The Torso: A Detective Inspector Huss Investigation, Vol. 2

by Helen Tursten

  “No.”

  “Where was he?”

  Irene hesitated about telling the truth, which was He was sitting and drinking with his Danish colleague Jens Metz. She decided not to.

  “No idea. I was with Beate Bentsen. She was worried because Emil hadn’t been in touch for so long and I agreed to go with her to his apart—”

  The superintendent interrupted her. “So Jonny wasn’t there when you discovered the murder. What excuse does he have for not working?”

  Irene chickened out again. “Don’t know.”

  “I’ll call his room and ask. And Irene . . . be careful.”

  “Of course. I’ll call tonight.”

  A RED-FACED and hungover Jonny Blom entered the breakfast room when Irene had almost finished eating. He sank down in the chair across from her and sighed. “Andersson called. He was in a horrible mood. Why was he jabbering about my not being with you last night? What corpse was he ranting about?”

  “Go and get some food and I’ll tell you.”

  In a pedagogic tone, Irene explained what had happened during the night.

  When he heard that they had found Emil’s body and in what condition, Jonny sat up straight in his chair and seemed completely sober. The look he gave Irene was full of doubt.

  “Is it true? Beate Bentsen’s son?”

  Irene nodded.

  “That’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever heard! How’s she holding up?”

  “She had to be taken to the hospital. Had a complete breakdown. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The killer cut away his penis, one chest muscle, and one buttock.”

  Jonny looked at the remainder of his ham sandwich with distaste. He set it aside on his plate. “What a sick bastard!”

  For once, the two of them were in agreement.

  “I’ve booked us for one more night. We can keep the rooms we have and, Jonny . . .” She leaned forward over the table and said seriously, “. . . I would be very grateful if you could stay sober this last day. Andersson was right when he said that the murderer is working close to me. And you’re close to me. For your own safety, you should—”

  Jonny’s face turned red, and he got up so quickly that he knocked over his half-full cup of coffee. “You’re no damn chief or boss over me! You have no say in what I do!”

  Furious, he stormed out of the breakfast room. Irene sighed loudly. It looked as though it was going to be yet another day of schnapps drinking.

  JUST AS Irene had thought the night before, it really was beautiful when the sun shone in through the multicolored glass windows in the stairwell. But she couldn’t enjoy the play of colors on the walls when she and her three male colleagues stepped out of the elevator and walked up to the door of Emil’s apartment. Jonny looked at the blue ceramic sign in surprise and bent over in order to check out the pigs. He mumbled something but he didn’t comment out loud.

  He had ignored Irene on the car ride over to Emil’s apartment. Her appeal for restraint with respect to alcohol had not gone over well.

  When they inspected the crime scene during the night, Irene had realized that the other door on the landing belonged to the rental portion of Emil’s apartment. It was made up of two large rooms with a communal kitchen, hall, and bathroom. Neither of the rooms seemed to be rented currently. A large door in the kitchen that was locked led to Emil’s bedroom.

  The rooms were almost identically furnished; each held a wide bed, a large fancy dresser with a mirror above it, and a leather recliner with a floor lamp next to it. On the floor were worn but beautiful folk art rugs. The closets were empty as well as the dressers. Everything was covered by a thick layer of dust, which indicated that no one had lived in the rooms for several weeks, maybe even months. The only thing that made the rooms different was the color scheme. One of them was decorated blue, the other green. Both the rooms had wonderful views of the Botanical Gardens.

  The kitchen and the bathroom were dusty and dirty, but not as filthy as Emil’s. There was actually a certain degree of impersonal order discernable.

  Jens Metz turned around and breathed old booze in Irene’s face. “We’re going to let the technicians search for hair strands and so forth in both of the rental rooms. We have lots of hairs from the Hotel Aurora since the victim there was found in an old hotel room. We’re going to search Emil’s apartment thoroughly. It’s going to take a hell of a long time but if we’re lucky we’ll find hair or something else that matches,” he said.

  Irene nodded. She couldn’t speak since she was holding her breath. The question was who had the most repulsive mouth odor, Jonny or Jens.

  They left the rental area and entered Emil’s apartment. The smell of decaying flesh still hung in the air even though the body had been taken to the morgue. Irene opened the window in the kitchen. The technicians were in the process of collecting evidence in Emil’s bedroom. A short, rather rotund young man looked up at the police officers through the door opening, and said, “This is going to take a while. There is more dust and shit than you can imagine. It doesn’t look like the guy ever cleaned.”

  “Fingerprints?” Peter Møller asked.

  “Tons.”

  “Anything of interest?”

  “It looks like there are a lot of semen stains on the mattress and the bedclothes, but they appear to be older. We found a fresh semen stain under the bed. It’s very small but I think it will be enough for a DNA test. It looks like someone wiped up something with a rag, here by the bed. It’ll show up clearly when we light the area.”

  “Did you find the rag?”

  “No. The murderer probably wasn’t stupid enough to leave it behind.”

  “Where is the area that was wiped clean?”

  “Here.” The technician pointed at the floor just below the head of the bed.

  Peter Møller nodded and turned to Irene. “Finally, we may have a bit of luck. The murderer slipped up and left some traces. If it’s from him, that is. Emil could have left a sample before he was killed.”

  “You mean that if the semen belongs to the killer, he achieved climax through performing his rituals, and cleaned up afterward but missed a spot under the bed?”

  “Yes.”

  The bright sunlight fell on the only picture in the room, a large framed black-and-white photo of a man in an incredibly exposed pose. He was half sitting against some large pillows. The focus was on his very erect penis. Even though his face and upper body were a bit fuzzy, Irene recognized him. She hadn’t done so during the shock and chaos of the previous night. Now she saw that the model was Marcus Tosscander. What was even worse was that she recognized the type of photograph. Tom Tanaka had two of them hanging in his bedroom.

  This realization hit her like a blow to the head. She needed to speak with Tom as soon as possible. He would probably be questioned since the police knew that Emil usually hung out in Tom’s store. But they wouldn’t find out anything from Tom. Emil’s murder would just confirm his suspicions about the police in general and the Vesterbro station in particular.

  The four crime inspectors backed out into the hall. They had to leave the bedroom to the technicians for the time being.

  “Since there are four of us, I suggest that we each take a room to check. Jonny can take the bathroom; Peter, the kitchen; Irene can take the other room—the music room—and I’ll take the living room,” said Metz.

  No one else came up with a better suggestion so each went to his or her assigned room.

  Irene opened the door and stopped abruptly on the threshold to the room. She recognized this smell: marijuana smoke. She hadn’t noticed it the previous night either. That evening’s investigation had been cursory. There hadn’t been time or personnel for a more careful investigation of the apartment.

  She entered the music room and closed the door after her. The smell of pot mixed with the stale smell of a room that hadn’t been cleaned or aired out. It was large and practically unfurnished. The morning sun shone in through the dirt-streaked and curtainless window. A w
ithered brown plant in a little plastic bucket was placed in the middle of the window’s marble ledge. Irene tore off a leaf. She crumbled the dry leaf in the palm of her hand and sniffed. It was a marijuana plant.

  The floor was covered with a wall-to-wall carpet, which at some point in time had been light yellow. The dominating color at present was nicotine brown. The room had probably originally been used as a library. A built-in bookcase of dark wood ran along one of the walls. Emil had sloppily torn down some of the shelves in order to make room for two huge speakers and an impressive stereo setup. Along the sides of the speakers were overstuffed CD shelves. CDs and CD cases lay in random piles on the floor.

  Irene assumed that Emil and his friends had laid on the floor to listen to music since there wasn’t any furniture to sit on. They could have rested their eyes on the posters that decorated the walls. Irene took a closer look at them. They showed various rock groups with names like Warriors of Satan, Deathlovers, and Necrophilia. The band members were depicted in different stages of decay. Worms crawled out of holes in their skulls. Despite this, they were standing and jamming on their instruments and bellowing out their lyrics. The living dead.

  The thought of the state Emil had been in when they found him—rotten and dead—made the pictures on the walls seem like mockery.

  The majority of the CD covers resembled the posters.

  Irene tried to imagine the fantasies that could lead a young man to like this type of picture and music. She jumped when the door behind her was yanked open.

  “Why did you close the door?” Jonny asked.

  “Come in and shut the door behind you,” said Irene.

  Uncertain, Jonny did as Irene had asked him.

  “Sniff,” she ordered.

  He took some loud breaths.

  “Pot,” he determined.

  “Yep. In the window is a marijuana plant but the smell is coming from the filthy rug. A hell of a lot has been smoked in here over the years.”

  Jonny looked at the pictures on the walls in bloodshot wonder.

  “Shit,” was his opinion.

  “I agree. But it shows that he was drawn to necrophilia.”

  “Damn!”

  “Again, I agree. But it’s in these circles that we must look for our killer. Not just a necrophile but a necrophile who supplies his own corpses.”

  The wheels of logic had started turning in Jonny’s fuzzy brain. With a clever smile, he said, “So it can’t be Emil we’re after.”

  “No. But he most likely knew his killer.”

  Jonny finally remembered why he had come to summon Irene. “Møller found something he wants to show us,” he said.

  They left the music room and almost ran right into Peter. He was standing in the hall, staring into a closet attached to the wall. Irene and Jonny stood beside him in order to see what he was looking at.

  The large closet contained a worn leather jacket, a black trench coat, and two police uniforms.

  “We shouldn’t touch the clothes. There could be evidence on them,” said Møller. His voice sounded strained. Irene guessed that he was thinking about the police officer who had shown up on the periphery of the murder of Carmen Østergaard. Her body become hot all over. Thoughts were going off like fireworks in her head.

  Was it really possible? Could Emil be the police officer? Of course, his mother was a police officer. The photo on the wall and the business card proved that Marcus and Emil had known each other. Emil matched the description of the officer that the prostitute had given in connection with the investigation of Carmen’s murder. Was this where Marcus had been living during his time in Copenhagen? Not unlikely. Where were his things? His car? Why hadn’t Emil rented out the rooms again? Why had Emil himself been killed?

  The answer to the last question must be that Emil somehow had become a threat to the murderer. Irene also saw another possibility: the killer had found sexual release during the murder. Perhaps desire had gotten the better of him and Emil was the only one around. The thought was nauseating, but Irene decided to bring up this hypothesis with Yvonne Stridner when she got the chance.

  Jens Metz had rejoined the others in the hall. His heavy breathing could be heard in the silence. Finally, he said sincerely, “Now I feel damned sorry for the superintendent.”

  They should try and speak with Beate Bentsen as quickly as possible, thought Irene. Tentatively, she asked, “May I come with you to the hospital and speak with her?”

  “Why?” Jonny asked sourly.

  “Because Emil and Marcus knew each other. The model in the photo above Emil’s bed is Marcus Tosscander. This is probably where Marcus was living. How much did Beate know about Emil’s life? His sex life? There’s a lot that I would like to ask her,” said Irene.

  Jonny looked irritated, but didn’t say anything.

  “You can come along. I’ll call the hospital and see if we can speak with her. If it’s possible, we’ll go there right after we’ve eaten,” said Peter Møller.

  “I’ll try and get Svend Blokk. He should be able to tell us if it’s the same murderer. Actually, have you thought about the fact that the first two murders were different from the last two?” Metz pointed out.

  “You mean because he hasn’t cleaned out Isabell and Emil?” asked Jonny.

  “Exactly. Plus the fact that the chest hasn’t been opened. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t had access to a circular saw. That’s probably also the reason he hasn’t cut off the head and other extremities. Maybe we should be asking ourselves whether we could have a copycat murderer?” said Metz.

  That was a possibility, but Irene’s intuition said that it was the same killer. No copycat could have known the details of the mutilation and defilement of the first two victims since the media hadn’t had access to all the facts. But she agreed that there were certain striking differences between the first two murders and the later ones. It was almost as though the last two were incomplete.

  Irene became terrified by the word that popped into her head: incomplete. She would keep it in mind and come back to it when she had more information about the new murders.

  Peter stuffed his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a closed plastic bag. “I found this far back in the pantry. A bit of pot. Pretty strong.”

  “It matches the smell in the music room. The door has probably been closed since the murder. The posters and CDs show that Emil had an interest in necrophilia,” Irene told him.

  Møller and Metz went into the music room. They looked at the wall decorations in silence. Møller bent down and picked around among the CDs and covers. When they started walking toward the door again, Møller said to Irene, “It seems to mostly be death metal and black metal. He wouldn’t have had to have been a necrophile to listen to that kind of music. There are a lot of youngsters who think it’s cool. But I agree that he seemed to be obsessed with death.”

  He made a gesture at the poster hanging closest to the door. It depicted a guitarist, full length, standing and grinning at the observer, while worms crawled in and out of holes in his skull. Under the electric guitar his rotting intestines appeared to be hanging down to the floor. The words over the picture said: “There is no death!”

  IT WAS a relief to come out onto the street again.

  “It will be just as well if we eat lunch now,” said Jens Metz.

  Irene wasn’t very hungry but realized that it would give her a chance to contact Tom Tanaka. There were certain advantages to having separate toilets for men and women.

  They decided that after lunch Jonny should go back to the police station and make copies of the investigation reports about Isabell Lind. Naturally he groaned and mumbled, but deep down inside he must have been happy to be driven to the police station to sit in peace and quiet to deal with a stationary pile of paper. He obviously had a headache. But maybe he could get past it with an aspirin and some cups of coffee. A “little one” and some food would probably also do the trick.

  Peter Møller called the hospit
al and asked if they could question Beate Bentsen that afternoon. After several discussions with the nurses, they mercifully were given a visiting time after three o’clock.

  It was almost a quarter to twelve. If they hurried up and ate, Irene would have time for a visit to Tom Tanaka’s before three. She became insistent that they eat an early lunch.

  They walked to Gråbrødretorv and the small rustic pub Peder Oxe, known for its meat dishes and generous glasses of wine. All of them chose tender ox rolls in a divine cream sauce, black currant jelly, and a large helping of early spring greens. Everyone had beer. To Jonny’s disappointment, he was the only one who wanted to have a schnapps. To save himself embarrassment he didn’t order it, but his expression was that of a sad puppy who had been tricked.

  Irene excused herself before coffee and slipped off to the ladies’ room. She locked herself in the bathroom and took out her cell phone, then quickly brought up Tom’s number on the cell phone display and made the call.

  “Tom speaking.”

  “Irene Huss here. We need to meet immediately.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “Yes, I need to speak with you.”

  “Are you able to, even with your colleague around?”

  “Yes. If we can meet in half an hour.”

  “I can make it in an hour. OK?”

  “No. There won’t be enough time. It’s important! Otherwise I wouldn’t have called you!”

  He must have heard the desperation in her voice.

  “OK. I have company now. Come in half an hour. Call when you’re outside the door and I’ll come down and open it for you.”

  Irene pulled a comb through her short hairdo and ruffled it a bit. To her surprise, she had started liking her short hairdo. For the sake of appearances, she put on some more lipstick. She smiled at her own reflection for practice. It was important that she look casual while she was serving up a white lie to her colleagues.

  She dropped down next to her steaming cup of coffee and said, “I think that I’m going to try and speak with the girls at Scandinavian Models again. I’d especially like to talk to Petra one more time. Now that the initial shock is over, she might remember more from the night Isabell disappeared.”