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

by Helen Tursten

  Why would Bobo murder Richard von Knecht? Why would he destroy his own home and studio? Not to mention himself! Picturing Charlotte in any of these roles was even harder. She certainly wasn’t a bomb maker. But the fact that Bobo and Charlotte knew each other was interesting. Were they still friends? More than friends? It seemed to be time to have a talk with young Fru von Knecht. Henrik von Knecht had gotten the mumps as an adult, and subsequently meningitis. Had the mumps spread to his testicles? If so, was he sterile? Viewed in the light of this latest information, she thought that many of Sylvia’s odd reactions over the past few days became more understandable. If you know that your son is sterile, would you be glad to hear that your daughter-in-law is pregnant? And the follow-up question was possibly even more interesting: In that case, who was the father of Charlotte’s child? Why did Henrik react as he did? According to his own statement he was prepared to try to keep his shaky marriage together, “For the sake of the child and the survival of the family.” That didn’t make sense. Either he thought he was the father of the child, or else he didn’t care. But if he was sterile he must know it! And if he didn’t care, would he then be prepared to continue working on his relationship with Charlotte?

  She was aroused from her musings by a voice in her ear.

  “’Scuse. Lady want more coffee?” A short, dark waiter was giving her a friendly smile and holding out the glass coffeepot. To her dismay she realized that in her distraction she had actually been sipping the coffee slop.

  JIMMY’S FACE brightened with joy when she came in with a bag of goodies and a stack of newspapers. He looked about like he did the day before, only a little darker purple in complexion. The IV was gone and he was sitting in a high-backed vinyl armchair over by the window. There was room for one more patient in the room, but that bed was still empty.

  “Hi Jimmy! You look like an LSD hallucination,” Irene said cheerfully.

  “Thank you. That’s just what I needed to hear.”

  He laughed heartily and they chatted about neutral topics. Irene gave him the latest news on the investigative front. He was exceedingly interested in the information about the traces of narcotics in the summer cabins.

  “We’ve been investigating part of the motorcycle gang for a long time. Death Squadron Number One is especially interesting. They’ve been full members of the Hell’s Angels for several years. The gangs ride around Europe and visit each other. It takes a lot before two lowly customs agents down in Helsingborg will start rummaging through twenty Hell’s Angels packs when they’ve been visiting their brothers in Denmark or Holland. We also know that they smuggle narcotics in other ways.”

  “Why do they deal drugs?”

  “Big business. Hardly any of the members have a job. They need plenty of money for daily living, new choppers and spare parts, club-houses and weapons. They have enough weapons to start a revolution! And many of them are drug users themselves. So dope for their own use too. They say they belong to ‘the extreme percentage—the sociopaths, for whom no laws apply.’”

  He fell silent and both of them had the same thought. It was Jimmy who expressed it. “Sometimes I think, They could have done whatever they wanted to me. I was completely defenseless. And a defenseless cop! So sometimes I wonder why they didn’t finish us off.”

  Once more Irene saw the glow of the explosion and she felt the hot pressure wave against her face. She could only whisper, “They thought about it. They tried.”

  Softly, she began to tell him as objectively as possible. Sometimes she had to pause to wipe away her tears, but she wanted him to know the exact course of events. He was the only one who could understand her feelings, since he had been there. While she was speaking, she noticed that the last emotional knots were loosening and she felt a sense of calm rising inside her. A troubling thought occurred to her: Had she transferred her anxiety to Jimmy? Not once during the entire account did he interrupt her. His one visible eye did not waver from her face. But his comment when she was done calmed her.

  “What luck that you were the one who was awake and not me! I was always lousy at throwing balls. My best events have always been the high jump and the hundred meters. Those wouldn’t have helped us much!”

  He laughed heartily again and offered her some of the candy from the bag. Mentally he seemed unscathed, but his physical damage was much worse.

  “A crack in one of the bones in my forearm. Do you know what it’s called? You don’t? Radius fissure. You learn a bunch of useful stuff when you’re in the hospital. Although you have to be healthy to deal with it. Today I spent two hours on my back in Radiology waiting for a skull X ray. To check that there’s no bleeding between the brain membranes. Then you get a . . . what was it called? Wait, I wrote it down.”

  He got up and shuffled over to his bedside table. With a shock Irene realized that his injuries were even worse than she’d thought.

  “Jimmy, what happened to your legs?”

  He turned and grimaced. “Violent blows or kicks to my lower back. I have to get it X-rayed tomorrow. They suspect a fracture of one of the tail vertebrae. It hurts like hell to walk or sit. That’s why I’m going to lie down now. You have to come over here. Ah, here’s the note!”

  Triumphantly he waved a little scrap of paper torn from a notepad.

  “Computer tomography. No, that’s the examination! A machine they stuff you inside. But you don’t feel anything. What they’re afraid I might contract is called subdural hematoma. It can appear several years later, say the doctors. That’s why I can’t go home before Friday. Damn it!”

  He said the last when he had to lift his legs onto the bed. With a sigh he went on, “Then I’ll probably be on the disabled list for a while. Although I’ll try to get home care.”

  The last he said with a wink and a knowing look toward the door. A young nurse with a waist-long blond braid came in. She nodded to Irene and gave Jimmy a gleaming smile. There was a light blush on her cheeks, and her eyes indicated that she wouldn’t be particularly hard to convince. She chirped at Jimmy, “X-ray preparations. Just a little micro-enema. I’ll come back in a while and help you with the enema, if you want.”

  “Now you’re talking, baby,” Jimmy said in English. “No, all kidding aside, I can handle it myself.”

  She laughed and left a little yellow plastic tube with a long nozzle on his nightstand. With another bright smile she vanished into the corridor.

  Irene stood up and said, “Well, I’ll leave you to your anal orgies. If I can’t stop by tomorrow, I’ll call you.”

  “Calling is good enough. Although it’s more fun when you come by.”

  He waved with his good hand.

  Chapter Fifteen

  AT SIX O’CLOCK ON the dot, Tommy Persson rang the doorbell of the Huss residence. Sammie was the first in line to bid him welcome. Since Tommy was one of his favorite guests, it took a while before all the jumping and licking were over.

  Conspiratorially, Irene whispered, “The twins are in their room. I said that you’re a grass widower today and that I invited you to dinner. They bought it without comment.”

  “Good. How’s Jimmy Olsson doing?”

  She gave him a detailed description of the young officer’s health status; Tommy thought it didn’t sound good. If you’re married to a nurse, you’re always learning something about diseases and their treatment.

  Since they never talked shop when they were around their families, Irene wanted to know the latest news from HQ before dinner. “How did the interview with Shorty go today?”

  Tommy hesitated before he replied. “Not so great. But Jonny actually managed to annoy him so much that he got mad and said something interesting. Jonny finally yelled, ‘Don’t you get it? You’re under suspicion for taking part in everything that happened, as long as you refuse to speak! We’re looking for your cousin’s murderer!’ Then Shorty leaned toward him and snarled, ‘I don’t have to look. That fuck’ll be sorry!’ And then he went back to imitating a clam. We pressured h
im like mad for several hours. But he’s used to it and it doesn’t bother him in the least. We didn’t get one more syllable out of him. Andersson and Jonny will have a go at him this evening.”

  “Interesting. I also got a hot tip. Bobo and Charlotte von Knecht are old acquaintances. She worked as a photo model for him. She was the one who helped him rent the apartments on Berzeliigatan about three years ago.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding! Although that’s a point of contact with Bobo, not Shorty. I don’t think she knows Shorty.”

  “Maybe. I’m thinking of driving over unannounced to question the lady in more detail tomorrow morning. Want to come along?”

  “Sounds just as good as haranguing Shorty. Jonny and Andersson can deal with him.”

  An aroma of fried onions that got their stomach juices flowing came wafting into the entryway. Krister stuck his head out the open kitchen door and teasingly shook his spatula at them. “What are you two whispering about?”

  “Professional secrets, just professional secrets. For instance, how hard you can hit somebody with a baton without leaving bruises,” his wife replied saucily.

  “Great topic of conversation. Come and devote yourself to the hamburgers instead.”

  Irene called the twins. Heavy rock rhythms were thumping upstairs. Neither of them seemed to hear her. She went up and opened the door to Jenny’s room.

  They were curled up on Jenny’s bed. Jenny was tossing her head in time to the music, while Katarina looked warier. Jenny became aware of her mother’s presence and jumped up to turn off the CD player. But Irene had heard the last line of the song: “We’re gonna clean this country and throw the Jew pigs in the sea. Clean it! Clean it!” Sung with hoarse rock voices, throbbing heavy-metal guitars, and pulsating drums.

  Jenny was caught off guard, but collected herself and immediately assumed a defensive position. She said quickly, “It’s not the words I like, but the music!”

  Irene looked at her daughter’s shaved head and angrily clenched fists. A feeling of powerlessness descended like a paralyzing blanket over her thoughts, and she couldn’t think of a single appropriate remark. Instead she said with exaggerated good cheer, “Come on now and eat. It’s one of your favorites, Jenny, hamburgers and onions.”

  “Did Pappa make his pickles?”

  “Of course! And since Tommy is here, there’ll be dessert in the middle of the week.”

  “What is it?”

  “Apple cake with vanilla ice cream.”

  Without showing any great enthusiasm, Jenny shrugged her shoulders. “Okay.”

  The year before she would have been the first one down the stairs and seated at the table. Now she shambled after Irene and Katarina and sat down last. Tommy gave her a cheerful hello, his gaze lingering so long on Jenny’s scalp that she was embarrassed. But he didn’t comment on her sudden hair loss.

  Pleasant conversation accompanied the dinner. No talk of murder, bombs, motorcycle gangs, dope, or fruitless interrogations with professional crooks. Irene felt safe and relaxed together with her family and her best friend.

  When it was time for coffee, Tommy suggested that they go sit in the living room. He smiled at the twins and said, “I feel like telling you an absolutely true story from real life.”

  They sat down on the sofa and armchairs around the coffee table. Through the glass top the warm-toned Gabbeh rug was visible, and Irene thought it went very well with the framed Miró print on the wall. At Tommy’s request they turned out all the lights and lit all the candles they could find.

  The mood was cozy when Tommy began his story.

  “This is both an exciting and very sad story. It begins in Berlin in nineteen thirty-two. The National Socialists, under the leadership of the great agitator Adolf Hitler, are about to take over all of Germany. The people are delighted and see Hitler as their great savior, freeing them from unemployment, poverty, and social injustice. Not to mention his skill at playing on their feelings that an unjust peace had been imposed after the First World War. There was a splendid breeding ground for Nazi ideas in Germany in the thirties. From nineteen thirty-three on the National Socialist Party was the only one permitted. Who would call for democracy, when a whole people rose up and marched in step? Books that were viewed as harmful to the national state were burned and authors were banned from writing. Only music approved by the state could be played. Movies and radio programs had to be censored before they could be broadcast. The schools put ideology on their curriculum, and the teachers who didn’t submit were purged. The Jews also had to be purged. The explanation was that they were active in a worldwide conspiracy that threatened everyone. All Jews had to wear a yellow star on their clothes. Gradually, systems were set up to transport them to huge death camps along with gypsies, Danes, homosexuals, Communists, Norwegians, Russians, Poles, Englishmen—”

  “There were never any concentration camps! That’s just propaganda!” Jenny’s face was red with rage, visible even in the soft candlelight.

  “Is that right? Who is spreading this propaganda, then?”

  “It’s the . . . Communists!”

  “Who are the Communists of today that are so stubbornly holding on to this lie?”

  “It’s the . . . Soviet Union!”

  “There isn’t anything called the Soviet Union anymore. No, Jenny, the people who were in these camps can tell you all about it. There aren’t many left alive today, but the ones who are still here can testify that it’s no lie. They speak for millions of people who never got out of the concentration camps alive. But even in their homelands there are groups today who deny what happened. It must be a bitter feeling for the Norwegian and Danish resistance fighters, who today are more than seventy years old, to listen to young neo-Nazis denying their horrendous experiences and the death of their friends.”

  Tommy took a gulp of his coffee before he went on.

  “But all this flourished at a later stage of Nazi Germany’s development. Back to Berlin in nineteen thirty-two. The National Socialists quickly gained strength. In the late twenties they had founded the Hitler Youth, a movement that aimed to make young people from the age of ten into trusted warriors for the Reich and the party. One dark January night a gang of five Hitler Jugend boys in their late teens was on the way to a meeting. They walked by a school and just as they passed by, a girl came out the gate. She was thirteen years old and her name was Rachel. The boys knew that she was Jewish and that her father was a bookseller. They forced her back into the schoolyard. There they took turns raping her. Four of them held her down while the fifth raped her. They kept on doing it until she started bleeding heavily. Then they got scared and left her lying there. Her father found her a couple of hours later. She lay as the boys had left her. Her eyes were fixed on the black night sky, and she didn’t respond when they said her name. Rachel would never respond again.”

  Tommy fell silent and looked at his audience. Irene understood his intentions in telling the story and resisted the impulse to ask him to finish. Katarina looked like she was going to throw up. Jenny sat with a stony expression on her face, but Irene knew her daughter and could see from her nervously plucking fingers that she was extremely moved. Tommy took another deep breath and continued.

  “You might think that since Rachel bled so heavily, she wouldn’t have become pregnant. But she did. Her father was in despair. His name was Jacob Uhr. He was widowed at an early age and had come from Poland when Rachel was little, to build a future for himself and his daughter in Berlin. He worked for his unmarried uncle in the bookstore. When the uncle died several years later, he left the bookstore to Jacob. The store wasn’t prosperous, but Jacob could support himself and his daughter comfortably. Until the rape occurred. Doctors came and went. Rachel lay in a coma as a result of shock and had to be cared for like a baby. Finally Jacob could no longer afford to pay the doctor bills and had to nurse Rachel himself as best he could. By then he knew that she was pregnant. A Jewish neighbor woman promised to help with the deli
very.”

  Katarina was so agitated that her voice broke when she asked, “But why didn’t the father report the boys?”

  Tommy’s tone of voice was unchanged. “He did, right after the rape occurred. The police just smirked and winked knowingly at each other. And nothing happened. Nobody was interested in even looking for five purebred Aryans who had raped a lowly Jewish girl. Jacob Uhr should have been grateful that his miserable lineage was infused with a little noble Aryan blood.”

  Jenny was pale as a corpse now, and her eyes looked unnaturally large in her hairless skull. She didn’t take her eyes off Tommy.

  “Rachel turned fourteen. Two weeks later the labor pains started. For the next three days the thin little girl lay there trying to push out the baby. Jacob had help from the neighbor woman, who was used to assisting at childbirths. She was the one who saw when Rachel died. Jacob refused at first to accept it, but she screamed, ‘Now it’s a matter of seconds!’ She stuck her hands into Rachel’s womb and with the blood streaming down her forearms pulled out the little baby in a torrent of blood. At first Jacob didn’t want to look at the miracle that had cost his only daughter her life. But the midwife was a resolute woman. She bathed the screaming little mite, wrapped her up, and placed the infant in Jacob’s arms. Then she said, ‘Jacob Uhr. This little child is without guilt. Your daughter died that night in the schoolyard, and she never came back to us. But the child is alive and healthy. You have received her as a gift from God, instead of Rachel who was taken from you. The little girl shall be called Sonya, after me!’