“Exactly. There weren’t any sheets on the bed. But we’ve checked departures to Thailand from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark during the first week of March. Marcus Tosscander wasn’t on any of the passenger lists. He should have been if he was booked on a flight.”
After the last sentence, Irene had goose bumps all over her body.
“That means Marcus was tricked. The murderer never intended to take him to Thailand. He had decided to kill Marcus from the very beginning,” she concluded.
Andersson nodded grimly.
“It seems that way.”
Irene forced herself to continue, “Then the big question is, where was he murdered? And then where was he dismembered? It doesn’t necessarily have to be the same place.”
“No. The technicians have checked the bathtub and the drain in his apartment, but there were no traces of human tissue or blood.”
“Do you know what the analysis of the trash bags and the tape have shown?”
“It’s the most common type of black trash bag on the market. It can be purchased at every hardware store and every gas station and so on. The tape is regular masking tape that you use when you paint. It can also be purchased anywhere. The only interesting thing the technicians found was traces of rice powder on the tape and inside the bags.”
Irene nodded. “That’s what we suspected all along. The murderer must have worn latex medical gloves. How commonly is rice powder used, compared to regular talcum powder, on medical examination gloves these days?”
“No idea. We’ll have to ask the technicians. But the murderer has actually left a clue behind or, rather, two.”
At first Irene was genuinely surprised. This murderer seemed more like a malicious being than a human who might leave a trail. Of course he was in fact a tangible person, and, as such, it was possible to trace him through the evidence he had left behind. Even if the leads in this case were very few. But at some decisive moment he would expose himself. Irene had been waiting for it to happen. Perhaps he was, reluctantly, beginning to reveal himself now. Anticipation caused her pulse to quicken as she leaned over the desk and looked at the superintendent.
“What kind of evidence?”
Andersson smiled contentedly when he saw her restrained excitement.
“Hairs. Two of them. They were in the sack, under the lower part of the body. And they don’t belong to Marcus Tosscander because they’re too light. Svante has sent one of them to his colleagues in Copenhagen. It will be a direct hit if they’ve found hairs from the same person at one of their crime scenes.”
“Have they found rice powder at the crime scenes in Copenhagen or in connection with Carmen Østergaard?” Irene asked.
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Svante. He’s in touch with Copenhagen.”
IRENE FOUND police technician Svante Malm in the Forensics break room. He was sitting, his eyes closed and his back leaning up against the wall. At first Irene thought that he was asleep, but when she hesitantly approached, he opened his eyes slightly. A happy smile crossed his long freckled face. He quickly ran his fingers through his carrot red hair in a futile attempt to make himself presentable. Wisps of hair stood up on the top of his head. He looked like he had just awakened.
“Now you caught me red-handed,” he said.
“Sorry if I woke you.”
“Not at all. I was meditating.”
He smiled again and got up to get some coffee from the pot on the hot plate. Irene had just had three cups of coffee after lunch, so, just to be different, she declined his offer. When he had seated himself at the table with his aromatic-smelling mug, Irene asked how much data he had on the murders in Copenhagen. She had copied the information with respect to Carmen Østergaard herself, but she hadn’t had a chance to read it over.
“As far as the murder of Carmen is concerned, it has been determined that the murderer was wearing rubber gloves there as well. They found talcum powder on both the body parts and in the sacks.”
“Talc? Not rice powder?”
“No, regular talc. Because of allergies they’ve recently begun to use rice powder, instead of talc, on examination gloves.”
“Did the sacks reveal anything?”
“The body parts of each corpse were found in the same type of black trash bag. The only difference is the way they were sealed. Marcus’s sacks were taped with masking tape. Carmen’s were tied together with nylon string. According to my Danish colleagues, strong string of