Read The Black Path for Free Online

once.
    Half an hour later she was awoken by the sound of Pohjanen coughing. He was sitting on the sofa leaning forward, and it sounded as if half his lungs were due to end up on his knee.
    All at once Anna-Maria felt stupid and uncomfortable. Sneaking in like that and sleeping in the same room. It was almost as if she’d crept into his bedroom and got into his bed.
    There he sat with his morning cough and the Grim Reaper’s arm around his shoulders. It wasn’t the sort of thing everybody should witness.
    He’s angry now, she thought. What did I come here for?
    Pohjanen’s attack of coughing ended with a strangled clearing of his throat. His hand automatically patted his jacket pocket to reassure himself that the packet of cigarettes was there.
    “What do you want? I haven’t even started on her yet. She was frozen solid when she came in last night.”
    “I needed a place to sleep,” said Anna-Maria. “Home’s full of kids sprawled across the bed kicking their legs out and enjoying themselves.”
    He glared at her, amused despite himself.
    “And Robert farts in his sleep,” she added.
    He sneezed to hide the fact that he was mollified, stood up and jerked his head to indicate that she should go with him.
    Anna Granlund had just arrived. She was standing in the sluice emptying the dishwasher, just like any housewife. The only difference was that it was knives, pincers, tweezers, scalpels and stainless steel bowls she was taking out instead of cutlery and crockery.
    “She’s such a
hätähousu
,” said Pohjanen to Anna Granlund, nodding toward Anna-Maria.
    “Stress pants,” he added, when he saw that Anna Granlund didn’t understand.
    Anna Granlund gave Anna-Maria Mella a restrained smile. She liked Anna-Maria, but people shouldn’t come in here stressing out her boss.
    “Has she thawed out?” asked Pohjanen.
    “Not completely,” said Anna Granlund.
    “Come back this afternoon and you can have a preliminary report,” said Pohjanen to Anna-Maria Mella. “Some of the tests will take a while, but that’s always the way.”
    “Can’t you tell me anything at this stage?” asked Anna-Maria, trying not to sound like a
hätähousu
.
    Pohjanen shook his head, as if he had given up completely when it came to Anna-Maria.
    “Okay, let’s take a look,” he said.
    The woman was lying on the fixed autopsy table. Anna-Maria Mella noticed that fluid had run out of the body and down into the drain beneath the bench.
    Down into the drinking water? she thought.
    Pohjanen caught her expression.
    “She’s thawing out,” he said. “But it’s going to be difficult to examine her, that’s obvious. The muscle cell walls split and become loose.”
    He pointed at the woman’s chest.
    “This is an entry wound here,” he said. “You could assume that’s what killed her.”
    “A knife?”
    “No, no. This is something else, probably something pointed.”
    “Some kind of tool? An awl?”
    Pohjanen shrugged his shoulders.
    “You’ll have to wait,” he said. “But it seems to have been perfectly placed. You can see she’s bled comparatively little onto her clothes. Presumably the blow went straight through the cartilage in the thorax and into the pericardium, so you end up with a cardiac tamponade.”
    “A tamponade?”
    Pohjanen became snappy.
    “Haven’t you learned anything over the years? If the blood hasn’t run out of the body, where has it gone? Well, presumably the pericardium has filled up with blood, so that in the end the heart couldn’t beat any longer. It happens quite quickly. The pressure drops too, which also means that you don’t bleed so much. It could be a pulmonary tamponade too, a liter in the lungs, and that means it’s curtains. And it has to be longer than an awl, there’s an exit wound on her back.”
    “Something that went right through! Bloody hell!”
    “Also,” continued Pohjanen, “no external signs of rape. Look here.”
    He shone a torch between the dead woman’s