Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [87]
“There’s nothing whatsoever to suggest a crime, or that Björck was not alone at the time,” Holmberg said.
“The lamp?”
“The ceiling lamp has fingerprints from the owner of the cabin – who put it up two years ago – and Björck himself. Which says that he took the lamp down.”
“Where did the rope come from?”
“From the flagpole in the garden. Someone cut off about two metres of rope. There was a Mora sheath knife on the windowsill outside the back door. According to the owner of the house, it’s his knife. He normally keeps in a tool drawer underneath the draining board. Björck’s prints were on the handle and the blade, as well as the tool drawer.”
“Hmm,” Modig said.
“What sort of knots?” Andersson said.
“Granny knots. Even the noose was just a loop. It’s probably the only thing that’s a bit odd. Björck was a sailor, he would have known how to tie proper knots. But who knows how much attention a person contemplating suicide would pay to the knots on his own noose?”
“What about drugs?”
“According to the toxicology report, Björck had traces of a strong painkiller in his blood. That medication had been prescribed for him. He also had traces of alcohol, but the percentage was negligible. In other words, he was more or less sober.”
“The pathologist wrote that there were graze wounds.”
“A graze over three centimetres long on the outside of his left knee. A scratch, really. I’ve thought about it, but it could have come about in a dozen different ways … for instance, if he walked into the corner of a table or a bench, whatever.”
Modig held up a photograph of Björck’s distorted face. The noose had cut so deeply into his flesh that the rope itself was hidden in the skin of his neck. The face was grotesquely swollen.
“He hung there for something like twenty-four hours before the hook gave way. All the blood was either in his head – the noose having prevented it from running into his body – or in the lower extremities. When the hook came out and his body fell, his chest hit the coffee table, causing deep bruising there. But this injury happened long after the time of death.”
“Hell of a way to die,” said Andersson.
“I don’t know. The noose was so thin that it pinched deep and stopped the blood flow. He was probably unconscious within a few seconds and dead in one or two minutes.”
Bublanski closed the preliminary report with distaste. He did not like this. He absolutely did not like the fact that Zalachenko and Björck had, so far as they could tell, both died on the same day. But no amount of speculating could change the fact that the crime scene investigation offered no grain of support to the theory that a third party had helped Björck on his way.
“He was under a lot of pressure,” Bublanski said. “He knew that the whole Zalachenko affair was in danger of being exposed and that he risked a prison sentence for sex-trade crimes, plus being hung out to dry in the media. I wonder which scared him more. He was sick, had been suffering chronic pain for a long time … I don’t know. I wish he had left a letter.”
“Many suicides don’t.”
“I know. O.K. We’ll put Björck to one side for now. We have no choice.”
Berger could not bring herself to sit at Morander’s desk right away, or to move his belongings aside. She arranged for Magnusson to talk to Morander’s family so that the widow could come herself when it was convenient, or send someone to sort out his things.
Instead she had an area cleared off the central desk in the heart of the newsroom, and there she set up her laptop and took command. It was chaotic. But three hours after she had taken the helm of S.M.P. in such appalling circumstances, the front page went to press. Magnusson had put together a four-column article about Morander’s life and career. The page was designed around a black-bordered