Free JF01 - Blood Eagle by Craig Russell

feel that there was something more going on than his hunt for a serial killer. It was as if there were some other agenda to which he was not party.
     
    Wednesday 4 June, 12.00 p.m. Mortuary of the Institut für Rechtsmedizin, Eppendorf, Hamburg.
    The Institut für Rechtsmedizin – the Legal Medicine Institute – was responsible for all forensic medicine in Hamburg. All of the city’s sudden deaths found their way to the Institut mortuary.
    Fabel’s gut lurched at the morgue smell with which he had grown familiar but to which he had never become accustomed: it was not the smell of decay, as one might expect, but a faintly disinfectant-rinsed stale odour. There were no bodies on the stainless-steel post-mortem tables and the bleaching striplights bathed the mortuary with a cheerless, unrelenting glare. When Fabel entered, Möller, still dressed in his green scrubs, was sitting at his desk, referring to handwritten notes and then peering at the screen of his computer. In between, he absent-mindedly scooped forkfuls of a ready-made pasta salad into his mouth from a plastic tub. He did not acknowledge Fabel’s arrival.
    ‘I wouldn’t have thought eating was allowed in here.’ Fabel pulled up a chair without waiting for an invitation.
    ‘It’s not. So arrest me.’ Möller didn’t look up from his notes.
    ‘What do you have on the girl?’
    ‘You’ll get the report this afternoon.’ Möller tapped the page he was writing with his pen. ‘I’m doing it now.’
    ‘Just give me the main points.’
    Möller threw his pen down onto the desk and leaned back in his chair, sweeping his hands through his hair and then placing them behind his head. He eyed Fabel with his practised, superior look. ‘Have you heard from your penfriend yet?’
    ‘Möller, I don’t have time for this. What have you got for me?’
    ‘This is an interesting one all right, Hauptkommissar.’ Möller picked up his notes. ‘The victim is female, between twenty-five and thirty-five years old, one metre sixty-five tall, blue eyes, with brown hair dyed blonde. Cause of death was heart failure caused by shock and massive blood loss, in turn a result of the massive trauma to the abdomen. She was dead before the lungs were excavated.’ Möller looked up from his notes. ‘You reckon this young woman was a prostitute?’
    ‘Yes. Why?’
    ‘She had not had sexual intercourse in the forty-eight hours prior to her death. The other thing is that she obviously took very good care of herself.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Her muscle tone was extremely good and there is a very low body-fat-to-muscle ratio. I would say she was either some kind of athlete or that she visited a gym frequently. She didn’t smoke and there was no trace of alcohol in her blood. Looks like her diet was good, too: her last meal was some kind of fish with pulses and her blood lipids were very low.’ Möller flicked through his notes. ‘We’ve screened her for narcotics – nothing. Notwithstanding genetic influences, if this young lady had not crossed paths with your “correspondent”, she would have more than likely lived to a ripe old age.’
    ‘Anything on the killer?’
    ‘No forensic evidence of the killer’s presence. As I said, no evidence of sexual intercourse nor of any other sexual activity. It’s definitely the same killer as the other one – or at least, the method of killing is identical. The killer made a single incision which was caused by a powerful but incredibly accurate blow to the sternum, probably with some heavy, large-bladed knife, or perhaps a sword, after which the ribs were prised open and the lungs excavated. There were stress indicators and splintering on the sheared bone edges, suggesting a sweeping, forceful blow downwards. The separation of the ribs would have taken considerable physical strength, as would the single-blow incision. This is a man all right … and the arc of penetration suggests probably not less than one metre seventy tall, with at