Victim Without a Face

by Stefan Ahnhem

  When Fabian had first walked into the house, he’d thought Schmeckel was a lonely but somewhat harmonious person, a man who took joy in the good things in life. But the more he scanned the bookshelves, the more he was beginning to form a completely different image, of a person with poor self-esteem, maybe even a victim of bullying.

  He pulled out a photo album and opened it. The first few pages were filled with pictures of a trip to some southern European country; then came pictures from a Halloween party at Lund Hospital. In one of the photos, Schmeckel was dressed up as a bloody butcher, chewing on a detached finger made of what looked like marzipan. Fabian doubted it was the sort of picture Schmeckel would want the general public to get a hold of, considering the scandal with the forgotten plastic clips. Fabian flipped through the rest of the album, but there were no more photographs.

  The problem with new technology was that no one ever got their photos developed anymore; instead, they were put onto a hard drive. All you usually found these days were albums full of very old photos with handwritten captions.

  And then it struck him. As his eyes swept around the room, he realized there was nothing in it that could be from Schmeckel’s childhood or teenage years — no nostalgic records by KISS or The Who or, as in Fabian’s case, Duran Duran. The only albums here were of “grown-up” music, for mature listeners with good taste. The same thing could be said about the bookcase: there was no Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. It was as if Schmeckel’s whole youth had been erased, like it had never existed.

  Fabian left the living area and went into the kitchen to have a look around. There was a wine cooler full of French wines sorted by region and year; Rune certainly was a pedant through and through. He opened the stainless-steel refrigerator to see what was inside. The stench came as a total surprise, hitting him right in the gag reflex. He had expected the fridge to be clean and empty, but the opposite was true. Besides rotten vegetables and old milk, there was half a crab on a plate. A crab that looked like it was capable of killing anyone, despite being deceased itself. Based on what Fabian had determined from the other parts of the house, leaving fresh crab to rot in his fridge wasn’t Schmeckel’s style. In other words, he had not planned to be away from home.

  Fabian continued searching the kitchen for more clues, uncertain whether the rotting food really meant something or if it was just a false lead, planted intentionally. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the cupboards, pantry, or freezer. He went through the drawers last. The first one contained silverware; the second had various kitchen utensils; and the third was full of the random items people usually don’t know what to do with: pens, erasers, obsolete coins, rubber bands, a roll of tape, an empty notebook, and a few keys, one of which looked like a car key. He picked it up and looked at it. PEUGEOT was engraved on the head.

  Fabian had an idea and stuck the key in his pocket.

  23

  THE COLD STEEL WALLS pressed against the left side of her body and there wasn’t much more room on her other side, three or four centimetres max. The space she was lying in was bordering on too small and it was dark and cold — twenty-two degrees below freezing, to be exact. Even if someone turned on a light it wouldn’t get brighter. But even though she was lying naked on her back in a freezing, dim space, she didn’t feel cold in the least.

  *

  DUNJA HOUGAARD HATED WHEN people were late. She thought it was the height of disrespect to waste other people’s time, as if it weren’t just as valuable as your own. Oscar Pedersen was late, as usual, so Dunja took the initiative and pulled out the box identified as METTE LOUISE RISGAARD from the wall of cold-storage boxes. She looked at the young, naked woman, her dark hair spread out around her head like a fan. She was beautiful, and aside from the piercing in her lip and the diamond tattoo on her right shoulder, she was somehow undisturbed. Life hadn’t started to eat away at her and leave its marks; death had beaten it to the punch. Mette Louise somehow looked so alive, like she was just sleeping deeply. What a waste, Dunja thought. She couldn’t understand what the Swedish police had been thinking when they had neglected to contact them. They were counterparts after all, and the Swedes must have been fully aware that a dangerous killer might come to the gas station.

  The door behind her opened and Oscar Pedersen came in with his usual superior smile, a smile that indicated he didn’t care a bit about his tardiness.

  “Hello, beautiful. I suspected that you wouldn’t be able to keep your hands to yourself. Have you found anything?”

  “Today isn’t about my opinions. I want to hear from you.”

  “It’s such a waste. She’s definitely a ten, wouldn’t you say? Think about how much joy she had left to spread around.” He laughed at his own joke and lowered the sides of the box.

  Dunja had never liked Oscar, and she was sure he had become a medical examiner for all the wrong reasons. As soon as a female victim landed on his table, he was in an extra-good mood, especially when they were young. Unfortunately, he was one of the best pathologists in Denmark, and had never missed a clue or failed to discover a cause of death in his nearly thirty years on the job.

  “This criminal sure knows how to kill someone. Take a look at this.” He bent the victim’s head back to reveal the neck fully, and turned the head from one side to the other. “See that?”

  Dunja nodded. There were two small bruises on either side of the throat.

  “He strangled her with the so-called pincer hold, which only requires the thumb and index finger. I’ll show you.” He demonstrated the technique using his own fingers. “It’s one of the most effective ways to strangle a person.” Dunja had to force herself not to back away from his claw-like hand. “It’s far better than squeezing the whole neck, the way amateurs do, which takes both hands and at least fifteen minutes for the victim die. We would be spared a lot of suffering in the world if people did their homework as well as this guy did.”

  Dunja wasn’t sure whether he was kidding, but she decided to take him seriously. “Do you mean to say that the perpetrator might have training in various killing techniques?”

  “He might, but it really only takes a basic knowledge of anatomy and heartlessness.”

  *

  DUNJA STEPPED INTO THE elevator and pressed the green button. She could feel herself moving up and immediately found it easier to breathe. She had never liked to be underground, and couldn’t understand why morgues always had to be in the basement. It made no difference to the deceased, but moving the morgue upstairs would improve the lives of everyone who worked at the hospital. She could never manage more than thirty minutes down there at a time.

  She would have liked to go up a few extra floors to have a chat with Morten Steenstrup, but he was still unconscious on the operating table. At this point the doctors couldn’t say anything about his prognosis. All she could do was hope — not just for his sake, but for the investigation as well. Morten was her only chance right now of understanding exactly what had happened at the gas station in Lellinge.

  She walked by Rigshospitalet’s convenience store and saw Steenstrup’s face on all the billboards. He had become a great hero over the weekend: the little officer from Køge who refused to give up and kept fighting even though he was alone and seriously injured. Dunja thought his actions represented the height of stupidity; not only did they go against everything they had learned at the police academy, they went against all common sense. But people wanted a hero, and the fact that he was currently hovering between life and death didn’t hurt in this department. Perhaps it would have been even bigger news if he were a baby hippo, Dunja thought, walking out through the main entrance.

  She was biking down Ravnsborggade past Nørrebro Theatre, turning left onto Nørrebrogade, when her phone rang. She answered without stopping.

  “You were trying to reach me.” It was Kjeld Richter, their forensic technician.

  “Yes. How are things going with the Peugeot?” Dunja asked.


  “I’m sure it’s fine. The car should have arrived at the station by now and I’ve contacted Peugeot to order a key, but that’s going to take at least two weeks since it’s vacation season.”

  “You haven’t started examining it yet?”

  “When would I have had time for that? I’m still in Lellinge. Have you ever been here? It’s a fucking shithole. I couldn’t work over the weekend since both Agnes and Malte have the stomach flu and Sofie needed help.”

  “It’s fine. I get it.” Dunja thanked God she didn’t have any kids as she pedalled across the Dronning Louise Bridge over the Lakes, where people insisted on jogging even though one pass was equal to half a pack of cigarettes’ worth of exhaust fumes. “Shouldn’t we consider sending the Peugeot over to Sweden if you don’t have time to examine it? I’ve heard that they can’t wait to get their hands on it.”

  “I suggested that option to Sleizner, but apparently as long as the conflict with Sweden is unresolved, we’re not going to let them have anything. You know how he is when he’s in that mood.”

  Dunja knew very well what “that mood” meant. If you managed to get on Sleizner’s bad side, you might as well emigrate. No one was more stubborn than him. He was like an angry badger that refuses to let go before it hears the sound of breaking bones. She had heard stories about him even when she was back at the academy, but she’d always thought those were just tall tales. Now that Sleizner was her boss, she knew better.

  “But we can’t just let it sit here untouched for two weeks. It would be better to let the Swedes come down and examine it themselves.”

  “I’m not going to get involved. If you feel like getting Sleizner worked up, be my guest. Just don’t count on any help from me when the shit hits the fan.”

  By the end of their call, Dunja’s bad mood had grown even worse, if that was possible. She wondered whether there was any reason not to co-operate with the Swedes, aside from Sleizner’s obstinate personality. As she biked along Kultorvet, she decided to contact the Swedish police in Helsingborg the minute she got to the station. Surely there would be someone in their department who was in a situation like her own.

  24

  “FIND ANYTHING INTERESTING?” FABIAN Risk asked as he stepped into the bedroom upstairs. Irene Lilja was standing behind the twin bed, leaning over a stack of books on the nightstand, glancing through the titles. There was another Bang & Olufsen stereo here, and more enlarged photographs of the same countryside as on the living room walls.

  “I don’t know.” She threw up her hands. “To be completely honest, I don’t get this guy. On one hand, he seems so — how should I put it? — level-headed and totally in control of his life. He has good taste, is well read, and is so meticulous it borders on a disorder.”

  Fabian nodded. Lilja had arrived at the same muddled conclusion as him.

  “But then you find something like this and it throws off your whole assessment.” She handed him a blue notebook with the handwritten title MY SLEEPING DIARY.

  “Sleeping diary? What’s that?”

  “Open it up and you’ll see.”

  Fabian opened the book. It was jam-packed full of handwritten entries. Not a page was empty from cover to cover. There was a date and time in the upper right-hand corner of each page. Fabian read a passage out loud.

  “May 20, 1994, 3:12 a.m. I ran as fast as I could, but I’m still in slow motion. They just kept getting closer and closer: wolves with razor-sharp teeth. I came to an elevator and pressed the button, but nothing happened. I banged on it as hard as I could. The doors opened, far too slowly. They caught up with me. I didn’t do anything. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. It was like I was paralyzed. I just stood there and took it. I wanted to spit in their faces, but I didn’t dare. The littlest one, who was maybe eight years old, came up and shoved me. I was totally unprepared, lost my balance, and fell right down the cliff...” Fabian stopped speaking and looked up from the book. “So it’s a dream diary?”

  Lilja nodded, took the notebook back, and flipped to the end. “Listen to this one from September 12, 2001, 5:38 a.m.... He lay down. I hit and kicked him until my white Nikes turned red and kept going until his face was no longer a face.” She met his gaze. “You heard it for yourself. He’s definitely not of sound mind.”

  Fabian agreed with her, and told her about the self-help books he had found in the living room. They agreed to let Molander take over and perform a thorough examination of the whole house to look for any clues that they’d missed. On their way through the upstairs hallway, Fabian suddenly stopped. “Did you check the attic?” he asked Lilja.

  “No, there doesn’t seem to be one here. I looked in every room.”

  “But what else would need one of these?” Fabian lifted a long, narrow steel rod from the nail in the doorjamb it had been hanging on. It was painted white and had a hook at one end.

  Lilja shrugged and Fabian started walking around the second floor to inspect the ceiling. Lilja was right: there didn’t seem to be an attic hatch in any of the rooms. Fabian didn’t find what he was looking for until he climbed up on a chair and examined the ceiling light, which resembled an upside-down umbrella. He used the rod to pull it down. A steep ladder unfolded.

  They climbed up and found themselves in a dark attic with a ceiling so low they had to stoop. When Lilja turned on the light, Fabian realized his initial impression of Schmeckel had been way off the mark. The attic functioned as a studio, just like the one in his own house, although it was considerably smaller than Sonja’s and it didn’t have any skylights. The paintbrushes were clean and arranged bristles-up in jars. Tubes of paint were sorted by colour. The space looked completely different from Sonja’s artistic chaos.

  “Yikes. Look what I found.” Lilja lifted one of the canvases and placed it on an easel.

  Although the painting was abstract, with thick strokes of bold colour, they had no problem deciphering the battered head of a human. Sonja would surely have said that Schmeckel was talented and that the painting was interesting. Fabian found it repulsive. The head was floating free against a white background, severed from its shoulders. Sinews and blood vessels hung from the neck. The nose was crushed and the skin had been removed from large portions of the left side of the face, exposing tendons, bone, and parts of the left eye socket.

  “Say what you what, but this guy obviously has a gift.” Lilja held up a few of the other canvases. All of them showed battered and beaten body parts. One of the paintings showed a pair of severed feet next to a bloody axe; another featured a torso with roughly twenty stab wounds, the knife still in the body, twisted a quarter-turn.

  “I don’t know what you think, but I believe these creative impulses fit the profile of the kind of man we’re looking for,” said Lilja.

  “How do we know it’s the same person?” asked Fabian.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. The man downstairs seems to be the very picture of harmony, but his house is so superficial and devoid of personal artefacts you can’t help wondering who he is deep inside. And then we come up to the attic and find so much personality here, it almost feels like a different guy.”

  “Maybe he has a lodger? Someone who uses his car as well?”

  “Isn’t there only the one bedroom upstairs?”

  Lilja nodded.

  They grew silent and each looked around the attic separately. They both needed time to think and make sense of it all. They poked around the tubes of paint, the easels, and the bizarre paintings. There was a metal box behind the jars of paintbrushes; its blue paint had rubbed off along the edges. Fabian carefully lifted the box and opened it. It contained around fifty Polaroid pictures. As soon as he saw the battered, swollen face he knew exactly how everything was connected.

  December 16

  Yesterday I went to the hospital.

  They were waiting for me in the courtyard of our building. I ran but they caught me and took me to the playground. I tried to protect myself but I
fell and they just kept kicking me. At first it hurt a lot. Then I didn’t feel anything. It was like I stopped caring. I heard them laughing and showing each other different kinds of kicks. A man came and yelled at them. They ran away.

  I tried to get up but I couldn’t. Everything was spinning. The man helped me and asked me my name. He told me my head was bleeding and that I had to go to the hospital. I never told him my name even though he kept asking. He finally left so I could go home but I was hurt and it took a long time.

  Mom started crying when I got home. I’ve only seen her cry one other time, when she was fighting with Dad, but it wasn’t like this. I said I got in a fight and it was my fault. She wanted to know if I was fighting with someone in my class. I just said it was some guys I had never seen before. I think she believed me.

  The good part is that I have two broken ribs, a concussion, and a couple deep cuts so I get to stay home until Christmas vacation!

  P. S. When I came home Laban was lying in his cage like he was sleeping, but he wasn’t sleeping. I stuck a needle in his back to get him up. At first he squeaked and tried to get away but I held him down super hard. Then he ran around in his cage like someone was chasing him. It was super funny.

  25

  “ARE YOU SURE?” TUVESSON looked at the Polaroids showing the battered face that were spread out on the table.

  “Yes,” Fabian said confidently. It had come to him the instant he saw the pictures up in the attic in Lund — Claes Mällvik and Rune Schmeckel were the same person. “We’ve got a clear motive and a link to both the car and the murders of Jörgen and Glenn. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier.”