Helene Tursten - Detective Inspector Huss

Irene tried again. “Does the name Lasse ‘Shorty’ Johannesson mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“A huge guy around thirty-five.”

“No.”

Absentmindedly, Sylvia gathered up some fallen petals from a purple chrysanthemum that had dropped onto the dusty coffee table. Irritated, she swept the pile up and then seemed to forget both the petals and Irene at the same moment. Her shining eyes didn’t seem to notice her surroundings as she sat gazing into her own abysses. Irene would have given a lot to know what she saw. But a glance at Sylvia’s face made her less sure that she wanted to see it herself. The discussion about the key ring had made Sylvia retreat within herself. Irene had to get her to come out again. What might tempt her to start talking? A vague hunch told Irene that money could always get Sylvia to talk. Wasn’t that what Valle Reuter had said?

“Well, Sylvia, that insurance you once told me about. .”

She left the sentence unfinished on purpose to see if Sylvia would bite. At first she seemed not to have heard, but after a while she turned her head and gave Irene an unexpectedly sharp look.

“Insurance? Did I mention the insurance to you?”

“Yes, when we spoke on the telephone the first time. When you were in the psychiatric ward.”

“I don’t remember that. Maybe I did. They put me on a lot of medication, and I have very dim memories of those first few days.”

She took a deep breath and to Irene’s relief sat down in one corner of the angular sofa. She kicked off her Birkenstocks and, tucking her legs beneath her, started chewing on her chipped nail again. In a normal tone she said, “The insurance. That was probably the only thing Richard ever did for Henrik’s and my benefit. He explained to me that it’s a sort of retirement annuity. After he turned sixty, he could retire anytime he wanted and draw an annual income of a million kronor for ten years. But it’s also life insurance. If Richard died, Henrik and I would receive the same sum over ten years, to be divided between us.”

“So the insurance falls due with a survivors’ benefit?”

“The same as most retirement annuities.”

Henrik and Sylvia would each receive half a million per year over the next ten years. People have been murdered for less. Added to the rest of the fortune, maybe Valle Reuter was on the right track. If only mother and son hadn’t been down on the street, surrounded by witnesses, when Richard fell. Irene decided to proceed cautiously.

“But the rest of your husband’s assets and fortune, who inherits all of that?”

Now Sylvia was utterly calm. She looked a bit like a small Siamese cat that has just swallowed a goldfish.

“I do. But it’s extremely complicated. The lawyers are busy making sense of it all. They say it could take a long time. But the insurance money will start being paid out next month, with this month’s payment retroactive.”

It had to be a hallucination, but Irene thought she heard a whirring sound as the wheels turned in her brain. The key ring was forbidden territory, but the money and Bobo Torsson had gone well. Should she continue with Bobo?

“Bobo Torsson is also dead. You may have read in today’s paper that he was murdered early Monday morning. He was blown up in his car.”

Sylvia gave her an uninterested look. “Blown up? No. I’m not reading the papers very carefully right now. I can’t face it. I have enough to think about with everything that’s happened.”

“Do you know if Bobo and Charlotte were still seeing each other?”

“No idea. Charlotte likes to go out and be part of the hip scene.”

“Does Henrik accompany her when she goes out and gets into the swing of things?”

Uh-oh, the ice was cracking again. Sylvia put her feet down on the carpet and gave Irene a measured look. Abruptly she said, “Henrik does not enjoy going out. Not after his illness, which I told you about.”

Suddenly Irene was struck by an idea. “It was meningitis that Henrik suffered as a result, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“As a result of what?”

“A childhood illness.”

“Which childhood illness?”

“The mumps.”

There was nothing left of the little contented kitten, only a sorrowful mother huddled in the corner of the sofa. Something clicked in Irene’s mind. One of her male colleagues at the police academy got the mumps while they were attending Ulriksdal. Both his testicles were also affected, and they swelled up so grotesquely that he couldn’t walk. Unfortunately his name was Paul, and he was always called “Paul Fig-Ball” after that. At a party he later confided to Irene and Tommy that there was a great risk that he was now sterile. Apparently it wasn’t an unusual complication in adult men who got the mumps. Had this also happened to Henrik? It was a long shot, but she decided to try.

“It’s common for adult males to become sterile after having the mumps. Were Henrik’s testicles affected?”

Sylvia’s eyes widened with terror. With a horrible crash the ice shattered and she fell through. She hid her face in her hands and began to cry hysterically.

It took twenty minutes before she calmed down enough for Irene to consider her somewhat stable. But Sylvia refused to answer any more questions and stubbornly repeated, “You have to go now! I’m due at the seamstress at one o’clock to try on my dress for the funeral. Go! Go!”

IRENE HAD a lot to think about as she sat in a mediocre pizzeria a few blocks down the street gnawing on the “daily special.” It consisted of a serving of tough lasagne, along with some pitiful cabbage strips in vinegar. The ice water was lukewarm and the coffee looked like Sammie’s bathwater. Not even Irene could manage to drink it. But it didn’t really matter, because questions and facts were tumbling through her head. Sylvia was scared stiff when the spare keys were mentioned. She knew, or had an idea, who might have taken them. Or had they been given to someone? Why wouldn’t Sylvia talk about it? Charlotte von Knecht and Bobo Torsson were old friends and had worked together. She initiated the contact between him and her father-in-law, and then Torsson was able to rent the two apartments. Did they still see each other? Did it have any significance for the investigation? Was this the point of contact they had been looking for? Irene had a hard time believing it. Not in her wildest fantasy could she picture Bobo Torsson knocking down Richard von Knecht and throwing him off the balcony, fabricating the bomb on Berzeliigatan, and then blowing himself to kingdom come. The last maybe by mistake. It wasn’t even logical, since it didn’t answer the question of why.

Why would Bobo murder Richard von Knecht? Why would he destroy his own home and studio? Not to mention himself! Picturing Charlotte in any of these roles was even harder. She certainly wasn’t a bomb maker. But the fact that Bobo and Charlotte knew each other was interesting. Were they still friends? More than friends? It seemed to be time to have a talk with young Fru von Knecht. Henrik von Knecht had gotten the mumps as an adult, and subsequently meningitis. Had the mumps spread to his testicles? If so, was he sterile? Viewed in the light of this latest information, she thought that many of Sylvia’s odd reactions over the past few days became more understandable. If you know that your son is sterile, would you be glad to hear that your daughter-in-law is pregnant? And the follow-up question was possibly even more interesting: In that case, who was the father of Charlotte’s child? Why did Henrik react as he did? According to his own statement he was prepared to try to keep his shaky marriage together, “For the sake of the child and the survival of the family.” That didn’t make sense. Either he thought he was the father of the child, or else he didn’t care. But if he was sterile he must know it! And if he didn’t care, would he then be prepared to continue working on his relationship with Charlotte?