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

by Helen Tursten

  He snorted lightly and Irene felt her heart warm. He too was affected by the objects around them.

  They left the den and went into the next room. It turned out to be the famous sauna, completely tiled from floor to ceiling. At the back of the room was a solid Plexiglas wall with a door, also of Plexiglas. Inside were benches at different levels, with a large sauna heating unit against one wall. Outside was a shower with glass walls and sliding doors. Two teak deck chairs with thick cushions and a small table made up the furnishings. There was a strong scent of eucalyptus. Irene shone her light in the shower and saw that the walls and floor were still wet.

  “Nothing more of interest. Let’s move on to the next door,” said Andersson.

  Behind it was a separate toilet with a large marble washbasin. The last door on the right side of the corridor led to the billiard room. A large billiard table occupied the middle of the room. On the walls the racks of cues were a nice counterpoint to the art.

  They crossed the hallway and entered the largest bedroom either of them had ever set foot in. An extra-wide king-size bed with a yellow silk bedspread and heaps of pillows was the focus of the room. It was surrounded by shining wooden cabinets and chests of drawers; the walls were covered with paintings. Here you could actually see what the art was supposed to represent. Naked bodies, mostly female. There were also a few men pictured. Some of the paintings by the bed were downright pornographic, or perhaps erotic, since the copulating couples were partially clothed. What clothing they still had on was old-fashioned; the women wore corsets, crinolines, and bonnets. Irene inspected with interest some advanced lovemaking positions portrayed in a number of small Japanese prints. A door on the wall facing the wardrobes proved to conceal a large bathroom. The bathtub was a corner model, apparently the Jacuzzi that had been mentioned.

  The superintendent stifled a yawn with the back of his hand and said, “It’s ten-thirty. We’ll have to settle for a quick once-over of the rest. By the way, did you notice one thing? Where are all the curious neighbors who should be running in and asking what happened? There are three other apartments in this building, after all.”

  “I’ll do a quick round of knocking on doors.”

  Huss left the von Knecht bedchamber.

  She came back sooner than she expected. Andersson was surprised when he ran into her in the downstairs hall again.

  “Not a single neighbor is home. It’s dark and quiet in all three apartments. And I rang the bells and knocked on the doors,” she assured him.

  Andersson looked pensive.

  “That explains the lack of curious neighbors. And it made things easier for the killer. Headquarters couldn’t get any of the neighbors on the phone either. By the way, I looked into the last room upstairs. A TV room. Nothing of interest. Just a bunch of pictures and a giant TV.”

  He nodded toward the kitchen door.

  “Let’s look it over.”

  The kitchen was ultramodern, probably at least fifty square meters. In the middle of the room there was a huge cooking island with an enormous copper ventilation hood. The upper and lower cupboards had carved doors of red-toned cherry wood. On the floor a silk rug lay upon dark red-glazed parquet that gleamed. In front of the stove and around the kitchen island reddish brown tile had been laid. The walls were light colored, almost white. Beams ran across the ceiling, glazed the same color as the floor. Everything was clean and in immaculate order. The door of the dishwasher was ajar. Cautiously the superintendent poked the end of his flashlight inside and looked around.

  “Dishes done. No dishes on the drainboard,” he declared.

  “Sven, look above the counter,” said Irene. “There are kitchen implements hanging underneath the ventilator hood.”

  Five centimeters above the edge of the hood ran a rod that was soldered fast. It had small hooks on it, and various kitchen implements hung on them. They didn’t see any meat cleaver. Andersson looked a little perplexed and asked, “What do you use a meat cleaver for?”

  Irene was amazed that he didn’t know, but restrained herself.

  “One side has a sharp edge for chopping off tendons and gristle. The wide, flat part you use to pound the meat to make it thinner and more tender. I wouldn’t think it would be used much these days. Usually meat is already cut up and tenderized when you buy it.”

  “We’ll have to compare the wooden handle of the cleaver with the handles of the implements hanging here. It seems to be the same style. And here’s an empty hook,” said the superintendent.

  “I get the feeling these are only for decoration. The tools don’t seem to have been used. I’ve certainly never seen a more virginal whisk! And look how the wooden handles match the cupboard doors exactly,” Irene snorted.

  She pointed to a door on the far wall. “I wonder where that leads?”

  “Looks like an ordinary door to the kitchen stairs. The techs will check it out tomorrow,” Andersson decided.

  He stifled another yawn before he went on, “I think we’ve been pretty thorough even though it’s just the preliminary survey. Anything we’ve forgotten?”

  Irene understood that the superintendent’s question was rhetorical, but that door was bothering her. An image from her memory had been insistently pricking at the back of her mind, and now it popped up. She remembered the four doors downstairs off the little square courtyard in back. The five stairways of all the main entry halls opened onto it, if she remembered it correctly. She hadn’t seen anything that looked like back kitchen stairs. There was every reason to look behind the door before they left, she thought.

  Andersson sighed but lumbered over to the door with her. With a cautious shove she managed to open it. Behind it was no kitchen stairway, but a large scullery. The beams of the flashlights played over broom closets, a clothes dryer, drying cupboard, and a washing machine. On the latter a red light was blinking, indicating that the wash was done. Again Irene used her pen, so that she wouldn’t leave any fingerprints or wipe off any that were already there, as she opened the lid of the washing machine.

  “A sheet. He put a sheet and towels in the washing machine before he met his killer,” she said dramatically to the superintendent.

  They went back out through the kitchen, stepped over the rug in the hall, and inspected the guest suite. Inside the door was an airy bedroom with a queen-size bed. They glanced quickly in the guest bathroom, without finding anything of interest.

  Chapter Three

  IRENE HUSS DROVE HOME through the midnight stillness of Göteborg. Here and there electric candlesticks had begun to appear in windows, although it was more than a week and a half until the beginning of Advent. Was it because of the Christmas decorations in stores being displayed earlier and earlier, or was it merely a sign of the longing for light in the dense winter darkness? Speaking of light, Jenny needed a new candlestick for her window. The old one had shortcircuited last year. Was it Jenny or Katarina who said that she’d rather have a birch-bark star? Sometimes it was hard to remember which of them said what. Even though the girls were twins, they were so unlike in every way that people hardly believed they were even sisters. Jenny was most like Krister, a little uncommunicative and just as blond. But she hadn’t inherited her father’s interest in food, devoting herself instead mostly to music. Katarina was dark like Irene, extroverted and sporty. She had started going with Irene to the dojo when she was ten. Now she was thirteen and was about to be certified for a green belt, ukemi-waza.

  Irene had been seventeen when she got hers. At nineteen she became the Nordic female champion in judo, and two years later the European champion. Of course in the women’s competitions there hadn’t been much significant opposition in the rest of Europe seventeen years ago, but it had still given her high status at the police academy.

  Her fellow students still talked about the time an instructor came to the academy to address “the need for the police to know some basics of self-defense.” He was a cocksure Stockholmer who intended to show the puny police cade
ts how a real ninja hero defended himself.

  He called up the skinniest boy in class, a wiry kid from Småland who never in his life had trained in any martial arts. On the other hand, he did belong to the Swedish national team in table tennis. The cadet was told to put a choke hold on the instructor from behind, and he obediently complied. Quickly the instructor grabbed the Ping-Pong player’s left hand, turned ninety degrees toward him, pressed his hand hard against his shoulder, and put him down on the mat with an o-sotootoshi. There was just one problem—you don’t push down wiry cadets from Småland any old way you like. Especially if they’re on the national Ping-Pong team. The cadet flared up and resisted, and then his shoulder dislocated. It hurt like hell and the poor guy lay there writhing on the mat. Instruction was halted as the student was taken to the emergency room to have his shoulder reset.

  Irene was outraged. During lunch she made a decision. It was against the ground rules of the sport, but the instructor had to be put in his place. He had used a move that belonged to a blue belt, much too high a difficulty level for a beginner.

  After lunch the instructor came back to the gym. With a smirk he said he hoped that “this little incident hadn’t scared them off from further practice.” No one answered, and the mood was gloomy. Quickly the instructor turned to his students and said, “Anyone figure out the hold and want to try?”

  Ha, right into the trap! Irene stood up before anyone else could volunteer. With feigned shyness she lowered her eyes and said in her thickest Göteborg accent, “I guess I could give it a try.”

  Tension was mounting among her fellow cadets, but the instructor didn’t notice. He was clearly annoyed when he saw that she was almost ten centimeters taller than he was. Resolutely he raised his arms so he could put a choke hold on her from behind. In a fraction of a second she had tensed her neck muscles, taken a step back with her left leg, and hooked his leg. She pulled his legs apart with a quick sweep, let him fall, and stepped back.

  The cheers and applause went on and on.

  The flattened instructor tried to regain the initiative as he lay on his back on the mat. “Good, very good! Anyone else want to try?”

  The booing that greeted his remark was too strong to drown out. He slunk out the door. That was the first and last time they ever saw the guy.

  Irene, amused by the memory, almost missed her turn onto Västerleden at Järnbrotts Motet and headed out toward Särö instead. Her eyelids felt heavy, and she longed to be home in bed.

  INSIDE THE front door sat Sammie happily wagging his tail. He jumped, leaped, and wriggled with his whole body to show his boundless joy that she was home. Suddenly he stopped and pressed his nose tight against the door. He gave her a pleading look. Out. Have to pee. Right away!

  With a sigh she put on his leash and went out in the night. After a few meters she remembered that she didn’t have any poop bags left in her pocket. If something happened now, they would have to rely on the darkness and the late hour and quickly slip away from the scene of the crime.

  “WAS THIS the reason you were so late last night?”

  Krister held up the Göteborg Post to Irene’s bleary gaze. She was sitting at the breakfast table, trying to wake up. It was almost seven o’clock. Her daughters plopped down at the table. The morning shower fight had ended with Katarina first, Krister second, Jenny third, and herself last. Krister was trying to find a new thermostat for the downstairs shower. It was hopeless to have only one, when all of them had to leave at the same time in the morning. Now it was her turn to shower. But hadn’t her husband just asked her something? She saw the black headlines screeching across half the front page: RICHARD VON KNECHT DEAD AFTER FALL FROM BALCONY. Lower down on the page, in smaller type: “Police tight-lipped. Accident or suicide?”

  She managed merely to nod in reply. Before she left the kitchen, she said over her shoulder, “I have to take a shower. Dear, make sure the coffee is strong!”

  She stood under the water for a luxuriously long time. Feeling much brisker, she went back to the bedroom and threw on her clothes: black Levi’s, black turtleneck, and a bright red V-necked Pringle sweater. Well, a Pringle knockoff, at least. Thin blue eyeliner to match her eyes, a little black mascara, and a light spray of Red Door. Now she was ready to move mountains!

  The girls had breakfast ready when she came down. Their bus would be leaving in fifteen minutes. Katarina scrambled around looking for her school bag while Jenny sat at the table. She made an effort to gather her courage. Finally she blurted out, “Do you think I could have the money to buy an electric guitar? Or maybe as a Christmas present?”

  “An electric guitar?” her parents echoed in unison.

  “Yes. A band at school needs somebody who can play guitar and sing ... so they asked me. One of the guys plays guitar for the same teacher as I do.”

  “Are any boys from your class in this band?” asked Krister.

  “No, three boys and a girl from ninth grade.”

  “Ninth grade! But you’re only in the seventh, sweetie pie.”

  “I’m not a sweetie pie!”

  She jumped up from her chair with tears in her eyes and whirled out of the kitchen. Katarina stuck her head in the kitchen doorway and said in surprise, “What the heck was that about?”

  “She wants an electric guitar so she can play in a band at school,” sighed Krister.

  “Oh, I get it. The White Killers. They’re not so bad. Sometimes they play in the courtyard at lunchtime,” Katarina informed them.

  “White Killers? What kind of name is that for a band? Are they satanists or what?” Krister had an unusually long fuse, but now he was starting to lose his temper.

  “Well . . . more sort of punk rock, like . . . maybe . . . Punx Not Dead, Pappa!”

  With a gleeful grin Katarina bounced out to the hall and the girls took off running to the bus stop.

  Irene could hear the weariness in her own voice as she moaned, “Give me strength! White Killers! Will you be home tonight? I don’t know when I’ll be back. This von Knecht case is hot. There’s plenty to indicate that he was murdered, but we’re lying low until the autopsy is done. It seems nothing has leaked out to the press yet. They’re going to tear down police headquarters when they hear this!”

  “Home? Probably not before six. But that works out fine, since Katarina has judo tonight. So I can try and talk to Jenny. Hurry up now, let’s get going.”

  They took Sammie for a quick walk before they dropped him off with the dog-sitter, a retired widow. She supplemented her pension by taking care of four dogs, for payment under the table. Jenny and Katarina usually picked up Sammie on their way home from school.

  THE DAY was already in full swing at headquarters when Irene Huss showed up just before eight. The annual flu season was approaching, but so far it was mostly autumn colds that were taking their toll. The Violent Crimes Unit had three inspectors out sick. It wouldn’t be easy, but Superintendent Andersson was going around trying to pry loose some officers from other units.

  He was talking with the superintendent of General Investigations, Birger Nilsson, who reluctantly spared an inspector when he realized that von Knecht’s death would soon be the cause of even bigger headlines. Accident or suicide is one thing, but murder is something else entirely. Intrigued, Nilsson began asking for more details, but Andersson, feeling stressed, replied curtly. He knew that his new investigative group was already gathered and waiting for him at their first meeting.

  “ALL OF us in this room will be working exclusively on the von Knecht case. Any other ongoing investigations will be set aside or turned over to other investigators. Has everyone seen the headlines in the morning papers about von Knecht’s ‘accident’?”

  The seven around the table nodded. Andersson took a deep breath and unconsciously rose up on his toes before he continued.

  “It was no accident or suicide. It was homicide!”

  The effect, naturally, was an astonished murmur. The superintendent called for silenc
e and began to report on what he and Irene had seen the night before. There wasn’t a sound during his entire presentation. He concluded by passing on what the techs had reported about an hour earlier, which was news even to Irene.

  He said, “You probably all know Police Technician Svante Malm. You do too, don’t you, Hannu?”

  This last was directed at Hannu Rauhala, the inspector on loan from General Investigations. No one in Violent Crimes had met him before. Rauhala nodded.

  “He just informed me that there’s blood and hair, probably from von Knecht, on the flat end of the meat cleaver. On the sharp edge they found blood and skin fragments, also apparently from the victim. The length of the cut on the back of the victim’s hand matches the length of the cleaver’s edge. The comparison tests were ready by seven this morning. Svante and Per worked in high gear all night. There were absolutely no prints on the handle. It was carefully wiped off, and from the smell we don’t need any tests to tell us that a dash of Ajax was used.”

  He stopped and looked around the table. On his right sat Irene Huss, who only raised one eyebrow slightly at the last piece of information. Next to her sat Tommy Persson, Irene’s fellow student from the academy and one of her closest friends. Then came Hans Borg, who still looked tired and worn out from his wife’s fiftieth birthday party over the weekend. Birgitta Moberg next to him could hardly be accused of looking tired. Her brown squirrel eyes were fixed in fascination on the superintendent. She was cute, blond, and cuddly. Plenty of guys in various departments had tried to make a pass at that little angel, who looked as if she had just left the police academy. But she was actually over thirty and possessed both brains and claws. Most of them made only one attempt. Among those who had tried was Jonny Blom, the man next to her. At an unforgettable Christmas party the year before, his wife and four kids had figuratively been shoved down his throat by Birgitta. The newest inspector in the department was Fredrik Stridh. He had worked with them for a year now and made a very good impression. The last man, sitting to the left of the superintendent, was Hannu Rauhala, who was of Finnish extraction. He looked inscrutable and slightly exotic with his slanted ice-blue eyes, platinum-blond hair, and prominent cheekbones. It was hard to tell how old he was, but probably somewhere around thirty.