Pollock clicks again, and the film starts in slow motion. Its a grainy video shot from directly overhead and showing the interior of the bank. At the bottom right of the image, a counter ticks off the seconds. Joona moves smoothly sideways with his arms out, holding his pistol high. It almost looks like hes underwater, his movements are so slow. The robber is hiding behind the open door to the safe. He holds a knife. Suddenly he rushes out with long, fluid strides. Joona points his service pistol toward the robber, directly at his chest. The robber doesnt hesitate. Joona is forced to pull the trigger. The pistol clicks but a faulty bullet is lodged in the barrel, narrates Pollock.
The grainy film flickers. Joona retreats as the man with the knife leaps at him. The whole thing is spooky and silent. Joona ejects the magazine and reaches for a new one. There is no time. Swiftly he reverses the useless gun until the barrel becomes an extension of his forearm.
I dont get it, says a female officer.
Hes transforming the pistol into a tonfa, Pollock explains.
Whats that?
I dont get it, says a female officer.
Hes transforming the pistol into a tonfa, Pollock explains.
Whats that?
Its a kind of stick or baton. American police use something similar.
Obviously, your reach is lengthened and if you must strike, the impact is intensified.
The man with the knife has reached Joona. Almost in slow motion, he strikes at Joonas abdomen, the blade glittering in a half arc. His other arm is up and turns with his body. Joona does not look at the knife at all. He moves straight into the robber and instantly strikes him in the throat, right under the Adams apple, with the shaft of his gun.
As if in a dream, the knife falls slowly, swirling to the ground. The man goes to his knees, clutching his throat, and then falls forward.
10
Joona Linna is in his car, driving toward the Karolinska Institute, the medical research center in Solna, a suburb north of Stockholm. Hes thinking about Carl Palmcronas hanging body, the tight laundry rope, the urine on the floor.
To the picture in his mind, Joona adds two sets of shoe prints on the floor circling the dead man.
This case is not over.
The department of forensic medicine is in a redbrick building set among the well-tended lawns on the large campus of the Karolinska Institute.
Joona swings into the empty visitors parking lot. He sees that the chief medical officer, Nils Ahlen, The Needle, has driven his white Jaguar over the curb and right onto the manicured lawn next to the main entrance.
Joona waves at the woman sitting in reception, who answers with a thumbs-up. He continues down the hallway, knocks at The Needles door, and goes right in. As usual, The Needles office is completely barren of anything extraneous. The blinds have been drawn but sunshine still filters in between the slats. The light is bright on white surfaces but disappears into the gray areas of brushed steel.
As if to match his environment, The Needle wears white aviator glasses and a white polo shirt underneath his lab coat.
I just put a parking ticket on a white Jaguar outside, Joona says.
Good for you.
Joona pauses in the middle of the room, his serious gray eyes darkening.
So howd he really die?
Youre talking about Palmcrona?
Right.
The telephone rings and The Needle hands the autopsy report to Joona.
You didnt need to come all the way here to find that out, The Needle says before he picks up the phone.
Joona sits down on a white leather chair. The autopsy on Carl Palmcronas body is complete. Joona flips through the file and eyes a few entries at random:
74. Kidneys weigh 290 grams together. Surfaces are smooth. Tissues are gray-red. Consistency is firm and elastic. Renal capsule is clear.
75. The ureters have normal appearance.
76. The bladder is empty. Mucous membrane is pale.
77. The prostate is normal size. Tissues are pale.
The Needle pushes his glasses up his narrow, hooked nose and finishes his phone call. He looks up.
As you see, he says, yawning, nothing unusual. Cause of death is asphyxiation, that is, suffocation but with a successful hanging were not talking about your typical meaning of suffocation. Rather, here we have closure of artery supply.
So the brain dies when the flow of oxygenated blood is stopped.
The Needle nods. Thats right. Artery compression, bilateral closure of the carotids. It happens unbelievably quickly, of course. Unconsciousness within seconds-
But he was alive before the hanging? Joona asks.
Right.
The Needles narrow, smooth face is gloomy.
Can you determine the drop?
I imagine it was a matter of decimeters. There arent any fractures of the cervical vertebra or at the base of the skull.
I see
Joona is thinking of the briefcase with Palmcronas shoe prints. He opens the file again and flips to the external examination: the investigation of the skin of the neck and the measurement of the angles.
Whats bothering you?
Could the same rope have been used to strangle him before the hanging?
Nope.
Why not?
Well, first of all there is just one line and its perfect. The Needle starts to explain. When a person is hanged, the rope or line cuts into the neck and it-