Free Death Angels by Åke Edwardson

with.”
    “Particularly in the Flemingsberg area,” Halders said.
    “Do you always get off the subway there?” Djanali asked. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that it goes farther?”
    “I’d rather eat shit,” Halders said.
    “You could use a more balanced diet.”
    “Your irony is a little undernourished too.”
    “Irony? Who’s being ironic?”
    Winter discreetly shuffled his papers and everyone stopped talking. “We’ll continue to work in teams of two. Djanali and Halders will be together today. They seem to be hitting it off just fine. The rest of you can go ahead like you have been.” He glanced over at Bergenhem. “And I have something to talk to you about after the meeting.”
    Bergenhem raised his head. He looks like a schoolboy, Winter thought. “We’ve found something,” he said to the whole group.
    Ringmar flipped off the light and turned on the slide projector. He clicked back and forth between the rooms of the two British victims and finally stopped on Jamie’s.
    The police photographer had used a wide-angle lens, and the room bulged out in the center.
    Winter nodded. Ringmar clicked to the next slide, Jamie’s upper body, and Möllerström felt ashamed, like an eavesdropper who is privy to a forbidden act.
    “Look at those uninjured shoulders,” Winter said, nodding again. Ringmar clicked to a new enlargement.
    “Do you see it?” Winter stared into the semidarkness. Nobody noticed anything. He nodded to Ringmar once more, and an even bigger enlargement appeared.
    “Do you see it now?” Winter moved his pointer toward a spot on the bare shoulder that could have been a piece of dust on the screen.
    “What’s that?” Djanali asked.
    “It’s blood,” Winter said. She saw the light from the projector reflected in his eye. “But it’s not Jamie’s.”
    Nobody stirred. Djanali shivered and raised her arm as if to keep her hair from standing up.
    “I’ll be damned,” Halders said.
    “Not Jamie’s blood,” Bergenhem echoed.
    “When did you find this out?” Djanali asked Winter.
    “Just a couple of hours ago, when I went through the photos in the morning light.”
    He was here when it was pitch black, Djanali thought, when everyone except this superman was fast asleep.
    “Fröberg called me as soon as the test results came back,” Winter said.
    “And the lab has verified it?” Halders asked. “I mean, there was quite a lot of blood, to put it mildly.”
    “Yes,” Winter said.
    “Can it be used as evidence?” Bergenhem asked.
    “If there’s enough,” Ringmar said. “They think so. They’re working like crazy on it right now.”
    “Enough for what?” Möllerström asked. “If there’s nothing to compare it with in the register, we won’t have a thing to go by.”
    “That’s negative thinking.” Bergenhem looked at Möllerström as though he had broken a spell.
    “It’s realistic thinking, as long as we don’t have a DNA database that starts at infancy.”
    “We all know your opinion about that,” Djanali said.
    “I for one am glad that we’re finally getting somewhere,” Halders said.
    “This could be our breakthrough,” Ringmar said.
    Ringmar rolled in a VCR with an oversized television screen and put in the videotapes from the crime scenes one by one. They began discussing the patterns on the floor.
    These tapes are horrible, Winter thought. It’s like we’re seeing everything through the murderer’s eyes, and you can bet he taped it too and it’s lying in a drawer someplace or playing to an avid audience. “There’s a clue for us somewhere,” he said.
    The video camera zoomed to the oval pattern on the floor.
    “We think it’s a dance.” Ringmar pointed to the screen. “The two rooms show striking similarities, as if the murderer acted the same way both during and after the crime.”
    “What kind of dance?” Bergenhem asked
    “When we know that, we’ll be in much better shape,” Winter answered. “Sara Helander here will be