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

by Helen Tursten

  Speechless, she stared at him. She had never heard him react so powerfully. To her he was even-keeled Tommy, the calm, secure father of three and also her oldest friend from the police academy. He was so worked up that he was pacing around their little office and stomping as he gave Hitler salutes to underscore his meaning.

  “And because they’re our kids,” Tommy went on, “we have to take responsibility. We can’t abdicate it! You have two kids, I have three. But those skinheads who will be gathering around statues of King Karl the Twelfth all over the country in a few days are our kids too!”

  She felt confused and tired, wanted to protest, but her weary brain couldn’t formulate her thoughts. She made a vague attempt anyway. “I don’t think that just because Jenny shaved her head, all skinheads are kids like mine.”

  “If you deny that, you also deny the society that has hired you to protect it! These skinheads are part of Swedish society. We all have a responsibility. But above all, they’re a symptom of our society’s ills.”

  “A symptom?”

  “Of alienation! Swedish society forces people outside! And once you’re outside you’re damned well never going to be let back in!”

  “But why do you think young people are voluntarily choosing to join groups of outsiders?”

  “Young people have always done that. In our day we wore FNL buttons and Palestinian scarves; we talked about solidarity with the Third World and all that stuff. Many of us were swept along with the Green Wave, the ecology movement. We had correct opinions and views!”

  “But everybody was politically Red in the seventies!”

  “Young people were, sure. We belonged to the progressive youth generation. We weren’t like them—I mean our parents. No, we stood for something different, something better. The only correct path for the future.”

  “Is what we’re seeing with neo-Nazis and skinheads the same thing? Is that what you think?”

  “Yep. They’ve given up trying to get into our restrictive society before they even make an attempt. It’s better to give up voluntarily than to be locked out. So they feel solidarity with groups of outsiders. They look for strength in the group. It’s easy to blend in and acquire an identity, since all of them look the same in their boots, military clothes, and bald heads. They inspire fear in other people by their very appearance. Young people learn prefabricated arguments and seek support from them. Their leaders make such a cocksure impression when they stand up and scream their slogans with electric guitars and heavy drums thundering in the background. How beautiful to avoid thinking for yourself! Just march along!”

  Why was Tommy so agitated and impassioned? Irene was astonished but didn’t get the chance to ask him, since the intercom beeped and called them to “morning prayers.” Tommy took a deep breath and appeared to made a quick decision. He blurted out, “It’s been a while since I’ve seen Jenny. I think you should invite me over tomorrow or the next day.”

  Irene was confused by his abrupt change of subject, but said at once, “You know you’re welcome anytime. As always! Krister and I have been talking about a little Lucia party, and of course you and Agneta will—”

  “That’ll be cool. Although that’s not what I was thinking of,” said Tommy. His voice was very serious.

  Irene also understood that he wasn’t talking about a pleasant evening. Right off she made up her mind and said, “Let’s make it Wednesday night. Krister can fix dinner for us. I know what you think of my cooking.”

  “It’s just as high-class as my own, although mine is a tiny bit better. Wednesday will be fine. Make sure Jenny’s home.”

  Just as Irene was about to enter the conference room, a secretary showed up and handed her a brown interdepartmental envelope. With a quick glance she noticed the name “Bo-Ivan Torsson” in the text.

  Superintendent Andersson cleared his throat and called for silence. “Okay. We’re all here. The techs are coming later. They’re working on a car bomb that went off this morning. Have you all heard about that?”

  The majority of the group looked surprised and shook their heads. Apparently the explosion was the top story on the seven-thirty news, but most of them had been busy getting ready for “morning prayers” at the time.

  Andersson went on, “Damned strange. A car exploded in the parking lot at Delsjön golf course at six o’clock this morning. Nobody was in the vicinity except for the driver of the car, who was much too close. He was literally vaporized to atoms! The theory is that some kind of terrorist set off the bomb by mistake. IRA or Hamas or something. Or maybe old shit from the former Yugoslavia. I remember what a hell of a mess we had with Ustasha in the seventies . . . Well, someone else will have to take care of that investigation. Now let’s go over what we’ve found out since Friday.”

  He continued by informing them that the charred body in Pathology was probably Pirjo’s. They would have definite word that afternoon, when the forensic odontologist looked at the X rays and compared them with the corpse’s teeth. He provoked even greater interest when he mentioned the cut on the head of von Knecht’s penis. Stridner’s assumption that he had had sex the day before he died prompted many questions and speculations. Irene recounted that she had checked out Jonas and Mona Söder. Without going into detail, she said that they should be left out of the investigation for the time being. Their alibis for Tuesday were impeccable. She quickly moved on to the theory that there was an extra set of keys to the two apartments, but also emphasized that so far it was only a theory; it would be important to follow up on what had happened to Richard von Knecht’s spare-key ring for the Porsche and the garage. She recounted Saturday’s conversation with Sylvia and the subsequent surveillance. When she revealed that it was Ivan Viktors who was the “boyfriend,” Jonny couldn’t hold himself back. Maliciously he hooted, “I knew it! There was something that smarmy customer was hiding. He may be a celebrity and a stuck-up fart, but we’ve got him now!”

  Irene was unusually grumpy on this Monday morning of all Mondays. She couldn’t hold back her acid comment, “Got him for what? That he’s screwing Sylvia von Knecht? There’s no law against that. They’re both grown-ups, that’s for sure.”

  Jonny scowled at her but couldn’t come up with any deadly repartee. Instead he told the others about Friday’s interview with Viktors. Then he went over what he and Hans Borg had found out during the stakeout of the parking garage on Kapellgatan on Friday. It didn’t take long. The results were zip.

  Andersson shrugged. “Okay, that was a dud. We’ll skip the parking garage for now. Evidently, in the crappy weather, our killer was on foot. Birgitta, tell us about our charming photographer, Bobo.”

  Birgitta told the story of what had happened on Friday afternoon, without giving a single hint about her own feelings. Relieved, Andersson saw that she seemed to be her normal self again. He hoped he wouldn’t have to get any more involved in what had happened between her and Jonny later that day. Damned unpleasant.

  The only thing Fredrik and Hannu had to report was that Bobo hadn’t shown up on Berzeliigatan over the weekend. After comparing his description with Birgitta’s account of his appearance and clothing during the interview, they were positive that he was the one who had picked up a large bag on Friday afternoon. The search of Shorty’s apartment had apparently been a regular circus. Tommy tried to stay in the background to record whether there was anything of interest in the apartment. It was a large two-room place, but filthy and messy like the crash pad it probably was. Shorty was totally infuriated at the encroachment by the police, and got himself so worked up that he started smashing his own furniture. He didn’t threaten the police directly, but watching the way he slammed his fist straight through the seat of a chair was “a tad unsettling,” as Tommy put it.

  “Actually we should have had a narcotics dog with us. But we were looking for Bobo Torsson, not drugs. And he wasn’t in the apartment. We had to go back to basics. Shorty didn’t know where Bobo was, but he told us repeatedly where he thought we ou
ght to go. I wouldn’t want to run into him alone on a dark night.”

  No one else looked particularly fond of the idea either. They all agreed with the superintendent that the presence of Shorty and Bobo in the investigation was troubling.

  Birgitta interjected a question, “Did he seem to be on drugs?”

  “Quite possible. But that guy is notorious for his bad temper, so it’s hard to say for sure,” said Tommy.

  “Could there be some connection between von Knecht and those rotten eggs? Could our respectable millionaire have been on drugs too?” It was Birgitta who posed this question, and all of them took time to think about it.

  Finally Jonny replied, “Nothing we have discovered so far indicates it. Like all big businessmen he had a little shit on his fingers, but it was mostly irregularities with foreign stock deals. Not the kind of thing Bobo and Shorty are into. No, the only point of contact is Berzeliigatan. The fact that they lived close to each other, Torsson above von Knecht’s apartment and Shorty across the street.”

  Fredrik took over. “We checked out Shorty. He was released from Kumla prison in August, after serving six of his eight years. He was convicted of a felony narcotics offense, felony assault, and attempted murder. ‘Good social prognosis, because Lasse Johannesson has been allowed to take over an apartment and small business from an elderly relative,’ it says in the documents. This elderly relative is an unmarried aunt of Bobo and Shorty. She had a cerebral embolism in June this year and lies paralyzed in Vasa Hospital. Apparently she’s doing better, but she can’t take care of herself in the apartment on Berzeliigatan. The old woman is supposed to get a place at a nursing home. According to Kumla it was Bobo Torsson who arranged all the practical matters involving the takeover of the apartment and the business. Everything was ready and waiting when Shorty got out.”

  Irene remembered the interdepartmental envelope she had received before the morning meeting. After quickly glancing through the text, she asked to speak. “Last Saturday I asked Narcotics for any information they might have about Bobo Torsson. This morning I got a report from them. He’s been convicted three times for possession of narcotics. Each time he was caught in raids on various clubs and discos. The first time was 1983, the second time 1985, and the third time 1989. He got suspended sentences the first two times, since he only had small amounts on him. In 1989 he was sentenced to four months in prison. He was nabbed at the same club where Shorty was so dramatically apprehended! Torsson was in the crowd when the police stormed in, and he had ten grams of cocaine on him. A little too much for his personal use, the court thought. Shorty and another big drug kingpin, Tony Larsson, were in the club’s office and didn’t even manage to hide the drugs that were in a bag on the desk. They were literally caught with their fingers in the cookie jar. Both of them had snorted cocaine and were extremely loaded. Both were armed. A violent shootout followed. Tony was shot in the shoulder by one of our colleagues, which provoked great discussion in the media,” Irene concluded her hasty summation.

  Andersson broke the silence that followed.

  “So-o-o, Bobo was already mixed up in Shorty’s circle back then. Of course, both of them have continued to do drugs the whole time, although Shorty has been more visible. He’s more brutal and loves weapons and bang-bang! Naturally, he’s been sent up numerous times. But the slippery Bobo Torsson has maintained a lower profile. ‘Fashion photographer’—I don’t think so! He’s been moving in the right inner circles, and it was easy for him to deal undisturbed. Something tells me that it’s time to call in the Narcs.”

  They all nodded in agreement. First of all, it would take a load off their own already overworked investigative group, but above all the narcotic investigators knew so much more about current conditions inside Göteborg’s drug scene.

  Satisfied with this decision, the superintendent said, “Let’s take ten minutes for a coffee break while we wait for Pelle, the arson tech.”

  Gratefully, they all took advantage of the chance to stretch their legs and try to spark some life into their weary brain cells with a little caffeine. Some poisons are required by the body in order to function better, Mona Söder had said. Irene had a vague notion that she was turning into a caffeine addict. But in that case it should probably be viewed as an old dependence, since she had been drinking her daily dose of at least ten cups of coffee for more than ten years now. With slightly shaky hands she downed cups number four and five for the day.

  WHEN ANDERSSON emerged from the rest room, Birgitta Moberg was standing a few meters away. He could tell that she was waiting for him. She walked right up to him and said, “Could I have a few words with you? I’ll make it fast.”

  His stomach knotted. Was she going to start harping again on the fact that Jonny had sexually harassed her? Reluctantly, he ushered her into his office. Without any hemming and hawing, she got right to the point.

  “It was a good idea you suggested on Friday, that I should stay at Mamma’s over the weekend. I didn’t want to say anything in the meeting, but it was probably Bobo Torsson who came by and rang my doorbell several times this weekend.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, not at all! That’s why I wanted to cool it and not say anything in front of the others. As you know, I have a studio apartment in Högsbo. My closest neighbor on the same floor is a sweet little old lady. She’s eighty-three, but sharp as a tack. It was late before I got home last night. It was almost eleven-thirty. When I put my key in the lock my little neighbor opened her door. She had stayed up waiting for me and was very upset. We have an intercom at the street door. If you don’t have your key, you have to ring someone from the street and ask them to open it. Sometimes kids ring as a prank, but what happened on Saturday and Sunday went well beyond the usual. Someone stood there and pressed all the doorbells at once out of sheer rage. When my neighbors answered their intercoms they got an earful of swearing and abusive language! My neighbor heard several times that the voice wanted to get hold of ‘that fucking whore who calls herself a cop.’ She quite correctly drew the conclusion that it had something to do with me, since I’m the only cop in the building. This occurred around seven on Saturday morning and at nine on Sunday night.”

  “Did anyone see the ‘voice’?”

  “No, that’s just it. He drove his car right up to the front door. Above it there’s a little roof to protect you from the rain and snow. I live on the third floor. That’s why my neighbor never managed to see more than a brief glimpse of a man climbing into his car and screeching off down the street. He was tall and thin. The car was big and red, she was sure of that.”

  “And now you want us to check whether Torsson has a red car?”

  “Right.”

  “Why couldn’t you mention this in the conference room?”

  She avoided looking at him directly and shifted her gaze around the room before she replied. “Because there’s someone in our department who’s tall and thin and has a red Volvo.”

  He knew at once who she meant, and he wished he could break out in a hearty yet indulgent laugh and give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. But the laugh froze in his throat because he couldn’t rule it out as completely impossible.

  “Jonny. You mean Jonny,” he said glumly.

  “Yes.”

  There was a long silence. Finally she took a deep breath and said, “That’s why I’m staying with Mamma for a while longer. But you’re the only one I’m telling. Nobody else. You have the address.”

  She turned on her heel and strode out. He nodded to the closed door. THE ARSON technician and the others had already taken their seats when the superintendent came in. He pretended not to notice their inquiring glances, but signaled to Pelle to get started.

  Pelle began by telling them that the theory about the devil bomb was stronger than ever. It had been a real charge with explosives in an iron pipe, blasting cap, pentyl fuse, and gasoline containers, just as he originally suspected. The bomb was placed on top of a bureau in the entryway
to von Knecht’s office. The reason they knew this was partially due to Sylvia von Knecht. Before she drove up to Marstrand on Friday night, she had helped Pelle make a rough sketch of the apartment and its furnishings.

  Tommy raised his hand before he asked his question. “A bomb like that, is it hard to make? Does it take a long time?”

  “For someone who knows how, it goes pretty fast. No more than an hour. The problem is getting hold of all the components. You can’t just go into Domus department store and buy blasting caps, plastique explosive, and pentyl fuses. The other stuff is easier to get hold of. To continue with what happened Wednesday night, I have to explain more about the detonator mechanism. The outer door to the office apartment was really solid. It opened outward. A thin steel wire was stretched between the handle on the door and a pin on the spring of the blasting cap. When the door was pulled open by the person we first thought was a young man, but we now know was a woman, the pin was pulled out and the spring struck the blasting cap. Boom! We know the result. It’s only thanks to the solid outer door that there was anything left of the body at all. She was flung backward and was probably knocked unconscious instantly. The reason she was lying in a semiprone position when we found her is probably because she slipped down when the door swung back. We found this in the outer door.”

  You could hear a pin drop when the arson technician pulled a thick plastic bag from his pocket. There was a blackened key ring inside.

  “And yesterday I found this, at the spot where the body was found.”

  Like a magician he pulled another bag out of his pocket. It also contained a key ring, but it was much smaller with only three keys on it. He shook the smaller ring.

  “Two of these are car keys. To a Porsche. The third fits a garage door on Molinsgatan, where the von Knecht family keeps their cars.”