Fredrik rode with Irene and Tommy. In a bag on the floor he had an assortment of pictures of various car models. Carl-Johan Quist had categorically refused to come down to HQ to look at them. He was alone in the store and the Christmas shopping season was starting. He couldn’t get away until Saturday afternoon after three at the earliest. Then he had unlimited time, if the inspector could make it then? So Fredrik decided that the mountain would have to come to Mohammed. He persuaded himself that the primary reason was the time factor. They had to clear up quickly what make of car they were looking for. Somewhere in the back of his mind Jonny’s scornful comments during morning prayers were still reverberating. But then he remembered Birgitta’s reaction to the verbal battle with Jonny and instantly felt quite satisfied with the way things had developed.
Irene managed to find a parking place on the other side of Aschebergsgatan. They agreed to meet back at the car at one o’clock on the dot. Anyone who didn’t show up within fifteen minutes would have to take the streetcar back to HQ. Gingerly, Fredrik walked off toward the clothing store with his pictures in the dark blue bag. Irene and Tommy saw him slip and almost fall in the middle of the crosswalk.
Irene chuckled. “He doesn’t really have his feet on the ground. He’s still floating after Birgitta’s kiss.”
“No wonder! Who wouldn’t be?”
“Would you?”
“Well . . . a little hop, maybe . . .”
They laughed, and it warmed them up. They decided to split up. Tommy would do a round and ask about the cars outside the garage on Friday night. Irene would take Pirjo and the light-colored car.
The streetcar stop where Pirjo had stood was about forty meters from Quist’s store. There were always people waiting at the stop, since two streetcar lines and three bus lines passed by. It was probably no use to ask the people standing there now. Better to concentrate on the shops and businesses at street level.
Closest to her was a big art gallery. GALLERI UNO was written in curlicue letters on the show window and doors. When she tried to push open the door, it was locked. A note the size of a postage stamp was fastened with tape at eye level. “Monday-Tuesday closed. Wednesday- Saturday 12-17. Sunday 12-16.” Okay, Uno would have to wait till last.
Uno’s neighbor was a small foot-care shop. The woman behind the counter was wearing a nylon dress that had probably been white once upon a time. The only thing that gleamed white now was her hair. Irene was unsure. Was this a real business? In Sweden people usually retire at the age of sixty-five, but this lady had to be twenty years older. Yet her voice was strong and clear.
“Hello, how can I help you?”
“Hello. My name is Irene Huss, detective inspector. I’m investigating the murder of Richard von Knecht.”
The old woman leaned over the counter and whispered so excitedly that her dental work clacked. “Imagine, how exciting, right at my doorstep! I’ve been following it on TV and in the papers.”
“I suppose you’ve read in the papers that there is a possible link to the arson bombing on Berzeliigatan?”
“Well, it’s obvious there’s a connection! And that little cleaning woman who died in the fire! Since she cleaned here at the von Knechts’ place, it’s clear that she had something to do with the fire on Berzeliigatan!”
She crossed her arms and gave Irene a challenging look.
“That little cleaning woman is the key,” said Irene. “We’re trying to track whom she met on that last day of her life. Wednesday of last week. According to several witnesses, she was seen outside here at the streetcar stop at around ten—”
“That’s right. I saw her. Three times a week for a couple of years I’ve seen her arrive on the streetcar. She usually rode home around three in the afternoon. But last Wednesday she went home at ten in the morning.”
“Did you see whether she walked over to a car that had stopped?”
“Yes, she did. But they only talked for a minute. The car drove off almost at once.”
“What kind of car was it?”
For the first time in their conversation the elderly saleswoman looked uncertain. “What kind?”
“Yes, what make of car.”
“I’m not so good at makes of cars.”
Irene sighed, but she tried to hide it. “Was it a large or small car?”
“I don’t know. Pretty big, I think,” she said and sucked pensively on her ill-fitting false teeth.
“Do you remember what color it was?”
“I don’t remember. Maybe brown. Or lighter . . . But the little cleaning woman—actually she wasn’t little—short, but not little. She was fat. She was wearing a white head scarf and a dark green jacket. And she had a big red shopping bag in her hand.”
That jibed with Marjatta’s description of what Pirjo was wearing. Irene decided to leave the car until later.
“Can you tell me what happened when Pirjo went over to the car?”
“She walked up to it. Bent down and began talking to someone inside the car.”
“What side of the car was she standing on?”
“She was on the curb. The driver of the car rolled down the window on the passenger’s side. But I didn’t see much, since the car was hiding the cleaning woman from my view.”
“So the driver had his back to you?”
“Yes. Although the windows of the car were so dark that I couldn’t see very well. But I think the driver had on a light jacket or coat.”
“Was it a man or a woman?”
“Couldn’t tell. But I think it was a man.”
“Why’s that?”
“I thought the driver was fairly tall. And when the car drove off, the cleaning woman waved a little after it. Like this.”
The old woman demonstrated a furtive wave. This reinforced Irene’s feeling that Pirjo must have known the person who gave her the keys. Hopefully she said, “Anything else you can recall?”
The woman really tried, but drew a blank. Irene asked for her name, address, telephone number, and Social Security number. Her name was Ester Pettersson and she was eighty-two years old. Irene felt her curiosity reawakened.
“It’s unusual for people to still be working at your age. Is it temporary?”
“Oh no, I’ve been in my shop for sixty-one years! My father used to own it, but he got T.B. and died. Mother was delicate. So I had to take care of the shop.”
“Didn’t you ever consider retiring?”
“Never! What in the world would I do?”
Irene declined her offer of coffee and promised to drop by again. A little bell tinkled when the door closed and shut off the olfactory symphony of foot powder, wart medicine, and liniment for tired feet.
BY ONE o’clock all three of them had returned to the car. Tommy had no new facts about the nighttime car exchange. Irene hadn’t had any nibbles other than the old lady in the foot-care shop. Fredrik had made enough progress with Quist that he was convinced the car Pirjo had approached was a larger sedan. Light-colored paint. Probably white or beige. Dark tinted windows. And then Fredrik had been invited to lunch, but as politely and firmly as possible he declined. He gave the excuse that he was having lunch with his girlfriend. Not because he was going steady with any girl just now, but there might be a chance of changing that. He decided not to tell Irene and Tommy about the lunch invitation. They were decent colleagues, not at all like Jonny, but he’d still never hear the end of a juicy detail like that! All in good fun, of course.
Tommy was looking thoughtfully at the stately art nouveau facade on the other side of Aschebergsgatan. He glanced up at the marble balustrade of the top floor and the now famous little turreted balcony. He mused, “I wonder if Sylvia von Knecht is home? I’d like to look in the garage again.”
Irene unlocked the car, took the card with Sylvia’s phone number out of her jacket pocket, and punched the number on her cell phone.
“Sylvia von Knecht’s residence,” a female voice answered in a lilting Finnish accent.
“
Hello, my name is Detective Inspector Irene Huss. I’m looking for Sylvia von Knecht.”
“She’s gone up to Marstrand. One of the horses is sick.”
“When do you expect her back?”
“This evening.”
“What time?”
“No idea.” It was a cool but not at all unfriendly voice.
Irene decided to take a chance. “Are you Sylvia von Knecht’s sister? Arja Montgomery?”
“Yes, I am.”
“May we come up for a moment? We’re right outside your building, on Aschebergsgatan.”
After a brief pause she said hesitantly, “I don’t know . . . Sylvia doesn’t like having the police snooping around.”
“No, I know that. She’s a little fragile after all that’s happened. But she has always helped us in our investigation. Our problem at the moment is something that can be easily solved with your help. We just need to get into the garage on Molinsgatan. The key is on Richard’s car-key ring. It’s on his nightstand, next to the case with the apartment keys.”
Again a hesitant silence. Finally Arja said, resigned, “I’ll go see if I can find them.”
There was a clatter when she put down the receiver. After a couple of minutes she returned.
“I found them. But I’ll have to bring the keys down to you. It’s a little silly, but I don’t know the code to the front door.”
“That’s okay. We’ll be waiting outside.”
ARJA WAS considerably younger than Sylvia. To Irene’s surprise, she realized that she and Arja were about the same age. It was difficult to see the resemblance to her older sister. Almost ten centimeters taller, with a powerful and slightly stocky figure, Arja was good looking in a typical Finnish way. She had thick light blond shoulder-length hair, high cheekbones, big clear blue eyes, and a wide mouth with beautiful, even teeth, revealed in an apologetic smile. She motioned at the dirty men’s shirt and worn jeans she was wearing and said, “Excuse me, but I’m helping Sylvia clean up. The funeral is on Thursday, so she wants the place to look nice.”
What was it Sylvia had once said? “Only Finns know how to clean properly.” It seemed as though she was sticking to that thesis. Arja pulled the keys out of her jeans pocket and asked, “Are these the right keys?”
“Yes, they are. And here are our IDs. It’s important that you know who you gave the keys to.”
Irene took out her police ID. Tommy and Fredrik followed her example, surprised. Arja glanced briefly at the card with the embossed metal seal and nodded.
Irene smiled and said, “After working on this investigation I know how Sylvia is. She’ll scold you if you don’t ask who you’re lending the keys to. But now you’ve seen our IDs and know for sure that we’re police officers.”
At first Arja looked surprised, but then her sapphire-blue eyes began to glitter mischievously, and a warm smile spread across her face.
“I can see that you do know my dear sister. Or more correctly, my half sister,” she said.
That explained the difference between them. Irene felt her curiosity urging her on. “Do you have the same father or the same mother?”
“The same mother. Sylvia’s father was killed during the Finnish-German offensive against the Soviet Union in June of ’forty-one. Sylvia was born seven months later. Mother remarried a cousin of her late husband. My father, that is.”
“Was it so that some ancestral estate would stay in the family?”
“No. The family’s property was located in Viborg province, which was ceded to Russia. We were wiped out after the war.”
“Is your father still alive?”
“No. He died of lung cancer ten years ago. Chain smoker.”
“And how is your mother doing?” Irene nodded up at the apartment.
Arja laughed. “She’s quite spry. Seventy-eight years old. She hears what she wants to, but otherwise there’s nothing wrong with her. She’s up there baking cookies for the funeral reception.”
“Funeral reception? Isn’t it going to be a large funeral, with pomp and splendor and a big dinner?”
It wasn’t a cop’s question, but a spontaneous expression of surprise straight from Irene’s heart.
Arja pursed her lips significantly. “If you know my sister so well, you also know that she is very frugal. It’s probably a remnant of our meager childhood. Keep up appearances, but it can’t cost anything! Sylvia thinks that a funeral reception for the closest mourners is sufficient. Guess who has to fix the sandwiches!”
She gave another warm smile, said good-bye to the detectives, and closed the beautiful front door.
IT WAS a big two-car garage. The red BMW was gone, but the Porsche was in place.
They closed the garage door behind them and turned on the overhead light. The witness two floors up was right. The door creaked and screeched terribly when it was opened or closed. The garage was deep and wide. The cars had plenty of room in the forward part. The back was obviously used for storage. Shelves all along the back wall held cartons, ladders, snow tires, a hose, slalom skis, two racing bikes painted metallic green with curved handlebars, and a lot of rope, cans, and boxes.
Irene looked around thoughtfully and asked, “Have the techs examined the garage thoroughly?”
Tommy shook his head. “No, just the car. The only strange thing about it is that they found traces of dirt or sand and oil in the trunk and inside on the floor of the car. Both at the base of the backseat and on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat.”
They went over to the car and opened the small trunk. On the bottom they could clearly see some dark oil spots, as big as one-krona coins. A little gravel and sand had adhered to them. Inside the car there were similar spots on the floor mats. It was a very nice car to look into. And surely even nicer to drive. The black leather upholstery lent the car a masculine aura. The little leather-covered steering wheel and the high-tech instrument panel gave the sense of sitting in a cockpit, which was of course the intention. Irene felt a slight flutter in her diaphragm as she settled into the driver’s seat.
“Excuse me, Irene, but have you entered nirvana or what?” It was Tommy’s voice that abruptly brought her back to earth.
Dreamily she said, “You get a certain feeling sitting in a car like this.”
“Go ahead and enjoy it. It’s not often you wind up in a Porsche. But I found something over here. Come on.”
With a sigh she hoisted herself out of the wonderful leather seat and followed him to the back of the garage. In one corner, wedged in between the end of the shelves and the wall, stood a large gasoline can of green metal. Tommy tried to wriggle it out, which he finally managed to do. He shook it and confirmed, “Empty. Only a little splash left.”
“How much does a can like this hold?”
“Twenty-five or thirty liters. It’s illegal to store gasoline in garages or similar spaces.”
“But it’s empty.”
“Yep. But it used to have gasoline in it.” Tommy unscrewed the lid and sniffed the opening.
“But maybe it was empty when it was put in here.”
“Maybe.”
He didn’t sound convinced, and Irene agreed with him. She looked at the can and said, “Could it have been this gasoline that was used for the devil bomb on Berzeliigatan?”
“Exactly what I’m thinking. But there had to be more gasoline involved than this.”
They went around looking at the junk on the shelves. All of a sudden Irene saw it. A yellow-and-black-edged snake that was trying to creep away under the bottom shelf plank. A cutoff piece of water hose. She pulled it out. It proved to be about a meter and a half long.
Triumphantly she said, “Check it out! A piece of the water hose, you say. Wrong, wrong! I say.”
Both Fredrik and Tommy looked astonished. They stared dumbly at the hose and suddenly Tommy lit up.
“Yep! You’re right. That’s it.”
Fredrik sighed, “I still think it’s a piece of hose.”
Both Irene
and Tommy shook their heads and said at the same time, “It’s a siphon!”
Irene stepped over to the coiled-up water hose. The piece had come from it. The fresh cuts fit perfectly when she put them together. Her heart was pounding with excitement, a familiar reaction to a riddle that was nearing its solution.
“That’s it all right! This is what took time inside the garage. Our bomber cut off a piece of the hose and used it as a siphon, to transfer the gasoline from the metal can to the plastic can. Or the plastic cans, I mean,” she added.
Tommy nodded his agreement and said, “Yep! But it would take more gasoline. Do you think he took it out of the car gas tanks?”
They looked at the Porsche. The BMW had also been in here. That was quite a lot of gasoline. Irene looked at the Porsche a long time. Finally she said, “I think I know why he took the Porsche and not his own car.”
She took the car key, climbed into the soft driver’s seat, and turned the ignition. The engine turned over. Her heart was pounding again as she pointed at the instrument panel.
“Look. The tank is almost empty.”
“Shut it off so we don’t die of carbon monoxide poisoning!”
Coughing, Tommy opened the garage door. It was doubtful whether the air outside was much better, but at least it wasn’t as concentrated.
Feeling a pang of loss, Irene shut off the engine. It had purred as softly as a leopard. She sketched out her imagined scenario. “The bomb maker comes here after midnight. He knows that there’s gasoline in the can and in the cars. He has just filled up his own tank. Once he’s here, he discovers that the Porsche has almost no gas in the tank. It’s only enough for less than fifty kilometers. He drives the Porsche out onto the street and puts his own car in the garage, so he can siphon the gas into the plastic containers undisturbed. But he leaves enough in his car that he won’t risk running out on the way home. The oil spots in the Porsche probably come from the plastic containers he had set down on the floor in here. They got oily on bottom.”
Fredrik interrupted her. “Why didn’t he use his own car to drive down to Berzeliigatan?”
“Because he didn’t want his own car to be seen in the neighborhood at the time. It would be hard to explain what he was doing there in the middle of the night. Von Knecht’s own car would arouse some curiosity but not the same amount,” Irene said.
Detective Inspector Huss: A Huss Investigation set in Sweden, Vol. 1 Page 37
