Helene Tursten - Detective Inspector Huss

Hannu’s expression didn’t change, and his voice didn’t alter, but his eyes took on a colder ice-blue tinge.

“Richard von Knecht has another son.”

In the tense silence that followed, it seemed as though the sirens from all the police cars and fire engines in Göteborg began wailing at once.

“WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? And what the hell is going on in town?”

The color in Andersson’s face rose considerably. He had thought they had a good grip on things. And suddenly all hell was breaking loose, both inside the department and out!

Hannu Rauhala kept his eyes riveted on the superintendent and continued, unmoved. “The tax authorities have copies of his personal file. Richard von Knecht has admitted paternity of a son, Bo Jonas, born July twenty-third, nineteen sixty-five, in the Katarina district in Stockholm. The mother is Mona Söder, November second, nineteen forty-one. It’s all on von Knecht’s death certificate.”

“How did you get access to. . Oh, the hell with it.”

One look in those ice-blue eyes and Andersson decided to put off the question until later. Instead he said, “This is interesting. I wonder whether the wife and his son Henrik know about the existence of Jonas? Irene, since you’re already in contact with both of them, you handle it. Hannu, you take Pirjo Larsson. We have to find out if she has a key to von Knecht’s apartment. Ask her who may have visited him while she was there, or if she saw anything else that seemed odd. And the rag. Don’t forget to ask her about the rag. Keep digging for information about Jonas and his mother. Maybe we’ll need to enlist the help of our colleagues in Stockholm. What a damned racket those sirens are making. Has half of Göteborg blown sky-high?”

Angrily he pressed the intercom button for the duty officer. At first nobody answered his call. He had to try again.

“Yeah, Dispatch here,” replied a calm male voice.

“What’s happening in town?”

“A building on Berzeliigatan is on fire. Suspected bombing. Didn’t you hear the explosion? It’s barely a kilometer from here.”

“Sounds like the boys at PO-One are going to be busy tonight!”

“No doubt. See you.”

The superintendent looked crestfallen when the intercom clicked off. To cover his embarrassment, he continued briskly, “So now we know, but that’s somebody else’s headache. We have to concentrate on the von Knecht family. Go on, Hannu, do you have more info on the second son?”

Hannu shook his head. “Nope, but you can take it from here, right, Jonny?”

“The rest of the family’s assets, last year’s tax returns. Sylvia von Knecht’s income was one hundred fifty thousand, personal net worth six hundred sixty-eight thousand. Henrik von Knecht’s income was five hundred thousand, net worth four hundred fifty-three thousand. Charlotte von Knecht’s income was seventy-two thousand and she has a net worth of zero.”

“A pauper compared to Pappa von Knecht. And who isn’t, compared to him?” Fredrik commented on Jonny’s research. Casually he remarked, “Truth be told, Charlotte and I are in the same financial bracket.”

The others laughed before taking a coffee break.

The meeting went on for another two hours. They went over and over various suggestions and hypotheses, but couldn’t tell whether they were getting any closer to the truth. Or whether it might already have been approached without anyone realizing it.

Andersson stifled a yawn and decided to wrap up the meeting with a few concluding remarks. “Okay, see you all here at seven-thirty in the morning.”

They had started packing up their notebooks, pens and pencils, coffee cups, and everything else essential to the investigation when there was another knock at the door. Without waiting for an answer, Officer Håkan Lund opened it, filling the entire doorway. He began with a greeting. “Peace. Thought I’d drop by with a report that might interest you.”

The group watched in surprise as he strode to the end of the table. Once he was there, he started his report. “I just came from the fire on Berzeliigatan. An eyewitness heard a loud explosion and then the place went up in flames. The windows of all the nearby buildings were blown out. According to the same witness the explosion came from the third floor. And there. .”

He paused melodramatically and gave his audience a look before he went on. “That’s where Richard von Knecht had his office!”

You could have heard a pin drop; no one could think of a thing to say. Håkan Lund was obviously pleased with the effect of his news. He continued, “My shift was supposed to end at four, but we were held up by a big traffic accident near the Tingstad tunnel. Sleet and black ice. Five cars involved in a rear-ender. No injuries to speak of, but plenty of peripheral work with reports and directing traffic. Just as we were finishing, we got the call about the explosion on Berzeliigatan, corner of Sten Sturegatan. It was burning good by the time we arrived. There were three fire engines on site and a couple of patrol cars.”

“Is the building a total loss?”

Lund gave Andersson, who had asked the question, a thoughtful look and replied, “Let me put it this way: On a fire scale of one to ten, where one is a match and ten is a quasar, this was a nine. An inferno. So yes, the entire building was gutted.”

“God damn it!”

It wasn’t the most intelligent comment the superintendent could have made, but it expressed precisely what everyone in the room was feeling. Lund resumed his report of the events.

“On the ground floor there’s a hair salon. The hairdresser who was in the salon escaped to the street. She was busy cleaning up after the day’s work. Fortunately, she only received minor injuries to her head and back. On the second floor there are two apartments. The residents of the larger one, a retired couple, managed to escape. They were in shock, their hearing was damaged, and they had a number of ugly burns. The tenant across the hall works as a desk clerk at the Sheraton and wasn’t home when the place blew up. He arrived just as I was leaving. Evidently he heard about the fire on the news. On the third floor is-or was would be more correct-von Knecht’s office. Apparently, it was a large apartment, according to the downstairs neighbors. By the way, von Knecht owned the whole building. The apartment next to his is currently vacant. It’s a little two-room place that he rents out to companies that need an apartment for short-term periods.”

Lund broke off, quickly went over and poured the cold dregs from the coffeemaker into a plastic cup, swished the coffee around in his mouth before swallowing, then smacked his lips contentedly and said, “Your mouth gets so dry from a fire. And from talking too.”

No one responded, so he returned to his place and went on with his report.

“On the fourth floor of the building there’s a photographer. He lives in the two-room space and has his studio in the larger apartment above von Knecht’s office. The witnesses from the second floor, the retired couple, think he must be out of town at the moment. They haven’t seen him in several days. He sometimes does fashion shoots abroad. For his sake, let’s hope he’s away shooting beautiful women under the palms. Otherwise he’s dead. Grilled. It’ll be several hours before the smoke-eaters can go into the building.”

Lund paused and looked quite stern and serious as he went on. “On the fifth floor they managed to rescue a young woman with the hook and ladder. She was in shock, of course, and refused to climb down the ladder. But the fireman grabbed her and more or less carried her down. When she reached the ground, she suddenly remembered that her boyfriend was asleep somewhere in the apartment. But it was too late. There was no chance of getting back inside. Her apartment was completely engulfed in flames and there was a big risk that the floor would cave in. The lady in the apartment next door had better luck. She came home from work in the middle of the firefighting work. She had evidently heard about the fire, but it was still a shock. She collapsed on the street and the ambulance had to take her to the ER. The sixth floor was empty. Work had just started on renovating it into an apartment that would take up the whole floor.”