Detective Inspector Huss: A Huss Investigation set in Sweden, Vol. 1 (20 page)

“Four. Göte Larsson took off. The kids haven’t seen him in two years. Maybe he’s at sea. He’s a sailor.”

“But he and Pirjo are still married?”

“Yep. The little boys, Juha and Timo, were at home. They have the flu. Pirjo hasn’t been heard from since Wednesday afternoon.”

“So who’s taking care of the boys?”

“Marjatta. She’s thirteen and is used to taking care of her brothers.”

“Does Pirjo usually disappear like this?”

“No, it’s never happened before. Marjatta says there isn’t any other man. I checked with the Angered Police and called all the emergency rooms. Not a thing. We should probably report her missing.”

“Yes, we probably should. You’ll have to look for her, Hannu. It definitely seems strange. Why should the von Knechts’ cleaning woman disappear at the same time he’s murdered and his office is bombed? She must have seen something last Monday when she was there cleaning. By the way, wasn’t her daughter with her?”

“Yes, she was.”

“Thirteen, you said?”

“Right.”

Andersson thought about it. He turned again to Hannu. “Did she hear or see anything of interest last Monday?”

“No. But her Finnish is hard to understand.”

“Are there different kinds of Finnish?”

“Yes, Pirjo and the kids come from northern Karelia. From Joensuu. I’m from Övertorneå. Different dialects, almost a different language.”

He was interrupted by a knock on the door. The techs had arrived, and there was a short pause while they greeted everyone and chairs were found for them. They’d already eaten, so they declined the remnants of pizza that Irene and Birgitta offered them. They did want coffee though.

After everyone had settled down, Hannu continued, unperturbed. “Pirjo doesn’t take a newspaper or listen to the Swedish news. She didn’t know that von Knecht was dead. She went to the von Knechts’ place, as she does every Wednesday. There she was met by the techs, heard about the murder, and went home. According to the boys she got home at eleven-thirty. She doesn’t have a car, but always takes the bus or streetcar. Marjatta came home from school at three-thirty. Pirjo made dinner. After five she said she had to go out and do some extra cleaning, but she didn’t say where. She hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”

There was a moment’s silence in the room. It was as though everyone had to catch their breath after this unexpectedly long speech from Hannu. Andersson was the first to recover. He asked, “Do you know how long Pirjo and the kids have lived in Sweden?”

“Three years.”

“And Pirjo has never disappeared like this before?”

“No.”

Andersson looked genuinely worried. What did Pirjo’s disappearance mean? Was it a coincidence? Had she gone underground voluntarily? Was she threatened? From pure instinct the superintendent felt that this had something to do with the von Knecht case. He slammed his hand on the table.

“Hannu, you’ll have to pull out all the stops. We have to get hold of Pirjo! Damn it, she can’t just disappear like this, with three kids to take care of! She must have seen something last Monday. Lean on her daughter a little more.”

He reflected for a moment, but couldn’t think of anything else to do to find Pirjo.

“Now we’ve got a homicide, a bombing, and a missing person to investigate. And we don’t know if there’s any connection or if they’re all sheer coincidences. But I have a feeling they’re related,” he said grimly.

He took a deep breath, got up, and paced back and forth at the end of the table. Moving around usually cleared his mind. Just now his head felt chaotic.

“Getting back to von Knecht’s murder. Hannu, did you get hold of the illegitimate son and his mom?”

“Since I was in Angered, I asked a pal from the academy for help. A detective from Stockholm. He’ll call us tomorrow.”

“Can’t he call you at home tonight?”

“No. I haven’t gotten a phone put in yet.”

“You mean you just moved to Göteborg, and not merely to General Investigations?”

“That’s right.”

Everyone was waiting for more, but nothing came. When Andersson realized this, he moved on.

“Irene, you still have to talk to the car dealer tomorrow. You might as well wait for the call from Stockholm too. Then Hannu can get going right away with the search for Pirjo.”

Irene gave Hannu a questioning look. He nodded, and the shadow of a smile passed over his face. He was actually quite a handsome guy. And no wedding ring. But about as forthcoming as a sphinx. She quickly put a question to him.

“What’s your pal’s name in Stockholm?”

“Veiko Fors. Detective Inspector.”

Andersson was very near asking whether there was a secret Finnish information network within the police corps, but reason prevailed. It’s not good to have every question answered. Instead he turned to Birgitta.

“Birgitta, you help Hannu search for Pirjo. It’s a top priority. Do we have a description?”

Hannu nodded. “About a hundred and fifty-five centimeters tall. Her daughter doesn’t know how much she weighs, but says she’s fat. Blond, shoulder-length hair. Thirty-two years old. She cleans part time at a newspaper kiosk. She’s on welfare. I talked to the welfare office since they needed to know that Pirjo has disappeared. They promised to keep an eye on the kids.”

Fredrik raised his hand politely, wanting to ask a question.

“So she has plenty of money then? I mean, welfare plus legal and illegal wages, the whole thing?”

Hannu leafed through his notebook, found what he was looking for, and rattled off: “Half-time wages as cleaning woman, forty-three hundred kronor, plus welfare and rent and subsidies for the children. After taxes, forty-one hundred and ten kronor a month, which has to cover the rest of the rent, food, and clothes for four people. The welfare office had all the figures. She needs the illegal jobs.”

Irene looked pensive and asked to speak. “I wonder how many hours a week she worked for the von Knechts? Even if it was three days, I think it was only a matter of a few hours at a time. Should I check it out?”

“Yes, call your dear little friend Sylvia and ask her.”

Andersson chuckled, pleased with his joke. Irene had a guilty conscience. Was it so obvious how much she disliked Sylvia? At the same time she felt she understood the woman to some degree and maybe even had a certain sympathy for her. It couldn’t have been much fun being Richard von Knecht’s wife.

Andersson slapped his palm on his knee. “No, now I want a coffee break before Malm and Ljunggren take over with their hot technical clues.”

He got up and went over to the coffee machine. A third pot had just finished brewing. The night was still young.

 

SVANTE MALM started talking as soon as he took his last sip of coffee and stuffed a pinch of snuff under the left side of his top lip.

“Today we started to sort out all the fingerprints. We found a total of twenty-two different sets. Thirteen are identified. Colleagues from the various locations where Saturday’s guests reside are helping us take their fingerprints so they won’t have to come all the way in to Göteborg. Hannu gave me prints from Pirjo’s daughter, and he also took Pirjo’s prints from the alarm clock by her bed. In von Knecht’s apartment there were no prints on the light switches in the hall, kitchen, and pantry, the bedroom on the top floor, the bathroom, or the light panel at the foot of the stairs leading to the top floor. These were all carefully wiped off. As were the door handles to the balcony and the outer door and the handle of the cleaver. On the other switch plates there are plenty of prints, mostly from Richard and Sylvia von Knecht. As well as a good number from Pirjo and her daughter. They were there on Monday to do the cleaning. Even the controls on the washing machine were wiped off.”

“Strange. Why would he wipe those off?” Andersson, who asked the question, looked baffled.

Irene replied quickly, “Maybe there’s a simple explanation. Perhaps it wasn’t von Knecht who put the wash in the machine, but our killer. Could I change the subject from the fingerprints and ask what kind of medicine bottles Sylvia von Knecht has in her drawer in the nightstand?”

Malm leafed through his papers. “Here it is. Four bottles of Stesolid, five milligrams. One was almost empty, the others unopened. Two bottles of Sobril, fifteen milligrams. One just started, the other unopened. One bottle of Rohypnol, one milligram, which was almost used up.”

Fredrik looked at a loss and asked, “What sort of medicines are those?”

“Stesolid and Sobril are sedatives. Rohypnol is a soporific. The prescriptions were written by three different doctors. I’m no doctor or expert, but it’s obvious that there’s a drug abuse problem here,” said Svante Malm.

The upshot of the rest of the technician’s report was that they hadn’t found anything noteworthy. Strands of hair and textile fibers had been cataloged, but since the apartment was extremely well cleaned they hadn’t found large quantities. Some hairs had already been identified as belonging to guests on Saturday night. Malm asked Hannu to take a hair from Pirjo’s hairbrush, and to ask Marjatta for a few of hers. There was a good chance that the hairs found in the pantry in front of the cleaning closet belonged to the mother and daughter. Saturday’s guests from Stockholm and Helsinki had to be contacted. He wound up his report, “The double bed upstairs had just been changed. Clean towels in the bathroom, but not in the sauna. There we found the towel that von Knecht had used.”

Irene thought about this. Finally she said aloud, “I don’t know how it is with you guys when you’re home with a cold, but I know how it is with my husband. He almost never gets sick, but if he gets the slightest cold he acts like he’s about to die. Used tissues all over the nightstand. Water glasses, bouillon cups, and snacks. Cough drop wrappers, newspapers, and other reading material all over the floor. Especially once he starts feeling better. But we haven’t found any sign of a mess from Richard von Knecht. It was clinically clean. I mean, he was home alone with a cold for a day after Pirjo and her daughter cleaned up after the party. He didn’t leave the apartment until one o’clock on Tuesday when he went out to Johanneshus with Valle Reuter.”

A thoughtful silence descended over the gathering. After a bit of self-examination most of them nodded in agreement.

Jonny snorted. “It doesn’t get like that at my place. My wife keeps it clean.”

“Precisely! She picks up after you. That’s exactly what I think happened with Richard too! He comes home to a shining clean apartment after his lunch with Valle. The bed is newly made, the towels changed, and the washing machine is running. No doubt the rooms he has been in for the past twenty-four hours have been vacuumed. The vacuum bag! Svante, did you find anything in it?”

“No. Just changed. Completely empty.”

“Then it’s possible that both the bag and the trash were dumped in the trash room. If it was the murderer who was in there. So far none of the other residents has admitted to being in the trash room at that time.”

Andersson had to interrupt. “But von Knecht must have noticed that it had been cleaned again. It stank of Ajax when we came in the door several hours later!”

“Yes, he must have been prepared for it. Used to it.”

The implications of this caused yet another thoughtful silence to descend.

“You mean that the killer cleaned the place before the murder?” Andersson looked dubious.

Irene shrugged. “Not necessarily the killer. But perhaps. At any rate someone wanted to remove all traces of being in the apartment. The careful cleaning that was done couldn’t have been done after the murder. It must have taken a couple of hours.”

Andersson was so excited that his ears were glowing. He exploded, “That can’t be right! Nobody would let someone in to erase all traces that he had been in the apartment. And then go out and eat a huge lunch—? Then home to his lovely sauna and whiskey and calmly let himself be knocked on the head by the party concerned! Anyway, there were no signs that two people had taken a sauna and spent a cozy time together.” He stopped to catch his breath.

Tommy Persson saw his chance to interject, “Wait a minute. I think Irene is on the right track. Could it be like this: Von Knecht let Pirjo in to clean! After what?”

Jonny lit up. “An orgy! That’s obvious. His wife was away, after all.”

Birgitta couldn’t pass up the opportunity. “Don’t judge everyone else by your own behavior!”

Andersson’s ears began to pale a little; he looked from Tommy to Irene. “Pirjo? Sure, why not? One idea is no more nuts than any other. But it doesn’t really fit. Why should she come back the day after she did a major cleaning? On the other hand, it explains why von Knecht was alone when he came home. She had already left. Hannu and Birgitta, you have to find Pirjo!”

Hannu made a calming gesture. Irene remembered something else she wanted to ask about.

“Svante, were there any sandwiches in the refrigerator? Sylvia told me that Richard was going to buy two sub sandwiches for supper.”

“No, it was almost empty. A little cheese and some eggs. A few beers and pickled herring. No fresh food.”

“I see. He told Sylvia on the phone when they spoke on Tuesday that he was going to bring home two subs, but I guess he forgot. They vanished in the alcohol and eucalyptus vapors,” she surmised dryly.

Malm nodded and went on, “If we move on to the fire site on Berzeliigatan, there is no doubt that it was caused by a firebomb. I spoke with arson investigator Pelle Svensson and he says there are definite traces of a large bomb. From what they’ve found so far, it seems to have been a devilish variant, a thick iron pipe filled with plastique. Apparently det cord was connected between the bomb and the gasoline cans.”

“How was the bomb detonated?”

“Pelle promised to let me know about that tomorrow. The proof hadn’t been secured yet, but he has a theory. That’s all he would tell me.”