Helene Tursten - Detective Inspector Huss

“Hold it! Wait!”

Both Irene and Henrik jumped at the unexpected sound of Sylvia’s voice. She came running down the stairs from the upper floor. A little out of breath, she said, “Here are the addresses and phone numbers of the guests last Saturday. I have my whole contact list in the computer. All I had to do was print out the ones you wanted. Very efficient.”

IRENE WENT via Berzeliigatan on her way back to headquarters. It was high time she had lunch. The hot dog stand on Heden was calling to her, with the best mashed potatoes in town. But first she wanted to see the remains of the building that had burned down. She caught sight of Tommy Persson talking to one of the arson technicians. There was a parking place right outside the barricades, and she pulled into it. A handicapped parking place, but it would be a while before anyone who lived here would be able to use it again. Most of the building was no longer habitable.

Apart from the acrid smell of smoke, an air of unreality hovered over the charred skeleton of the building. It didn’t belong here in the prosperous downtown section of Göteborg. Maybe in Chechnya or Sarajevo.

Irene went over to Tommy. He gave her a cheerful greeting and introduced the arson investigator, Pelle, who nodded and raised his hands-encased in thick gloves-in greeting. He excused himself at once and tromped off in his heavy protective gear.

Tommy said somberly, “They found a completely charred body inside. It’s behind the door to von Knecht’s office. Apparently there was steel on the inside of the door, which protected the body from being totally cremated. The door was blown open by the explosion, and the poor guy crawled in behind it when he couldn’t make it down the stairs. The heat must have been horrible.”

Both of them shivered, and not just because of the cold. A pale sun was trying to break through the gray clouds. It would eventually succeed, because it was starting to clear up and turn colder. The temperature would probably fall below freezing later that night. Then the water on the ravaged building would freeze and form an armor of ice around it. There is nothing sorrier or more depressing than the sight of a damaged and mangled building, ruined by fire and water. If you know that a person died in the flames, the sight becomes a brooding threat. Irene felt slightly nauseated, but blamed it on her hunger and the suffocating smell of smoke.

Tommy turned around, nodded toward the corner at the brick building across the street, and said, “Do you see the tobacconist over there?”

Irene saw the little shop with a worn-out sign that stuck straight out from the very corner of the building. She nodded and murmured affir-matively.

“Guess who Fredrik and I found in there when we were going around knocking on doors?”

“No clue.”

“Shorty Johannesson! And he’s the one who runs the store!”

“You’re kidding! I thought he’d been sent up forever and they’d thrown away the key.”

“That would have been too good to be true. We checked. He was released this summer. He served six of his nine years.”

If you live in Göteborg, you know that anyone with the nickname Shorty or Half-Pint is at least the height of an average basketball player. And if you live in Göteborg, you know who Lasse “Shorty” Johannesson is. On the list of the ten most dangerous criminals in recent years, he was right up there between Lars-Inge Svartenbrandt and Clark Olofsson.

TIME WAS TIGHT, BUT Irene managed to write down the most important points from her meeting with the von Knecht mother and son. She also called Charlotte von Knecht but got no answer. The Volkswagen Center on Mölndalsvägen was next in line on her phone list. After some paper shuffling the woman at the service desk managed to find the right file. Yes indeed, Charlotte von Knecht had picked up her new Golf last Tuesday, but she didn’t know at what time. The salesman in charge was off on Thursdays and was impossible to reach before ten o’clock Friday morning. The woman grew more cooperative after Irene began to mutter about “interfering with a police investigation of a felony.” With a lot of grumbling she finally gave Irene the salesman’s home phone number. When Irene called she had to deal with a dashing answering machine that trumpeted, “Hello! You’ve reached Rob’s home! I’m either out or doing something else right now, so I can’t take your call. Leave your name and number after the beep and I’ll give you a jingle a little later.” Irene curtly left her name and her direct line to the department. She made a point of emphasizing her title.

THE USUAL procedure for ordering pizza was automatically initiated before the run-through could begin. Then the superintendent took the floor.

“It’s been a hectic day. At the press conference today I announced that a bombing caused the fire on Berzeliigatan. The arson techs found the remnants of an explosive device in the hall of von Knecht’s office apartment. It was practically like I’d set off a bomb under the reporters. They went crazy! Naturally they’re making a connection between von Knecht’s murder and the explosion last night. They’ve been hounding me all afternoon. Newspapers, radio, and all the TV channels in existence! The techs will be stopping by at any moment to report developments on their end. Svante Malm and the new guy, Ljunggren, promised to show up.”

He looked around at his seven inspectors and quietly cleared his throat.

“Let’s go around the table, one by one.”

He gave Irene, to his right, an expectant look. The report on her survey of the gossip clippings from Swedish Ladies’ Journal took time but was necessary. It gave a picture of Richard von Knecht’s public life. The account of her conversation with Sylvia and Henrik also gave most of the inspectors a clearer picture of the family members. Irene summed up her own thoughts and conclusions.

“It’s a regular soap opera. Both Sylvia and Henrik seem to be emotionally cool toward Richard. Not to mention that he felt the same about them. It wasn’t a happy family. The motives are the classic ones: money, unfaithfulness. What contradicts the theory of murder within the family, of course, is the bomb. There’s a chance that the murder and the bomb had nothing to do with each other. But actually I think that chance is microscopic,” she said.

The others nodded in agreement. Irene concluded by telling them about Charlotte’s still-unconfirmed car-buying alibi and the guest list from Saturday’s party that Sylvia had given her.

Andersson looked pleased. “I myself had the great pleasure of eavesdropping on Birgitta’s interview with Waldemar, alias Valle, Reuter. Tell us about it, Birgitta.” His whole face lit up with a broad smile, but the smile was quickly extinguished when Birgitta began to speak.

“Valle Reuter is a very pathetic man. He has been a serious alcoholic for many years. I’ve been in contact with the president of his brokerage house, Mats Tengman. When I explained to him what it was all about he was quite candid. Valle is still part of the firm in name only. He owns it, but has no influence on the business end, and no one is more aware of this than Valle himself. He still has his office. He sometimes goes inside and locks the door, saying that he’s extremely busy and is not to be disturbed. This usually means that he’s hung over. But they have to keep him on. The president calls it ‘social therapy.’ Reuter doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Except on Tuesdays, when Richard von Knecht was in the habit of having lunch with him. This was the high point of the week for Valle, Mats Tengman told me. But now we know that there were also other high points on Tuesdays. . Valle was thoroughly loaded when he came here and he gave us a good deal of information. I checked with Johanneshus, where von Knecht and Reuter ate lunch last Tuesday. The restaurant owner confirms the time. They arrived between one and one-thirty, left around three-thirty. The reason Valle Reuter wasn’t home on the night of the murder was that he spent the night with his girlfriend of the past three years, Gunilla Forsell. He managed to remember the address, and I contacted her this morning. She wasn’t particularly happy about the attention, to put it mildly. At first she refused to meet me. But I threatened to have her picked up by a squad car if she didn’t show up voluntarily. Then she was more cooperative, because the neighbors in the fancy boardinghouse on Stampgatan have no idea what little Fru Forsell does on the side. An extra job that pays more than her regular job. Guess what her day job is.”