information on the missing women you can.’
The keys were placed in her hand, and as they left the manager’s office, they could clearly hear the scratching of pen on paper; frenetic, as though done by a man with a knife to his throat.
Both detectives walked down the corridor with stony faces – right until they turned the corner and reached the stairs. Then they started giggling like schoolgirls. The moment passed. As they climbed the stairs, Kerstin Holm said gruffly: ‘
It’s important you aren’t sloppy when you think it through
.’
‘It just came to me,’ Sara said with a hint of smugness, running her hand through her cropped blonde hair. ‘What reason could he have for keeping quiet about prostitution in the refugee centre?’
‘Just when I’d started to like him. I actually fell for his whole civil disobedience thing. Me, an old dear, I’m more naive than you. That feels weird.’
‘Don’t say that. All the crap I saw when I was working with the paedophile unit … It’s nothing to be jealous of. And you’re not an old dear.’
‘Mmm,’ Kerstin Holm replied, gravely serious.
They came to the rooms, four doors next to one another in the middle of a seemingly endless corridor two floors up. Rooms 224, 225, 226 and 227. After fumbling with the keys, they made their way into number 224. Unmade beds against two of the walls; an empty desk; a couple of empty wardrobes, doors flung wide; ugly strip lighting on the ceiling and the same piss-coloured wall-to-wall carpet and institutional fabric as everywhere else. It was clear that the atmosphere wasn’t part of what the brothel had to offer. People came here for raw sex, nothing more, nothing less. Even the reading lamps were bare strip lights.
They stood for a moment, taking in the scene.
‘What’s your intuition telling you?’ Kerstin asked, a question aimed as much at herself as Sara. ‘Is it worth calling the technicians in? Do you think they’ve just done a runner? Or has something happened to them? Sara?’
‘Fingerprints, semen …’ Sara thought aloud. ‘Yeah, well … should we take a look at the other rooms first?’
The other rooms were remarkably similar. In fact, there was barely anything to distinguish them. It was like that classic nightmare: no matter which door you opened, the very same room was waiting on the other side.
Both women knew that it would take multiple, time-consuming interviews before they would even start to form an idea about what had happened here. And by then, it would be too late for the technicians. They would have to go on their intuition. Breathe the rooms in. Try to find some small clue as to what had happened.
They thought about the decree from above – from the CID department head, Waldemar Mörner – which obliged staff to minimise their use of the National Forensic Laboratory, since its services were, in his view, ‘criminally overpriced’.
They stood for a moment, trying to get a sense of the atmosphere. Then they nodded, both at the same time.
‘Yup,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘Something’s not right.’
‘No,’ said Sara Svenhagen. ‘Something’s not right.’
And so they called in the technicians. Not that it was easy; they were busy elsewhere.
‘Skansen?’ Kerstin Holm exclaimed into her mobile. ‘What the hell are they doing there? Wolverine shit?? OK, OK, someone’s been reading their Ellroy …’
She hung up on her boss, Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin, and shook her head. Doing so still hurt slightly. Just over a year ago, she had been shot, leaving her left temple paper-thin. Her hair was still refusing to grow back over it. She poked at the little bald spot which her dishevelled black hair was managing, with some trouble, to cover.
‘Don’t ask,’ was all she said as they relocked the doors and headed back downstairs.
When they reached the manager’s office, Jörgen Nilsson had already filled ten or so sheets of A4. They looked at one another and
The keys were placed in her hand, and as they left the manager’s office, they could clearly hear the scratching of pen on paper; frenetic, as though done by a man with a knife to his throat.
Both detectives walked down the corridor with stony faces – right until they turned the corner and reached the stairs. Then they started giggling like schoolgirls. The moment passed. As they climbed the stairs, Kerstin Holm said gruffly: ‘
It’s important you aren’t sloppy when you think it through
.’
‘It just came to me,’ Sara said with a hint of smugness, running her hand through her cropped blonde hair. ‘What reason could he have for keeping quiet about prostitution in the refugee centre?’
‘Just when I’d started to like him. I actually fell for his whole civil disobedience thing. Me, an old dear, I’m more naive than you. That feels weird.’
‘Don’t say that. All the crap I saw when I was working with the paedophile unit … It’s nothing to be jealous of. And you’re not an old dear.’
‘Mmm,’ Kerstin Holm replied, gravely serious.
They came to the rooms, four doors next to one another in the middle of a seemingly endless corridor two floors up. Rooms 224, 225, 226 and 227. After fumbling with the keys, they made their way into number 224. Unmade beds against two of the walls; an empty desk; a couple of empty wardrobes, doors flung wide; ugly strip lighting on the ceiling and the same piss-coloured wall-to-wall carpet and institutional fabric as everywhere else. It was clear that the atmosphere wasn’t part of what the brothel had to offer. People came here for raw sex, nothing more, nothing less. Even the reading lamps were bare strip lights.
They stood for a moment, taking in the scene.
‘What’s your intuition telling you?’ Kerstin asked, a question aimed as much at herself as Sara. ‘Is it worth calling the technicians in? Do you think they’ve just done a runner? Or has something happened to them? Sara?’
‘Fingerprints, semen …’ Sara thought aloud. ‘Yeah, well … should we take a look at the other rooms first?’
The other rooms were remarkably similar. In fact, there was barely anything to distinguish them. It was like that classic nightmare: no matter which door you opened, the very same room was waiting on the other side.
Both women knew that it would take multiple, time-consuming interviews before they would even start to form an idea about what had happened here. And by then, it would be too late for the technicians. They would have to go on their intuition. Breathe the rooms in. Try to find some small clue as to what had happened.
They thought about the decree from above – from the CID department head, Waldemar Mörner – which obliged staff to minimise their use of the National Forensic Laboratory, since its services were, in his view, ‘criminally overpriced’.
They stood for a moment, trying to get a sense of the atmosphere. Then they nodded, both at the same time.
‘Yup,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘Something’s not right.’
‘No,’ said Sara Svenhagen. ‘Something’s not right.’
And so they called in the technicians. Not that it was easy; they were busy elsewhere.
‘Skansen?’ Kerstin Holm exclaimed into her mobile. ‘What the hell are they doing there? Wolverine shit?? OK, OK, someone’s been reading their Ellroy …’
She hung up on her boss, Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin, and shook her head. Doing so still hurt slightly. Just over a year ago, she had been shot, leaving her left temple paper-thin. Her hair was still refusing to grow back over it. She poked at the little bald spot which her dishevelled black hair was managing, with some trouble, to cover.
‘Don’t ask,’ was all she said as they relocked the doors and headed back downstairs.
When they reached the manager’s office, Jörgen Nilsson had already filled ten or so sheets of A4. They looked at one another and
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