The Fire Witness. Ларс Кеплер

from the front, slightly off to one side,’ Nils replies, pointing at the bloody hair. ‘Compression fracture of the temporal bone … We’ll do a digital tomography scan, but I assume that the large blood vessels on the inside of the skull have been detached and that we’ll find fragments of bone in the brain.’

      ‘Just like with Elisabet Grim, we’re bound to find trauma to the cerebral cortex,’ Frippe says.

      ‘Myelin in the hair,’ Nils says, pointing.

      ‘Elisabet had broken blood vessels in her skull, and blood and cerebrospinal fluid had run into her nasal cavity,’ Frippe says.

      ‘So you think they were killed at roughly the same time?’ Joona says.

      ‘Close together,’ Frippe nods.

      ‘They were both attacked from the front, both have the same cause of death,’ Joona says. ‘The same murder weapon, and …’

      ‘No,’ Nils interrupts. ‘They were killed with different implements.’

      ‘But the hammer …’ Joona says, almost inaudibly.

      ‘Yes, Elisabet’s skull was crushed with the hammer,’ Nils says. ‘But Miranda was killed with a rock.’

      Joona stares at him.

      ‘She was killed with a rock?’

       43

      Joona stayed in the pathology lab until he had seen Miranda’s face behind her hands. The notion that she hadn’t wanted to be seen after death is still lingering. He had felt a peculiar unease when they forced her hands away.

      Now he’s sitting at Gunnarsson’s desk in Sundsvall police station reading the preliminary forensic report. Yellow light is streaming through the blinds. A woman is sitting a short distance away in the glow of a computer screen. The phone rings and she mutters irritably as she looks at the number on the display.

      One wall is covered with maps and pictures of Dante Abrahamsson, the missing boy. The bookcases on the other walls are full of files and piles of paper. The photocopier rumbles almost nonstop. A radio is switched on in the staffroom, and when the pop music falls silent Joona hears the announcement for the third time.