Watching You(13)

He turned and tapped Deer on the shoulder. She spun round at once, at if she’d been waiting for it.

Without a word he passed his mobile to her. She glanced at him and took it. Then effortlessly she zoomed in on the rings set into the wall. Berger watched her, saw the frown spread across her forehead.

After scrolling back and forth she handed the mobile back. ‘So what’s that?’

‘Mooring rings,’ Berger said. ‘Deeply embedded in the wall.’

‘Is it part of some contraption?’

‘Don’t know. Maybe.’

‘We need to tell Robin.’

‘He’s on his way. We’re seeing him at half past eight.’

Deer nodded. Then she said: ‘So no morning assembly today?’

‘There’s hardly anyone here,’ Berger said, waving his hand. ‘And we haven’t got anything new to say anyway.’

‘That’s new,’ Deer said, nodding at the phone.

‘Not until it’s been past Robin.’

There ought to have been a meeting at eight o’clock, known as morning assembly, but most of the team was out in the field. Three of them were leading the door-to-door inquiries in M?rsta, and their collective grumbling could be heard all the way to Police Headquarters. Syl was down in the media room, grumbling almost as much, as she scrutinised the news reports. Two officers were revisiting the handful of witnesses, before going back to Ellen Savinger’s poor parents. Only Maja and Samir were at their desks, Maja as coordinator, Samir with his sights on the subcontracting estate agent.

Berger called M?rsta. His three sets of boots on the ground had just set in motion their own team of uniformed boots on the ground. The previous day’s door-knocking was continuing, further and further from the crime scene, colder and colder.

‘No sign of activity in the house?’ Berger said, earning him a wry glance from Deer.

Then Samir was standing there, trying to hide his youth with a steadily lengthening hipster beard. He leafed through some papers and said: ‘It actually looks like that dodgy estate agent has managed to dig out an email address.’

‘Let me guess,’ Berger said. ‘Hotmail?’

‘Does that still exist?’ Samir said, running his fingers through his beard. Then he handed over a sheet of paper.

Berger took it and passed it on to Deer, who took it and carried it over to Maja. Like a game of pass the parcel.

‘Dig as deep as you can,’ Berger said to Samir. ‘Even if the chances of finding anything at the other end are pretty slim.’

‘I don’t know where we’d be without such enthusiastic leadership,’ Samir deadpanned, then went back to his desk.

It was hard to tell how much time had passed when a strikingly overweight man in an elegant three-piece suit appeared at the edge of the open-plan area. Because his suit was a nondescript shade of pale violet, his two companions faded into the colourless background behind him. Berger stood up and went to meet him.

‘Robin,’ he said, holding his hand out. ‘Good to see you managed to get the dirt of the cellar out of your clothes.’

Robin shook his hand and pointed at Berger’s knees: ‘You, on the other hand, still have a surprising amount on you considering that it’s been twenty-four hours since you were there.’

‘I’m surrounded by wannabe detectives,’ Berger complained, and gestured towards the next corridor.

The three visitors followed him, and Deer brought up the rear of the quick march. Berger led them into an utterly sterile meeting room. They settled down around the bare table.

‘You know Vira,’ Robin said, indicating the woman with him, who didn’t look a day over twenty-four.

Vira gave a doctor’s nod that instantly added ten years to her age.

‘So Medical Officer H??g has sent one of his assistants,’ Berger said coolly.

‘For the simple reason that there isn’t much to say,’ Vira said, even more coolly. ‘We estimate that the oldest blood has been there eighteen days old, the newest four. In total there wasn’t much more than three decilitres. But there are two types of DNA found in the whole house. Most of it Ellen Savinger’s. Rather less, Sam Berger’s. How’s the wound healing?’

Berger looked at his right knuckles. ‘Toxicology?’

‘What?’ Vira said.

‘If you’ve already managed to get hold of the DNA, then presumably you’ve also conducted toxicology analysis. Checking for drugs in the various layers of blood. You must have figured out a timeline for the introduction of any poison or drug.’

For the first time Vira looked slightly wrong-footed.

‘Do it again; do it right,’ Berger said. ‘So who’s your other little friend, Robin?’

‘Cary,’ Robin said. ‘Sound technician. But we’ll leave him for a while. Because the more I see of your not-long-since-dried appearance, the more obvious it is that I don’t have the whole story. I was thinking of setting out the forensic position, but I can’t do that now. Have you spent the whole night in the cellar, Sam? Sleeping your way towards the truth like some shaman? Contacting restless spirits?’

Berger held his mobile phone out to Robin. The impeccably dressed forensics expert took it and wrinkled his nose.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said.