The Black Madonna by Peter Millar Page B

not among the tightly knit religious community. He had hoped to keep the more salacious details out of the public domain. When searching for a killer, particularly a sadist which this one undoubtedly was, it was always better to keep something back. He had said as much to Sister Galina, but the nun, who was still in the order infirmary, had made it abundantly clear – with no more than a hand gesture – that she had not the slightest intention of revealing any more than the absolute minimum. And under the circumstances, Weinert had had no problem believing her.
    But inevitably the word had got out. He did not know who had leaked it and there was next to no point in trying to find out. The tabloid press had a way of finding out the goriest details of murder cases, and in one like this there had never been any prospect of imposing a gagging order ‘for the sake of the investigation’. It had been for his own sake too, he admitted privately. As it had turned out, however, the circumstances – the religious setting and the sense of deliberate desecration – had kept the worst elements of the force’s inimitable black humour at bay. So far.
    He had no doubts that when the investigation ran into the sand, as he had a horrible feeling this one was going to, he would still end up being labelled ‘Inspector Dickhead’. At least they had kept the worst of it out of the press. Releasing the details about the heart was gruesome enough to feed the interest that might – just might – produce a lead; keeping back the more grotesque details about the genitalia would at least give a means to weed out any phoney confessions . God knows, releasing that sort of detail might have prompted a deluge of them. There had been that guy who volunteered to be eaten alive, penis first, by Germany’s home-grown cannibal, and had his wish come true.
    Weinert had little optimism about anything useful coming out ofthe forensics. Apart from Sister Galina, none of the other members of the religious community had touched the bag, unsurprisingly enough. The local police, who had been summoned immediately, had been so horrified at the thought of leaving evidence of murder within the confines of a sacred chapel – particularly evidence of this nature – that they had immediately removed it to the mortuary of the local hospital. Admittedly they had preferred to use tweezers to hold even the bag, but Weinert thought the chances of retrieving identifiable fingerprints slim. Identification of the victim was the first step and it did not look like being easy.
    The lab boys back in Munich had not held out much hope. The chances of the victim’s DNA being on a database were negligible. It was at times like these that policemen were tempted to wish that governments would introduce compulsory DNA registration for the entire population. In Wienert’s opinion this was going to be a case that stayed open for years, or rather opened and shut in everything but name. Because the sister had failed to get even the probably phoney details of the supposed courier company, there was no way of being sure the package had been sent from within Germany.
    Weinert was therefore irritated at having to wait outside the labs until some boffin in a white coat came out to tell him, as he was certain they would, that the case stopped here. It was at that moment that the lab door opened and Dr Heidi Wenger emerged and held out her hand with a grim but satisfied look on her face.
    ‘Nasty business. Very nasty.’
    Weinert nodded. He had no time for platitudes.
    ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting. I don’t know whether or not you’ll thank me.’
    Weinert smiled tightly. He knew: he wouldn’t.
    ‘Right, well as you can imagine, the most immediate conclusion was that the deceased was an adult male.’
    Weiner grunted a suppressed laugh. That much had hardly taken a forensic scientist to deduce.
    ‘That, however, hardly narrows down the field. Then we took a DNA sample.’
    Yes,