Helene Tursten - Detective Inspector Huss

The road out toward Marstrand is extremely beautiful, and she usually gave it the attention it deserved. On this gray November day, though, she was focused on driving as fast as she could while she kept an eye out for her colleagues from the Traffic Division.

She had memorized the route before she left Göteborg. Holta Church flashed by. She knew that there would soon be a side road and that she should take it toward Tjuvkil. Then she was no longer sure, so she pulled off the road and took out the map.

Just as she was about to start off again, she caught sight of a car coming toward her at high speed. A hunch, or rather an instinct, made her hold the map up in front of her face and peek over the edge.

It was a red BMW. And Sylvia von Knecht was driving. She didn’t even deign to give the old dark blue Saab a look. On the other hand, Irene saw her clearly. She sat with her eyes fixed on the road ahead, on the edge of her seat and with her back erect.

Calmly, Irene put the car in gear and made an elegant and illegal U-turn. She tried to keep one or two cars between her and Sylvia. It was easy to follow her since there was still a lot of traffic.

Sylvia took the same way back toward Göteborg. But at Olskroksmotet she headed toward the western part of town on Västerleden. Was she going out to Västra Frölunda? Apparently not, because she drove past Frölunda Square and the exit Irene usually took when she was going home to her row-house neighborhood.

Askim, Hovås, Skintebo. Now Irene knew where they were heading. She increased the distance between her and the red BMW. Sylvia passed the exit sign for Kullavik, continued a few kilometers, and turned off toward Särö.

Ivan Viktors. He was the one she planned to spend the night with. The superintendent hadn’t been far wrong when he suspected that Sylvia and Viktors had spent Sunday evening together. But Sylvia had been with her mother and sister the entire evening. And Viktors had visited his brother in the hospital. Where was the gap in the chronology? The answer was as simple as it was logical. They had concentrated on the wrong evening. It wasn’t Sunday evening, but Monday evening that Sylvia and Ivan Viktors had spent together.

She was so full of this revelation that everything nearly went to hell as she almost ran straight into the back of the BMW, which had stopped to turn off toward Särö Västerskog. Quickly, she turned the wheel and whipped by on the left side. It was her good fortune that there were no oncoming cars. Everything happened so fast that Sylvia probably didn’t have time to notice who had thundered past her. Irene swung into a passing turnout a little farther ahead. In her rearview mirror she could see Sylvia driving at a leisurely pace toward King Gustav V’s favorite tennis courts. Irene performed another illegal maneuver but wasn’t in much of a hurry to head toward the small cluster of turn-of-the-twentieth-century houses.

During the eighties large villas had been built on the meadows in front of the nature preserve, but along the narrow old country road there were several grand old patrician villas. The red BMW stood outside a big redbrick house with pinnacles and towers and a somewhat overgrown garden. Irene drove on about a hundred meters farther before she parked her car and got out. With her chin tucked down, her collar turned up against the wind, and Katarina’s black baseball cap on her head, Irene would not be easy to recognize, in case Sylvia happened to look out the window. There was a greater risk that she would recognize Irene’s jacket. But she probably didn’t burden her memory with such soiled attire.

Usually, the lovely preserve was full of people strolling around. In the summer swimming was popular at the sandy beach. But on a damp Saturday afternoon in late November there were no crowds. Irene was completely alone. She kept close to the bushy vegetation along the shoulder of the road and tried to blend into nature. When she reached the hedge that surrounded the garden of the redbrick house, she had to duck down quickly and pretend to tie her shoelace.

Sylvia was loading Viktors down with suitcases and bags from the trunk of the BMW. Was she thinking of moving in? From the amount of baggage it looked like it. She had almost as much as Irene used to pack for the whole family’s three-week vacation at her husband’s parents’ summerhouse up in Värmland. It was too windy for her to hear what they were saying to each other. But judging by Sylvia’s body language, she was very excited. She gesticulated as she talked, tossing out the baggage with great energy and making swift, abrupt movements. To top it off she went up to Viktors, wrapped her arms around his waist, and leaned her head against his broad opera singer’s chest. He glanced around quickly and for a moment Irene thought he was looking straight through her peephole in the lilac hedge. Evidently, he didn’t see her. With an impatient movement he broke free of Sylvia’s embrace. Carrying all the gear, he started walking toward the solid oak front door. It closed heavily behind them.

BACK AT headquarters, Irene found out that not much had happened. Torsson seemed to have been swallowed up by the earth. Shorty claimed that he had no idea where his cousin was. Andersson was very pleased with Irene’s investigative efforts. He was especially happy that he had been right about Sylvia and Ivan Viktors. He clapped his hand to his chest and beamed like the sun.

“Male intuition, understand? Male intuition!”

Irene tactfully refrained from pointing out whose intuition had led to the disclosure.

Andersson went on, “Fredrik called just before you arrived. From lunchtime until midnight yesterday he kept Shorty’s smoke shop under surveillance. A person who may have been Bobo Torsson entered the street door to the stairwell of Shorty’s apartment building at three-thirty yesterday afternoon. The same man left after about an hour. In his hand he was carrying a large bag. Based on my description of Torsson, which I got secondhand from Birgitta Moberg, Fredrik thinks it was him. Now I’ve spoken with both Hannu and Fredrik. They’re continuing the surveillance of Shorty over the weekend. Not because I think Torsson is so damned stupid that he’d show up on Berzeliigatan again, but you never know. It might be good to see what Shorty’s up to as well.”

Irene teased him, “Male intuition?”

“Nope. Cop intuition,” said the superintendent.

Both laughed. Andersson turned serious then. “Speaking of cop intuition. . because Torsson threatened Birgitta, I’ve asked her not to stay at her apartment this weekend. She must have been feeling jumpy, because she complied. Really. She’s staying with her mother in Alingsås for a few days.”

“You’re afraid that Shorty and Torsson might be our phantoms?”

“Well. . no. . but I don’t want them tramping around in this shit. They’re stirring things up!”

From many years of working with Andersson, she knew what he was getting at. Maybe Shorty and Bobo Torsson didn’t have a thing to do with the von Knecht case. They were troubling elements, though, and the police couldn’t just ignore them. Shorty was too well known to the force for that. Suddenly, she had an idea.

“What if I tried to ferret out something useful on Bobo Torsson?”

“There should be something on him. Birgitta is stone certain that he was high as a kite. Go check with Narcotics, see what they’ve got.”

The only person she could find in the International Narcotics Division was unknown to her, a relative rookie. He muttered that he had tons of things to do, but promised to get back to her on Monday morning. There wasn’t much else she could do just now. She wrote a report about her surveillance of Sylvia von Knecht and decided to go home. It was almost five, and she was tired, but pleased with her day. And she looked forward to the rest of the evening.