over his forehead. One of the white-clad members of the CSI team also straightened up and came over. Lina recognized Reiner
Hartmann, who was an almost-friend of Max.
“Good morning,” said Max to no one in particular. “How’s it
going?”
The coroner handed both of them disposable overalls and protec-
tive shoes and gestured toward the underbrush. “Come along.”
Lina followed her colleague cautiously and stopped a few steps
away from the corpse. The dead man wore a light-colored T-shirt, a
leather jacket, and jeans, which seemed to have been quite presentable once, but were now smeared with dark soil, blood, and some reddish-gray substance. He lay on his side, one hand protecting his temple, as if he were still warding off what had overtaken him. One side of his face was on the dark forest soil; the other half was almost totally obscured under a layer of encrusted blood. An ant crawled in an open wound at his temple.
Lina raised her head and sniffed. “Did he puke before he died?”
Sotny tilted his head. “You can smell that? Amazing.”
Lina was about to answer, but the noise from a low-flying plane
right over their heads made conversation impossible. A whoosh in the treetops a few seconds later sounded as if the souls of the passengers followed the plane at their own speed.
“He did indeed vomit before he died,” continued Sotny when it
got quieter again. “We found traces of the vomit around his mouth and I assume that the puddle on the ground is his as well.”
“Can you tell us anything about the dead man?” asked Max.
2
Dead Woods
“Male, between thirty and forty, closer to thirty,” Sotny replied.
“In good shape—apart from the fact that he’s dead.”
“Did he die from the head wound?” Lina asked.
“Most likely. A blow with a blunt instrument, probably a stone.”
Sotny gestured to the brush around the corpse. “More than enough of
those around here. It’s probably just a matter of time until we find it.”
“Time of death?”
“Sometime last night.”
Lina could have guessed that herself. The Niendorfer Gehege in
northern Hamburg was a small, highly frequented forest. A cyclist on his way to work had discovered the dead man this morning. It was
almost impossible for it to have been in the undergrowth undetected
for more than a few hours.
“Could you narrow that down?” Max asked.
“Between eleven and maybe three, but don’t quote me. It might be
half an hour earlier or later. I will only know more after the autopsy.”
Max nodded and looked closely at the dead man and the area
around him. “Am I wrong, or are there quite a few footprints here,”
he said and turned to Hartmann. “Or are they all from you and your
people?”
“A few, yes, but not all of them, for sure. It must have been like
Grand Central Station here. There seem to be at least three, maybe
four, different footprints. One of them belongs to the dead man.”
“So two or three perps?” Max asked.
“Maybe. Or curious bystanders, none of whom called the police.”
“Robbery?”
Hartmann shrugged. “I was about to check his pockets when you
arrived.”
Max motioned toward the body. “Don’t let us keep you.”
Hartmann squatted next to the dead man. Lina gazed at the man’s
battered face. He seemed to have been quite good-looking: short dark hair, clean-shaven. His wide-open eye, the one that wasn’t masked
3
Maria C. Poets
by blood, was blue. It still seemed to be staring toward the bushes.
Lina turned away. It was not the first corpse she had ever seen, but she still hadn’t gotten completely comfortable with dead bodies. As
far as murder scenes were concerned, this one didn’t look all that bad.
She remembered the remains of the woman they had fished out of
Hamburg’s harbor two years ago, in winter, and was glad that she had not had breakfast yet.
Hartmann, careful to move the dead man as little as possible, went
through his pockets. He removed a keychain, a phone, and a wallet,
which he flipped open and searched. Inside was a new ID card, which
Hartmann removed and placed in a plastic bag. Then he got up and
came back to Berg and Svenson.
“Here,” he said. “This should help you with your work.”
Max took the bag with the ID card.
“Philip Birkner,” he read aloud, then the address and the date of
birth. Sotny had been right. The dead man was thirty-four years old.
4
Chapter 2
On the way to the address listed on the ID, Max stopped at a bakery
so Lina could get a coffee. He asked her to bring orange juice for him, something Lina never understood. They had been partners for two
years, and she had never seen him drink anything other than juice, tea, or