Helene Tursten - Detective Inspector Huss

She stated dryly, “It probably wouldn’t do you much good to look at the body. It was a long drop, certainly more than twenty meters. Well, here’s the data.”

She put a pair of reading glasses on her nose, cleared her throat, looked down at her stack of papers and read: “Height, one hundred eighty-three centimeters. Weight, eighty-two kilos. His age we know, and it corresponds with the body. He was in good shape for his age, good musculature.”

She gave Andersson a knowing glance over the top of her glasses before she looked down at her papers again.

“I won’t go into all the multiple fractures. In brief, I can say that almost every bone in his body was broken. With regard to his condition otherwise, I found some slight arteriosclerosis in his coronary artery, which would definitely increase the risk of heart attack in the future. A healed fracture of his right tibia, his shinbone, that is. The wound looked old. His liver was somewhat enlarged, with incipient fatty degeneration, but moderate so far. A clear indication of a certain level of alcohol intake,” she declared.

“Was he an alcoholic?”

“Absolutely not. Their livers are striated with visible fatty necroses. Even though Richard had recently started to drink more, his liver still had many years left. Apparently he could have lived long enough to die from something other than liver problems. Which he did, of course. And a person can have fatty degeneration of the liver for years without being troubled to any appreciable extent. It’s when liver function begins to fail and we get a conversion to cirrhosis that problems arise. Real problems! But Richard had a way to go yet. I will venture to state that much, even though I’m no expert in the chronological progression of alcohol damage. I sent blood samples in to be tested for alcohol content and also the contents of his stomach. He had eaten a substantial meal, apparently a late lunch. The time of death we know, of course.”

Andersson’s stomach knotted up when he thought of von Knecht’s surely excellent lunch that now lay quivering like a disgusting sludge in a glass jar at the lab.

Stridner gathered up her papers and took off her glasses.

“That’s how far I’ve gotten,” she said.

“How about the slash on the back of his hand? Was it a bad cut?”

“Yes; it wasn’t very deep but it must have hurt terribly. It’s actually curious that he had no defensive wounds on his forearms. There should be some if the fall was preceded by a struggle. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.”

Both of them sat and pondered this puzzle for a bit. Finally Andersson said, “It must mean that he was clubbed from behind as he stood leaning over the railing. He never had a chance to defend himself against his killer.”

Stridner nodded and a hard expression came over her face.

“That’s probably how it was. A cowardly murderer. But then murderers always are. Cowards.”

She gave Andersson a dark look as though he were personally responsible for the existence of these killers. She continued more pensively, “Or desperate. Fear can drive people to murder. But the most common motives no doubt are revenge or jealousy and perhaps greed. I wonder what it was that drove Richard’s murderer?”

She fell silent again. With a deep sigh she leaned back in her chair and gave Andersson a quick glance.

“The list. You wanted to have the list of those boys. Can you write it down?” she asked in a tone that made it clear that she had no intention of doing so.

The superintendent nodded and got ready with his stubby pencil.

“You don’t have to write down my ex-husband Tore Eiderstam because he died last September. Or Per Nord, he died of leukemia five years ago. And now Richard. .”

She paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and went on, “Sven Tosse, my dentist, and also that of the von Knecht family. He and Sylvia von Knecht were engaged, by the way, before she met Richard. Richard was up in Stockholm for a few years, but he had to return to Göteborg immediately when his father died.”

Andersson was writing as fast as he could. Stridner paused tactfully and waited until he finished the sentence.

“Then we have Valle Reuter. He’s one of our biggest stockbrokers, in more than one sense. He’s the broker for the lot of them, just as Sven is their dentist. His brokerage firm is called Reuter and Lech, as I recall.”

Again she had to wait for Andersson to catch up. With an oath he snapped the point of his pencil. Without a word Stridner handed him a white mechanical pencil with GÖTEBORG MEDICAL ADMINISTRATION printed on it.

“Press on the eraser, then the lead will come out. Now where was I? Oh yes, Valle. He lives on the second floor of von Knecht’s building. He’s married to Leila. They have a son who’s a doctor. I had him as an undergraduate a few years ago.”

She seemed to be thinking of whether she knew anything else about Valle Reuter, but couldn’t recall anything.

“The next man is Peder Wahl. He’s married to Ulla, Sven Tosse’s sister. They live on the third floor, but I think they have a vineyard in France where they spend most of their time.”

“What kind of work does he do?” asked Andersson.

In reply, Stridner just raised one eyebrow ironically. Andersson had a feeling that he’d asked the stupidest question of the day, but he couldn’t figure out why. It was best to move on. He looked down at his notepad and said, “I have three names now. Sven Tosse, Valle Reuter, and Peder Wahl. Is that the whole crowd?”

“No. Ivan Viktors, the opera singer.”

Andersson gave a start. It’s not often that you run into your idol in a homicide investigation.

“He retired from the world’s opera stages after his wife died of cancer a year or two ago. There’s one more name, Gustav Ceder. He’s a banker and lives in London. I met him only once.”

Stridner sat twisting a dark red lock of hair as she absentmindedly gazed out the window. It couldn’t have been the sight of the gray buildings of Vasa Hospital that transported her into such a dreamy state. It was her memories. She had been a fantastic help. He ought to tell her that. His glance fell on the clock. He blurted out, “There’s a press conference at one o’clock!”

He jumped up as if his chair had suddenly become electrified.

She flinched, brutally awakened from her reverie. Deliberately she said, “Surely there’s no reason to worry. It’s only a quarter to.”

“I’m the one who’s holding it! I’ll call you this afternoon.”

“It’s better if I call you when the test results come in.”

But she was talking to an empty doorway. She could hear Andersson rushing down the stairs. He made good time, considering his physique. She shook her head and said to herself, “If you keep that up, we’ll be seeing you sooner than you think.”

THE PRESS CONFERENCE WAS a tumultuous affair with journalists all shouting at once. Andersson had participated in press conferences before, but he had never experienced anything like this. Somehow he managed to get through it, answering as best he could about what he knew while leaving out certain facts for “investigative reasons.” A guy with a crew cut from TV 4’s local station wanted to know how the killer managed to get out of the building and avoid discovery, even though the police were on the scene so quickly.

Andersson put on an inscrutable expression and snapped brusquely, “The technicians have not yet concluded their examination of the crime scene.”

It was high time they found out the answer to that reporter’s question. So it was with great satisfaction that he saw Svante Malm sitting at the conference table in the room that served as investigation central. Malm had put up photos of von Knecht’s smashed body on the bulletin board. Among them were several blowups of the wound on the back of his head. There were pictures of the cleaver too.