The Crow Girl Read Free Page B

sharp knife.
    A scalpel or razor blade, perhaps?
    An examination of the mummified boy’s back revealed a large number of deeper wounds, the sort a whip would make.
    Ivo Andrić tried to picture in his mind’s eye what had happened. A boy fighting for his life, and when he no longer wanted to fight someone had whipped him. He knew that illegal dogfights still happened in the immigrant communities. This might be something similar, but with the difference that it wasn’t dogs fighting for their lives but young boys.
    Well, one of them at least had been a young boy.
    Who his opponent might have been was a matter of speculation.
    Then there was the fact that the boy hadn’t died when he really should have. Hopefully the post-mortem would reveal information about any traces of drugs or chemicals, Rohypnol, maybe phencyclidine. Ivo Andrić realised that his real work would begin once the body was in the pathology lab back at the hospital in Solna.
     
    At noon they were able to put the body in a grey plastic bag and lift it into an ambulance for transportation to Solna. Jeanette Kihlberg’s work here was done, and she could go on to headquarters, at the other end of Kungsholmen. As she walked towards the car park a gentle rain started to fall.
    ‘Fuck!’ she swore loudly to herself, and Åhlund, one of her younger colleagues, turned and gave her a questioning look.
    ‘My car. It had slipped my mind, but it broke down on the way here and now I’m stranded. I’ll have to call a tow truck.’
    ‘Where is it?’ her colleague asked.
    ‘Over there.’ She pointed at the red, rusty, filthy Audi twenty metres away from them. ‘Why? Do you know anything about cars?’
    ‘It’s a hobby of mine. There isn’t a car on the planet that I couldn’t get going. Give me the keys and I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it.’
    Åhlund started the car and pulled out onto the road. The creaking and screeching sounded even louder from outside, and she assumed she would have to call her dad and ask for a small loan. He would ask her if Åke had found a job yet, and she would explain that it wasn’t easy being an unemployed artist, but all that would probably change soon.
    The same routine every time. She had to eat humble pie and act as Åke’s safety net.
    It could all be so easy, she thought. If he could just swallow his pride and take a temporary job. If for no other reason than to show that he cared about her and realised how worried she was. She sometimes had trouble sleeping at night before the bills were paid.
    After a quick drive around the block the young police officer jumped out of the car and smiled triumphantly.
    ‘The ball joint, the steering column, or both. If I take it now I can start on it this evening. You can have it back in a few days, but you’ll have to pay for parts and a bottle of whisky. How does that sound?’
    ‘You’re an angel, Åhlund. Take it and do whatever the hell you like with it. If you can get it working, you can have two bottles and a decent reference when you go for promotion.’
    Jeanette Kihlberg walked off towards the police van.
    Esprit de corps
, she thought.

Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
     
    DURING THE FIRST meeting Jeanette delegated the preliminary steps in the investigation.
    A group of recently graduated officers had spent the afternoon knocking on doors in the area, and Jeanette was hopeful that they’d come up with something.
    Schwarz was given the thankless task of going through the lists of vehicles that had passed the road tolls, almost eight hundred thousand in total, while Åhlund checked the surveillance footage they had secured from the teacher-training college and the metro station.
    Jeanette certainly didn’t miss the monotony of the sort of investigative work that usually got dumped on less experienced officers.
    The main priority was getting the boy’s identity confirmed, and Hurtig was given the job of contacting refugee centres around Stockholm. Jeanette