“So the two of you decided to screw?”
Robert was bright red in the face, but his expression became almost satyrlike when he replied. “You bet! We got into her new car and drove around to the back of the building where an old Ford Transit is parked; we have to fix it up a little before spring. They sell like hotcakes. People buy them as vacation cars. We hopped in the Transit. She brought a blanket and a bag from her old car. So we lay down on the blanket.”
“You were hot, I know that. So it didn’t take long before you were finished?”
To Irene’s satisfaction, some of Robert’s satyr smile was wiped away. “Well, yeah. But we couldn’t take too long because they’d start to miss me in the showroom, you know. But then she said that we’d meet again soon. If I wanted to.”
“And you did, I suppose.”
“Did I ever! It’s what every guy dreams about happening sometime in his life!”
“When did you hear from her again?”
“On Wednesday night. The next day. She said that we’d have to wait a while to meet. Her father-in-law had been murdered, you know. She also said that the police would probably want to get in touch with me. And that she had told them the truth. That she picked up the car. But not the rest. We agreed to say that we’d gone over the new car extra carefully. There are actually quite a few new details on this model. Take for example the new—”
“But that wasn’t what you were doing. Going over new details. How does this fit in with the timetable you gave us? You said that you heard the news on the radio and that she said something like, ‘Oh, it’s the five o’clock news already! I have to hurry!’ And she got her papers for the new car and drove off.”
His whole young face radiated honesty.
“But the last part is true! When we were . . . finished . . . she put on the clothes she had in her bag. Then when she got into the car she turned on the radio. That’s when we heard the news program. And then she said that part about the five o’clock news.”
Both the detectives could hear that he was telling the truth. They got up, thanked him for the refreshments, and Tommy patted Robert lightly on the shoulder and said, “You probably know that she was using you. Tell me seriously—wasn’t it really too good to be true?”
Robert hung his head, but nodded in agreement.
“If it hadn’t been for the drugs . . . but she had to keep taking that shit all the time. Before I left this afternoon, I told her. That it’s dangerous, I mean. I don’t like stuff like that. She was mad and told me I could go to hell. I felt mostly relieved. Really!”
Thank God he was someone who hesitated about contact with narcotics. Charlotte had misjudged him, while Irene had been right. She had liked him after their first conversation on the phone. He had lifted her spirits on that rotten Friday. The Friday she had spent in Stockholm. Impulsively she decided to call Mona Söder as soon as possible.
THEY DROVE by Örgryte, but the house was empty. The garage door was unlocked and when they looked inside, the garage was empty. There was no yellow Golf. In a corner inside the door they found two empty plastic jugs marked “DISTILLED WATER.”
At the department there was still feverish activity even though it was past six. Andersson wasn’t in his office. Birgitta Moberg was deeply engrossed in her computer. On the desk lay stacks of papers and folders. They decided to go down to the pizzeria a few blocks away.
Before they left, Irene called home. Her mother answered. Yes, both the twins were home. They had rented a video, which they were watching. The girls had eaten dinner, and she was going to watch the rest of the movie with them. Before she hung up she said, “Be careful if you go out. It said on the TV news that there are young people rioting downtown. Good thing you’re not involved with such dangerous things. When are you coming home?”
THE UPROAR in the center of town could be heard clearly. They went in the opposite direction and slipped into the pizzeria, whose owner was getting rich from the Göteborg police force. Besides pizza it served excellent dinners. They each ordered goulash and a large regular beer and had bread and salad while they waited for the main course.
As they sat stabbing at the salad with their forks, Birgitta said, “I found something really interesting this afternoon. Bobo Torsson and Hoffa Strömberg were in the same prison. At the same time, that is. There’s the contact between Bobo and the Hell’s Angels.”
“What does Shorty say about that?”
“Naturally he doesn’t know a thing about it, according to him. He did seven years inside, after all. But at a different prison.”
“What was Hoffa in for?”
“Aggravated assault. The victim will never be a human being again. It was a fight between rival motorcycle gangs. We don’t have any evidence against Shorty. He’ll probably be released tomorrow. Andersson is frantic.”
Irene and Tommy told her about their discoveries that afternoon. Birgitta didn’t interrupt the story. She stared at them steadily, not wanting to miss a word. There was an intense gleam in her eyes when she leaned over her piping hot goulash and said in a low voice, “The beautiful people and their glamorous life. It’s so enticing and enviable when you see it from a distance. But if you start to scratch the surface, the gold soon turns to dust.”
AT NINE o’clock Irene called Mona Söder at home and left a message on her answering machine.
“Hi, Mona. This is Irene Huss in Göteborg. I want to thank you for telling me everything and letting me meet Jonas. It was a big help in the investigation that we didn’t have to keep checking on you two. You’ve been completely eliminated from the suspect list. I’ve . . . been thinking about Jonas. Please give him my fondest regards. Tell him that the butterfly painting is the most wonderful I’ve ever seen. Talk to you later, Mona. I . . . we’ll talk.” Quickly she hung up. Then she drove home.
Chapter Sixteen
IT SMELLED LIKE COFFEE and gingersnaps at “morning prayers.” Everyone had come, except for Hans Borg and Superintendent Andersson. The secretary had set up an Advent wreath, and the first candle was lit. In the windows stood the electric ones, spreading a soft, cozy glow. Irene was already into her fourth cup of coffee of the morning when the boss’s steps were heard approaching down the corridor. They sounded determined. There was a sense of foreboding when the door was flung open and Andersson’s bright red face appeared in the doorway.
Angrily he shouted, “Damn, it’s dark in here. Turn on the lights!”
He stepped inside and poured himself some coffee, looked down into the steaming cup, and took a deep whiff.
“You’ll have to excuse me. Happy Advent, or whatever it’s called. But everything is going to hell! Shorty is going to be released this morning. And that God damned standalone has fallen into the cellar!”
Borg appeared in the doorway just in time to hear the boss’s words. He nodded and said, “That’s right. They called me when the standalone broke through. It’s going to be salvaged later today. We decided to start digging for those pipes instead. Now there’s a hole anyway. They have to redo the support work over the weekend. We won’t have another chance to lift out the safe until Monday morning at the earliest.”
Jonny Blom looked annoyed and urged, “Why don’t we just knock down the walls with one of those big balls on the end of a crane? Quick and easy!”
Borg dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “Too rough. The whole building could come crashing down and then it would be hard to locate the safe.”
“How are we going to open it?”
“We’ve checked it out with binoculars. It’s a Swedish safe with a combination lock. A guy from Rosengren’s is coming to help us. There’s probably no bomb inside, but we’re going to take safety precautions when we open it.”
Andersson gave the group a grim look and said, “We’re not getting anywhere. This is going too slow! Damn!”
The last had to be interpreted as a general comment on the state of things. No one ventured an opposing point of view.
Irene reported on her interview with Charlotte von Knecht and the conversation with her young lover. Tommy took over and told about Robert Skytter’s revelations. By the time Irene presented Chong’s story from the ’89 raid, they had quite a different image of the charming Charlotte von Knecht, née Croona.
Andersson’s face was beginning to return to normal, but his voice was strident. “That filly doesn’t have clean oats in her feed bag. Or to put it more precisely, clean snow! Ha ha!
Ahem.
What did that guy from Narcotics call the stuff he found in her pendant?”
Birgitta hurried to his rescue and said pedantically, “Freebase. Cocaine mixed with bicarbonate of soda. That’s what’s sold on the street. Pure cocaine is too strong and too dangerous. And who can check how much baking soda they put in?”
Now that she had started, she told them about her visit to Vänersborg to see Bobo’s mother. It had produced nothing of value. Mother and son seemed not to have had any contact in recent years. It had been almost two years since they last saw each other. But she had brought up the question again about the insurance payment in the event of death. Birgitta had referred her to the claims office of the current insurance company. The mother hadn’t seen Bobo’s father in more than twenty years, but she knew that he was a total outcast. She herself had remarried, lived in a house outside of Vänersborg, and worked in a candy store. Birgitta’s final tidbit was the discovery that Bobo Torsson and Glenn “Hoffa” Strömberg had done time in the same prison, but she had been unable to find any connection between Shorty and the two Hell’s Angels, except for Shorty and Paul Svensson’s abortive participation in the bank robbery in Kungsbacka in the early eighties.
Andersson sighed heavily. “And today we have to release that son-of-a-bitch! Jonny and I have both grilled him, but it didn’t produce a thing. Except that we suspect he knows who killed Bobo. That’s why I want surveillance on him. Jonny? Hans? Fredrik? Birgitta?”
They all nodded. Only Fredrik looked enthusiastic. Andersson went on, “And how’s it going with Bobo’s drunken father? Did you get hold of him, Hannu?”
“Yes. At Lillhagen.”
“He’s been admitted to Lillhagen Hospital?”
“Right. He can’t walk or talk. He’s dying of liver cancer.”
“But Lillhagen is a mental hospital. He shouldn’t be there if he has liver cancer.”
“Nobody would take him. He was admitted this summer. They found him passed out in a stairwell on the north side of town.”
There was a brief pause as they poured more coffee and reached their hands into the plastic container to grab some gingersnaps. Andersson stacked up three cookies and bit into all of them at once. The result was a shower of crumbs. With his mouth full of gingersnaps he said, “Fredrik, did you find out anything new yesterday?”
Fredrik’s face lit up, and he began energetically leafing through his notebook full of scribblings. “You bet! Two interesting new observations on Molinsgatan. I did another round with the tenants yesterday and asked if anyone had seen or heard anything at midnight on Friday, a week ago. Especially if anyone had seen or heard the Porsche. It’s not a car you can sneak around in. A guy whose baby had a stomachache was up with the kid at that time. His living room window faces Molinsgatan, two floors above von Knecht’s garage. He remembers that he heard a car braking hard outside the garage, then someone fussing with the garage doors. They’re old and stiff and creak like crazy. Next he heard a car start up and drive out of the garage. After a while another car started and was driven into the garage. By then the guy was curious and went over to the window to take a look. There stood the Porsche parked on the street. He stood there almost fifteen minutes, rocking the kid by the window. The baby fell asleep and he put him to bed. Then he went to the john, and when he got back he heard the Porsche starting up. When he got to the window and looked out, it was gone.”
“This is great! Did he see anybody?”
“No.”
“Does he know exactly what time it was?”
“No. But he thinks the Porsche drove off sometime between twelve-thirty and a quarter to one.”
Andersson rubbed his nose excitedly, so it shone Christmas-red. Irene spontaneously thought of a certain Rudolph with the red nose, but she kept her associations to herself. Pondering, the superintendent said, “Someone parks a car outside. Someone opens the garage door. Someone drives out the Porsche. Someone drives his car into the garage. Someone drives off in the Porsche.”
Everyone nodded to show that they were following along.
“Someone also came back in the morning and drove out his own car and put back the Porsche. It wasn’t on Berzeliigatan on Saturday morning, because then the man with the bedroom window facing the parking places would have seen it. It’s those damned keys to the car and the garage that are haunting us again!”
Hannu nodded and said, “Which Pirjo had.”
They all remembered the sooty key rings in plastic bags that the arson tech had shown them. Andersson began to rub his nose again.
“Why did Pirjo have these two key rings? She couldn’t drive. She didn’t have her own car. She had never been given her own key to von Knecht’s apartment.”
Fredrik interrupted him excitedly. “I think Birgitta was right the other day, when she said that somebody lured Pirjo to Berzeliigatan. The techs say that Pirjo never crossed the threshold to the apartment on Molinsgatan on Wednesday morning. First she had a hard time understanding when they tried to explain to her that Richard von Knecht was dead. She spoke very poor Swedish. When she finally grasped what they were telling her, she was utterly distraught. But she was never allowed in, because they had just started on the lower floor when she arrived. On the other hand, I got to hear something interesting from the guy who has that nice-looking clothing store on the corner. His name is . . . let me see . . .”