The Hanging: A Thriller (9 page)

Arthur Elvang went through the preliminary autopsy results. The board was soon covered and in a little while he would wipe it clean for the fourth time. Simonsen glanced at Arne Pedersen and Pauline Berg, who were sitting at his side and were following the professor’s discourse with great concentration, in contrast to the head of Criminal Forensics, on his other side, who was sleeping. His name was Kurt Melsing and he was respected for his abilities. In contrast to the professor, he was a likable man. From time to time he nodded or gave a little snort, waking for a brief period of time, after which he soon fell back asleep. He had been up all night and none of the others wanted to interfere with his nap.

The presentation had lasted almost an hour and nothing indicated that Arthur Elvang was nearing his conclusion. Unfortunately, the information offered did not contribute significantly to making a breakthrough in the investigation. The lengthy explanation was caused mainly by the number of dead, but each individual relationship was useful. First, the time of death had been established to Wednesday, between twelve thirty and two o’clock. The cause of death had also been established: four men had died by hanging and the last by strangulation. The latter had probably fainted when the noose was fastened around his neck. Apart from that, there was almost nothing that cast any light on the identity of the dead, nor had they discovered any shared characteristics among the men apart from their mutilated sex organs. The ages ranged from forty-five years to approximately sixty-five, and the muscle mass of two of the victims indicated regular physical activity and therefore manual labor, which was not true of the other three.

But there was one glimmer of light. Arthur Elvang was working with a provisional set of names for the men, which Simonsen intended to borrow. The professor had established that looking from the main door to the back wall of the gymnasium was due north, whereby he came up with the following names for the dead: Mr. Northeast, Mr. Northwest, Mr. Southwest, and Mr. Southeast. The last person was called Mr. Middle.

When the lecture came to an end at long last, the three police officers had a chance to ask detailed questions and Arne Pedersen was the quickest off the mark.

“Could you repeat what you said about the use of anesthetic?”

The professor repeated himself. Simonsen noted that his choice of words was basically identical to the first time, only spoken somewhat slower.

“All five men were partly anesthetized with Stesolid about two hours before they died. Stesolid is a tranquilizer or sedative. Depending on the amount used, it can cause either unconsciousness or drowsiness. The medication is administered by intravenous injection. All five bodies have a prick mark on the left or right arms and there are also marks on their upper arms most likely resulting from a tourniquet. The concentration of Stesolid in their blood is identical almost down to the decimal point, which indicates that they have received individually calculated doses determined by their body weight. The doses have been calculated and administered by a professional. One can deduce this if only because of the fact that all five injections hit a vein on the first attempt. My assumption is that a physician or nurse or the equivalent has handled the injections.”

Pedersen followed up. “You said partly anesthetized.”

“Yes, the concentration was not particularly strong, and its effects will have been limited. I assume that the aim was to make the men cooperative. Easily manipulated, if you will.”

“You mean passive?”

“Something like that. Slow and dull for a couple of hours is more precise.”

“You say that their body weight has been taken into account; were they weighed?”

“Not necessary. A competent assessment of their weight from their height and build is more likely.”

Then it was Simonsen’s turn. He had jotted down a couple of questions on his pad and now discovered that he could neither read nor recall the first. The odd pause caused the others to give him quizzical looks, and Kurt Melsing briefly woke up in the ensuing silence. Simonsen went to his second question.

“In regards to the identification, is it correct to assume that we have a partly intact dental impression?”

“From Mr. Northwest, yes, with an emphasis on
partly.
But combined with his approximate age it should be enough to establish an identification, if you can locate his dentist.”

“You said that Mr. Northeast had a pacemaker inserted about forty years ago, when he must have been in his early twenties. Is that something that can be traced?”

Arthur Elvang paused before he replied, “He may have suffered from rheumatic fever. I’ll give one eye that this is one of our homegrown surgeries. A Danish hospital inserts a pacemaker on a man, nineteen to perhaps twenty-five, sometime between 1961 and 1968. He was given a blood thinner. Marevan or Marcoumar. We’ll analyze that later. Much speaks for the fact that he would have had his INR values measured quarterly in order to monitor his status and most likely at a hospital. That’s not a bad point of departure for an identification. There can’t have been many such operations at the time.”

Pedersen interjected, “Will you help us?”

It was a rational thought since the professor was the ideal man for such a task, but given the work that still lay before him, it was unrealistic. In view of the man’s age, which one often forgot, the question became unreasonable.

Simonsen modified it: “… To find someone that we can work with on this?”

Arthur Elvang looked in confusion from one to the other.

“Stop with the Donald Duck talk. Who is asking what?”

They both dropped the request.

The time was now ripe to put Kurt Melsing back into action, and they got some life back in the man, who was soon in the middle of an enthusiastic monologue on the subject of one hundred kinds of bloodstains, with a focus on arterial spurts and splatters. As opposed to the professor, his level of eloquence was relatively low and relatively disjointed, and apart from what Simonsen had noticed—that the floor in the gymnasium had been covered in plastic and signs—he offered nothing useful. That the man knew about blood was nothing new. Finally, it was too much even for Arthur Elvang.

“No one wants to hear about your bloodstains, Kurt,” he interrupted. “Let’s hear your conclusion. That is something they are more interested in.”

Kurt Melsing redirected himself cheerfully and took out a piece of paper from which he read, in an admission to his evident limitations in expressing himself off-the-cuff.

“Our measurements of interfaces and angles as well as bloodstains on the corpses show that the chainsaw was operated from right to left at an angle of about sixty degrees to the ground. The person who used the saw was located about one meter higher than the body he was cutting. It is also evident that the men were standing on a raised platform of some kind before they were hanged. It is also clear that the spray of blood has often been intercepted by a flat surface. Taken together, this information leads us to believe that a kind of podium of about one and a half meters above the floor was erected. A scene with five trapdoors. Nothing short of an execution ceremony.”

“Damn.”

That was Pedersen. His tone was muted but it spoke for them all. For a moment all was quiet, as if angles, rotational speed, intestinal residue, and dental records retreated to the background and the full impact of five people’s horrendous death hit them. Arthur Elvang broke the silence.

“Yes, it certainly can’t have been very pleasant. The victims were transported to the gymnasium and up onto the podium in a more-or-less advanced state of sedation. Their clothes were removed. Where and how we don’t know. Naked, with hands bound behind their backs and legs tied, they were placed apart from each other, a noose around their necks. We have found traces of glue on their ankles and in several cases on their underarms, most likely from strong tape. Then they were hanged, and immediately after the hanging but before the next person was killed, the victim’s hands were cut off. There are also a number of slashes made on the person’s face. The bloodstains and angles of the wounds are the grounds for the forensic conclusion we have already mentioned. We can only offer an educated guess as to the order of executions. We think it was Mr. Southwest, Mr. Northwest, and Mr. Southeast. As previously mentioned, Mr. Northeast is an exception, and Mr. Middle was last. The mutilation of the victims’ genitals occurred only after the podium had been dismantled.”

As if by previous agreement, they all waited for Konrad Simonsen, who, despite the pressure of their silence, took his time to gather his thoughts. Finally he said quietly, “Plastic on the floor, newspapers above to absorb the blood, then a whole podium that is erected for the occasion and then dismantled and taken away?”

It was a question and it was of acute significance. Pauline Berg said, “It fits nicely that the janitor’s father was a master carpenter—”

Simonsen interrupted her: “One moment, Pauline. Kurt?”

Kurt Melsing was as soft-spoken as Konrad Simonsen, but there was no hesitation in his answer.

“That is what happened, Simon. I know that it sounds sick, but it happened that way.”

“There’s no room for doubt?”

“No.”

The Criminal Forensics Division had produced a visual re-creation of the events in which stick figures enacted the tableau that Arthur Elvang described. The sequence lasted two minutes, with occasional close-ups for details of particular interest. The animation was done in three dimensions, and though it did not appear particularly lifelike it depicted a stylized gruesomeness that gripped its audience and depressed the atmosphere further.

They watched it twice.

Melsing made a single comment: “We have used two perpetrators. It could have been one or, for that matter, five. We don’t know and don’t have a way to make a reasonable determination.”

When the meeting came to an end, Simonsen lingered. First, however, he took the lead on psychologist Ditte Lubert, from Berg, who had made no headway with her. He would let the Countess or Pedersen—whichever one had the time—take a stab at it.

After the two others had left, he asked Elvang, “Can you give me a short lesson in craniofacial reconstruction?”

The old man beamed. It would be his pleasure, he said, and without any further need for reflection he launched into an explanation.

“The method is used for the purpose of obtaining an identification. It is not used here in Denmark, where forensic law enforcement in tandem with a well-functioning dental service with orderly files constitute a better, cheaper, and more secure method for establishing an identity. But it is employed to some extent in England, for example, and in the USA, where people are less documented, and in these places there are trained professionals. ‘Forensic anthropologist’ is what the Americans call them. The idea is that one models a face from an unidentified cranium, and the method is based on a combination of anatomy and statistics. In area upon area, one builds up single muscles or muscle groups once small custom-made pins are applied to the cranium. These anchors are placed in predetermined reference points and are trimmed in relation to the average soft-tissue thickness at a given location. The facial construction is often done with clay, and it is beneficial if the anthropologist has an artistic vein, a little like a translator, but an exact reconstruction of the face is impossible. For example, one can never replicate the ears.”

He paused, then added thoughtfully, “Implicit in your question is of course the question of whether this method can be applied in this case.”

“Yes, that was my thought. An identification is crucial. The odds that we will make it another way are good, but the teeth from Mr. Northwest and the pacemaker from Mr. Northeast can take a long time and do not of course guarantee success. If you can get me some photographs that more or less resemble the victims, I would like for you to start that now, rather than in a week. It is my only recourse if I am still empty-handed, and, as you know, money is no object for once.”

“No, I’ve heard that and that’s good, because it’s expensive. Unbelievably expensive.”

He stared straight out into the air, grunted something unintelligible, and said, “Come on, let’s go take a look.”

Melsing and Simonsen followed him.

The room they stepped into was light and clean. There was a terrazzo floor and walls covered in white tile, as in a bathroom from the fifties. The floor bulged slightly in the middle and sloped down to a trench that ran along the perimeter of the room, so that the entire area was easy to hose down. A couple of large stainless-steel sinks were placed between the windows, one for hands, the other for internal organs. Four stretchers were placed in the middle of the floor at least two meters apart, and a corpse lay on each. The sounds in the room were unpleasant and metallic as in a public swimming pool.

Arthur Elvang studied the facial remains on three of the bodies critically while his two companions remained silent. When he spoke, his words were directed mainly to himself.

“It doesn’t have to be an anthropologist. There is a great deal of information here and no maggots, so perhaps a skilled facial surgeon. That could be interesting, putting together a team and getting them to use each other’s knowledge. Perhaps a funeral director; a mortuary makeup artist from the States.”

He reached a conclusion but continued his train of thought, now turned to the others.

“Back here we just pop them in coffins and advise the survivors not to open the lid. They aren’t to be looked at here.”

The chief of Criminal Forensics had been listening intently and was fired up about the idea. “I have just the photographer,” he said. “She’s a pure genius with her camera and in developing the pictures.”

Elvang received this positively: “Yes, yes, good idea. I’d like to have her on the team as well.”

The decision had been made. Simonsen’s nighttime Internet research that lay behind his question had born fruit and he felt a measure of pride, although he could not know if the results had been the same had he been ignorant. He delicately inquired about a possible time frame and received—as expected—a rather gruff reply from the professor about how that could not be determined here and now. For the first time this Tuesday, Simonsen was finally in a good mood. Podium or not.