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

by Helen Tursten

  During the slowly crawling hours of the night she realized how impossible it is to run away from yourself. The black hole was about to swallow her up. She had to go into it and drive out the whispering voices. She had to fight her inner enemy. She was her own uke.

  IN THE big dark blue police bag Irene packed a thermos of coffee, three sandwiches, clean underwear, and a clean gi. The last item was important. No old, irrelevant smells could be allowed to distract her. The fresh sweat in her workout clothes would tell her what it cost to drive out her demons.

  The bells in the German Church tolled five o’clock as she parked outside the gym by the Harbor Canal. It was dark and quiet. There was little traffic, and she heard the lonely, distant squeaking of a streetcar. She found the right key and unlocked the door.

  She was met by the familiar smell of sweaty workout clothes and liniment, which sent a vague thrill of joy down her spine. A good sign. With determined steps she went into the locker room and changed, comforted by the rough cotton suit and black belt.

  The dojo lay plunged in deep darkness. The windows up high on the walls let in a sparse glow from the streetlights outside. She had left the door to the locker room ajar so a little more light could come in. She didn’t turn on the ceiling light in the dojo itself but went at once to the middle of the mat and sat down on her heels, with her hands resting loosely on her thighs and her gaze straight ahead. When she felt Mokuso approaching, she closed her eyes and looked inward. It was empty and dark. The voices were whispering, but she could no longer hear as clearly what they were saying. She approached the Point, where Bruce’s calm voice with his American accent could be heard through the hiss of the demons. His voice flowed into her and she heard him say encouragingly, “Okay, baby. Your fantastic kata, when you made black belt, third dan.”

  She felt sorrow and grief for him, surprised at the strength of her feelings. What she thought she had gotten over was still there. Mokuso became deeper, and she continued to seek the Point. Her breath began to make contact; suddenly she felt filled with an effervescent warm power. She became weightless and was borne by the power up toward the Light. The power flushed through her sore muscles and joints, cleaning away fatigue and pain.

  As if in a trance she stood, still with her eyes closed. At first she moved slowly, but as the rhythm of the kata seized her the movements became faster and stronger. She opened her eyes and saw uke—a semitransparent foggy form with long hair down the back of leather jacket and a scornful grin.

  To a spectator it looked like ballet with incredibly advanced choreography. A knowledgeable viewer would see a skilled judo master who at a furious pace went through Sandan-kata, combinations with uke, tski, and geri-waza. An initiate would also wonder why she didn’t have an opponent. But she did have an opponent. Furiously she struck at uke. At first his laughter sounded derisive, but she had the Power and was filled by her proximity to the Light.

  Exhausted, she sank down on the mat. Sweat was running down her whole body. She sensed its salty taste in her mouth and felt it trickling between her breasts and buttocks. Her rib cage heaved and she felt some discomfort from her crushed rib. But the Power and the Light flowed through her and so pain did not yet bother her.

  Slowly the Power ebbed and she rolled over and looked up at the ceiling. Would the black hole open and the voices start whispering again?

  All was silent. Only the Light remained, pulsating in her diaphragm, and she felt the stillness and peace. She had made it through.

  IRENE FOUND them inside the conference room. It was just before eight o’clock, but she wasn’t the last to arrive. Jonny Blom was missing but expected at any minute. He had called to say he had a flat tire outside Åby. Superintendent Andersson began to speak.

  “We’ll start without Jonny. Great to see that you’ve recovered, Irene. Damned if a good night’s sleep isn’t the best medicine!”

  “I feel better. Just black and blue and stiff. And I didn’t get much sleep. Later this afternoon I’ll drive over to visit Jimmy, and then I’ll go home,” she replied firmly.

  Andersson raised his eyebrow. He didn’t comment. “Okay. First I have to report that the body of the guy who was burned to death on Berzeliigatan has been found. They removed it with the help of the telescopic boom. Narcotics wants to have a meeting tomorrow at one. Evidently they have a bunch of investigations going simultaneously, but it seems as though some threads are connected with this Hell’s Angels crap. Hans, you had some luck with the keys?”

  Borg nodded and tried without great success to stifle a yawn. In a tired voice he said, “Mister Minit at the Domus department store on Avenyn made a complete set of keys for Richard von Knecht in early August of this year. He ordered them himself and waited while they were made. That’s why the guy who made the keys remembered that it was von Knecht. He stood there for quite a while, plus he is . . . or was . . . a celebrity. But he didn’t have any extra key made for the garage or the car. Of course, he must have had a spare key to the Porsche. It’s not even a year old. He must have gotten a spare key with a Porsche! You know what one of those costs?”

  Andersson sighed. “More than you or I will ever be able to afford. We have to find out more about these damned keys. Irene, get hold of Sylvia von Knecht and ask her why she thinks Richard would have an extra set of keys made. We know that he had a spare-key ring for the Porsche and the garage. He was looking for it the week before he was murdered. Maybe Henrik von Knecht knows more about it.”

  Irene gave a slight nod when she replied, “Could be. But he left for Stockholm early yesterday morning to buy antiques at various auctions.”

  Andersson laughed and said with a wink, “Hope he makes some finds. He could use some newer furniture.”

  In the midst of the general merriment Jonny showed up. Bright red in the face, he rushed in and sat on a free chair. Out of breath he puffed, “Excuse me. I had a flat and the damned spare tire was flat too! A nice guy gave me a lift to a gas station so I could pump it up. He drove me back too.”

  “Don’t you check your tire once in a while? I do at regular intervals. About every other month,” said Hans Borg.

  For once Borg was interested. Cars were his passion.

  Jonny made an irritated gesture and replied, “Phooey. It’s just one of those things that’s always there. Sometimes you remember to check, but most of the time you forget. Who’s interested in spare tires?”

  Irene gave a start. She said pensively, “Charlotte von Knecht is.”

  “Is what?” asked Jonny.

  “Interested in spare tires. According to the car dealer Robert Skytter, the spare tire was the last thing they checked on her new Golf before she drove off.”

  “Okay, I get it. Someone cares. But I have a lot of other things to think about. It doesn’t seem important to check the air in the spare tire until the day you need it. And then it’s too late!”

  That matched Irene’s own relationship with her spare tire. Charlotte didn’t give the impression that she was the orderly type who checked everything in advance. She probably batted her heavenly eyelashes when things got screwed up. And some gentleman would come hurrying to the beauty’s rescue. Were there a few sour grapes to these thoughts? Maybe, but life had taught Irene that it wasn’t the practical girls in the woolen pants and rubber boots who awakened a male’s protective instincts. It was the small defenseless creatures in high-heeled pumps and chiffon skirts who prompted men to fling their capes across puddles. For her part she never wore high heels. And the only chiffon skirt she had ever owned was quickly confiscated by the twins to play dress-up.

  Andersson asked, “Fredrik and Jonny, you haven’t discovered any activity at Shorty’s over the weekend that would indicate contacts with Billdal?”

  Each shook his head in reply. Disappointed, the superintendent snapped, “On Friday we have to be able to give Inez Collin some reason for the detention order! Jonny, you’ll have to try to question Shorty today. Birgitta, have you found anything else
interesting on Bobo or Shorty?”

  “That’s pretty hard to do where Bobo’s concerned. He, his apartment, and his photo studio have all been blown to bits. I have to make do with what little there is. We have only those three arrests that I mentioned earlier. The assumption, of course, is that he’s been using drugs for years. Narcotics thinks he was mostly dealing, but he probably was using a lot himself. We base that conclusion on his behavior,” said Birgitta.

  She paused and a dark shadow passed over her face. But it vanished quickly and she went on, “Today I’m going up to Vänersborg to talk to Bobo’s mother. She was extremely upset when she heard that Bobo is dead. But when I called her today to set a time for us to meet, she asked if I thought it would take a long time before she got the insurance money!”

  Insurance money? Who had said something about insurance money before? Irene couldn’t remember, but thought it was Sylvia. Quick note in her notebook: “S. v. K. Changed lock? Insurance money?”

  The superintendent nodded and looked pensive. “Has anybody tried to get hold of his father?”

  “No. He’s a homeless wino. I haven’t spent much time on him,” said Birgitta.

  “Hannu, this sounds like a job for you.”

  Hannu nodded. Andersson asked him, “Did you find out if Pirjo had a driver’s license?”

  “I did. She never had one.”

  “Did you ask the daughter if she knew anything about the keys?”

  “Yes, Pirjo didn’t have any. Richard von Knecht loaned her his keys whenever they went down to the garbage room. All the doors to the courtyard are locked.”

  “So you have to have a key even to get out of the courtyard?”

  “Right.”

  “That confirms my belief that our murderer had the spare-key ring. But how did Pirjo get hold of it?”

  “Maybe on Wednesday,” Hannu said.

  Andersson regarded the department’s “exotic” element. Slowly he nodded. “She came to the apartment on Wednesday morning. You mean that she could have pinched it at an unguarded moment. That’s not impossible. Hans, you’re in charge of the keys; ask the techs if there’s any chance that Pirjo entered the apartment on Wednesday. And ask them if they saw a key ring lying around anywhere.”

  “Which techs were there on Wednesday morning?”

  “Ljunggren and Åhlén.”

  Borg nodded but didn’t jot down anything on his clean, blank pad.

  Irene asked Hannu, “Do Pirjo’s kids know that she’s dead?”

  “Yes. They were told yesterday. Welfare has them now.”

  His voice was somber, and she understood that he was at least as affected by the fate of the poor children as she was.

  Birgitta cleared her throat; her expression became stubborn. Harshly she said, “I still think Pirjo was lured by someone to Berzeliigatan. Maybe with the prospect that she would have a free hand to steal now that Richard von Knecht was dead.”

  No one said anything, but several nodded in agreement.

  “But why was it so important for the office on Berzeliigatan to be blown up?” asked Irene.

  That was another question that no one could answer.

  Tommy Persson waved his hand in the air. “Late last night I got hold of the hairdresser on the ground floor of the building. Her partner was in bed at home with a cold, so she was alone in the salon on Wednesday night. She saw Pirjo arrive! When I described Pirjo’s appearance, she was positive that she had seen her minutes before the explosion.”

  The superintendent interrupted him. “Why didn’t she call and tell us about it?”

  “According to her, she was so shocked by the fire that she forgot. By the way, she didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary on Wednesday. When I asked whether she’d seen any unusual visitors on the days before the fire, she said something quite remarkable: ‘There was always a bunch of funny characters going upstairs to that photographer. He’s quite well known, of course, but I don’t like him much.’ Remember, she didn’t know that the victim out at Delsjön was Bobo Torsson. I didn’t tell her either. When I asked why she didn’t like Torsson, it came out that he had been over to her salon, offering her a future as a photo model if she just did as he said. He promised her fame and fortune. But that is one tough dame, and she told him to get lost. The interesting thing is that he had asked both her and her partner whether they wanted to buy any dope. He said he could get hold of whatever they wanted.”

  Tommy paused, broke his Marie biscuit into three pieces, and stuffed them one after the other into his mouth. He washed each piece down with a sip of coffee. After he finished this ritual he went on, “My interview with the woman who lived below von Knecht’s office confirms many of the hairdresser’s statements. It was a brief conversation. Her husband is very sick because of his heart attack. She told me many strange people were always coming and going to Bobo’s place. And some wild parties had kept the entire building awake until the wee hours. I asked in more detail about Friday night, whether they had heard anything from von Knecht’s apartment around one o’clock. At first she couldn’t remember, but after a while she recalled that she woke up that night because someone was going up and down the stairs. At least three times, she said. But she couldn’t say for sure whether she had heard anything in particular from von Knecht’s apartment.”

  The superintendent listened intently. Finally things were starting to move on Berzeliigatan. Eagerly he said, “That confirms what we already know. He was dealing. But what a careless devil, to invite people into his own building! Was that why it was so important to blow up the place? What was it that had to be destroyed, that we weren’t supposed to see? Dope? Dope-processing equipment?”

  A pensive silence followed the superintendent’s last remark. Hannu straightened up in his chair and said, “No. Dope processing smells. It seems the bomb was sitting there primed for almost four days. It was von Knecht who was supposed to be blown up.”

  “But on Wednesday he had already been dead for twenty-four hours!”

  “But not on Friday night. He was alive then. When the bomb was made.”

  The color began to rise in Andersson’s cheeks and he stared glassy-eyed at Hannu. “So we’re talking about two different murder attempts on von Knecht!”

  “That’s right.”

  “Would that mean that we have two murderers?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So the bomb murderer was beaten to the punch by the one who hurled von Knecht off the balcony!”

  Irene looked at Hannu thoughtfully. Circumspectly she said, “There might be something to this argument. Killer number one rigs up the bomb at Berzeliigatan on Friday night and then goes and waits for von Knecht to arrive and blow himself up. But von Knecht catches a cold and doesn’t go there on either Monday or Tuesday. On Tuesday he eats lunch with Valle Reuter. And on Tuesday night he’s murdered by number two! Without having set foot in the office apartment for several days! But the person who made the bomb knows that it’s there, ready to explode as soon as somebody opens the door. There isn’t any back way into the apartment, so he can’t go in and disarm the bomb.”

  “How did he fasten the wire to the trip mechanism on the handle of the outer door?” Birgitta wondered.

  “He must have stood on the outside and threaded the thin wire through using a long hook. It must have been nerve-wracking and not something he wanted to repeat. It would be far too risky. What does he do now? Well, he sends over an insignificant insect like a Finnish cleaning woman,” Irene replied grimly.

  “So the guy who made the bomb doesn’t know that Pirjo has three kids?”

  “Or else he doesn’t care.”

  Again the cold presence of calculated evil gave Irene a nasty shiver down her spine. She saw both Tommy and Birgitta unconsciously hunching their shoulders. Jonny was unusually silent. She glanced at him and saw that he seemed to be brooding. As if he heard her thoughts, he asked to speak. “I’m sitting here thinking. Who and why? What can we say about Shorty?
He’s a notorious hooligan, he knows at least one and possibly more Hell’s Angels, and he has been dealing drugs together with his cousin Bobo. He could certainly make one of these devil bombs. There’s probably a do-it-yourself recipe on the Internet!”

  The superintendent agreed enthusiastically. “Shorty? Yes, he could be the common denominator. But why? Why would he murder von Knecht?”

  “Maybe it was the other one who murdered von Knecht! Hannu did say there could be two people.”

  “The other one . . . stop right there . . . Then why did the second killer murder von Knecht?”

  The silence was answer enough. Andersson sighed heavily. “The damned truth is that in the von Knecht case we’re just treading water! We know a lot about the family and their relatives and friends, but we have no motive for the murder. No answer to the question ‘Why?’ And where does Shorty come into the von Knecht picture? Was it Shorty who blew up his cousin? Hardly, since he didn’t seem to know about Bobo’s murder when he was brought in for questioning. I think we’re heading off on the wrong track. The Hell’s Angels, Bobo, and Shorty are a whole different case that we have to solve together with Narcotics. But in the von Knecht case we need a new angle. Let’s check all observations and witness statements one more time. If it really was Shorty who tossed von Knecht, somebody must have seen him. That guy doesn’t just melt into a crowd!”