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

by Helen Tursten

  “Completely blank. Not a single mark! Someone has wiped the switch plate clean,” he said, astounded.

  “That’s probably why it smells like Ajax,” said Irene.

  She sniffed the air. There was something else. A cigar. That explained the Christmas mood that had stolen over her unconscious when they stepped into the hall. A memory from her childhood Christmases. Her mother’s Ajax and her father’s Christmas cigar. She turned to von Knecht.

  “Did your father smoke cigars?”

  “Yes, sometimes. On festive occasions . . .”

  His voice died out to a whisper. He swallowed hard, for he too had noticed the cigar smell. Barely moving his lips, he whispered to Irene, “Why are they taking fingerprints?”

  She thought about what the medical examiner had said, but decided to evade his question. “Just routine. We always do this when we’re called to the scene of a sudden death,” she explained.

  He made no comment but clenched his jaws so hard that the muscles bulged out like rock-hard pillows along his jawline.

  Svante Malm turned on the light in the hall, which was airy and of an imposing size. The ceiling had to be four meters high. The floor was made of light gray marble. To the right of the door paraded five built-in wardrobes with doors carved of some dark wood. The one in the middle was adorned with an oval mirror that took up almost the entire door panel. Despite this, one of the biggest and most ornamental mirrors Irene had ever seen loomed up on the opposite wall. Below it stood an equally ornate gilt console table. Superintendent Andersson turned to von Knecht.

  “Can you give us a rough idea of the apartment’s layout?”

  “Of course. The door next to the mirror leads to a toilet. The door after that goes to the kitchen.”

  “And the door opposite the kitchen, next to the wardrobes?”

  “It leads to the guest suite on this level. There’s also a separate bathroom with a toilet in there. Straight ahead we have the door to the living room. All the way in, to the left, is the stairway to the upper floor. Up there are the library, a small den, sauna, bedroom, TV room, and billiard room. And a bathroom with a toilet and Jacuzzi.”

  Svante Malm had stopped in front of a shiny polished bureau with gilt fittings, rounded lines, and checkerboard veneer in alternating light and dark wood. With reverence in his voice he said, “I just have to ask: Is this a Haupt bureau?”

  Henrik von Knecht snorted involuntarily. “No, the Haupt is in the library. Pappa bought this one in London. The insured value is five hundred fifty thousand kronor. Also a fine piece,” he said.

  None of the policemen could think of anything to say. The superintendent turned to Irene. “You might as well stay here with Henrik while we take a look around,” he said.

  “I’d like to come with you. There could be something that’s out of the ordinary,” von Knecht quickly countered.

  He jutted out his chin and his mouth took on a stubborn look. Andersson gave him an appraising glance and nodded his assent. He turned to the crime scene technicians.

  “Let’s check the balcony first,” he decided.

  As a group they headed for the wide entrance to the living room. They stepped cautiously onto the vast, soft rug in the middle of the hall floor. Irene couldn’t help stopping to admire its shimmering gold pattern, which depicted a beautiful tree with birds and stylized animals, surrounded by a climbing plant like a grapevine against a dark blue background. She could feel von Knecht looking at her.

  “That’s a semi-antique Motashemi-Keshan,” he said knowledgeably.

  She had a fleeting vision of her latest investment on the rug front, a rusty red rug with small primitive stick figures in the corners. The salesperson at IKEA had assured her that it was a genuine, hand-tied Gabbeh, for the reasonable price of only two thousand kronor. She loved her rug and thought that it lit up the whole living room from its place beneath the coffee table.

  Suddenly she had the equally fierce and foolish impulse to defend her rug. With more vehemence than she intended, she snapped, “Are you some kind of museum guy, or what?”

  “No, but I deal in antiques,” he replied curtly.

  They stood in the doorway until Henrik left the living room. In the flashlight beam Svante Malm was performing his fingerprint procedure on the big light switch panel, with the same negative results. Irene could sense that they were in a very large dining room. Light from the street filtered in through the sheer, drawn curtains. Windows seemed to run from floor to ceiling along the entire outer wall. Why did it feel like they were in a church? Since there weren’t any prints to be found, Malm flicked on the lights. Shiny, heavy brass chandeliers illuminated a huge dining room. They were all surprised and oddly awestruck, but the superintendent collected himself and said, “All right, then. Has everyone put on their plastic booties?”

  The stairway began right next to the light switch panel and led up along the wall where they stood. With Andersson in the lead the techs quickly climbed the broad marble staircase.

  Henrik pressed the last button on the panel, and with a soft hum the thin champagne-colored side drapes slid open.

  She had envisioned it all wrong. The tall windows were not windows, but French doors to the balcony. And they didn’t stretch from floor to ceiling. The height of the ceiling at the outer wall was indeed eight meters. But above their heads the ceiling was only four meters high, stopping abruptly a few meters farther toward the windows. Irene walked into the room and looked around. What was the ceiling in this room was of course the floor of the upstairs level. Where the upper-level floor stopped, there was a lovely wrought-iron railing. It extended on two sides of the dining room. High above her head vaulted the stuccoed ceiling. No wonder she had the feeling of being in a church. From the ceiling hung three colossal chandeliers. The entire room was oblong, but it looked narrower than it was because marble pillars stood in rows supporting the upper floor.

  Her colleagues walked with purposeful steps along the railing, over to the corner of the balcony in the big open library. She returned to Henrik, and they walked silently up the wide staircase together.

  On the upper floor the odor of cigars was very strong. They followed the railing up to the airy library. To the left Irene saw a corridor with several doors. This must be where the other rooms and the sauna were, she realized. The sauna . . . She slowed her steps and stopped. Underlying the cigar smell was a familiar fragrance.

  She took a deep breath and turned to Henrik. “Do you know what this smell is?”

  He sniffed the air and nodded. “Eucalyptus. Pappa took a sauna. That’s why he had on his dressing gown,” he replied with a slight quaver in his voice.

  She had a fleeting vision of the scene: the crushed body of Richard von Knecht dressed in a thick dressing gown of wine-red velvet terry cloth, his naked legs contorted and white in the floodlights, and the brown leather slippers lying a few meters from the body. She shuddered and concentrated on her colleagues standing by the door to the balcony.

  The three men silently faced the locked door. Slowly Superintendent Andersson turned around and said solemnly to Henrik von Knecht, “Unfortunately, I must prepare you for the fact that there are strong indications that your father was murdered. The balcony door is locked from the inside, the key is in the lock, the handle is pulled down. And there’s no handle on the outside.”

  This was too much for von Knecht. He dropped to his knees inside the balcony door with his hands to his face and broke into quiet, dry sobs.

  Irene called for help, for someone from a squad car to drive him home in his white Mercedes.

  BEFORE THE cruiser arrived, Inspector Huss asked him whether he could try to answer a few questions. He nodded affirmatively.

  She began neutrally, “Where do you live?”

  “The Örgryte neighborhood. On Långåsliden.”

  “Do you have anyone who could stay with you tonight, or would you like us to contact someone?”

  “My wife is home.”

/>   “Oh.”

  Irene could hear how stupid her remark sounded, but she was very surprised that von Knecht had a wife. She quickly tried to cover up her reaction.

  “Does your wife know about what happened this evening?”

  He shook his head without taking his hands from his face.

  She went on, “If I understand correctly, you and your mother were in the street at the time your father fell. You were getting out of a car, is that right?”

  For a long time he remained sitting silently in the same position. Irene began to wonder whether he even realized she had asked a question. She considered reformulating it when he removed his hands and looked straight at her. Again she saw the rigid mask. Even though his eyes were shining with tears, there was a layer of ice beneath the tears. He rubbed his face in a weary gesture.

  “Pardon me . . . What did you ask me?”

  Irene posed the question again. He took a deep breath before he answered.

  “We parked around the corner, on Aschebergsgatan. I didn’t notice that anything had happened as I hurried around to open the door for Mamma. Then I heard a scream. I could see that . . . something was lying on the ground, and people were running over to it. Mamma ran there. She started screaming. I called the police from my cell phone. Well, you know the rest.”

  “Where had you and your mother been?”

  “We had decided to meet at Landvetter Airport. She came in on a plane from Stockholm that landed fifteen minutes after my own flight from London. It was a pure coincidence that our flights were arriving at the same time. We discovered it last Saturday when we had a party here. Mamma and Pappa were celebrating their thirtieth anniversary . . .”

  He swallowed hard and fell silent. Huss realized that he wouldn’t be able to say much more.

  “We can postpone the rest of our talk until tomorrow. Would you like me to come to your house or will you come down to the station?”

  “I’ll come down to the station.”

  “How does eleven sound? Bring your wife too.”

  “We’ll try to be there at eleven.”

  “It’s about time for us to go downstairs. The officers in the squad car can’t come through the front entrance, as you know,” she said gently.

  She escorted him down in the elevator. He muttered his thanks and disappeared out into the darkness between the two waiting uniformed officers.

  IRENE HAD to stop and admire the skillfully laid marble floor. The pattern was a black swan surrounded by pink and white lilies. It was the most beautiful floor she had ever seen. Carl Larsson on the stairwell walls, as an extra bonus, didn’t hurt the overall impression either.

  In her many years on the police force, she had passed through hundreds of stairwells, most of them depressingly dilapidated, with the smell of piss and cooked food slamming visitors in the face like a kind of urban tear gas. The walls were scratched up and the graffiti shrieked COCK, NIGGER GO HOME, KILROY WAS HERE, and other cheery messages. Filthy stairs and front doors that had been kicked in were part of the usual picture. The police are seldom called to stairwells with marble inlay on the floor and Carl Larsson paintings on the walls.

  THE BALCONY door was open and the techs were busy securing evidence. One obvious item was a meat cleaver. Not the size used by a butcher, but rather a smaller kitchen variety.

  “This was lying on the floor of the balcony, right next to the wall. It was sheltered by part of the roof, so we’ll probably find something of interest on it,” said Andersson.

  The superintendent was more excited than he wanted to show. His cheeks were flushed a bright red.

  Irene said softly, “Are you okay? I mean . . . your blood pressure?”

  “Why the hell are you bringing that up now?”

  The superintendent was thrown quite off balance and looked annoyed. No one wants to be reminded of the incipient infirmities of old age. Hypertension was one of his. The techs looked up from their tasks in surprise. With great effort Andersson controlled himself and lowered his voice.

  “The sauna was turned on. I got overheated when I looked inside,” he said without convincing even himself.

  Irene decided to drop the sensitive question of her boss’s blood pressure. “Was the heating unit still on?” she wondered.

  “No, it was off. And here’s the explanation for the cigar smell.”

  Andersson pointed at the gray cylinder of ash left by a cigar that lay in a blue crystal ashtray, placed on a smoking table inset with a round copper disc. Beside the ashtray stood a short whisky glass with a trace of amber-colored liquid in the bottom. The smoking table stood between two sofas, which stood perpendicular to each other. They looked invitingly comfortable and were covered in soft wine-red leather. The sofa nearest the balcony was placed with its back to the wrought-iron railing, one end facing the balcony door. A wing chair was ensconced in front of the big mullioned window, upholstered in leather that matched the sofas. The halogen reading lamp next to it resembled a flesh-eating plant made of brass. The other sofa faced the balcony door, with its back to the stairway and the bedroom corridor. The placement of the ashtray and the whisky glass indicated that Richard von Knecht had been sitting on the latter sofa. The superintendent pondered the scene.

  “Why was he sitting on the sofa and not in the wing chair?” he wondered.

  “Check the speakers. One is in the corner and the other is on the other side of the balcony door. I’m guessing the sound is best right here on this sofa,” Irene replied.

  She walked over to the CD player, which was hidden behind smoky glass doors in one of the bookshelves. With a pen she carefully pushed a button, and the disc slid out. Without touching it she read aloud: “The Best of Glenn Miller. So Richard von Knecht sits here, fresh out of the sauna, smoking a good cigar, drinking a shot of Scotch whisky, and listening to Glenn Miller. Suddenly he’s supposed to jump up, cut his hand with the cleaver, and throw himself off the balcony! It doesn’t sound very believable. Stridner was right, it wasn’t suicide.”

  “Don’t forget that the balcony door was locked from the inside and the key was in the lock.”

  “I wonder what happened.”

  “That’s what we’re paid to find out,” said the superintendent dryly.

  He turned toward the balcony and asked in a loud voice, “Svante, is there much blood on the balcony?”

  Svante Malm stuck his freckled, horsy face through the door. “No, so far we haven’t seen any. Could be some spray, but nothing you’d notice right off.”

  “Apparently, he wasn’t killed with the cleaver on the balcony but was actually shoved over the railing. Funny he didn’t scream. Did any of the witnesses say whether he yelled before he fell to the ground?” asked Andersson.

  Irene thought of the little old lady with the dog.

  “I spoke with the closest witness, an elderly lady with a dachshund. She was quite upset that von Knecht almost landed on her dog. But she didn’t mention any scream. Surely she would have said something if he’d screamed as he fell. But she was obviously in shock. I’m interviewing her tomorrow.”

  “Okay. We’ll keep looking around.”

  Tall built-in bookshelves dominated the library. They extended from floor to ceiling and had glass doors. The sofa group stood in the middle of the area. A smaller reading group in one corner consisted of a glass table and two wing chairs, in the same leather and design as the sofa group. There were no bookshelves around the big window or by the balcony door. Modern art hung on the walls instead. Below a brilliantly colored oil painting, depicting a green monster head with yellow eyes, stood the piece by Haupt. You could hardly call it a bureau; rather, it was a secretary on tall, ornate legs. Below the writing surface were three drawers in a row, and above it an elegant rolltop. It was a disappointment. The bureau in the hall was grander. But evidently that wasn’t what determined its value, as Irene gathered from Svante Malm’s reaction. On the other side of the window hung two paintings that even the superintendent’s un
trained eye could tell were Picassos. There were clear signatures on each.

  “Cubist style. I recognize it from the descriptions of paintings that were stolen from the Modern Museum in Stockholm. Nothing is where it should be. How do they expect you to see two eyes when the nose is in profile?” said Andersson.

  He eyed both paintings critically. They were considerably smaller than the monster painting, but surely much more valuable.

  “We’ll take a look around. And we won’t touch anything, and only use flashlights.”

  This last he directed at Svante, whose face was again visible in the balcony doorway.

  THEY WALKED toward the corridor on the upper floor where the other rooms were located. The first room proved to be the den, slightly smaller than an ordinary living room. In the beam of light they could see more bookshelves with books and binders, a small sofa group, a large desk, and a separate computer table.

  Everything looked very clean and neat. Andersson’s flashlight stopped at a framed poster over the desk. It depicted a ballerina in a calf-length tulle dress. She had assumed a pose with one leg raised at an angle in front of her, and her arms and torso stretched forward. In large type the poster announced: THE NUTCRACKER. MUSIC BY TCHAIKOVSKY AND WITH ORIGINAL CHOREOGRAPHY BY L. IVANOV.

  Surprised, Andersson said, “Did von Knecht like ballet?”

  Curious, Irene stepped forward and read in the beam of her penlight: “JOIN US IN CELEBRATING THE NUTCRACKER’S 75TH ANNIVERSARY, 1892-1967, AT THE GRAND THEATER IN GÖTEBORG. Yes indeed, obviously he was interested in ballet,” she declared.

  “We’ll do a quick search through the apartment now. The techs will have all night to secure evidence. I’ll meet with them early tomorrow morning if they’ve found anything of value . . . well, that’s a damned stupid thing to say in these surroundings!”