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 withered 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