somewhere. Mercedes—wasn’t that what they liked? The church bell rang. According to the price list, a Q5 cost 666,000 kroner. If there was a hidden message in those figures, it went way over Truls Berntsen’s head.
“Y OU LOOK GOOD, ” Beate said as she inserted the key into the lock. “Got a new finger, as well.”
“Made in Hong Kong,” Harry said, rubbing the short titanium stump.
He observed the small, pale woman as she unlocked the door. The short, thin blond hair held in a band. Her skin so fragile and transparent that he could see the fine network of veins in her temple. She reminded him of the hairless mice they used in experiments for cancer research.
“Since you wrote that Oleg was living at the crime scene I thought his keys would give me access.”
“That lock was probably destroyed ages ago,” Beate said, pushing the door open. “You just walked straight in. We had this lock put in so that none of the addicts would come back and contaminate the scene.”
Harry nodded. It was typical of crack dens. No point having a lock; they were destroyed immediately. First of all, junkies broke into places where they knew the occupants might have drugs. Second, even those who lived there stole from one another.
Beate pulled the tape to the side, and Harry squeezed in. Clothes and plastic bags hung from hooks in the hall. Harry peered into one of the bags. Paper towel rolls, empty beer cans, a wet bloodstained T-shirt, bits of aluminum foil, a cigarette packet. Against one wall was a stack of Grandiosa boxes, a leaning tower of pizza that rose halfwayto the ceiling. Four identical white coat racks. Harry was puzzled until he realized they were probably stolen goods they had been unable to convert into cash. He remembered that in junkie flats they were forever coming across things they thought they could sell at some point. In one place they had found sixty hopelessly out-of-date cell phones in a bag, in another a partly dismantled moped parked in the kitchen.
Harry stepped into the sitting room. It smelled of a mixture of sweat, beer-soaked wood, wet ash and something sweet that Harry was unable to identify. The room had no furniture in any conventional sense. Four mattresses lay on the floor as if around a campfire. From one protruded a piece of wire bent at ninety degrees, shaped into a
Y
at the end. The square of wood floor between the mattresses was black with scorch marks around an empty ashtray. Harry assumed the SOC unit had emptied it.
“Gusto was by the kitchen wall, here,” Beate said. She had stopped in the doorway between the sitting room and kitchen, and was pointing.
Instead of going into the kitchen Harry stayed by the door and looked around. This was a habit. Not the habit of forensics officers, who worked the scene from the outside, started the fine-combing on the periphery and then made their way bit by bit toward the body. Nor was it the habit of a uniformed officer or a patrol car cop, the first police on the scene, who were aware they might contaminate the evidence with their own prints or, worse, destroy the ones there were. Beate’s people had done what had to be done ages ago. This was the habit of the investigating detective, who knows he has only one chance to let his sensory impressions, the almost imperceptible details, do their own talking, leave their prints before the cement sets. It had to happen now, before the analytical part of the brain resumed its functioning, the part that demanded fully formulated facts. Harry used to define intuition as simple, logical conclusions drawn from normal impressions that the brain was unable, or too slow, to convert into something comprehensible.
This crime scene, however, did not tell Harry much about the murder that had taken place.
All he saw, heard and smelled was a place with floating tenants who gathered, took drugs, slept, on the rare occasion ate and, after a while, drifted off. To another squat, to a room in a hostel, a
“Y OU LOOK GOOD, ” Beate said as she inserted the key into the lock. “Got a new finger, as well.”
“Made in Hong Kong,” Harry said, rubbing the short titanium stump.
He observed the small, pale woman as she unlocked the door. The short, thin blond hair held in a band. Her skin so fragile and transparent that he could see the fine network of veins in her temple. She reminded him of the hairless mice they used in experiments for cancer research.
“Since you wrote that Oleg was living at the crime scene I thought his keys would give me access.”
“That lock was probably destroyed ages ago,” Beate said, pushing the door open. “You just walked straight in. We had this lock put in so that none of the addicts would come back and contaminate the scene.”
Harry nodded. It was typical of crack dens. No point having a lock; they were destroyed immediately. First of all, junkies broke into places where they knew the occupants might have drugs. Second, even those who lived there stole from one another.
Beate pulled the tape to the side, and Harry squeezed in. Clothes and plastic bags hung from hooks in the hall. Harry peered into one of the bags. Paper towel rolls, empty beer cans, a wet bloodstained T-shirt, bits of aluminum foil, a cigarette packet. Against one wall was a stack of Grandiosa boxes, a leaning tower of pizza that rose halfwayto the ceiling. Four identical white coat racks. Harry was puzzled until he realized they were probably stolen goods they had been unable to convert into cash. He remembered that in junkie flats they were forever coming across things they thought they could sell at some point. In one place they had found sixty hopelessly out-of-date cell phones in a bag, in another a partly dismantled moped parked in the kitchen.
Harry stepped into the sitting room. It smelled of a mixture of sweat, beer-soaked wood, wet ash and something sweet that Harry was unable to identify. The room had no furniture in any conventional sense. Four mattresses lay on the floor as if around a campfire. From one protruded a piece of wire bent at ninety degrees, shaped into a
Y
at the end. The square of wood floor between the mattresses was black with scorch marks around an empty ashtray. Harry assumed the SOC unit had emptied it.
“Gusto was by the kitchen wall, here,” Beate said. She had stopped in the doorway between the sitting room and kitchen, and was pointing.
Instead of going into the kitchen Harry stayed by the door and looked around. This was a habit. Not the habit of forensics officers, who worked the scene from the outside, started the fine-combing on the periphery and then made their way bit by bit toward the body. Nor was it the habit of a uniformed officer or a patrol car cop, the first police on the scene, who were aware they might contaminate the evidence with their own prints or, worse, destroy the ones there were. Beate’s people had done what had to be done ages ago. This was the habit of the investigating detective, who knows he has only one chance to let his sensory impressions, the almost imperceptible details, do their own talking, leave their prints before the cement sets. It had to happen now, before the analytical part of the brain resumed its functioning, the part that demanded fully formulated facts. Harry used to define intuition as simple, logical conclusions drawn from normal impressions that the brain was unable, or too slow, to convert into something comprehensible.
This crime scene, however, did not tell Harry much about the murder that had taken place.
All he saw, heard and smelled was a place with floating tenants who gathered, took drugs, slept, on the rare occasion ate and, after a while, drifted off. To another squat, to a room in a hostel, a
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