Chapter One, in which a corpse wearing ballet shoes poses a mystery
Two hours after the woman's body was found, Constable Ronald Strutner, together with forensic pathologist Jean-Louis Talradja, was busy searching the site for evidence and photographing the body from every angle. Talradja - known to his friends as J.L. for short - had carried out an initial assessment of the body, but the lack of any injuries inflicted by violence made it unlikely that any traces would be found in this hollow that could lead to a perpetrator. Added to that was the fact that the group of hikers had trampled down everything by running around in panic.
"The body's definitely been here for a few days. But, thanks to the rather low temperatures for mid-May, there are hardly any visible signs of decomposition," said Talradja. "And luckily no scavengers have got to her yet, otherwise ." He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I'm sure you can imagine what she'd look like then. Weird, she looks familiar ."
"Perhaps she worked at the hospital?" Ronald replied. "And the cause of death? Any idea?" He couldn't see any clues.
The coroner studied the dead woman. "She wasn't killed by violence; she wasn't beaten to death or strangled. And she wasn't killed with any kind of weapon, at least not at first glance," said Talradja. "My guess would be a natural death."
"You mean . something like a heart attack?" The constable looked at the dead woman's face, which had yet to bloat up, he noted. "Wasn't she a bit young for that?"
"Footballers as young as eighteen have dropped dead on the pitch due to heart failure," J.L. pointed out.
Ronald shrugged his shoulders indecisively. "Well, you can't rule it out." He pointed at the dead woman. "It's just the clothes she's wearing that seem wrong."
"It's the middle of May, so there's nothing wrong with jogging bottoms and a T-shirt," said J.L. casually.
"I was actually thinking more about the shoes," the constable clarified. "Who goes on a hike through the forest in ballet shoes? After a few hundred metres, those soles would be worn through. Yet these ." he leant forward to see more, ". are clean - she can't have walked more than ten steps in them."
"Maybe she was murdered somewhere else and dumped here," Talradja pondered aloud. "That would explain the condition of her ballerinas."
"That would be a possibility," Strutner admitted. "However, there are blades of grass and soil stuck to her clothes everywhere, which gives me the impression that she rolled into the bushes."
The coroner pointed upwards. "What if the murderer let her roll off the edge?"
The constable's mouth tightened. "I don't know; that doesn't sound plausible. If he wants the body to disappear, why is he rolling it down the slope? That way, he has no control over where it lands, and if it stays in the wrong position, he has to go after it and get it under the greenery."
"But if she covered the last few metres of her life herself, she can't have walked far. She could have camped out here somewhere," the coroner replied, rubbing his goatee, which made him look like one of the three musketeers. His jet-black flowing mane of curls was only partially covered by a plastic cap. He was wearing a thin, light-blue protective suit and disposable gloves.
Ronald shook his head. "Camping is forbidden along this hiking route. Besides, we should have seen her tent somewhere near the clearing because she couldn't have walked far."
"I see - and if you get far enough away from the hiking route, you can camp?"
The constable nodded.
"Why?"
"What why?"
"Why is camping forbidden here, yet allowed twenty metres away?"
"I don't know," Ronald replied. "I didn't make the regulations."
"That means our stranger - who I know I've seen somewhere before - could have pitched her tent up there," J.L. said, pointing to the opposite side of the hollow.
Ronald pushed his cap back on his neck and looked up the slope. "Then I'll have a look there."
"I'm coming with you. I can't do anything else here anyway," said Talradja. "I need my lab for everything else." He looked at his watch. "The guys from the undertaker should be here soon."
"Who's responsible now? Heard that Becker absconded because of his tax debts."
"Some chain from the north has set up temporary premises in his shop," the coroner replied. "'Life After Life' is its name, if I'm not mistaken. The tax office will eventually seize the whole shop, but while there are people who can't wait to die, they can't."
The constable laughed briefly, then walked up the slope. J.L. was close behind him.
"Bullseye," Ronald said when he reached the top. "The woman actually only walked three steps before she rolled down here."
In the middle of the forest stood a two-person tent that looked as if it had been hit by a small hurricane. A gas cooker was lying on its side, plates and cutlery were scattered on the ground, and items of clothing, including hiking boots, had been pulled out of the tent. Large holes were seen in several places in the tarpaulin.
"You would think that a small horde of barbarians had attacked the tent," said the coroner.
"Everything has been ransacked," the constable realised. "We'll have to secure evidence first. It could be a robbery-murder."
"If you really want to arrest one of the perpetrators, you should get yourself a set of extra-small handcuffs, Ronald."
"Why tiny?"
"Well, for all the guilty magpies, crows, foxes, mice and creepy crawlies. No one who could be prosecuted! After the camper was dead and there was peace and quiet, the animals descended, had a look around, discovered the food supplies and then turned everything upside down. Look there, the lunch box." He lifted the lid, which was lying next to the container that was empty except for a few crumbs. "Someone bit the corner out. It's a lot of work, but worth it if you can snatch a slice of bread or a piece of cheese and eat it in peace. This is the reason the tent tarpaulin was also shredded - our four-legged friends must have wanted to know if there was any more food on the other side."
The constable nodded in agreement. "Let's photograph everything first before we move anything."
A few minutes later, that was done, and Ronald began to sift through what was in the tent and the immediate surroundings. Everything from T-shirts to hairbrushes had clearly been plucked, pulled and nibbled to check their edibility. "There's no bank cards, or anything to identify her," he realised after a while.
"She didn't have anything on her, either," added Talradja. "Maybe she had left all that at home or in the car, if she drove here."
"Tracking her car down will be no easy matter," Ronald muttered.
"Isn't there a central car park from where the hikers usually set off?"
The constable shook his head. "Pelham Woods has the central car park where we parked. But the walking routes aren't limited to this wood, they go all over the county. You can choose a route where you return to the starting point after three hours, but you can also walk around the entire region for three weeks. This means there are dozens of car parks, but even these don't necessarily help. Some hikers prefer to park their car in the village, around the corner, and walk the distance to the hiking trail because they think their car is safer there."
"That makes sense." J.L. shrugged his shoulders. "Besides, we don't even know if she might have travelled here by bus."
As J.L. turned round, he knocked over a saucepan and bent down to pick it up. It was then he saw the position of the tent in relation to the ditch that ran through the middle of the forest. "Well, that would all fit," he continued quietly. "Suppose she suddenly got heart trouble that woke her from her sleep. She crawled out of the tent, still drowsy, so she didn't really know where she was. Her only thought would be to call for help and a doctor. Perhaps her heart was stabbing so hard that she lost her bearings. Perhaps she started running, but quickly got lost."
"I get how she could have fallen into the hollow. What I don't understand is why she didn't pick herself up - she doesn't seem to have broken anything."
J.L. raised his hands in defence. "There must be a thousand reasons why she couldn't get up. Maybe she was so panicked that her heart just couldn't help but surrender. The autopsy will undoubtedly reveal more, but we won't know what was going through her mind in those last moments."
"It's all very tragic, but I think it's safe to assume," Ronald said after a long, thoughtful pause, "that she died a natural death. There's nothing that points to murder, is there?"
"You know, Ronald, I never rule things out until they are proven or disproven," the forensic scientist emphasised. "But it's looking like you'll just have to write a short report this time."
"That would be a pleasant surprise."
"Hello! Haaaallooo! Hello!" Loud shouts rang out, silencing the constable in mid-sentence.
"Who's that?" he asked in surprise, when he spotted two women coming down the slope from the other side. One was tall and stocky, the other much shorter and petite. The shorter woman wore her platinum-blonde hair in a long plait, while the taller one had a short...
