Chapter 21
It took just under an hour to contact Ida’s mother and hand over Alice, so Daniel is both late and stressed as he hurries toward the enormous wooden house.
It reminds him to a certain extent of Hanna’s sister’s lodge.
Hanna lived there when she first came to ?re, before she found a place of her own in Solbringen.
This is almost as impressive, with oversize windows and a magnificent view.
It must be three times as big as the average Swedish terraced house, even though it is meant to be used only for vacations.
However, the color is astonishingly ugly—a lurid fleshy pink. It doesn’t fit in with its surroundings at all.
According to Grip, the body is at the front of the house, down at the bottom of the plot.
The slope is steep; the snow must be three feet deep, so it is no easy task getting to the scene.
It helps that he can follow his colleagues’ footprints, but the snow still manages to find its way inside his boots, chilling his ankles.
He spots Anton as soon as he rounds the corner of the house. The younger detective is standing with uniformed colleagues who are busy cordoning off the area. The distinctive blue-and-white tape signals that this could be a crime scene, and that the general public must stay away.
“Good to see you,” Anton says. “There she is.”
He points to the body of a young woman lying just a few feet away, with one cheek resting on the ground, facing the slope.
Daniel remains where he is for a moment, forcing himself to take in what he is seeing: the naked skin covered in ice crystals, the limbs that have stiffened in the cold.
The bare feet and the toes with their blue nail polish form a heartrending contrast to the whiteness surrounding the body.
“Where are her clothes? She doesn’t even have shoes on her feet.”
The deceased is wearing only a bra, panties, and camisole. It is horribly reminiscent of Daniel’s first homicide case in ?re a couple of years ago, when a half-naked body was found on one of ?re’s best-known ski lifts, the VM6.
It was a tragedy that shook the entire community. Daniel shudders at the thought of having to deal with a similar situation.
“No idea,” Anton says, waving a hand in the general direction of the property. “I haven’t seen anything nearby.”
Daniel looks around. The plot is large; he estimates that the area in front of the house alone must measure some four or five hundred square yards.
Outside a door leading into the lower floor, presumably where the sauna is located, he sees a wooden hot tub with a green plastic cover.
The ski run is immediately below the property.
Three warmly dressed skiers, their scarves pulled up to protect their faces from the cold, pass by and disappear toward Hermelinbacken, unaware of the tragedy playing out above their heads.
What is the significance of the fact that the deceased is hardly wearing any clothes and is outside with no shoes?
“Would she have come out into the snow of her own free will, barefoot, then simply lain down and gone to sleep?” he says.
It seems unlikely.
“There were high winds all night,” Anton points out. “The snow has drifted, and any possible tracks will have been obliterated by now.”
“But we should be able to spot the contours,” Daniel objects, gazing around once more.
Everything looks perfectly normal. There don’t seem to be any formations suggesting that clothes might be hidden beneath the snow cover. Nor footprints from anyone else who could have been there during the night.
When Daniel turns his head, he sees the neighboring house. For a second he thinks someone is peeping from behind a curtain; then the feeling disappears.
He focuses on the body again, moves closer to see if there is any indication of the cause of death.
He is very conscious of the need to proceed with caution.
CSI Carina Grankvist, who lives in Mattmar, is on her way.
Daniel knows exactly what she thinks of careless police officers who stomp all over the scene of a crime before she and her team have had the chance to carry out a thorough examination.
Is this the scene of a crime?
When he crouches down and gazes at the young woman, he can’t see any sign of external force. Nothing to explain why she is lying dead outdoors on an overcast Sunday in January.
There don’t appear to be any bruises on the body, nothing to suggest strangulation, or that someone has gripped her arms or upper body.
No visible scratch marks.
“What do you think?” he says to Anton. “Was she murdered, or was this an accident?”
“There are no immediate signs of violence,” Anton replies pensively. “But why is she lying here? Who goes out in the middle of the night wearing next to nothing, when the temperature is minus twenty-five?”
Exactly.
The temperature was very low last night; it is still bitterly cold even though it is almost eleven o’clock in the morning. Daniel’s feet are already starting to go numb, despite the fact that he is warmly dressed.
Logically, it seems unbelievable that the dead woman would have voluntarily gone out into the darkness and frozen to death, but there is nothing in sight to suggest any other explanation.
Unless of course she was under the influence.
When people are very drunk, they do crazy things. Or if they’ve taken drugs.
“So what do we know about her?”
“Her name is Filippa Smeds?s, and she’s nineteen years old,” Anton replies. “She arrived here yesterday with a group of friends—students from Uppsala. The house belongs to the parents of one of the boys, and they were planning to stay for a week.”
“Are they in there?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s start by talking to each of them, see if we can form a picture of what happened.”
Daniel turns to face the house, which is surrounded by a wide balcony.
The subdued winter light is reflected in the windowpanes.
It is impossible to see through the glass from where he is standing, but he can almost feel the fear seeping through the walls.
Six friends arrived here yesterday.
Now there are only five of them.