Bad Apples by Will Dean

Author:Will Dean
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786079824
Publisher: Point Blank

28

Noora wakes me with a kiss to the forehead and I pull her in close.

An hour later I cook her American-style pancakes from a packet I bought in ICA Maxi last week. I add blueberries and syrup. They look pretty decent considering I made them. She makes lattes and we sit out on my little two-person balcony with blankets over our knees.

‘Sunday brunch,’ she says.

I kiss my fingertips and say, ‘Out of a box, but still, they’re pretty tasty, no?’

‘Sorry I can’t stay longer. Thord asked to swap shifts. He’s got some kind of wedding-planning thing with Priest Kilby down at the Lutheran church.’

‘It’s fine.’ I fold over a thick pancake and it splits open and the soft, fluffy insides emit steam into the cool October air. ‘I’m not so shaken today. Maybe the Chief was right. Maybe the bullets were twenty metres away and I’m just being paranoid.’

‘Call me anytime you feel you’re in danger,’ says Noora. ‘Where will you be today?’

‘I need to visit the Edlund golf club.’

She frowns. ‘You trying to get your green card, Tiger?’

‘Hell, no. Trying to interview Eva Edlund, boss of the club, on the pretence of a bullshit feel-good article about their philanthropic pre-Christmas gala dinner.’

‘You got a problem with philanthropy?’

‘Not always,’ I say. ‘But I reckon if the billionaires paid all their taxes there’d be less need for it. And less need for them to graffiti their names all over hospital wings and school libraries. If they just quietly paid what was due like everyone else manages to do, and they kept their names to themselves, I think the world would look a little better.’

Noora thinks about that.

‘I’ve been sending files over to a psychological profiler in Uppsala. Smart guy named Westergren. Isn’t it amazing what they can glean from bare-bones evidence?’

I stay silent. I just want her to keep talking.

She sips her latte and the milk stains her upper lip.

‘For example,’ she says. ‘The way the killer dealt with the body. Severing the head after death. Taking it away. Working meticulously on the teeth. Painstaking work. Westergren thinks it suggests someone who may have killed before, perhaps multiple times. Someone whose crimes are escalating. A first-time killer is unlikely to have severed the head. They’d have been satisfied with the kill itself. And they certainly wouldn’t have been so cold as to have worked diligently on a dead man’s teeth.’

‘You saying there’s a serial killer in Visberg?’

She shakes her head. ‘I’m not saying it, the profiler is suggesting it’s a possibility. That’s all. And his conclusion isn’t that this person has killed before, just that it’s an angle we should look into. Westergren also made clear the killer didn’t necessarily have any formal dental training. Could have been self taught through the internet or an international-correspondence course. Maybe some training overseas.’

‘That doesn’t help you much.’

She takes another sip of coffee.

‘He thinks the most disturbing factor is the killer’s display of trophies, I think that’s the word he used. Trophies. Leaving the teeth and the head in plain sight.

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