to the conductor, then eats a sandwich with her eyes fixed outside the window. As the train pa.s.ses Uppsala she takes off her military boots, folds her jacket around her pistol and uses that as a pillow.

The train journey to Nattavaara, over a thousand kilometres away, will take almost twelve hours.

The train rumbles on through the night. Lights pa.s.s by outside like tiny stars, fewer and fewer the further north they get. Warm air streams from the scorching-hot radiator by the panel beside her seat.

In the end the night outside the window is nothing but solid darkness.