The Hanging: A Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page A

it, I can recall the taste, even though one wouldn’t think foam tastes like anything. But it does. It tastes of wrongdoing, of wrongness and guilt.”
    He shook his head to rid himself of his thoughts, and added thoughtfully, “It is unpleasant to remember and … well, perhaps Per captured it perfectly. When everything is said and done, that is probably what I am—the foam guy.”

 
    CHAPTER 5
     
    Professor, medicus, forensic pathologist, and medical examiner Arthur Elvang was a churlish man. Konrad Simonsen steeled himself, determined to keep his focus and not let himself be distracted by the professor’s sharp tongue. They met in front of the gymnasium, where Elvang sat absorbed in a newspaper in approximately the same place where the little Turkish girl had been sitting some seven hours earlier, and he, too, was reluctant to give up his reading material. After an eternity, he laid the pages aside and returned his awareness to his surroundings as his small, peering eyes behind the tortoiseshell glasses flew critically up and down over Simonsen, as if he were taking measurements for a suit.
    “You have enough fat stores to last you through the winter, my little Simon. Too bad about your vacation. Where were you then? At a halfway house?”
    He stretched out a twisted hand, and Simonsen, who thought he wanted to underscore his observations by sticking a finger in his stomach, drew back.
    “Now don’t be sulky, give me a hand to get up.”
    Simonsen gingerly helped him to his feet.
    “I’m not upset. My daughter is always commenting on my girth so I am used to it, but it is many years since anyone called me ‘little Simon.’ That stopped when Planck retired.”
    Planck had been the head of the Homicide Division before him.
    “Yes, time flies. Have you told your daughter about your diabetes?”
    Simonsen stiffened.
    “How in all the world do you know…”
    He stopped and regained control of himself. The professor’s medical expertise was legendary, although he might simply have been making a stab in the dark. A guess he had now unwittingly confirmed by his exclamation. He hurriedly left the subject.
    “Is the room free?”
    “Yes, the technicians left about a quarter of an hour ago, but keep away from the back entrance as well as the bathroom. I hear that you have free hands in this matter. Is that correct?”
    “Apparently.”
    “Then you should bring Planck in, unless he is senile. The two of you bring out the best in each other. And as it happens, he is more talented than you.”
    “He is far from senile. Shall we go in?”
    “Yes, of course. Good idea, little Simon.”
    The corpses of five men were strung up in the middle of the room, each with a noose of a sturdy blue nylon rope around the neck. The ends were fastened around sturdy hooks screwed into the beams about seven meters above. The men’s feet were about half a meter from the floor, and the bodies had been placed at least two meters apart in such a way that the four outermost bodies formed a square, the sides of which ran parallel to the walls. All the bodies were missing hands but the lower arms were intact from the elbow down to the wrist. The faces had been disfigured to the point that most of the human elements were gone; also the genitals, which had either been mutilated beyond recognition or removed. Death and the injuries gave the men a similar look, as if their physical differences no longer existed. Simonsen recognized the phenomenon and knew that when he had studied the dead a little longer, their individuality would return.
    “Chainsaw?”
    Elvang confirmed this. That was one of his positive attributes. He wasn’t afraid to express an immediate opinion, in direct contrast to most other pathologists that Simonsen knew, who seldom wanted even to confirm the sex of a corpse before it had undergone a CT scan. And physicians were even worse.
    “While they were still alive?”
    “No.”
    The answer was a relief; the whole thing