Detective Inspector Huss: A Huss Investigation set in Sweden, Vol. 1 (3 page)

From inside the examination room a loud wail was heard. “Don’t go, Henrik. Don’t leave me here!”

Henrik von Knecht closed the door and leaned his forehead against it for a moment. He straightened up quickly, took a deep breath, and followed the nurse. They were about the same height. But everything about the dark-skinned nurse that implied strength, warmth, and radiance seemed to be the exact opposite in Henrik von Knecht. He was indeed tall, but slightly stooped. His elegant topcoat hung loosely on his gaunt body. His blond hair was thin on top. To conceal this he combed his long shock of hair in front straight back. His face was angular. It was actually a pleasant face, but his pallor and the light-colored coat gave him an oddly washed-out appearance.

He walked up to Irene. His gruff voice rasped when he said expectantly, “Yes, what do you want?”

“My name is Detective Inspector Irene Huss. We would be very grateful if you would help us with something.”

“What’s that?”

“We need to borrow the key to your parents’ apartment.”

He jumped as if she had slapped him hard.

“The key? Why?”

“So we don’t have to call a locksmith in order to enable us to search the apartment. It’s a necessity in cases like this. It would be nice not to ruin the lock. Or the door.”

He looked as if he was thinking of protesting, but instead gritted his teeth and turned on his heel. Over his shoulder he said, “Mamma has the front door key in her handbag.”

He vanished into the examination room. Irene could hear an excited muttering of voices inside and loud sobbing. After almost five minutes Henrik von Knecht emerged. His face resembled an eroded marble statue. From inside the room Irene could hear a tense, shrill female voice: “. . . back the keys. Even if they’re . . .”

The flow of words was cut off as von Knecht resolutely pulled the door shut.

HENRIK VON KNECHT DIDN’T say a word during the five-minute car trip. He sat with his head bent forward, his forehead in his hands, and his elbows propped on his knees. Inspector Huss didn’t ask him to put on his seat belt, but let him sit there, lost in his grief, in silence.

When they turned onto Molinsgatan, Irene Huss saw that it wasn’t just Superintendent Andersson and the crime scene technicians who were gathered outside Richard von Knecht’s building. Two people she recognized quite well were squeezed into the doorway of the menswear store. She drove by them and turned left on Engelbrektsgatan. Huss lightly touched Henrik von Knecht’s arm, which made him jump as if she had wakened him.

“Where are we going?” he asked in confusion.

“I thought I’d drive around the neighborhood and park on Aschebergsgatan. There are two newspaper reporter guys waiting on the corner by the menswear store. Can we get into the building through a back courtyard and open the front door for the others from inside? That way you can ditch the hyenas,” she said.

A tense expression passed over his face, and he seemed to awaken. “Park here on the right side by Erik Dahlberg’s stairs. Take one of the two outer spots,” he directed.

They were lucky; one of the spots was vacant. Irene looked at his blood-flecked beige overcoat. She asked him to remain seated while she stepped out and opened the trunk. In it she had an old, greasy blue Helly Hansen jacket and her daughter’s black cap, embroidered with NY. She handed him the garments and said, “Take off your overcoat and put these on.”

He changed quickly inside the car, without revealing what he thought of his disguise.

They crossed the intersection at a brisk pace. This was the critical moment. She had to force herself not to look toward the corner fifty meters away. With strained composure they kept going for another twenty meters or so. Henrik von Knecht stopped at a massive wooden doorway, took a bundle of keys out of the pocket of his tailored trousers, and unlocked the door. One of the photographers poked his head around the corner, but he didn’t seem to react to the contrasts in von Knecht’s attire.

They slipped in through the doorway and wound up in a storage area. It was a combined bicycle and garbage room consisting of a passageway about twenty meters long equipped with locked doors at either end. Five green garbage cans stood close to the street entrance.

They hurried through the room, turned the lock of the inner door, and stepped into a small, square, back courtyard. It was dominated by a big tree in the center, and illuminated by an old-fashioned streetlight. Flower beds bordered the walls. On each wall there was a little entry door with a window, and each door was lighted by a bright exterior lamp. Henrik von Knecht strode directly to the one on the left, unlocked the door, and held it open for Irene Huss. He reached out his hand toward the glowing red button to turn on the stairway lights.

“Don’t turn on the lights! Or the reporters will see that something’s going on,” she snapped.

She took out her little high-intensity flashlight from the pocket of her poplin jacket. With the beam pointed downward she started up the five narrow steps, went through a low doorway, and stepped out into a large stairwell. In the beam of light the floor’s variegated marble gleamed. To her right she could see the light from an elevator window. She turned off the flashlight and they headed off toward the stairs, which led down to the front entrance. When she was opposite the elevator door she could see the upper part of the front door’s beautiful incised-glass pane. She took a few steps forward and glimpsed the heads of the superintendent and the techs outside. Cautiously she stepped to one side of the broad stairway, grabbed the carved banister, and glided down the ten steps to the front door. She padded across the soft carpet in the foyer, pulled open the door behind her colleagues, and loudly urged, “Hurry! Come inside before the ambulance chasers get here!”

“Hurry? How the hell are we going to do that when we’ve just pissed our pants?” asked Police Technician Svante Malm.

Superintendent Andersson later claimed that he had never been so close to a heart attack in all his life.

They slipped in through the door before the tabloid reporters at the corner figured out what was happening. Irene turned on the stairwell lights. The superintendent blinked his eyes angrily and snapped, “What the hell are you doing?”

Irene didn’t reply, but gazed up in wonder at the walls of the stairwell. The frescoes were amazing, with children romping among wood anemones and an allegorical figure of Springtime, flying in a cart drawn by huge exotic butterflies. It was all done in light, elegant, springlike pastels. On the opposite wall was a full Midsummer Eve celebration done in considerably richer and more intense tones. Grown-ups and children danced in the summer twilight, and the fiddler sawed away at his instrument for dear life. His face was shiny with sweat; his eyes glistened with the joy of making music.

“Carl Larsson did the paintings, in the early eighteen nineties.”

The police turned their faces to the top of the stairs, where the voice had come from. In his disguise, Henrik von Knecht looked undeniably bizarre. He peered down at the four officers and nodded to Irene before he continued.

“Inspector Huss was kind enough to help me get past the press. Shall we go upstairs?” He gestured toward the elevator door. The police trudged up the stairs and squeezed into the tiny elevator. A brass plate said MAX. FIVE PERSONS. Irene sincerely hoped that meant full-grown persons. She made a point of introducing Henrik von Knecht to the other three: Superintendent Andersson and the crime scene technicians Svante Malm and Per Svensson. The latter was carrying the heavy lighting equipment and various cameras.

The elevator took them up to the fifth floor without a hitch. They stepped out and walked over to a huge carved double door. A slender wrought-iron grid in the shape of entwined French lilies covered the door’s cut-glass window. The carvings on the lower half of the door represented leaping and gamboling deer. Svante Malm put his lips together to whistle, impressed by its magnificence.

Irene thought that Henrik von Knecht seemed to have recovered a little of his spirit during their game of hide-and-seek with the press. But when they stepped out of the elevator the rigid expression was back on his face. Superintendent Andersson saw it too.

“You don’t need to go into the apartment with us,” he said kindly.

“But I want to!”

His reply came like a cobra strike. The superintendent was surprised, and he hesitated. “I see, all right. But you have to stay right next to us. You can’t touch anything, sit on any chairs, or turn on any lights. Of course we’re grateful that you can guide us through the apartment. How big is it?”

“Three hundred fifty square meters. It takes up the whole floor. The other three flats in the building take up a whole floor too. Pappa bought this building in the late seventies and had it renovated very carefully. It’s on the National Register, of course,” he informed them.

“So there are only three other apartments in the whole building?”

“Right.”

While they were talking, the superintendent had put on a pair of thin rubber gloves. With a gesture he asked Henrik von Knecht for the door key. He took it and unlocked the door.

Gingerly gripping the very end of the door handle, he pressed it down and opened the door to the apartment.

“Don’t touch any light switches in the hall. Turn on your flashlights,” Svante Malm exhorted. He sighed and went on, “The laser is broken, so I’ll have to use the good old powder method.”

As soon as the technician said this, he began to search for the light switch with the beam from his flashlight. When he found it just inside the door, he asked Irene to keep her flashlight pointed at the switch while he blew metallic powder over the entire plastic switch plate. Carefully he brushed away the excess, pressed a thin plastic sheet over the surface, and then peeled it off. A look of astonishment spread across his long, narrow face.

“Completely blank. Not a single mark! Someone has wiped the switch plate clean,” he said, astounded.

“That’s probably why it smells like Ajax,” said Irene.

She sniffed the air. There was something else. A cigar. That explained the Christmas mood that had stolen over her unconscious when they stepped into the hall. A memory from her childhood Christmases. Her mother’s Ajax and her father’s Christmas cigar. She turned to von Knecht.

“Did your father smoke cigars?”

“Yes, sometimes. On festive occasions . . .”

His voice died out to a whisper. He swallowed hard, for he too had noticed the cigar smell. Barely moving his lips, he whispered to Irene, “Why are they taking fingerprints?”

She thought about what the medical examiner had said, but decided to evade his question. “Just routine. We always do this when we’re called to the scene of a sudden death,” she explained.

He made no comment but clenched his jaws so hard that the muscles bulged out like rock-hard pillows along his jawline.

Svante Malm turned on the light in the hall, which was airy and of an imposing size. The ceiling had to be four meters high. The floor was made of light gray marble. To the right of the door paraded five built-in wardrobes with doors carved of some dark wood. The one in the middle was adorned with an oval mirror that took up almost the entire door panel. Despite this, one of the biggest and most ornamental mirrors Irene had ever seen loomed up on the opposite wall. Below it stood an equally ornate gilt console table. Superintendent Andersson turned to von Knecht.

“Can you give us a rough idea of the apartment’s layout?”

“Of course. The door next to the mirror leads to a toilet. The door after that goes to the kitchen.”

“And the door opposite the kitchen, next to the wardrobes?”

“It leads to the guest suite on this level. There’s also a separate bathroom with a toilet in there. Straight ahead we have the door to the living room. All the way in, to the left, is the stairway to the upper floor. Up there are the library, a small den, sauna, bedroom, TV room, and billiard room. And a bathroom with a toilet and Jacuzzi.”

Svante Malm had stopped in front of a shiny polished bureau with gilt fittings, rounded lines, and checkerboard veneer in alternating light and dark wood. With reverence in his voice he said, “I just have to ask: Is this a Haupt bureau?”

Henrik von Knecht snorted involuntarily. “No, the Haupt is in the library. Pappa bought this one in London. The insured value is five hundred fifty thousand kronor. Also a fine piece,” he said.

None of the policemen could think of anything to say. The superintendent turned to Irene. “You might as well stay here with Henrik while we take a look around,” he said.

“I’d like to come with you. There could be something that’s out of the ordinary,” von Knecht quickly countered.

He jutted out his chin and his mouth took on a stubborn look. Andersson gave him an appraising glance and nodded his assent. He turned to the crime scene technicians.

“Let’s check the balcony first,” he decided.

As a group they headed for the wide entrance to the living room. They stepped cautiously onto the vast, soft rug in the middle of the hall floor. Irene couldn’t help stopping to admire its shimmering gold pattern, which depicted a beautiful tree with birds and stylized animals, surrounded by a climbing plant like a grapevine against a dark blue background. She could feel von Knecht looking at her.

“That’s a semi-antique Motashemi-Keshan,” he said knowledgeably.

She had a fleeting vision of her latest investment on the rug front, a rusty red rug with small primitive stick figures in the corners. The salesperson at IKEA had assured her that it was a genuine, hand-tied Gabbeh, for the reasonable price of only two thousand kronor. She loved her rug and thought that it lit up the whole living room from its place beneath the coffee table.

Suddenly she had the equally fierce and foolish impulse to defend her rug. With more vehemence than she intended, she snapped, “Are you some kind of museum guy, or what?”