Bad Blood

17

Viggo Norlander was back on his dunce task, but he hadn’t realized until now that it had nothing to do with dunces. Quite the opposite: it was important work, and he had been placed there because of his competence.

He had arrived at his spot in the pathology department before the new corpse did, which he considered to be of merit. This time, unfortunately, he wasn’t alone.

He didn’t really understand how it had happened, but several of the unpleasant morning’s visitors were already present.

The Johnsson couple were there, the ones who dreamed of finding their son-in-law in the morgue at Karolinska instead of in his Bahraini harem. The old rapids-shooter Egil Högberg, accompanied by a new aide, was there, ceaselessly repeating “My son, my son.” And Justine Lindberger, the young civil servant from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was there, intensely missing her missing husband. Norlander did his best to cool down the heated atmosphere.

By the time old Sigvard Strandell peeked out of the loathsome cold chamber and gave Norlander a quick nod, the latter had already decided to prioritize Justine Lindberger.

She appeared to have collected herself after the morning’s breakdown, but Norlander made sure that there were still medical personnel on site.

He led her carefully into the cold chamber. As had not been the case with the unidentified corpse from Frihamnen, the new body had not yet been placed in a cooler box; it was lying on a gurney in the middle of the room, covered by a genuine county council sheet. Strandell was there to make sure that no damage was done to his future working material. It was he who pulled the sheet aside for Justine Lindberger.

This corpse was a man almost as young as the previous, unidentified one. The dark hair gave a ghostly contrast against the whitish-blue face, slightly swollen from its stay in the water-and it had two small holes in the neck.

Justine Lindberger squeaked, nodded, and ran out into the hallway. The staff outside were ready, caught her up, and gave her an injection. Before it took effect, Norlander had time to ask the unnecessary question: “Do you recognize the dead man?”

“It’s my husband,” said Justine Lindberger faintly. “Eric Lindberger.”

And then a gradually developing mist brought her long, horrible day to a merciful end.