Detective Inspector Huss: A Huss Investigation set in Sweden, Vol. 1

by Helen Tursten

  “How did your ex-husband know Richard von Knecht?”

  Again it was Irene Huss who asked. Yvonne Stridner gave her a sharp look but nodded in comprehension of the reason the question had been asked.

  “They belonged to the same crowd during their high school days. They stuck together through thick and thin over the years. Over time, various girlfriends and wives joined the group. We were invited to the spring bonfire celebration and the New Year’s party held every year. Otherwise we girls stayed pretty much on the sidelines. It was like a men’s club, or a fraternal lodge.”

  “How many years did you socialize with the von Knechts?”

  “Tore and I were married barely four years. I met them probably ten times. As I said, this was fifteen years ago. After our divorce I lost contact with the von Knecht circle.”

  Irene could see that the professor was beginning to glance at her elegant wristwatch and knew that she had to hurry and get to the last important question. Quickly she asked, “Who was included in this men’s club?”

  Now Yvonne Stridner looked annoyed. Maybe she thought she had been too communicative.

  “They were men who are quite prominent today,” she said brusquely. Then she thought for a moment and her expression brightened. “Let’s do this. I’ll make a list of all the men in the group. You’ll have it tomorrow with the preliminary autopsy report.”

  She hurried off toward the white Ford Escort. Irene watched her go and said, “She’s actually quite human.”

  Andersson snorted. “Human, her? She’s got the emotional life of a backhoe!”

  Inspector Huss smiled, concluding once again that the superintendent didn’t forgive or forget easily.

  “How are we going to get into the building then? This is a real Fort Knox if you don’t have the code or the keys,” she noted.

  Superintendent Andersson didn’t seem to be listening; for a long while he stood, lost in thought. Finally he took a deep breath and said, “It’s going to take some time before the superintendent at headquarters gets hold of the prosecutor and gets his permission for a search warrant. In the meantime I’ll just have to stay here and wait for the warrant and a locksmith. HQ will also have to track down the phone number of someone in this building who can let us in. Maybe you could drive up to Sahlgren Hospital and check on how the wife and son are doing. My first thought was to borrow the key from the wife so we don’t have to damage their lovely front door.”

  A weary and bitter undertone revealed that Andersson was more affected by the events than he would admit.

  “Okay, I’ll run up to emergency. The car keys, please,” she said.

  Irene reached out her hand and took the keys, still warm from his pocket. She walked off toward the old Volvo.

  AS USUAL, finding a parking place was hopeless, even though evening visiting hours at the hospital were almost over. Huss showed her police ID to the guard and was allowed to drive in. That didn’t always happen when the police showed up in plainclothes and didn’t have someone in the car who needed patching up.

  Since it was a normal Tuesday evening and still relatively early, it was quiet in the big emergency room. Irene went up to the nurses’ counter and saw a blond male nurse sitting there, talking on the telephone. They had met several times before in the line of duty. He waved cheerfully in acknowledgment and signaled that he’d be off the phone soon.

  Irene looked around. Right outside the counter was an elderly man on a gurney. His face was a horrible shade of gray; she could hardly see his lips in that pale face. He lay there with his eyes closed and didn’t seem to be conscious of his surroundings. On a chair next to him sat a short, plump woman patting his arm unceasingly. She was sniffling quietly but didn’t speak to him. Over by the waiting room a youth sat with a wad of bloody paper towels wrapped around his hand. An older gentleman whom Irene recognized from the “A-team” bench in Brunnsparken lay snoring loudly on a gurney. He didn’t seem to be in such bad shape because the blood around the gash on his forehead had already started to congeal. A young woman sat stiffly on her chair staring into space. Except for the old man’s snoring it was almost peaceful in the ER.

  Nurse Roland finished his phone call and waved Huss over from the corridor with a blithe “Hi there, Irene! Long time no see! I bet I can guess why you’re here.”

  “Hi! Have you seen Fru von Knecht and her son?”

  “I sure have. The medics came in and brought me out to the ambulance. They had a feeling that it was probably best to take her straight to Psych. And in the condition she was in, I agreed with them.”

  “How did the son look?”

  “He just sat there staring into space. Of course he’s had a great shock too. Would you like a quick cup of coffee before you dash off?”

  Roland gestured invitingly toward the employees’ lounge. Irene could feel her body longing for a cup of coffee but declined. Time was passing. She started to walk toward the exit as an odd figure came through the double doors. He was tall and incredibly skinny. His rat-colored hair was thin and straggled down the back of his leather jacket. On his feet he wore a pair of indescribably dirty and ragged jogging shoes, and only his jeans could compete with them in filthiness. His thigh-length leather jacket was of a sixties design and had probably been bought at the Salvation Army or picked out of a Dumpster after someone had cleaned out an attic. But it wasn’t his slovenly clothing, which had seen a few too many winters, that made Irene gape.

  His skin was so yellow that it was almost greenish. The guy had jaundice of the most fulminating kind. Without a word the yellow-skinned man ripped off his jacket. The front of his T-shirt was drenched with blood. His stony pupils, surrounded by the sulfur-yellow whites of his eyes, stared straight at the inspector. He grabbed hold of the bottom of his T-shirt and pulled it up.

  Then Irene yelled, “Roland! Hurry! Roland!”

  Nurse Roland stuck his head out the door of the nurses’ station. After more than ten years on the job in the ER, he had no problem evaluating the situation instantly.

  “Damn, that’s a loop of intestine hanging out his belly!”

  He dashed back into the station. Irene heard him yell on the intercom, “. . . abdomen slashed open. He’s a walking case of HIV and hepatitis!”

  He bolted like a shot out the door. On the way he swept on a yellow protective coat, plastic gloves, and a pair of safety glasses. Just as he reached the stabbing victim, the man’s eyes turned upward and rolled into his skull as he collapsed onto the floor.

  Down the corridor quick steps were heard approaching. The emergency personnel walked as fast as they could while trying to pull on some protective gear.

  With a careful evasive maneuver the inspector slunk out into the black November damp. Now it felt good to be outside in the cold. The wind had let up and the rain hung like an icy fog in the air. She went over to her car and drove through the hospital grounds.

  PSYCH EMER GENCY was locked, of course. Irene had to ring the doorbell. A tall, muscular nurse in a white uniform came and opened the door. He towered in the doorway, his shoulders almost filling it. He had sharply defined, powerful features and very dark skin. Could he be from India? He was certainly ten years younger than Irene. But he was one of the most beautiful men she had ever seen.

  “Hi, what do you want?” He had a deep, pleasant voice with no accent.

  “Detective Inspector Irene Huss, Crime Police. I’d like to have a few words with the son of Richard von Knecht. No, not an interrogation, nothing like that. I know he accompanied his mother here an hour ago. We need some help with a case. Their ambulance had already left by the time we got to the scene of the accident.”

  Irene showed her police ID. The nurse, whose name tag said THOMAS, nodded and smiled. She followed him to the cramped waiting room. He said in a low voice, “They were placed in an examining room immediately. Have a seat if you like, and I’ll go tell Henrik von Knecht that you want to speak to him.”

  Again he gave her an irresisti
ble smile before he turned away. Irene saw his broad back disappear down the corridor. He knocked on a door and opened it. Sobs could be heard from within. The nurse was inside for barely a minute. When he emerged a pale man most likely in his thirties accompanied him. There were flecks of blood on the man’s light beige overcoat, mainly on the sleeves and across the chest.

  From inside the examination room a loud wail was heard. “Don’t go, Henrik. Don’t leave me here!”

  Henrik von Knecht closed the door and leaned his forehead against it for a moment. He straightened up quickly, took a deep breath, and followed the nurse. They were about the same height. But everything about the dark-skinned nurse that implied strength, warmth, and radiance seemed to be the exact opposite in Henrik von Knecht. He was indeed tall, but slightly stooped. His elegant topcoat hung loosely on his gaunt body. His blond hair was thin on top. To conceal this he combed his long shock of hair in front straight back. His face was angular. It was actually a pleasant face, but his pallor and the light-colored coat gave him an oddly washed-out appearance.

  He walked up to Irene. His gruff voice rasped when he said expectantly, “Yes, what do you want?”

  “My name is Detective Inspector Irene Huss. We would be very grateful if you would help us with something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We need to borrow the key to your parents’ apartment.”

  He jumped as if she had slapped him hard.

  “The key? Why?”

  “So we don’t have to call a locksmith in order to enable us to search the apartment. It’s a necessity in cases like this. It would be nice not to ruin the lock. Or the door.”

  He looked as if he was thinking of protesting, but instead gritted his teeth and turned on his heel. Over his shoulder he said, “Mamma has the front door key in her handbag.”

  He vanished into the examination room. Irene could hear an excited muttering of voices inside and loud sobbing. After almost five minutes Henrik von Knecht emerged. His face resembled an eroded marble statue. From inside the room Irene could hear a tense, shrill female voice: “. . . back the keys. Even if they’re . . .”

  The flow of words was cut off as von Knecht resolutely pulled the door shut.

  Chapter Two

  HENRIK VON KNECHT DIDN’T say a word during the five-minute car trip. He sat with his head bent forward, his forehead in his hands, and his elbows propped on his knees. Inspector Huss didn’t ask him to put on his seat belt, but let him sit there, lost in his grief, in silence.

  When they turned onto Molinsgatan, Irene Huss saw that it wasn’t just Superintendent Andersson and the crime scene technicians who were gathered outside Richard von Knecht’s building. Two people she recognized quite well were squeezed into the doorway of the menswear store. She drove by them and turned left on Engelbrektsgatan. Huss lightly touched Henrik von Knecht’s arm, which made him jump as if she had wakened him.

  “Where are we going?” he asked in confusion.

  “I thought I’d drive around the neighborhood and park on Aschebergsgatan. There are two newspaper reporter guys waiting on the corner by the menswear store. Can we get into the building through a back courtyard and open the front door for the others from inside? That way you can ditch the hyenas,” she said.

  A tense expression passed over his face, and he seemed to awaken. “Park here on the right side by Erik Dahlberg’s stairs. Take one of the two outer spots,” he directed.

  They were lucky; one of the spots was vacant. Irene looked at his blood-flecked beige overcoat. She asked him to remain seated while she stepped out and opened the trunk. In it she had an old, greasy blue Helly Hansen jacket and her daughter’s black cap, embroidered with NY. She handed him the garments and said, “Take off your overcoat and put these on.”

  He changed quickly inside the car, without revealing what he thought of his disguise.

  They crossed the intersection at a brisk pace. This was the critical moment. She had to force herself not to look toward the corner fifty meters away. With strained composure they kept going for another twenty meters or so. Henrik von Knecht stopped at a massive wooden doorway, took a bundle of keys out of the pocket of his tailored trousers, and unlocked the door. One of the photographers poked his head around the corner, but he didn’t seem to react to the contrasts in von Knecht’s attire.

  They slipped in through the doorway and wound up in a storage area. It was a combined bicycle and garbage room consisting of a passageway about twenty meters long equipped with locked doors at either end. Five green garbage cans stood close to the street entrance.

  They hurried through the room, turned the lock of the inner door, and stepped into a small, square, back courtyard. It was dominated by a big tree in the center, and illuminated by an old-fashioned streetlight. Flower beds bordered the walls. On each wall there was a little entry door with a window, and each door was lighted by a bright exterior lamp. Henrik von Knecht strode directly to the one on the left, unlocked the door, and held it open for Irene Huss. He reached out his hand toward the glowing red button to turn on the stairway lights.

  “Don’t turn on the lights! Or the reporters will see that something’s going on,” she snapped.

  She took out her little high-intensity flashlight from the pocket of her poplin jacket. With the beam pointed downward she started up the five narrow steps, went through a low doorway, and stepped out into a large stairwell. In the beam of light the floor’s variegated marble gleamed. To her right she could see the light from an elevator window. She turned off the flashlight and they headed off toward the stairs, which led down to the front entrance. When she was opposite the elevator door she could see the upper part of the front door’s beautiful incised-glass pane. She took a few steps forward and glimpsed the heads of the superintendent and the techs outside. Cautiously she stepped to one side of the broad stairway, grabbed the carved banister, and glided down the ten steps to the front door. She padded across the soft carpet in the foyer, pulled open the door behind her colleagues, and loudly urged, “Hurry! Come inside before the ambulance chasers get here!”

  “Hurry? How the hell are we going to do that when we’ve just pissed our pants?” asked Police Technician Svante Malm.

  Superintendent Andersson later claimed that he had never been so close to a heart attack in all his life.

  They slipped in through the door before the tabloid reporters at the corner figured out what was happening. Irene turned on the stairwell lights. The superintendent blinked his eyes angrily and snapped, “What the hell are you doing?”

  Irene didn’t reply, but gazed up in wonder at the walls of the stairwell. The frescoes were amazing, with children romping among wood anemones and an allegorical figure of Springtime, flying in a cart drawn by huge exotic butterflies. It was all done in light, elegant, springlike pastels. On the opposite wall was a full Midsummer Eve celebration done in considerably richer and more intense tones. Grown-ups and children danced in the summer twilight, and the fiddler sawed away at his instrument for dear life. His face was shiny with sweat; his eyes glistened with the joy of making music.

  “Carl Larsson did the paintings, in the early eighteen nineties.”

  The police turned their faces to the top of the stairs, where the voice had come from. In his disguise, Henrik von Knecht looked undeniably bizarre. He peered down at the four officers and nodded to Irene before he continued.

  “Inspector Huss was kind enough to help me get past the press. Shall we go upstairs?” He gestured toward the elevator door. The police trudged up the stairs and squeezed into the tiny elevator. A brass plate said MAX. FIVE PERSONS. Irene sincerely hoped that meant full-grown persons. She made a point of introducing Henrik von Knecht to the other three: Superintendent Andersson and the crime scene technicians Svante Malm and Per Svensson. The latter was carrying the heavy lighting equipment and various cameras.

  The elevator took them up to the fifth floor without a hitch. They stepped out and walked over to a huge car
ved double door. A slender wrought-iron grid in the shape of entwined French lilies covered the door’s cut-glass window. The carvings on the lower half of the door represented leaping and gamboling deer. Svante Malm put his lips together to whistle, impressed by its magnificence.

  Irene thought that Henrik von Knecht seemed to have recovered a little of his spirit during their game of hide-and-seek with the press. But when they stepped out of the elevator the rigid expression was back on his face. Superintendent Andersson saw it too.

  “You don’t need to go into the apartment with us,” he said kindly.

  “But I want to!”

  His reply came like a cobra strike. The superintendent was surprised, and he hesitated. “I see, all right. But you have to stay right next to us. You can’t touch anything, sit on any chairs, or turn on any lights. Of course we’re grateful that you can guide us through the apartment. How big is it?”

  “Three hundred fifty square meters. It takes up the whole floor. The other three flats in the building take up a whole floor too. Pappa bought this building in the late seventies and had it renovated very carefully. It’s on the National Register, of course,” he informed them.

  “So there are only three other apartments in the whole building?”

  “Right.”

  While they were talking, the superintendent had put on a pair of thin rubber gloves. With a gesture he asked Henrik von Knecht for the door key. He took it and unlocked the door.

  Gingerly gripping the very end of the door handle, he pressed it down and opened the door to the apartment.

  “Don’t touch any light switches in the hall. Turn on your flashlights,” Svante Malm exhorted. He sighed and went on, “The laser is broken, so I’ll have to use the good old powder method.”

  As soon as the technician said this, he began to search for the light switch with the beam from his flashlight. When he found it just inside the door, he asked Irene to keep her flashlight pointed at the switch while he blew metallic powder over the entire plastic switch plate. Carefully he brushed away the excess, pressed a thin plastic sheet over the surface, and then peeled it off. A look of astonishment spread across his long, narrow face.