Cnut - The Man Who Did It Doggy Fashion

By Tony Nash/Stig Larssen and Stig Larssen

Killed by a corpse.

At first sight of the way the naked corpse of a young woman is displayed, DI Kvindstrom vocalises all their thoughts, with, 'I've never heard one praying for it like that.' It gains him a sharp taste of Cnut's disgust, even though his comment is a correct description of the killer's intent with that particular victim. The one that follows implies a more artistic goal, but the woman is just as dead. The murderer is well versed in forensic science, and leaves no clues, but as the victim count mounts, Cnut decides that two things: artistic perfection, and the desire for fame as an artist, are driving the killer. Those needs apply to dozens of suspects, and one by one they have to be eliminated as the murderer. One name stands out, but that man has been dead for four years. Nevertheless, Cnut becomes more and more convinced that he is the killer – a dead man killing the living.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TONY NASH
• Release date: Jan 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393122630

Tony Nash/Stig Larssen

Tony Nash is the author of over thirty detective, historical and war novels, who began his career as a navigator in the Royal Air Force, later re-training at Bletchley Park to become an electronic spy, intercepting Russian and East German agent transmissions, during which time he studied many languages and achieved a BA Honours Degree from London University. Diverse occupations followed: Head of Modern Languages in a large comprehensive school, ocean yacht skipper, deep sea fisher, fly tyer, antique dealer, bespoke furniture maker, restorer and French polisher, professional deer stalker and creative writer.

Book preview

The sculptured dead, on each side, seemed to freeze

John Keats 1820

Copyright © Tony Nash 2020

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This book is a work of pure fiction. Names and characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Other works by this author:

THE TONY DYCE/NORFOLK THRILLERS:

Murder by Proxy

Murder on the Back Burner

Murder on the Chess Board

Murder on the High ‘C’

Murder on Tiptoes

Bled and Breakfast

THE JOHN HUNTER/MET COP THRILLERS:

Carve Up

Single to Infinity

The Most Unkindest Cut

The Iago Factor

Blockbuster

Bloodlines

Beyond Another Curtain

HISTORICAL/WWI NOVELS:

A Handful of Destiny

A Handful of Salt

A Handful of Courage

WWII EPIC:

No Tears For Tomorrow

THE HARRY PAGE THRILLERS:

Tripled Exposure

Unseemly Exposure

So Dark, The Spiral

THE NORWEGIAN SERIES:

CNUT – The Isiaih Prophesies

CNUT – Paid in Spades

CNUT – The Sin Debt

CNUT – They Tumble Headlong

CNUT – Night Prowler

CNUT – Past Present

CNUT – Cry Wolf

CNUT -  Mind Games

CNUT -  When The Pie Was Opened

LOOT – (A Viking tale)

OTHER NOVELS:

The Last Laugh

The Sinister Side of the Moon

Hell and High Water

The Thursday Syndrome

ESPIONAGE:

‘Y’ OH ‘Y;

CHAPTER ONE

Stark naked and kneeling, she had been arranged so that her coccyx was the highest point, and her legs were spread wide open, deliberately displaying her sexual organs to the world. From her backside, her body sloped downwards, but her head was raised, and her open, sightless eyes gazed directly forwards, at the small, rough-hewn, wooden cross that had been hammered into the ground, less than a metre in front of her eyes – a cross that had a Roman figure one roughly carved into it on the crossbar.

Both elbows were on the leaf-strewn ground, and the forearms were straight out in front, as were the hands, which were close together, with all fingers touching, in an obscene parody of religious devotion.

‘Well, I’ve heard of women liking it doggy fashion, but never one praying for it.’

DI Sigurd Kvindstrom’s voice came from behind Cnut.

He turned sharply, and gave Sigurd a scowl that would have incinerated a bucket of ice.

‘Any other clever comments you’d like to make, Kvindstrom?’

Cnut’s use of the surname alone clearly told Sigurd and the others the depth of his anger.

All of them, the sheriff included, had had similar thoughts on sight of the attitude of the body – it was the natural, immediate reaction, but to speak it out loud, as Sigurd had done, was in the worst possible taste.

Sigurd hung his head, ‘No, boss. I’m sorry.’

And so you bloody should be. Thank God, Kristin Tveit was not nearby – her headline would have been a real humdinger, and the police force needs that kind of publicity as badly as a slug needs salt.

Seeing his inspector’s distress, Cnut regretted the strength of his outburst, but not the remonstration. Sigurd must know a lot about that particular sexual position, having been homosexual until two years earlier, when Ingrid Olsen, a fellow detective, had converted him. Maybe they used it, but it did not excuse him.

A sudden darkening made Cnut look up.

The morning had started well enough, with a clear sky, but the small, white, fluffy clouds that had appeared soon after nine had swollen and turned grey, and then slowly developed into towering black cumulo-nimbus, its tips reaching up to over twelve thousand metres, racing forward like eager fingers, determined to grab and devour the whole sky. At ground level, the earlier wind had dropped to nothing – the lull before the storm.

There was no need of a bunch of wet seaweed to know that it would not be long before a deluge fell.

Cnut turned to his friend, Ari Blank, head of the team of Scene of Crime Officers, and suggested, ‘I think you’d better get a tent up damned quickly, Ari. For once, the forecasters have got it right, damn their hides.’

Blank nodded, ‘I agree. It won’t take long.’

He turned and gave the order to two of his team.

‘We’ll get out of your way while you do that.’

Cnut had brought DI Kvindstrom, who was next senior on the day shift, DS Anton Bende, and DC Per Matsen with him in answer to the call, leaving Ilse in the office, suffering from one of the debilitating migraine headaches that had plagued her for the last couple of weeks, and Nick, the black Labrador they had adopted, after his owner was killed by the last serial killer they had brought to justice.

It was the first murder scene that Ilse had ever missed, since they had been together, and Cnut felt as if a vital part of him was missing. As the official profiler, Ilse’s initial view of a crime scene, before SOCOs and the pathologist disturbed it, was of the utmost importance, and second-hand information and photos, no matter how good, could not replace that personal first impression.  

Cnut told his men, ‘This area around the body is all beaten up – it looks almost deliberate. I want you to look around for evidence of approach and departure, and you’d better make it quick, before the heavy rain destroys all signs.’

They moved off.

Ari and his team had arrived only a minute after Cnut, and as he watched them erecting the tent, Viv Blenke, the busty blond pathologist, who still carried a torch for the sheriff, arrived with her two dieners in their now ancient and rusting meat wagon, which was making heavy weather of the hill.

Leaving the two lads in the van, after she braked to a halt, she climbed out, and strode over to Cnut.

He greeted her with, ‘That old banger will go up in smoke one day. Have you seen the fumes coming out of the exhaust?’

She shrugged, ‘I might set fire to it myself. With a 3D printer I could probably build a new one with all the requests I’ve put in for a replacement. Six years’ worth to date, and counting.’

He chuckled, ‘We’ve all had to put up with the cut-backs, Viv.’

‘Tell me about it. I even had to pay myself for the new multislice tomography machine, after the last one burnt out almost two years ago, and my requests for a new one were continually ignored.’

‘We all have our crosses to bear, and that young lady certainly has one. It’s been bashed into the ground directly in front of her eyes.’

‘What exactly have we got? I was just told, An unusual death by the operator.

‘They’ve got the tent up, so come and have a look.’

They entered the canvas structure, and Viv stopped dead.

‘Jesus Christ! It looks as if...’

‘Yes, it does.’ Cnut interrupted her, ‘and that was obviously the killer’s intention.’

‘So, after killing her, he moved her into that pose, and kept her in it until rigor was fixed, and then moved her here.’

‘That was my thinking. It’s the only way it could have been staged like that.’

‘Both her vagina and her anus are wide open, as if....’

Cnut sighed heavily, ‘Yes, he must have inserted something large into both of them, and removed whatever he had used after he brought her here, leaving them set like that.’

‘So...she was killed between twelve and twenty-four hours ago – most likely around eighteen hours, since she is still completely rigid. He could not have begun to move her until she had been dead around twelve hours, when rigor was fixed, and since it seemed he wanted her found like this, he must have transported her here shortly after that. It was cool overnight, and it’s only around sixteen Celsius now. We’ll know the time of death closer when rigor starts to ease. Fixing her in that pose would not have been at all easy, and he must have used supports of some kind. He was definitely sending a message, but to whom, and what for, one can only conjecture. She’s slightly built, and obviously not heavy, but she would not have been easy to manhandle like that. He must have used some kind of carrier, like a wheelbarrow. Who found her?’

‘A jogger.’

‘Male or female?’

‘Female.’

‘Probably just as well. Have you questioned her yet?’

‘No.’

‘Can I listen in?’

‘Of course. She’s in my car.’

Cnut’s unmarked VW Passat had managed the climb up the narrow, unpaved track fairly easily in four-wheel drive, but there were deep ruts in the soft earth behind Viv’s van. He knew that she would make it back down all right, even if she had to reverse all the way, but if the rain that was about to fall had arrived earlier, it would have probably made it impossible for her to reach the scene in the old van. It told him that whatever vehicle had been used to bring the girl’s body up there must also have had four-wheel drive, though there had been no wheel marks in the grass, to show the recent passage of any kind of vehicle. That was an enigma – one he would have to solve. That the girl had not been murdered where she was found was obvious.

As they walked across to the car, the first heavily pregnant rain drops fell on them, and they were glad to get inside.

Cnut got into the back, where the young woman who had found the body sat shivering.

He realised that the body heat she had generated while jogging had dissipated, leaving the sweat drying on her fast cooling body.

Cnut pulled the knob to release the boot lid, jumped out, grabbed two blankets, slammed the boot lid down, and jumped back into the car, to hand them to the girl.

Shivering, she thanked him, while she pulled them around her.

He said, ‘Start the engine, please, Viv, and put the AC onto the highest setting. This poor girl is freezing.’

To the woman, he added, ‘I’m so sorry. I should have done that before I left you.’

With her eyes just above the level of a tightly wound blanket, she told him, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll survive, though I’ll never forget that sight, as long as I live.’ She began to sob.

He waited until she had quietened down, before telling her, ‘I have to ask you some questions, Frøken...?’

‘Elise Haraldsdottir – my father is Icelandic.’

‘What age are you?’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘How often do you jog here?’

‘Every day.’

‘At about the same time?’

‘At exactly the same time. I jog, go home for a shower and breakfast, and then go to work.’

‘Where do you work?’

‘At the Alsberg Fitness Centre. I am an instructor.’

‘But you live close by.’

‘Yes, in one of the cottages at the bottom of the hill. The one with the newly-painted red roof. You can see it from here.’

‘Do you see anyone else when you’re jogging here?’

‘Occasionally, an old man with a German shepherd dog, but I believe he usually walks it down below, rather than make the climb. Then, recently, there has been another jogger – a man about forty. I didn’t know him, but he spoke as he passed me on the first occasion that I saw him, and he sounded friendly.’

‘How often have you seen him?’

‘On four consecutive mornings last week.’

‘But not before or since?’

‘No.’

‘Can you describe him?’

She sighed, ‘I didn’t really look at him – just glanced once – kept my head averted to avoid looking at him, in fact. You know, a woman alone, wearing what some men think of as sexy, does not want a man she does not know at all to think that she might have a sexual interest in him. Though I jog up here alone, I do feel very vulnerable, and now this has happened, I will never come here again.’ She shivered, ‘My God! It could so easily have been me, if he killed that poor woman.’

Cnut made no comment about that – it was dangerous ground, but he asked, ‘Can you tell us anything at all about him?’

‘Around my height, I think – I am one-seventy-five – he was certainly not exceptionally tall or short – kind of medium build - a forgettable face – you know, nothing outstanding about it. He had a beard and a moustache, and wore thick-rimmed spectacles. He did run as if he favoured his left leg, but it was so little that I might have been imagining it.’

False facial fungus and glasses. It figures.

‘That is good. Anything else? How did he speak? Did he have an accent?’

‘He only said, "God morgen" on the first occasion that I saw him, and it could have been anyone speaking. I detected no accent.’

Cnut knew it was all they were going to get, and he offered, ‘Would you like me to drive you home? You’ll get soaked.’

The rain had become a steady downpour.

She smiled, ‘I’m quite used to that, and I’ll go straight home, instead of continuing my jog.’

‘Well, thank you for your help. Could I ask you not to discuss what you’ve seen with anyone else, and particularly not with any journalist?’

She sighed again, ‘I’ll try not to, but...’

‘I understand. We may need to see you again, but hopefully that will not be necessary. You can take the blankets with you, if you like.’

She began to pull them off her, ‘No, thank you. I’ll soon work up some heat.’

When she’d left the car and closed the door, Cnut asked, ‘What are your first impressions, Viv?’

‘About the body?’

‘Yes.’

‘Killed somewhere else, and brought here to be displayed where the murderer knew it would be found while still in that fixed pose. The sexual implication is obvious, and must have a meaning. The religious aspect of it is a strange one, and that cross tells us that we will not have heard the last of him.’

‘I agree. It seems that we have a new serial killer to deal with. It’s a great pity that Elise didn’t get a good look at that jogger. He must be the killer, and was sussing out a quiet place to display his victim where he knew it would be found before rigor passed.’

‘Local, do you think?’

Cnut hesitated, ‘That would be the logical thinking, but I believe that he knew of this place, and maybe has been here in the past, but doesn’t live anywhere nearby now. We’ll have to question everyone who lives in this area, to find out if anyone has stayed with them recently, and particularly on those days when Elise saw him, but if my hunch is right, he either camped close to here, or drove to the vicinity each morning, and hid his car somewhere, to check it out.’

She looked out of the window, ‘Seems as if there’s nothing for it – we are going to get drenched, but here goes. I’ll give you a bell when I’m about to do the post. We prepped an RTA death yesterday afternoon, ready for this morning, and we might as well do that first. We’ll do this one when rigor eases, and I’ll telephone you with the start time.’

Cnut went for the dryest option, ‘Thanks, Viv. Would you tell my boys to come back to the car. They’ve just gone into the tent, hoping to shelter, I guess.’

She laughed, ‘So you can stay here out of the nastiness. Nice one. Okay, I’ll tell them.’

With the thought that taking the shortest distance between two points was in his best interest, he clambered between the backs of the two front seats, and into the driver’s seat.

The three men ran fast across the wet grass, and jumped into the Passat.

When they were settled, and had stopped grumbling, he asked, ‘Anything?’

DC Matsen answered, ‘Yes, sir. I found narrow tyre tracks close by, and on a patch of bare soil saw the imprint of a heavily profiled tyre, but before I could ask one of the SOCOs, who was searching near me, to bring his camera, and cover it up, the rain had just about obliterated it.

He took some photos, but they will be useless, and he and I tried to follow the tracks back through the trees, but by then it was hopeless.’

‘Damn the rain. Just a few more minutes, and we might have had something. Still, narrow wheels, and a heavy tyre profile tells us that he used an ATV of sorts.

Most of those are for off-road, and are illegal to use on the roads, so he couldn’t have reached this place from outside the immediate area driving that. At least, not without taking a hell of a chance of being seen and stopped by a copper. Most ATVs have a loading platform, for the transport of dead deer, and so on, which would be ideal for carrying the body. He either borrowed one locally, with or without permission, or brought it on a trailer.

Okay, I want you three to come back here after you’ve dried off and changed, and start visiting the farmers in the area, to see if they own an ATV. If they have, ask them if they’ve lent or hired it to anyone, or if they think it could have been taken without their consent. You also need to visit all the local houses, just those in the village at the bottom of the hill, and the other two nearby, to see if anyone has been staying with them recently. Luckily, there aren’t too many of them.’

The latter will probably be a waste of manpower, but needs to be done.

He pipped the horn, to let Ari and Viv know that he was leaving, and drove down the track, to join the small road at the base of the hill.

On the top of another hill, three kilometres away, a watcher observed Cnut’s departure through a pair of twelve magnification binoculars.

So that is my hunter. He looks competent, but he is out of his depth this time. It will take him several days to find the only connection, and he’ll be really pissed off to find that it’s a false one. Then he’ll realise that he’s up against a master.

He sighed. It was a pity that the first one had to work in the sex industry, but that had been necessary for the reality of the pose, and the required findings of the post mortem. He had covered his tracks well. When making the booking with the agency, he had presented himself as Hans Madsen, a stockbroker, and supplied all the genuine details demanded of him as a new client.

His bank details were requested, for security reasons, and, taking a chance, he had given false ones.

The real Madsen was a complete stranger to him, and he had picked the name originally from a brochure. Then, he had researched the man, using his computer skills. He took a tiny chance that the girl might know the real Madsen, but it was a chance worth taking, and had that happened, it would merely have set his programme back a short while.

He had learnt that the escorts liked to be paid in cash. The police, he knew, would check for fingerprints, and possibly also for DNA, on any banknotes found in the victim’s home, and he had carefully washed the notes he withdrew from the ATM with strong disinfectant, mixed with washing up liquid and hot water, before drying them again, with rubber gloves on, in case the woman placed them in a safe immediately after receiving them. In the event, after he had tipped them out of the envelope and returned the envelope to his pocket, she merely left them on a work surface, instead of locking them in a safe, which he had expected her to do, and he retrieved them after killing her.

He packed the binoculars away, and returned to his car.

It was almost time to attend to number two of the series. He knew her daily schedule perfectly, and could afford to choose his time.

He smiled – invincibility was a wonderful thing.

He would let her live for one more day.

He started the engine, and pushed the gear lever forward.

He felt great, and a quarter kilo sirloin steak with fries and a side salad, washed down with a good Shiraz, would make him feel even greater. He deserved it.

~~~oOo~~~

Back at Headquarters, fussing Nick’s head with his hand when the Labrador, who had been lying beside Ilse, had got up to greet him, Cnut asked her how she was feeling.

She looked pale, but told him, ‘The worst pain has gone now.’

‘Do you want me to take you home? You should not have come in today.’

‘No. I’ll be fine now. You know what I’m thinking?’

‘No.’

‘Remember the last time I had headaches?’

Oh, Jesus.

‘You don’t think...?’

‘Yes, I do.’

It had been when they believed that she was pregnant, despite it being a virtual impossibility, and it had turned out to be a pseudocyesis – a phantom pregnancy.

‘You’d better call Arne, and have a check-up.’

‘I’ll do that as soon as you’ve told me what you found, and I’ll ask him to arrange a D and C.’

‘Come out front then, and listen while I tell the boys and girls. Nick – stay.’

He led the way out of the office into the bullpen, and called his whole team of detectives to attention, to give them a run-down of what he knew so far.

He ended with, ‘That figure one on the cross makes it quite obvious that we are going to see more from this unsub. He likes to advertise, and we’ve often seen that kind of thing before. He’s a bragger, and it could be his undoing. It is possible that a witness saw him, but he was heavily disguised, with beard, moustache, and thick glasses. She said he seemed to favour his left leg, though that too could have been something he did that was false. Her description does not help us at all, except that, in her estimation, he was of average height and build. Though his presence at the site on four consecutive days the previous week is suspicious, and would appear to indicate that he is our perp, I have to add that there is no other indicator that he had anything to do with the murder. Any questions?’

Ingrid Dansen, an attractive brunette who had recently been promoted to detective, and joined Cnut’s Serious Crime Squad, asked, ‘With the use