Medusa by Torkil Damhaug Page B

Okay then, she said, surprised. – What do you want me to say?
    – Tell them I’ll be busy all day. It’s the truth, after all.

19
     
    – T HIS IS THE closest you get to knowing what it feels like to be a surgeon, said Detective Chief Inspector Viken after he and his sergeant, Arve Norbakk, had pulled on the disposable green capes, with hoods in an almost matching green, and the blue plastic shoe coverings. – And it’s plenty close enough for me. I’ve never yet met one doctor you could trust.
    – Right now you look more like a chef, chuckled Norbakk as they entered the sharp light of the mortuary room in the basement of the Rikshospital.
    Viken didn’t like delay, and he’d taken the trip up to the Institute of Pathology without Finckenhagen knowing anything about it.
    – I know it’s not long till dinner, he said, wrinkling his nose, – but surely the smell down here doesn’t remind you of food?
    Two people were already in the room, bent over a steel table. One was a tiny woman in her forties with a heavily made-up doll-like face. Viken knew her well, had worked with Jennifer Plåterud many times. He had quickly discovered that her mind and her tongue were equally sharp and he treated her with a respect that very few others of his acquaintance enjoyed. Viken knew a lot about most of the people he worked with. In his head he kept a catalogue of useful information regarding them, some of which he had even written down. He had tried on several occasions to worm out of Jennifer just what it was that had brought her to Norway. Surely her real reason for leaving Canberra and travelling to the other side of the globe couldn’t be that she’d met some farmer from Romerike, the guy she later married? But when it came to her private life Jennifer was a sphinx, and Viken still hadn’t got to the bottom of that particular question.
    The other person standing there was a man of medium height wearing glasses, with a well-trimmed beard. Viken had never seen him before.
    – Frederik Ovesen, the bearded man said, introducing himself with a cough. – Assistant professor at the Zoological Institute.
    – Ovesen is their leading expert on beasts of prey, Jennifer announced in perfect Norwegian but with a broad Australian accent. Despite the fact that she was wearing stilettoes under her shoe coverings, she had to stretch to reach across the width of the steel table she was working at.
    – How far have you got? asked Viken, with a glance at the body he had last seen in the forest a few kilometres beyond Ullevålseter. The ribcage had been opened up and the heart and both lungs taken out.
    – The preliminary autopsy will be ready by tomorrow, Jennifer promised, and Viken couldn’t off-hand recall a single time she hadn’t kept her word.
    – Time of death?
    The pathologist pulled on her plastic gloves.
    – Four to five days ago. Six at the most.
    Viken’s eyes narrowed.
    – So a week after she went missing. We can only guess what she was doing up there in the marka all that time. Does she look as if she spent four or five days sleeping rough in the forest?
    – Not really, Jennifer replied. – But I wouldn’t exclude it either. Another thing is that we found large quantities of plaster under her fingernails. Some on the clothes, too. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it certainly doesn’t come from the forest floor.
    – Any signs of sexual assault?
    – Doesn’t look like it.
    Norbakk said:
    – I’ve seen a lot of animals killed by bears. There’s no mistaking these gashes across the neck and the back.
    Ovesen coughed again.
    – I agree. I’ve never seen a human being who’s been attacked, but we do have some archival material. I would say a fully grown adult bear.
    – How certain can you be? Viken persisted.
    Ovesen opened his mouth, coughed a couple more times; already these glottal eruptions had started to annoy the detective chief inspector.
    – We’ll send the photos to Edmonton