“She claims that she heard the door to the farthest trash room close after the last sirens died out. That would mean about quarter to six, before the last ambulance arrived on the scene.”
The superintendent interjected a question. “How does she know that it was the door to the farthest garbage room?”
“Her apartment is right next to it. So she lives directly across the courtyard, viewed from von Knecht’s stairwell. But if what she says is true, it seems a little suspicious that the door was opened again almost immediately and she heard quick steps moving toward the courtyard door that leads to her stairwell. Not running, but sort of nervous-sounding. She assumed that the person who was hurrying wanted to get out of the rain. Not so strange, because it was pouring at the time. But she claims that she knows her neighbors by the sound of their footsteps. Her apartment is on the second floor, so she certainly has the opportunity to keep tabs. But she didn’t recognize these footsteps. It wasn’t someone from her building.”
Jonny Blom groaned and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Fredrik ignored him, but looked down at his notepad before he went on.
“She heard the courtyard door open and someone went up the steps to the ground-floor apartment, but then the footsteps didn’t continue up the stairs but instead crossed the hall and went out the front door to the street. The door is heavy and closes with a thump, according to the old lady.”
Andersson interrupted him with another question. “Did she seem confused or senile?”
“Well, she is ancient, after all. And I don’t know if she hears as well as she claims. But she seemed pretty sure of what she was saying.”
Anyone over fifty was a fossil in Stridh’s view. Andersson gave a little sigh before he asked, “Did any of you check to see whether someone in the building was out taking a walk at that time?”
Stridh, Borg, and Persson had found no one who confessed to being out at the time in question who might have been the cause of the slamming doors or the footsteps in the courtyard.
Andersson said, “If this was our murderer, then it shows he was incredibly cold blooded. To wait in the building for fifteen minutes after the murder! On the other hand, at first everyone probably thought it was suicide. No one was looking for a killer. And if it’s true that he went across the courtyard and straight through the entryway, then he would have come out on Kapellgatan. A whole block from the murder scene!”
Andersson wasn’t as doubtful as Stridh. Experience had taught him that sedentary old people who kept watch on their neighborhood were invaluable witnesses.
Eagerly he said, “Assume that it actually was our killer. Under cover of rain and darkness he slips out into the courtyard. For some reason he slinks quickly into the garbage room and disposes of something. What? An idea is coming to mind. Any suggestions?”
Andersson looked around the room, but no one else came up with a guess. Triumphantly he exclaimed, “The rag! The rag with the Ajax on it! It wasn’t found in the apartment. The only cleaning rags we found were in an unopened package in the broom closet. Now we’ve run into some bad luck, because we weren’t on the alert this morning. The sanitation department came and picked up the garbage before we had a chance to look through the cans. And the only fingerprints on the door opening onto the courtyard belonged to Irene and to Henrik von Knecht. Someone wiped off the handle before Irene and von Knecht’s son touched it.”
The others gave Irene a quizzical look, but neither she nor the superintendent felt like explaining about the hide-and-seek game with the press the night before.
Instead Irene said, “According to Sylvia von Knecht the cleaning woman is Finnish; her name is Pirjo Larsson and she speaks terrible Swedish. We have to get her phone number, and then we can find her address. She lives somewhere out in Angered. Hannu, may I ask if you speak Finnish?”
Hannu Rauhala nodded.
“Would you please handle the interview with Pirjo Larsson?”
Another nod from Hannu.
Irene reported on the conversations she had had during the day. They all thought, just as she did, that quite a few interesting angles had developed, even though there was no motive yet or any plausible perpetrator.
Birgitta Moberg had managed to reach the Wahl couple in Provence by phone. Their youngest daughter, who was unmarried, was listed in the phone book; she had given Birgitta the number. She had called the couple, who had already heard that Richard von Knecht had been murdered, from one of their daughters. They told Birgitta that they had taken the car ferry to Kiel the previous Sunday evening. This morning they reached their farm about fifty kilometers outside Aix-en-Provence. They could only confirm what others who were at the party had said, that von Knecht was happy and in high spirits as usual, and that they didn’t have the foggiest idea of a motive or murderer. Unbelievable, was their comment. She leafed through her notes.
“Waldemar Reuter was at his brokerage office. He didn’t have time to talk to me today but promised to come here tomorrow morning at eight. He did say this much: He was shocked and found it impossible to comprehend why anyone would want to kill von Knecht. Seems to have been a regular model citizen, that Richard von Knecht,” she said dejectedly.
There was a discreet knock on the door, and the secretary came in with a thick stack of faxes under her arm. Dryly she said, “Greetings from the fax room to Inspector Huss; the fax machine burned up! Do you know why?” With that she slammed the heap on the table in front of Irene.
She had to admit that her journalist contact at Swedish Ladies’ Journal was a real find. Irene could see that, even after a cursory glance through the pile. Everything was neatly arranged in chronological order and stamped with the date.
Jonny reported on the investigative material he had been allowed to examine with his two colleagues in Financial. Von Knecht was mixed up in a tangle of suspected tax crimes that had to do with moving money out of the country for stock deals abroad. The material, gathered over a period of almost two years, had been left untouched, Jonny explained.
“These guys in Financial are trained to unravel financial crimes, but they work here at police headquarters, even though they’re actually associated with the National Unit for Financial Crimes in Stockholm. So it’s a government deal, really. But since their work often runs into a hitch on the prosecution side, they do some other investigative work here at Crime Police. Evidently there were suspicions of insider trading relating to the sale of a pharmaceutical company a couple of years ago. But it couldn’t be proven. Von Knecht made a neat little profit of eleven million on that one. According to the financial guys, they think his offshore assets are larger than the ones he has in Sweden. But since foreign brokers handle those deals, they’re hard to check up on. And in Sweden he’s taxed on personal assets of a hundred and sixty-three million!”
The appreciative whistles and shouts in the room were interrupted by an angry buzz from the intercom.
“Hello! This is the duty officer! Will you please come down and get your damned pizzas? It stinks like a pizzeria in here!”
Fredrik Stridh and Birgitta Moberg volunteered. It occurred to Irene as they vanished out the door that she had seen them together quite a bit lately. Jonny Blom seemed to be thinking the same thing. He unconsciously pressed his lips together as he gazed after them with a gloomy expression. The others were busily rising and stretching their legs.