Detective Inspector Huss: A Huss Investigation set in Sweden, Vol. 1 (55 page)

Jenny nodded glumly. Irene continued, imperturbable. “Do you remember that I told you about the grenade that was thrown into the house where my colleague and I were locked inside? Do you remember?”

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t have to keep talking about it! Of course I remember!”

“If you remember that, what makes you think for an instant that this guy wouldn’t kill you or Katarina? If the circumstances were right—or from your point of view, unlucky—nothing would stop him. He was there when they tried to murder me and Jimmy!”

Finally she couldn’t stop herself. Her final words turned into a shriek. But she got them out. Jenny’s eyes grew big and shiny. She got up and went over to her mamma and threw her arms around her. They didn’t say a word, but they both felt that something was changing between them. It would take time, but it would heal.

They jumped when the telephone rang. Katarina got to it first and picked it up.

“Just a moment. Mamma, it’s for you.”

“Irene Huss.”

“Hi, Irene. It’s Mona Söder. Is this a bad time? No? I just wanted to tell you that Jonas . . . Jonas died early this morning . . . at two o’clock.”

Her voice had been steady, but now it broke. Around two in the morning. That was when Irene thought she had heard somebody crying in the house.

SUNDAY MORNING WAS ROUGH. Irene woke up with an unpleasant feeling of being hung over. Unjustly, since she hadn’t even had a light beer the night before. Krister was snoring loudly next to her in bed. He had come home around two in the morning. He had worked the extra shift he had traded with Sverker so he could take care of her after the beating out in Billdal. A wave of tenderness rose up inside her and she tiptoed out as quietly as she could so she wouldn’t wake him. It was just after eight o’clock. The twins would sleep at least two more hours. And no doubt their father would too. The important thing was to make the best of these few hours to herself.

She put on her long underwear and jogging suit. Sammie lay playing possum. He was the biggest sleepyhead of the whole family in the morning. He didn’t mind a brief walk to pee, but no running or jumping in the morning, please. She rattled his leash a little. Nature’s call made itself felt, and he meandered out into the hallway. He gave a big yawn and stretched out his body, heavy with sleep.

It was a short walk. Sammie was eager to get home. He was thinking about an empty bed that was still warm.

It was dark and cold, but the air felt clear and crisp. She ran down toward Fiskebäck marina without meeting a soul. The salt-saturated wind blew the scent of seaweed into her wide-open nostrils and swept away the heavy feeling in her head. The flint-gray sea slammed its swells against jetties and wharves. The mooring ropes slapped and the shrouds fluttered on the big sailboats still in the water. The creak of some wooden fenders made her instinctively slow her pace. It was clear that they were protesting being squashed between a huge boat hull and the wharf. Although she had already run almost two kilometers she wasn’t even short of breath. She turned around out by the rocks and ran back a bit, then turned off toward Flundregatorna and jogged the back streets up toward Skärvallsberget. She made it all the way out to the very edge of Hinsholmskilen before she turned back.

IRENE TOOK a long hot shower, followed by a short ice-cold one. A perfect conclusion to a jog of several kilometers. Gone was the earlier disgruntled feeling. She was bursting with energy. Breakfast for the family, including the dog, was fixed in a jiffy. It was harder trying to pry her weary family members out of their warm beds. Including the dog.

Irene had to explain one more time what had happened the day before. Krister apologized for not fully understanding the gravity of the situation. Irene shrugged it off and said that she was equally to blame. She had been too agitated to tell him what was actually going on. Her gracious spouse then tactfully told her what the restaurant owner had said. “Overstressed” and “perhaps a little too affected by her job” were hardly the comments his wife wanted to hear.

After breakfast her energy began to ebb. She began to notice her home. Piles of dirty laundry in the laundry room. Dust bunnies, dirt, and gravel that Sammie’s long hair had dragged in. She had a vague feeling that she was seeing the whole house through a soft-focus lens. The dusty fluff was erasing all contours.

With a lot of sighing and protesting, the twins helped vacuum and dust. Krister had to take Sammie outside, because he was afraid of the vacuum cleaner. During the three years the dog had lived with them, he had tried to make his beloved family aware that there truly was a little dog locked inside the terrible vacuum cleaner. He could hear it whining! It had made things worse when Krister, in a fit of misdirected humor, sucked Sammie’s whiskers into the nozzle. After that the dog was convinced. The vacuum cleaner was treacherous and lethal. It ate little dogs.

Irene set to work on the bathroom, the toilets, and the laundry room. All the beds had to be changed, all the towels replaced with fresh ones. This hadn’t been done for two weeks. After Krister returned with Sammie, he left to do the grocery shopping. By then the vacuuming was done, but for safety’s sake Sammie crept under Jenny’s bed. He didn’t quite trust things as long as there was activity in the house and the strong smell of household cleansers. All of a sudden somebody might decide to take out the vacuum again.

They went at it for almost two hours. Twice a month they went through the same process. All year round. There was never time for Christmas, fall, or spring cleaning. Irene’s mother occasionally changed the curtains. She loved to change curtains. If she hadn’t done it, the curtains would have never been changed. Well, maybe Krister would have taken care of it when he washed the windows twice a year. Irene herself wasn’t much interested in curtains. She didn’t know what the neighbor women thought about it, and it didn’t bother her either. Some of them changed the curtains several times a year.

 

KRISTER FIXED a wonderful Advent dinner. The menu included an old-fashioned beef roast with steamed vegetables, black currant jelly, boiled potatoes, and a heavenly gravy. Irene’s mamma was coming at four. Katarina had found the red ceramic Advent candelabra. Who had put it on top of the fuse box? Krister had remembered to buy four Advent candles of real paraffin. But they had to do without drip rings, because nobody could find them. Jenny set the table with the good porcelain and folded the napkins in intricate pleats and waves. It was the only napkin trick she knew, but it was amazingly sophisticated, excellent for impressing people. And Grandma was astonished at her talent, as always. She complimented Jenny without so much as a glance at her stubby scalp.

Katarina also seemed to have had a sudden change in attitude, because for dessert she had baked a magnificently gooey chocolate cake. Lightly whipped ice-cold cream was served with it, along with cups of freshly brewed coffee. They sat in the living room and ate the chocolate cake and drank coffee. The Advent candles glowed, everyone was full and content, and a warm holiday mood hovered over the room. The twins excitedly told Grandma about the thrilling events at McDonald’s the day before.

Irene’s mother gave her a sharp look. “I read about the arrest in the paper this morning. He’s a thoroughly evil motorcycle gangster! Was it really necessary to take the girls along on this manhunt?”

Before Irene could open her mouth in defense, the telephone rang. Instinctively she looked at the clock. Almost five-thirty. She got up and went out to answer the hall telephone.

“Irene Huss.”

“Hi, Irene. It’s Birgitta. I’m calling from my cell phone. I’m following Shorty’s car right now. The white Mondeo. We’re on the way out E-Six to the north, and just passed Kärra. He stopped at Charlotte and Henrik’s house in Örgryte and was inside almost fifteen minutes. Something tells me we’re on our way up to Marstrand.”

The connection crackled and crunched, but Irene could nevertheless hear Birgitta fine. She tried to get her food-sated brain to work and asked, “Did you get in touch with the others?”

“Yes and no. Just with Fredrik. He’s swinging by his house to get his pistol. I’ve got mine on me. I haven’t been able to reach the others.”

Fredrik lived a few minutes from HQ. For him it was no big detour. But Irene decided not to waste any more time. The best thing for her would be to zip up the big freeways and not venture downtown. Two SIG Sauers should be enough.

She said curtly, “Okay, I’m on my way.”

She hung up. An idea occurred to her. She took a few steps over to the hat rack and started rooting around in the pockets of her leather jacket. In the inside pocket she found her little notebook. She turned to the last pages with the heading “R. v. K.” Richard von Knecht. The murder of that man had started this whole merry-go-round. Irene shook her head as she searched for the phone number of the caretaker, Lennart Svensson. She found it. The phone rang ten times with no answer.

She went back to her family in the living room. Doing her best to sound casual she said, “Sorry, but I have to run off. Things are happening in the von Knecht case.”

Krister unconsciously pursed his lips and said, “And so you have to be there, of course? Even though it’s your day off? Can’t they get along without you?”

Her mother and the twins also looked disappointed. Irene felt a pang of guilty conscience, as usual, but steeled herself. Somewhat more authoritatively she said, “We’re beginning to get close to solving the case. At least I think so. And Birgitta Moberg is in a bind. I have to help her out. She hasn’t had any luck contacting anyone else. See you later, and thanks for a wonderful dinner.”

She turned on her heel and made a flying start back out to the hall. Way too much time had already been lost. She grabbed her jacket and heavy jogging shoes on the way out to the garage.

 

THE SIGN HOLTA CHURCH flashed by and she slowed down. Now she had to make sure not to miss the exit. There it was! Tjuvkil. She turned onto the gravel road. There were no streetlights out here. The darkness was intense outside the field of her headlights. A little yellow arrow with black text said KÄRRINGNÄSET. She had to turn there. The road was narrow. The branches of the bushes and trees along the ditch scraped along the side of the car.

It was a good thing that Birgitta had the presence of mind to turn on her taillights, or Irene would have crashed into the rear of her car. True to form, she had been driving too fast. Birgitta had left the dark blue Volvo stakeout car in the middle of the road. There was no other place to park it. She turned off the taillights, hopped out of the car, and approached Irene.

“Good of you to come. And here comes Fredrik,” she added.

Irene also put her blinkers on. The arriving car braked, and Fredrik jumped out even before the engine turned off. Eagerly he said, “It took a little extra time, but I slipped into Narcotics and borrowed a weapon. I was thinking of you and Jimmy. Too bad they couldn’t spare another officer. So it’s just the three of us. You didn’t have any luck getting hold of Jonny or Hans?”

Birgitta shook her head and stretched out her hand so she could take a look at the famous night-vision telescope in the flashlight beam. Irene answered for her, “Borg is probably taking an after-dinner nap. And there’s no hope of trying to get Tommy to come out here. He’s in Borås at Agneta’s parents’ house.”

They walked toward the two-meter-high gates of solid iron with inhospitable spikes on top. Fredrik shook the heavy iron bars to test them, but the gate was locked. The fence was just as high, and barbed wire ran along the top between tall iron posts.

After thinking for a moment, Birgitta said, “Irene, you’ve studied the map of this area better than we have. How far is it to the house from here?”

“Almost a kilometer. Close to the fence here are pastures for Sylvia’s horses. A few hundred meters farther along the road—I’d say about five hundred—is the caretaker’s house.”

Birgitta looked around, pondering, and said, “Shorty’s car isn’t parked here, as far as I can see.”

“Are you sure he was coming here?”

“Yes. I followed him up to Holta Church. He turned down toward Tjuvkil and then continued straight ahead. So I turned around and headed down the same road. I saw his lights in front of me. Then I switched mine off. He turned off here toward Kärringnäset. I didn’t dare get too close. If he had stopped he might have heard my engine. So I parked for five minutes, right by the turnoff. When I got here there wasn’t a trace of the Mondeo. He must have had a key to the gate.”

“You said he made a detour over to Örgryte?”

“Yes. I was staked out at his place on Berzeliigatan. Right after five his car came zooming past. I got in my car, or rather the department’s car. Mine is too clunky for tailing anyone. It couldn’t keep up with a souped-up moped! He drove straight out to Långåsliden, jumped out of the car, and knocked on the door. Charlotte opened it. I saw her in the doorway. She let him in. He came out thirteen minutes later. I checked the time.”

Irene said dryly, “Then they hardly had time for a quickie. That’s where he must have gotten the key!”

Fredrik stood stamping impatiently and interrupted them, “We don’t have time to talk right now. Let’s get moving! How are we going to get over the fence?”

Irene thought of a possible solution. She went back to her Saab and opened the trunk. After some clanking and thumping amid all the junk, she found what she was looking for. Triumphantly she turned back to her colleagues.

“How about this—my towrope! Fredrik, you and I will give Birgitta a boost to the top of the fence. We’ll toss up the rope so she can tie it to one of the iron bars, and we can hoist ourselves up. Then we just throw the rope over to the other side.”

Fredrik and Irene placed themselves next to each other so Birgitta could climb up via their knees and shoulders. They tossed up the tow-line and Birgitta tied a good knot, as if she were making fast a sailboat worth millions. The other two rapidly clambered up, climbed carefully over the barbed wire, threw the line over to the other side of the fence, and slid down.