Helene Tursten - Detective Inspector Huss

Now a red flame glowed in the depths of his one visible eye. The effect was weird against the surrounding purple swelling. She understood him. There was a black depth within her from which voices whispered, Revenge! Murder! Retribution! Forbidden and meaningless thoughts. She straightened up and forced a smile.

“I’ll come back tomorrow and tell you what’s going on with the investigation. Take care of yourself.”

AT HOME there were wild scenes of joy with Sammie, and he was also given a brief stroll to pee while Krister fixed lunch. She was allowed to pick anything she wanted. It was pasta with Gorgonzola sauce and a tomato and basil salad. They spoke about everything except yesterday’s events. She couldn’t face it. The black hole was too big, the voices too insistent. Krister understood and talked about other things.

“What was that about Tommy having dinner here tomorrow?”

“He had such a strong reaction when I told him about Jenny. He wants to talk to her. He went on and on about it being everyone’s responsibility and that all skinheads are our children. Krister, I think we should let him take this up with Jenny! It can’t do any harm, anyway. He’s the only cop I know who works actively for Amnesty International. He’s so involved.”

He nodded, noticing that she was eating unusually little. He secretly scrutinized her. Normally she pulsated with energy, but now her vitality and power seemed diminished. They had known each other for sixteen years, but he had never seen her like this before.

The telephone rang. It was Sven Andersson. He wondered how she was feeling and whether she was able to come down to headquarters.

“I’ll drive you, dear. Then call me when you’re ready to come home and I’ll pick you up,” said Krister. It would be good for her to have something else to think about. Although sitting and looking at photos of the ones who had beat her up less than twenty-four hours earlier was probably not the best distraction, of course.

THE SUPERINTENDENT and Tommy were waiting for her. Before them on the table lay closed folders of criminal records. Andersson patted one and said, “We’ll talk first. A lot has happened in the past twenty-four hours. Especially for you. How are you doing?”

“Well, so-so,” Irene replied. “I was lucky. It’s worse for Jimmy.”

“I talked to the hospital an hour ago. He has to stay there at least another night. But we have to talk about this damned mess of an investigation. As I said, a lot has happened. We’ve got Narcotics involved with Billdal. First they give us a lousy little assistant, and then the whole division comes and takes over!”

“Sven, please. Don’t call Jimmy ‘a lousy little assistant.’”

“Hmm. It turns out that International has had a motorcycle gang on the west side of Göteborg under surveillance for several months. They’re suspected of smuggling in large quantities of narcotics via Holland and Denmark. These scumbags are connected to the Hell’s Angels, the gang that you and Jimmy ran into. They call themselves … ‘Ded skvadron n-o one.’”

She understood that he meant “Death Squadron No. 1.” Without laughing she said, “I wonder if they can spell it. What did the Narcs find out at the cottage in Billdal?”

Tommy took over. “Actually quite a bit. The grenade you talked about yesterday left a small crater. The door of the cottage was broken in. We found some pizza boxes and empty beer cans in the kitchen. In the little bedroom there was a bed, and on it was a brand-new down sleeping bag. On the floor was a plastic box and a receipt from Allsport on Södra Vägen dated last Friday. Today we checked with the staff at the sporting goods store and it turned out that Bobo Torsson bought it.”

“Excellent! But you’ll have to excuse someone who was just hit hard on the head-what does this all mean? Von Knecht? Pirjo and the murder bomb? Shorty, Bobo, and Hell’s Angels?”

Both the superintendent and Tommy stared at her for a long time. Finally Tommy said, “And it gets even messier. We knew about it yesterday, but didn’t want to tell you. We didn’t want to upset you. Bobo Torsson is dead.”

“Torsson is dead? Keep going, before I fall over!”

“Remember the car bomb in the parking lot at the Delsjön golf course early yesterday morning?”

Was it really only yesterday? It felt like several years ago, but she nodded to show that she was following. She began to understand the reason for Andersson’s restrained agitation when he’d come to see her at the hospital.

Tommy said dramatically, “The techs found parts of a body, including a finger. The fingerprint shows that it was Bobo Torsson who was blown sky-high! And the car turned out to be Torsson’s.”

She wondered vaguely why the superintendent quickly interjected, “A red Toyota Corolla.”

“Give me strength!” was Irene’s only, but spontaneous, comment.

Andersson took over and nodded in assent. “Yeah, that’s what I said too. ‘Holy shit,’ I said. How are we going to make any sense of this? But now the Narcs have agreed to join the investigation. Which in all honesty is lucky for us, because this is starting to get out of control!”

“What kind of bomb was it?” Irene asked.

Tommy gave her a rundown of the details. “A pipe bomb. In a briefcase that exploded when the briefcase was opened. The iron pipe was the same type used on Berzeliigatan, but much smaller. Svante thinks the type of pipe is interesting. They’re old threaded drainpipes of different diameters. Modern ones are made of plastic, so they’re no good for making bombs.”

“Do we know what Bobo was cooking up with the Hell’s Angels?”

“No. On Friday he bought a sleeping bag and headed out to the summer cottage. He probably knew we wanted to talk to him about the attack on Birgitta. We don’t know what he was up to on Saturday and Sunday. But on Monday morning, at six o’clock on the dot, he was blown to bits by a bomb in his car!”

Irene looked just as confused as she felt when she asked, “Fatso thought that Bobo had split with the bread! What bread , I have to ask. Then he got the idea that Bobo had squealed and set us on the trail out to Billdal. While they ‘sat and waited with their pants down,’ as he expressed it. What did he mean by that?”

Tommy shrugged his shoulders. “Good questions. I don’t have any good answers. We know that the biker gang hadn’t been at Bobo’s cottage for very long. At most a few hours. On the other hand, we found plenty of traces of them in the summer cabins a few hundred meters away. They obviously stayed there a few days. We’re still looking into things, although now Narcotics has taken over. But we do know one thing: how they knew that you were on the way.”

“I’d really like to know that!”

“They had set up an electric eye by the road, hidden in the lumber pile. When you crossed the beam an alarm went off inside the house.”

“But why?”

“My theory is that they wanted to be forewarned in case anyone showed up, because they were busy with things that absolutely could not be seen by strangers. Actually, I can’t imagine any activity of theirs that outsiders might see. Except when they ride around in big gangs on their choppers and look generally terrifying.”

So it hadn’t done them any good to turn off their flashlights and stumble blindly through the dark. Again the feeling of total helplessness came over her. She tried to control it and said matter-of-factly, “So we could have been struck down when we got to the summer cabins. Why weren’t we?”

“They must have wanted to know who you were.”

“I think I need some coffee before I look my Hell’s Angels in the eyes. Even if it’s only in mug shots.”