by Chris Ould
“I have to finish securing the body, then wait for the doctor. After he’s been I want to reassess. It’s a question of whether it’s better to move her, or wait for a full technical team.” He looked at his watch. “There might still be time to get them here today. If we could I’d feel better about leaving things as they are.”
“I’ll call them now and see what I can do,” Remi said. “I’ll let you know.”
“Okay, thanks. Do you want me to call Ári again and update him?”
“No, I’ll speak to him. Just concentrate on what you have there.”
“Okay. I’ll send the photo now. Bye.”
Hentze called Dánjal at the village hall and was told that the doctor had arrived. It was a formality to have life declared extinct, but necessary before anything else could be done.
“Shall I send him out?” Dánjal asked.
“Is he suited up?”
“Yeh, but I had to insist.”
“Good. Okay, leave Rani in charge there and come with him – I’d like a second pair of eyes, a second opinion.”
“You know I haven’t had forensic training, right?” Dánjal said.
“That doesn’t matter, just come.”
* * *
The doctor was a middle-aged man called Hansen, a local GP who clearly didn’t like the fact that he’d been called out on Sunday, or that Dánjal had required him to put on a forensic suit. He had to be asked again to put the hood up before going to the body, which he did grudgingly. His whole demeanour was that of a man who thought he was being asked to do something beyond the call of duty.
While the doctor examined the body Hentze stood back with Dánjal. “Anything from the local residents?” he asked.
Dánjal shook his head. “So far no one has reported anything suspicious and no one seems to have taken photos. I’ve sent them home with instructions – a request – not to talk about it. Not that it’ll do any good. The whole island probably knows by now.”
“Anything else?” Hentze asked. “What about the woman who found her?”
“She told Karin she was just taking her dogs for their usual walk when she saw what she thought was old clothes or rubbish.”
“When she says their ‘usual walk’, does that mean she would have come the same way yesterday or earlier today?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, we’ll need to find out. It might help establish how long the body’s been there.”
The doctor emerged from between the walls of the huts. He had taken less than two minutes.
“I can say that life is extinct,” he told them, pointedly pushing his hood back and removing his surgical gloves.
Hentze nodded. “Thank you. Can I ask you about the wound in her chest? You saw it?”
“Yes.”
“To me it appeared to be a stab wound. Would you agree?”
“I couldn’t say. That would be for the pathologist.”
“Yes, I understand.” Hentze said. “But for the sake of argument, if it was a stab wound, would you not expect there to be a lot of blood from it?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” the doctor conceded reluctantly. “Although it is also possible for bleeding to be mostly internal. As I said, I would leave that for a pathologist to determine.”
“Okay, thank you,” Hentze said. “If you wouldn’t mind going back by the same route you came. And, of course, please don’t speak about what you’ve seen here.”
“Naturally.”
The doctor departed and Hentze and Dánjal walked towards the huts.
Hentze had already fastened plastic bags over the woman’s hands and feet to preserve any evidence there. Now that the doctor had pronounced death he could do the same to her head. But not yet. He gave Dánjal time to take in the scene, then stepped carefully over the body.
“There’s only a single wound that I can find.” He showed Dánjal the hole in the tee shirt. “Here. But see the amount of blood? Almost nothing. And none on the ground.”
“Maybe it was like the doctor said: internal bleeding.”
“Maybe. What do you think about the weeds? Have a look. They’re only broken where she’s lying.”
Dánjal assessed this. “You think if there had been a struggle – say if the attacker had forced her to the ground to rape her – there would be more flattened plants?”
“Do you?”
“Probably,” Dánjal conceded. “But plants straighten up if they’re bent, don’t they? I mean, over a few hours.”
“Yes, but these are old and dried out. They’d snap wouldn’t they?”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“So?” Hentze pressed.
Dánjal shifted uncertainly. “So maybe she wasn’t attacked here – is that what you mean? Maybe the body was brought here.”
“If she was, how did the killer get her body out here? Could one person have carried her so far? It’s two hundred metres from the road if you go in a straight line.”
“Someone might do it if they were strong.”
“Could you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Or she could also have walked out here with him: either voluntarily or because he forced her – with a knife or something. Then maybe he raped and killed her out in the open and dragged her body in here.”
“Yes, that’s possible,” Hentze agreed. “But to attack her in the open, where he might be seen? More likely at night, then, but in that case you’d have to know the area well enough to find your way out here.”
“Or use a torch.”
“Which could give you away.”
“I suppose.” Dánjal was obviously unsure where any of this was getting them – or rather, getting Hentze – but he was saved from further back-and-forth when Hentze’s phone rang. It was Remi Syderbø.
“I’ve spoken to Copenhagen,” he told Hentze. “A technical team will be on the 19:00 flight tonight. They won’t get to the scene until well after dark, but as long as we’re prepared for that I think we should leave things as they are. Do you agree?”
“Yeh, I think that’s the best thing.”
“Good,” Remi said. “So when you’ve secured things there come back to the station. I’ll set up an incident room.”
“Okay, sure.”
Hentze rang off, then turned to Dánjal. “Technical are coming so we just need to preserve everything as it is. Will you go back to the car and get the tent and the large plastic sheets? If we do it between us I think we can rig something up to hold the rain off and keep the disturbance to a minimum.”
“Okay,” Dánjal nodded but then gestured to the graffiti. “It can’t be a coincidence, can it? I mean, if she is one of the Alliance, and after the whale drive on Friday…”
Hentze cast a glance at the words, then shook his head. “It seems unlikely,” he said.
As Dánjal turned to pick his way carefully out of the shelter and go back to the community hall, Hentze assessed the scene one last time. Very unlikely, he thought. Which was sure to make things even more complicated. But there was nothing to be done about that now.
He opened the forensic kit to look for a plastic bag large enough to accommodate the dead woman’s head.
8
THE HOUSE ON MARKNAGILSVEGUR WAS LARGE AND DOUBLE-fronted, painted grey. Perhaps wisely the Alliance people had chosen to rent a property on the outskirts of Tórshavn rather than nearer its centre, and they had refrained from putting up any outward sign of who was living there. The only clue was the logo on the doors of the two cars parked outside.
Remi Syderbø stopped his car on the gravel drive in front of the house and got out. The head of CID was a man of medium build, lent a faintly steely air by his greying hair and rimless glasses.
“You’d better wait here for the moment,” he said to the uniformed officer in the patrol car, which had followed him from the station. After Friday’s grind, police uniforms might not be so popular in the Alliance headquarters.
The door of the house was opened by a young ma
n, well dressed and Danish, who showed Remi in. Two rooms on the ground floor at the front had been turned into offices, but the place was quiet – just a couple of people typing on laptops – and if not for the campaign posters on the walls it might have belonged to an accountancy firm. This surprised Remi. He had expected something more informal, if not bohemian.
He was led through to a smaller office where Petra Langley stood up and came round a desk as Remi introduced himself.
“Politiinspektør Remi Syderbø,” he said, somewhat formally so she would be aware of his rank. “Thank you for seeing me.”
For himself, Remi was well aware of Petra Langley’s own details. As coordinator of the AWCA operation on the Faroes she’d naturally had her fair share of scrutiny and was the subject of an intelligence file: Canadian, forty-two years old, divorced, no children.
“So how can I help?” Petra Langley asked then. “On the phone you said it was important.”
Remi cut to the chase. “Can you tell me if any of your group are unaccounted for?”
“You mean missing?” Petra frowned. “Not that I know of, but people come and go and today’s Sunday. We don’t keep track of them on their day off. Why?”
“I’m afraid that a woman’s body has been found and we believe she may be one of your staff or volunteers,” Remi said. “I have a picture here. It was taken of the body but it’s not—” he sought the correct word “—not graphic. And of course, you don’t have to look, but it would help to know if you recognise her.”
Petra hesitated for a moment, then said stiffly, “Okay.”
Remi took out his phone and summoned up the photograph Hentze had emailed to him, then held it so Petra Langley could see the screen. She looked for a second, then made a sound in the back of her throat before looking away.
“Do you know her?” Remi asked.
“Yes. That’s— Her name is Erla, Erla Sivertsen. She’s our photographer.”
“Thank you.” Remi put the phone away quickly. “I’m sorry to bring such bad news. How long have you known her?”
“About a year and a half.”
“Was she a friend?”
“Yes. Not a close friend, but, yes, of course. Where is she? Do you know what happened?”
“Her body was found at Húsavík on Sandoy,” Remi said. “We don’t know what happened yet, but we are treating the death as suspicious.”
“Suspicious?” The word appeared to surprise her. She looked away for a moment, to gather her thoughts. “I… I don’t know what to say. You know she’s – she was – Faroese. Her father lives here. On Suðuroy, I think.”
“Thank you, that’s useful to know,” Remi said. “I’ll find out so the family can be informed. Can you tell me, did she live here in the house?”
Petra shook her head. “No, she was sharing with some other people at the house on Fjalsgøta, number 82.”
“Okay, in that case we’ll need to have a look at her room. Do you know who has a key?”
“No, but I can find out. The landlord might.”
“Thank you, if you would.”
“Is there anything else I can do – any of us?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Remi said. “We need to know what Ms Sivertsen was doing before she died, so we’ll need to talk to all your people and find out when they last saw her. How many are here at the moment, in the house?”
“I’m not sure. Only a few: most people go out.”
“But you can contact them?”
“Yes, I’d think so, most of them, but—”
“Then please do that, and ask them to come back here as soon as they can.”
For a moment it seemed that Petra Langley might raise an objection, but Remi Syderbø’s tone had not left it as a request. Instead she nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. Am I allowed to tell them what it’s about?”
“It might be better if you don’t – at least until they arrive. Some officers will come to take statements from them.”
“Okay,” Petra said, accepting the idea that some things were now inevitable.
“And if I can make one more request: I know that your organisation uses social media and the Internet to keep the public informed of your work, but for the time being – until we can notify Ms Sivertsen’s family – I’d ask you not to make any public announcements. Can you agree to that?”
Petra Langley looked offended. “Sure, of course,” she said. “We are decent people, too, you know.”
* * *
Hentze caught the four o’clock ferry back to Streymoy and when he got to the station it was clear that Remi Syderbø hadn’t been idle. He called Hentze straight into a side office, one along from the incident room, and made sure the door was closed firmly before starting to speak.
“The victim’s name is Erla Sivertsen,” he told Hentze. “She was Faroese – from Suðuroy – but she’d been with the Alliance for about eighteen months: their official photographer, not a volunteer.”
“Does she have any family?”
“Yeh, her parents. Jacob Poulsen is going to see them now to break the news.” He paused, as if to indicate that it was not a job he had handed out lightly. “So, what can you tell me?”
“The scene is secured,” Hentze said. “I’ve left six people to look after it. That’s as much as we can do until Technical arrive.”
“And you’re still sure it was suspicious?” Remi asked as if he still had one last thread of hope that something might have changed.
“Definitely,” Hentze said sombrely. “Apart from the stab wound – what looks like a stab wound – her jeans and underpants had been pulled down to her knees. I couldn’t see any sexual injuries, but it also looked to me as if her body was moved to the place it was found – from how far, I don’t know. It could have been just a few yards.”
“And the graffiti?”
Hentze had a feeling this was the question Remi had wanted to ask all along. “There isn’t much to add to what I said on the phone,” he said with a shrug. “It looks as if it’s written in marker pen and it seems fairly fresh – as if it was put there recently – but Technical might be able to tell us for sure.”
“What’s your feeling about it?”
“Given that she was working for the Alliance? It seems unlikely it’s a coincidence.”
“Yes.” Remi adjusted his glasses. “Okay, well as it stands now Ári is at the Alliance headquarters with a team to interview the AWCA staff and volunteers and two officers – Sonja Holm and Annika Mortensen – are conducting interviews at the house Erla Sivertsen shared with some other Alliance people.”
“Has anyone examined her room there yet?”
“I’ve sent Oddur to do it, but until we know what her movements were before her death we haven’t got much else to go on. Will you coordinate everything here and prepare a briefing on what you found at the scene? I’d like to get an overall picture as soon as possible.”
“Sure. Are you taking charge?”
It was a loaded question, and although Hentze made it seem innocent enough he wanted to gauge Remi’s response. The Tummas Gramm case was barely cold and its abrupt conclusion had effectively forestalled any judgement of the way Ári Niclasen had handled it. Even so, Hentze was sure that Remi Syderbø would not have forgotten his reasons for stepping in towards the end, so the question now was whether Remi was confident enough to put Ári in charge of what might be an even more high-profile investigation.
“For the moment I’ll lead,” Remi said, his tone neutral. “Until we know what we have. The involvement of the Alliance obviously makes this – complicated.”
Hentze nodded. “Yeh, I can see that. Okay, I’ll get on then.”
9
VEERLE KONING WAS CRYING; A ROUND-CHEEKED YOUNG woman in her early twenties, with curly hair and slightly pouting lips. The tears didn’t do much for her looks, which would not be outstanding at the best of times, Annika thought. Hard to tell how much of a meal she was making of all this, too. Although she knew
it was an uncharitable thought, there was something about this young woman that made Annika suspect that her grief had an element of performance about it. Not that that necessarily made it less genuine; some people just didn’t know how to react to moments like this and so relied on reactions learned from television dramas.
“It’s okay, take your time,” Annika told her. Veerle was Dutch and spoke no Faroese or Danish so Annika used English. “It’s a shock, I know.”
They were in the sitting room of the house on Fjalsgøta. The place had a distinctly student feel to it, with abandoned coffee mugs and discarded newspapers and magazines on various surfaces, and a tumbledown stack of DVDs in front of the TV.
Upstairs Oddur Arge was examining Erla Sivertsen’s bedroom, and in the adjacent room Sonja Holm was interviewing another AWCA woman who had arrived with Veerle about five minutes ago.
“How long have you known Erla?” Annika asked as Veerle blotted her eyes with a tissue.
“From May.” Veerle sniffed, then made an attempt to focus. “We shared a room at the training camp before we came out here.”
“Training camp?”
“Well, it wasn’t really a camp – that’s just what we called it. It was a conference centre outside Malmö. Those of us who were going to be here for the whole operation were there so we could get to know each other and learn what we were going to do.”
“Oh, right, I see. And you’ve shared the house here since you arrived?”
Veerle nodded. “Ja. And when Lukas and I wanted to share a room here I exchanged with Erla. She said she didn’t mind having somewhere smaller if we wanted the double. She was thoughtful like that. Always happy to help someone out, you know?” Veerle swallowed a lump in her throat, then ran a hand briefly over her cheek.
Annika said, “Is Lukas also a member of AWCA?”
“Yeh.”
“Can you tell me his last name?”
Veerle sniffed. “Drescher. Why?”
“We need to know everyone who lives here so we can be sure to talk to them all,” Annika said, noting the name down. Get as much information as possible, Remi Syderbø had told them, but find out especially who lived in the house and when they had last seen Erla Sivertsen. “So, can you tell me the last time you saw Erla?”
