Detective Inspector Huss: A Huss Investigation set in Sweden, Vol. 1 (21 page)

“And the body that was found?”

“We don’t know much about the man yet. Stridner promised to look at him early tomorrow morning. They told me at Pathology that she’s busy with a scientific symposium in forensic medicine. And the other pathologists are there too.”

Now it was Birgitta’s turn to ask a question. “What’s det cord?”

“Detonator cord. Most people who’ve been in the military know about it. Let me put it this way: If you wind this fuse around an ordinary pine tree and trigger the detonator, the fuse explodes and splits the trunk. Explosive fuse, you might call it.”

He sat down. A general surge of ideas and questions resulted, but they didn’t seem to be getting much farther. At nine o’clock the superintendent decided to adjourn.

“Okay. Let’s go home and get some shut-eye. We need to be clear headed all day tomorrow. You all know what you have to do tomorrow?”

They muttered and nodded.

“I’ll be here all day from seven to . . . as long as necessary in the evening. As soon as you find out something, give me a call. We’ll all meet here at eight on Monday morning. Weekend duty on Saturday is assigned to Tommy. Backup will be . . . Irene. Sunday duty, Hans. Backup will be . . . me.”

That was fine with her, Irene realized. Then she’d have Sunday off. On Saturday night she and Krister would have a real cozy evening. Great. Suddenly she noticed how tired she was.

EXCEPT FOR Sammie’s happy snuffling and small yips, it was completely quiet in the house, even though it was only shortly after ten. The dog’s coat was getting shaggy; it was time to have him groomed. But it would have to wait until this investigation was over. Or at least until things calmed down. She felt a pang of guilty conscience. Sammie was a lovely dog, but nobody really had time for him anymore. Everyone had taken on too many work, school, and leisure-time activities. He had his doggy pals, of course, at the dog-sitter’s. To compensate him a little and to soothe her guilty conscience, she took him out on an evening walk.

From the street she saw that there was a light on in Katarina’s room. She was lying on her bed reading or else she had fallen asleep with the light on. Before she went to bed, Irene would have to go in and turn it off.

Actually Krister’s schedule was ideal. He always worked late on Thursdays, until midnight. Then either Friday or Saturday was a late night too. Every third weekend he had both Saturday and Sunday off. When the twins were little, her mother had taken over when his schedule and her overtime conflicted. But now the girls were big and Grandma hadn’t needed to come over as often during the past three years. The passage of time works for the benefit of parents of small children.

She walked along smiling to herself, lost in her thoughts. That’s why she was totally unprepared when Sammie suddenly barked and hurled himself at a figure slipping into the deep shadows next to the garage.

“GOOD MORNING, SWEETIE. YOU look like a disaster zone.”

“Thank you, dear. That’s just the sort of comment that makes my day!”

Irene angrily snatched the bath towel he was about to dry himself off with and flicked the towel into the spray of the shower. A little revenge is still revenge, even if it’s childish. Krister laughed annoyingly.

“Okay, okay. So it’s one of those mornings. About time for your period?”

That did it. “No, but I’ve worked more than fifty hours in four days! And yesterday Jenny made a point of seeing that I threw in the towel for good!”

“Did we get off on a towel thing for some reason?”

“Oh, go jump in the lake!”

Mad as a hornet she climbed into the shower. When she turned around she saw Krister take her towel and walk out the door, whistling. Now she was the one with no towel. There was no justice in the world. “Just one of those days.” Or was it “things”? Was it Frank Sinatra who sang that song? Didn’t make a damned bit of difference which old fart it was. It was a rotten day even before it got started.

She felt a little better after the shower, but still spoiling for a fight. Krister wasn’t the main adversary, but he’d get his. First she had to take on Jenny.

Her other daughter was sitting at the breakfast table.

“Where’s Jenny?” Irene asked.

“She says she’s sick,” said Katarina, who was absorbed in the front page of
GP.
Holding the newspaper open in front of her face, she asked, “Mamma, were you there when they found the guy who burned up?”

Krister was in a teasing mood. “If he was burned up, they couldn’t have found him, could they?”

“Ha ha. Very funny. Don’t be such a konk,” was his daughter’s comment.

Krister looked deflated. Irene rejoiced to the depths of her black soul at his confusion. He obviously didn’t know what a “konk” was, but didn’t want to ask Katarina and then reveal that he wasn’t up on the latest teenage slang. He raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Irene, who merely smiled sweetly. With her fangs bared.

She turned to Katarina. “No, I never saw the guy who died in the fire. Thank God! What do you mean, Jenny’s sick?”

“You’ll have to ask her. Not me. I’m fine!” Katarina gave her a fierce glare. “Just one of those . . .”

Irene sighed. And decided to change her tactics. It wasn’t good to be at odds with the whole world. In a weary tone she said, “It must have been last night that gave me the willies. I went out for a walk with Sammie right after ten. I don’t think we were out for more than half an hour. When I came around the garage Sammie jumped at somebody slipping behind the corner. I almost had a heart attack, I was so scared! It was Jenny. If I hadn’t had the dog with me, I never would have seen her. But of course he knew her scent from far away.”

Krister turned at once to Katarina. “What was she doing out at ten-thirty on a school night? Katarina!”

She was staring hard at the newspaper and pretending not to hear. But two pairs of staring parental eyes are hard to ignore. Finally she had to answer. “She was out playing. With the band,” she said sullenly.

Irene sighed again. “Yes, that’s what she told me too. But she has a big hickey on her neck. And she won’t say who gave it to her.”

Katarina sprang up, flinging the paper away. “That’s her own damned business!” Furious, she stomped out of the kitchen.

Krister’s playful teasing mood vanished instantly. He gave Irene a serious look. “Forgive me, but I didn’t know anything about this. You were all asleep when I came home at midnight.”

“Exhaustion. Exhaustion pure and simple.”

“Irene, I’ll go up and talk to Jenny. Eat your breakfast in peace and quiet.”

With a sob in her throat she threw her arms around him. She felt a deep gratitude to fate or to whoever it might be who had given her such a wonderful husband. She herself was a whining wife and bad mother who couldn’t handle a job, husband, home, and children. And a dog, she was reminded when Sammie’s ruffled mustaches appeared in the doorway.

“HELLO! DOES anyone know where Hannu Rauhala is? He’s got a call from Stockholm.”

Irene gave a start. Stockholm! It must be the inspector Hannu knew. She dashed for the intercom.

“Hello! Irene here. Switch it over to me. Hannu asked me to handle this matter.”

Not exactly true, but she didn’t have time to be entirely truthful. While she was trying to pull off her jacket, the phone started ringing insistently. Breathlessly she lunged for the receiver, with one arm still in her sleeve.

“Inspector Irene Huss.”

“Hi, Veiko Fors, Stockholm Crime Police. I’m looking for Hannu.”

“I know. We’re both working on this case. We’re understaffed so Hannu asked me to take your call today. He’s out searching for a material witness who disappeared.”

“If Hannu is on the job, you’ll have that witness pretty soon.”

There wasn’t a trace of Finnish intonation in Veiko Fors’s voice. He actually sounded like a guy from the south side of Stockholm.

“Yes, he’s a dynamo, all right. The von Knecht case has just been expanded, as you may have seen in the papers,” Irene said.

“Yes, it looks like you’ve got shit by the boxful. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t got plenty too.”

“Shit by the boxful?”

“Exactly. Jonas Söder is an artist, lives on Fjällgatan. It’s impossible to get hold of him. I called several times and even drove over there and rang the bell on my way home last night. Zip. Mona Söder also drew a blank. I got hold of the old lady’s home phone number and she answered at around five. But when I introduced myself and started to explain that we needed to talk to her and Jonas regarding the von Knecht homicide, she totally flipped out! Refused to talk to me. Says she’ll only come down to talk to somebody who’s in charge of the investigation. So I’m bouncing her back to you in G-borg. Sorry!”

Irene wrote down the address and phone number of Jonas and Mona Söder. Veiko also had Mona’s number at work. He told her that Mona Söder was listed in the phone book as “personnel director.”

Dejectedly she hung up the phone. How would she solve this? There was no time to think about it, because the phone rang again.

“Inspector Irene Huss.”

“Hi there! Robert Skytter here!”

The name didn’t mean a thing to her, but she recognized the trumpeting tone. The car dealer from Volkswagen. His youthful voice sounded like a commercial for energizing cereal flakes or some ginseng preparation. Maybe she ought to buy a bottle of ginseng. Did it come in a five-kilo size? A new trumpet blast shocked her out of her reveries.

“Hello! Are you still there?”

“What? Yes. I was busy with something else. Excuse me. Listen, Robert, I called you about the fact that Charlotte von Knecht was down there picking up her new car Tuesday evening. Is that correct?”

“That’s right!”

“When did she arrive?”

“Well, after four, maybe closer to four-thirty.”

“What time did she leave?”

There was a brief pause. There wasn’t the same self-confident zing in his voice when he replied. “Don’t know for sure. Right after five, I should think.”

“Not
before
five?”

“No, I’m quite sure of that. I remember hearing the five o’clock news on the radio.”

“Weren’t you selling a car? How did you have time to listen to the radio?”

“Well, we were taking a test drive in Charlotte’s new car. She was feeling a little insecure about driving it. I was giving her some advice.”

“Didn’t she have a Golf before?”

“Yes, but this one is much newer. More features. For instance, a more powerful engine, hundred and fifteen horsepower—”

“Thanks, but I already have a car. By the way, how old are you?”

Now there was a long pause. “What does that have to do . . . twenty-two.”

“Married or living with someone?”

“Neither. How about yourself? Are you trying to pick me up or . . . ?”

Her response caught her by surprise, but she couldn’t stop it. The laughter surged up from her chest and exploded from her lips. She had to put down the phone. She leaned over the desk as tears of laughter made even more spots on the already soiled blotter on the desk. She ended up with a cramp in her diaphragm. With a powerful effort she pulled herself together, wiped her nose and the corners of her eyes with her sleeve, and picked up the receiver.

“Hello, excuse me, Robert. But it was just too funny. I could almost be your mother. If I’d only started in time.”

“That’s cool. I’m glad I can make somebody happy. Although I do prefer mature women.”

“Like Charlotte?”

“Charlotte is really something special. And fun. Nice as hell.”

“And you’re sure you heard the five o’clock news while you were in the car?”

“Yes. Even though I wasn’t sitting in the car then. I had just gotten out. Charlotte wanted to see how to remove the spare tire. The car door was open, so we heard the news. Charlotte said something like, ‘Is it five o’clock already?’ Well, then we checked to see if she had all her papers and everything. Then she left.”

“So it would have been about ten after five. Or more correctly, seventeen-ten.”

“Yes, it must have been.”

“Thanks, Robert. Please forgive the laughing fit, but you really made my day.”

“No problem. Drop by if you ever need a good car.”

Well, damned if a faint clearing on the horizon didn’t herald a clear day. A little sun never hurt. It hadn’t been seen in almost two weeks. Irene felt renewed energy flowing through her body. Wasn’t that called “comic relief”? Screw the ginseng; a little flirting on the phone works wonders with ladies approaching forty.

Andersson was sitting in his office. When Irene knocked lightly on the door frame he jumped in his chair.

“Jesus, you scared me!”

“Sitting there trying to think? It smells like something’s burning.” Irene sniffed the air.

He gave her a weary look. “How do you manage to be so cheerful in the morning? And
smells like burning
is the right expression. The fire on Berzeliigatan doesn’t seem to fit in with von Knecht’s murder. Yet it was incredibly convenient. And now the cleaning woman has disappeared.”

“I spoke to Hannu’s pal in Stockholm, Veiko Fors.”

“So how were things going for him?”

“Nothing yet. He had shit by the boxful.”

“Shit by the boxful . . . are you nuts?”

Irene laughed and even got Andersson to smile a little.

“Those were his exact words. Stockholm slang, you know. The shit is that Jonas Söder can’t be found. He’s apparently an artist. His mamma went crazy when Veiko Fors said he wanted to talk to both of them regarding von Knecht’s murder. She refuses to speak to anyone but the detective in charge of the investigation.”

Andersson looked out his overgrown window thoughtfully. The poor lily hanging in its macramé holder had given up the ghost long ago. He sat in silence for a long time. Without looking at Irene, he said pensively, “Besides myself, there’s only you and Jonny here right now. Jonny is talking to Ivan Viktors. They may have already started by now. How are you doing?”