The Torso: A Detective Inspector Huss Investigation, Vol. 2

by Helen Tursten

  She stopped and thought about that last question. Yes, she felt violated and degraded as a woman. The feeling actually surprised her, but that was what she really felt. She thought about her two beautiful and headstrong daughters. Was this what they would be reduced to in the eyes of many men: fuck objects?

  Irene felt anger rise inside her; the last steps she took to Tom Tanaka’s gay sex shop had extra length and force due to her anger.

  Maybe it was the power of that rage that made her yank open the shop door more vehemently than she had intended. Everyone in the store turned in her direction. More customers were there now than had been earlier. Tom Tanaka stood behind the counter with Emil at his side. She walked across the floor of the shop and said hello to them. The young man quickly looked away. Nervously, he rubbed his goatee and mouth with his forearm. In one hand he was holding a ham sandwich and in the other a can of Coca-Cola. Irene saw him try to chew and swallow at the same time.

  Irene and Tanaka went through the employee lounge. He opened the door to the apartment and gestured for Irene to enter. Without saying a word, he walked toward his office, then invited her to sit on one of the chairs. The good cigar smell felt almost home like.

  “A beer or a whiskey?” he asked.

  Irene hesitated at first, but then said, “A beer, thanks.”

  He bent and, to Irene’s surprise, took two chilled beers out of a little minibar in his desk. There were glasses there as well. He filled one and pushed it toward her. Tanaka raised his open bottle and clinked it against hers in a toast. The beer was amazingly refreshing and she agreed with the slogan that a Tuborg tastes best “every time.”

  Tanaka set his bottle down on the desk and focused his black eyes on her. “Inspector Huss. I must be able to trust someone. You aren’t a police officer in Copenhagen and that’s why I’m willing to trust you.”

  Irene lowered her head but didn’t say anything for the simple reason that she didn’t know what she should say.

  “I’m pretty sure I know who the murdered man in Göteborg is. His name is Marcus Tosscander.”

  Tanaka had difficulty pronouncing the last name. He held out a business card to Irene, which read:

  Tosca’s Design

  Marcus Tosscander, Designer

  in dark blue letters on a card of linen-paper. Simple, nice, and of the highest quality. The address and telephone number for Tosca’s Design were listed farther down on the card.

  “Kungsportsplatsen in Göteborg,” Irene said aloud.

  She looked up from the card and met Tom’s gaze.

  “Why do you think it’s his body we found?”

  “The tattoo. He was allowed to borrow the painting from me and take it to Copenhagen’s most skilled tattoo artist, whom I recommended.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “It’s a she. Woon Khien Chang. Her father is a Chinese tattoo artist in Hong Kong. Woon was trained by her father.”

  “Can you give me her address?”

  “Of course. It’s no secret. But you can’t tell your Danish colleagues that you learned about her from me.”

  “Why not?”

  Tanaka hesitated before he started to tell her the story. “Marcus came into my shop for the first time at the end of January. It was . . . I don’t know how I’m going to explain . . . it was like the whole store lit up. He was so beautiful and radiated warmth around him. He came up to me and said, ‘Hi, Tom Tanaka, I’d like to speak to you.’ He knew my name before he came into the store. I didn’t think much about it, but after the visit from you and the Danish policeman yesterday, I started thinking and I then remembered.”

  Tanaka paused and watched Irene as she took notes on a wrinkled pad of paper. Marcus Tosscander. Finally they had a name to go with—the torso.

  “I was both happy and surprised that he wanted to meet me. We came in here. It was easy to talk with him. His English was perfect. Suddenly he asked if he could borrow my silk painting because he wanted an unusual tattoo as a souvenir of Copenhagen. Apparently he had seen the sign outside the shop and fallen for it. I still don’t know why I agreed to lend it to him but I did. And I gave him Woon’s address.”

  He fell silent. When he started speaking again, Irene heard a sorrowful undertone in his voice.

  “After every visit to Woon he would return the painting. It took two weeks to complete the tattoo. He couldn’t go to her every day because he didn’t have time since he had several large projects here in Copenhagen. He continued to come to see me even after the tattoo was finished. He would always come and go by the back way. I’ll show it to you later because you’re also going to use it.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “February 28. It was a Sunday. We ate dinner here in my kitchen and he told me that he was going back to Göteborg to get his summer clothes. It seemed as though he was seriously considered moving here. He said that it was mainly for my sake.”

  His voice broke after the last sentence. Tanaka lowered his heavy head to hide his tears and sat in that position for a long time. Then lifted his head and looked at Irene with a furious glare.

  “He left on Monday, March 1, and since then I haven’t heard from him. Now I know why. That’s why I’m telling you, a Swedish police officer whom I trust. You have to catch the murderer!”

  “Why don’t you want to talk to the Danish police?”

  “Marcus moved to Copenhagen just after New Year’s. He was living with a . . . friend. This friend was a police officer. Marcus was always talking about my little policeman. The officer wasn’t allowed to know anything about us as long as Marcus was living with him. Sometimes I got the feeling that he was afraid of that officer. He often said, ‘He’s almost worse than my doctor in Göteborg.’ ”

  “Wait a second! Did he really say ‘worse than my doctor in Göteborg’?”

  “Yes. Word for word and on several occasions. I read it as though the officer and the doctor were jealous. Maybe of each other. But maybe Marcus meant something else.”

  The officer and the doctor had shown up again. But Carmen Østergaard was a woman and Marcus a man. Was it the same officer and doctor? A coincidence? How did all of this fit together?

  “Do you know the officer’s name?” Irene asked.

  “No. He didn’t want to tell me. ‘You would be surprised. It’s best that you don’t know,’ he said when I asked. But one time it slipped out that the officer had a connection to Vesterbro. ‘We have to be cautious,’ he said.”

  “You got the impression that the officer worked in this district?”

  Tanaka considered. “I don’t remember every word. But that he had some connection here was very clear.”

  “Do you know where the officer lives?”

  “No. Just that it was somewhere around the Botanical Gardens.”

  “Do you know how old Marcus was?”

  “Thirty-one.”

  “Do you know anything about his family and friends in Göteborg?”

  “No. Nothing. We talked about almost everything but that.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “We had a lot of things in common. Trips, for example. Marcus loved to travel. We had talked about going to Japan in the fall. . . .”

  Tanaka interrupted himself and stood abruptly. He said, “Here is my cell phone number. Only a handful of people have this number. You can reach me around the clock. Call immediately if there’s anything you can tell me.”

  Irene took the note. Tanaka bowed to her and she bowed back. She appreciated the respect and trust Tom Tanaka was showing her.

  He led her though the small corridor and into a huge bedroom. The scent of expensive male cologne was prevalent. The room was dominated by a huge bed without covers, made up with black silk sheets. The walls were white plastered and displayed two large framed photographs. Both were studies in black and white of naked young men. On one of the walls there was a door. Irene noticed that it was supplied with both a keypad lock and a heavy-d
uty burglarproof lock. Tanaka unlocked both locks and opened the door. Behind it there was a little landing and a flight of narrow stone steps.

  “If you need to meet with me, call me. We’ll make an appointment and I’ll open the door for you.”

  Again they bowed to each other. Irene pushed the glowing button for the stairwell lighting and went down the little half flight of stairs. She opened a door to a small, dark courtyard. The smell of food from a restaurant on the other side of it was nauseating, as was the odor rising from the piles of trash lying against the wall. The scratching and rustling from inside the piles implied that there were inhabitants of the trash pile who were happily living the good life.

  As Irene hurried across the courtyard toward the entrance to the street, she saw ashes from a cigarette float to the ground.

  Someone was standing just inside the doorway.

  She turned around but the door she had used to enter the courtyard had locked behind her. The restaurant didn’t have a back door. She would have to confront the person who was waiting in the darkness. She didn’t know if the person was armed, but would have to assume so.

  She started toward the street entrance. She was close enough to hear suppressed breathing as she passed someone in the shadows. When she was about to take the last step into the street, a man jumped out and stood in front of her, blocking her path. The streetlight outside reflected on a knife blade and glimmered faintly on his shaved head. He had been standing outside; that meant there were two of them.

  Without turning her head, Irene shot her arm out to the right like lightning, straight to where she knew the other one had to be standing. She got hold of a thick jacket and pulled so hard that her assailant stumbled in front of her. With a thump, his club hit the wall instead of landing on her head. She quickly changed her hold and took a firm grasp of his neck. She could feel more than see that he also had shaved his head. She rammed it into the stone wall with a hollow thud. He crumpled to the ground with a faint grunt.

  The man with the knife stepped over his fallen accomplice. He stood in the dimly lit doorway and made a jab at her stomach with the knife. She blocked this attack and grabbed his wrist. Quickly, she stretched out his right arm and moved in a half circle to the right. With an iron grip she held the arm with the knife straight up and at the same time she aimed a kick at his stomach. Mae-geri. All the air went out of him. Before he had the chance to catch his breath she put her left arm around his throat and twisted while still holding his right arm straight out. When he was lying on the ground it was easy to push her lower leg against his throat and bend his elbow backward over her thigh. It must have been unbearably painful. He let go of the knife.

  So that he wouldn’t recover his courage and decide to come after her, she aimed a hard kick at his ribs, not to break them but to inflict pain. Based on his scream, he wouldn’t have an interest in pursuing her any time soon. She took the knife with her when she hurried from the scene. The last she heard was one of them wailing in a broad southern Swedish accent, “That was no damn fag!”

  “What was it then?” the friend whined.

  “Damned if I know!”

  Apparently they were two thugs who had ridden the ferry from Sweden to take part in the popular sport of gay bashing. Irene had investigated similar cases a few years before. Some of the victims still had deep scars. She felt satisfied. The knife she had taken from the skinhead turned out to be a stiletto. With a soft click the knife blade slid into the shaft. The weapon fit easily into her pocket.

  She jogged up toward Istedgade. If she was going to make it over to Store Kongensgade and visit the girls at Scandinavian Models she was probably best off taking a taxi.

  After just a minute or two she found a cab, got in, and caught her breath. When she gave the older taxi driver the address he said, “A whole night out on the town by yourself?”

  He could think what he wanted. She looked out the window and pretended not to understand.

  It was unbelievably tiring always having to strain to understand Danish, not to mention Tom Tanaka, who spoke to her in English. Until now she had managed pretty well, but it wasn’t always easy. Especially when people spoke Danish quickly.

  But Tom Tanaka spoke very good, clear English. Maybe he was extra pedagogic when he was speaking with her. How was it that he, a Japanese, was so fluent in English? At least he seemed to be, to her. Had he lived in the USA? She would have thought someone in his field would have stayed in Japan, where sumo wrestlers were practically treated like gods. Did his leaving there have to do with his sexuality? Possibly.

  Finally they had a probable name for the poor victim at Killevik. Marcus Tosscander, thirty-one years old and a designer. It struck her that she had forgotten to ask what he designed, but that would be answered now that they knew his identity.

  The two who had attacked her by the doorway—could they have something to do with the investigation? When she thought about it in the peace and quiet of the backseat of the taxi she ruled out that possibility. It was probably a coincidence.

  They drove along the wide boulevards, passing brightly lit houses. Her eyelids felt heavy and she realized how tired she was.

  The taxi driver signaled and turned over toward the sidewalk. “There. So here we are at the next bit of entertainment,” he said.

  “Would you mind waiting with the car? I’m just going in to ask after someone.”

  “Yes, but you’ll have to pay for this ride first.”

  Irene paid, and the taxi driver promised to wait for five minutes. If she didn’t return by that time, he would leave.

  She opened the car door and was just about to step out when she stopped herself and slowly sank back into the half darkness of the car. A man came by, walking briskly and stopped in front of the door to the building where the Scandinavian Models office was located. With his index finger he followed the list of the building’s tenants. Apparently, he found what he was looking for. Without the slightest hesitation, Detective Inspector Jens Metz went up the half flight of stairs. Irene saw his broad back disappearing through the landing door.

  She sat in the taxi for a good ten minutes. Finally she had had enough of the taxi driver’s knowing mutter. “Oh. We were shadowing the unfaithful husband. That’s what we were doing!”

  She got out of the cab and walked to the entrance to the building. On the list of tenants, Scandinavian Models was located on the first floor. She pushed the brass button next to the little sign. The lock buzzed and then she opened the heavy door.

  On the middle of the first-floor landing there was a door with a shiny brass plate saying WELCOME TO SCANDINAVIAN MODELS. At a quick glance it could just as easily have been the entrance to a lawyer’s office.

  After Irene’s second ring the door was opened by a girl who, according to the picture in the tourist guide, was Petra. She was blonde and had on heavy makeup, but still barely looked twenty. Even though she didn’t have the super-short T-shirt on, her sheer see-through blouse was just as revealing. Her black leather miniskirt was a centimeter away from being just a wide belt.

  She jumped when she saw Irene. A quick look of fear came into her eyes. Irene understood. What strange requests and desires might this tall woman have? Before Irene had time to introduce herself, Petra said curtly, “Have you made an appointment?”

  She spoke broad southern Swedish.

  “No. I’m a Swedish police officer and I’m looking for Isabell Lind. She’s also known as Bell.”

  Petra grew pale under her makeup and pressed her lips together. Her gaze wandered around the newly painted stairway, which was marbelized in a sober light gray. There was no one there who could help, and her nervous gaze returned to Irene.

  “Bell . . . Isabell isn’t here,” she finally said.

  “No? Where is she?”

  “Out. With a client.”

  If they had been at home in Göteborg, Irene could have asked to come in to search the office. Now she was in Copenhagen, where she didn’t hav
e any authority. But Jens Metz did. She hadn’t seen a trace of him since he’d entered these the premises. He must be inside somewhere. What was he doing? Was he helping her inquire after Isabell? Or had he decided to become a customer?

  “Do you know when Isabell will be back?”

  Petra shrugged. Irene decided to push a little harder.

  “I’m not here on police business. I’m an old friend of Isabell’s and of her family, and it’s the family that needs to get in touch with her for important private reasons, you understand.”

  With the last sentence she lowered her voice and sent Petra an imploring look. The girl looked confused and seemed not to know what to say. Irene took out her wallet and fished out a calling card. Under her name she wrote:

  Hi Bell! Contact me at Hotel Alex or call my cell phone number, which is on the card. It’s important that we speak with each other.

  Irene

  She handed the card to Petra, who took it reluctantly.

  “Could you please give this card to Isabell?”

  Petra nodded sulkily and closed the door.

  Irene stepped into the shadow of a parked truck and kept an eye on the entrance to the building for another half hour. Jens Metz didn’t emerge.

  Chapter 7

  THE RINGING OF THE telephone woke her from a deep sleep. At first she didn’t have the faintest idea where she was. The telephone kept ringing. After a while she managed to find the receiver and answer. A faint female voice speaking English informed her that it was time to wake up. It was six thirty. Irene sank back into the pillow with a groan. Her body was sore after the last night’s skinhead fight. Sleep hung treacherously in her eyelashes, and forced her eyelids to close. . . . She sat up in bed with a jerk. It was best to get up now, otherwise Peter Møller would have to wait for her again in the reception area.

  She felt more awake after a long hot shower. She put on her light yellow Björn Borg T-shirt and the blue linen pants. Together with the blue trench coat it would definitely say I’m so happy that I’m Swedish, ho ho! but she didn’t have any other clean clothes.