Detective Inspector Huss: A Huss Investigation set in Sweden, Vol. 1 (33 page)

“Are you sure?”

“No, not at all! That’s why I wanted to cool it and not say anything in front of the others. As you know, I have a studio apartment in Högsbo. My closest neighbor on the same floor is a sweet little old lady. She’s eighty-three, but sharp as a tack. It was late before I got home last night. It was almost eleven-thirty. When I put my key in the lock my little neighbor opened her door. She had stayed up waiting for me and was very upset. We have an intercom at the street door. If you don’t have your key, you have to ring someone from the street and ask them to open it. Sometimes kids ring as a prank, but what happened on Saturday and Sunday went well beyond the usual. Someone stood there and pressed all the doorbells at once out of sheer rage. When my neighbors answered their intercoms they got an earful of swearing and abusive language! My neighbor heard several times that the voice wanted to get hold of ‘that fucking whore who calls herself a cop.’ She quite correctly drew the conclusion that it had something to do with me, since I’m the only cop in the building. This occurred around seven on Saturday morning and at nine on Sunday night.”

“Did anyone see the ‘voice’?”

“No, that’s just it. He drove his car right up to the front door. Above it there’s a little roof to protect you from the rain and snow. I live on the third floor. That’s why my neighbor never managed to see more than a brief glimpse of a man climbing into his car and screeching off down the street. He was tall and thin. The car was big and red, she was sure of that.”

“And now you want us to check whether Torsson has a red car?”

“Right.”

“Why couldn’t you mention this in the conference room?”

She avoided looking at him directly and shifted her gaze around the room before she replied. “Because there’s someone in our department who’s tall and thin and has a red Volvo.”

He knew at once who she meant, and he wished he could break out in a hearty yet indulgent laugh and give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. But the laugh froze in his throat because he couldn’t rule it out as completely impossible.

“Jonny. You mean Jonny,” he said glumly.

“Yes.”

There was a long silence. Finally she took a deep breath and said, “That’s why I’m staying with Mamma for a while longer. But you’re the only one I’m telling. Nobody else. You have the address.”

She turned on her heel and strode out. He nodded to the closed door. THE ARSON technician and the others had already taken their seats when the superintendent came in. He pretended not to notice their inquiring glances, but signaled to Pelle to get started.

Pelle began by telling them that the theory about the devil bomb was stronger than ever. It had been a real charge with explosives in an iron pipe, blasting cap, pentyl fuse, and gasoline containers, just as he originally suspected. The bomb was placed on top of a bureau in the entryway to von Knecht’s office. The reason they knew this was partially due to Sylvia von Knecht. Before she drove up to Marstrand on Friday night, she had helped Pelle make a rough sketch of the apartment and its furnishings.

Tommy raised his hand before he asked his question. “A bomb like that, is it hard to make? Does it take a long time?”

“For someone who knows how, it goes pretty fast. No more than an hour. The problem is getting hold of all the components. You can’t just go into Domus department store and buy blasting caps, plastique explosive, and pentyl fuses. The other stuff is easier to get hold of. To continue with what happened Wednesday night, I have to explain more about the detonator mechanism. The outer door to the office apartment was really solid. It opened outward. A thin steel wire was stretched between the handle on the door and a pin on the spring of the blasting cap. When the door was pulled open by the person we first thought was a young man, but we now know was a woman, the pin was pulled out and the spring struck the blasting cap.
Boom
! We know the result. It’s only thanks to the solid outer door that there was anything left of the body at all. She was flung backward and was probably knocked unconscious instantly. The reason she was lying in a semiprone position when we found her is probably because she slipped down when the door swung back. We found this in the outer door.”

You could hear a pin drop when the arson technician pulled a thick plastic bag from his pocket. There was a blackened key ring inside.

“And yesterday I found this, at the spot where the body was found.”

Like a magician he pulled another bag out of his pocket. It also contained a key ring, but it was much smaller with only three keys on it. He shook the smaller ring.

“Two of these are car keys. To a Porsche. The third fits a garage door on Molinsgatan, where the von Knecht family keeps their cars.”

They all felt the draft as the phantom passed by. His breath stank of death and ashes when he laughed right in their faces.

Andersson’s eyes were popping out of their sockets like red Ping-Pong balls. His face was turning purple and his breathing was labored as he wheezed. Nobody moved. They all prayed silently that the superintendent wouldn’t have a stroke.

Pelle was disconcerted. He could sense the charged atmosphere, but he wasn’t quite sure what the cause was. So he kept silent and waited for Andersson’s comments on the discovery of the keys.

Andersson tried hard to pull himself together. It wasn’t easy, since even he realized that all the hypotheses and theories he had been working on had dissolved at a single blow. Finally he wheezed resolutely, “Somebody is screwing with us. Have you managed to indentify where the other keys on the ring go?” He asked even though, inside, he already knew the answer.

The arson tech nodded. “Yes. Two of them are to the office door on Berzeliigatan. Two are to von Knecht’s apartment on Molinsgatan, and the last two are to the summerhouse at Marstrand. Three are deadbolt keys and three are a normal Yale type. Each door has a Yale lock and a deadbolt.”

“We’ve always said that both these sets of keys had to be somewhere. And now they’ve both been found at the same impossible place, for Christ’s sake!”

Andersson put into words what everyone was feeling. The arson tech looked bewildered, but decided to go on with his report. He turned a page in his notebook and continued, “The problem right now is to get into a safe that’s set inside the wall. It’s not that large, but it’s in a tricky location, since there’s no floor to stand on. We’re trying to do it by standing on a skylift. We’ll have to drill around the safe and try to lift it out with a standalone.”

Several of the group said simultaneously, “A what?”

Pelle grinned and explained, “A standalone. To put it simply, it’s a big forklift truck on which you can raise the lifting fork very high while the truck stands ‘alone’ on the ground, so to speak.”

A weighty silence descended. It was Irene who finally broke it.

“So the situation is apparently as follows: Pirjo had the keys to von Knecht’s two apartments and to his car. Why in the world would he give her these keys? Sylvia told me that Pirjo didn’t have any keys, that she was always let in to the apartments by someone in the family. And as far as the car is concerned, I wonder whether Pirjo even had a driver’s license. We’ll have to check on that. We know she didn’t have a car. She always took the bus or streetcar. If the car keys were lying where we found Pirjo’s body, did it mean that she had the keys on her? In her pocket, for instance?”

“Yes,” the technician said, “unless someone dropped the keys outside the door and they wound up underneath . . . what was her name? ... Pirjo, when she was knocked unconscious by the blast. But it doesn’t seem very likely.”

The superintendent recalled what Hannu had said a couple of days earlier and put in, “How could she have gotten the keys?”

Irene tried to think clearly before she replied. “On Monday she was at Molinsgatan with her daughter. She could have taken them then. In that case, I wonder where she found them. After all, Sylvia von Knecht denied the existence of a fourth key ring. Although then the question is, why did she wait until Wednesday evening? Why not Monday or Tuesday evening?”

“Her kids got sick and had a high fever,” said Hannu.

“You might be right about that. A mother has plenty to do when her kids get the flu. And two of Pirjo’s kids had it. But Marjatta was home and could take care of her sick brothers when Pirjo was away for a few hours. On the other hand, maybe they were so sick that they took priority over her little break-in.”

None of them thought that really jibed with the picture they had of Pirjo. Tommy thought out loud, “It doesn’t make sense. On Monday evening Pirjo could have been quite sure that Richard von Knecht wouldn’t be at his office apartment. He had a cold, which she had seen for herself when she was there cleaning that day. On Tuesday evening she wouldn’t have been as sure. No, from a logical standpoint she should have chosen Monday evening. Keep in mind that she didn’t know von Knecht was dead until Wednesday morning!”

Irene nodded agreement and went on, “Maybe she stole the keys, but she chickened out. Not until she found out that von Knecht was dead did she think it was risk-free. Sylvia told me that Pirjo thought her pay was too low. Maybe she was thinking of taking some items and selling them, because she needed money. Although I doubt that Pirjo knew where to go to sell antiques and art. Richard von Knecht didn’t surround himself with off-the-shelf items.”

Fredrik had a suggestion. “Could it have been a put-up job? Let’s say that somebody knows that von Knecht has a particularly valuable item in his apartment, so he asks Pirjo to steal the keys. And then to go into the apartment and steal the thing.”

After not saying a word for a long time, Birgitta broke her silence. “Imagine if someone gave the keys to Pirjo so, unsuspecting, she would go over there and trigger the bomb.”

Irene felt an icy chill even though the air in the room was heavy and stuffy. Slowly she said, “It would be terrible to deliberately send a mother of three to certain death. And to risk the lives of the other renters in the building.”

Andersson couldn’t drop the matter of the keys, but kept on working at it. “But what about the car keys! Explain those God damn car keys! Why give the keys to a Porsche to someone who probably can’t drive?”

Nobody had a good explanation, so he continued, “Do we have any witness who saw Pirjo arrive at Berzeliigatan?”

Tommy tried to hide his embarrassment when he answered the question. “No, we didn’t know we were supposed to ask if anyone had seen a fat little woman arrive at the building. The whole time we assumed it was a time bomb, with the perpetrator sitting in safety far from the site. I’m going to meet the woman who has the hair salon on the ground floor today, and the woman who lives with her daughter in Mölndal. I’ll probably have to wait a while to talk to her husband.”

“Okay,” Andersson said. “That will be your assignment for today. Hannu, you check on whether Pirjo had a driver’s license. See if you can get anything else out of the daughter. Keep in touch with Pathology and contact me as soon as the forensic odontologists are done with their examination.”

He looked around and his gaze fell on Hans Borg, who true to habit was sitting dozing in his chair.

“Borg!”

Everyone in the room jumped, especially Borg.

“Wake up! You have to go out and do some legwork. Go around to all the key makers downtown and try to find out where and when the keys were made. I want to know everything about those keys! Also find out whether this is the only spare key to the car and the garage.”

Borg nodded and stifled a yawn.

“Fredrik and Jonny, you go and stake out Shorty, at least until we nab Bobo Torsson. Is anyone on Berzeliigatan right now?”

Fredrik nodded. “An old lady from General Investigations, Eva Nyström. Hannu arranged for her.”

Irene’s first reaction was surprise and then indignation. Eva Nyström was the same age she was.
Old lady, my foot!

Andersson gave Hannu an approving nod. “Fredrik and Jonny, take over from Eva Nyström and organize the search. So far it’s been quiet down there at the smoke shop, but I have a hunch that some kind of monkey business might be going on. Irene, you’ve already been in contact with the Narcs. You and I will go over there in an official capacity and inform them about our dear cousins. In other words, tell them we need help to figure out what those two are up to! Birgitta, dig into all the files we have on Bobo and Shorty. Somewhere there’s got to be a clue to where Torsson might be hiding out. We’ll all meet back here at seven-thirty tomorrow morning.”

 

THINGS DID not go smoothly between Superintendent Andersson and Assistant Superintendent Annika Nilsén in the International Narcotics Division. In vain she tried to explain that they didn’t have any personnel to spare for what in her eyes wasn’t a lead for Narcotics, but part of the investigation into the von Knecht case.

The superintendent, puffing up his cheeks, gave her a riveting glare, explaining without trying to conceal his anger that this was a matter of homicide, homicidal arson, and assault on a police officer. And since it all had to do with a known criminal who was previously mixed up in narcotics cases along with his small-time drug addict pal and cousin, it was definitely a matter for Narcotics!

An expression of infinite indulgence and patience came over Annika Nilsén’s weary face. “If all the crimes involving drugs and drug addicts were automatically assigned to us, you could rename the entire Göteborg Police Headquarters ‘the Narcs,’” she said quietly.

This wasn’t completely true, but close enough. Andersson knew it, but still was so furious that he looked like he was going to fling himself at the poor assistant superintendent. Into this charged atmosphere came the same young colleague who had helped Irene over the weekend with the information on Bobo Torsson.

Irene turned to him with a happy smile. “Well, hi there! And thanks for the help with Torsson.”