We Know You Remember (84)

Many of the 220 bones that make up an adult skeleton were still missing, but the man had at least begun to take shape.

Whoever he was.

The cooling unit made the air inside the old engine room almost icily cold. The various objects were gone from the floor—the dress, the beer cans, and everything else that had been sent off for analysis—and the bones had been laid out in their place. The cold air was to preserve them while they waited for specialist transportation. The blue clay had been rinsed off, revealing a white substance on some of the bones.

“Corpse wax,” Shirin ben Hassen explained, adding another piece to the puzzle of the man’s left leg. “It could have something to do with the blue clay. I’ve seen it before, when we recovered the crew of the DC-3. You know, the one shot down off the coast of Gotland during the Cold War; they found it fifteen years ago. They had been embedded in blue clay, too.”

It was Shirin who had tried to reach Eira the night before, wanting to talk to someone with knowledge of the case. GG had given her Eira’s number. He was busy elsewhere, apparently, though he had now sent a message to say that he was on his way from Sundsvall.

Shirin had been ankle deep in the blue clay since seven o’clock that morning, and didn’t have much time for people who would rather spend their weekends watching TV or sleeping in. Not when it looked like the guy’s head had been caved in.

“You can tell that already?” asked Eira.

When it came to analyzing skeletal remains, it often took half an eternity to determine the cause of death—assuming anyone ever managed. Shirin pulled out an iPad and showed Eira a photograph of the man’s skull, which had already been sent off to the lab.

“You see this?”

She scrolled slowly through a series of images taken from different angles. Sure enough, the skull had a number of typical male characteristics. Square eye sockets, a powerful jaw. The forehead more sloping than a woman’s.

“Someone gave him a pretty nasty bash,” she said, enlarging the image. Small indentations in the bone, a nick.

“Could that have happened afterwards, in the water?”

“Lucky for this guy it was me they sent.” Shirin’s fingers brushed across the screen, almost like she was stroking it. “Often when they recover the body, there isn’t anyone with osteological expertise present—even though we do try to demand it. It can take weeks to find something like this otherwise.”

Yes, the injuries had arisen prior to death. They were looking at a case of serious, likely lethal violence.

Shirin pointed into the forge.

“If it happened in there,” she said, “there’s no shortage of iron bars and sledgehammers and other rusty objects; the place is a treasure trove for anyone wanting to cave someone’s head in. With a bit of luck we’ll find some DNA, but if it were me I would’ve tossed the murder weapon as far into the river as I could. Getting rid of a body is much trickier. Coffee?”

“Please.”

There was a thermos and a few mugs on a collapsible table outside. Eira gratefully helped herself to a couple of cinnamon swirls.

The greenery round about seemed to have come alive after the rain, crawling and buzzing with life.

Shirin excused herself to go and talk to a colleague. Eira remained where she was, trying to process the fact that, despite everything, they had managed to uncover a murder. It wasn’t Lina, but someone out there would soon learn what had happened to a relative—assuming the man’s family was still alive. She remembered a case in which an excavator had found human remains in a park in the S?dermalm area of Stockholm. The murder investigation was eventually closed when they discovered the body had been buried in a cholera cemetery dating back to the eighteenth century.

“I know it’s too early to ask,” she said once the forensic technician had returned, “but can you say anything at all about the timeframe?”

Shirin pulled off her gloves and pumped herself a fresh cup of coffee.

“No earlier than April 1960,” she said. “And most likely after 1974.”

Eira laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Come with me.”

The ground was muddy after the previous day’s rain. A tent had been put up down by the edge of the river, and the area had been marked out with pegs and string, some of them in the water, forming a grid. Every discovery was given coordinates. There was a camera on a tripod, carefully documenting everything.

Eira said hello to the two technicians working inside the tent.

“We found this this morning,” said Shirin.

She paused by a plastic container right by the beach. When Eira leaned in, she saw a shoe floating inside.

“We’re keeping it filled with river water to maintain the same temperature until we can send it off, to prevent any decomposition from setting in. We want to know everything this little beauty can tell us.”

It was a black leather boot. Laced, with a thick sole. It didn’t look brand new, but nor was it especially old.

“Is that a DocMartens?”

“Yup, the classic 1460 model. It first went on sale in April 1960, hence the name.”

“Are you sure it’s his?”

“Well, no one lost this by accident, that’s for sure.” She turned the container around so that the boot moved slightly. Eira could make out something white inside.