She reached across the desk and picked up a manila envelope, which she waved triumphantly in the air.
The superintendent had a hard time hiding his conviction that things had now gone too far. He had always had trouble talking with this woman, but what he intuitively sensed now was that she was totally insane.
Stridner saw what he was thinking. Laughing, she opened the flap of the envelope and pulled out a green piece of cardboard. It was folded in thirds, and each part had small rectangular windows in it, filled with shiny dark celluloid. They were dental X rays. In the corner was a small cardboard label with the text: RICHARD VON KNECHT, 350803.
Andersson was embarrassed and managed only to mutter, “I see . . . all right . . .”
Stridner frowned and jokingly waved the X rays at him. “I don’t hear you saying, ‘Amazingly fast work, Yvonne!’ or ‘But how in the world did you manage to get his X rays already?’ or the most obvious, ‘How did you get hold of his dentist so quickly?’”
This was her point, and she was savoring the moment. Andersson sighed and raised both palms in a gesture of resignation.
“Okay, okay. Amazingly fast work . . . Yvonne, and all that other stuff. I bow to you. But I’d appreciate an answer to my questions, plus facts about von Knecht’s general condition.”
“Oh, you certainly are a demanding man.”
Mischievously she gave him another gleeful look. She was truly enjoying her little joke. With a glance down at the papers on her desk she became the efficient pathologist again. For his part, Andersson preferred this Yvonne Stridner.
“As you may recall, I promised you a list of the von Knecht crowd. I haven’t had time to write it down, but I’ll give you the names before you go. One of the names is Sven Tosse. He’s one of Göteborg’s most talented dentists. Among his patients are both myself and the von Knecht family. This is probably the only common point of contact we have left since my divorce from Tore. His practice is only a stone’s throw from here, on the other side of the street. At Kapellplatsen.”
Andersson had pulled a dog-eared notepad out of his pocket and with a stump of a pencil wrote down the dentist’s name and address.
“I called Sven this morning. Naturally he had seen the news of Richard’s fall in the paper and was deeply shocked. He sent over his nurse with Richard’s X rays, and now the forensic odontologists will take care of the rest.”
“Do you have any doubts that it’s von Knecht’s body?”
“No, but it’s important to cover all bases, since his face was so damaged. Would you like to see him?”
Andersson was unprepared for the question, but quickly shook his head. Autopsy rooms were not pleasant places. Not to mention what usually lay on the table. No, if he could avoid it he preferred not to enter any autopsy room. The bodies he had to look at in the course of his work were bad enough. Although their interests did often coincide, of course, Stridner could keep her corpses to herself.
She stated dryly, “It probably wouldn’t do you much good to look at the body. It was a long drop, certainly more than twenty meters. Well, here’s the data.”
She put a pair of reading glasses on her nose, cleared her throat, looked down at her stack of papers and read: “Height, one hundred eighty-three centimeters. Weight, eighty-two kilos. His age we know, and it corresponds with the body. He was in good shape for his age, good musculature.”
She gave Andersson a knowing glance over the top of her glasses before she looked down at her papers again.
“I won’t go into all the multiple fractures. In brief, I can say that almost every bone in his body was broken. With regard to his condition otherwise, I found some slight arteriosclerosis in his coronary artery, which would definitely increase the risk of heart attack in the future. A healed fracture of his right tibia, his shinbone, that is. The wound looked old. His liver was somewhat enlarged, with incipient fatty degeneration, but moderate so far. A clear indication of a certain level of alcohol intake,” she declared.
“Was he an alcoholic?”
“Absolutely not. Their livers are striated with visible fatty necroses. Even though Richard had recently started to drink more, his liver still had many years left. Apparently he could have lived long enough to die from something other than liver problems. Which he did, of course. And a person can have fatty degeneration of the liver for years without being troubled to any appreciable extent. It’s when liver function begins to fail and we get a conversion to cirrhosis that problems arise. Real problems! But Richard had a way to go yet. I will venture to state that much, even though I’m no expert in the chronological progression of alcohol damage. I sent blood samples in to be tested for alcohol content and also the contents of his stomach. He had eaten a substantial meal, apparently a late lunch. The time of death we know, of course.”
Andersson’s stomach knotted up when he thought of von Knecht’s surely excellent lunch that now lay quivering like a disgusting sludge in a glass jar at the lab.
Stridner gathered up her papers and took off her glasses.
“That’s how far I’ve gotten,” she said.
“How about the slash on the back of his hand? Was it a bad cut?”
“Yes; it wasn’t very deep but it must have hurt terribly. It’s actually curious that he had no defensive wounds on his forearms. There should be some if the fall was preceded by a struggle. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
Both of them sat and pondered this puzzle for a bit. Finally Andersson said, “It must mean that he was clubbed from behind as he stood leaning over the railing. He never had a chance to defend himself against his killer.”
Stridner nodded and a hard expression came over her face.
“That’s probably how it was. A cowardly murderer. But then murderers always are. Cowards.”
She gave Andersson a dark look as though he were personally responsible for the existence of these killers. She continued more pensively, “Or desperate. Fear can drive people to murder. But the most common motives no doubt are revenge or jealousy and perhaps greed. I wonder what it was that drove Richard’s murderer?”
She fell silent again. With a deep sigh she leaned back in her chair and gave Andersson a quick glance.
“The list. You wanted to have the list of those boys. Can you write it down?” she asked in a tone that made it clear that she had no intention of doing so.
The superintendent nodded and got ready with his stubby pencil.
“You don’t have to write down my ex-husband Tore Eiderstam because he died last September. Or Per Nord, he died of leukemia five years ago. And now Richard . . .”
She paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and went on, “Sven Tosse, my dentist, and also that of the von Knecht family. He and Sylvia von Knecht were engaged, by the way, before she met Richard. Richard was up in Stockholm for a few years, but he had to return to Göteborg immediately when his father died.”
Andersson was writing as fast as he could. Stridner paused tactfully and waited until he finished the sentence.
“Then we have Valle Reuter. He’s one of our biggest stockbrokers, in more than one sense. He’s the broker for the lot of them, just as Sven is their dentist. His brokerage firm is called Reuter and Lech, as I recall.”
Again she had to wait for Andersson to catch up. With an oath he snapped the point of his pencil. Without a word Stridner handed him a white mechanical pencil with GÖTEBORG MEDICAL ADMINISTRATION printed on it.
“Press on the eraser, then the lead will come out. Now where was I? Oh yes, Valle. He lives on the second floor of von Knecht’s building. He’s married to Leila. They have a son who’s a doctor. I had him as an undergraduate a few years ago.”
She seemed to be thinking of whether she knew anything else about Valle Reuter, but couldn’t recall anything.
“The next man is Peder Wahl. He’s married to Ulla, Sven Tosse’s sister. They live on the third floor, but I think they have a vineyard in France where they spend most of their time.”
“What kind of work does he do?” asked Andersson.
In reply, Stridner just raised one eyebrow ironically. Andersson had a feeling that he’d asked the stupidest question of the day, but he couldn’t figure out why. It was best to move on. He looked down at his notepad and said, “I have three names now. Sven Tosse, Valle Reuter, and Peder Wahl. Is that the whole crowd?”
“No. Ivan Viktors, the opera singer.”
Andersson gave a start. It’s not often that you run into your idol in a homicide investigation.
“He retired from the world’s opera stages after his wife died of cancer a year or two ago. There’s one more name, Gustav Ceder. He’s a banker and lives in London. I met him only once.”
Stridner sat twisting a dark red lock of hair as she absentmindedly gazed out the window. It couldn’t have been the sight of the gray buildings of Vasa Hospital that transported her into such a dreamy state. It was her memories. She had been a fantastic help. He ought to tell her that. His glance fell on the clock. He blurted out, “There’s a press conference at one o’clock!”
He jumped up as if his chair had suddenly become electrified.
She flinched, brutally awakened from her reverie. Deliberately she said, “Surely there’s no reason to worry. It’s only a quarter to.”
“I’m the one who’s holding it! I’ll call you this afternoon.”
“It’s better if I call you when the test results come in.”
But she was talking to an empty doorway. She could hear Andersson rushing down the stairs. He made good time, considering his physique. She shook her head and said to herself, “If you keep that up, we’ll be seeing you sooner than you think.”
Chapter Five
THE PRESS CONFERENCE WAS a tumultuous affair with journalists all shouting at once. Andersson had participated in press conferences before, but he had never experienced anything like this. Somehow he managed to get through it, answering as best he could about what he knew while leaving out certain facts for “investigative reasons.” A guy with a crew cut from TV 4’s local station wanted to know how the killer managed to get out of the building and avoid discovery, even though the police were on the scene so quickly.
Andersson put on an inscrutable expression and snapped brusquely, “The technicians have not yet concluded their examination of the crime scene.”
It was high time they found out the answer to that reporter’s question. So it was with great satisfaction that he saw Svante Malm sitting at the conference table in the room that served as investigation central. Malm had put up photos of von Knecht’s smashed body on the bulletin board. Among them were several blowups of the wound on the back of his head. There were pictures of the cleaver too.
“Hi, Malm!” Andersson tried to assume a cheerful tone, but when he saw Malm’s pale grimace that passed for a smile, he regretted it. Instead he said lamely, “You and Per have really done a great job.”
Malm looked like he could fall asleep at any moment. He rubbed his eyes and said, “I’d just like to report what we’ve found so far. One of you will have to take notes.”
Andersson gestured to Irene Huss to do so.
“On the balcony we found the cleaver. The sharp edge corresponds to the cut on the hand, and the blunt end matches the cross-shaped wound on the back of the neck. Professor Stridner helped us check it out this morning. It’s a small meat cleaver, taken from the utensils in von Knecht’s kitchen. The implements hang inside the stove’s ventilation hood. The handle of the cleaver was wiped off with a rag dipped in a solution of Ajax. Not any of the working surfaces, just the handle. The cleaver lay next to the balcony wall, so no rain could reach it. We found blood and hair on the cleaver, apparently from von Knecht. The analysis isn’t finished yet,” Malm rattled off. He paused briefly and gave a big yawn.
Andersson was careful to ask, “Was the balcony the scene of the murder?”
“Yes. There was no sign that the body was dragged out onto the balcony before being shoved over the railing. Keep in mind that von Knecht wasn’t a small guy. It’s hard to drag an unconscious body. On the other hand, we have a theory about how it all happened. The balcony is turreted, with four columns supporting the little roof. On one of the columns we found a fresh palm print from von Knecht. His right hand. The cut was on his right hand. We think that von Knecht was standing on the balcony with his back to the balcony door. Maybe he was holding on to the column—the print is actually quite high up. The perp hits him on the back of the neck from the rear, but he’s not knocked out; he keeps hanging on to the column. Then the perp slams the sharp edge onto the back of his hand and he instinctively releases his grip. A hard shove on his back and Richard von Knecht takes his last flight.”
It was utterly quiet in the conference room when Malm painted this picture of von Knecht’s last minutes of life. Irene felt a chill on the back of her neck. Suddenly the killer’s presence was completely palpable. Before, he had almost vanished amid the antiques and sensational headlines.
Besides Sven Andersson, Svante Malm, and Irene Huss, Jonny Blom was the only other person in the room. The others hadn’t returned yet.
Andersson decided it was a good sign. They were gathering information and the investigation was proceeding. He hoped. Aloud he said, “That sounds plausible. And Stridner pointed out that he didn’t have any defensive wounds on his forearms.”
Irene looked up from her notepad.
“He knew the killer. Trusted him. Didn’t mind having him stand behind him when he went out on the balcony and leaned over the railing. Remember, he was afraid of heights.”
Malm continued, “What’s even more remarkable is that all the light switches and door handles were wiped off with a rag soaked in Ajax. The whole upper floor is extremely orderly and clean. We probably won’t finish up the lower floor until late tonight. Åhlén and Ljunggren have taken over. They’ll be checking the elevator and stairs. Even though it poured almost all last night, it might be an idea to go over the courtyard and the trash rooms.”
“I’ll talk to the guys about that. Go on home now, Svante, and get some sleep,” said the superintendent.
After Malm disappeared down the corridor, Andersson remained seated for a while, in deep thought. He was brought back by a tap on the door. A secretary came in and handed him a note. He read it quickly. From the furrow between his eyebrows Irene understood that he wasn’t completely pleased with what it said.
“Are we going to have to wrangle with another old crone now? I didn’t mean you, Irene, but the prosecutor in charge. It’s going to be Inez Collin. It was bad enough with Stridner, but now we have Collin too,” he said and sighed heavily.
Irene noticed Jonny and Andersson exchange a knowing look. She was perplexed, because Inez Collin was regarded as a very capable and judicious prosecutor. Tough but clear as glass. Again the problem of attitudes toward middle-aged, competent women. Why were they so intimidating? She realized that she herself was well on the way to joining this group of women. But Andersson never seemed to feel threatened by her, even though she was a bona fide expert detective. Evidently because he knew her and liked her, in his eyes she never grew older. That was a comforting thought.
Andersson said, “I’ll see to it that everyone in the group is informed that we’ll meet in this room at five o’clock. What are you doing this afternoon, Irene?”
“Talking to Fru Karlsson, the dachshund lady. Then I’ll drop by Sahlgren Hospital and talk to Sylvia von Knecht at three.”
“Okay. Jonny?”
“I’ll keep on checking with Financial. Richard von Knecht obviously figured in a number of shady deals. Last year he declared an income of nine hundred eighty thousand kronor.”
Almost a million. Both Andersson and Irene were impressed, but hardly surprised.
Jonny continued triumphantly, “But do you know how much his declared net assets are? Hold on to your hat: a hundred and sixty-three million! But Financial thinks he has a bunch more offshore and pro
fits that never show up in Sweden. Who could track that down?”
It was such an inconceivable amount of money. Anyone would be lucky to win a million kronor, rich if he had two million, and Croesus if he had ten. But 163! A person with so much money—and apparently even more on top of that—what would he have left to strive for? What kind of goals would he have in life? What would give life excitement and meaning? What was it that had given von Knecht’s life that extra spice? Antiques?
Irene was jogged out of her thoughts by Jonny’s voice. “... has tried for many years. But it’s hard, because he was an early player in the Southeast Asian markets. His assets are probably plowed into companies like Toshiba and Hyundai. Financial will try and pull out as much as they can.”
“You might as well look at the rest of the family’s income and assets too. By the way, I got a list from Stridner of the other people in the von Knecht crowd,” said Andersson.
He pulled out his crumpled notepad, paged through it, and read aloud: “Sven Tosse, dentist. He has a practice on Kapellplatsen.”
“Then I can talk to him on my way back from the hospital. Although it isn’t far to walk to Tosse’s office from Fru Karlsson’s,” Irene said.
She decided to try to squeeze in Tosse before she went to Sahlgren.
“The next names are Waldemar and Leila Reuter. Birgitta Moberg will probably run into them, since they live on the second floor in von Knecht’s building. Von Knecht has really gathered his old pals around him, because on the third floor we have the couple, Peder and Ulla Wahl. But apparently they live in France most of the time.”
The superintendent broke off and leafed through his notepad again before he went on. “Gustav Ceder is the name of a guy who evidently disappeared from their social circle. He has lived in England for years. Jonny, can you check him out too, so we don’t miss anyone? The last man is Ivan Viktors. I’ll take him myself.”
Irene put in, “Did you know that Viktors is going to move in to the empty apartment below von Knecht’s? And that Waldemar Reuter lives alone on the second floor?”
Detective Inspector Huss: A Huss Investigation set in Sweden, Vol. 1 Page 7
