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

by Helen Tursten

  “How often does she clean your place?”

  “Three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Don’t know. Out in Angered, I think. I have her phone number at home.”

  “Did your husband say anything else?”

  “Well, he was supposed to go buy two open-faced submarine sandwiches for us to have the evening I . . . when I came home.”

  Again she bowed her head. Her shoulders shook a little, and for a brief moment Irene almost had the feeling that she was trying to stifle a fit of laughter. But the dry, hot sobs indicated grief. Irene decided this was enough for now.

  She took a couple of steps toward Sylvia, but sensed that she shouldn’t touch her.

  “Thank you for answering my questions. I’ll come by tomorrow. But I’ll call first. If you’d like to talk to any of us involved in the investigation, just call the number on this card,” Irene said.

  She handed her a card with the number of her direct line written on it. When Sylvia didn’t seem to take any notice, she stuck it carefully between her clasped hands, which were still resting on her knees.

  As she turned to leave the room, Irene thought that a glow appeared in the eyes of the mummylike old woman in the next bed. Hatred. Seething hatred. But it could have been just a reflection from the lights in the corridor, since the door was open and a nurse came in with coffee.

  SHE SPENT the time before the five o’clock meeting writing up reports about the day’s inquiries. As yet there had been no formal interviews. Still, she felt pleased with the results. There was already a great deal of information, even though they had only been working on the case for twenty-four hours. This was the advantage of stepping into the investigation quickly. Were the murderer and motive lurking in the material already acquired, even though they couldn’t yet see them? Or were they still light-years from the truth? As long as there weren’t any concrete leads to follow, it was just as well to continue digging and scratching here and there. Something useful might always turn up.

  She called home. Krister answered. He had just come in the door but told her that Katarina had already taken off for her judo training and Jenny was out walking Sammie.

  “I’ll talk to Jenny tonight and try to get a handle on this thing with the ‘White Killers.’ I’m reading about you in the evening paper right now. VON KNECHT MURDERED! all the headlines are shouting. It’s obvious they stopped the presses all over the country and tore down the newspaper placards that were printed this morning.”

  Irene sighed. She always had a guilty conscience about Krister having to stay home most of the time. On the other hand, she was very glad that he was handling the discussion with Jenny.

  Feeling stressed, she said, “We’re going to have a meeting at five o’clock. I guess that means right now. I’ve got to run. Probably won’t be home before nine. Kisses and hugs!”

  She had stolen that last bit from a TV show. Cute.

  Before she left for the conference room she grabbed a fresh notebook from her desk drawer. On the front she wrote “Von Knecht” with a black marker. She turned to the first page and printed neatly on the top line: “Pizza.”

  SHE WAS the last to arrive, but they hadn’t started yet. She passed the pizza list around the table, and everyone who wanted one wrote his or her name and the kind of pizza. Light beer and salad were included. The list was sent out to a secretary who would phone in the order to be delivered to HQ at six o’clock.

  Andersson went over what Pathology and the techs had put together during the day. The only thing new to Irene was that they hadn’t managed to get hold of Ivan Viktors. Andersson had left a message in his mailbox and another one on his answering machine.

  The inquiries that Tommy Persson, Hans Borg, and Fredrik Stridh made in the neighborhood were largely negative. The only positive thing, although somewhat questionable, was the statement from a retired teacher. She was eighty-one years old and almost blind. “But that’s why my hearing is so sharp,” she said. Stridh wasn’t convinced, but he reported what she had told him.

  “She claims that she heard the door to the farthest trash room close after the last sirens died out. That would mean about quarter to six, before the last ambulance arrived on the scene.”

  The superintendent interjected a question. “How does she know that it was the door to the farthest garbage room?”

  “Her apartment is right next to it. So she lives directly across the courtyard, viewed from von Knecht’s stairwell. But if what she says is true, it seems a little suspicious that the door was opened again almost immediately and she heard quick steps moving toward the courtyard door that leads to her stairwell. Not running, but sort of nervous-sounding. She assumed that the person who was hurrying wanted to get out of the rain. Not so strange, because it was pouring at the time. But she claims that she knows her neighbors by the sound of their footsteps. Her apartment is on the second floor, so she certainly has the opportunity to keep tabs. But she didn’t recognize these footsteps. It wasn’t someone from her building.”

  Jonny Blom groaned and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Fredrik ignored him, but looked down at his notepad before he went on.

  “She heard the courtyard door open and someone went up the steps to the ground-floor apartment, but then the footsteps didn’t continue up the stairs but instead crossed the hall and went out the front door to the street. The door is heavy and closes with a thump, according to the old lady.”

  Andersson interrupted him with another question. “Did she seem confused or senile?”

  “Well, she is ancient, after all. And I don’t know if she hears as well as she claims. But she seemed pretty sure of what she was saying.”

  Anyone over fifty was a fossil in Stridh’s view. Andersson gave a little sigh before he asked, “Did any of you check to see whether someone in the building was out taking a walk at that time?”

  Stridh, Borg, and Persson had found no one who confessed to being out at the time in question who might have been the cause of the slamming doors or the footsteps in the courtyard.

  Andersson said, “If this was our murderer, then it shows he was incredibly cold blooded. To wait in the building for fifteen minutes after the murder! On the other hand, at first everyone probably thought it was suicide. No one was looking for a killer. And if it’s true that he went across the courtyard and straight through the entryway, then he would have come out on Kapellgatan. A whole block from the murder scene!”

  Andersson wasn’t as doubtful as Stridh. Experience had taught him that sedentary old people who kept watch on their neighborhood were invaluable witnesses.

  Eagerly he said, “Assume that it actually was our killer. Under cover of rain and darkness he slips out into the courtyard. For some reason he slinks quickly into the garbage room and disposes of something. What? An idea is coming to mind. Any suggestions?”

  Andersson looked around the room, but no one else came up with a guess. Triumphantly he exclaimed, “The rag! The rag with the Ajax on it! It wasn’t found in the apartment. The only cleaning rags we found were in an unopened package in the broom closet. Now we’ve run into some bad luck, because we weren’t on the alert this morning. The sanitation department came and picked up the garbage before we had a chance to look through the cans. And the only fingerprints on the door opening onto the courtyard belonged to Irene and to Henrik von Knecht. Someone wiped off the handle before Irene and von Knecht’s son touched it.”

  The others gave Irene a quizzical look, but neither she nor the superintendent felt like explaining about the hide-and-seek game with the press the night before.

  Instead Irene said, “According to Sylvia von Knecht the cleaning woman is Finnish; her name is Pirjo Larsson and she speaks terrible Swedish. We have to get her phone number, and then we can find her address. She lives somewhere out in Angered. Hannu, may I ask if you speak Finnish?”

  Hannu Rauhala nodded.

  “Would you please h
andle the interview with Pirjo Larsson?”

  Another nod from Hannu.

  Irene reported on the conversations she had had during the day. They all thought, just as she did, that quite a few interesting angles had developed, even though there was no motive yet or any plausible perpetrator.

  Birgitta Moberg had managed to reach the Wahl couple in Provence by phone. Their youngest daughter, who was unmarried, was listed in the phone book; she had given Birgitta the number. She had called the couple, who had already heard that Richard von Knecht had been murdered, from one of their daughters. They told Birgitta that they had taken the car ferry to Kiel the previous Sunday evening. This morning they reached their farm about fifty kilometers outside Aix-en-Provence. They could only confirm what others who were at the party had said, that von Knecht was happy and in high spirits as usual, and that they didn’t have the foggiest idea of a motive or murderer. Unbelievable, was their comment. She leafed through her notes.

  “Waldemar Reuter was at his brokerage office. He didn’t have time to talk to me today but promised to come here tomorrow morning at eight. He did say this much: He was shocked and found it impossible to comprehend why anyone would want to kill von Knecht. Seems to have been a regular model citizen, that Richard von Knecht,” she said dejectedly.

  There was a discreet knock on the door, and the secretary came in with a thick stack of faxes under her arm. Dryly she said, “Greetings from the fax room to Inspector Huss; the fax machine burned up! Do you know why?” With that she slammed the heap on the table in front of Irene.

  She had to admit that her journalist contact at Swedish Ladies’ Journal was a real find. Irene could see that, even after a cursory glance through the pile. Everything was neatly arranged in chronological order and stamped with the date.

  Jonny reported on the investigative material he had been allowed to examine with his two colleagues in Financial. Von Knecht was mixed up in a tangle of suspected tax crimes that had to do with moving money out of the country for stock deals abroad. The material, gathered over a period of almost two years, had been left untouched, Jonny explained.

  “These guys in Financial are trained to unravel financial crimes, but they work here at police headquarters, even though they’re actually associated with the National Unit for Financial Crimes in Stockholm. So it’s a government deal, really. But since their work often runs into a hitch on the prosecution side, they do some other investigative work here at Crime Police. Evidently there were suspicions of insider trading relating to the sale of a pharmaceutical company a couple of years ago. But it couldn’t be proven. Von Knecht made a neat little profit of eleven million on that one. According to the financial guys, they think his offshore assets are larger than the ones he has in Sweden. But since foreign brokers handle those deals, they’re hard to check up on. And in Sweden he’s taxed on personal assets of a hundred and sixty-three million!”

  The appreciative whistles and shouts in the room were interrupted by an angry buzz from the intercom.

  “Hello! This is the duty officer! Will you please come down and get your damned pizzas? It stinks like a pizzeria in here!”

  Fredrik Stridh and Birgitta Moberg volunteered. It occurred to Irene as they vanished out the door that she had seen them together quite a bit lately. Jonny Blom seemed to be thinking the same thing. He unconsciously pressed his lips together as he gazed after them with a gloomy expression. The others were busily rising and stretching their legs.

  The pizzas were devoured quickly, right out of the boxes, using the plastic utensils that had been supplied. The local pizza maker knew what was required when he made deliveries to police headquarters.

  The coffeemaker was turned on. Andersson leaned back in his chair, feeling full, bloated.

  Just at that instant a powerful muffled explosion was heard. The pressure wave made the windowpanes bend inward and start to rattle ominously.

  “Damn, one of the refineries on Hising Island must have blown up!”

  Jonny meant it as a joke, but nobody laughed. It was an unpleasantly large boom, even if it wasn’t the Shell Oil tank that had exploded.

  Andersson shrugged his shoulders and tried to ignore the outside world.

  “That explosion is someone else’s problem. Well, we’ve heard a report from everyone—except for you, Hannu.”

  Hannu Rauhala looked straight at the superintendent when he began to speak. His voice was unexpectedly deep and his lilting Finnish accent sounded pleasantly soft. “I’ve been at the tax office—”

  Jonny sat up in his chair and interrupted him, sounding agitated. “We don’t need to do double work!” He sounded agitated. “I’ve already ferreted out everything of interest from Financial!”

  Hannu’s expression didn’t change, and his voice didn’t alter, but his eyes took on a colder ice-blue tinge.

  “Richard von Knecht has another son.”

  In the tense silence that followed, it seemed as though the sirens from all the police cars and fire engines in Göteborg began wailing at once.

  Chapter Six

  “WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? And what the hell is going on in town?”

  The color in Andersson’s face rose considerably. He had thought they had a good grip on things. And suddenly all hell was breaking loose, both inside the department and out!

  Hannu Rauhala kept his eyes riveted on the superintendent and continued, unmoved. “The tax authorities have copies of his personal file. Richard von Knecht has admitted paternity of a son, Bo Jonas, born July twenty-third, nineteen sixty-five, in the Katarina district in Stockholm. The mother is Mona Söder, November second, nineteen forty-one. It’s all on von Knecht’s death certificate.”

  “How did you get access to . . . Oh, the hell with it.”

  One look in those ice-blue eyes and Andersson decided to put off the question until later. Instead he said, “This is interesting. I wonder whether the wife and his son Henrik know about the existence of Jonas? Irene, since you’re already in contact with both of them, you handle it. Hannu, you take Pirjo Larsson. We have to find out if she has a key to von Knecht’s apartment. Ask her who may have visited him while she was there, or if she saw anything else that seemed odd. And the rag. Don’t forget to ask her about the rag. Keep digging for information about Jonas and his mother. Maybe we’ll need to enlist the help of our colleagues in Stockholm. What a damned racket those sirens are making. Has half of Göteborg blown sky-high?”

  Angrily he pressed the intercom button for the duty officer. At first nobody answered his call. He had to try again.

  “Yeah, Dispatch here,” replied a calm male voice.

  “What’s happening in town?”

  “A building on Berzeliigatan is on fire. Suspected bombing. Didn’t you hear the explosion? It’s barely a kilometer from here.”

  “Sounds like the boys at PO-One are going to be busy tonight!”

  “No doubt. See you.”

  The superintendent looked crestfallen when the intercom clicked off. To cover his embarrassment, he continued briskly, “So now we know, but that’s somebody else’s headache. We have to concentrate on the von Knecht family. Go on, Hannu, do you have more info on the second son?”

  Hannu shook his head. “Nope, but you can take it from here, right, Jonny?”

  “The rest of the family’s assets, last year’s tax returns. Sylvia von Knecht’s income was one hundred fifty thousand, personal net worth six hundred sixty-eight thousand. Henrik von Knecht’s income was five hundred thousand, net worth four hundred fifty-three thousand. Charlotte von Knecht’s income was seventy-two thousand and she has a net worth of zero.”

  “A pauper compared to Pappa von Knecht. And who isn’t, compared to him?” Fredrik commented on Jonny’s research. Casually he remarked, “Truth be told, Charlotte and I are in the same financial bracket.”

  The others laughed before taking a coffee break.

  The meeting went on for another two hours. They went over and over various suggestions
and hypotheses, but couldn’t tell whether they were getting any closer to the truth. Or whether it might already have been approached without anyone realizing it.

  Andersson stifled a yawn and decided to wrap up the meeting with a few concluding remarks. “Okay, see you all here at seven-thirty in the morning.”

  They had started packing up their notebooks, pens and pencils, coffee cups, and everything else essential to the investigation when there was another knock at the door. Without waiting for an answer, Officer Håkan Lund opened it, filling the entire doorway. He began with a greeting. “Peace. Thought I’d drop by with a report that might interest you.”

  The group watched in surprise as he strode to the end of the table. Once he was there, he started his report. “I just came from the fire on Berzeliigatan. An eyewitness heard a loud explosion and then the place went up in flames. The windows of all the nearby buildings were blown out. According to the same witness the explosion came from the third floor. And there . . .”

  He paused melodramatically and gave his audience a look before he went on. “That’s where Richard von Knecht had his office!”

  You could have heard a pin drop; no one could think of a thing to say. Håkan Lund was obviously pleased with the effect of his news. He continued, “My shift was supposed to end at four, but we were held up by a big traffic accident near the Tingstad tunnel. Sleet and black ice. Five cars involved in a rear-ender. No injuries to speak of, but plenty of peripheral work with reports and directing traffic. Just as we were finishing, we got the call about the explosion on Berzeliigatan, corner of Sten Sturegatan. It was burning good by the time we arrived. There were three fire engines on site and a couple of patrol cars.”

  “Is the building a total loss?”

  Lund gave Andersson, who had asked the question, a thoughtful look and replied, “Let me put it this way: On a fire scale of one to ten, where one is a match and ten is a quasar, this was a nine. An inferno. So yes, the entire building was gutted.”