Unspoken

the friend took the opportunity to disappear.”
    “It seems fishy that he ran off. Maybe he was the murderer,” Wittberg suggested.
    “But if so, why would he contact the super?” objected Norrby.
    “Maybe he wanted to get back inside the apartment to get something that he left behind, but he didn’t dare break in again,” Jacobsson piped in.
    “Well, we can’t rule that out, even though it doesn’t sound very plausible,” countered Norrby. “But why would he wait a whole week? There was always a risk that the body would be discovered.”
    Knutas frowned. “One alternative is that he disappeared because he was afraid of being a suspect. Maybe he was at the party, because it’s obvious that a party took place in that apartment. No matter what, we need to get hold of him as soon as possible.”
    “Have we got a description?” asked Wittberg.
    Knutas looked down at his papers. “Middle-aged, about fifty, according to the super. Tall and heavy. He has a mustache, and dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Dark shirt, dark pants. He didn’t notice the man’s shoes. I think it sounds like Bengt Johnsson. He’s probably the only one of the local winos who fits the description.”
    “It’s got to be Bengan. Those two were always hanging out together,” said Wittberg.
    Knutas turned to the crime tech. “Erik, you can give us the technical details now.”
    Sohlman nodded. “We’ve gone over the apartment and darkroom, but we’re far from done. If we start with the victim and his wounds, we need to look at the photos. I should warn you that they’re rather nasty.”
    Sohlman switched off the lights and, using a computer, clicked the digital pictures onto the screen at the front of the room.
    “Henry Dahlström was lying prone on the floor with extensive contusions to the back of his head. The perpetrator used a blunt instrument of some kind. My guess is a hammer, but the ME will eventually be able to tell us more. Dahlström was struck repeatedly on the head. The large amount of blood spatter resulted because the perpetrator first knocked a hole in the victim’s skull and then continued to strike the bloody surface. Each time he delivered another blow, blood sprayed all over.”
    Sohlman used a pointer to show spatter that was visible on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling.
    “The killer probably knocked Dahlström to the ground and then stood over him and kept striking as he lay there. As far as determining the time of death, I would estimate that the murder took place five or six days ago.”
    The victim’s face was a blotchy yellowish gray shifting to green. His eyes had a dark, brownishred color, and his lips were black and parched.
    “The process of decomposition had begun,” Sohlman went on impassively. “You can see the little brown blisters on the body and the corpse fluid that has started to seep out. The same substance is coming out of his mouth and nostrils.”
    His colleagues around the table grimaced. Jacobsson wondered how Sohlman could always manage to talk about bloody victims, rigor mortis, and decomposing bodies as if he were discussing the weather or his annual income tax returns.
    “Everything in the place had been tossed, and the cupboards and boxes containing photos had been searched. The murderer was apparently looking for something. The victim also has defensive wounds on his arms. Here we can see bruises and scratches. So he attempted to resist. The bruise on his collarbone may have been made by a blow that missed its mark. We’ve taken blood samples, of course. We also found a cigarette butt in the basement hallway, and hairs that don’t seem to have come from the victim. Everything has been sent to SCL but, as you know, it will take a while before we get any answers.”
    He took a sip of coffee and sighed. The response from SCL, the Swedish Crime Laboratory in Linköping, usually took at least a week, more often three.
    Sohlman went on. “As far as evidence goes, we’ve found footprints in the flower bed outside the basement window. Unfortunately, the rain made them impossible to identify. On the other hand, we did get some footprints in the hallway outside the darkroom, and in the bestcase scenario they should tell us something. The same footprints were in the apartment—which, by the way, was filled with bottles, ashtrays, beer cans, and a lot of other junk. We’ve secured quite a few fingerprints, as well as the footprints of four or five different