Chapter Eighteen
IRENE WOKE UP WITH a start. She thought she heard quiet sobbing. Was Jenny awake and crying again? Cautiously she sneaked up and listened at her daughter’s door. All was quiet. When she cracked open the door, she could hear calm breathing and panting. The panting came from Sammie. He lay squirming on his back with his paws in the air. His “little mistress” lay dangerously close to the edge of the bed, but Irene felt no uneasiness, only tenderness. It was good for Jenny to have her dog close to her. It had been a difficult Friday for her.
IRENE HAD come home around ten. What she wanted most of all was to have a big cup of tea and a sandwich and then crawl into bed. But it wasn’t to be. Not right away at least.
Sammie stormed toward her, but he wasn’t himself. His tail hung anxiously straight down and he crouched down and whimpered instead of leaping and yelping. Was he sick or in pain? She bent down and started to babble to him as her hands slid over his body to see if he was sore anyplace. Then she heard sobs and Katarina’s voice from the living room. “She looks like a God damned skag!”
“Skag”! What in God’s name did that mean? And who looked like one? Irene got up, tossed her leather jacket on the hat rack as she passed by, and went to find her daughters in the living room. Katarina was hanging off the edge of the easy chair talking to Jenny, who lay prone on the sofa, shaking with sobs. She had hidden her bald head under a sofa pillow, which she was holding tight. Katarina hadn’t heard her mother arrive and didn’t notice when she came in the room. She was intensely involved in comforting her sister.
“There are thousands of other guys who are cooler and nicer! And thousands of other bands. With better music. And if you don’t want to play skinhead music, you can let your hair grow out. In two months your hair will be as long as Marie Fredriksson’s in Roxette! We can bleach it. Cool as shit! Pale stubble! Before it grows out we can say you had cancer. Your hair fell out because of all the chemo and all that radiation . . . Hey! Are you crazy?”
With a wail Jenny jumped up and threw the pillow straight at Katarina. She was furious. Tears sprayed from her wide eyes. Her stamina was running out, because she didn’t pursue the attack. When she saw Irene she rushed over and flung herself with full force into her arms and sobbed. Sobbed inconsolably, wordlessly. Sobbed over her first betrayed love, her first betrayed hopes. Irene’s crushed rib hurt when Jenny came flying into her arms, but she didn’t show it; she started silently rocking her as she tenderly stroked her bald head.
A LITTLE later they were sitting around the kitchen table, drinking tea and eating open-faced egg sandwiches with Kalle’s caviar. Bit by bit the story came out. Jenny had told Markus that she didn’t want to go to the demonstrations on the anniversary of Karl XII’s death. She didn’t want to shout slogans that she didn’t agree with. But she did want to stay in the band. Markus got furious and said, “If you don’t believe in them, then you can’t stay with the band. You’ve shown where you stand!”
Then he turned on his heel and left. Jenny was devastated, because she was in love with him, or so she thought anyway. He was the first boy who had kissed her so her knees got weak. When Katarina mentioned this, Jenny flared up again but soon calmed down. That was exactly how it had felt.
It had been Katarina’s idea to rent Schindler’s List that night. Grandma was coming over, and surely she would enjoy a movie that took place during her own youth. The movie was about a man who pretended to cooperate with the Nazis while he succeeded in saving hundreds of Jews from the extermination camps.
Katarina told her mother that after the movie Grandma had described in detail her own experiences as a seventeen-year-old at the end of the war. About the white Red Cross buses that emptied their cargoes of walking skeletons. At her school they had opened up the baths. Nurses had stripped the ragged clothes caked with filth off the human wrecks. They were treated with delousing powder and scrubbed with hot water and scrub brushes. A poor old Jewish man was so scared when they were about to delouse him that he had a heart attack and died! He thought it was poison. Like the poison the Nazis used when they wanted to kill lots of people at once. Although that was probably gas, Grandma said. Her job had been to hand out clean clothes and help those who couldn’t even dress themselves. Strangely enough, Grandma didn’t say a word about Jenny’s clean-shaven head. It was as if she didn’t even see it.
By then Jenny thought that her sister had been allowed to talk long enough. After all, this was mostly about her! Eagerly she broke into the conversation. “When Grandma finished telling her story, I asked her if she really had seen all those people who had been in concentration camps. She had. Then I asked if it was true that there were really extermination camps. And then she said ‘Yes.’ I asked why they let it happen! Why didn’t the Swedes protest that millions of people were being killed in these camps? But she didn’t know the answer. Then she said that in Sweden we didn’t know about it during the war. It wasn’t until the war was over and Hitler was dead that the camps were opened and people found out about it. I think that sounds incredible! I mean ... it’s not so strange that someone might not believe that the camps existed . . . since nobody reacted during the war. They just let it happen!”
She stopped and Irene sensed a slightly apologetic tone in those final remarks. Jenny sat running her fingernail along the edge of the table. That was a sign that she was holding back something that was difficult to say. Finally she took a deep breath and said, “Could you tell Tommy that I’m not a racist? We don’t have to be enemies. I don’t want that! Tell him. I’m not a racist, really. The lyrics are racist. I can hear that now. Totally. I gave my CDs back to Markus. He can give them to Marie!”
“Is she the one who’s a ‘God damned skag’?”
“Exactly! She is a God damned skag!”
It wasn’t necessary to ask for an explanation of the word. Her tone of voice explained everything.
Cautiously Irene asked, “What happened to Markus?”
Jenny turned all crinkly around the eyes, but before Katarina could start to speak for her again, she said with a teary tremble in her voice, “Markus and Marie started going steady yesterday. She’s in the eighth grade.”
“Is she a skinhead too?”
“Naw, she has neon pink hair. Sometimes she makes lavender loops in it. And she got pierced too. She has a ring in her eyebrow, one in her upper lip, and one in her nose. Disgusting!”
Both daughters were agreed that it was “totally heinous,” and Irene was grateful for that.
WHEN KRISTER came home at one A.M. the girls were asleep, but Irene was still up. After telling him about Jenny’s troubles and about the impending end to her skinhead period, she tried to seduce her husband. But he was too tired and not at all in the mood. The Christmas rush at the city’s restaurants had begun. She lay awake for a long time, her whirling thoughts of skinheads, millionaires, bombs, murderers, biker gangs, sexual relations between people who shouldn’t be having any, and sexual relations between people who should.
From sheer exhaustion she fell asleep, until the sobbing woke her. But she must have been dreaming. Nobody in the house was crying.
THERE WASN’T a free parking place in the whole city. Finally Irene drove down to police headquarters and put her car in the lot. Both Jenny and Katarina were bursting with anticipation. They had a hard time maintaining their teenage dignity when the little kid inside them demanded to come out. Jenny had pulled a bright red chimney-sweep cap over her ears. Not just to hide her scalp, but also because it was very cold. Only a few degrees below freezing, but it was windy. That’s when Göteborg feels like the Antarctic. Irene and the twins ran toward the downtown shopping district to keep their circulation going.
Garlands with lights and stars were stretched across the pedestrian-only streets. The tall trees in Brunnparken and along Östra Hamngatan glittered with hundreds of tiny lights woven into their leafless branches. But few people looked up at the crowns of the trees. Most of them burrowed their chins down into their collars and hunched their shoulders against the wind. They wanted to get into the lovely warmth, and the shopkeepers were rubbing their hands. That was exactly what they wanted too.
The girls popped in and out of clothing stores. Irene looked at a few jackets, but a glance at the price tags made her decide to wait until spring. She would only have to wear a winter jacket for a few more months. Spring and fall jackets could wait. But she missed her poplin one.
“Look, Mamma! Too cool, huh?”
Katarina’s trumpeting woke Irene out of her reverie when she walked out of the dressing room like a runway model, dressed in a bright orange top that came down to her navel and a pair of moss-green bell-bottoms. First she just stared at her daughter. Finally she couldn’t hold it back any longer and burst out laughing.
“What are you cackling at?” Katarina said. “This is totally modern! Try and keep up, okay?”
Jenny agreed and said patronizingly to her old fossil of a mother, “This is the latest thing, after all.”
Irene tried hard to contain herself. “I’m sorry, but it’s just that I recognized myself. I looked just like that when I was your age.”
Both her daughters gave her a skeptical look and exchanged a glance heavenward. The hardest thing to believe was that Mamma was ever their age.
Just like all the other shoppers looking at the decorations and searching for gifts, they wound up in NK. Irene was tired and needed a cup of coffee, but the girls voted to go look around the department store first. With a sigh, after a mild protest, Irene had to give in. Whenever the girls joined forces, she was in the minority. All the lights and glitter began to drain the energy out of her. And the elves—! Wherever you looked you saw an elf. Tiny elves, giant elves, artificial elves, and live elves. One of them almost scared her to death when it bent forward and touched her arm and asked if she didn’t want to buy a new shaver for the “little husband.”
Worn out, Irene tried to catch her breath on the escalator up to the second floor. Above their heads hovered slowly rotating Christmas trees. Halogen lamps made them glitter and flash. One was done completely in silver rosettes, another in gold hearts, a third in silver icicles, a fourth in gold balls . . . all the gold and silver dazzled her and hurt her eyes. Gold and silver. Silver. Like shiny sardines in their can. Like shiny . . .
“Mamma! Lift your feet!”
Katarina was yelling at her. The girls were behind her and realized what was about to happen. But it was too late. She was on her face where the escalator ended. The bag of newly bought panties and stockings spilled out every which way, but Jenny quickly picked them up. Katarina was so embarrassed she was about to sink through the floor. How humiliating could a mother be, anyway?
All Irene’s weariness had vanished. She swiftly gathered up her children, her packages, and her wounded dignity. Eagerly she said, “Let’s go! I need a telephone!”
“Did you hurt yourself? Should I call an ambulance or anything?”
“No. But something did strike me, as a matter of fact. An idea!”
“Don’t you have your cell phone?”
“No, I didn’t bring it.”
They made a U-turn and took the escalator back downstairs. On the ground floor Irene found a nice café and a pay phone. She parked the girls at a table furnished with hot chocolate with whipped cream and saffron Lucia buns.
Irene began searching her pockets for the piece of paper with the number on it; she found it and punched in the number.
“Sylvia von Knecht.”
“Hello, excuse me for bothering you. This is Inspector Irene Huss.”
“What do you want?”
It wouldn’t be fair to claim that any great warmth flowed through the line. But it wasn’t necessary either. What was important now was not to get Sylvia into a bad mood. Which Irene unfortunately seemed to have a real talent for. In as friendly a tone as she could muster, Irene said, “A piece of information has come up that I need to check. It will only take five minutes.”
“Go ahead and check then!”
Irene was flustered until she realized what Sylvia meant. “No, I can’t do it on the phone. I have to come up and talk to you at the apartment. It’s very important if it turns out to be true,” she said urgently.
There was a long silence.
“When would you be coming, in that case?”
“Would three o’clock be all right?”
“Fine.”
Click. Hung up on her, as usual. If her revelation on the escalator proved to be wrong, imagine with what scornful laughter it would be scattered, like fog, into empty nothingness. In that case it would be a sweaty conversation with Sylvia.
JUST BEFORE three o’clock they went back to the car. All three had tired feet, but they were happily sated with purchases and impressions. There was no doubt about it: This year there would be a Christmas too. Irene started the car, and only then did she tell the girls that she had to run an errand at someone’s apartment. But it was on the way home, not a detour. The girls griped but promised to wait in the car. Irene parked on Kapellplatsen so that they could stroll around and do some window-shopping. It wasn’t that much fun, though, because all the stores were closed, except for the Konsum grocery store and the bakery. After NK all the other Christmas decorations were an anticlimax. IT WAS Arja who opened the door. She smiled her pleasant smile but it faded rapidly when her sister’s whiny voice was heard from inside the apartment.
“Is it that cop person?”
Before Arja could reply, Irene shouted back, “It’s Detective Inspector Irene Huss from the Homicide Commission.”
She’d be damned if she’d let herself be called a “cop person”! And there wasn’t anything called the “Homicide Commission,” but Sylvia wouldn’t know that. It sounded good. Arja at least was impressed, when she stepped back to let Irene in, as evidenced by her wide eyes and slightly gaping mouth.
Sylvia came out of the kitchen with her lips pressed together in annoyance. Presumably she had gotten lost because the kitchen was not one of the places where she usually spent any time. Irene recalled the virginal kitchen implements over the stove. And the empty hook where a meat cleaver was missing. She tried to smile and look pleasant.
“Thanks for letting me come up and bother you for a moment. I just need to check on one thing. It’s about the keys.”
“Yes?”
“Can we go upstairs?”
Sylvia jerked her neck and began striding toward the stairs to the upper level. Irene assumed that it was all right to follow.
In the upstairs hall Sylvia stopped and turned. She coolly raised one eyebrow and said, “The keys?”
“Would you please get the spare-key ring? The one you said you keep in your desk drawer in your office. I’ll go in and get your husband’s key case. That is, if it’s still on his nightstand?”
Sylvia snorted lightly before she replied, “In the drawer of the nightstand. The police just traipse around at will in my home! I don’t suppose I can stop you. You’ve already taken his car keys, without returning them!”
She swiftly turned and glided away toward her office. Irene swallowed the words that were on the tip of her tongue. Don’t get mad, don’t get mad . . .
The room had changed. It took a fraction of a second before Irene noticed that the paintings were gone. There were a couple of paintings on the empty walls, but they weren’t “sex pictures,” as Irene in her ignorance had called them. A “collection of erotica,” Henrik von Knecht had corrected her. Imagine how much useful information she had learned in the course of this investigation! The ones that were in the room now were completely normal paintings. Modern and eccentric, but not nudes. A sudden pang of sympathy for Sylvia went through her. She quickly went over to the enormous silk bed and opened the drawer of Richard’s nightstand. It contained paper tissues, some ice-blue cough drops in transparent wrappers, and the shiny, black leather key case. Now she would see if she was right. She was surprised to see that her hands were shaking a little when she unsnapped the case. Out fell the six keys, hanging from their hooks. All were equally shiny. All were made of exactly the same type of metal. All had no numbers or markings. No wear whatsoever. This was the newly made set of keys, the one that Richard had had made at Mister Minit less than six months ago. A sigh of relief escaped her.
“Did you find anything of interest?”
Irene heard Sylvia’s voice behind her back. You could have cut glass with it. Calmly Irene turned around, walked over to the rigid, thin little woman, and said, “Have you looked at Richard’s set of keys since he died?”
Sylvia’s eyes widened in astonishment but soon resumed their inimical attitude.
“Why would I do that? I have my own!”
“You haven’t looked at his keys?”
“No, I told you! I just put them in the drawer.”
“Look at this. Hold out your set of keys and compare them to the keys in Richard’s case. That’s it, hold them in your hand,” Irene said in a friendly, persuasive voice.
Hesitantly Sylvia did as she was told. When the two sets of keys were held next to each other, she saw it too. Richard’s new, shiny ones were as gaudy as Christmas tree decorations, while the keys in the spare set were different colors from age, wear, and oxidation. They also had various numbers and letters on them.
With tight lips Sylvia whispered, “Heavens!”
She was transfixed by the keys; she couldn’t take her eyes off them.
Softly Irene said, “Somebody borrowed, or stole, Richard’s keys last summer. He didn’t get them back, but had another set made using the spare set as a pattern. Why did he do that? Why didn’t he report the keys missing? Change all the locks? Why didn’t he tell you?”
Sylvia just stared at the keys in Irene’s hand. Her eyes looked unnaturally large in the narrow, transparent face. A wailing sound rose from her throat, and she started tossing her head from side to side. At first it was barely noticeable, then the motion grew more and more violent. The wail rose to a shriek and Sylvia started shaking all over. Damn, she had done it again! Why, why couldn’t she ever handle Sylvia?
Irene rushed over to the bedroom door and called for Arja. Then, with hard-won composure, she approached Sylvia and tried to calm her down. It was useless. Sylvia had worked herself up to a state of hysteria and was screeching like a siren. When Irene tried to put her hand on her arm, she screamed. Then she fainted. The woman could really collapse beautifully! Like falling swan’s down she sank to the floor in a graceful rippling motion. One arm lay in an arc above her head and the other rested lightly across her stomach. This was the scene that greeted Arja when she came through the door.
“So, she’s fainted again,” she said calmly.
Without hurrying she crossed the floor to her sister. With a practiced motion she raised Sylvia’s legs in the air and began to massage her calves. All the while she looked at Irene, who thought that her guilt feelings must be blatantly visible. Calmly Arja asked, “What made her so upset?”
“Upset? It was the keys,” Irene said vaguely.
“Sylvia has always fainted when she gets upset. Her whole life! Sensitive artistic soul, you know.”
Arja gave her a broad, pleasant smile of camaraderie, and Irene began to feel a little better. She decided to tell Arja exactly what was going on.
“It was when I showed her that Richard’s set of keys was newly made. So the one we found in the door on Berzeliigatan was Richard’s old key ring. He had lost it last summer and never said anything to Sylvia.”
Arja gave her a long look. Emphatically she said, “There was a lot that Richard didn’t tell Sylvia.”
Now or never! Irene looked down at Sylvia, who was beginning to show signs of life. She said softly to Arja out of the corner of her mouth, “Tell me about the party!”
Arja started and cast a quick glance at Sylvia’s pale face. She put one finger over her mouth and made a gesture toward her sister.
“Could we lift her up onto the bed?”
They helped each other lift the feather-light body. Sylvia began to mumble weakly and her eyelids fluttered.
“I’ll call Mother,” said Arja.
The words were barely out of her mouth before a thin little shadowy figure slipped in through the doorway. Irene was dumbstruck. That’s exactly how Sylvia would look in twenty-five years. The little woman ignored the other two and tiptoed over to the bed. With her slender hands, in which the blue veins seemed to lie outside her white skin, she grasped her daughter’s equally pale and bloodless ones. Gently caressing Sylvia, she murmured long strings of consoling words. To Irene’s ears they sounded like magic incantations, but after a few moments she realized it was Finnish she was hearing.
Arja poked her furtively in the side and motioned with her head toward the door. Silently they slunk out and down the broad staircase. They continued into the entryway, and Arja took a key lying on the marble top of the ornate hall table. She opened the front door and gestured to Irene to follow. They hurried down the stairs to the floor below. With growing astonishment Irene realized they were on their way into the apartment below the von Knechts’. Arja unlocked the door. She motioned for Irene to enter and then silently closed the door and touched the switch on the wall. A naked lightbulb hung from the ceiling and cast a harsh light. The place smelled of paint and wallpaper glue.
Arja waved her hand and said, “Ivan Viktors is moving in tomorrow. The moving van is coming early.”
“Do you know that Sylvia and Ivan Viktors have a relationship?”
Arja stiffened and gave her a sharp look. “So you know about it too? Yes, of course I know that. You certainly can’t blame Sylvia. It wasn’t always much fun being Richard’s wife. He was a big shit!”
The way she said it with her Finnish accent made it sound quite pleasant. Irene decided to get right to the point to save time and skip the chitchat. With a hint of a smile in her voice, she asked, “Did he try to seduce you too?”
Arja pouted slightly and then gave Irene a big, soft smile. “Almost twenty years ago. But his charm didn’t work on me. I told him like it is, that I’m a lesbian.”
Irene gave a start. She hadn’t expected this.
Arja said dryly, “I’ve been in a relationship for many years. But neither Mamma nor Sylvia will accept Siirka. She’s not allowed to attend any of the family events, such as weddings and funerals. She couldn’t anyway. She’s a teacher, and it’s hard to get time off.”
Irene’s thoughts flew to Mona and Jonas Söder in Stockholm. How was he doing?
Irene collected herself and tried to ask the right questions.
“And you’re a journalist?”
“Yes. Freelance. I’m my own boss.”
“Can you tell me about the party? The one Sylvia doesn’t want you to talk about.”
Arja took a deep breath and for a shaky moment Irene thought she had changed her mind. But she began to speak. “It was at Richard’s sixtieth birthday party last summer. There were tons of people there. It was warm and lovely far into the night. But around two o’clock I was getting tired and thought I’d sneak off to bed. Mother and I each had a room in the guest cabin. Mother was feeling spry and still dancing. She had taken a nap in the afternoon. She loves parties! But I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Too much wine and champagne. The guests had to be driven to various hotels in Göteborg. Limousines had been rented, but they weren’t coming until three. No one would miss me if I slipped away. On the path down to the guest cabin I ran into Sylvia. She was tipsy like all the others, but she was also uneasy. People had been asking for Richard, but she couldn’t find him. I suggested that she follow me to the cabin, then we could have a glass of the Arctic raspberry liqueur I had bought on the ferry. Sylvia loves it. And that’s where we found Richard.”
She fell silent and rubbed her eyes wearily, as if to erase an image from her memory. Or maybe to make it clearer. A bitter tone slipped into her voice as she continued, “We didn’t just find Richard. Charlotte was there too. We saw them, but they didn’t see us. On the floor of the great room they were engaged in filthy acts.”
Irene was surprised at the choice of words. Did a lesbian consider heterosexual intercourse to be “filthy acts”?
Arja took her hands from her eyes and looked straight at Irene. Curtly she said, “They were sucking each other and . . . ” She looked away and red flames shot down her neck.
“It was disgusting! We went back outside. They didn’t notice we had been there. Sylvia fainted, of course, but recovered quite rapidly. She made me promise never to tell anyone what we had seen. Not anyone.”
She paused and fingered the key to the apartment. In a low voice she said, “But I’m breaking that promise now. I think this has something to do with Richard’s death.”
“Why do you think that?”
“The keys. I know that Charlotte took them.”
“Tell me.”
“The next day the mood was naturally flat. Richard had fallen asleep on a sofa in the living room. He lay there snoring when I came into the big house. Mother had misplaced her little travel pillbox with her heart tablets. We found it later in the guest cabin, but not that morning. Mother swore that she had left it in Sylvia’s bedroom when she went there for a little nap the day before. I tiptoed in as quietly as I could so I wouldn’t wake anyone. Sylvia and Richard had separate bedrooms up at Marstrand. I sneaked into Sylvia’s room and woke her, of course. She sleeps so lightly. She hadn’t seen Mother’s pillbox, and I couldn’t find it either. When I left Sylvia’s bedroom, I ran into Charlotte coming out of Richard’s! We both stopped short and then she said, “Hi, I forgot my keys. But I found them.” And then she stuffed the key case she was holding in her hand into the pocket of her dressing gown. I was tired and a little hung over, so I didn’t give it much thought then. But I’ve thought about it many times since. Why would Charlotte leave her keys in Richard’s bedroom?”
“Did you tell Sylvia about this encounter with Charlotte?”
“No. I didn’t want to mention Charlotte too much in her presence.”
“Do you think Henrik knew what was going on between Richard and Charlotte?”
Arja thought about it. She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. But Charlotte hasn’t been up to Marstrand since the sixtieth birthday party, I know that.”
“But Henrik goes there as often as he can?”
“Yes, he loves his cabin.”
“Do you know that Henrik is sterile?”
“Yes. Sylvia told me.”
“Do you know that Charlotte is pregnant and nearing her second trimester?”
Arja nodded and said, resigned, “Yes. Sylvia told me.”
She took another deep breath and looked steadily at Irene. “I told you all this because I want the murder of my shithead brother-in-law to be cleared up. Sylvia needs rest. It has to be solved. But I will never testify in any trial. This is just between you and me,” she said firmly.
“Not even the fact that you met Charlotte on the way out of Richard’s room, with a key case in her hand?”
Arja thought for a moment. “All right, I could testify to that. But not the rest. Not a word about it! Sylvia would lose her trust in me. And rightly. I’ve already betrayed it. But I thought I had to. The murder must be solved, not swept under the rug.”
WHEN IRENE came back to the car there were no twins, but a note on the front seat. “We went to Glady’s. Hungry as hell! Hugs, K&J.” She really couldn’t blame them. She had been gone more than an hour and it was cold in the car. With a sigh she started the engine, rolled down Aschebergsgatan, and turned off toward Avenyn.
She parked in an employee parking space in the back lot of Glady’s Corner and went in through the kitchen entrance. In the large restaurant kitchen there was feverish activity, and steam was pouring out of the huge saucepans. People were running around and shouting out orders. But everything was functioning smoothly; the big evening rush hadn’t started yet. Not a sign of the girls that Irene could see. She managed to catch sight of Krister. He was lifting rolled-up fish fillets out of a wide sauté pan with a perforated ladle. His concentration was total, and he didn’t notice her until she was right next to him.
She chirped in his ear, “Hiya, pal. Have you seen our kids?”
He jumped and the tender piece of fish plopped back into the pan.
“Damn, now it broke! Hi. I sent our kids off to McDonald’s,” he said, annoyed.
“To McDonald’s?”
“Yes, the food here wasn’t good enough for the ladies. And they kept buzzing around bothering people. So I sent them off across the street. A Big Mac is always a culinary hit according to our daughters. It must be your genes coming through.”
He gave her a hasty kiss on the nose and dived for his fillet again, rescuing what he could.
IT HAPPENED unconsciously, but she did notice it. Her steps slowed when she saw the shiny motorcycles parked in a row outside the hamburger restaurant. A sense of uneasiness began churning in her stomach. Maybe she ought to talk to a shrink about her incipient—or manifest—phobia about motorcycles? Maybe it could be cured with a few doses of Porsche? This was something she’d have to figure out for herself. She gave herself a mental kick in the rear and began walking toward the entrance. The girls were sitting by the window and waved happily to her when they saw her. Just as she reached out her hand to push open the door, she saw him.
He was sitting with his back to the door but she could see his face at an angle from behind, since he was talking to a man on the seat facing him. The greasy hair curled thinly down his back and his shoulders jerked nervously under the padded leather jacket. It was the Thin Man, alias Paul John Svensson.
First she was mad as hell. He was pretty cocksure, all right! To sit in the open chowing down on hamburgers on Avenyn, when he had to know he was wanted by the police! A second later the fear came. She couldn’t go in. He would recognize her. Her daughters were sitting inside, with a madman. Presumably he was fully tanked up on dope. And no doubt armed.
She spun around and tried to look like she had forgotten something. She hurried across the street and was almost run over by a streetcar in the process. Calm down, she had to try to stay calm! Safely on the other side she started jogging toward Glady’s. She didn’t have time to go around the back, but slunk in through the main entrance. The maître’d was new and didn’t recognize her. She wasted a few precious seconds as she argued with him. Finally she had to wave her police ID at him, since the chef’s wife apparently couldn’t just walk in. She realized that it was her jeans and the worn leather jacket that had landed her in hot water. Authoritatively she shouted, “This is a police matter. I need to borrow a telephone immediately!”
With a disapproving expression he led her into the office. She and the owner were old acquaintances, but he also looked at her curiously as without explanation she grabbed the telephone on the desk. As she leafed through the Yellow Pages under RESTAURANTS, she snapped, “Police matter. I’ll explain later. Here it is!”
She found the number for McDonald’s on Avenyn. With shaking hands she first misdialed and then had to try again . . . ten, eleven, twelve. On the thirteenth ring a very young voice answered, “McDonald’s, Tina.”
“Hi, Tina. Would you please announce over the loudspeakers that Jenny and Katarina have a phone call? It’s extremely important. There’s been an accident, you see. I’m their mother. But don’t say anything to the girls. Everything’s under control.”
“All right, yeah, I can do that.”
There was a clatter when she put down the receiver and half an eternity passed before Katarina’s querulous voice came on the line.
“Hello?”
“Hi, darling, it’s Mamma. Don’t say a word, but listen to me. I want you and Jenny to leave that place immediately.”
“But we haven’t finished our ice cream!”
“The hell with it! Do as I say! Dear Katarina, it’s very very important!”
“Okay. But Jenny will be mad.”
“Get her out of there. Come over to Glady’s right now!”
Katarina must have sensed her panic. It was something she had never heard before in her mamma’s voice.
“Okay. We’ll be right there,” she said quickly.
Irene’s hands were shaking so much she could hardly hang up the phone. She ignored the owner’s questioning glance. The direct number to the department was free, but no one answered. Five-thirty on a Saturday night, no wonder. Instead she called Dispatch. She got a connection fast. A confident voice answered, “Dispatch, Inspector Rolandsson.”
“Hello, Irene Huss, inspector in Violent Crimes. I’ve spotted a wanted perp. He’s sitting in McDonald’s on Avenyn. Dangerous. Belongs to the Hell’s Angels. Probably high, and armed. Name: Paul John Svensson.”
Rolandsson was silent a moment before he said, “Roger. We’ll send the team in the van and a patrol car. Armed, you said.”
“Yes, that son-of-a-bitch probably has a SIG Sauer he took from me or Jimmy Olsson!”
“So it’s one of those guys from the fray out in Billdal. We know what he looks like. The team has a photo. Can you stay there to facilitate the arrest?”
“Yes. I’ll be across the street on the other corner, on Engelbrektsgatan. In front of the display window at KappAhl.”
After she hung up she began shaking all over. Curiosity was written all over the restaurant owner’s face, but she waved quickly at him and shouted that she’d explain later. Quickly, she went to the kitchen—and there stood her daughters. Krister looked annoyed and puzzled. Irene didn’t have time to explain, but threw herself on the girls and said, relieved, “Oh, you girls are so good! Thank the good Lord! Just a little while more, and we’ll go home to poor Sammie. Then the others will have to take over!”
Krister looked even more quizzical. “What are the others going to take over?”
“The bad guys and the bandits! God, I’m so tired of all this shit!”
He gave her an astonished look and said, “That’s probably the first time I’ve ever heard you say anything like that.”
She gave him a long look. To his consternation there were tears shining in her eyes when she finally replied. “This is the first time that my own family has been directly threatened because of my job!”
Like the wings of a brooding hen she spread her arms around the girls and admonished, “Stay here with Pappa. Don’t go before I come back!”
She gave them each a hasty kiss on the forehead and crept out the back door. The owner came into the kitchen from the other direction. He caught sight of Krister and gave him a questioning look. The head chef threw up his hands in a very French and telling gesture: Women! What can you expect?
THE PATROL car was about to park when Irene arrived at the rendezvous. After a few minutes the van arrived. To her relief Håkan Lund was in charge of the van squad. It didn’t do him much good that the new uniform jackets had full-length, slimming white stripes. It’s not easy to wish away a hundred kilos.
He greeted her cheerfully, “Hello! I heard you’ve got a bead on Paul Svensson! We’re going to suck that scumbag right in. Here’s the plan. Take this radio. Walk past McDonald’s and locate Svensson. Make sure he doesn’t see you. We’ll move in as soon as you give us his position.”
He pressed a little walkie-talkie into Irene’s hand and waved her off. She walked along the outer edge of the sidewalk. Right outside the burger joint she stepped out into the street to gain some cover from the parked cars and motorcycles.
Irene saw him. He was still sitting, talking to his buddies. She raised the radio to her mouth and pressed the button. Exactly at that instant Paul Svensson got up. His lanky body began staggering around, until it suddenly seemed to remember its intention. He headed for the door marked with the international symbol for “Men.”
She whispered in the radio, “Irene here. He went into the men’s room.”
“Excellent! We’re going in.”
Twenty seconds later the police went in the back way with their weapons drawn. They surrounded Paul Svensson’s pals. Four officers went in the front and two of them took up positions on either side of the bathroom door. When the Thin Man came out he got two gun barrels stuck in his back. Even though he was as high as Kebnekaise Peak, he realized how lousy the odds were. Obediently he put his hands in the air. He was searched quickly and thoroughly. Irene saw Håkan Lund take a heavy pistol from a holster that Paul Svensson had under his jacket. A SIG Sauer. Hers or Jimmy’s? She just didn’t care. She wanted to go home.
SAMMIE WAS overjoyed when they arrived. He hadn’t peed on the floor, even though he’d been alone for more than seven hours. Once outside the door he couldn’t hold it any farther than to the rose bed under the kitchen window. He sighed with relief.
Irene tried to explain to her daughters what had actually happened inside McDonald’s and why it was so important for them to get out of there. They were sitting around the kitchen table drinking a cup of hot O’Boy.
Katarina said excitedly, “Wicked exciting! Why couldn’t we have stayed there and watched them nab him?”
“Because it’s not TV or a movie! That guy is a murderer. He was armed with a pistol and maybe a number of other weapons. He wouldn’t have hesitated to take the two of you hostage if he found that out you were a police officer’s daughters. Mine.”
Jenny was tracing her fingernail along the edge of the table again. “I thought they looked nice. The little I talked to them, I mean,” she said sullenly.
“Nice! Sure, because he’s tanked up on amphetamines and maybe some other shit!”
“You mean he could have killed us? I don’t think so! They didn’t seem dangerous at all, or like dope addicts,” Jenny insisted.
Obstinately she tossed her head, where an extremely short stubble could be seen in the backlight from the kitchen lamp. Irene forced herself to speak calmly and tried to select her words with care.
“Jenny, do you remember when you and Katarina visited me at the hospital on Monday? Do you remember how I looked? Do you remember that a young colleague I had with me was beaten up so badly that he’s still in the hospital?”
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.