The Glass Devil Read Online Free PDF

spoken with Åhlén. He’ll be here at any moment and will give an account of what has materialized out at the cottage. I’ll go through what we’ve found so far at the rectory. Professor Stridner was actually nice enough to come out last night to look at the bodies. She said that they had probably been dead less than twenty-four hours. It was cold in the bedroom, not more than seventeen degrees,* and that, of course, impacts the process. She promised to give these autopsies priority this morning.”
    He stopped to take a gulp of coffee. Irene noticed that his hand shook slightly as he brought the mug up to his lips. Forensics was more understaffed than usual since this year’s flu season was still reaping victims. Two of them worked in the Forensics department of the Göteborg Police Department. There were no substitutes for those positions.
    “The victims were shot at point-blank range with at least one shot each, right in the forehead. You don’t get a small, neat little hole when you shoot someone between the eyes with large-caliber ammunition. The back of the skull is torn away. They died immediately. No signs of a struggle. Based on the injuries, the rifle which was lying under the bed is probably the murder weapon. There were no fingerprints on the rifle. It had been wiped carefully. The murderer probably wore gloves.”
    “How did he get in?” Superintendent Andersson interrupted.
    “The door was open when Irene and Fredrik arrived at the crime scene, the key in the lock.”
    Tommy whistled softly and said, “So the murderer had a key to the house.”
    “That’s not certain,” Andersson replied. “Irene and I found a key to the cottage under a flower pot on the outside steps. Was there one like that on the steps to the rectory?”
    Irene tried to remember but before she could answer, Fredrik beat her to it.
    “There was a large white ceramic pot with pine needles or something like that on the outside stairs. The key may have been under it.”
    The superintendent nodded and shrugged at the same time. No one could know for certain but the family may have been in the habit of putting an extra key under potted plants, the most common place for Swedish families to leave a spare key.
    “There is no apprarent damage in the rest of the house. Which brings us to the computer. The lab did a quick test; the symbol on the monitor was written in human blood. We’ll know whose blood a little later. But when I tried to start up the computer, it was completely dead. It beeped when the power was turned on, but the monitor remained blank. We’ve brought it in to the station. Ljunggren is good with computers. Åhlén brought in the other computer, from the cottage. The last thing I did before I came up here just now was to try to boot it up. Exactly the same thing happened: It beeped but wouldn’t start up.”
    Svante pulled out some Polaroid photos from an envelope and handed them to Tommy Persson. “Here are pictures of the symbol.”
    The photos were divided quickly among the officers present. Irene felt uneasy when she saw the five-pointed star surrounded by the ring. Svante had written “the cottage” and “the rectory” in one of the top corners. From what Irene could make out, the symbols were almost identical.
    “These stars are called pentagrams. A pentagram is a fivepointed star that can be drawn in one pass with five straight lines. One point faces up, two down, and two to the sides.”
    Svante stood. He pulled down the white screen from the ceiling and turned on the overhead projector. He drew a fivepointed star in blue ink.
    “This is a pentagram. Compare it with the pictures. Do you see any differences?”
    “Yes. On the computer screens, they’re upside down,” Fredrik said quickly.
    “Exactly. Now I’ll turn my picture as well.”
    With a quick movement of his hand, Svante rotated the picture a hundred and eighty degrees.
    “Do you see that the appearance of the star changes? Now it has two