being really abnormally well preserved. I don’t know if I really understood, but it was something about the salts in the mine that stopped the body from rotting; it was only the hair that …”
“Did they say anything else?”
The intern had already begun to write.
“Yes, apparently he had pretty strange clothes on too, coarse fabric, a suit with a vest, a shirtfront with a separate collar. No ID or driver’s license or loyalty card, nothing. You know, they actually said that the police haven’t found a single object made of plastic on that guy. Ivory shirt buttons, pants buttons made of horn, shoe soles that were made of some sort of natural rubber.”
“Maybe he’d been kidnapped from a house in Östermalm. Old money and wealth,” said the intern with the phone tucked under his chin, writing with both hands now.
6
Up into the Light
T he next morning—
Dalakuriren
’s leading news:
DALAKURIREN EXPOSES
THE SECRET POLICE INVESTIGATION
Then came the introduction, with the intern’s name in a bold byline:
FALUN —Today
Dalakuriren
exposes the secret police investigation of the so-called Æsir murder.
According to the police’s new theories, the victim has most likely been lying in the mine shaft for a very long time—possibly for centuries.
According to several independent sources, the body of the murder victim has been submerged in the preservative copper vitriol, which has protected the body from decomposition.
Police investigators now assume that this is not an active murder case but rather a crime for whichthe statute of limitations has long run out. Officially, the police do not want …
It was still as cold in the clearing as the intern remembered from last time. It was as though the fog and the cold were somehow rising up from the shaft opening itself, followed by the stench of the underworld.
As the rescue-service pump began to work, the nauseating smell became even worse. The horde of journalists began to move back as the water was sucked noisily into the colossal cylinder tank.
At lunchtime the forensics team rappelled down into the drained tunnels and began their work.
Quite soon, as the police spokesman would later explain to the intern and the other journalists, they had come across a pile of newspaper, sticky with copper vitriol.
The pile had been near one of the mine walls in what the evening papers had called the hall of murderers. It was still possible to read one of them; narrow columns with headlines in smeared black type:
The great German offensive.
The advance finally stopped?
Only minor progress reported by the Germans.
Farther down:
The question of provisions. The rationing plan for next year.
A scarcely hopeful statement from the minister of agriculture.
And on the next page, the entire masthead was still there:
Southern Dalarna’s Newspaper—7 June 1918
After that, they had begun to suck up the water from the pool around the stone where the diver said he had found the dead man.
In the sand on the bottom they had found a large awl with a broken red handle, and you didn’t need an extensive forensic education to realize what had hacked the deep hole in the vitriol-soaked man’s forehead.
A few hours later, the police technicians and the journalists would learn that the only prints that could be gathered from the handle had come from the dead man’s own fingers.
“So it’s not even certain that it was a murder? It could be a
suicide
? It might not even have been a story a hundred years ago?”
The Weasel from the big evening paper was waving his hands as though he couldn’t get air. The police spokesman nodded calmly.
“Fucking goddamn Dalarna,” said the Weasel, shoving his way out of the press conference to call home.
H is editor reserved half a page for the story in the afternoon edition. The other evening paper chose to fill the space with a lighthearted column.
That evening the newspapers called their correspondents home from Falun. Time to pay
“Did they say anything else?”
The intern had already begun to write.
“Yes, apparently he had pretty strange clothes on too, coarse fabric, a suit with a vest, a shirtfront with a separate collar. No ID or driver’s license or loyalty card, nothing. You know, they actually said that the police haven’t found a single object made of plastic on that guy. Ivory shirt buttons, pants buttons made of horn, shoe soles that were made of some sort of natural rubber.”
“Maybe he’d been kidnapped from a house in Östermalm. Old money and wealth,” said the intern with the phone tucked under his chin, writing with both hands now.
6
Up into the Light
T he next morning—
Dalakuriren
’s leading news:
DALAKURIREN EXPOSES
THE SECRET POLICE INVESTIGATION
Then came the introduction, with the intern’s name in a bold byline:
FALUN —Today
Dalakuriren
exposes the secret police investigation of the so-called Æsir murder.
According to the police’s new theories, the victim has most likely been lying in the mine shaft for a very long time—possibly for centuries.
According to several independent sources, the body of the murder victim has been submerged in the preservative copper vitriol, which has protected the body from decomposition.
Police investigators now assume that this is not an active murder case but rather a crime for whichthe statute of limitations has long run out. Officially, the police do not want …
It was still as cold in the clearing as the intern remembered from last time. It was as though the fog and the cold were somehow rising up from the shaft opening itself, followed by the stench of the underworld.
As the rescue-service pump began to work, the nauseating smell became even worse. The horde of journalists began to move back as the water was sucked noisily into the colossal cylinder tank.
At lunchtime the forensics team rappelled down into the drained tunnels and began their work.
Quite soon, as the police spokesman would later explain to the intern and the other journalists, they had come across a pile of newspaper, sticky with copper vitriol.
The pile had been near one of the mine walls in what the evening papers had called the hall of murderers. It was still possible to read one of them; narrow columns with headlines in smeared black type:
The great German offensive.
The advance finally stopped?
Only minor progress reported by the Germans.
Farther down:
The question of provisions. The rationing plan for next year.
A scarcely hopeful statement from the minister of agriculture.
And on the next page, the entire masthead was still there:
Southern Dalarna’s Newspaper—7 June 1918
After that, they had begun to suck up the water from the pool around the stone where the diver said he had found the dead man.
In the sand on the bottom they had found a large awl with a broken red handle, and you didn’t need an extensive forensic education to realize what had hacked the deep hole in the vitriol-soaked man’s forehead.
A few hours later, the police technicians and the journalists would learn that the only prints that could be gathered from the handle had come from the dead man’s own fingers.
“So it’s not even certain that it was a murder? It could be a
suicide
? It might not even have been a story a hundred years ago?”
The Weasel from the big evening paper was waving his hands as though he couldn’t get air. The police spokesman nodded calmly.
“Fucking goddamn Dalarna,” said the Weasel, shoving his way out of the press conference to call home.
H is editor reserved half a page for the story in the afternoon edition. The other evening paper chose to fill the space with a lighthearted column.
That evening the newspapers called their correspondents home from Falun. Time to pay
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