Life and Limb by Elsebeth Egholm Page A

and women were attracted to that, although he hoped it wasn’t the reason Ida Marie had originally fallen for him when he was leading the investigation into her son’s kidnapping.
    In addition to authority, some women might have found Kamm’s macho appearance – with muscles bulging under his suit – a turn-on. It was blatantly obvious, though, that Kamm had never been in love with Mette.
    Wagner stood up. So young, so dead and so in love with a man who didn’t deserve her affection.
    â€˜Thank you for your time. Perhaps you could show us where Mette worked?’
    Kamm flung out his hands apologetically.
    â€˜I’m afraid not. All she had was a desk, and we’ve cleared that already as we’re short of space.’
    â€˜Cleared it!’
    Ivar K spat out the words. Wagner couldn’t blame him.
    â€˜A colleague has been brutally murdered and the first thing you do is clear her desk?’
    Kamm opened the door to the open-plan office where Wagner counted eleven employees. There were several empty desks.
    â€˜What happened to the contents of Mette’s desk?’ he asked. ‘It’s important that we see them.’
    Kamm ran a hand across his scalp. He glanced at his watch again and looked as if he had made a decision.
    â€˜Okay. I’ll look into it and get back to you. They’re probably in a box somewhere unless the cleaners have already been in. Allow me to show you around quickly …’
    The two men were briefly introduced to the rest of the staff, and they asked the usual routine questions; jotted down everyone’s names; noted facts, alibis and who the victim had worked with closely. But no one really had much to add about Mette Mortensen.
    â€˜Wanker,’ Ivar K muttered as they left. ‘Bastard should be strung up from the nearest tree.’
    Wagner would probably not have expressed it quite like that. But he was a whisker away from agreeing.

‘H is son?’
    Bo pointed to a pane in one of the bedroom windows. ‘This one is punctured as well.’
    Dicte stepped closer and saw the condensation that had spread from the centre of the glass.
    â€˜This house will be the ruin of me. That’s nine so far.’ She marked the casement on a piece of A4 paper on which, for the benefit of the glazier, she had sketched the four six-pane rustic windows in the house. ‘The son, yes. And the moral of that is? A father plays football with his son and he ends up a football hooligan and a Nazi. You’d better watch yourself!’
    â€˜With Tobias?’
    Bo beamed as he uttered his son’s name. There was something about fathers and sons, Dicte thought. Pride at having produced a male child, would be her guess. Girls invoked a father’s protection; boys invoked pride. It was old-fashioned. But that’s the way things were.
    â€˜He had no major genetic predisposition to violence.’
    â€˜That’s what Adolf’s mother said.’
    Bo grinned.
    â€˜She might have been right. He made others do it. So what are you going to do about the son?’
    Dicte calculated the cost of nine new panes. The figure was eye watering because she had to add the cost of the two large windows in the living room.
    â€˜Shit. It’ll be more than fourteen thousand kroner.’
    She looked at Bo, who had reclined on the bed. On the bedside table was his glass of red wine from the dinner they had just eaten. She drank from her glass and placed it next to his.
    â€˜I have to find him. And I have to talk to Wagner.’
    â€˜Why? Kosovo?’
    She didn’t reply; instead she lay back with her head on his shoulder.
    â€˜I’m ruined,’ she said again. ‘This place is a bottomless pit.’
    â€˜That’s what Scrooge McDuck always says,’ Bo said in a Donald Duck voice, stroking her hair. Seemingly cheered up by thinking of his friends in Duck Town, he quoted Donald reciting from The Rime of the