Helene Tursten - Detective Inspector Huss

In the middle of the room stood Shorty with his hands in the air and his palms turned toward the viewers. Blood was running down them. His face was expressionless, and the look he gave Irene was utterly uninterested. Only his lower jaw churned, as if he were chewing gum slowly. Across the double bed lay Henrik von Knecht. Or more precisely, she assumed it must be Henrik. The bedspread had once been white, but now it was so soaked in blood that it could have passed for a red batik. Henrik’s face was swollen. With each breath he took, bright red bubbles came out of his mouth, and his naked body was covered with crimson swellings from blows and kicks.

Irene had seen plenty during her years of service, but this had to be the worst. A crazed beating, verging on slaughter. With a shudder she remembered how the murdered fourteen-year-old John had looked after the skinheads’ senseless shower of kicks and blows. In the world of movies and videos, after murderous attacks, the heroes just shake it off, get up, and keep fighting. In reality the victims never get up again. They die. Anyone could see that Henrik von Knecht was dying.

Irene and Fredrik approached Shorty. Without revealing how she felt, Irene said, “Turn around! Head against the wall, spread your legs, and hands behind your back. If you don’t obey, it’d be our pleasure to shoot your balls off!”

Still expressionless, he turned around and obeyed the command. This wasn’t his first arrest; he knew when it was time to give up. These cops wouldn’t hesitate, so it would be stupid to give them a reason. He preferred to keep his balls for a while longer.

Irene put the cuffs on him and ordered him to stay where he was. She barked out commands. “Birgitta. Call and get the chopper out here. Ambulances take too long. And we’ve blocked the road with our cars. It has to be a helicopter. They can land on the lawn in front of the big house.”

Birgitta pulled the phone out of her pocket and did as she was told. There was a minor argument before Dispatch realized the extent of what had happened and who was involved. The constellation of Shorty Johannesson, Hoffa Strömberg, and Henrik von Knecht prompted some question about whether the whole thing was a joke. Not until Irene grabbed the phone and began bellowing and shouting just like the superintendent did the officer understand that it was urgent. It would take fifteen minutes at most before the helicopter arrived. With a glum expression Irene hung up. It was doubtful whether either of the two injured men would survive that long.

She looked around the room. There was blood everywhere. On the floor were smashed glass and ceramic shards that crunched underfoot when she walked over to the bed. Henrik von Knecht was almost unrecognizable. His face had been pounded to hamburger. His breathing was now shallow and fast. The blood bubbles came in gusts when he breathed. She leaned over toward him and said reassuringly, “Henrik. It’s Inspector Huss. It’s over now. He can’t hurt you anymore. It’s all over now.”

His eyelids began to move faintly and he managed to open his eyes to small slits. In a whisper he gasped, “The h. . ho. . horse.”

The horse? Irene vaguely recalled that Tommy had mentioned Sylvia’s sick horse. Was Henrik worried about it? Apparently. With all the assurance she could muster, she said very softly and slowly, “Don’t worry. The vet has been here and gave it a penicillin shot. It’ll be well soon.”

Again he began struggling to open his eyes, without success. A coughing fit threatened to choke him on his own blood. Fighting for breath, he gasped, “Idiot! The shattered. . T. . Tang horse!”

He lapsed back into unconsciousness. The shattered Tang horse? Suddenly she realized that she was standing in a pile of shards. She looked down at the floor and discovered a terra-cotta horse’s head. Carefully she picked it up. One ear was broken off, but otherwise it had survived. It was a nobly formed horse’s head that fit perfectly in her palm. Its nostrils were wide and its mouth open for a challenging whinny. The tensed muscles in its neck vibrated with vitality, power, and strength. But the body was gone. It was shattered and lay in bits on the floor.

THE MOOD IN THE room was tense and feverish. Only Prosecutor Inez Collin looked cool and unharried in her dove-blue suit and white silk blouse. Superintendent Andersson was also excited, but not as ill as he had been recently. His fever had abated on Sunday evening, but his cold was hanging on in the form of loud sniffles and a whiskey-bass voice. He was glad not to have to talk. He could leave that to the three inspectors. Fredrik was the one who spoke the longest and gave the most details. His eyes flashed and his hair stood on end. He hadn’t changed clothes in twenty-four hours, nor had Birgitta or Irene. They had each borrowed a dorm room at headquarters and slept a mere three hours. In Irene’s case, less than that. The concern that Hoffa might die gnawed at her. In America, police who had injured Hell’s Angels or been involved in firefights with them that led to fatal results had later been murdered for revenge. It would be stupid to broadcast her name too much and end up the first such victim in Scandinavia. So they had agreed on an edited version of events. Only the three of them knew what actually happened. No one else, at either high or low levels, would ever find out the exact truth. They didn’t even exchange glances when Irene without a quaver in her voice related how Hoffa’s accident had occurred.

“I was unarmed when I climbed up onto the deck. I had the night-vision telescope strapped on. Thanks to the scope I saw Hoffa, armed with a knife, sneaking up on Birgitta, who was standing with her back to the dark dining room and the deck. We thought Shorty would be alone! I had to act and just at that instant I stubbed my toe on the base of the umbrella. Somehow I managed to throw it through the glass doors. There was a regular explosion, and both Hoffa and Birgitta jumped sky-high. She spun around, caught sight of Hoffa, and aimed her pistol at him. He backed up with his knife drawn and suddenly slipped on the shards of glass. He pitched backward and. . had bad luck. A large shard cut deep into the side of his neck.”

She stopped and Tommy filled in, “From what I understood from the reports this morning, it cut a large vein. The blood loss was enormous. He’s in a coma, and the doctors don’t know his prognosis. On the other hand, it’s quite clear that he will have lasting brain damage.”

“Great! Then he can continue as vice president of the Hell’s Angels!”

Of course Jonny had to draw attention to himself. Sulkily he had explained why no one could get hold of him on Sunday afternoon. He had taken his two youngest kids to see Pocahontas.

Hans Borg had wondered all Sunday evening where everybody had gone. Birgitta wasn’t there when he came to relieve her outside Shorty’s house at six o’clock. And no one was in the department when he called. He had also called both Birgitta and Fredrik at home. Where was he when Birgitta tried to get hold of him at five-fifteen? Well, yeah. . there was a classic car exhibit at the Swedish Convention Hall and he stopped in for just a minute before he went on his stakeout shift. .

Andersson sighed out loud. It’s annoying to have people who mentally retire ten years too soon but still show up at work. To hide what he was thinking, he said in a scratchy voice, “All right. I myself was in bed with this cold. So now we know what everybody was doing yesterday. Hannu, we haven’t heard about your day off. How was it?”

“Good.”

What did he expect? A rapturous depiction of the fantastic tango evening at the Finnish Society’s hall, or whatever it was that Hannu might find amusing?