“We understand. It’s difficult when you know the victim,” Bentsen said soothingly.
Irene quickly grabbed the basket and slipped down the corridor. She knew where the bathroom was.
She cleaned the basket and blessed the fact that it was made of plastic. Woven rattan would have been worse. She bathed her face with ice-cold water and washed her mouth clean. Then she saw her pale face in the mirror and mumbled half inaudibly to her reflection, “It’s not just the fact that I knew you. It’s my fault that you died. I led the murderer to you. Oh, Bell!”
Her throat felt thick with suppressed sobs, but there wasn’t time for sorrow right now. For Bell’s sake she was forced to try to be professional and objective. And what would the Danes think? One Swedish police officer is lying in bed at the hotel with a hangover, and the other pukes when she sees pictures from the murder scene.
Her Danish colleagues were sitting in the same places, waiting for her arrival, each with a fresh cigarette. The smoke made her feel ill again, but she braced herself.
“I’m sorry. It’s OK now,” Irene said and sat down.
She didn’t pick up the close-up of Bell again, but turned to Jens Metz instead and asked, “What did the medical examiner say?”
“She had been dead more than twelve hours but less than twenty when she was found. He thought that fifteen to seventeen hours was a good guess. It matches the time she disappeared. She was strangled first. That’s the cause of death.”
“So she was dead when the trauma to her abdomen was inflicted?”
“Yes.”
Thank God, thought Irene.
Metz picked up the enlargement of the photo of Isabell on the bed. He said, “The medical examiner thinks that she was chained with the handcuffs first. There are marks on the wrists that indicate she struggled to get free. Then she was strangled. As soon as she was dead, the murderer started striking her pubic bone with a heavy object. The bone was completely crushed, just like with Carmen Østergaard and your guy . . . what’s his name.”
“Marcus Tosscander,” Irene added.
“Marcus. Both he and Carmen display exactly the same type of injuries. The object was also driven into her vagina and rectum. They were heavily damaged. Finally, he slit her open. According to Professor Blokk, he used the same incision that Østergaard and your guy had. Notice how careful he has been not to cut through the navel. The words are Blokk’s, not mine.” Metz made an ironic face.
“The object was not left in the room?” Irene asked.
“No. Blokk estimates that it was a sturdy, short clublike object.”
“Could it be a large baton?”
Irene could hear that her voice sounded unsteady when she asked the question.
Metz looked surprised when he answered. “That’s actually what Blokk guessed, but we really don’t know.”
A baton. The police officer, she thought. And she was sitting in a room with three officers who had known about her private search for Isabell.
Metz picked up the photo of Isabell on the bed. He studied the scene thoughtfully before he said, “The knife that was used was powerful, a hunting knife or an autopsy scalpel. According to Blokk, the murderer would have had a heck of a time with the breastbone even if he had had a proper knife. With the other two victims, the breastbone was sawed through with a circular saw, but here he must have decided not to worry about opening the chest.”
“Why not? Wouldn’t it have been easy to bring along a circular saw?” said Irene.
For the first time, Peter Møller responded. “Maybe he didn’t have access to the saw this particular night. But it’s probably because a circular saw makes a lot of noise. Even at the Hotel Aurora they would have reacted to the sound of a circular saw in the middle of the night.”
It sounded like a plausible explanation. Metz nodded in agreement before he cleared his throat and continued. “We found out from the staff at the hotel that a woman had called and asked about Isabell. First she had asked for a guest who was called Simon Steiner but when the porter said that there wasn’t a guest with that name, she got worried. That’s when she asked about Isabell.”
“Did any of the employees at the hotel see Isabell?”
“No, but we know why. The top floor was closed due to renovation. The room that Isabell was found in